ScienceInsider

New Leader. MIT elects one of its own, L. Rafael Reif, to head the distinguished research university.

Credit: MIT

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's board of trustees today elected Provost L. Rafael Reif as president of the top-tier research university. He will replace neuroscientist Susan Hockfield, who was the first life scientist to lead MIT, on 2 July.

Reif, who has been an MIT faculty member since 1980, became the institute's chief academic officer in 2005. During his tenure, Reif presided over the development of Web projects that offer MIT and Harvard University courses online for free and led faculty efforts to recruit and retain minorities and women.

Faculty, staff, and students got a chance to welcome the president-elect and his family at a campus reception this afternoon.

A U.S. House of Representatives committee today takes up a 2013 spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that would partly reverse deep cuts in the agency's science and technology programs. It also provides $75 million for a controversial agricultural biodefense laboratory in Kansas that the Obama Administration had zeroed out of its fiscal year 2013 budget request.

Overall, the draft spending bill before the House Appropriations Committee would provide $39.1 billion for DHS, 1% below the White House's request and about $484 million, or 1.2%, below its 2012 budget. The agency's core research, development, and innovation (RD&I) programs would get a hefty 40% increase, to $406 million, over current spending levels, but that number is $73 million below the White House's request.

The restored $140 million is in part to make up for major RD&I cuts Congress imposed last year. The funding will allow DHS "to fully fund all projects that were at a reduced level in fiscal year 2012, restart half of its requested projects currently on 'hold,' and consider new R&D projects that offer the potential of novel and more cost effective solutions to DHS challenges," notes a committee report accompanying the bill.

Chile's Supreme Court has handed down a possibly landmark decision that will require more stringent environmental reviews of major construction projects and could help opponents challenge a series of planned hydroelectric dams in Patagonia.

In the 11 May decision, the high court voted 3 to 2 to invalidate the recent approval of the Río Cuervo dam in Chile's Aysén region. The justices ruled that project backers had not completed a required geological survey before a regional government agency approved the project. The dam's approval "is unlawful" because the agency hadn't considered "the indicated ground survey that, in the opinion of this Court, is essential for the approval or rejection of the project."

The decision "is clearly a radical change in the historical judgments of the Supreme Court," said Fernando Dougnac, attorney for the Environmental Prosecutor's Office, which filed the challenge on behalf of local residents opposed to the dam. It confirms that "studies should be performed before the decision is made," he said.

Collaborators. Brazil’s Glaucius Oliva (left), the U.S.’s Subra Suresh (center) and Germany’s Matthias Kleiner (right) discuss the new Global Research Council at today’s press conference in Arlington, Virginia.

Credit: Sandy Schaeffer, NSF

A new group of government research funders from around the world announced today that it will try to find common ground on two big issues in its inaugural year: defining research integrity and promoting open access to scientific information. The Global Research Council (GRC), comprised of the leaders of publicly funded science agencies from about 50 nations, also released its first work product, a common set of principles that frame how funders should review and choose the most worthy research projects.

The release of the new Statement of Principles for Scientific Merit Review followed a meeting of 47 research leaders hosted by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) at its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. "I am very pleased that pretty much everyone we invited came," said NSF Director Subra Suresh, who has been looking for ways to foster international research cooperation. The 2-day Global Summit on Merit Review capped a year-long effort to develop the new statement, which highlights six "key elements necessary for a rigorous and transparent review system." They include the use of expert assessment of proposals and a transparent, impartial, and confidential review process.

"These are not necessarily all-inclusive principles," Suresh said at a press conference today, "but they are basic principles we all agreed on." Such agreement could help smooth the way for multinational research projects, he noted.

Suresh also formally announced the creation of GRC, which he said will be a "voluntary, … virtual organization" designed to foster discussion of "shared goals, aspirations, and principles, and provide a vehicle to unify science across the globe." It is not intended to be "a new bureaucracy," he emphasized, and each member agency will cover its costs for participating. GRC also will not, at least for the time being, get involved in funding international research projects, Suresh said. Instead, the goal is to create forum for "high-level discussions" of more general policy issues.

Now that it has hashed out the merit review principles, GRC will focus on developing common views on safeguarding research integrity and expanding open access, said science chiefs from Brazil and Germany, which will lead the effort. Both are "important" topics "in every laboratory in the world," said physicist Glaucius Oliva, president of Brazil's National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, the nation's lead research funding agency.

The latest numbers on the status of fisheries in the United States, released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), show continued progress toward ending overfishing. Six stocks that were previously overfished have been declared rebuilt—having reached a healthy population size—the biggest improvement since NOAA began issuing the reports in 1997. That raises the total number of rebuilt stocks to 27. "This is evidence that we are moving in the right direction and that sacrifices that fishermen have made are paying off," says Lee Crockett of the Pew Environment Group.

All told, 86% of the 258 major stocks reviewed by NOAA are in good shape.

But more remains to be done. Forty-five stocks remain overfished (the population is below the target) and 36 others are still "subject to overfishing," or, in other words, being caught at too high a rate. Both of these metrics, however, improved slightly from the previous year.

In a teleconference, Galen Tromble of NOAA's Office of Sustainable Fisheries credited the gains to the annual catch limits required by federal law and the rebuilding plans implemented by regional fisheries councils.

The six stocks now ready for guilt-free eating are:

• Northeast: Gulf of Maine Haddock
• Mid-Atlantic: Summer Flounder
• Northwest: Widow Rockfish, Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon
• Alaska: Bering Sea Snow Crab

NSF Director Subra Suresh

Increasing collaboration between U.S. scientists and their counterparts in other countries has been a priority for Subra Suresh since he became director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in October 2010. But one thing about negotiating such bilateral agreements has frustrated him: The time it takes to reach an agreement on the scientific rules of the road. There may be haggling over how to handle intellectual property and access to data, for example, but Suresh says the biggest bugaboo is often agreeing on common standards for peer review.

"We keep repeating the same thing over and over," says Suresh about the discussions over how each side would select the most worthy proposals. "Having to start from scratch causes considerable delay, and it is a big waste of time."

So Suresh decided to do something about it. After winning the strong backing of the White House, Suresh this weekend convened a meeting of 47 leaders of research funding agencies from 44 countries. And tomorrow, at the conclusion of closed-door sessions, the group will issue the first-ever global statement on the principles of merit review. Although the actual statement is embargoed until then, it is expected to touch on the importance of using experts in conducting a confidential yet transparent process to identify the highest-quality proposals.

The U.S. science education community is being invited to comment on the first-ever set of science standards for U.S. school children.

A draft of the Next Generation Science Standards has been posted by Achieve Inc., a coalition of high-tech companies, foundations, and state and local governments that hope to use their collective influence to create a voluntary national science curriculum where none now exists. The standards, a 2-year effort funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, are built around a novel "framework" for teaching science that blends content with how scientists do their work and its practical applications.

The public has until 1 June to submit comments. A second draft is expected to be issued this fall in hopes of finalizing the document in early 2013. Some 26 states are already involved in writing the standards, which would need to be adopted separately by each state.

See next week's issue of Science for an inside look at the draft standards.

The University of Michigan is offering trios of faculty members the chance to make interdisciplinary connections and get a quick start on high-risk, high-reward research projects.

The $15-million program, announced earlier this week, is called MCubed. Beginning this fall, each professor in a department with a research component will receive a token for $20,000. Professors can then discuss project ideas with colleagues. Once a minimum of three researchers—at least two of whom must be from different disciplines—decide to work together, they will register their project online and immediately receive $60,000 to hire an undergraduate, graduate student, or postdoctoral researcher. The collaborations and funding can scale up, but only by factors of three tokens.

The program aims to fund about 250 projects during its first-year pilot phase. The goal is to help faculty members gather the type of preliminary data that are typically needed to submit a competitive grant proposal to a federal research agency or other funding source.

The European Parliament yesterday postponed signing off on the 2010 expenditures of three science-related E.U. agencies amid concerns over conflicts of interest and inappropriate spending.

The vote to postpone the so-called discharge—which affects the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and the European Environment Agency (EEA)—has no immediate consequences, but it is seen as a warning that the agencies need to restore their credibility. It came 2 days after EFSA's head resigned effective immediately because she had returned to her job at an industry-funded group.

The agencies, which provide the European Commission with scientific advice, have been under fire from members of the European Parliament for several years for being too close to industry and other parties. Because the Parliament has little control over them, members have used their right to withhold approval of past spending as a way to express their discontent and put pressure on the agencies.

Gas station. The U.S. government's helium enrichment facility in Texas.

Credit: U.S. Department of the Interior

Two years ago, scientists warned Congress of a looming helium crisis. Yesterday, a Senate panel examined a proposal that responds to that warning.

"Helium is a commodity that is frequently overlooked and often only considered when purchasing balloons for parties," said Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chair of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, at a hearing on a bill he has introduced that would alter the terms under which the United States is selling off its once-vast reserve of helium gas, held underground in a natural geological formation near Amarillo, Texas. "Let me take a moment and highlight the importance of this commodity, as well as the importance of the U.S. helium reserve in the world's helium market."

The proposed Helium Stewardship Act of 2012 (S.2374) would maintain a roughly 15-year supply for federal users, including the holders of research grants. It would also give priority to federally funded researchers in times of shortage. Those provisions are meant to maintain a steady supply of helium for scientists as they ease over to private suppliers.

Bingaman's bill, co-sponsored by two other Democrats and two Republicans, would supplant a 1996 law expiring next year that authorizes sales from the federal helium reserve. Those sales, which constitute nearly 30% of the world's helium, would simply stop if Congress fails to act.

Budget cutter. Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) wants the National Science Foundation to stop funding political science research.

Credit: U.S. House of Representatives

The U.S. House of Representatives has decided that the country can't afford several federally funded research programs.

The list includes the entire political science portfolio at the National Science Foundation, as well as a $10-million NSF program on climate change education. The House would also pull the plug on the American Community Survey, a monthly questionnaire from the Census Bureau that has replaced the long form of the decennial census. And it voted to withhold funds from the Obama Administration's effort to implement a National Ocean Policy (NOP).

The moves were included in amendments to a bill approved today on a largely party-line, 247-to-163 vote that funds the commerce and justice departments as well as NSF, NASA, and other independent agencies.

The targeted programs comprise a tiny fraction of the $51 billion appropriated for 2013 in the so-called CJS bill (HR 5326), one of 12 appropriations measures that fund the entire U.S. government. But House Republicans say that they represent the type of duplicate and/or unnecessary spending that has led to a $1.5 trillion annual deficit and a $15 trillion federal debt.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Instiute of Texas (CPRIT) issued a statement yesterday afternoon in response to the resignation of its chief scientific officer, Nobel prize-winning biochemist Alfred Gilman. For details see our updated story that broke the news of Gilman's resignation.

Test results. The latest data on what U.S. middle school students know about science raises many questions.

Credit: NAEP

U.S. eighth graders did slightly better last year on a national science test than did their counterparts in 2009. But what that result says about the state of science in U.S. schools is open to debate.

A 2-point rise to 152 (on a scale from 0 to 300) is part of what Jack Buckley, head of the National Center for Education Statistics, calls the "uniformly positive" results from the 2011 Science National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) at Grade 8. The pronounced racial gap in scores narrowed by a small but significant amount, says Buckley, from 36 points to 35 points for white students compared with black students, and from 30 to 27 for white students compared with Hispanic students. And all three groups did better. At the same time, he notes that the gap in scores between boys and girls grew from 4 to 5 points.

However, some science educators strongly disagree with Buckley's self-declared "optimism" that things are moving in the right direction. "It's pretty hard to get excited about these results," says Gerald Wheeler, interim executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. "It's like when a student who is flunking every subject finally comes home with a D."

Moving on. ARPA-E Director Arun Majumdar (right) discusses biofuel technologies with Willem Vermaas of Arizona State University, Tempe, at an event near Washington, D.C., earlier this year.

Credit: Quentin Kruger/U.S. Department of Engery

Arunava Majumdar, the head of the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), will leave his post next month, Energy Secretary Steven Chu wrote in an e-mail to agency staff members today. President Barack Obama had proposed elevating Majumdar to an undersecretary at DOE, but the Senate never confirmed the appointment.

"Under Arun's leadership, we have seen ARPA-E grow from a fledgling program to become a leading agency for innovation and energy research," Chu wrote in his e-mail. "Arun has recruited some of the most talented professionals across the country to join the ranks at ARPA-E and create programs that have the potential of changing the entire energy landscape."

Biochemist Eric Toone, a former professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and DOE's deputy director of technology for ARPA-E, will become head of ARPA-E, Chu wrote. David Sandalow, DOE's assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the department, will become undersecretary.

Arjun's departure "is a kick in the stomach," but Toone "will keep the agency in good hands," says Barton Gordon, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives who spearheaded the creation of ARPA-E in 2007. Gordon, now a lobbyist with K&L Gates in Washington, D.C., says Majumdar is a "good scientist and a good organizer who created a good bipartisan following [in Congress] for ARPA-E. I don't think people realized what a good politician he is. He's a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy."

Modeled after the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA-E is designed to funnel money quickly to high-risk, "transformational" efforts to develop new energy technologies. Since getting its first chunk of funding in 2009, it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on technologies that ARPA-E's program managers believe are close to commercialization. The agency has won broad backing from industry, and has fared relatively well in the annual budget battles. This year will spend about $300 million on a wide array of projects, down from a high of $400 million in 2010.

Majumdar was not available for comment. But Gordon says Majumdar, who came to Washington from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, has wanted to spend more time with his two young daughters "for some time." Gordon expects him "to take some time to think about what comes next. He will have plenty of options." Majumdar will always be "a leading advocate for ARPA-E," Gordon predicts.

Majumdar, who has led ARPA-E for nearly two-and-a-half years, will leave 9 June, Chu wrote.

Officials at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have agreed to prevent the reburial of two 9000‑year‑old skeletons until the settlement of a federal lawsuit against the University of California (UC) by three professors.

In anticipation of a court hearing that was to be held on 11 May in federal court in San Francisco, UCSD officials agreed to keep the skeletons in a safe place until the case is settled rather than hand them over to American Indians for reburial. Judge Richard Seeborg of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California signed an injunction on 7 May to extend a temporary restraining order against the transfer he granted on 27 April, at the request of three UC professors who want to keep the remains accessible for scientific study.

The skeletons were discovered in 2006 during excavation at the University House (the traditional home of the UCSD chancellor) and have been the subject of a legal battle ever since. Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, museums and other institutions must repatriate remains and artifacts that can be traced to a tribe. The Kumeyaay tribes of San Diego have sought the skeletons for reburial because they say they were found on their ancestral tribal lands. The tribes filed a lawsuit on 13 April to recover the skeletons.

Three university professors, however, filed their own lawsuit on 27 April to block the transfer, saying that there is no evidence that these bones are related to the Kumeyaay tribes. A scientific advisory committee to UCSD found that the Kumeyaay language moved into the region just 2000 years ago and that the Kumeyaay traditionally cremated their dead rather than burying them. The researchers argue that the ancient bones are important for scientific analysis, particularly because new methods are being developed to extract and study ancient DNA and to analyze the diet and lifestyles of ancient people. The bones also could shed light on the identities of some of the earliest humans to settle in North America.

Conflict over conflict. The resignation of a senior member of Europe’s Food Safety Authority, shown here during a technical meeting, has highlighted conflict of interest concerns.

Credit: EFSA

Diána Bánáti, a food policy expert from Hungary, has resigned from her position as chair of the management board of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Union's top risk-assessment body. EFSA officials asked her to give up her position after she announced yesterday that she would become executive and scientific director of the Brussels-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) starting on 1 July. Bánáti has also resigned as food safety commissioner and chief scientific advisor at the Hungarian Ministry of Rural Development, according to an ILSI spokesperson.

Bánáti's relationship with ILSI, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., that is heavily funded by industry, has long been the subject of controversy. In October 2010, some members of the European Parliament and nongovernmental advocates called for Bánáti's resignation from the EFSA management board, which she had served on since October 2008, after it became known that she joined ILSI's European board of directors in April 2010 but did not publicly report the potential conflict of interest before her reelection to the EFSA board later that year. She ultimately resigned from the ILSI board but continued her work as EFSA chair.

Bánáti was not available for an interview, but an ILSI spokesperson told ScienceInsider that she knew that she would not be able to continue her EFSA work after accepting the position at ILSI because of EFSA's conflict-of-interest policies. Bánáti's picture and biography were removed from the EFSA Web site today.

Bánáti is not the only EFSA board member facing conflict complaints. In March 2011, Corporate Europe Observatory, a group that campaigns for transparency in E.U. institutions, sent a letter to EFSA Director Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle and E.U. Health and Consumer Policy Commissioner John Dalli, which charged that four other EFSA members also hold outside positions that present potential conflicts.

The European Parliament, meanwhile, has also expressed concerns about EFSA's independence. In March, its budgetary control committee postponed a decision to close out EFSA's books for 2010, citing concerns about meeting expenses and conflicts of interest, and calling on the body to improve its management. The parliament is expected to make a final decision on the issue tomorrow.

Alfred Gilman

Credit: UT Southwestern

The Nobel prize-winning biochemist who has steered the scientific arm of Texas's $3-billion cancer research fund is stepping down citing concerns over the agency's funding process.

Alfred Gilman, the chief scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), yesterday wrote to CPRIT Executive Director William Gimson to say that he plans to resign effective 12 October. In the resignation letter obtained by ScienceInsider, Gilman explained that the 3-year-old CPRIT is now well established and no longer needs him as a full-time science officer. But he also expressed concerns about the agency's peer-review system.

Texas voters 5 years ago approved a plan to fund CPRIT at $3 billion over 10 years, following a model similar to California's stem cell research agency. It has disbursed $671 million so far, mostly for basic research and clinical trials. In addition to awarding scores of grants to Texas labs, CPRIT has recruited at least two dozen scientists to the state, including several top-ranked researchers.

Gilman, who came to the agency from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, has prided himself on setting up a peer-review system made up of scientists from outside Texas and led by Phillip Sharp, a fellow Nobelist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist.

In his resignation letter, Gilman explains that CPRIT's research program "is now essentially at a steady state," his job "has become routine" and that CPRIT "no longer require[s] a full-time person." But he also alludes to problems: He writes that keeping the peer-review system "intact ... will be critically dependent on the attitudes of CPRIT leadership," especially CPRIT's oversight committee.

Just say no. White House officials say they would advise President Barack Obama to veto a House version of appropriations bill over NOAA, NASA spending levels.

The U.S. House of Representatives today begins work on passing a 2013 spending bill that includes robust funding for the National Science Foundation—but the White House is threatening to veto the bill because of spending levels for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA.

The Obama Administration "strongly opposes" the bill's passage for a variety of reasons, it writes in a 7 May Statement of Administration Policy (SAP). One problem is that the Republican-led House has adopted a lower total spending level for the 2013 fiscal year, which begins 1 October, than Congress and the White House agreed to last year in resolving an impasse over borrowing by the federal government.

Other deal breakers include a House plan to give NOAA $93 million less than the White House requested. "This cut would impact negatively NOAA's ability to support the Nation's fisheries and oceans stewardship programs," the Administration argues, although it "appreciates" the House bill's support for the agency's "mission-critical satellite programs."

The Administration also "strongly opposes" a flat budget for NASA's efforts to develop commercial launch vehicles for its astronauts. In addition, "while the Administration appreciates the overall funding level provided to NASA," the statement says "the bill provides some NASA programs with unnecessary increases at the expense of other important initiatives."

Multiuse. A proposed National Ocean Policy hopes to improve efficiencies in marine research, management, and use of ocean waters such as the Port of Los Angeles in California.

Credit: U.S. Geological Survey

Coaxing U.S. federal agencies to work together is no small feat. But an emerging National Ocean Policy (NOP) is attempting to do just that. The Obama Administration's proposed NOP will help federal agencies better organize marine research efforts and inject data into policy decisions—and potentially prevent conflicts between ocean users and save money, U.S. officials argue. But recent public comments on the Administration's plan for implementing the new policy suggest that researchers are concerned that budget shortfalls and program eliminations could undermine efforts to realize these goals.

U.S. policymakers have tried to come up with a coordinated ocean-use policy for years. The most recent effort started in 2000 when Congress passed the Oceans Act, which called for the formation of a U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. The commission issued recommendations for a national ocean policy in a report released in 2004. But it wasn't until July 2010, when President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13547, that the most recent iteration of NOP was put into place.

NOP is intended to enable "the integration of information through the ocean policy agencies that has really not happened in the past," Sally Yozell, director of policy at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said last week during a science policy conference hosted by the American Geophysical Union. And that coordination "is going to help us and industry save millions of dollars," she predicted.

In the midst of the biggest changes to U.S. science education in the past 2 decades, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has removed its executive director. The decision has caught science educators by surprise.

The governing board of the 55,000-member organization, based in Arlington, Virginia, last month decided to part company with Francis Eberle after 4 years. His last day was Monday. Gerald Wheeler, who retired in 2008 and returned to his beloved Montana after leading the association for 13 years, has agreed to serve as interim executive director until a replacement is on board.

"The board decided to make a change in the association's leadership," says Patricia Simmons, the current NSTA president and head of the department of math, science, and technology education at North Carolina State University. "We were fortunate to be able to coax Gerry out of retirement." Asked why the move was made, Simmons called the secret vote a "personnel decision," and said, "I would rather not discuss the reasons." A letter sent out to affiliate organizations thanks Eberle "for his service to the association … and for his efforts to improve science education." Eberle did not respond to several phone messages.