Keith’s note: I find it interesting how two similar tweets at totally different scales / disciplines can often appear in sequence on social media. Look at the video in the left post – Molecular machines moving on a backbone – do so in a somewhat similar fashion to the way that the Mobile Servicing System moves on ISS. This is also somewhat of an example of NASA stovepiping. No one in NASA Science world or NASA Human Spaceflight world really thinks like this. I do – and lots of people would – if someone had the task of making NASA 21st century compliant in a world where emergent properties like this from different fields of study spawn new ideas and inventions. Funny thing – the thing happening on the left is part of what is studied inside the thing on the right – and NASA loves to crow about the end result biotech goodies form ISS – but never the synergies that might stop people for a moment to think differently – out of the box – in ways NASA has yet to do. Just sayin’

Keith’s note: This White House Executive Order “Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking“ dropped today. Highlights:

• “Discretionary awards must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”
• “Applicants should commit to complying with administration policies, procedures, and guidance respecting Gold Standard Science”.
• “Each agency head shall promptly designate a senior appointee who shall be responsible for creating a process to review new funding opportunity announcements and to review discretionary grants to ensure that they are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.”
• “The term “senior appointee” means an individual appointed by the President, a non-career member of the Senior Executive Service, or an employee encumbering a Senior Level, Scientific and Professional, or Grade 15 position in Schedule C of the excepted service.”
• “Until such time as the process specified in subsection (a) of this section is in place, agencies shall not issue any new funding opportunity announcements without prior approval from the senior appointee designated under subsection (a) of this section, except as required by law.”
• “Discretionary awards shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate: racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination by the grant recipient, including activities where race or intentional proxies for race will be used as a selection criterion for employment or program participation; denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic; illegal immigration; or any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.”

The Government Shutdown Was Temporary, Its Damage to Science Permanent, Scientific American “In many ways the federal government shutdown was a huge, unplanned experiment in what happens when we give up on science for two weeks. The experiment is now over and the results are still incomplete. But so far, they are ugly.” Shutdown’s science fallout could last for years, Politico “Even if the government opens tomorrow, a significant amount […]

How to Solve Protein Structures with an X-ray Laser, Science (subscription required) “For over a decade, biologists have asked whether x-ray lasers can be used to determine the structures of biomolecules such as proteins. Such methods have the potential to allow structure determination from micro- or even nanoscale crystals, but radiation damage can be extensive and data interpretation is fraught with difficulty. On page 227 of this issue, Redecke et […]