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Breakthrough of the Year; News

Breakthrough of the Year; News

BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
Small RNAs Make Big Splash

Jennifer Couzin

Just when scientists thought they had deciphered the roles played by the cell's leading actors, a familiar performer has turned up in a stunning variety of guises. RNA, long upstaged by its more glamorous sibling, DNA, is turning out to have star qualities of its own. Science hails these electrifying discoveries, which are prompting biologists to overhaul their vision of the cell and its evolution, as 2002's Breakthrough of the Year. The online version of the Breakthrough of the Year section contains references and links not found in the print edition (see www.sciencemag.org/content/vol298/issue5602/#special).

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BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
The Runners-Up

The News and Editorial Staffs

Science applauds nine other discoveries that were made this year, ranging from the dawn of time to the dawn of our species.

Neutrinos Nailed

Genomes Head South

Cosmic Twist

Fast Moves

A Taste for Temperature

Frozen Images

Clear Skies Ahead

Retina Receptors

Evolutionary Headlines

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BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
Areas to Watch in 2003

Science's editors use their powers of prognostication to come up with next year's hot research topics. Their picks for 2003: greenhouse warming's effects on the world's ice stores, the sun-climate connection, the budget bust, evolutionary genomics, astronomy outside the optical band, and antihydrogen.

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BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
Scorecard 2002

Each year, we predict six research areas that will make headlines in the coming year. Now the editors take their lumps for predictions made last year.

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BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
Bioterrorism: The Calm After the Storm

Martin Enserink

The 11 September terrorist attacks and the mysterious anthrax letters are beginning to put their stamp on the research enterprise. But although 2002 has been marked by much talk about bioterror, it has also become a year of waiting for action, with major decisions on research funding, regulation, and smallpox vaccination stalled by politics and technical debate.

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BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
Breakdown of the Year: Physics Fraud

Robert F. Service

The past year witnessed more than just high points. The physics community suffered two stunning setbacks when separate investigations concluded that a physicist at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and another at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California committed fraud.

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News of the Week

BIOLOGICAL AGENTS:
New U.S. Rules Set the Stage for Tighter Security, Oversight

David Malakoff

The U.S. government last week unveiled sweeping new bioterror research regulations that will require 20,000 scientists at nearly 1000 laboratories to beef up security--or face hefty fines and jail sentences. The interim rules, due to go into effect early next year, could also force scientists to get prior approval for a growing list of sensitive experiments.

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CALIFORNIA BUDGET:
Latest Cuts Send Universities Reeling

Andrew Lawler

A rapidly ballooning budget deficit is forcing California to make substantial cuts in state-funded science programs. The reductions affect facilities used by a global community of researchers, from astronomical observatories to oceanographic collections. And the bad news is expected to get worse.

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SCIENCE AND SECURITY:
Academy Asks to Ease Visas for Scholars

David Malakoff

Security reviews are causing delays that threaten the health of U.S. science, say the leaders of the National Academies, which last week called on the government to fast-track foreign researchers seeking to enter the country. They ask the Department of State to reinstate a "precleared" status for foreign scientists who travel frequently to the United States, create a special visa for researchers with solid credentials and invitations from U.S. scientists, and consult with U.S. scientists on which fields should raise red flags.

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STEM CELL MEDICINE:
Stanford Gets Gift for New Institute

Constance Holden

Stanford University last week announced the formation of a new, privately funded institute to marry research on stem cells and cancer in a search for new therapies. The announcement precipitated a brief media flurry over the issue of cloning, leaving university officials scrambling to beat down press accounts that suggested the school might become a baby factory.

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RESEARCH FUNDING:
Italian Researchers Facing Lean Times

Alexander Hellemans

NAPLES--Italian researchers are reeling this week after legislators approved a 2003 budget that could shutter some national facilities and threaten Italy's contributions to major international research centers. The parliamentary vote came after days of heated debate in the Senate, punctuated by outraged researchers demonstrating noisily outside and a mass resignation by university rectors, who say that a written commitment to adequate funding is the only thing that will bring them back. No agreement had been reached as Science went to press, however.

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2004 BUDGET:
No Holiday Cheer for NIH, NSF

Jeffrey Mervis and Jocelyn Kaiser

Science has learned that the White House has settled on a 9% increase for the National Science Foundation (NSF), to roughly $5.4 billion. But that's no more than Congress wants to give NSF this year. The $23.3 billion National Institutes of Health (NIH) has received similarly Scrooge-like news for the holidays: The White House has offered less than a 1% hike, and NIH officials are appealing.

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HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS:
CERN Council Chooses ITER's Head as Chief

Charles Seife

Europe's premiere accelerator laboratory has elected a director general without training in particle physics but skilled in managing large projects. That's no accident: CERN's governing council made it clear last week that building the Large Hadron Collider on time and within budget is the lab's top priority, with everything else--including a streamlined research portfolio--taking a back seat.

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ASTRONOMY:
Europe's Telescope Builders Aim High

Govert Schilling

LONDON--At a meeting here last week, rival telescope-building teams from across Europe announced that they will now work together on a joint design for what they hope, 12 years hence, will be the largest telescope in history. The European Large Telescope would take an order-of-magnitude leap from the scale of today's telescopes, which have mirrors about 10 meters across, to one up to 100 meters in diameter, capable of revealing the workings of the universe and examining nearby stars and planets in unimaginable detail.

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News Focus

PUBLIC HEALTH:
Rough-and-Tumble Behind Bush's Smallpox Policy

Jon Cohen and Martin Enserink

After months of ideological tugs-of-war over whether to vaccinate the public against smallpox to protect against a bioterrorist attack, the Administration has settled on a compromise that most scientists can live with. On 13 December, President George W. Bush announced the policy: immediate, mandatory vaccination of 500,000 military personnel, and a voluntary campaign among a similar number of health care workers or "first responders." After that, the government would offer the vaccine to up to 10 million additional health care workers, police, firefighters, and other essential personnel--but not the general public.

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PUBLIC HEALTH:
Treating Vaccine Reactions: Two Lifelines, But No Guarantees

Martin Enserink

In a small minority of cases, the smallpox vaccine can have horrific side effects. Unfortunately, doctors will have only limited means to help such patients when the United States resumes vaccination. Although two treatments are recommended for vaccine complications, little hard evidence supports the efficacy of either one.

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PUBLIC HEALTH:
Looking for Vaccines That Pack a Wallop Without the Side Effects

Jon Cohen

Since the 11 September terrorist attacks, the quest for a safer smallpox vaccine has taken on a new urgency, drawing in a number of leading labs. Science discusses a few of the new approaches being tested.

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TRANSGENIC CROPS:
China Takes a Bumpy Road From the Lab to the Field

Ding Yimin and Jeffrey Mervis

BEIJING--The Chinese government once enthusiastically embraced efforts to get genetically modified (GM) seeds into the hands of farmers and welcomed foreign investment in developing GM crops, but it is now proceeding with extreme caution. Officials point to growing concerns about biosafety as the reason for the shift, whereas others see trade policy as the driving force.

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ARCHAEOLOGY:
Armenia Uncovers a Bronze Age Treasure Trove

Richard Stone

AGARAK, ARMENIA--With the help of private money, Armenian researchers are unearthing a site here that is full of impressive stonework and ritual artifacts and promises to shed new light on the peoples of the Caucasus from the Early Bronze Age some 5000 years ago right up to the Middle Ages. The Armenian team has also begun excavating the remains of stone houses clustered along a street, along with a bounty of terra cotta statuettes and ceramic artifacts linking the site to the Kuro-Araxes, a culture widespread in the Caucasus in the 29th to 27th centuries B.C.

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ANIMAL MODELS:
Can a Mouse Be Standardized?

John Bohannon

OXFORD, UNITED KINGDOM--With new generations of mutant mice on the horizon, some researchers question the meaningfulness of standard behavioral tests and the wisdom of minimizing the mouse environment. There's accumulating evidence that the typical living conditions of lab mice might induce odd behaviors, from the subtle to the profound, that might obscure genetically based differences. The result: The same experiment can have different outcomes in different labs.

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ANIMAL MODELS:
To Build a Better Mouse Cage

John Bohannon

Mice are sensitive to differences between people, such as their handling techniques or scents. And not only do humans complicate experiments by their presence, they limit the pace of research by observing no more than one mouse performing one task at a time. So researchers are attempting to create standard human-free mouse environments.

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NANOTECHNOLOGY:
Biology Offers Nanotechs a Helping Hand

Robert F. Service

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS--Rather than building tiny devices atom by atom, nanoscientists are raiding biology's molecular toolbox in hopes of revolutionizing sensors, medical diagnostics, and electronics. At the Materials Research Society meeting here earlier this month, it was clear that as nanotechnology begins to leave its infancy and find its feet, most nanobuilders are looking to biology not just for inspiration but also a little practical help.

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