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Science Progress: When Mary Ann Mason was graduate dean at the University of California, Berkeley, a frequent question she heard from women graduate students was "when is a good time to have a baby?"

For women in academic science careers, the conventional wisdom was that waiting until she had achieved tenure was the best approach.

In 1985, the national average age of scientists winning tenure was 36. But by 2003, it was over 39.

"So it's increasingly poor advice to wait until you get to tenure," she says.

Her belief is that women researchers should be able to have children whenever they want, and her new report, co-authored with colleagues Marc Goulden and Karie Frasch, explains the work-family policies that are driving women out of the academic pipeline.

Their data, taken from extensive surveys of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers within the University of California system, shows that work-life issues, and particularly decisions about when to get married and when to have children, account for the most significant loss of academic scientists in the pipeline between PhD and tenured positions.

"The leak is almost entirely, or least due primarily to family formation," said Mason, who is currently a professor and co-faculty director of the Berkeley Law Center on Health, Economic, and Family Security at the UC Berkeley.

Science Progress has a podcast discussing these issues with the authors of the study.

Nature News: The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), near Gakona, Alaska, has for twenty years used radio waves to probe Earth's magnetic field and ionosphere.

One of the most visible results of the experiments—since the facility upgraded its transmission power output from 1 to 3.6 megawatts—is that they can create lights in the sky that are similar to auroras.

The technique works by using the high-frequency radio waves to accelerate electrons in the atmosphere, increasing the energy of their collisions and thereby creating a glow.

In February last year, HAARP unexpectedly managed to induce a strange bullseye pattern in the night sky. "This is the really exciting part—we've made a little artificial piece of ionosphere," said US Air Force Research Laboratory physicist Todd Pedersen to Nature's Naomi Lubick.

APS News: Restrictions imposed by the US Air Force on the use of lasers are significantly diminishing the utility of adaptive optics for studying the cosmos, according to a number of astronomers.

ReviewJournal.com: Managers of the Nevada Test Site are ready to write a new chapter in the history of the nation's nuclear weapons proving grounds.

They hope the Rhode Island-size test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will become home this fall to a new National Center for Nuclear Security, where experts on treaty verification, counterterrorism and nonproliferation will huddle to chart the nation's course for achieving national goals.

The center "will probably be the biggest thing at the site in many decades," said Stephen M. Younger, president of National Security Technologies, NSTec, the managing and operating contractor at the Nevada Test Site.

Nevada Site Office Manager Stephen Mellington said the center will play a pivotal role in supporting arms reduction treaties and "other nonproliferation activities we're going to be doing with the intelligence communities."

New Scientist: The US government is launching a competition, which will run until the end of 2010, to find the best way of tracking pieces of junk down to the size of a pool ball. Three aerospace companies—Northrop Grumman, Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon—have each been awarded $30 million by US Air Force Space Command to design a "space fence" that will constantly report the motion of all objects 5 centimetres wide and larger in medium and low-Earth orbits.

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Science News: Hundreds of high-resolution satellite photos of the Arctic sea ice taken during the past 10 years should be immediately declassified and released to the scientific research community, the National Research Council reported on July 15. Shortly after, the US Geological Survey made about a thousand of the images available to the public through the Global Fiducials Library.

“Most people from the scientific community are not aware that these images have been collected,” says Stephanie Pfirman, chair of the NRC committee that wrote the report. “They’ll be very excited to see these results.”

Washington Post: Federal investigators at the GAO say the next generation radiation detectors—that are scheduled to be bought by the Department of Homeland Security—are only marginally better at detecting hidden nuclear material in cargo containers than monitors already at US ports, but would cost more than twice as much.

The monitors now in use can detect the presence of radiation, but they cannot distinguish between threatening and nonthreatening material. Radioactive material can be found naturally in ceramics and kitty litter, but would be of no use in making a bomb, for instance.

The DHS has said the new machines it is developing can distinguish between kitty litter and dangerous radioactive material and produce fewer false alarms than the current ones.

The new one are also better at detecting lightly shielded material. But the machines perform at about the same level when detecting radiological and nuclear materials hidden in a lead box or casing, the most likely way a terrorist would try to sneak the materials into this country.

OrlandoSentinel: With a White House–ordered review of its next-generation Constellation rocket program just weeks away, NASA faces some unwelcome news: Key milestones for the agency's Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule are falling further behind schedule because of design flaws and technical challenges.

An important test of the Orion's emergency escape system that was supposed to happen last year will not come off before November and could slip further.

A review of the proposed fixes for the violent shaking at liftoff that has plagued development of the Ares I has been delayed from this summer to December.

Even the first test flight of the Ares design—a mock-up rocket called the Ares I-X—has been moved from April to July to August and now possibly September.

Los Angeles Times: A decade-long effort to refurbish thousands of aging nuclear warheads built more than 20-years-ago has run into serious technical problems that have forced delays.

The $200-million-a-year refurbishment program involves a type of warhead known as the W76, which is used on the Navy's Trident missile system and makes up more than half of the deployed warheads in the US stockpile.

In February, the Energy department's National Nuclear Security Administration announced that the "first refurbished W76 nuclear warhead had been accepted into the US nuclear weapons stockpile by the Navy."

But no delivery was ever made. The warhead is still in pieces at the Energy Department's Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas, according to an engineer at the facility.

The hold-up in deploying the warhead is not connected to any missing expertise regarding how to build a nuclear device, but how to manufacture one of the other warhead components. Delays in the program could extend the refurbishment program by another 10 years.

NPR: A hundred years ago, the Welsbach and General Gas Mantle factories kept the lights on across the country by making a popular precursor to the light bulb called a mantle, but they left a toxic, radioactive legacy behind in Camden and Gloucester City, NJ. As part of the economic stimulus package, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to spend more than $25 million to accelerate the cleanup at the Welsbach and General Gas Mantle Superfund site. It's one of 50 contaminated properties getting injections of cash totaling $600 million from the recovery funds. That's more than double what the EPA usually spends on these projects each year.

Physics Today: Herbert Frank York (24 November 1921-19 May 2009), an eminent nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, provided decades of advice to government on science and arms control issues, and founding chancellor of the University of California, San Diego (1961-1964) died on Tuesday at Thornton Hospital in San Diego after a long illness. He was 87.

UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said, "Herb was not only a leader of UC San Diego, he also was a world leader and had a global impact. During his exceptional, long-standing career, he was the 'first' in many of the positions he held. Herb York made this campus and this world a better place. We will forever be grateful for his leadership and vision."

Harold Brown, Secretary of Defense under President Carter and one of York's closest friends, said, "Herb York's life was an unsurpassed record of achievement in science, education and national security. He played the leading role in creating a series of innovative and crucial institutions--a nuclear laboratory, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, a UC campus, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. In the national government, in California, and in international meetings and negotiations, he was dedicated to peace while being realistic about security needs. Beyond the public record, all of us who knew him as a friend appreciated his omnivorous interest in the world around him, dedication to his family, great sense of humor and zest for life; for us, the loss is both intensified and redeemed by our recognition of the model he provided."

"Herb and I have been friends since 1948 and our lives have been intertwined ever since," said Marvin Goldberger, former dean of UC San Diego's Division of Natural Sciences and former president of Caltech. "By the time Herb was only 28 years old, he had been appointed director of the Livermore Laboratory. That was the start of Herb's career of public service at the highest levels of government and academe. He was an effective voice for science within the White House and enormously effective as the first chancellor of UC San Diego."

Mark Thiemens, dean of UC San Diego's Division of Physical Sciences, noted "Herb is one of the most remarkable and influential scientists I have ever met. Whenever I pick up a book on the history of science policy in the United States, a history of the Manhattan Project, or a history of fundamental physics, Herb is featured prominently. He played an integral role in creating our nation's science agencies--the NSF, NASA and the Department of Energy--as well as an integral role in developing UC San Diego into a world renowned university."

Speaking for the family, York's oldest daughter, Rachel, said, "We are so grateful that Dad died in the embrace of the university he loved so very much, and was so very proud of."

UC's long association with York

York first came to the UC system in 1943 when he was recruited to join the staff of the University of California Radiation Laboratory (UCRL) at Berkeley. Under the auspices of the UCRL, York was dispatched to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project, where a group of scientists designed the first atomic bomb - the bomb detonated over Hiroshima, Japan.

In a memoir, York wrote that his contribution to the bomb's development had not been all that profound, but that he still felt triumphant: "Not only did we complete the project, but we ended the war."

Ending the war, or better yet, not starting one, was eventually to become a cause York advocated the better part of his life.

York received his B.S. and M.S. degrees, both in the same year, at the University of Rochester. At the end of World War II, York returned to UC Berkeley as a graduate student, received a doctorate in physics in 1949, stayed on as research physicist, then joined the physics department in 1951 as an assistant professor. Life in academia was short-lived, as once again he was recruited to a more urgent mission. From July 1952, to March 1958, York initiated and directed the UC Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, overseeing research programs which included development of the hydrogen bomb and other classified programs under the sponsorship of the Atomic Energy Commission.

In March of 1958, York became the first chief scientist of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon, Washington, DC In December of that year, President Eisenhower appointed him the first director of Defense Research and Engineering, serving as civilian supervisor of missile and space research.

It was during these duties in the 1950s that York's belief that ending a war was done most effectively by not starting one sharpened, and turned him emphatically to arms control and to a nuclear test ban as a first step. "I was the only senior official who thought it (arms control and nuclear test ban) was a great idea," York later said. "Others were tolerant of it, but the majority thought it was really dumb."

York returned to academia in 1961 when UC established a campus in La Jolla. UC President Clark Kerr turned to York as someone with a solid record of administration and good rapport with the Board of Regents. York was named chancellor 17 February 1961, and assumed office in July that year.

In his slightly more than three years as UCSD chancellor, York worked with faculty committees planning to expand the campus. Though pleased with the tangible progress, York was less than gratified by the bureaucratic system of committee-based decision making and resigned in November of 1964 to return to teaching as a professor of physics, later chairing the Physics Department and serving as dean of graduate studies, 1969-1970.

An interest in arms control

York also was continuing in various capacities for the US government. He served as a member of the first General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament, 1962-69; headed the US delegation to a UNESCO conference in 1965 on the application of science and technology; served as a member of the US delegation to Soviet-American Arms Control Talks, 1978-79, and served as US ambassador and chief negotiator for the Comprehensive Test Ban negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, 1979-81.

Opposition in both the United States and the Soviet Union scuttled the Geneva negotiations, and York later related his disappointment, but not surprise, saying that at that time: "The world situation just wouldn't support it."

In 1969, York started a long association with Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs, by attending his first private meeting with Soviet counterparts to discuss arms control issues. "It is truly no understatement to say that Herb was one of the giants of the American national security and arms control communities," says Pugwash Executive Diretor Jeffrey Boutwell, "and few people embodied as he did the highest standards of intellectual rigor and passionate engagement for seeking what was best for our country and the world community."

Sandy Butcher, the official Pugwash historian, agrees by pointing to a 1971 quote from York, "[O]ur final goal must remain the ideal of general and complete disarmament.... Any reasonable extrapolation of history tells us that if we keep all those weapons around they will be used. While no one can say how to get from the present situation all the way to total nuclear disarmament, it is clear that throwing weapons away heads us in the right direction and building more weapons, be they MIRVs, ABMs, or SS-9s, heads us in the wrong direction. We have fussed too much and too long about fine structure. We must begin to focus on directions rather than details." (A Little Arms Control Can be a Dangerous Thing, War/Peace Report, August/September 1971, pp. 3 - 7).

Presidential Adviser

York also was adviser to six US presidents on arms and armament, and served on the President's Science Advisory Committee and the scientific advisory boards of the Army and the Air Force.

The scholar and university administrator again served as chancellor of UC San Diego on an interim basis from 1970 to 1972. In contrast to his first term as founding chancellor, before the first students had even been accepted, York relished the short interim chancellorship made sweeter by the fact that "we had real students, and it was a real university."

Following the second chancellorship, York taught physics and served as director of the Program in Science, Technology and Public Affairs, 1973-88. In 1983 York founded and directed the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), which conducts research and seminars on conflict resolution and promotes international efforts to avoid war. In 1989 he became director emeritus.

He also served as advisor to the president of UC and the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories on the future of the nuclear labs.

Richard Atkinson, president emeritus of the University of California and former UC San Diego Chancellor, said, "Herb played a key role in the development of nuclear weapons and more importantly, in defining the nation's policy on such weapons. As the first chancellor of UC San Diego he set the standard for excellence and the university's subsequent development as a great research university. His contributions at the national level and in San Diego are truly legendary."

Among his numerous awards were:

   * The 2000 Clark Kerr Award for Distinguished Leadership in higher education, the highest honor bestowed by UC Berkeley's Academic Senate.

   * The 2000 Enrico Fermi Award for his efforts and contributions in nuclear deterrence and arms control agreements, presented by President Clinton in Washington DC The Fermi Award is the government's oldest science and technology award honoring lifetime achievement.

   * The 2000 Vannevar Bush Award for leadership in the arms control movement and work in nuclear energy, presented by the National Science Board, the policymaking arm of the National Science Foundation.

   * Also, the American Physical Society's Leo Szilard Award, 1994; the Federation of American Scientists' Public Service Award, 1993, and the Atomic Energy Commission's Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award, 1962.

York was the author of six books: Arms Control (Readings from Scientific American, 1973); The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller and Superbomb (1976); Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race (1978); Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to Geneva (1987); A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics and the Strategic Defense Initiative (1988); and Arms and the Physicist (1994).

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Sybil, whom he met at Berkeley, and three children: Rachel York, Dr. Cynthia York, David Winters, and four grandchildren.

Arrangements for a memorial service at UC San Diego are pending.

In lieu of flowers, the York family suggests donations in Herb's memory be made to the "Herb York Memorial Fund. "Donations can be made online at www.givetoucsd.ucsd.edu by indicating in the comment section Herb York Memorial Fund.

Related Links
Herbert York dies at 87; scientist and arms-control leader LA Times
Herbert York, 87, Top Nuclear Physicist Who Was Arms Control Advocate, Dies New York Times

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: For the last four years, a research team from Texas Tech University has studied the degree of radioactive contamination at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center in Iraq.

Al Tuwaitha was the center of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program. The site is in many ways historically unique: It has been used in the development of nuclear weapons; it has been bombed in repeated military campaigns; and it has been looted by civilians who in 2003 inadvertently dispersed radioactive material at and around the research site and in their own homes and villages.

Related Link
Details of Texas Tech University's Iraq research grant

Slate: Five months ago, Sheri Sangji, a young technician in a biochemistry laboratory at the University of California-Los Angeles began to transfer a tablespoon of t-butyl lithium from one container to another. T-butyl lithium is pyrophoric, meaning it ignites on contact with air, but Sheri Sangji wasn't wearing a protective lab coat--instead, she had on a flammable synthetic sweatshirt. Somehow the stuff spilled onto her clothing, and she was engulfed in flames. Sangji died from her burns 18 days later.

According to a recently completed government investigation, the fire could have been foreseen. UCLA's own safety officials had already faulted the lab on the latter issue back in October, but the problem went uncorrected.

James Kaufman, president of the Laboratory Safety Institute in Natick, Mass., estimates that accidents and injuries occur hundreds of times more frequently in academic labs than in industrial ones.

The presence of flagrant safety violations at a major research university is no surprise, says Slate's Beryl Lieff Benderly.

Since what counts in academia is publishing papers and winning grants, any change will have to start with the people who control the research money, says Benderly. Federal funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation should treat the welfare of the students, postdocs, and technicians who do the labor of American science with the same attention they afford experimental subjects and laboratory animals.

Related Physics Today article
After Serious Accident, SLAC Experiments Remain Shut Down and DOE Report Faults Lab's Safety Oversight (February 2005)

Steven Chu: Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table. What we're going to be doing is saying, let's step back. We realize that we know a lot more today than we did 25 or 30 years ago. The NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] is saying that the dry cask storage at current sites would be safe for many decades, so that gives us time to figure out what we should do for a long-term strategy. We will be assembling a blue-ribbon panel to look at the issue.

[We're] looking at reactors that have a high-energy neutron spectrum that can actually allow you to burn down the long-lived actinide waste. [Editor's note: Actinides include plutonium, which can be dangerous for 100,000 years.] These are fast neutron reactors. There's others: a resurgence of hybrid solutions of fusion fission where the fusion would impart not only energy, but again creates high-energy neutrons that can burn down the long-lived actinides.

"Leadership in science remains vital to America's economic prosperity, energy security, and global competitiveness," said Chu at a lunchtime press conference. "These projects not only provide critically needed short-term economic relief but also represent a strategic investment in our nation's future. They will create thousands of jobs and breathe new life into many local economies, while helping to accelerate new technology development, renew our scientific and engineering workforce, and modernize our nation's scientific infrastructure."

The money will mainly be directed to the 10 national laboratories run by DOE. The package also provides substantial support for both university- and DOE-based researchers, working on problems in fields ranging from particle and plasma physics to biofuels, solar energy, superconductivity, solid-state lighting, electricity storage, and materials science, among others.

The news came days after the Obama administration announced that current BP chief scientist Steve Koonin will serve as undersecretary of science at DOE. He would replace Ray Orbach once the position receives Senate confirmation.

Included among the approved projects are the following:

• $150 million to accelerate ongoing construction on the National Synchrotron Light Source-II at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York.

• $123 million for major construction, modernization, and needed decommissioning of laboratory facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL); and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

• $65 million to accelerate construction of the 12-Billion Electron Volt Upgrade of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF) in Newport News, Virginia.

• $277 million for Energy Frontier Research Centers, to be awarded on a competitive basis to universities and DOE National Laboratories across the country. These centers will accelerate the transformational basic science needed to develop plentiful and cost-effective alternative energy sources and will pursue advanced fundamental research in fields ranging from solar energy to nuclear energy systems, biofuels, geological sequestration of carbon dioxide, clean and efficient combustion, solid-state lighting, superconductivity, hydrogen research, electrical energy storage, catalysis for energy, and materials under extreme conditions.

• $90 million for other core research, providing support for graduate students, postdocs, and PhD scientists across the nation.

• $69 million to create a national scale, prototype 100-gigabit per second data network linking research centers across the nation.

• $330 million for operations and equipment at Office of Science major scientific user facilities, including ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source; the Nanoscale Science Research Centers, located at five national laboratories nationwide; the ARM Climate Research Facility; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory; and Linac Coherent Light Source at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SNAL).

In addition, the Recovery Act funding provides $125 million for needed infrastructure improvements across nine DOE national laboratories: Ames Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, LBNL, ORNL, PNNL, SNAL, and TJNAF.

Related Links
Further information

The Washington Post: The nation's nuclear weapons laboratories would be spun out of the Energy Department and become the center of an independent Agency for National Security Applications under a proposal to be released today by a bipartisan task force formed by the Stimson Center, a research organization devoted to security issues.

The New York Times: When President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus measure last Tuesday, one of the law's most surprising provisions was a 36 percent increase in the budget for the National Institutes of Health. The law gives the health institutes $10.4 billion in addition to its annual budget of $29 billion, and the new money must be allocated by September 2010 on grants and other projects that can extend no more than two years.

The law gives the National Science Foundation $2 billion in stimulus financing for research grants, and the foundation also has until September 2010 to spend the money. But the foundation will act much faster, pushing nearly all of that money out to scientists within 120 days, said Jeffrey Nesbit, an N.S.F. spokesman. (Last year, the science foundation's $6.1 billion budget included $4.8 billion for research grants; Congress has not finished work on the budget for the current fiscal year.)

The spending increase comes after six years of nearly flat research budgets at the N.I.H., the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and other agencies, and growing desperation at research universities, which depend on the agencies to underwrite much of their scientific faculty and laboratory infrastructure.

To speed the process, the science foundation will not put out any new calls for proposals from researchers, but will instead use the money to finance a higher fraction of proposals already under review and to finance old ones that were judged meritorious last year but were rejected for lack of funds.

Ars Technica: In a sign that the appointment of Steven Chu means that the DOE will not be taking a business-as-usual approach, the Department announced a series of steps that will streamline the process of using the stimulus money to get projects started.

Nature: Will the National Nuclear Security Administration leave the energy department?

Various: The FBI has released details about its case against accused researcher Bruce Ivins, who killed himself last week after being told he would be prosecuted as the prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. A number of websites have provided some analysis of the FBI's case. The Smoking Gun has collated the highlights to the prosecution's case. Meryl Nass, a noted anthrax researcher, writes on her blog Anthrax Vaccine that “What came out today was another pastiche of innuendo and circumstantial evidence, with an awful lot of holes.”

Nass raises the following main questions:

1. Ivins had just been immunized against anthrax. He was required to have yearly immunizations, and some anthrax scientists have chosen to be vaccinated every six months for safety, since the vaccine’s efficacy is weak — and Ivins had proven its weakness in several animal models. In his career he had probably received about 33 separate anthrax vaccinations.

2. Earlier in the week, anonymous officials at the FBI leaked to the press that the envelopes came from the specific post office he frequented. Today the affidavit states it is "reasonable to conclude" they were purchased in Maryland or Virginia.

3. Choosing a strain that would direct suspicion at Ivins. The perpetrator(s) were tremendously careful to leave no clues vis a vis the envelopes. For example, block lettering was used, which is the hardest to identify with handwriting analysis. Second, stamped envelopes were chosen to avoid using saliva. Third, there were no fingerprints on anything.

Why would the person(s) who took such care select an anthrax strain that would focus suspicion on himself? In 2001, strain analysis was possible. It had been discussed many times as a forensic tool for biowarfare, including in a paper Nass wrote in 1992, which Ivins had read, and in which Nass thanked him for his contributions.

4. Ivins was the “sole custodian” of the strain. But the strain was grown in 1997, and more than 100 people had access to it over that four year period. Having received a sample, or obtained it surreptitiously, they would be “custodians” of it too.

Nass also points out that the FBI report does not explain how the anthrax was weaponized, nor can explain how Ivins created it. The FBI also cannot explain how the letters were mailed from Princeton. "Either Ivins had an alibi or he didn't.... If Ivins cannot be placed in New Jersey on those dates, he is not the attacker, or he did not act alone," says Nass.

Update: 8/19/2008. The FBI release some of the evidence related to their investigation. NPR's David Kestenbaum provides some details of the case, along with New York Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and Nicholas Wade. Although some of the techniques have been reviewed, the research has yet to be independently verified by experts not associated to the case. Richard O. Spertzel, a retired microbiologist who led the United Nations’ biological weapons inspections of Iraq, told the New York Times that he remained skeptical of the bureau’s argument despite the new evidence. “It’s a pretty tenuous argument,” Spertzel said, adding that he questioned the bureau’s claim that the powder was less than military grade. Nass adds some more questions to the coverage

Nature News: Representatives of nine national space agencies signed an agreement on 24 July to create an International Lunar Network, which aims to plant a system of six or more seismic stations on the Moon.

Various: Microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins, 62, died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. He was believed to have taken a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine after the FBI told him that he was going to be indicted as part of the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks.

According to the Associated Press, prosecutors were seeking the death penalty as part of the indictment.

Ivin's lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, who has represented Ivins for the past year, issued a statement asserting Ivins' innocence.

"For more than a year, we have been privileged to represent Dr. Bruce Ivins during the investigation of the anthrax deaths of September and October of 2001," Kemp said. "We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial."

"The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation. In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his untimely death. We ask that the media respect the privacy of his family, and allow them to grieve."

Ivins worked for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, at Fort Detrick in Maryland. Ivin's was an expertise on anthrax and has been called on by the FBI to analyze the anthrax spores that were sent through the mail to media organizations and politicians shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The anthrax letters killed 5 people and sickened 17.

In 2003 Ivins received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.

According to the LA Times, which broke the story, Ivins began showing signs of “serious strain” shortly after the government’s $5.8 million settlement with Steven J. Hatfill, who for many years, was the main suspect in the case, a fact that was leaked to the press and damaged his career.

After Ivins had expressed suicidal thoughts to a therapist he was seeing to treat depression, his access to sensitive work at the government labs was curtailed, and he was subsequently hospitalized for depression.

Ivins was released from the hospital on July 24, but he was facing the prospect of forced retirement, according to a colleague, who described him as “emotionally fractured” by the government scrutiny.

USA Today published a story in 2004 on Ivins and his casual nature nature in dealing with suspect anthrax contamination in a colleague's office.

In 2003, Physics Today published some of the research connected to the investigation.

Related Physics Today articles
Technical and Policy Issues of Counterterrorism--A Primer for Physicists May 2003
National Labs Focus on Tools against Terrorism in Wake of Airliner and Anthrax Attacks January 2002

Related News Stories
Anthrax suspect dies in apparent suicide LA Times
Report: Md. Anthrax Scientist Dies in Apparent Suicide Washington Post
Scientist Suspected of Anthrax Attacks Said to Kill Himself Associated Press
Death Of Suspect In Anthrax Attacks Called Suicide NPR

Wired.com: The Pentagon's storied research and development arm turned 50 years old this year, and its birthday present appears to be another $100 million in budget cuts, according to a Defense Department document. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is having a tumultuous financial year: in June, DARPA faced a $32 million cut because it was "underexecuting", leading the agency's director, Tony Tether, to strike back by saying the Pentagon's "comptroller apparently does not believe in accountability."

Cognitive computing systems, which has previously been hit by congressional cuts, will lose another $13 million, while Network Centric Technology is sliced by $19 million. Another $18 million is being diced from biological warfare defense, and a big cut is taken out of DARPA's Electronics Technology program, which loses $26 million. The cuts also indicate that DARPA's high power fiber laser program has apparently been canceled.

Science: The US Department of Energy (DOE) will accept proposals this week for a Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), an accelerator to make fleeting nuclei never before produced outside stellar explosions. Gelbke and colleagues want to build FRIB at Michigan State's National
Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, a facility already pursuing such work with 300 employees and an annual budget of $20 million from the US National Science Foundation (NSF). But researchers from Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois also want to host the machine. Argonne is a DOE lab with a staff of 2800 and a $530 million budget. DOE says
it will decide by year's end.

Science: The Department of Defense has issued a new policy directive that's meant to resolve a 7-year dispute between the Pentagon and academic institutions over the rules governing unclassified research.

University of Delaware: Faculty in the space physics group in the Bartol Research Institute and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UD have been awarded several multi-year grants by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to conduct theoretical and observational research projects.

Physics Today: On Tuesday the House Science and Technology space and aeronautics subcommittee quickly cleared bill H.R. 6063 which orders NASA to make one extra flight to the international space station to deliver the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

AMS was without a launch vehicle after the loss of space shuttle columbia cancelled its 2009 flight. NASA had been looking at alternative launch vehicles but the large cost involved made approval unlikely (see NASA Cancels Science Flight, Ditches International Partners May 2007).

H.R. 6063, which also sets NASA's budget for 2009, adds more than $1.6 billion to the White House request. The bill increases funding for the development of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares launcher, which are currently scheduled to enter service in 2015, nearly 5 years after the last shuttle flight.

Controls put in place to reduce cost over-runs on NASA's science programs were over ruled by the subcommittee, which authorized NASA to proceed with the climate-monitoring satellite Glory, which is over budget.

The bill also demands that the next generation of Landsat satellites continue collecting thermal infrared land imagery, the compliance of which may delay a 2011 Landsat satellite launch.

The bill will now be sent to the full committee for consideration.