Horizon 2020–the EU’s science fundings scheme….

Scheme in the European sense of the word of course. An excellent summary from colleagues at the Austrian Embassy, here. This is the successor program to the Frameworks Initiatives and it represents a really substantial investment by the EU states.

Microbiome therapies rising…

Story in Nature, here. Seems like a smart business approach to me: tweaking the ecosystem that lives in our gut–the same one that takes it on the chin when we take antibiotics.

Commencement 2014

Provost and Deans, George Mason University 2014

My colleagues and I got together for our annual informal photo just prior to commencement this morning. These are wonderful folks to work with. Today’s ceremony marks the end of my 16th year in this position. It’s been an incredibly fulfilling job. Happy Summer!

0.2% of the SSL certificates out on the Net are bad….

This according to a new paper from Carnegie Mellon scientists here [pdf]. Considering the size of the Internet, that number is extremely worrying. The geographic distribution of the forged certificates is actually the most interesting part of the paper to me…it’s not what one might expect.

Propublica muckrakes on Medicare fraud….

Apparently there are a cadre of doctors who, as a rule, always charge Medicare top dollar…for virtually all of their patients. Excellent investigatory journalism, story here. Part of bending the health care curve down is going to be about ending this kind of fraud….

Thoughts on California…

It was good to be back in my native state last week. In spite of the drought, Pasadena had that certain lushness that no doubt enhances a Caltech education for those lucky undergraduates. That said, the traffic was as terrible as its ever been and my aggressive use of the carpool lanes was pretty much continuous.

As a state, California seems to be getting its act together again about public higher education. To my mind, investing tax dollars in the UC system is a no-brainer–it’s still the flagship of flagships among its brethren. If the Golden State can protect that golden egg, I think its future economy is going to be in really excellent shape.

On the private side, increasingly USC is comparable and complementary to Stanford. And of course Caltech is in a league of its own.

In Southern California for most of next week….

Blogposts will be scarce…

Alan Guth, Inflation and The Big Bang….

Neil Swidey’s long piece in the Boston Globe is here. I continue to be interested in this story and it’s implications….

The latest Q&A on the MERS outbreak in Saudi Arabia….

ScienceInsider has the interview with Christian Drosten here. It’s interesting that there appears to be some evidence of a “mild” infection and also that the real danger of spread seems to be in overloaded hospital wards.