The university has been fined for animal-care violations before. In 2005, it paid a fine of $11,400 after the Agriculture Department cited it for 46 violations. The university disputed at least one of the agency’s findings in that case, and it has said that the problems found in both cases have been corrected.

The NSF argues in the plan that, because of various efficiencies that would be gained, the costs of construction would be recovered within 12 years, and so the operation of McMurdo would cost $12-million a year less thereafter. The NSF proposal followed a governmental review that affirmed the U.S. presence in Antarctica benefits the country for both science and geopolitical reasons. A similar review in the 1990s led Congress to approve a $174-million replacement of the South Pole Station.

The documents containing the false statements included several grant applications that were submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities over the past 10 years. The endowment has said it will investigate.

The state attorney general in Massachusetts, where the academy is located, reportedly is also interested in the case. Brad Puffer, director of communications for the attorney general, said in a statement quoted by the Times that the office was pleased that the academy had arranged for an independent inquiry. “Our office will continue to actively monitor this investigation and further action by the board to ensure it carries out its fiduciary responsibility,” he said.

The scholarly group has attributed the false statements about Ms. Berlowitz’s credentials to an unspecified staff member.

The group of organizations includes the National Institutes of Health, whose director, Francis S. Collins, told the newspaper that his agency was a strong supporter of the effort. The cost of DNA sequencing has fallen sharply in recent years, and the group is seeking a common framework for collecting genetic data so that the growing trove of information can be shared effectively among researchers.

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a British genetics-research institute, announced on Wednesday that more than 60 organizations had signed letters of intent to take part in the effort. A full list of those participants is available on the institute’s Web site.

Mr. Blavatnik, who founded Access Industries, an international industrial group, said he had long dreamed of creating something like a Nobel Prize for young scientists. “The Nobel’s about $1-million,” he said. “I thought $250,000 was big enough to make it really interesting but not big enough to be scary. There are a lot of rewards for established scientists, but I don’t think young scientists get enough encouragement and support in a systematic way.”

Mr. Blavatnik’s foundation has been a generous contributors to higher education in recent years. In April it announced a $50-million donation to Harvard University to support basic biomedical research and student entrepreneurship. In 2010 the industrialist and the foundation donated about $114-million to the University of Oxford to create the Blavatnik School of Government.

The new program expands on a regional program that has operated in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut for the past seven years.

“The long-term goal of the awards is to create a pipeline of scientific support in which established scientists choose the most outstanding young faculty-rank scientists, who then go on to mentor the next generation of would-be scientists and award winners,” said Ellis Rubinstein, president of the New York Academy of Sciences.

For more, see this Chronicle article.

This year’s prize in astronomy will be shared by Steven A. Balbus, of the University of Oxford, and John F. Hawley, of the University of Virginia. David L. Donoho, a professor of statistics at Stanford University, will receive the prize in mathematical sciences. The prize in life science and medicine will be shared by Jeffrey C. Hall, a professor emeritus of biology at Brandeis University and a visiting professor at the University of Maine at Orono; Michael Rosbash, a professor of biology at Brandeis; and Michael W. Young, a professor of genetics and vice president for academic affairs at Rockefeller University.

The prizes will be awarded at a ceremony in September. The Shaw Prize was established by Run Run Shaw, a film producer and philanthropist who has created several trusts and foundations to promote education, scientific and technological research, medical and welfare services, and culture and the arts.

Drake, a private university, announced on Friday that it had established a center called the Tom Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement in connection with Mr. Harkin’s gift.

Mr. Harkin’s namesake institute at Iowa State was the subject of much controversy, with Iowa Republicans objecting to the notion of honoring a sitting politician. In February, Mr. Harkin said he would not give the papers to Iowa State, after taking issue with research restrictions that had been placed on the institute bearing his name. Those restrictions were loosened, the Register reported, but Mr. Harkin still decided to withhold the gift.

In a news release, David E. Maxwell, Drake’s president, hailed the gift as a boon to teaching and research at his university, saying the new resources would “significantly enhance our ability to fulfill the university’s social compact.” The university pledged that the new institute and archive would be nonpartisan.

Mr. Harkin said in January that he would not seek re-election in 2014.

The paper obtained a copy of language for a possible motion that is being circulated among lawmakers in the statehouse. University officials have been trying to persuade legislators to advance the motion either by slipping it into the state budget or by moving forward with a separate bill.

The document warns that the premature disclosure of research-related information could jeopardize patent applications and hinder efforts to bring new inventions to the market. The university also noted that it is spending more than $100,000 a year responding to open-records requests from animal-rights groups, saying it could recover only a fraction of those costs.

The proposed change was prompted by a major overhaul of U.S. patent law, which involved a shift to a “first to file” standard. When that reform was being debated, some higher-education officials raised concerns that the change would put undue pressure on academic inventors to publish their findings quickly. A Wisconsin group was among the opponents of the change.

William W. Barker, director of the university’s Office of Industrial Partnerships, told the Journal-Sentinel that the institution wasn’t “trying to hide anything from anybody,” and said the university had to stay competitive.

A spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker declined to comment to the newspaper about the university’s push for an exemption from the law.