ScienceInsider

by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

Advances in synthetic biology have prompted fears that terrorists might develop biological weapons by purchasing made-to-order DNA sequences from gene synthesis companies and using them to engineer deadly pathogens. Five of the world's leading gene synthesis companies today announced steps they are already implementing—or plan to implement—a plan to prevent misuse of the technology. The announcement comes amid calls for tougher government controls on the field of synthetic genomics.

The companies, which make up what they call the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, already examine purchase orders to ensure that they are not supplying customers with genomes of pathogens that many governments consider as potential threats to biosecurity. The consortium's members now plan to strengthen this procedure by screening orders against a database they say will be more comprehensive.

by Eli Kintisch

The secretive JASON group of academic physicists have given a thumbs up to the current program of refurbishing nuclear warheads in the U.S. stockpile instead of building new, more reliable ones. The report should bolster efforts by the Obama Administration to keep dead the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, a Bush-era program to build new nukes. Bush's Energy Department and Pentagon officials had argued that flaws in the refurbishment program were a key rationale for new bombs, but Obama disagreed. (Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover, tried to revive the program this past summer, but failed.) The strong endorsement of the status quo by JASON, says Arms Control Wonk:

should drive a stake through the heart of the RRW and warhead “replacement” in general.

by Greg Miller

In the new movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, which opens today in the United States, George Clooney plays a former member of a secret sect of soldiers trained by the U.S. military to deploy a host of paranormal weapons against the enemy. Their deadly talents supposedly include the ability to kill a goat via psychokinesis—by staring at the beast they can make its heart stop with thought alone.

The movie takes some liberties in the name of comedy, but the program it's based on is real. During the Cold War, the U.S. military became convinced it was losing the "mind race" against the Soviet Union, and as recently as the late 1980s was investigating a range of paranormal phenomenon and their potential uses in espionage and combat, says Jonathan Moreno, a philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania who studies military applications of cognitive science.

For more details, Moreno referred me to a 1988 National Research Council report on enhancing human performance. According to the report, some military decision makers believed that extrasensory perception ("if real and controllable") could prove valuable for intelligence gathering, while psychokinesis could find an even wider range of uses, from jamming enemy computers or weapons, planting thoughts in individuals without their knowledge, or even killing enemies at a distance. And that's not all.

by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
Since being established 6 years ago, the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security has been the black sheep (subs. required) of the federal scientific community, with lawmakers criticizing it from time to time for poor management, shoddy accounting, and cluelessness over the setting of priorities. At a House of Representatives hearing this afternoon on how the directorate is doing, legislators discussed yet another concern: the lack of peer review in funding research projects.

Cindy Williams, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who chaired a study of the S&T directorate at the behest of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), told the House Science Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation that DHS was awarding "many basic research projects" without "competition or peer review." She suggested that the directorate follow the example of other science agencies like the National Science Foundation in giving out grants, and "that funds be awarded on a competitive basis based on scientific peer review except in cases when that is clearly not feasible."

by Richard A. Kerr

Before being arrested Monday and charged with trying to sell classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence agent, planetary physicist Stewart Nozette was on a mission. Fifteen years earlier, he had gotten a whiff of ice hidden in the unbearably cold shadows of polar craters on the moon. Today, he heads one instrument team and co-leads another probing for lunar ice. Early signs of ice were promising.

by Erik Stokstad

A former government scientist with a top security clearance has been charged with attempted espionage. Stewart David Nozette of Chevy Chase, Maryland, was arrested Monday afternoon and will appear in federal court today.

Nozette helped develop a radar experiment that seemed to have detected water on the moon in 1996. He worked for the White House’s National Space Council from 1989 to 1990. Nozette then spent about 9 years at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s “Advanced Concepts Group” with a high-level security clearance. After leaving LLNL, Nozette ran a company , Alliance for Competitive Technology,which consulted with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA, and the Naval Research Laboratory.

Nozette was arrested after he allegedly gave classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence agent in exchange for $11,000. The criminal complaint, posted by Politico, contains partial transcripts of Nozette’s conversations with the FBI agent.

Photo: Pallava Bagla

Lighting up the Internet in India are bizarre allegations that a researcher at the country's premier defense lab was attacked with an ax in a bungled attempt at human sacrifice. But in a press release today, the Defence Research and Development Establishment in Gwalior labeled the allegations "baseless" and noted that it has tasked a committee to report back on the matter by 28 October.

—Pallava Bagla

by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

A Homeland Security spending bill that received final approval from Congress yesterday will grant the Department of Homeland Security $32 million the next fiscal year to continue planning the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. But construction money for the controversial $450 million project, where researchers want to study anthrax and other deadly diseases, will have to wait until Congress is satisfied with results of new studies it has ordered to determine if the lab can operate safely.

The National Science Foundation's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) has awarded six $20 million grants for infrastructure to support research including grassland studies in Kansas and Hawaiian environmental monitoring.

All 10 campuses of the University of California are bracing for walkouts and demonstrations tomorrow as faculty, labor unions, and student groups vent their frustration over layoffs, furloughs, and tuition hikes.

A top-level scientific committee to the European Commission has found few risks to health from the electronic fields that mobile phones emit.

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration has certified the elimination of more than 375 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from Russian nukes—the equivalent of more than 15,000 weapons. A 1993 agreement to eliminate 500 tons is now 75% complete.

The House of Representatives science committee has approved legislation to bolster cybersecurity research.

(Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitroids/ / CC BY 2.0)

 

By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

Biodefense researchers in the United States, watch out. A crescendo of concerns over biosecurity and biosafety expressed at different forums today may signal that tougher oversight of research involving dangerous pathogens is around the corner. That includes the possibility that the federal government will be given the power to decide whether any new proposed biodefense facilities ought to be built and, if so, where.

At two hearings on the Hill today, U.S. lawmakers talked about the need to strengthen the monitoring of research on select agents, deadly microorganisms like anthrax and smallpox that could potentially be used as weapons. A House panel heard testimony from Nancy Kingsbury of the Government Accountability Office, which released a report yesterday recommending that a single federal entity be responsible for determining how many more biocontainment labs the country needs and where those labs should be located. The recommendation follows years of protests by environmental groups who say the mushrooming of biosafety level 3 and BSL-4 facilities across the United States since 2001 poses a public health risk.