RESEARCH FACILITIES
Tornado razes agricultural middle
A hub of agricultural analysis within the small metropolis of Princeton, Kentucky, was among the many many locations left in ruins final week as a sequence of tornadoes ripped by means of the area, killing dozens. No staff of the University of Kentucky’s Research and Education Center have been killed, and only one particular person there suffered minor accidents. But practically all the 60 buildings on-site—together with scholar housing, places of work, and analysis amenities—have been condemned. Director Carrie Knott estimates it will likely be at the least a 12 months earlier than the middle’s 15 principal investigators can resume their analysis packages, which embody agronomy, plant pathology, and horticulture. Center management will spend the upcoming days eradicating particles and establishing momentary places of work and storage amenities for workers.
COVID-19
Vaccine mimics virus particle
A vaccine with a singular composition and manufacturing technique labored in a big COVID-19 efficacy trial, its sponsor, Canada-based biotech firm Medicago, introduced in a press launch final week. The vaccine consists of SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins that self-assemble into viruslike particles (VLPs). Already utilized in vaccines towards human papillomavirus and hepatitis B, VLPs in concept stimulate sturdy immune responses due to the orderly approach they pack many copies of the viral proteins right into a particle that resembles a virus. Medicago produces the spike proteins in a genetically engineered plant, a tobacco cousin referred to as Nicotiana benthamiana, moderately than in lab cell cultures. The vaccine had 71% efficacy towards symptomatic illness in a 24,000-person trial in six international locations, the place many variants have been circulating—though not Omicron. The firm is now looking for authorization in Canada and, pending success there, plans to submit information to U.S. and European regulators.
SCIENCE POLICY
Tabak named performing NIH chief
Lawrence Tabak, principal deputy director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will change into the company’s performing director on 20 December—the day after present Director Francis Collins leaves his publish. Collins, the physician-geneticist who has led the $43 billion company for 12 years, introduced his resignation in October. Before assuming his present position at NIH in 2010, Tabak, a dentist and biochemist, spent 10 years directing the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Onlookers say he’ll carry stability because the White House searches for the subsequent director. The everlasting place requires approval by the Senate well being committee and full Senate.
This is sort of a teenager promising to wash their room in 30 years. We want motion now.
Bill Snape, senior counsel on the Center for Biological Diversity, on President Joe Biden’s 8 December announcement of a plan for the U.S. authorities to attain net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.
PUBLIC HEALTH
New Zealand to part out tobacco
The authorities of New Zealand final week launched an unprecedented proposal to outlaw gross sales of tobacco merchandise to these turning 14 years previous, a prohibition that may final their lifetimes and steadily finish gross sales totally. The nation’s Smokefree 2025 Action Plan would additionally make it the primary on the planet to solely enable gross sales of low-nicotine smoked tobacco merchandise. Authorities selected daring motion after modeling confirmed a diminishing impact of present methods, together with excessive taxes and bans on public smoking. The plan additionally requires better funding in smoking cessation assist for the Māori neighborhood, which has a smoking charge of 24.8%, in contrast with 10.1% amongst New Zealanders of European heritage. Parliamentary approval is anticipated subsequent 12 months, with the measures doubtless taking impact in 2023.
A brand new semiconductor chip incorporates rows of vertically stacked transistors (micrograph above). CONNIE ZHOU FOR IBM; IBM
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Vertical leap for chips
Microscopic transistors on the coronary heart of computer systems and telephones could quickly pack an even bigger punch. Researchers have stood these skinny transistors vertically on their ends, making it doable to pack them in tighter on silicon chips to allow sooner or extra energy-efficient units, IBM and Samsung reported final week on the International Electron Devices Meeting. Traditional transistors lie flat with electrical present shifting by means of them laterally. But as they’ve shrunk to the nanometer scale, engineers have struggled to get ample present by means of their tiny electrical channels. The vertical transistors provide room for bigger electrical channels and different elements, which is able to allow future units to run both twice as quick, or with 85% much less vitality use, researchers reported.
CLIMATE SCIENCE
Arctic warming understated
It’s a typical statistic, discovered even on this 12 months’s U.N. local weather evaluation: The Arctic is warming about twice as quick as the remainder of the world. But that determine is deceptive, scientists reported at a gathering of the American Geophysical Union this week. Since 1990, the Arctic has really warmed 4 occasions sooner, an amplification attributable to melting sea ice and different components. One motive for the discrepancy: Climate scientists usually use 60°N to outline “Arctic” moderately than the extra technically right 66.6°N, lumping in decrease latitudes the place there’s much less amplification. Another motive: Many analyses use information from earlier time durations when light-reflecting air pollution blocked Arctic warming. As a end result, the researchers say, the true toll of world warming on the Arctic has been underestimated.
LAB SAFETY
Researcher will get COVID-19 in lab
A Taiwanese researcher contracted SARS-CoV-2 whereas working with contaminated mice in a biosafety stage 3 laboratory on the Genomics Research Center of Academia Sinica in Taipei, within the first identified case of laboratory transmission of the virus. Authorities suspect the vaccinated researcher was contaminated through a mouse chunk. The genomic sequence of the variant infecting the researcher matched that of the lab’s mice and never strains within the surrounding neighborhood, Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center reported on 11 December. More than 800 potential contacts have examined unfavourable, and Academia Sinica has promised an investigation and a evaluation of the lab’s security procedures. The incident is prone to bolster claims {that a} lab leak might have sparked the pandemic.
#MeToo Updates
Prominent male scientists confronted new allegations this week, whereas one other’s accuser fought his defamation lawsuit.
Paleontologist Leonardo dos Santos Avilla was positioned on administrative go away from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) this week following an exposé on the Brazilian TV channel Fantástico through which former college students accused him of bullying and sexual misconduct together with undesirable kissing, touching, and coercive intercourse. At least 30 ladies have raised allegations courting again so far as 2007, the section revealed. UNIRIO says Avilla will stay on go away till an investigation, begun on 7 December, is finalized. Avilla “vehemently denies the allegations,” his lawyer mentioned within the exposé.
More than a dozen ladies who labored or studied on the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama are alleging harassment and exploitation by a number of STRI scientists, a BuzzFeed News investigation revealed final week. Allegations towards soil biochemist Benjamin Turner embody rape, undesirable touching, off-color remarks, and abuse of energy. Turner, who BuzzFeed reviews was eliminated in 2020 following an STRI investigation, has denied the allegations. Although STRI has carried out new insurance policies to protect towards abuse by its workers, legal professionals representing 14 ladies scientists have written President Joe Biden’s Gender Policy Council urging it to handle these points at STRI and different science establishments.
A lady final week lodged a counterclaim in a defamation go well with filed in October by former Whitehead Institute biologist David Sabatini. He resigned in August after a probe concluded that he had violated the institute’s sexual harassment insurance policies. Sabatini’s go well with names Whitehead, its director Ruth Lehmann, and one in all his accusers. That accuser’s counterclaim, entered in Massachusetts Superior Court, says Sabatini’s “frivolous” go well with retaliates towards her for talking frankly with Whitehead investigators. It additionally alleges that he coerced her into intercourse when she was a graduate scholar and fostered a “toxic” and “sexualized” lab setting. Sabatini is on administrative go away on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the place he’s a professor. It is contemplating revoking his tenure.