ScienceInsider

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 Jeffrey Mervis

THUWAL, SAUDI ARABIA—King Abdullah opened the kingdom of Saudi Arabia today to a throng of foreign dignitaries, government officials, scientists, and guests to show off his new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

The multi-billion dollar project is a graduate institution with designs on crashing a list of the world's top 20 research universities.  It's a tall order for a school that sits on a 32 sq. km. slab of desert that hugs the Red Sea north of Jeddah, the country's second largest city. But the 70-odd scientists that form the founding faculty—along with 400 students who began classes on 5 September—won't be lacking for money or equipment.

The king has put his considerable power and authority behind the university, a message reinforced by holding the inaugural ceremony on the country's National Day holiday. He's hoping that KAUST will help to move the country from an oil-based to a knowledge-based economy, a task that the university's president, Choon Fong Shih, expresses with a simple formula: "Hire the best minds and find practical applications for their discoveries."

In addition to tapping $1.5 billion in core facilities that include the first supercomputer in the region, an industrial-class a nofabrication lab, a top-rated visualization center, and a dozen state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance machines, faculty members will get from $400,000 to $800,000 apiece per year for 5 years to outfit and staff their labs.

by Eli Kintisch

The African Science Academy Development Initiative will hold a workshop in Ghana in November to tackle maternal, newborn, and child health in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Joel Myers, founder of AccuWeather.com, has given $2 million to Pennsylvania State University to start a weather center.

The 2009 Canadian Science Policy Conference will meet in Toronto 28–30 October.

Retired faculty are filling in as science professors at state universities as budgets continue to whither.

(Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshme17/, CC BY-SA 2.0)

... on a Carnegie Mellon University robotics scientist eschewing military cash:

I adore such a scientist. It might be difficult, but I believe that it is worth it. On the other hand, loosely speaking, I believe that it looks like a game. We need a certain portion of people who follow the same trend. ... There will be a positive feedback and more and more people will tend to reject this kind of money.

Another reader is not so sure:

by Richard Stone

Earlier this summer, South Korea merged three science agencies to form the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). The new body will control a $2 billion pot of money, roughly 20% of the government’s annual R&D spending. Science recently caught up with NRF’s first president, computer scientist Chan-Mo Park.

Q: By any measure, Korea is a technology powerhouse, but its achievements have come more from emulation than innovation. How will NRF change that?

The University of California, San Francisco, appointed pediatrician Sam Hagwood yesterday as dean of its medical school. Hagwood was named interim dean in December 2007 after the abrupt dismissal of his predecessor, David Kessler, who had bickered with administrators over alleged financial irregularities at the school.

Aerosmith lead guitarist Joe Perry will headline an event in Washington, D.C., on Thursday organized by the "Rock Stars of Science" organization to push for biomedical research funding.

On the same day the House of Representatives science committee will take several doses of testimony at a hearing about the need for measurement standards for biologic drugs.

Industrial biotechnology could provide 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions cuts if given the chance, says the World Wildlife Fund.

German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine have struck a deal to collaborate on stem cell projects.

Photo courtesy of Aerosmith

by Greg Miller

Next Thursday is supposed to be the first day of school at several campuses of the University of California (UC). But hundreds of instructors are planning to cut class to protest budget cuts and furloughs at the cash-strapped public university.

The university faces a roughly $800 million shortfall in state funding over the next 2 years and administrators have responded with a number of cost-cutting measures, including tuition hikes and a furlough plan for faculty and staff members that amounts to a 4-10% pay cut, depending on pay grade. Last month, Lawrence Pitts, UC's interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs announced that furlough days would not occur on days when faculty are scheduled to teach, arguing that doing so would violate UC's "paramount teaching mission."

That angered many faculty, who had assumed they would have a say in when they took their furlough days and wanted to take some of them on teaching days to demonstrate to students, parents, and state legislators that budget cuts were having a direct impact on the quality of education at UC. On 31 August, faculty from several UC campuses began a petition urging a walkout on 24 September. In an open letter to their colleagues, the organizers accuse the UC administration of acting by "autocratic fiat" and call for a walkout to protest the management of the furlough plan. Nearly 800 faculty had signed the petition as of this morning, and according to the organizers' blog, several student organizations and labor unions have voiced support for the walkout.

Meanwhile, UC Regents meet in San Francisco today to consider a plan that would raise tuition by 30% by the fall of 2010.

by Eli Kintisch

A few environmental groups have set up an online directory for the public to locate and contact specialists in ecosystem services. Meanwhile, universities have set up Futurity, a new portal for sharing science research news.

Today, President Barack Obama announced a new program to raise fuel efficiency standards to 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016, a change agreed upon as part of a previous deal with automakers and environmentalists.

Obama's nominee to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, occupational epidemiologist David Michaels (left), has come under fire from conservative critics emboldened by the president's falling approval ratings; Effect Measure has a good summary.

The National Research Council has published its recommendations on the role of engineering education in K–12 schools.

For the first time since the 1988 establishment of the treaty, the United States will send a delegation to the official conference on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which will be held on 24–25 September in New York City.  President Obama announced today that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead the delegation.

Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence, today released a strategic roadmap for national intelligence that highlights, among other things, the country's need for a stronger defense against cyberattacks as well as increased partnerships with academia and industry to develop science and technology tools for intelligence purposes.

by Sam Kean

Things are as bad as expected under the Ivy in New Haven. Yale University President Richard Levin has announced in an email to staff, faculty, and alumni that Yale expects to run a deficit of $150 million each fiscal year between 2010–11 and 2013–14, and that “with the exception of financial aid, no area of expenditure will be immune from scrutiny.”

Levin noted that the college of arts and sciences will have to pare back faculty recruitment significantly. This reduction includes recruitment to the university’s new West Campus, situated 7 miles from the New Haven campus. The West Campus will house a number of science laboratories, and while the university will still recruit scientists and staff for those buildings, it will not do so at the pace it had hoped.

Virtually all universities are facing similar cuts and cutbacks, and even the wealthiest Ivies have not been spared, especially their endowments. Yale’s did not take as big a hit as Harvard University's did, but Yale’s projection last summer that the endowment would be approximately $17 billion is now looking $1 billion too optimistic. Any university program dependent on endowment funds will be especially hard hit, Levin warned.

TOKYO—The Ministry of Education's budget request for the next fiscal year has some welcome news for research, including a new teaching assistant program to employ graduate students, dramatically expanded funding for the space program, and a big increase in support for grants to researchers. But there’s a catch: In recent years the ministry, which funds the bulk of Japan's public research, has been encouraged to aim high, only to have its requests cut down by science advisory bodies, politicians, and the parsimonious Ministry of Finance.