The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is considering reversing a highly unpopular policy that allows its grant applicants only one additional try at winning funding if their application is at first rejected. Read more
Since 2005, astrobiologists have considered Enceladus a possible haven for life, after the Cassini mission found that the icy moon of Saturn shoots out plumes of water through fissures in its crust. But planetary scientists Elizabeth Turtle of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and Julie Castillo-Rogez of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are now turning their eyes to an even more distant Solar System locale: Ariel, a moon of Uranus that they think could also harbour an underground ocean. Read more
The frequently caustic battle over European biofuels policy has kicked off again this week as the European Union is set to reverse gear and end years of support for the controversial energy source. Read more
A confidential report of evaluaters examining the PhD thesis of Annette Schavan, German’s research and education minister, has apparently confirmed charges of plagiarism. Copies of the 75-page report were leaked to the press on 12 October. Read more
Assessing consciousness may seem like the ultimate exercise in subjectivity, but some researchers are moving closer to what they call an objective measure. Read more
Arlen Specter, a former US Senator from Pennsylvania and one of Washington’s biggest boosters of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), died today at age 82. He succumbed to complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), his son Shanin told media outlets including the New York Times. Read more
Last week, Uganda celebrated 50 years of independence from British rule. However, Uganda’s Minister of Health, Christine Ondoa, missed the nationwide celebration so that she could travel to New York City to spread the word about malaria. Read more
The story keeps getting odder for Hisashi Moriguchi, the visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo who last week claimed a clinical breakthrough in using iPS cells. Read more
The man in the bowtie says he can transform you into anyone you want. At the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, conceptual artist Jonathan Keats is applying his ‘experimental philosophy’ to epigenetics, one of the hottest and most rapidly advancing fields in biology. The art exhibit opened this weekend. Read more
Back in February we wrote about a new estimate for methane emissions, based on air sampling, at a natural gas field in Colorado. Authored by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study suggested that methane emissions from this particular natural gas field might be significantly larger than commonly assumed. But the results also came under fire, and today the Journal of Geophysical Research posted a formal comment by Michael Levi at the Council on Foreign Relations, who presents an alternate analysis that is in line with prior emissions estimates. 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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