Science Magazine News

In science news around the world this week, an Italian official will also be a defendant in the earthquake trial, Japanese experts have questioned the safety of—and need for—nuclear power, biodiversity in the Andes is threatened, and Nobelists are lobbying for a gigantic neutrino experiment.

Thomas Edison is still number one when it comes to invention. Researchers think they know why the male orb-web spider will often voluntarily break off his whole sex organ while it's still lodged in the female's abdomen: It continues to transfer sperm into the female long after the male has fled or been consumed. A British seismologist has a geologic twist on the classic nightstand "word-a-day" calendar: the daily rock. And this week's numbers quantify the price offered for DNA sequencing company Illumina and the percentage of plant collectors who have found more than 50% of the world's known species.

This week's Newsmakers are Janet Rowley of the University of Chicago, Brian Druker of the Oregon Health & Science University, Nicholas Lydon of Blueprint Medicines, and Masato Sagawa of Intermetallics Co., winners of the Japan Prizes; Scott Doney, whose nomination to be chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been withdrawn by the White House; Johannes Vogel, an expert on fern genetics, who took over as director of Berlin's Natural History Museum this week; and Paul Alivisatos of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Charles Lieber of Harvard University, Jacob Bekenstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ronald Evans of the Salk Institute, Michael Aschbacher of the California Institute of Technology, and Luis Caffarelli of the University of Texas, Austin, winners of the Wolf Prizes.

How concerned should people be that what happened in the controversial experiments that exposed ferrets to H5N1 avian influenza viruses engineered to be more transmissible will apply to humans?

Author: Jon Cohen

The Broad Institute received a $32.5 million gift last week to take on one of the biggest challenges in biology: mapping the molecular "circuitry" inside several kinds of mammalian cells.

Author: Jocelyn Kaiser

Last week, Fomalhaut b, an exoplanet that once enjoyed celebrity status, faced an identity crisis after astronomers failed to spot it in a new round of observations.

Author: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

With new sequencing centers in Europe and the United States, BGI hopes its growing clout will help deliver the benefits promised by genomics—and revenue to pay off a mounting debt.

Author: Dennis Normile

When spillways were opened to divert the flooding Mississippi last spring, scientists studying the waters sought data that might help restore the river's eroding delta.

Author: Carolyn Gramling

The high price of oil is driving technological innovation that has reversed the decline in U.S. oil production, but the world will increasingly depend on OPEC and “non-oil” oil.

Author: Richard A. Kerr

In science news around the world this week, outbreaks of H5N1 continue in poultry in south and southeast Asia—and the human death toll mounts; the University of Tokyo plans to shift the start of its school year from April to autumn; researchers are looking for signs of life in the Tissint meteorites; the Natural History Museum in London is under fire for its scientific cooperation with an Israeli company that conducts research in the occupied West Bank; Marco Antônio Raupp will become Brazil's new minister of science, technology, and innovation; and NASA's twin moon orbiters were officially christened Ebb and Flow.

Peerage of Science, an online social network founded by three Finnish ecologists, aims to provide journals with already-peer-reviewed manuscripts. And this week's numbers quantify NIH grant success rates and the number of bats that have died from white nose syndrome.

This week's Newsmakers are Terence Tao of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Jean Bourgain of the Institute for Advanced Study, winners of the Crafoord Prize in mathematics; Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and Andrea Ghez of UCLA, who will claim the prize for astronomy; and Cristián Samper, who in August will become the president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Amid a growing global controversy over the potential dangers of experiments involving the H5N1 avian influenza virus, a group of leading influenza researchers last week agreed to a 60-day moratorium on some sensitive flu studies.

Author: David Malakoff

Science talked to Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who carried out one of the two controversial H5N1 avian influenza studies that triggered the international debate.

Author: Martin Enserink

As a result of widespread migration, rising inequality, and evolving sexual mores, China now holds the dubious title of the nation with the largest increase in reported syphilis cases in the penicillin era.

Author: Mara Hvistendahl

Last week, astronomers gathered to work out a plan to combine data from radio telescopes worldwide and create, in effect, a dish the size of Earth that will be able to peer into our galaxy's heart.

Author: Daniel Clery

A $500 million upgrade planned for early next decade would enable the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider to answer a key puzzle about the proton itself—if RHIC doesn't fall victim to budget cuts.

Author: Adrian Cho

Scientists hope the next generation of supercomputers will carry out a million trillion operations per second. But first they must change the way the machines are built and run.

Author: Robert F. Service

Deep beneath the central United States, researchers find signs of buried faults that have triggered earthquakes in the past—and may still be kicking.

Author: Naomi Lubick

The venerable Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences has been trying to reinvent itself by applying behavioral science to 21st century problems.

Author: Greg Miller