US Biomedical Research under Siege

US Biomedical Research under Siege

The stagnation of biomedical research funding in the US is placing great pressure on the research enterprise. It is time to consider some radical solutions.

Women under HIV siege bolster microbicide research.

Prefix Coding under Siege

A novel lossless source coding paradigm applies to problems in which a vital message needs to be transmitted prior to termination of communications, as in Alfréd Rényi’s secondhand account of an ancient siege in which information was obtained to prevent the fall of a fortress. Rényi told this story with reference to traditional prefix coding, in which the objective is minimization of expected c...

Sepsis under siege

The understanding of severe sepsis and septic shock could be on the verge of a breakthrough, in view of research overturning the long-held belief that the conditions are caused only by Gram-negative bacterial infections. The implications—and potential treatments—could be huge, as severe sepsis and septic shock affect 3 people in every 1,000 and kill at least 135,000 Europeans each year, about t...

Funding of US biomedical research, 2003-2008.

CONTEXT With the exception of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, funding support for biomedical research in the United States has slowed after a decade of doubling. However, the extent and scope of slowing are largely unknown. OBJECTIVE To quantify funding of biomedical research in the United States from 2003 to 2008. DESIGN Publicly available data were used to quantify funding fro...