ScienceInsider

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has chosen 50 early-career biomedical scientists to each receive a 6-year, $1.5 million grant to chase their research dreams. The winners, chosen from nearly 2100 applicants, include experts in fields as varied as stickleback fish evolution, organ regeneration, and biophysics of DNA repair. What the list does not include, however, is an abundance of women.

Forty-one of the new hires are men; nine are women. The overwhelmingly male ratio (more than 4 to 1) is consistent with past outcomes, says HHMI spokesperson Avice Meehan. “The number [of women] is within the ballpark percentage of prior competitions—they oscillate between a quarter and just under a quarter,” she said.

Construction of the world’s largest and most energetic laser officially finished today, after more than a decade of hang-ups and controversy and 7 years later than initially planned. The laser will power the $4 billion National Ignition Facility, sited at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which aims to produce fusion by using a blast of laser light to squeeze a tiny capsule of deuterium and tritium to incredibly high pressures and temperatures. But the scientific fun won’t begin just yet: The first attempt to “ignite” fusion won’t take place until sometime next year.

In actuality, the facility has been revving up for some time.

In Bonn, Germany, on Sunday, international negotiators to the U.N. climate change treaty have started to negotiate the successor to the Kyoto Accords, which lapses in 2012. They hope to finish the work by December in Copenhagen, when a climactic meeting of the U.N. climate treaty will commence.

The U.S. team has announced it will pursue international negotiations on two tracks. This week, it highlighted its most public position, a leadership role in the path toward Copenhagen, which President Barack Obama says George W. Bush relinquished because the Republican eschewed mandatory emissions caps.

But, interestingly, on a parallel track, the Obama team is following the Bush model.

According to the conventional wisdom in recent news accounts, the failure of a recent German-Indian expedition to grow and sink a massive algae bloom at sea is the death knell for a controversial method of reducing CO₂ in the atmosphere.

But some prominent oceanographers say they are not sure the results should be interpreted that way. And ScienceInsider can report that politics may have played a larger role than has been previously reported in the unexpected results of the test of the experimental technique.

Previously, scientists had thought that the algae technique, known as iron fertilization, could contribute to the drawdown of up to 1 gigaton of carbon a year—more than 10% of current yearly emissions. Was that estimate far too optimistic?

Elias Zerhouni, who stepped down as the U.S. National Institutes of Health director last October, is returning to his roots as a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Zerhouni, a radiologist, was a dean at Hopkins before joining NIH in 2002. He told ScienceInsider that he plans to reestablish a research group in molecular imaging and stay at Hopkins "for the next year at least." He's also working as a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

—Jocelyn Kaiser

A seesaw battle between creationists and their opponents in Texas ended this afternoon on a dismal note for scientists and educators. The Texas State Board of Education voted 13–2 to adopt new science standards containing a number of last-minute amendments aimed at weakening the teaching of evolution. The only silver lining for scientists is that the new document does not require teachers to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolutionary theory as was stipulated by the old standards.

Creationists on the board "amended and amended and amended" the draft standards until "they got what they wanted," Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education told ScienceInsider.

The "strengths and weaknesses" language was substituted by a guideline to teach students to

analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations in all fields of science by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.

Creationists also inserted the statement that students be taught to

analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell

and

Analyze and evaluate the evidence regarding formation of simple organic molecules and their organization into long complex molecules having information such as the DNA molecule for self-replicating life.

• Energy efficiency and renewable energy chief is named at the Department of Energy: It's Cathy Zoi, former CEO of Al Gore's climate nonprofit, Clinton Administration environmental official, and cleantech businesswoman.
• The White House could not say, in response to a question by ScienceInsider, what President Barack Obama will be doing during Earth Hour Saturday. World Wildlife Fund: not happy that administration not promoting the effort.
• Representative Jay Inslee (D–WA) introduces legislation that would instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to tackle the problem of black carbon. Although this type of soot, emitted in the United States mostly by diesel vehicles, is not a greenhouse gas and, therefore, not covered under the Kyoto protocol, when it lands on snow it speeds up melting. Last year, University of California, San Diego, atmospheric scientist V. Ramanathan calculated in a paper published in Nature that the pollutant could have up to four times as much potential to warm Earth than previously thought. Black carbon only lasts in the atmosphere for weeks at most; carbon dioxide lasts for a century or more. So cutting black carbon pollution—most easily done by toughening car emission standards—could have a big effect fast and help protect the Arctic.
  

—Eli Kintisch

The lab researcher in Germany who was accidentally exposed to the deadly Ebola virus 2 weeks ago remains healthy, according to virologist Stephan Günther of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, where the researcher pricked herself during an experiment. Günther has coordinated an international effort to save the researcher's life in case she became infected by giving her an experimental vaccine. In the past week or so, she has not developed a fever, and Ebola virus has not been detected in her blood. If she stays well, she will be released on 3 April, after the 21-day period for Ebola incubation ends.

Günther told ScienceInsider that there was one minor development last week: The patient developed slightly elevated levels of D-dimers, which are protein fragments that are a possible indication of a coagulation disorder and could be a sign of Ebola infection.

Ten members of the White House bioethics advisory board appointed by George W. Bush have slammed the president's stem cell decision, taking issue with Obama's characterization of Bush's 2001 decision. The center-left Center for American Progress has his back.

—Eli Kintisch

TOKYO—With the Internet awash in scientific information, does the world need another database of publications and researchers? The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) thinks so—if it's in Japanese. Its new J-GLOBAL database was unveiled here today and will go live on 30 March at noon Japan time (3 a.m. coordinated universal time). "The digital infrastructure here is weaker than it is in the U.S. and Europe," says Osamu Kato, the JST official leading development of the database and its Web portal.