News of the Week
News Focus

News of the Week

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY:
Arrest of Ex-Harvard Postdocs Raises Questions of Ownership

Andrew Lawler

BOSTON--Two former Harvard University researchers face up to 25 years in prison and a $750,000 fine for allegedly conspiring to steal Harvard-owned trade secrets and for shipping university property across state lines. The defendants were arrested last week and are in jail in California pending extradition to Massachusetts. But some researchers have expressed sympathy for the defendants and worry that the government is overreacting.

[Full Text] [PDF]

PALEONTOLOGY:
China Regains Fossils Seized in California

Ding Yimin and Erik Stokstad

BEIJING--Fourteen tons of Chinese fossils are back in their native country after a failed attempt to smuggle them into the United States. The shipment, which includes a 225-million-year-old ichthyosaur and a large number of exquisite crinoids--a kind of echinoderm called a sea lily--dating from the same period, arrived here earlier this month after being seized a year ago in San Diego, California.

[Full Text] [PDF]

COUNTERTERRORISM:
Academies Weigh In on Homeland Defense

David Malakoff

Get better organized, get more outside help, and get going--immediately. That's what the U.S. government must do to develop and deploy the technologies needed to fight terrorism, says a blue-ribbon scientific panel this week in a report likely to influence the shape of the Department of Homeland Security, proposed earlier this month by the White House. In particular, the panel says, the government needs a new institute to help it chart and coordinate counterterrorism research.

[Full Text] [PDF]

EXOPLANETS:
Winking Star Unveils Planetary Birthplace

Richard A. Kerr

A group of astronomers has stumbled on a newborn star whose protoplanetary disk has fortuitously set up a monitor of its own innermost workings. By simply measuring the star's brightness, researchers are seeing how a protoplanetary disk works. It's the closest, most detailed look at the cauldron of planet formation anyone is ever likely to have.

[Full Text] [PDF]

AGBIOTECH:
A Little Pollen Goes a Long Way

Erik Stokstad

A comprehensive study, described on page 2386, provides some hard numbers on the movement of pollen between fields, with implications for regulators of genetically modified (GM) crops. Ecologists report that canola pollen can travel considerable distances but that the amount of gene flow is minimal. Although the findings reinforce the difficulty of growing GM-free crops, they also suggest that the levels of gene diffusion are below European standards for contamination of conventional food.

[Full Text] [PDF]

CANCER RESEARCH:
Nanoparticles Cut Tumors' Supply Lines

Jennifer Couzin

On page 2404, a team reports erasing tumors in mice by packing a tiny particle with a gene that forces blood vessel cells to self-destruct and then "mailing" the particle to blood vessels feeding tumors. Researchers are enthusiastic about the new work, although they are treading gingerly around the landmines in cancer treatment, where hopes have been raised and dashed many times.

[Full Text] [PDF]

PATENTS:
NIH to Limit Scope of Foreign Patents

Jocelyn Kaiser

The National Institutes of Health plans to limit the future patent rights of all foreign recipients of grants and contracts to the awardee's own country and have NIH retain the rights elsewhere on the grounds that allowing foreigners patent rights could put U.S. companies at a "disadvantage." The proposal has sparked an uproar and even left U.S. university officials wondering how it might affect collaborations.

[Full Text] [PDF]

OPTICS:
New Twist Could Pack Photons With Data

Andrew Watson

Photons have long been known to spin, but it is also possible to give them an additional form of angular momentum, a sort of twist. A team of physicists in the United Kingdom has now devised a way to measure the twisting of single photons. In principle, physicists could use a photon's twist to load huge quantities of data onto a single photon, revolutionizing optical communications and quantum computing.

[Full Text] [PDF]

HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS:
CERN Panel Calls for Cuts and Shake-Ups

Giselle Weiss

GENEVA--It's official: CERN must slash other research projects in order to finish the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). That's the conclusion of a group tasked with reviewing the $2 billion megaproject, under construction here at the European laboratory for particle physics, in the wake of cost overruns disclosed last fall. And non-LHC projects might not be the only sacrificial lambs: CERN is coming under pressure to shake up its senior management.

[Full Text] [PDF]

ASTRONOMY:
Cosmic Lenses May Be Magnifying Quasars

Robert Irion

A new study predicts that so-called gravitational lenses are unexpectedly common for the most distant bodies that astronomers see: quasars near the fringes of the visible cosmos. Up to one-third of these remote beacons might be dramatically brightened by the gravity of matter along the way stretching, splitting, and contorting their images. The finding might help resolve a puzzle about how these enigmatic denizens of the early universe came to be.

[Full Text] [PDF]

CANADA:
Few Women Win New Academic Chairs

Wayne Kondro

OTTAWA--A new report shows that women are seriously underrepresented in a fledgling program to help Canada retain its best academic talent. In October 1999 the government committed $585 million to create 2000 new posts under the Canada Research Chairs program. A report looking at the first four classes shows that women, who represent 25% of the total academic pool, have received just under 15% of the 532 chairs.

[Full Text] [PDF]
News Focus

THERAPIES:
Confronting the Limits of Success

Jon Cohen

Six years ago, new cocktails of anti-HIV drugs transformed prospects for infected people in industrialized countries. Now, serious limitations have become apparent, including numerous long-term drug side effects and a rise in transmission of drug-resistant strains of HIV. As researchers prepare to gather in Barcelona, Spain, next week for the XIV International AIDS Conference, this special package looks at two pressing issues on the agenda: problems limiting the effectiveness of current treatments and puzzles over what kinds of immune responses might lead to vaccines.

[Full Text] [PDF]

THERAPIES:
Raising the Limits

Jon Cohen

The impressive flow of new anti-HIV drugs--10 have been approved in the past 6 years--is giving researchers hope that they can alleviate some of the problems with current therapies (see main text). But the array of choices can be bewildering for physicians. And it is only going to get more complicated.

[Full Text] [PDF]

THERAPIES:
The High Cost of Poverty

Jon Cohen

After the XIII International AIDS Conference finally focused attention on the tens of millions of HIV-infected people in poor countries who would soon die for lack of treatment, drug companies, the United Nations, and various public and private groups took steps to shrink the treatment gap between rich and poor. These efforts helped, no question about it; but formidable obstacles remain.

[Full Text] [PDF]

VACCINES:
Monkey Puzzles

Jon Cohen

Almost 2 decades after HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS, researchers are still debating which immune responses are likely to provide the best protection against the virus. The answer is proving elusive in part because experiments with monkeys are coming up with puzzling, even contradictory, data. As a growing number of vaccines move through the pipeline toward clinical trials, these experiments are raising serious questions about most of the vaccine approaches now being pursued.

[Full Text] [PDF]

PLANT GENETICS:
Something to Sniff At: Unbottling Floral Scent

Kathryn Brown

Many flowers, bred for stunning blossoms and long vase life, have all but lost their scent. Now plant biologists hope to bring back petal perfume by using modern genomics and classic biochemistry to master the molecular details of floral scent.

[Full Text] [PDF]

PLANT GENETICS:
Plants 'Speak' Using Versatile Volatiles

Kathryn Brown

The emerging biochemistry of floral scent confirms what researchers have long suspected: Plants are versatile perfumers, flinging similar--and in some cases, identical--chemicals into the air to turn organisms on or off, depending on the situation.

[Full Text] [PDF]