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• City Dwellers Drive Deforestation in 21st Century
  Scientific American -- Instead of the typical "fish bone" signature of deforestation from small-scale operations, large, chunky blocks of cleared land reveal a changing driver for cutting down woods: large enterprises feeding urban demand, according to a new paper published Sunday in Nature Geoscience. [Read more]
• U.S. Officials Plan $78.5 Million Effort to Keep Dangerous Carp Out of Great Lakes
  NY Times -- Federal authorities on Monday presented a $78.5 million plan intended to block Asian carp, a hungry, huge, nonnative fish, from invading the Great Lakes. The threat has grown increasingly tense throughout the region in recent months as genetic material from the fish was found near and even in Lake Michigan. [Read more]
• FDA rolls out Web-based risk assessment tool for food, drug imports
  Federal Computer Week -- The Food and Drug Administration is deploying a new Web-based computer application to flag high-risk imports of food and medical products for additional monitoring and inspection.  FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg announced the Predictive Risk-based Evaluation for Dynamic Import Compliance Targeting (Predict) system in a speech at the Center for Strategic [Read more]
• USDA announces plans for new program to trace animals, to be administered by states
  LA Times -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Friday it has abandoned a program that was intended to trace the movement of farm animals around the country but garnered little support from farmers.  Instead, the department announced plans for a new, more flexible program to be administered by states and tribes to strengthen disease [Read more]
• One Bowl = 2 Servings. F.D.A. May Fix That.
  NY Times -- Seeking a new weapon in the fight against obesity, the Food and Drug Administration wants to encourage manufacturers to post vital nutritional information, including calorie counts, on the front of food packages. The goal is to give people a jolt of reality before they reach for another handful of chips. But the [Read more]
• Obama suggests extending debate as way to pass health reform
  Washington Post -- President Obama sketched out an alternative approach to passing health-care legislation that would enlist Republicans and potentially extend debate into the spring, a strategy seemingly in conflict with the fast-track talks among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Obama vowed to continue his year-long quest to overhaul the nation's health-care system, to curb rising [Read more]
• Moving forward with electronic health records
  Scientific American -- Almost a year since President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which earmarked some $19 billion to get electronic health records off the ground, most of the country's medical and research institutions are still primarily pushing paper. Researchers, health professionals and government officials gathered Friday at the New York [Read more]
• With Federal Stimulus Money Gone, Many Schools Face Budget Gaps
  NY Times -- Federal stimulus money has helped avoid drastic cuts at public schools in most parts of the nation, at least so far. But with the federal money running out, many of the nation’s schools are approaching what officials are calling a “funding cliff.” Congress included about $100 billion for education in the stimulus [Read more]
• Rep. Bart Gordon plans big push for science research in final year
  Nashville Tennessean -- Rep. Bart Gordon has a busy agenda planned for his final year as chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, and parts of it will have a direct impact on the future of Tennessee. His primary goal will be to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act, which was signed into law in [Read more]
• DOE's Chu Takes R&D Budget Request to House Science Panel
  Greenwire -- Energy Secretary Steven Chu will defend his department's hefty research and development budget request this week to House lawmakers. Total R&D spending throughout the department would increase by 3.5 percent over fiscal 2010 appropriated levels under the White House proposal. [Read more]
• Climate bill backers pick up jobs theme
  The Hill -- Backers of climate-change legislation are making an extra push to link clean energy with job growth as the administration and congressional Democrats look for ways to lower unemployment. One group released a study on Thursday that found mandating more renewable energy use, a provision included in climate legislation in Congress, would create [Read more]
• Justice Department 'Reluctantly' Says Google Settlement Still Needs Work
  Chronicle of Higher Education -- The U.S. Department of Justice has weighed in on Google Book Search Settlement 2.0, saying that despite "substantial progress, substantial issues remain." In a statement of interest filed on Thursday, the department said that the revamped agreement "suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: It is an [Read more]
• Stalled Health Care Bill Leaves Drug Makers in Regulatory Limbo
  NY Times -- With the possible demise of health care legislation, getting back to business as usual may not be the best thing for the nation’s drug makers. After all, in return for the prospect of tens of millions of newly insured customers and a large degree of regulatory certainty, the pharmaceutical industry had agreed [Read more]
• Fixing the Broken Government Policy Process
  Scientific American (Opinion) -- The administration should initiate a more open, transparent and systematic public-private policy process in each major area of sustainable development. Highest priorities would include renewable energy, nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration. A high-level roundtable would be established in each area, perhaps under the National Academy of Sciences, with representatives [Read more]
• Stalled Health Care Bill Leaves Drug Makers in Regulatory Limbo
  NY Times -- President Obama’s proposed budget this week, for example, includes a plan he alluded to in last week’s State of the Union address: a new tax on profits from some patents and other intangible assets parked in overseas tax havens by American companies. For drug makers, which are among those most likely to [Read more]
• U.S. sounds warning on healthcare costs
  USA Today -- The rise in current costs, driven in part by surging spending in the government Medicare and Medicaid programs, and the bleak projections for the future do not take into account changes that may come if Democrats succeed in reviving their health overhaul legislation. The report, while issued by a nonpartisan accounting agency, [Read more]
• New Biofuels Regs Could Still Face Fight From Capitol Hill
  Greenwire -- New Obama administration biofuels regulations would give ethanol a larger share of the U.S. renewable fuels mix, but not enough to satisfy some farm-state lawmakers on Capitol Hill.  U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson yesterday announced the new regulations for low-carbon fuels, which would implement the long-awaited renewable fuels standard that Congress included in [Read more]
• Leader of nation's biggest campus wants to change rules that govern granting of tenure
  LA Times -- The leader of the country's largest university thinks it's time to re-examine how professors are awarded tenure, a type of job-for-life protection virtually unknown outside academia. Ohio State University President Gordon Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and [Read more]
• U.S. Scientists Given Access to Cloud Computing
  NY Times -- The National Science Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation have agreed to offer American scientific researchers free access to the company’s new cloud computing service. A goal of the three-year project is to give scientists the computing power to cope with exploding amounts of research data. It uses Microsoft’s Windows Azure computing system, [Read more]
• US House Passes Cybersecurity R&D Bill
  PC World -- The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would authorize hundreds of millions of dollars in spending on cybersecurity research and education. The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act would give US$395 million to the U.S. National Science Foundation to fund several cybersecurity research projects between this year and 2014. [Read more]
• This Week, Cybersecurity Efforts Advance on Several Fronts
  PopScience -- For cybersecurity wonks who see Chinese agents or al Qaeda hackers lurking behind every email from a Nigerian prince, this was one hell of a busy week. With fallout continuing from the recent attack against Google, Director of National Intelligence, National Security Agency, House of Representatives, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and Department [Read more]
• White House Seeks Public Input On Innovation Goals
  Information Week -- The White House this week issued a request for public input on potential game-changing technologies the administration might pursue with research and development dollars. More specifically, the White House appears to be looking to set up a number of "grand challenges" for inventors and scientists to solve over coming years, which the [Read more]
• Soaring cost of healthcare sets a record
  LA Times -- In a stark reminder of growing costs, the government has released a new estimate that healthcare spending grew to a record 17.3% of the U.S. economy last year, marking the largest one-year jump in its share of the economy since the government started keeping such records half a century ago. The almost [Read more]
• Global warming research grant in danger of fund freeze
  Washington Times -- A top member of Congress wants President Obama to freeze more than $500,000 in stimulus money going to a Penn State global warming researcher after the school said it was expanding an investigation into the professor's work. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House investigations committee, said the [Read more]
• House Panel Sees Pros and Cons in NASA Plan
  NY Times -- Congressional reaction to President Obama’s budget for NASA was divided more along geographical than political lines Wednesday, as members of a House subcommittee debated the merits of scrapping the agency’s plans to return to the moon by 2020 and shift, instead, to developing new launching technologies. Representative Pete Olson, a Republican member [Read more]