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Boom! The bomb exploded. But don't worry—it was a virtual bomb, part of a game I started to play with my research group through teleconferencing in the early days of the pandemic. Called Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes ( KTANE ), the game consists of a “defuser”—me—who has the bomb but no idea how to defuse it, and a group of “experts”—the members of my team—who have an instruction manual but cannot see the bomb. I have to describe the components of the bomb to them. They have to identify each component in their manual, figure out how to defuse it, and explain the solution to me. Then I have to execute based on their instructions. If we make too many mistakes or run out of time—boom!—the bomb explodes and the game is over. For our group, playing offered excitement and camaraderie—and for me, a lesson in how games can hone leadership skills. > “Maybe bringing this game to my research group … would be good practice for me.” I learned about KTANE from my older son, who organized a game for our family. He was the defuser, describing to his younger brother, my wife, and me each of the bomb's modules—for example, a set of colored wires that need to be “cut” a certain way and a set of buttons labeled with symbols that need to be pushed in a certain order, among hundreds of much more complex puzzles. It was a roller coaster of joy and desperation. We were hooked. I was especially captivated by the role of the defuser, who controls the flow of tasks and information to keep everyone busy, productive, and efficient—just as I try to do as lab head. Maybe bringing this game to my research group, with me as the defuser, would be good practice for me while also helping our lab stay connected and maintain morale during the COVID-19 shutdown. After an initial round to get our bearings, we hit our groove. Our communication flowed smoothly, the experts solved their puzzles efficiently, and we had some laughs along the way. I thought we were ready to increase the complexity of the modules—but I pushed us too far, too fast. Frustration skyrocketed as our bombs exploded again and again. The worst part was that we weren't identifying or learning from our mistakes. This reminded me of my experience struggling to mentor some students who didn't acknowledge their mistakes, and as a result weren't growing as scientists. I tried to convey to them that we all make mistakes; certain errors are beyond our control and we might not even be aware of them. The most important thing is to take responsibility for our missteps and move forward, not pretend they never happened. But that message rarely seemed to get through. So after each explosion, I began to lead the group through the game's logfile analyzer, which included information about the correct solutions to each module. Talking about research mistakes can be delicate and uncomfortable, but within a game the stakes are low. I practiced offering constructive, supportive feedback—and my students became more comfortable receiving and acting on my input. Within a few rounds, our bombs rarely exploded. I realized that cooperative games like KTANE —and we've gone on to play others, too—offer a fun, nonthreatening environment to practice effective communication and dealing with mistakes. In real life, we don't have a logfile analyzer to show where we've gone wrong. Still, the game has given us a foundation to build on. Recently, one of my students inadvertently provided the wrong cells to another student, affecting a lengthy and expensive experiment. This could have been a sensitive situation to navigate. But I reminded my group of the lessons we learned from KTANE . I emphasized the importance of communication, the humbling experience of realizing that everybody makes mistakes, and the crucial value of identifying and learning from these errors so we can minimize repeating them. I felt like a pilot who, after many hours training with a flight simulator, was confidently flying a real plane.

Angel Yanagihara of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu has spent 20 years studying the venom of box jellyfish and how they kill their victims. Her studies have shown that the venom contains proteins that puncture red blood cells and release potassium, disrupting the electrical rhythms that keep the heart beating; she has developed products to help counter the sting, which she hands out for free in countries where many stings occur. But nobody has independently replicated Yanagihara9s methods and findings or tested her products. Some jellyfish researchers say other compounds in the venom are the real killers and that different remedies—or none at all—are more likely to work. Research that would resolve the debates is scarce; funders prefer to focus on bigger public health problems. But Yanagihara thinks the stings exact a much higher death toll than most people assume; her team is trying to prove that in a study now underway in the Philippines.

“Are you OK?” my principal investigator (PI) asked me. I had just broken down crying in his office during one of our meetings. “It doesn't seem like you're OK.” He was right. But I wasn't ready to be vulnerable with him, so I evaded the question. Later, I wondered why. When I mentor undergrads, I make a point of connecting with them on a personal level and reaching out to them when they seem to need help. For the past year, I had been yearning for someone to do the same for me. So why hadn't I accepted the gesture when it finally came? > “Concealing my stuggles … hampered my ability to be my true self in the lab.” Things had started to go downhill for me during the third year of my Ph.D. My science wasn't going as planned, and I was in the midst of a long-standing conflict with a colleague. I was dragging myself into the lab at 1 p.m., my face hidden beneath my hood, headphones on to drown out the chatter around me. I stopped speaking up in meetings. The quality and quantity of my work dropped. With my downcast eyes, slow gait, and slumped posture, I tried to signal that I needed help—but nobody reached out. To my labmates, I may have just seemed stressed or tired. As for my PI, he seemed to not want to pry into my personal life. I felt alone and helpless, hesitant to share my struggles because I wasn't sure that anyone cared. For a while, my undergrads kept me functioning. Their curiosity spurred me to plan experiments and read papers. My duty to them forced me out of bed and into the lab, where I set aside my own distress and put on the disguise of an encouraging mentor. I enthusiastically asked about their classes and weekend plans, their extracurricular activities and postgraduation ambitions. Mentoring offered a consolation: If I couldn't make my mark in science, at least I could have an impact on my mentees' career trajectories and support them through their own challenges. When one of my undergrads began to act lethargic and distracted, for example, I reached out to ask whether there was anything I could do. Though usually reticent, she opened up. She thanked me for checking in and offering a sympathetic ear, and we adjusted her lab workload to accommodate her needs. Why was it that I could be there for my mentees, yet no one could be there for me? Soon enough, I lost the high I got from mentoring. My patience gave way to irritation. When my undergrads made simple mistakes, I had a harder time being understanding. I knew that I couldn't wait any longer to seek help. I finally contacted the therapist I had connected with at the beginning of grad school and started medication for my now-diagnosed anxiety and depression. Then came that meeting with my adviser. Because our relationship had always been strictly professional, I wasn't sure he really wanted to know about my troubles any more than my other colleagues seemed to. I also worried that he would think less of me if I told him I was having a hard time. Yet concealing my struggles from my closest colleagues hampered my ability to be my true self in the lab—the place where I spent most of my waking hours. Eventually, I worked up the courage to tell close friends and supportive labmates. Many listened and empathized, and I realized that just because they hadn't reached out didn't mean they didn't care. In the end, I told my PI too. It was incredibly awkward at first, but with time, we became more comfortable having frank, candid conversations. We made arrangements to minimize the conflict I had with my colleague and devised a plan to balance my scientific interests with my graduation timeline. I'm still working on my mental health, but I finally feel like I'm headed in the right direction. The experience has taught me that when I need help and support, sometimes I need to ask for it. And when it's offered, even from an unlikely source, I should embrace it.

Four months into my second faculty job, I was shocked to discover that I had to record the hours I'd worked. I'd heard that others at the university were required to do that—but surely not faculty members, I thought. I was wrong. At the end of each month, I was expected to sign and submit a sheet that listed my start and end times each day. At first, I was annoyed that I had to waste my time on such a mundane task. But the practice of writing down my work hours was surprisingly illuminating, ultimately sending me down a path to better work-life balance. > “The data have completely altered my view of work-life balance.” In my previous 16 years in academia, it had been up to me to judge whether I was working hard enough. Usually, I felt I needed to work harder. During my Ph.D., I always believed I could make my dissertation better with extra effort. My research never felt finished, and I had no idea how many hours I was supposed to work. That made it easy to go down rabbit holes and work more hours than necessary. After graduating, I continued to work long hours, even though my employment contracts spelled out shorter workweeks. During my postdoc years, I was supposed to work precisely 39.5 hours per week, according to the labor agreement for public servants in Germany. But nobody asked how long I actually spent in the office, and I probably exceeded that on a regular basis. When I started my first faculty position, my contract stated that I work anywhere from 36 to 48 hours per week. At first, I appreciated the flexibility, hoping for the occasional guilt-free 36-hour workweek. But my teaching and administrative workloads were so high that I regularly reached the 48-hour mark. I was conscious of my work hours. I kept track mentally and made a point of taking some time off when I felt as though I'd worked too hard. But there were stretches of time during my first faculty job when my children didn't see me enough, or when—between work and parental duties—I had no time to spend with my husband. In my second faculty position, I expected that my work hours would again be my business. So when I was told to track them, I was surprised. My contract stated that I work 40 hours per week, and couldn't I be trusted to do so? Grudgingly, I opened a spreadsheet and started to record my hours. It would have been easy to add standard start and end times for each day—for instance, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.—and be done with it. But my scientific tendencies kicked in, and I decided to keep careful track of my hours, even noting breaks. I'm glad I did, because the data have completely altered my view of work-life balance. Recording my hours showed that I was racking up much longer workweeks than I realized. During the first month I started to track, for instance, I worked 15 hours more than was required of me—nearly two full workdays. That's far less than the insane hours that some academics work. But it was eye-opening for me. With my tracking, I've found that I generally accumulate 1 week of overtime every 2 to 3 months. So now, every time I reach that milestone, I take a few days or even a whole week off. I spend that time at home with my family. Or I use the days to take a longer vacation, or to spend more time with relatives who visit. The breaks have improved my overall happiness and job satisfaction. The data also help alleviate any guilt that I may have otherwise felt taking time off. I still have deadlines, tenure requirements, and the pressure to publish papers. And I still work a lot, sometimes even on weekends. But I now know how much I work—and that I deserve the time off. When I am tenured, I won't have to submit my hours to my university any longer. But I'm going to continue to track them to help keep my work in bounds. To some academics, it may seem like a waste of time. But for me, it's been anything but. I'd recommend opening a spreadsheet and tracking the hours that you spend at work. Even if you only do it for 1 or 2 weeks, you might be surprised what you'll discover.

Happenstance led Chen Hualan to influenza research in 1994; at the time, says the 44-year-old virologist, "nobody cared about flu" in China. But events soon put her in the center of action. As the point person for animal testing and research for avian flu, she has seen the country through periodic outbreaks of the deadly flu virus H5N1. When news of the novel virus H7N9 infecting humans broke in late March, Chen faced suspicions from other scientists that she was hiding information about the outbreak. A controversial study she authored on how H5N1 might spread from human to human has kept her in the crossfire.

With Congress committed to reducing the $1.5 trillion federal deficit, research agency budgets will likely be flat or declining for the foreseeable future, meaning the loss of thousands of jobs and grants and the delay or cancellation of numerous high-profile projects. But will Congress actually abide by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which caps discretionary spending at $1.043 trillion for the 2012 fiscal year and requires reducing the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years? The so-called Super Committee was formed to break the political gridlock: Republicans typically object to any tax hikes, and Democrats want to avoid cutting social programs. On other hand, nobody likes the idea of mandatory cuts, and there is talk of rewriting the rules. So far the panel has been unable to reach agreement on any plan, and time is running out.

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.-- Born of a 19th century magnate9s vision of heroic science, the Nobels remain the prizes everybody wants to win--and nobody wants to tamper with. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prizes, the stories in this special Focus section explore how the science awards achieved iconic status, why they have overlooked some major discoveries (see p. 292), and how they change the lives of those who win them--for good or ill (see p. 293). A timeline of some Nobel milestones and a series of " Nobel nuggets " round out the package.

When the biggest discovery in cosmology in years officially unraveled last Friday, nobody was surprised. Nevertheless, cosmologists remain optimistic that such a discovery may come soon. Last March, cosmologists using a specialized telescope at the South Pole called BICEP2 reported that they had detected faint pinwheel-like swirls in the afterglow of the big bang—the cosmic microwave background—that would be direct evidence of cosmic inflation, a bizarre exponential growth spurt thought to have blown up the infant universe. But in September, data from Europe's Planck spacecraft suggested the signal was an artifact of dust in our galaxy. Now, a joint analysis by the BICEP and Planck teams confirms the dust explanation. Still, a gaggle of experiments in the works will have sensitivity to see a signal half as strong as the now-discredited one. And researchers are planning for a $100 million network of telescopes, to be deployed next decade, that would be 10 times more sensitive still. Evidence for inflation may come within a few years.

In the 11 April Research News article “What makes brain neurons run?” by Marcia Barinaga ([p. 196][1]), neurophysiologist Marcus Raichle argues (as phrased by Barinaga) that “nobody doubts that glucose consumption rises as much as blood flow in activated brain areas, and that oxygen use—by

I n 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, only 5% of the population held a postsecondary degree. Despite the steady rise in educational attainment (nearly one-third of Americans currently have a college degree) and voting enfranchisement over the past 50 years, American democracy continues forward with the seemingly paradoxical circumstance of relatively high levels of education and low levels of political knowledge. In an engaging new book, eminent political scientist Arthur Lupia sets out to provide answers to the question of “why people know so little about politics and what we can do about it.” Lupia begins by critiquing the conventional wisdom that we are, in fact, lacking when it comes to political knowledge. He argues that studies that draw such conclusions are often based on unrealistic expectations, poor quality of measurement, and faulty reasoning from the data. There is far too much detailed and policyspecific political information at any given moment for any person to be considered knowledgeable about all things political, Lupia maintains. “A democracy would be a farce if nobody knew anything at all about politics or policy,” he writes. “[H]owever, it requires a grand leap of logic (usually accompanied by a substantial dose of illogic) to go from POLITICAL SCIENCE

Robert S. Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, is the most cited engineer in history, with more than 163,000 citations. He holds more than 1000 patents, licensed or sublicensed to more than 300 companies, and he has helped found at least two dozen biotechnology companies. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. ![Figure][1] “Don't sacrifice publishing good science to be secretive.” ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER Q: Why did you become a scientist? A: In my day, there was this company called A. C. Gilbert that made these great erector, chemistry, and microscope sets. I got them for various birthdays. Later on, in high school, I was good in math and science and terrible in everything else. People would say to me, “You should become an engineer.” I thought engineers ran railroad cars. I went to Cornell and majored in engineering. My first term, the only class I liked and did OK in was chemistry, so I decided I would be a chemical engineer. When I graduated with my doctorate in 1974, the standard chemical engineering job was to work at an oil company. I wasn't excited about that. So I kept looking for things I felt would make an impact, that would help people. I ended up working as a postdoc with Judah Folkman, a surgeon at Boston Children's Hospital. He had this idea that if you could stop blood vessels, maybe that would be a way to stop cancer. I thought, “Boy, this is a lot better than oil companies.” If it worked, it would be incredible. Q: How did you go from scientist to entrepreneur? A: My project was to isolate the first angiogenesis inhibitors. We invented microparticles that release an inhibitor of blood vessel growth to starve the growing tumors. I thought, “We'll publish our work on microparticles, and everybody will use them clinically.” And then nobody did. Nobody used them to help people. So we patented them and licensed them. After about 10 years, somebody called me. They were going to work with the microspheres we developed, but they did only an experiment or two a year. I was frustrated. About a year later, Alex Klibanov, a professor at MIT, said, “Bob, we should start a company.” Q: What, in your view, is the most common mistake scientists make when trying to launch a company? A: Starting too early. It is a long road in the medical area. If you start up too early, you may have trouble getting investment. Even if you succeed, then by the time you get to clinical trials, the investors may get tired. Q: What is the connection between graduate science education and entrepreneurship? A: When you're a student, you're judged by how well you answer questions. But in life, you're judged by how good your questions are. You want students and postdocs to transition from giving good answers to asking good questions. Then they'll become great professors, great entrepreneurs, great something. When somebody is a student or postdoc, what is going to help them through is to be stretched. Feeling some of that discomfort, knowing how to get through it—the fact that you can prove to yourself that you can get through, and you can do well—that is wonderful, as long as it is not too painful. Q: How do you advise scientists to approach their careers? A: I always tell people, “Just follow your heart. Pick something you think you are going to love.” To me, that is the most important thing. Q: What is your take-home message to budding scientist-entrepreneurs? A: Do great science. Don't sacrifice publishing good science to be secretive. Then go to the next step and patent it—and do licensing and start companies. That can be incredibly fulfilling because it gives you the opportunity to take your ideas—and give your students the opportunities to take their ideas along with you—and create things that could change the world and make it a better place. [1]: pending:yes

Did a continent-searing comet impact wipe out the mammoths and other great beasts? Impact specialists have now weighed in on that widely publicized possibility. Their verdict: There never was a mammoth-killer impact. Proponents' evidence "is not internally consistent, not reproducible, and certainly not consistent with being produced by impact," says a geochemist who has been publishing on impacts for 27 years. Since impact specialists went looking on their own, he says, "nobody has found anything." The final blow, in the eyes of some, comes this week in a paper reporting a failure to find proponents' most promising trace of an impact, a particular crystal form of nano-size diamond. But core supporters of the impact scenario are sticking to their guns.

HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICSEAST LANSING, MICHIGAN-- At a meeting here last week, researchers announced results that, so far, nobody can explain. By slamming gold atoms together at nearly the speed of light, the physicists hoped to make gold nuclei melt into a novel phase of matter called a quark-gluon plasma. But although the experiment produced encouraging evidence that they had succeeded, it also left them struggling to account for the behavior of the particles that shoot away from the tremendously energetic smashups.

Next week, physicists working with the world's biggest atom smasher—the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN—will report the latest results of searches for the Higgs, the key to physicists' explanation of how all particles get their mass. Nobody expects a definitive claim of discovery, but given the amount of data the LHC has produced in 2 years of running, some physicists say that—if it's there—the Higgs should begin to emerge from "background" particle collisions like a sapling rising above the grass.

A $70-million-a-year program launched 7 years ago at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help academic researchers move into industry-style drug discovery may soon be forced to scale back sharply. NIH Director Francis Collins has been one of its biggest champions. But the NIH Molecular Libraries, according to plan, must be weaned starting next year from the NIH director9s office Common Fund and find support at other NIH institutes. In a time of tight budgets, nobody wants it.

Conservation EcologyOn a small round island in the Sea of Japan lives the Oki salamander ( Hynobius okiensis ), a critically endangered species found nowhere else on Earth. Nobody knows how many Oki salamanders are left. Saving the palm-sized forest dweller from extinction could require habitat restoration, stricter conservation laws, and a revolution in how island residents approach development. Proponents of conservation triage might question the cost—but a new global commitment to zero extinction should give a major boost to the Oki salamander and other species in need of a lifeline. * Winifred Bird is a writer in Japan.

Undergraduate EducationEverybody agrees that U.S. colleges and universities need to prepare more minority students to enter careers in science and engineering. But almost nobody likes a new plan by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fold three programs aimed at achieving that goal into a still-to-be-defined initiative. Scientists and university administrators involved in the programs are up in arms, and Congress is telling NSF to go back to the drawing board.

Malaria scientists are brimming with optimism. Thanks to a massive influx of new money, dozens of countries have begun scaling up simple ways to fight malaria: insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor spraying of insecticides, and a class of powerful drugs called artemisinin-based combination therapies. Some have seen spectacular results. On top of that, megaphilanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates gave the field a breathtakingly ambitious goal in 2007: Don9t just control malaria, eradicate it—get rid of it once and for all. Nobody believes that is possible in the next 10, 20, or even 30 years. But the call for eradication, combined with the plummeting malaria burden, are already reshaping the scientific agenda.

Proposed salary cuts and/or furloughs for all faculty and staff members are causing consternation at the University of California (UC), one of the nation9s largest public universities, with approximately 170,000 employees. The proposed cuts, outlined in a letter to all employees by UC President Mark Yudof on 17 June, would help reduce a projected $800 million shortfall in state funding for UC over the next 2 years, a result of the state9s economic meltdown. Nobody likes a pay cut, but many science faculty and staff members are particularly peeved because their salaries are at least partly paid by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies. Cutting pay from these nonstate sources won9t save UC any money, they argue, and could make matters worse.

ARCHAEOLOGY TARASCON, FRANCE— Jean Clottes, the eminent French prehistorian, is leading a visitor into the Grotte Niaux, a cave decorated some 13,000 years ago with delicate black sketches of bison and horses. Clottes has visited this cave hundreds of times and studied its art in depth, but as he shines his light onto the painting of a shaggy bison, his eyes are as alight with excitement as if he were a spelunker stumbling into the dark grotto for the first time. “There's always the chance of seeing something new, or seeing things in a new way,” he says, peering at the wall and tracing every crack and rocky ripple with his beam. Despite a long career in cave art, the 65-year-old Clottes has never lost an amateur's sense of wonder. He was an English teacher in a French school before becoming director of antiquities for the Midi-Pyrenees, a region that encompasses much of southern France—and some of the world's most spectacular cave art. “I never thought I'd become a professional archaeologist,” says Clottes. “And I certainly never thought that I'd do nothing but research into prehistory, which was my hobby. So all of this has been something wonderful.” Perhaps in part because of his unorthodox background, Clottes has been something of an outsider among the French scholarly elite. He works in the provinces far from the traditional hub of French archaeology in Paris, and he was paid only a token wage for his first 4 years as director of antiquities. He has never had a university or museum affiliation, working instead out of his “cave bear's den”—a cluttered basement office in his home in Foix on the edge of the Pyrenees. But over time Clottes's enthusiasm, innovative ideas, and willingness to try new methods have turned him into the consummate insider. He heads the most important cave art dig in France—some would say in the world—on the 32,000-year-old paintings at the Grotte Chauvet (see main text). He serves as scientific adviser to the French Ministry of Culture, and the fax machine in his study hums constantly with preprints and requests from around the world. Most importantly, Clottes's abiding curiosity has led him to collaborate with other leading scholars to probe the “what, when, why, how, and who” of rock art. “He's got a twinkle in his soul and a love for this stuff that is simply contagious,” says archaeologist Robson Bonnichsen of Oregon State University in Corvallis. And Clottes's “research has moved rock art into a much more scientific framework.” Thirty-five years ago, Clottes was teaching English to high school students. But to satisfy his curiosity about the past, he attended university at night to study archaeology. He was chosen for the directorship of antiquities for the Midi-Pyrenees region in 1975, while he was still working on his Ph.D.—although the job was so poorly paid he had to continue teaching at first. But he thus became responsible for overseeing the scientific exploration of some of the world's most spectacular cave art. Perhaps because of his unconventional career path, Clottes has never been afraid of taking chances, and his gambles have paid off. For example, some scientists might hesitate to touch the cave paintings, even to take small chips of paint for analyses, says Meg Conkey, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley. But with Clottes, “it's always, ‘Maybe we might learn something.’” And so with the passion one brings to an avocation, Clottes has organized a host of scientific studies that have changed cave art research. In the late '80s, for example, he teamed up with Michel Menu and Philippe Walter from the Louvre Museum to analyze the pigments in paintings from Niaux and other caves. Those studies—which did require taking chips from the paintings—revealed that the ancient artists had “recipes” for mixing paints, adding various minerals to extend the pigments and to make the paintings last. Next he worked with radiocarbon specialists to date the art, yielding ages of 11,600 years to nearly 30,000 years for various caves. The dating studies also showed that artists had visited the caves many times over thousands of years. And Clottes had animal behaviorists look at paintings in Niaux and other caves; they found that the artists often painted not “symbolic” animals but individual ones that they had actually watched or hunted. “He advocated doing archaeology in the caves, trying to find out what the people were doing in them,” says Conkey. “The astonishing thing is that nobody had really asked that question before.” Yet not all of Clottes's studies are grounded in hard science. In his latest and most controversial study, he and cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams of South Africa's University of Witwatersrand suggest that prehistoric artists created paintings after seeing visions in trances, much as some modern peoples practicing shamanism do. “People have speculated for years about what these might mean,” says Clottes, pointing his light at a vertical series of small red circles on the wall of Niaux. Spelunkers have told Clottes that they often see dots after spending days underground, and Clottes thinks the red and black dots “were part of [the artists'] visions, the trances they had after staying in the dark of these caves.” Not surprisingly, this idea has drawn scorn from some archaeologists and skepticism even from Clottes's backers. “I think they [Clottes and Lewis-Williams] have a somewhat narrow understanding of shamanism,” says Conkey. But Clottes is undeterred. “There are similarities between the way people in very different parts of the world go on vision quests and see animals in trances,” he says with a Gallic shrug. “I think we can then extrapolate to the Upper Paleolithic without being too fanciful.” Clottes is now piecing together the art and archaeology of the Grotte Chauvet, the biggest task of his career because the paintings are so pristine and so old. Says he: “It's a great joy understanding something a bit better. I think that's part of being human—wondering about our ancestors of 30,000 years ago.”

I was amazed by J. Mervis's News of the Week story “U.S. output flattens, and NSF wonders why” (3 August, p. [582][1]). Not by the conclusion that U.S. science productivity is flattening out, but because apparently nobody interviewed by the NSF could identify the reason. Had the question been posed of almost any working scientist I know, the simple and accurate answer would have been that the number of papers that are written is diminishing because scientists are able to spend less time writing papers! Instead, we spend ever-more time on the increasingly burdensome administrative requirements of conducting science legally, and on writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting grant applications as the NIH's pay line drops to catastrophically low levels. As the number of hours in a day is finite and unchanging, something has to give. If I didn't have to spend the rest of this month ignoring various half-complete manuscripts and rewriting a grant application, I'd be able to explain in more detail. # {#article-title-2} ![Figure][2] CREDIT: IMAGES.COM/CORBIS The regulatory burden that accelerated around 1990 is finally affecting the output of U.S. researchers (J. Mervis, “U.S. output flattens, and NSF wonders why,” News of the Week, 3 August, p. [582][1]). Increased funding is reduced by the cost of regulatory compliance: expensive security systems for animals, superfluous accreditation, excessive requirements for cage sterilization, verification of sterility using cultures, and signatures at every step. And, of course, the regulatory documentation takes time away from documenting the research itself. Because of the monumental effort required to gain approval to use animal or human subjects in research, discouraged investigators avoid pursuing experiments that require new approvals, even if the idea may take only a few days to test. The fault lies not with committee members trying to maintain compliance while still permitting research to proceed, but rather with regulations that aim to prevent not only harm, but the appearance of harm, or even the possibility of harm no matter how unlikely. Even an experiment in which participants must listen to a snippet of song and judge its familiarity is subject to stringent requirements intended to protect those participants from harm. Science is an exploration of the unexpected, and these constraints are suffocating. We must expect creative students to look to other careers when they see how science is done today. They are replaced by those who are comfortable with bureaucracy and who do not know that science used to be accompanied by enthusiasm and spontaneity. The only mystery is why the flat output line has not yet turned down. # {#article-title-3} The News of the Week story “U.S. output flattens, and NSF wonders why” by J. Mervis (3 August, p. [582][1]) states that “the total output of U.S. scientists stopped growing in the early 1990s and hasn't budged since then.” This conclusion is based on publication productivity data from 1992 and 2001. Had more recent data been used, at least one university, Drexel, would have shown a 130% increase in publication productivity. Specifically, in 2002 Drexel faculty published 502 articles; in 2006 the number grew to 1165, according to data from Thompson Scientific Web of Science. Drexel's productivity has not only budged, but surged. The decrease shown in the article for MCP Hahnemann University and Drexel University requires context. For starters, MCP and Drexel are one and the same university. When Drexel acquired the academic units of the bankrupt Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in 1998, it formed an exigent entity called MCP Hahnemann University, which by design was dissolved in 2002 and no longer exists. The compelling reason why Drexel and MCP show a decline in faculty publications during 1992 to 2001 is because of the profound shift in attention, energy, and resources on the part of both faculties as they worked toward the common goal of integrating the nation's largest private medical school, a college of nursing and health professions, and a school of public health into a consolidated, fully integrated university. This formidable and unprecedented undertaking was a success, and research and publishing are now thriving at Drexel University. Telling a story “by the numbers” alone can sometimes mean a tale half-told. Drexel and likely other universities accept NSF's challenge to step up productivity and are already meeting it. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.317.5838.582 [2]: pending:yes

Science boosters believe that the results of a November poll offer one more reason for lawmakers to jump onto the bandwagon this year and increase federal support for academic research—especially if nobody thinks too much about what the answers might mean. Commissioned by a coalition of business

This summer, a flu strain unlike any that has infected humans before appears to have jumped directly from birds to a human, killing a Hong Kong boy. The event rang alarm bells around the world, as public health experts feared that the virus might touch off a pandemic, because nobody would have immunity to this new strain. On 20 August, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta dispatched researchers to Hong Kong to join an international team of scientists conducting an "extensive investigation" there and in mainland China.

Nobody has yet come up with a convincing way to build a single theory that includes all the particles, the strong and electroweak forces, and gravity all in one big bundle. But physicists do have some leads; perhaps the most promising one is superstring theory.

The message of Jeffrey D. Sachs' Editorial “Sustainable development” (30 Apr., p. [649][1]), a summary of the 2004 State of the Planet meeting, was clear: The adverse impacts of increases in the human population and economic activity per person have considerably outpaced the development of solutions and the investments needed to implement them. Sachs describes the coming Wilsonian “bottleneck,” which includes a massive species extinction event, failing ocean ecosystems, coastal flooding, emergence of disease, and other very inhospitable conditions. Nobody should be surprised; conservation biologists and other scientists have warned of these possibilities for decades. The question we pose is, “Why are we so slow to act to minimize the potentially disastrous consequences, given the obvious risks to our survival?” The Fourth World Fisheries Congress held 2 to 6 May 2004 in Vancouver, Canada ([1][2]), like the State of the Planet conference, demonstrated that we are capable of developing solutions that we agree on. Further development and implementation are often prevented, however, by dysfunctional and corrupt government systems, disproportionately inadequate investment, and the failure of scientists to communicate. The solutions are easy in concept. We can allow ocean and freshwater ecosystems to recover by fishing less, and less destructively; by emitting fewer pollutants into water, air, and soil; and by creating fair and functional systems of governance that allocate resources based on sober assessments of risks. We can allow terrestrial ecosystems to recover by protecting habitat, decreasing logging and road-building, and protecting varieties of habitats. Although identifying solutions is not difficult, implementation is challenging, especially in the context of global inequity and current trends toward imperialism and hegemony that are fear-driven and that embrace an unviable “fortress world” future ([2][3]). One word sums up the overall and long-term problem: overpopulation ([3][4]). We wonder how any sane person could disagree. Still, some religions, such as the Catholic church, and some nations effectively continue to promote fast population growth. Shorter-term solutions are equally important, however. These involve inventing governments that are truly democratic and economies that are devoid of ecologically perverse incentives. Sachs' conclusion is correct and parsimonious. Increasing public understanding is key to minimizing disaster in the coming bottleneck. We should use whatever ethical methods we can muster, in addition to analytic deliberation, to increase public awareness and to translate this awareness into fundamental political and economic change. 1. 1.[↵][5]See [www.worldfisheries2004.org/home.htm][6]. 2. 2.[↵][7]As defined by the Global Scenario Group ([www.gsg.org/][8]). 3. 3.[↵][9]See [www.worldpopulationbalance.org/][10]. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.304.5671.649 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-2 [4]: #ref-3 [5]: #xref-ref-1-1 "View reference 1. in text" [6]: http://www.worldfisheries2004.org/home.htm [7]: #xref-ref-2-1 "View reference 2. in text" [8]: http://www.gsg.org/ [9]: #xref-ref-3-1 "View reference 3. in text" [10]: http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/

The Book Nobody Read Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. by Owen Gingerich. Walker, New York, 2004. 320 pp. $25, C$38.95. ISBN 0-8027-1415-3. Gingerich describes the reception accorded Copernicus's De revolutionibus and his own adventures chasing extant copies and examining them for annotations and marginalia in order to refute Arthur Koestler's claim that the book was essentially unread.

We know spacetime can ripple and curve and twist, but what does its fabric look like on very small scales? Nobody knows for sure, but when physicists find out, it may drastically alter our view of the universe--and of space and time.

Thirty-one universities are participating in the National Science Foundation9s Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education program, a $13 million, high-profile program that gives 1-year stipends and tuition support to graduate students and advanced undergrads. Its aim is to raise student achievement, upgrade classroom teachers9 skills, elevate the importance of teaching in the research community, and create a cadre of science communicators. But, although nobody disputes the fellows9 potential contribution to U.S. elementary and secondary math and science instruction, some educators say that the program9s expansive goals and the variety of approaches it is supporting will make its long-term impact extremely hard to measure.

RUSSIAWhen the Russian government earlier this year installed a new system for distributing grants awarded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and its offspring, the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation--the country's fledgling competitive grants agencies--many scientists' grants failed to appear, others got only a fraction of their awards, and nobody at the foundations could track what had happened to the money. Now, the government is trying again, with a new distribution system that was installed this month.

The author is the executive director of the American Psychological Society. E-mail: akraut@aps.washington.dc.us The prospect of cutbacks in federal funding of research has provoked a strong and largely successful defense by the scientific community. However, our advocacy has laid bare our priorities, and advancing the next generation of scientists is not among them. Unless we take deliberate steps to make sure money and mechanisms are available for training and supporting new investigators—even if that means less money for today9s investigators—we are in danger of mortgaging research9s future for our own current spending. Maybe nobody sets out to overlook training, but it is almost invariably an afterthought. When federal agency officials and science advocates take to Capitol Hill, they describe the excitement of the Human Genome Project, they show pictures of the brain at work, they offer a peek through the Hubble Space Telescope. Of course these things should be promoted, but so must the research training that gave us the scientists who mapped those genes, traced those brain mechanisms, and discovered those stars. The scientists who grew up under the first federal training programs are now the leaders of the science establishment. More than anyone, they should be attuned to the need for a strong federal commitment to training. In their hearts, they know it. Federal agency heads have told me that there may not be enough researchers in the future to continue their agency9s mission in historically high-quality ways. However, that is not what they tell Congress. Research training, they tell me, is not what Congress wants to hear about. By tailoring our message in this way, we put science on the same plane with every other special interest vying for a piece of the federal pie, and that9s not good enough. We need to speak for the next generation, tell Congress what their needs are, and convince Congress of the importance of those priorities, even if they don9t want to hear it. It9s true, Congress does not want to fund more research training. “Now let me get this straight, Doctor,” they say. “Five NIH [National Institutes of Health] directors were just here begging for more money because only 15% of their approved grants are going to be funded this year. And you want me to do what? Add more people to that competition?” Not exactly. This is not about more money for established competitors. We must invest in the next few generations of scientists. They are the ones who will build on current research to find the cure for AIDS or Alzheimer9s, to prevent schizophrenia, or to create tomorrow9s miracle metals. We should be as excited about bringing the best new minds to bear on these issues as we are about any current accomplishment. Blindly pumping money into existing training mechanisms is not the answer; money for training should not be used to augment current science with research assistants cast in our own image. To encourage talented people to work in areas of national importance and to move in promising directions, we need to rethink the nuts-and-bolts mechanisms in ways that recognize the needs of young investigators at different stages of their careers. To give one example, in my field, psychology, a new mechanism is allowing young Ph.D.9s to collect pilot data while learning how things work at NIH. Known as B/START (Behavioral Science Track Awards for Rapid Transition), these grants are designed to reverse the “graying” of the field and support new investigators in their transition to independent research, a difficult juncture in a scientist9s career. We need to examine and reexamine such issues as mentoring; making training money portable so investigators can work in different settings; making multidisciplinary training deliberate; injecting new perspectives into training even where it is discipline specific; breaking down barriers between basic, clinical, and applied research; and many more. On a broader scale, we need to initiate with policy-makers a new national training strategy, one that articulates a strong federal role in producing and supporting young researchers—for their sakes, not ours. It will not be easy: Adopting a national training strategy may require something on the order of a culture change within science. However, if training continues to be a marginal consideration, we are virtually guaranteeing a future work force less qualified than what we have now. Both science and the nation deserve better.

Europe9s Rosetta spacecraft is scheduled to shadow the comet Wirtanen for 2 years early in the next century, sending back spectacular close-up views—a scientific and public relations bonanza. But there9s a catch: Nobody seems willing to pay for a camera to take those close-up shots.

This editorial is adapted from a speech given at the AAAS annual meeting in February 1996. The American dream is about opportunities, aspirations, and a better quality of life. Science has provided an important pathway to that dream, but whether this will continue to be true is an open question. During the Cold War, one primary goal of the American dream was to preserve our freedom while securing our safety from annihilation. Generous funding of science helped us reach that goal, but also provided many other benefits, such as improved health, safer work environments, and a higher standard of living for more people. Today, circumstances are dramatically different and call for different kinds of leadership. Global communications and transportation have made the world a village, and global markets have made it an intensely competitive circle of highly productive participants. In our own country, neglected social problems have become festering national issues. The ballooning of the federal budget deficit in the 1980s, along with the economic drain from interest on the federal debt, have energized the electorate to demand greater accountability from all government investment, including that made in science and technology. In this new environment, leadership from the science and engineering community requires a much more public and civic persona. More than ever, scientists and engineers need to be visible and vocal in the greater community. Today, science can be funded only if the taxpayers and their elected representatives are convinced of its value and contribution. This understanding and the explanations it requires are not well suited to crash efforts in times of budgetary crisis; they need to be routine parts of community discourse on the goals and values of the nation9s current and future investments. Only then can we be assured that science and technology9s contributions will be inherently valued in the current climate of accountability. Without this understanding among citizens and policy-makers, science and the American dream may be only a memory of the past. I believe that the new leadership needed from those of us in the research community—particularly from individual scientists and engineers active in research—is to carry our understanding of science and its value into the lives of all Americans. Whether in classrooms, boardrooms, or clubrooms, this leadership can help propel America toward investments that are vital to a vibrant 21st-century American dream. Science and technology provide an open door to understanding of the mysteries of the universe, the human mind, the planet9s climate, the potential of computer and communications technology, and the list goes on. The current push for spending cuts should not preclude possible healthy increases in RD perhaps so integral that they are often taken for granted, like sunlight or rain. However, nobody understands better what it takes to build a strong science and technology presence than we who are scientists. If we thought about it, we would also realize how vulnerable that capacity can become in just a brief time. Leadership from the research community—a national stronghold of intellect, creativity, and dogged determination—is essential to ensuring that science and the American dream will be a promise for the future, not just a legacy of the past.

IT is perhaps presumptuous for an experimental physicist to address a body of mathematicians. He can at best appeal. They are the arbiters of his science. They determine the number of cubic feet allotted for his antics. In a genial mood, they may give him the equivalent number of cubic centimeters. Physicists appreciate the clemency. Let nobody contend that there are, necessarily, laws of nature. In science, as in civil law, the experts in a measure make the facts. So I appeal to the law-givers of physics, with a purpose of exhibiting something of the method with which they have supposedly treated me, in the past forty years of my experience. If I am obtrusively personal I must be pardoned, for this is the only experience I have to give. We, the experimentalists, are supposed to be the artists of science, a type of men who reach conclusions by intuition, by a happy leap in the dark. The inventor, the laboratory hermit, parades an essentially feminine type of mind, whereas the eternal masculine, the essentially logical trenchency, belongs to the mathematician. In all humility, however, in the dark recesses of the laboratory, there are skeptics who believe that both the physicist and the mathematician, in the main, follow the method of trial and error; that both develop from idea to idea. The usual outcome in the mathematical case is a huge paper basket, overflowing and standing in the waste; the outcome in the other, a sort of dismal morgue, a junk-shop of botches. Failures have been the rule, successes the exception. But as we flaunt our successes (and they only

Examples are presented that suggest that the United States is about to run out of electricity. This is not going to happen in the next few years, but beyond that nobody knows. Forecasting electricity demand has become a highly uncertain business. Twenty years ago making a decision to add generating or transmission capacity would have been fairly straightforward. Today the problem is immensely more complicated. Uncertainty about national and regional economic growth, conservation, and small power generation have caused many power companies to shelve building plans. Wary that investor confidence in electric utilities has been eroded by massive cost overruns and falling growth, power companies are understandably adopting a low-risk, least-cost strategy for meeting power demand. The problems faced by the electric utilities in planning for additional capacity on their systems are discussed.

I am under 40, have for a long time been considered a brash Young Turk, thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Strangelove, am not offended by jokes about religion or motherhood, and once had a manuscript returned to me by one of the more imaginative editors of a scientific journal because the manuscript was too flippant. Nobody has ever accused me of being a stuffed shirt. Nevertheless, I am offended by Franklin Stahl's book, The Mechanics of Inheritance (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964. 185 pp. Illus. $4.95), the first volume in the new series, The Foundations of Modern Genetics, edited by Sigmund R. Suskind and Philip E. Hartman. I am so put off by Stahl's adolescent hubris that it is difficult for me to evaluate the substantive contribution he is trying to make. In the preface the phrase "Mendelian genetics" is used with a footnote stating that "Mendelian" is an "adjective referring to the nineteenth century Austrian who established most of the ideas this book aims to elucidate." On page 2 is a double photograph, supposedly to provide a stereoscopic view, of two cells of Escherichia coli in copulo. We are informed in the caption that one cell "is being pestered to death by bacteriophage particles" and that permission to reproduce the photograph "was secured from Erotica." Pretty hot stuff, eh? Figure 3.1 is an electron micrograph of a part of a DNA molecule which, we are told, is "20 A' wide and terribly long." Stahl missed up here. Surely he meant "tewwibwy wong." On page 77 is a set of diagrams of chromosomes in mitosis with instructions as follows: "You can't see the chromatids in interphase; color them invisible." "Reflect upon the wonders of the Nuclear Age while you color the nonradioactive chromatids yellow. Quick

Modern medicine seems to convey the following message: Surgical sterilization in the female terminates reproduction nearly entirely since restoration of the tube passage does not restore the tubes vital function for early embryonic life. In the male surgical sterilization can be revoked by recanalization with only slight chances of regaining full fertility but this is not necessary. Ample numbers of sperm can be obtained by puncturing the epididymides suitable for artificial insemination. Does it still make sense to hold women solely responsible? If the privilege has to be granted or if the right for a child can be claimed does it not make sense to take advantage of the semen depot readily available in sterilized men samples of which can even be checked for their biological value by numbers morphology and biochemistry? Artificial insemination is highly successful as long as the mothers genital tract can function unimpaired. How successful the procedure will be to gain eggs by laparotomy to fertilize them in vitro and transfer them to the mothers uterus in time nobody knows. And even if successful cost and procedures involved are highly in favor or artificial insemination to an unimpaired female. If it is true that mankind is entering the age of equal rights and responsibility for both sexes it is inconceivable to put burdens on one sex or the other as long as alternatives exist. The widely discussed and proposed punitive actions any elected government or society can impose on those breaking newly established laws or moral codes should leave the choice of the method open to responsible parents but should give them all possible advice and tell them of the other side of any method involved. Any method with the assurance of reasonable safety and true reversibility should have priority.((Full text))