Scathing appraisal for UK research councils’ Shared Services Centre
The Shared Services Centre (SSC), which was intended to save money by combing the back-office functions of the UK’s seven research councils, has so far not been good value for money.
EPA to regulate fracking waste water
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday Oct 20 that it plans to develop standards for disposing of waste water generated by hydraulic fracturing, a method used to extract natural gas from shale rock formations, often referred to as “fracking.” Later that day, the EPA provided expert testimony to a Senate panel that continues to look for ways to best regulate a field that could be an energy boon as well as a safety disaster.
Abbott splits into two companies to lessen reliance on Humira
Abbott Laboratories announced plans yesterday to split into two companies.
US lab safety under fire
The United States’ Chemical Safety Board (CSB), which usually investigates large industrial accidents such as refinery explosions, yesterday published its first ever report [pdf] into an accident in an academic lab. The study looks into a January 2010 accident at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where graduate student Preston Brown lost three fingers of his left hand during a dangerous experiment. But the concerns it identifies spread wider than Texas Tech, and are relevant to anyone working in US chemistry laboratories – as Nature discussed after the death of Michele Dufault at Yale University in April.
Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock, and … Serratia marcescens?
Bacteria have been roped in to producing an artwork for the first time.
High times for Cannabis researchers
The past few months has yielded a bountiful crop of genome sequence from the first medicinal plant to be sequenced: Cannabis sativa. Read more
Nature Podcast: 20 Oct 2011
String theorists find their practical side, a molecular manipulation that boosts good fat and reduces bad fat, and are we getting less violent? Find out this week in the Nature Podcast. Read more
Egg donor ‘compensation’ increased in UK
Women donating eggs for research in the United Kingdom will in future be able to receive £750 in return.
Scottish carbon capture demonstration project shelved
The UK has dropped plans to invest £1 billion in a carbon capture and storage demonstration project at Longannet in Scotland.
If I ruled Yucca Mountain…
Attempts in the United States turn a mountain in Nevada into a long-term nuclear dustbin have been on the rocks for a while. So Congressional watchdog the Government Accountability Office has been looking at alternative uses for the site at Yucca Mountain.