News in a nutshell

Negativity, paperwork at NSF
National Science Foundation Director Arden Bement is not optimistic that the funding agency will receive the president's request for a $552 million (8 percent) budget increase in 2011. "I won't be surprised to see us operating under a continuing resolution" until well after the November congressional elections, linkurl:Bement told ScienceInsider.;http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/nsf-director-gloomy-about-2011-b.html "In fact, anything else would be a surprise."

Image: Wikimedia commons

In other NSF news, those who choose to apply for the agency's current $6.9 billion in funding will soon need to detail a data management plan -- part of a wider effort to emphasize the importance of community access to data, linkurl:ScienceInsider reported.;http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/nsf-to-ask-every-grant-applicant.html Bad economy is good for planet
The silver lining of the economic downturn? It may be good for the ozone lining, it turns out. The linkurl:US Energy Information Administration reported;http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/environment/emissions/carbon/ that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States dropped by 405 million metric tons (7 percent) in 2009, in part due to less energy use by industry, the result of the bad economy. This is the largest reduction in CO₂ output since records started being kept in 1949. Latest word on weed
There's a new type of synthetic marijuana, and it's currently legal -- although perhaps not for long. At least one state is vying for the illegalization of the increasingly popular substance known as K2 or Spice. Lately, K2 is a hot topic for bloggers and teens alike. A linkurl:February post;http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2010/02/synthetic_marijuana_k2_spice_j.php by DrugMonkey linkurl:(which remains quite popular);http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2010/05/synthetic_marijuana_k2_spice_j_1.php explained the technical reasons why the substance was legal, and its use among partying teenagers is on the rise, linkurl:according to CNN.;http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/23/synthetic.marijuana/index.html

Image: Wikimedia commons,
HighInBC

In other marijuana news, last week, the District of Columbia linkurl:approved the use of medical marijuana;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05marijuana.html?ref=health (the real stuff) for people with chronic illnesses, such as HIV, glaucoma, and cancer. Climate investigation challenges academic freedom
When Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli investigated University of Virginia climate scientist linkurl:Michael Mann;http://www.meteo.psu.edu/%7Emann/Mann/ (now at Penn State University) for allegedly defrauding taxpayers by falsifying data, he challenged academic freedom on a much broader scale, according to the university's Executive Council of the Faculty Senate. Cuccinelli's attack on Mann's work, which demonstrates the human influence on global warming, sends "a chilling message to scientists engaged in basic research involving Earth's climate and indeed to scholars in any discipline," Faculty Senate Chair Ann B. Hamric linkurl:said in a statement.;http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/UVa%20Faculty%20Senate.pdf "Such actions directly threaten academic freedom and, thus, our ability to generate the knowledge upon which informed public policy relies." (Thanks to linkurl: The Washington Post;http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/05/u-va_faculty_senate_cuccinelli.html for this story.) Duesberg was warned
When AIDS-denialist Peter Duesberg submitted his controversial paper to Medical Hypotheses, he had already been told that he could face misconduct charges if the paper was published, linkurl:according to Nature.;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100504/full/news.2010.210.html The warning came from a reviewer who read the paper when Duesberg first submitted it to the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (JAIDS) . It explicitly cautioned that "cherry-picking" results and the "obvious conflict of interest" of one of the paper's co-authors could result in charges of misconduct. Still, after its rejection from JAIDS, Duesberg submitted the paper to Medical Hypotheses, which does not employ a traditional peer-review system. As warned, the University of California, Berkeley, launched an investigation of misconduct last month, and the paper has also gotten the journal linkurl:into a heap of trouble,;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57121/ as well. Clarification: While climate scientist Michael Mann worked at the University of Virginia from 1999 to 2005, he is currently a professor at Penn State University.
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:Journal editor facing axe;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57204/
[8th March 2010]*linkurl:Radical journal's fate at risk;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57121/
[27th January 2010]*linkurl:NSF slaps school over grant;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57087/
[20th January 2010]*linkurl:Cannabinoid controversy;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/55969/
[10th September 2009]