Into Europe under cover?

DuPont wins patent battle over oil gene
Pay synapse
Coke to recycle Mexican PET

Research

Pay synapse

European politicians worried about the brain drain need look little further than the pay differentials for PhDs. US male boffins enjoy a pay packet nearly 60% bigger than their British equivalents, says the current edition of The Scientist, which published its third salary survey.

Of course, corporate sponsors pay for much US research. Usually they are in pursuit of commercially viable intellectual property. Traditionally British and European research has been more interested in knowledge for its own sake.

But with many European firms, especially in the life sciences, electing to move their research bases to the US, the alarm bells should be ringing in Brussels and Westminster.

The Scientist reckons US science is riding something of a crest due to increases in the National Institute of Health budget, lots more defence spending, and a rise in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. It found the average senior researcher, who holds a PhD and leads a lab, will earn $73,351 this year, a 7.3% increase compared to an inflation rate of only 2.1%.

In contrast, pay rises in the UK have averaged a miserly 1.7% to £28,479 this year, well below the inflation rate of 2.9%. But their Canadian colleagues saw their pay packets shrink 5.2%, from C$64,692 while the Canadian consumer price index rose 2.2%.

The results also show that white men continue to earn more on average than women and non-Caucasians.

Pay gaps

Courts

DuPont wins patent battle over oil gene

US-based chemical company DuPont has won a court battle to exploit a patented gene that could lead to healthier foods.

The gene increases the ratio of beneficial fatty acids to harmful saturated fats. Oil seed crops in particular could benefit from the gene to produce healthier vegetable oils for cooking food.

DuPont sued Washington State university's John  Okuley, who with a colleague identified the FAD2 gene while working in a laboratory borrowed from Ohio State U in 1992. 

At the time Washington State researchers had to assign the rights to all intellectual property to the university.  DuPont had a collaboration deal with the university  that gave it rights to research discoveries.

Okuley challenged DuPont's rights to his discovery, only to be rejected by the US Circuit Court of Appeals.

GM

Into Europe under cover?

European civil servants are meeting this week to discuss draft legislation that will permit some GM seed to be distributed with non-GM seed without it being labelled as containing GMOs.

Environmental campaigner Friends of the Earth has condemned the talks as a “recipe for disaster”. FOE says the proposals will not only put the environment at risk but will also eventually lead to so much contamination that consumers will have no choice but to eat foods with GMOs.

The European Commission’s Standing Committee on Seeds will make an indicative vote before sending their recommendations to the World Trade Organisation. Later it will take a formal vote before the rules become law. “At no stage is the European Parliament involved,” says FOE.

Some crops such as oilseed rape, for which GM strains are already permitted, the proposed level of contamination would allow up to 10,000 GM seeds per hectare to be sown without the farmer knowing. In the US and Canada, Monsanto has sued farmers because their normal crops contained GM material developed by the firm. The farmers claimed their crops were contaminated without their knowledge.

But FOE and other environmentalists believe GM could lead to less biodiversity, weeds that resist herbicides, and hence greater use of herbicides which may find their way into water courses.

The draft regulations specify GM contamination thresholds for seed batches - oil seed rape (0.3%), tomatoes, beet, cotton, chicory, maize and potatoes (0.5%), and soya beans (0.7%) - before having to be labelled.

Recycling

Coke to recycle Mexican PET

Coca-Cola Mexico is to build Latin America's first bottle-to-bottle polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic recycling plant. The $20 million plant, which opens near Mexico City in late 2004, will process 25,000 tons of PET bottles a year, triple the amount of PET now recycled in Mexico.

PET bottles are recycled into containers, fibrefill for sleeping bags and coats, fabric for T-shirts, sweaters, shoes, luggage, upholstery, and carpeting, car parts, and industrial strapping, sheet, and film.