Seven days: 21–27 September 2012

Business | Events | Policy | People | Research | Trend watch

Database case The American Chemical Society (ACS), the worlds largest scientific society, is likely to have to pay US$11.5million in compensation to a small start-up company after a ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court on 18September. The court ruled that the ACS, based in Washington DC, filed a lawsuit to unfairly suppress chemical-informatics firm Leadscope of Columbus, Ohio. See page482 for more.

Drug-makers unite Ten giant pharmaceutical companies have formed a non-profit organization called TransCelerate BioPharma, with the goal of making clinical trials more efficient. By setting universal standards in trial design and data collection, the group could shave time and expense off the drug-development process, says Garry Neil, head of TransCelerate and a former vice-president of science and technology at Johnson & Johnson. Smaller companies are invited to join the team. See go.nature.com/jj2sky for more.

Dark Energy Survey Collaboration/FERMILAB

First light for dark-energy lens A camera designed to hunt for signs of dark energy, a force thought to be responsible for the Universes rapid expansion, snapped its first images on 12September. The images from the Dark Energy Survey camera (Nature 489, 190191; 2012), which is mounted on the 4-metre Blanco telescope in Chile, were generated as part of a testing phase that is set to end in December. This stitched-together image of sections of sky shows the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, which is around 5,000 parsecs from Earth. See go.nature.com/ya5y2p for more.

Arctic drilling stops Plans to drill for oil and gas resources off the coast of Alaska have been abandoned following damage to oil containers on the spill-clean-up barge Arctic Challenger, oil company Shell announced on 17September. The setback means that the mission no longer meets the safety requirements for a permit to drill specific wells. Shell will continue to bore exploratory top holes in the Chukchi Sea in preparation for further drilling, which has now been delayed until 2013. See go.nature.com/zynxtq for more.

Stem-cell funds The European Parliaments legal committee has recommended that research involving human embryonic stem cells should not be funded in the European Unions upcoming Horizon 2020 research programme. The committee refers to a decision by the European Court of Justice, which ruled on ethical grounds last October that treatments based on such cells were not patentable (see Nature 480, 310312; 2011). Horizon 2020 is intended to promote Europes economic competitiveness, and the parliamentary committee argues that research that cannot be patented should not be supported under the programme.

Ethics hub A US$1.5-million online resource for scientists teaching responsible conduct of research (RCR) was officially launched on 20September. The Ethics CORE website (www.nationalethicscenter.org) is funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and directed by C.K.Gunsalus, an expert on research integrity at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The America COMPETES Act of 2007 made RCR training mandatory for all NSF grant recipients; the foundation implemented the requirement in 2010. See go.nature.com/m38bnp for more.

Rainforest threat Deforestation is on the rise again in the Brazilian Amazon. The amount of clear-cut land hit 522square kilometres in August 2012, up from 163km2 in the same month last year, according to satellite measurements made by Brazils National Institute for Space Research (INPE), based in So Jos dos Campos. Deforestation had been on the wane since April 2011. See go.nature.com/b7ej2p for more.

Immigration bill The US House of Representatives rejected a bill on 20 September that would have granted permanent residency commonly referred to as green card status to 55,000 foreign scientists and engineers with advanced degrees from US universities each year. Both presidential candidates have expressed support for admitting more workers in these disciplines, but the bill failed to garner the two-thirds majority needed to pass. See go.nature.com/hatvjq for more.

Visit link:
Seven days: 21–27 September 2012