News of the Week
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News of the Week

SOLAR SYSTEM EXPLORATION:
France, Italy Threaten to Rain on Parade of Missions to Mars

Andrew Lawler

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA--A carefully crafted international program to explore Mars is in danger of coming apart at the seams. Italy and France might soon scale back or cancel several collaborative projects with the United States, forcing a major revamping of Red Planet exploration in this decade and beyond. More immediately, design troubles on U.S. and European rover missions threaten to push back launches scheduled for next year.

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CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY:
Select T Cells, Given Space, Shrink Tumors

Jennifer Couzin

Tumors normally fend off any attacks by the immune system. But now scientists have found a way to give immune cells an edge, thereby shrinking tumors throughout the body, from the skin to the liver. The work, reported online by Science this week (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1076514), breathes life into cancer immunotherapy, a field that has struggled to achieve success in humans.

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BIOTERRORISM:
NAS Censors Report on Agriculture Threats

Jeffrey Mervis and Erik Stokstad

This week, a National Academy of Sciences panel made public its analysis of whether terrorists could disrupt the U.S. food supply--or at least most of it. Missing from the panel's report are eight hypothetical case studies that the academy excised because the material was deemed a potential security risk.

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PAIN RESEARCH:
Enzyme Might Relieve Research Headache

Ingrid Wickelgren

How the popular pain reliever acetaminophen works has been largely a mystery. Now a group of biochemists has discovered in dogs a new variant of the well-studied cyclooxygenase (COX) enzyme. The newfound enzyme, dubbed COX-3, fits the profile of the long-sought site of action for the drug, which is the active ingredient in Tylenol.

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UNITED NATIONS:
Bush Brings U.S. Back to UNESCO

John Bohannon

President George W. Bush announced to the United Nations General Assembly last week that the United States will rejoin the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after an 18-year absence. The announcement made few headlines, but at UNESCO headquarters in Paris it's the best news in years.

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FUSION RESEARCH:
Energy Panel Asks U.S. to Rejoin ITER

Charles Seife

GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND--A panel of fusion scientists meeting here last week recommended that the United States rejoin negotiations to build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a multibillion-dollar international project that the Americans abandoned in 1998. But they also argued that the country should initiate its own fusion experiment if the government lacks the budgetary will to return to the ITER fold.

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SPACE STATION:
NASA Plans Expansion, New Research Agenda

Andrew Lawler

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA--In a sign that 18 months of turmoil is ending, NASA last week quietly laid out plans to expand the international space station beyond a stripped-down version that was the product of large cost overruns and management problems. The new plan would increase the number of shuttle flights to the station, start design on a spacecraft that could return a larger crew, and make room down the line for additional pressurized space for experiments.

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ASTRONOMY:
Hubble Successor Finds Builder and New Name

Govert Schilling

The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope passed a major milestone last week when NASA announced that the company TRW in Redondo Beach, California, will lead construction of the $1.8 billion observatory. But NASA broke with tradition by naming the scope not after a pioneering scientist but after a former NASA administrator.

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ASTROPHYSICS:
Orbiting Scopes Shoot 'Movie' of Crab Nebula

Robert Irion

The Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory teamed up to take more than 30 images of the heart of the Crab Nebula, a tangled web of cosmic debris cast off by a supernova nearly 1000 years ago. The dynamic sequence, which spans about 8 months, is winning raves from astrophysicists who are accustomed to static snapshots or mere points of light.

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PHYSICS:
CERN Team Produces Antimatter in Bulk

Charles Seife

Scientists report in this week's issue of Nature that they have produced about 50,000 slow-moving atoms of antihydrogen, the antimatter doppelgänger of the most abundant element in the universe. Because such atoms are very cold and slow moving, the team hopes it will be able to study them long enough to probe the fundamental asymmetries between matter and antimatter.

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PALEONTOLOGY:
China Issues Rules on Fossil Excavation

Ding Yimin and Xiong Lei

BEIJING--China has adopted new regulations on access to fossils that assign enforcement to a single administrative body. Most scientists see the new rules as a positive step toward bringing greater order to the current patchwork system, which did little to deter illegal digging and trafficking of fossils. But a few are worried that putting a single entity in charge could result in additional barriers to research.

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News Focus

GENOMICS:
After the Gold Rush: Gene Firms Reinvent Themselves

Trisha Gura

Private investment in genomics boomed in 2000-01; now there's a glut of sequence data and many firms are struggling to deliver drugs. One strategy genomics companies are adopting is to home in on proteins that are important in disease processes to come up with targets for new drugs. Another tactic is to de-emphasize basic genetics and shift resources into focused therapeutics. Yet another--for firms than can afford it--is to buy a company that already has plans to make drugs.

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COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY:
Recharged Field's Rallying Cry: Gene Chips for All Organisms

Elizabeth Pennisi

At last month's comparative physiology meeting, researchers wowed the audience with studies using gene chips--glass slides dotted with thousands of bits of DNA--they had created to track the activity of many genes over time or under different conditions. Until recently, the chips were impractical for organisms whose genomes had not been sequenced. But now the seeds of microarray technology are helping comparative physiology bloom again.

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INFECTIOUS DISEASE:
West Nile's Surprisingly Swift Continental Sweep

Martin Enserink

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS--Scientists are trying to understand why the West Nile epidemic has exploded this year--and how the spread of the virus might be stopped. One researcher says studying the secret lives of mosquitoes might help find some answers. He's focusing on Culex pipiens, an abundant species that transmits the virus among birds in the northern United States.

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INFECTIOUS DISEASE:
Bird Advocates Fear That West Nile Virus Could Silence the Spring

David Malakoff

ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND--So far, most reports of absent avians have been anecdotal or based on sketchy data. But next week, at the 3rd North American Ornithological Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, researchers are expected to call for a major new federal effort to understand West Nile's impact on wild birds--which would also help scientists study its potential threat to humans.

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