Japan’s nuclear sun to set?

Japan's nuclear sun to set?

A week can be a long time in politics, so today’s announcement by the Japanese government that it intends to phase out its 50 remaining nuclear reactors by around the 2030s is perhaps much less of a certainty than it might at first appear. Under the plan, existing reactors would be phased out when they reach 40 years of age so causing a gradual fall in nuclear’s share of electricity generation in Japan, as no new reactors are built to replace them.  Read more

ArXiv’s funding future boosted by hedge-fund charity

The financial sustainability of the ArXiv preprint server at Cornell University Library received a boost yesterday with the announcement that the Simons Foundation would provide the repository with up to $300,000 a year in funding for the next five years. The sum would include a $50,000 a year unconditional grant, with the remainder being matched to funds provided by ArXiv’s other donors.  Read more

French research minister appointed

French research minister appointed

Geneviève Fioraso, deputy mayor of Grenoble, and a Socialist member of the National Assembly (the French parliament), representing the Isère constituency, has been appointed minister of higher education and research in the first goverment of French president François Hollande and prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. Fioraso is no stranger to research and innovation issues, which has been her speciality both as a member of parliament, and as deputy mayor of Grenoble, while she is also a member of the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices. Most recently, she was rapporteur of the office’s February report on the challenges of synthetic biology. She was also part of the group of advisers on innovation in François Hollande’s election campaign team.  Read more

French physicist jailed for 5 years on dubious intent-of-terrorism charges

By Declan Butler and Geoff Brumfiel A French court today sentenced French-Algerian physicist, Adlène Hicheur, to four years in prison with a further one year suspended sentence. He was found guilty of plotting with AQIM, al-Qaeda’s North African branch, to carry out terror attacks on military and economic targets on French soil. The court also ordered the confiscation of €15,000 that Hicheur had transferred to Algeria for what he said was a property purchase, as well as his computer equipment.  Read more

Canada confines mutant flu to maximum-security facilities

Canada this month announced that any research on mammalian-transmissible strains of the H5N1 avian flu virus in the country’s labs would need to be done at the strictest level of biocontainment, Biological Safety Level 4 (BSL-4). It’s the first country to issue a biosafety rating following the creation of such H5N1 strains in two recent controversial studies (see “Nature News Special: “Mutant Flu”).  Read more

WHO meeting calls for mutant-flu research to be published ‘in full.’

A two-day meeting of 22 experts convened in Geneva by the World Health Organization which ended this afternoon has concluded that two controversial flu studies should be published in full. The research – which created ferret-transmissible strains of avian H5N1 flu virus – will be published after a delay of probably a few months, which the experts argue is needed to explain better the public-health benefits of the research and allay public concerns over the safety of the work. “There is a preference from a public health perspective for full disclosure of the information in these two studies,” says Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of health security and environment at the WHO. “However there are significant public concern surrounding this research that should first be addressed.”  … Read more

Avian flu controversy comes to roost at WHO

Almost two dozen experts kicked off a two-day international meeting this morning at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, in a bid to find ways to move forward in the controversy over two studies that have created strains of the H5N1 avian flu virus that are transmissible in ferrets. The meeting may reach some consensus on a few immediate issues, such as what parts of the studies should be published, and who might qualify for access to the full papers on a ‘need-to-know’ basis.  Read more

Iranian chemical engineer assassinated

Iran’s press have reported that a chemical engineer, who is allegedly an official at the country’s Natantz uranium enrichment facility, was assassinated this morning in the north of Tehran. Two men on a motorcycle are reported to have attached a magnetic bomb to his car.  Read more