Archive for April, 2009
ScienceInsider posted an illuminating (albeit rather technical) interview yesterday evening with Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In it, he explains the swift work CDC has done investigating the genetics of the swine flu virus.
The detective work, still underway, indicates that the [...]
Public health measures that reduce the potential for spreading disease through groups of people present a strong defense in the face of an outbreak. We should have been talking about them earlier.
Controlling infections once they reach the human population is crucial, but the origin of many pathogens may lie in factory farming operations, where potent diseases develop.
Recently revealed documents just add to the evidence that sowing doubt about global warming seems to have been in part a political strategy.
Conflicts of interest in the realm of biomedical research are nothing new. In 1984, a study found that half of the surveyed biotech companies provided financial support for university research. But as Institute of Medicine President Harvey Fineberg said yesterday morning, this old problem “seems to be coming forth with increasing force and frequency.”
Fineberg was [...]
“Open innovation” challenges the assumptions made by university technology transfer offices about maximizing the value of their intellectual property.
Over at the main CAP site, P.J. Crowley and Andy Grotto ask how well public health officials have done in responding to the international epidemic. Their assessment: the systems in place to protect citizens are working well. Detection, identification, and response are the central responsibilities, and they give local and federal agencies high marks.
They also [...]
A raft of scientific evidence in recent years, along with a recent book, demonstrates that environment has a very strong impact on an individual’s brain development. The work effectively rebuts most of the lingering arguments over the controversial
Bell Curve hypothesis.
Using specially engineered proteins instead of DNA to coax mice cells back into an embryonic state is promising, but doesn’t resolve many potential problems. For regenerative medicine research in humans, embryonic stem cells remain the gold standard.
This morning, President Obama addressed the National Academies of Sciences, laying out the imperative for sustained government investment in scientific research. He said his administration would commit more funding to R&D than during the Apollo program (see Update below):
I am here today to set this goal: we will devote more than three percent of our [...]
The Flemish government’s 20 years of cluster building offers U.S. policymakers some key lessons on how to guide technology innovation.
Almost one million people died of malaria in Africa in 2006, according to the World Health Organization. Stopping this devastating disease requires a new set of tools, some of which might include mosquito-killing drugs, drugs designed to evade parasite resistance, or perhaps even mosquito-immobilizing lasers.
In an effort to halt the spread of infections, health groups [...]
The latest in cell reprogramming research is that scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California have created induced cells into an embryonic state using proteins instead of genes. The study involves mouse cells.
The process, reported in Cell Stem Cell, points towards a method of creating pluripotent cells without the significant risk of [...]
Increasingly complicated fMRI research demands increasingly sophisticated evaluations of its validity. We should neither ignore the serious problems with fMRI, nor dismiss its potential to make important scientific discoveries.
The British Independent is reporting that a fertility doctor claims he’s on the verge of creating human clones. Trouble is, the man in question, Panayiotis Zavos, said the same thing in 2001, 2004, and 2006, but was unable to produce any evidence to back up his boast.
Brandon Keim at Wired Science points out that regardless [...]
Amid a global economic downturn during which other nations are boosting their already significant public- and private-sector efforts to build more competitive, innovation-led economies, the United States stands almost alone in the world without a national innovation framework.
Nearly 50 years after C.P. Snow’s famous “Two Cultures” lecture, what can we learn from its polemical aftermath, and its author’s savage battles with literary critic F.R. Leavis?
Creating a vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystem is key to fostering broad-based economic growth and competitiveness. Astute policymaking is necessary.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to grow its DNA database, reports The New York Times. Currently 6.7 million profiles strong, the idea is to go from 80,000 new entries every year to 1.2 million in 2012.
While genetic information is certainly useful in catching some offenders and exonerating the wrongfully imprisoned, this ramp-up nevertheless raises [...]
The answer is a mix of politics and profits, two things that should not get in the way of national standards for school nutrition to help better educate our youngsters.
News leaked Friday that Aneesh Chopra, Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, has been appointed the first federal CTO. President Obama made the official announcement Saturday.
While working in Virginia, Chopra lead a highly successful effort to ramp up broadband deployment around the state, which Nancy Scola chronicled in her feature, “Broadband Done Right.” Creative public-private [...]
The new rules on embryonic stem cell research weigh ethical considerations and sound science. Now that’s progressive.
Congressional action on climate change may be the preferred method for mitigating the impact of global warming and moving the United States to a clean energy economy, but the Environmental Protection Agency just turned up the pressure to act. Administrator Lisa Jaskson just announced that carbon dioxide is among six greenhouse gases that “contribute to [...]
Sunlight Labs, the web development shop of the Sunlight Foundation, runs an occasional series on “Redesigning the Government,” in which they offer redesign and information architecture advice for federal agencies. Today, they’ve conceived a website that doesn’t yet exist, but that Whitehouse CIO Vivek Kundra has promised is in the works: Data.gov, the central repository [...]
Nicholas Wade has an overview in the New York Times of a package of articles released this week in the New England Journal of Medicine about the limits of genomewide association studies. At issue is the fact that such studies have not revealed as many concrete links between genotype and the risk factors for common [...]
Reports this week indicate that the Obama administration is leaning towards keeping secret some information on the controversial interrogation tactics used in the CIA’s detention program. But the administration can’t keep secret recently divulged evidence suggesting that fourteen detainees were tortured in that detention program in the presence of doctors, which would constitute a significant [...]
Three key “knobs” that our leaders can use to fine tune their climate policies—the role of EPA, the payment of dividends, and the auctioning of permits—will make it easier to achieve legislative or policy victory. And if they get the bass, volume, and tone just right, they can still win.
In a Washington Post editorial today, Christina Hoff Sommers argues that President Obama’s suggestion that Title IX—which requires equal funding for men’s and women’s school athletics programs—could be used to advance parity for women in science and engineering fields should give readers pause. Unfortunately, she misses both the critical point of diversity in the scientific [...]
How can you design the products of tomorrow and create the innovations that will keep the country advancing if you don’t learn how to make anything? Robots can help.
Science Progress talks with Tandy Trower, general manager of Microsoft’s robotics group, about the future of robotics in the United States and around the globe.
Our CAP colleague Tom Kenworthy has a column up today on the SmartGridCity project Xcel Energy has set up in Boulder, Colorado. The system integrates broadband communications with power lines to allow customers to monitor power consumption, make efficient choices, and let the power company route electricty through the system to meet needs in real [...]
Patenting unmodified genes rewards discovery, not invention. We must prohibit the process and invalidate all claims to unmodified genes to facilitate more open science.
The National Human Genome Research Institute recently posted a searchable database and spreadsheet of genome-wide association studies, or GWAS. The catalog includes data on 1309 single nucleotide polymorphisms, called SNPs, from articles in 296 publications. The table explains what traits were studied in each paper, the sample size, the relevant genes, and the statistical significance. [...]
Science Progress is a media sponsor for the upcoming Tech Policy Summit, May 11-13 in Silicon Valley. Speakers will include a broad swath of experts from the science, technology, and transparency communities. Check out the the participants here registration is here. The focus of the event is “Accelerating Innovation and Economic Growth.” We’ll be collaborating [...]
John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, was nominated in the middle of December, but only confirmed by the senate three weeks ago. In the past, he has spoken in earnest about the importance of scientists devoting time to public communication and outreach—he suggests 10 percent of researchers’ time go towards [...]
The short newsbreak available at the moment seems like a small portion of a longer forthcoming feature, but the wire focused on the OSTP director’s comments on geoengineering:
John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme [...]
As Chris Mooney points out in today’s column, many science graduates are choosing career paths that lie outside academia. This is in part because the career paths within academic science are narrowing, but it is also because the importance of science to many other fields of work is increasing. But how well are we keeping [...]
Many students don’t see a life of academic specialization as the best way to employ their scientific talents. They want to do something more, to bring science to the rest of America.
Signing the Omnibus Public Land Management Act is only the first step in addressing the diverse and vexing challenges facing our 700 million-acre public land estate—the approximately one-third of our nation’s landscape owned in common by all Americans.
Our guest blogger is Gavin Baker, assistant editor of Open Access News, which covers the open access movement, and Outreach Fellow for SPARC, a coalition of academic and research libraries that advocates for open access. The opinions expressed here are his own and not those of either organization.
Today marks one year since the National Institutes [...]
This week, the Federal Communications Commission will begin designing a plan for improving broadband access and speeds for all Americans. The comment period for how to spend taxpayer funds on the project, which includes $7.2 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, opens Wednesday; the final plan is due next February.
But as Mark Lloyd [...]
History that only considers success stories creates a very real danger for policymakers. Telling the story of nanotechnology in all its fascinating, sometimes weird, detail makes this important technology more human and approachable.
Academics and science policy wonks did a double-take last spring when Rick Weiss took early retirement from a wildly successful, award-winning career at The Washington Post to join the Center for American Progress as a senior fellow and columnist for Science Progress. Some expressed their concern to me: Was Weiss, the trenchant analyst of [...]
The lone star state has been in the scientific spotlight for its school board decisions on the teaching of evolution in public classrooms, but it’s also a focus of the next round of arguments over human embryonic stem cell research.
On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle reported that the state Senate Finance Committee passed a budget bill [...]
The economic stimulus funding for broadband deployment should require policymakers to determine first what connectivity standards are necessary before spending any money.
Don’t fall for the optimistic spin that some are putting out: What happened in Texas last week was bad, bad, bad for science education.
