In a brief 15-minute speech today, US President Barack Obama championed independence for the peer-review process, in front of an audience of elite researchers at the 150th annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. Read more
Chemistry professor Patrick Harran, of the University of California, Los Angeles, will face trial on three counts of violating health and safety standards over the death of 23-year-old research assistant Sheharbano Sangji more than four years ago, a Los Angeles court judge ordered on 26 April. Read more
No one is sure what is causing bee colonies to die off around the world, but pesticides called neonicotinoids may be part of the problem. Today,Europe’s health commissioner Tonio Borg said the European Commission would go ahead with a continent-wide plan to severely restrict three of the most commonly-used pesticides in an effort to protect bee health. Read more
This week China budged. Depending on one’s perspective, it wasn’t much of a concession. The country agreed, in essence, to do what it and everybody else had already agreed to do back in 2007: accelerate the phase out of a common class of ozone-eating refrigerants that double as powerful greenhouse gases. But rather than haggling over prices each step of the way, China made it simple and cut a single deal – worth up to $385 million – to eliminate hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) between now and 2030. Read more
The Ontario provincial government has stepped in to keep open the Experimental Lakes Area. The freshwater research facility located in northern Ontario was closed in March by the government of Canada, despite protests from scientists. Read more
Citing cash concerns, Harvard Medical School announced on Tuesday that it will close the New England Primate Research Center (NEPRC), which houses around 2,000 monkeys in Southborough, Massachusetts. Read more
Jeremy Farrar, a clinical infectious disease researcher, has been appointed to lead the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest biomedical research charities. Read more
A highly anticipated new drug for treating hepatitis C has sailed through its first phase III clinical trials, according to two papers published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Read more
Two ultra-high energy neutrinos captured by the IceCube experiment probably came from outside the Galaxy, according to an analysis posted by the collaboration today. Read more
Is the world’s only commercial quantum computer really a quantum device, or a just regular computer in disguise? Controversy has long swirled around the computer produced by D-Wave, a company based near Vancouver, Canada. Now a paper published on the arXiv preprint server takes a step forward in showing that it really does operate on a quantum level. Read more
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Archived newsblog. Breaking news from the world of science, brought to you by Nature’s news team.
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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Experiments reveal that crabs and lobsters feel pain
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Chemistry credit disputes under the spotlight
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