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SCIENCE News Summaries, Volume 331, Issue 6016
dated January 28 2011, is now available at:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol331/issue6016/news-summaries.dtl

A copy of the "SCIENCE News This Week" section has been appended below.

SCIENCE News This Week January 28 2011, 331 (6016)

NEWS OF THE WEEK

Around the World

In science news around the world this week, a melanoma drug was found to extend life, JPL scientists were ruled to be subject to background checks, Japan's solar sail mission was extended, Egypt demanded the return of a famous bust of Queen Nefertiti, Ecuador stepped up its fight against invasive rats in the Galápagos, the MD Anderson Cancer Center received the largest donation in its history, and stem-cell researchers were asked to share data, materials, and intellectual property. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/382-a?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.382-a

Noted

The European Union is simplifying the bureaucracy of the Framework Programme, its multibillion-euro research funding system. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/382-b?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.382-b

Newsmakers

Newsmakers this week include the winners of one of science's top honors, the Japan Prize; the winner of this year's Crafoord Prize; and the volcanologist who has been chosen as the new secretary general of the European Research Council, the E.U.'s funding agency for individual basic researchers. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/383-a?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.383-a

ERC Still Looking for Women

The low number of women winning grants is a continuing source of frustration for the European Research Council. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/383-b?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.383-b

By the Numbers

Read a sampling of the latest numbers and statistics buzzing around the science world this week. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/385-c?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.385-c

Random Sample

A Stanford University biotechnology researcher has developed a basic game console that nudges paramecia around a microfluidic chamber with chemical gradients and mild electric fields. Descriptions of the whole microarcade including games involving yeast and DNA are being published this month. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/385-d?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.385-d

NEWS & ANALYSIS

Collins Sparks Furor With Proposed NIH Reshuffling

Jocelyn Kaiser A plan to create a new center aimed at developing drugs at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has many biomedical researchers in an uproar. Since NIH Director Francis Collins endorsed the plan in mid-December, it has drawn a flood of concerned and sometimes angry comments, mainly because creating a new NIH center would entail breaking up another center. Questions last week from a congressional committee have cast uncertainty over Collins's plan to launch the new center by next October. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/386?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.386

Did Modern Humans Travel Out of Africa Via Arabia?

Andrew Lawler One hundred twenty-five thousand years ago, when the Sahara desert was savanna, with plentiful water and game, a group of hominids made tools under the protection of a rock overhang in Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates. A German-led team argues on page 453 of this week's issue of Science that these toolmakers were modern humans who may have crossed directly from Africa as part of a migration spreading across Europe, Asia, and Australia. Although most researchers agree that our species came out of Africa in one or more waves (see p. 392), those dates are more than 50,000 years earlier than most believe our ancestors left the continent. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/387?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.387

Despite Sensitivities, Scientists Seek to Solve Haiti's Cholera Riddle

Martin Enserink Several cholera experts have told Science that nailing the source of the recent cholera outbreak in Haiti could potentially embarrass the United Nations, distract from the day-to-day fight to control the outbreak, and even lead to violence. So their passion for traditional shoe-leather epidemiology has been tempered by diplomatic and strategic concerns. Indeed, prominent cholera scientists declined to discuss the issue with Science or would only speak off the record. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating the source, but a spokesperson referred questions about it to a panel charged by the U.N. secretary-general with investigating the outbreak. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/388?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.388

Pressure Growing to Set a Date to Destroy Remaining Smallpox Stocks

Jocelyn Kaiser The fate of the world's last stocks of the deadly smallpox virus is once again being debated. Last week, the executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO) began discussing what research remains to be done with the live virus. In May, WHO's governing body, the World Health Assembly, will decide whether to set a firm deadline for the stock's destruction. Contrary to some media reports that the executive board recommended keeping the stocks, no conclusions were reached, says a WHO spokesperson. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/389?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.389

Last-Ditch Effort to Save Embattled Ape

Richard Stone The Hainan gibbon may be the world's most endangered primate. By the latest tally, there are only 22 Hainan gibbons—one family with 11 members, another with seven members, and four loners—remaining in their last refuge, Bawangling National Nature Reserve on southern China's Hainan Island. Here, rangers and scientists hope to prevent the first primate extinction in recorded history. Government protection and high fecundity have helped the species recapture some lost ground, giving researchers reason for guarded optimism. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/390?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.390

Telling Time Without Turning On Genes

Gretchen Vogel Researchers have identified a host of genes and proteins that help track time, controlling daily cycles of sleep and wakefulness, hunger, and metabolism in dozens of organisms and cell types. Most of the timekeepers discovered so far have depended on gene transcription, the process in which cells use the information stored in genes to make proteins, to drive the complex feedback loops of molecules that make up a cell's internal clock. Now researchers have found evidence—in people and in algae—for a eukaryotic circadian clock that works independently of gene activity. This protein-based timekeeper might represent an evolutionarily ancient way of keeping cellular time. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/391?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.391

NEWS FOCUS

A New View Of the Birth of Homo sapiens

Ann Gibbons New DNA data from archaic human species are providing a much higher resolution view of our past. When compared with the genomes of living people, the ancient genomes allow anthropologists to thoroughly test the competing models of human origins for the first time. The DNA data suggest not one but at least two instances of interbreeding between archaic and modern humans, raising the question of whether Homo sapiens at that point was a distinct species (see sidebar). And so they appear to refute the idea that modern humans came out of Africa, spread around the world, and completely replaced the archaic humans they met. But the genomic data also don't prove the classic multiregionalism model, which argues that a single, worldwide species of human, including archaic forms outside of Africa, met, mingled, and had offspring, and so produced Homo sapiens. They suggest only a small amount of interbreeding, presumably at the margins where invading moderns met archaic groups. The new picture most resembles so-called assimilation models, which got relatively little attention over the years. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/392?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.392

The Species Problem

Ann Gibbons Last year, two papers were published proposing that our ancestors had sex with at least two kinds of archaic humans at two different times and places. Both Neandertals and mysterious humans from Denisova Cave in Siberia interbred with ancient modern humans—and those liaisons produced surviving children, according to the latest ancient DNA research (see main text). But the researchers avoided the thorny question of species designation and simply referred to Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern humans as "populations." So were the participants in these prehistoric encounters members of separate species? Doesn't a species, by definition, breed only with others of that species? Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/394?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.394

Going the Distance

Elizabeth Pennisi A $9.3 million grant has bought a group of researchers at the University of Western Ontario in Canada a state-of-the-art bird research facility, complete with aviaries, surgery room, a bird-sized magnetic resonance imaging machine, and a $1.5 million wind tunnel, the only one in the world in which temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure can be controlled. A year old, the tunnel presents researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to probe the mysteries of migration in exquisite detail. But money can't buy birds that are keen to fly in a wind tunnel, and the team has had mixed success finding willing avian partners. An early project using starlings did well, despite taking place when the tunnel was not quite finished. It netted "Super," a bird that always cooperates and will even fly into the wind tunnel on its own accord. But a study involving robins took months to identify five somewhat cooperative fliers; switching to Swainson's thrushes worked better. One immunological project involving a shorebird called a ruff is stranded because the birds show no inclination to take to the air. And the researchers have just started testing warblers to see if high-protein or high-carbohydrate diets make a difference in energy use during flight. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/395?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.395

Treading Air

Elizabeth Pennisi The wind tunnel at the University of Western Ontario in Canada is the centerpiece of a new building that includes indoor and outdoor aviaries, some of which have small pools of water for shorebirds and waterfowl, acoustic chambers, behavior-observation rooms, and environmental chambers for controlling light cycles, as well as temperature and humidity. Made of steel, two stories high and 12 meters long, the tunnel looks quite imposing. Birds fly in a 1-meter-high by 1.5-meter-wide octagonal Plexiglas cylinder, almost completely covered with blankets to discourage the birds from getting too close to the walls. Pressure, temperature, and humidity in the tunnel can all be modified to simulate different conditions, including high altitude. The tunnel also doubles as a studio for understanding the mechanics of bird flight. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6016/396?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/28-January-2011/10.1126/science.331.6016.396