Scientists in the Honours List - December 31, 2007
Ian Wilmut, the scientist famous for creating Dolly the cloned sheep, has been knighted in the annual British Honours List. He has apparently professed himself to be “surprised and delighted”.
Wilmut, who recently announced he would be abandoning cloning work in favour of research into induced pluripotent stem cells, was knighted alongside a number of other scientists (full list pdf).
Others nominated for ‘services to science’ include Martyn Poliakoff, professor of chemistry at the University of Nottingham. As the BBC notes, his research includes looking at how chemistry can deliver environmental benefits.
Brian Spratt, professor of molecular microbiology at Imperial College, is also honoured. He produced an independent review of UK biosecurity after the Foot and Mouth virus escaped from a supposedly secure laboratory (report pdf).
And in a year of climate change news, it seems appropriate that Godfrey Jenkins, head of the Climate Change Programme at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, is on the list.
The Guardian notes:
But there was no knighthood for Prof Colin Blakemore, who stepped down as chief executive of the Medical Research Council this year. Despite being nominated several times, his outspoken support for the need for animal experimentation appears to have made him too controversial for Whitehall to the anger of many scientists.
Another, probably overdue, honour goes to Steve Furber, one of the designers of the classic BBC Micro computer (news coverage, appropriately enough, from the BBC). Although almost unknown outside the UK, the BBC Micro was perhaps the first widespread home computer used in the country.
Japan’s 
Worrying new research surfaces in this week’s issue of Nature. According to the authors “increasing numbers of scientists are swapping party hats for mouse mats during the festive season”.
How do you protect a species that most experts agree is on the brink of extinction? Catch more of them for food!
A speed boat running on bio-diesel with a net zero carbon-footprint is attempting to beat the round the world record. The current record is 74 days, 23 hours and 53 minutes, 
At last we may start see some real world benefits of all this genome sequencing we’re doing: better wine at better prices. An international team is announcing the second genome sequence of the pinot noir grape.
The US politician who counts the Kennedy Space Center’s workers among his constituents is demanding that NASA keeps the Shuttle flying beyond its current planned retirement date.
American scientists are urging the country not to abandon human stem cells in the wake of the recent successes in cell reprogramming. Worried by proclamations from some that these successes ‘prove right’ the current US administration’s tough-line on stem cell and cloning work, the researchers have gone on the offensive.
A giant jet of energy from a supermassive black hole has been witnessed punching into a neighbouring galaxy, with potentially devastating consequences. Any ETs living in the jet’s path would be bombarded with huge amounts of radiation and particles travelling at the speed of light (
You don’t get many people waxing lyrical about the giant isopod – a kind of deep-sea woodlouse larger than many dogs. As well as looking like they’ve stepped out of one of your darker nightmares, giant isopods also have the unappealing habit of feeding on the carcasses of dead things that sink down to the ocean floor.
If you like coral reefs you should enjoy them while you can, they won’t be around for long. Global warming and the ocean acidification that comes with it will decimate reefs by the end of this century, according to a new 
It must seem to the people responsible for the International Space Station that someone up there doesn’t like them. Ongoing problems with its power supply may be added to by a meteor strike, 
Far from being youthful tykes, appearing only around the time of the dinosaurs, Saturn’s rings actually date back to the start of our solar system some 4.5 billion years ago, according to data from the Cassini probe (
Arctic ice is the story that won’t die – unlike the ice, which apparently will, and soon. Since the start of October, and what I hoped would be the 
First there's an 
A moment of levity during NASA’s 
Evolution has accelerated in the last 40,000 years as a result of natural selection, according to a paper published this week in PNAS. Some experts are already questioning the claims however.
UPDATE: see what our reporter at the conference makes of 
It seems obvious that penguins will be in trouble if global warming continues. If you like it cold and icy then a hotter planet is not going to work in your favour.
I’ve been waiting for this excuse to blog about Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo collection – the 100th tattoo has gone online. Not that Carl himself has 100 science tattoos; the centenary entry in his collection is from Michelle Vieyra, of the University of South Carolina, who has a tasteful sea turtle and DNA motif (
The space shuttle will not fly again this year, NASA said Sunday. It cited a faulty fuel sensor in putting back a mission which would hoist Europe’s Columbus lab up to the International Space Station.
A hacking attack on government laboratories in the United States has been traced back to China. Laboratories including the Oak Ridge site were subjected to sophisticated and coordinated attack last week (
The founder of IT firm Intel has pledged $200 million for what is being claimed as the world’s largest telescope. When it starts scientific work sometime in 2016 the Thirty Meter Telescope will consist of 492 individual 1.45-metre segments creating a total diameter of, you guessed it, 30 metres.
The first team has registered for the X-Prize for private Moon missions that was announced 
The ‘great, great, great, great grandfather of modern kangaroos’ walked on all fours and had nasty looking fangs, according to a new paper. Named Nambaroo gillespieae, this prehistoric Skippy had muscular fore-limbs, showing it didn’t follow the body plan that gives modern kangaroo’s their distinctive, if ridiculous, method of locomotion.
Oil giant BP is moving back into tar sands in Canada (
For something so close and so obvious, it is sometimes surprising how little we know about the Moon. A paper in this week’s Nature gives us a bit more understanding, by dating one of the oldest Moon rocks we have down here on Earth.
Much as I had been hoping to avoid this, the sheer volume of news about the first birthday of polar bear Knut is forcing my hand. Those living in a hole for the last 12 months may have missed the saga of Knut, rejected at birth by his mother, threatened by animal rights enthusiasts (who rather counter-intuitively wanted him put down), and embraced by the public for his cuteness.
The first life on Earth began in the protected spaces between sheets of mica. So says Helen Hansma, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Keeping tabs on your friends and relations isn’t easy if you’re an elephant: they don’t have mobile phones and they don’t tend to let you know what they’re doing on Facebook. So elephants keep track of their family members by smelling their urine.
Science at the US drug regulator is simply not up to the job of keeping America safe. This is the worrying conclusion of a new report by the Food and Drug Administration’s own science advisory committee (
While the world’s climate experts meet in Bali, the rest of the world is getting on with the serious business of elaborate hoaxes and stating the obvious. First up: activists from the Rising Tide movement successfully impersonated a major business group and pretended they were going to cut carbon emissions by 90%.
A secret dissertation prepared for the Nazi regime by the father of modern rocketry goes under the hammer today. The 166-page manuscript, prepared by Wernher von Braun, is expected to sell for up to $30,000 when auctioned at Bonhams in New York (
Plans for the replacement of the aging and ailing Space Shuttle are looking pretty shaky following a report from the US congressional spending watchdog. The Government Accountability Office says there are “gaps in the knowledge about requirements, costs, schedule, technology, design, and production feasibility” for the Ares I rocket. Which seems to me to be just about all of it.
Unsure what gifts to buy the scientist in your life? Check out the Great Beyond’s Great Gifts.
A dinosaur complete with skin, tendons and perhaps even internal organs has been uncovered in the US. Although it is being billed as “mummified”, the skin and tissues on this hadrosaur have actually been turned to stone. Crucially however, they have been preserved.
NB – NATURE’S 