An army of 11,400 citizen scientists joined forces with artificial intelligence (AI) to spot more than 1000 previously unknown asteroids. In 2019, researchers led by the European Space Agency enlisted volunteers to peruse more than 37,000 images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over nearly 20 years. Because the exposures were 30 minutes long, asteroids appear as curved lines or streaks. The volunteers spotted more than 1000 of these traces, which were then used to train an AI system to find more, bumping the total to 1701 in 1316 images, the team announced last week. Roughly one-third are known asteroids, but the rest are new, and are thought to be small lumps of rock in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. Researchers will now try to assess their orbits, sizes, and rotation rates, to learn more about the rubble from which the planets formed.
SEISMOLOGY
A martian big one
NASA reported this week that its InSight lander on Mars hit the seismic jackpot, recording a magnitude 5 marsquake, by far the largest ever seen. Since InSight landed in 2018, seismologists have dreamed of such a quake, large enough to allow waves to encircle the planet’s surface, providing InSight’s seismic station an ultraprecise epicenter location and with it, a sort of skeleton key for the planet’s interior. Using smaller quakes, InSight’s team has managed to chart the thickness of the martian crust, mantle, and core; with the new quake, this picture is expected to grow far more precise. The quake was well timed, coming 3 days before the lander entered a hibernating “safe mode” because of low power from its dust covered solar panels. The spacecraft is likely to expire in the coming weeks as martian winter approaches.
COVID-19
U.S. limits use of J&J vaccine
The COVID-19 vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) should only be given to people who cannot receive any other vaccine, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on 5 May. The move is related to thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a rare, serious clotting disorder that has been associated with the vaccine. FDA has confirmed 60 cases of TTS, nine of them fatal, after 18.7 million doses of J&J were administered. The vaccine’s benefits still outweigh the risks, the agency says, but alternatives that don’t cause TTS are readily available. Scientists have not been able to pin down why the vaccine—and a similar one, made by AstraZeneca—cause the syndrome.
We have to kind of hold hope and grief at the same time.
Jacquelyn Gill
of the University of Maine, Orono, quoted in the Associated Press on the mind frame of climate scientists.
RESEARCH SECURITY
Verdict in China Initiative case
An applied math professor at Southern Illinois University (SIU), Carbondale, last week was found guilty of failing to report a Chinese bank account on his U.S. tax returns but cleared of charges that he committed grant fraud. The 4 May verdict against Minqqing Xiao came in the fourth jury trial resulting from the China Initiative, a controversial U.S. law enforcement campaign that has led to the prosecution of some two dozen U.S. academics, most of them of Chinese ancestry. “It’s a massive victory for Ming because the government was not able to prove that Ming did anything wrong in applying for his [National Science Foundation] grant,” said Ed Benyas, an SIU music professor who helped organize daily vigils to the Benton, Illinois, courthouse, where supporters wore “I stand with Ming” buttons. Xiao, on paid administrative leave from SIU, faces up to 5 years in prison and a substantial fine. Sentencing is set for 11 August.
ECOLOGY
Soil fungi keep ecosystems humming
This bridal veil stinkhorn fungus breaks down plant matter in the soil.ALEX HYDE/NPL/MINDEN PICTURES
Mushrooms not only add color to the landscape, they help keep the natural world productive and stable. Places with a wider variety of soil fungi that break down plant matter—the so-called decomposers—are better able to cope with drought and other stressors, ecologists reported this week in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The researchers determined the fungal makeup of about 700 soil samples from tropical, temperate, and polar climates. They mapped the diversity of different kinds of soil fungi onto 2 decades’ worth of satellite images of plant photosynthesis, a measure of the ecosystem’s productivity. Diverse fungal decomposers helped plants stay productive over time, but diversity of pathogenic fungi had the opposite effect, says lead author Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, an ecosystem ecologist at the Spanish National Research Council. He and others suggest finding a way to enhance decomposer diversity may buffer against the negative effects of climate change.
BIOTECHNOLOGY
Donor pig heart harbored virus
The pig heart transplanted into a human patient in a groundbreaking surgical experiment carried a porcine virus that may have contributed to the man’s death, MIT Technology Review reported last week. In January at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), David Bennett, a heart failure patient, received the heart of a genetically modified pig created by the company Revivicor. When UMSOM researchers announced Bennett’s death in March, they shared no details about its cause. But in a 20 April webinar, UMSOM surgeon Bartley Griffith said the team had detected porcine cytomegalovirus in Bennett’s blood. The virus has been shown to damage pig hearts transplanted into baboons, leading to the primates’ death. The finding suggests immune rejection of the organ was not to blame for Bennett’s death, and that thorough virus screening before transplant could improve survival time.
MISCONDUCT
Disgraced surgeon on trial
Paolo Macchiarini, the surgeon famed and then disgraced for implanting artificial tracheae seeded with stem cells into patients, took the stand in his trial for assault in Solna, Sweden, last week. Macchiarini performed at least eight of the transplants between 2011 and 2014. All recipients died except one, who had the implant removed. In 2016, the Karolinska Institute (KI) fired Macchiarini, who was later found guilty of fraud and research misconduct. Now, Swedish prosecutors have charged him with assault or “bodily harm due to negligence” related to three patients who received transplants at KI. Prosecutors argue Macchiarini performed the transplants with “reckless intent,” knowing complications plagued earlier recipients. But Macchiarini testified that he performed the surgeries with the knowledge and support of KI and that the surgeries were a last resort for the patients. The trial, which began on 27 April, is expected to conclude on 23 May.
PHILANTHROPY
Stanford gets climate windfall
Stanford University will use a $1.1 billion gift—the second largest to an academic institution in history—to create a school focused on climate change. The gift, from John Doerr, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and his wife Ann Doerr, board chair of Khan Academy, will establish a school with 90 faculty members, including many from existing departments; Stanford will add 60 more over a decade. Climate-focused schools are a trend in U.S. higher education, with Columbia University announcing a similar one in 2020.
BIOMEDICINE
Pediatricians take stand on race
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a professional association, announced last week it would eliminate race-based medicine in its recommendations and publications. Race has no use as a proxy for a person’s risk of health conditions or for other biological traits, AAP said in its policy announcement, noting that race-based medicine has increased racial health disparities. The group will revisit its “entire catalog,” including its guidance for newborns with jaundice, which currently says that East Asian race is a risk factor for the condition.
BIOLOGY
Speed control keeps flocks in sync
Starlings fly in enormous, intricate flocks called murmurations.LAURIE CAMPBELL/MINDEN PICTURES
Large flocks of starlings doing their synchronized dances across the sky stay together without constantly bumping by adjusting to one another’s subtle changes in speed, researchers have determined. Theoretical physicist Antonio Culla from the Italian National Research Council and colleagues recorded flocks of starlings and then experimented with computer models until they came up with one whose on-screen birds behaved like real birds. The secret, Culla’s team reported this week in Nature Communications, is having “marginal speed control”: The birds, which fly 8 to 18 meters per second, slow down or speed up a little to keep up with birds nearby but avoid large changes in speed, which could lead to the breakup of the flock, he says. The finding could one day help drones better coordinate their flight in swarms.
CRYPTOGRAPHY
U.S. preps for quantum hackers
Someday, quantum computers—exotic machines that can solve practical problems that would stymie conventional computers—will be able to crack the encryption algorithms used to protect internet communications. So, last week President Joe Biden’s administration instructed federal agencies to prepare to shift to new algorithms that can resist a quantum attack. The memo envisions the decadelong shift beginning in 2024, when the first standard for such “postquantum cryptography” should be set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Fortunately for internet companies, postquantum cryptography will involve changes mostly in software. Still, NIST researchers say the transition will be challenging and expensive.
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
NSF revs up innovation engines
Details of the competition for the largest cash awards in National Science Foundation (NSF) history were announced last week. NSF hopes to spend $160 million over 10 years on each of five “regional innovation engines” that will headline the agency’s new technology directorate. The competition kicks off this year as teams of university scientists, companies, and local governments vie for 50 $1 million starter grants. NSF is asking applicants for their plans to conduct user-inspired research, translate the results into high-tech products and services, and train local people for the additional jobs that are created. The five most promising approaches will win the jackpot in a second round of funding next year. NSF says it will favor teams from areas “without well-established innovation ecosystems,” meaning long odds for traditional high-tech regions like Silicon Valley, Boston, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
$334M penalty in patent case
Last week, a Delaware jury ordered U.S. sequencing company Illumina, Inc. to pay $333.8 million to Chinese genomics firm BGI Group after finding Illumina infringed two of BGI’s patents for DNA sequencing technology. Illumina and Complete Genomics, Inc., a California-based arm of BGI, have each claimed the other infringed their “2-channel” technology patents, which speed sequencing by imaging bases in parallel. Illumina has said it plans to appeal the verdict. Meanwhile, the companies are also locked in patent battles in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and Turkey. The decision comes on the heels of another case in San Francisco, where a jury found BGI infringed a different Illumina patent and ordered it to pay $8 million.
PUBLIC HEALTH
U.S. gun murders surged in 2020
Firearm homicide rates in the United States increased by 35% from 2019 to 2020, reaching their highest level since 1994, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The rate of gun murders increased from 4.6 to 6.1 per 100,000 people as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. The biggest increases were in Black boys and men ages 10 to 44 and in American Indian/Alaska Native men ages 25 to 44. Rates also grew with increasing poverty. The firearm suicide rate also grew in 2020, by 2.5%; among American Indian/Alaska Natives, the rate grew by 41.8% even as gun murder rates in this group grew by 26.5%, less than the overall U.S. increase.
PLANETARY SCIENCE
Volunteers, AI bag 1000 asteroids
An army of 11,400 citizen scientists joined forces with artificial intelligence (AI) to spot more than 1000 previously unknown asteroids. In 2019, researchers led by the European Space Agency enlisted volunteers to peruse more than 37,000 images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over nearly 20 years. Because the exposures were 30 minutes long, asteroids appear as curved lines or streaks. The volunteers spotted more than 1000 of these traces, which were then used to train an AI system to find more, bumping the total to 1701 in 1316 images, the team announced last week. Roughly one-third are known asteroids, but the rest are new, and are thought to be small lumps of rock in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. Researchers will now try to assess their orbits, sizes, and rotation rates, to learn more about the rubble from which the planets formed.
SEISMOLOGY
A martian big one
NASA reported this week that its InSight lander on Mars hit the seismic jackpot, recording a magnitude 5 marsquake, by far the largest ever seen. Since InSight landed in 2018, seismologists have dreamed of such a quake, large enough to allow waves to encircle the planet’s surface, providing InSight’s seismic station an ultraprecise epicenter location and with it, a sort of skeleton key for the planet’s interior. Using smaller quakes, InSight’s team has managed to chart the thickness of the martian crust, mantle, and core; with the new quake, this picture is expected to grow far more precise. The quake was well timed, coming 3 days before the lander entered a hibernating “safe mode” because of low power from its dust covered solar panels. The spacecraft is likely to expire in the coming weeks as martian winter approaches.
COVID-19
U.S. limits use of J&J vaccine
The COVID-19 vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) should only be given to people who cannot receive any other vaccine, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on 5 May. The move is related to thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a rare, serious clotting disorder that has been associated with the vaccine. FDA has confirmed 60 cases of TTS, nine of them fatal, after 18.7 million doses of J&J were administered. The vaccine’s benefits still outweigh the risks, the agency says, but alternatives that don’t cause TTS are readily available. Scientists have not been able to pin down why the vaccine—and a similar one, made by AstraZeneca—cause the syndrome.
We have to kind of hold hope and grief at the same time.
Jacquelyn Gill
of the University of Maine, Orono, quoted in the Associated Press on the mind frame of climate scientists.
RESEARCH SECURITY
Verdict in China Initiative case
An applied math professor at Southern Illinois University (SIU), Carbondale, last week was found guilty of failing to report a Chinese bank account on his U.S. tax returns but cleared of charges that he committed grant fraud. The 4 May verdict against Minqqing Xiao came in the fourth jury trial resulting from the China Initiative, a controversial U.S. law enforcement campaign that has led to the prosecution of some two dozen U.S. academics, most of them of Chinese ancestry. “It’s a massive victory for Ming because the government was not able to prove that Ming did anything wrong in applying for his [National Science Foundation] grant,” said Ed Benyas, an SIU music professor who helped organize daily vigils to the Benton, Illinois, courthouse, where supporters wore “I stand with Ming” buttons. Xiao, on paid administrative leave from SIU, faces up to 5 years in prison and a substantial fine. Sentencing is set for 11 August.
ECOLOGY
Soil fungi keep ecosystems humming
This bridal veil stinkhorn fungus breaks down plant matter in the soil.ALEX HYDE/NPL/MINDEN PICTURES
Mushrooms not only add color to the landscape, they help keep the natural world productive and stable. Places with a wider variety of soil fungi that break down plant matter—the so-called decomposers—are better able to cope with drought and other stressors, ecologists reported this week in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The researchers determined the fungal makeup of about 700 soil samples from tropical, temperate, and polar climates. They mapped the diversity of different kinds of soil fungi onto 2 decades’ worth of satellite images of plant photosynthesis, a measure of the ecosystem’s productivity. Diverse fungal decomposers helped plants stay productive over time, but diversity of pathogenic fungi had the opposite effect, says lead author Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, an ecosystem ecologist at the Spanish National Research Council. He and others suggest finding a way to enhance decomposer diversity may buffer against the negative effects of climate change.
BIOTECHNOLOGY
Donor pig heart harbored virus
The pig heart transplanted into a human patient in a groundbreaking surgical experiment carried a porcine virus that may have contributed to the man’s death, MIT Technology Review reported last week. In January at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), David Bennett, a heart failure patient, received the heart of a genetically modified pig created by the company Revivicor. When UMSOM researchers announced Bennett’s death in March, they shared no details about its cause. But in a 20 April webinar, UMSOM surgeon Bartley Griffith said the team had detected porcine cytomegalovirus in Bennett’s blood. The virus has been shown to damage pig hearts transplanted into baboons, leading to the primates’ death. The finding suggests immune rejection of the organ was not to blame for Bennett’s death, and that thorough virus screening before transplant could improve survival time.
MISCONDUCT
Disgraced surgeon on trial
Paolo Macchiarini, the surgeon famed and then disgraced for implanting artificial tracheae seeded with stem cells into patients, took the stand in his trial for assault in Solna, Sweden, last week. Macchiarini performed at least eight of the transplants between 2011 and 2014. All recipients died except one, who had the implant removed. In 2016, the Karolinska Institute (KI) fired Macchiarini, who was later found guilty of fraud and research misconduct. Now, Swedish prosecutors have charged him with assault or “bodily harm due to negligence” related to three patients who received transplants at KI. Prosecutors argue Macchiarini performed the transplants with “reckless intent,” knowing complications plagued earlier recipients. But Macchiarini testified that he performed the surgeries with the knowledge and support of KI and that the surgeries were a last resort for the patients. The trial, which began on 27 April, is expected to conclude on 23 May.
PHILANTHROPY
Stanford gets climate windfall
Stanford University will use a $1.1 billion gift—the second largest to an academic institution in history—to create a school focused on climate change. The gift, from John Doerr, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and his wife Ann Doerr, board chair of Khan Academy, will establish a school with 90 faculty members, including many from existing departments; Stanford will add 60 more over a decade. Climate-focused schools are a trend in U.S. higher education, with Columbia University announcing a similar one in 2020.
BIOMEDICINE
Pediatricians take stand on race
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a professional association, announced last week it would eliminate race-based medicine in its recommendations and publications. Race has no use as a proxy for a person’s risk of health conditions or for other biological traits, AAP said in its policy announcement, noting that race-based medicine has increased racial health disparities. The group will revisit its “entire catalog,” including its guidance for newborns with jaundice, which currently says that East Asian race is a risk factor for the condition.
BIOLOGY
Speed control keeps flocks in sync
Starlings fly in enormous, intricate flocks called murmurations.LAURIE CAMPBELL/MINDEN PICTURES
Large flocks of starlings doing their synchronized dances across the sky stay together without constantly bumping by adjusting to one another’s subtle changes in speed, researchers have determined. Theoretical physicist Antonio Culla from the Italian National Research Council and colleagues recorded flocks of starlings and then experimented with computer models until they came up with one whose on-screen birds behaved like real birds. The secret, Culla’s team reported this week in Nature Communications, is having “marginal speed control”: The birds, which fly 8 to 18 meters per second, slow down or speed up a little to keep up with birds nearby but avoid large changes in speed, which could lead to the breakup of the flock, he says. The finding could one day help drones better coordinate their flight in swarms.
CRYPTOGRAPHY
U.S. preps for quantum hackers
Someday, quantum computers—exotic machines that can solve practical problems that would stymie conventional computers—will be able to crack the encryption algorithms used to protect internet communications. So, last week President Joe Biden’s administration instructed federal agencies to prepare to shift to new algorithms that can resist a quantum attack. The memo envisions the decadelong shift beginning in 2024, when the first standard for such “postquantum cryptography” should be set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Fortunately for internet companies, postquantum cryptography will involve changes mostly in software. Still, NIST researchers say the transition will be challenging and expensive.
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
NSF revs up innovation engines
Details of the competition for the largest cash awards in National Science Foundation (NSF) history were announced last week. NSF hopes to spend $160 million over 10 years on each of five “regional innovation engines” that will headline the agency’s new technology directorate. The competition kicks off this year as teams of university scientists, companies, and local governments vie for 50 $1 million starter grants. NSF is asking applicants for their plans to conduct user-inspired research, translate the results into high-tech products and services, and train local people for the additional jobs that are created. The five most promising approaches will win the jackpot in a second round of funding next year. NSF says it will favor teams from areas “without well-established innovation ecosystems,” meaning long odds for traditional high-tech regions like Silicon Valley, Boston, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
$334M penalty in patent case
Last week, a Delaware jury ordered U.S. sequencing company Illumina, Inc. to pay $333.8 million to Chinese genomics firm BGI Group after finding Illumina infringed two of BGI’s patents for DNA sequencing technology. Illumina and Complete Genomics, Inc., a California-based arm of BGI, have each claimed the other infringed their “2-channel” technology patents, which speed sequencing by imaging bases in parallel. Illumina has said it plans to appeal the verdict. Meanwhile, the companies are also locked in patent battles in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and Turkey. The decision comes on the heels of another case in San Francisco, where a jury found BGI infringed a different Illumina patent and ordered it to pay $8 million.
PUBLIC HEALTH
U.S. gun murders surged in 2020
Firearm homicide rates in the United States increased by 35% from 2019 to 2020, reaching their highest level since 1994, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The rate of gun murders increased from 4.6 to 6.1 per 100,000 people as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. The biggest increases were in Black boys and men ages 10 to 44 and in American Indian/Alaska Native men ages 25 to 44. Rates also grew with increasing poverty. The firearm suicide rate also grew in 2020, by 2.5%; among American Indian/Alaska Natives, the rate grew by 41.8% even as gun murder rates in this group grew by 26.5%, less than the overall U.S. increase.
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