The response is well worth a read for Sciblogs regulars who have followed the debate Heinemann and colleagues have led of late about dsRNA and the potential of dsRNA molecules present in genetically modified food to interfere with the genes of humans who consume it.

Last year, Heinemann teamed up with Dr Judy Carman and the Australian anti-GM activist group Safe Food Foundation to release a paper suggesting that GM wheat being developed by the CSIRO could cause liver damage in humans or as the foundation alarmingly put it “devastating consequences causing serious illness or death”.

The paper was criticised by scientists as it had not been through peer review by a major journal. Robust debate ensued here on Sciblogs, with Prof Heinemann contributing this guest post. Sciblogger Prof Peter Dearden chipped in with some typically insightful analysis here.

In March, Prof Heinemann, Dr Carman and Sarah Agapito-Tenfen of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, authored a paper that appeared in the journal Environment International and suggested regulators in Australia, New Zealand and Brazil were failing to properly test genetically modified food that could could pose a risk to humans. The Press newspaper carried the story on its front page and more scientific argument generated some heat, it not much light on the subject.

In that respect, the decision by the FSANZ to step back and let the dust settle was a wise one. It’s extensive report is well laid-out and gives a good overview on the state of the scientific literature concerning the dsRNA issues that these researchers have sought to highlight.

Overall FSANZ concludes: “The weight of scientific evidence published to date does not support the view that small dsRNAs in foods are likely to have adverse consequences for humans.”

It elaborates:

- In formulating their hypothesis, the authors have not taken into account the fact that small dsRNAs are ubiquitous in the environment and in the diverse range of organisms we consume as food, including plants and animals. This establishes a long history of safe human consumption which pre-dates the use of such techniques in GM plants.

- The authors failed to adequately acknowledge that developing oral therapies based on small dsRNAs targeted against human viruses and other diseases such as cancer has so far been unsuccessful because of the barriers that exist to their uptake, distribution and targeting within the body.

- The authors have also underestimated the strengths of the GM food safety assessment to detect possible unintended effects, including those that could arise from the use of gene silencing.

- There is no scientific basis for suggesting that small dsRNAs present in some GM foods have different properties or pose a greater risk than those already naturally abundant in conventional foods.

- The current case-by-case approach to GM food safety assessment is sufficiently broad and flexible to address the safety of GM foods developed using gene silencing techniques. This approach enables additional studies to be requested should that be necessary to further inform the safety assessment of a particular GM food.

- FSANZ will continue to monitor the scientific literature for any new developments which may be relevant to GM food safety assessment.

It particular, FSANZ points out that the researchers have relied heavily on a single paper (Zhang et al.):

Over at the Science Media Centre we will later today be posting reaction to the report from FSANZ – including hopefully from Prof. Heinemann, who today via The Press, expressed his disappointment on an initial look at the paper, that FSANZ had not supplied data on testing of dsRNA in GM foods.

The FSANZ response, arguably, is no surprise.But Prof Heinemann and colleagues, even their critics agree, have raised some issues worthy of discussion.

The view however, from the regulator responsible for assessing the safety of our food, genetically modified or not, suggests there is scant evidence to back up the bold claims that in effect suggested a public health disaster was waiting to happen.

$130 million of funding has been committed to boosting R&D efforts in companies and start-ups, $107m of which will come from the Government’s internationally focused growth package, with $23m re-prioritised from elsewhere in the science and innovation vote.

Detail about the new grants scheme that will account for the new funding is detailed here.

Additionally, changes to tax rules were announced that would allow loss-making start-up companies investing heavily in research and development to take advantage of tax breaks. Eligibility criteria for the scheme will be released next month ahead of public consultation.

Previously announced and reallocated

Elsewhere, previously announced Budget allocations, such as the National Science Challenges which receive $73.5 million in funding over the next four years, and funding for newly-formed Callaghan Innovation account for the bulk of changes on the positive side of the ledger within the science and innovation vote. The Marsden Fund receives an increase in funding ($46.8 million to $51.8 million),

“Realising the benefits of innovation” receives a $17.5 million allocation, and is described as “activities that build the level of, and returns from, science and technology-driven innovation through providing tailored brokerage and access to advice, technical services and facilities, and creating linkages, projects and collaborations between business and industry and Research Science and Technology providers”. Allocations for the KAREN advanced network ($4 million) and New Zealand access to the Australian Synchrotron $7.5 million) are also included.

Decreases in allocations include ”high value manufacturing”, which reduces from $187.5 million to $61.1 million year on year, Fellowships for Excellence ($13.4 million to $8.6 million) and Crown Research Institute core funding ($215.5 million to $201.6 million)

Vote Science and Innovation appropriation estimates for 2013-14 are outlined here

Departmental appropriations consisting of:

• just under $30 million for advice and support to shape the science and innovation system, including policy advice, public consultation and engagement on National Science Challenges, contract management and strategic leadership in the Science and Innovation sector.

Non-departmental appropriations consisting of:

• under $202 million for Crown Research Institutes (CRI’s) to provide greater financial certainty to deliver outcomes for the benefit of New Zealand and to assist the CRI’s to contribute to the outcomes in their statement of core purpose

• just over $303 million for research and research applications in the areas of high value manufacturing and services, biological industries, health and society, environmental, hazards and infrastructure and energy and minerals

• under $145 million for Research and Development Growth Grants multi-year appropriation (MYA), Targeted Business Research and Development Funding MYA, and Repayable Grants for Start-Ups

• just over $42 million for National Science Challenges to fund specific research projects in seeking answers to the most pressing issues of national significance facing New Zealand

• under $19 million for services by the Crown entity Callaghan Innovation for development and maintenance of strategic capabilities required to meet immediate and future needs of business and industry

• under $52 million for the Marsden Fund for excellent fundamental research

• under $9 million for fellowships and grants to support the development of future research leaders

• under $13 million for contract management services with regard to research, science and technology contract with organisations or individuals

• just under $9 million for engaging New Zealanders with science and technology

• just over $16 million for the advice, brokerage and networking services provided by Callaghan

Innovation

• over $6 million for Research Contract Management

• under $6 million for providing specified standards to meet the needs for traceable physical measurements in New Zealand, and

• under $7 million for the development of skilled people and organisations undertaking research that supports the four themes of Vision M?tauranga.

Non-departmental other expenses consisting of:

• under $38 million for grants to organisations in New Zealand and overseas which ensures infrastructures and projects that have system-wide benefits or are too large for any one institution to fund, but are of benefit to New Zealand, can take place, and

• a total of $135,000 for membership to the Convention du Metre.

Non-departmental capital expenditure consisting of:

• just under $32 million to support the establishment and development of an advanced technology institute as the Crown entity Callaghan Innovation.

Departmental capital expenditure: please note that as a result of the formation of Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment all departmental capital expenditure is now under Vote Economic Development.

Lord Winston

Previous attempts to introduce labelling have failed in the face of strong opposition from the UK Department of Health and pharmaceutical companies, who were concerned that a declaration on animal research on labels may deter some patients from taking medicines.

But Robert Winston says the new mood of openness on animal research within the scientific community and government (reflected in the Declaration on Openness that was launched at the Science Media Centre in London last October) that this is the right time to place this issue back on the agenda.

Lord Winston said of the labelling Bill:

“The Bill is designed to produce transparency, and to make it clear that it is virtually impossible to receive any licensed pharmaceutical whether it be a sleeping pill, painkiller, fertility injection, cancer drug, or vaccination without stringent tests using animals first.  There are a very few exceptions like aspirin, almost the only one I can think of.  It is designed to show the hypocrisy of those who try to pretend to unknowing members of the public that animal research can be abandoned.  It is designed to help the pharmaceutical companies to ‘put their head above the parapet’.  It is also designed to show how rigorously animal research in the UK is regulated; more than any other jurisdiction. But more than anything it is designed to re-open this debate.

Wording of the Bill:

The text of Lord Winston’s Bill

Despite the push for openness, the Bill is still likely to face opposition from members of the House swayed by the arguments of pharmaceutical companies.

Animal testing is a touchy subject everywhere, but particularly so in the UK. Last month, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection revealed had been running an undercover operation in the labs of Imperial College, London, secretly filming scientists in what the Union claims were breaches of the regulations and abuse of the animals they were working with. Imperial is investigating the lab as a result.

Lord Winston sparked controversy earlier this month when he admitted he had deliberately discriminated against job applicants with first-class university degrees.

He told school students in London recently:

“I know scientists who are amazingly stupid. And in my laboratory I have appointed scientists on the whole that didn’t get first-class honours degrees, deliberately, quite specifically, because, actually, I would rather have young people around me who developed other interests at university and didn’t just focus entirely on getting that first.”

Lord Winston was recently made a patron of Gravida, New Zealand’s national Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE).

The areas of focus are:

1. Aging well
2. A better start
3. Healthier lives
4. High value nutrition
5. New Zealand’s biological heritage
6. Our land and water
7. Life in a changing ocean
8. The Deep South
9. Science for technological innovation
10. Resilience to nature’s challenges

So what do you think? Has the Government, after consulting the science sector and the public, got the mix right?

In fact, the sources of the world’s most productive wine regions are likely to alter radically in the coming decades as climate change makes currently prime wine growing areas ill-suited to sensitive grape-growing conditions, while new areas will become ripe for wine growing.

On the flipside, New Zealand’s wine industry stands to benefit with the area suitable for wine growing here estimated to increase by up to 168 per cent. Existing areas will expand slightly, but newly suitable areas such as along the coast of Canterbury, will emerge as prime wine growing areas.

Research published today in PNAS considered 17 climate models applied to nine wie-producing regions. Two scenarios were examined – a 4.7C temperature increase by 2050 and a 2.5C increase by 2050.

Both scenarios present a grim outlook for the global wine industry:

- 85% decrease in production in Bordeaux, Rhone and Tuscany.

- 74% drop in Australia

- 70% fall in California.

- 55% decline in South Africa’s Cape area.

- 40% decline in Chile

New Zealand then appears well placed to expand production and its influence in the international wine trade. We rounded up some comment from New Zealand scientists at the Science Media Centre.

But lets not crack the champagne (or New Zealand Methode) just yet. Climate change will have all sorts of other implications that will see the wine industry’s gains tipped massively on the other side of the ledger as sea level rise, climate refugees and more extreme weather events cost us dearly. The changing climate will also have implications for biodiversity as new areas are cultivated for wine growing.

Write the authors:

Freshwater habitats may be particularly at risk where climate change undermines growing conditions for already established vineyards. Climate change adaptation strategies that anticipate these indirect impacts are particularly im- portant for creating a future that is positive for vintners, wine consumers, and ecosystems alike. Alternatives are available that will allow adaptation in vineyards while maintaining the positive ecological association that is valued in the industry.

Still, they suggest New Zealand is in for a slightly easier ride here too, thanks to our reasonably abundant water supplies.

The graphic below outlines the changing suitability for wine growing around the world under the modeled global temperature increases.

Source: Hannah et al. PNAS

The armchair climate change expert has in the past managed to stimulate discussion of climate science on his tours of New Zealand and Australia, even if he has been criticized for manipulating and cherry-picking the science to suit his narrative on climate.

However, after his roasting in the media, his train wreck of a public discussion in Auckland and a falling out with one of his imagined allies, Monckton’s arguments against acting on climate change have received scant attention, overshadowed by his erratic behaviour.

The Weekend Herald lavished the full back page interview on Monckton last Saturday and in the process featured perhaps the best insight yet into the mind of Lord Monckton who abruptly ended the interview. Writes the Weekend Herald’s Michele Hewitson:

“It is very difficult to walk out on an interview when the only place you have to walk out of is the living room in the house where you are staying and into the kitchen where the person you are walking out on has to follow you to get to the front door. We stood about for a bit while he studiously ignored me and while I waited for him to laugh because it was so farcical.

“But he didn’t. He wouldn’t even say goodbye, which was quite some feat because it might have been the first time he had ever stopped talking.”

Lord Monckton earns serious newspaper real estate… opposite Kim Jong-un. Appropriate or what?

This is by no means the first time Monckton has walked out of an interview, nor the first time he has done it in New Zealand. On his last visit, he lost his cool with Country 99 TV reporter Benedict Collins, marching out of the interview when his credentials to discuss complex climate science were questioned.

It is no wonder Monckton was feeling tetchy when he sat down with Michele Hewitson. Earlier in the week, the Herald revealed the contempt the scientific community has for Monckton, sparking an angry rebuttal rejecting the criticism as “hate speech”. But it got worse for Monckton as the week rolled on.

On Friday morning, Monckton appeared on TV3′s Firstline programme, where he claimed to be in New Zealand as a guest of Federated Farmers. Monckton was still fuming about his treatment by the Herald:

“They made assumptions which were not correct, and one of the universities concerned is going to have the father and mother of all complaints later today, once the lies have been investigated,” he told Firstline.

But untruths were the subject of a press release issued later in the day about Monckton’s TV3 appearance, with Federated Farmers moving to distance themselves from the visiting sceptic:

In an interview on 3News Firstline this morning, in which Lord Christopher Monckton said his tour was being organised and supported by Federated Farmers of New Zealand, but this is incorrect.

Federated Farmers of New Zealand has not invited Lord Monckton to tour. Nor is Federated Farmers of New Zealand sponsoring or organising his tour either directly or indirectly.

Federated Farmers of New Zealand is aware our Marlborough province may be supporting the tour in some capacity and that some farmers may be involved, but the national body is not.

The Federated Farmers rebuke would have been gnawing at Monckton as he took to the stage at a University of Auckland public lecture to enthusiastic applause – from the Flat Earth Society for Climate Realists:

He didn’t seem to like us cheering and applauding his every joke and saw it as a reason to call security, but we managed to persuade security that we were FRIENDS, not foes!

He seemed a bit cross with everyone in the end, which was confusing as we are all about cooperation and collaboration.

Then came this morning’s account in the Northern Advocate of a meeting Monckton spoke at in the Whangarei library. Reporter Lindy Laird admitted she found it hard to take Monckton seriously:

It’s because he reminds me of Spike Milligan. Maybe it’s the eyes, the self-deprecating Englishness, or a delivery that turns a serious subject into the bizarre. I tell myself to get serious, be professional, I’m on a job.

This is not The Goon Show, and although the grass outside is frying in the blazing April sun and people mutter “driest in 70 years” no one looks likely to burst into ludicrous song at any moment. “Ning Nang Nong…”

At least Monckton may be able to drown out his detractors when he comes to Wellington. He is holding his public lecture there in the Bose audio store.

You wonder at this stage whether Monckton wouldn’t be better served just bypassing the despicable mainstream media and accepting an interview with The Civilian. At the very least he’ll share their penchant for bowler hats…

John Nixon (right) dining with telecommunications analyst Paul Budde.

John’s daughter Dominique Annonier wrote from her home in New Caledonia:

I’m very sad to announce that my Dad John Nixon passed away on Tuesday March 19^th in Australia.

We buried him on the Gold Coast as per his wishes.

My apologies to people whom I was unable to contact sooner.

I first met John when I was a telecommunications reporter for the New Zealand Herald and regularly drew on his considerable knowledge of broadband networks and fibre optics. As a network engineer, John worked all over New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific islands advising on the design and construction of optical networks.

John was excited about the potential of fibre to revolutionise business and consumer life in New Zealand.

He came onboard Sciblogs in 2010, filing updates from his travels and keeping tabs on the build-out of fibre optic networks on both sides of the Tasman. It is particularly sad that John didn’t live to see these networks completed.

We knew John had been ill with cancer, but his death came out of the blue all the same. We will miss him and the Sciblogs team send our condolences to his family and friends.

Peter Griffin

Sciblogs editor

Any top-10 list would be hotly contested – and the one below will be no different. It was put together as one of those pleasant-looking infographics designed to lure you to one of those dubious advertising websites – in this case “Best College Reviews”.

So don’t bother clicking at the link at the bottom, you’ll just find yourself in spam hell. But the infographic itself is well put together and touches on some of the big science-related events of 2012. But are these the most influential scientists of 2012? An interesting question to consider…

Source: Best College Reviews

The National Mall in all its glory photo: Peter Griffin

Factions of the media have analyzed it as a very “progressive” or “liberal” speech. I didn’t take that away from it. For me it was a very American speech. It was full of references to Dr Martin Luther King, the founding fathers, 1776, the Constitution, the military, the greatness of America. It was clearly a fairly liberal crowd surrounding me, but Obama was tugging the heart strings of all Americans with his words.

It also, refreshingly, paid tribute to science and technology and urged America to harness both to reclaim the country’s position as a leader in innovation.

We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries. We must claim its promise. That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure, our forests and waterways, our crop lands and snow capped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

There’s a dark hint in that first sentence that the US feels its technological lead has been wrested from it by illegitimate means. Its attempts to tighten up intellectual property law, its distrust of Chinese technology giants like Huawei, are testament to that partly justified paranoia.

But before it came something more fundamental and universal on an issue that got hardly any play during the election campaign.

 We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

The cheer that went up around me almost drowned out the following:

Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition. We must lead it.

The overwhelming judgement of science.

I haven’t listened to many inauguration speeches but I doubt such a strong statement about science has ever been made by a President on such an occasion.

Now the reality bites. As the fiscal cliff negotiations illustrated, US politics is more partisan than it has been in a long time. The economy is not growing, America is spending beyond its means. Many will be asking what Obama is going to do in the next four years about these immediate problems. Climate change mitigation doesn’t enter those discussions, it is considered a cost, a nice to have, something we can do when they lower the deficit, return the economy to a path of growth, return the US to a position of hegemony in the world.

Obama’s challenge, and if he can rise to it, he deserves another Nobel, is to change the thinking so that the issue of tackling climate change is central to all of the above. He is jubilant at this moment, he has avoided becoming a one-term president, his place in history is secure. But the real judgement of him will be measured by what he does in the next four years, where he has a mandate to pursue the agenda he laid out in the election campaign.

With several precious moments of his inauguration speech devoted to science, technology and the effort to mitigate climate change, there’s a strong hint he will pursue the issues in this space that were left on the table in his first term.