News of the Week
News Focus

News of the Week

AIDS MEETING:
South African Leader Declines to Join the Chorus on HIV and AIDS

Jon Cohen

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA--When South African President Thabo Mbeki rose to address the opening ceremony for the XIII International AIDS Conference here last Sunday, the thousands of researchers packed into Kingsmead Stadium hoped he would say three simple words: HIV causes AIDS. He didn't. Mbeki's failure to acknowledge directly that HIV causes AIDS has angered the country's AIDS researchers; many visiting scientists also expressed their dismay.

[Full Text]

ECOLOGY:
California Algae May Be Feared European Species

Jocelyn Kaiser

A volleyball-court-sized patch of bright green algae in a San Diego lagoon has set off alarm bells among ecologists and officials. Scientists strongly suspect that the algae, Caulerpa taxifolia, is the same fast-growing, non-native clone that has swept over the northwestern Mediterranean sea floor in the past decade with devastating ecological consequences. A consortium of agencies and private groups has cordoned off the lagoon and is laying plans to poison the seaweed, marking the first major U.S. attempt to stop an incipient marine species invasion.

[Full Text]

SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING:
Publish and Perish in the Internet World

Eliot Marshall

NEW YORK CITY--When 120 leaders in publishing and biomedicine met here last week to talk about the Internet's effect on scholarly journals, it didn't take long for disagreements to surface. Participants clashed over two very different visions of the future--one predicting that private firms will continue to produce the most reliable and readable journals, the other that scientists will soon abandon traditional journals and share results directly with other researchers on the Internet.

[Full Text]

ARTHRITIS:
A Gene for Smooth-Running Joints

Michael Hagmann

A new study on page 265 of this issue suggests that a genetic defect in mice causes the joint's cartilage cells to pump insufficient amounts of pyrophosphate--a natural water softener--into the joint cleft, and this in turn leads to the formation of bony spurs that eventually stiffen the joints completely. Because humans have an almost identical gene, and disorders such as osteoarthritis also feature an abnormal outgrowth of bones, some arthritis researchers are hopeful that these new findings may point the way toward a new class of pyrophosphate-based drugs similar to the antiscaling chemicals in washing powders and toothpaste. But, as many of the researchers point out, the numerous roads that lead to human joint degradation make a single cure-all unlikely.

[Full Text]

U.K. FUNDING:
New Program Supports Facilities, Stipends

Richard Stone

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.--British scientists are celebrating a $1.7 billion windfall, announced last week by the U.K. government, to shore up deteriorating facilities and raise stipends for Ph.D. students. The 2-year spending boost is intended to keep the pool of British science well stocked, both by attracting more talented students into the field and stemming the flow of scientists out of the country. But the benefits are not spread evenly across the research spectrum.

[Full Text]

PARTICLE PHYSICS:
CERN Collider Glimpses Supersymmetry--Maybe

Charles Seife

Last week, particle physicists at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland announced that by smashing together matter and antimatter in four experiments, they detected an unexpected effect in the sprays of particles that ensued. The anomaly is subtle, and physicists caution that it might still be a statistical fluke. If confirmed, however, it could mark the long-sought discovery of a whole zoo of new particles--and the end of a long-standing model of particle physics.

[Full Text]

MOUNT GRAHAM:
Report Finds Squirrels Survived 3 Telescopes

Mark Muro

TUCSON, ARIZONA--In 1988 Congress allowed construction of three telescopes on Mount Graham, a desert "sky island" northeast of here, prompting the U.S. Forest Service to order a long-range study to monitor the population of an endangered subspecies of red squirrel that lives here. The results are now in. But the findings--that the work to date has had "no significant effect" on the rare rodents--have done little to resolve a debate that is expected to heat up again next year when the University of Arizona seeks permission to build four more telescopes.

[Full Text]

EUROPEAN SCIENCE:
Pathogens Lab Chief Stripped of Duties

Michael Balter

PARIS--Europe's most advanced high-security pathogen lab has claimed its first human casualty--and it hasn't even opened for business. On 28 June, the Marcel Mérieux Foundation, which funded the construction of the $8 million facility in Lyons, banned lab director Susan Fisher-Hoch from the premises and launched legal proceedings to dismiss her. Fisher-Hoch's most egregious offense, it appears, was speaking with the press.

[Full Text]

EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY:
Chewed Leaves Reveal Ancient Relationship

Elizabeth Pennisi

On page 291, researchers describe a new beetle fossil based not on traces of the insect skeleton but on the distinctive gouges the beetles left when they munched on 11 ginger leaves many millions of years ago. The chew marks of the newly described Cephaloleichnites strongi prove that leaf beetles underwent rapid evolution and diversification more than 65 million years ago, possibly taking advantage of (and perhaps influencing) the rapid diversification among flowering plants occurring at the same time. What's more, C. strongi represents the earliest known rolled-leaf beetle species, hundreds of which today still prefer just one of the ginger- and heliconia-like plants in the Zingiberales order.

[Full Text]

ECOLOGY:
When Fire Ants Move In, Others Leave

Elizabeth Pennisi

Researchers have uncovered new evidence about the long-range, and potentially long-term, ecological damage being wrought by an invasive species of fire ant. The red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta displaces other ant species and upsets the structures of native communities of ants--disruptions that appear to be permanent, they report in the July issue of Ecology Letters. The drop in biodiversity could represent a significant loss, experts note, because of the critical role ants play in recycling nutrients and other biological material.

[Full Text]
News Focus

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY:
Creation's Seventh Day

Robert F. Service

Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute are attempting to find out what life would look like if DNA contained more than four nucleotide bases and proteins more than 20 amino acids. By reengineering DNA, RNA, and the proteins that interact with them, they hope to create synthetic organisms with a chemical makeup fundamentally different from all life that has existed on Earth for the last 3.8 billion years. If they succeed, their biochemical reengineering could have a profound effect on everything from basic molecular biology to industrial chemistry.

[Full Text]

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY:
Tackling Biology With No Holds Barred, at 800 Miles Per Hour

Robert F. Service

Peter Schultz launched his academic career by exploring what made living organisms such powerful synthetic chemists. His work led him to conclude that the key to nature's success was its strategy of generating millions of possible chemical solutions to a problem and then screening for the ones that worked best. Now Schultz is applying this approach to working out the functions of the thousands of unknown genes being turned out by the world's genome projects.

[Full Text]

OIL OUTLOOK:
USGS Optimistic on World Oil Prospects

Richard A. Kerr

According to the latest estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey, the world has 20% more oil awaiting discovery in yet-to-be-found fields than the USGS estimated 6 years ago. And a newly analyzed category--oil lurking in and around known fields--offers almost as much additional oil as in those undiscovered reservoirs. But even if the additional oil is really there, pessimists argue that it pushes back the global production peak--and the end of the era of cheap oil--by years, not decades.

[Full Text]

ASTRONOMY:
The Virtual Observatory Moves Closer to Reality

Govert Schilling

Data from decades of observations by dozens of instruments may soon be accessible over the Internet, changing the way that astronomy is done around the world. The National Virtual Observatory will be an electronic web that gives astronomers access to terabytes of celestial data with the click of a mouse. The virtual observatory promises to make possible new analyses of the heavens by weaving together information from facilities around the world--and in space.

[Full Text]

ASTRONOMY:
Watch This Space!

Govert Schilling

Later this year, a site called SkyServer hopes to put the sky at your fingertips at www.skyserver.org. Initially aimed at a more general audience, SkyServer might become part of a National Virtual Observatory.

[Full Text]