News of the Week
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News of the Week

AMPHIBIAN DECLINES:
Conflict Brewing Over Herbicide's Link to Frog Deformities

Rebecca Renner

New findings suggest that exposure to very low amounts of atrazine--one of the most widely used herbicides in the United States--in the wild is turning male frogs into hermaphrodites. But new experimental results in another frog species cast doubt on such low-dose effects. At stake could be continued regulatory approval for atrazine.

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FISHERIES SCIENCE:
Scientists Recommend Ban on North Sea Cod

David Malakoff and Richard Stone

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.--In what could prove to be a serious blow to Europe's ailing cod-fishing industry, fisheries scientists last week advised the European Union to ban cod fishing in the North Sea and several other historic regional trawling grounds. But economic pressures might lead politicians to tone down the advice.

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ASTRONOMY:
Iron Deficiency Reveals Nearly Pristine Star

Robert Irion

Astronomers have found an ancient star that preserves a chemical record of the infant cosmos. The little star, just now facing the end of its long life, suggests that the first stars in the universe might not all have been the colossi that models predict.

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HUMAN GENOME:
HapMap Launched With Pledges of $100 Million

Jennifer Couzin

A consortium of six nations is diving into a massive new genomics project it hopes will pinpoint the genes behind common diseases. The U.S. National Institutes of Health announced earlier this week that it's garnered the $100 million the 3-year effort to construct a so-called haplotype map is likely to cost. But even as the project was announced with considerable fanfare, many details remained sketchy.

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WOMEN'S HEALTH:
More Questions About Hormone Replacement

Jennifer Couzin and Martin Enserink

Last week, several hundred experts and observers gathered to weigh the implications of a large study of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) that was stopped 3 months ago due to safety concerns. Most agreed that hormone therapy should not be used to prevent disease. But HRT might still have valid, short-term uses in treating the symptoms of menopause.

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ANTHROPOLOGY:
Going Head-to-Head Over Boas's Data

Constance Holden

Studying skull dimensions is commonplace in forensics and paleoanthropology. But two new papers offering diametrically opposed analyses of a classic study by Franz Boas suggest that the technique is still controversial for many anthropologists entwined in the ongoing debate over the relation among genes, environment, and race.

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EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY:
Placentas May Nourish Complexity Studies

Virginia Morell

On page 1018, researchers report that placentas have evolved independently three times in closely related species of guppylike fish in the genus Poeciliopsis. Other species in the genus lack placentas, and some have partial maternal provisioning by means of tissues that might be precursors of placentas. Thus the fish present the full trajectory of steps involved in the evolution of this organ, offering a model system for studying the evolution of complex organs.

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PFIESTERIA DEBATE:
Is Sugary Toxin the Smoking Gun?

Jocelyn Kaiser

A team of researchers claims to have found more support for the controversial assertion that a toxic microbe called Pfiesteria is responsible for massive fish die-offs along the eastern United States. But the new studies, which include the first rough sketch of the toxin, have failed to convince skeptics.

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INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION:
NATO Ordered to Cut Science Program

Richard Stone

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.--Two days before last week's first-ever "Grand Gathering" in Brussels of researchers and others connected with NATO's science program, the alliance's political overseers slashed the program's $24 million budget by 13%. The fete quickly turned into a self-examination of a program that has struggled to find a suitable mission to replace its former role in helping Western nations stand up to Soviet hegemony. It also spawned a behind-the-scenes effort to reverse the cuts.

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DNA SEQUENCING:
Venter's Next Goal: 1000 Human Genomes

Rebecca Spieler Trager

Fundraising campaigns often repay donors with mugs, buttons, or books as a token of thanks, but DNA sequencer J. Craig Venter is offering something more personal. People who donate $500,000 to his recently formed J. Craig Venter Science Foundation can have their genome analyzed and get the results on a disk.

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News Focus

STRUCTURAL GENOMICS:
Tapping DNA for Structures Produces a Trickle

Robert F. Service

BERLIN, GERMANY--The goal of a venture called "structural genomics," set in 2000, was to have each lab solve hundreds of new protein structures per year. So when research teams met to compare notes here last month, they were disappointed to learn that everyone was having plumbing troubles. Their pipelines have sprung leaks, and instead of delivering a flood of results, so far they're delivering just a trickle.

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STRUCTURAL GENOMICS:
Big Biology Without the Big Commotion

Robert F. Service

To date, structural genomics has not experienced the noisy head-to-head competition between academic groups and companies that roiled the Human Genome Project. If anything, relations are downright cozy--to the extent that two structural genomics companies are even members of U.S. public projects and also plan to deposit some of their private results in a public database.

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JAPAN:
Postdocs Get Primer on How to Survive Abroad

Dennis Normile and Andrew Lawler

KYOTO, JAPAN--The U.S. approach to intellectual property rights is foreign to many Japanese scientists. So last month a roundtable discussion entitled "Working in the U.S.: Advice for Young Scientists" was held at the annual meeting here of the Japanese Biochemical Society. The subtext: "how to go abroad without being arrested."

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NUCLEAR TRAFFICKING:
Crime and (Puny) Punishment

Gretchen Vogel

KARLSRUHE, GERMANY--A seizure of highly enriched uranium on the Bulgaria-Turkey border shows that heightened vigilance and high-tech forensics are not sufficient to deter would-be nuclear smugglers. The Bulgarian case also reveals that in many countries where the potential for smuggling is greatest, authorities lack the legal tools to give convicted smugglers much more than a slap on the wrist. The smuggler in this case was given only a fine.

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EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY:
Evo-Devo Enthusiasts Get Down to Details

Elizabeth Pennisi

Many researchers from a field that melds evolutionary and developmental biology--evo-devo--are turning their attention away from dramatic evolutionary events and toward seemingly mundane ones. They hope their work will eventually help explain how subtle genetic changes can sometimes make evolution appear to skip ahead, possibly even reconciling the positions of those who champion large-scale changes with the positions of those who pay heed to more minor variations.

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SOCIETY OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY MEETING:
A Bonanza of Bones

Erik Stokstad

NORMAN, OKLAHOMA--Paleontologists came sweepin' down the plain to the 62nd annual meeting of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology. From 9 to 12 October, some 1000 attendees heard about new ideas and specimens that spanned the taxonomic gamut from marsupials to dinosaurs.

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