Some of you may have seen this James Hicks article in The Scientist, where he shows a graph that seems to correlate high notices of retractions with low NIH grant success rates. Interesting idea, right?Unfortunately, Nature reporter Richard Van Noorden (the collector of some of the data used in the graph) notes that Professor Hicks did not use the most relevant data for his retractions (i.e. US retractions, funded by the NIH) for his graph. When you do, the correlation is not nearly so clear.I agree with Richard that the hypothesis is sound (i.e. as it gets more difficult to get funded, the incentive to cheat goes up), but it remains unproven.

TAKE a vast windowless hall. Squeeze in hundreds of garish booths vying to produce the loudest and most obnoxious music possible. Then add thousands of busy people and bake at a high temperature for several days. Visiting a large conference or trade show can be an unpleasant experience, as Babbage can attest from many years of writing about technology. Precisely how unpleasant, though, no one has measured until now. At Google’s annual I/O conference for developers in San Francisco this week, scientists are finally trying to turn sharp elbows, raised voices and sweaty brows into cold, hard data.The Data Sensing Lab, a project of O’Reilly Media, has deployed over 500 sensor motes at key locations around the Moscone West centre. Each phone-sized mote is a self-contained computer based on a cheap Arudino micro-controller and linked with low power ZigBee digital radios. Some measure temperature, pressure, noise, humidity and light levels. Others are tracking air quality, the motion of crowds or how many mobile phones are being used nearby. Together, they form a network producing over 4,000 streams of data that are uploaded to Google’s Cloud Platform software for analysis.The network is an example of the "internet of things", where physical objects are digitally interconnected and communicate without human intervention. At a shidig like I/O, this could one day mean rooms pre-emptively activating air conditioners when they detect delegates arriving, or organisers rating speakers by the level of mobile phone use during their presentations.At the Google event, the Data Sensing Lab showed live visualisations of people flowing out of seminars and forming an eager cluster around a stand showcasing Google Glass wearable computers. It also highlighted the noisiest area (the keynote by Larry Page, Google's co-founder) and the quietest (a pop-up shop selling Google-branded products). All the data will be made freely available online after the conference wraps up.If the internet of things is going to expand as some enthusiasts predict, ultimately comprising trillions of objects and encompassing entire cities, practical experiments like the one at Google I/O will be invaluable. Each sensor mote at the conference cost about $50 to build and it turned out that “you really need density to build good insights,” says Michael Manoochehri, an engineer at Google. Nevertheless, deploying such networks outside the rarefied atmosphere of a tech gathering will be expensive, not least because nifty sensor motes could simply be pinched. There are also unresolved issues around standards for machine-to-machine communication and interaction, as well as the perennial privacy bogeyman.“But the real problem is the data,” says Mr Manoochehri. Even his small network is creating gigabytes-worth. Crucially, he adds, more and better brains are needed to work out how to answer questions as fast as they can be asked.

From international political economy professor Daniel Drezner, a comment on being paid honoraria for speaking in China:1) From a personal perspective, as the occasional visitor to China, I can confirm the wads of cash thing -- but it's a bit more complicated than Barboza suggests. First of all, for U.S. academics at least, the payment isn't in renminbi, but in U.S. dollars. Renminbi is sometimes dispensed for things like per diem reimbursements, but not for honoraria. After all, officially, the RMB is still not convertible to dollars outside of the country, so it wouldn't be very nice to get paid in a currency that is technically useless outside the People's Republic. There are two other qualifiers here. First, at least with respect to academic honoraria, it's not just China that pays in cash -- so does Japan, for example. Second, speaking as an academic who's received the occasional honorarium, it's friggin' awesome. At some point, someone takes you aside and gives you an envelope stuffed with bills. I know it's impolite to say, but every time it happens, I feel like I'm an earner in Tony Soprano's crew. It's soooooo much more satisfying than getting a check (as is the norm in the U.S.) or receiving a bank transfer three months later than it should be and only after haranguing someone a few times (as is the norm in Europe). Having just worked in the United States, I haven't had the pleasure of being paid in cash. (I've been paid in work experience and donuts -- why do you ask?) Whenever I go to the ATM to pull out a couple hundred bucks when we go on vacation, I always feel a little weird. Readers, what's the best way you've been paid?

Photosynthetic oxidation of water is one of the central processes of life on Earth, but it is still not completely understood. Now, a German-American team of scientists has set out to observe the intermediate stages of this complex catalytic reaction using ultrashort snap shots taken at light sources including BESSY II in Berlin and the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford.... Kern, J., Alonso-Mori, R., Hellmich, J., Tran, R., Hattne, J., Laksmono, H., Glockner, C., Echols, N., Sierra, R., Sellberg, J.... (2012) Room temperature femtosecond X-ray diffraction of photosystem II microcrystals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(25), 9721-9726. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1204598109 Room temperature femtosecond X-ray diffraction of photosystem II microcrystals

Tweet of the Week: There is not enough coffee for both me and America. — Dr24Hours (@Dr24hours) May 13, 2013 To the network: Grand CENtral: Guest Post: “#Chemclub” by Andrew Bissette Newscripts: In Print: Shall We Play A Game? and Amusing News Aliquots The Haystack: Biotech, Pharma, & VCs Offer Rare Disease Patient Groups Some Advice The Watch Glass: “We can now make a few milligrams of anything” and Inspection, with Mustache and Membranes in Immunology and Making of Breaking Bad Related Posts:This Week on CENtral Science: Whale Fossils, Oscar Noms, UC…This Week on CENtral Science: Harlem Shake, Natural gas, andThis Week On CENtral Science: Richard's Lionheart,…This Week on CENtral Science: #SheriSangji, China's…This Week on CENtral Science: #scioDC , World's…

MEDICAL implants, such as stents and catheters, bring a risk of infection. Specifically, their smooth surfaces encourage the growth of bacterial films—and such sheets of connected bacteria are far more resistant to disinfection than are isolated bugs. The trick, therefore, is to stop these films forming in the first place and, as he describes in Biomacromolecules, Marek Urban at Clemson University in South Carolina thinks he may have a way of doing so.Dr Urban and his colleagues are employing viruses called bacteriophages as microbiological landmines. A bacteriophage (or “phage”, for short) is a virus that attacks bacteria—in the process, causing them to explode. Like most viruses, phages are host-specific, so Dr Urban chose phages known to attack Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, the types of bacteria that most commonly cause problems in hospitals.He attached his phages to sheets of polyethylene or polytetrafluoroethylene, two polymers often used to make implantable medical devices, by exposing the sheets to a chemical called maleic anhydride while simultaneously bombarding them with microwaves. That caused acids to form on the plastic surfaces, and those acids bonded readily with chemical groups called amines on the phages. The upshot was that the plastic became covered in a layer of phages.He then laid the pieces of plastic, phage-side down, on nutrient-rich culture gels impregnated with E. coli and S. aureus. This, he hoped, would mimic conditions inside the body. That done, he left the pieces of plastic in place for six months, as an implant might be left in a body. As he hoped, the phage-coated areas of plastic blew up the bacteria, successfully inhibiting their growth. Even low concentrations of phage did this.Whether the technique will work in real bodies remains to be determined. But if it does, then one of the risks of surgical implants will have been usefully diminished.

Ancient Ivory: Metal traces on Phoenician artifacts show long-gone paint and gold

Biomaterials: Coating could prevent implant rejection

D-WAVE'S controversial quantum computer is pitted against regular number-crunching machines in a series of tests

Compare and contrast. Here we have Krishnan Ramalingam, from Ranbaxy's Corporate Communications department, in 2006: Being a global pharmaceutical major, Ranbaxy took a deliberate decision to pool its resources to fight neglected disease segments. . .Ranbaxy strongly felt that generic antiretrovirals are essential in fighting the world-wide struggle against HIV/AIDS, and therefore took a conscious decision to embark upon providing high quality affordable generics for patients around the world, specifically for the benefit of Least Developed Countries. . .Since 2001, Ranbaxy has been providing antiretroviral medicines of high quality at affordable prices for HIV/AIDS affected countries for patients who might not otherwise be able to gain access to this therapy. And here we have them in an advertorial section of the South African Mail and Guardian newspaper, earlier this year: Ranbaxy has a long standing relationship with Africa. It was the first Indian pharmaceutical company to set up a manufacturing facility in Nigeria, in the late 1970s. Since then, the company has established a strong presence in 44 of the 54 African countries with the aim of providing quality medicines and improving access. . .Ranbaxy is a prominent supplier of Antiretroviral (ARV) products in South Africa through its subsidiary Sonke Pharmaceuticals. It is the second largest supplier of high quality affordable ARV products in South Africa which are also extensively used in government programs providing access to ARV medicine to millions. Yes, as Ranbaxy says on its own web site: "At Ranbaxy, we believe that Anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy is an essential tool in waging the war against HIV/AIDS. . .We estimate currently close to a million patients worldwide use our ARV products for their daily treatment needs. We have been associated with this cause since 2001 and were among the first generic companies to offer ARVs to various National AIDS treatment programmes in Africa. We were also responsible for making these drugs affordable in order to improve access. . ." And now we descend from the heights. Here, in a vivid example of revealed preference versus stated preference, is what was really going on, from that Fortune article I linked to yesterday: . . .as the company prepared to resubmit its ARV data to WHO, the company's HIV project manager reiterated the point of the company's new strategy in an e-mail, cc'ed to CEO Tempest. "We have been reasonably successful in keeping WHO from looking closely at the stability data in the past," the manager wrote, adding, "The last thing we want is to have another inspection at Dewas until we fix all the process and validation issues once and for all." . . .(Dinesh) Thakur knew the drugs weren't good. They had high impurities, degraded easily, and would be useless at best in hot, humid conditions. They would be taken by the world's poorest patients in sub-Saharan Africa, who had almost no medical infrastructure and no recourse for complaints. The injustice made him livid. Ranbaxy executives didn't care, says Kathy Spreen, and made little effort to conceal it. In a conference call with a dozen company executives, one brushed aside her fears about the quality of the AIDS medicine Ranbaxy was supplying for Africa. "Who cares?" he said, according to Spreen. "It's just blacks dying." I have said many vituperative things about HIV hucksters like Matthias Rath, who have told patient in South Africa to throw away their antiviral medications and take his vitamin supplements instead. What, then, can I say about people like this, who callously and intentionally provided junk, labeled as what were supposed to be effective drugs, to people with no other choice and no recourse? If this is not criminal conduct, I'd very much like to know what is. And why is no one going to jail? I'm suggesting jail as a civilized alternative to a barbaric, but more appealingly direct form of justice: shipping the people who did this off to liv