The Great Beyond

The International Energy Agency is urging us to remember that there's a good side to the global economic crisis - it's causing the sharpest plunge in carbon dioxide emissions for 40 years. In a teaser document extracted from its upcoming World Energy Outlook 2009 report, the IEA forecasts that emissions will drop by 3% worldwide this year. The excerpt was released today to coincide with United Nations climate talks in Bangkok, though the full report isn't out until next month.

The IEA will actually broadcast its silver-lining message three times - it made the same point when its headline statistics were partially leaked to the media last month, and it will do so again when the full World Energy Outlook report appears on 10 November.

Continue reading "The IEA's take on carbon emissions" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on October 06, 2009
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Last night Cambridge’s clown school gave the world’s best and brightest the awards they deserved. Harvard University hosted its 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, where its Annals of Improbable Research recognized the usual combination of mad scientists and asinine leaders.

Pulling in the biology prize was a Japanese team that discovered pandas are more than just cuddly tax dollar vacuums — their poop packs a potent punch. The group isolated bacteria in panda feces that can reduce kitchen waste by more than 90 percent in mass. Good news, given that pandas produce about 40 pounds of poop a day — and as one might expect, it doesn’t stink.

The Ig Nobel prizes also continued their fascination with skivvies. Back in 2001 the biology prize went to the inventor of panties that filter out flatulence with a replaceable charcoal filter, and this year the public health prize went to the inventors of a bra that can be “quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander” — in this case that needy bystander was Wolfgang Ketterle, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Continue reading "Panda poop, panties and more at the Ig Nobels" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on October 02, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Thousands of students, professors and other staff at the 10 University of California (UC) campuses staged mass protests yesterday against deep cuts to budgets that have led to enforced periods of unpaid leave, higher fees and job losses.

The cuts are in response to a gap of about $800 million in the UC budget - just one symptom of the roughly $15 billion of debt faced by the state. Stem-cell researchers have suffered, as have lab construction projects.

AP reports that about 1,200 of UC's roughly 19,000 faculty members signed a letter supporting the walkout.

Berkeley saw the biggest demonstration, with more than 5000 people gathering for a two hour rally. (San Jose Mercury News)

The Guardian likens the protests to the heady days of the 1960s when Berkeley earned a reputation for student activism. Author and scholar at UC Berkeley's geography department Gray Brechin told the Guardian: "California is beyond broke. The wealthiest state in the nation is bankrupt."

Photo:

Posted by Mark Peplow on September 25, 2009
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Harvard, Yale and other elite US universities announced this week just how many billions of dollars they lost from their endowments last year.

Harvard's endowment tumbled 27.3%, shedding nearly $11 billion — an amount that exceeds the total endowment of every other university except for Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Texas System. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school's decline was the first loss in seven years and the biggest in four decades. Harvard's portfolio now sits at around $26 billion. (NYTimes)

Yale saw its endowment plummet 30% — worse than the 25% forecast — to $16 billion in the fiscal year that ended on June 30. The drop means that the New Haven, Connecticut, university will face annual deficits of $150 million for the next four years. On top of 7.5% reductions in staff and non-salary expenses already announced for the current academic year, Yale plans to push for another 5% in non-salary cuts. (Wall Street Journal)

"With the exception of financial aid, no area of expenditure will be immune from close scrutiny," Yale President Richard Levin and Provost Peter Salovey wrote in a statement. The administrators singled out faculty recruitment and building construction as two areas that are expected to slow down.

Rounding out most of the rest of the Ivy League schools: Columbia University in New York’s endowment declined in value by 21%, to $5.7 billion (Wall Street Journal); Providence, Rhode Island-based Brown's endowment investments dropped 23%, while the total fund dipped 27%, leaving the school with $2 billion (Bloomberg); and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia announced last month that its endowment lopped off 15.7%, falling to $5.3 billion (Bloomberg).

Image: Wall Street Journal

Posted by Elie Dolgin on September 11, 2009
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The pharmaceutical industry cannot rely on increasing sales to drive its profits, a leading executive warned this week.

Speaking at the British Pharmaceutical Conference in Manchester, Brent Vose, vice president of Global Drug Development at AstraZeneca, said that the world financial situation makes it even more important to be smart about drug research.

“Over time sales have continued to go up in dollar terms. I have little doubt that that will not continue,” he said. “As GDP and tax revenues reduce, the pressures on healthcare budgets will increase.”

The financial crisis comes at a bad time for major pharmaceutical companies, which are also bracing for the patents on a number of big selling drugs to expire, opening them up to generic competition.

Speaking at another conference session, Steve Wicks, vice president of Worldwide Pharmaceutical Sciences at Pfizer, noted that it is normal for a drug to lose 60% of its market share in the first year of generic competition. Wicks cautions that new big sellers are not coming on to the market in time to fill the gaps from the big blockbusters about to lose their patents.

“We are beginning to move into the unsustainable cycle,” he said.

Continue reading "Hard times ahead for big pharma" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 09, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Women with high levels of testosterone are more likely to make risky financial decisions, according to research published this week. The finding, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is another twist to the controversy over ‘traders’ testosterone’.

Women are generally more risk averse than men, says Dario Maestripieri, of the University of Chicago. Maestripieri’s team had 550 MBA students play financial computer games to determine how risky their behaviour was. They also measured the students’ levels of testosterone.

Higher levels of testosterone meant less aversion to risk in women, but not in men, they found. In addition, and perhaps unsurprisingly, testosterone levels and risk aversion appeared to predict career choice with those high in the former and low in the latter being more likely to choose risky careers in finance.

“This is the first study showing that gender differences in financial risk aversion have a biological basis, and that differences in testosterone levels between individuals can affect important aspects of economic behaviour and career decisions,” says Maestripieri (press release).

Previous research has linked testosterone levels to success in trading (see: The testosterone of trading). However, any female traders reading this should be dissuaded from artificially boosting their testosterone levels to compete in the markets; another study in women found that raising their levels of testosterone made no difference to how risky their behaviour was (see: Testosterone boost doesn't fuel risky behaviour in women).

Some papers have inevitably managed to make this research about sex, given testosterone's links to sex drive, and are suggesting that women who are risky may also be risqué.

When published, the PNAS article will be available here.

Image: punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 25, 2009
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It’s every American energy analyst’s favourite parlour game: how much is the climate bill currently moving through the US Senate going to cost the national economy?

"We can move to a clean energy future at a cost of less than a postage stamp per family per day," said energy secretary Steven Chu on the latest estimates from the Energy Information Administration (which provides statistics and analysis for the Department of Energy).

The EIA said the measures – due to higher energy costs – would reduce household consumption between $26 and $362 annually (7-99 cents a day) by 2020; and between $157 and $850 annually by 2030.

Chu also pulled out the trusty postage-stamp line after earlier reports by the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency. The CBO reckons that implementing the legislation would cost US families an average $175 a year (48 cents a day); the EPA goes for between $80 and $111 a year on average.

Meanwhile, studies by the Heritage Foundation have projected that the average family’s energy bill would rise $1,241 a year by 2035 – there are also plenty more numbers in that range from groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and consultants CRA International.

The analyses don't pick up all the savings enabled by the bill such as through energy-efficiency regulations. (The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has tagged these per household at $750 annually by 2020 and $3,900 annually by 2030.)

Most of the low estimates assume that US factories will be able to meet their bill-imposed carbon emission limits by paying foreign governments – cheaply – to offset their emissions. The higher estimates generally predict that won’t happen. A 26 June article in the New York Times sums up the “quagmire” of “dartboard projections”: “There are too many critical unknowns in the equation, from the amount of forest land in developing nations that the United States can ransom from clear-cutting to the costs and timing of massive investments to capture and store coal-fired power plant carbon emissions.”

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on August 05, 2009
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The University of Wyoming's geology museum in Laramie, with one of the best paleontology and geology collections in a small university town in the American West, closed last month -- a casualty of the budget cuts rippling through many academic institutions. The resulting outcry has yielded enough private donations to open the museum on a parttime basis starting in August -- but without its director.

Museum officials blame the $18 million reduction in state funding for the university. The private funds will pay only for security to keep the museum open for visitors, the university announced last week.

“I’m kind of skeptical that a security guard would be able to answer all of the questions about paleontology and geology that the museum handles constantly — or at least the staff used to handle constantly," former volunteer Beth Southwell told the Laramie Boomerang. Exhibits include the bones of Big Al the Allosaur (pictured).

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology wrote an open letter yesterday to the university trustees calling the closure "financially short-sighted". It pointed out that the museum is extremely active in leading local paleontological excavations and getting local students involved in the science and history of their state.

(Full disclosure: Brent Breithaupt, who had run the museum, is a friend of a friend of mine. And I'm pretty sure I dropped some cash in a donations box when I visited a few years ago.)

Image: via Fossil Freak, on Flickr

Posted by Alex Witze on July 24, 2009
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As researchers at the University of California system cope with unpaid leave, it looks like the troubles for higher education will soon stretch to this side of the pond. The University and College Union (UCU), the UK's largest postgraduate Union, has made a grim prediction of massive layoffs at London universities.

The UCU predicts that over 2,000 jobs are "at risk" at 18 institutions across London. Of particular concern to scientists are a possible 130 jobs at Imperial College's faculty of medicine, and a possible 530 job cuts at University College London (right). The UCU is highly critical of the possible cuts: "Most of these universities and colleges are not in financial crisis", they've written in their statement. "Nobody is saying that the sector in the capital is awash with money but the fact is that universities and colleges in the capital are in relatively good financial health."

That may be true at the moment, but universities in Britain are heavily dependant on government funding—funding which is expected to be cut back dramatically in coming years as the recession deepens. "Public spending is already tight and all the signs are that it is likely to get tighter yet," says Dominique Fourniol, a spokesperson at University College London. "It is likely that we will see a decrease in our income in the next few years, requiring us to reduce our spending."

Fourniol confirmed that UCL is looking to reduce spending by 6%, but he says it's "not a simple question" of lopping 6% off the current staffing level. A spokesperson at Imperial similarly said that the college "is making every effort to avoid compulsory redundancies" at the faculty of medicine.

Unlike the situation at the University of California, which is very immediate, it seems that researchers at London's universities have to wait and see just how bad the pain from the current financial crisis will be.

Image: Wikipedia

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on July 17, 2009
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Employees of the University of California San Francisco protested proposed salary cuts and furloughs on 14 July at the institution's campus on Parnassus Avenue.

[Watch a video of the protests here.]

The protests came on the eve of a 15 July meeting at which the University of California Board of Regents was planned to discuss the cuts.

About 100 nurses, janitors, researchers and administrative assistants marched outside the UCSF Medical Center and chanted slogans such as, "They say furlough, We say hell no!" and "They say layoff, We say Yudof!" during the protest.

Continue reading "University of California employees protest proposed cuts" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden on July 15, 2009
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Science courses may soon disappear at the UK’s highly-respected Open University (OU). The country’s largest institution for distance-learning, which is celebrating its fortieth birthday this year, supports around 150,000 undergraduate and 30,000 postgraduate students.

According to Times Higher Education (THE), a briefing paper from the science department says the OU is considering “scrapping its named science degrees and offering just one undergraduate course, a BSc in ‘Natural Science’.” This degree would also require fewer modules; and residential fieldwork schools might also be scrapped (perhaps to be replaced with IT-based practical work).

The paper says the cuts are needed because the OU is receiving a 10% cut in its teaching funds, following the government’s September 2007 announcement that it would cut funding for students studying for a qualification equivalent to, or lower than, a qualification they had already achieved. It warns of further teaching cuts in 2010, as the government looks to cut public spending.

OU dean of science, Phil Potts, said no decision had been made yet. “There is absolutely no suggestion of dumbing down or losing rigour,” he added.

But angry OU geoscience student Kate Allen tells THE that “prospective students are likely to vote with their feet and deny the OU further income as a result of this, to the point at which science degrees in general could become financially unviable.”

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on July 08, 2009
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State budget cuts in Florida have apparently claimed another victim: the geology and oceanography departments at Florida State University will merge, according to several emails making the rounds. Munir Humayun, an associate professor in the geology department, reports that FSU has terminated five tenured faculty and kept on seven in the geology department. They will move with the meteorology department, and the remnants of oceanography, into a new department of earth and atmospheric studies.

The faculty cut include three assistant professors who were hired within the past year, Humayun reports. Who gets laid off and who stays can be dictated more by union rules than by other factors, as Florida-based writer Mark Schrope reported recently in Nature on the budget troubles facing universities in the state.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 26, 2009
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Is there any week that doesn't pass without bad news for universities? Take just US higher education as an example. The 10-campus University of California system, facing a $800 million slash from its $3.2 billion budget, is beginning to circulate emails about how such cuts might be implemented.

Jonathan Eisen this week blogged about emails reportedly circulating at UC Santa Cruz in which biomedical faculty are protesting a proposed 4-8% salary cut for all staff. They have a seemingly valid point in that their salaries come out of federal grant money, not from the UC system; they argue that it makes little sense to cut their salaries when it won't help the state.

Continue reading "US universities flounder further" »

Posted by Alex Witze on June 25, 2009
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Think bankruptcy is just for folks with too many credit cards? Think again.

Major health costs (see table) contributed to over 60% of US bankruptcies in 2007, according to a study of over 2,000 individuals, although this is obviously before the credit crunch really started to bite. The study [pdf], published in The American Journal of Medicine (AJM) this week, is a follow-up to a study in 2001 which found that major health costs accounted for 46.2% of US bankruptcies in that year.

The surprise is that over three quarters of those bankrupted had medical insurance and middle-class incomes.

Continue reading "Health costs drive US bankruptcies even for the insured" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 05, 2009
Categories: Financial Crisis, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seven months after dumping R&D tax credits, New Zealand’s government looks set to slash funding for agricultural and food research, according to media speculation ahead of the 28 May budget.

The Dominion Post reports that the National party – leading a right-of-centre coalition – will replace a ten-year NZ$700 million (£270 million) research fund with a three-year NZ$90 million scheme. And, the paper says, the funding is contingent on matching dollars from industry, so may be pared back even further in the recession.

"I'm a little bit bemused by the economic strategy ... $30m a year against $1.5b on tarmac for roads [in Auckland]?" says Derek Fairweather, chief executive at Waikato Innovation Park.

Continue reading "New Zealand 'to gut science budget'" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on May 21, 2009
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The credit crunch claims another victim, this time it’s the algal-fuel hope of MIT and Harvard. The company GreenFuel Technologies promised to provide green energy from algae. “GreenFuel's high yield algae farms recycle carbon dioxide from flue gases to produce biofuels and feed, reducing net carbon dioxide production as waste becomes profit. Harvesting algae for biofuels enhances domestic fuel production while mitigating CO2,” reads their website.

Greentech media now reports that the company claims to have fallen victim to the economic times: "We are closing doors. We are a victim of the economy," the report has venture capitalist Duncan McIntyre saying.

GreenFuel has had problems in the past when its algae over ran and they couldn’t control production. But the company seems to have been adept at raising money, although the last round, $13.9 million came over a year ago.

The hopes of a world fuelled by green slime are not over, though. Plenty other algae projects are still in existence. In late April, the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology opened, an academic and commercial collaboration. In New Zealand Aquaflow continues its open-air production and in Colorado, Solix does the same in tanks. Both these companies, as well as GreenFuel were highlighted in an article from last year looking specifically at 15 algae companies.

It will be interesting to watch progress of these other companies in these challenging credit crunch times.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on May 18, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pfizer has announced plans to give free drugs to people who have lost their jobs following the credit crunch.

A new programme titled Medicines Assistance for Those who Are in Need (Maintain) will give 12 month supplies of medication to Americans in financial hardship who lose their jobs and their health insurance this year. This will presumably include the hundreds of scientists Pfizer is itself laying off.

“We all know people who have been laid off recently and have lost their health insurance, making it difficult for them to pay for health care,” says Jorge Puente, the company’s regional president of Worldwide Pharmaceuticals. “We thought there must be some way we could help recently unemployed people who are taking Pfizer medicines to continue treatment during these challenging economic times.”

Over 70 drugs are on the free list, including Viagra and cholesterol medication Lipitor.

“Pharma’s obviously always trying to work on their image. It gets them to be able to say, ‘We can help out in a recession and help people afford our drugs.’” Jon LeCroy, an analyst with Natixis Bleichroeder, told the WSJ. The Journal also highlights schemes from Abbott and Merck to help the needy.

Bizarrely, earlier this week GlakoSmithKline nixed claims that it was planning to offer a 50% discount on medicines to the uninsured. Those claims were based on a press release issued in error, said the company (see: FiercePharma).

Image: detail from ‘Maintain’ application form

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 15, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Shell’s profits tumbled by 62% to $3.49 billion in the first quarter of this year (from $9.08 billion from last year, AP), and meanwhile the oil company remains committed to hoiking oil out of gloopy, sticky tar sands in Canada (see this Nature story from earlier this year for a description of the stuff).

The slump is blamed on falling oil prices. According to a Market Watch report Shell “sold oil for, on average, 54% less than it did in the same quarter last year. Gas prices dropped 15%.”

The tar sands project has been roundly criticised by environmentalists, because they say getting oil out of these tar sands is a messy, carbon-intensive process. But Shell is pressing ahead with the project: “When we build projects, we take a long-term view. Oil sands is something that produces for 30-40 years and you do not get too nervous if short-term volatility drives you in a down cycle,” CEO Peter Voser is quoted by the Guardian.

Bloomberg is reporting another Oil sands company also posting huge losses – bigger than Shell’s: Canadian Oil Sands profits dropped by 86% this quarter compared to last year.

Image: US DOI

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on April 30, 2009
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Further details of what is expected in the UK’s budget on Wednesday are leaking out into the press. The Independent first reported the government’s plans for a green budget on 8 April (The Great Beyond).

Alastair Darling, the chancellor, is expected to announce a £500 million green stimulus package, including £200 million for wind turbines, hydro-electric power and other renewable energy technologies, says a report in the Times

The BBC reports that the chancellor will announce two carbon capture and storage demonstration projects. It is unclear if funding will be earmarked for these projects, though.

Continue reading "Hundreds of millions for green technology expected in UK budget " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on April 20, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE – Current Nature editor Philip Campbell’s tribute, John Maddox 1925–2009, is now on our website:

It was with great sadness that I and my colleagues at Nature learned of the death on Sunday of Sir John Maddox — or 'JM', as his colleagues always referred to him.

There was puzzlement, too. Yes, John had been looking frail recently, but, well, this was JM — the perpetually restless, irresistible, unstoppable force. The editor who conducted some gatherings with 'shock and awe' as some recall. The 'man with a whim of iron' as others used to call him. And the man who survived countless cigarettes and glasses of red wine, many consumed late into the night as he wrote the week's Editorials at the last possible moment.

As Walter Gratzer, of King’s College, London, wrote recently, “John Maddox brought an old-fashioned Nature into the modern age from the mid-1960s.” (History of Nature feature.)

A full appreciation from Nature will follow shortly. Meanwhile, here is what the world is saying.

Without too much trouble I could probably fill blogs for a month with tales of John: of waiting at the typesetter while he finished an editorial way beyond deadline; of a plan to visit Mexico together when we wined and dined the very attractive press attache at the Mexican Consulate; of how he regularly set fire to his waste-paper basket. Of being sent to the wine bar with a fiver for a bottle of Chateau Thames. Of him disappearing on a Friday night and saying, as the door closed, that he wanted a thousand words from me by Monday for the following week’s issue – on anything I pleased. Of many cases of exasperation and irritation, and many more acts of kindness.

- Henry Gee, Nature editor

He was one of those fellows who shaped the direction of science for quite a long period of time with the power of one of the most influential science journals in the world. I suspect every scientist of my generation read his editorials in our weekly perusal of the journal.

- PZ Myers, Pharyngula

One of the toughest adversaries I’ve ever wrangled with is Sir John Maddox. He was hard-headed, scarily knowledgeable, hyper-articulate, unfailingly gracious even as he ripped you a new one.

- John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology

As Editor of Nature, he restored the journal to an unchallenged position as the place to publish interesting research quickly, and did so at a time when Britain’s influence in world science was otherwise declining. His judgments, sometimes quirky but never dull, were always backed by persuasive argument and a sense of humour.

- The Times

It was a mark of his skilled editorship that Nature could publish a paper on, say, the Loch Ness monster without sacrificing its authority.

“He took command of Nature in a big way,” the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said. “He had a tremendous grasp of science in the full range, from physics to biology to public affairs as they affected the world of science.”

Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society and Britain’s astronomer royal, called Mr. Maddox “a dominant figure,” adding that “he helped establish Nature’s status internationally and built it up by developing supplements to increase its coverage.” After retiring as editor in 1995, he assumed an influential elder statesman role, acting, Mr. Rees said, “as a general guru of science and scientific policy.”

- NY Times

"He adored science and talked about it all the time," she [his daughter, Bronwen Maddox] says. "He was enormously enthused by it. He was a physicist, and took to the biological sciences with enthusiasm, but I think his heart stayed in physics."

- Scientific American

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 14, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Neat technologies, On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, says the UK budget to be announced on 22 April will kick start a “green” route to economic recovery.

In an interview with the Independent, Brown outlined a flurry of environmentally friendly measures, including plans to create the UK’s first green cities, and to make Britain "a world leader" in producing and exporting electric cars, hybrid petrol-electric vehicles and lighter cars using less petrol.

He said that trials for electric cars in two or three cities will begin next year, and that the government will open talks with power companies to ensure the vehicles can recharge their batteries at a national network of roadside power points.

Brown says the green initiatives are “a major part of [the UK’s] plan for recovery in the budget”.

Continue reading "Gordon Brown to announce green budget" »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on April 08, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Medical research in the UK could face a bout of belt-tightening, after the country’s major research charities warned they have been hit hard by the financial crisis.

The Independent is reporting that the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation and Leukaemia Research may cut their research spending after losing billions in the credit crunch.

For the first time in its history Cancer Research UK’s fundraising income has dropped, and is £17 million down in the last 12 months, says the paper. The British Heart Foundation is down £10 million and Leukaemia Research and the Wellcome Trust have both seen their investments fall as a result of stock market fluctuations.

“In common with most other UK charities, the BHF has been affected by the recent financial turmoil,” says the British Heart Foundation’s chief executive, Peter Hollins. “The year ahead will be characterised by a cautious approach to maintaining investment across our prevention, care and research activities.”

See also
Nature News: Recession Watch special

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 23, 2009
Categories: Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the first time in 25 years, a majority of Americans would prioritise the economy ahead of the environment, according to pollsters Gallup.

Just over 1,000 adults were asked:

With which one of these statements about the economy and the environment do you most agree:
- Protection of the environment should be give priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth
- Economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent?

Here are the results:

“The percentage of Americans choosing the environment slipped below 50% in 2003 and 2004, but was still higher than the percentage choosing the economy,” says Gallup. “Sentiments have moved up and down over the last several years, but this year, the percentage of Americans choosing the environment fell all the way to 42%, while the percentage choosing the economy jumped to 51%.”

Clearly the financial crisis is behind this shift. Of course many would say that the majority of people in all Western countries were clearly not prioritising the environment over the economy in most of their decisions prior to 2009.

Graph: Gallup

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 20, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A billion pound ‘boffin bailout’ is on the cards in the UK, with the government department in charge of research apparently seeking a cash injection to keep academics happy and boost the economy.

According to the BBC, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills is lobbying the UK Treasury to fund a wish list of proposals drawn up by funding bodies to the tune of £1 billion. These proposals might include research funding, new laboratories, and funding for young scientists, and would mirror to some extent the US bailout’s cash injection for science.

The BBC says no one in an official position would comment while negotiations with the Treasury were ongoing, so this one should be firmly stamped ‘speculation’.

However the BBC notes that, “Privately, many research leaders are determined to ensure highly trained scientists and engineers don't get lost during the downturn. They are telling ministers and officials at Dius that additional spending on research grants or post-doctoral fellowships could help ensure that the UK retains talent for when the economy picks up.”

News of the attempt to bring about a boffin bailout come just a week after the Guardian announced that a group of British research universities were trying to get ministers to create a “£1bn fund to finance the early stages of university spin-outs”.

Surely a bloggers bailout is only a matter of time now?

Image: Alamy

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 18, 2009
Categories: Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Times are not good for the biotech industry, a whole host of people are warning this week.

According to the European industry trade group, one in five small bio-tech firms could go to the wall this year. Interviews with industry figures conducted for the European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises group suggest that over 50 % of small and medium sized firms are under threat.

The major problem is that many of these companies are still in the early loss making stages of their development and credit is in short supply, says Reuters.

EBE president Carlo Incerti says one solution could be a bailout from the European Investment Bank. “This is not just about saving jobs in the short term, it’s about protecting Europe’s capacity to drive medical innovation,” he says (press release).

Things are no better in the US...

Continue reading "Bye-bye-biotech industry?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 17, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Universities of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon could have to swallow losses of $100 million after falling victim to an alleged financial swindle.

They had investments of $65m and $49m respectively with money managers Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh. The pair are now under arrest on fraud charges, with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging they misappropriated $554-million from investors (Chronicle of Higher Education, WPXI, SEC press release).

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says both institutions will be lucky to get their money back as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission says there is “strong probability that the defendants do not have sufficient assets to remotely cover the losses incurred by their misappropriation of investor funds”.

Both universities are now pursuing Greenwood and Walsh’s company Westridge in federal court in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review).

As the Chronicle of HE points out:

The recent scam is not the first suffered by higher education during this recession. An alleged Ponzi scheme by the investment adviser Bernard L. Madoff bilked many millions from Yeshiva University, New York University, and others. And observers say similar episodes are on the way, as the downturn exposes empty coffers of fraudulent investment managers.

Image: SEC complaint (click for PDF)

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 05, 2009
Categories: Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Heidi Ledford

A local entrepreneur has donated $100 million over the course of 10 years towards the establishment of a new immunology research institute. The new ‘Ragon Institute’ plans to focus initially on development of an HIV vaccine, but eventually aims to tackle broader issues in immunology and infectious diseases.

In a time of shrinking endowments and overstretched budgets, it is refreshing to hear that some philanthropists still have their wallets open. At the announcement of the institute yesterday morning, Harvard University President Drew Faust called the donation “particularly extraordinary at this time.”

The heroes of this story are Phillip “Terry” Ragon – an MIT grad who made his fortune by founding a software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts – and his wife, Susan Ragon. For more about their motivation to invest, check out the Boston Globe story.

Continue reading "$100 million stimulus package for Boston-area HIV research" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 05, 2009
Categories: Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another victim of the credit crunch: the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Last week Rajat Gupta, the chairman of the fund’s board, warned the international meeting in Davos, Switzerland, that “the global fund is not immune to the environment today of the global financial crisis” (AFP).

Currently the gap between the cost of programmes eligible for funding and the funds pledged by nations is about $5 billion for the months up to 2011 (Christian Science Monitor, NY Times).

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, can see where some of the money can come from. He thinks the US government should take back the alleged $18 billion in bonuses Wall Street bankers are getting (NY Times).

“Those bonuses are being paid out of our bailout funds,” he says (LA Times). “I suggest the U.S. government reclaim that funding and put the money into the Global Fund immediately.”

And Eve Odete, Oxfam’s Pan-Africa Policy Officer, is warning of a “possible reduction in social spending as the global financial crisis is likely to hit Africa hardest this year” (Reuters). Given that we’re just printing money at the moment, it shouldn’t be too hard for the world’s treasuries to run off a few extra notes should it?

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 03, 2009
Categories: Financial Crisis, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I think I’m beginning to get RSI from typing the phrase “more woe in the pharmaceutical industry”.

AstraZeneca has now announced it is cutting more jobs. Most reports put the number of job losses at 6,000. However AstraZeneca’s statement says that that “business reshaping activities” would deliver “a reduction of approximately 15,000 positions by 2013”, this includes 7,600 redundancies announced in 2007 meaning around 7,400 new cuts.

Continue reading "Pharma Phynancial Phaliure" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 30, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Chemicals company Rohm and Haas is trying to force Dow Chemical to finish its billion dollar acquisition of the firm.

Andrew Liveris, Dow’s chief executive, announced at the end of last week that the takeover would not be completed by the end of today (Tuesday 27th January). In a statement Rohm and Haas says it will “pursue all available alternatives” to make sure the $15.3 billion deal goes through.

It has already asked a Delaware court to force Dow to finish the buy up, which Dow says is proving difficult due to the current financial situation (court document). In its statement last week Dow said “recent events have made closing untenable at this time”.

More below the fold…

Continue reading "Rohm to Dow: Du Haas mich" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 27, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Drug giant Pfizer is to slash up to 8% of its research staff, the company has announced.

This follows on from last year’s announcement that the pharma company would be narrowing its focus onto certain specific disease areas such as diabetes, and cutting and running from others, such as heart disease.

“R&D is the lifeblood of pharma but Pfizer has not been that productive. So it may be a case that they are trying to eliminate non-productive assets,” Les Funtleyder, an analyst for Miller Tabak, told CNN. “I would imagine the scientists would say the problem is with management.”

By the end of 2009, between 5% and 8% of Pfizer’s 10,000 researchers will have to have started looking for new jobs (Financial Times). They’re going to have to look hard, as other pharma companies are also laying people off.

Continue reading "Pfizer to fire hundreds of scientists" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 14, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Declan Butler

Google has at the last-minute pulled the plug on a plan to host large scientific datasets for free. The idea was to have been that Google would send three-terabyte or bigger hard drives by snail-mail to scientists interested in having their data hosted by the company. Once returned to Google, these were to have been uploaded onto its servers. As a condition of using the service, scientists would have to agree that all data was public domain, free for all to access and reuse.

Google's stated mission “is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”, but for the moment extending that mission to include scientific information seems off the table.

Over the past few months, Google had been quietly testing the service, mostly using data from NASA, including massive Hubble datasets, but also data from the Archimedes Palimpsest project.

Continue reading "Google pulls out of science data project" »

Posted by Asher Mullard on December 19, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma company Bristol-Myers Squibb has announced it is shedding another 10% of its staff.

This time last year the company announced 4,300 positions – 10% of its workforce –would go. Now it says that an additional 10% will get the chop, bringing the total to 8,000 losses by 2010 (WSJ).

Commenting on what now looks like a worrying new pre-Christmas tradition for the company, David Moskowitz, an analyst with Caris & Co, told Reuters, “Overall it’s just getting tougher in the new environment for pharmaceutical companies with increasing generic competition and insurance companies clamping down on what drug companies can charge. As a result, this is the natural consequence.”

As the FiercePharma blog notes, it’s time to round up the usual suspects: the layoffs are “likely due to weak pipelines, increasing regulatory burdens, looming generic competition and (do we even need to say it?) the economy”.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 18, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yale has joined the growing list of institutions being hammered by the current financial crisis. The Ivy League university has seen a loss of at least 13.4% - and probably more like 25% - in its endowment portfolio.

President Richard Levin has revealed that the value of Yale’s marketable securities has fallen by the former number between 1 July and 31 October, while once other investments and drops since then were taken into account it was probably down by the latter number, putting it at $17 billion.

“It is important to recognize that $17 billion is still a very large endowment,” he says. “This was where the endowment stood as recently as January 2006.”

Continue reading "Yale joins the credit crunch club" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 17, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

After a protracted battle, US chemicals companies Huntsman and Hexion have reached an agreement over the proposed buyout by Hexion of Huntsman.

This ‘agreement’ means that Hexion, owned by Apollo Management, has to stump up $1 billion to pay off Huntsman and the deal, which was meant to see Hexion pay $6.5 billion for Huntsman, is off.

Huntsman is glad of the cash, according to CEO Peter R. Huntsman (press release) and so they should be, because their shares dropped by either 40% (Times) or 51% (Forbes) depending which story you read. This means that the cash they’re getting from Hexion is more than the company’s current value. Nice work Huntsman!

Continue reading "Huntsman terminates deal, gets cash" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 16, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chemical company Dow has announced “a series of aggressive actions to accelerate its transformational strategy in light of current economic realities”. For those baffled by this new low in corporate speak: it is laying off thousands of employees after being credit crunched.

Dow is closing 20 facilities in what it calls “high-cost locations” and will shed 5,000 employees, around 11% of its total workforce, as part of a $700 million annual cost saving (press release).

Andrew Liveris, the company’s chairman and CEO, told a conference call Dow was also “temporarily idling” around 180 production plants, 30% of its total. This will mean a reduction in contractor numbers of around 6,000.

Just in case he hadn’t used enough jargon, Liveris added “Today’s restructuring is designed to support the Dow of Tomorrow. However, we are accelerating the implementation of these measures as the current world economy has deteriorated sharply, and we must adjust ourselves to the severity of this downturn.”

Reaction below the fold.

Continue reading "Welcome to the Dow of Tomorrow!" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 09, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Heidi Ledford

Nervous Genentech employees can stop eyeing the door -- for a little while at least. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, which announced its intention to acquire the California biotech in July, may not be able to get that $45 billion loan it has asked for to complete the offer, according to Reuters.

While the financial crisis has left tiny biotechs gasping for air, big pharma with its big reservoirs of cash is predicted to fare relatively well. But even the mighty Roche doesn’t have $43.7 billion* lying around, and according to a few anonymous but seemingly well-placed sources talking to Reuters, no bank is likely to lend it to them in the current economic morass.

That doesn’t mean that Roche’s bid is over – they’ll just have to work a little harder to raise the funds, possibly by selling corporate bonds. Roche, meanwhile, has pledged as recently as last week that its pursuit of Genentech is on track. But just a day earlier, Pharmalot entertained a little speculation that Roche may have scrapped plans for a swanky new helix-shaped, $450 million R&D center in Basel amid concerns over how the company would finance the Genentech takeover. And remember, at the end of it all, Genentech wanted more than $43.7 billion anyway.

* How big a loan Roche wants is unclear. The offer for Genentech is $43.7 billion but a loan of $45 billion is often mentioned.
Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 02, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Asher Mullard

The world’s third largest chemical company is the latest victim of the credit crisis.

Ineos, founded only 10 years ago, is the biggest privately owned company in Britain, producing over 50 billion tonnes of chemicals a year for an annual profit revenue of £30bn. Until now, Ineos has thrived by borrowing money from bankers — and therefore not depending on public shareholders — to buy up floundering companies.

Given the current financial crisis, however, it looks like Ineos may need a new strategy. Ineos announced today that their plans to build a £65 million biodiesel plant in Grangemouth, Scotland, will be put on hold indefinitely. According to the BBC, “the current economic slowdown had rendered the project unviable”.

Continue reading "Chemical company feeling the financial heat" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 01, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Mathematician Kiyoshi Ito died this month in Kyoto, Japan.

The New York Times notes that his work on random motion and probability was used in fields from finance to biology. His maths for describing random processes is now called ‘the Ito Calculus’, it adds. “People all over realized that what Ito had done explained things that were unexplainable before,” Daniel Stroock, a mathematician at MIT told the paper.

The citation for his 1998 Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences says his theory “marked a new epoch in scientific research regarding random motion and stochastic phenomena in nature and society”.

Continue reading "RIP Kiyoshi Ito" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 27, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE - We've now obtained the missing statistics, full details at the bottom of the post.

Ever since the current financial crisis hit people have been suggesting that belt-tightening could spell the end of green spending.

Now a new survey conducted in 12 countries has found “Forty three per cent of those surveyed chose climate change ahead of global economic stability when asked about their top three concerns, despite the survey taking place in the midst of the financial market turmoil in September-October 2008.”

Unfortunately the survey, run for the HSBC bank, provides no further details on that figure, either in the press release or the glossy, eight-page report pdf. No information on what the other 57% of people think, or indeed what the top three concerns actually were.

Worryingly this fact – or lack of it – is glossed over in most of the positive press coverage that is being given to this poll...

Continue reading "Credit crunch chills climate change choices" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 27, 2008
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The estimable Chronicle of Higher Education in the US held a shindig earlier this week with Moody’s Investors Service, a well-respected financial analyst company, to discuss the economic future of higher education establishments in the US. (Story here, login required)

The financial health of academic institutions in the US is somewhat bolstered by their private funding structure (see Nature’s in-depth coverage of how the financial crisis is affecting academics worldwide here).

This feeling is shared by Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi, who said that because the higher education sector is one with still increasing numbers of jobs, it might be able to weather the recession.

But all is not good. The problem with the mess we’re in at the moment, said a Moody’s report, is that it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. And the longer the recession continues, the harder US colleges will be bitten. “The potential impacts of the combined credit freeze and recession on some colleges and universities will be significant if current trends persist,” the report says.

According to the Chronicle, “those effects could include less availability of private student loans, a shrinking pool of people who can afford to go to college, and more difficulty in borrowing funds for the colleges' operations and growth.”

But perhaps good times are ahead – the Obama administration could be good news for higher education institutes, suggested Moody’s director for higher education ratings John Nelson. “I don’t think that he’s going to lead an administration that’s hostile to universities… If anything, the opposite.”

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 14, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Paris-based International Energy Agency came out with its annual World Energy Outlook report yesterday. And it makes for gloomy, and expensive, reading (Press release, Calgary Herald, Greentech Media).

The agency bases its findings on a reference scenario that assumes no new government policies are introduced. In this scenario, the IEA says that between now and 2030 world energy demand will grow by 1.6% a year, requiring energy-supply investments of $26.3 trillion (yep TRILLION dollars). “Yet the credit squeeze could delay spending, potentially setting up a supply-crunch that could choke economic recovery,” says the press release.

A week ago, Reuters pre-empted the report, with a story focusing on the slim chance we have to limit warming of the planet to 2 degrees Celsius. “The scale of the challenge ... is immense,” IEA has warned.

The IEA has been busy. Today it also released its prediction for how much oil will be needed globally next year. It lowered its estimate for 2009 by 0.8% to 86.5 million barrels a day (Bloomberg).

The agency also lowered its oil price assumption for 2009 to $80 a barrel from the $110 forecast it held during the past three months (AFP).

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 13, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The president of Harvard says that the financial crisis could severely damage the university’s endowment.

Drew Faust warned that Harvard “is not invulnerable to the seismic financial shocks in the larger world” in a letter to faculty, students and staff, published yesterday.

“While we can hope that markets will improve, we need to be prepared to absorb unprecedented endowment losses and plan for a period of greater financial constraint,” says Faust.

At present the endowment funds around a third of the universities operating budget, but this figure varies widely from school to school. Bloomberg notes that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences gets 52% of its income from the endowment whereas the School of Public Health depends on it for just 13%.

Harvard is just one of the universities feeling the pinch.

Continue reading "Harvard gets credit crunched" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 11, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Enigma, now there's a great film. It is all about efforts to break the code of the German Enigma machine; a complex device used by the military in the Second World War to send encrypted messages. As it happens, on News Year’s day 2008 this correspondent swam in the very loch in Scotland that appears at the end of that there film.

But I digress... Bletchley Park, in the heart of the English countryside, was the home of the British war time code-cracking efforts. It hit hard times lately and was at risk of becoming a dusty pile of rubble. So it is with a happy heart that the Great Beyond can update this tale with good news: Bletchley Park has been saved! (Press release.)

English Heritage has stumped up £300,000 to pay for urgent repairs to the buildings, and talks are underway to get another £600,000 to pay for the rest of the repairs that will be needed over the next three years. This news has hit the PC press, focussing on the fact that Bletchley was home to Britain’s first programmable computer. It's nice to see that computer geeks also have a sense of history.

Hooray! Nice news as we go into a bleak and dreary weekend here in London.

Photo of Bletchley Park by Draco2008 via Flickr

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 07, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

AstraZeneca announced a rather rosy set of third-quarter results yesterday. The company also said it will stop buying up its own shares in order to have more free cash for snapping up smaller firms.

At the moment Simon Lowth, its chief financial officer, says, “we don’t have any specific targets in mind” (Financial Times).

As the credit crunch hits smaller companies this could be an ideal time to buy them and AstraZeneca is not the only one hoping to profit from the world’s financial woes.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that, “small drug companies squeezed by the credit crunch are turning to GlaxoSmithKline PLC to discuss being acquired, Glaxo Chief Executive Andrew Witty said, adding that Glaxo may step up its acquisition activity in the coming months”.

Bloomberg says AstraZeneca’s results put it as “the best performing stock among European drugmakers this year”. It adds:

AstraZeneca joins GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Novo Nordisk A/S in seeking bargains as the financial crisis forces cash-strapped companies to seek buyouts. Glaxo last week said it plans to scrap its stock repurchasing program in 2009 to free up funds for more purchases. Novo CFO Jesper Brandgaard said today that the Danish drugmaker is earmarking as much as $2 billion for takeovers. AstraZeneca will not seek a 'large scale' purchase and will reconsider share buybacks in January, Lowth said.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 31, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Large Hadron Collider has already been fired up and it has already broken. Yesterday the giant particle physics experiment was also formally inaugurated as Swiss president Pascal Couchepin, French prime minister François Fillon and science ministers from across the world met at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva.

In an obligatory nod to the world’s financial woes, Fillion said, “The financial crisis that is currently raging shows us the most destabilising face of globalisation. But the LHC is an example of its most promising aspect.” (AFP.)

Of course the machine is not working at the moment, after a massive amount of liquid helium leaked from its cooling system. This fact could hardly be glossed over and Raymond Orbach, US undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy, told AP, “Frankly it was a surprise that it worked the first time without a glitch.”

However Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation, added, “I have no doubts they'll get back into operation within three to four months.”

The Daily Telegraph is among papers to note that those attending the reception were treated to a banquet of ‘molecular cuisine’: “molecular egg curdle and ice-cream mixed with liquid nitrogen, created by two of the world’s best chefs Ettore Bocchia of Italy and Ferran Adria, who runs El Bulli restaurant in Spain”.

Liquid nitrogen? Let’s hope that none of that leaked...

Image: CERN control room / CERN

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 22, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis, Neat technologies, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Amid widespread concerns that the global financial meltdown could hinder efforts to tackle climate change, European Commission plans to cut greenhouse gases face difficulties after EU environment ministers led by Italy called for significant changes at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.

Under the plans, the EU would cut greenhouse gases by 20% compared to 2005 levels by the end of the next decade. The major sticking point is proposed reforms to the existing carbon emission trading scheme, which when first implemented in 2005 gave carbon credits to industry for free.

Now the European Commission wants industry to buy emissions allowances at auction from 2013. According to press reports, some EU member states, including Italy and highly coal-reliant Poland, are concerned that the reforms would put them at a competitive disadvantage. They have threatened to block the plans unless amendments are made that would allow energy intensive industries such as cement and steel and the power sector to keep their free allowances until 2020.

Continue reading "EU green plans face tough road ahead" »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on October 22, 2008
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The latest in our occasional series rounding up how the credit crisis is impacting on the world of science.

Reuters said last week that financial woes could halt Italian nuclear power plans. “The financial market turmoil has made investors less willing to put up the billions of euros needed to build just a single plant”, it warned.

Things are looking better in China, where Chemistry World informs us that the credit crunch may lead to more spending on science. Experts told the magazine that the government might increase its spending in response to a drop in exports, with science high on the priority list for such spending.

Over in the UK, the combination of the credit crunch and rising tuition fees is pushing students into science disciplines at university, says the Daily Mail. The number of students starting maths degrees is 8% up on last year, with engineering up 6.4%, physics up 4.4% and chemistry up 3.3%.

“Students are turning back to courses which lead to better paying jobs after graduating,” explains the Mail.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 22, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nothing is immune from the current financial crisis / credit crunch / liquidity meltdown / world doom. Even Nature News is not immune, as we’ve just launched our ‘Finance in crisis’ specials page.

If that’s not enough, below the fold you can find what the rest of the world’s media is saying about science during the squeeze regarding:

Forest finance
Food finance
University finance

Continue reading "Financial doom science round up" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 16, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week Kenyan scientist Richard Leakey warned that the global credit crunch would be “devastating” to scientific research with “a very dramatic reduction in available funds for research” (AP).

Here in the UK however science minister Lord Drayson is looking for the silver lining:

Like many chief executives of science-based companies, I suffered from scientists going into the City* because they were paid more. My message to them is: You have been a rocket scientist in the City, now become a real scientist again. (Financial Times)

* An American colleague points out that ‘the City’ may not translate for some foreign readers. It refers to the City of London, shorthand for the Big Smoke’s financial district and institutions.

Image: Drayson.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 13, 2008
Categories: Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)