Apologies again for the silence. I’m still catching up from traveling and giving/preparing talks.

In case you hadn’t heard, an advisory panel of scientists, convened by NIH head Elias Zerhouni, recommended last week that the BU infectious disease lab (including a BSL4 facility), which was supposed to open later this year in the South End, undergo further safety reviews and that federal authorities should better assess the risk of accidental release of pathogens (see also Nature’s news brief.

The lab has been the target of a number of lawsuits and previous environmental reviews have been criticized as being inadequate. The opening of the lab is likely to be delayed by at least a year, according to the Boston Globe.

In other news, the NIH announced last week changes to its grants peer review system (see Nature’s story) and one of the ‘priorities’ listed in the NIH’s press release was to “Support a minimum number of early stage investigators and investigators new to NIH…”

It’s well known that young professors and first-time applicants for NIH R01s are bearing the brunt of the funding crunch. I saw a really stark visualization of this when I was at the annual meeting of the National Postdoctoral Association in Boston in April. In his slide show presentation, Walter Schaffer, an advisor for extramural research at the NIH, showed graphs of the ages of NIH grant recipients every year since the 80s. By showing them in quick succession, one after the next, you could plainly see the bell curve steadily shift to the right, towards the older ages. Wow.

So it’s no surprise that there’s been quite an interesting discussion in the Nature News and Opinion forum about whether there should or shouldn’t be mandatory retirement at universities for researchers. A commentary a recent issue of Nature, arguing that there should NOT be, touched off the conversation. Join in and have your say.