New Science/AAAS Webinar
Generating the best superresolution microscopy data: Finding the right tool for the right job
Wednesday, July 29, 2015, at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 noon Eastern, 5 p.m. UK, 6 p.m. Central Europe
Join our roundtable discussion with microscopy experts Nobel laureate Eric Betzig, Raman Das, and Justin Taraska.
Register TODAY: webinar.sciencemag.org
Produced by the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office and sponsored by GE Healthcare.
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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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| Special Section |
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Special Issue News
Artificial Intelligence
John Bohannon
Special Issue News
Artificial Intelligence
John Bohannon
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| In Brief |
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In science news around the world, Iran agrees to dismantle large pieces of its nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions—with science as an important beneficiary, Smithsonian Institution scientists sample plants from federal gardens as part of an initiative to capture the genomic diversity of half of the world’s living plant genera, a bill to speed the discovery and development of new medical cures sails through the U.S. House of Representatives, and more. Also, IBM says it has manufactured a working version of an ultradense 7-nanometer computer chip with four times the capacity of the most powerful chips on the market. And an inexpensive cholera vaccine shows promise in a new study conducted in Dhaka.
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| In Depth |
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Scientific Societies
John Bohannon
After years of denying that it had given scientific and ethical legitimacy to torture by the U.S. government, the American Psychological Association (APA) last week accepted the finding of an external investigation that concluded it had done just that. The 542-page report from a former Chicago inspector general, David Hoffman, pulls no punches, concluding that APA officials colluded with the U.S. government to enable the torture of detainees. Now, with a public apology and wave of forced retirements, APA is struggling to craft an institutional response that will satisfy its members and longtime detractors, even as some of those pilloried in the probe defend themselves and their colleagues.
Clinical Trials
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
The race to bring a new treatment to market has many dropouts along the way. About 12% of clinical trials are reported to shut down prematurely. Knowing why could help minimize the number of terminated trials going forward. A team of three computational biologists who had hoped to use ClinicalTrials.gov in a research project of their own instead began exploring why clinical trials end prematurely. They looked at all 3122 terminated trials on the registry at the time their study began, and divided the reasons for ending early into “buckets,” such as funding, ethical reasons, or business decisions, so they could see the breakdown by category.
Global Health
Kai Kupferschmidt
On 7 July, an independent six-member panel delivered a scathing review of how the World Health Organization (WHO) has handled the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. It also proposed wide-ranging reforms that would enable the agency to better tackle the next major health crisis—from giving it more money and power to setting up a special, semi-independent emergency center. But whereas many of the suggestions have been praised as sensible, WHO’s complex, politicized governance structure and entrenched bureaucracy make it difficult to change, people who know the $2 billion U.N. agency say. Much will depend on member states’ willingness to give the agency additional funding and powers.
Science Policy
Vladimir Pokrovsky
The news last week that the Dynasty Foundation, Russia’s only private funder of scientific research, is closing its doors adds to a darkening prospect for philanthropic support of Russian science. The decision by the Dynasty Foundation’s council, announced 8 July in a terse one-sentence notice on Dynasty’s Russian-language website, came weeks after the Russian government had labeled Dynasty a “foreign agent” under a recently enacted law. That move was part of what many see as a growing official crackdown on organizations the government considers subversive. A new mechanism, separate from the foreign-agent law, threatens to label such groups as “undesirable” and make collaborating with them illegal, potentially curtailing their support for scientists. Anna Piotrovskaya, the foundation’s executive director, told the press that she cannot say exactly when it will close but that all of Dynasty’s obligations to current grantees will be fulfilled.
Behind the Numbers
Jeffrey Mervis
This new feature will take a fresh look at some of the numbers that drive important science policy questions in the United States and around the world. The first column examines a metric devised by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to track the cost of what’s needed to carry out biomedical research. Conventional wisdom holds that the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index grows faster than a similar index for consumer goods because of the ever-rising cost of the high-tech supplies and equipment used in a modern lab, and that NIH needs an extra dollop of funds each year to keep pace. But it turns out that salaries and benefits are by far the largest component—a fact revealed in 2012 after Congress lowered the ceiling for what investigators could be paid on an NIH grant.
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| Feature |
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Jon Cohen
Recent advances in HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention have convinced an increasing number of scientists, politicians, and advocates that the tools now exist to end AIDS epidemics locally and, by 2030, around the world. Chief among the new findings that have driven this optimism is that antiretroviral (ARV) drugs both ward off disease in an infected person and, if the virus is suppressed to undetectable levels, powerfully reduce the risk of transmission. ARVs given to uninfected people as prophylaxis, a strategy dubbed pre-exposure prophylaxis, also can prevent transmissions, further changing the trajectory of epidemics. San Francisco, New York state, and British Columbia, Canada, all are at the vanguard of the movement to end AIDS epidemics, and each locale is tailor-making a response based on their demographics, politics, and scientific convictions of what is needed most. They also have different definitions of what it means to “end AIDS.” But each locale has set the goal line at 2020—and each faces complex challenges.
Jon Cohen
Tijuana, Mexico, has vastly improved its HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention efforts over the past decade, now providing free antiretrovirals to all infected people. But like many locales around the world, its HIV/AIDS response also illustrates that a vast distance separates the dream of “ending AIDS”—which is gaining increasing attention worldwide—and reality. Its one publicly funded HIV/AIDS clinic is located far from downtown, is difficult for people to reach, and has only three doctors treating a patient load of around 1000 people. HIV-infected people in Tijuana who know they are living with the virus rarely receive treatment, a tiny percentage fully suppress their viral levels, and some still die in AIDS hospices without ever having taken antiretroviral drugs. Needle sharing among people who inject drugs is commonplace. HIV testing in not routinely done in gay bars or the red light district. And the prevalence in drug users, sex workers, gay men, and transgender people ranges from 5% to 20%—and is showing no signs of declining.
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New Science/AAAS Webinar
Generating the best superresolution microscopy data: Finding the right tool for the right job
Wednesday, July 29, 2015, at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 noon Eastern, 5 p.m. UK, 6 p.m. Central Europe
Join our roundtable discussion with microscopy experts Nobel laureate Eric Betzig, Raman Das, and Justin Taraska.
Register TODAY: webinar.sciencemag.org
Produced by the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office and sponsored by GE Healthcare.
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Science and the future 