SCIENCE News Summaries, Volume 331, Issue 6014
dated January 14 2011, is now available at: - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol331/issue6014/news-summaries.dtl
A copy of the "SCIENCE News This Week" section has been appended below.
SCIENCE News This Week
January 14 2011, 331 (6014)
NEWS OF THE WEEK
Genetic Testing: New High-Tech Screen Takes Carrier Testing to the Next Level Jennifer Couzin-Frankel Bioinformaticists describe in a paper published online this week by Science Translational Medicine what appears to be the broadest application of "next-generation sequencing" to a medical problem. They used technology that "sprays the genome with sequences" to look for mutations in the genes behind 448 childhood recessive diseases. Carrier tests currently offered all hunt for previously identified genetic mutations for various diseases, working from a list that cobbles together what's been described in the scientific literature, which captures many carriers, but not all of them. The new test looks for any mutation in a gene involved in one of these rare diseases. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/130?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.130
High-Energy Physics: Fermilab to End Its Quest for Higgs Particle This Year Adrian Cho U.S. researchers will soon abandon their search for the most coveted particle in high-energy physics because of a lack of funding. Researchers working at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) had wanted to run their 25-year-old atom smasher, the Tevatron, through 2014 in hopes of spotting the so-called Higgs boson before their European counterparts could discover it with their newer, more powerful atom smasher. But officials at the U.S. Department of Energy, which funds Fermilab, informed lab officials this week that DOE cannot come up with the extra $35 million per year to keep the Tevatron going beyond September. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/131?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.131
Avian Influenza: Transgenic Chickens Could Thwart Bird Flu, Curb Pandemic Risk Martin Enserink The chicken soup of the future might just be made from transgenic birds that can't get bird flu—if regulators decide they're safe and consumers don't object. U.K. scientists have created transgenic chickens that can't pass on avian influenza, a disease that decimates poultry flocks and that flu scientists fear could spawn an influenza pandemic among humans. The study is published in this week's issue of Science (p. 223). Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/132-a?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.132-a
Research Funding: Japan Boosts Competitive Grants at Expense of Big Science Dennis Normile Under what Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls "a budget for the reinvigoration of Japan," the country's main research grants program is slated for a whopping 32% increase to $3.2 billion in the coming year. Rank-and-file researchers are sure to be pleased with the better odds of winning support under the fiercely competitive program, says Kazuaki Kawabata, the education ministry's director of research and development policy. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/132-b?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.132-b
ScienceInsider: From the Science Policy Blog ScienceInsider reported recently that the British Medical Journal has accused gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield of committing scientific fraud in the publication of a 1998 paper in The Lancet linking vaccines to autism, among other stories. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/133?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.133
Paleontology: Pint-Sized Predator Rattles The Dinosaur Family Tree Michael Balter On page 206 of this week's issue of Science, a team working in Argentina reports the discovery of a very early dinosaur—possibly a distant ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex—that lived about 230 million years ago, during what paleontologists call the dawn of the dinosaurs. The researchers say the new finds—two specimens that together make up a nearly complete skeleton of a diminutive, 1-meter-long dinosaur—and neighboring fossils show that dinosaurs didn't outcompete other reptiles, but rather gradually replaced them as their predecessors died out for other reasons. More controversially, the team says the fossils show that one of the most well-known early dinosaurs, Eoraptor, long considered an ancestor of meat eaters like T. rex, was actually an ancestor of gigantic plant-eating dinosaurs like Apatosaurus. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/134?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.134
Digital Data: Google Books, Wikipedia, and the Future of Culturomics John Bohannon As a follow-up to the quantitative analysis of data obtained from Google Books published online in Science on 16 December 2010 and in this week's issue on page 176, one of the study's authors has been using Wikipedia to analyze the fame of scientists whose names appear in books over the centuries. But his effort has been hampered by the online encyclopedia's shortcomings, from the reliability of its information to the organization of its content. Several efforts are under way to improve Wikipedia as a teaching and research tool, including one by the Association for Psychological Science that seeks to create a more complete and accurate representation of its field. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/135?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.135
Environmental Technology: Greenhouse–Power Plant Hybrid Set To Make Jordan's Desert Bloom Daniel Clery A novel combination of technologies that has the potential to turn large areas of desert green, producing commercial quantities of food and energy crops, fresh water, and electricity, looks set to have its first large-scale demonstration in Jordan. This week the governments of Jordan and Norway signed an agreement to work with the Sahara Forest Project, an environmental technology group based in Norway, to build a 20-hectare demonstration center near Aqaba on the Red Sea, which would begin operation in 2015. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/136?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.136
ScienceNOW.org: From Science's Online Daily News Site ScienceNOW reported recently on the discovery of the first Earth-sized extrasolar planet, a promising new drug to treat mental retardation, scientists' first glimpse of the lunar core, and bumblebee declines, among other stories. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/137?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.137
NEWS FOCUS
Social Neuroscience: Why Loneliness Is Hazardous to Your Health Greg Miller In a steady stream of recent papers, social psychologists have identified several potentially unhealthy changes in the cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems of chronically lonely people. The findings could help explain why epidemiological studies have often found that socially isolated people have shorter life spans and increased risk of a host of health problems, including infections, heart disease, and depression. The work also adds a new wrinkle, suggesting that it's the subjective experience of loneliness that's harmful, not the actual number of social contacts a person has. An impressive network of collaborations with researchers in other disciplines is now pioneering a new science of loneliness. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/138?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.138
Archaeology: Did the First Cities Grow From Marshes? Andrew Lawler The first American archaeological research team to visit Iraq in a quarter-century suggests that cities and civilization didn't rise along riverbanks, as most archaeologists have supposed, but out of swamps, which provided rich animal and plant resources to complement irrigation agriculture and animal husbandry. The team's findings were presented at a meeting in November. But additional on-the-ground data will be crucial to convince interested but skeptical colleagues. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/141?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.141
American Geophysical Union: Tectonic Blow Ended Mountain Building, Fired Up Volcanoes Richard A. Kerr Fifty-five million years ago, Siletzia arrived on North American shores with nary a bump. But the 500-kilometer-wide chunk of drifting oceanic plate had far-reaching geologic effects across the continent's western third, according to a presentation at the meeting. New seismic imaging shows Siletzia throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of the plate tectonics machine and thus reshaping western North America. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/142-a?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.142-a
American Geophysical Union: What Heated Up the Eocene? Richard A. Kerr Fifty-five million years ago, carbon dioxide gushed into the atmosphere over as little as a millennium, acidifying the ocean and scorching the world of the Eocene epoch with a 5{ring}C greenhouse warming. At least two more progressively weaker "hyperthermals" would strike during the next few million years. So where did all that carbon dioxide come from? The possibilities are expanding, from the sea floor to an ice-free Antarctica. In one presentation, earth systems modelers suggested an ocean source. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/142-b?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.142-b
American Geophysical Union: Worry But Don't Panic Over Glacial Losses Richard A. Kerr Glaciers are suddenly galloping to the sea in Greenland and the "weak underbelly" of Antarctic ice is beginning to give way, but a couple of glaciologists at the meeting say that at least in the short term, the situation, while bad, is not always quite as bad as it looks. A study of the forces acting on the Jakobshavn Glacier of southern Greenland shows that Jakobshavn is accelerating and thus increasing the rate of sea level rise—plenty of cause for worry—but the researchers say that Jakobshavn is not totally off its leash. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/143-a?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.143-a
American Geophysical Union: Snapshots From the Meeting Richard A. Kerr Snapshots from the meeting include new evidence showing that the Sierra Nevada mountains of east-central California are rising at the rate of about 1 millimeter per year and geophysical quirks that worsened the air-traffic disruption caused by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6014/143-b?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/14-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6014.143-b
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