The Mother Of Inquiries: Parliamentary CRU Report

The UK's House of Commons is often called the mother of parliaments. In reality that would be Tynwald, the parliament of the Isle of Man.  However: a cross-party commitee, the House of Commons Science and Technology Commitee, has just published its report on the CRU affair.  The two pdfs, free to download, come to about 2.7Mb of data.

31 March 2010  Eighth Report   HC 387-I 387i.pdf and 387ii.pdf

The big news in biotech this week is the court ruling against Myriad Genetics and gene patents. As Genomics Law Report discusses, this was an overwhelming win for the plaintiffs (which included the ACLU and various research and patients' organizations). The judge issued a summary judgement, which means 1) that both sides of the case agreed on the basic facts, and 2) the law was judged to be overwhelmingly on the plaintiff's side:

I forget how I ran across this link, but this blogger reflects on how six years of blogging has helped his work as a political analyst:

Climategate is being evaluated by several committees. The truth about transparency of climate data and scientific methods is supposed to be revealed after analyses of the hacked emails from University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

Blindsnakes are one of the few groups of organisms that inhabited Madagascar when it broke from India about 100 million years ago, and continental drift had a profound impact on how the animals evolved, says a new study published in Biology Letters.

Called scolecophidians, the creatures comprise about 260 different species and form the largest group of the world's worm-like snakes. These burrowing animals typically are found in southern continents and tropical islands, but occur on all continents except Antarctica. They have reduced vision -- which is why they are called "blind" -- and they feed on social insects including termites and ants.

Despite understanding the long term benefits of eating healthy and exercising,  people often forgo these potential gains for the immediate satisfaction of a big mac and a night of cable TV.

What makes people go for the quick reward even though they know they'll be worse off for doing so?

According to a new study in Judgment and Decision Making, it's because people have to repeatedly feel the benefits of long term decisions, like eating healthy and exercising, to fully appreciate them. Simply having complete information about their choices isn't enough.

Adults with a history of cocaine use face an increased risk of HIV as a result of engaging in unprotected sex. And a new study in Journal of Child and Adolescent Substance Abuse suggests that the link may hold true for adolescents as well.

Researchers found that teens in psychiatric care who used crack and/or cocaine at least once were six times more likely to use condoms inconsistently, which was defined as "sometimes," "never" or "rarely."

The findings suggest that crack cocaine appears to have more of an influence on risky teen behaviors than other factors, like alcohol and marijuana use, which are more routinely incorporated into adolescent HIV prevention interventions.

Our telescopes show the Milky Way galaxy only as it appears from one vantage point: our solar system. B using a simple but powerful technique, astronomers have seen an exploding star or supernova from new several angles.

The supernova left behind the gaseous remnant Cassiopeia A. The supernova's light washed over the Earth about 330 years ago. But light that took a longer path, reflecting off clouds of interstellar dust, is just now reaching us. This faint, reflected light is what the astronomers have detected.

Scientists have fine-tuned computer models that can indicate when forest "carbon sinks" actually become net carbon generators instead.

The effort, detailed in Global Change Biology, will help pinpoint the effectiveness of trees in offsetting carbon releases that contribute to higher atmospheric temperatures and global climate change.

Since U.S. forests absorb and store about 750 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, managing forest resources to optimize carbon sequestration is essential to mitigating the effects of climate change, the authors say.

Scientists have developed a non-viral, synthetic nanoparticle carrier to improve and save the sight of mice with retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disease characterized by progressive vision loss and eventual blindness, for which there is no cure.

The researchers say the findings are based on "a clinically relevant treatment paradigm" and may one day lead to a gene replacement therapy for human retinal degeneration.

The research is detailed in The FASEB Journal.

Mice with with the retinal degeneration slow (Rds) gene, which causes retinitis pigmentosa, received one of three types of "treatments:" nanoparticles containing the normal copy of the Rds gene, the normal gene alone, or saline solution.