Informative and sobering blog post from Sally Rockey, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, on 2011 grant application success rates. It's all summarized in this graph, taken from the NIH Data Book: The success rate, which is the number of funded grants divided by the number of applications, has dropped ...

Head of the US National Institutes of Health Francis Collins was asked some tough questions by a House of Representatives subcommittee examining the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NCATS. The goal of the new center, opened in 2012, is to reduce the amount of time needed to develop ...

On episode #211 of the science show This Week in Virology, the TWiV four discuss an mRNA-based influenza vaccine, and a phage tubulin that forms a filamentous array in the host cell that is needed for positioning viral DNA. You can find TWiV #211 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.

For week 48 in the United States (25 November - 1 December), influenza activity increased. Of 5,511 specimens submitted, 1,139 (20.7%) were positive for influenza. Of these, 854 (75%) were influenza A and 285 (25%) were influenza B. Of the influenza A virus positive specimens, 4 were H1N1 (2009) and 406 ...

On episode #210 of the science show This Week in Virology, the complete TWiV team reviews identification of the cell receptor for hepatitis B and D viruses, and the cell enzyme that cleaves the genome-linked protein from picornaviral RNA. You can find TWiV #210 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.