ScienceInsider: September 2010 Archives

September 30, 2010 5:21 PM

Interior Department Releases 'Scientific Integrity' Policy

by Erik Stokstad

In recent years, the Department of the Interior has taken a lot of criticism about abuse of science, such as a Bush Administration political appointee who scientists said played...

September 30, 2010 5:06 PM

Court Schedule Suggests Stem Cell Lawsuit Won't Be Resolved Until Late in Year

by Jocelyn Kaiser

The court dates for the lawsuit tying up stem cell research suggest the case won't be decided until at least Thanksgiving and could take until the end of the...

September 30, 2010 2:38 PM |

Lawmakers at Odds Over Polar Satellite System Overhaul

by Eli Kintisch

A section of a bill passed last night by the House of Representatives expresses support for President Barack Obama's plan to restructure the bloated environmental satellite system known as...

September 30, 2010 1:19 PM |

Congress Mostly Approves New Direction for NASA

by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

After months of political fighting, the cloud of uncertainty over NASA's future has lifted. Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 304-118 to approve the Senate version of...

September 30, 2010 1:05 PM

BP Releases Long-Awaited Plan for $500 Million for Gulf Research

by Lauren Schenkman

An alliance of gulf state governments will be in charge of doling out the biggest pot of money for scientific research on impacts of BP's Gulf of Mexico oil...

September 30, 2010 12:59 PM |

New Answers for Increasing Minorities in Science

by Jeffrey Mervis

For decades, the conventional wisdom was that increasing the number of minority scientists requires addressing every aspect of the pipeline—from elementary school through hiring and promoting faculty members. That's...

September 30, 2010 11:11 AM

Suresh Confirmed as New NSF Director

by Jeffrey Mervis

Subra Suresh has been confirmed as the 13th director of the National Science Foundation. The U.S. Senate voted to approve the Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering dean by unanimous...

September 29, 2010 8:00 PM

Scientists: Wolf Hunts More Deadly Than Previously Thought

by Virginia Morell

A policy to sustainably manage gray wolves via recreational hunting appears to rely on faulty ecological science, says a new paper published today in PLoS ONE. The paper challenges...

September 29, 2010 3:30 PM |

Report: U.S. Needs National Strategy for Adapting to Warmer Climes

by Eli Kintisch

The federal government is way behind on efforts to develop effective strategies to adapt to a changing climate, a new report to the White House says today. "Even with...

September 29, 2010 1:00 PM |

How Plant Biologists Hit a $75 Million Jackpot

by Elizabeth Pennisi

Long the impoverished Cinderella of the biological research kingdom, plant science has just had a visit from the fairy godmother. Today the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced it would...

September 29, 2010 12:23 PM

Disgraced Physicist Can Keep His Degree

by Gretchen Vogel

Jan Hendrik Schön can keep his doctorate, a judge in Freiburg, Germany, decided on Monday. In 2002, the physicist was the center of one of the biggest scandals to...

September 28, 2010 9:16 PM

Appeals Court Says Stem Cell Funding Can Continue

by Jocelyn Kaiser

An appeals court today decided to allow federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research to continue while the court considers legal arguments that halted hESC research last month. “Appellants...

September 28, 2010 1:00 PM |

U.S. Grad School Rankings: It's Complicated

by Jeffrey Mervis

So who's number one? The long-delayed National Academies' assessment of U.S. graduate research programs is finally out today. And it's chock-full of information about 5100 doctoral programs in 62...

September 28, 2010 12:23 PM

Government Asks District Judge to Dismiss Stem Cell Suit

by Jocelyn Kaiser

The legal wrangling over stem cell research continues. Yesterday, the same day an appeals court questioned lawyers about the case, the government filed documents in a lower court arguing...

September 28, 2010 12:17 PM |

Plagiarized Report Presents New Hurdle to GM Eggplant in India

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI—In an embarrassing revelation, a landmark report from India's six science academies backing commercial planting of genetically modified (GM) brinjal, or eggplant, has been found to contain materials...

September 27, 2010 5:31 PM |

With Emissions Caps on Ice, Is Geoengineering Next Step in D.C. Climate Debate?

by Eli Kintisch

A 5-hour public conference today in Washington, D.C., on geoengineering research highlighted a growing focus in the nation's capital on the controversial idea of devising technical remedies for the...

September 27, 2010 4:41 PM

Judges Ask Tough Questions of Both Sides in Appeal of Stem Cell Research Ban

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Today, government lawyers asked an appeals court to suspend a lower court ruling that froze federally funded research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) last month. In a rapid-fire...

September 27, 2010 12:14 PM |

Nestlé Announces New Food Science Institute

by Martin Enserink

Swiss food giant Nestlé plans to step up its involvement in food products designed to prevent disease and improve health. At a press conference this morning, the company announced...

September 24, 2010 6:05 PM

Ohio Ag Campus Digs Out From Tornado

by Elizabeth Pennisi

More than a week after a tornado blew through the Wooster campus of Ohio State University, researchers were finally invited back today en masse to figure out the next...

September 24, 2010 3:50 PM

Six Ways to Keep Women in Science

by Kristen Minogue

First the good news: More women are getting Ph.D.s than men, capping a decades-long march toward parity. And it's not just in the humanities and social sciences. They also...

September 24, 2010 3:34 PM |

Sounds Familiar—End Breast Cancer by 2020?

by Jocelyn Kaiser

The National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC), an influential disease lobbying group, is known for its skeptical, scientific approach to battling cancer. In the early 1990s, the group lobbied to...

September 24, 2010 2:16 PM

India's Scientific Leadership Endorses GM Eggplant

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI—Six institutions representing India's top scientists (three academies of science and the academies of agriculture, engineering, and medicine) have given their joint and unanimous backing for a controversial...

September 24, 2010 2:01 PM |

U.K. Research Leaders Make Final Stand Against Science Cuts

by Sarah Reed

Top officials from six U.K. universities joined Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, in London today in a last-ditch attempt to avert the government's expected cuts in science...

September 23, 2010 5:10 PM

Science Chair Accepts Blame for Delays in COMPETES Bill

by Jeffrey Mervis

The retiring chairman of the House of Representatives science committee says that his attempt to win bipartisan support for revisions to the 2007 America COMPETES Act has slowed its...

September 23, 2010 4:15 PM |

Chinese Threat on Rare Earth Minerals Could Revitalize U.S. Mines

by Robert F. Service

Action is heating up in the world of rare earth minerals. China has blocked exports of rare earths to Japan over a fishing dispute between the two countries. Earlier...

September 23, 2010 4:01 PM

Two More Gene Therapy Papers Retracted

by Greg Miller

Two more papers have been retracted by Savio Woo, a noted gene therapy researcher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Last week, Mount Sinai issued...

September 23, 2010 3:22 PM |

FDA, Europe Curb Risky Diabetes Drug

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

The United States and Europe are both greatly restricting use of the diabetes drug Avandia, culminating several years of concern that the drug increases the risk of heart problems....

September 23, 2010 3:05 PM |

Parties in Stem Cell Lawsuit Want to Keep University of California Out

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Today, the two sides in the court battle over whether federally funded research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) is legal both registered their opposition to the University of...

September 23, 2010 2:00 PM |

Bad Forecast for U.S. Competitiveness, Says New Gathering Storm Report

by Jeffrey Mervis

The storm threatening to wipe out U.S. leadership in global science and technology is now a Category 5 hurricane. So say the authors of an influential 2005 report called...

September 23, 2010 11:00 AM |

Urologist Arrested for Attacks on Chinese Whistleblowers

by Hao Xin

BEIJING—The police bureau here announced Tuesday evening that they have detained the suspected mastermind behind assaults on China's science misconduct watchdog Fang Shimin (aka Fang Zhouzi) and journalist Fang...

September 23, 2010 9:48 AM |

Rome's Mathematical Physicists in Search of a Home

by Edwin Cartlidge

The Center for Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, a new institute in Rome that was officially inaugurated yesterday, aims to bring together some of the brightest scientific minds in the...

September 22, 2010 5:50 PM

Scientists Seek Donations on Innovative Micro-Philanthropy Site

by Eli Kintisch

A creative new Web site connects funding proposals by scientists with contributors who want to support the work out of the goodness of their hearts. An e-mailed press release...

September 22, 2010 2:40 PM

Russian Scientists Held for Months on Spy Charges

by John Travis

Reports out of Russia are that two of the country's scientists have been held since March on charges of spying for China. Svyatoslav Bobyshev and Yevgeny Afanasyev study gas...

September 21, 2010 2:46 PM

New Post for Senate's Medical Research Watchdog

by Eli Kintisch

If you're a medical researcher or administrator, you don't want to receive an e-mail from Paul Thacker. He was the key staffer behind a series of investigations since 2007...

September 21, 2010 1:43 PM |

American Physicists Scrounge to Stay in 'God Particle' Race

by Adrian Cho

The director of the sole particle physics laboratory in the United States says he has found ways to scrape up about one-third of the money the lab will need...

September 21, 2010 1:05 PM |

More Coming on Warming From French Academy

by Barbara Casassus

PARIS—Revelations and contradictions from the closed-door debate on climate change at the French Academy of Sciences yesterday continue to make their way into the press, but how much was...

September 21, 2010 1:01 PM

UC System Asks to Join Stem Cell Lawsuit

by Jocelyn Kaiser

The University of California (UC) system is seeking to join the legal battle being waged between the U.S. government and two researchers who work with adult stem cells over...

September 20, 2010 6:04 PM |

Veil Lifted on French Academy Debate on Climate

by Barbara Casassus

PARIS—The French Academy of Sciences finally produced a statement after a full day of debate on climate change Monday that had been shrouded in secrecy. The debate followed a...

September 20, 2010 5:29 PM |

Government Asks Appeals Court to Keep Stem Cell Research Going

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Government lawyers sallied forth on another legal maneuver today in an effort to defend U.S.-funded research on stem cells: They asked an appeals court to grant a longer stay...

September 17, 2010 5:41 PM |

Mount Sinai Says Misconduct by Postdocs Led to Retraction of Gene Therapy Papers

by Greg Miller

Earlier this week, the blog Retraction Watch called attention to four recent paper retractions by noted gene therapy researcher Savio Woo of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New...

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