news20091209gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Carbon emissions]
Climate change report calls for passenger tax on flights to reduce CO2
Watchdog says air travel cannot continue to grow unchecked if UK's emissions targets are to be met
Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 8 December 2009 Article history

Heavy taxes on passengers and a ban on expansion at regional airports will be needed to curb Britain's insatiable appetite for air travel, a climate change report will say today .

But it will still be possible to build a third runway at Heathrow, add second runways at Stansted and Edinburgh and permit an extra 140 million journeys a year by 2050 without breaking the UK's commitment to cutting carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Committee on Climate Change.

However, that 60% increase in air travel over the next four decades will come at a cost of choking off expansion at other airports including Gatwick, Birmingham, Newcastle and Bristol.

The committee – set up under the Climate Change Act 2008 to independently advise the government on how to meet its legally binding targets – warns that the British flying boom, stoked by the emergence of Ryanair and easyJet, is unsustainable.

If the aviation industry continues to grow unchecked, passenger journeys would increase by 200% in the next 40 years, but that cannot be tolerated because carbon dioxide emitted by carriers in 2050 must not exceed 2005 levels.

"This is a very challenging target," said David Kennedy, the committee's chief executive. "Don't be deceived by the fact that demand can grow. It will have to grow by much less than if we didn't care about carbon dioxide."

Today's report says ministers must consider measures including: a carbon tax on passengers; limits on runway expansion; and restrictions on flights at existing airports. Passenger growth will have to be limited to 60% over the next four decades, compared with an increase of 130% since 1990, allowing the UK a maximum of around 370 million air travellers by 2050, from 230 million currently.

"Demand can increase, but only in a limited way," added Kennedy. The committee forecasts that unchecked airline growth would shatter emissions targets, increasing passenger numbers by 200% to 695 million per year.

Asked if fares will also have to increase in order to choke off demand, Kennedy said: "The price has to cut back some of the growth, so you do have to have rising prices."

However, the report delivers a blow to campaigners against Heathrow expansion by making the theoretical case for a third runway. According to government forecasts an expanded Heathrow could handle a further 68 million passengers a year by 2030 — more than double current demand of 67 million a year — and still fit easily within the committee's growth projections. "You can see how you can do the maths and have a third runway at Heathrow and be within the 60% limit," said Kennedy.

If projections published by the DfT this year are correct, Britain could reach the maximum permitted number of flights soon after 2030. According to DfT forecasts, adding new runways at Heathrow, Stansted and Edinburgh will be the equivalent of an extra 131.2 million journeys per year by 2030. Not only would that leave no room for new runways at Gatwick, Luton, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle and Bristol, but it would bar those airports from increasing passenger numbers beyond current levels.

Even with an anticipated carbon price of £200 per tonne passed on to fares, the creation of a high-speed rail network, and more use of video-conferencing to cut business travel, the committee warns that more action such as constraining airport use might be needed in order to stop the population from flying. The report singles out a "carbon tax" as one of the solutions, which would be levied on top of the £200 per tonne carbon price.

"The policy instruments which could achieve this restraint include a carbon tax on top of the forecast carbon price, limits on further airport expansion, and restrictions on the allocation of takeoff and landing slots even where airports have the theoretical capacity available," the report says.

The report calculates that the aviation industry can limit 2050 carbon dioxide emissions to 2005 levels – or 37.5m tonnes of CO2 a year – because aircraft manufacturers and airlines will improve the fuel efficiency of their fleets by 0.8% a year. Including limited use of biofuels, that will slash carbon dioxide emissions per passenger by 35%.

Under that scenario, which includes greater use of the A380 superjumbo and an increase in the amount of seats sold per flight, the number of flights in and out of the UK can increase from 2.2m a year to 3.4m.

Even then, aviation will account for a quarter of all UK emissions by 2050 because other industries will have made tougher emissions cuts.

Environmental campaigners said the government should now scrap expansion plans laid out in the 2003 aviation white paper. "Ministers have been influenced by misleading greenwash from the aviation industry for far too long – this report is a reality check which should put the nail in the coffin for government plans to allow a huge expansion in air travel," said Richard Dyer of Friends of the Earth.

The white paper had envisioned demand for flights growing to 465 million a year by 2030 – a number that is now inconceivable under the committee's projections. It said the government could rewrite its airport policy – and choose which airports expand at the expense of others – in a national policy statement that is now required under the 2008 Planning Act. The act creates an infrastructure planning commission that will refer to policy statements when it considers planning applications for infrastructure projects such as airports.

The report also marks a potential transformation in the lifestyle of millions of Britons who have benefited from a regional airport boom which gave cheap access to the beaches and cities of Europe from an airport a few miles down the road.

If the Committee on Climate Change's advice on capping growth in air travel is accepted by ministers, then the majority of the UK's remaining airports could find themselves at a standstill while the likes of Heathrow take much of the allowed growth. Under that scenario, prices will rise inexorably as demand for a weekend break to Nice far outstrips supply.

One of easyJet's most successful routes from Bristol International airport is to Alicante in Spain — 50,000 passengers last year at £100 per return ticket.

A spokesman for the airline admitted that fares at regional airports could be forced up if the likes of Bristol International, which handled 6 million people a year and is aiming for 10 million by 2020, are barred from growing. "If you follow the recommendations of the committee that might be the result."

It is likely that the report will widen the schism between budget carriers and regional airports on the one hand, and long-haul carriers such as British Airways and international hubs such as Heathrow on the other.

EasyJet argues that airports serving heavily polluting long-haul destinations should have the toughest curbs because their business plans are predicated on transfer flights, which involve passengers flying into the airport on a regional service. "Why shouldn't the government manage that growth in an environmentally responsible manner?

"Letting Heathrow grow means more transfer flights, which is more polluting because you have to take two flights instead of one," said the easyJet spokesman.

EasyJet's comments will make for awkward reading among fellow members of the Sustainable Aviation group, who include two of Heathrow's biggest carriers - British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

Sustainable Aviation declined to be drawn into the approaching fight over which airports deserve to grow, saying that limiting emissions through technological improvements was the answer, not cutting people's right to travel.

Four ways to curb air travel, according to the committee on climate change

1 A carbon tax on flights, which could be imposed after airlines join the European Union emissions trading scheme in 2012. The scheme alone is likely to force up fares because airlines will have to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions, but the committee says that is not enough.

2 Limiting runway growth to a select number of airports, possibly Heathrow, Stansted and Edinburgh.

3 Restrictions on take-off and landing slots at airports.

4 Setting out a new growth strategy for UK airports in a national policy statement.

news20091209gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Hacked climate science emails]
MPs ask University of East Anglia to explain leaked climate emails
Chairman of the House of Commons science and technology committee has requested a 'comprehensive note' on the university's response to the allegations
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 11.06 GMT Article history

The university at the centre of a row over leaked emails which sceptics claim show global warming data has been manipulated has been asked to explain the incident to the committee of MPs responsible for science.

The material was taken from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit before it was published on websites run by sceptics, possibly in a bid to undermine the global climate summit in Copenhagen.

Phil Willis, the chairman of the House of Commons science and technology committee, has written to Professor Edward Acton, the vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, requesting a "comprehensive note" setting out what had happened.

The letter also calls for the university to set out the steps taken to investigate the allegations and test the integrity of the data held by the unit, how the centre can "justify its commitment to academic transparency" and how the university proposes to restore confidence in the research.

The committee, which said it may ask the university to appear to give oral evidence, also asked for an assurance that none of the data referred to in the emails which have been published has been destroyed.

The University of East Anglia has already launched an independent review into the allegations, while the head of the UN's expert panel on climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, has said it will look into what has happened.

The director of the Climatic Research Unit, Professor Phil Jones, has stood down while the investigation takes place, but has said he "absolutely" stands by the science the centre has produced.


[News > Politics > Boris Johnson]
Boris Johnson signs London City Hall up to 10:10
But mayor stops short of making personal pledge to cut carbon emissions by 10% by 2010
Hélène Mulholland
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 18.07 GMT Article history

Boris Johnson today signed City Hall up to the 10:10 climate change campaign, as part of his goal to make London "the greenest city on earth".

The mayor committed the "home of London government" to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 10% by the end of 2010. Next week, he will go to Copenhagen to attend a summit for city mayors being held in parallel to the UN climate change conference.

But, despite urging Londoners to sign up to 10:10, Johnson has stopped short of making a personal pledge to cut his carbon emissions, in contrast to his party leader, David Cameron, and the entire shadow frontbench. The shadow chancellor has pledged that, if elected, a Conservative government would cut the emissions of the government estate by 10% within a year.

The 10:10 campaign, which is supported by the Guardian, was joined by Gordon Brown and the cabinet in September; Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrat team have also signed up.

Johnson said: "We will be redoubling efforts to drive down energy use at City Hall, notably through motivating our staff to become even more alert to wasteful practices.

"There are also plans to introduce more efficient lighting and smart meters. This delivers a tangible sign of our broader commitment to cut carbon in the capital and make London the greenest city on earth.

"As a time of heightened focus on climate change, 10:10 offers individuals and organisations a very simple way to get practically involved in the climate challenges we face, and I urge even more Londoners to do so."

City Hall is just one element of the Greater London authority that the mayoralty oversees.

A motion being tabled tomorrow by Mike Tuffrey, the Liberal Democrat leader of the London assembly, will urge him to ensure bodies such as Transport for London and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority also commit.

The mayor's office said Johnson's team is working with the functional bodies to see "how best they can redouble efforts to cut carbon and sign up to the campaign".

Tuffrey said: "Having first claimed two months ago that he had already signed up City Hall to the 10:10 campaign it is good news that the mayor is finally getting round to it.

"The challenge now is for the mayor to go much further and ensure that the 10:10 commitment applies not just to City Hall but also to London's police, fire and transport services."

Last week Johnson, who has committed to reducing London's carbon emissions by 60% by 2025, announced the expansion of a programme to slash the emissions from public sector buildings in the capital by giving them a "green makeover".


[Environment > Hrathrow third runway]
BA calls Tory opposition to Heathrow third runway 'biggest mistake ever'
Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 20.41 GMT Article history

British Airways' chief executive, Willie Walsh, has rounded on the Tory party in the wake of the Committee on Climate Change report into aviation, and warned that it will make the "biggest mistake ever" if it blocks a third runway at Heathrow.

In a tirade at one of David Cameron's flagship policies, the boss of Heathrow's largest airline said the party's line on airport expansion was incoherent and seriously undermined the opposition's environmental credentials because it did not rule out expansion at other airports.

Walsh's comments follow the publication today of a report by the government's advisory panel on climate change, which makes the case for a third runway by admitting that British airports can handle up to 140 million more passengers a year by 2050 without breaching emissions targets. But the shadow transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, said the Tories stood by their policy and warned that a third runway would exact a "horrendous price" on the environment.

Warning that scrapping a third runway would be a major error, Walsh said: "We will look back years from now and say, what a disgrace."

He added: "We expect governments to have policies that are coherent. I don't see this as coherent."

Walsh also used the economic case for expanding Heathrow – that major businesses need well-connected local airports in order to thrive – to attack the Conservative stance.

He said: "I want to know, if the Conservatives don't want to build a third runway, how are they going to position the UK economy to compete on a global scale in the future?"

Walsh said the Conservative embargo on new runways at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick – the UK's three largest airports – carried no environmental benefit because the party refused to rule out expansion elsewhere. "Their environmental credentials are seriously undermined," he said.

BA's rival Virgin Atlantic joined the attack at a conference hosted by the Airport Operators Association in London. Steve Ridgway, Virgin Atlantic's chief executive, said : "It is very difficult where they [the Tories] are at the moment. It is wrong in terms of what this country needs and there is a job to be done in terms of convincing them that this is the right thing to do. Somehow we have to find a way to convince them."

Colin Matthews, chief executive of BAA, the owner of Heathrow, said the need for a new runway at Heathrow "has been there for years".

The Conservative party today stood by its commitment to block new runways at Heathrow, Stansted or Gatwick, despite the Committee on Climate Change findings that it would be possible to expand Heathrow, Stansted and Edinburgh without breaching greenhouse gas emission targets. The government has ruled that emissions from the aviation industry in 2050 must not exceed 2005 levels.

Villiers said: "We have got a coherent, well-thought-through and principled position on Heathrow expansion. We very strongly believe that the environmental costs of a new runway would outweigh any potential economic benefits."

Asked how the Conservatives would manage their relationship with BA if they won the election, she said: "I am well aware that Willie Walsh does not share our view but we are on the right side of the argument."

Villiers added that the extra growth outlined by the committee – an increase of around 60% on 2005 figures – could be taken up by regional airports rather than major hubs such as Heathrow.

The first signs of a schism within the aviation industry over who benefits from the 60% increase emerged today as Birmingham international airport's chief executive, Paul Kehoe, criticised the "preposterous" committee report. "Heathrow sucks in traffic, we have to support it and if you don't support it you are made to look like climate change deniers," he said.

Sparking an onstage row with Walsh, Kehoe added that Heathrow's importance as an international hub was dwindling in the face of economic growth in Asia.

"If China builds 94 airports they will not want to connect through Heathrow. Hubs are moving eastwards so let's connect through Dubai."

Environmentalists continued to describe the committee's report as a victory today despite its theoretical endorsement of a third runway. Jeff Gazzard, of the Aviation Environment Federation, said investors would refuse to back runway projects that had government limits on aviation growth hanging over them.

news20091209nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 8 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/462705a
News
Exoplanet claim bites the dust
Ground-based astrometry dealt a blow as planet found not to exist.
Katharine Sanderson

Is there really a planet orbiting VB10 (red star)?NASA/JPL-CaltechStrike one planet from the list of 400-odd found around stars in other solar systems: a proposed planet near a star some 6 parsecs from Earth may not exist after all.

The finding is also a strike against a planet-seeking strategy called astrometry, which measures the side-to-side motion of a star on the sky to see whether any unseen bodies might be orbiting it. Ground-based astrometry has been used for more than a century, but none of the extrasolar planets it has detected has been verified in subsequent studies.

In May, Steven Pravdo of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and his colleagues raised fresh hopes for the technique when they announced an exoplanet, six times more massive than Jupiter, orbiting VB10, a star about one-thirteenth the mass of the Sun, using a telescope at the Palomar Observatory in southern California (S. Pravdo and S. Shaklan Astrophys. J. 700, 623–632; 2009). But now a group led by Jacob Bean at the Georg-August University in Gottingen, Germany, has used a different approach, and found nothing. "The planet is not there," says Bean.

Bean and his colleagues used a well-honed technique called radial velocity, which has found most of the extrasolar planets detected so far. The method looks for shifts in the lines of a star's absorption spectrum to track its motion towards and away from Earth, which would be caused by the influence of a planet.

Radial-velocity measurements typically exploit the visible bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. But VB10 is a very dim star and gives off most of its light as infrared radiation. At the Very Large Telescope in Chile, Bean placed a gas cell filled with ammonia in the path of the starlight, enabling him to calibrate the instrument for the infrared.

"We would definitely have seen a significant amount of variation in our data if [the planet] was there," says Bean, who has submitted the work to the Astrophysical Journal (J. L. Bean et al. Astrophys. J. preprint at http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/0912.0003; 2009).

Pravdo says that Bean and his colleagues "may be correct, but there is hyperbole in their rejection of our candidate planet". Bean's paper, for instance, only rules out the presence of any planet that is at least three times more massive than Jupiter, says Pravdo, adding that the work "limits certain orbits for possible planets but not all planets".

"Unfortunately, astrometry is a very difficult business," counters Bean, explaining that Earth's atmosphere can introduce distortions that affect the measurements. Astrometrists rely on watching a field of stars about the same distance away as the target star to calibrate their measurements, and that can be tricky, says Alessandro Sozzetti, an astrometry expert at the Turin Observatory in Italy. "Even if we think we have selected a good set of reference stars," he says, "we may still be limited by atmospheric effects that cause an extra jitter" in the motion of those stars.

Alan Boss, an exoplanet expert at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, agrees. He points to the well-known 'detection' of 1963, when Dutch astronomer Piet van de Kamp used astrometry to claim that two planets were orbiting Barnard's Star — a finding disproved a decade later. The dispute over the VB10 planet, says Boss, "is another example of how hard it is to detect extrasolar planets using astrometry from the ground".

Astronomers expect astrometry to work much better above the distorting effects of the atmosphere. Two space missions in the works — the European Space Agency's GAIA, due to launch in 2012, and NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, the launch date for which is yet to be set — will use the technique to search for planets as small as Earth around Sun-like stars, says Sozzetti. More significantly, astrometry can yield the mass of a planet, whereas radial velocity only puts a lower limit on it.

Bean admits that astronomers might one day find a planet around VB10 if they scrutinize the star long and hard enough. "The main lesson from VB10," says Boss, is that a lot of high-quality data are needed to be sure that an exoplanet is present.


[naturenews]
Published online 8 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1131
News
Testosterone link to aggression may be all in the mind
A dose of the hormone makes human game-players behave more fairly.
Alison Abbott

{Higher levels of testosterone do not necessarily lead to more aggressive behaviour.}

The popular idea that testosterone always makes people more aggressive has been debunked by researchers. A team based in Switzerland has shown that the hormone can make people behave more fairly in an effort to defend their social status.

Ernst Fehr, an experimental economist at the University of Zurich, and his colleagues used the 'ultimatum bargaining' game to test how testosterone would affect behaviour in a group of 121 women. Counter-intuitively, women who were given testosterone bargained more fairly.

But the idea that testosterone causes aggression in humans, as it clearly does in rodents, is so firmly ingrained in the human psyche that women who believed they had been given testosterone — whether or not they had — bargained much less fairly.

Women, not men, were tested because they have less variable 'baseline' blood testosterone levels.

The study is published in Nature1. "It is a folk hypothesis that testosterone causes aggression," says Fehr. "But human society is more complex than this."

Fair play

Several studies in humans have shown positive correlations between high blood testosterone levels and confrontational behaviour. But it has been hard to determine experimentally whether the aggression is caused by testosterone or is instead a consequence of a challenge to a person's social status.

The ultimatum game makes it possible to distinguish between these possibilities.

{{“It is a folk hypothesis that testosterone causes aggression. But human society is more complex than this.”}
Ernst Fehr
University of Zurich}

In the game, two individuals must agree on the division of a sum of money. The proposer suggests a particular splitting of the sum and the responder must accept or reject the offer. The proposal is an ultimatum — the responder may not make a counter-offer. If the responder accepts the proposal, the money is duly allocated. If the responder rejects the proposal, neither the proposer nor the responder gets any money.

Responders normally reject very low offers as unfair — they would rather receive no money than see their partner carry off a disproportionate amount of cash.

Some proposers offer a 50-50 split because they are motivated by fairness, although most push to keep a bit more for themselves — but not so much more that they risk rejection and ending up with nothing.

Fehr's team reasoned that if testosterone caused aggression, it would cause proposers to make low offers. If, however, it promoted social-status-seeking behaviour, proposers would make higher offers to avoid the social affront of having their offers rejected.

Beggaring belief

The women were given either 0.5 mg testosterone or a placebo four hours before playing the ultimatum game for the sum of 10 money units. Before they played, they were asked to say whether they believed they had been given testosterone or placebo.

Women who received testosterone made significantly higher offers than those who received placebo — an average of 3.9 money units compared with the placebo group's average offer of 3.4 money units.

"In the socially complex human environment, pro-social behaviour, not aggression, secures status," says Michael Naef, an experimental economist at the Royal Holloway, University of London, who is a co-author on the paper.

The study has an additional, equally important message: those who believed they received testosterone, whether they had or not, made much lower offers — as low as 2 money units in some cases, or even nothing. "We think their belief that they had received testosterone, and that testosterone promotes aggression, gave them an up-front excuse to act more aggressively," says Fehr.

Responders remained as likely to reject a shabby offer when they were treated with testosterone as when they received placebo, showing that the hormone was not promoting altruistic behaviour.

Adam Goodie, a psychologist at the University of Georgia in Athens who works on decision-making, says: "The paper is a major blow to the popular wisdom that testosterone simply makes you more aggressive and less cooperative — the true picture is not nearly as negative."

"And it takes the field of neuroeconomics an important step further by showing that not only does biology affect economic behaviour — but so does belief," he adds.

The powerful impact of belief is a good lesson for neuroeconomists, adds Fehr: "Belief should always be controlled for in neuroeconomics studies, but often it is not."

References
1. Eisenegger, C. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature08711 (2009).

news20091209nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 8 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/462712a
News
Israel weighs up new funding agency
Top scientists say that basic biomedical research is flagging.
Haim Watzman
JERUSALEM

{{Ruth Arnon calls for a boost to biomedical research.}
SASSON TIRAM}

Israel is a research powerhouse, sustained by a per-capita level of spending that, by some counts, is the highest in the world. But most of that money is spent by industry; in basic research, which is mostly conducted in higher-education institutions, Israel lags behind many other developed countries (see graph), with biomedical research bringing up the rear.

Israeli researchers are on a quest to remedy that by establishing the country's own biomedical research funding agency, along the lines of the US National Institutes of Health or Britain's Medical Research Council, and boosting funding by as much as tenfold.

At an international workshop last week in Jerusalem, leading researchers declared their support for establishing a National Fund for Biomedical Research (NFBR). The biggest hurdle remains the Israeli ministry of finance, where officials are reserving judgement on the proposal.

Compared with Israel's roughly US$65 million in merit-based basic research funding each year, the United States, with 50 times the population, has 1,000 times as much federal funding for basic research. The US National Institutes of Health alone is a $30-billion agency.

The Israel Science Foundation (ISF), which oversees government funding for basic research, has allocated just $8 million annually for biomedicine in recent years. Another $2 million in state support goes to clinical research through the ministry of health.

Immunologist Ruth Arnon of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, who is also vice-president of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities, leads a task force that last year published a report calling for the establishment of the NFBR. It concluded that Israel significantly underutilizes its potential resources in the biomedical research field owing to limited research funds, outdated infrastructure and the difficulty that young researchers have in finding jobs in Israel.

"Significantly expanding biomedical research in Israel can bring Israeli scientists back from overseas, create a healthier society — and ensure that Israel is known throughout the world for its science rather than for violence and conflict," she says.

A new national fund for biomedical research should aim to give out $100 million annually, she says. She predicts that the NFBR could be up and running by 2011.

At the workshop last week, Daniel Hershkowitz, the minister for science and technology, said that next year he would bring the proposal before the ministerial committee on science and technology, which has the power to make policy decisions on behalf of the government. Deputy health minister Yakov Litzman also pledged support for an increase in funding, and Meir Sheetrit, chairman of the science and technology committee of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, said that he will bring the proposal up for discussion there.

But a finance-ministry official attending the workshop, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to comment, was less sanguine. He said that he still needed to be convinced that new money for biomedical research should take precedence over research funding in other fields. He also noted that, statutorily, his ministry cannot allocate money for a specific research purpose; research funds are allocated to the Council of Higher Education, an independent body that accredits and funds Israeli universities. The council then decides how much of its budget to hand over to the ISF.

Others have more creative ideas about where the money might come from. Sheetrit suggests it could be diverted from the $350-million budget of the chief scientist in the ministry of industry, trade and labour, which is the government's main office for funding applied research.

To ease the financial strain, Arnon suggests that the NFBR could be established modestly, with an initial budget of $20 million, and gradually ramp up funding. It could, she says, start out as a division of the ISF before becoming a fully fledged independent funding body.

Arnon thinks the NFBR could remedy the flaws she sees in the current system. For one, ISF grants are small, limited to a maximum of $50,000 a year for five years, whereas a modern biomedical research laboratory usually costs at least three times that much to run. This means that researchers must apply for multiple grants.

"The average Israeli scientist spends a third of his time writing grants and grant reports," Arnon says. The NFBR would allow researchers to receive adequate funding from a single source, she says, enabling them to devote more time to their scientific work.

Arnon also singles out clinical research as in need of a fix. "We interviewed quite a few clinicians in preparing our report, and they said that the most critical factor preventing them from performing research is a lack of protected time," she says. "Clinicians come to work early in the morning and work late into the afternoon and their time is completely consumed by clinical tasks."

Undeterred by the coolness of the finance-ministry official last week, Arnon says that she and her colleagues are talking to policy-makers at the finance and other ministries. "The money is there — it's a matter of deciding priorities," she says. "I'll be knocking on doors and making my case. We have to do this."

news20091209bbc3

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 19:06 GMT, Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Draft text divides climate summit
{The leaked text has overshadowed the first day's upbeat speeches}
Documents leaked at the UN climate summit reveal divisions between industrialised and developing countries over the shape of a possible new deal.
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Copenhagen

Campaigners say a draft text proposed by the Danish host government would disadvantage poorer nations.

It also sees everything coming under a single new deal, whereas an alternative text from developing countries wants an extension to the Kyoto Protocol.

Other blocs are expected to release their own texts in the next few days.

Chairmen of working groups will then have to turn the various documents into a political document that 100-odd world leaders, plus delegates representing all other nations, could sign at the end of the conference.

The Danish document, plus the alternative text submitted by the BASIC group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) were discussed by a small group of key countries in Copenhagen last week.

But the Danish proposal had remained under wraps until The Guardian newspaper published it on its website during the second afternoon of the conference.

More ambition

The documents show that at the broadest level, developed and developing worlds are split on several points:

> the level of cuts from developed countries
> the establishment of a target date by which global emissions should peak and begin to fall
> most fundamentally, the shape of any future deal.

The BASIC draft sees emission reductions from developed countries coming under the Kyoto Protocol, whereas the Danish draft envisages all measures coming under a single new agreement.

Although this might appear a technical point, developing countries have so far remained adamant on the retention of the protocol because of the measures it contains on financial assistance and technology transfer, and because it is the only legally binding treaty in existence that makes countries reduce emissions.

{{The only formal texts in the UN process are the ones tabled by the Chairs of this Copenhagen conference at the behest of the parties}
Yvo de Boer,
UNFCCC executive secretary}

The Danish text sets out a vision of greenhouse gas emissions peaking globally by 2020, then declining.

It specifies a 50% emissions cut globally (from 1990 levels) by 2050. Most industrialised nations have already pledged an 80% cut in their own emissions.

According to some calculations, those figures, when combined with projected population growth in the developing world, mean that per-capita emissions in developing countries will remain below those in the west, "locking in" inequality.

Oxfam's Antonio Hill said industrialised nations had to offer bigger cuts than are currently on the table.

"The targets need to rise in ambition and in line with what the science says," he told BBC News.

"We think that at least 40% (from 1990 levels by 2020) is needed; and even that is not enough to produce equity."

However, Mr Hill suggested that measures on transferring finance from industrialised to developing countries - to help them curb their emissions and help them protect against the impacts of climate change - were "quite good".

Impossible dream?

Other observers, such as Sol Oyuela from the development agency CAFOD, were more damning.

"The document should not even exist," she said.

"There is a UN legal process which is the official negotiating text; there is no need for any other texts.

"To be working on a rival text is a kick in the teeth to the UN process that has been negotiated for so long."

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate convention, also said the document had no formal weight within the negotiations.

"This was an informal paper ahead of the conference given to a number of people for the purposes of consultations," he said.

"The only formal texts in the UN process are the ones tabled by the Chairs of this Copenhagen conference at the behest of the parties."

The UK government dissociated itself from the text.

"At this stage in the negotiation there's inevitably all sorts of texts doing the rounds and more will no doubt appear over the next 10 days," said a spokesman for the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

"The UK is continuing to strive for the most ambitious deal possible, as the prime minister has made clear again today."

Gordon Brown declared earlier that he would favour the EU moving from its current 20% target to 30%, which governments have agreed to do if there is a global deal here.

Over the next few days, small island states, least developed countries, the African bloc and the overall G77/China grouping are expected to present their own texts.

The small island states are expected to demand a legally binding outcome from Copenhagen, which many insiders say is impossible.

news20091209bbc4

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 15:46 GMT, Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Hubble sees most distant galaxies
{Very distant galaxies were spotted in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field}
Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has captured its deepest view of the Universe, producing images of galaxies that have never been seen before.
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

{The pictures were acquired by the HST's new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).}

This highly sensitive camera can see starlight from far-off objects - light that has been "stretched" by the expanding Universe.

Scientists who have analysed the new images say the galaxies they reveal could be the most distant yet observed.

Two UK-based teams of scientists published their analyses in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomy Society.

{Astronomers installed Wide Field Camera 3 during a servicing mission}

WFC3 was added to Hubble as part of a upgrade and repair mission carried out by the space shuttle Atlantis earlier this year.

The camera is sensitive to infrared light, which has wavelengths about twice as long as visible light and cannot be detected by the human eye. It is described as "beyond red".

Dr Andrew Bunker, an astronomer from Oxford University, led one of the teams that studied the new pictures.

He explained that the camera had captured "light that started its life in the visible and has been stretched to longer wavelengths, so it is redder".

Some of the new images are from the region of sky known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

Dr Bunker and his colleagues first analysed this five years ago using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

"We're able to use this new data - taken at long wavelengths - and combine it with the existing data that was taken in the visible [spectrum]," he told BBC News.

"We make a colour image with the long wavelengths and the short wavelengths and look for a very distinctive signature."

That signature is based on colour. The redder an object appears, the more its light has been stretched, and the further away it is.

Looking back

Capturing this stretched starlight gives astronomers a glimpse back in time to the early Universe.

{{These new observations are likely to be the most sensitive images Hubble will ever take}
Professor Jim Dunlop
University of Edinburgh}

Dr Daniel Stark, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, also worked with the teams reporting their work on Tuesday.

He said: "We can now look even further back in time, identifying galaxies when the Universe was only 5% of its current age - within one billion years of the Big Bang."

But Dr Bunker said that the exact distance to the galaxies was yet to be confirmed.

"The evidence on the basis of the images - the colours - is very strong," he told BBC News.

"These are some of the most distant, and perhaps the most galaxies distant yet seen."

But to confirm this, he said, astronomers would need to study the spectrum of light from each galaxy, to measure its "redshift". This is a measurement of how much the light from a distant object has been stretched.

Professor Jim Dunlop from the University of Edinburgh co-led a team with Dr Ross McLure, which also studied the Hubble data. He said: "These new observations are likely to be the most sensitive images Hubble will ever take."

The follow-up studies, he added, would be possible when Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), was launched in 2014.

Dr Bunker described the JWST as the "next quantum leap in telescope technology".

"It has a greater collecting area and is optimised to work in the infrared," he explained.

"With JWST, we'll be able to take the spectra of many objects at once... This will be wonderful - instead of [analysing] the odd galaxy, we'll be able to build up meaningful samples and do real science."

Record-breaking

{The light from very distant objects appears redder}

In 2007, a group led by Professor Richard Ellis from the California Institute of Technology reported the discovery of light from galaxies at similar, and perhaps even longer, distances than the ones reported on Tuesday.

He and his team employed a technique called gravitational lensing, which uses of the gravity of relatively nearby objects to magnify the light coming from much more distant objects.

Dr Bunker, who has worked with Professor Ellis's team in the past, explained that the scientific community was still actively studying the Caltech team's "very exciting" results.

"The galaxies they looked at were really incredibly faint," he said.

"And they looked at the glow of gas, which is the very limit of what is feasible and difficult for the community to confirm."

He said that he expected Professor Ellis's results eventually to be confirmed and said that all the studies were "complementary".

"They show us the different aspects of galaxy formation."