Recently in Government agencies Category

Nature: In a Nature opinion column, Ryan Meyer, a science integration fellow at the California Ocean Science Trust in Oakland, discusses the revamping of a government agency's strategic plan. For the past 20 years, the US Global Change Research Program has spent more than $30 billion on climate change studies. Although the program has improved our understanding of climate systems, Meyer writes, it has been less successful at providing decision makers with useful information. So the program has added three more objectives: to inform decisions, to sustain assessments, and to communicate and educate. Meyer points out that problems may arise regarding the reallocation of funds among the new priorities and that there may be tradeoffs between the increasing complexity of climate models and the need of policymakers for simplicity. Nevertheless, he applauds the program administrators for "taking such an important conceptual step in the right direction."

BBC: Due to financial woes, NASA may be forced to withdraw from its partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the dual ExoMars robotic space missions. NASA expects to know more after 13 February, when President Obama announces his 2013 budget. The US agreed to provide equipment and launch rockets for an orbiter and a rover to go up in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Because ESA has already invested heavily in the ExoMars project, it has started looking for other partners, foremost of which is the Russian space agency Roscosmos. This is not the first time the US has reneged on a project with Europe, so the decision may have "grave implications for transatlantic relations," writes Jonathan Amos for the BBC.

Nature: Small fission reactors may be used to power future NASA manned space missions. With twice the efficiency of chemical rockets, the reactors could send astronauts farther into space and at a much higher rate of speed, writes Eric Hand for Nature. Although researchers have been exploring the technology for years, funding has been problematic—until now. In a National Research Council report released 1 February, nuclear power and propulsion were ranked high on a list of the most important areas of technology development. And public opinion regarding nuclear power may be changing. Whereas the 1997 launch of Cassini–Huygens, with a radioisotope generator, was protested by antinuclear activists, the November 2011 launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, which also has a radioisotope generator, did not generate the same level of public concern.

Nature: Radioisotopes collected from atmospheric samples suggest that North Korea may have tested two nuclear weapons in 2010, if a new analysis by Lars-Erik De Geer of the Swedish Defence Research Agency in Stockholm is correct. De Geer examined radioisotope data from Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) monitoring stations, then he compared them with South Korean monitoring data and meteorological records. After about a year of work, he concluded that North Korea carried out two small nuclear tests in April and May 2010. According to De Geer, the detection of xenon-133 and xenon-133m points toward an explosion in the middle of April, and the presence of barium-140 and its radioactive decay product lanthanum-140 indicates that there was a second test in early or mid May. However, the seismic data from that time don't corroborate the radioisotope data, and the Korean peninsula is well equipped to detect the vibrations that would come from a nuclear explosion. Another possible explanation for the presence of the isotopes is that a reactor accident took place. De Geer hopes that his paper, due to appear in the April/May issue of the journal Science and Global Security, will prompt other scientists in CTBTO member states to reexamine the data.

BBC: A plan to levy charges on flights in EU airspace based on carbon emissions has been criticized by the US, Canada, and China—and China has barred its airlines from participating. The plan was implemented at the beginning of the year. The EU has estimated that airline passengers will be charged €2–12 more per flight as a result of the plan. China claims that the plan would cost Chinese airlines €95 million a year if they took part. Although the EU could forbid Chinese airlines from flying in EU airspace, doing so could damage its relationship with China. Ultimately, the issue may have to be resolved by the World Trade Organization or another international body.

Ottawa Citizen: After a quarter century of courtroom battles, Chander Grover, a physicist and former manager of the National Research Council of Canada, has agreed to abandon his last remaining lawsuit against the NRC. Born in India, Grover first complained of unfair discrimination at the NRC in 1987. In 1992 he won a landmark human rights case against the council, whose managers were shown to have "thwarted his advancement, humiliated him, unfairly fired him, then tried to intimidate witnesses from testifying on his behalf," writes Andrew Duffy for the Ottawa Citizen. Grover then proceeded to file four more human rights complaints against the NRC and was dismissed in July 2007 for "medical incapacity." Last year Grover underwent cancer treatments. "It's impossible at my age to continue and with all of the health problems I'm facing and my wife is facing," he said. "It's important, but what can I do?" He now plans to write a book about his experience.

Reuters: Early Sunday a fire broke out at the Alikhanov Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, a nuclear research center in Moscow that houses a nonoperational 60-year-old atomic reactor. Although institute officials maintain that there was no risk of a radiation leak, Greenpeace Russia officials expressed concern. The fire, which broke out in a basement area of the facility, consisted primarily of smoke that came from an area housing power cables. The smoke was visible above the institute, and an acrid smell filled the air. About 30 emergency vehicles responded. Russian news agencies issued conflicting reports, including whether fire brigades were initially denied access and when exactly the fire was extinguished.

New York Times: Rare-earth elements are not that uncommon in Earth's crust, but they're typically dispersed. Economically exploitable forms are rare, however. China currently mines and processes more than 90% of rare earths on the market, and it has placed restrictions on their export over the past several years. On 1 February, Malaysian regulators granted Lynas, an Australian company, an initial operating license for a rare-earth metals refinery expected to open this year. The refinery will process concentrated rare-earth ore from a Lynas mine deep in the Australian desert. Each year it will use thousands of tons of powerful sulfuric acid to separate the valuable minerals from dirt and radioactive contaminants. According to a statement by the Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Board, within 10 months Lynas must submit a plan for permanently disposing of the more than 1000 tons of low-level radioactive waste that the refinery will produce each month.

Nature: The Japanese government is preparing to merge five of its science organizations: the RIKEN network of basic research laboratories, the National Institute for Materials Science, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, and the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The change is intended to increase efficiency while reducing costs. The agencies involved would pool research and administrative resources, and a supervisory body that covers all five agencies will probably be established. Few details are known about the timing or potential cost savings, and some researchers have expressed concern that the end result would be deep funding cuts and increased bureaucracy.

Gizmodo: Although NASA canceled its Constellation program, key research from the project could be put to use on future spacecraft. While developing the Ares 1 rocket, engineers discovered that it had a crucial flaw: During the final stages of a launch, the burning down of the solid rocket caused the entire vehicle to oscillate so rapidly that the crew couldn't read the digital display. Rather than involving a costly fix, however, the problem proved to have a relatively simple solution. After an extensive period of trial and error, the engineers decided that, instead of trying to fix the shake, they would make the digital display strobe in time with the vibration. In his article, Gizmodo staff writer Brent Rose describes his trip to NASA's Ames Research Center, where he got the chance to climb into the "driver's seat."

Science: Nanotechnology research requires more oversight regarding human and environmental safety, says a new report from the US National Research Council (NRC). Although the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) studies the safety of nanomaterials, the NRC has found gaps in its guidelines. For example, little research has been done on the effects of human ingestion of nanoparticles or on the safety of complex nanomaterials made up of mixtures of different elements.

Potentially the most disruptive recommendation in the report is to change who oversees nanotechnology risk research. NNI currently consists of 25 different federal agencies that work with the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office to coordinate their research efforts to avoid duplication. But neither the NNI nor the Coordination Office have any authority to mandate who does what. The NRC suggested several possible solutions, including setting up a panel with budgetary authority within the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Florida Today: NASA isn't adequately prepared to evacuate the International Space Station (ISS) in an emergency, says a new report from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP). The report recommends that the agency improve its emergency drills and consider alternative "lifeboat" options for ISS. There is a greater than 30% chance that a crew might have to abandon ISS between now and 2020, the planned end of ISS operations, as a result of the failure of critical systems or a deadly space debris strike, says ASAP. The panel also found NASA lacks an adequate plan to safely send the station to a remote spot in the Pacific Ocean at the end of its useful life. ASAP was created by Congress after the loss of three astronauts in the 1967 Apollo 1 launch pad fire. The group is made up of aerospace safety experts and reports to the vice president, the Speaker of the House, and the NASA administrator each year.

Nature: According to a study released yesterday by the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, severe flooding will be the most urgent problem the country could face as a result of climate change. The study examines 100 potential consequences of climate change for the UK in a number of different climate scenarios, drawing on climate projection models made in 2009. Flooding currently costs the UK around £1.3 billion (US$2.04 billion) per year; the study predicts that by the 2080s, it could cause £2.1 billion to £12 billion worth of damages each year.

Financial Times: Madhavan Nair, former head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has been banned from government employment because of allegations that he was involved in the underpriced leasing of space spectrum to the private sector, write James Fontanella-Khan and James Lamont for the Financial Times. Nair, who supervised 25 space missions during his tenure from 2003 to 2009, earned international recognition for his efforts to put India's space program on a par with those of China and Japan. Since 2009, when he retired from ISRO, he has served as president of the Paris-based International Academy of Astronautics. Regarding the allegations, Nair claimed he was not given any opportunity to defend himself, and one space expert suggested that they were politically motivated. No criminal charges have been filed.

Science: Although the Obama administration has proposed to move the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from the US Department of Commerce to the Department of the Interior, it looks unlikely that the move will be approved by Congress, writes David Malakoff for Science. The proposal, part of President Obama’s plan to reorganize and streamline the federal government, is drawing mixed reactions from former staff, members of Congress, and outside organizations. Some supporters say it would allow several agencies with weather, geographical, and geological responsibilities to work together under one agency. Among those voicing objections, however, are environmental groups that worry this may not be a good time to shake things up. According to Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, “The move could erode the capabilities and mute the voice of the government's primary agency for protecting our oceans and the ecosystems and economies that depend on them."

Toronto Star: The Ontario government has cut Can$42 million in university research grants from its budget in order to meet “current fiscal challenges.” The money would have been used to support research in such areas as clean technologies and the bio-economy. In addition, soon after winning the 6 October election, Premier Dalton McGuinty downsized his cabinet and folded the ministry of research and innovation into the ministry of economic development. “We are in an era now of prioritization and rationalization,” said Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid. Ironically, McGuinty has also launched a 30% tuition rebate, totaling Can$423 million, for community college and undergraduate university students.

BBC: A new type of graduate school for science and technology was announced on 4 January by the UK's universities minister David Willetts. The advanced research center would rely on international partnerships and corporate sponsorship and receive no additional government funding. The move is part of an overall push to encourage business and industry investment in research; Willetts has proposed to increase nongovernment funding for universities in general by 10%.

Science: Last week NSF announced that it does not expect to fund the building of either the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) or the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) until 2020 at the earliest. The two university consortia in charge of the giant ground-based telescope projects have raised tens of millions of dollars in the hope that NSF would be able to come up with the balance, and both the TMT and the GMT were scheduled to start operations before 2020. The hope was not unfounded. In its most recent decadal survey, the National Academy of Sciences recommended that NSF should pick and fund one project, a recommendation that Congress later mandated but didn't explicitly fund. To stay on schedule, both teams will need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in private funding or else find international partners.

Nature: Although it has long been assumed that the US favors applied over basic science, the opposite turns out to be true, writes Daniel Sarewitz for Nature. Over the past 15 years, agencies that serve public goals rather than advance science—the US Geological Survey, for example—have experienced minimal budgetary growth. Yet, over the same period, government funding for research doubled, with most of that money going to the National Institutes of Health and NSF. Sarewitz claims the funding allocation may be because advocacy for research funding comes mostly from the high-prestige frontiers of science and the institutions associated with such research. Nevertheless, addressing social problems, such as preventing and preparing for natural disasters, is just as important. To ensure that the scientific enterprise continues to meet challenges to public well-being, he says, science advocacy should seek a balance between the fundamental-science agencies and the mission agencies that link science to the public good.

New York Times: The Chinese government has announced a five-year space-exploration plan that calls for launching a space laboratory and collecting samples from the Moon, all by 2016, along with a powerful manned spaceship and space freighters. The plan includes a major expansion of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, which on Tuesday began providing navigation, positioning, and timing data on China and surrounding areas. China intends to expand Beidou from its current 10 satellites to 35 satellites in orbit by 2020.

BBC: Yet another Soyuz rocket launch has failed. After liftoff from Russia’s Plesetsk spaceport on Friday, 23 December, the Soyuz-2 vehicle was unable to put a communications satellite into orbit. It is one of several failed attempts this year, including Phobus-Grunt in November and the Progress cargo spacecraft, which was to take supplies to astronauts aboard the International Space Station, in August. Russia’s problems could severely impact the US, which depends on Russian rockets to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, writes Will Englund for the Washington Post. In his overview article, Englund notes how Russia has tripled its science spending over the past 10 years, “but innovation is losing out to exhaustion, corruption and cronyism.” Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is still struggling to bounce back.

Nature: Spain’s Ministry of Science has been cut by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a member of the People’s Party. Rajoy had pledged to reduce the number of government ministries from 15 to 12. Responsibility for science and research will now be the purview of Luis de Guindos, the minister of economy and competition. The Ministry of Science was created in 2000, under a People’s Party government, but fell under a joint ministry with education from 2004 to 2008, then again became a dedicated ministry from 2008 to 2011.

Science: The director of the US National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, was forced to retract an email he sent his staff over the weekend, writes Jocelyn Kaiser. In the email he announced that President Obama had signed a 2012 spending bill, which, among other things, would establish a new center Collins has been promoting—the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS). In reality, what the president signed was a continuing resolution; Obama is not expected to sign the spending bill until later this week. Many felt Collins's premature email was indicative of the entire project, which Collins is said to have rushed through without adequate discussion. The creation of NCATS will mean the dismantling of another NIH center, the National Center for Research Resources, which Collins admits in his email has had a “rich history.” For the many critics of the reorganization, says Kaiser, the memo "rubbed salt in their wounds."

New York Times: The Japanese government announced that it has regained control of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's reactors in what is called a "cold shutdown." The announcement has been met with some skepticism, partly due to the fact that a cold shutdown is normally used to describe healthy reactors, to indicate that they are safe enough that their containment vessels can be opened up and their fuel rods taken out. In this situation, however, a cold shutdown means that the reactors' temperatures can now be kept safely below the boiling point of water and that their melted cores are no longer at risk of resuming an atomic chain reaction that could allow them to heat up uncontrollably. Even that is in some dispute, as the restart of fission can't be absolutely ruled out until the reactors can be opened and the melted fuel inside examined. The biggest risk, however, is the possibility that a strong aftershock from the 11 March earthquake could knock out Tepco's cooling system, which was built hastily—and not to earthquake safety standards—after the accident.

Los Angeles Times: The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to approve more stringent limits on power-plant emissions, writes Neela Banerjee for the Los Angeles Times. Companies will have three years to clean up their emissions of mercury and about 70 other toxic substances, with the possibility of appealing for an additional year. First proposed in March, the new rule is expected to be approved today and formally announced on Monday. However, utility companies claim the emissions limits are too strict and the timetable too tight; their opposition could delay approval and implementation. "In the history of the Clean Air Act, there has never been a greater intervention into the power sector than with this regulation," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry lobbying group. "So it stands to reason that we will likely see a substantial amount of litigation around this."

BBC: Claims that high energy bills are the result of investment in low-carbon technologies are unfounded, says the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC). Instead, it found that increases in bills over the past few years have been mostly due to higher wholesale gas costs. Although the combined gas and electric bill for a typical UK household is expected to rise from £1060 ($1600) in 2010 to £1250 ($2000) by 2020, further energy efficiency measures, such as better insulation, could limit that increase to only about £150 ($100). And, says CCC chief executive David Kennedy, the costs of investing in green energy were “significantly” outweighed by the benefits—among them, a reduced reliance on imported fossil fuels. The investigation of rising fuel prices was prompted, in part, by the large number of people in the UK with energy debt. An independent report published in October found that some 2700 people die in that country each year from problems linked to fuel poverty.

Science: Arun Majumdar, founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), may soon become undersecretary for the US Department of Energy (DOE). Although Majumdar has been acting undersecretary since March, the Obama administration did not officially nominate him until November. The confirmation process is expected to take several months, althoughhe appears to have strong bipartisan support after his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday. In the meantime, there is speculation about whether Majumdar will also retain his position at ARPA-E or whether someone else will be nominated to head that agency.

Nature: The European Commission has proposed that funding for ITER, the international effort to build a fusion test reactor, and for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Earth-observation project be separated from the next general budget for 2014–20. The two projects would be supported via new intergovernmental organizations funded by European Union member states, with each member state required to contribute according to its gross national income. The commission argued that the arrangement would reduce the main EU budget's exposure to the large cost overruns common with large science projects. While ITER has experienced major overruns—going from a projected €5 billion budget in 2006 to €15 billion, GMES has stayed within its budget. The proposal represents potential risk for both projects, but for GMES particularly, as it is due to begin launching its satellites in 2013. Without guaranteed funding and governance, that won't be possible.

Chronicle of Higher Education: The so-called supercommittee of 12 congressional Democrats and 12 congressional Republicans admitted yesterday that it had failed to carry out its charge: to reach agreement on a series of deficit-reducing measures. The failure triggers automatic spending cuts, which include a $3.54 billion reduction in the budget of the Department of Education. If the automatic spending cuts go through as scheduled in 2013, student-aid programs will lose $134 million, which will affect some 1.3 million students. The Chronicle's Kelly Field reports that the cuts to Education are especially severe because they come on top of cuts imposed in 2011 on career and technical education and college preparatory programs.

Washington Post: Congress has refused a request by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to establish a National Climate Service, even though no new funding was required, writes Brian Vastag for the Washington Post. According to the NOAA website, the climate service would have provided “a single, reliable and authoritative source for climate data, information and decision-support services to help individuals, businesses, communities and governments make smart choices in anticipation of a climate changed future.” Demand for climate information has been growing. Between 2009 and 2010, the amount of climate data retrieved from NOAA websites shot up 86%, and climate-related phone calls and emails jumped from 26 000 to 30 000. But several House Republicans believe that the climate service “could become little propaganda sources instead of a science source,” according to Representative Andy Harris (R-MD). Christine McEntee, executive director of the American Geophysical Union, expressed her disappointment in the decision: “We think it’s very unfortunate. Limiting access to this kind of climate information won’t make climate change go away.”

Daily Mail: On Friday the US Army tested its new hypersonic flying missile, which can strike any target anywhere in the world in just 30 minutes, writes Lee Moran for the Daily Mail. Launched from Hawaii, the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) hit its target in the Marshall Islands some 2500 miles away. The AHW is made of a carbon composite that can withstand temperatures up to 2000 °C, which it will experience in flight. Turbojets provide the thrust for cruising, and scramjets can propel it up to 13 000 mph, or Mach 22.

The missile’s test flight coincides with the US Air Force’s announcement of its eight 15-ton Big Blu bombs, which are capable of smashing open underground concrete bunkers and tunnels. News of the super bombs and testing of the supersonic missile came the same week President Obama announced that the US would take a firm stand against nuclear proliferation activities by North Korea.

Guardian: A test of a UK geoengineering project has been postponed pending further discussion of its implications. The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project, which was conceived in March 2010, would inject particles into Earth’s atmosphere to try to cool the planet and mitigate climate change. In mid-September 2011, SPICE announced the UK’s first field trial. However, the trial was postponed later that month by the project’s scientific advisers, who say further public discussion is needed. Among the objections to the plan is the charge that such a project would “deflect political and scientific action away from reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,” write Phil Macnaghten, chair of the advisory panel, and Richard Owen, architect of the project's governance process, who describe in Nature the first attempt to govern a climate-engineering research project.

Science: Francesco Profumo has been named Italy’s new Minister for Education, Universities, and Research, writes Marta Paterlini for Science. Profumo, who is provost of the Polytechnic University of Turin, was also recently named president of the country’s National Research Council (CNR). "He has a deep knowledge of university, research, and industry. I am sure he has the right skills to try, at least, to reform a system that is craving a fair evaluation and recruitment based on merit," said Adriano De Maio, president of the European Centre for Nanomedicine in Milan. A press release stated that Profumo is "honored" by the new assignment, which he will "embrace with humility and a spirit of service."

New York Times: A private–public project to build a fossil-fuel power plant that generates electricity and hydrogen without emitting carbon dioxide is in jeopardy, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. Called FutureGen 2.0, the project entails retrofitting an old oil-fired power station with technology that captures CO₂. Ameren, the Midwestern power company that is donating the power station, has told its other FutureGen 2.0 partners that it can no longer participate in the project because of Ameren's unfavorable financial situation. The directors of FutureGen 2.0 will meet next week to decide what to do next. One possibility is for the other partners to buy the power station from Ameren, but they'll need to act fast. The US Department of Energy promised to cover 80% of the project's $1.25 billion pricetag, but only if the money is spent by the end of 2015.

Nature: At its meeting next January in Geneva, the International Telecommunication Union will decide whether to abandon the leap second. Thus the world's official definition of the time of day would be decoupled from Earth's rotation. First introduced in 1972, the leap second accounts for Earth's slowing rotation rate and ensures that the Sun reaches its zenith over the prime meridian on average at exactly 12:00:00. Unfortunately for time keepers, Earth is spinning down at an erratic, unpredictable rate. Whereas seven leap seconds were added in the 1990s, only two were added in the 2000s. The unpredictability of leap seconds frustrates systems such as navigation satellites that require accurate timing. Indeed, the US GPS doesn't use leap seconds at all. As Zeeya Merali reports for Nature, whether keeping track of leap seconds is a mild inconvenience or a serious problem is a matter of debate. Regardless of how January's vote goes, Earth will continue to spin down. In her story, Merali quotes Peter Whibberley, a physicist at the UK's National Physical Laboratory: "A century down the line, we'll need to introduce a 'leap minute,' and nobody has any sensible arguments for why that won't be a worse issue.”

Yorkshire Post: The UK government has announced that it will fund 100 scholarships, each worth £20 000 ($32 000), to help graduates become high school physics teachers. The scholarship program, which is being run in partnership with Britain's Institute of Physics, addresses a significant shortfall in the number of graduates who sign up for a course known as Initial Teacher Training (ITT). Last year, 275 fewer trainees were recruited to physics ITT courses than were needed.

Space.com: Despite a successful launch yesterday, Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft is stuck in Earth orbit after its thrusters failed to fire and send it on toward Mars. Engineers now have about three days to figure out what went wrong and fix the problem. After that time, Phobos-Grunt’s batteries will run out and the spacecraft will become just another piece of space debris orbiting Earth. China also has a stake in the venture because its first Mars probe, Yinghuo 1, is attached to Phobos-Grunt. This is Russia's third attempt to send a probe to the Martian moons; the other two missions, launched by the USSR in the 1980s, ended in failure.

NPR: Over the past half century, plutonium-238 has powered such NASA robotic spacecraft as Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini, and New Horizons, which have traveled to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. Although not the same plutonium isotope that is used for bombs, plutonium-238 was only produced in the US during the cold war years. Now the US, whose supply of ²³⁸Pu made it the only country to have sent spacecraft beyond Mars, is running out of the fuel and has not made plans to produce more. In the past, NASA, which uses ²³⁸Pu, has split the bill with the Department of Energy, which makes and handles the material. But Congress is balking at allocating the requested funding to DOE. Little time remains: The supply is expected to run out by 2022, and experts predict that production of new plutonium won’t be fully up and running before 2020.

Science: The International Classification of Diseases has served for more than 100 years as a standard for the World Health Organization, physicians, and the healthcare industry to track disease incidence, make diagnoses, and determine reimbursement for care. Last year, however, the National Institutes of Health decided it was time to update it. What the resulting National Research Council panel has proposed is a massive data network that would combine cutting-edge genomic and molecular data on patients' diseases with their routine medical records, writes Jocelyn Kaiser for Science. That system would be used to develop a new disease taxonomy and personalize medical care, according to the 108-page report, titled Toward Precision Medicine: Building a Knowledge Network for Biomedical Research and a New Taxonomy of Disease. Creating such a network of data is expected to take a decade or two, and it will require a change in the public’s attitude toward patient privacy and the use of personal medical data for research.

Baltimore City Paper: Yesterday the US Senate approved full funding of the James Webb Space Telescope through its 2018 launch. As reported earlier, the JWST project, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, has been plagued with cost overruns and delays. Although the Republican-dominated House of Representatives had proposed cutting its funding, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) has proven its biggest advocate and pushed hard to keep it in the Senate's version of the budget. “The Webb Telescope supports 1200 jobs and will lead to the kind of innovation and discovery that have made America great,” she said. “It will inspire America’s next generation of scientists and innovators that will have the new ideas that lead to new products and new jobs.” The next hurdle will be keeping JWST funding alive as part of reconciling the Senate and House versions of the 2012 budget.

BBC: Apparently the counterfeiting of whisky is a major problem for Scottish distilleries. However, researchers at St. Andrews University have found a novel way of detecting the fakes: with the use of lasers. Physicists Praveen Ashok, Kishan Dholakia, and Bavishna Praveen found that they can detect a whisky’s brand, age, and cask by shining a laser on a mere teardrop-sized sample. Their findings from the use of near-IR spectroscopic analysis have been published in Optics Express. On a related note, the Scottish National Party is trying to enforce minimum alcohol pricing to tackle what Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon called “Scotland’s alcohol problem.”

New York Times: Environmentalists aren’t the only ones who are concerned about Shell Oil’s proposed drilling of exploratory wells off the Arctic coast of Alaska. The US Coast Guard is also assessing the situation. Besides the carbon dioxide emissions and potential spills, Coast Guard officials anticipate that emergencies could arise, such as a vessel becoming stranded and its crew needing to be airlifted to safety. The Arctic Circle has a harsh climate, with often-severe weather conditions—ice, darkness, and brutal storms—that could hinder a rescue operation. Currently the closest Coast Guard base is in Kodiak, Alaska, at least a 3- to 4-hour flight from the proposed drilling site. Adam Shaw, the chief of prevention for the Coast Guard in Alaska, is looking into leasing an airplane hangar in Barrow, which is closer to where Shell would be drilling. “Hopefully nothing happens,” he said. “If something does, hopefully Shell takes care of it. But if it doesn’t, we’ve got to jump in there.”

New Scientist: As a potential cost-cutting measure, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has proposed recycling parts of dead satellites that are in graveyard orbit. The agency estimates that billions of dollars’ worth of satellites, many of them retired due to obsolescence or failure, are currently orbiting Earth. DARPA’s Phoenix program would draw on diverse techniques, such as remote operating procedures and remote imaging, gleaned from non-space-related activities like surgery and offshore drilling, to harvest parts that could still be useful. A first test mission is planned for 2015 during which a robot would use remote sensing to collect parts and reconfigure them for a new purpose. However, old satellites are not necessarily just up for grabs—according to the Outer Space Treaty dating from the late 1960s, any object launched into space remains the property of the country that launched it.

New Scientist: A 2010 report on Galveston Bay has been delayed by disputes between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) because of edits TCEQ made to the portion of the report the research center provided to the commission. TCEQ officials deleted all references to sea-level rise, human-induced climate change, and human-caused change in other contexts, such as wetlands destruction. The three scientists involved in the paper—Jim Lester, vice president of HARC and editor of the publication; Lisa Gonzales, a co-editor; and John Anderson of Rice University, the author—have asked that their names be removed from the edited version of the report, citing issues of scientific credibility.

Science: On 9 January 2012 Thomas Bogdan becomes president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages NSF’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Bogdan previously worked as a senior scientist at NCAR, whose nearly 600 scientists and engineers study severe weather, climate change, geomagnetic storms, and other environmental factors. Currently he is director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Bogdan will succeed current UCAR president Richard Anthes, who is retiring after 23 years.

Los Angeles Times: Private commercial launch providers, such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX), may soon be able to compete with United Launch Alliance (ULA)—a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing—for launching national-security-related satellites into outer space. An agreement has been signed by several government agencies to establish the criteria, including detailed technical requirements and a successful launch record, for launching government payloads. On a related note, ULA is pushing for a five-year block buy of 40 of its rocket booster cores. The Government Accountability Office has raised several serious questions concerning the proposal, among them the possibility that such a block purchase could kill opportunities for competition by forcing the government to commit to more boosters than are actually needed.

Nature: The European Space Agency (ESA) has begun negotiations with Russia for a rocket to launch the first stage of ExoMars, in 2016, in exchange for Russian participation in the mission. The first stage of the mission will carry an orbiter designed to find possible sources of methane and other trace gases that could indicate the presence of microbial life on Mars. The orbiter would serve as a data relay for a rover, launched in 2018, that would collect Martian soil samples. A separate mission would carry those samples back to Earth for study. NASA officials had initially promised an Atlas V rocket for the 2016 launch, but they informed ESA earlier this year that budget problems would prevent them from doing so. They still intend to provide a rocket for the mission's second stage in 2018.

Science: Several hundred scientists and students, many dressed in lab coats, gathered in Moscow's Pushkin Square on 13 October to protest procurement regulations and a funding freeze that they say are major obstacles to research. Russia's granting system operates through the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and the Russian Foundation for Humanities (RFRH), and the Russian government has frozen the budgets for both at 2010 levels until 2014. Protesters want the government to go back to the old policy, which gave RFBR 6% of the overall budget for civilian science, and RFRH 1%. They also demanded an overhaul of public procurement legislation, which severely limits the amount of equipment and reagents researchers can purchase each month, and they called for the clarification of funding criteria.

Nature: The US National Solar Observatory (NSO) is working with an officially appointed arbiter to resolve challenges to building the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) on the summit of Haleakala, the highest mountain on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The ATST would have twice the aperture of existing solar telescopes and an improved resolution that would allow observation of solar features heretofore not directly observable, such as magnetic flux tubes, the precursors to sunspots. The coronal loops and flares that can cause geomagnetic storms arise from sunspots; such storms can disrupt communication networks, spacecraft, and the power grid. One argument in favor of the observatory is that the ATST meets a societal need. But there are potential negative consequences of building on Haleakala. The Hawaiian petrel, an endangered seabird, nests near the proposed site, and some native Hawaiians believe that the telescope's stark white enclosure will scar a sacred area. The builders of the NSO have said they will do all they can to minimize the impact of construction on the site.

BBC: The March tsunami that damaged Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant prompted numerous governments around the world to reexamine their own plants and policies. Under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UK sent its chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman, on a fact-finding mission to Japan. After examining Japan’s and the UK’s facilities, he recently issued a report in which he found no fundamental weaknesses in the UK’s current licensing regime or safety principles. He did emphasize, however, that there is always room for improvement. Critics, including Greenpeace, claim that the report was rushed and did not fully cover the potential safety, environmental, and financial costs that new nuclear power stations could generate.

Science: Last month NSF officials met with representatives from two California-based consortia that are interested in building the next US giant ground-based telescope. The two groups—one based at Caltech, which is designing the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), and one at the Carnegie Institution of Science, which is working on the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)—may enter into competition for NSF funding of their projects. Such funding would provide more than just financial support: It could also be seen as a vote of confidence and could lead to the securing of additional funding from other partners, both public and private. However, there has been some confusion stemming from the language used in a Senate report that accompanied the proposed 2012 NSF budget; it's directed that the telescope be "developed ... on domestic soil." Because the TMT would be built in Hawaii and the GMT in Chile, some feel that the latter would be automatically disqualified. Such a qualification was not part of the National Academies' 2010 committee report, which had recommended the NSF face-off between the two projects, according to Roger Blandford of Stanford University, who chaired the committee.

BBC Newsnight: Defending themselves in an Italian courtroom this week are six scientists and one official, who are charged with manslaughter for failing to predict the 6.3-magnitude earthquake that struck L'Aquila in 2009. Members of the prosecution claim they are not putting science on trial; rather, they are questioning whether the seven individuals, who together constitute Italy's Commission of Grand Risks, did their jobs properly: whether they weighed all the risks and communicated them clearly to authorities. More than 5000 scientists worldwide have signed a letter protesting the trial, saying authorities should focus instead on earthquake protection and enforcing building codes.

Universe Today: Early this morning a Soyuz spacecraft returned three astronauts to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS). After nearly six months in space, Alexander Samokutyaev, Andrey Borisenko, and NASA flight engineer Ronald Garan touched down safely in the southern steppes of Kazakhstan. For the next two months the ISS will be maintained by the three remaining astronauts, until the next three-person crew will arrive. Flights to and from the ISS were disrupted after a freighter carried by a Soyuz rocket crashed to Earth in August. Russia has been working to determine exactly how and why the rocket crashed.

Science: The Senate subcommittee that funds NSF, NASA, and the key research agencies within the Department of Commerce yesterday approved part of an appropriations bill that would reduce NSF's current budget by 2.4%, or $162 million. In imposing the cut, the Senate appropriators went further than their House counterparts, who passed a bill in July that would keep NSF's budget at this year's level of $6.86 billion. Whether the NSF budget cut makes it into the final Senate appropriations bill will depend on the full appropriations committee, which meets today.

Nature: Canada's environment agency has informed researchers that it intends to severely cut back its network of ground-based ozone-monitoring stations because of budget constraints. As Nature's Quirin Schiermeier reports, the news shocked atmospheric scientists around the world. Data from the network's 17 stations helped to identify the widest-ever Arctic ozone hole: In March of this year, scientists reported that 40% of stratospheric ozone over the Arctic had been destroyed. Although instruments aboard satellites can also monitor ozone, experts say that ground-based measurements are essential for calibrating and validating space-based measurements. The decommissioning of Canada's ozone network will also entail the loss of 776 jobs.

Space.com: NASA does not have enough astronauts, according to a report released yesterday by the National Research Council. The agency has advised that NASA step up its recruitment to be sure to have enough trained personnel to anticipate attrition due to illness or injury and to accommodate possible new missions. The American astronaut program has been steadily decreasing in size since 1999, from 150 members to the current 61, partly due to the retirement of the space shuttle. However, the US still needs astronauts to fly missions to the International Space Station. The ISS training regime is extensive and requires years of preparation, including training for spacewalks, learning software systems, and mastering docking procedures.

New York Times: Iran may allow its nuclear activities to be supervised by international inspectors for the next five years—on the condition that the economic sanctions against the country be lifted. Fereydoon Abbasi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, made the offer Monday, but his proposal was “vaguely worded” and “far from clear,” writes David Sanger for the New York Times. Nevertheless, it is the first time since October 2009 that Iran has indicated a willingness to negotiate, and the Obama administration sees it as a sign that the sanctions have been effective.

Earth magazine: Over the past decade, a team from the US Geological Survey has been studying the long-term health risks for rescue workers, civilians, and survivors directly affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The US Environmental Protection Agency and the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps called in the USGS because of its expertise in categorizing dust and airborne contaminants, especially using remote sensing. Since 2001 the USGS has been increasingly involved in disaster response; it sent out teams in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina and in 2007 and 2009 during the California wildfires. Meg Marquardt, writing for the American Geological Institute’s Earth magazine, discusses the USGS’s methods and what they have found.

Nature: Traditionally, environmental monitoring has been a small-scale local science, but now the US is moving it toward a continental-scale group enterprise. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will comprise 20 core observatories, each representing a distinct eco-region throughout the US, and a number of temporary stations that can be relocated wherever needed. The result will be a vast database that scientists can mine to tackle broad questions such as how global warming, pollution, and land-use change are affecting ecosystems across the country, writes Jeff Tollefson for Nature. On 28 July NSF awarded NEON $434 million over the next decade. The money could jump-start site preparation and construction as early as this year, probably starting near its home base in Boulder, Colorado, and in the Northeast, then expanding from there, according to David Schimel, the project's chief science officer.

New York Times: Yesterday a test run of an experimental aircraft ended abruptly when it crashed in the Pacific Ocean. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, capable of flying at 13 000 mph, is the fastest aircraft ever built. It is part of a project designed to provide the US with a vehicle that can carry out a military strike anywhere in the world within an hour. Launched aboard a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Los Angeles, the Falcon successfully separated from the booster, attained the desired trajectory, and managed to collect nine minutes of data before contact with it was lost. Despite the modest flight time, officials deemed the test a success.

Talking Points Memo: The US Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego, California, has earned the distinction of being the first ever green Marine Corps facility. It is showcasing a new landfill gas recovery project, whereby the natural gas released by a San Diego landfill is expected to generate about 25 million kilowatt-hours per year, or about half of Miramar’s electricity needs. Landfills release natural gas through decomposition, as microorganisms break down the organic materials in garbage. Miramar’s gas recovery project will serve an additional purpose as well: Landfills are the third largest source of methane emissions from human activity in the US, so the project will also reduce the amount of that greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere.

Science: To avert a potential government default, President Obama signed legislation to raise the US debt ceiling. The legislation includes a $917 billion cut to discretionary spending over the next decade. Some aspects of the agreement, however, may work in favor of science research. Whereas federally funded research is essentially frozen for 2 years, there will be annual increases of $20 billion to $25 billion over the next 10 years thereafter, writes Jeffrey Mervis for Science. Also, the new limit on discretionary spending is $24 billion higher than that approved earlier this year by the House of Representatives. Thus, funding may be reconsidered for programs facing deep cuts or termination. And finally, the annual budget resolution provides a blueprint for legislators and allows the appropriations process to begin; last year the Senate didn't pass a budget resolution, which resulted in six months of inaction and delayed disbursement of funds to federal agencies. The legislation could serve as a "super" budget resolution for 2012, preventing such a stalemate from recurring.

New York Times: Even as the House, Senate, and White House wrangle over raising the US debt ceiling, Congressional appropriators are at work writing bills that fix spending for the next fiscal year, which begins on 1 October. As the New York Times's Leslie Kaufman reports, the House version of the bill that funds the Department of Interior, the Forest Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency is proving contentious. The bill emerged from the Republican-led appropriations committee with 39 non-spending provisions, or riders, all of which loosen or curtail regulations aimed at protecting the environment and its natural inhabitants. Satisfying those regulations, the Republicans argue, hinders growth by imposing costs on companies.

New York Times: Yesterday the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously passed a new rule concerning the planning and financing of new power lines to help the nation’s electricity grid meet the demands of renewable energy and a competitive electricity market, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. The new rule is intended to encourage cooperation among the various organizations that manage the nation’s electrical grid in order to build power lines across multiple states and electrical jurisdictions. Such cross-jurisdictional transmission lines are becoming increasingly important as states seek to integrate large amounts of wind and solar power, generally available in remote areas, and transport the power to more populated areas. The rule addresses planning and cost allocation, two of the main impediments to new power line construction. Among its general guidelines is the idea that the costs should be covered by those who benefit, although critics charge that assessing who benefits from a new line is difficult.

Space.com: The final space shuttle launch took place this morning. NASA's Atlantis began its 12-day mission to the International Space Station with a successful lift-off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center around 11:26am EDT. Some 750 000 to 1 million eager spectators showed up for the historic event. The four-astronaut crew will deliver about 9500 pounds of cargo and several science experiments to the station. "Good luck to you and your crew on the final flight of this true American icon. Good luck, Godspeed, and have a little fun up there," shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach told the astronauts just before launch.

Nature: A demographic analysis shows that NASA's cohort of experienced, highly qualified principal investigators (PIs) able to lead Discovery-class missions—a series of focused planetary science projects to explore the solar system—is nearing retirement age. Susan Niebur first noticed the demographic shift when she ran the Discovery program at NASA between 2003 and 2006. As an independent consultant she has continued to track the dwindling number of experienced PIs; by 2015, only 14 potential PIs out of a likely 30 will have experience as PIs, deputy PIs, or project scientists. If NASA doesn't find a way to give younger scientists opportunities to develop the necessary experience to step into mission-leading roles, the program as a whole may suffer from PI burnout, missed launch windows, and cost overruns. However, an inexperienced PI doesn't necessarily doom a mission to failure. Most of the program's missions have succeeded, including those led by less experienced PIs.

Daily Mail: Earlier this month a robotic lander successfully flew up to 7 feet for 27 seconds during testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. The lander, about the size of a golf cart, is powered by a green propellant, hydrogen peroxide. The test proved the lander could execute commands autonomously, such as hover for an extended period, control its position and orientation, and land successfully. Such unmanned vehicles are being designed to perform science and exploration research on the surface of the Moon and other airless bodies, including near-Earth asteroids, where aero-braking and parachutes won't work.

Washington Post: The Western Regional Air Partnership and other environmental groups have succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce provisions of the Clean Air Act in the Western US. Provided a deal struck between the EPA and the groups passes a judicial review, coal-fired plants in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming will be required to install devices called scrubbers to reduce their emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxides—or be shut down. Besides being a source of atmospheric pollution, the emissions are responsible for reducing visibility at the Grand Canyon and other national parks.

Science: In four referendums held 12–13 June, Italians voted overwhelmingly to overturn key policies—including the reintroduction of nuclear power—of Italy’s controversial prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Despite Berlusconi’s various political maneuvers to try to stop the referendums, Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation ruled that they should go forward. The vote was significant because an estimated 57% of eligible voters showed up, surpassing the 50% needed for a quorum, and some 95% of them voted against Berlusconi’s policies. Italy now becomes the second Western country after Germany to reject nuclear energy following Japan's Fukushima disaster.

Los Angeles Times: Yesterday Bruce Babbitt, former secretary of the Department of the Interior, charged that President Obama has failed to answer “forcefully and persuasively” Republican attacks on environmental safeguards, writes Neela Banerjee for the Los Angeles Times. According to an Interior Department spokesperson, Obama instituted a conservation plan more ambitious than those of his recent predecessors. Since the midterm elections, however, the Obama administration has delayed or weakened several regulations opposed by congressional Republicans and business lobbyists. Babbitt urged the president to reject all future environmental riders and to restore land and waterways by using executive authority to create more parks and wilderness areas.

BBC: A report from Japan's nuclear emergency task force asserts that Japan was insufficiently prepared for a nuclear accident on the scale of the one at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and states that poor oversight may have been a factor. Authorities have pledged to make NISA, the country's nuclear regulatory agency, independent of the industry ministry, which promotes nuclear power. The report will be submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency later this month. NISA has doubled its initial estimate of leaked radiation from the plant; the revised estimate of 770 000 terabecquerels is about 15% of the total amount of radiation released in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Science: In a Q&A with Richard Stone of Science, the European Union's commissioner for research, innovation, and science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, recounts last week's official visit to China, her first. Some of the issues covered in the interview—such as intellectual property, nuclear power, and visas for Chinese researchers—pertain to US–China relations as well as to EU–China relations. Other issues, such as the challenge of reaching consensus in a 27-member federation, had a specifically EU flavor:

STONE: When China sets a goal, because of its top-down system of government, it can actually get things done. Are you jealous of China's ability to design and implement a science policy?

GEOGHEGAN-QUINN: I don't think we should be jealous of anyone. We have a standard of living that is widely envied. A collection of 27 individual member states brings a richness and diversity of culture. It's a testament to political innovation.

Nature: When Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator shuts down in September it will have collected a staggering 20 petabytes of data. But, as Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature reports, Fermilab is only now developing plans for preserving that data hoard and for making it available to future researchers. The archival challenge is exacerbated by the impending diversion of computational resources away from the Tevatron's two principal experiments D0 and CDF. What's more, some of the oldest data from the Tevatron's 26-year lifespan reside on old magnetic tapes. Historically, particle physicists have been less ready than astronomers to archive data, but that situation is changing. In contrast to Fermilab, CERN developed an archive plan for the LHC before the accelerator came on line in 2009.

Science: Starting on 1 June, the next director of Los Alamos National Laboratory will be Charles McMillan, a former nuclear weapons designer who has more than 28 years of scientific and leadership experience in weapons science, stockpile certification, experimental physics, and computational science. McMillan, who has a PhD in physics from MIT, has spent most of his career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he managed nuclear weapons research. He joined Los Alamos in 2006 and was principal associate director for weapons programs when he was picked for the laboratory's top job. McMillan replaces the current director, Michael Anastasio, who announced in January his intention to retire.

Wired: This June, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to declare that all vehicles must contain an event data recorder, which would record vehicle inputs and, in the event of a crash, provide a snapshot of the final moments before impact. Many cars manufactured now already have the devices, writes Keith Barry for Wired. Since the early 1990s, General Motors has installed them in most vehicles that have airbags. For the most part, the data have been used by automakers for diagnostic purposes, to determine whether vehicle systems, driver error, or a combination of the two contributed to an accident, and to find out which vehicle systems prevented serious injuries or death. The data have also been used to assess the merit of vehicle-defect claims, the results of which can either vindicate the manufacturer or lead to a recall. No federal laws govern access to the data; 13 states require a warrant and 37 have no statutes barring the disclosure of such data.

Nature: NASA plans to launch Aquarius on 9 June. The satellite observatory's main instrument will monitor global ocean salinity by measuring the microwave radiation of the oceans, writes Jeff Tollefson for Nature. The microwave emission depends on the electrical conductivity of seawater, which in turn depends on the seawater's salinity. The new data will allow scientists to test theories about climate change's influence on the global water cycle. Aquarius will fly as part of a joint mission with Argentina's National Commission for Space Activities. The instrument, which will be able to measure changes in salinity down to 2 parts per 10 000 in seawater, will cover the whole globe once every week.

BBC: Tardigrades, also known as water bears, joined the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour on Monday as part of Project Biokis, sponsored by the Italian Space Agency. The project will investigate the impact of short-duration spaceflight on several different microscopic organisms; Tardkiss, a subset of the project, will expose tardigrade colonies to different levels of ionizing radiation at different points during the spaceflight. The data will be used to help determine how radiation dosage affects the way cells work. Less than one millimeter long and ubiquitous on Earth, water bears became the first animals to survive exposure to space during the European Space Agency's 2007 Foton-M3 mission. In inhospitable conditions, they enter a state of dormancy called cryptobiosis—an ametabolic state that allows them to resist physical and chemical extremes, including solar winds, high pressure, and the vacuum of space. The Tardkiss study may facilitate the development of techniques to protect other organisms, including humans, from the extreme stresses encountered during space exploration.

LA Times: The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off to its final mission today, carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02), two communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank, additional parts for the Dextre robot, and other critical supplies to the International Space Station. Endeavour's crew will also transfer the shuttle's orbiter boom sensor system to the ISS, where it can assist spacewalkers as an extension for the station's robotic arm. The 16-day mission includes four spacewalks for the shuttle crew, with the return to Earth scheduled for 1 June. The AMS-02 will operate as an external module on the ISS for a nominal mission of 3 years, gathering data at 7 gigabits per second. It will analyze cosmic rays and flux and search for antimatter and dark matter; it will continue to provide cosmic-ray measurements after its nominal mission is complete.

Science: A White House commission on spent nuclear fuel released draft recommendations that include a call for one or more new above-ground storage sites, writes Eli Kintisch for Science. The commission was formed last year by President Barack Obama after the White House's 2009 decision to cancel plans for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. There, spent fuel would have cooled for several decades before being permanently entombed onsite. The draft recommendations suggest a process involving separate sites for each step. New interim sites would first receive fuel that's currently stored in above-ground concrete casks at nine decommissioned US plants. Fuel at working reactors would be transferred next. The commission also called for the creation of an entity separate from federal agencies to manage the long-term disposal sites. The final version of the report will be released in January 2012.

Space.com: Next August, if all goes to plan, NASA's car-sized rover Curiosity will touch down on the Martian surface and begin its mission: to determine whether Mars is or was ever hospitable to life. The person responsible for the mission's success is project manager Peter Theisinger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In a Q&A with Space.com's Mike Wall, Theisinger describes the technical challenges he and his colleagues had to contend with, notably ensuring that the rover lands safely and upright. Comparing Curiosity with its two famous predecessors, Theisinger answered,

Spirit and Opportunity were geology missions. They were looking for signs of water, and they found it. This is taking the next step forward: to look at more detailed chemistry and mineralogy, and to see if there were true habitability possibilities, and to search for organics as well.

Science: Gravity Probe B, launched in 2004, has confirmed two predictions derived from Einstein's theory of general relativity. The satellite, which circled Earth from pole to pole for 17 months, used gyroscopes to measure the geodetic effect caused by Earth's mass creating a dimple in spacetime; the circumference of a circle around Earth should be slightly shorter than 2π times the circle's radius. Gravity Probe B measured the 2.8-centimeter decrement to 0.25% precision. The satellite's measurement of the frame-dragging effect, in which Earth twists the surrounding spacetime as it rotates, fell short of expectations and achieved 19% precision. The gyroscopes were geometrically the roundest objects ever manufactured—but trapped charges in their niobium coating made them far less precisely round electrically. Those imperfections combined with ones in the gyroscope's housing to create uncertainties that took five years to correct. In 2004 Ignazio Ciufolini (University of Salento in Lecce, Italy) and colleagues used data from less expensive satellites, LAGEOS and LAGEOS II, to measure the frame dragging effect to 10% precision. Whether Gravity Probe B merely confirms those results, or has additional importance, is a matter of perspective.

Physics Today: The final launch of the space shuttle Endeavour, scheduled for today, has been delayed for at least 48 hours because of a problem with the heaters associated with the shuttle’s auxiliary power unit, according to Manuel Roig-Franzia writing for the Washington Post. Officials at first thought the weather would cause a delay, but forecasters predicted the skies would clear in time. Endeavor is scheduled to deliver the Alpha Mass Spectrometer (AMS-2), the "first fundamental science experiment to the International Space Station," says Nobel Prize winner Samuel Ting, AMS-2's principle investigator. The $2 billion experiment, a collaboration between more than 40 institutions and 600 physicists, has taken more than 17 years to reach this point and has suffered dramatic setbacks, including the loss of its ride to the space station following the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 and the last-minute replacement last year of its superconducting magnet with a less powerful permanent magnet.

Ars Technica: The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory has produced the heaviest antimatter particle ever seen in a laboratory: antihelium-4, the antimatter partner of the alpha particle. Antihelium-3 was detected in the 1970s, but the antialpha has proved more difficult to spot. For a nucleus to condense, the right number of antimatter baryons of the right types must be traveling near enough to one another, with similar enough momenta. By colliding gold atoms, which each have 79 protons and 118 neutrons, RHIC increased the chances that antialphas would form. The discovery, published in Nature, will inform the search for antimatter elsewhere, including on the International Space Station. On 29 April the space shuttle Endeavour will begin a journey to the station to drop off the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will look for primordial antimatter.

Space.com: The Pioneer anomaly, which caused deep space probes Pioneer 10 and 11 to slow down on their paths away from the sun may be solved. NASA first noted the anomaly 30 years ago. The broader scientific community began investigating it in 1998, and a host of reasons for the slow-down have been proposed, among them gravitational forces from the Kuiper belt, dark matter, or some other unidentified source; drag from the interplanetary medium; and radiation pressure, including thermal radiation from the heat of the probes themselves. Orfeu Bertolami, of the University of Porto in Portugal and colleagues created three-dimensional simulations of how thermal radiation emitted by the deep space probes bounces off their surfaces. They found that when the reflected heat was added into prior calculations of thermal effects, thermal radiation accounts for all of the anomaly, rather than the 66% previously supposed.

Various: Powerful electrical currents flow between Saturn and its sixth-largest moon, Enceladus. The Cassini spacecraft, since its arrival at Saturn in 2004, has passed the 500-km-wide moon 14 times and has gathered more data each time. Jets of gas and ice from Enceladus's south pole become electrically charged, forming an ionosphere. The motion of the moon and its ionosphere through the magnetic bubble that surrounds Saturn acts like a dynamo, which in turn creates the currents. Cassini's UV imaging spectrograph spotted a patch of UV light in Saturn's upper atmosphere near its north pole that indicated the presence of an electrical circuit; the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer's electron spectrometer (CAPS-ELS) detected the electron beams. The process observed between Saturn and its satellite may be a universal one; Jupiter and its moon Io have a similar electrical current between them that appears to develop through a comparable process.

New York Times: On Tuesday the US Supreme Court examined the issue of who should be responsible for regulating carbon emissions. Six states (California, Connecticut, Iowa, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont) and New York City brought a lawsuit against five power companies that are responsible for a quarter of carbon-dioxide emissions by utilities in the nation. The suit said the courts should step in to protect the states from a "public nuisance" created by the defendants. The court countered that regulating greenhouse-gas emissions is more the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency. Since the lawsuit was filed in 2004, the legal and political landscapes have changed—the EPA under the Bush administration took the view that the Clean Air Act did not permit it to issue regulations addressing climate change, while in 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the authority to regulate some emissions. Nevertheless, the New York solicitor general, Barbara D. Underwood, urged the court "to keep the federal courts open to states exercising their historic power to protect their land and their citizens from air pollution emitted in other states."

New York Times: Four winners were chosen from 22 proposals for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) 2 awards: Boeing received the largest award of $92.3 million; Sierra Nevada Corp, $80 million; Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX), $75 million; and Blue Origin, $22 million. The awards are designed to promote the development of commercially operated transport systems to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. “We’re committed to safely transporting US astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a prepared statement. “These agreements are significant milestones in NASA’s plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit, so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration.”

Los Angeles Times: According to a new report by the Pew Environment Group, mining claims pose an environmental threat to territory near the borders of 10 iconic US national parks and wilderness areas. The Grand Canyon is especially at risk, where uranium claims have increased 2000% since 2004, because of possible damage to the Colorado River watershed. In the wake of rising global prices, companies have filed claims at an increased rate to mine copper, gold, and other metals as well as uranium. Critics blame an outmoded 1872 law, which allows corporations to stake out rights to federal lands for mining without a competitive bid and to extract resources without paying royalties. "We're still dealing with an antiquated law that in its wake has left huge cleanup and contamination problems all over," said Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ).

Science: As of Friday when US Democrats and Republicans struck their 11th-hour deal to approve a budget for 2011, science and space exploration were spared any disastrous cuts, writes Yudhijit Bhattacharjee for Science. NASA will receive $18.5 billion, just $200 million less than the 2010 level and $500 million below President Obama's 2011 request. In addition, NASA was allowed to cancel the Constellation Program, which centered on human spaceflight and the development of spacecraft to replace the space shuttle.

The Department of Energy saw a budget reduction of only $30 million, writes Adrian Cho. That is only 0.6% of the 2010 level and brings the 2011 budget to $4.874 billion. The predominant response to the announcement was relief, as the agency had expected to lose as much as 18% from its Office of Science budget. The office's national labs will be able to keep running, which means tens of thousands of researchers from various agencies still have jobs. Officials, though, do expect that some trimming will be necessary and can't guarantee that no layoffs will be made. The final budget is 4.8% short of the $5.121 billion requested by the Obama administration for 2011.

Science: On 28 March NASA’s Swift spacecraft captured the biggest cosmic blast since the Big Bang. The blast is unusual in that instead of fading, which would indicate that a massive star had blown up, the high-energy radiation—actually a series of bursts—has continued to shoot out like a jet. The source of the explosion is at the center of a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away. "We think that there is a dormant black hole there that has accreted a lump of matter—probably a star that has fallen into it," said astrophysicist Neil Gehrels, the lead scientist for Swift at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. If a star is "being torn up," he said, astronomers expect it to fade in the next few days. If it does not fade, they may need to revise their theory.

Space.com: Yesterday researchers announced the discovery of a new mineral, Wassonite, found in a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite discovered in Antarctica in 1969. "Wassonite is a mineral formed from only two elements, sulfur and titanium, yet it possesses a unique crystal structure that has not been previously observed in nature," NASA space scientist Keiko Nakamura-Messenger said in a statement. The mineral’s name honors John T. Wasson, a UCLA professor known for his achievements across a broad swath of meteorite and impact research. Meteorites may contain information about the formation of our solar system.

MSNBC: NASA's inspector general has issued a report saying that the agency-wide mission computer network was vulnerable to potentially "catastrophic" cyberattacks, writes Paul Wagenseil for MSNBC. “Six computer servers associated with IT [information technology] assets that control spacecraft and contain critical data had vulnerabilities that would allow a remote attacker to take control of or render them unavailable,” according to the audit report released yesterday by Inspector General Paul K. Martin. It’s long been known that security on NASA networks is weak, and recommendations from two earlier audit reports have yet to be acted on. In response to the latest report, NASA's management team has promised to implement a strategy for an agency-wide network risk assessment by the end of August and work up a comprehensive approach for identifying and addressing risks by the end of September.

Washington Post: Department of Energy secretary Steven Chu has announced that the DOE will reduce the fees and the paperwork required for startup companies who want to license technologies developed by DOE national laboratories, according to an Associated Press release. Chu said the total upfront cost of licensing patents in a specific technology would be reduced to $1000 for portfolios of up to three patents. Called “America’s Next Top Energy Innovator” challenge, the program starts 2 May and those interested should submit a business plan and technology of interest.

Boston Globe: Yesterday NASA shut down its Stardust space probe, ending the craft's 12-year career. Launched in 1999, the probe was designed to study the asteroid 5535 Annefrank and collect samples from comet Wild 2. It completed its primary mission in 2006, when it returned a sample capsule of comet particles to Earth. The probe continued working and last month photographed a crater on an asteroid. "Like saying goodbye to a friend," said Allan Cheuvront, Stardust program manager for Lockheed Martin, who has worked on the probe since its design stage in 1996. "It's been an amazing spacecraft. It's done everything we asked; it's done it perfectly."

Los AngelesTimes: The US government's crucial radiation alert network in California is not fully functional; that leaves the stretch of coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco unprotected in the event of a nuclear emergency, according to Jack Dolan and Ron-Gong Lin II in the Los Angeles Times. Half of the 12 Environmental Protection Agency detectors in California have problems that could delay alerts by several hours. The system is critical for warning the public of a sudden radiation danger from foreign or domestic sources. That weakness has not caused problems during the Japanese nuclear crisis because radiation reaching US shores has been minuscule, but critics say the lack of consistent alerts could pose a public health concern.

Space.com: After a journey of more than six years and 5 billion miles, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft attained its goal of entering orbit around Mercury—the first spacecraft to do so. Launched in August 2004, MESSENGER has orbited the Sun 15 times and made one flyby of Earth, two of Venus, and three of Mercury. With seven science instruments, the spacecraft will study Mercury over the next 12 months, mapping its surface and studying its composition and atmosphere. Among other things, scientists hope to determine whether Mercury has any water ice and, on a larger scale, to gain insight into how the solar system formed and evolved.

Nature: Continuing resolutions (CRs), the stop-gap funding bills that keep the US government running in the absence of an annual budget, are damaging US physics. As Nature's Eugenie Samuel Reich reports, the Synchrotron Radiation Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Holifield Radio­active Ion Beam Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are among several facilities that face closure or staff reductions if NSF, NASA, and other federal agencies continue to be funded through CRs.

New Scientist: Earlier this week, a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences issued its latest Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which lists in order of scientific priority the missions that NASA should undertake in the decade 2013–22. The top slot went to the Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C), which seeks to land on the Martian surface and return to Earth with rock samples. The Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO), which would survey Jupiter's icy moon, came in second, followed by the Uranus Orbiter and Probe. Each of the top three missions is expected to cost several billion dollars. If NASA can't find the money, the panel recommends that some missions be delayed or replaced with cheaper ones.

Guardian: A NASA astrobiologist claims to have found microscopic fossils of alien algae-like beings inside meteorites that landed on Earth. Writing in the Journal of Cosmology, Richard Hoover claims that the samples' lack of nitrogen, which is essential for life on Earth, indicates they are "the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth's atmosphere." Hoover, an expert on life in extreme environments who works at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, said that laboratory tests on the rocky filaments found no evidence to suggest they were remnants of Earth-based organisms that contaminated the meteorites after they landed. Rudy Schild, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and editor of the journal, said: "The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets."

Guardian: A $424 million Earth observation satellite launched by NASA on Friday morning failed midflight because the nose cone of the rocket carrying it did not detach properly. The rocket was transporting the Glory observation satellite, which was designed to help scientists understand how solar radiation and atmospheric aerosols affect Earth's climate. The loss of the satellite is the second failure in a row for the Taurus XL rocket; two years ago another climate research satellite was lost. The rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 2:09am local time (10:09am GMT) but was declared a failure by NASA's launch director, Omar Baez, five minutes later.

New Scientist: The James Webb Space Telescope is suffering yet another setback—a team at the University of Arizona in Tucson found in December that about 2% of pixels in a detector destined for JWST’s Near Infrared Camera were transmitting signals although no light was hitting them. That's four times as many "hot pixels" as there were when the detector was analyzed in 2008. The researchers later found that the problem affects four of the camera’s five long-wavelength detector arrays. NASA allows no more than 5% of a detector's pixels to be hot by the end of the telescope's five-year space mission. At this rate, the detectors may exceed this limit before the telescope even leaves the ground.

Space.com: Because US lawmakers have yet to pass a budget for FY 2011, the government has been operating under a stopgap measure called a continuing resolution (CR) that extends last year’s funding. The latest CR, which was passed yesterday by the House and which comes before the Senate today, would fund the government for two more weeks. Clara Moskowitz of Space.com considers the possible effects on NASA if the government is forced to shut down. In the event of a shutdown, all NASA workers considered essential, such as those working on the Discovery space shuttle mission, would likely stay on, while support personnel such as cafeteria workers and office managers would be sent home. As bad as this sounds, it wouldn’t be the first time, she points out. The federal government shut down in November 1995 while President Clinton negotiated with Congress, which coincided with the STS-74 mission of the space shuttle Atlantis as it visited Russia’s Mir space station.

Physics Today: Discovery, the busiest space shuttle in NASA’s fleet, was successfully launched on its final mission yesterday, at 4:50 pm, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Pete Spotts, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, gives an overview of Discovery and its last trip. The ship is carrying an Italian-built cargo carrier reengineered to provide extra storage space on the International Space Station. In addition, the orbiter is lofting some five tons of supplies and Robonaut 2, which designers envision as an eventual humanoid helpmate for future space station crews. Space.com provides a photo album of the building of Discovery in the early 1980s.

Science: Despite funding cuts by the National Science Board last December, the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), expected to be built in the former Homestake gold mine near Lead, South Dakota, will retain its viability as a future facility a while longer. The National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy have agreed to pay for pumping water out of the mine so that it does not flood, which should preserve the site while the two agencies wrangle over how to transfer primary responsibility for DUSEL from NSF to DOE.

BBC: Three days ago, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory detected an ultraviolet flare emanating from a sunspot. Hot particles associated with the flare have already reached Earth. Although observations from two other spacecraft, STEREO-B and SOHO, suggest that the stream of particles is not powerful enough to knock out power grids, it will likely affect telecommunications on Earth, brighten and enlarge the polar auroras, and qualify as the strongest in four years.

Space.com: The first photos of the comet Tempel 1 taken by NASA’s Stardust probe were released Monday. The probe flew to within 181 km of the comet and beamed home 72 high-resolution images of the encounter. Stardust’s photos are the first close-up views of the comet in almost six years; in July 2005 NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft crashed a small probe into its icy surface to determine its composition. This may be Stardust’s last mission, after having logged some 5.7 billion km during its 12 years in space.

New York Times: To help the Department of Energy meet a federal target for reducing its carbon dioxide emissions, the Obama administration's 2012 budget proposal will include a request for money to help develop small "modular" nuclear reactors, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. The reactors, which would supply electricity to a government lab, would be built almost entirely in a factory and trucked to a site, like modular homes. The DOE, like other federal agencies, is required by an executive order to reduce its carbon footprint by 28% by 2020. A longer-term goal, however, is to foster assembly-line production of the small reactors at a lower cost than construction of conventional reactors.

Independent: If you grew up thinking there were nine planets and were shocked when Pluto was demoted five years ago, get ready for another surprise. There may be nine after all, and Jupiter may not be the largest, says Paul Rodgers for the Independent. Scientists now believe they have proof of the existence of Tyche, a gas giant four times more massive than Jupiter and orbiting at a distance 15 000 times greater than Earth's orbital radius. The proof could lie in data that have already been gathered by a NASA space telescope, WISE, and are just waiting to be analyzed.

New York Times: Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar addressed the issue of offshore wind farms at a news conference yesterday in Norfolk, Virginia, announcing up to $50.5 million in federal spending over the next five years. Because about 78% of the nation’s electricity demand lies in 28 coastal states, harnessing the ocean breezes would be advantageous. However, the effort will require a lot of work, they say. Offshore wind generation is more expensive than conventional power generation from coal, gas, or even onshore wind due to such issues as reliability, parts manufacturing, and maintenance. Chu said the goal is to get the price of offshore wind down to levels where it could compete without subsidies.

Science: Consistent with their pre-election promise to rein in government spending, House Republicans yesterday announced a budget plan that includes double-digit cuts for civilian research agencies. If the plan were passed, the pot of money that funds NSF, NASA, NIST, and NOAA would be reduced by 16% compared with President Obama's 2011 budget request, which the previous Congress failed to act on. Science's Jeffrey Mervis outlines the cuts.

New York Times: In 2009 Envia Systems of Newark, California, was among 37 companies that shared $151 million in government grants to pursue clean-energy ideas. Though promising, the ideas would require years, even decades, of R&D before becoming marketable products. Now, Envia, which is developing a new kind of cathode for batteries, has secured an order from General Motors. As Matthew Wald of the New York Times reports, six companies in Envia's class have attracted $108 million in private-sector financing, which amounts to about four private dollars for every one dollar of initial government investment. Known as ARPA–E, the program for financing the startups was modeled on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Space.com: Monday NASA released a formal notice seeking to gauge private industry interest in renting out the space processing and support facilities at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Those facilities may become available for commercial use when NASA's space shuttle program draws to a close later this year, agency officials said. In all, NASA's announcement lists 20 facilities that may be open to potential renters.

Science: US students don't know much about science, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress released yesterday, writes Jeffrey Mervis for Science. The NAEP measures student achievement in reading, math, and science at the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. The 2009 assessment, which focused on science, found that 40% of high-school seniors perform below the basic level in science, and that younger students did only marginally better. Francis Eberle, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association in Arlington, Virginia, says that a big reason for their poor performance is a 2002 federal law—No Child Left Behind—that has pushed the subject out of classrooms by emphasizing reading and mathematics.

Space.com: Spaceweather.com is sponsoring a space photo contest with cash prizes for the best views of NASA’s NanoSail-D satellite. This NanoSail-D skywatching guide has some tips on how to track the satellite from the ground. NanoSail-D's primary mission is a demonstration of a compact solar sail system. This technology could lead to further development of solar sails for future missions, and could help satellites de-orbit cheaply and efficiently, according to officials.

Beacon-News: At an all-hands meeting yesterday, Fermilab's director Pier Oddone reassured the assembled staff that the lab's future was bright, even though funding for a proposed three-year extension for the lab's main machine, the Tevatron, fell through last week. Now, Oddone said, Fermilab would commit itself to the plan that was in place before the Tevatron extension became a possibility: to explore the intensity frontier, where the lab's ability to generate large numbers of particles could reveal rare and elusive events.

Chronicle of Higher Education: The US Customs and Border Protection agency has boosted the manpower it deploys along and behind the US–Canadian border. The result, as the Chronicle's Colin Woodard reports, has been an increase in the number of roving patrols and surprise checkpoints on buses, trains, and highways. If foreign professors, postdocs, and students fail to present valid immigration documents, they risk being fined or detained. But even when scholars do have the right paperwork, border patrol agents, who are not necessarily well-versed in the intricacies of immigration law, have detained scholars anyway. Woodard cites the case of

A scholar at an undisclosed institution in Rochester [who] was arrested at the airport while on his way to visit his wife, a student at an institution out of state. Both had H1B visas, had applied for permanent residence status, and had permission from Citizenship and Immigration Services to live, work, and travel while their applications were adjudicated, according to their attorney, Mr. Novak. But Customs and Border Protection officers "treated him like a criminal and threw him in the clink. The wife didn't dare come to pay the bond to get him out because they would throw her in jail, too."

New York Times: Cape Wind, the wind farm proposed for a 24-square-mile tract of Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, got its final government permit on Friday, 10 years after work on the project began. The project’s sponsors hope to begin construction this year, although they have not yet lined up a market for all of the electricity. Although Cape Wind’s electricity price will be 20.7 cents per kilowatt-hour—almost double the national average retail rate—it is hoped that it would deliver electricity during peak demand periods, when all prices are high. Matthew L. Wald discusses the project for the New York Times’s Green blog.

SPACE.com: The 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society opened yesterday and runs through 13 January in Seattle, Washington. About 2500 scientists are expected to attend. Besides its extensive scientific program, the meeting also features several policy sessions, which will cover such topics as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Astro2010 Decadal Survey, which made recommendations about the highest-priority astronomy research for the coming decade.

New York Times: Besides completing a series of efficiency upgrades and other energy retrofits, caretakers for New York’s Empire State Building have agreed to purchase 55 million kilowatt-hours worth of renewable energy certificates annually—enough to cover the building’s yearly electricity consumption. Trumpeting large-scale purchases of renewable energy certificates has become increasingly common among businesses and institutions seeking to improve their green reputations, writes Tom Zeller Jr for the New York Times. Whether the purchase of RECs will encourage greater production of renewable energy remains to be seen, but as Zeller points out, “it still seems a notable milestone for New York’s most famous landmark.”

NPR: The Environmental Protection Agency this week starts regulating greenhouse gases from power plants and other big polluters for the first time. Although the rules apply only to new construction and major expansions, they've become hugely controversial. Critics say the rules will drag down the economic recovery, reports Elizabeth Shogren in a National Public Radio broadcast.

BBC: Piers Sellers, a NASA astronaut with three space shuttle flights under his belt, has been appointed an OBE (an Officer of the Order of the British Empire). Sellers was among the Britons whose services were recognized in the UK's traditional New Year's Honors. Born in the UK, Sellers joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1996 after a career spent analyzing Earth's vegetation from data gathered by satellites. He plans to resume his scientific career when he returns to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

New York Times: The feud between Texas and the Environmental Protection Agency reached a new level this week, with federal officials saying they will take over the granting of permits for new power plants and refineries in the state because Texas refuses to regulate its emissions of greenhouse gases, writes James C. McKinley Jr for the New York Times. Texas is the only state that has refused to enforce the new emissions rules through its state permitting program. It also produces the most carbon dioxide because it has scores of coal-fired power plants, refineries, and factories.

Nature: Nature’s Newsmaker of the Year is Jane Lubchenco, the first woman to serve as the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earlier this year she found herself at the center of the government’s response to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, one of the biggest environmental disasters in US history. Despite a series of communication missteps, Lubchenco has been acknowledged as a strong leader during a difficult time. Nature’s Richard Monastersky writes about Lubchenco’s actions during the oil spill and about her life and career leading up to it.

New Scientist: A new breed of electronic solar cells is being developed that can work after dark. The key to the new devices is their ability to harvest IR radiation, says Steven Novack, one of the developers of the technology at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls. Nearly half of the available energy in the solar spectrum resides in the IR band, and IR is reemitted by Earth's surface after the Sun has gone down, meaning that the antennas can even capture some energy during the night, writes Duncan Graham-Rowe for New Scientist.

Nature: The National Science Board has refused to continue to fund the design of the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), which is expected to be built in the former Homestake gold mine near Lead, South Dakota, at an eventual cost of $800 million–$900 million, writes Eugenie Samuel Reich for Nature. Because of the mine’s depth, it is the perfect location for a range of sensitive experiments to search for hard-to-detect particles such as neutrinos and dark matter. Building the lab would allow the US to compete effectively with other countries that have underground facilities, such as the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory near Hida, Japan; Gran Sasso National Laboratory near L'Aquila, Italy; and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada. "Here in the United States we are conspicuous in not having a deep underground science lab, in contrast to other countries with large science programs," says Brown University's Rick Gaitskell, a particle astrophysicist who hopes to use DUSEL.The board’s decision reflected differences of opinion concerning the NSF's and the Department of Energy's roles in DUSEL; board members felt that DOE should be contributing more.

Space.com: As of 15 December, NASA’s Odyssey orbiter became Mars’s longest-running mission. The satellite has been orbiting Mars for 3340 days, passing the record previously set by the Mars Global Surveyor. It was Odyssey that discovered water ice under Mars’s surface, only a few months into its mission. It also monitored Mars’s radiation levels to determine the feasibility of human exploration. Although Odyssey completed its primary mission in 2004, it continues to work, monitoring long-term climate patterns and capturing images of the planet’s surface to create a high-resolution global map.

New York Times: The US Department of Energy released a report today that examines the extent to which the development and use of clean energy in the US depends on access to rare earths and other critical materials, some of which are produced abroad. The report's main conclusions, quoted from the executive summary, are that

• Several clean energy technologies—including wind turbines, electric vehicles, photovoltaic cells and fluorescent lighting—use materials at risk of supply disruptions in the short term. Those risks will generally decrease in the medium and long term.
• Clean energy technologies currently constitute about 20 percent of global consumption of critical materials. As clean energy technologies are deployed more widely in the decades ahead, their share of global consumption of critical materials will likely grow.
• Of the materials analyzed, five rare earth metals (dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium), as well as indium, are assessed as most critical in the short term. For this purpose, “criticality” is a measure that combines importance to the clean energy economy and risk of supply disruption.
• Sound policies and strategic investments can reduce the risk of supply disruptions, especially in the medium and long term.
• Data with respect to many of the issues considered in this report are sparse.

In a news story about the report, the New York Times's Keith Bradsher points out that China produces more than 90% of the world's rare earths. As if to underscore its hold on the rare-earth market, China announced yesterday that it would raise export taxes on some rare earths next year.

Science: Late last week NASA announced that it didn't know the whereabouts of NanoSail-D. The 4-kg "nanosatellite" (shown below) was designed to test the feasibility of propelling spacecraft with solar sails that unfurl in space. At this point, it's not known whether the sails failed to deploy, the spacecraft's communication equipment failed to operate, or both. NanoSail-D is one of three small probes that formed the payload of NASA's FASTSAT spacecraft.

Los Angeles Times: How do you gauge fuel economy when there's no gasoline? asks Tiffany Hsu, writing for the Los Angeles Times. In her article, Hsu details the difficulties encountered by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has had to come up with a way to rate the new hybrid cars. Traditionally, the fuel economy rating for vehicles with internal combustion engines has been calculated from emissions generated during a series of tests. Because the Nissan Leaf runs entirely on a battery, the EPA developed a miles-per-gallon-equivalent rating. Things got more complicated with the Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid plug-in that switches to gasoline when its electricity runs out; the EPA gave the Volt multiple ratings, depending on when it runs on just electricity, just gas, or both. In addition, the EPA's rating may end up sharing sticker space with those of other entities, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the automakers themselves, which may use different testing systems.

New York Times: Earlier this week, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation grilled White House and NASA officials on what some of its members perceive is reluctance on the part of the space agency to implement the congressional version of President Obama's plan for space exploration in the post-shuttle era. In the original White House plan, Constellation, the program for taking astronauts back to the Moon, was cancelled outright. In Congress's plan, which is now law, Constellation's crew capsule survives; Constellation's launcher is to be replaced by a future vehicle that should be ready for liftoff by 2016. As Kenneth Chang of the New York Times reports, the senators repeatedly sought reassurances that NASA would indeed heed the law and not try to evade or delay its provisions.

Science News: NASA's EPOXI spacecraft passed through a storm of fluffy, golf-ball-sized ice bodies as it whizzed past Comet Hartley 2 on 4 November, writes Ron Cowen in Science News. Hartley 2 is the first observed comet whose activity is powered by the sublimation of dry ice as it nears the Sun, creating jets of carbon dioxide gas that drag out particles of water-ice and dust along with it. Though the individual ice particles are thin, measuring only a few micrometers across, they clump together to form the much larger, fluffy chunks. “This whole thing looks like a snow globe that you’ve shaken,” said EPOXI scientist Peter Schultz of Brown University.

New York Times: By measuring the ratio of cosmic alpha particles to cosmic antialpha particles, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer could help to answer one of the most puzzling and fundamental questions in physics: Why is there more matter than antimatter in the universe? In February, if all goes to schedule, the space shuttle Endeavour will carry the AMS on its final flight to the International Space Station, where the instrument will begin its experimental run. Dennis Overbye of the New York Times profiles the experiment and its inventor, MIT's Sam Ting.

Science: A committee convened by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and chaired by John Casani of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has issued its report into NASA's successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope. The report estimates that the spacecraft's cost, originally put at $5 billion, could rise by as much as $1 billion. To accommodate the overrun, NASA might have to postpone JWST's 2014 launch to 2017. But spending an additional $1 billion in those three years would adversely affect other NASA missions. Yudhijit Bhattacharjee and Andrew Lawler's report in Science ends with the paragraph:

A senior NASA official, who did not wish to be named, says the Casani report is not the final word on how much JWST will end up costing or when it will be ready for launch. The report, he says, will be only one of a number of inputs that NASA will consider in drafting a budgetary plan for completing the project.

SPACE.com: New research shows that not only does space travel weaken bones but the effects can last for a year or more after astronauts return to Earth. Humans develop strong bones particularly in their hips and legs due to Earth’s gravity. Study leader Shreyasee Amin, an associate professor at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and colleagues have found that in the microgravity of space those bones in particular tend to become weaker and remain weaker for some time even after the astronauts landed back on Earth. Amin and colleagues present their results today at the American College of Rheumatology annual scientific meeting in Atlanta.

Business Week: By the end of 2011 NASA plans to have launched its last three space shuttles; the first, Discovery, is scheduled to launch tomorrow. In a news feature for Business Week, Paul Barrett examines the shuttles' imminent retirement, from a mainly economic perspective. Layoffs at the Kennedy Space Center, the shuttles' base in Florida, will be severe:

The Kennedy head count—civil servants and contractors—will fall from 15,000 in 2009 to 7,000 or lower. Nearly all the cuts will affect private sector workers; the 2,100 direct NASA employees currently are not targeted for layoffs. Overall, the Space Center workforce earns an average annual wage of $75,000, compared with $47,000 "outside of the gate."

Economically, things will get worse in the recession-hit towns where shuttle workers live. And because NASA has spread its workforce in centers around the country, the impact of the shuttle's retirement will be felt in California, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah, as well as in Florida.

Guardian: NASA's Epoxi mission will sweep past the Hartley 2 comet on Thursday and take detailed measurements and images. Comets are formed from space rubble and vary in size from a few hundred meters in diameter to tens of kilometers. "Comets were once thought to be roughly similar in shape and structure," said Mark Bailey of Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland. "But the more probes that we fly past them, the more differences we find." Because scientists believe that water and complex organic materials detected on comets may have played a key role in the evolution of life on Earth, they are interested in studying them close up. Hartley 2 was also in the news last week. Astronomers attributed two meteors to the comet, which, being small, is not expected to shed such fireballs. The images below of the comet come from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Nature: To justify its existence, NASA's next big space-based optical observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, must significantly outperform its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. Great leaps forward in performance are not cheap. From its perch at the second Lagrangian point 1.5 million km from Earth, JWST will observe young distant galaxies with a mirror that is three times wider than Hubble's and with detectors that must be kept no warmer than 50 degrees above absolute zero. Launch is scheduled for 2014. Before then, NASA's engineers and scientists are conducting extensive tests and reviews to ensure that the expensive telescope will work as planned. And, as Nature's Lee Billings reports, JWST's price tag, which stands at $5 billion, is so great that it's starving or delaying other missions.

Physics World: At its meeting yesterday, the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) recommended that the US Department of Energy should fund a plan to extend the lifetime of Fermilab's Tevatron proton–antiproton collider. The plan, devised by Fermilab's director Pier Oddone, calls for an additional $35 million a year to fund the operation of the collider through 2014. In making its recommendation, the panel had to weigh the loss of funding to other particle physics experiments against the advantage of the Tevatron possibly detecting the Higgs boson ahead of its rival, the Large Hadron Collider.

Wall Street Journal: The Moon has a lot more water than previously believed, according to analyses of NASA data published today in five research papers in the journal Science. Last year NASA crashed a rocket into a lunar crater and then used a pair of orbiting satellites to analyze the debris created by the impact. The discovery could be important for such future projects as establishing a manned lunar base from which to launch other interplanetary missions. Water’s components, hydrogen and oxygen, are key ingredients for rocket fuel, and the oxygen can be used to make breathable air.

Nature: Despite the problems experienced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) over the past year—2009's "Climategate" when e-mails were leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the UK and the revelations concerning mistakes in the most recent IPCC climate assessment report—beleaguered IPCC chairman and economist Rajendra Pachauri managed to retain his position. After the IPCC’s plenary meeting last week, Ottmar Edenhofer, cochair of the IPCC's working group on climate-change mitigation, said, "Governments made it very clear that they expect him to make changes." To restore some of the IPCC's lost credibility, members agreed on new guidelines on the use of non-peer-reviewed literature