News in a nutshell
| 12 July, 2010 | Adie Chan |
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Pepsi’s science blog pulled
Wikimedia commons, NotFromUtrecht
ScienceBlogs by SEED removed a blog called “Food Frontiers” from its website last week, after complaints over its sponsorship. The blog was started by Pepsi and written by Pepsi employees, leading many Sb bloggers to assert that it was merely advertising, and should not be hosted by ScienceBlogs. Some bloggers even quit in response. After first making some changes to clearly indicate that Food Frontiers was a sponsored blog, Sb decided to completely remove the blog from its site.
Merck closes 16 sites
Merck & Co. will shut down eight manufacturing plants and eight research sites around the world, the drugmaker announced last Thursday (July 8). Partly due to the restructuring of the company following its acquisition of Schering-Plough last year, the company says the moves will save about $2.7 billion to $3.1 billion in 2012, according to Philly.com.
“The death of tenure”
The number of tenured professors in US institutions is dwindling, according to a soon-to-be-released report from the US Department of Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
The percentage of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track dropped from 57 percent in 1975 to only 31 percent in 2007, and the new report is expected to show an even lower number for 2009. This “lack of institutional commitment” will affect the primary research that takes place at universities, according to DrugMonkey.
NIH to open clinical facility?
The National Institutes of Health is considering allowing outside investigators to use its clinical center in Bethesda, Md., which is now only available to NIH researchers. The change could help offset the rising costs of care at the center, which have prevented some federal institutes from running clinical trials, according to Nature. The center has, for instance, metabolic chambers to measure metabolism science by second, and a facility that makes vaccines and drugs.
Wikimedia commons, Goldstein lab
Remote-controlled worms
Using magnetic nanoparticles that bind cell membranes, researchers have developed a system to remotely activate neurons and cause C. elegans worms to recoil, according to a new study published in Nature Nanotechnology. The team used a magnetic field to heat up the nanoparticles, causing temperature-sensitive calcium ion channels to open, neurons to fire, and the worms to recoil. In addition to being a fascinating display of science’s ability to manipulate animal behavior, the research could also have implications for cancer and diabetes treatments, according to Wired Science.
Burp gun
Scientists in Liverpool have developed a way to measure how much methane cattle produce after feeding — use a “burp gun” originally intended to test for gas leaks, the BBC reports.
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[25th March 2010]
[28th May 2009]
[September 2007]
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Is tenure dying?
There is something else going on here besides the decline of the tenure system.
Examination of the actual data published in the Chronical of Higher Education is instructive. Most of the 26% loss of tenured/tenure-track professors (from 57% of all post-secondary faculty in 1975 to 31% in 2007) has been made up for by an increase of part-time faculty, from 30% in 1975 to 50% of the total in 2007.
These numbers reflect the widespread replacement of full-time faculty members by part-time teachers who basically function as contract workers, getting paid by the credit hour. Colleges and univeristies have found that it is cheaper to outsource instruction than to maintain a full-time professional teaching faculty. I have heard that many community colleges operate with a minimum of full-time faculty, but this trend is also affecting major research universites. I recently heard a Dean of a major medical school state that his goal was to relieve tenured basic science faculty of all teaching duties so they could concentrate on their research, and contract out basic science course instruction online.
The data reported here seem to support this anecdotal evidence. We’re looking at a fundamental change in our paradigm of higher education, which includes but is not limited to the tenure issue.
BURP GUN:
I remember reading a story a long time back about a veterinarian who had just surgically relieved a cow of bloating due to gas. To demonstrate that the gas was flammable, he took out his cigarette lighter and set fire to it. There was an explosion and the entire cattle shed burned down. Don’t remember whether any of the cattle or humans were seriously hurt or killed.
The incident was also reminiscent of Charles Lamb’s classical essay, “A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG” http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia1/pig.htm
I see no reason to pull a blog by Pepsi employees. People should be able to realistically judge their comments.