GoKawiilThe US National Institutes of Health will now focus on ‘unsolicited’ research proposals driven by the interests of individual scientists. Plus, the oldest known recording of a whale’s song and how tiny electric vehicles can help to change the world.
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Charles Bennett (left) and Gilles Brassard pose for a photograph next to a cryptography quilt. Credit: Lise Raymond
The US$1 million A. M. Turing Award — one of the most prestigious prizes in computer science — has been awarded to computer scientist Gilles Brassard and physicist Charles Bennett “for their essential role in establishing the foundations of quantum information science and transforming secure communication and computing”. The win marks the first time that the Turing Award has recognized work related to quantum physics. “Had I been asked to choose one recognition at any point in my career, it would have been the Turing Award,” says Brassard.
Nature | 5 min read
The oldest known recording of a whale has been re-discovered on a disc labelled ‘Fish Sounds’ in the archives of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) was recorded near Bermuda in 1949. But the researchers who did so probably didn’t know what they’d got, says Woods Hole bioacoustician Peter Tyack, because it predates biologist Roger Payne’s influential Songs of the Humpback Whale album. “For me, it was almost more mesmerizing to hear the ocean soundscape that whale was experiencing [more than] 75 years ago,” says Tyack.
CBC | 6 min read or 5 min listen
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the world’s largest funder of biomedical research — is no longer allocating many of its grants by asking researchers to submit proposals that address specific scientific problems. Instead, the agency is focusing on ‘unsolicited’ research proposals driven by the interests of individual scientists. The NIH says that the move will save money on admin and will offer scientists more flexibility to choose the direction of their research. But some researchers worry that will mean fewer large, collaborative projects that require agency coordination, such as the Human Genome Project, and that it could widen knowledge gaps in areas such as neglected diseases or underserved populations.
Under the new system, funding must be approved by political appointees, rather than solely by panels of politically independent scientists. “It eliminates the scientific stewardship function that programme staff have exercised for decades,” argues Elizabeth Ginexi, who wrote funding calls for 22 years as an NIH programme official. “This is about centralized control.”
Nature | 6 min read & The Chronicle of Higher Education | 13 min read (free reg required, or read a version on Elizabeth Ginexi’s personal blog)
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