In San Francisco new building regulations could accelerate the integration of electric plug-in vehicles. The regulations, which have just been introduced, insist that all new houses will come ready equipped with a plug-in electric car charger.

The move puts San Francisco in the lead in the race to becoming US’s most electric-car friendly city. In fact many companies in the area are readying their facilities so that employees can plug in their cars in the staff car park, and utilites companies re figuring out how to deal with the surge in demand for electricity if electric cars really take off. Coming up in the city will be a loan scheme for residents to help pay for electric chargers in their homes (Telegraph).

Which they seem set to do: Nissan is currently taking its electric car, the Leaf on a promotional tour of the US. This car will become available for sale in Europe in December 2011 and to the mass market in 2012.

The New York Times pre-empted the introduction of San Francisco’s regulations with a piece at the weekend explaining San Francisco’s lead in the electric-car area. But as the Leaf does the rounds, Houston has also been touted as the electric car capital. Meanwhile across the pond, according to Time at the weekend, European countries are also apparently in a rush to become electric-car friendly with Denmark firm favourite to win.

Image: Alamy

Statins, the drugs used to lower levels of bad cholesterol and reduce the risk of coronary disease are in the press again following a meta-analysis of the link between statins and type-2 diabetes.

The study was published in the Lancet and set out to clear up conflicting reports about a link between statin use and diabetes. The study looked at 13 trials from the period 1994–2009 and worked out that statin therapy was associated with a 9% increased risk for developing diabetes.

Previous meta analyses of this topic had shown some sort of link, but not a significant one. This latest report, from Naveed Satar and David Preiss, at the Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre, University of Glasgow, UK, and colleagues puts more weight behind the notion that statins and diabetes are linked, but the conclusion still comes down firmly on the side of statins: “In view of the overwhelming benefit of statins for reduction of cardiovascular events, the small absolute risk for development of diabetes is outweighed by cardiovascular benefit in the short and medium term,” the paper concludes.

Coverage ranges from measured (BBC’s Statins heart benefits outweigh diabetes risks) to less measured (Telegraph’s Cholesterol-busting wonder drugs taken by millions ‘increases diabetes risk’).

Previous studies have suggested that statins have benefits even for healthy patients. This latest round of analysis doesn’t contradict the benefits of statins, but will require further monitoring, and hopefully a molecular mechanism for the effect, if any such molecular mechanism exists, might be figured out eventually as well.

New pictures of Pluto taken by the Hubble space telescope show that the dwarf planet became significantly redder between 2000 and 2002. The images are the most detailed pictures taken of Pluto and are made up from a suite of images taken in 2002 and 2003. Comparing these images with those from 1994 reveals that Pluto’s northern hemisphere has brightened and its southern hemisphere has darkened.

The US Food and Drug Administration has reversed its position on bisphenol A (BPA), announcing today that the chemical is of “some concern” to the health of fetuses, infants, and young children.

The controversial chemical, which is used in baby bottles, “sippy” cups, and the inner linings of food cans, has been linked to a range of conditions including prostate and breast cancers, reproductive disorders, and cardiovascular problems. In August 2008, the agency ruled the chemical safe, but outside scientists, including the FDA’s own external science board, criticized the agency for ignoring studies showing the chemical to be harmful to human health. The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, had conducted its own review in 2007 and said that it had some concern about BPA in infants and children.

“We share the perspective of the National Toxicology Program of some concern of the health effects of BPA,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said today. “’Some concern’ means that we need to know more.” She said that the FDA is partnering with the NTP to conduct studies over the next 18-24 months at the National Center for Toxicological Research in Arkansas to “clarify certainty about potential risks of BPA”. President Barack Obama has asked federal agencies to put together a task force on children’s environmental health.

In the meantime, the FDA is supporting industry actions to remove BPA from its products and facilitate development of alternatives. The agency recommends that people work to reduce their exposure to BPA, but warns parents against abandoning canned infant formula if they are unable to breast feed. “A stable source of good nutrition outweighs exposure,” Hamburg said.

Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the NTP, said that the agency is investing $30 million to support research on BPA. “We are working with other agencies to learn as much as we can as fast as we can and to share that information as best as we can,” she said.

Earlier this week, David Melzer of the Peninsula Medical School at the University of Exeter, UK, published a study confirming a link between BPA and coronary heart disease in adults.

This afternoon, Regina Dugan, the new-ish director of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) gave US President Barack Obama’s science advisory panel a briefing on what makes the mysterious funding agency unique and how she will guide its future.

Dugan is a mechanical engineer and technology investor who served as a DARPA program manager from 1996 to 2000 and took the helm of the 50-year old agency last year. At the third meeting of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), she said that the agency has persisted as one of the “gems of the nation” responsible for such innovations as the global positioning system (GPS) and, more recently, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS).

The reason for its success, she said, is due not only to the stability of funding and urgency of purpose that comes with working on defense-related projects, but to its 120 program managers, who serve for just a few years at a time. “The influence of the program manager is large and the lever arm is long,” she said. “They [join] because it is their form of service to the country. Many believe they are answering a calling, myself included.”

That strategy, as PCAST co-chair Eric Lander noted, contrasts with other US funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. “NIH has smart people,” he said, “but they are not empowered to make bets. They defer to a study section.” Indeed, Dugan said that she has interacted with several funding agencies, including the Department of Energy and NASA, who “seek to emulate the DARPA model in some form.”

In leading DARPA, Dugan says she also hopes to re-engage the basic research community at universities, whose involvement has flagged, in part, due to national security restrictions on the inclusion of foreign nationals and exporting of sensitive data. “We’ve created an interface for researchers to check and make sure their work is [basic research] and free of restrictions,” she said. “We went on a university tour, so to speak, to get that message out.”

As early as this Friday, the US Supreme Court could force Illinois to close two locks in order to prevent the Asian carp from spreading to Lake Michigan, reports the Chicago Tribune.

First introduced to clean algae from catfish ponds along the lower Mississippi River in the 1970s, two Asian carp species made their way up to the Illinois River following major floods in the 1990s. To stop them from crossing Chicago-area locks and threatening the $7 billion Great Lakes fishery and ecosystem, state and federal agencies installed an electric barrier along the waterway.

But earlier this fall Lindsay Chadderton of The Nature Conservancy and the University of Notre Dame used a new technique to identify bighead carp DNA beyond the barrier and along the Cal Sag branch of the canal, a finding which set off an intensive netting and poisoning operation and Michigan’s request for a Supreme Court injunction. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, and New York have since joined the lawsuit.

Closing the locks could destroy a $1.5 billion shipping economy and threaten the city with floods. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, and the Army Corps of Engineers argue that Asian carp are not as big a problem as some contend. The Obama administration has also sided with Illinois.(AP)

“We think that this issue about Asian carp destroying the ecology and the economy of the Great Lakes is just overblown and just fraught with a lot of emotion,” Water District Executive Director Dick Lanyon told the Chicago Tribune.

While most ecologists would dismiss Lanyon’s sentiment outright, the US EPA contends that Asian carp are a “”https://www.epa.gov/glnpo/invasive/asiancarp/“>significant threat” to the Great Lakes. Nature correspondent Emma Marris has written about Mark Davis of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and other invasive species doubters in the ecology community.

Image: bighead carp courtesy US Geological Survey

Howard A. Schmidt, a former George W. Bush administration official, is now part of US President Barack Obama’s team as an advisor on government computer security strategies.

Obama announced the creation of the position on 29 May, but delayed as political, military, and business interests expressed concerns about the cyber-czar’s duties and position within the White House bureaucracy. Many candidates turned down the job along the way. Schmidt will report to deputy national security advisor John O. Brennan. (Washington Post)

Schmidt, an expert in computer forensics, is currently president of the Information Security Forum, a London-based nonprofit trade association that works on cybercrime issues. He has previously worked as security officer for both Microsoft and eBay and headed up a computer forensics team at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Drug Intelligence Center. From 2001 to 2003, he served on Bush’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. (NY Times / Associated Press)

In April, Nature advocated boosting academic research against cybercrime. “Cybersecurity is an arms race in which ever-more sophisticated responses will be needed as new threats emerge,” the journal’s editors wrote.

A bird-like dinosaur used venom to kill its prey, paleontologists say.

Larry Martin and David Burnham of the University of Kansas in Lawrence were examining the fossil of Sinornithosaurus one day when they noticed a depression in the maxilla and a groove that led into the razor-sharp teeth. “We just looked at each other that day,” Martin told the Wichita Eagle. "And I said, ‘David, you do realize what this means?’ We knew at that moment, ‘Oh my gosh, this was a venomous animal.’”

The fossil, described in the early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, marks the first discovery of a potentially venomous dinosaur. Sinornithosaurus was about the size of turkey and had feathers on both its front and back legs. It likely fed on small birds in the forests of Cretaceous-era China, 128 million years ago. The fangs would only be able to penetrate 4 to 6 millimeters into the skin, allowing the poison to enter the bloodstream.

The venom would not necessarily kill the prey, but as in modern day Gila monsters and some rear-fanged snakes, it would induce “a state of shock.” (National Geographic)

“You wouldn’t have seen it coming,” Burnham told The Guardian. “It would have swooped down behind you from a low-hanging tree branch and attacked.”

Of course, not everyone is sold on the story. Brian Switek of the Dinosaur Tracking blog at Smithsonian.com writes, “The new study, while interesting, does not include compelling evidence that Sinornithosaurus or any other dinosaur was venomous.”

Image: David A. Burnham, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute

This morning, convicted murderer Kenneth Biros became the first person executed in the United States using an overdose of thiopental sodium rather than the typical three-drug cocktail. Despite objections that the new procedure could take more than twice as long to kill, it took just ten minutes, according to the local news site Vindy.com.

In the traditional procedure, officials first inject the sedative thiopental sodium, followed by a muscle relaxant, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart. Critics have challenged the method as “cruel and unusual punishment” because it can cause extreme pain if the sedative is not properly administered, and the medical community has long objected to taking part in any form of execution (Nature).

Although the Supreme Court upheld the procedure’s constitutionality last year, Ohio became the first state to abandon it after a botched execution last month in which prison staff were unable to identify an appropriate vein. (The Guardian)

However, because the single injection method is untested, it has found its critics as well. Biros’ lawyers called it human experimentation and experts noted that a single injection could take 15 to 30 minutes for the heart to stop beating compared to 7 using the three-drug cocktail. (The Telegraph)

In the end, the court didn’t buy the argument from Biros’ lawyers, and he was executed at 11:47 am. (New York Times)