The new director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, is familiar with the dark clouds over the agency.

His boss, President Donald Trump, keeps proposing big cuts to NSF’s budget. Two recent executive orders on immigration make it harder for foreign scientists—who make up a sizeable share of the U.S. research enterprise—to enter the country. In Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike have lambasted NSF and other research agencies for not doing more to stop the Chinese government from stealing federally funded technology. New cases of sexual harassment within the academic research community that NSF funds seem to pop up weekly, and the growing national debate over racial inequities has highlighted the chronic underrepresentation of minorities and women in science.

But those problems are no match for his relentless optimism, expressed in his first public interview since taking office on 23 June. Speaking remotely with Science last week in advance of his move to the Washington, D.C., area, the Indian-born computer scientist was unabashedly upbeat about the future of U.S. academic research—where he has spent most of his career—and about NSF’s role in supporting that community.

When OneWeb filed for bankruptcy protection in March, astronomers breathed a sigh of relief. The company planned to launch thousands of internet-providing satellites into low-Earth orbit, where their reflections could disrupt the observations of ground-based telescopes. But now, the company has risen from the grave with the announcement today that the U.K. government and the Indian cellphone operator Bharti Global have successfully bid to rescue OneWeb with a $1 billion investment.

The revived company now plans an even larger constellation of up to 42,000 satellites, at an altitude of 1200 kilometers—the worst possible outcome for astronomers. At that altitude, satellites will leave bright trails across telescope images all through the night, effectively ruining the observations of survey telescopes such as the 8-meter Vera C. Rubin Observatory, under construction in Chile. “It’s the stuff at 1000 kilometers that is the real killer for astronomy,” says Mark McCaughrean of the European Space Agency, speaking at a briefing organized by the European Astronomical Society (EAS). “Engagement [with astronomers] has to happen and it has to happen now.”

Astronomers first became concerned about such “megaconstellations” last year, when the launch company SpaceX lofted the first batch of its Starlink satellites. The aim of the project is to provide internet access in areas hard to reach with fiber-optic cables. The satellites, launched 60 at a time in a single rocket, proved to be highly visible in the sky, to the alarm of astronomers. The company has now launched 540 Starlink satellites—part of an initial goal of 1584—and aims to provide a service in the United States and Canada before the end of the year.

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

The leaders of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s well-funded project to develop COVID-19 vaccines at record speed, have said they are running a transparent project. They have bristled at critics who say they make major decisions behind closed doors. But at a Senate subcommittee hearing today that focused on Warp Speed, scientists at the front of the effort, after repeated questioning, gave limited answers about the vaccine candidates they have chosen as frontrunners in the race and their selection criteria.

At the opening of the hearing—held by the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies—Senator Patty Murray (D–WA) put the witnesses on notice that she wanted straightforward answers on many issues. “We’re going to need to hold this administration accountable to avoid repeating mistakes and delays,” Murray said. “The administration still has not provided any explanation of how it is selecting vaccine candidates, what the risks are of narrowing down that shortlist or addressed concerns about potential conflicts in contracts that predate this crisis.”

*Update, 6 July: This story has been updated to include the American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology’s decision to change the name of its flagship journal, Copeia, to Ichthyology and Herpetology beginning with the first issue of 2021. It also includes the Entomological Society of America’s decision to change the name of its student trivia competition.

*Update, 3 July: This story has been updated to include Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's decision to remove the name of biologist James Watson from its graduate program.

For Earyn McGee, terminology matters.

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

On 29 June, University of Oxford clinical scientists Martin Landray and Peter Horby changed how physicians around the world consider treating COVID-19—for the third time in little more than 3 weeks. The principal investigators of a U.K. megatrial called Recovery, which has been testing existing drugs as therapies for the new infection, the pair had just finished reviewing data from 1596 patients who had received a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, two antivirals known to curb HIV, and 3376 patients who had received only standard care. In a press release, they and their Recovery colleagues announced there had been no significant difference in the death rate between the two groups. “This could have worked. And it was a bust,” says Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “It was really important to clarify that.”

Earlier the same month, and again through press releases, Recovery (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 therapy) delivered widely accepted verdicts on two other treatments. It revealed that dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, reduced deaths by one-third in patients on a ventilator and showed that hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug controversially touted for COVID-19, did not benefit hospitalized patients. A run on dexamethasone ensued as physicians in the United Kingdom and elsewhere quickly made it part of their standard of care for the sickest patients, whereas many other studies of hydroxychloroquine now looked futile and were halted.

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Anton Pozniak attended his first international AIDS conference in 1990, and it changed his life. The English physician was debating whether he should specialize in infectious disease or pulmonology. After the meeting, there was little debate. “I just thought I have got to be a part of this.” Now, Pozniak heads the International AIDS Society (IAS), which runs the mega-biannual meeting, originally scheduled to take place in San Francisco and Oakland, California, next week. Instead, it is going virtual.

AIDS 2020, the 23rd International AIDS Conference, is but one of slews of scientific meetings that have been upended by COVID-19 and gone online. But this gathering of some 20,000 people has no parallel in the world of medicine or science. Researchers, health care workers, pharmaceutical companies, and public health officials from around the world spend 1 week intensely interacting with—and sometimes being harshly criticized by—people from affected communities, which includes villagers from remote parts of Asia and Africa, LGBTQ people, drug users, and sex workers. Speakers have ranged from presidents and royalty to A-list movie stars and musicians. A global village connected to the conference venue offers free admission, creating a festival atmosphere with music, plays, movies, photo exhibits, sculptures, and dance. HIV/AIDS advocates regularly stage boisterous protests that take over streets, city bridges, and the conference stage itself. Media come in droves.

The U.K. government plans to set up an “office for talent” to oversee visas and make it easier to attract top scientists after Brexit, according to an R&D road map announced today.

The R&D plan builds on a budget, announced in March, that held big boosts for science. The plan underscores the Conservative Party’s ambition to prioritize science post-Brexit, and reiterates a desire to double public R&D funding by 2024. It also calls for reducing the bureaucracy that hampers research, increasing open-access publishing, and boosting diversity of the research workforce. Alongside a £280 million research support package announced earlier this week for those who lost funding because of COVID-19, the road map dedicates a further £300 million to upgrading scientific infrastructure.

Among the new proposals in the plan is the talent office, which would be located in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office. Although the plan does not give details on the function of the office, it could have the authority to oversee immigration rules set up by other government agencies, says James Wilsdon, a science policy expert at the University of Sheffield.

Academics in Hong Kong are facing new worries today after the mainland government yesterday abruptly imposed a controversial new security law that critics say could infringe on human rights and chill academic freedom.

“We don’t know exactly how the law will be implemented, but just the perception and uncertainty that it creates will be a problem for the universities,” says Sun Kwok, a Hong Kong–born astronomer who was dean of science at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) for 10 years.

The law was imposed by the government in Beijing after months of demonstrations in Hong Kong. The protests were initially triggered by a proposed extradition bill that could have subjected Hongkongers to the mainland’s legal system, but grew over worries about the erosion of the city’s quasi-independent status. The law gives authorities new powers to punish “offenses of secession, subversion, organization, and perpetration of terrorist activities, and collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security” in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong authorities began to enforce the law today, arresting hundreds of protesters—including those holding signs with independence slogans—for alleged violations, according to media reports.

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

New rules on how U.S. universities manage federal research grants leave them with less flexibility to cope with the pandemic. The changes, which rescind many temporary measures adopted this spring as COVID-19 shuttered campuses and froze the economy, come despite continued uncertainty over the fall semester and the status of research on U.S. campuses.

“I am speechless because I just don’t know” what lies ahead, confessed David Mayo, head of sponsored research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), during a meeting yesterday of a top-level advisory panel to the National Science Foundation (NSF) at which the changes were discussed.

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Nearly half a year later, scientists around the world are rushing to create a COVID-19 vaccine. An approved product is still months, if not years, away and public health agencies have not yet mounted campaigns to promote it. But health communication experts say they need to start to lay the groundwork for acceptance now, because the flood of misinformation from antivaccine activists has surged.