Policy | Events | Research | Business | People | Facilities | Awards | Trend watch | Coming up

POLICY

CDC safety group In the wake of biosafety mishaps in the past two months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has formed an external laboratory-safety working group. The group will advise the agency’s head and its director of laboratory safety on corrective actions for the CDC’s labs. It will also identify training and oversight needs, and review biosafety protocols. The group’s first meeting will be in early August. See pages 507 and 515 for more.

Polish space agency Poland is set to create a national space agency, even though it is already a member of the European Space Agency (ESA). On 25 July, its parliament made the decision to establish the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), which will oversee space research and — the country hopes — give Polish researchers easier access to ESA projects and make it simpler to set up space-related companies and research centres.

Credit: Giant Magellan Telescope

EVENTS

Giant telescope gets boost from Brazil Brazil’s São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) confirmed on 22 July that it will join the US$880-million Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), to be located at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert, Chile. The 25-metre instrument is one of three competing megatelescopes to be built in the next decade. FAPESP will contribute $40 million to the project, opening up access to researchers from the state of São Paulo. But the foundation hopes to share the costs with the Ministry of Science and Technology of Brazil to allow astronomers from across the country to access the telescope when it begins operations in 2021. See go.nature.com/k3tsgv for more.

Ebola outbreak The largest recorded outbreak of Ebola virus has spread to Nigeria, which has reported its first case of the disease: an aeroplane passenger died in Lagos on 25 July after travelling from Liberia. The World Health Organization says that 672 people have so far died in the outbreak, which is concentrated in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. See page 520 for more.

Long drive on Mars NASA’s Opportunity rover has clocked up more than 40 kilometres on Mars — breaking the record for long-distance driving on an extraterrestrial world. On 28 July, the space agency announced that Opportunity had surpassed the 1973 record held by the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 Moon rover. Experts had been unsure exactly how far the Soviet rover had travelled (see Nature 498, 284–285; 2013), but new calculations involving satellite imagery of its tracks show that it went about 39 kilometres. Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 and has been driving ever since.

RESEARCH

Malaria vaccine London-based pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline has asked the European Medicines Agency to review its malaria vaccine, which would be the world’s first, under a programme designed to license medicines for use primarily outside Europe. A study published on 29 July indicates that the vaccine is 45% effective in preventing infections for 18 months after its administration in children aged 5–17 months (The RTS,S Clinical Trials Partnership PLoS Med. 11, e1001685; 2014).

Agriculture body The US Department of Agriculture announced the creation of the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research on 23 July. Agricultural researchers have long called for such as body as a source of extra funding; it will focus on a variety of issues, including plant and animal health and nutrition. Congress has provided US$200 million for the non-profit foundation, to be matched by external donations. The body will be guided by a board of 15 directors.

Nuclear risks The US nuclear-power industry must be more proactive in seeking and acting on information about potential threats to nuclear plants, concludes a report released on 24 July by the US National Research Council. The report to the US Congress sought lessons from the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. The industry, it says, should incorporate more modern risk assessments of earthquakes, tsunamis and solar storms that could cut plants’ electrical power, a key factor in the Fukushima accident.

BUSINESS

Drugs repurposed UK scientists will gain access to experimental drugs that have been deprioritized by pharmaceutical companies, the government said on 21 July. The UK Medical Research Council (MRC) will fund projects to develop treatments from as-yet-unnamed compounds from seven companies. The programme follows a previous MRC-funded scheme to repurpose experimental drugs that AstraZeneca had suspended from development.

Credit: Scripps Res. Inst.

PEOPLE

Scripps resignation Michael Marletta (pictured) is stepping down as president of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, according to a 21 July statement from the institute. Marletta’s plan for a US$600-million merger between Scripps and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles drew faculty ire and a vote of no confidence this month. Scripps faces a $21-million budget deficit. See go.nature.com/cvozom for more.

Lab chief resigns The head of a laboratory in which employees may have been accidentally exposed to live anthrax has resigned. Michael Farrell stepped down as director of the Bioterror Rapid Response and Advanced Technology lab in Atlanta, Georgia, on 22 July. The lab, part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had failed to inactivate anthrax spores properly before sending them to labs with lower biocontainment levels. Farrell had already been reassigned from his post following the incident, which happened in June.

FACILITIES

Rocket shortfall NASA is short of money to carry out the first flight test of its heavy-lift rocket planned for December 2017, according to a report released on 23 July by the US Government Accountability Office. The space agency expects to spend nearly US$12 billion developing the vehicles for the first launch; the report says it would need some $400 million more. NASA engineers are gearing up to test parts of the rocket engines — modified from the space-shuttle programme — at a centre in Mississippi.

Telescope reprieve On 21 July NASA announced a two-year reprieve for the Spitzer Space Telescope, which had been scheduled for shutdown following a review of the agency’s astrophysics mission priorities in May. Spitzer observes planets, stars and galaxies at infrared wavelengths. It launched in 2003 and, after running out of coolant in 2009, began observing at slightly higher and less-optimal temperatures. Because of its Earth-trailing orbit, it can observe objects that other telescopes cannot, such as small asteroids following the planet.

Hawaii green light Hawaii’s planned Thirty Meter Telescope has cleared its last major legal hurdle, and construction can now begin on Mauna Kea. The state’s Board of Land and Natural Resources gave approval for the telescope observatory to sublease the site from the University of Hawaii on 25 July. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which advocates for the interests of native Hawaiians, who consider the mountain holy, had contested the arrangement in a petition filed on 7 July. It later withdrew the petition.

AWARDS

Blavatnik awards The three winners of this year’s US Blavatnik National Awards were announced on 28 July. Neurobiologist Rachel Wilson from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was recognized for mapping the circuitry of fruit-fly brains. Adam Cohen, also from Harvard, won for his advances in imaging neural activity in real time. Marin Soljačić of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge was rewarded for his work on electromagnetic phenomena, including wireless battery charging. Each person receives US$250,000 — the largest unrestricted cash prize for early-career scientists. The prizes are awarded annually by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences.

Credit: Source: Chronicle/The New York Times

TREND WATCH

The New York Times now writes about ‘climate change’ much more than it does about ‘global warming’ — a move that may reflect a shift in reporting emphasis away from temperature and towards effects such as rising sea levels and ocean acidification. Roger Pielke Jr, a science-policy expert at the University of Colorado Boulder, spotted the trend using the newspaper’s Chronicle tool, released for public use on 23 July. The 2009 peak for ‘climate change’ coincides with the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen.

COMING UP

31 July The New York Academy of Sciences holds a symposium in New York city to honour the work of Marshall Nirenberg, who was awarded a Nobel prize in 1968 for his part in deciphering the genetic code and protein synthesis. One session will see experts discuss legal, ethical and social issues related to applications of the genetic code. go.nature.com/wq1ong