ScienceInsider

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

The Department of Homeland Security's National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), to be built in Manhattan, Kansas, ran into a funding roadblock last week when the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill denying $36 million sought by DHS for the first phase of construction. The Senate version of the bill, approved by a Senate spending panel but yet to be passed by the full Senate, includes the money. The House bill instead provides $5 million for a study on the risks of studying foot-and-mouth disease on the mainland, which is one of the things NBAF would do. Whether DHS can start construction in 2010 as planned will depend on the final funding picture when the two bills are conferenced.

Energy efficiency got a moment to bask in the sun of presidential attention this morning. With the Senate poised to take up climate legislation, President Barack Obama took the opportunity to announce tighter efficiency standards for two widely used light bulbs: long fluorescent tubes and cone-shaped incandescent bulbs that are used in recessed lighting. At the same event, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that the Department of Energy has committed $346 million for research and deployment of energy efficient technologies in all major types of commercial buildings as well as new and existing homes.

The Science Careers blog describes new research centers authorized by the Waxman-Markey climate change bill. Funding could reach $1.4 billion a year, but the Brookings Institution argues that it's far short of what's need for energy research.

—Erik Stokstad

Yesterday’s The New York Times featured a front-page story suggesting that the government’s approach to funding cancer research—particularly at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—pushes scientists to “play it safe” and steer clear of bold ideas. The article, by Gina Kolata, touched on points scientists have complained about for years, and generated a blizzard of mostly supportive comments on the Times’s Web site. More than 200 people have weighed in so far, many of them frustrated researchers, grant reviewers, and others inside and outside the cancer field.

A number of scientists, both those commenting and those quoted in the original article, said it hasn’t always been this bad. They attribute some cautiousness to years of tight budgets under the Bush Administration. Several commenters defended the current system, particularly in an age of tough funding: “There is a limited amount of money. VERY limited,” wrote Rosa from Ohio, who said she’s reviewed NIH grants for the last 8 years. “We cannot possibly fund every wild idea without any proof of basic feasibility.”

But from the sound of it, there’s a yearning, among some at least, for wilder studies at the expense of tame ones, in the hope that they will actually make a difference.

—Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

A Senate spending panel says that the National Science Foundation's mishandling of an Internet porn scandal is part of "systemic workforce management problems" that have created "a hostile work environment" for its 1300 employees.

Most of the senior program managers at the $6.5 billion agency are academic scientists who spend a few years at NSF headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Such "rotators" are thought to provide a fresh perspective on the scientific challenges facing their field. But in a senate report accompanying a bill covering NSF's 2010 budget that was approved last Thursday, legislators have harsh words both for the administrative skills of those senior scientists and, more broadly, how the agency has responded to a 2008 report by its independent inspector general that found that senior officials were downloading and viewing pornography.