What's New Friday, 21 Aug 09

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 21 Aug 09   Washington, DC
	
1. NIH: TO THOSE WHO HAVE MUCH, MORE SHALL BE GIVEN.
With an annual budget of $30 billion, NIH was already the world's top 
funded research agency; now throw in another $10.4 billion from this year's 
stimulus package and you should have an organization that can respond to 
every challenge.  The new director, Francis Collins, outlined his 
priorities this week, including health-care reform and the translation of 
research into medicine. Collins also addressed concerns that his 
evangelical Christian interests might influence the operation of NIH. He 
resigned from BioLogos, the foundation he created to explore science and 
faith, and insists that his "personal interests" will not interfere with 
his judgments as director of NIH.

2. GHOST RESEARCHERS: THIS SHOULD NOT BE GOING ON.
An article by Natasha Singer in the business section of Wednesday's New 
York Times calls attention to ghostwritten scientific papers.   Singer 
alleges that faculty at major medical schools routinely allow their names 
to be added to scientific papers that are ghostwritten for them by 
pharmaceutical companies, thus fattening their resume even if no money 
changes hands.  As you might expect, the papers report that some drug 
produced by the company is beneficial.  They are not even written by 
scientists at the drug company; a medical-writing company is hired to crank 
them out.  This practice won't stop until the NIH, which controls most of 
the grant money, penalizes participating faculty.

3. CLIMATE:  OCEAN TEMPERATURES RISE TO A RECORD.
I still have global warming deniers sending me stories about how cold it is 
this summer in East Cupcake, Nebraska or someplace.  But they didn't send 
me the Associated Press story this week on ocean temperatures. Because of 
its high specific heat, water temperature changes slowly. The National 
Climatic Data Center reported this week that the average global ocean 
temperature in July was 62.6°F, the hottest since record-keeping began in 
1880.  Another record: there are actually people in the water at beaches in 
Maine.
	
4. FREE ENERGY: NEVER PAY ANOTHER ELECTRIC BILL. 
An alert reader sent me the URL for Magniwork.  It’s an assemble-it-
yourself home generator that “powers itself” http://www.magniwork.com .  
Joe Newman made the same claim 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN89/wn081889.html. So did Steorn just 
recently http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN09/wn062609.html . 

5. PELAGRA:  IT’S SHOWING UP AGAIN IN AFRICA.
In the final stages it leads to dementia and finally death.  Last seen in 
the United States during the Great Depression, it continues to show up in 
Africa.  Ironically, it is linked to a World Food Program that supplied 
Maize to stave off starvation.  Unfortunately, Maize lacks vitamin B3, 
causing Pelagra.  Starvation is officially blamed on crop failures, but 
crops fail because productive farms were divided into tiny parcels that 
cannot support a family.  

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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