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Nature 00734.txt

News briefing: 29 october 2009: Nature Newspolicy Events Funding Research Business The week ahead Number crunch News maker Policy Spaceflight review: The US panel charged with reviewing NASA's human spaceflight programme issued its final report last week, and warned that the current programme seems to be on an unsustainable trajectory. Present funding doesn't match the space agency's targets, says the commission, which is chaired by ex-aerospace executive Norman Augustine. Many of its suggestions, such as bypassing human exploration of the Moon and scrapping the Ares -I rocket in favour of commercial space flights, had already been aired in public meetings (see Nature 460,791; 2009). ) European research reform: The European commission has agreed that a top scientist should lead the administrative and managerial activities of the European Research Council (ERC), in place of the commission's current appointee, economist Andreu Mas-Colell. The decision, announced on 22 october, came in response to a damning review of the ERC published in July (see Nature 460,557; 2009), which called for immediate reforms to the council's management. Fotis Kafatos, president of the ERC, said that the commission's response was welcome but not particularly revolutionary. See go. nature. com/Eh8n43 for more. Nuclear vision: Germany's new coalition government will extend the lifespan of the nation's nuclear power plants which last year produced around 23%of the country's electricity needs beyond 2022. But the Christian Democratic Union and its junior coalition partner, the liberal Free Democratic party, will not revise an existing ban on building new nuclear plants. In a 24 october policy plan, the coalition also agreed to immediately lift a moratorium on evaluating the merits of the Gorleben salt dome, a controversial storage site for nuclear waste. Mercury deadline: The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) has agreed to set new rules governing emissions of mercury and other toxic chemicals from power plants by November 2011, according to a settlement in a federal lawsuit filed by several environmental and health groups. Environmentalists say that the Clean Air Act required the EPA to set limits by 2002, but the administration of former US President George w bush avoided this in part by creating a market-based system that would allow mercury emissions to continue at some plants as long as they dropped in aggregate. However, Bush's work-around was deemed later illegal in federal court. Polar-bear protection: The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed on 22 october to designate around 500,000 square kilometres of critical habitat 96%of which is sea ice for the polar bear. The bear was listed as a threatened species in 2008 owing to projections of sea-ice declines caused by global warming. The government is obligated already to avoid actions that jeopardize the bear, but the designation would add another layer of protection by also making it illegal to conduct activities that adversely affect the bear's habitat. Vaccine report: More children than ever are being immunized, but 24 million infants in the world's poorest nations still do not receive routine immunization, according to a report by the World health organization, UNICEF and the World bank. The 21 october State of the World's Vaccines and Immunization report says that although four in five children now have access to lifesaving vaccines, at least another US$1 billion is needed annually to help raise immunization rates above 90%.%This would cover the rising costs of immunization and could prevent two million children from dying per year by 2015. See go. nature. com/APMPTB for more. GM protests: Environmental groups are protesting after the Mexican government's 15 october approval of the first permits to plant experimental genetically modified (GM) maize (corn. Growing of GM varieties had previously been outlawed in the country, which is the homeland of domesticated maize. Mexican environmental and agricultural agencies say that they will keep plantings away from traditional'landrace'maize, and will monitor the experimental crops closely before considering requests from agribusiness for full-scale GM maize planting. But researchers say that past landrace contaminations from illegal GM maize planting (see Nature 456,149; 2008) mean corruption of traditional genomes is inevitable. Events Hwang convicted Disgraced South korean cloning scientist Woo Suk Hwang left Seoul Central District court on 26 october knowing that his sentence, a two-year prison term suspended for three years, could have been worse. He was found guilty of embezzling government funds and buying human eggs in violation of the country's bioethics law, but was cleared of fraud. The prosecution had sought a four-year jail term, and plans to appeal. See page 1181 for more. Funding Energy funding: The US Department of energy has awarded $151 million to 37 research projects through the recently formed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Based on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA-E is geared towards high-risk'transformational'energy research that might not be funded through traditional science grants. Awardees included small businesses, educational institutions and large corporations that focus on everything from liquid-metal batteries and gasoline-producing bacterial reactors to new methods for making light-emitting diodes and synthetic enzymes for capturing carbon dioxide from industrial emissions. Innovation fund: The United states is following up on promises to facilitate a global fund to trigger innovation and technology development. On 23 october the government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation issued a call for proposals for a Global Technology and Innovation Fund, aimed at countries in Asia, the Middle east and Africa. Each selected proposal would receive between $25 million and $150 million; potential areas include clean technology and information technology. Research Scientific espionage: A former Los alamos nuclear-weapons physicist says that he is under investigation for espionage. The researcher, P. Leonardo Mascheroni, spoke to the Associated press on 22 october, two days after he says FBI AGENTS raided his home. The bureau confirmed an ongoing investigation into his activities. Mascheroni, who worked in the lab's X Division in the 1980s, says that last year he gave unclassified information widely available on the Internet to a man claiming to be from the Venezuelan government who asked for information about starting a nuclear-weapons programme. HIV vaccine doubt: Results of the largest-ever HIV-vaccine trial looked less impressive when full details were published formally last week (S. Rerks-Ngarm et al. N. Engl. J. Med. doi: 10.1056/nejmoa0908492; 2009) than when they were outlined in a press release a month earlier. In September, the trial was said to show that a vaccine combination reduced the risk of HIV infection by nearly one-third. But Peter Smith, a tropical epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, says there is not much evidence from the data that it protects at all. See page 1187 for more. Business watch Beginning its rehabilitation after a dismal funding scene earlier this year, venture-capital financing in the United states saw a small improvement in the year's third quarter (to 30 september. It increased by 17%over the previous quarter to $4. 8 billion, according to a 20 october Moneytree Report by Pricewaterhousecoopers and the National Venture capital Association, based on data from Thomson Reuters. The clean-technology sector, which spans industries such as alternative energy, conservation, pollution-scrubbing, recycling and power supply, was responsible for more than half of the rise. Venture-capital funding in this sector grew by 89%from the previous quarter to $898 million in 57 deals. A few large funding rounds fuelled this increase; three of the top ten deals of the third quarter went to clean-tech companies in California: $286 million to Solyndra of Fremont (photovoltaics), $82. 5 million to Tesla Motors of San Carlos (electric vehicles) and $60 million to Serious Materials in Sunnyvale (energy-efficient building materials. Biotechnology continues to be funded the top sector, receiving $905 million in the third quarter a 4%decrease from the second quarter. The week ahead 29 october â oe1 November Philadelphia hosts the 47th Annual Meeting of the Infectious diseases Society of America. go. nature. com/ykfvnw 29 â oe30 October A European council summit meeting in Brussels may firm up European promises to finance climate-change action in developing countries. go. nature. com/1kwxls 2 november The European space agency is scheduled to launch its Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite. go. nature. com/shq161 2 â oe6 November Nairobi, Kenya, hosts the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria's fifth Pan-African Malaria Conference. www. mimalaria. org/pamc 2 â oe6 November The United nations Framework Convention on Climate Change holds its fifth round of international climate talks this year in Barcelona, Spain. go. nature. com/Qss4jx Number crunch 57%of Americans think there is solid evidence the Earth is warming, according to an October 2009 poll. 71%of Americans thought this in April 2008. Source: Polls conducted by Washington-based Pew Research center for the People & the Press News maker Large Hadron Collider Physicists last week injected particles into the accelerator for the first time since an accident forced it to shut down in September 2008.

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