New Science/AAAS and Science Signaling Webinar
Part 4: Targeting Cancer Pathways: The Epigenetics Question
Wednesday, August 12, 2015, at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 noon Eastern, 5 p.m. UK, 6 p.m. Central Europe
What is the role of epigenetics in cancer? Watch this webinar to find out what leaders in the field have found.
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, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft spies nitrogen ice flows on Pluto as well as a ring of haze around the dwarf planet, the first-ever malaria vaccine clears the first hurdle along a complicated path to approval, the Kepler satellite spies the most Earth-like exoplanet yet, a new technique offers a way to spot hidden HIV in the body’s tissues, South Korea declares the Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak in the country over after 23 days of no new cases, and more. Also, one of Spain’s star mathematicians is removed as the head of a national research institute over accusations that the center mismanaged public funds. And Science interviews music technologist Gil Weinberg, who has pioneered artificially intelligent robots that can play music and has also created a robotic drumming prosthesis for a drummer who lost an arm.
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| In Depth |
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Planetary Science
Eric Hand
Philae, the comet-landing component of the European Rosetta mission, made the most of the hours it had last November on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Today, the lander team publishes the scientific fruits of that brief life: seven papers that describe the mechanical, compositional, and textural properties of the comet surface and its interior. And they may be the lander’s last. After an initial reconnection between the orbiter and lander on 13 June, there were six more communications between Philae and Rosetta, of varying durations, in the subsequent 10 days. The engineering “housekeeping” data that were retrieved were good: The lander was warm and receiving plenty of sunlight, which will increase up until 13 August, when 67P reached its closest point to the sun. Engineers lowered the altitude of Rosetta’s orbits in the hopes of attaining more durable radio links. But that has not happened. Since 24 June, the team has heard just once from the lander—on 9 July. One of the lander’s two receivers is dead, and one of its two transmitters may also be on the fritz.
Biophysics
Adrian Cho
Two groups of researchers have independently fashioned tiny lasers within living cells. They may sound like weapons for Ant-Man’s next nemesis, but the microscopic lasers could greatly improve biologists’ ability to track the movement of individual cells. The lasers consist of spheres of plastic several micrometers in diameter that are doped with a fluorescent dye and that the cells absorb through a process called endocytosis—although one group also used injected droplets of dyed oil and naturally occurring fat globules. When the fluorescent molecules are excited, a sphere rings with light of specific wavelengths, just as an organ pipe rings with sound at a fundamental frequency and its overtones. If the intensity of the light exceeds a certain threshold, the light itself stimulates the dye to radiate far more intensely, creating a laser. Because each bead shines distinctive wavelengths, the built-in lasers can be used to identify and track individual cells. They might be put to use right away to track cultures of immune cells as they migrate in response to chemical stimuli. If they can be used in living tissue, they might eventually track cells in developing embryos, the immune system, or cancerous tumors.
Infectious Diseases
Kai Kupferschmidt
Vaccines have saved millions of human lives, but according to evolutionary biologist Andrew Read they sometimes may also cause pathogens to turn deadlier. Read first put forward the theory 15 years ago. Now, in a new paper, he presents evidence that that is what happened with the virus causing Marek’s disease, an infectious disease in chickens. Read acknowledges that the effect has never been seen with human vaccines, but he argues that future vaccines that prevent disease rather than infection could have the same effect. Other researchers say that no general conclusions should be drawn from the paper. Even if he turns out to be right, the study offers no support whatsoever for those who oppose vaccination, Read stresses. If “leaky” vaccines are proven safe and effective, they should be used, he says, but perhaps with closer monitoring and additional measures to reduce transmission, such as bed nets for malaria.
Science and the Law
Kelly Servick
Last week, at the first International Symposium on Forensic Science Error Management in Arlington, Virginia, nearly 500 forensic scientists, crime lab managers, and other practitioners confronted the factors that have led to unreliable results in the field. A key problem, many said, is that people who evaluate evidence from crime scenes have access to information about a case that could bias their analysis. That subconscious bias could arise from irrelevant contextual information, such as the nature of the crime or police investigators’ beliefs about a suspect’s guilt, or from the physical evidence itself. As forensics struggles to recover from revelations of serious flaws in its methodology and scientific underpinnings, more labs are considering ways to shield their examiners from potential bias.
Q&A
Dennis Normile
Chinese bioinformaticist Jun Wang helped make the Shenzhen-based institute BGI a global powerhouse in sequencing and genomics analysis. But he recently stepped down as head of the organization to pursue new challenges. Joining the original Beijing Genomics Institute upon its founding in 1999, Wang quickly rose from head of bioinformatics to CEO. Along the way he led BGI, which moved to Shenzhen in 2007, into some of its most ambitious projects, including an ongoing effort to sequence 10,500 bird genomes. But, “It’s a good time for me to move on,” he told Science in this Q&A. He wants to apply artificial intelligence techniques to the challenge of dealing with the huge data sets emerging from life science studies. His initial goal is to gather genomic and health care data for 1 million individuals to probe for hints to bettering human health.
Neuroscience
Emily Underwood
At the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Washington, D.C., last week, researchers expressed cautious optimism that the field is gaining momentum. The primary reason: tantalizing hints from two high-profile, phase II trials of antibodies that latch onto β amyloid, a protein that forms sticky masses in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. To some, the small number of people studied and the modest results were far from persuasive. But to others at the meeting, the findings provide some of the first encouraging evidence that β amyloid is a target for treatment. One next step is to try to stimulate the body’s own immune defenses with an antiamyloid vaccine—an approach that failed in the past but is now getting a second look.
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| Feature |
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Adrian Cho
A year and half ago, physicists working with the massive IceCube particle detector—a 3D array of 5160 light sensors buried kilometers deep in ice at the South Pole—spotted ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos from beyond our galaxy. The discovery is Nobel-caliber stuff, some physicists say, as, except for a burp from a nearby supernova explosion in 1987, neutrinos from the far reaches of the cosmos had eluded capture. However, IceCube saw only about a dozen cosmic neutrinos per year, a rate at which the $279 million detector might never see enough of them to work as advertised: as a neutrino telescope with which to view the heavens in a whole new way. But as the data continue to come in, researchers are optimistic that a big enough detector should be able study the sky through neutrinos. IceCube researchers are pushing to expand the array, and other researchers have developed approaches that they say could be cheaper and more efficient. More important, a convergence of observations suggests that cosmic neutrinos spring from the same astrophysical sources as other particles from space: highly energetic photons called gamma rays, and mysterious ultra-high energy cosmic rays—protons and heavier atomic nuclei that reach energies a million times higher than humans have achieved with particle accelerators. If so, physicists have only one mystery to solve.
Kelly Servick
The U.S. military is on the eve of a historic integration: By order of the defense department, the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines must open previously male-only ground combat positions to women by January of 2016 or present a reason to keep certain roles closed. The deadline has prompted a slew of new research projects, including studies of physical standards, gender differences in injury rates, and service members’ attitudes toward integration. It has also fueled rumors that the services will arbitrarily lower standards in order to meet political demands for equality. A look inside one such study—an exercise physiologist’s effort to set new standards for Air Force combat soldiers—reveals how its researchers and participants are navigating the controversial issue.
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New Science/AAAS and Science Signaling Webinar
Part 4: Targeting Cancer Pathways: The Epigenetics Question
Wednesday, August 12, 2015, at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 noon Eastern, 5 p.m. UK, 6 p.m. Central Europe
What is the role of epigenetics in cancer? Watch this webinar to find out what leaders in the field have found.
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 