Science Insider reports that many researchers have expressed satisfaction with the final guidelines on conducting research with human embryonic stem (ES) cells issued today by the National Institutes of Health:

The new rules, which set out criteria for determining which ES cell lines can be used in federally-funded experiments, give NIH discretion to approve old lines that don’t meet stringent modern ethical requirements. And they call for NIH to set up a registry of eligible lines. The rules add up to “a major step in the right direction for stem cell research,” says Harvard University stem cell researcher George Daley.

NIH recently updates its Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (RePORT), which estimates the amount of research dollars being spent for various research, condition and disease categories.

According to NIH:

“At the request of Congress, the NIH embarked on a process to provide better consistency and transparency in the reporting of its funded research. This new process, implemented through the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) system, uses sophisticated text data mining (categorizing and clustering using words and multiword phrases) in conjunction with NIH-wide definitions used to match projects to categories.

“The definitions are a list of terms and concepts selected by NIH scientific experts to define a research category. Due to significant methodology changes, it is likely that annual totals for categories (year over year) will exhibit a noticeable one-time adjustment. The research category levels represent the NIH’s best estimates based on the category definitions.”