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| A roundup of the week’s top stories in Science:
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| In Brief |
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In science news around the world, Japan will spend $3.7 million to expand the Telescope Array, an international collaboration that studies very high energy cosmic rays; an open-access publishing company sacks 31 editors in a heated conflict over editorial independence; a U.S. House of Representatives committee unanimously approves a major effort to spur medical innovation; a World Heritage Site is under attack by Islamic State militants; legislators in the U.S. Senate move to pull out of ITER, a huge international fusion experiment, for the second year in a row; and more. Also, the new head of Japan’s network of national laboratories proposes a tenure system. And famed mathematician John Nash, subject of the biography and film A Beautiful Mind, dies in a car crash while returning from an awards ceremony.
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| In Depth |
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Natural Resources
Herton Escobar
Scientists in recent years have run afoul of a law aiming to clamp down on what Brazil perceived as rampant pillaging of its biological resources. After wrangling over how to fix the statute, in which officials sought to balance the interests of scientists, the agricultural industry, and biotech firms with those of indigenous populations demanding compensation for traditional knowledge, Brazil President Dilma Rousseff last week signed a law that is raising hopes among scientists. Like its predecessor, the new “biodiversity law” regulates research on “genetic resources”: an all-encompassing term covering everything from genes and proteins to oils and fragrances. It sets rules for sharing benefits with indigenous peoples when R&D leads to a product, such as a drug, shampoo, energy drink, or industrial enzyme, while eliminating bureaucratic hassles and encouraging biodiversity research. The scientific community has greeted the new law with a sigh of relief.
Agricultural Research
Christina Larson
The complex mix of phytochemicals responsible for the taste of tea may be far more sensitive to climate than the yields of commodity crops. An ideal place to study the relationship is China’s Yunnan province, known for an oxidized and fermented black tea called pu’er, one of the country’s most prized and already being touched by climate change. Earlier this year, scientists embarked on a 4-year project that examines the linkages among climate, tea quality, and farmer livelihoods. What they find could have implications for scores of other crops, from coffee to chocolate to cherries, whose taste and value also depend on local climates.
Christina Larson
This sidebar gives a rundown of a few of the most vulnerable crops in a changing climate: coffee, cocoa, maple syrup, cherries, and tobacco.
Regenerative Medicine
Gretchen Vogel
An independent investigation has concluded that surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, famous for transplanting tissue-engineered tracheae into more than a dozen people, committed scientific misconduct in publications describing the results of the operations. The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where Macchiarini is a visiting professor, commissioned the external inquiry after allegations arose in August 2014. The investigator, Bengt Gerdin, professor emeritus of surgery at Uppsala University, examined six papers about the patients and one on animal tests of the procedure and found a systemic misrepresentation of the success of the technique. He faults the papers for inaccurate or misleading descriptions of the condition of patients at the time of publication and for stating that ethical permission had been obtained for the work although there is none on record. The report, submitted to the Karolinska vice chancellor on 13 May, concludes that Macchiarini “is primarily responsible for incorrect or incomplete data published in numerous articles and thus guilty of scientific misconduct.” Macchiarini has disputed the allegations. He and the researchers who brought the complaints have 2 weeks to comment on Gerdin’s findings. Karolinska’s vice chancellor will then decide what action to take, a Karolinska representative says.
Science Policy
Jeffrey Mervis
The phrase “in the national interest” sounds innocuous, but it lies at the heart of a heated, 2-year debate between lawmakers and science advocates about how Congress should oversee research funding at the National Science Foundation (NSF). That debate was at full boil last week, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act, which sets policy for NSF and two other federal research agencies, and the House Appropriations Committee adopted a 2016 spending bill that includes NSF. Both actions aim to ensure that everything NSF funds will be “in the national interest,” according to the influential Texas legislators behind the two bills, representatives Lamar Smith and John Culberson. But many scientists believe that the bills, if enacted without any changes, would have disastrous consequences.
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| Feature |
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Leslie Roberts
Before the polio virus is even in the grave, a small cadre of disease fighters is itching to set the next global eradication target: measles. The case is compelling. Measles killed 145,000 children last year in poor countries and left many more blind, deaf, or disabled. A cheap and effective vaccine has long been on the shelves; numerous expert panels have deemed measles eradication feasible, although daunting—it is the most contagious virus on Earth. But the biggest obstacle to measles eradication is polio, which hasn’t disappeared as it was supposed to do in 2000. Skeptics question whether a measles initiative would fall down the same rabbit hole as did the polio effort, which has spent billions of dollars and nearly 3 decades chasing the last few cases, only to see them disappear around the corner. Maybe it is time, they say, to settle for keeping measles cases really low but not trying to get to zero.
Leslie Roberts
Routine immunization is one of the great public health success stories in Vietnam, where rates of vaccine-preventable diseases have plummeted. But the measles outbreak last year was another story, with 60,000 reported cases and nearly 150 deaths in children under age 2. Experts trace the epidemic to the public’s loss of faith in the government-led vaccination program, following reports of adverse events associated in time with another vaccine. Many parents stopped vaccinating their children, leaving them susceptible to measles. When the virus swept in from the north and hit Hanoi, it exploded. Panicked parents rushed their children to the hospital, which was quickly overburdened. With poor infection control, the hospital became a hub of measles transmission, and children who weren’t already infected caught the virus there.
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Science and the future 