| Judge Keeps Ban on Stem Cell Funds A federal judge refused to lift a ban on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. feeds.nytimes.com |
Global Update: United States: Decrease in Bubonic Plague Cases May Be an Effect of Climate Change A study this month concluded that rising nighttime temperatures since 1990 had helped cases in Western states drop over time. feeds.nytimes.com |
Don't cut science funding – you'll start a brain drain This coalition shows no understanding of the value of UK scientific research, argues leader of the lecturers' unionDoes the UK value its world-beating academic research or not?Our academics set the global standard, despite less funding than that they could secure abroad. The £6bn a year currently spent on research pumps an additional £45bn into the UK economy.With just 1% of the world's population, the UK produces 7.9% of the world's research publications and 12% of all citations.Most UK academics want to carry on working here. But significant brain drains in the 1950s and the 1980s were driven by an inability to gain funding and frustration with government policy.If we are to avoid a brain-drain cycle every 30 years then we cannot pursue another punitive regime of cuts. The financial cuts of the 1980s hit morale and infrastructure hard, and that led to talent disappearing overseas.The coalition's cuts may dwarf previous brain drains because, in its underpinning philosophy, this government makes it clear that research is simply not valued. Yet university research provides a great deal for the taxpayer.Cutting research funding would only advance the decline of the UK as an academic world power. The science budgets in our competitor countries, such as America, France, and Germany, are expanding. India and China are building hundreds of new labs and research facilities every year, not threatening existing projects with closure or making academic staff redundant as some UK universities are doing.We simply will not be able to continue to compete against countries with bigger budgets and support from politicians who understand the importance of research. We should also not be surprised if competitor countries make it easier for our scientists and researchers to move abroad.It is time for government to pull back from the brink before they undermine the fabric that has made UK universities the envy of the world.• Sally Hunt is general secretary of the University and College UnionResearch fundingHigher educationResearchScienceLecturersguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Employment tribunal hears of bizarre hoax phone call The director of Britain's Science Media Centre pretended to be a journalist investigating MP's staff expenses.Few people who are familiar with the small pond that is science journalism in the UK will have failed to gulp on reading about the ex-Labour MP Jim Devine and the unthinkable bullying he unleashed on his boss, Marion Kinley.Devine, who was an MP in Livingston, Scotland, before being done for fiddling expenses last year asked an acquaintance to make a fake call to Kinley and pretend to be a journalist investigating her financial affairs. The story gets darker with every step and you can read more about it here. Devine has since been ordered to pay Kinley £35,000.Though appalling from the off, it was not the top line that shocked many of my colleagues most. What came as a surprise was the revelation far down the story that the fake call in question was made by Fiona Fox, head of the Science Media Centre in London, a prominent venue for press conferences on all matters scientific and medical. Otherwise articulate people who read the story struggled to say more than three letters: WTF?I contacted Fox to ask her about the story and she provided a statement, which she has already sent on to a Scottish newspaper. It reads as follows:"I am pleased Miss Kinley has won her case and deeply regret being unwittingly drawn into this unpleasant saga. In a very, very small way I too was duped by this man. He had assured me that this kind of prank was part and parcel of the humour in his team and that his colleagues gave as good as they got. At that time I had no reason to doubt the integrity of a Member of Parliament who I got to know because of his public support for stem cell research during the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in 2008."By phone, Fox explained that she knew Devine for around five weeks in 2008. A day after making the fake call - and leaving a message on Kinley's answerphone - Kinley called Fox, who admitted the hoax and apologised. Fox says: "I was a first class idiot." I doubt many will disagree.There are many wonderful things about being a science journalist. You get to spend your days interviewing highly intelligent people who have spent their lives wrestling with profound and fascinating questions about how the world works and all that is in it. Now and then a grim story crops up. This is one of them.Controversies in scienceIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Saturn moon has thin atmosphere Rhea, Saturn's second biggest moon, has a thin atmosphere of oxygen and carbon dioxide. bbc.co.uk |