Month: October 2012

Every so often, a new medical breakthrough or health-assisting device hits the market. The latest innovation to grab the headlines and change the health industry for the better is a cuff-shaped apparatus conceived to measure blood pressure in the largest artery in the body. As the brainchild of researchers at the University of Leicester and institutions in Singapore the cuff, which is fitted around the patient’s wrist, serves to give a much more accurate reading than the traditional arm cuff.

Cut science funding, and innovations such as the new blood pressure device wouldn’t come to fruition, nor would life-saving medicines, let alone space ships. Still, the question of whether more money should be pumped into scientific research at the time of financial hardship is a delicate one. Before raising the budget-busting axe, it should be taken into account that unlike most areas of public spending, the science research budget tends to pay for itself. To offer a tangible figure, the Medical Research Council in the UK estimates that every pound it parts with brings back a 40p return each year. To further prove the strength of the segment, university offshoot companies have been acquired or floated on the stock market for a total value of £3.5bn in the past few years, creating jobs for over 14,000 people in the UK.

Indeed, scientific research is, or rather has been, one of the UK’s most sound areas of economic competitive advantage, and as ardently stressed by institutions such as The Royal Society, the country faces a doomed future and stifled economic growth unless it invests heavily in research. “History shows us that new technologies drive economic development – look at the industrial and digital revolutions. The UK has been in the top two of the scientific premier league for the last 350 years. It would seem obvious that politicians would recognise the need to invest in this competitive advantage rather than cutting funds,” says Sir Martin Taylor, who chaired the Royal Society report entitled The Scientific Century in March last year.

The significant and much buzzed about report was put together in a bid to create awareness leading up to the new budget announcement of 2011 that didn’t seem to favour R&D. While some muttered that the paper was nothing but a piece of propaganda drafted by a gaggle of scientists fretting that they’d be forced to hand in their lab coats for good, the actions of international rivals supported the pro-science argument by making scientific research and exploration their number one priority. To give a snapshot of what the competition is up to in an attempt to boost their economies via science research, President Obama’s stimulus package included more than $100bn for science, seeing an increase of 5.9 percent per year, while the country’s overall budget stayed intact; President Sarkozy of France, meanwhile, announced an extra €35bn for research, whereas Germany is set to spend an additional 12bn on education and science by 2013.

Also upping its game significantly, China has ramped up research funds by 20 percent a year for a decade and is thus considered the new monster force in the sphere of global science. To strengthen its position further, the top scientific bodies of China and Taiwan have formed a partnership to promote exchanges and cooperation between researchers, who will also share research resources and data. The country has also made progress in the field of space science and is widely regarded as taking a leading role in some areas of space research in the future.

Since we’re on the subject, France and the US are equally keen to invest in the space industry. In his 2012 budget request for Nasa, Mr Obama is asking Congress for $850m to help seed the development of a series of private space vehicles – a $238m increase on the 2011 budget (that is yet to be implemented, but has been authorised). The request for Nasa as a whole is $18.7bn – the same as the current figure. Under the proposed budget, Nasa would continue to work with the same budget through to the fiscal year of 2016.  Hot on the heels of the US, France is on a roll too, launching new space innovations on a regular basis.

Academics’ campaign pays off
Returning to bleaker territories, the UK and less fortunate parts of the EU need to be on their guard if they’re not to fall by the wayside, ramping up their spending and general science investment to match that of their rival nations, the US and China. Giving the UK as an example, while the R&D pot of gold was full to the brim during Blair and Brown governments, when it doubled in value, the situation looks much different today, with a £178bn deficit to be dealt with. Leading up to the latest budget announcement, academics fought their corner with gusto, without much assurance from government to encourage their cause. The Shadow Science Minister even went as far as to state that cuts were inevitable. Hence, the research community expected nothing but a catastrophic outcome with at least a 20 percent cut in grants for science research. To everyone’s surprise and delight, the campaign paid off; in October 2010 George Osbourne announced that the £4.6bn science budget was ring-fenced for the next four years. In his speech, Osborne rightly said: “Britain is a world leader in scientific research, and that is vital to our economic success.” The funds are divided between the seven research councils, which in turn hand out grants to relevant scientists and institutions, leaning towards a distribution favouring areas with the most potential to deliver wealth creation and promote a low carbon economy.

The fact that merciless cuts were avoided is undeniably positive, but the stagnant budget still sees a reduction of about 10 percent once inflation has been taken into account. Stepping in to rescue dwindling revenues, charities are under greater pressure than ever to fund the area, particularly the field of medical research. But organisations such as the Wellcome Trust are careful to point out that they’re not stepping in to substitute for government, as that would send out the wrong signal. “The government knows very well that the Wellcome Trust believes this is about synergy not substitution,” said Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, in a statement responding to the government’s feeble attempts to rescue the UK science industry from cuts.

Apart from the obvious drawbacks of a shrinking scientific community, such as challenged prosperity and an increasing number of vacant labs, countries with a less forward-thinking scientific culture risk seeing their best scientists becoming easy prey for international rivals ready to lure them away with more lucrative offers and high-profile ventures. In developing countries, ‘brain drain’ is a problem, where many skilled scientists undertake studies in science abroad, but rarely return to home turf to utilise their expertise.

But it’s not only practicing scientists that are in decline. Looking at A-levels in science in the UK, for example, a mere 17 percent of 16 to 18-year-olds took one or more science A-levels in 2009, according to a fresh report by The Royal Society. Equally worrying, British universities produce less than 10,000 science graduates per year, and there’s a significant fall in the number of selective schools putting forward candidates for physics. To compare, in 2005, every private school in the UK had physics candidates, but in 2009 that number had dropped to 89 percent. “At a time of economic uncertainty, when science and scientists can play a key role in revitalising the UK’s financial outlook, it is deeply worrying to find that numbers of A-level science students are at such low levels,” says Professor Athene Donald, chair of the Royal Society’s education committee.

Empty labs
The pharmaceutical industry has been hotly debated for some time now, and spending in some areas is in decline worldwide. Making headlines when the news broke in January 2010, UK pharmaceutical name AstraZeneca has made substantial cuts that form part of a global restructuring plan to make up for losses linked to lost patents and pressure to reduce drug prices. On the job loss front, the number will reach 8,000 across the company’s various international sites by 2014. Of the total cuts, around 1,800 account for worldwide redundancies within the R&D segment, with another 1,700 shifting to other locations or therapeutic areas.

In a bid to up its profit, AstraZeneca will be exiting  research areas where the risks outweigh the rewards. These include thrombosis, acid reflux, ovarian and bladder cancers, systemic scleroderma, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety and hepatitis C. The company will continue to invest in all its traditional areas, namely cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, oncology, respiratory, inflammation, neuroscience and infection.

Adding to the worrying trend, the US drug company Merck has also closed facilities worldwide in countries including the Netherlands, Canada and Denmark, whereas GlaxoSmithKline has decided to withdraw its antidepressant research facility in Britain in an attempt to save £500m a year by 2012.

Another major blow to the R&D community is the announcement that US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is to close its main European research site in Sandwich, UK. By no means a minor player, the company boasts Europe’s largest research and development facility, bringing together prime chemists, biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists and clinicians – some of the fields that the UK specialises in. At the Sandwich site, key areas of research and development include that of drugs fighting Alzheimer’s and cancer. The closure of the facility, planned for 2013, will result in 2, 400 employees being made redundant within the next two years.

According to company executives, the decision to close the site is not a reflection on the UK environment, but part of a global plan to create a more “focused and sustainable R&D engine for innovation”. This new route involves exiting certain therapeutic areas, such as allergy and respiratory, which significantly is based at the soon to be abandoned site. By no means struggling, Pfizer recorded a 36 percent increase in revenue for the financial year to $67.8bn. The upswing is primarily a result of the Pfizer’s merging with Wyeth in 2009. Not planning to clear out of the UK entirely, Pfizer is said to be opening a new Pain and Sensory Disorders Unit based in Cambridge. Still, the company’s ruthless plan of action has created furore in the UK, and the House of Commons won’t let the company or the government get off lightly. In due course, the Science and Technology Select Committee is to summon Pfizer representatives and science minister David Willetts to give evidence about the closure and job losses. 

In order to soften the blow, Mr Willetts recently suggested that the government should attempt to transform the Sandwich site into a new life sciences park. Furthermore, the ABPI (Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries) has backed the UK as a destination for scientific research, owing much to the fact that the government recently introduced the so called Patent Box – a promising new tax-reduction initiative aimed at luring the pharmaceutical industry.

Called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), the metallic crystals are porous, stable structures that can absorb and compress gases into very small spaces.

Scientists are hoping such materials can lead to cleaner energy and help capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions before they reach the atmosphere and contribute to global warming, rising sea levels and ocean acidity.

Led by Omar Yaghi at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute, the team improved upon an earlier crystal named MOF-177 to produce two new versions – MOF-200 and MOF-210 – that can store twice the volume of gases.

“Porosity is a way to do a lot with little,” said Yaghi, a chemistry and biochemistry professor, in a statement. “Instead of having only the outside surface of a particle, we drill small holes to dramatically increase the surface area.”

The improved crystals were described in a paper published in the online edition of the journal Science.

Jaheon Kim, a chemistry professor at Seoul’s Soongsil University, helped design the MOF-210. He described one gram of MOFs as being about the size of four sugar tablets.

When flattened, each gram of these improved crystals could spread over 5,000 square metres, Yaghi said.

“If I take a gram of MOF-200 and unravel it, it will cover many football fields, and that is the space you have for gases to assemble,” Yaghi said. “It’s like magic. Forty tons of MOFs is equal to the entire surface area of California.”

Kim said he saw many uses for these crystals.

“They can be used for the short-term storage of CO2 or fuel gas storage. I think it is practically possible,” said Kim, adding that hydrogen could also be stored.

MOFs can be made from low-cost ingredients, such as zinc oxide, a common ingredient in sunscreen, and terephthalate, which is found in plastic soda bottles.

“We had a technical stop over Christmas and that has finished. The beams are circulating again,” Barbara Warmbein, press officer at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), told reporters.

Collisions at the highest possible energy level, emulating conditions in the moments after the creation of the universe 13.7 billion years ago, should occur within two to four weeks, the spokeswoman said.

Scientists around the world will scour the resulting data to search for the elusive Higgs Boson particle, which Scots scientist Peter Higgs said three decades ago would explain how matter came together and created the universe.

“The plan is to run at those energies for 18 to 24 months to give the experimenters the data that they need to work,” Warmbein said.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is the largest machine ever built and doomsday theorists have worried its experiments would create black holes that would destroy humanity.

It was first started up in September 2008 but then shut down 10 days later after over-heating in its 27km (17-mile) circular underground tunnel which required lengthy and expensive delays. The project has drawn together thousands of physicists worldwide and cost some $10bn.

The UN health body said the rapidly rising rates of new HIV infections in countries such as Ukraine, Moldova, Estonia and Latvia meant the region as a whole now had world’s the fastest growing epidemic.

“While HIV epidemics in Western Europe are, with some exceptions, generally stabilising, in many countries in Eastern Europe, they rage out of control,” Andrew Ball of the WHO’s HIV/AIDS department told an international AIDS conference in Vienna.
   
“The rate of increase of new HIV infections in Europe is now the highest in the world.”

Most of the increase is due to the spread of the virus among injecting drug users in places such as Russia and Ukraine, where addicts are often stigmatised and have limited access to HIV treatment or information.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS is spread in blood, breast milk and through sex and drug users can spread it by sharing used needles.

In the WHO’s European region, which covers around 50 countries in Eastern and Western Europe, as well Central Asia, there were more than 1.2 million HIV cases by the end of 2008, with more than 100,000 new infections in that year.

“The AIDS crisis in Europe is not over,” said Martin Donoghoe, the WHO’s programme manager for HIV/AIDS in the region.

He said that while the annual number of new HIV cases was relatively stable at about 20,000 in Western Europe, rates were volatile and increasing in the east, where there were 80,000 new cases in 2008.

The UN children’s fund UNICEF said recently that an “underground HIV epidemic” in Eastern Europe and Central Asia was being fuelled by drug use, risky sex and severe social stigma that stopped people asking for help.

Donoghoe said a specific focus was needed on injecting drug users, a group which in some areas accounts for 50 percent of all those living with HIV. In a large number of countries in the region, drug users are stigmatised and excluded from health and social services, including HIV treatment, the WHO said.

The number of people in Europe who get AIDS drugs has doubled from 2003 to 500,000 in 2008. But Donoghoe said the vast majority of those new patients were in the west. In Eastern Europe, only around 23 percent of people who need HIV/AIDS medicines can actually get them.

Donoghoe said breaking and ultimately halting the fast growth of HIV in Europe would require “concerted action” by all governments and health organisations. “HIV in Europe depends on access to services in the east,” he said.

At stake is public belief that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, and political momentum to act as governments struggle to agree a climate treaty which could direct trillions of dollars into renewable energy, away from fossil fuels.

Public conviction of global warming’s risks may have been undermined by an error in a UN panel report exaggerating the pace of melt of Himalayan glaciers and by the disclosure of hacked emails revealing scientists sniping at sceptics, who leapt on these as evidence of data fixing.

Scientists said they must explain better how a freezing winter this year in parts of the northern hemisphere and a break in a rising trend in global temperatures since 1998 can happen when heat-trapping gases are pouring into the atmosphere.

“There is a lack of consensus,” said Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, on why global temperatures have not matched a peak set in 1998, or in 2005 according to one US analysis.

Part of the explanation could be a failure to account for rapid warming in parts of the Arctic, where sea ice had melted, and where there were fewer monitoring stations, he said.

“I think we need better analysis of what’s going on on a routine basis so that everyone, politicians and the general public, are informed about our current understanding of what is happening, more statements in a much quicker fashion instead of waiting for another six years for the next IPCC report.”

The latest, fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was published in 2007 and the next is due in 2014.

The proportion of British adults who had no doubt climate change was happening had dropped in January to 31 percent from 44 percent in January 2009, an Ipsos MORI poll showed recently.

Hottest decade to record
The decade 2000-2009 was the hottest since 1850 as a result of warming through the 1980s and 1990s which has since peaked, says the World Meteorological Organisation.

British Hadley Centre scientists said last year that there was no warming from 1999-2008, after allowing for extreme, natural weather patterns. Temperatures should have risen by a widely estimated 0.2 degrees Centigrade, given a build up of manmade greenhouse gases.

“Solar might be one part of it,” said the Hadley’s Jeff Knight, adding that changes in the way data was gathered could be a factor, as well as shifts in the heat stored by oceans.

The sun goes through phases in activity, and since 2001 has been in a downturn meaning it may have heated the earth a little less, scientists say.

“We’ve not put our finger precisely on what has changed,” Knight said. “If you add all these things together … there’s nothing really there to challenge the idea that there’s going to be large warming in the 21st century.”

Melting Arctic ice was evidence for continuing change, regardless of observed temperatures, said Stein Sandven, head of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway.

“The long-term change for the Arctic sea ice has been very consistent. It shows a decline over these [past] three decades especially in the summer. In the past three or four years Arctic sea ice has been below the average for the last 30 years.”

Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, told reporters that the IPCC stood by its 2007 findings that it is more than 90 percent certain that human activities are the main cause of global warming in the past 50 years.

“I think the findings are overall very robust. We’ve made one stupid error on the Himalayan glaciers. I think that there is otherwise so much solid science.” The IPCC wrongly predicted that Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035.

Natural causes?
One long-running doubter of the threat of climate change, Richard Lindzen, meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said a lull in warming was unsurprising, given an earlier “obsessing about tenths of a degree” in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The world warmed 0.7-0.8 degrees Celsius over the last century. Lindzen expected analysis to show in a few years’ time that recent warming had natural causes. “It just fluctuates. I think the best explanation is the ocean. The timescale for ocean circulations can be decades.”

He dismissed recent ice melt over a short, 30-year record.

Pachauri said that scientists had to unpick manmade global warming from natural influences – such as the sun and cyclical weather patterns – also dubbed “natural variability”.

“Natural variability is not magic, there is movement of energy around the climate system and we should be able to track it,” said Trenberth.

Trenberth attributed the cold winter to an extraordinary weather pattern not seen since 1977 which had curbed prevailing westerly winds across the northern hemisphere, and said that the underlying cause was “one we don’t have answers to.”

“At the end of 2009, the market for forest carbon stands in an uncertain position on the verge of potentially enormous growth,” the State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2009 report said.

“Amidst this scene of opportunity and risk, investors are still eyeing forest carbon, though many are waiting on more definite regulatory signals before taking a financial leap.”

Although climate talks in Copenhagen in December failed to agree a new legally-binding global climate pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the US pledged at the summit $1bn towards a scheme to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).

Many countries have committed politically to the $3.5bn scheme, of which Australia, France, Japan, Norway and Britain are also contributors.

A domestic US bill to cut emissions has also stalled in Congress, with market players calling its passage this year vital for investment.

Regardless of this uncertainty, the forest carbon market grew nearly fivefold since 2006.

The market was worth $37.1m in 2008, after rising to $40.5m a year before and from $7.6m in 2006, according to Ecosystem Marketplace, the report’s authors.

The report said the forest carbon market was worth $21m in the first half of 2009.

The volume-weighted average price was $7.88 per tonne of carbon dioxide, with compliance markets like the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme commanding the highest average price for forest offsets ($10.24).

The over-the-counter (OTC) market for voluntary carbon offsets, typically unregulated and somewhat opaque, had average prices of $8.44 a tonne, while forest offsets trading on the Chicago Climate Exchange, the only exchange for voluntary carbon offsets, saw prices of around $3.03.

To the end of June 2009, the market traded the equivalent of 20.8 million tonnes in offsets, representing 2.1 million hectares of forests worth some $149.2m, the report said.

Of this, North America was home to 39 percent worth $32m, Latin America had 22 percent worth $35.5m, Australia had 16 percent worth $37.8m and Africa had 11 percent worth $20.9m, the report said.

Asia and Europe made up only six percent and four percent of volumes, worth $10 and $6m respectively.

The report found that of the protected forests in question, the top drivers of deforestation were commercial logging (23 percent) and agricultural development (19 percent).

Latin America, home of the Amazon rainforest, showed the largest variety of pressures, which also included ranching, illegal logging, urban development and oil and gas exploration.

In years gone by, employers relied on subjective tools such as CVs and interviews to identify the best talent. However, it has become clear in recent years that personality and ability assessments play a valuable role in recruitment and development processes, offering managers unprecedented objectivity when identifying whether somebody has the right skills or attributes for a role.

Today more than ever, global businesses have recognised that the quality of their people can make or break their success and this has led to a close examination of recruitment, retention and talent management, with psychometric testing now playing a central role. Assessment is no longer seen as an optional extra. It gives organisations competitive advantage by helping identify the best and appropriate talent, saving time and cost in recruitment and increasing retention by ensuring optimum employee-job fit. This could not be more important for businesses than in the current economic environment.

Such assessments are also beneficial from a candidate’s perspective, ensuring that the role for which they are applying is right for them. Plus, given the current questions being asked about ethics and transparency in business, particularly in the financial sector, taking a psychometric test gives applicants an assurance that the company is following best practice in its recruitment and that it is serious about taking on the best people. 

The Growth of Online Assessment
Up until the early 2000s, psychometric testing, like many now web-based activities, was carried out on paper. SHL was one of the pioneers of online, on demand assessment through a ‘software as a service’ model and since then, its application has exploded. Fewer than 15 percent of SHL assessments today are delivered via paper – in the last 12 months alone, more than two million SHL online assessments have been completed worldwide by a vast range of organisations.

Saving Time and Cost
The move online provided numerous benefits that had not previously been possible with assessments. It meant that candidates could take assessments remotely from anywhere in the world at any time. This made it easier and quicker for the candidate, removing the need for them to take time out of their current role.

From the employer’s perspective, online assessment now enables them to screen out unsuitable applicants quickly at an early stage, facilitating short-listing  of the best people to be interviewed. Given that employers often need to assess a large number of people, such as during an annual graduate recruitment programme, this has huge time and cost-saving implications. And this does not just apply to graduate programmes; many businesses have recently seen a steep increase in the volume of applicants for individual roles, due to the unfortunate influx of candidates into the job market.

The development of online delivery systems has also led to unprecedented global reach and, with multilingual assessment offerings, has truly opened up a global, cross-border recruitment and selection market.

The Next Generation
That’s the story so far, but what of the future? With increasing demand for online testing, leading psychometric assessment providers are investing in online architecture to maximise the potential of the web. For example, “SHL On Demand” is an £11m investment which is at the forefront of the next generation of online assessment technology. This new architecture is revolutionising the assessment experience for both employers and candidates. 

SHL On Demand is the system that powers most of SHL’s online assessment tools, from the client interface, where employers can administer the different tools available, to the candidate interface, where candidates go to take the tests.  The system also incorporates administration functions, such as the analysis and distribution of results, report generation and customer support.

Working Harder for Employers
The advanced technology gives the system significant scope for expansion and provides a platform for development. It supports up to 10,000 concurrent users globally, and can deliver an impressive 8,000 assessments and generate 5,500 reports per hour.

Users benefit from faster set∞up times, faster processing speed and real time results – scores are available within seconds and reports within a minute, so candidates can be told almost instantly how they have performed. These improvements mean that psychometric testing works harder for employers, speeding up the process and making it easier to identify and recruit the perfect talent for the business. Leading∞edge e∞learning is also on hand to help users learn their way around the system and get the most from it.

Another important benefit to the employer is the system’s ability to integrate with third party talent management systems, of which there are a growing number. This means for example that SHL’s online assessment content can fit seamlessly with an independent recruitment management system, so that managers only need to interact with the one system and all data is stored in one place.

Global Solution
The candidate’s online assessment experience has been completely re-designed following a two year investigation into improving usability, whilst maintaining principles of best practice in assessment. The system meets the highest standards of internet accessibility (to WAI 1.0 Level 3) and usability, and being available in 30 languages, it is a truly global solution.

With the additional facility for a business to brand the candidate interface according to their requirements, SHL On Demand provides a credibility boost to their employer brand and gives candidates a consistent positive view of the company.

Building for the Future
The current economic downturn is dramatically changing the world of work. While many companies are reorganising and streamlining, the focus on cost-effectively identifying the right talent to drive the business forward has become more critical. There is also a growing demand for increased transparency across the industry spectrum, with companies and public sector organisations under intense scrutiny from the government, regulatory bodies, employees and the public at large.

The growth in psychometrics not only highlights the increasing importance that organisations are placing on the talent at their disposal, it also reflects this growing need for compliance and transparency, by providing tools to make recruitment and talent management as effective and objective as possible. Enlightened businesses are also recognising that the development of sophisticated online assessment systems is facilitating this drive and will support them in retaining a competitive edge through talent management strategies, both during the current uncertainty and in better times beyond

Bureaucratic changes mean that staff running the labs have to spend an inordinate amount of time asking for money while their facilities disintegrate, a panel of experts appointed by the council said.

“The fundamental research community at NASA has been severely impacted by the budget reductions that are responsible for this decrease in laboratory capabilities, and as a result, NASA’s ability to support even NASA’s future goals is in serious jeopardy,” they conclude in the report.

The report does not say NASA should spend any particular amount of money to fix the problems but recommends that the agency shift its emphasis to upgrading the facilities.

The report lands as President Obama tries to sell a new vision of space exploration that includes public-private partnerships to replace the government-dominated model that sent astronauts to the Moon 40 years ago.

Obama has asked for a $6bn increase in NASA’s budget to help ramp up exploration of the solar system and increase Earth-based climate change studies.

NASA commissioned the National Research Council, one of the independent National Academies of Sciences that advises the federal government on medical and scientific policy, to look at its science labs before Obama’s changes were in place.

The panel found that NASA has systematically neglected research laboratories at six centres – the Ames Research Centre and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the Glenn Research Centre in Ohio, Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, Langley Research Centre in Virginia, and Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama.

“These research capabilities have taken years to develop and depend on highly competent and experienced personnel and infrastructure,” said Joseph Reagan, a retired vice president at Lockheed Martin Corp, who helped chair the panel.

“Without adequate resources, laboratories can deteriorate very quickly and will not be easily reconstituted.”

Maintenance budget
For instance, the report found the amount NASA needs to spend for maintenance has grown from $1.77bn in 2004 to $2.46bn in 2009.

“A reduction in funding of 48 percent for the aeronautics programs over … 2005-2009 has significantly challenged NASA’s ability to achieve its mission to advance US technological leadership in aeronautics in partnership with industry, academia, and other government agencies that conduct aeronautics-related research and to keep US aeronautics in the lead internationally,” the report reads.

“Approximately 20 percent of all NASA facilities are dedicated to research and development: on average, they are not state of the art: they are merely adequate to meet current needs,” it adds.

“Over 80 percent of NASA facilities are more than 40 years old and need significant maintenance and upgrades to preserve the safety and continuity of operations for critical missions.”

The panelists found a pattern of researchers “expending inordinate amounts of time writing proposals seeking funding to maintain their laboratory capabilities” and then looking for money elsewhere.

Efforts to improve child health, reduce maternal deaths, fight malaria and bring the AIDS epidemic under control in some of the world’s poorest nations have led to “striking improvements”, according to a WHO report – and experts say the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that galvanised political determination are largely responsible.

Now, however, fresh epidemics of chronic or ‘non-communicable’ diseases – including heart disease, stroke, cancers, lung conditions and type 2 diabetes – are poised to overwhelm health systems in developing countries, and there are calls for new goals to be set to force governments to prepare.

“We really need to halt this excessively rapid epidemic of chronic diseases. They are all spreading, and we are essentially doing nothing in the developing world,” Abdallah Daar, chair of the Global Alliance on Chronic Disease (GADC), told reporters.

Setting goals drives progress
According to the WHO’s World Health Statistics 2010 annual report, political will behind MDGs has helped the percentage of underweight children drop from 25 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2010, HIV infections fall 16 percent between 2001 and 2008 and upped the percentage of the world’s population with access to safe water to around 87 percent.

Yet the report also says that non-communicable diseases and injuries caused an estimated 33 million deaths in developing countries in 2004 and will account for a growing proportion of total deaths in the future.

“The health of individuals will also be undermined in the longer term by chronic conditions, sensory and mental disorders and violence,” said the report, which uses data from the WHO’s 193 member states.

Carla Abou-Zahr, the WHO’s coordinator for monitoring and analysis, says this is in part the price of success in tackling or managing killers like malaria, malnutrition, AIDS and child and maternal health – all covered by the MDGs which were set in 2000 and designed to be met in 2015.

“All of the countries are really working hard with this 2015 target date in mind,” she told reporters in an interview.

“And what we see and hear constantly from our partners is that political commitment is absolutely essential if progress is going to be achieved – sometimes even more than resources.”

But she said evidence is also becoming ever clearer that as levels of child mortality and death rates from infections diseases decline – and as populations age and people’s behaviours change – there is “an increasing predominance” of death and diseases due to chronic conditions.

Experts estimate that unless action is stepped up, 388 million people worldwide will die prematurely in the next decade of chronic non-communicable diseases. “Gradually, chronic diseases are spreading to developing countries. They are no longer just rich country problems,” said Abou-Zahr.

New targets needed for chronic disease
Daar describes it as a house burning from both ends – infectious diseases at one, chronic diseases at the other.

“MDGs have focused political attention, and they have provided metrics against which you can measure – so I think they have done a tonne of good,” he said.

“But we are putting out the fire at the infectious diseases end, and we’re going to get burnt and die because of the fire approaching us from the chronic diseases end.”

Daar, whose Global Alliance groups some of the world’s leading public health research institutions, said there was an opportunity, as the 2015 MDG target date approaches, for new goals to be set to help shift the focus.

The GADC plans to focus its efforts into tackling the threat of heart and lung diseases in poor nations, both of which are being ramped upwards by widespread tobacco use and increasing alcohol consumption.

“I’d also like to see chronic diseases captured in the next iteration of the MDGs,” he said. “They’re taking a toll on people in the developing world, but they’ve been neglected.”

Experts agree, however, that health authorities should not see this as a zero-sum game – where improving resources and policy for AIDS, for example, may cancel out efforts to combat cancer risk from drinking and smoking.

“Most governments are increasingly aware of the need to have a balance – that addressing child mortality and infectious diseases problems doesn’t mean doing nothing about the future epidemic of non-communicable diseases,” said Abou-Zahr.

Daar said it was important to look for synergies. “After all, if the patient is going to be taken care of for HIV, and then dies of cancer, you haven’t served that patient well.”

After 217 orbits around earth and 5.7 million miles (9.17 million km), commander George Zamka circled Endeavour high over the Kennedy Space Centre to burn off speed, then nosed the 100-tonne ship onto a canal-lined runway.

Ending the space shuttle fleet’s 130th mission, Endeavour landed three miles from where it blasted off on February 8.

“Welcome home,” astronaut Rick Sturckow radioed to Zamka from Mission Control in Houston. “Congratulations to you and the crew on an outstanding mission.”

“Houston, it’s great to be home,” replied Zamka. “It was a great adventure.”

The space station, a $100bn project of 16 nations, has been under construction 220 miles above earth since 1998.

Endeavour carried the station’s final connecting hub, named Tranquility, which will serve as a second living quarters for the resident station crew. The module has been outfitted with a toilet, water-recycling system, oxygen generator, air scrubber and exercise gear. NASA added a day to Endeavour’s planned eight-day stay at the station so the visiting astronauts could help with the work.

Endeavour also delivered a dome-shaped observation deck featuring seven windows, providing a view the astronauts described as spectacular.

The new rooms, which were hooked up during three spacewalks by Endeavour astronauts Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick, are the last major components of the station.

130th shuttle mission
Joining Zamka, Behnken and Patrick aboard Endeavour were veteran astronauts Stephen Robinson and Kay Hire, and rookie pilot Terry Virts.

NASA plans four more shuttle flights to complete delivery of spare parts and science experiments to the station. The US then intends to retire its three space shuttles before the end of the year.

The Obama administration has decided to cancel a planned follow-on programme intended to return US astronauts to the moon, due to cost concerns. Instead, NASA is being redirected to develop technologies for an eventual human expedition to Mars that would be conducted in partnership with other countries, similar to the space station programme.

The US space agency also wants to seed development of commercial space taxis so the station will not be solely dependent on Russia’s Soyuz capsules to transport crews to and from the outpost.

With the shuttles’ retirement, only the Russian and Chinese governments will have the ability to put people into orbit.

The cancellation of the moon programme, called Constellation, as well as the spending of government money for private space launch companies has sparked heated debate in Congress, at NASA field centres and surrounding communities, and among aerospace contractors.

NASA has also been investigating a series of main computer crashes aboard the space station. The problem did not impact any life support systems, NASA said.

Preliminary analysis indicated the problem may be with communications software in the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory. The crashes temporarily knocked out the crew’s audio and television links with Mission Control.

NASA’s next shuttle mission is scheduled for launch in April.

A coalition of rights and civil society groups said the agency was allowing Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo to launder his international reputation by funding the $3m prize instead of using the cash to improve the living standards of his people.

“The grim irony of awarding a prize recognising ‘scientific achievements that improve the quality of human life’, while naming it for a president whose 30-year rule has been marked by the brutal poverty and fear of his people and a global reputation for governmental corruption, would bring shame on UNESCO,” 30 groups said in a statement sent to UNESCO.

“We repeat our call for the $3m that UNESCO has accepted from President Obiang to be applied to the education and welfare of Equatoguineans, rather than the glorification of their president.”

Signatories to the letter, dated May 10, include international groups such as Human Rights Watch and Global Witness, as well as national groups from around the world.

A UNESCO official declined to comment immediately on the letter, but forwarded via email parts of a statement it sent to Human Rights Watch acknowledging it “had received criticism about the prize”.

Obiang has run Equatorial Guinea since a 1979 coup. Under his rule, the country has leapt from small-scale cocoa production to becoming a key oil producer.

However, the rights groups say that a per capita GDP that rivals Italy’s and South Korea’s conceals huge inequalities in wealth, and three quarters of the population live in poverty.

The rights groups say that a number of nations on UNESCO’s executive board objected to the prize when it was established in 2008 but, after several delays, it is due to be awarded in June.

Other UN agencies have been “clear” about the country’s poor rights and development record, the rights groups say.