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| The latest news from the Academies
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Mar. 12 -- Many state and local officials and private organizations are basing decisions -- such as how to build bridges or manage water supplies -- on the invalid assumption that current climate conditions will continue. A new report from the National Research Council recommends that federal agencies should expand their efforts to produce and deliver the climate information these decision makers need.
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Mar. 9 -- The presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine were at the White House today when President Obama signed an executive order lifting limitations on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and issued a presidential memorandum calling for guidelines to ensure that government scientists are not subject to undue political influence. In a statement, the NAS, NAE, and IOM presidents welcomed President Obama's directives, and said that they look forward to advising the administration on these issues.
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Mar. 6 -- The White House should lead the reformulation of U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction programs to focus on combating international terrorism and other current threats, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council. Originally designed to deal with immediate post-Cold War challenges, the programs should be expanded geographically and revamped to address contemporary threats from groups that are agile, networked, and adaptable.
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Mar. 4 -- Higher-education programs in agriculture need to change with the times and prepare top students for new challenges in the field -- including concerns about energy and national security, human health and nutrition, and the impact of climate change -- says a new National Research Council report. Academic institutions also should integrate agriculture with other departments and engage employers and others to help produce a flexible, skilled work force.
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| Breaking stories in science
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Mar. 12 -- A new strain of flood-resistant rice currently being developed has the potential for making a huge impact on hunger for half of the world’s population, which relies on rice as a food staple.
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Mar. 6 -- Within the next few decades, biologists may figure out how the millions of species on Earth are related to one another. But in order for people to actually see the relationships mapped out, biologists need help from computational scientists and specialists in visualization to draw the immense evolutionary tree full of complex relationships.
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Feb. 26 -- The rocket carrying NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory did not reach orbit due to the payload’s failure to separate, sending the satellite into the ocean near Antarctica. The observatory was to be NASA’s first effort to map carbon dioxide emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere from space.
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Feb. 20 -- The recent unprecedented domestic and international recall of products containing peanut butter and paste produced by the Peanut Corporation of America has again called attention to the need for an overhaul of the nation's food safety system. Consumption of tainted peanut products have so far led to more than 600 reported cases of salmonella poisoning and a number of deaths in the United States alone. To date, more than 2,100 products have been voluntarily recalled by more than 200 companies, and the situation has spurred congressional hearings, FBI investigations, and a Justice Department criminal investigation.
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Feb. 13 -- This year marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his most influential publication, On the Origin of Species, in which he introduced evolution by natural selection. Darwin's ideas had a profound influence on 19th-century thought, and today evolution is a cornerstone of modern biology.
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