ScienceInsider

A third case of oseltamivir-resistant swine flu, announced today in Hong Kong, has flu experts worried that resistance to the drug is spreading. Unlike the previous two cases, the Hong Kong patient hadn’t taken oseltamivir herself, which suggests she picked up a resistant strain from someone else.

When Denmark reported its first known resistant case of 2009 A(H1N1) swine flu on Tuesday, scientists weren’t alarmed yet, because the virus most likely developed resistance while the patient was being treated and there was no evidence that she had infected anybody else. A second case, reported yesterday from Japan, also appears to have arisen while the patient took the drug. In the past, such drug-induced mutant viruses have often not spread very well.

The U.S. government will donate 420,000 treatment courses of the drug Tamiflu to help treat severe cases of influenza in Latin America and the Caribbean. U.S. Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius announced today that the donation will go to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to combat the novel H1N1 virus driving the swine flu pandemic. “The U.S. is committed to supporting and enhancing the health security in the region by reducing transmission and severity of illness," Sebelius said at a meeting in Cancun, Mexico, that gathered health ministers from the region.

Regina Dugan, a mechanical engineer with a background in explosives detection, has become the first woman to lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dugan, who was named today, succeeds Tony Tether, who left the agency in February after 8 years on the job.

This will be Dugan's second tour of duty at the agency, which spends $3.2 billion a year on development of technologies to boost the country's military might. A California Institute of Technology doctorate, Dugan served as a DARPA program manager from 1996–2000, earning praise for her stewardship of a program that produced a field-portable system for land mine detection. In 2005, she co-founded a company, RedXDefense, LLC, that specializes in technologies for countering explosive threats.

Dugan's appointment puts two of the country's most important technology development agencies under the charge of women. The other is Lisa Porter, director of the newly formed Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA).

—Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

The Wellcome Trust is pouring nearly $50 million into bolstering research capacity in Africa. On Thursday, the U.K. biomedical research charity announced seven pan-African research partnerships, involving more than 50 universities and research institutions, as part of a ₤30 million pound ($49.4 million) initiative.

John Niederhuber, the director of the National Cancer Institute, is not a fan of Sunday’s front-page article in The New York Times that harshly critiques how cancer research is funded. The story, whose title, “Grant System Leads Cancer Researchers to Play It Safe,” leaves little to the imagination and prompted a flood of mostly supportive comments from frustrated scientists who say the peer review system isn’t backing the most innovative research.

Niederhuber says this couldn’t be farther from the truth. In a lengthy rebuttal in the June 30 NCI Cancer Bulletin, he wrote that he was “disappointed in the Times story,” and gave several examples of NCI’s creativity—including its cancer genome project and planned physical science-oncology centers.

—Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Nobody likes a pay cut, but many science faculty and staff members at the University of California (UC) are particularly peeved about proposed pay cuts and/or furloughs proposed in a 17 June letter to university employees by UC President Mark Yudof. The proposed cuts, which amount to a roughly 8% reduction in pay, would help reduce a projected $800 million shortfall in state funding for UC, a result of the state's economic meltdown. But researchers are upset because many of their salaries are at least partly paid by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other sources. Cutting pay from these non-state sources won't save UC any money, they argue, and could make matters worse.

The world's only captive research colony of spotted hyenas as gotten a much-needed boost from the U.S. economic stimulus package.

Since 1985, the hyena colony at the University of California, Berkeley, has attracted a wide range of scientists to study the animals' unusual sexual anatomy and social hierarchy. But in 2007, the National Institute of Mental Health declined to renew a grant that had funded research with the hyenas for 22 years.

A Danish swine flu patient has developed resistance against the most widely used influenza drug, oseltamivir. But public health experts say there is no reason to be alarmed, because resistance developed while the patient was being treated—which suggests the resistant virus isn’t circulating yet—and she appears not to have infected other people. In a “threat assessment”  issued today, the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) says that the finding “does not represent a public health threat.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. government set aside more than $1 billion to study the pros and cons of health treatments, but it needs advice on how to begin. Today, an expert panel suggested 100 priorities for the so-called "comparative effectiveness research" (CER) funded in the economic stimulus package. The topics, culled from more than 2600 suggestions, range from heart disease treatments to ways to encourage breastfeeding. The report from the Institute of Medicine does not shy away from advising researchers to consider "cost-effectiveness," a term that has raised concern from some members of Congress that it will lead to rationing.

Macau scholars are breathing a big sigh of relief: On 27 June, China’s National People’s Congress passed a law that gives Macau jurisdiction over the University of Macau’s (UM’s) proposed new campus in mainland China. UM faculty and students had worried that if the new campus were run under mainland rules, they would lose academic freedoms and an open social milieu that Macau residents enjoy and most Chinese do not: unfettered Internet access, for instance, and a legal system that excludes capital punishment.

The new UM campus on Guangdong Province’s Hengqin Island near Macau will give the university sorely needed elbow room: It will be 1.09 square kilometers in area (the present campus is 0.05 square kilometers) and will expand the student body from 6600 students to 10,000, including 7000 undergrads. UM commuters will not have to pass through immigration controls to reach the new campus, expected to open in 2012. “Everything in our plan was blessed,” says Zhao Wei, UM’s rector.

—Richard Stone