Archive by date | May 2011

California’s stem cell agency to choose between investment banker and cardiologist

California's stem cell agency to choose between investment banker and cardiologist

Cross posted from Nature Medicine’s Spoonful of Medicine blog on behalf of Elie Dolgin. CIRM nominees: Jonathan Thomas (left) and Frank Litvack (right) Six months after a bungled attempt to find a new leader, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) yesterday announced two candidates to succeed Bob Klein, the architect and founding chairman of the $3 billion state stem cell agency. And with the option of electing either a bond financier or a cardiologist, the CIRM board now faces a stark choice over who will lead the San Francisco-based institute as it enters into its next phase. Klein, a  … Read more

US Astronomers to face tough choices

US Astronomers to face tough choices

Tight budget projections have prompted the US National Science Foundation to launch a review that is likely to recommend consolidations or divestments for some major US astronomy facilities, officials warned a town hall meeting at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston today. “The time for difficult decisions is here,” said Tom Statler, a program director in the NSF’s division of astronomical sciences.  Read more

Critical hours for E. coli outbreak in Germany

Posted on behalf of Marian Turner The next 24 hours will be critical for scientists in Germany who are trying to understand if an outbreak of infections from a deadly strain of E. coli currently sweeping the country is a severe instance of a normal infection, or something different. Three women have died today from suspected infections with the bacteria enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) which causes dysentery-like, bloody diarrhoea, severe cramping and fever. Health authorities have registered a further 400 confirmed cases – mostly young women. First cases emerged barely two weeks ago and authorities have been shocked at the  … Read more

WHO defers decision on smallpox stocks

The World Health Organization’s top-decision making body, the World Health Assembly, said today it would defer until 2014 any decision on the destruction of the two last known remaining stocks of the virus that causes smallpox. A US-resolution calling for the stocks to be maintained for at least another five years ran into opposition led by Iran, resulting in deadlock last night after a day of negotiations.

Kepler announces new rocky planet

Kepler announces new rocky planet

The Kepler planet-finding mission’s first rocky planet, announced in February, has a similarly-sized sibling, the team announced at the American Astronomical Society conference in Boston today. The discovery – dubbed Kepler 10C, is the first planet to be confirmed using infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope together with a statistical method that could be applied to find Earth-like planets from among the 1235 candidates released in February. “I’m here to present a new technique exemplified by the discovery of Kepler 10C” said Francois Fressin of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to a packed press conference room.  Read more

Role of bacteria in Gulf oil spill under the microscope

Role of bacteria in Gulf oil spill under the microscope

Since last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, microbiologists have been working to understand how the microbial environment responds to and ultimately breaks down oil from a spill. (For more information, see our feature on the topic.) This weekend at the 111th general meeting of The American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans – the nearest large city to the spill site – an entire session was dedicated to the newest results from spill studies.  Read more