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PEOPLE

Physics awards Seven scientists will share a US$3-million prize for their key roles at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, and UK theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking will receive the same amount for his insight that black holes should emit Hawking radiation. The awards were made on 11 December by the Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Internet investor Yuri Milner. They follow nine $3-million awards to physicists made by the foundation in August. See go.nature.com/jzkdcj for more.

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/NOAA NGDC

EVENTS

NASA snaps Earth at night Almost exactly 40 years after Apollo 17 astronauts took the iconic Blue Marble photograph of Earth, NASA has released a spectacular view of the planet at night, appropriately named Black Marble. The views, unveiled on 5 December, were stitched together from images taken by a high-resolution sensor aboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership weather satellite. Data from the new sensor could be used as a proxy for factors such as population distribution and carbon emissions. See go.nature.com/jfv8ql for more.

POLICY

Next US Mars rover NASA will land another rover on Mars in 2020 at a cost of US$1.5 billion, said John Grunsfeld, the agency’s science chief, on 4 December. Earlier this year, NASA pulled out of the European Space Agency’s 2016–18 ExoMars mission, which included a NASA rover intended to cache rocks before their eventual return to Earth, alongside a European life-detection rover. See go.nature.com/k4cm8b for more.

Facilities cash UK chancellor George Osborne is investing an extra £600 million (US$967 million) in UK science. The cash, announced on 5 December, will go partly to academic researchers for infrastructure projects, and partly to industrial research facilities. The UK government has now announced more than £1.5 billion of new science funding over the past two years, but the money has yet to fully make up for drastic infrastructure funding cuts made in 2010. See go.nature.com/dw9kjn for more.

Arctic report card An annual environmental assessment of the far north has revealed that the Arctic broke a string of environmental records in 2012, including the lowest summer extent of sea ice. The warming of the Arctic will have global repercussions, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released the report on 5 December. See go.nature.com/kyxdxd for more.

Embryo research A government-backed bill to relax rules on research using embryonic stem cells and embryos was passed by the French Senate last week. Such research is currently banned in France, although a 2004 law giving scientists dispensation for research that promises “major therapeutic progress” against serious diseases has allowed some work. The bill, supported by President François Hollande (see Nature 484, 298–299; 2012), will go to a vote in the national assembly next year, before returning for a second reading in both chambers.

Stem-cell drive A coalition of 10 drug companies and 23 academic institutions announced a plan on 5 December to create 1,500 new induced pluripotent stem-cell lines. With €26 million (US$34 million) from the European Union and €21 million of ‘in-kind’ contributions from the private sector, the StemBANCC project will derive cell lines from 500 patients and make them available to other researchers. See go.nature.com/ohez8u for more.

Credit: Liquid Robotics

RESEARCH

Robot sailor A wave-powered robot named Papa Mau has broken the record for the longest distance travelled by an autonomous vehicle, its maker announced on 6 December. The robot is one of four ‘Wave Gliders’ (pictured) launched by Liquid Robotics in Sunnyvale, California, to gather oceanographic data. It took over a year to cover the more than 16,000 kilometres between California and Australia. See go.nature.com/jo8jsz for more.

Cancer sequencing Up to 100,000 patients with cancer and rare diseases in England will have their DNA mapped under plans to integrate whole-genome sequencing into the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. In an announcement on Monday, Prime Minister David Cameron said that £100 million (US$160 million) had been earmarked for the project, which includes wider plans to boost genetic science and build an infrastructure to feed data back to researchers. See go.nature.com/myvpxs for more.

Big-data bonanza The US National Institutes of Health will spend about US$125 million a year for up to seven years on training and on upgrading its ability to analyse, optimize and share the gigantic data sets being generated in biomedicine, the agency announced on 7 December. From 2014, such ‘big data’ awards will be available mostly to grant applicants, but also to the agency’s staff.

Desert science Qatar has announced plans to set up a climate-research institute in Doha. A key focus of the institute will be the effects of climate change on dry regions around the world, officials from the Qatar Foundation said on 5 December, at the sidelines of international climate talks in the capital. A research plan and budget figures are to be announced once a founding committee has been established.

BUSINESS

Drug sales concern On 3 December, a US federal appeals court overthrew the conviction of a pharmaceuticals salesman who had promoted drugs for uses that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, ruling that a long-standing ban on drug marketing violated free speech. The pharmaceutical industry has already paid billions of dollars in penalties for marketing drugs this way. If upheld by higher courts, the ruling could make it more difficult for the US government to prosecute those who promote such ‘off-label’ uses of drugs.

Genetics buyout Biotechnology giant Amgen has announced plans to acquire deCODE Genetics for US$415 million. deCODE, based in Reykjavik, struggled through bankruptcy in 2009. However, it has identified a wealth of genetic variants associated with conditions from Alzheimer’s disease to schizophrenia. Amgen chief executive Robert Bradway said that the acquisition would allow his company, based in Thousand Oaks, California, to produce more-innovative drugs.

Whistleblower deal A US scientific-integrity official who says he was fired for raising scientific concerns about a dam project (see Nature 484, 15; 2012) has reached a settlement with the government, a watchdog group representing him announced on 4 December. Paul Houser, a hydrologist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, was employed by the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation but lost his government job in February. He launched a complaint under the Whistleblower Protection Act, a rare example of a scientist appealing to the act to protect his scientific disclosures. In a joint statement, both sides said they had reached agreement through mediation and would not be disclosing details of the settlement.

Vaccine landmark A cheap vaccine against meningitis A last week reached the landmark of immunizing more than 100 million people in Africa’s ‘meningitis belt’ — a region in the north of the continent where the bacterial disease periodically kills thousands in intense epidemics. In Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, where MenAfriVac was first rolled out in 2010 (see Nature 468, 143; 2010), no cases of meningitis A had been detected up to October this year. The vaccine has now been launched in seven other countries. The project is led by the World Health Organization and PATH, a non-profit body based in Seattle, Washington.

Credit: Source: FDA

TREND WATCH

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 35 new drugs in the fiscal year 2012, the same number as in 2011 (see chart). Half of the drugs were authorized through programmes designed to accelerate the process — for example, in cases of serious unmet medical need involving life-threatening diseases. The class of 2012 includes nine cancer drugs, nine treatments for rare, or ‘orphan’, diseases and the first approved drug made from human umbilical-cord blood.

COMING UP

15–19 December The American Society for Cell Biology meets in San Francisco — with an address from US energy secretary Steven Chu on how physical scientists are changing biomedical science (see Nature 474, 20–22; 2011). go.nature.com/xkzgw8

17–18 December With research on modifying avian H5N1 flu viruses still under a moratorium, scientists and policy-makers meet at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, to discuss conditions under which experiments might restart. go.nature.com/5bvvzw