The Obama administration has terminated the Microbiological Data Program created under President George W. Bush and his 2001 Food Safety Initiative.

During its run, MDP conducted 80 percent of all federal produce testing for pathogens like Salmonella and Listeria. They conducted tests on thousands of samples of fruits and 
vegetables each year, gathered from 11 distribution centers.

The group was officially shut down on December 31st but had been winding down since November. The Obama administration had asked Congress to eliminate funding for it and the Republican Congress, stunned there was something they could stop funding, dutifully complied.  

Writing in JAMA, a group of researchers say the way to curb gun violence is to treat guns as a public health awareness issue, the way we do awareness campaigns against cigarettes and drunk driving.

So media, celebrities and the public should "de-glorify" guns the same way, though the efficacy of the campaigns they list is suspect.  In movies, directors now make sure the edgy, rebellious person smokes, in order to show how edgy and rebellious they are. And marijuana use is actually being encouraged in lots of the same states that ban cigarettes in bars despite billions of dollars in awareness campaigns about the dangers of drugs.

Researchers at Imperial College have released a video game that was written in part by what they call an Artificial Intelligence (AI) "machine" named Angelina, which is a clever acronym for "A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named Angelina".

Their latest effort, released last month, is called "A Puzzling Present" (download it here). Players have to help Santa collect gifts on 30 Christmas levels with holly and other things getting in the way.

Since 2007, on too many occasions to count, I have noted that by being overwhelmingly partisan scientists in academia are putting themselves at risk.

Not financially. If funding mattered, all scientists would vote Republican - when it comes to funding, Republicans have spent more than Democrats on science even in the period when science, and all academia, lurched far to the left. Republicans do not cut funding because scientists vote Democrat.

"Cash for clunkers", President Obama's 2009 Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), was hailed as a huge success by the administration and environmentalists - but it was really just another government boondoggle. Not as expensive as $72 billion wasted in pet energy projects but still a high-profile case of an administration engaged in the Scientization of Politics - prettying up a world view by pretending it is reality-based.

In the New York Times, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman