According to the examiner:

In a surprise move today, Representative Eric Cantor(R-VA) announced that he will stop all action on SOPA, effectively killing the bill. This move was most likely due to several things. One of those things is that SOPA and PIPA met huge online protest against the bills. Another reason would be that the White House threatened to veto the bill if it had passed. .

PIPA, the Senate Version is still in play, however.

Research using lab rats or mice funded by the NIH is regulated by a set of guidelines that have very recently been upgraded. Mother rats and mice with litters are now recommended to have more room than current guidelines require. The new guidelines are not hard and fast rules, but researchers are concerned that not following these guidelines would jeopardize funding, and it appears from my reading of them that the new cage size guidelines are minimum requirements that must be met.

The main difference that is causing some discussion about the new guidelines is that cages that hold females with litters would be larger, and thus potentially different from the other cages as well. In many labs, current rat cages that are all 140 square inches at the base would have to be replaced with larger cages that are 210 square inches at the base. This is not a huge difference in size, but since a large number of cages would no longer fit in whatever shelving or rackspace is set up, there would have to be a lot of changes. Also, researchers appear to be annoyed that while currently all the cages in a given facility may be the same size with variable number of rats or mice in them, the new standards would require either a lot of extra space for all cages or different size cages, which would be more difficult to manage.

NPR, reporting this story, gives Johns Hopkins as an example. They have a rat and mouse facility about one football field in size, with about 40,000 shoe box size cages that fit in special racks and that integrate with a ventilation and water supply system. The facility is paid for with an internal rent of 62.5 cents per cage per day. It would cost about $300,000 to buy new cages, and more space would have to be found.

The implementation of the regulations is somewhat negotiable, which is probably not a good thing for the researchers. It might be much better to have a required change implemented over a small number of years, and to have costs covered by future NIH funding, than to be uncertain as to whether or not one must change to retain funding, vs. this new rule simply going away. Also, in the long run, this is not as expensive as it sounds. Johns Hopkins received almost 700 million dollars in NIH research funding in 2010. Throwing a million bucks into the overall research budget one time and a few hundred thousand increase which will be covered by grants over the long term is not insignificant, but it is certainly doable.

Some “animal rights” groups want the rodents to have even more room. Some scientists have pointed out that there is no evidence that increasing room changes anything for the rodents, which is probably not a helpful thing to say at this point in time because if it it seems to imply that there has been no research into enclose size requirements for rodents. The new guidelines explicitly state that “Space recommendations were nominally expanded based on … professional and expert opinion and on current housing methods,” and “substantial guidance” is provided in the document to achieve the objectives of the new goal. Also, the guide attempts to distinguish between things that researchers must, vs. should, vs may do. I would assume that “shoulds” and “mays” are guidelines that under some conditions could be seen as potential future “musts.” If I was in charge of an animal research facility, I’d be meeting with member of the NIH committee now and then to assess their future directions along these lines, so that the next time I speced out rat cages, I’d consider the “should” requirements if there was an expectation that “should” would someday become “must.” The cage size increases appear to be in the “must” category but with exceptions. It is actually rather complicated, which is why the people who run these facilities are experts!

Here’s a copy of the guidelines.

Twitter is telling me that Phobos Grunt is going to do its mostly burning up in the Earth’s Atmosphere thing RIGHT NOW. Or it just did. Or really really soon.

#PhobosGrunt is the hashtag.

If you have an aluminum foil hat, now would be a good time to put it on.

That is all.

b0yle Alan Boyle
MT @PhG_Reentry: RT @timmermansr: STRATCOM claiming #PhobosGrunt reentered, crashed in Pacific in last few minutes. Unconfirmed by Russians

_VanillaBlues Alina Razzouk
#PhobosGrunt may have crashed in the Pacific Ocean according to the US Strategic Command. Awaiting Russian validation

AdirondackAstro Michael Rector
USStratcom saying #PhobosGrunt crashed down in South Pacific off of Southern South America, but unconfirmed by Roscosmos.

monzitrek Luigi Morielli
#PhobosGrunt pare che US STRATCOM abbia confermato il rientro della sonda sul Pacifico. Si attende conferma da Roscosmos.

gregladen Greg Laden
#PhobosGrunt re-entered? Pics or it didn’t happen!

… with Science! And she also talks about fishing, the size of government, Republicans, Obama, government reform And lies, damn lies.

Continue reading Rachel Maddow Admits Love Affair →

Below the fold because it is 20 pixels too wide.
Continue reading Phobos-Grunt Watch Goes Comic →

UPDATE: With the last orbital elements decay prediction is now january 15, 2012 at 18h27 UTC +/-4h

Thirteen tons of space ship once destine for the planet Mars is starting to lose altitude, and may drop into the thicker layer of the atmosphere and (mostly) burn up Sunday (story at bbc). The Russian space agency estimates that about 200 kilograms will make it to the ground. It is impossible to predict this far in advance where any of that might fall.

You can track Phobos-Grunt here, but that tracking tool does not give you the location of the object; It shows you where it should be based on calculations. Once Phobos-Grunt starts to interact with the thicker atmosphere and, perhaps, bits and chunks start to fall off, the trajectory will probably change and this tracking map will no longer be that useful, and probably won’t tell you if the space craft has crashed yet.

The original mission is described as follows:

Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt… was an attempted Russian sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. Fobos-Grunt also carried the Chinese Mars orbiter Yinghuo-1 and the tiny Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment funded by the Planetary Society.*

The space ship made it into earth orbit, but for unknown reasons, a booster designed to push the craft towards the Red Planet failed to fire. This of course makes this re-entry interesting in a novel way: Since the booster didn’t fire, there’s about 10 tons of rocket fuel in aluminum tanks on Phobos-Grunt. It is assumed the tanks will melt quickly and the fuel will burn or explode.

I wonder if this will make re-entry more visible than otherwise?

I also hate it when the waiter brings the bill, but I usually don’t break their fingers.

According to a report in Raw Story, the waiter at a fancy Palm Beach restaurant Club Colette was asked by Castle’s wife to bring the bill to Castle’s table, and did. However, Castle had the idea that the waiter would not bring the bill, but rather, just put it on the guy’s account or something. So, naturally, Castle had to break the waiter’s finger as punishment.

No charges have been filed and nothing is going to happen.

Now, imagine the reverse scenario: A member of the 99% becomes annoyed withe a member of the 1% and breaks his fingers. What do you think would happen then?

The Research Blogging Editor’s Selectionies are out! Hosted by Krystal D’Costa, this award is roughly similar to the Academy Awards, but for blog posts about peer reviewed research. And I won one!!!

My post “A word or two about tobacco, and some neat and new research.” It was said of this post “At Greg Laden’s blog, readers are treated to a bit of botany related to tobacco and we learn that physical evidence has been found linking the Maya to tobacco use.”

I am truly humbled.

Four other posts won the same award. From Krystal’s post:

• Is there a relationship between language density and habitat diversity? Tim DeChant explores this question at Per Square Mile with respect to Italian dialects.
• A post at EvoAnth reports that four genes for skin tones have been discovered, shedding further light on this variable physical trait.
• Navajos don’t eat fish, according to teofilo at Gambler’s House–and the taboo may apparently be traced linguistically.
• At Body Horrors, Rebecca Kreston discusses the dangers of unsanitary shaving practices linked to an important Hajj ritual that may be leaving devotees susceptible to a blood-borne disease.

Thank you, thank you very much, oh, I see the music is playing I must get off the stage now.

But seriously, if you don’t happen to be familiar with Research Blogging Dot Org you should check it out. It is a kind of central link clearing house for science bloggers (who are legit science bloggers, not fake ones) blogging about current (but sometimes I sneak in an older one) peer reviewed research papers. I always recommend it to teachers as a great way to get a quick handle on current research in your area.

OK, back in my seat now. They are announcing the next Selectionie.

Holy crap I won another one! Sarah Kendrew has selected three wonderful posts, one by me (thank you very much) for the January 10th awards. One appears to be on time travelling, and one on supermassive black holes.

Mine is on Russian Rivers and Arctic Salinity: Climate Variation Better Understood.

I’m happy to be introducing this Sunday’s guest speaker at the Minnesota Atheists meeting.

Shawn Otto, author of Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, will speak about his book and related matters at about 2:00. The event is at the Southdale Library. Details here.

I believe he’ll have a few copies of his book and he’s usually good for a signature!

I’m happy to be introducing this Sunday’s guest speaker at the Minnesota Atheists meeting.

Shawn Otto, author of Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, will speak about his book and related matters at about 2:00. The event is at the Southdale Library. Details here.

I believe he’ll have a few copies of his book and he’s usually good for a signature!