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A Famous Victory. It all started with a blog post. This one, to be precise, posted on 8 September, in which a postdoctoral researcher in London decided that whereas and notwithstanding inasmuch as which it was all good and fine to grumble about proposed cuts to the science budget, Someone Should Do Something About It. So was born the ScienceIsVital pressure group which attracted - in short order - many of those whom any hostess would surely rank among the Great, the Good, and the Both At Once. A rally outside the Treasury on 9 October attracted around 2,000 people and media coverage; on 12 October the campaign lobbied Parliament; and on 14 October a petition bearing 33804 signatures and weighing several tons thirteen billion squillion gazillion electronvolts a policeman's lot was handed in to the address which the Guardian might have rendered as 1 7/8 Dowling Strune.

Normally, science spending does not have such a high profile when the Chancellor sets out the government's plans it says. Science is Vital: Perturbation Theory and Practice - Reciprocal Space Blog | Nature Publishing Group. The internet was all aflutter last week because Elsevier has sent thousands of take-down notices to Academia.edu, a social networking site where many researchers post and share their published papers. This marks a significant change of tack for Elsevier. Previously the publisher had only been sending a handful of DMCAs a week to Academia.edu (the notices are named after the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but now it appears they have decided to get tough. There was the predictable outrage at the manoeuvre though, as several commentators acknowledged, Elsevier is acting entirely legally.

It is simply enforcing rights that were handed to it — for no compensation — by the authors who have now been affected by the takedown demands. The company is behaving rationally. The problem, and it is a fundamental one for legacy publishers as a whole, is that what seems reasonable in this market is changing. There is a sense that the company knows the ground is shifting beneath its feet. MPs believe the funniest things. The Science is Vital protest outside the Treasury in Whitehall at the weekend saw thousands of people turn up, wave placards, chant, sing and listen to prominent scientists, science commentators and science-friendly politicians give the case against the cuts to science funding and immigration caps being considered by the Government. Science on the march. Picture: ShaneMcC on Flickr A figure of 45 per cent was mentioned by Vince Cable at one point, although up to 25 per cent seems more likely, and rumours are being passed around of the possibility of further cuts to fund the decision to scrap the graduate tax proposed, also by Cable, in July.

Jokes about homeopathy from the platform got the easiest laughs, but the biggest gasp of astonishment was reserved for a description of the Science Party’s single candidate, standing in Bosworth against David Tredinnick. It wasn’t a randomly chosen constituency. Mr Tredinnick was duly re-elected and sits on the back benches. Picture: ShaneMcC on Flickr. Reviewing the Browne Review. Michelle Brook, a recent graduate in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, has been working as an intern in the CaSE offices and helping with the Science Is Vital campaign. CaSE Director Imran Khan and Assistant Director Dr Hilary Leevers also contributed to this post. The much anticipated review by Lord Browne on Higher Education Funding was published last week, having been commissioned by the previous government in November 2009. CaSE welcomes the Browne reviews’ attempts to secure the funding of science and engineering courses in order for the UK to remain competitive.

However, there are concerns at some of the repercussions specifically in three key areas: funding, access and choice of careers. Funding: is there any more money for universities? Under the proposals within the review, students would receive a non-means tested annual loan of £3,750 for living costs, with additional support for students from families earning below £60,000 a year. Overall… Why Science Is Vital To Our Future — Part-Time Wage Slave. Snowblog - Is the Treasury thinking about Britain’s brain drain? I met up with a friend over the weekend who has been offered an endowed Professorship at one the UK’s “Great Universities”. He’s a scientist and the post is at the top of his particular proclivity. He is 80 per cent certain of rejecting the Chair and is presently on track to leave Britain for an emerging Asian University, where he has been offered a higher salary.

More important, my friend ( I shall call him Roberts, although that’s not his name) is making his decision on the basis that the country in which this University is set has just increased its budgetary investment in University research by some 25 per cent. His new post is blessed with a significantly uprated research budget. Dr Roberts is at the cutting edge of scientific research in a specialist field in which he and his UK team are world leaders. Dr Roberts’ final decision will be considerably influenced by Chancellor George Osborne’s “Spending Review” this Wednesday. Zed Books launches new series of articles - 'Is there a future Left?' Is there a future left? Is a series of short and radical contributions to important current debates by some of Zed Books’ most interesting and respected authors, freely available online at The aim of this project is to engage in and stimulate a necessary debate on various questions surrounding the current financial, social and environmental crises.

We want to address big questions such as whether there is any potential left in ideas of social justice, gender equality, environmental responsibility and sustainable development. Is it really easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism – and what might come after capitalism as we know it? The series will be unfolding regularly from Friday 24th September at running alongside the large number of demonstrations, meetings, conferences and direct actions planned by grassroots organizations and trade unions for the autumn and winter of 2010. The S Word: 20 per cent cuts to British science means 'game over' Roger Highfield, magazine editor A vivid picture of the economic damage that could be caused by a retraction of Britain's research base was given today by Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society.

Rees was speaking with five university vice chancellors as scientists steel themselves for deep cuts at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. The gory details will be laid bare in October's Comprehensive Spending Review, in which all government departments have been asked to prepare for budgets to fall by up to 25 per cent, perhaps even more. In their submission to the Treasury, the Royal Society has described the potential effects of the cuts, where "an X per cent cut would lead to a much more than X per cent decrease in output, because we would lose the most talented people".

They outline three scenarios: Just to make sure that the Treasury gets the point, the Vice Chancellors also weighed in: What was fascinating about today's briefing was what was not discussed. Home economics. So far this week we have seen much ado over Uncle Vince Cable's comments on the state of capitalism in the UK, and learned of his disingenuous Damascene conversion from stone-cold Keynesian to "deficit hawk". This episode, on reflection, looks like the dysfunctional Tory family wisely letting an old relative have a palliative rant so that he will tire himself out and waddle off for a nice, long nap. I'm not alone in flogging the corny family metaphors. The coalition has been consistently couching the reasoning behind the austerity message in the vocabulary of domesticity.

Here's a sampler. Danny Alexander at conference: For every £4 Labour spent, £1 had to be borrowed. Nick Clegg at conference: The problems are there. David Cameron: "If you don't deal with your debts -- it's a bit like our credit cards -- we all know the longer you leave it, the worse it gets. " It all comes from (thanks to LFF) Maggie Thatcher: Why don't you look at it as any housewife has to look at it? The age of scientific discovery is over. The message pages of the Nobel Prize website made for moving reading after the announcement that Robert Edwards, the British pioneer of in vitro fertilisation, had won this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. "Congratulations. You have helped to put smiles on a lot of faces," said Mkpouto of Nigeria. "Congrats, dear doctor. Thanks for my beautiful niece.

On 5 October, a day after Edwards's prize was announced, two scientists based in Britain won the Nobel Prize in Physics. “Geim and Novoselov could be the last of their kind," warns Imran Khan, head of the Campaign for Science and Engineering - formerly known as Save British Science. The sense of pessimism among those working in British scientific research is profound. It was the robustness of British science that attracted the Manchester physicists, who are both supported by the Royal Society. Eureka moment In graphene, carbon is laid out in a hexagonal pattern to create a thin sheet of atoms, like microscopic chicken wire. My #scipolicy News archive: September 2010 Part B.

Impacts of Investment in the Science and Engineering Research Base: A CaSE report from Science policy in the UK forum on Nature Network. CaSE has just published a policy report examining the Impacts of Investment in the Science and Engineering Research Base. According to the press release, the main conclusion of the report is that policy initiatives to increase the impact of science and engineering research need to be informed by evidence, clearly articulated and fully debated prior to implementation. Key points: The research base produces economic growth but its broader roles must be valued and sustained. Efforts to increase impact at the research base level should focus on supporting and rewarding impact activities rather than predicting future impact.

Enhancing economic growth from the research base should occur by improving the “pull” through of research from users and using various policy levers. The Chancellor should appoint a Chief Scientific Adviser to enable a more coherent and evidence-based approach to developing science policy in this area. Campaign for Science and Engineering CaSE. How vital is science? Science is Vital in the UK. Science cuts: the dangers. Scientists are expecting grim news in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, where funding for science and research is expected to be cut significantly.

This is despite arguments that science and innovation should be at the heart of future economic growth, not least in a Royal Society report from March. Business secretary Vince Cable at the beginning of the month said universities will have to do ‘more with less’, and angered researchers by suggesting up to 45% of grants went to research that wasn’t of excellent standard (with the implication that mediocre science could reasonably be cut).

Now the heads of leading research universities are getting involved. Lord Krebs, head of the House of Lords’ science and technology select committee, has warned today that cuts to the government’s science research budget will affect the ability of UK universities to attract and retain the best researchers from around the world. Image: Will scientists be left counting the pennies? Vital Problems « The e-Astronomer. In case you hadn’t noticed there is a petition brewing – Science Is Vital. The arguments against cutting the science budget are well made, and there is a rally planned next Saturday. Volume of public protest does matter : sign up. Amongst other things, the web site stresses that science is not so much a fixed body of knowledge but an incomplete project. What don’t we know ? As a postgrad I was inspired by Ginzburg’s “Key Problems in Astrophysics”.

I can’t promise to be that good, but here is my personal pick of Top Ten Big Problems. Probably on the obvious side. Why is the Universe accelerating ? Next up, some practical issues related to Astronomy Can we predict CMEs ? And some niggly worries Why are quasar metallicities the same at all redshifts ? I note that the niggling worries are closer to home for me. Like this: Like Loading... It could be Game Over for UK science within days - Exquisite Life. A week ago, we had the FT story saying the government was planning cuts of £960 million in research. Then Martin Rees said at the press conference on Friday that the gap between a good and bad outcome for the spending review was about £1 billion.

These are cuts of around 20 per cent, the level at which the Royal Society has warned the government it would be "Game Over" for Britain's position as a leading scientific nation. And I’m now told that the decision on the BIS budget could be taken as early as this week. It’s time to face it. Irrational it may be, but in the coming days we really are staring into the barrel of the deepest cuts in science spending ever contemplated by any British government - cuts that for an entire generation of scientists, for Britain's hopes for a hi-tech economic future really do mean Game Over. In one day, Vince Cable has become an object of ridicule and loathing - Exquisite Life. It was a momentary slip. Something, Lib Dems will say, that could happen to anyone.

But one thing is for sure, Vince Cable's confusion on yesterday’s Today programme over percentages, the Research Assessment Exercise and research council grants has cost him dearly with scientists. He started the day as a reasonably new, reasonably popular cabinet minister for science. By the end of it, he was for many an object of ridicule and loathing. To anyone who isn’t a researcher, it’s probably hard to see what the fuss is about. The key passage from Cable’s BBC interview is this: “There was some estimate on the basis of surveys done recently that something in the order of 45 per cent of the research grants that were going through was to research that was not of excellent standard.

That 45 per cent is the sort of mind-numbing statistic that politicians hurl around every day. The reaction was swift and furious. Cable then had a chance to put things right when he made a set-piece speech on science. Is science really that important?... In the UK, science is an endangered species. Over the last few years a silent battle has been raging as, attacked from all sides, the misunderstood beast we call UK science has been nibbled at by penny-pinching piranhas, sliced by sinister savings sharks and had chunks hacked away by hatchet heaving heavies... But enough crude alliteration indulgences... UK science - with its proud history of excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – is facing devastating funding cuts.

Despite the fact we are world-leaders in a multitude of fields of research, and despite the fact we produce more than 10 per cent of global scientific output with only one per cent of the global population, and despite the fact we achieve all this by spending less on science per capita than most of our competitors. Science Is Vital: a Letter to my MP « BenjaminDBrooks' Blog. The Science Vote | Ideas on science and engineering policy. “Game Over” for Science? Not yet, I hope.. « In the Dark.

A Mixed Prognosis for Medical Research. Transfinancial Economics. David Willetts warned over science cuts by universities. WalesOnline - News - Wales News - Welsh Nobel prizewinner says Cable’s cuts to the research budget is short-sighted and will be bad for Britain. Science funding cuts will cost UK economy billions. Science is Vital | Science. Scientists: Keep calm, carry on, but don't keep quiet | Jon Butterworth | Science. Don't cut science funding – you'll start a brain drain. Cash-strapped science departments face overseas brain drain | Science.