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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