This blog and the upcoming issue of the Michigan Independent discuss the erosion of the funding of the sciences and the detrimental effects on long term economic growth and progress in the United States. Nature reports the same occurrence in the United Kingdom as well. From the article:
“The EPSRC scale-back, which will mean grant cuts […]

Does the practice of meditation foster one’s capacity for compassion and empathy? The Venerable Ajahn Chah believed so, and now, scientific evidence appears to confirm it. In an article published in the Public Library of Science, scientists used an MRI to examine the brain circuitry engaged when in a state of compassion for meditators and […]

The Florida State Senate’s K-12 Education Committee approved a bill to the main floor “protecting” teachers who wish to teach alternative theories of evolution (read: Creationism). Clearly these bills have been discussed in the blogosphere extensively, but whenever these bills are introduced I still cringe. For one, this is the very reason why we need […]

If you read the New York Times today and saw their report on the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minnesota, you may have been wondering like me exactly what those bends looked like, or for that matter, why did the bridge fail in the first place? For a better explanation than the one given, […]

A group of institutions increasingly alarmed with the stagnant rate of growth for the National Institutes of Health have launched a new initiative to explore the effects of an underfunded scientific community. It’s called A Broken Pipeline.
(HT: Greg Laden)

From the latest issue of Science (subscription required):
Most institutes are affected, but the pain is acute at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), where up to 12 intramural labs–run by 16% of 74 tenured staff–could be shuttered. “This is a completely new category of nightmare,” says an NICHD investigator who asked […]

Here’s some recent news on the crazy things that University of Michigan researchers have been up to:

The University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center has designed a molecule that inhibits a protein that inactivates p53, a protein that works to suppress tumors, in cancer.
Michigan builds the WORLD’S MOST INTENSE LASER EVER.
Scientists have developed a way […]

While much effort has been made in the development of an Ebola vaccine, there still remain many barriers to actual implementation in humans. Furthermore, in the event of an Ebola outbreak, it is too late for a vaccine to have any effect in infected patients. In these events, there may be new hope. Penn researchers […]