Archive by date | February 2012

Science advisers should sign off on policy, suggest Lords

The UK government’s departmental chief scientific advisers (CSAs) should be given a formal role in signing off on new policies from their departments to ensure that decisions are supported by scientific and engineering advice, according to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee.  Read more

Beset by budget cuts, US Mars scientists look to possible 2018 mission

It is the job of a federal bureaucrat to put a good face on bad budget news, and on Monday, NASA science chief John Grunsfeld, just two months into his job, did his best to buck up a reeling Mars community. He announced that the agency would re-design its Mars exploration programme, and that the new architecture would include input — and money — from the human programme as well as the space technology division. Grunsfeld tasked Orlando Figueroa, the former deputy director for space and technology at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with heading up a seven or eight person committee, and to start developing mission concepts in the next month.  Read more

Stakeholders weigh in on comparative effectiveness research

Stakeholders weigh in on comparative effectiveness research

Patient advocates, researchers, medical insurers, and clinicians had no shortage of advice today for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) – an organization created by the 2010 US health-care reform act to spur research into the effectiveness of clinical therapies and services (see Opponents battle health care research).  Read more

New risk assessment for Boston biocontainment lab

New risk assessment for Boston biocontainment lab

A US National Institutes of Health advisory panel has released a new risk assessment for a controversial high-security biocontainment lab located near  Boston’s bustling downtown core. The Draft Supplementary Risk Assessment for the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) was released on 24 February and is the next step in a long and process that may eventually lead to the National Biocontainment Laboratory being used for its intended purpose:  researching vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for emerging biological agents that could pose a serious public threat.  Read more