In the early days of January, the deep and chilly waters off the coast of Antarctica played host to a bitter confrontation between two old foes. As storm clouds rolled overhead, the crew of Japan's scientific whaling fleet found themselves battling once again with members of the environmental group Greenpeace, who had tracked them down with the intention of doing everything they could to stop their killing of whales.Videos of the encounters show the Japanese ships - two obs

More than eight months after Australia's last Chief Scientist, Robin Batterham, stepped down from the post, the government has named Jim Peacock, president of the Australian Academy of Science, as his successor. Peacock, a plant scientist, has been given a ringing endorsement from many in the research world. John Mullarvey, CEO of the Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee, for example, said he had made a strong contribution to science both nationally and internationally. ?I am sure [he] will

Science groups and universities aren't convinced by need for a European Institute of Technology

I think anyone who received last week's Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) linkurl:newsletter;http://www.esof2006.org/blog_list.php4 would have been forgiven for wondering why the main article was entitled ?What is Islamism?? ESOF is a science meeting and its emailed newsletters are presumably designed to build interest levels prior to the event. Previous editions had covered fairly routine territory?lasers, neurons, galaxies, microbes, science journalists and the origin of the universe?which made t

An urgent plea has gone out from Britain's Royal Society, calling for a ?white knight? to buy some notes written by Robert Hooke in the late 1600s and make them available to researchers. Hooke worked with Robert Boyle, coined the term 'cell' and helped rebuild London, among other things. He was an early secretary of the Royal Society and the papers in question are annotated and draft minutes from early meetings. Given all of which, it seems a shame that the Royal Society isn't in a financial

The virus has probably been killing poultry for weeks, but migratory birds are likely not to blame

Former CSIRO scientists say they have been pressured over talking about climate change

After 27 years, Australia's Lorne Conference on the Organization and Expression of the Genome witnessed a first on Sunday: a session dedicated to the joys of linkurl:epigenetics;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23011/ . The session kicked off with Carmen Sapienza from the Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecule Biology, Temple University School of Medicine, who showed using a combination of database analysis and lab work that imprinted chromosomal regions are historical hot-sp

The 18th Lorne Cancer Conference Erskine on the Beach in Lorne, Australia, closed today, but not before p53 competed with the scenery for scientists' attention. Just as the linkurl:Keystone Symposia;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23090/ are set up to allow for skiing in the afternoon, Lorne is set up to nice long break in the middle of the day during which delegates play tennis on grass courts, swim at the sweeping beach across the road or just laze on the grass in the sun. Tony Brai

A week or so ago, Ann Maree Pearce, a government cytogeneticist from Australia's island state, Tasmania, and colleagues said in a Nature news report that a nasty facial cancer affecting the Tasmanian devil population, dubbed Devil Facial Tumour Disease, was in fact an infective cell line being passed between the ferocious, foxed-sized scavengers via bites and so on. At the linkurl:18th Lorne Cancer Conference Erskine on the Beach;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23110/ in Lorne, Austra

Evidence from a trial in Germany raises fears that athletes are already misusing gene therapy

As Austria takes over the European presidency, ministers vow to find agreement on research budget