Companies and scientists developing genetically modified (GM) insects for release in the wild need to be more open with safety data, contends an article published online today in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Read more
Some of the iconic winter landscapes by Pieter Breughel the Elder rank not only as fine examples of 16th century Dutch art. Paintings such as Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow (1565) also serve as vivid evidence for the so-called Little Ice Age, a period of cold climate conditions and glacier advances in Europe and elsewhere that lasted from the late Middle Ages until the 19th century. Read more
Six former and current scientists at the US Food and Drug Administration have sued the agency for secretly monitoring their personal email according to the Washington Post. Read more
Faculty members at Sharif University of Technology (SUT) in Tehran, Iran, have protested the arrest by US authorities of electrical engineering professor Seyed Mojtaba Atarodi, who was visiting the US when he was detained on 7 December. News of the arrest became public on 26 January when Atarodi attended a closed court hearing in California. In a statement dated 11 January but provided to Nature on 30 January, members of the faculty council of SUT (pictured) suggest that Atarodi has been indicted for purchasing items in the US for his lab at SUT, which might violate a ban on US trade with … Read more
Posted on behalf of Hannah Hoag Canada’s Arctic research vessel the CCGS Amundsen has been put out of action while it awaits engine repairs, forcing researchers to cancel the ship’s research program for 2012. A routine inspection in December 2011 revealed cracks on four of the ships six engines. “She can’t go into the Arctic this summer,” says Martin Fortier, executive director of ArcticNet, a research network based at Laval University in Quebec City, Quebec, that provides funding and logistics for Arctic research in Canada. “But if it had to happen, this was a good year for it.” Fortier says … Read more
The Faculty of 1000 (F1000), in London, has announced an experiment in online science publishing, aimed at sharing research results widely and rapidly, and using open peer review to check postings afterwards. Read more
Additional Reporting by Geoff Brumfiel An Iranian semiconductor scientist said to be visiting the US for health reasons has been arrested and charged with buying lab equipment in violation of export laws, the Associated Press reports. Seyed Mojtaba Atarodi of Iran’s Sharif University of Technology in Tehran (SUT, pictured, right) appeared in court on 26 January for a closed hearing after being arrested on 7 December. A spokesman for the US Attorney’s office in San Francisco told Nature the office had comment, including even on what charges had been filed, and no listing appears under Atarodi’s name in US federal court … Read more
The European Commission is reportedly close to admitting that imports of biodiesel made from crops such as palm oil, soybean and rapeseed cause more greenhouse gas pollution than fossil diesel. Read more
Today NASA’s Kepler mission announced the discovery of 26 new planets (above, green). The new worlds, comparable to the giant planets of our solar system (blue), nearly double the number of planets previously discovered by the probe (red), but it’s probably only a small taste of what’s to come. Kepler looks at 150,000 distant stars and searches for tiny changes in brightness as a planet passes by. So far, the probe has turned up 2,300 planet candidates. Confirming a planet is far more difficult, but Kepler has managed to verify the new worlds announced today by measuring slight changes in … Read more
When the US National Science Board nixed US plans for an underground lab in 2010, multiple potential experiments were left homeless and the US physics community in a kerfuffle. Now forty leading theoretical physicists, including three Nobel Prize winners, have written to the US Department of Energy (DOE) urging it build an underground facility to study subatomic neutrinos that would compensate to some degree for the lab’s absence. Read more
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The report produced by the investigators does not say so explicitly, probably out of fear of prejudicing future criminal/civil inquiries,… ... Read more
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