Element FYI

• U.S. Caps Number of AIDS Researchers at Toronto Meeting [Science, Feb. 24] - The Bush administration has capped the number of federal researchers being allowed to attend the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto scheduled for this August to only 50 researchers from the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The idea to cap US attendance at the yearly conference was apparently sparked in 2002, when "[t]he heckling of former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson at the 2002 meeting in Barcelona upset congressional Republicans, who questioned sending 236 HHS staffers and spending $3.6 million on the conference. In 2004, the department imposed a 50-person limit for the Bangkok meeting, leaving some NIH and CDC scientists unable to present papers that had been accepted."
  
  
• In Fire's Wake, Logging Study Inflames Debate [The Washington Post, Feb. 27] - The federal Bureau of Land Management revoked the final year of funding from a three-year, $300,000 grant by researchers at Oregon State University after graduate student Daniel Donato and colleagues published an article in Science, which showed that "salvage logging can strip burned forests of the biological diversity that fire and natural recovery help protect. The study also questions the scientific rationale behind a bill pending in Congress that would ease procedures for post-fire logging in federal forests.... After the cutoff, Democrats in the Northwest congressional delegation complained about government censorship, academic freedom and the politicization of science in the Bush administration. Within a week, the BLM backed down and restored the grant."
  
  
• Bush Admits to 'Mixed Signals' Regarding Laboratory on Renewable Energy [NY Times, Feb. 21] - Within a week after President Bush's State of the Union Address on Jan. 31, in which he called for more funding for alternative energy research, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory announced that it was laying off eight scientists and 24 support staff due to a $28 million budget shortfall. Then, just days before Bush was scheduled to visit the lab, the Energy Department "announced that it had transferred $5 million back into the laboratory's budget and that the 32 employees would be reinstated."
  
  
• Scientists See Clean Air Decision As Latest Snub [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 27] - For the first time in its 35 year history, the EPA is "rejecting recommendations from its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee as the agency moves forward this year with revised rules governing how much soot and dust can be permitted in the air.... In the first step of the review process for air-quality standards, EPA scientists prepare documents summarizing the latest scientific research. Those documents looked much different after being edited by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The White House office made dozens of changes, many of them softening assertions of harm from pollution and some deleting entire sections. For instance, the White House budget office deleted references to a study concluding that low-income people could be more vulnerable to exposure to soot and dust. Likewise, the office removed a sentence asserting that the air quality rules "may have a substantial impact on the life expectancy of the U.S. population.""

• Rough Skin is Good [Physical Review Focus] Surface irregularities can suppress air turbulence, suggesting possible improvements for airplane wings.
  
• The New Gag Rules [Science] Science Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy remarks on Bush administration efforts to prevent NASA and NOAA scientists from speaking to reporters and the public. "These two incidents are part of a troublesome pattern to which the Bush administration has become addicted: Ignore evidence if it doesn't favor the preferred policy outcome. Above all, don't let the public get an idea that scientists inside government disagree with the party line."
  
• Sex on the Brain [Nature] Gene that helps determine gender is linked to Parkinson's disease.
  
• Hearing the Whales [NOAA Magazine] NOAA tracks whale calls over large distances across the ocean.

• The Ever-Aging Postdoc [Science]
  
• Deconstructing Faculty Doors [Academe]
  
• Advice From Administration Courtesans [Inside Higher Ed]
  
• Leaving the Village [Chronicle of Higher Ed]

Now the muckrackers are at it again, giving us the lowdown on aspartame, which was approved by the FDA in 1981 for use as an artificial sweetener in products such as NutraSweet and Equal, and is consumed in huge quantities in diet colas. Before you chug another Diet Coke, you should know that aspartame has been linked to cancer in rats and aggravation of depression and bipolar disorder in humans. Hogwash, you say. The FDA wouldn't have let this product be sold to consumers for the last 25 years if it were really bad for you, right? Melanie Warner of the NY Times writes that of 166 aspartame studies published between 1980 and 1985, all 74 studies that were financed by the industry said that aspartame is safe, while 84 out of 92 independently funded studies "identified adverse health effects." Coincidence? Well, what if we told you that from 1977 to 1985, the company that created aspartame, G. D. Searle & Co. (now part of Pfizer), was headed by none other than Donald 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' Rumsfeld? The conspiracy theory is in fact all old news. The new twist is that last July, Italian scientist Dr. Morando Soffritti (pictured right) published the results of an intensive seven-year study on 1900 rats, which found unusually high rates of cancer in rats that consumed the human equivalent of four to five diet colas sweetened with aspartame per day. According to the NY Times article, the FDA intends to thoroughly review the study this year. But given the games that the Bush administration has been playing with scientists and the coincidence that the former CEO of Searle is none other than our own Secretary of Defense, what are the chances that the FDA is going to review these new results with unbiased scientific scrutiny? Who's going to hold their feet to the fire this time, bloggers?