[News & Analysis] Assisted Reproduction: FDA Considers Trials of 'Three-Parent Embryos'
An experimental technique, called mitochondrial DNA replacement therapy, that manipulates a woman's DNA could spare her from passing on a potentially deadly disease to her children. But the technique breaks new and ethically fraught ground: It would create a child that has DNA from "three parents"—the mother, the father, and an egg donor. Now, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are grappling with whether to allow the first human trials of the technique to go forward.
Author: Gretchen Vogel (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 21, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Gretchen Vogel Tags: Assisted Reproduction Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Astrophysics: New Neutrino May Have Heated Baby Universe
Last March, many cosmologists were disappointed when new measurements of the cosmic microwave background showed no signs of exotic physics such as previously undiscovered particles. Or did they? In separate papers, three groups of theorists now argue that last year's data, combined with measurements of how galaxy clusters are scattered through space, suggest that some of the universe's dark matter consists of a new particle called a sterile neutrino. Further studies now in progress may soon show whether the hypothesized hot, fast-moving particles are real. Meanwhile, physicists are savoring the possibility that the univers...
Source: Science: This Week - February 21, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Adrian Cho Tags: Astrophysics Source Type: research
[News of the Week] AAAS | 2014 Annual Meeting
Catch up on science highlights from the 2014 AAAS annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois, and read some of our favorite attendee responses to "What's the Coolest Science Fact You Know?" (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 21, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News of the Week] Newsmakers
Patrick Gallagher steps down as head of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to become chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh. And Russian Academy of Sciences President Vladimir Fortov talks with Science about the academy's recent restructuring. (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 21, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News of the Week] Random Sample
With help from a group of cheerleaders, Project MERCCURI will send microbes collected from sports stadiums around the United States to duke it out in a microbial Super Bowl aboard the International Space Station. (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 21, 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 Canadian government announces a $1.36 billion research fund, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to crack down on ivory and rhino horn sales, and more. (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 21, 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 WorldAAAS 2014 Annual MeetingRandom SamplesNewsmakers (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 20, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Stewart Wills (mailto:swills at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[News Focus] Strength in Numbers?
Most mammalian cells carry two sets of chromosomes, but a few types of cells—including the mainstays of the liver and heart—have additional chromosome sets, a condition known as polyploidy. The advantage of polyploidy for mammalian cells has been unclear. But by tinkering with cells' chromosome endowments, researchers are testing polyploidy's possible advantages. Polyploidy might aid some cells by boosting their size. And in the liver, polyploidy might spur regeneration by creating genetic diversity among cells. Researchers are also working to test whether inducing polyploidy in certain cells can combat a deadly type ...
Source: Science: This Week - February 14, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Mitch Leslie Source Type: research
[News Focus] The Coming Copper Peak
If electrons are the lifeblood of a modern economy, copper makes up its blood vessels. In cables, wires, and contacts, copper is at the core of the electrical distribution system, from power stations to delicate electronics. As consumption has risen exponentially—reaching 17 million metric tons in 2012—miners have met the world's demand for 10,000 years. But that might soon change. A group of resource specialists has taken the first shot at projecting how much more copper miners will wring from the planet. Results of their model, described this month, show that production peaks by about midcentury even if copper is mor...
Source: Science: This Week - February 14, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Richard A. Kerr Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Energy: Laser Fusion Shots Take Step Toward Ignition
The National Ignition Facility (NIF), a troubled laser fusion lab in California, has finally produced some results fusion scientists can get enthusiastic about. In a series of experiments last year, NIF researchers produced yields of energy 10 times greater than achieved before and demonstrated the phenomenon of self-heating that will be crucial if fusion is to reach its ultimate goal of "ignition"—a self-sustaining reaction that produces more energy than it consumes.
Author: Daniel Clery (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 14, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Daniel Clery Tags: Energy Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] History of Science: After More Than 50 Years, a Dispute Over Down Syndrome Discovery
Marthe Gautier, an 88-year-old French pediatric cardiologist, claims she hasn't received proper credit for her role in the discovery of the cause of Down syndrome in the late 1950s. Gautier says she was the first to notice that patients carried an extra chromosome in their cells. But her colleague Jérôme Lejeune was the first author on a paper about the discovery, which was prepared without Gautier's involvement. The conflict came to a head on 31 January in Bordeaux, when an award ceremony for Gautier was called off at the last minute after the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation sent two bailiffs to record Gautier's speech.
Aut...
Source: Science: This Week - February 14, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Elisabeth Pain Tags: History of Science Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Endangered Species: Science Behind Plan to Ease Wolf Protection Is Flawed, Panel Says
The science doesn't support a claim that gray wolves (Canis lupus) didn't live in the eastern United States before they were hunted nearly to extinction almost a century ago, a four-member independent panel review concluded in a report released 7 February. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has argued that a different species of eastern wolf historically lived in 22 eastern states. If true, that scenario would support the agency's proposal to remove gray wolves from the endangered species list, because western populations have recently rebounded and the agency would have no legal obligation to restore the wolf to its easte...
Source: Science: This Week - February 14, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Virginia Morell Tags: Endangered Species Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Science Indicators: New NSF Report Shows Where U.S. Leads and Lags
Policy wonks can gorge on the 2014 edition of the biennial Science and Engineering Indicators from the National Science Foundation. The 600-page tome tracks the continued rise of China and other Asian countries at the same time it documents areas where the United States has retained its preeminence.
Author: Jeffrey Mervis (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 14, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Mervis Tags: Science Indicators Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Astrophysics: India Poised to Join Hunt for Gravitational Waves
An emerging global network of detectors is watching for gravitational waves: ripples in spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. As part of an ongoing upgrade of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, scientists want to extend the global network. India has offered to host a detector that could come online in 2020; the Indian government must still develop a management structure for the project and commit to a schedule and budget.
Authors: Pallava Bagla, Adrian Cho (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 14, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Pallava Bagla Tags: Astrophysics Source Type: research
[News & Analysis] Genomes: Ancient Infant Was Ancestor of Today's Native Americans
Researchers sequenced the complete nuclear genome of an infant found on land owned by the Anzick family back in 1968. The so-called Anzick child, represented by a skull and a few other bones, was closely associated with sophisticated tools from the Clovis culture, thought to be the first well-established presence of the earliest Americans. The genome is especially closely related to that of today's native populations from Central and South America, establishing a direct link between ancient Paleoindians and Native Americans.
Author: Michael Balter (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - February 14, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Michael Balter Tags: Genomes Source Type: research
