Stephen Hawking’s ‘boycott’ of Israeli conference not due to health reasons

Posted on 08 May 2013 by Daniel Cressey

UPDATE: The University of Cambridge has now said that Hawking’s decision was based on “advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott”. The headline on this post has been changed to reflect this update (it was originally ‘Stephen Hawking’s ‘boycott’ of Israeli conference may be for health reasons’).

Physicist Stephen Hawking’s confirmation that he will not be attending a conference in Israel has re-ignited long-simmering debate over boycotts of the country by some researchers. ~~But the University of Cambridge insists the decision was taken on medical grounds~~. After initially stating the decision was taken on medical grounds, the University of Cambridge, UK, has confirmed that Hawking’s decision was out of respect for the current boycott.

A statement from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), a group supporting an academic boycott of Israel over the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, said that Hawking had declined an invitation to a conference run under the auspices of the Israeli president. The group said in a statement — which has been reported as being released with Hawking’s approval — that “this is his independent decision to respect the boycott” and was based on his knowledge of the situation and “the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there”.

An initial statement from the University of Cambridge, where Hawking is director of research at the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics, said (in full), “Professor Hawking will not be attending the conference in Israel in June for health reasons — his doctors have advised against him flying.”

However, in a follow-up statement the university confirmed that “a letter was sent on Friday to the Israeli President’s office regarding his decision not to attend the Presidential Conference, based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott. We had understood previously that his decision was based purely on health grounds having been advised by doctors not to fly.”

The initial BRICUP statement triggered a surge of news coverage about Hawking’s ‘boycott’ of the event. Calls for academic boycotts of Israel are longstanding in the United Kingdom, and have been proposed numerous times at meetings of academic trade unions, with varying success. Although some researchers have backed boycotts, others call them counterproductive.

Israel Maimon, the chairman of the Israeli Presidential Conference, said in his own statement that Hawking’s announcement was “unjustifiable and wrong” and that “the academic boycott against Israel is in our view outrageous and improper”.

US frees Iranian scientist accused of illegal trade

Posted on 02 May 2013 by Davide Castelvecchi

Posted on behalf of Michele Catanzaro.

Sayed Mojtaba Atarodi, a professor of electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran who had been held in prison in the United States since 7 December 2011, was released and returned to Iran on 27 April, according to the Iranian government-funded PressTV.

Atarodi had been charged of violating the US ban on trade with Iran by purchasing items for his laboratory. Upon arrival at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, the engineer declared that he had travelled to the United States for academic-research purposes and wanted to buy simple equipment for his personal laboratory, according to PressTV. Atarodi denied that this technology may have dual use, that is, that it could also have applications to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Atarodi’s work deals with materials science and microchip technology. In the past, he has collaborated with engineers at the University of California, Irvine, and at France’s CNRS research centre in Toulouse.

On 11 January 2012, faculty members at Sharif protested the arrest in a statement, which asked that Iranian scientists abroad be treated as are faculty from other countries. The statement argued that the technology Atarodi had planned to buy is available on the open market in Iran. As well, the authors of the statement wrote that Atarodi suffered from a heart condition and expressed concern for his health.

Political thaw raises hopes for refrigerant regulations

Posted on 26 Apr 2013 by Jeff Tollefson

{credit}Data: UN Risoe Centre{/credit}

This week China budged. Depending on one’s perspective, it wasn’t much of a concession. The country agreed, in essence, to do what it and everybody else had already agreed to do back in 2007: accelerate the phasing out of a common class of ozone-eating refrigerants that double as powerful greenhouse gases. But rather than haggling over prices each step of the way, China made it simple and cut a single deal — worth up to US$385 million — to eliminate hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) between now and 2030.

Reached under the auspices of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the agreement would lock in extra protection for stratospheric ozone as well as greenhouse-gas reductions equivalent to 8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is more than double the annual carbon emissions of the European Union. But more importantly, observers hope that it might mark a new beginning in the long-running bureaucratic battle over how to manage the chemicals that replace HCFCs: hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are ozone friendly but remain potent trappers of heat. In particular, environmental advocates — and a solid majority of countries — hope that China will finally get behind a proposal to shift management of HFCs from the United Nations climate convention, where they now reside, to the Montreal Protocol.

“It’s really too early to tell, but this could be a signal they are going to take a better position with regard to phasing out HFCs,” says Mark Roberts, senior legal counsel for the Environmental Investigation Agency based in Stow, Massachusetts. Roberts notes that China also agreed to manage ongoing HCFC production as well as associated by-products “in accordance with best practices to minimize associated climate impacts”.

The timing is uncanny. In recent years a small cohort of companies in China and a handful of other countries have collected billions of dollars to destroy HFC-23 — a by-product of certain HCFC production that is 14,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas — in exchange for dubious credits under the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows wealthy countries to offset their emissions in developing countries. In just four days, at midnight on 30 April, the European Union will turn off the spigot. Many feared that the companies would respond with the cheapest solution: vent into the atmosphere. China now seems to be suggesting that won’t happen.

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INTERPOL establishes unit to fight illegal fishing

Posted on 25 Feb 2013 by Daniel Cressey

INTERPOL, the international criminal investigation body, today launched a special unit to tackle illegal fishing.

The new programme, called Project Scale, aims to suppress criminal networks and the ships they run, which, by some estimates, account for one in every five fish caught every year.

David Higgins, head of the environmental-crime programme at INTERPOL, says that there are various indicators to suggest that organized crime is involved in illegal fishing. “It’s like an unlawful business that’s operating. Wherever money is to be made there will be criminals looking to exploit that industry.”

Officially launched today in Lyons, France, and falling under the auspices of INTERPOL’s environmental-crime programme, Project Scale is backed by funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts, a charity organization, and will work in tandem with a working group on fisheries crime. The main purpose of the programme will be to collect data on what is a very murky area and provide a forum in which those responsible for enforcing maritime laws across the globe can exchange intelligence.

It is unclear at present exactly how much fishing falls into the overlapping categories of illegal, unreported and unregulated — known in the business as IUU. A widely cited 2009 study puts it at between US$10 billion and $23.5 billion, and between 11 million and 26 million tonnes of fish.

Illegal fishing has been blamed for devastating not just fish populations but also local economies in developing nations. Somalia’s recent outbreak of piracy has been attributed at least in part to fishermen seeking alternative incomes after their former livelihoods were destroyed by IUU ships.

Some IUU activity is likely to be small-scale unreported fishing done by otherwise legal vessels. At the other end of the spectrum, there are thought to be completely illegal fishing vessels run by large-scale criminal organizations.

“It’s a complex problem and a global problem. The importance of INTERPOL is it brings together 190 countries and their experience of environmental crime,” says Anthony Long, who runs Pew’s campaign against IUU fishing. “The most important thing is they get countries starting to share information. INTERPOL is the first step in getting back into the battle.”

International activity against IUU fishing is on the rise. In January this year, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that ten nations had been identified as being home to ships engaging in IUU activity in 2011 or 2012. Europe last year warned eight countries that they could end up on a trade blacklist if they didn’t take strong action against illegal fishing.

In London earlier this month, at the Eighth International Forum on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing, Europe’s fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, praised INTERPOL’s moves into the area and said, “The fight against IUU sometimes reminds me of Greek mythology: we are destined, like Tantalus or Sisyphus, to endlessly pursue our human activities.”

“Again and again we need to chase criminals profiting from every loophole,” Damanaki added. “But with our international partners, we will sail on. We will stay the course.”

Scientists voice support for student to mark two years of his jailing in Iran

Posted on 31 Jan 2013 by Davide Castelvecchi

Posted on behalf of Michele Catanzaro.

Scientists and students at the University of Texas (UT) in Austin released a short documentary about Omid Kokabee, a doctoral student at that university, on 30 January to mark his second year of detention in Iran on a controversial conspiracy sentence (see video below).

The group also issued an online petition asking the university to allow the physics department to make an official statement on the case.

Kokabee (pictured) transferred to UT Austin in the autumn of 2010 to complete his PhD after three years at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain.

On 30 January 2011, at the end of a holiday in his native Iran, he was arrested at Tehran’s airport. In May 2012 he was sentenced to ten years in prison for “illegal earnings” and “communication with an hostile government”. Kokabee denied all accusations and alleged irregularities in his trial in two open letters.

Scientific organizations such as the American Physical Society, four professional optics societies and the Committee of Concerned Scientists based in New York, among others, have issued letters and petitions in support of Kokabee (see ‘Scientists protest against prison sentence for Iranian student‘).

However, neither UT Austin nor the Technical University of Catalonia (of which the ICFO is part) have made any official statements on the case. Francisco Cigarroa, chancellor of the UT system, said that an internal regulation forbids university personnel from making official statements on behalf of the university on matters of political or controversial nature.

“We are trying to get UT involved” through the video and the petitions, says an Iranian-American student member of Austin for Iran, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

The video includes declarations in support of Kokabee from Kamiar and Arash Alaei, two AIDS doctors who were detained in Iran in 2008 and released after an international campaign from the scientific community. In the film, Kamiar Alaei asks the Iranian government to release Kokabee to mark the Iranian new year, in March.

Scientists who support Kokabee have set up other initiatives to mark Kokabee’s second anniversary in jail. On 7 December, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Amnesty International hosted an event in Washington DC at which scientists could sign an open letter backing Kokabee. And on 3 January, the Middle East Studies Association, a think tank based in Tucson, Arizona, issued an open letter asking for Kokabee’s freedom.

https://youtu.be/JK8N9FfzyYc

India may go to the Moon alone

Posted on 22 Jan 2013 by Davide Castelvecchi

Posted on behalf of K. S. Jayaraman.

BANGALORE — The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which had planned to put a rover on the lunar surface on its second Moon mission sometime in 2015, will be doing it all by itself and not as a joint venture with Russia as was originally proposed.

India’s first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, launched on 22 October 2008 and was able to detect water on lunar surface before onboard power supply problems caused it to end prematurely after just ten months in orbit.

For its successor, Chandrayaan-2, the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roskosmos, in 2007 had agreed to contribute a lander and a rover. Sripada Murty, chairman of the planetary sciences division of the ISRO’s Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, told The Hindu that Russia has backed out after its sample return mission to Mars’s moon Phobos failed in November 2011 and also due to financial problems.

PRL director Jitendra Nath Goswami, however, made it clear that Russia has not officially informed the ISRO that the joint venture is off. “We have only been told that Russia is reprioritizing its planetary exploration programme in the light of its interplanetary mission failure and that it would first thoroughly review the lander/rover system and test it in a lunar mission before offering to India.” Russia has recently announced that this test will take place in 2015.

Designing and building the lander and the rover will surely take time, admits Goswami. Moreover, the ISRO has yet to certify the rocket to be used in this mission, which is expected to make its first test flight next month after two successive failures in 2010. The vehicle must make at least two successful flights before it can be trusted for launching Chandrayaan-2, says Goswami.

Research beagles released as pets

Posted on 18 Dec 2012 by Meredith Wadman

Beagle dogs at the Chennai quarantine facility await transfer to rescue groups. {credit}PETA INDIA{/credit}

Seventy beagle puppies originally intended for pharmacology research were released to adoptive families in India on Saturday, several weeks after activists alerted the Indian government that the animals had been falsely described as “pets” by the contract research organization seeking to import them.

The company, Bangalore-based Advinus, had been receiving beagle shipments from the Chinese arm of Marshall BioResources, a major research animal breeder based in North Rose, New York, since at least 2010. As Nature‘s news blog reported last month (see ‘Research dogs shipped to India under airline’s radar’), the dogs, which are a sought-after breed for toxicology research because of their docility, were flown to companies in India and Japan by Cathay Pacific, which refuses to transport research animals. Marshall had represented the dogs to the airline as being for “breeding” and “genetic research” purposes. “They won’t be hurt or killed as lab animals,” the Chinese arm of Marshall wrote to the airline.

Scott Marshall, the president and chief executive of Marshall BioResources, said last month that he needed to investigate the matter and would have no comment until he did. He did not respond to two additional e-mailed requests for comment this week.

The pups had been in quarantine in Chennai since the Cathay Pacific flight from China landed on 19 October. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in India obtained a photo of them and additional documents indicating that they were intended for research use at Advinus, and reported the information to the Indian government’s Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experimentation on Animals. The committee investigated and, on Saturday, as The Times of India reports, the government released them for distribution to adoptive owners by Blue Cross and People for Animals, two animal groups in Chennai. The crated pups pictured are shown in the quarantine facility in Chennai shortly before their release.

Russia paroles jailed physicist

Posted on 14 Nov 2012 by Quirin Schiermeier

A Siberian court has finally granted parole to a Russian physicist who has spent 11 years in jail for alleged espionage and embezzling of funds. If no appeal is filed, Valentin Danilov could be released as early as next week.

Danilov, born 1951, headed the Thermo-Physics Center at Krasnoyarsk State Technical University in Siberia before he was arrested in 2001 on charges of selling classified satellite technology to a Chinese company. He was acquitted of all charges in 2003 but one year later a new jury overturned the decision and sentenced him to 14 years in prison, which was later reduced by one year.

As a researcher, Danilov had investigated effects of solar activity on space satellites. He has always maintained that the satellite device in question was unclassified technology that had been public knowledge for many years. Human right groups say that his conviction was politically motivated.

Russian courts have in the past targeted a number of scientists accused of alleged treachery or espionage. Prominent examples include military analyst and nuclear weapons expert Igor Sutyagin, sentenced to 15 years in 2004, who was spectacularly swapped in 2010 for the release of ten agents arrested in the United States for spying for Russia.

In 2006, physicist Oskar Kaibyshev was given a six-year suspended prison sentence for exporting technologies with possible military use to South Korea. And in June, a St. Petersburg court sentenced to 12 and 12 ½ years in a penal colony, respectively, two professors, Yevgeny Afanasiev and Svyatoslav Bobyshev, at the city’s State Military Mechanical University for having passed on military secrets to China. All convicted scientists have consistently maintained their innocence.

The threat of prosecution is not confined to Russian scientists involved in military research. In August, the arrest of poppy expert Olga Zelenina, accused of abetting drug trafficking, caused an outcry among scientists in Russia and abroad. Zelenina, who her supporters say merely produced an expert opinion on the narcotics content in a shipment of poppy seeds, was released from custody in September pending her yet unscheduled trial.

Danilov’s release will bring attention to the plights of Russian scientists in similar positions, says Sébastien Francoeur, a physicist at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada, and a member of the American Physical Society’s committee on International Freedom of Scientists.

“This is very good news for the Russian scientific community and scientists worldwide,” he says.

Bosch quits Desertec

Posted on 13 Nov 2012 by Quirin Schiermeier

The world’s most ambitious renewable energy project suffered another blow yesterday when the Germany technology supplier Bosch announced it was pulling out of the DESERTEC solar project. Stuttgart-based Bosch, the world’s biggest supplier of car parts, said it will quit the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii) by the end of the year.

“The economic conditions [do] not allow a continuation of its membership,” Reuters quotes a Bosch spokeswoman as saying.

The decision comes just two weeks after Siemens had announced its exit from the consortium. Siemens, based in Munich, Germany, said last month it will pull out from the loss-making solar business altogether

The DESERTEC initiative was launched in 2009 with the goal of building a network of solar plants across North Africa. Backers of the project hope that by mid-century DESERTEC will supply the region and large parts of Europe with more than 125 gigawatts of electricity.

But the €400 billion project has been criticised for being too risky and expensive. Last week, Spain delayed signing an agreement that would have allowed Dii to move ahead with building a first €600 million 150-megawatt solar plant in Morocco.

Dii’s chief executive Paul van Son said previously that the exit of single partners does not jeopardize the project. Dii’s shareholders do still include, among others, the German reinsurance company Munich Re, German power utilities E.ON and RWE, Deutsche Bank and the Italian-based UniCredit group. Meanwhile, the Chinese power company State Grid Corp (SGCC) is considering joining the project.

Japan’s nuclear sun to set?

Posted on 14 Sep 2012 by Declan Butler

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.

Many of Japan’s reactors are relatively young meaning that any phase-out will bite hardest quite a fair bit down the line – see the graph belo,w which gives a snapshot of the age of Japan’s power reactors – leaving potential scope for Japan’s nuclear policy to shift in the future under different administrations, and circumstances. (In passing, several of Japan’s reactors were built in the last decade, and two reactors are under construction, so under the 40-year rule would persist beyond 2040). In contrast, Germany which last year decided to phase out its then 17 nuclear reactors intends to do so by 2022 – see “The knock-on effects of Germany’s nuclear phase-out” (almost all of its reactors were built in the 1970’s and are nearing the end of their lifetimes).

{credit}IAEA{/credit}

Indeed, in the short-term, the pledge to phase-out nuclear energy may provide the Japanese government with political cover to begin restarting reactors, the last of which was shut down in May (see ‘Japan switches off its last nuclear reactor). The reactors, closed for routine maintenance, would usually be reopened immediately after this was completed, but all will need to meet new safety tests and rules to be implemented this autumn before being restarted.