[News of the Week] Around the World
In science news around the world, an investigator of research misconduct is himself under investigation for alleged misconduct, a National Research Council report finds that the United States is far from prepared for an oil spill in its Arctic waters, the British Antarctic Survey will receive a new polar research ship, and more. (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - May 2, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News of the Week] This Week's Section
Follow the links below for a roundup of the week's top stories in science, or download a PDF of the entire section.
Around the WorldFindingsRandom Samples (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - May 1, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News Focus] The Cyclone Addict
Millions around the world got a first-hand look at what it was like to be in Tacloban while it was pummeled by Supertyphoon Haiyan's winds and then flooded by its surge, thanks to on-the-scene video captured by Josh Morgerman and his storm-chasing colleagues. Morgerman went further, returning to the region several months later to interview survivors and document patterns of wind damage to trees and buildings. His results will help scientists interpret satellite observations of the storm.
Author: Dennis Normile (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Dennis Normile Source Type: research
[News Focus] After the Deluge
Researchers are gaining insights into what made Supertyphoon Haiyan so powerful and devastating through post-storm surveys and analyses. The tropical cyclone's ferocity resulted from a buildup of heat in subsurface waters in the western North Pacific; the devastating surge was a quirk of geography in which a narrow bay funneled water toward the heavily populated city of Tacloban. There is no obvious link to global warming. But scientists warn that reducing the toll from future storms will depend on moving residents and buildings away from vulnerable coastlines.
Author: Dennis Normile (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Dennis Normile Source Type: research
[News Focus] Tanks for the Batteries
Fossil fuels power modern society by generating heat, but much of that heat is wasted. Semiconductor devices called thermoelectrics can reclaim some of it by converting it into power, but they remain too inefficient and expensive for widespread application. Now, scientists in Illinois have used a cheap, well-known material to create the most heat-hungry thermoelectric so far. In the process, the researchers say, they learned valuable lessons that could push the materials over the commercial threshold. If that happens, thermoelectrics could one day power cars and scavenge energy from engines, boilers, and electrical plants....
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Robert F. Service Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Neurodegeneration: Potential Alzheimer's Drug Spurs Protein Recycling
By stabilizing the components of retromers, molecular complexes that act like recycling bins in cells, a recently identified compound could slow or stop the implacable spread of a protein fragment called β amyloid, a likely culprit in neuron death in Alzheimer's disease. The work builds on growing evidence that retromer dysfunction plays a role in the neurodegenerative disorder. Although the research on the possible small molecule drug is preliminary—so far the published work has only been done in cells—the new results have nonetheless impressed some veterans of the Alzheimer's field.
Author: Ken Garber (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Ken Garber Tags: Neurodegeneration Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Biomedical Funding: At NIH, Two Strikes Policy Is Out
The National Institutes of Health is revising its "two strikes" rule, which allowed researchers only one chance to revise a rejected grant application before having to start over with a new idea—a rule that critics worried was especially hard on young investigators. Instead, the agency announced on 17 April, applicants can now resubmit an identical proposal as many times as they like.
Author: Jocelyn Kaiser (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Jocelyn Kaiser Tags: Biomedical Funding Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Genomics: Genome Yields Clues to Tsetse Fly's Strange and Deadly Ways
The tsetse fly is best known as the vector for the trypanosome parasites that cause sleeping sickness and a disease in livestock called nagana. But its biology is quite unusual. Both sexes feed solely off blood, whereas many blood-sucking insects supplement blood meals with nectar. And females give birth to live young that have been nourished by specially produced milk. Now, the genome sequence and studies of gene activity in various tissues have uncovered the fly's special repertoire of proteins for procuring, filtering, and packaging the blood and for viviparity. They also help clarify the fly's relationship with microbe...
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Elizabeth Pennisi Tags: Genomics Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Climate Science: Climate Outsider Finds Missing Global Warming
Major climate data sets have underestimated the rate of global warming in the last 15 years owing largely to poor data in the Arctic, the planet's fastest warming region. A dearth of temperature stations there is one culprit; another is a data-smoothing algorithm that has been improperly tuning down temperatures there. The findings come from an unlikely source: a crystallographer and graduate student working on the temperature analyses in their spare time.
Author: Eli Kintisch (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Eli Kintisch Tags: Climate Science Source Type: research
[News of the Week] Newsmakers
Science has won two awards this past month: Contributing correspondent Ann Gibbons won an award from the Society for American Archaeology for her writing in the immersive multimedia story "The Thousand-Year Graveyard"; and Deputy News Editor Leslie Roberts won an award from the Association of Health Care Journalists for her story "The Art of Eradicating Polio." (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News of the Week] Random Sample
NASA's Cassini spacecraft spies a new moon forming in Saturn's outermost ring, which scientists hope will offer insight into the formation of the planet's other icy moons within its now-vanished, even more massive rings. (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News of the Week] Around the World
In science news around the world, the European Space Agency's new environmental satellite Sentinel-1A sends back its first radar images of Earth, polio spreads farther into Central Africa, China releases new information on its polluted soil, and more. (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News of the Week] This Week's Section
Follow the links below for a roundup of the week's top stories in science, or download a PDF of the entire section.
Around the WorldFindingsRandom SamplesNewsmakers (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News Focus] Into the Maelstrom
Three years ago, Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University proposed that a warming Arctic was altering the behavior of the northern polar jet stream, the high, fast-moving torrent of air that circles the pole. The jet stream is slowing and meandering more, she proposes, causing extreme weather patterns to linger longer over North America. The idea has drawn extensive attention from the media, the public, and influential policymakers, such as White House science adviser John Holdren. Many researchers, however, are skeptical, and some have been vociferously critical. But Francis, whose life and work has been shaped by two round...
Source: Science: This Week - April 18, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Eli Kintisch Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Astronomy: Almost-Earth Tantalizes Astronomers With Promise of Worlds to Come
Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf—a star cooler than the sun—500 light-years away. Because such stars make up three-quarters of all stars in the Milky Way, the finding could open a wide new hunting ground for extraterrestrial life.
Author: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - April 18, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee Tags: Astronomy Source Type: research
