And in the wake of Climategate a year ago and widespread attacks on the IPCC and on climate science in general, the public may be confused more than ever about
It earned her scathing attacks on skeptical climate blogs. They claimed there were serious problems with the hurricane statistics the paper relied on, particularly from before the 1970s,
And it made her reconsider her uncritical defense of the IPCC over the years. Curry says,
What she does believe is that the mainstream climate science community has moved beyond the ivory tower into a type of fortress mentality, in
and accusations of conflicts of interest involving IPCC chair Rajendra K. Pachauri, bodies ranging from the U n. to The british government to individual universities on both sides of the Atlantic launched investigations.
Hungarian emergency agencies, assisted by environmental chemists from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, are confident that there will be no lasting damage to human health
and the law entered into force. But in August, the ministry of agriculture published regulations for the law which seem to allow the contained use of GM plants and animals in education and research
they met with the Civil Protection in L'aquila to assess the risk of a major shock.
After the meeting, a Civil Protection official (who was indicted also) told the press that there was no immediate danger.
The scientific saboteur Court records show that Vipul Bhrigu, the former postdoc at the University of Michigan, Ann arbor
Sabotage!')'),paid US$5, 000 in restitution in November. This is in addition to the $10, 000 he paid at the time of sentencing
US producers of corn ethanol are encountering increasing scepticism from the legislators on Capitol hill even as producers of the'greener'cellulose-derived ethanol struggle to move beyond basic research and development.
a year's extension of the subsidies and protections granted under current law. But they had been hoping for a longer extension,
to avoid a similar battle next year, and industry officials say the government still is not giving advanced ethanol companies the kind of support they need to scale up their technologies
director of renewable energy policy for the Natural resources Defense Council in New york. There's a sort of belief in Washington that corn ethanol is one of these topics where everyone has to toe the line,
Anthrax report The US National Academy of Sciences has delayed releasing a long-awaited report on the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, after a request by the Federal bureau of investigation (FBI.
The report examines the scientific evidence used by the FBI to accuse microbiologist Bruce Ivins of the attacks,
the FBI said hundreds more pages of previously undisclosed documents should be considered by the investigation,
In 2005, Fenn lost a legal battle over the patent rights to Yale university in New haven, Connecticut,
The conference also reached a historic agreement on forest protection, and advanced programmes to help the developing world adopt clean energy
The other major dispute in Canc  n was between the world's two largest greenhouse-gas emitters the United states and China.
and enable the pathogens to run faster in an arms race. As a result of climate change and the loss of habitats from where important crops originated,
there is a big risk that we will run out of options for natural genetic resistance, says Spanu.
The savings will be made in part by reducing operating time and downsizing a planned extension of the main experimental hall.
Patient protection US President Barack Obama has asked his bioethics commission to review the recent discovery that US government-funded scientists intentionally infected subjects with syphilis in a study in Guatemala in the 1940s (see Nature 467,645;
a'Quadrennial Energy Review',modelled on an existing defence review. Oil-spill budget Scientists have welcomed a long-awaited peer-reviewed US government report on the short-term fate of the oil from the Deepwater horizon spill in the Gulf of mexico this summer.
and poses cancer risks. Tuna quotas Fisheries regulators are showing little mercy to the Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus),
which is in danger of being wiped out by commercial fishing. On 27 november at a meeting in Paris, members of the Madrid-based International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas,
more than two years after the species was given a protection status of'threatened'by the US Endangered Species Act.
and his wife injured in a bomb attack on 29 november in Tehran. Another nuclear scientist, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani,
and his wife, survived an identical simultaneous attack. See page 607 for more. Scientist threatened Animal-rights activists mailed razor blades and a'threatening note'to neuroscientist David Jentsch at the University of California, Los angeles, in November, the university said last week.
setting out the potential risks associated with climate change, and possible solutions. These range from adopting the same building standards for roads as those for the south of France,
Nature Newspolicy Research People Business Trend watch Coming up Number crunch Policy Haiti's cholera fight Health officials have outlined plans for a proposed cholera vaccination
As the country struggles to recover from the earthquake that devastated it last January, some experts have pushed for a small pilot project,
NIH conflict clash The US National institutes of health (NIH) should issue regulations governing conflicts of interest for the institutions at which its grantees work
The NIH is revamping rules that address the reporting of potential conflicts by individual investigators
The agency says it is carefully considering comments it has received on institutional conflicts as it finalizes changes to the rules for individuals.
Permit for mountaintop mine revoked The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) has revoked for the first time a permit for mountaintop mining.
what would have been the country's largest mountaintop mine in 2007 from the Army Corps of Engineers,
But the EPA has ruled that Spruce 1 Mine in the Appalachian mountains of West virginia presented major environmental and water-quality concerns,
US mountaintop mines, such as the one on Kayford Mountain (pictured), are largely found in the Appalachians.
Environmentalists have protested against the deal as they grow increasingly vocal about the dangers of drilling in the Arctic.
2011 墉 takes place at the UN headquarters in New york. go. nature. com/potx5i Number crunch 18%The number of health advocacy groups receiving funding from Eli lilly in the first
Other blockbusters due to come off patent include Sanofi-aventis's anti-clotting drug Plavix (clopidogrel) and Eli lilly's schizophrenia drug Zyprexa (olanzapine.
and requires the two nations to keep the numbers of their nuclear warheads and launch vehicles below limits that are lower than those agreed in a previous treaty;
protecting wetlands may not make a huge difference to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions. Oceanographer Christoph Heinze at the University of Bergen, Norway, points out that the carbon sequestration abilities of wetland plants are
Pollution fight US oil giant Chevron of San Remon, California, says that it will appeal a US$8. 6-billion fine imposed for environmental damages by an Ecuadorian court on 14 february,
With the military in interim control, the country's future is unclear, but academics are already hoping to improve its moribund research system.
science and technology should be Egypt's first line of defence (see Editorial, page 306). Valuable treasures did not survive the revolution unscathed;
and shot a projectile into the same comet. Researchers hope to spot differences that will reveal how comets change with each orbit round the Sun
too little is known about the risks associated with intensification. These systems are intensifying anyway. So how do we intensify in a sustainable way
and how do we manage the risk? he asks. These questions will be investigated as part of a new $us60-million per year research programme proposed by the International Food Policy Research Institute,
Perchlorate interferes with the production of thyroid hormones and mainly leaches into the environment from its use in the manufacture of rocket fuel and explosives.
that concerns about the possible cardiovascular risks of the drug Contrave (naltrexone/bupropion) outweighed its weight-loss benefit.
Murenzi is expected to take up the post at TWAS headquarters in Trieste, Italy, around April; he will replace Mohamed Hassan,
Canadian forest deal at risk: Nature Newsfor conservationists, the promise seems almost too good to be true
2010), it would be the single biggest forest-protection deal ever, and has been portrayed by participants as a model of cooperation.
and environmentalists adamant that far-reaching protections must be enforced, questions remain over how much forest will actually be preserved.
could allowing cattle to graze in the country's Alpine National park the picturesque setting for the film The Man from Snowy River reduce the risk of bushfires?
might not realize that it also involves walking into a serious stoush that's Australian for fight.
which tells us that the changes are linked to some common global force and are consistent with
the fact that many are dying after high ocean temperature events may have something to do with humans stressing them with pollution, dynamite fishing, recreational activities and coastal development.
often by fostering rare species. But they aren't always a force for good when it comes to conservation, according to a study by Philip Hulme, a weed specialist at Lincoln University in New Zealand1.
or at least knew nothing of the threat they might pose to native ecosystems. So Hulme decided to check
and few have undertaken any kind of risk assessment of their operations. I just wanted to prick the conscience of botanic gardens,
But he also says that many gardens take steps to limit the danger of unwanted escapees.
or fungus that might pose a threat. And its shop doesn't sell anything that is considered invasive.
Nature Newsan international treaty aimed at protecting and improving access to the world's plant genetic resources has obtained more than US$10 million from donors to fund its second round of research grants for helping
Koh and his colleagues found that the conversion to oil-palm plantations had put four species of bird at risk of extinction in Borneo,
16 species at risk in Sumatra, and 46 in Peninsular Malaysia. Koh's team also collaborated with remote-sensing experts to create a map of land-use change.
Dire threats to coral reefs More than 60%of the world's coral reefs are threatened directly by local human activities such as coastal pollution and destructive fishing.
The World Resources Institute in WASHINGTON DC published the statistics on 23 february in Reefs at Risk
providing food and coastline protection, and said that they can rebound if communities stop unsustainable practices.
People German plagiarism Germany's defence minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (pictured), has resigned after a row over plagiarism in his Phd thesis. The University of Bayreuth withdrew Guttenberg's doctoral thesis
but environmental campaigners such as the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Arizona, bemoaned the fact that politicians had lifted protection rather than waiting for due process under the Endangered Species Act.
Grants aim to fight malnutrition: Nature Newsnearly US$20 million in new grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be spent on getting nutritionally enhanced rice and cassava to market and decreasing malnourishment in Asia and Africa.
vice-minister of environmental protection, said on 28 march at a conference in Beijing on the rural environment.
This is the first time that the protection of the rural environment has been included in the country's five-year budget plan.
This is wonderful news for the course of environmental protection in China says Zhang. China's rural areas produce more than 9 billion tonnes of waste water and 280 million tonnes of household rubbish a year.
The ministry is set to promote public awareness and participation in environmental protection in rural areas, and performance in curbing rural pollution will be one of the criteria by
There are also plans to set up long-term monitoring networks to ensure sustained protection. As most existing environmental laws and guidelines are geared towards industrial pollution,
the ministry is drafting new laws on soil protection and the reduction and treatment of livestock pollution.
With a limited labour force but ample subsidized chemical fertilizers available in most rural areas, dumping nutrient-rich animal manure has become an easier and cheaper option than using it to fertilize crops.
In addition to laws on soil protection and livestock management, regulations on the use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides the use of which is much higher per hectare in China than in developed countries are needed urgently,
With food insecurity, low yields and growing populations in Sub-saharan africa, conserving future farmland could pose a serious cost to people in terms of their welfare and livelihood.
The team then plugged those concentrations into a piece of software called ERICA (Environmental Risk from Ionising Contaminants) to calculate the radiation dose that various groups of wildlife would have received.
the laureates signed a memorandum stating that economic and social development should go hand in hand with environmental protection.
as well as potential strategies for protecting the insects from a multitude of threats. At the meeting, Cornman presented data showing that hives affected by CCD have higher levels of microscopic gut fungi called Nosema,
but how are they surviving against this onslaught of parasites, he says. The genome offers a window into the bees'immune pathways,
The goal is to identify the genes that are crucial in helping bees thwart attack,
and, ultimately, to strengthen these defences. You can breed for these traits, but with genetic markers you could do it faster,
At the meeting, Michelle Flenniken, a virologist at the University of California, San francisco, presented evidence that, in honeybees, it can also trigger a general immune response that might ward off a variety of threats.
will not be restarted until Chubu completes existing plans to upgrade seawall defences there. The suspension has worried both utilities and local industry,
Events Pacts to curb illegal logging Liberia's logging industry was used once to fund bloody civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The report pointed to probable leakage from latrines at a riverside United nations peacekeepers'camp. However it stopped short of directly accusing Nepalese soldiers in the camp,
US veterans biobank The US Department of veterans affairs (VA) hopes to enrol 1 million military veterans to form
On 5 may it announced that the Million Veterans Program, already launched at the Boston VA Medical center,
Coming up 14 18 may The science and politics of protecting marine life is the focus of the 2nd International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria,
The United nations Security council banned timber imports from Liberia in 2003, after it was shown that the industry was being used to fund civil wars that left hundreds of thousands of people dead.
The civil wars are now over, and sanctions were lifted in 2006 following the reform of the forestry sector,
comes into force. Lack of political will could also be a major stumbling block for the deal, according to Siakor.
On the one hand, close scrutiny of certification papers by European importers could act as an extra safeguard in the system.
Lawson also questions the strength of safeguards in importing countries in Europe because the legislation allows countries to determine their own penalties for breaches in paperwork.
during an epidemic, culling on farms that are at risk of infection could be unnecessary.
otherwise confer protection against radiation damage, and that this molecular trade-off is shaping bird populations around the former nuclear power plant.
One of the team, Anders M ¸ller from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, donned a radiation-protection suit to make four bird-watching trips between 2006 and 2009 to the Red
The new study takes the analysis a step further by teasing out the different protective effects of different types of melanin pigment.
the controversial overhaul of NIFA's flagship competitive grants programme, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI.
if legislators follow through on threats to trim spending further, Beachy doesn't plan to disappear entirely.
There they could potentially take advantage of the country's weakened defences and multiply into the kind of swarm that has ravaged previously large swathes of Africa and the Middle east.
but until now we haven't been able to move into those areas owing to security problems,
is that the danger of an uncontrolled outbreak in Yemen is declining as the country heads into its dry season.
However, that does not mean the danger would be over, Cressman warns. Wind could still carry the locusts across the Red sea
Although fighting continues between government troops and militias in the Darfur region, Cressman says that agricultural officials there should be able to control locusts throughout most of northern Sudan.
but that will depend on individual countries, politics, security and all those things.
Seven days: 17 23 june 2011: Nature Newspolicy Funding Events Research Trend watch Coming up Policy Pathogen dangers A US panel has named the most dangerous pathogens with potential for misuse.
In a report released on 14 june, the Federal Experts Security Advisory Panel identified 11 biological agents that it said needed more rigorous monitoring,
and recommended background checks for researchers working with them. The pathogens include bacteria and viruses that cause smallpox, the plague, anthrax, Ebola and foot-and-mouth disease.
and other parties to force utility companies to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions on the grounds that the emissions are a public nuisance.
Events Primate peril Employees at a major US primate-research centre and the animals it houses, all survived unscathed a massive chemical explosion at a nearby plant on 14 june.
The New Iberia Research center in Louisiana holds 6, 500 macaques and 360 chimpanzees. Some 1, 900 rhesus and pigtail macaques were housed within 350 metres of a fire and multiple explosions at the Multi-Chem facility in New Iberia,
but none seemed to be harmed; they are now being monitored for stress and other adverse affects.
Phage on the rampage: Nature Newswomen, beansprouts, cucumbers, bacteria, cows: the cast of the current European Escherichia coli outbreak is already a crowd.
If bacteria are exposed to some types of antibiotics they undergo what is called the SOS response,
The potential for the creation of new pathogens via phage release is absolutely a factor in the broader environmental danger of overuse of antibiotics.
though, countries such as the Democratic republic of the congo, Liberia and Nigeria have stumbled with their forestry targets because of war or lack of resources.
Non-governmental organizations had high hopes that the Brazzaville meeting would end in a firm pact for forest protection.
or after its use in the mining and electronics industries increased its presence in the environment.
and even shotguns to gather samples of vegetation from forest canopies around the globe. They have created a digital catalogue of the chemical and optical properties of some 4, 700 plant species in different conditions.
a decades-old law intended to safeguard against plant pathogens from overseas. Previous types of GM plants are covered
foreign genes can be fired into plant cells on metal particles shot from a'gene gun'.
and particle bombardment is less predictable, often yielding multiple, fragmented insertions of the new gene.
or run the risk of over -or under-regulating GM plants, says Roger Beachy, a plant biologist at Washington University in St louis, Missouri,
and assessing the long-term threat. Their first results, to appear in the Japanese journal Radioisotopes in August,
People cannot rebuild their lives until the radiation risks are understood and a plan for reducing them is in place.
applicants must submit a risk assessment and set out all the uses of the GM crop to the Kenyan biosafety authority.
Once a product has been released for 20 years with no reported risks to human health and the environment
Mosquitoes score in chemical war: Nature Newskey weapons in the fight against malaria, pyrethroid insecticides, are losing their edge.
Over the past decade, billions of dollars have been spent on distributing long-lasting pyrethroid-treated bed nets and on indoor spraying.
The international community has been slow to respond to the threat despite warnings says Janet Hemingway, director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK,
'But Lines says that the malaria-control community felt too many lives were at stake to let the threat of resistance stand in the way of massively scaling up the bed-net and spraying campaigns.
The best surveillance data (see'Resistance on the rise), 'although useful, do not give a complete picture of where resistance is emerging
What Brazil has created is in many ways sort of the perfect recipe for a rural insurrection,
A national poll conducted in June by environmental groups found that 85%of Brazilians rate forest protection above agricultural production.
he says, warning of the perils of endless organizational meetings. I don't want to spend ten years on this.
West africans at risk from bat epidemics: Nature Newsserious viruses carried by bats pose a considerable risk to people in West Africa,
warn epidemiologists cataloguing bat-human interactions in the region. Bats are thought to have been the source of several of the nastiest viruses to jump to humans from animals during the past 40 years,
Cunningham and his team started investigating the risk from henipaviruses five years ago. The viruses were thought then to be restricted to Asia and Australasia
The expanded virus range is cause for alarm, says James wood, a veterinary researcher at the University of Cambridge, UK,
This is the first step along the line to a public-health threat. Wood agrees. I would be surprised
That absence has hampered global efforts to tackle these problems under the United nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) unable to track the impact of their funding,
since it came into force in 1996. Donors must have a clear idea of how big the problem is
says William Dar, director-general of the Inter  national Crops Research Institute for the Semiarid Tropics in Andhra Pradesh,
'The convention's secretariat now wants to broaden its scope to include humid and wet lands that are at risk of future degradation through the effects of climate change, for example.
The drug brings an increased risk of autoimmune diseases. In the trial, 18.1%of people taking alemtuzumab experienced thyroid-related autoimmune responses,
and it is possible to identify those patients most at risk by screening for certain biomarkers.
and increased research to rule out health risks stemming from the bean. Nodari, a former member of CTNBIO who has questioned long transgenic crops,
a biotechnologist at The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich, adds that plants naturally produce similar RNA snippets to defend themselves from viral attack,
and there is no evidence that this common molecular warfare is dangerous to humans. With approval secured, EMBRAPA must now conduct a further round of field trials to ensure that the transgenic bean produces yields comparable to those of existing varieties.
ruling that the government must prove that the crop poses major health or environmental risks.
had to pull the blockbuster arthritis drug from the market in 2004, after five years of sales.
after it lost patent protection on 30 november. The drug has brought in more than US$100 billion in sales for the pharma company,
They could also make large savings on fertilisers and pesticides, which typically represent 60-70 per cent of the total cost of rice production.
Fish significantly lower the risk of rice sheath blast disease and reduce the amount of weeds and harmful pests such as the rice planthopper.
"It s difficult to overestimate how revolutionary this move is, says Simon Chapman, a public-health scientist at the University of Sydney.
Australian health minister Nicola Roxon has said repeatedly that the government will go ahead with the plan despite the threats."
and what political and legal battles ensue
The mystery of the magnetic cowse. ELISSEEVA/GLOWIMAGES. COMCATTLE seem to align with magnetic field lines,
true danger or the pressure and motivation of a real journey to Mars. See go. nature. com/1zquiu for more.
and restricted in the United states last year after concerns that it increased risks of heart attack and stroke.
when a US Senate committee concluded that GSK had known about the drug's heart risks for more than a decade without reporting them to regulators.
After working on radar and the atomic bomb in the Second world war, Ramsey (pictured) moved to Harvard university in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
It loses patent protection from 30 november. Source: Reuters, IMS Health Â
How mammoths lost the extinction lottery: Nature Newswoolly mammoths, woolly rhinos and other large animals driven to extinction
This conclusion the result of a huge analysis of fossils, climate records and DNA hints that it could be more difficult than thought to identify the species at greatest risk of disappearing today.
This could mean that it will be difficult to determine which modern species are at greatest risk of extinction,
and ecology of individual species should offer clues as to which are under greatest threat. Others
He says that this proves the value of protecting such secondary forests, as well as pristine forests.
Forest suspense Final voting on a law that would relax forest protection rules in the Brazilian Amazon was delayed last week until March 2012,
Mining molecular gastronomydieter Heinemann/Westend61/Corbisshrimp and tomato are paired often together in North american cuisine, because they share certain flavour compounds.
and would come into force from 2020. The Kyoto Protocol will be extended by at least 5 years. Emotions were mixed after the deal on 11 december
Forest threat Brazil's Senate has approved a new'forest code, 'which scientists fear will weaken strict rules on tree-clearing that have reduced deforestation in the Amazon.
and Drug Administration (FDA) and denied girls under 17 access to the emergency contraceptive levonorgestrel known as the morning-after pill,
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