Sponsored by Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists
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Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists
Deadline: August 1, 2015
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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 reports a new case of Ebola, 11 protestors attempting to block construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea are arrested, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a regulation to limit emissions of mercury from coal power plants, the Smithsonian Institution overhauls its ethics policies in the wake of controversy around one of its researchers, a Dutch court orders the government to do more to combat climate change, and more. Also, surgeon Paolo Macchiarini responds to a May report that found him guilty of scientific misconduct during his clinical testing of artificial tracheas. And a new study confirms an early finding that a set of bones found on a remote Pacific Island—thought by some to belong to lost aviator Amelia Earhart—instead belonged to a middle-aged man.
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| In Depth |
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Archaeology
Michael Balter
Early humans lived in South Africa’s Sibudu Cave for tens of thousands of years, leaving the first recorded evidence of many crucial technologies—including bedding, bows and arrows, and snares to catch small animals. Their artifacts offer crucial clues as to how early human culture developed. But now 21st-century humans seek to live next door to the formerly secluded cave, and archaeologists say a priceless record of our ancestors is in danger. A huge industrial and housing development is planned right next to Sibudu, which is located about 40 miles north of Durban. Within the last few weeks, archaeologists and their supporters have filed two appeals against a decision by provincial officials to approve the 621-hectare development. The plans call for heavy and light industry, two schools, and a mixture of houses and apartments comprising about 2700 housing units, right next door to the cave. Archaeologists say that proximity could be disastrous, and fear that residents gathering firewood along the nearby river or teenagers seeking a hangout would trample the cave’s fragile stratigraphic layers.
Biomedical Research
Jocelyn Kaiser
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) may be headed for its largest budget increase in more than a decade. Last week, a Senate panel approved a $2 billion increase for NIH in 2016, or a 6.6% raise, to $32.1 billion. And a House of Representatives panel has approved a $1.2 billion increase, $100 million more than requested by the White House. The bills, which set spending levels for the 2016 fiscal year that begins 1 October, also give an unexpectedly hefty boost to Alzheimer’s disease research and revive the recently canceled National Children’s Study. “The Senate mark is obviously the best … action we have seen for NIH in more than 12 years,” says Pat White, president of ACT for NIH, a Washington, D.C., group that lobbies for biomedical research funding. But some groups are concerned about provisions in the two bills to either slash or eliminate funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which supports studies of evidence-based medicine. Although the House and Senate still have to agree on a final number—a process which could be complicated by debates over long-term government spending—biomedical research advocates “are starting from a pretty good position,” says Jennifer Zeitzer, deputy director of the office of public affairs of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland.
Q&A
Catherine Matacic
When Xue Feng landed his first job after academia as a petroleum consultant in 2000, he was delighted. His new employer, Denver-based IHS, had high ambitions for the young geologist: overhaul how the company—a corporate intelligence firm—gathered oil and gas data on China. By 2005, Feng had snared a rare, unclassified database of 30,000 oil wells in China from a private broker. Disaster struck on 20 November 2007. Feng was on a business trip in Beijing when he was abducted from his hotel room. Chinese security personnel charged the Chinese-born U.S. citizen with selling state secrets. His chief crime: arranging for IHS’ purchase of the oil well database, which had been declared a state secret in 2007. In 2010, Feng was convicted and sentenced to 8 years in prison, including the 3 years he had already spent in detention. He was finally released in April—10 months before his sentence was set to expire—and immediately deported to the United States, where he rejoined his wife and two children in Houston. Feng spoke with Science about his time in prison and what other researchers working abroad might glean from his experiences.
Astronomy
Daniel Clery
Astronomers rely mostly on still images for their research, yet the universe is full of motion and change. Supernovas burst into life; variable stars wax and wane; exoplanets reveal their presence by eclipsing their parent stars. Now a few teams of astronomers are asking: What if we could capture the whole sky regularly enough to create a movie of the heavens? Taking advantage of powerful data processing and storage and, in some cases, cheap off-the-shelf optics, several telescope systems are now doing just that. Run by small teams with modest budgets, most aren’t powerful enough to look deep into space beyond our own celestial neighborhood. But there are exceptions. One huge telescope, due to embark on a 10-year survey in the 2020s, is expected to log 20 billion galaxies and 17 billion stars.
Public Attitudes
Jeffrey Mervis
Ideology is not the dominant factor in shaping what Americans think about most science-related issues, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center. Although a person’s political views are a strong predictor of their attitudes on climate change and a handful of energy issues, their gender, age, religion, race, or education play a larger role on many other controversial topics. The Washington, D.C.–based think tank surveyed 2002 U.S. adults last summer on 22 issues ranging from global warming and offshore drilling to the safety of genetically modified foods, the use of animals in research, and the value of the International Space Station. A previous report based on the same survey found striking differences in what scientists and the public think about many topics, including genetically modified foods and animal research.
Influenza
Gretchen Vogel
The 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic left a troubling legacy in Europe: More than 1300 people who received a vaccine to prevent the flu developed narcolepsy, an incurable, debilitating condition that causes overpowering daytime sleepiness, sometimes accompanied by a sudden muscle weakness in response to strong emotions such as laughter or anger. The manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, has acknowledged the link, and some patients and their families have already been awarded compensation. But how the vaccine might have triggered the condition has been unclear. In a paper in Science Translational Medicine this week, researchers offer a possible explanation. They show that the vaccine, called Pandemrix, triggers antibodies that can also bind to a receptor in brain cells that help regulate sleepiness. The work strongly suggests that Pandemrix, which was given to more than 30 million Europeans, triggered an autoimmune reaction that led to narcolepsy in some people who are genetically at risk.
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| Feature |
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Mitch Leslie
The obesity epidemic has hit the liver. About 20% to 30% of Americans have excess fat in the liver, and the problem is widespread throughout the world. The fat accumulation is often benign, but it can progress to a condition called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, that features inflammation and swollen cells. NASH often leads to fibrosis, or scarring that can result in cirrhosis, liver failure and death. Why some people with excess fat in their livers develop NASH remains uncertain, but researchers and doctors are optimistic because more than 20 potential NASH treatments are under development or in testing. Two large clinical trials of possible NASH drugs are due to start this year. In a previous clinical trial, one of the treatments, obeticholic acid, reduced the amount of fibrosis, a first for a liver drug.
Elizabeth Pennisi
Since the mid-2000s, bioinformaticists have been comparing human, mouse, and chimp genomes to figure out the genetic changes that contributed to our big brains, bipedalism, broad diet, and other traits that have made our species so successful. Although these studies have identified thousands of potentially key regions, very few have gone the distance to demonstrate the effects on function and anatomy. Unable to do those studies in people, a few teams have turned to mice, and one has shown that the human version of a piece of regulatory DNA called an enhancer leads to a 12% bigger brain and a 23% increase in how fast developing brain cells divide. That work suggests how more human-specific DNA needs to be investigated.
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Sponsored by Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists
Want to be published in Science?
Want to receive US$30,000 for your research?
Now accepting entries
Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists
Deadline: August 1, 2015
Visit www.sciencemag.org/scilifelabprize
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|
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Science and the future 