4 | NewScientist | 9 March 2013

AMERICANS hoped it wouldn’t come to this. The federal budget is getting a hacking, and the country’s science and health programmes are bound to suffer.

Because Republicans and Democrats failed to negotiate a budget deal in time for the 1 March deadline, automatic spending cuts known as the “sequester” are kicking in. These will bring the axe down across all federal government spending, except “entitlements” such as social security and Medicaid.

Programmes in health, science and the environment will feel the pinch. The cuts will, for instance, affect efforts to distribute fortified baby formula to poor

mothers. And with the east coast still repairing the damage caused by superstorm Sandy, there are particular concerns about the ability of the National Weather

Budget cuts hit US Service to forecast future storms. “The country is going to need more reliable forecasts of weather events,” says William Hooke of the American Meteorological Society in Boston. “The science isn’t going to keep pace with it if the sequester remains in place.”

Similar cuts to meat inspectors employed by the US Department of Agriculture may force processing plants to close – leading to less food on shelves and higher prices.

The sequester will also force cuts to scientific research, denting President Barack Obama’s plans to make investing in innovation a centrepiece of his second term. The American Association for the Advancement of Science estimates federal spending on research and development will be reduced by $54 billion over the next five years.

“There is one hope, and that’s public outcry,” says Mary Woolley, president of Research!America, which lobbies for biomedical research. “If the public decides that they can’t stomach the kind of cuts being talked about, we could see it being modified.”

Cancer risk still lowCATCHING a flight out of Fukushima in the wake of the nuclear disaster two years ago would have given you a larger dose of radiation than staying put.

This is the upshot of a new report from the World Health Organization estimating that for residents exposed to the radiation leak, the risk of developing cancer has increased only slightly.

People had been most worried about an increase in thyroid cancer, due to exposure to

radioactive iodine. The report says the risk has increased by 70 per cent, but in practice this only adds 0.5 per cent to the existing risk. This would mean that a woman’s lifetime risk of getting thyroid cancer might rise from 0.75 to 1.25 if she had been exposed as an infant. The margin of increase for other cancers was much lower.

After Chernobyl, most of the population got a dose of less than 9 millisieverts of radiation over 20 years, says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London – less than an international flight.

–Drink up at your peril–

UK is ‘sick man of Europe’A SURGE in ill health related to booze, drugs and dementia has prevented the UK from keeping pace with several European nations in improving public health.

That’s according to a report comparing disease trends in 18 developed countries between 1990 and 2010. An increase of 65 per cent in deaths from cirrhosis of the liver – much of it linked to rising alcohol consumption – has moved the UK from 14th to 9th worst in the countries surveyed. Deaths from drug use have soared by 577 per cent, and Alzheimer’s disease by 137 per cent (The Lancet, doi.org/kp2).

Researchers say a big problem is the cheapness and availability of alcohol compared with 20 years ago. “Alcohol is sometimes cheaper than

bottled water,” says Katherine Brown, director of policy at London’s Institute of Alcohol Studies. She hopes that the government’s planned introduction of a minimum unit price for alcohol will make a dent in harmful drinking.

The rise in Alzheimer’s is more of a mystery, although the UK’s Alzheimer’s Society says it may reflect better recognition and diagnosis of the disease, rather than a true increase in mortality.

Ed Jessop of the UK’s Faculty of Public Health in London says there is good news too. Death rates from coronary heart disease have more than halved, thanks to increased tobacco controls, lower fat consumption and better treatments. “We’ve done fantastically well there,” he says.

“There’s one hope, and that’s public outcry. If the public can’t stomach the cuts, it could be modified”

DRAGON capsules are classed as weapons, and commercial spaceflight may suffer for it. US rules to prevent arms trafficking may mean we never find out what delayed a recent Dragon mission to the International Space Station.

SpaceX, based in California, sent a Dragon into orbit on 1 March. Its thrusters developed problems, apparently due to blocked fuel valves. But ground engineers managed to clear the blockages, and the craft

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docked with the ISS a day late.SpaceX promises a full

investigation into what went wrong, but what it can reveal is restricted by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which list commercial capsules like Dragon as munitions.

The space industry would benefit from learning what happened, says Alex Saltman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation in Washington DC. “Being able to share best practices is important.”

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