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One of the nation's most biodiverse states has taken the Bush administration to court to reverse last-minute changes by the Department of Interior to the Endangered Species Act. The changes to the law went into effect on 16 December. They would eliminate mandatory scientific reviews by Fish and Wildlife Service officials of decisions that agencies make related to endangered species. The Administration of President-elect Barack Obama is expected to reverse the changes, but the involvement of the state, which is joining several environmental organizations that have already sued over the rule changes, could boost the chances that the rules will be tossed out by a judge.

—Eli Kintisch

It's not often that White House science advisers suggest how the next Administration might want to do things differently. But that's what the outgoing President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has done in a candid self-assessment.

Released last month, the report acknowledges what was perhaps an open secret: that PCAST, a presidentially appointed advisory group, concentrated on the second half of its name. That bias was tailored to the Bush Administration's interest in using technology to stimulate economic development, says venture capitalist Floyd Kvamme, its co-chair, adding that the decision was a no-brainer. "If you look at the big issues of the last two decades, especially the concern over energy," Kvamme tells ScienceInsider, "the role of information technology in our lives, and the promise of nanotechnology, I think you'd have to agree that the solutions will come not from science itself but from its application. And that's what technology is."

Although Kvamme asserts that the council's various reports were influential, he sees considerable room for improvement by Harold Varmus and Eric Lander, whom President-elect Barack Obama named to be co-chairs of PCAST along with the next science adviser, John Holdren. Suggested changes range from the size and composition of the council to its interactions with the White House, other federal agencies, and Congress.

One problem is that PCAST grew too big for its own good, expanding from 22 to 35 members over the Bush presidency. "The current size of PCAST is no longer optimal," the report notes, suggesting that it could be more productive with 20 to 25 members. As the council grew, it also accumulated too much dead weight. "About a quarter of our members, over time, became inactive," the report acknowledges. Some of the worse offenders, Kvamme notes, had lobbied the hardest to join the council. "Maybe they didn't realize how much work they would be asked to do," he says.

Kvamme says PCAST also could have done more after it issued a report. "Maybe it's not our role, but I think that we should have worked harder to make sure that the Hill understood why we felt so strongly" about certain issues, says Kvamme. He also faults himself for a steady decline over the years in the number of meetings between PCAST and senior White House and agency officials on timely issues. "In the early days, we were briefed regularly on what to look for," he says. "But once we understood how the process worked, we stopped having those meetings. Maybe we should have continued them."

Having a few more working scientists as members might also have helped PCAST do a better job, Kvamme says. "Charlie [Arntzen, a much-decorated plant geneticist at Arizona State University] was very helpful on many issues. But maybe we should have had a few more like him." At the same time, Kvamme says that members never discussed whether PCAST should include the rising generation of scientists—Arntzen is 65—and that younger scientists were tabbed for expert panels convened to help write specific reports.

Finally, Kvamme says he's "surprised" that Obama has named two outside co-chairs, both of whom have spent their careers in the life sciences. "There are so many other important issues, like education, energy, information technology," he says. "And it never crossed my mind to have two co-chairs."

—Jeffrey Mervis

A member of a U.S. scientific delegation headed by the President of the Institute of Medicine was interrogated for 9 hours earlier this month in his Tehran hotel. The U.S. National Academies labeled the incident a “serious breach,” and declared on Friday that they “cannot sponsor or encourage American scientists to visit Iran unless there are clear assurances that the personal safety of visiting scientists will be guaranteed.”

IOM President Harvey Fineberg and the small delegation were visiting Iran to identify opportunities for cooperation in the medical sciences. They were accompanied by Glenn Schweitzer, director of Eurasian programs at the Academies, who has spearheaded an 8-year effort to nurture scientific ties with Iran in the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries. On 4 December, three men who claimed to be security officers detained Schweitzer in his room for 3 hours of questioning. Two days later, they returned for another 6-hour session. The men threatened to prevent Schweitzer from leaving Iran and told him that exchange visitors are not welcome. None of the other members of the delegation were questioned, and the men, who did not identify themselves, did not explain why Schweitzer was targeted.

“This really was a big surprise. It’s a risk we did not expect at all,” says William Colglazier, executive officer of the Academies’ National Research Council.

A scandal appears to be brewing among French geologists and other earth scientists. According to a full-page story in the 26 December 2008 issue of the French daily Le Monde, members of the prestigious Institute of the Physics of the Globe of Paris (IPGP) stand accused of conflicts of interest. Their offenses? While serving on the seven-member editorial board of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, several IPGP researchers allegedly edited and accepted papers from colleagues at their own institute.

The affaire threatens to taint France’s former research minister, geophysicist Claude Allègre—also a former director of the IPGP—just at the moment when Allègre is reportedly being considered for a cabinet post. According to Le Monde, four of Allègre’s papers received such insider treatment; one published in 2004 was edited by IPGP geophysics researcher and current director Vincent Courtillot, a longtime Allègre associate who served as his chief advisor at the research ministry.

The conflict-of-interest accusations are circulating in the form of an anonymously produced 100-page document consisting largely of the papers concerned. According to Le Monde, the document was sent to the journal’s publisher, Friso Veenstra of the scientific publishing giant Elsevier. Veenstra reportedly told Le Monde that he had not been aware of the situation but that in the future he would keep IPGP members from serving on the main editorial committee—citing a formal rule the publisher had adopted in 2006 against such conflicts of interest.

But Courtillot, who reportedly served on the editorial committee from 2003 to 2005, and IPGP geochemist Claude Jaupart, a member from 2006 to 2008, are quoted by Le Monde as denying that there was any secret about their involvement with the IPGP papers, arguing that they were identified as the editors on each one. Courtillot and Jaupart also say that their role on the editorial committee was explicitly to help publish French papers that, despite their high quality, might not otherwise have seen the light of day.

Le Monde reports that the affair has embarrassed officials of the giant research agency CNRS, with which the IPGP is associated, citing e-mails that the paper has obtained. As for who took the trouble to dig out all of the offending papers and circulate the anonymous 100-page document of accusation, Le Monde says that this is an “open question”—but suggests that researchers unhappy about Allègre’s vocal skepticism of global warming being caused by human activities might have been involved.

—Michael Balter

Emory University has taken the unusual step of banning one of its own, prominent psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, from collecting industry money at certain speaking engagements. The decision comes after Nemeroff spent months under the uncomfortable spotlight of Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), who accused him of failing to report at least $1.2 million of the more than $2.4 million he earned by consulting for drugmakers. Nemeroff subsequently stepped down from his post as department chair.

Yesterday, Emory reported the results of its internal investigation into Nemeroff's dealings with GlaxoSmithKline. The Atlanta, Georgia, university found that Glaxo paid him more than $800,000 over 5 years for giving 250 speeches, money he did not report to Emory. Although Emory says Nemeroff's failure to disclose the amounts he received didn't taint his research or patient care, the university imposes these limitations on his activities: Nemeroff will need to "seek review and approval by the dean's office of any and all outside compensated engagements before he accepts them," and he can't seek National Institutes of Health grants for 2 years. When it comes to speaking at continuing medical education events, Nemeroff will be permitted to talk only at those "sponsored by academic institutions or professional societies."

Emory spokesperson Ron Sauder declined to tell ScienceInsider whether the measures were taken to appease Grassley or because Emory doesn't trust Nemeroff to participate in industry-sponsored events. "I really can't interpret that for you," Sauder said, beyond noting that the measures don't apply to other faculty members.

Nemeroff said in the statement that he had misunderstood the disclosure rules and thought he was following them properly.

—Jennifer Couzin

In a verdict that U.K. scientists see as a turning point in efforts to protect animal researchers against illegal attacks, a British court yesterday convicted four people of conspiring to blackmail companies that supply an animal testing laboratory.

The activists had targeted employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences, Europe's largest contract medical testing center, with threats of violence, vandalism of homes and businesses, letter bombs, and firebombs between 2001 and 2007. Prosecutors at the trial, held in the southern English county of Kent, said the campaign was also directed against GlaxoSmithKline, Astellas Pharma Inc., F2 Chemicals Ltd., and Biocair. The defendants, members of the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, will be sentenced next month along with three people who pleaded guilty earlier to conspiracy to blackmail. One defendant was acquitted.

The Kent trial grew out of 30 arrests made during a May 2007 police raid across the United Kingdom, dubbed Operation Achilles, which included sites in the Netherlands and Belgium. Simon Festing, the executive director of the Research Defence Society, tells ScienceInsider that, combined with similar trials over the past few years, the total number of convictions of such activists now stands at 30. He says those outcomes send a strong message that U.K. authorities are capable of protecting researchers. "This shutters the largest, most aggressive, and most unpleasant animal extremist organization in the world," says Festing, who notes that U.K. police have estimated the group contained about 40 to 60 active members. "Confidence is growing that police can deal with this problem. As a result, more and more scientists are willing to come out and explain the importance of animal research."

The police crackdown has been a boon to U.K. campuses. (The University of Cambridge abandoned plans in 2004 for a primate research lab, and activists have targeted an animal research lab being built by the University of Oxford.) Festings says there have been fewer than 10 criminal incidents this year, "none of them serious," a level that is the lowest in decades. "Now that people know most of the activists are in jail, it's easier to build and refurbish facilities and to attract investors," he says. "I think that people are becoming more comfortable in their ability to do good science."

—Jeffrey Mervis

SEOUL—South Korea is better plugged into the Internet than any other nation, and its economy is dominated by megacompanies like Samsung whose inexpensive consumer electronics are now sitting under millions of Christmas trees. By any measure, the country is a technology powerhouse—but its achievements have come more from emulation than innovation. A new program called the 577 Initiative aims to change that.

Each digit has significance. The "5" is a pledge to raise the percentage of GDP spent on R&D from 3.23% in 2006 to 5% in 2012. Part of that boost will come from the government, which plans to increase R&D spending by 50%, from $8.4 billion in 2008 to $12.6 billion in 2012. To hit the 5% target, the private sector must contribute three-quarters of total R&D spending; the government plans to roll out tax incentives to grease those wheels.

Money will be funneled to "7" major technology areas. South Korea's business-savvy president, Lee Myung-bak, spent 27 years at Hyundai Group, and he doesn't intend to neglect South Korea's cash cows: Its consumer electronics and automobile industries are 577's area number one. "Big science" is another category, including the country's space program, nuclear energy development, and military technologies such as next-generation weapons. So-called convergence technologies—melding disparate advances in, say, nanotechnology and robotics—comprise a third area.

That may sound like a tech-heavy agenda, but by 2012, half of the government's R&D budget will be spent on basic and fundamental research—up from the current 25.6%, says Park Chan-Mo, Lee's special adviser on S&T. "Basic research is very strongly emphasized," says Park, former president of Pohang University of Science and Technology. If all goes to plan, the funding pot for individual research grants will triple to more than $1 billion in 2012; the ratio of university science professors who receive basic research grants is expected to increase from 25% to 60%, and the ratio of researchers in their 20s and 30s who get such grants will increase from 18% to 25%.

These measures are intended to thrust South Korea into the top seven major S&T powers in the world—the second "7" in the initiative's name—as judged by criteria such as science citation index and international patent applications. Park says the country is now ranked number 12. Some elements of 577 were articulated by the previous government but not implemented, says Park. "We are taking action," he says.

—Richard Stone

The Picower Foundation is the latest U.S. charity to be sunk by Bernard Madoff and his self-admitted $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Researchers are reeling from the blow to the foundation, which in 2007 listed assets of $958 million.

On Saturday, The Boston Globe reported that foundation president Barbara Picower had sent out an e-mail declaring, "it is with great sadness that I write to inform you that the Picower Foundation has ceased all grant-making, effective immediately, and will close its doors in the coming months." In addition to funding a range of education and other projects, the Picower Foundation focused on Parkinson's disease and diabetes work, including a $1.5 million grant to Jeffrey Flier, a diabetes researcher and the dean of Harvard Medical School in Boston. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge has also been a major recipient of the foundation's money, which helped found MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory there with a $50 million gift and contributed $200,000 a year for graduate fellowships.

"It's just so horrific," says Virginia Lee, director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at the University of Pennsylvania. Lee was part of a Parkinson's disease consortium that had been funded by the Picower Foundation for about 5 years, and her lab alone received about $3 million over that time; the consortium had recently made plans to expand. Now, she says, "I expect that it will fall apart," leaving each of the half-dozen or so members scrambling to fill the gap.

—Jennifer Couzin

 

On Saturday, President-elect Barack Obama confirmed that John Holdren will be his White House science adviser, a pick first reported here on ScienceInsider last week. The Harvard University professor, a physicist with deep knowledge of energy, climate, and nuclear weapons, was one of four people whom Obama introduced as "members of my science and technology team" in a short radio address devoted to science. But unlike the rest of Obama's Cabinet and White House choices, none of the four—Holdren, Harold Varmus, Eric Lander, and Jane Lubchenco—was rolled out in person and made available to the press. To use an analogy from the President-elect's favorite sport of basketball, only Holdren can really be considered a starter.

Two of the "team" members will actually be unpaid advisers. Obama announced that Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, will serve as co-chairs of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Having two outside co-chairs will be a first for PCAST, which was reconstituted in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush after President Richard Nixon eliminated its predecessor because he didn't care for its advice. The council is staffed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which Holdren will direct, and he will also serve as PCAST's third co-chair.

PCAST has had a low profile under President George W. Bush, turning out worthy but rarely notable reports. Its 34 presidentially appointed members and irregular schedule—it averages three meetings a year—have helped make it an unwieldy body for advising the president on scientific issues. Obama acknowledged that fact by declaring that Holdren, Varmus, and Lander "will work to remake PCAST into a vigorous external advisory council that will shape my thinking on scientific aspects of my policy priorities."

Lubchenco, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University, Corvallis, will be running the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Despite a $3.9-billion-a-year budget that includes the National Weather Service, NOAA is not well known to researchers outside of the marine and geosciences. But the incoming president's emphasis on climate is expected to provide Lubchenco with the opportunity to raise the profile of her agency, which is part of the multimissioned Department of Commerce.

—Jeffrey Mervis

Italian physicists' hopes of getting their own particle smasher got a boost on Friday, when a national funding agency announced it would provide seed money to hammer out a detailed design of the machine. The €500 million accelerator, dubbed SuperB, would crank out particles called B mesons at rates 100 times higher than currently possible. It would also allow higher precision studies of a slight asymmetry between matter and antimatter called CP violation. The project is not a done deal-the Italian government would still have to decide to fund construction—but getting the design money does signify that the funding agency, the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), is on board with the plan. 

The new collider would complement the much bigger and more-powerful Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European particle physics lab, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. Once it's running, the LHC will smash protons into other protons at incredible energies in an attempt to blast massive new particles into existence. In contrast, SuperB would fire electrons into antielectrons, or positrons, at much lower energies to produce particles called B mesons and a variety of other subatomic particles. Physicists plan to study how these particles decay to a very high precision and search for tiny deviations from the predictions of the theory known as the standard model. Such discrepancies could indirectly signal new physics, including phenomena beyond the LHC's grasp. For example, if new particles exist but are too massive for the LHC to make, then their "virtual" presence within B mesons could still affect the way those particles decay. 

Although the details remain to be worked out, INFN will provide between €1 million and €2 million a year over the next 2 or 3 years to design SuperB, says INFN Vice President Umberto Dosselli. The idea is to demonstrate that the SuperB plan will work and to persuade the Italian government to build the machine at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata," near the Frascati National Laboratory. The plan calls for recycling $200 million worth of magnets and other parts from the PEP-II collider, which cranked out B mesons at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, from 1999 until March of this year. 

INFN researchers will have to get moving, as the Japanese are planning a similar project. Scientists at the particle physics lab, KEK, in Tsukuba want to upgrade their current KEKB collider, which competed with PEP-II. The Japanese plan is to take a brute-force approach and cram more electrons and positrons into their machine. The Italian team will try something trickier: compressing the beams to nanometer size to increase the collisions without increasing the currents in the accelerator.  

Given the competition, INFN officials are hoping the Italian government will make a decision on SuperB soon. "2009 for us will be a critical year," says Dosselli. "We must have the first hints from our government what they think of our plan." 

Some observers say that the Japanese government may be more inclined to fund the Super KEKB upgrade given that Japanese theorists Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa won the 2008 Nobel Prize for their theory of CP violation, which was confirmed in experiments at KEKB and PEP-II. Dosselli jokes that he's got an idea to convince the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to fund SuperB: "We can sell it to the government as SuperBerlusconi." 

--Adrian Cho