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NIH: It’s all about significance, approach

Under the revised peer review system, significance and approach are the two most important core review factors used to determine the overall impact score of a NIH grant application, according to an analysis by National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) director Jeremy Berg at the Institute’s blog on Thursday. Using a sample of 360 NIGMS R01 grant applications, Berg graphed significance score against overall outcome score and found a strong direct correlation. Significance and approach had the strongest correlations with high overall impact scores, he writes, followed by innovation, investigator, and, lastly, environment. Hat tip to DrugMonkey.

Animal activist charges dropped

A San Jose judge has dropped the charges against four animal activists arrested by the FBI last February. The four were charged with harassing University of California researchers at Berkeley and Santa Cruz at their homes and in public. The ruling, dismissed the charges for lack of specifics about the alleged crimes, describing the language of the charges as “generic,” lacking dates, targets, and specific acts. However, in dismissing the case “without prejudice,” ScienceInsider notes, the judge has left the door open for prosecutors to try again.

Sting operation

Last Saturday (July 17), Thailand’s Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with international researchers, released a quarter of a million parasitic wasps into the country’s northeastern province of Khon Kaen. The campaign hopes to prevent the spread of the mealybug, a pest that has infested and sucked dry 160,000 hectares of cassava, a $1.5 billion per year cash crop in Thailand. The wasps, which have been successfully used against mealybugs in sub-Saharan Africa, pose no threat to people or other animals, the scientists say. Female wasps inject their eggs into the mealybugs, where the larvae feed on the host insect, reducing the population. “Think of them as a kind of eco-friendly SWAT team,” said Tony Bellotti, an entomologist at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture who was involved in the project, in a press release.

Positive phase II for HIV vaccine

Today at the XVIII International AIDS 2010 Conference in Vienna, FIT Biotech, a private company based in Finland, announced positive phase II results of a therapeutic vaccine against HIV infection. Sixty HIV-positive volunteers in Johannesburg, South Africa — who had received no antiretroviral therapy in the past — received five doses of a placebo or the vaccine, designed to boost the immune system again infection, over a year and a half. Patients who received the vaccine showed a significant long-term reduction in viral load and an increase in CD4 cell counts.

Stem cell haikus

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has announced the winners of their first annual stem cell poetry contest. This year’s theme was, “What stem cell research means to me.” Check out the winning poems here.

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