Fourteen Nobel Prize winners plus former NASA officials, former astronauts and others sent a letter to House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) urging him to reconsider the provisions of the NASA authorization bill (H.R. 5781) reported by his committee.  The bill has not yet been voted upon by the House.

President Obama will announce reforms to the U.S. export control system today according to a fact sheet released by the White House.   The reforms are "a major step forward in the Administration's efforts to fundamentally reform the export control system" and "will help strengthen our national security" according to the release.

The National Research Council (NRC) published the new Decadal Survey on astronomy and astrophysics (Astro2010) earlier this month.  Now it has released the reports of the nine panels that fed into the steering committee's deliberations.   Five were science panels; four were programmatic.   All the panel reports are combined into a single volume available from the National Academies Press.