British universities are being forced to reveal details of animal experiments conducted by their researchers after an animal rights activist filed a flurry of freedom of information requests.
Australia's main biomedical research agency has had to extend grant deadlines after a new online system kept freezing up and crashing, frustrating researchers.
Whale conservation advocates cheered today when Senator John Kerry (D-MA) introduced a bill designed to strengthen the position of U.S. negotiators at the International Whaling Commission meeting in June. Iceland, Norway, and Japan have proposed lifting a ban on commercial whale hunting. The bill, analogous to a bill introduced in the House of Representatives last year, also calls for more research into human impacts on whales.
]]>The future looked bleak for this joint Russian-ESA project as recently as last year, says Gernot Grömer, a space biomedical researcher at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. "They were pretty much scrounging" for funding, he says. The total price tag of Mars500 has not been announced, but next week's press conference indicates that ESA and the Russians have dug into their pockets.
An intense training regimen—identical to the ESA's astronaut program—began 24 February for four Europeans, four Russians, and a single Chinese candidate. All of the candidates speak English and Russian, and they made the final cut due to their skills in medicine, electronics, and other relevant fields. After the final crew of six are chosen, they will enter a completely isolated capsule at the IBMP facility. The tiny capsule consists of four connected modules, each with a volume of 550 cubic meters. Their diet will be identical to the freeze-dried menu on the International Space Station.
The simulation is meant to test the psychological stresses and logistical challenges of a real mission to Mars. Claustrophobia and depression are serious risks. "But given good crew selection and good activities and onboard entertainment, I seriously doubt they will go nuts," says Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and a former NASA astronaut candidate. "The crew will be motivated and selected for just this kind of confinement."
Besides testing the grit of the crew, a support crew will be working around the clock at IBMP for the duration of the mission. Communication between mission control and the crew will have an automatically enforced delay of as long as 20 minutes to account for the distance between Earth and the capsule during its 100 million-mile jaunt. One simulated emergency that they are certain to face is a solar flare. In the space outside of Earth's magnetic shielding, astronauts will be vulnerable to the Sun's periodic belches of plasma and high-energy radiation. Once the alarm sounds, the Mars500 crew will have to scramble to emergency shielding to wait out the flare.
The experiment is launching at a time when human space flight seems more remote than ever. President Barack Obama canceled NASA's moon mission last month. And yet ESA struck an optimistic note in its Mars500 press release: "This mission might lack some of the glory and feeling of the real flight, but it is just as tough and will yield a lot of experience for the future. The first humans to walk on Mars will surely remember these pioneers."
]]>Says the paper:
A pilot program of five excellence centers will begin during the upcoming academic year. Sources close to the Council for Higher Education said the first centers to open would focus on economics and computer science, two areas in which Israeli scientists have made particularly important contributions to international research.
"It's certainly a step in the right direction," Eytan Abraham, an Israeli research fellow at the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Biomedical Engineering Center, tells ScienceInsider. Abraham is MIT's representative of BioAbroad, a group that tries to facilitate the return of biomedical scientists, entrepreneurs, and physicians to Israel, for instance, by bringing them into contact with companies there and funding travel for job interviews.
Many Israeli expat scientist want to go back, Abraham says; to wit, more than 100 showed up in Boston for a 2 January meeting about the topic with Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz. The small number of scientific positions available in Israeli academia is a major obstacle, Abraham says. But he cautions that it remains to be seen whether academic institutions and private donors will come through with their share of the money. He also notes that the program is for academic posts only; a similar initiative should aim to open up jobs in Israel's industry, says Abraham.
]]>The House of Representatives has passed a law to address the threat of harmful algae blooms.
Funded by the biomedical research charity Wellcome Trust, the Wellcome Trust Monitor survey examines attitudes toward medical research among adults and young people in the United Kingdom.
Enjoy the newly archived presentations from the recent ARPA-E summit.
The third of three hearings on geoengineering will commence on Thursday at the House science committee with the key witness Phil Willis, chair of the U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology committee.
A federal court today rejected claims that a mercury-containing preservative used in vaccines can cause autism.
]]>That's the hope of the country's ministers, who today approved the text of a new research law that aims to reward scientific talent and encourage entrepreneurship, according to local Spanish-language reports.
The law still needs to be approved by Spain's parliament. But Science and Innovation Minister Cristina Garmendia told reporters that scientific reforms could provide "a new model" for Spain's troubled economy based on innovation. Among other steps, the law would create a new Spanish Research Agency to oversee spending and encourage the private sector to take on a larger share of R&D, something Garmendia says has been lacking in recent decades.
Currently, Spain's research establishment produces large amounts of middling quality science. The country ranks nineth in the world in number of papers published, but only 20th in impact, according to a Spanish report. "We demand a law that will let us get to the level of the Nobel Prize," said Joan Guinovart, president of the Confederation of Spanish Scientific Societies (COSCE), which represents about 30,000 researchers.
]]> The confederation released a statement in Spanish criticizing the law as largely ineffective. Mr. Guinovart told El Mundo that the law "doesn't provide solutions to the real problems" of Spanish science, which researchers say favors seniority over talent, in part by doling out automatic promotions. According to one joke making the rounds: "A messenger arrives in your office and 20 years later he becomes a professor."Spain's government says the new Science, Technology and Innovation law would address problems facing researchers, for instance by making it easier to move between universities or leave to start companies.
Garmendia said in a press conference today that the law will also do away with the public-sector grants for graduate students, and replace them with contractual arrangements that include unemployment benefits. "Where before there were grants, now we'll have contracts," the minister said.
Spain is also fretting over losing scientific talent, such as noted Spanish oncologist Josep Baselga, who this week confirmed that he would become chief of the hematology and oncology division and associate director of the Massachusetts General Hospital cancer center in Boston.
To stem brain drain, the new law calls for special "distinguished investigator contracts" for recruiting foreign researchers. Garmendia said that the "balance of attraction and retention of talent must be positive," Spanish news agency ADN reported.
Garmendia, a biologist and leading figure in Spain's biotechnology industry, was appointed head of Spain's newly created Science and Innovation ministry in 2008. She quickly drew criticism for overseeing a sharp cut in Spain's science budget. Spain's science spending totals about 1.35% of GDP and lags behind European neighbors, according to Guinovart's organization.
Spain's science ambitions suffered another blow this month when the European Southern Observatory recommended construction of a new giant telescope in Chile. Spain had bid for a location on the island of La Palma.
]]>In 2007, the employees filed suit against NASA, which owns JPL's infrastructure; California Institute of Technology, which manages the lab; and the Department of Commerce over a government rule requiring all workers at federal facilities to obtain a new mandatory I.D. for which they needed to subject themselves to a background check. The employees argued that the requirement, which stemmed from a 2004 Homeland Security Presidential Directive issued by George W. Bush, was a violation of privacy and would constrict the open and free environment that had drawn them to work at JPL.
They were able to obtain a court injunction against the rule. But the federal government has now appealed to the Supreme Court to have the injunction overturned, which would force the employees to comply with the requirement. The Supreme Court is likely to hear the case this fall.
]]>ScienceInsider has learned that Subra Suresh, 53, has been tapped by the White House to replace Arden Bement Jr., who announced last month that he would be stepping down before his 6-year term ends in November. The Indian-born Suresh has been dean since 2007; he came to MIT in 1993 and was chair of the department of materials science and engineering before becoming dean.
A relative unknown in national policy circles, Suresh is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and maintains a productive research group in the emerging field of nanobiomechanics. That would make him a rarity at NSF, which has traditionally been led by senior administrators who are no longer active scientists.
The NSF director must be confirmed by the Senate, although it would be unusual for a nominee to attract any opposition. The 77-year-old Bement, a nuclear engineer, is stepping down on 1 June to lead a new global research institute at Purdue University, where he has been on leave.
]]>The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a tangled appeal, filed by parents of a child allegedly injured by a vaccine, that challenges key tenets of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. The act, passed by Congress in 1986, was meant to shield vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits if they made products to approved specifications, as occurred in this case.
In an unrelated case filed by Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center that warns about the dangers of vaccines, a Virginia District Court ruled that she was not libeled by vaccine advocate and pediatrician Paul Offit and Wired magazine, which ran a 2009 article about Offit that quoted him criticizing Arthur and saying, "She lies."
]]>Although the traditional disciplinary setup works well for universities that grant degrees in the separate fields, it is "a little unwieldy" for the agency, says NIST Director Patrick Gallagher. The new labs include information technology, a physical measurement lab, a materials measurement lab, and an engineering lab. Gallagher says that the shift will be felt more by administrators than by bench scientists but that hopefully the new organization will make it easier for interdisciplinary groups of researchers to come together to address critical research problems.
Other changes are afoot as well. Gallagher says that he's already put in a request to Congress to change the top management structure of the agency, replacing the single deputy director with three associate directors, one responsible for the labs, one for extramural programs such as the Technology Innovation Program, and one for overall administrative management. Because the associate directors would be career staff rather than presidential appointments, the change should make for a more stable top leadership team, lending more continuity and stability to long-range planning efforts within the agency.
]]>Because while the U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions on terrorism research, including the creation of terrorism research institutions at the University of Maryland and elsewhere, the U.S. strategy against terrorism “is focused on technology, not understanding who violent extremists are and where the are coming from,” Atran told ScienceInsider by e-mail. In fact, he said, the only reason they invited him to the hearing is “because they were spooked by the [attempted] Christmas bombing and aware that their over-reliance on widgets isn't doing the job. ... They know I'm one of the only people around who works in the field with jihadis and wannabes and want to find out what makes them tick.”
]]> Atran leveled criticism at the U.S. military’s Human Terrain System, a program that has embedded social scientists in military units in Iraq and Afghanistan. “It is the infantry units themselves that should be trained before they go in theater to be culturally sensitive,” Atran told the senators. “Such efforts as these, small as they are, are potentially quite counterproductive. ... The military and cultural reality of the terrain may favor having embedded social scientists be uniformed and armed, ... but the possibility that social scientists themselves would have to fire their weapons and perhaps kill local people ... is guaranteed to engender academia's deep hostility.”While giving his testimony, Atran called on the U.S. government to engage social scientists more directly in open, peer-reviewed studies of terrorism, rather than relying on clandestine intelligence and antiterrorism technology. “Involve social scientists but not in [the military] theater,” Atran said.
But persuading more anthropologists to collaborate with the U.S. military “is not going to be easy, and it’s not going to happen today,” says Karaleah Reichart, an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She notes that the ethics code of the American Anthropological Association prohibits researchers from doing clandestine work for any government as well as any research that leads to the harm of their subjects. “How can the military convince us of that?”
Reichart says that the distrust between academic anthropologists and the U.S. military is a recent phenomenon. “Historically, anthropologists have worked closely with the government, and many were in the armed services,” she says, for example, studying the culture and ideology of the Germans and Japanese during World War II. “It’s the ‘know your enemy’ strategy.” But sentiment among academics about the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has turned sour, she says, especially in the wake of scandals involving social scientists' role in government-sanctioned torture.
]]>ITER, an enormous research fusion reactor which is shortly due to begin construction in France, is a collaboration between China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States and is due to cost somewhere between €5 billion and €10 billion. (The cost is a current bone of contention.) Over the past couple of years, the funding partners have become alarmed about the rapidly escalating cost estimates and delays in getting the project moving. The ITER council ordered reviews of the costing system and the project management. Sources say that the European Union, which, as host, is shouldering 45% of the construction cost, has been calling for more construction time because of concern that pushing ahead too fast could lead to unacceptable technical risks. Although Brinkman does not name the E.U., he says that a delay until 2020 was requested but after objections the meeting settled on a start date of late in 2019.
Brinkman also said that the review of the ITER management structure was "very negative." Researchers close to the project told Science that when the project was officially created in 2006, too much power was given to the seven Domestic Agencies, the bodies in each partner that procure parts for the reactor from industry, and not enough to the central organization, which consequently cannot manage the project properly. Brinkman says this issue is now being addressed and told the committee, in less than kind words, what he'd like to do to the person who designed the current management structure.
The ITER management is now adjusting cost estimates and construction schedules to take account of the new completion date. Those documents and the reactor's detailed design must be approved by the full ITER council, which is due to meet next in June but could call a meeting sooner.
]]>The National Cancer Institute's main advisory board is launching a broad review of the nation's cancer program that will result in a "strategic scientific vision" by September.
The European Union's new commissioner says the EU should stay the course on its current pledge of a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
]]>Dijkgraaf’s group, which represents 15 nations' national academies of science, said the review would include a close look at IPCC's procedures for assuring quality of data in its reports, the kind of literature used in its assessments, its review procedures, and ways it might publicize errors found in the future. In addition, Dijkgraaf said the review would look at IPCC's leadership structure, including issues about transparency and how it conducts its affairs. No members of the review panel have been named, although Dijkgraaf said he aimed to complete the report by August—a very quick turnaround for the National Academies.
Facing reporters at the UN headquarters in New York City, Dijkgraaf ducked questions about IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri’s leadership or the contents of e-mails at the University of East Anglia last fall. The review would be "really forward-looking," he said, suggesting that IPCC could "implement even better procedures for the next report," expected in 2014.
And Pachauri? “We are receptive,” he said. “This review will help us strengthen the process.”
“Nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently [about the IPCC] alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change,” added UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “The threat posed by climate change is real.”
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