New Science/AAAS and Science Signaling Webinar
Part 3: Targeting Cancer Pathways: Tumor Metabolism and Proliferation
Thursday, June 11, 2015, at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 noon Eastern, 5 p.m. UK, 6 p.m. Central Europe
Learn how tumor-specific metabolic changes promote oncogenic progression and how these changes can be exploited to develop more effective treatment options.
Register TODAY: webinar.sciencemag.org
Produced by the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office and sponsored by Cell Signaling Technology.
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Science
Weekly News
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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, Liberia cautiously celebrates the end of Ebola in the country, the U.S. White House OKs Shell’s plan to resume drilling in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska, Johnson & Johnson is to convene a panel of bioethicists to help decide how to respond to patients’ requests for experimental drugs, 16 Nobel laureates add their voices to science organizations defending the European Union’s existing rules for animal research, the Australian government’s controversial plan to help fund a think tank in collaboration with a climate skeptic’s organization is in limbo after protests by the country’s scientists, and more. Also, the United Kingdom has a new minister for science and universities: former journalist Jo Johnson. And a new app, BabyFace, is seeking data from parents—photos of their babies’ feet, face, and ears, as well as gestational ages—to ultimately make it easier to gauge how long a baby actually spent in the womb.
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| In Depth |
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Biomedicine
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
The wrinkled heel of nearly every baby in the United States is pricked at birth, and a few drops of blood are dabbed on filter paper and shipped off for analysis. Started in the 1960s, this newborn screening program tests for at least 30 rare and serious diseases that are treatable if caught early in life. Now, many public health experts who help run or advise the program are worried about what the future holds. A new law shaped by a coalition of privacy advocates and conservative politicians requires that any federally funded research on newborn blood spots, which include DNA but no names, first secures informed consent. Seeking consent sounds innocuous, even welcome. But experts are concerned that the law could hamstring not just fundamental research but also the kind of studies that routinely improve screening.
Avian Influenza
Mara Hvistendahl
As a third U.S. state declared a state of emergency, scientists are scrambling to understand the H5N2 avian influenza virus that is ravaging poultry farms across the Midwest. At least 30 million birds in 12 states have been affected so far, either infected directly or scheduled to be culled, in the largest outbreak of a high-pathogenicity avian flu virus in the United States in decades. The new strain, which emerged in wild birds along the Pacific flyway several months ago, has not yet infected any humans, but researchers are puzzled by its path of transmission and other characteristics. An ambitious case-control study about to be launched by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the University of Minnesota, and the turkey industry may help answer these questions.
Infectious Diseases
Martin Enserink
In the Guinean capital, Conakry, 90 people have so far been treated in a clinical trial that aims to seek whether plasma from Ebola survivors can help patients. Animal studies of similar therapies had yielded mixed results, and the findings of a small human study in 1995 were ambiguous. The study aims to recruit 130 patients, but enrollment has ground to a halt because the last Ebola patient in Conakry was discharged on 28 April. Results are expected later this year, but researchers acknowledge that they will be difficult to interpret because the study has no control arm.
Evolution
Elizabeth Pennisi
What a boon the bird’s bill has been. Agile beaks of all shapes and sizes, from the gulping gape of a pelican to the needle nose of a hummingbird, have enabled the 10,000 avian species to thrive from the Arctic to the tropics, build intricate nests, and eat many different foods. Now, researchers say they have identified genes that transformed an ancestral snout into a bird’s bill. By manipulating the genes’ proteins, they have turned back the clock in developing chicken embryos, producing skulls that resemble those of alligators today. Their conclusions are at odds with an earlier study. But even researchers who might disagree with the result applaud the melding of fossil studies with developmental research.
Infectious Diseases
Kai Kupferschmidt
Naming emerging infectious diseases is a tricky business, and one that has led to many conflicts and much confusion over the years. For instance, swine flu, which swept the globe in 2009, is not transmitted by pigs, but some countries still banned pork imports or slaughtered pigs in response to the outbreak. Now, the World Health Organization has released a list of recommendations: In the future, disease names should not include geographic locations; the names of people, occupations, animals, or food; or “terms that incite undue fear.” Many scientists think the rules go too far and that they will lead to long names that are hard to remember and breed further confusion.
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| Feature |
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Richard Stone
A handful of Cuban scientists are keeping science alive by cunning and daring in an isolated nation trapped in a time warp. Their chief impediment is the U.S. embargo in place for a half-century. It stymies the import of equipment and supplies made in the United States or with U.S. components, and it has turned Cuba into a cyber-backwater with excruciatingly slow Internet speeds. But at long last, Cuban science is poised to join the modern world. Revised travel rules ease visits to Cuba for U.S. scientists, and the U.S. Commerce Department now allows scientific equipment to be freely donated to Cuba, as long as it does not have potential military applications. And in a critical way, Cuba is about to join the scientific mainstream. In the coming months, the government is expected to establish an agency akin to the U.S. National Science Foundation that will distribute research funds through competitive, peer-reviewed grants.
Richard Stone
The father took care of the politics. The son shepherded some of Cuba’s biggest science dreams. In the 1980s, Fidel Castro tapped his eldest son, Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, to bring nuclear power to Cuba. When Raúl Castro took power in Cuba in 2008, Castro Díaz-Balart, who has always been close to his uncle, saw his stock rise. Now, he has discovered a new passion, nanotechnology, and has spent several years laying the groundwork for a nanotech R&D center slated to open later this year in south Havana. The soft-spoken science adviser to Cuba’s powerful Council of State and vice president of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba sat down with Science in February in the towering José Martí monument, a short walk from his office in the main government complex in Havana.
Richard Stone
Cuba spends a pittance on health care, but with a life expectancy of 78 years for both sexes, it’s neck and neck with the United States. Two big reasons Cubans live long without prospering are a raft of compulsory childhood immunizations and an army of doctors deployed across the nation. But that signal achievement of Cuban science has led to new challenges as the country grapples with a rapidly aging population. Young adults have left the country in droves, and those who stay aren’t reproducing: Cuba has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, averaging 9.9 births per 1000 people. A graying population is straining Cuba’s social safety net and its vaunted health system. Cuban scientists are exploring how to slow cognitive declines in the elderly and how to transform cancer into a chronic disease through broad use of therapeutic vaccines.
Elizabeth Pennisi
Scientists wanting to do research in Cuba face a lot of hassles, having to bring in all of their equipment and enough cash to sustain the work. But for marine biologists, the effort is worth it. Thanks to limited development and extensive conservation efforts, Cuba has the best coral reefs of the region, and scientists want to know why so they can understand the decline of reefs elsewhere in the region. Because of the thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, these researchers may find visiting easier but they worry that the economic development anticipated will ruin the reefs. Some predict that the visitors will be disappointed, as the reefs may not be as pristine as many think.
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New Science/AAAS and Science Signaling Webinar
Part 3: Targeting Cancer Pathways: Tumor Metabolism and Proliferation
Thursday, June 11, 2015, at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 noon Eastern, 5 p.m. UK, 6 p.m. Central Europe
Learn how tumor-specific metabolic changes promote oncogenic progression and how these changes can be exploited to develop more effective treatment options.
Register TODAY: webinar.sciencemag.org
Produced by the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office and sponsored by Cell Signaling Technology.
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Science and the future 