A team of World Health Organization scientists investigating the source of the coronavirus, that first emerged in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, visited a provincial disease control center Monday that was key in the early management of the COVID outbreak.   China did not release any details about the team’s visit to the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control.  Team member Peter Daszak, however, told reporters it had been a “really good meeting, really important.” Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team, investigating the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus, visit the closed Huanan Seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, China’s central Hubei province, Jan. 31, 2021.Since the WHO team’s arrival last month, the scientists have also visited the Huanan Seafood Market that was linked to a cluster of COVID cases and at least one of the hospitals in Wuhan that treated some of the first patients. The scientists want to know where …

Lucenia Dunn spent the early days of the coronavirus pandemic encouraging people to wear masks and keep a safe distance from each other in Tuskegee, a mostly Black city where the government once used unsuspecting African American men as guinea pigs in a study of a sexually transmitted disease.   Now, the onetime mayor of the town immortalized as the home of the infamous “Tuskegee syphilis study” is wary of getting inoculated against COVID-19. Among other things, she’s suspicious of the government promoting a vaccine that was developed in record time when it can’t seem to conduct adequate virus testing or consistently provide quality rural health care.   “I’m not doing this vaccine right now. That doesn’t mean I’m never going to do it. But I know enough to withhold getting it until we see all that is involved,” said Dunn, who is Black.   The coronavirus immunization campaign is …

U.S. President Joe Biden is planning to bring what he calls a Clean Energy Revolution to tackle climate change. The diesel industry, which had gone through its own revolution a decade ago to meet stricter environmental standards, has seen payoffs in adopting “green” fuel initiatives. Genia Dulot has the story.  …

Since taking office in January, President Joe Biden has reaffirmed a national commitment to integrity in scholarship and research, appointing scientists to numerous leadership roles.  Educators and experts applaud these appointments and say elevating intellectual integrity in research and science will take the combined effort of universities, industry and the public, too.    Biden appointed Eric Lander — who in 2001 was the first author on a paper published in the science journal Nature that heralded human genome sequencing — to be the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Biden elevated the post to Cabinet-level status for the first time.     “How can we address stresses on academic research labs and promote creative models for federal research support?” the president asked in his January 15 letter announcing Lander’s appointment. Some experts say that with the change in the presidential administration in the U.S., this is a moment for academia and research to review its standards, particularly given that the validity of science …