Contents
Vol 327, Issue 5972
Contents
This Week in Science
Editorial
Editors' Choice
Podcasts
- Science Podcast
The show includes the biology behind learning deficits at puberty, a 3D invisibility cloak, and the Nile delta's sinking future.
Products & Materials
- New Products
A weekly roundup of information on newly offered instrumentation, apparatus, and laboratory materials of potential interest to researchers.
News of the Week
- Budget Red Tape in Europe Brings New Delay to ITER
The projected start of the ITER fusion reactor in France looks set to slip by another 10 months. The new completion date is now November 2019.
- Silicon Mystery Endures in Solved Anthrax Case
Scientists say there is clear evidence that the high levels of silicon found in the anthrax used in the 2001 letter attacks came not from anything added to "weaponize" the anthrax spores but from the culture in which the spores were grown. So why did the mailed anthrax have such a high proportion of spores with a silicon signature in comparison to most other anthrax samples?
- Beyond DSM: Seeking a Brain-Based Classification of Mental Illness
Harnessing knowledge gained from modern research in neuroscience and genetics to improve the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders was a major impetus for undertaking a revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
- Budget Shortfall Could Derail Plans for Underground Lab
A tight budget and unanticipated safety problems are threatening to kill plans to convert an abandoned gold mine in South Dakota into a $750 million deep underground science and engineering laboratory.
- MIT Engineering Dean Tapped to Head NSF
The dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Subra Suresh, is in line to become the next director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Science has learned.
- Hardy Cotton-Munching Pests Are Latest Blow to GM Crops
Monsanto has revealed that a common insect pest has developed resistance to its flagship genetically modified (GM) product in India. Monsanto claims that the finding "is the first case of field-relevant resistance to Cry1Ac products, anywhere in the world."
- China Amasses War Chest to Confront Its Environmental Nightmares
In a nod to rising public expectations, China's government work plan for 2010, rolled out last week at the country's two major annual political powwows, puts the environment front and center.
- Fresh Momentum for China's Science Juggernaut
Science won high praise and a hefty budget boost at last week's meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Central government spending on science and technology is slated to rise 8% to $24 billion in 2010.
- From Science's Online Daily News Site
ScienceNOW reported this week that psychopaths may be hypersensitive to rewards, which may create a pathological drive for money, sex, and status; a proposed carbon-capture method could poison oceans; a way to finger criminals from their skin bacteria; and the successful identification of the memory a person is recalling by analyzing their brain activity; among other stories.
- Polish Science Reforms Bring Fear and Hope
The Polish Parliament this month began voting on legislation creating a new national agency charged with distributing competitive grants for frontier research.
- Male Rivalry Extends to Sperm in Female Reproductive Tract
Two papers published by Science this week, one on work in ants and bees and the other on work in fruit flies, demonstrate that sperm competition between males continues even after the sperm enters the female.
- From the Science Policy Blog
ScienceInsider reported this week that congressional supporters of stem cell research have introduced legislation to codify President Barack Obama's 2009 executive order, which lifted restrictions on the number of human embryonic stem cell lines available to federally funded researchers, among other stories.
Random Samples
News Focus
- The Nile Delta's Sinking Future
Climate change and damming the Nile are threatening Egypt's agricultural oasis.
- Lucky Glimpses of a Weirdly Wetter Moon
At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, scientists flying a ground-penetrating radar on India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter reported a distinctive radar signature from the interiors but not the surroundings of more than 40 small craters in the north polar region, suggesting ice.
- Coaxing Out Another Taste of the Sun
At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, team members of the Genesis mission, which returned atomic bits of the sun and thus samples of the solar system's primordial material, confirmed their measurement of the isotopic composition of the solar wind's oxygen and reported an isotopic composition for solar-wind nitrogen.
- Spirit Is Willing, Though Weak
At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, there was talk of resurrecting the Spirit rover, which has been stuck since January, or at least a realistic prospect of a return to limited mobility. NASA missions are indeed hard to kill.
- Snapshots From the Meeting
Snapshots from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference include the discovery of its first candidate bits of mineral born around distant stars and considerable progress in making sense of the odd shape of the moon.
Letters
Books et al.
- Sailing on an Ocean of 0s and 1s
This set of essays from researchers and computer scientists describes the prospects and possibilities of data-intensive science.
- Programming to Forget
Mayer-Schönberger explores a range of concerns arising from the fact that information technology makes us less able to forget our pasts.
Policy Forum
- China, India, and the Environment
Cooperation between China and India can curtail biodiversity loss, mitigate climate change, and reduce deforestation.
Perspectives
- Setting the Trap for Reactive Resonances
A combined quantum mechanical calculation and molecular beam study has succeeded in detecting elusive metastable quantum states.
- Phenology Under Global Warming
In most temperate tree species, phenological events such as flowering and autumnal cessation of growth are not primarily controlled by temperature.
- Controlling Turbulence
Injecting a fluid jet into a pipe at an optimized location can control the development of turbulent flow.
- AMPA Receptors—Another Twist?
A protein expressed in brain controls the plasticity of synaptic transmission by regulating the properties of a neurotransmitter receptor.
- Toward Organic All-Optical Switching
A sophisticated molecular design method yields an organic material for possible application in high-speed, all-optical communication.
- Fairness in Modern Society
What features of a society motivate individuals to behave fairly?
- Expanding the Repertoire of Shape Memory Alloys
An iron alloy may open up new applications for strong materials that are also capable of large reversible shape changes.
Reviews
Research Article
- Markets, Religion, Community Size, and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment
The origins of modern social norms and behaviors may be found in the evolution of institutions.
Reports
- Design of Polymethine Dyes with Large Third-Order Optical Nonlinearities and Loss Figures of Merit
Nonlinear optical materials are designed and characterized for potential applications in all-optical switching.
- Ferrous Polycrystalline Shape-Memory Alloy Showing Huge Superelasticity
A shape-memory alloy has been prepared with high mechanical energy absorption capability and reversible magnetization change.
- Eliminating Turbulence in Spatially Intermittent Flows
Injection of jets of water is used to control the transition from laminar to turbulent flow in pipes.
- Microcavity Laser Oscillating in a Circuit-Based Resonator
An ultrasmall laser is fabricated from conventional electronic components combined with an amplifying medium.
- The Climatic Signature of Incised River Meanders
Typhoon frequency and bedrock strength influence river meandering in mountain environments.
- Transition-State Spectroscopy of Partial Wave Resonances in the F + HD Reaction
Spectroscopy can distinguish the reaction paths in a collision between an atom and a diatomic system.
- Mechanosensitive Self-Replication Driven by Self-Organization
The type of mechanical agitation applied to a solution influences which of two molecular products dominate.
- Seminal Fluid Mediates Ejaculate Competition in Social Insects
Substances produced by rival male social insects destroy sperm, and females produce compounds to counteract sperm loss.
- Patterns of Diversity in Marine Phytoplankton
Highest diversity occurs in physically dynamic mid-latitude zones, and lowest diversity and highest biomass occur toward the poles.
- Unicellular Cyanobacterial Distributions Broaden the Oceanic N2 Fixation Domain
Nitrogen fixation in the South Pacific Ocean is partitioned among several microbe species with distinct ecophysiologies.
- A Critical Role for α4βδ GABAA Receptors in Shaping Learning Deficits at Puberty in Mice
Learning incapacity observed during puberty is related to receptor location in the hippocampus.
- CKAMP44: A Brain-Specific Protein Attenuating Short-Term Synaptic Plasticity in the Dentate Gyrus
A synaptic protein that regulates postsynaptic AMPA receptor responses has been cloned and functionally characterized.
- Circadian Gating of the Cell Cycle Revealed in Single Cyanobacterial Cells
Modeling and observation of cyanobacteria show entrainment of the cell cycle by their biological clock.
