Tạp chí khoa học số 2007-09-28

Having dealt successfully with this problem, a Europe-wide collaboration to fund basic research through a program called the European Young Investigators EURY 1; wwwesfon/ activities/eur

Science

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Volume 317, Issue 5846

National Science Foundatiom/Science 2007 Visualization Challenge All the winning 1839 Random Samples 1841 Newsmakers

entries are displayed in a special feature beginning on page 1857 and online at 1879 AAAS News & Notes 1939 New Products T0 tên

wnu scien cemag.org/sciext/vis2007

1833 European Young Investigators byT Hunt

NEWS OF THE WEEK LETTERS

Panel Wants U.S Program to Retain Its Russian Roots 1845 anel Wants U.S Program to Retain Is Russian Roots BGØIKŠ cmau

Polition Stews lina’ Conal Project tate) C Delécraz, L Durussel, A Fondrini, curators

Science Express Report by 1 Browsing 1870

‘RW Boyd, K W.C Chan, M N O'Sullivan

NEWS FOCUS n

U.S Says No to Next Global Test of 1851 Does Our Universe Allow for Robust 1876

Accidents Spur a Closer Look at Risks at 1852

P Convey and M I Stevens

2007 VISUALIZATION 1857 CHALLENGE

For elated online content, go to wnnn.sciencemag.org/sciext/vis2007

Assay technologies by QIAGEN

Multiplex PCR assays

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Genotyping and genetic analysis

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SCIENCE EXPRESS

wwwsciencexpress.org

GENETICS

Paired-End Mapping Reveals Extensive Structural Variation

in the Human Genome

1.0 Korbel et al

Sequencing of structure variations over segments of DNA from two individuals of

different ethnic groups showed unexpected levels of diversity

10.1126/science.1149504

GENETICS

Wasp Gene Expression Supports an Evolutionary Link Between

‘Maternal Behavior and Eusociality

ALL Tothet al

Analysis ofa set of genes expressed inthe brain of a primitive wasp shows that

the care shown by worker wasps toward siblings probably evolved from maternal

care behavior

10.11.26/science.1146647

CONTENTS L

CLIMATE CHANGE Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial

‘Atmospheric CO, Rise and Tropical Warming

L Stott, A Timmermann, R Thunell Dating of benthic versus near-surface plankton in a Pacific Ocean core shows that southern high latitudes warmed 1500 years before the tropics during the last, deglaciation

>> News story p 1847 10.11 26/science.1143791

ASTRONOMY ABright Millisecond Radio Burst of Extragalactic Origin D.R Lorimer, M Bailes, M.A McLaughlin, D J Narkevic, F Cranford

‘Arapid and powerful burst of radio waves is found through an analysis of archival pulsar data, suggestive of anew class of radio bursts, perhaps from a supernova,

10.11 26/science.1147532

TECHNICAL COMMENT ABSTRACTS

OCEANS

Comment on “A Semi-Empirical Approach to

Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise”

S Holgate, 5 Jevrejeva, P Woodworth, S Brewer

‘Comment on “A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting

Future Sea-Level Rise”

T Schmith, S Johansen, P Thejll

Response to Comments on “A Semi-Empirical Approach to

Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise”

M.A, Purnell etal

‘Wear patterns in fossilized teeth show that Miocene sticklebacks

‘switched from surface- to bottom-feeding over 20,000 years,

implying that changes in diet drove their evolution

REPORTS

PLANETARY SCIENCE

The Dark Side of the Rings of Uranus

de Pateretal

Images of Uranus’ rings, which are currently oriented edge-on

to Earth, reveal large changes in dust distribution since Voyager's

V Parigi A Zavatta, M Kim, M Bellini

An experiment shows that quantum addition snot commutative:

Adding a single photon to alight fetd and then subtracting one produces a different result than subtracting first

1890

PHYSICS Symmetrized Characterization of Noisy Quantum Processes

J Emerson et al A symmety-based approach dramatically reduces the number cof measurements needed to describe the decoherence of a quantum system, a necessity fr practical information storage

1893

APPLIED PHYSICS Nuclei-induced Frequency Focusing of Electron Spin Coherence

A Greilich et al

Laser pulses can tune spin precessions of electrons in an ensemble

of singly charged quantum dots to well-defined modes that remain stable inthe dark for tens of minutes

1896

CONTENTS continued >>

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Science

REPORTS CONTINUED

GEOCHEMISTRY Late Archean Biospheric Oxygenation and 1900

‘Atmospheric Evolution

ALJ Kaufinan etal

AWhiff of Oxygen Before the Great Oxidation Event? 1903

A.D Anbar et al

Sulfur isotopes and trace elements imply that oxygen levels

in Earths atmosphere rose briefly 50 to 100 milion years

before the major increase 24 billion years ago

ARCHAEOLOGY

Stone Adze Compositions and the Extent of 1907

Ancient Polynesian Voyaging and Trade

KD Collerson and M 1 Weisler

Isotopic and chemical data trace Polynesian adze heads on the

Tuamotus to nearby island sources and to the Hawaiian Islands,

4000 km to the north, showing an extensive trade network

DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY

Synchrony Dynamics During Initiation, Failure, 1911

and Rescue of the Segmentation Clock

IH Riedel-Krase, C Miller, A C Oates

‘Amodel of the segmentation clock, coupled genetic oscillators

that sequentially generate the body segments of animals,

successfully predicts the results of system perturbations

ECOLOGY Rapid Emergence of Baculovirus Resistanc 1916

Coding Moth Due to Dominant, Sex-Linked inheritance

Š Asser-Kgiser etal

Moths have developed an unusual ype of resistance ta widely used,

environmentally benign val pesticide, explaining recent damage to

apple cropsin Germany and France

NEUROSCIENCE

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Elicits Coupled 1918

Neural and Hemodynamic Consequences

EA.Allen, 8 N Pasley, I Duong, R D Freeman

‘A procedure that targets circumscribed brain regions in people and

animals suppresses and desynchronizes neural activity, effects that

ate faithfully reflected by bran imaging methods > News story p28

GENETICS

Genomic Minimalism in the Early Diverging 1921

intestinal Parasite Giardia lamblia

The genome ofthe pathogenic intestinal parasite Giardia

reveals simplified metabolic systems, unexpected evidence

cof sexual reproduction, and specialized clases of protein,

Structures of the CCRS N Terminus and of a 1930

‘Tyrosine-Sulfated Antibody with HIV-1 gp120 and CD4

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wwm.sciencenow.org DAY NEW

In the Deep, a Tropical Surprise

Kelp forests may exist throughout the tropics, a new study finds

Space Germs Could Yield Earthly Cures

Taking bacteria on a shuttle ride reveals some of their

best-kept secrets

'0VERAGE

Twinkle, Twinkle, Lonely Stars

Astronomers discover a stellar hatchery far outside

2 galaxy’s main body

Day length influences behavior

wWWfstk€.org, SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION KNOWLEDGE ENVIRONMENT

PERSPECTIVE: Gene-Hormone-Environment Interactions

in the Regulation of Aggressive Responses: Elegant Analysis

of Complex Behavior

D Pfaff and R Silver

The effects of estragen on behavior are modulated by day lenath

PROTOCOL: Studying Integrin-Mediated Cell Adhesion at the

Single-Molecule Level Using AFM Force Spectroscopy

GM Fronz, A Taubenberger, P-H Puech, D.) Muller

Forces between adhesion receptors and their ligands can now be

measured atthe level of single molecules,

in Academia, But Fostered in Industry

D Jensen Industry employers relish the kilerinstinc in scientists

GLOBAL: Mastering Your Ph.D.—Progress Reviews With Impact

8 Noordam and P Gosting Here are some tps for getting a progress review with the answers and a plan you need

MMISCINET: Educated Woman, Postdoc Edition, Chapter 9—

The Postdoc Has Two Faces

SCIENCEPODCAST

Download the 28 September Science Podcast to hear about clues to wasp eusociality, ancient Polynesian trading, and the winners of this year’s Science and Engineering isvalization Challeng

mmesroncemag.org/abou/paccas atl

‘Separate individual or institutional subscriptions to these products may be required for full-text access

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and Conferences

Join the world’s leading cancer researchers for the latest findings

and most important scientific advances at these conference:

October 31-November 3, 2007

The Role of Non-Coding RNAs in Cancer

Philip A Sharp, René Bemards, and Todd R Golub,

Chairpersons

Cambridge, Massachusetts

November 4-8, 2007

AACR Centennial Conference:

Translational Cancer Medicine: Technologies

to Treatment

Edison T Liu and William N Hait, Chairpersons,

Singapore

November 14-17, 2007

Advances in Colon Cancer Research

Monica M Bertagnolli, Hans Clevers, and

Raymond N DuBois, Chairpersons

Cambridge, Massachusetts

November 27-30, 2007

The Science of Cancer Health Disparities in

Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically

6th Annual International Conference on

Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research

Maria A Blasco, Woodring E Wright, and

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January 22-25, 2008

Ubiquitin and Cancer: From Molecular

Targets and Mechanisms to the Clinic

Claudio Joazeiro, Tony Hunter, and

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February 3-5, 2008 Cytoskeleton Signaling in Cancer

Rakesh Kumar and Alan Hall, Chairpersons

San Diego, California

February 12-15, 2008 The Role of Cancer Stem Cells in the Initiation and Propagation of Tumorigenesis

John E Dick and Jane Visvader, Chairpersons Los Angeles, California

February 24-26, 2008, Energy Balance and Cancer:

Mediators and Mechanisms Joint AACR: Transcscilinary Research on Energetics and Cancer (TREC) Conference Nathan A Berger, John D Potter, Kathryn H Schmit, and Cornelia M Ulich, Chaitpersons Lansdowne, Virginia

March 15-18, 2008

‘Advances in Cancer Research:

From the Laboratory to the Clinic Samir N Khleif, Chairperson

Dead Sea, Jordan April 12-16, 2008

‘AACR Annual Meeting Eileen P, White, Program Committee Chairperson San Diego, California

May 20-23, 2008

Candidate Pathways, Whole Genome Scans:

Reconciling Results, Looking into the Future

In conjunction with the Molecular Epidemiology Working Group of the AACR

Coxnelia M Ulrich and Stephen Chanack, Chairpersons

Carefree, Arizona May 28:31, 2008 Cancer Epigenetics Jean-Pierre Issa and Peter W Laird, Chairpersons Boston, Massachusetts

July 21-24, 2008

‘AACR Centennial Conference:

Translational Cancer Medicine Chairperson TBD Monterey, California

August 3-7, 2008 Joint Metastasis Research Society-AACR Conference on Metastasis

Danny R Welch, Chairperson Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Fall, 2008

‘Omics to Clinics: Translation of Cancer Genome Insight Into Therapeutics and Diagnostics

tynda Chin, Joe W Gray, William R Sellers, and Richard L Schilsky, Chairpersons

Location TBA

October 13-17, 2008 Chemical and Bi Inflammation and Cancer Michael Karin, Lisa M Coussens, and Lawrence J Mamet, Chairpersons

Ko Olina, Oahu, Hawaii

October 21-24, 2008 EORTC-NCI-AACR International Conference on Molecular Targets and

Cancer Therapeutics Patrick Schafiski, James H Doroshow, and Eric H Rubin, Scientific Committee Chaitpersons Geneva, Switzerland

November 3-6, 2008

‘AACR Centennial Conference: Impact of Emerging Technologies on Cancer Diagnosis and Therapeutics

‘Michael 8 Kastan, Joseph D Rosenblatt, and Moshe Oren, Chairpersons Jerusalem, trael

November 11-14, 2008 Targeting the PI3-Kinase Pathway

in Cancer Prevention Lewis C Cantley and Charles L Sawyers, Chairpersons

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November 16-19, 2008

‘Seventh Annual International Conference

on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Chairperson TBD

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December 25, 2008 Tumor Immunology Louis M, Weiner, Olvera J Finn, Alexander M M Eggermont, and Dmity | Gabrlovich, Chairpersons Miami, Florida

December 5-7, 2008 Infection and Cancer: Biology,

‘Therapeutics, and Prevention Anthony 1 Chan, Chairperson Waun Ki Hong, Honorary Chairperson Hong Kong, China

RE: EDITED BY STELLA HURTLEY AND PHIL SZUROMI ce.-

When Quantum Arithmetic

Doesn't Add Up

If you add an item to your shopping basket and then remove one that is identical, your total bill does not change If you shop in a quantum supermarket, however, the probabilities and the sequence of adding or subtract

ng to your shopping basket matter and can change the total Parigi et al (p 1890; see the Perspective by Boyd et al.) demonstrate this counterintuitive behavior for pho- tons in a light field Adding or subtracting a single photon

to or froma light field produces a different result depend- ing on the sequence of the event, with the final state of light field being different from the initial one This capa- bility of engineering the quantum state of a light may prove useful in areas such as quantum communication

Fluorinated Drugs

on the Rise

Organofluorine substituents are playing an

increasingly important rolein synthetic small

‘molecule pharmaceuticals, including such major

drugsas Lipitor and Prozac In a review, Miller et

al (p 1881) highlight the emerging understand-

ing of how fluorine interacts with proteins during

docking events Elucidation of these itermolecu-

lar interactions complements more traditional

paradigms of fluorine’s electron-aithdrawing

effects, which influence substrate basicity,

and its wide-ranging stereoelectronic impact

(on substrate conformation The discussion is

supported by analysis gleaned from exten-

sive searches of structural databases

Quantum Noise

Reduction

Asuccessful quantum computer must over-

come decoherence effects caused by interac-

tions with its environment Such effects could be

mitigated if they fully characterized, which in

principle can be done by process tomography However, this process requires resources that

«grow exponentially with the number of qubits in

the system, which renders it impractical Emerson

et a (p 1893; see the Perspective by Bacon)

describe a theoretical technique through which

key features of the decoherence can be effi

ciently measured, which reduces the number of

experiments from exponential to polynomial

The authors present an experimental implemen-

tation of the method on quantum-information

‘cyanobacteria Anbar etal (p.1903) and Kaufman et al

(p 1900) examined the geochemistry of

a detailed section

core through the Mount McRae Shale, Western Australia, dated to about 2.5 billion years ago

They used trace ele- ment chemistry (partic- ularly of molybdenum and rhenium, which respond to oxidative weathering) and the mass- independent fractionation of sulfur isotopes (hich can indicate the lack of abundant ozone) to trace the presence of free oxygen The data indi- cate the first hints of atmospheric oxygen, but still

at low levels, at this time

Seen On Edge

Ina rare alignment, the plane of Uranus’ rings appeared edge-on to Earth in August 2007 This

the rings, including faint rings that are bright- ened by scattered light With the Keck telescope

in Hawaii, de Pater et al (p 1888, published online 23 August) snapped an infrared picture of the side-on rings Diffuse dust envelops the entire ring system but is unconnected with any particular ring or feature The pattern of dust has changed significantly since the rings were first photographed by the Voyager spacecraft in

1986, which indicates that such changes are common in the solar system and occur on much larger scales than had been expected

Spin, All Together Now

Manipulation of the spin of an electron in a sin- gle quantum dot isa strong contender for quan- tum-information processing protocols However, the spin dynamics of each dot depend strongly

‘on environment, and the distribution resulting from dot-to-dot variability presents a formidable problem in addressing a system with many quantum dots Greilich et al (p 1896) report

cn femtosecond magneto-optical pump-probe experiments on an ensemble of self-assembled semiconductor quantum dats A sequence of laser pulses can induce al ofthe electronic spins across the ensemble to precess coherently As the spin information is stored in the nuclear spin, this process effectively results in a long-term memory for the electronic phase information

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This Week

Continued rom page 1829

evidence for these return trips has been lacking Collerson and Weisler (p 1907; see the Perspec-

tive by Finney) have examined the chemistry of 19 basalt adzes collected on a coral atoll in the

Tuamotus to trace their origin The data link many of the adzes to nearby islands, but the isotope and

trace element chemistry uniquely links one to Hawai‘, 3400 kilometers away Thus, the Polynesians

had a maritime trade network extending over thousands of kilometers and some repeated contact,

with Hawai’,

Viral Pesticide Resistance

Although insect resistance to chemical agents is well documented, there is little information on virus

insecticides Generally, these have been considered safe reagents, with little prospect of resistance

developing in the host; however, resistance to the codling moth granulovirus has been observed in

field populations Asser-Kaiser et al (p 1916) now show that the resistance factor is a Zsex-linked

feature After selection, a population was isolated that was 10,000- to 100,000-fold more resistant to

the virus challenge, which is considerably higher than the naturally resistant field strains

Giving the Brain a

Magnetic Massage

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an increasingly

‘common technique used to selectively modify neural process- ing, Although TMS reportedly alters neural and hemodynamic activity, basic neurophysiological evidence for these effects is largely unexplored Allen et al (p 1918; see the news story

by Miller) applied TMS to anesthetized cats while measuring neural and hemodynamic activity simultaneously in a co-localized region of the neocortex, and provide quantitative data on the neural effects of TMS and how they relate to standard neuro imaging techniques These results also provide insight into the

‘mechanisms of brain plasticity that are thought to underlie long-lasting therapeutic effects of TMS

Parasitic Evolutionary Oddity

Giardia is a common intestinal protozoan parasite and an important human disease agent

Morrison et al (p 1921; see the Perspective by Keeling) offer a genome analysis of Giardia

that reveals a wealth of unusual attributes, including an extremely simplified metabolic capacity

relating to its parasitic life-style; little DNA heterozygosity in a cell thought to lack a sexual cycle;

functionally enigmatic amino acid insertions in otherwise conserved regions of proteins; an

unusual actin cytoskeleton that lacks conventional myosin; and simplified DNA replication and

RNA processing machinery

Mammoth Mitochondrial Sequencing Effort

Ancient DNA survives well in hair, is found in copious quantities in cold environments, and can be

decontaminated easily Gilbert et al (p 1927) used these advantages to completely sequence the

mitochondrial genomes of 13 Siberian woolly mammoths One of the samples came from the Adams

mammoth, which was found in 1799 and has been stored at ambient temperatures for the last 200

years This finding will facilitate analysis of samples of organisms that can only be found in museums

Sulfated Tyrosine and HIV Entry

In order for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) to enter host cells, its envelope glycopro-

tein gp120 must bind to the host-cell surface receptor CD4 and to a co-receptor An unusual post-

translational modification, tyrosine sulfation, is important to the co-receptor interaction Huang et al

(p 1930) have investigated HIV-1 gp120 interactions with a sulfated N-terminal peptide from the

co-receptor CCRS and determined the crystal structure of a tyrosine-sulfated antibody in complex with

.gp120 and CD4 A conserved site in gp120 recognizes sulfo-tyrosine and might be a target for design

of therapet

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TGradient highest demands

TProfessional Basic for molecular biology “

Professional Technology research for routine applications

without interchangeable modules

European Young Investigators

SCIENCE IS INTERNATIONAL, BUT ITS FUNDING AND ADMINISTRATION ARE USUALLY A

‘matter for governments of nation states In Europe, this balkanization leads to problems; perhaps the worstis finding peer reviewers when, in a small country, applicants for support may have few peers Of course, the definition of “peer"is not always clear, and it can be difficult to identify real experts ina field unless oneis init That creates a problem, because supporting anything less than superior research wastes taxpayers’ money Ina small country, identifying quality depends on the fair and accurate opinions of foreign experts

Having dealt successfully with this problem, a Europe-wide collaboration to fund basic research through a program called the European Young Investigators ((EURY 1); wwwesfon/

activities/euryi.htm!] has sent four cohorts of outstanding young European scientists into their posts with substantial research support since 2004, For better or worse, that program, which sup- ported research ranging from theoretical physics to sociology, made its final

appointments this year The good news is that almost 100 investigators got grants of up to 250,000 euros per year for 5 years with no strings attached

‘An important question now is whether the European Research Council (ERC) will manage a similar program (Young Investigator Programme) with the same attention to the freedom and independence of young investigators that became a hallmark of EURYI

‘The EURY I scheme was hatched by a roster of research councils from all over Europe, encouraged and administered by the European Science Foundation, Heads of the research councils wanted to promote European, rather than national, science and were concerned about career structures

in the European Research Area EURYI arrived when the Framework Programmes of the European Union (EU) were already in place, but the latter were not intended to support basic research, Rather, the EU awards are contracts, not grants, with milestones and deliverables that are more appropriate to engineering projects than to the foggy uncertainties of basic research, And European scientists have long complained about the application paperwork required for EU support Really, the only mystery is why it took so long to set up a simple grant scheme such as EURY Ito support young scientists

A suecessful EURY l awardee had typically made an important discovery asa graduate student,

‘made another as a postdoctoral fellow abroad, often in the United States, and then returned to Europe to set up a thriving laboratory I chaired the Life Sciences and Medical Sciences selection process during EURYI'S4 years and was very heartened by what | saw: administrators, panelist candidates, and their institutions all enthusiastically supporting the program's mission and

ous review by national and international panels), no matter where they came from, success was quickly evident from the growth of the award’s prestige, the increase in the mutual trust of the participating organizations, and the scientific contributions ofthe EURY scholars Countries entered and left the program, some disappointed by their lack of success, but

it was important—and a surprise—that there was no “juste retour” in the EURYI scheme A nation could submit candidates for consideration in proportion to its financial contribution, but there was no guarantee that any of them would be succes

What of the future? EURYI has ended because the ERC is now set up with similar aims and a larger budget The 19 countries of EURYI are enlarged to the 27 of the EU The

2000 applicants over 4 years of EURY increased to 9000 in the first year of the ERC That's a good sign Administering these schemes is a lot of work, but well worth it, We must hope that the ERC’S new program builds on the firm foundations of trust, fairness, consistency, and continuity that helped EURYI successfully transcend national boundaries The ERC must allow youngscientistsin Europe the responsibility and freedom for independent discoveries and rightful credit Giving young scientists independence is (alas) still not universal throughout Europe The EURY! awards were, as my friend said “In comparison to the regular EU grants, something that scientists really like.” Is that so terrible?

~Tim Hunt 10.1126/scenee 1150256

EDITED BY GILBERT CHIN AND JAKE YESTON

‘The 100,000 or so ships that make up the global commercial and military fleet collectively travel billions of vessel-miles every year, producing a large fraction of the pollution contributed by fossil fuel burning in the transportation sector In addition to the direct radiative effects oftheir emissions, caused by the light-scattering properties of the particles themselves, aerosols from the exhaust plumes can produce thin lines of very low clouds in the marine boundary layer, an example of the aerosol indirect effect It has been shown that the local effects of these clouds can be large, up to 100 Wim? (for comparison, the average solar {lux at the top of the atmosphere is about 340 Wim), but how large an influence they exert on the global albedo has been an unresolved concem Schreier et a analyzed a full year of satellite data derived from ENVISAT AATSR (Environmental Satellite

‘Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer) in order to estimate the size of the radiative forcing caused by ship tracks They found that, contrary to fears arising from previous global model estimates, the global annual mean radiative forcing from ship

‘racks was small, 0.4 to 0.6 mWWim2, and negligible compared to estimates of total net anthropogenic radiative forcing, 0.6 to 2.4 Wim? Thus, it seems that ship tracks are too inconsequential to affect the rate of anthropogenic global warming — HJS

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Regulation Revealed Under Stress

In most eukaryotic genes, the protein-coding

sequences are interrupted by noncoding introns

These introns are removed from the pre-mRNA

transcript by RNA splicing, a process that pro-

vides an additional and sometimes critical layer

of gene regulation Unlike more complex organ

isms, few genes in the yeast Saccharomyces

cerevisiae contain introns In those that do, the

splice site sequences often conform to a strict

consensus, making it unlikely that the use of

alternative splice sites figures in the differential

expression of genes Intriguingly, though, ribo-

somal protein genes (RPGs)—components of

the mRNA translation machinery—are the

largest class of intron-containing genes

Pleiss et al show that amino acid starvation,

which induces a general repression of transla~

tion, also results in a rapid and specific reduc

tion in the splicing efficiency of nearly all

intron-containing RPG transcripts Thisis not

merely an effect of stressful circumstances,

because exposure to high levels of ethanol does

not have an effect on RPG splicing; rather the

splicing of distinct sets of transcripts is either

down- or up-regulated The yet-to-be-discovered

regulatory mechanisms, which other evidence

suggests could be mediated by core, rather than

accessory, spliceosomal components, probably

explain the evolutionary retention of intron

these groups of yeast genes and, given the con-

servation of the RNA splicing machinery, similar mechanisms may pervade pre-mRNA splicing in higher eukaryotes — GR

‘Mol, Cell 27, 10.1016/.molcel.2007.07.018

(2007)

CHEMISTRY

A Hot Dip Before Swimming

‘Most solution routes for nanoparticle synthesis proceed in nonpolar solvents and achieve size selectivity in part by capping the surfaces with hydrophobic groups However, after this prepara- tion, many applications require dispersing the nanoparticles in aqueous solvents Ligand exchange reactions can be used to introduce

‘capping agents that bear hydrophilic

‘groups on their ends, but these ® reactions, which often run

near room temperature, tend to be incomplete,

‘and can lead to aggre- gation if ligand des-

‘orption dominates, and exposes the tundertying surfaces

Zhanget al have devel-

‘oped a robust method for >

polyelectrolytes such as polyacrylic acid)

run in polar solvent such as

to &

Geophys, Res ett 34, 117814 (2007)

~245°O) The multivalent polyelectrolytes help displace the hydrophobic ligands while minimiz- ing surface exposure The properties of several nanoparticles —magnetism for iron oxides, photo- catalysis for titanium dioxide, and photolumines- cence for cadmium setenide—ere maintained or even improved after such processing — PDS

‘Nano Le 7, 10.1021/nl0719281 (2007)

puvsics Stimulated Symmetry

Whereas the underlying parameters of condensed matter systems may be fixed, thereby limiting the pphase space in which to vary the material proper- ties, the ability to tune and manipulate atoms or

‘molecules trapped in an optical latice opens up that phase space With success demonstrated already in systems with isotropic symmetry, asin the case ofthe superfluid-to-Mott-

‘insulator transition of bosons on a square lattice, interest is now in

2 describing systems with an

= anisotropic symmetry in the order parameter Hemmerich and Morais

‘Smith describe a scenario for imprint- ing a d,?-? wave symmetry onto an array of polarizable bosons confined to a {two-dimensional 20) optical lattice They show theoretically that exciting the atoms by stim- ulated Raman scattering can result in the forma~ tion of a checkerboard-like pattern of staggered flux states on adjacent plaquettes of the 20 lat-

tice, resulting in a d-vave momentum distribu-

tion The proposed scenario offers the prospect of

engineering optical latices for the modeling of

complex interacting phenomena rơm the likes of

high-temperature superconductivity to magnetic

frustration — 150

Phys Rev Lett 9, 113002 (2007)

BIOCHEMISTRY

Acquiring a Trace Element

Iron, asthe central element in heme cofactors or

as part of metal clusters, endows enzymes with the

capacity to carry out a much wider range of redox

reactions (such as those in respiration and photo-

synthesis) than is supported by the functional

‘groups of the genetically encoded amino acids

Hence, the acquisition of iron isa highly comps

tive endeavor, and as ocean supplementation

experiments have shown, iron can be a limiting

‘nutrient forthe growth of plankton Nevertheless,

‘marine organisms face a special challenge

because iron in an aqueous and aerobic environ-

us identification of a borate-siderophore interac- tion, Harris etal provide a fuller characterization

of the equilibria inthe reaction of B(OH), and vib- rioferrin, a siderophore of Marinobacter spp The tetrahedral coordination of B(I) by the pair of ơ-hydroxycarboxyate moieties in vibrioferin is highty pH-dependent, and accounting for the pro- tons contributed by the hydroxys as well as one donated by solvent allowed the authors to assem- ble the formal binding constants for the multiple borate-vibrioferrin complexes Extending this analysis to the other two types of siderophores—

the catecholates and the hydroxamates—revealed thatthe former are also competent to bind boron

‘whereas the later are not Whether any of these capabilities are in fact used by the siderophore producers is as yet unclear, though low-pH envi- ronments may be one place to look — GIC

An, Cher Soc 129, 10.1021/a073788x (2007)

<< Preventing Transformation

The oncogene c-Myc, which encodes a transcription factor, is well known for its ability to transform cells, However, not al cells are equally sensitive to c-Myc~induced transformation Partanen et al compared the responses of organized epithelial

2 acini and of disorganized or imma-

ture acini formed from mammary epithelial cells to the trans-

forming ability of a form of c-Myc (MycER™) activated by cell

exposure to tamoxifen When epithelial cells were plated in

Matrigel (a three-dimensional cell culture environment pre-

pared from an extract of extracellular matrix) and MycER!™ was

activated right away, the cells formed misshapen acini and some

cells could be seen in the luminal space On the other hand,

cells grown in the absence of activated c-Myc formed symmetri-

cal acini with an empty lumen, and the acini were smaller If

tamoxifen was added after the cells had already formed organ-

ized acinar structures, then c-Myc lost ts oncogenic activity: The

morphology and size of the acini were unchanged, and cell pro-

liferation was not induced Cells in which the kinase LKB1

(implicated in the establishment of cellular polarity) was

silenced formed disorganized acini with disrupted cell potarity

when cultured in Matrigel However, these LKB1-deficient cells

did become quiescent Activation of c-Myc in the LKB1-deficient

cells stimulated reentry into the cell cycle, thus confirming the

potency of epithelial organization as a brake for oncogenic

transformation The authors also addressed the apoptotic active

ity of Myc, which sensitized cells of fully organized acini to

TRAIL (a death-inducing agent that activates apoptosis) and

revealed that both TRAIL and Myc were required to promote apoptosis However, in LKB1-deicient

cells with disorganized acini or immature acini, the activation of MycER™ or TRAIL caused

apoptosis, and these two agents had an additive effect on cell death Thus, disorganized epithelia

are more sensitive to both the cell-proferative and apoptotic effects of c-Myc — NRG

Proc Natl Acad Sci U.S.A 104, 14694 (2007)

Amazingly comfortable operation

Simple “One-step’

commandbuttons, just clíc (G101 cata

‘cMyc expression does not alter basal polarity (upper) or cell-cell junc- tions (lower) in organized acinar cultures

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thecommonwealthmedical.com | The link to the Dean's blog is newmedicalschool blogspot.com

THE COMMONWEALTH MEDICAL COLLEGE

proposed

Don’t Be Lat

you're itching to visit other stars, better zip

cover to London first On 15 November, the

British interplanetary Society (BI) will host a

‘workshop titled “Warp Drive, Faster Than Light:

Breaking the Interstellar Distance Barter.”

“Warp” refers to the fact that space and

time can bend, stretch, and shrink The confer-

ence is based on work by theoretical physicist

Miguel Alcubierre, now at the National

‘Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico

Gity, who in 1994 showed that Einstein’s gen-

eral theory of relativity, which equates gravity

with the bending of space and time, could allow

for faster-than-light propulsion He noted that

because the universe is expanding, two distant

galaxies can move apart faster than light with-

out either one’s moving that fast relative to the

space around it Run the film backward, and

the galaxies rush toward each other Combining

the effects, Alcubierre showed that in theory,

one could move a patch of ordinary space

superfast by shrinking space in front of it and

stretching space behind it to make a “warp

bubble.”

There's a hitch, however The scheme

requires "negative energy,” which does not exist

as far as anyone knows “The idea was to make a

fine point about general relativity, not really to

have any practical means of traveling faster

than light,” says Alcubierre, who will not attend

the conference Physicist Richard Taylor, a con-

sultant to BIS, saysit's till “quite exciting to let

real scientists talk about things that are almost

off-limits.”

AJuicy Match

Following up on an intriguing clue from

Vietnam, researchers in Florida are studying

‘whether guava trees can control a devastating

plant disease called citrus greening Spread by

aphidlike insects called psyllids, the bacterial

disease makes fruit taste nasty and then kills

trees Itwas first spotted in Florida 2 years ago,

but citrus growers have yet to figure out how to

beat it (Science, 28 April 2006, p 523)

U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA)

researchers recently leamed that in Vietnam,

orange groves planted with guava trees were

disease-free So they went to look for them-

selves “It was pretty much incredible,” says

ON

li VÌ

EDITED BY CONSTANCE HOLDEN

When you think of an invasive species, the freshwater jellyfish Craspedacusta sowerbyi (above) probably

twhat comes to mind But the Chinese native has a firm tentacle-hold in the United States and now

s from coast to coast

To find out more about this and other aquatic interlopers, visit the Nisbase Web site from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland The site allows you to simultaneously scan nine databases that cover areas as far apart as the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean Sea, and Australia There are links to images, fact sheets, museum records, and species accounts from the taxonomy hub ITIS C sowerbyi, you can learn, probably hitched a ride to the United States

in ornamental water plants shipped from the Yangtze River valley >

‘orange trees, which are not planted as densely

as they are in Vietnam Denise Feiber, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Agriculture, says she's cautiously optimistic but points out that guava trees attract fruit flies, which could complicate the pic- ture, Ultimately, the scientists say, compounds from guava extracts might be used as sprays

Disappearing

Tongues

Of 6900 languages spoken in the world today, 6300 are in danger of going extinct, say two linguists who have mapped the world's

“language hot spots.”

Gregory Anderson and K David Harrison, a Visiting professor at Swarthmore College in

SCIENCE VOL317 28SEPTEMBER 2007

Pennsylvania, have taken the concept of “bÍo- diversity hot spots” and applied it to languages, using criteria that include "genetic diversity”: the ratio of languages to language families Bolivia, for example, has as many language lineages as

Europe but far fewer languages, which means its language diversity is threatened Other hot spots are in North America, Siberia, and Australia

The pair, who are documenting languages with high-tech equipment from the National Geographic Society, have just returned from northern Australia, whose 231 aboriginal languages—trom

50 different language families—are almost all endangered They found a lone speaker

of Amurdag, a lan-

‘guage that had been thought extinct, and three known speakers each of two other languages, Magati Ke and Yawuru

rw

“Old Man" Patrick Nanudjul, one of the last three speakers

of Magati Ke

1839

This the premier conference The conference

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‘Academic and industry researchers, clinicians, biopharma-

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To learn more and to ret

is of oligonucleotides; Chemical synthesis of s; Scale-up production; Development of analytical methods; Isolation and purification of natural products; Pharmacokinetic/ ADME studies including bioanalytical method development; Development of suitable formulations; Manufacture of phase I drug supplies; Range-finding initial toxicology; IND- directed toxicology; Product development planning and advice in IND preparation The program also is open to non-U.S applicants

Applications are received electronically through

Grants.gov Ideas arising solely from a corporate source without academic collaborators are not eligible

NIH-RAID Pilot Program Office & @

‘Sciencenow Daly Att Baty headline summary

‘Science Magazine TOC Weeliy table of contents

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Soe receiving e-mail updates, go to:

http:/Amwnsciencemag.org/ema Edlor' Goke

The first World Conference on Research

Integrity drew 300 people from 52 coun-

tries last week to Lisbon, Portugal

Science caught up with one of its organiz~

ers, Nicholas Steneck of the US Office

of Research Integrity, which joined with

the European Science Foundation to initi-

ate the event

Q: Did the conference achieve what you

wanted?

My expectations changed significantly

‘over time I had overestimated the level of

engagement [on this issue] in many other

countries, and therefore we had to back

up and do more basic education From

that perspective, I'm enormously pleased

Q: One speaker called plagiarism a “vic-

timless crime.” Were you disappointed

by that?

Raising that question is important 1

have often said that plagiarism may

have a positive outcome because it

still spreads scientific information

We really do need to assess which

behaviors are having the biggest impact

on research integrity

Q: Norway has established a very formal

scientific misconduct system with an

appointed judge Do we need a World

Court of Research Integrity?

The solutions have to be country-

appropriate What is important is [to]

‘establish minimum standards: There must

beaplace to report, there has to ben

able assurance an investigation will take

place, and] there has to be anonymity or

at least protection of whistleblowers

TWO CULTURES

WANTTO TRY IT? After 3 years and 100 hours

of tape, Richard Rifkind, chair emeritus of the Sloan-Kettering Institute

for cancer research in New York City, is wrap- ping up a documentary

on how science really

gets done The Lab chronicles the attempts

of graduate student Robert Towntey to uncover the atomic structure of AMP- activated protein kinase

in Lawrence Shapiro's protein crystallography lab at Columbia University

Rifkind, a cancer researcher who helped develop the lymphoma drug Zotinza, wanted

to portray an important scientific challenge that also would look nice on film in his quest

to educate the public about the true process

of scientific discovery Townley didn't pull any punches, either, says Rifkind: ‘At one point, he looks at the camera and says,

Got a tip for this page? E-mail people@aaas.om

“Two-and-a-half more years of misery.’ ” The film is co-produced with Rifkind’s wife, Carole, and incorporates a video diary that Townley had been independently keep- ing for several years The Rifkinds are in talks with several broadcasters for release rights

The couple's first film, released in 2005, documented the effects of tourism on Venice

—Scott Fahlman, inventing the first emoticon in

a message he posted on an electronic bulletin board 25 years ago Fahlman, a computer scien- tist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and his colleagues last week started an annual $500 Smiley Award student Contest to foster innovation in technology assisted person-to-person communication

UGHTS OUT Darkness has fallen over a sliver of easter Canada, and astronomers are thanking Chloé Legris for it The 32-year-old engineer at the Mont-Mégantic Observatory in eastern Quebec province took the lead in persuading federal, provin- cial, and municipal governments to limit light pollu-

es around the observatory Her

st reserve recognized by the

I Datk-Sky Association All of the sky- polluting light fixtures within 25 kilometers of the observatory have been replaced with shaded models that do not project light upward, in the first step of a process that will eventually include neighboring Sherbrooke, a city of 150,000 residents

‘The measures should reduce light pollution to the levels last seen 30 years ago, says Robert Lamontagne, director of the observatory The increased level of light pollution, he says, had

“shrunk” the observatory’s 1.6-meter telescope to the point at which “there was some research we couldn't do anymore.” Legris says public officials saw the light after she explained that replacing

2500 light fixtures with astro-friendly designs would

gawatt-hours of energy each year

also save 1.3 g

Vaccine-Related Polio Outbreak

In Nigeria Raises Concerns

Northern Nigeria has been hit by one of the

largest known outbreaks of poliomyelitis,

caused by the live polio vaccine itself The

‘ongoing outbreak could be a serious setback

for the global polio eradication campaign: It

is occurring in a region where rumors about

vaccine safety derailed vaccination efforts

several years ago

Experts with the Global Polio Eradication

Initiative emphasize that the widely used

trivalent oral polio vaccine (OPV) is safe But

the low immunization rates in northern

Nigeria have created the conditions for the

attenuated vaccine virus to regain its viru-

lence and trigger an outbreak

Detected in September 2006, the outbreak

of vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) type 2

‘was immediately reported to the World Health

Organization and Nigerian health officials But

the informationis just now beingreteased pub-

licly—in the 28 September Morbidity and

Mortality Weekly Report and WHO's Weekly

Epidemiological Record—a delay that has

caused some consternation in the polio com-

‘munity Officials say they were worried that the

news, if misconstrued, could again disrupt

polio vaccination efforts in Nigeria,

“There were legitimate concerns that

anti-polio vaccination rumors would be rekin-

dled by an incomplete explanation of the cause

of the VDPV outbreak,” says Olen Kew, who

has led efforts to analyze the outbreak from the

Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Biosecurity in Baltimore, Maryland

Henderson says details of each outbrc cessential ifscientists are to understand just how risky these vaccine-derived strains are

So far, there are 69 confirmed cases of paralysis, and more suspected, caused by VDPV in nine northern Nigeria states, says Kew The case count seems certain to rise

About half the cases have occurred around Kano,a largely Muslim state where anti-Westem sentiment and rumors that the vaccine caused sterility or AIDS led several states to halt polio vaccination in 2003 After repeated demonstra- tions of the vaccine’s safety and considerable bhind-the-scenes diplomacy, vaccinations resumed about a year later, but the damage ha already been done

By the end of 2004, the number of polio

ria had doubled to about 800, and

in 2006 it soared to more than 1100 Wild virus from Nigeria reinfected some 20 other coun tries, leading toa spike in global cases It was a huge setback to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which estimates that the world spent

"U17 ) Cree)

Double whammy Northern Nigeria is batting wild and vaccine-derived poliovirus

an additional $500 million to contain the dam-

e Only recently have global cases dropped back to near preboycott levels

Although Nigeria has since made consider=

able progress, wild poliovirus, both type | and type 3, is still circulating in the north, and vac- cine coverage there remains low In 2006, between 6% and 30% of children in the north had never received a single dose of OPV

‘Those are exactly the conditions that render

an area susceptible to outbreaks of vaccine- derived virus Since the 1960s, scientists have known that attenuated viruses can in rare instances mutate and regain virulence, but it was only in 2000, with an outbreak in Hispan- iola, that they realized VDPVs could spread disease from person to person

The current outbreak came to light when a technician at the CDC polio lab noticed a pre- ponderance of type 2 virus in the isolates sent

in from northern Nigeria That instantly raised suspicion, Kew says, because wild type 2 poliovirus has been eradicated globally That

‘meant the only possible source was the triva- lent vaccine, which had been used in Nige preboycott campaigns Since Nigeria resumed vaccinations in 2004, says Kew, it had “quite properly” been using the more effective mono- valent vaccinesagainst wild types 1 and 3 in its campaigns Genetic analysis quickly con- firmed the source; it also suggests that several VDPVs emerged independently in 2005 and

we don’t believe there is anything exceptional about this virus,” says Kew As evidence, he notes that two VDPV strains jumped from Nigeria to Niger, where routine vaccination is, almost 90% Both “barely made it 5 kilometers before they dead-ended,” he says

Polio expert Oyewale Tomori, vice chan- cellor of Redeemer’ University near Lagos and chair of Nigeria's expert advisory committee for polio eradication, says he has been urging officials to go public, He worries that secrecy might fuel suspicions about vaccine safety instead of reinforcing the need to intensify immunizationsin Nigeria -LESLIEROBERTS

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

The science

of forest fire:

Tougher Ozone Accord Also Addresses Global Warming

‘Come for the ozone layer, stay for the climate

That come-on might have been the marketing

spiel for negotiators meeting last week under

the aegis of the United Nations Environment

Programme to strengthen the Montreal Proto-

col, the 20-year-old accord on chlorofluoro-

carbons (CFCs) and other chemicals that

deplete the ozone layer And it worked The

delegates who returned to the city from which

the 1987 treaty got its name also made signifi-

cant progressin combating global warming by

recognizing the fact that most chemicals

affected by the treaty are also potent green-

house gases and that restricting them pays

double dividends

The thin shell inthe stratosphere that pro-

tects Earth from the sun's rays has a variety

of enemies, and the Montreal Protocol has

g been tightened four times as scientists have

placed restrictions on newly recognized

g threats As a result, the rate of harmful

emissions has slowed (see graph), and more

than 90% of the production and use of

‘ozone-depleting chemicals has been phased

‘out The biggest threats may have passed, say

experts, but this year's weeklong meeting set

itself two main goals: to clamp down on

ozone-harming refrigerants that have

£ become prevalent in the developing world,

8 andto do it ina way that could provide tangi-

ble side benefits for climate

Bythe endofthe meeting, they couldclaim

to have met both goals Most impressive was

an agreement by delegates to push forward by

a decade a legally binding schedule to phase

out in developing nations a family of chemi-

cals called hydrochlorofluorocarbons

2 (HCFCs) The 191 participating nations also

§ pledged to finance a transition fund, currently

& funded at roughly $150 million per year, to

§ support the conversion to alternatives And

$ with the urging of US officials, the delegates

& also pledged to make sure that the HCFC

replacements would have the lowest possible

= harmful impact on global warming

“The delegates deserve lots of credit for

2 tunity to protect both the ozone layer and the

climate” says Alexander von Bismarck of the

§ Environmental Investigation Agency, a

5 London-based nonprofit that has monitored

the treaty Activists hope the action gives

‘momentum to international meetings on cli- mate change occurring in New York and Washington, D.C ,as Science went to press

The Montreal Protocol arose out of two scientific developments In 1974, chemists,

F, Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina cal- culated that CFCs, a common ingredient in spray cans, could destroy stratospheric ozone

Although that discovery led to some voluntary curbs on their use, the impetus for mandatory action came in 1985, when British scientists

‘measured an ozone “hole” over the Antarctic

The new agreement is consistent with the findings of a scientific assessment in August

Production

A Chinese HCFC factory

The agreement would freeze HCFC pro- duction by developing nations in 2013

2 years earlier than planned—followed by successive cuts until production was ended

in 2030, a decade sooner than previously agreed Developed nations agreed to advance their deadline for a phaseout from

2030 to 2020, as well as promising to pro- vide “stable and sufficient” funds for replacements while “taking into account global warming potential” in deciding which chemicals to accept as substitutes

“You couldn't have imagined this 5 years ago,” says Durwood Zaelke of the nonprofit Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD) in Washington, D.C

‘The current availability in China of products with many of the HCFC alternatives bodes well for the new agreement, says DuPont chemist Mack McFarland An important river during talks was a statement from the G8 summit in June, pushed by the US., pledging the industrial powers to climate- friendly action on ozone “It's being held up [as an inspiration] by all the parties” during

id IGSD's Scott Stone, who

‘great leadership by the White House

Thereviews weren't entirely positive, Del- egates agreed to U.S demands to continue an

‘exemption for ozone-unftiendly methyl bro- mide, a firmigant used by US farmers, allow- ing annual emissions of 4600 tons David Donigerof the Washington, D.C.-based Natural Resources Defense Council, which wants a full phaseout, called that “a black mark” on an otherwise strong U.S performance White House environment aide James Connaughton says US negotiators hope to build on the suc- cess in Montreal during a 2-day meeting hosted by the Bush Administration this week attended by representatives from 15 industrial nations and majoremitters -ELIKINTISCH

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BIOWEAPONS

Panel Wants U.S Program to

Retain Its Russian Roots

n Obolensk, Rus- sia, wanted to ship a strain of anthrax toa lab

in Fort Detrick, Maryland, under a US pro-

‘gram intended to prevent former bioweapons

scientists from selling their expertise to ter-

rorists or “rogue” nations, But the Russian

government wouldn't give the Obolensk lab

an export license

Such setbacks are one reason the Depart-

ment of Defense (DOD) has decided to

phase out collaborative research projects in

Russia under its Biological Threat Reduction

Program But a new report by the U.S

National Academies’ National Research

Council (NRC) says the agency is making a

Total Funding

$430 million

Whose threat? U.S entities have received most of the money for

research on reducing the threat of Russian bioweapons

mistake, It calls on DOD to increase support

for the program and to give Russian admin-

istrators and scientists a greater voice in

determining its direction

Since 1998, the agency hasspent more than

$430 million on dismantling biological

‘weapons production centers, improving secu-

rity at research facilities, setting up disease sur-

veillance networks, and supporting scientists

throughout the region, The activities are part of

the US government's biological nonprolifera~

tion efforts in the former Soviet Union DOD

officials plan to continue, and even increase,

support for scientists in other countries in the

region, But the difficulties in gaining access to

Russian labs, combined with an improved out-

look for funding science that stems from the

country’s robust economy, have made Russia

the odd man out “We think the Russians are

now perfectly capable of transitioning their for-

‘mer weapons labs to make them part of their

‘The academies report, requested by DOD's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) at the urging of Congress, takes a different view

“Although the economic situation in Russia is stabilizing, the future ofa large number of bio- logical institutions is in flux,” it says “And many former weapons scientists remain trapped in uncertain circumstances that could raise serious proliferation concerns.” The bottom line, according to NRC’s Glenn

‘Schweitzer, is that “Russia is too important a country to not engage in

‘The report cites the program's success in

improving security at a number

of Russian labs And it sugges that heeding the wishes of its Russian hosts would strengthen the program, “DOD continues to

be interested only in studying pathogens it considers dan- gerous for bioterrorism, while the Russians want to tackle health problems like cholera and tuberculosis, cexphins Sonia Ben Ouagsham- Gormley of the Monterey Institute of International Studies

in Washington, D.C The fact that most of the money has gone to U.S contractors and visiting scientists has also soured Russians on the program, the report notes

‘The panel's recommendations are right

on the mark, says Carleton Phillips II, a biol-

i Tech University in Lubbock and the principal investigator on a DOD- funded project in Kyrgyzstan aimed at map- ping the distribution of mammals that are reservoirs of infectious diseases He says the best way to reduce biological threats in the former Soviet Union is to “engage local sci- entists in true collaborations.”

Now that the experts have spoken, will DOD listen? A DTRA official says the report

“will definitely have an impact on the future of the program,” adding that the agency plans to respond before the end of the year A staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also likes the report's recommendations “There is, basic support on the Hill fordoing more collab- orative research in Russia,” he says

‘and channeling water through or around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta The environmentally sensitive delta is beset by crashing fisheries, pollution, and invasive species (Science, 27 July, p 442)

Schwarzenegger says the new water infra structure is part of a “comprehensive fix.” But

‘opponents say water conservation isa better solution Science should help sort out the

‘options, says Peter Moyle, a fisheries biologist

at the University of California, Davis: "There's

a lotwe don’t understand [about] how these plans will affect fish.” ~ROBERT F SERVICE

OPE

Pounds for Paws

Britain's largest medical research charity hopes to help veterinarians keep up with the latest developments with 2 $22.5 million ini- tiative to recruit them into research In 2004, the U.K government provided $43 million to boost the number of scientists trained to tackle challenges such as foot-and-mouth disease

But that program ends in 2009 Last week, the Wellcome Trust made awards to seven U.K vet- erinary schools for efforts including summer

‘courses and postdoctoral training "Th absolutely vital development,” says Christopher Stokes ofthe University of Bristol, one of the recipient universities =ELIEDOLGIN

White House: Risk-Averse

After getting slammed by the National Acade- mies’ National Research Council (NRC), the White House Office of Management and Bud get (OMB) has decided not to issue a contro- versial directive on risk assessment The draft bulletin, released in January 2006, contained

‘uidelines and technical standards on issues such as expressing uncertainties in federal risk assessments But a subsequent NRC report requested by OMB called the approach “fun- damentally flawed,” saying, for example, that

it would require uncertainty analysis "beyond the current state of the science” (Science,

19 January, p 316) In reversing the move, OMB has instructed agencies to follow “gener ally accepted principles for risk analysis”

issued by the Clinton Administration That's

“good news for the science community,” says Rick Melberth of the advocacy group OMB Watch in Washington, D.C ~ERIK STOKSTAD

i NEWS OF THE WEEK

1846

NEUROSCIENCE

Uncovering the Magic in Magnetic Brain Stimulation

In recent years, neuroscientists and psychia-

trists alike have touted the potential uses of

noninvasive brain stimulation technique called

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) The

‘method has been used to disrupt neural activity

experimentally in studies of human cognition,

and it has shown promise in clinical trials for

treating psychiatric disorders such as

depression (Science, 18 May 2001, p 1284)

Although widely considered safe—thousands

of people have received TMS—relatively little

is known about how it actually works Now, a

detailed look at its effects shows that TMS can

boost or dampen the firing of neurons depend-

ing on ongoing brain activity

Neuroscientists at the University of Cali-

fornia, Berkeley, applied TMS to the cerebral

cortex of cats while monitoring neural activ

ity and metabolism Their findings, reported

on page 1918—and future investigations of

this type—will have important implications

for how TMS is used in people, other

researchers say

One interesting possibility, according to

Mark George, a psychiatrist at the Medical

University of South Carolina in Charleston, is,

that it may matter what subjects think about

while they're being stimulated, a factor that

hasn't received much consideration to date

George, who pioneered TMS therapy for

depression, says a better understanding of how

TMS works will enable researchers and clini-

cians to apply it more effectively: “This is pre-

cisely where the field needs to go.”

Ina typical TMS procedure, technicians

place a ring-shaped paddle near the scalp

These currents alter the electrical activity of neurons, but exactly how they alter it is poorly understood

of anesthetized cats and tracked the aftermath using probes developed in Freeman's lab that can simultaneously record the electrical activ=

ity of neurons and measure fluctuations in oxy-

Pollution Slows China's Canal Project

The first phase of a massive project to

replumb some of China’s mightiest water-

‘ways has fallen far behind schedule because

local authorities don’t want to pay forthe priv-

ilege of drinking pottuted water

‘The South-to-North Water Diversion

Project is a three-stage effort to alleviate

chronic water shortages in the country’s

more populous but parched northern plains

(Science, 25 August 2006, p 1034) The

eastern route makes use of an existing net-

work of canals, rivers, and lakes to pump and

move water from the lower Yangtze River to

Jiangsu and Shandong provinces But this

month, the official Xinhua news agency

announced that the first phase of the route,

scheduled to begin operating this year, has been delayed at least 3 years

Nearly half of the $4 billion cost of the first phase is earmarked for improving the quality of the water However, the central government is footing only about 10% of the bill, with the rest expected to come from localities that will benefit from the project

But because nobody wants to clean up some- body else's dirty water, few treatment facil ties have been built along theroute, and water quality continues to deteriorate So far this year, according to Xinhua, the water is drink- able at only one of the 21 monitored cross sections in Shandong

‘Some engineering experts say the entire

‘gen concentration, an indicator of energy con- sumption Using optical imaging methods, the researchers also tracked hemoglobin levels, another metabolic marker A train of TMS pulses lasting a few seconds caused an imme- diate increase in neural firing that lasted for abouta minute, followed by a decrease in firing for several minutes Oxygen and hemoglobin mirrored this pattem, indicating that neurons” firing and energy demands go hand in hand TMS had a dramatically different effect, however, on neural activity evoked by black and white bars flashed on a computer screen (Such responses persist even in anes- thetized animals.) In this case, neural firing dipped sharply after TMS and remained suppressed for several minutes

The findings have implications for design- ing TMS therapies, says George For depres- sion therapy, for example, “we may need peo- ple to become sad in the chair while stimulat- ing [them],” George says “Alternatively, we

‘might have them engage in formal cognitive therapy, thinking positive thoughts.” Such con- siderations are important, he adds, as the Food and Drug Administration is considering approval fordaily TMS of the prefrontal cortex

to treat depression

The new findings also suggest why the effects of TMS often vary, says Alvaro Pascual- Leone, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Pascual-Leone suggests that TMS results could be made more consistent

by monitoring the physiological state of the brain using eleetroencephalography orfunctional

‘magnetic resonance imaging, ~GREG MILLER

www.sciencemag.org

A Far-South Start for Ice Age's End

Where was the thermostat switch that, once

thrown, began to thaw the world out of the last

ice age? Paleoceanographers long assumed

that it lay in the North Atlantic Ocean some-

where; then the tropical ocean gained popu-

larity in some quarters But now, strong new

evidence fiom the tropics places the start yet

farther south, in the waters around Antarctica

The result “is all very solid, very hard to ques-

tion,” says paleoceanographer William

Ruddiman, professor emeritus at the Univer~

sity of Virginia, Charlottesville, “But it also

tells us things are complicated There are just

layers of complexity to this’

Finding where it all started “comes down

to timing,” says paleoceanographer Lowell

Stott of the University of Southern California

in Los Angeles But determining the timing of

climate events can be tough when, say, warm-

ing in the tropies is recorded in marine sedi-

ment, whereas warming in Antarctica is

recorded in glacial ice Those are dated by

entirely different methods, which injects an

uncomfortable amount of uncertainty

Stott and colleagues Axel Timmermann, a

modeler at the University of Hawaii, Manoa,

and paleoceanographer Robert Thunell of the

University of South Carolina, Columbia, elim-

inated that uncertainty, at least, by gauging

changing temperature in western Pacific

A southerly start Water from near Antarctica

(bottom) watmed before the tropics (top)

on the sea floor recorded the temperature of bottom water that had sunk from the surface of the Southem Ocean near Antarctica Then the

‘gt0up radiocarbon-dated the sediment

The results, reported online at www

sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1 143791,

‘were startling In an earlier Science paper,

‘Thunell and Stott had concluded thatthe tropi- cal Pacific had warmed first, presumably causing glacial ice to begin melting But their new analysis shows that more than 18,000 years ago, Antarctic waters warmed 1000 to

1300 years before tropical waters, Starting from that timing and drawing on other dated records, Stott and colleagues spin a tale of how the ice started melting First, predictable variations in Earth's orbit and tilt increased the amount of sunlight hit- ting high southern latitudes during austral spring That warmed things up locally and shrank the sea ice back toward Antarctica, uncapping the Southern Ocean and freeing

‘much ofits carbon dioxide to begin warmin the whole world

Nice story, other researchers say, and the starting point at least seems fairly solid “I think they make a convincing case that something is happening at high southern la itudes before tropical temperatures change, says paleoceanographer Jean Lynch- Stieglitz of Georgia Institute of Technology

in Atlanta, But, as she and Ruddiman both note, putting together the deglaciation story

is “a tricky business.” And there are dissent- ing voices Paleoceanographer David Lea of the University of California, Santa Barbara, says it isn’t so clear polar warming preceded tropical warming, given the difficulty of picking out exactly when the tropical warm- ing began All agree that finishing up the story in the Northern Hemisphere—where most ice melting eventually occurred—will takemuch more work -RICHARDA KERR

‘on its own, upsetting the Albany group, which

is led by cancer biologist Paulette McCormick (Science, 29 July 2005, p 684) Last week Clinton and Schumer took up the case, sug- gesting in a letter to VA Secretary R James Nicholson that “the Department may be using the concepts developed by Dr McCormick to establish a gene bank in another location.”

‘They urged the VA to set up a gene bank at SUNY-Albany

Joel Kupersmith, the VA's chief research and development officer, declined to comment

‘on the dispute But he says that although VA researchers are only collecting specimens for individual projects now, “our plan in the long tunis to assemble a vast store that could be used by outside investigators

JENNIFER COUZIN

NuSTAR Is Reborn

NASA resurrected a mission to study black holes, last week and now plans to orbit the spacecraft

by 2011 The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope

‘Array (NUSTAR) will use high-energy xrays to image the areas around black holes that con-

‘gregate at the center of galaxies Thespace agency killed the idea in 2006 because of fund-

‘ng constraints But NASA science chief S Alan Stern said in a statement that he reversed that decision because “we're getting more and more from the science budget we have, and the restart of the highly valued NUSTAR mission is

‘an example of that.” That's music to the ears of the researchers who thought all was lost fr a imission originally stated for launch this year

“I'm personally incredibly excited,” says Caltech physicist Fiona Harrison, the principal investiga- tor on the project

Not every project got good news last week

Stern also approved a plan to reduce the num- ber and complexity of instruments on the Mars Science Laboratory because of cost overruns

Thats raising howls from Mars exploration advocates The Pasadena, California-based Planetary Society called the move “penny-

‘and pound foolish.” =ANDREWLAWLER

OPE

THE UNIVERSE: THERE’S NOTHING ELSE

like it So if the cosmos is strange in some wa

how would you tell? That may sound

beginning of an annoying argument among

philosophy majors But cosmok

been debating just this point as the;

ure out whether—just maybe

even weirder than they thought

The controversy has been simmering for

some time, In 2003, NASA’s Wilkinson

Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satel-

lite measured the light lingering from the big

bang (Science, 14 February 2003, p 991)

Researchers charted the slight variations in

the temperature of the radiation, known as the

cosmic microwave background (CMB), to

produce a sky map resembling a dimply lime

d statistically, that iconic map bol- stered a bizarre scenario called inflation, in

which in a billionth of a trillionth of a tril-

lionth ofa second, the newborn universe dou-

bled and redoubled in size 100 times over,

stretching each atom-sized volume to the size

ofa galaxy

But the map led to some mysteries, too

Within 6 months, one team had found a curi-

ous alignment of certain undulations in the

CMB Others soon found more correlations

that suggested that the cosmosmight be skew~

ered like a meatball on a toothpick by an “axis,

‘our universe is,

28 SEPTEMBER 2007

ofevil:” That axis might show that the universe has astrange shape or is rotating Itcould trash cosmologists’ cherished assumption that the universe has no center and no special direc~

tions, the so-called cosmological principle that traces its origins to Copernicus Or it

Everyone grees it’s there,” says Kate Land, a cosmolo-

st at the University of Oxford in the U.K

‘But isit significant?”

There’ the rub: With only one universe

to measure, it may be impossible to tell

Modern cosmol cal theory mixes the elegant predictabil- ity of Einstein's the- ory of gravity with the inherent ran- domness of quantum mechanics, which held sway when the universe was just an infinitesimal spe

the statistical or average properties of the rse, bụt not the individual quirks and coincidences caused by random quantum fluctuations all those billions of years ago, Moreover, although the universe in toto may be infinite, we see only a finite part of

it Because the univ the speed of

So theorists can predict

VOL 317 SCIENCE

fast we'll never glimpse it So the axis could hintat some fundamental feature of the entire universe Or it could be a meaningless pecu- liarity of the bit we can see, our so-called Hubble volume or observable universe

Deciding will be difficult, as it's impossible

to peer into neighboring Hubble volumes or

to repeat the “experiment” that produced our homey patch of the infinite

The main problem with cosmology is our sample size—that of just one universe,”

Land says “If our universe is unusual, what

does it mean?” The

question underscores just how much cos-

* observa ved

“In the past, our frontier has always been set

by technology; you could always build a big~

ger telescope and look deeper,” says Max Tegmark of the Mass

(MIT) “For the first time, we've hit the final frontier:

So far, only measurements of the CMB have run up against that barrier But as cos- mologists launch studies that take all they can see as one measurement, other efforts could hit it, oo A few researchers think that the matter undermines cosmology’s status as a

Technolo

www sciencemag.org

hhusetts Institute of

Weirdness ahead? Future maps ofall the galaxies

willbe scrutinized for unexplained patterns

science All agree that having only one obsery-

able universe means that some of its quirks

‘may remain forever mysterious

Fanfare for the common universe

Like a Jimi Hendrix power chord, the CMB

reverberates through time The harmonies

in the electromag-

netic echo reveal the

state of the universe

when the chord was

stantly after

the big bang

According to cur-

rent theory, the uni-

verse popped into

existence infinitely

dense and hot and

crammed with light

and subatomic particles Within 10 seconds,

inflation stretched it immensely, before its

expansion slowed to a more leisurely pace

Inflation evened out the temperature of the uni-

verse, stretched space as flat asa taut bed sheet,

and diluted to nothing the numbers of certain

pesky particles that theorists say should exist

bbut that have never been seen

The big blowup also sowed the seeds for

the ripples in the CMB The stretching magni

fied tiny quantum fluctuations in the soup of

fundamental particles, creating slight varia-

ns in its density Matter began to coalesce

into the denser spots, setting off a sloshing of

light and matter and leading to tiny tempera-

ture variations These are the same variations

conveyed by the CMB, which began shining

through the cooling universe 400,000 years

afier the big bang, when light-trapping pro-

tonsand electrons combined to form transpar-

ent hydrogen atoms

To decipher the mottled CMB map,

WMAP researchers broke it down much as a

‘musical chord can be broken into individual

pitches Any spherical map can be viewed as

thesum of coarser and finer undulations called

harmonics or multipoles For the CMB, the

coarsest, the dipole, simply divides the sky into

hotter and colder halves The next, the qưadri-

pole, divides the sky roughly in four, into the

tWo hottest and two coldest regions, and so on,

Researchers measured the strengths of hun-

dreds of harmonics and plotted them

called power spectrum, the cosmological

equivalent of musical notation specifying

which notes to play louder or softer

‘The WMAP team then tried to match this

spectrum to the predictions of cosmological

theory They found they could do just that if

“Cosmology may look like

a science, but it isn’t a

science” because it's

impossible to do repeatable

Princeton University

the universe is precisely 13.7 billion years old and flatter than an Illinois cornfield It also hhas to contain 4% ordinary matter; 23% dark matter, which has revealed itself only through its gravity: and 73% space-stretching dark energy, which is currently accelerat- ing the expansion of the universe (Science,

19 December 2003, p 2038) The power spectrum also rises and dips in several places, revealing how sound waves rip-

pled through the tod- dler universe Infla- tionary theory pre- dicted the nature of the bumps and wig- gles, and the WMAP

data fit the predictions precisely says Charl Bennett, a cosmolo- sist at Johns Hopkins University in Balti-

‘more, Maryland, and leader of the WMAP team: “It certainly was a major victory for inflationary cosmology:

‘ania, reported in Physical Review D that the hot and cold spots of the octopole pattern are arrayed around a single axis abit like the pan- cls on a basketball Moreover, thisaxis appears

to line up with a similar axis for the quadru- pole They estimated the chances that the alignment is a fluke at | in 66

‘A few months later, another team found

‘more curious alignments The axis defined by the quadrupole and the octopole lies in the plane of the solar system, known as the eclip- tic, and points toward the equinoxes, the two points on Earth’ orbit at which night and day are equal length all over the planet, reported Glenn Starkman of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Dominik Schwarz of the Uni-

venity of Bielefeld in Germany, and col- leagues in Physical Review Letters

Then, in 2005, Oxford's Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College London reported that the next two har- monies also appear to

be aligned with the

‘quadrupole and octo- pole They interpreted

SCIENCE

NEWSFOCI

thatas possible evidence that the universe isin fact arrayed around a special axis If that were true, the cosmological principle would go out the window The alignments are all the more suggestive because they involve the broadest undulations on the microwave sky, Land says:

“If there were something odd cosmologically, this is where you'd expectit to kick in.”

Many are skeptical “If you look at a data set in 1000 different ways, you expect to find something that’s unusual at the 1-in-1000 level,” WMAP leader Bennett says Some sus- pect that the axis may be an illusion produced

by an unaccounted bias in how the satellite works And even those who have studied the alignments note that exactly how unlikely they appear depends on which mathematical tools researchers use to analyze them Still, many are taking it seriously “I would say that with a bit more than 99% confidence you can say there's something strange,” Schwarz says

Axis-stential musings Assuming theaxisis more than ameasurement error, whatt new physics might it point to? The

‘most conservative explanation is that the align-

‘ments reflect contamination from some nearby stuff that either emits or absorbs microwaves, Researchers already have to filter out the reground” microwave glare from the disk

of the galaxy A signal originating within the solar system might explain the connection to the ecliptic—although that would be far more likely if the axis ran parallel to the axis of the solar system, not perpendicular to it

Such a foreground would be sexier than it sounds at first, Starkman says At the least, it

‘would reveal new astrophysics, perhaps some really bizarre form of dust Moreover, the pres- ence of a foreground from the solar system

‘would most likely only bolster the case for the cosmic axis, he says Strange though it may sound, compensating for such a foreground

‘would probably accentuate the oddities “The chances are that when you subiract it, the data will agree even less well with the theory than

Poles apart The axis of evil (poles marked red) lies almost perpendicular to the

solar system's axis (poles marked blue) and far from the galactic axis

VOL 317 28SEPTEMBER 2007

0:

1849

i NEWSFOCUS

1850

they do now.” Starkman says

By far the most exciting possibility is that

the axis indicates that the universe is stranger

than cosmologists have assumed For exam-

ple, the universe could whip up such an axis

if space had an odd shape, such asa torus that

wraps around and reconnects to itself “If

‘you want to explain the axis of evil, the eas:

est way would be to say that our universe isa

lot like [the video game] Asteroids, where if

‘you go off the screen on one side, you come

back on the other,” Tegmark says Others

have proposed weirder shapes or suggested

that the whole universe could be spinning

around the axis

None of these tantalizing ideas has bowled

researchers over, however Tegmark and

de Oliveira-Costa’s doughnut universe clashes

with other observational constraints Ifthe uni-

verse wraps around in such a way, then

researchers should see faint matching circles in

the CMB onopposite sides ofthe sky (Science,

2 June 2001, p, 2237) But none have been

found Other models suffer similar problems

“It Stough because on one hand, I’m onthe side

of saying that this may be telling us something.”

‘Starkman says “On the other hand, so far I'm

unconvinced by the ideas that have been put

forward for what this might be telling us.”

Of course, the axis could just bea fluke, a

coincidence produced by primordial quan-

‘tum fluctuations in our particular Hubble vol-

ume Although Albert Einstein insisted that

“God does not play dice”—so often that oth-

crs tired of hearing it—theorists now think

that in making the cosmos, the metaphorical

creator rolled the bones once and walked

away Perhaps, like troubled gamblers, some

cosmologists read too much into the fact that

he tossed 2 and a3

One thing is certain: Cosmologists will

never figure out what the axis of evil is by

remeasuring the CMB Researchers have measured the temperature variations in the CMB so precisely that the biggest uncertainty now stems from the fact that we see the microwave sky for only one Hubble volume,

an uncertainty called cosmic variance “We've done the measurement,” Bennett says “Its not

‘going to get any better”

The geology of the cosmos Tobe sure, many things remain to be measured

But cosmic variance could ultimately pinch other sorts of studies, such as galaxy surveys

Researchers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are using a 2.S-meter telescope

at Apache Pointe, New Mexico, to map everything they can see in a quarter of the sky and have spotted

80 million galaxies

so far The proposed 8.4-meter Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) aims to tally 3 billion, By the middle of the century, researchers likely will have surveyedall 100 il- lion bright galaxies in our Hubble volume, says Michael Tumer, a cosmologist at the University

‘tuations also spawned the dark matter filaments, which in turn seeded the galaxies Even with LSST, some of those studies will buttagainstthe limits of cosmic variance, says Lloyd Knox of the University of California, Davis

Going my way? The CMB quadrupole (top lef), octopote (top right), and the next two multipoles The ed dots

‘mark their symmetry axes, which appear to line up

“The fact that we can only see one Hubble volume has

not been an impediment

to understanding the origin

and evolution of the universe.”

University of Chicago

‘That barrier to knowledge, some argue, is cosmology’s Achilles’ heel Cosmology may look like a science, but it isn’t a science.” says James Gunn of Princeton University, co-founder of the Sloan survey “A basic tenet

of science is that you can do repeatable experi-

‘ments, and you can’t do that in cosmology’ Others don't see the problem “So far, the fact that we can only see one Hubble volume has not been an impediment to understanding the ori- gin and evolution of the universe,” Tuer says Some note that cosmic variance will limit

‘measurement of only the very largest features

of the universe and that studying the myr- iad smaller bumpsand wiggles may be more revealing anyway

all agree that cosmic variance highlights a definite limit to what cosmol- ogy can tell us “The goal of physics is to understand the basic dynamics of the universe.” Tumer says "Cos- mology isa little different The goalistorecon- struct the history of the universe.” Cosmology

is more akin to evolutionary biology or geol- ogy, he says, in which researchers must simply accept some facts as given For example, the theory of plate tectonies does not explain why Earth has precisely seven continents

‘That distinction may disappoint the many researchers who have come to cosmology by

‘way of physics, afield that prides itself on its rigor and unparalleled testability Many hope

to connect particle physics directly tothe birth and evolution of the universe to arrive at an all-encompassing theory that, at least statisti- cally, would allow them to mathematically derive the universe “I don’t like unexplained coincidences,” Tegmark says “Generally, 1

‘wantan explanation’

To get one for the axis, many say, researchers must press on concocting new models Others suggest looking for evidence

in galaxy surveys and other typesof

that the most promising route may be to develop theories that extend to the “multiverse” of Hubble volumes beyond our own (Science, 23 July 2004, p 464) and ask why the axis might help make our exis- tence in this one more likely

Al agree that, in the end, they may never know if the axis signifies anything “Let's face it: Nature might leave us wondering forever about certain questions,” Tegmark says We have only one universe, and in some ways per- haps it justi as it is

EDUCATION RESEARCH

U.S Says No to Next Global Test of

Advanced Math, Science Students

After U.S high school students did poorly on TIMSS in 1995, the government has

decided not to participate in another version to be given next year

In 1995, the United States lagged behind

most of the world ona test of advanced math-

ematics and physics taken by graduating

high school students from 16 countries That

‘won't happen again, if the Bush Administra

tion has its way: Ithas decided not to partici-

pate in the next version of the test

ional Center for Education Statis

), part of the U.S Department of

titute of Education Sciences

s bowing out of 2008 TIMSS-

‘A, an advanced version of the Trends in

International Mathematics and Sci-

ence Study given quadrennially to

younger students, because it can’t

Fit the $5 million to $10 million

price tag into its flat budget Offi

cials also question whether the tar-

get cohort —students finishing sec-

ondary school who have taken

advanced mathematics and

physics courses—is comparable

around the world

But many leaders in the mathe-

matics community believe that

the Administration opted out

because it feared another poor

U.S performance would reflect

badly on its signature education program,

the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act While

advocates of the test look for other sources

of funding, Science has learned that the

National Board for Education Sciences,

which advises IES, will ask for a review of

the decision next month

International tests have proliferated in

recent years as countries seek ways to m

ure how well they are preparing students for

jobs in a global economy And although

fourth- and eighth-grade U.S students have

performed adequately on the TIMMS tests,

high school seniors have not In 1995, the last

that cohort was measured, U.S students

topped only Austria in advanced math and

ranked dead last in physics

Planning for 2008 TIMSS-A began in

2006 at the urging of Norway and Sweden

Although 16 countries participated in the

first test, only nine—the two proponents plus

Russia, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Iran,

Lebanon, and Armenia—have ponied up for

Leaders from the U.S mathematical co munity, including the National Council of

Teachers of Mathematics and the American Mathematical Society, are up in arms at the department's decision, first reported last month by the newspaper Education Week

They argue that this elite group of students needs to be monitored because they are most likely to major in STEM (science, technol- ogy, engineering, and mathematics) fields in college and become the next generation of scientists and engineers, “It's inconceivable tome that the government wouldn't fund our participation.” says Stanford mathematician

R James Milgram, a member of the IES advisory board that expects to take up the issue at its 30 to 31 October meeting “The

1995 test was extremely important in show- ing thata problem exists,” he notes “And the only way to know if we're beginning to turn things around is by looking at new data to see

if we've made any progress.”

In defending their decision, NCES offi- cials note that they are already supporting

(0⁄33)5637L7E)x345(x)+1549.3523(x23)(47

NEWSFOCUS L

lar 2007 TIMSS for fourth and eighth graders, a fourth-grade reading exam, a math and science assessment of 15-year- olds, and a planned survey of adult literacy

They say that USS, students may be at a dis- advantage because some TIMSS-A test takers from other countries are older and may have specialized in math and science during the latter part of their secondary school years In addition, says NCES associ- ate commissioner Valerie Plisko, whose office manages the various international assessments, “we typically do not bench-

‘mark against these countries.”

But those explanations don’t pass muster with critics TIMSS-A “is not just a horse race,” responds Patsy Wang-lverson, coordi- nator of the group advocating US partieipa- tion and also vice president of the Gabriella and Paul Rosenbaum Foundation in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, which supports mathe- matics education She says there is much that U.S educators can learn from look- ing more closely at this population “A

lot has changed since 1995,” she

“Students are taking more math and science and more AP [advanced placement] courses, and TIMSS-A provides us with a wonderful opportunity to evaluate their performance If we don't do itnow, we'll lose track of an entire generation of reform efforts.”

After NCES bowed out, offi- cials at the National Science Foun- dation (NSF) asked the

tional Testing Service Princeton, New Jersey, to propose how it would administer TIMSS-A ETS's approach also would have laid the foundation for a longitudinal study of these advanced

‘math and science students But this summer, NSF officials declined to fund the proposal after reviewers raised questions about the tar- get population and ETS's ability to improve onthe disappointingly low levels of U.S par ticipation in the 1995 test “Weld have to do more work to resolve those issues.” admits ETS’ Michael Nettles,

Michael Martin, co-director of the Boston College-based center that manages the international TIMMS-A assessment, says the group is on schedule to administer TIMMS-A next spring in participating coun- tries and report the results by the end of 2009, Any change of heart by U.S officials, he adds, won't alter that time frame “We are sad that the United States won't be participat-

1852

BIOSAFETY BREACHES

Accidents Spur a Closer Look at

Risks at Biodefense Labs

Failure to report a Brucella infection and other problems at a Texas university have

microbiologists searching for ways to ensure safety and public trust

An unreported infection with a dangerous

pathogen and other biosafety breaches at a

‘Texas university are fueling an already heated

debate about safety at U.S biodefense labs

The problems at Texas A&M University in

College Station, which led federal officials to

shut down the university's biodefense research

this summer, follow a spate of accidents at

other U.S, labs in the past few years They also

coincide with the accidental rel f

and-mouth virus from a research facility in the

United Kingdom that has shown the potential

economic devastation that can result if a

pathogen escapes These events are bringing

new urgency to a question raised

soon after the United States began

pouring money into biodefense

research after the 2001 anthrax

attacks: Are the nation’s biodefense

labs safe enough?

“Proponents insist there is a

clean safety record Thatis simply

wrong Withsomeagents, it could

have catastrophic consequences,”

says microbiologist Richard

Ebright of Rutgers University in

Piscataway, New Jersey, a critic of

the biodefense expansion

Although other scientists and

biosafety experts say the exten-

sive breakdown in procedures at

Texas A&M is probably excep-

tional, they too worry that many

incidents are going unreported

Next week, a congressional com-

The scrutiny is sending tremors through

university administrators and the microbiol- ogy community, which is struggling with how

to both ensure safety and gain the public’s trust One idea under discussion is an anony-

mous national accident reporting system that

would enable institutions to learn from one another's mistakes

2002, 2003: £ coli 0157:H7 infections in two USDA labs 2004: Three workers infected with tularemia, Boston University 2004: Ebola needle stick (no infection), USAMRIID

2004: Anthrax exposure (no infec 2004: Valley fever (C immitis) infection, Medical College of Ohio

Redundancy A postive-pressure “space suit” isone

of several precautions used to protect workers from the deadliest pathogens ina biosafety level 4 lab highest level used to study the most danger- ous pathogens Community support will also likely play a role in which of five competing sites wins a planned $450 million BSL-4 national agro-biodefense lab funded by the Department of Homeland Security

Some infectious disease experts worry that public hysteria fueled by watchdog groups over even relatively minor lab inci- dents will paradoxically make it harder to establish the atmosphere of trust that is essen- tial to running a safe lab “To ring all the bells and bring out the fire trucks is counter- productive,” says virologist Clarence 1 Peters

of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston But there is room for improvement, he adds: “One of the biggest problems is transparency I think we're all going to have to get past that:

To be sure, biosafety has come a long way in the past few decades Before then, “there weren't a whole lot of rules, just alot of com-

‘mon sense” about how torun an infectious dis ease lab, says virologist Charles Calisher of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who says the biosafety officer's main message was:

“Put that cigarette out; no more mouth pipet- ting.” Peters notes that there were thousands of lab-acquired infections before the 1970s, when labs began installing hoods, shields around centrifuges, and other safeguards In 1984, the

US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta,

Georgia, produced the first edition ofa guidebook, called Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL), that pooled researchers’ experiences and is, now considered the Bible of safety Oversight became stricter after 2001 when federal agen- cies beefed up a regulation, called the select-agent rule, for the handling of pathogens such

as anthrax and the Ebola virus that are potential bioweapons The rule requires that lab work- ers get a security clearance for working on the roughly 80 select agents and toxins; that select- agent labs be inspected and workers undergo training; and that lab exposures and losses of select agents be reported to

CDC About 14,000 people at 400 labs now

have select-agent authorization

To date, the most serious biosafety breaches

have occurred outside the United States, such

as several SARS infections in Asia in 2003 and

2004 that killed one researcher and infected

several people outside the laband the death of'a

Russian lab worker from Ebola in 2004 And

some potential exposures—such as animal

bites, needle sticks, and glove tears—are

inevitable, U.S, biosafety experts say One of

the worst recent accidents occurred at the US

‘Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious

Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland, where a

worker was exposed to the Ebola virus but

didn’t become infected Others (sce table,

p 1852) involved shipments of

pathogens labeled nonpathogenic

that turned out to be virulent That

happened with tularemia in Boston

University in 2004, where three

‘workers were infected The incident

‘was reported to local authorities

and made public only after delays,

adding to criticism of the proposed

Boston BSL lab (Science, 28 Jan-

uuary 2005, p 501)

The problems at Texas A&M,

however, may be the most egre-

ious to date, They first emerged

in April when the school belatedly

reported to CDC that in February

2006, a worker was infected with

Brucella bacteria, a pathogen com-

‘mon in livestock that causes fever

fatal This incident, like many oth- Cepeatinat— ỔaeviemD

ers, was brought to light through Bealeylenl4 9, Bote tet

public records requests by Edward

Hammond of the Sunshine Pro-

ject, a watchdog group in Austin,

§ Texas In June, after the Sunshine

2 had tested positive for antibodies to the

Q feverpathogen, CDC shut downall of Texas

A&M'sselect-agent work In an August inves-

ion, CDC inspectors found a dozen seri

ous violations, including unapproved exper

‘ments, lost simples, improper safety training,

and lab workers without select-agent authori-

zation (Science, 14 September, p 1487)

Some observers suggest the Q fever anti-

2 body tests were nota major issue; none of the

‘workers became ill, and two were apparently

exposed before they joined the lab, But the

Brucella case, which happened when a

worker leaned into an aerosol chamber to

clean it, isa clear violation of safe practices:

The chamber should have been decontami-

nated with gas first, says Jonathan Rich-

mond, a consultant in Southport, North Car-

‘weren't publicly disclosed He says they sug-

‘gest other significant mishaps are hidden Researchers and biosecurity experts say serious infections would be difficult to hide from CDC But some agree there is probably underreporting of mild infections and potential exposures Workers who make a mistake are often embarrassed and may fear angering their supervisor, and institutions worry about the damage to their reputation, says Richmond

“It's been a problem for a long time,” he says

Supporting that suspicion, CDC, which has recorded about 20 accident reports a year since

2004, has received 32 reports since April 2007, possibly because of the publicity about Texas A&M, saysa CDC spokesperson

Although the multiple protocol violations

at Texas A&M may be the exception, less extensive violations are not A 2006 Depart- ment of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General audit of security proce- dures found that 11 of 15 institutions had

“serious weaknesses” such as unlocked doors and freezers and lax inventory records Janet Shoemaker, public affairs director for the American Society for Microbiology in Wash- ington, D.C., points out that schools have a strong incentive to adhere to the rules; since

NEWSFOCUS L

2003, the HHS Inspector General has levied fines ranging from $12,000 to $150,000 on nine research institutions and companies for breaches such as unapproved select-agent shipments Texas A&M is facing fines as high

as $500,000 for each violation

No public menace

‘One point of agreement among most scientists

is that however scary these incidents sound

the mention of Eboia virus conjures the 1995 movie Outbreak, for example—the risk to the Publicis very low for most pathogens, fortwo reasons First, there have been no known envi-

ronmental escapes from BSL-4 labs since the

early 1980sandonly two workersareknownto

Proliferation Critics are worried about the potential for infections and escapes at biosafety level 4 (BSL) labs (ive existing, atsixleast planned) and 84 existing and new BSL-3 biodefense labs, as compiled here by the Sunshine Project

have become infected in BSL labs, both out- side the United States Workers have many lay ers of protection, including positive-pressure

‘and realize the hazards of work- ing with pathogens studied in BSL labs, for which, by definition, there are no treatments

Second, even if an agent studied in a BSL-4 lab did escape, most, with the excep- tion of smallpox (which can only be studied at CDC), are not very transmissible Anthrax doesn’t spread person to person, for example, Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers that have killed hundreds in Africa would likely never cause an outbreak in Western countries because hygiene and medical treatments are

so much better, says Peters, (He also notes that many select agents, such as anthrax and

Q fever, occur commonly in nature, so people

i NEWSFOCUS

1854

can get infected without coming anywhere

near a biodefense lab.)

Some scientists and biosafety experts are

more worried about risks at BSL-3 labs

because the standards at these labs are not as

stringent But even most of these pathogens-

with the exception of SARS, avian influenza,

and 1918 flu—are not very communicable,

and in any case vaccines and other treatments

are available At most, says infectious disease

modeler Ira Longini of the University of

Washington, Seattle, “the result could be a

handful of cases and maybe deaths.” Another

exception is foot-and-mouth disease, which

doesn’t infect humans but is extremely conta-

gious among animals; the escape in the United

Kingdom, which has been tied to an outdated

effluent treatment system, would be unlikely

to occur at more modern facilities in the

United States, Richmond says

worries that the “hysteria and witch

by people like Hammond of the Sunshine Project is compromising safety by

making lab workers worry that reporting

potential exposures will get them fired “Peo-

ple can’t be terrified to report,” agrees Jean

Patterson of the Southwest Foundation for

Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas,

which runs a BSL-4 lab,

So how can biosafety be improved? One pro-

posal is an anonymous, mandatory reporting

system for all laboratory accidents Such a

system would enable labs to learn from one

anothers mistakes, as do the data compiled

‘on aviation accidents by the National Trans-

portation Safety Board, says Gigi Kwik

Gronvall of the Center for Biosecurity of the

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in

Baltimore, Maryland, who co-authored a

paper describing this proposal earlier this

year in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism “Other

industries have gone through this,” says

Gronvall The system would also capture lab

exposures to pathogens not on the select-

agent list, such as HIV and tuberculosis

Reporting these to NIH or CDCis notmanda-

tory, Rutgers's Ebright notes

But some microbiologists caution that

reportable incidents should be well-defined,

lest the system become glutted with minor

mishaps (Peters cites UTMB'S recent deci

sion to release, at a community group's

5 years.) Also important, says biosafety con-

sultant W, Emmett Barkley of Bethesda,

Maryland, reports should include not just

bare facts but analysis, as CDC now provides

for selected lab accidents in its Morbidity and

Mortality Weekly Report

‘A more radical idea is to require that BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs be licensed by the federal gov- ernment This would mean that all these labs, not just those working on select agents, would

be inspected and they would be required to follow the same operating procedures One supporter of this proposal, biosecurity expert Anthony Della-Porta of Geelong, Australia, says the problem now is that BMBL offers only general guidance Others, such as Barkley, say institutions need flexibility, espe- cially the many BSL-3 labs that don’t do biodefense work

analysis on whether all of the six planned

BSL-4 and two dozen new BSL-3 bio-

defense labs are actually necessary to pro-

tect the nation from bioterrorism (see map) Says Gronvall: “Is there too much [bio- defense research]? Without seeing the plan

Shard to sa

~JOCELYN KAISER

Setting the Forest Alight

To validate satellite data for carbon-emissions modeling, researchers this summer torched a jack-pine forest in Canada and tried to ignite a stand of larch in Siberia

KODINSK, RUSSIA—In July, as temperatures soared during a heat wave in eastern Siberia, scores of large fires flared through the region's dense pine forests For 500 kilo- meters along the Amur River northwest of Lake Baikal, thick smoke blanketed the wildern

airborne forest fire fighting service, Aviale- sookhrana, were tracking the wildfires

at an airbase here in Kodinsk, a small city

on the Amur They were tense To them

it seemed bizarre that a team of inter- national scientists had received permis sion to burn a patch

of nearby forest

Even with every local helicopter and plane conscripted to serve their firefighting crews, millions of dollars’ worth of timber was going up

to help them if they lose control.”

Sixty kilometers to the west at the experi- mental site, a group of Russian, American, and Canadian researchers hoped to set a test fire that would thoroughly burn a hectare-sized patch of larch forest, Siberia’s dominant conifer Their aim was to quantify carbon

Safe distance Douglas McRae checks out a gap in

a pine forest during an experimental burn in

emissions from fires in larch forests across Siberia, now inadequately documented, according to Douglas McRae, a forest-fire researcher with the Canadian Forest Service McRae has been conducting experimental burns in Canada and Russia since 199 as part of project FIRE BEAR (Fire Effects in the Boreal Eurasia Region), a research program aimed at studying forest-fire behavior, eco- logical effects, emissions, carbon cycling, and

remote sensing, Conceived in 1997, FIRE BEAR brings researchers from the

Agriculture (USDA) rest Service and the Canadian Forest Service together with colleagues at the

the Russian Academy

of Sciences’ (RAS'S) V.N Sukachev Insti- tute in Krasnoyarsk

As the group’s pre- vious studies have shown, extreme for- est fires are grow- ing more frequent in Siberia And some models predict that climate change will bring dramatic warming—and more for- est destruction—in eastern Siberia and other northern regions The experimen- tal burn, the FIRE BEAR team hoped, would yield direct observations to buttress satellite data and fill gaps in the models

28 SEPTEMBER 2007 VOL317 SCIENCE wwwscencemag.org

Ề Ễ

5

Flaming wildemess

The searing summer heat in Kodinsk pre-

sented a dilemma for the scientific team

“We want the larch to burn well in order to

obtain good data,” McRae explained, “but

we risk losing control if it burs a little too

well.” In the days leading up to the experi

mental burn, bulldozers hacked firebreak

lanes around the test patch, and researchers

wired the forest floor with probes to gauge

heat release, carbon emissions, and effects

on vegetation and microbes McRae had

‘good reason to be anxious In May, in simi-

lar weather, he and his FIRE BEAR col-

leagues conducted an experimental burn

near Sault Ste, Marie, Canada, in which a

hectare-sized patch of bone-dry jack-pine

forest fanned out of control That experi-

‘ment was meant to show how infrared tech-

nology can be used to estimate fuel con-

sumption and carbon emissions during

fires McRae and his colleagues hoped it

‘would help them gauge how Russian wild-

fires contribute to greenhouse gas em

sions (Russian security laws prevent

infrared filming from the air.)

Only minutes before the scientists

ignited the fire in Ontario, wind gusts unex-

pectedly blew through the treetops After

ignition, the entire test plot flared in an

explosive burst that melted computerized

‘monitoring equipment The equipment tech-

nicians got out unharmed with much of the

damaged, although still-functioning, gear

belonging to Martin Wooster, a geographer

at King’s College London,

‘Wooster believes that the amount of car-

bon emitted from wildfires every year is

possibly half that released by fossil-fuel con-

sumption, He has been traveling the world

collecting data to confirm his theory In the

Canadian test, he had an opportunity to

gather data at ground level and at 300 meters

above the fire in a helicopter Researchers

will use the observations to test the accuracy

of satellite data

While making an infrared film, Wooster

watched the test fire jump across the fire-

breaks around the experimental site Within

a few hours, more than 1400 hectares of

magnificent pine forests were ablaze

Water bombers, surveillance planes, and

Wooster's rented helicopter scrambled to

get the situation under control Wooster

came away with an impressive data haul

that will help to validate the usefulness of

infrared measurement, he said later But

Ontario forest officials were not pleased

strongly doubt they'll be quick to give per-

mission for more such experimental fires

future,” Wooster said

Foresters aren't the only ones to express doubts; Russian secu- rity officials have been wary, too Thanks to

an infusion of fund- 1g from the Inter- national Science and Technology Center in Moscow, which sup- ports nonmilitary collaboration between Western scientists and those within the Russ- ian weapons com- plex, FIRE BEAR has attracted former- Soviet military experts

in remote sensing Other scientists have joined including members of the Siber- ian RASS Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion in Novosibirsk, as well as

US researchers funded by NASA

‘Some Russians have complained of being arrested and undergoing harrowingly long

interviews, says Anatoly Sukhinin, a remote- sensing expert who joined FIRE BEAR after acareer in the Soviet military “I still spend a fair amount of my time explaining our work

to the police.” complained Sukhinin, sitting

in his laboratory in Krasnoyarsk, which NASA helped equip to receive and interpret Siberian fire data beamed from American and Russian satellites “It doesn’t help that we're doing these experiments in a region which was until recently secret and still remains heavily militarized.”

Despite the hassles, the partnership seems to be paying off, In recent years, says Amber Soja, a research scientist with the USS National Institute of Aerospace, cur- rently resident in the Climate Dynamics branch of NASA‘ Langley Research Center

in Hampton, Virginia, FIRE BEAR papers have widened knowledge of Siberian forest fires and their global atmospheric effects In

1998, Brian Stocks of the Canadian Forest Service reported a positive correlation between climate-change impacts and a increase in the severity of Siberian fires A

2004 paper by Soja, along with McRae, Sukhinin, and Susan Conard of the USDA Forest Service, concluded that disparities in the amount of carbon stored in different for- est types and the severity of fires within them can affect total direct carbon emissions

by as much as 30% This is why they need specific data on larch fires, which emit less

Hot results A sudden gust of wind sent flames temporarily out of controt in a Canadian test area, but the fire produced terrific data

carbon than pine In extreme fire years, they found, total direct carbon emissions from wildfires can be 37% to 41% greater than in normal ones, because severer fires consume

‘more organic matter in the forest floor

Last year, Soja, Stocks, and Sukhinin pub- lished a review of predictions of climate- induced boreal forest change Four of seven models predict that warming in Siberia will

be 40% greater than the global mean, Soja spent several weeks at the FIRE BEAR camp near Kodinsk last summer, living in a tent and subsisting largely on tinned fish and buck- wheat cereal while comparing notes with her Canadian and Russian co-investigators in the run-up the test burn The predictions she co-reviewed, she says, are already coming true in Alaska, Canada, and Russia In Siberia, 7 of the last 9 years have resulted in extreme fire seasons, she explains Speaking from the camp, she said “If you are looking for climate-change impacts on forests, this is the place to be.”

On the day of the big test burn this sum- mer in Kodinsk, however, all predictions

‘went up in smoke Minutes after local fire crews ignited the perimeter of the experi- mental larch site with benzene, dark clouds suddenly appeared and rain doused the flames “You'd be surprised how often this sort of thing happens,” McRae said with a shrug “That's what you get for playing with fire.” The researchers, who still need the larch data, are already planning to torch a forest in Siberia next summer

~PAUL WEBSTER Paul Webster writs from Toronto, Canada

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the Subaru VIP Partners Program AAAS Members can save between $1,300 - $3,300* off the manufacturer's

suggested retail price (depending on model and accessories) on the purchase or lease of a new Subaru from

participating dealers To qualify, you must be a AAAS member in good standing for at least six consecutive months

prior to participation in this program Please contact AAAS Member Services at 202.326.6417 or e-mail

‘membership@aaas.org BEFORE visiting your local Subaru dealer Access subaru.com to find a nearby dealer or learn

more about Subaru vehicles

“Limited time offer subject to change without notice Terms and contions apply This offer eplaces al previous VP offers ands not applicable in Hawai and Puerto Rico "Available

‘onall25 GT and 3.0 R models "MSRP excludes destination and delivery charges, taxi an registration fees Dealer ets actual price 2008 Subaru Legacy 30 pictured above hasan MSRP of $31,295,