news20100116jt

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010
DPJ lawmaker held in Ozawa fund scam
Ex-aide tied to shady land buy; allies tell kingpin to come clean
Kyodo News

Prosecutors Friday arrested Democratic Party of Japan Lower House member Tomohiro Ishikawa in connection with a dubious land deal linked to DPJ No. 2 Ichiro Ozawa's political fund management organ.

Ishikawa, 36, used to oversee clerical work at Rikuzankai, Ozawa's funds body, before he became a lawmaker. Prosecutors believe Ishikawa played a role in the 2004 Tokyo land buy, in which an unregistered \400 million was allegedly used.

He claimed the ¥400 million was handed over as "loans" from Ozawa. Prosecutors apparently suspect Ozawa got the cash from general contractors.

Two other ex-Ozawa aides also face arrest, including one now on trial.

Ruling bloc lawmakers earlier Friday urged Ozawa, the DPJ secretary general, to come clean about the Rikuzankai funds scandal.

Transport minister Seiji Maehara said: "People are closely watching to see if news reports (on the scandal) are true. It is very important for a lawmaker to provide adequate explanations."

The secretaries general of the DPJ's partners — Yasumasa Shigeno of the Social Democratic Party and Shozaburo Jimi of Kokumin Shinto (People's New Party) — also said Ozawa should explain himself.

While the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito hope in the coming Diet session to grill Ozawa and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, the DPJ president, who recently agreed to pay over \500 million in gift taxes for shady funds from his tycoon heiress mother, Finance Minister Naoto Kan said debate should focus on the budget amid the economic funk.

Hatoyama, for his part, said that despite the scandal, he is determined to fulfill the mandate he received after his DPJ swept the election last August.

The Ozawa scandal "had already been a topic before the general election, but many in the public chose the DPJ in spite of this kind of problem," Hatoyama said outside his official residence. "So we must fulfill our responsibilities."

Hatoyama expressed understanding about Ozawa's refusal to go into detail about the scandal, reckoning "there is naturally a limit to which he can talk about it" while the prosecutors' probe is under way.

He acknowledged, however, that the people feel Ozawa has not fulfilled his duty to explain the accounting irregularities at Rikuzankai.

Ozawa, who wields huge clout within the ruling party as secretary general and election strategist, has come under fresh fire after prosecutors searched his office, as well as that of his fund management body and Kajima Construction Co. over the accounting irregularities Wednesday.

Hatoyama later said efforts are needed to create a "clean constitution" in politics when it comes to politicians and their links to money. Although Ozawa is mired in scandal, Hatoyama said he will retain him as secretary general and plans to head into the July Upper House poll under the ex-DPJ leader's guidance.

Ozawa quit the DPJ presidency last spring after ex-aide Takanori Okubo was charged over alleged illegal donations from Nishimatsu Construction Co. to Rikuzankai. Okubo now faces a fresh warrant, and ex-aide Mitsutomo Ikeda also faces arrest.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010
MSDF wraps up eight-year Indian Ocean mission
Kyodo News

The Maritime Self-Defense Force was ordered Friday to end its refueling mission in the Indian Ocean in support of U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in and around Afghanistan, as a law authorizing it expires.

Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa issued the order that will terminate at midnight the MSDF operations that have continued for most of the period since December 2001.

As an alternative support measure, Japan has pledged to offer up to $5 billion in civilian aid to Afghanistan.

The 13,500-ton supply ship Mashu and 4,550-ton destroyer Ikazuchi will now exit the Indian Ocean.

Kitazawa told reporters Friday morning that he "respects" the MSDF efforts in the mission that has lasted about eight years, and he believes the "high level" of Japan's refueling technique was demonstrated to the world through the operations.

The minister said, however, demand for such operations had been declining in recent years, and Japan will come up with fresh international contribution measures.

Japan has provided about 510,000 kiloliters of fuel to vessels from 12 countries, including the United States, France, Britain and Pakistan, in 938 missions as of Dec. 31, according to a Defense Ministry tally.

The cost of fuel provided to foreign vessels in the mission since fiscal 2001 has exceeded ¥24 billion. The MSDF is to conduct its last refueling mission Friday.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010
Nagasaki drops bid to host '20 Olympics with Hiroshima
Kyodo News

NAGASAKI — The city of Nagasaki has given up its bid to cohost the 2020 Summer Olympics with Hiroshima, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue said Friday.

But Nagasaki would be willing to offer its full cooperation to Hiroshima if the city tries to host the event alone, the mayor said at a meeting of city assembly members.

The announcement came after Taue and Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba were told by International Olympic Committee Vice President Chiharu Igaya earlier this week that it would be difficult for the cities to jointly host the Olympics even with a concession they have made to try to comply with a stipulation in the Olympic Charter that only one city can host the Olympics.

The two cities had sought to "effectively" cohost the games by having Hiroshima alone apply to be the host city while unofficially calling the event the "Hiroshima-Nagasaki Olympics."

In a statement issued after the announcement, Akiba said, "We would like to accept the decision as a way to open up future developments."

"We hope to continue to jointly work for the dream of hosting the 2020 Olympics," he said.

The two cities announced in October after the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's bid to host the 2016 Olympics was dashed, that they wanted to cohost the 2020 games to mark their goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons by 2020.

But the Japanese Olympic Committee turned down their bid last month, saying it is not in a position to go against the Olympic Charter, while suggesting that it would have a chance for success if either city makes a bid.

On the development, JOC President Tsunekazu Takeda said the Japanese committee is willing to "substantially consider" whether to support Hiroshima's bid if it formally files to host the event alone, saying such a move would "produce a possibility."

news20100116lat

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[Environment> Local]
By Bettina Boxall
January 16, 2010
GREENSPACE
Endangered butterfly and sheep win a round in the San Jacintos
Forest officials are rethinking the extent of cattle grazing on 51,000 acres in the San Jacinto Mountains that include habitat for the quino checkerspot butterfly and the peninsular bighorn sheep.

A rare Southern California butterfly and desert bighorn sheep have won a round in their contest for territory in the San Jacinto Mountains.

National forest officials are rethinking the extent of cattle grazing on 51,000 acres in the San Jacintos that include habitat for the endangered quino checkerspot butterfly and the peninsular bighorn sheep.

In response to appeals by environmental groups, the U.S. Forest Service withdrew one decision and reversed another involving the renewal of grazing allotments on San Bernardino National Forest lands.

Environmentalists are negotiating with forest officials to keep cattle out of areas important to the two endangered species.

"The Forest Service has been very willing to talk to us about how these projects can move forward," said Michael Connor of the Western Watersheds Project. He added that he expected the San Bernardino National Forest supervisor to issue new decisions on the grazing permits, which involve no more than 100 cattle.

The cattle compete with the bighorns for forage. They eat and trample plants used by the small butterfly, which is checkered with dark brown, reddish and yellowish spots.

Abundant in San Diego, Orange and western Riverside counties during the early part of the 20th century, the quino is now found in scattered populations in southwestern Riverside and north-central San Diego counties.

Peninsular sheep, a distinct population of desert bighorns, have declined dramatically in recent decades because of habitat loss and disease.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year slashed the amount of acreage classified as critical habitat for both species as a result of lawsuits.


[Environment> U.S. & World]
By Nicole Santa Cruz
January 16, 2010
Arizona decides to close most state parks
Facing a multibillion-dollar shortfall, the state will shut 13 parks by June, including the Tombstone Courthouse and Yuma Territorial Prison. Several had already been closed.

Wrestling with a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, Arizona decided Friday to close nearly all of its state parks, including the famed Tombstone Courthouse and Yuma Territorial Prison.

The State Parks Board unanimously voted to close 13 parks by June 3. Eight others had already been closed, and the decision would leave nine open -- but only if the board can raise $3 million this year.

The action represents the largest closure of state parks in the nation, although several other states are considering similar moves.

"It's a dark day for the Arizona state parks system," said Renee Bahl, the system's executive director.

"We have 65,000 acres around the state and the majority of them are closing."

The Arizona parks receive about 2.3 million visitors per year who bring about $266 million into the state, Bahl said.

"It's unfortunate that a short-term recession is having an impact on our future," Bahl said.

Arizona isn't the only state struggling to support its parks.

In May, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed closing 220 of California's 278 state parks to help close a multibillion-dollar deficit but backed off after protests.

This month, Schwarzenegger proposed to expand oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast to provide up to $140 million for state parks in place of state funding, said Jerry Emory, the director of communications for the California State Parks Foundation.

Louisiana and Iowa may close parks due to budget problems. Other states have transferred their parks to local control to save money.

In Idaho, Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter has proposed disbanding the state parks department, saving $10 million by selling the headquarters and shifting management of 30 state parks and recreation programs to another agency, said Jennifer Wernex, spokeswoman for the Idaho Parks and Recreation Department.

Phil McKnelly, the executive director of the National Assn. of State Park Directors, lamented the decision to close parks amid a recession.

"This is the time when people need to be getting out and releasing stress," he said.

The Arizona State Parks budget has gone from $26 million in the 2009 fiscal year to $7.5 million as the legislature has struggled to close its budget gap.

Some local jurisdictions that depend on the flow of tourist dollars have mobilized to protect their parks.

The town of Camp Verde came up with $18,000 of its own money to keep Ft. Verde State Historic Park operating.

For Mike Scannell, the Camp Verde town manager, closing the fort -- one of the best-preserved Army forts from the period of the Indian Wars -- simply wasn't an option for the community of 12,000.

"We clearly had to do something," he said.

Closing the park would have dealt a "catastrophic" blow to Camp Verde's economy, Scannell said. "It's a real important part of the history of the town."

But even with the extra funds, the town was able to only delay the closing of the park by a month, from Feb. 22 to March 29.

The town plans to use the time to come up with a funding plan to keep the fort open permanently.

news20100116gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Food]
British supermarkets at root of vegetable supply problem
Demand for carrots shoots up due to panic buying as Downing Street warned about crop shortage
Felicity Lawrence
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 January 2010 19.10 GMT Article history

In a busy week for the Chilcot inquiry and with an election campaign looming, you might think the prime minister would have more to worry about than the nation's vegetables. Since the food price spikes of two and a half years ago, however, Gordon Brown has been known to keep a close eye on the country's shopping baskets, and on Monday morning root veg took its place alongside the prime minister's presentation of his election campaign team. Carrots and some green vegetables might run out because of the snow, Downing street was warned. There were also problems with the national supply of milk.

Just a week after the publication of the government's report on UK food security, the record cold snap brought the fragility of our hi-tech food system into sharp focus. By today, as the ice continued its rapid thaw, it was clear that the system had held – just – but the cracks bad weather could cause had been exposed and the disputes about whether the powerful retailers or the farmers at the bottom of the chain should pick up the bill were beginning.

About 80% of all supermarket supplies of carrots now come from just 10 major packers in East Anglia, Scotland and the north of England. At this time of year, more than half the carrots the UK eats have to make their way from north-east Scotland, where the fields over the past fortnight have been frozen, to centralised distribution depots and back out again to stores.

The UK's milk supply has become very concentrated too: some 60% of our fresh milk has to travel from farms around the country to six locations for processing before being trucked back hundreds of miles up and down icy motorways to customers.

In Inverness-shire this week, one of the largest suppliers of organic carrots to the big retailers and a key Tesco contractor, Tio Ltd, battled the elements to get each day's supermarket orders out "by the skin of our teeth", according to senior manager Stephen Ryan.

Whereas in the recent past the carrot harvest would have been lifted at the end of the autumn and stored, now the carrots are kept in the fields through the winter, covered with thick layers of straw and dug up just in time to meet supermarket orders day by day, Ryan said.

"They've got 2ft of snow on top of them and it's taking twice as long to harvest them," Ryan said. "It's a challenge to keep the water in the factory flowing to wash them with temperatures of minus 12 degrees. We've had lots of breakdowns."

A mixture of panic buying and demand for warming meals saw orders double just when conditions were harshest. The company brought in 25 agency workers and ran extra night and weekend shifts to cope.

"We've managed to get all the deliveries to the depots, though some have been running hours late. There's not as much slack in the system as there used to be, especially from Scotland, because the distances things have to travel are so big," Ryan said. The thaw promises to bring just as many problems with harvesting as fields become waterlogged.

In East Anglia, growers have also had to throw labour at the problems to keep up. Sarah Pettitt, chair of the National Farmers' Union board of horticultural growers, estimates that her brassica company has seen a 100% increase in its costs in the cold weather, like most other vegetable growers she knows.

For two weeks, Pettitt's broccoli could not be lifted. Extra workers, mainly Lithuanian and Bulgarian migrants, have been needed across East Anglia to harvest in snow-covered fields where mechanical harvesters have been unable to work, and to run thawing lines in packhouses. Extra shifts have been on grading machines to pick out damaged and rotten vegetables.

She said there was "absolute frustration" among producers that the costs of keeping supply lines going were not being shared by supermarkets, which set prices up to a year in advance. "We've been blowing our brains out to keep continuity of supply to them, but there's no suggestion that the costs will be repaid. Bring on the supermarket ombudsman."

Asda's main carrot supplier, MH Poskitt, in Yorkshire, also reported "huge operational difficulties". It managed to keep up, but with a 40% increase in labour costs, most of which it expected to absorb itself. "You have to take the rough with the smooth – it's a long-term, very good relationship with the retailers," Guy Poskitt said. "Transport has been very tough," he added. "We've all become a bit complacent because we haven't seen weather like this for a long time."

For the dairy sector, which has seen many farmers giving up their herds in the face of persistently low supermarket prices, losses resulting from the weather have been a particularly hard blow.

Nick Tyler, a large-scale dairy farmer with 600 cows in Wiltshire, lost £11,000-worth of milk last week when the processor's tanker failed to turn up and he was forced to throw it away. He is contracted to Dairy Crest, one of the big processors for the supermarkets, which in turn contracts its haulage to Wincanton.

"They didn't even phone, they just didn't turn up," Tyler said. "We'd salted the road to the dairy, and the feed lorries managed to get in, but they didn't come to collect." He woke to face four to five inches of fresh snow on Wednesday and a fight to work out which of the companies, if either, would pay. His local supermarket, meanwhile, was repeatedly out of milk and rationing customers to one loaf of bread.

The structure of today's milk industry has made it more vulnerable to bad weather. The milk travels further to fewer, larger processors, which use larger articulated lorries that are less able to cope with even a slight deterioration in weather than the smaller tankers the Milk Marketing Board used to operate. "It can be mayhem even when conditions aren't really that bad," Tyler said.

Huw Bowles, director of the organic co-operative OMSCO, agrees. "Forty years ago milk was processed closer to where it was produced and delivered back to the same area." The drive to make industry logistics as economically efficient as possible has also removed any slack. OMSCO has cut the cost of collection by 30% in recent years with these efficiencies but at the price of less resilience. "There are no spare vehicles any more. If the driving speeds are reduced by just 10mph on a nine-hour shift because of snow, they just can't get round the whole collection; the whole route is affected," Bowles explained.

The lack of collection has hit Liz and Chris Best, organic dairy farmers in the Cotswolds: "The yard's been freezing, you start at 5.30am and go right through to 8pm at night before you've finished, checking water for the cows, defrosting machinery. You clear your driveway so the tanker can get to you and then you wait. Then you get a call saying, sorry he can't come, and you've got to throw everything away before you start milking again in the afternoon. It doesn't feel right," Liz Best said.

Sir Don Curry, formerly the government's top adviser on ­sustainable farming and now the chair of the Better Regulation Executive, hopes that the strain a couple of weeks of cold weather can inflict on the food system will give greater urgency to calls to make it more sustainable.

"Most retailers have adopted a just-in-time supply chain, so there is not a lot of slack," he said. "They allow for some variation, but three to four weeks of difficult weather, and suddenly supplies are under threat. That ought to be an early warning for government and the industry. Disruptions to supply are a serious risk and they need to build a cushion."

This week the government finally announced its delayed decision to set up an ombudsman to tackle abuses of power in the supermarket chain. However, the structure and scope of the new ombudsman's office is to be the subject of further consultation.


[News > World news > Animals]
Turtles return home after a week's break from cold
Endangered creatures released back into the Atlantic after temperatures in Florida rise to normal
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 January 2010 18.35 GMT Article history

Hundreds of endangered sea turtles were released back into the Atlantic ocean yesterday after the temperature in Florida rose back to its seasonal norms.

Officials had rescued nearly 3,000 turtles from the sea, lagoons and rivers over the past week as air temperatures plunged to between 0C and 4C along the coast.

The unseasonably chilly weather had left the turtles, which weigh up to 180kg, stunned and largely motionless – the perfect prey for predators.

After a week of treatment – soakings in heated pools and oxygen therapy – they were released back into the wild by the truckload.

news20100116gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Business > Automotive industry]
Electric cars struggle to spark enthusiasm
All the big carmakers at the Detroit motor show had electrically powered and hybrid cars on display, but Americans still aren't buying green vehicles
Andrew Clark in Detroit
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 January 2010 16.51 GMT Article history

With a curiously squashed, elongated body, the Tango electrically-powered car is as narrow as a single passenger and as nippy as a motorbike. Billed as the world's fastest urban car, it can reach a speed of 130mph. Satisfied customers include the actor George Clooney, and its inventor describes the bizarre vehicle as a "chick magnet".

Built by a US start-up called Commuter Cars, the Tango takes up only half a traffic lane. It can carry two people tandem-style in slightly cramped comfort. Without the need for gears, its battery-powered engine can accelerate from zero to 60mph in four seconds and, with a racing car-style roll cage design, the Tango is supposedly as robust as a Volvo estate car.

"It's unequivocally the fastest car you can buy for an urban environment," says Commuter Cars' president, Rick Woodbury, who has sold 11 of the vehicles so far, at a hefty price of $150,000 (£90,000) each, including a recent delivery to a customer in Surrey. "I drove through Times Square and had girls throwing their arms around me."

The Tango is among the quirkier exhibits on Electric Avenue, a corner of the Detroit motor show devoted to electrically-powered vehicles. Visitors this week included speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm. Every manufacturer of any note, from General Motors to Toyota, Mitsubishi and Hyundai, has a plug-in car or, at the very least, a petrol-electric hybrid on display, usually involving the letter "e", as in the BMW ActiveE prototype and the Audi e-tron sports car.

The future of motoring, according to political and environmental enthusiasts, is electric. But this mantra has been repeated, in different forms, for almost a decade and many industry experts feel that it is hard to find a true groundswell of enthusiasm among consumers.

Held back

Twelve years ago, the Toyota Prius broke new ground as the first mass-market hybrid car. Hybrid technology, combining electric batteries with a petrol-driven back-up engine, is well established. But barely 1% of industry sales last year were hybrid or electrically powered vehicles. PricewaterhouseCoopers' automotive institute expects to see a small rise to 4% by 2015.

"What's holding them back?" asks Anthony Pratt, a PricewaterhouseCoopers analyst. "Cost." The starting price for a Prius in Britain is £19,500. A Toyota Avensis, with a conventional petrol engine, starts at £16,800.

Typically, buying an environmentally friendly car involves a premium of several thousand pounds, and the recession has not helped. Pratt says: "When people begin to look to do more with less, they became less concerned with the environment and more worried about trying to balance the budget."

Toyota this week showcased a smaller, cheaper version of the Prius called the FT-CH concept. Its Japanese rival, Nissan, displayed a pure electric plug-in car called the Leaf, which is already on the market in Japan and will hit US showrooms this year, arriving in Britain in 2012. It has a socket in its bonnet and needs to be recharged every 100 miles. At a turbo-powered quick charging station, re-energising the batteries takes 26 minutes; a home charging station will take eight hours.

Mitsubishi has a similar model, the MiEV prototype (short for Mitsubishi Innovative Electric Vehicle). With their relatively short range, these vehicles are aimed at commuters and are suitable for commercial use in towns – by, for example, postal services and restaurants delivering food. But until somebody builds a network of electric charging stations, they are awkward for longer trips.

That, according to Jim Hall, an automotive expert at 2953 Analytics, a Detroit-based research company, is a major sticking point: "The average American sees a car as a tool that must be able to do everything. Our cars are viewed as Swiss army knives."

Another reason, Hall believes, for the slow take-up of electric vehicles is that consumers most concerned about the environment also tend to be "late adopters" who are suspicious of impenetrable technology: "They'll be concerned about the nickel in the batteries – the fact that nickel must be mined and that nickel is toxic."

New ideas

Other ideas are being tested. Hyundai showed off a prototype called the Blue-Will this week, with roof-mounted solar cells to help recharge its lithium batteries. Tesla Motors, a small Silicon Valley company, has come up with a way to extend the range of a battery-powered car. Its test drivers recently managed to go 313 miles through the Australian Outback on a single charge.

But the most keenly awaited mainstream "green" launch will be GM's Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid that can go 40 miles on a single electric charge but then harness power from its internal combustion engine to generate more electricity on the go, extending its range to hundreds of miles from one tank of petrol. The Volt, which will cost about $40,000, will go on sale in the US late this year, but GM's vice-chairman for product development, Bob Lutz, admits that it will not be much of a moneyspinner.

"If we did it purely for profitability, we wouldn't be doing it," said Lutz, who predicts that even in a decade's time, at least 90% of cars sold will still be powered by internal combustion. "Other than 5% of the public who will willingly make a sacrifice to buy green vehicles, the other 95% of people will ask, 'What am I getting – what's the deal?' They're not going to spend $5,000 to $6,000 on technology they don't need."

There is a legislative incentive to lead the public towards greener cars. The Obama administration has tightened standards for fuel efficiency and ordered manufacturers to cut emissions from new vehicles sold in the US by 30% by 2016. But raising taxes on fuel, which would concentrate consumers' minds, has proved too risky to contemplate for politicians on either side of the Atlantic.

As recently as 2005, research by JD Power, the marketing information company, found that US buyers cared more about the number of cup holders in a new vehicle than its miles-to-gallon ratio. A 2008 spike in oil prices changed that, prompting a shift towards smaller cars, yet still an electric "revolution" on the roads remains a distant prospect. Plug-in cars face a long, tough battle to break beyond a small but devoted audience of Hollywood stars, eccentrics and passionate environmentalists.

news20100116nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 15 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.14
News
Israel hails first steps towards funding agency
Weightier grants will provide security for biomedical researchers.
Haim Watzman

Israeli researchers hope the new grants is the start of a windfall for biomedical research.zverushko/iStockphoto.comA doubling in the size of grants to 39 research groups could be the first fruits of a major push to boost biomedical funding in Israel. The move by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) follows efforts by ministers and researchers to establish an Israeli funding agency that would boost state-sponsored funding of biomedical research as much as tenfold (see 'Israel weighs up new funding agency').

The bulk of the money for the current programme, which will award US$40 million over seven years in the form of three-year grants worth around $100,000 a year, comes from the Legacy Heritage Fund, a New York City-based charity, with further funds coming from the ISF and private Israeli donors. Two rounds of grants have been awarded and the ISF is currently reviewing applications for a third, with a fourth round expected later this year. The grants are being given for research into neurodegenerative diseases, and current grantees will report how their work is progressing at a conference on 17–20 January to be held in Ein Boqeq on the shores of the Dead Sea.

"We have been working intensively to obtain the resources to offer larger grants," says Benny Geiger, a molecular-cell biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and the newly appointed chair of the ISF's Academic Board. "Although the ISF funds a large number of biomedical projects, our average grant, $50,000 a year for three years, is very small. This is a first step in the right direction."

Solid foundations

At a conference on the proposed new funding agency held in Jerusalem last month, Ruth Arnon, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute and vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, said that the small size of the grants from the ISF and other funding agencies in Israel means that local scientists spend an average of a third of their time preparing and submitting grant applications. Larger grants are vital, she said, so that Israel's biomedical researchers can spend more time on their scientific work.

One of the grant winners under the new programme, molecular neurobiologist Michael Fainzilber, also at the Weizmann Institute, estimates that he needs about $250,000 a year to run his lab.

"So the grant is not enough to cover the entire cost, but it's a decent sum of money," Fainzilber says. The rest of his funding comes from two German-Israeli grants, and from European funding agencies. "And I've got a long list of applications currently pending," he adds.

International collaborations sponsored by European and American funding agencies will always be important sources of funding for Israeli scientists, Geiger says. "But to obtain these," he says, "Israeli scientists need a solid foundation of grants that are not dependent on collaborators", which the new programme provides.

news20100116bbc1

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

[Science & Environment]
By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst, BBC News
Page last updated at 14:15 GMT, Saturday, 16 January 2010
Met Office's debate over longer-term forecasts
{The Met Office's seasonal forecasts rely partly on statistical projections}
The UK Met Office is debating what to do with its long-term and seasonal forecasting after criticism for failing to predict extreme weather.

Some experts say the Met Office should stop longer-term forecasting because it damages the organisation's reputation.

It has been criticised for failing to predict in its seasonal forecasts that the UK would suffer this cold winter or the previous three wet summers.

Others maintain that communication of the forecasts must be improved.

After being rapped for its now notorious "barbecue summer" press release, the winter forecast was expressed in probabilistic terms, with a 66% likelihood that the winter would be warmer than average and a one in seven chance that it would be colder.

The Met Office admits its annual global mean forecast predicted temperatures higher than actual temperatures for nine years out of the last 10.

This "warming bias" is very small - just 0.05C. And the Met Office points out that the variance between the forecast and the actual temperature is within its own stated margins of error.

{{These annual forecasts are not awful - they accurately predicted two of the cooler years, for instance. But they are not great, either}
Professor Andrew Watson, UEA

Professor Chris Folland from the Met Office said a re-analysis of weather science might even show that the actual temperature measurements have under-recorded recent warming - making the Met Office forecast even more accurate than it appears.

But some scientists contacted by BBC News say the organisation needs to discover why there is a consistent bias towards warming, however slight.

Andrew Watson, a Royal Society environment fellow from the University of East Anglia's school of environmental sciences, said: "These annual forecasts are not awful - they accurately predicted two of the cooler years, for instance. But they are not great, either.

"The warming bias is admittedly very small - but the Met Office has to address why it is there. It will certainly be very difficult to get rid of - they can't just knock a bit off their forecast - that would be totally unscientific."

Rain or shine?

Professor Watson said the warming bias - first mentioned on BBC correspondent Paul Hudson's blog - should not affect trust in the Met Office's climate projections, which are based on a different methodology.

But he said the medium-term projections were undermining public faith in the Met Office overall.

"I don't know why the Met Office bothers with these annual forecasts - [these forecasts] have a very low reputation in meteorology and climatology. No one really believes them anyway. They should just stop doing them," he said.

The climate scientist Mike Hulme - respected in many quarters of the climate debate - agreed on the need for change.

"These sorts of seasonal forecasts are of dubious value to the public," Professor Hulme, also of UEA, explained.

"It would probably be much better if the Met Office didn't attempt to persuade the public that it can forecast annual temperature to two decimal places given uncertainties in forecasting and in the measurements themselves," he said.

Long and short of it

But Professor Stephen Mobbs, director of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at Leeds University, said the warming bias in the annual prediction was a red herring.

"All models have biases and these are very small. It may be, as the Met Office suggests, that the observations are wrong, not the model."

But Professor Mobbs criticised the Met Office's communication of its forecasts. "The Met Office is a truly world-class organisation - we are lucky to have it," he said.

The University of Leeds researcher added: "They need to say that these longer-term forecasts are experimental and not use ridiculous phrases like 'barbecue summer' dreamed up by the communications people."

"When you see Met Office people on TV now they have a look of panic - and they dig themselves deeper into a hole. The short term forecasts are excellent. They should say the longer-term ones are highly uncertain, then keep modifying them.

"For some reason, the Met Office isn't telling the public what it knows about the weather for the next week - and what we ourselves can tell from looking at the Met Office data."

Weather and climate

Professor Mobbs agreed that the experimental nature of annual forecasting should not undermine climate forecasting.

'If you run the (computer) model one year it might not come out right but over 50-100 years you will be able to predict that the climate is getting warmer on average but not if, say, 2031 will be a warmer or a colder year.'

Some staff at the Met Office itself are angry that seasonal forecasting is damaging its reputation. Sources confirm that the organisation is debating how to react to public criticism on the issue.

In recent years the Met Office has increasingly expressed its forecasts in probabilistic language, hedged with error bars.

But Matt Huddlestone, who deals with public understanding at the Met Office, told me that the media constantly over-simplified the forecasts to remove the probabilities. "I actually think the public are capable of understanding probabilities much more than some of the papers think," he said.

Others see the problem as one of forecasting rather than communication. Piers Corbyn, the independent weather forecaster, predicted the winter cold many months ago, to the surprise of many meteorologists. He says the Met Office failed to warn of extreme events in their seasonal forecasts because they are employing a computer model based on the assumption of man-made climate change.

Public confidence

But the Met Office's seasonal and annual forecasts rely partly on statistical projections, not just computer modelling.

And many other meteorologists mistrust Mr Corbyn himself because he refuses to publish his scientific methods. I have been asking him for several months to offer independent corroboration of his forecasting successes but none has been supplied.

Some other forecasters say he has major forecasting successes but equally large failures which he does not mention.

This correspondent has been discussing with the Royal Statistical Society, the Royal Meteorological Society and the Public Weather Service whether an index can be created comparing the records of all reputable forecasters making weather projections in the UK.

A weather index could allow the public to see over the years who is really getting it right over long-term weather.

In the meantime, the Met Office has to make difficult decisions. Some commentators say that if they stay in the long-term weather game and trip up again, they may be pilloried. If they withdraw, they may be accused of losing faith in their methodology - and public confidence in science could be eroded - whether that is fair or not.

Many researchers are likely to feel that they are damned if do and damned if they don't.

news20100116bbc2

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

[Science & Environment]
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
Page last updated at 11:36 GMT, Friday, 15 January 2010
Herschel space telescope restored to full health
{Hifi experienced a damaging voltage peak in August}
Europe's billion-euro Herschel Space Telescope is fully operational again after engineers brought its damaged instrument back online.

The observatory's HiFi spectrometer was turned off just three months into the mission because of an anomaly that was probably triggered by space radiation.

The Dutch-led consortium that operates HiFi has now switched the instrument across to its reserve electronics.

It says the failure event has been understood and cannot happen again.

"We've had 30 people working on this," said Dr Frank Helmich, the lead scientist on HiFi, from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

"I don't watch much television but I know Crime Scene Investigation and this was just such an investigation - but in space! We found out what happened and then we designed all the mitigating measures," he told BBC News.

The HiFi fault has not affected the performance of Herschel's two other instruments - Pacs and Spire.

Strange readings

The European Space Agency (Esa) telescope was launched from Earth last May.

{{THE HERSCHEL SPACE TELESCOPE}
> The observatory is positioned 1.5m km from Earth
> Its instruments sense far-infrared and sub-millimetre radiation
> Its 3.5m diameter mirror is the largest ever flown in space
> Herschel can probe clouds of gas and dust to see stars being born
> It will investigate how galaxies have evolved through time
> The mission will end when its helium refrigerant boils off

Its quest is to study how stars and galaxies form, and how they evolve through cosmic time.

The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HiFi) is is a high-resolution spectrometer.

It is designed to capture and split light into its constituent wavelengths, creating a kind of "fingerprint" that will reveal information on the chemistry of a light source.

HiFi is expected to bring remarkable new insights into the composition and behaviour of the clouds of gas and dust that give rise to stars.

But the instrument was taken offline in August when it started returning anomalous readings.

The detailed inquiry at SRON traced the fault to a failed diode in a Local Oscillator Control Unit (LCU), which is part of the system that helps process the sky signal received by the instrument.

Electronic puzzle

Even though the investigators and their "crime scene" were separated by 1.5 million km, the SRON team was able to establish that the most likely cause was a cosmic ray hitting a microprocessor.

This upset triggered a sequence of hardware and software actions that ultimately resulted in a powerful voltage being sent through the LCU and killing the diode.

HiFi project leader Dr Peter Roelfsema said: "It turned out to be a very complex technological puzzle that we had to solve based on limited information and under a great deal of pressure.

{While Hifi was down, Spire and Pacs took up the observing time}

"But for all researchers involved, quickly finding an answer to this question was a matter of professional pride. We had to - and would - crack the problem with HiFi as soon as humanly possible, but we also had to take the time to be thorough."

Like most space equipment, Hifi has redundant electronics and the instrument is now using its reserve LCU. Measures have also been put in place to ensure another cosmic ray event cannot initiate the same failure sequence.

While Hifi was down, its observing time was used by Pacs and Spire to return stunning new images of the far-infrared and sub-millimetre (radio) Universe.

They will now reciprocate by giving HiFi 50% of the sky time in the next few months. Fortunately, because of the way the telescope is orientated in space, HiFi's most important targets were not due to come into view until early 2010 anyway.

"We will go into a priority science programme," Dr Helmich told BBC News.

"We do not fear that the LCU will misbehave again but we have lost redundancy in our electronics and so we want to do the most important science observations first.

"One of the first targets will be [star forming regions in] Orion. We expect tens of thousands of [spectral] lines to be seen by HiFi that will all need interpretation."

The Herschel mission is expected to last about three years before the superfluid helium that drives its cooling system boils away. At that point, the instruments' detectors will lose their sensitivity.


[UK]
Page last updated at 02:12 GMT, Friday, 15 January 2010
Rival to government drug advisory panel launched
{The government's former chief drugs adviser, David Nutt, on why he set up the panel}
An independent group designed to give "politically neutral" information about the risks of drugs is being launched.

It has been set up by the government's former chief drugs adviser, David Nutt, who was sacked last October for criticising government policy.

The Independent Council on Drug Harms consists of about 20 specialists.

Prof Nutt has said the group will be "very powerful" and its "goal" will be to take over from the official Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

'Focus on science'

Several former and current ACMD members are among the specialists in drugs, addiction and medicine who have joined the group, which held its first private meeting on Thursday .

{{I think in a way we will take over that particular role of the ACMD}
Professor David Nutt}

BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said he understood the new organisation had secured funding from a benefactor for three years.

It is also being supported by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies think tank.

When he announced his plans for the group, Prof Nutt said: "We have a really very, very powerful grouping - more powerful than the ACMD in the past has ever managed to pull together."

He said the new body would provide independent scientific evidence about the effects of drugs.

"I think in a way we will take over that particular role of the ACMD," said Prof Nutt.

"We're going to focus on the science and the ACMD can continue, if it likes, to deal with issues about treatment provision, about social policy etc."

Prof Nutt was sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson last October after publicly disagreeing with the government's decision to re-classify cannabis as a Class B drug and not to downgrade ecstasy.

Appointment overshadowed

Five ACMD members then resigned in the row that followed Prof Nutt's departure.

It later emerged that two other ACMD members had also stepped down, though the Home Office said their departures were unrelated to the Nutt affair.

On Wednesday the Home Office named pharmacology specialist Les Iversen as the new chairman of the ACMD, but the appointment was overshadowed by the revelation he had once backed the legalisation of cannabis.

In an article in 2003, Prof Iverson wrote that cannabis had been "incorrectly" classified as a dangerous drug for almost 50 years and said it was one of the "safer" recreational drugs.

However, he told BBC Radio 5 live he had since changed his mind because of new evidence about the dangers of cannabis.

It was the home secretary's prerogative to make decisions about drug classification and accept or reject scientific advice, Prof Iverson added.