SCIENCE News Summaries, Volume 331, Issue 6020
dated February 25 2011, is now available at: - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol331/issue6020/news-summaries.dtl
A copy of the "SCIENCE News This Week" section has been appended below.
SCIENCE News This Week
February 25 2011, 331 (6020)
NEWS OF THE WEEK
This Week's Section Follow the links below for a roundup of the week's top stories in science, or download a PDF of the entire section.
Around the World In science news around the world this week, a student lab worker has become the first person in the United States to catch cowpox, India may join the U.S. MoonRise mission, Japan's whaling season was cut short, IBM's factoid-spewing supercomputer Watson is turning its talents to medicine, and the U.S. House of Representatives approved a budget that would trim roughly $5 billion from current federal spending on research. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/992-b?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.992-b
Random Sample A company has designed a supercompact fusion reactor. A retired schoolteacher is among the winners of the 2010 Wellcome Image Awards. An international group of mathematicians hopes create a "periodic table" for shapes. And this week's numbers quantify scientific literacy, global funding for research into neglected diseases, and lost-and-found species. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/992-c?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.992-c
AAAS Meeting At this year's AAAS annual meeting, it was reported that infants can distinguish between two languages they've never heard before just by looking at the face of a speaker, methane from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill may be migrating undigested, a seaweed could be used to fight malaria, and overfishing has drastically altered the balance of biomass in the world's oceans. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/995?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.995
FINDINGS
Cancer Diagnosis: An App for That Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/993?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.993
Rising Temperatures Bringing Bigger Floods Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/994-a?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.994-a
Cheers! Ancient Britons Made Skull Cups Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/994-b?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.994-b
Longer Genes, Longer Flight Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/994-c?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.994-c
NEWS & ANALYSIS
Post-Mubarak Era Seen as Opening for Science Andrew Lawler As the country's universities prepare to reopen on 26 February after a youth-powered revolution toppled the government, Egyptian and foreign researchers see an opportunity to elevate science, if decades of neglect and corruption can be overcome. Researchers predict that a revitalized Egypt will bolster its lagging R&D spending in order to solve the country's problems, from agriculture to urban unemployment. But a new government—which is unlikely to form before the fall—faces tremendous hurdles. It will inherit a university system that's woefully lacking in incentives; rooting out inefficiency and encouraging a research-savvy culture will be a challenge. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/996?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.996
House Cuts to DOE National Labs Would Also Hamstring Industry Adrian Cho A spending bill passed by the House of Representatives last week would bring the Department of Energy's (DOE's) entire science program to a screeching halt and wreak havoc on research funded by other agencies and by private industry (see p. 993). The so-called continuing resolution, which provides funding for the federal government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year, would cut DOE's Office of Science by 18%. The $4.9 billion agency supports 10 national laboratories as well as research at hundreds of universities. Republican opposition to the Obama Administration's plans to beef up clean energy research may be the driving force behind the deep cuts, but if they are enacted—the bill now goes to the Senate, which takes issue with many provisions—the impact would extend far beyond research geared toward developing green energy technology. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/997?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.997
Researchers Use Weather Radar to Track Bat Movements Elizabeth Pennisi A new field of study called aeroecology looks at the interactions between flying animals and their airspace. Using weather radars, a bat ecologist has discovered that the weather strongly affects the behavior of at least one species. Brazilian free-tailed bats, common in the south-central United States and Mexico, emerge from their daytime slumber at different times of day depending on the temperature, she and her colleagues reported on 19 February at the AAAS annual meeting (see p. 995 and here for more meeting coverage). Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/998?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.998
Schooling the Jeopardy! Champ: Far From Elementary Karen A. Frenkel* For 7 years, IBM researchers toiled to build a machine that could understand and answer spoken questions. In 2007, the company invited computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to two workshops at its research center in Yorktown Heights, New York. For CMU graduate student Nico Schlaefer, the workshops were a turning point. As an undergraduate at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and a visiting scholar at CMU in 2005, Schlaefer had built a question-answer system called Ephyra. Impressed, IBM offered Schlaefer a summer internship with the project—the first of three he spent working on Watson. Last week, Schlaefer, now a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at CMU and an IBM Ph.D. Fellow, told Science about the algorithm he contributed to the now-world-famous computer. * Karen A. Frenkel is a science writer in New York City. * Karen A. Frenkel is a science writer in New York City. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/999?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.999
Activists Go on Warpath Against Transgenic Crops—and Scientists Richard Stone* Ever since the Chinese government awarded safety certificates in November 2009 to two genetically modified rice varieties and a variety of GM maize, researchers have come under increasing fire. The anti-GM backlash in China is driven in part by Greenpeace and scientists who are raising long-standing concerns about possible ecological and health effects of transgenic crops. Now, Wu You Zhi Xiang, a loose-knit group known in English as Utopia, is gathering signatures on an open letter denouncing GM crops. The letter alleges that China is being exploited by agribusinesses and calls for the revocation of the safety certificates for GM rice. Few observers expect Utopia's petition to sway the Chinese government, which has enshrined transgenic crop R&D as a top priority. But Utopia's actions may well slow commercialization of GM foods. * With reporting by Hao Xin and Li Jiao. * With reporting by Hao Xin and Li Jiao. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1000?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1000
NEWS FOCUS
Second Thoughts About CT Imaging Lauren Schenkman David Brenner directs Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research, where he focuses on exactly how radiation damage leads to cancer. He's become one of the most insistent voices in an imbroglio that is roiling radiologists, medical physicists, and the general public over the rising and largely unregulated use of computed tomography (CT) scans, and whether the technology can, in some cases, cause more harm than good. The risks are surprisingly unclear, given how old and how commonly used the technology is. Brenner found that each CT scan gives a patient a very small chance of developing cancer, although many radiologists and medical physicists say that for a single CT scan, there's no hard evidence of any raised cancer risk. But even the skeptics favor managing potential CT risks, if for no other reason than to reassure patients. As the debate rages, the number of CT scans administered continues to soar and shows no sign of slowing down. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1002?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1002
Decision-Making Lauren Schenkman James Thrall, chief radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, has discovered in the past 6 years just how much doctors rely on computed tomography (CT) scans. In 2005, MGH created and implemented a program that scores the appropriateness of a CT scan every time a doctor orders one and compares its worth to that of other imaging techniques given the patient's symptoms. The software shares the score with doctors and offers them a chance to change their mind. As a result, the quarterly growth rate in MGH's use of CT scans has dropped from 3% to 0.25%. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1003?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1003
Beyond Human: New Faces, Fields Exploit Genomics Elizabeth Pennisi Fast new genomics technology is not just for human geneticists and biomedical researchers anymore. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1005-a?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1005-a
Tracing the Tree of Life Elizabeth Pennisi With the help of next-generation sequencing, a team of evolutionary biologists is shining a scientific spotlight on little-studied organisms called micrognathozoans. During a recent field trip to Greenland, they collected specimens of the tiny invertebrate and have stored them in a freezer. In a project that would have been unthinkably expensive for a single lab just a few years ago, they will now decipher much of the creature's genome and identify its genes. And that's just the beginning. The researchers and their colleagues have freezers full of other unusual organisms whose genomes they plan to sequence so that they can refine the much-debated animal tree of life. This story and the ones accompanying it are part of a collection this month reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the publication of the human genome, which is gathered here. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1005-b?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1005-b
Using DNA to Reveal a Mosquito's History Elizabeth Pennisi In 2001, a pair of evolutionary geneticists made the mosquito Wyeomyia smithii a poster child for climate change when they demonstrated for the first time that an animal had evolved in response to global warming. Now the same researchers are applying next-generation DNA sequencing tools to probe further details of this species' evolutionary history—tools that have become so cheap and widely available that they can be applied to other poorly studied organisms as well. This story and the ones accompanying it are part of a collection this month reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the publication of the human genome, which is gathered here. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1006?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1006
Tackling the Mystery of the Disappearing Frogs Elizabeth Pennisi The chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, has wiped out amphibians around the globe. New sequencing technologies that have made it affordable to directly decipher all the active genes of a species without doing the extensive, and expensive, presequencing legwork required in the past are now being used on wild populations of the mountain yellow-legged frog, comparing ones that persist despite exposure to the fungus to nonexposed ones that ultimately prove susceptible to it. Results so far suggest that in susceptible frogs, the immune system doesn't go on the defensive; the fungi somehow evades the body's defenses. This story and the ones accompanying it are part of a collection this month reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the publication of the human genome, which is gathered here. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1007?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1007
Digging Deep Into the Microbiome Elizabeth Pennisi In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that animal intestines naturally harbor diverse microbial communities that help provide nutrients and sustain good health. A landmark 2005 study concluded that the bacterial communities in the human gut vary tremendously from one individual to the next. But that work looked at the guts of just three people, using traditional sequencing technology to probe for different variants of ribosomal RNA genes, each of which represented a different microbe. A new analysis of 146 people, made possible by the lower cost and higher efficiency of DNA sequencing, is now telling a much more detailed story, as well as providing researchers a new way to evaluate which genes are "must-haves" for the microbes. This story and the ones accompanying it are part of a collection this month reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the publication of the human genome, which is gathered here. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1008?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1008
Probing Pronghorn Mating Preferences Elizabeth Pennisi Animal behaviorists have shown that if a female pronghorn picks the right male, her fawns will grow faster than normal and have a much better chance of surviving. They suspect that female pronghorns are actually choosing mates with the lowest burden of so-called deleterious mutations. They haven't had a good way to prove this theory, but thanks to the growing availability of next-generation DNA sequencing, they may finally have a chance. This story and the ones accompanying it are part of a collection this month reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the publication of the human genome, which is gathered here. Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/331/6020/1009?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/25-February-2011/10.1126/science.331.6020.1009
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