Intel founder chips in with 'largest ever' gift to academic world

San Francisco

The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has pocketed US$600 million from microchip billionaire Gordon Moore and his wife Betty, an award that the institute claims is the largest donation ever made to an academic centre.

Half of the donation came directly from the couple themselves, and the other half was channelled through the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a San Francisco-based grant-making organization established by them a year ago.

Gordon Moore earned a PhD in chemistry from Caltech in 1954 and was one of the founders of computer-chip manufacturer Intel in 1968. He has made several previous donations to Caltech and is a long-standing member of its board of trustees.

→ http://www.moore.org

All goes swimmingly for puffer-fish genome

London

A draft sequence of the puffer-fish genome has been completed by an international consortium in just one year.

Fugu rubripes has a repertoire of genes that is very similar to that of humans, but it crams them into a genome that is one-eighth the size of ours. The similarities should help to speed up the discovery of genes and their key controlling sequences in the human genome. “These sequences are some of the most exciting targets for therapeutics,” says Greg Elgar of the UK Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Centre near Cambridge, a member of the consortium.

The draft sequence could also help to settle disputes over the total number of genes in the human genome, as the compact nature of the Fugu genome makes counting genes relatively easy. The rough sequence, which covers 99% of Fugu's DNA, contains between 35,000 and 40,000 genes. The International Fugu Genome Consortium plans to publish an analysis early next year, and will make all sequence information freely available.

→ http://fugu.jgi-psf.org

NASA in orbit over Mars Odyssey success

Washington

NASA officials breathed a sigh of relief last week as the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft successfully entered into martian orbit. The agency lost contact with Odyssey's two predecessors on its Mars exploration programme — a lander and an orbiter, which were valued at a total of US$290 million — after they arrived at the red planet.

After entering its orbit around Mars, Odyssey sent back radio signals reporting its success, and indicated that its 'aerobraking' technology was working. The technology, developed for interplanetary travel and tested on NASA's Magellan mission to Venus in the early 1990s, will allow Odyssey to use drag from the martian atmosphere over the next three months to slowly bring itself into a lower orbit 400 km above the planet's surface.

Spectrometers and imagers on the $300 million craft will then record the geology and climate of the planet, and look for water. The spacecraft will also provide communications relays for future US and European lander missions scheduled for launch in 2003.

Europe sets target date for Kyoto Protocol

Munich

The European Commission has asked the 15 member states of the European Union (EU) for a ratification date of 14 June 2002 for the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases, and has put forward proposals on how this should be done. Details of the protocol, including the right to trade emissions targets with less industrialized countries, will be discussed this week as climate-change talks resume in Marrakech, Morocco.

Once adopted, the protocol will commit the EU to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 8% from the 1990 level by 2012. Under the EU proposals, reductions for member states vary sharply according to how easy it is for the states to cut their emissions. Germany and Britain are asked to reduce their emissions by 21% and 12.5%, respectively; France need not make any change from its 1990 levels; and Greece is allowed an increase of 25%.

“We hope this proposal will encourage other countries to ratify soon so that the protocol can enter into force before the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September next year,” says Margot Wallström, the European commissioner for the environment. The proposal has been forwarded to all member states for approval.

Neuroscientist lined up for top job at AAAS

Washington

Alan Leshner: stepping in as chief executive officer at the AAAS. Credit: NIDA

Alan Leshner is to take over the reins of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) when the current chief executive officer Richard Nicholson retires next month after 12 years in the job.

Neuroscientist Leshner, who is 57, has been head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health since 1994.

The AAAS is best known as the publisher of the weekly journal Science, and for its annual meeting dedicated to the public understanding of science. The non-profit-making society, which has an annual budget of approximately US$80 million, also supports programmes aimed at improving science education and influencing science policy.

→ http://www.aaas.org

Imaging network gives brain scientists a head start

San Diego

The University of California, San Diego, has won a $20 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health to build a high-performance computer network for neuroscientists.

The network will allow researchers at different universities to share digital images of the brain generated using different techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging and in vivo three-dimensional microscopy. Such techniques allow the shape of functioning brains to be visualized.

The project, known as the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN), will initially be made up of two sub-projects. Mouse BIRN will allow sharing of data on mouse models of multiple sclerosis and dopamine disorders. The other sub-project, Brain Morphology BIRN, will contain data from human studies, with an initial focus on depression and Alzheimer's disease.