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WEAPONS LABSThe scheduled appointment of a new director for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was delayed last week. The leading candidate is believed to be Raymond Juzaitis of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sources say that rivalry between the two weapons labs may have played a role in the delay, along with the fact that Juzaitis once supervised Wen Ho Lee, the former Los Alamos computer scientist who was accused of spying but never charged with espionage.

ARCHAEOLOGYLONDON-- Construction has begun on a Tigris River dam that will flood dozens of important archaeological sites in northern Iraq, including the ancient royal capital of Assyria. A senior Iraqi antiquities official attending a scientific meeting here last week pleaded for international help in salvage excavations, but researchers say there may be too little time and too much politics to save more than a fraction of the Assyrian heartland before the floodwaters finish rising in 2007.

SPACE SCIENCEJust over a week ago, Sean O'Keefe was publicly criticizing NASA for cost overruns and poor management. Now those problems are his responsibility. President George W. Bush nominated O'Keefe, 45, currently the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and an influential Washington insider, on 14 November to NASA's top job, vacated on 16 November by Dan Goldin.

A mixture of relief, praise, and criticism greeted the publication last week of a much-anticipated report on support for astronomy in the United States. A panel of the National Academy of Sciences had argued strongly against merging the astronomy programs of NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF)-a possibility the White House had asked the academy to consider. But the panel has stirred up debate with recommendations to improve coordination of federal astronomy programs, while highlighting flaws in NSF support for the ground-based portion of the discipline.

EARTH SCIENCESNASA last week abruptly decided to shut down a venerable research satellite that has been gathering critical global climate change data for a decade. The decision, made for fiscal reasons, surprised and angered atmospheric researchers, who were planning a festive 10th anniversary celebration next month for the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite.

FOREIGNERS RETURNWARKA-- The return of foreign archaeologists to Iraq marks an abrupt and dramatic end to Iraq's near-total isolation from scientific circles since 1990, following its invasion of Kuwait. Archaeologists from Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Belgium, and Austria are now preparing a new generation of excavations that will profit from advanced field methods and technologies. But frustrated American and British archaeologists are being forced to cool their heels due to travel restrictions imposed by their governments, leaving them out of the scramble for prime sites in which their European and Japanese counterparts are currently engaged.

BAGHDAD-- Recent discoveries in the Near East and Pakistan are forcing scholars to reconsider traditional ideas about writing9s evolution. Most researchers now agree that writing is less the invention of a single talented individual than the result of a complex evolutionary process stretching back thousands of years before the first hard evidence of writing surfaced in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus River valley about 3300 B.C. But a lack of fresh data, the reluctance of museum curators to allow potentially destructive testing of critical artifacts, and the limitations of radiocarbon dating are making it difficult to sort out the origins of writing.

U.S. SCIENCE POLICYCAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS-- Although billed as a celebration, the largest gathering of U.S. presidential science advisers had more the air of a wake. Meeting here last week, the former government officials were all too aware that a new Administration is busy making critical decisions without benefit of the kind of scientific advice that has guided most presidents in the past half-century.

Last week, Afghanistan9s Taliban leaders began to carry out a decree to demolish all carvings and statues of animals and humans. The government-sponsored destruction extends even to artifacts from its own, Islamic tradition, as well as thousands of lesser known items that experts say combine Western and Eastern traditions in unique and irreplaceable ways. The Taliban, which few governments recognize as legitimate rulers, believes animal and human representations are antithetical to Islamic teaching.

NATIONAL SECURITYWhat began as an explosive case of alleged nuclear espionage is expected to end quietly soon when physicist Wen Ho Lee walks free from an Albuquerque, New Mexico, courtroom after 9 months in jail. The ignominious collapse of the government's case and Lee's release have embarrassed federal prosecutors. However, the news was a relief to Asian-American researchers and others who say Lee's status as a suspect had heightened racial tensions at the national labs.

A panel of eminent science and engineering administrators has delivered some stern advice to the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences, in a report on how the council does its business. The review concludes that the council takes too long to produce many of its reports, is not responsive enough to its sponsors, lacks clear lines of authority, and its staff is too often frustrated and stressed. To fix these problems, the panel urges the academy "to reduce unnecessary layers of approval," delegate more authority, appoint a chief management officer, and create "a service-oriented culture."

Last week a hefty Russian module with living and working quarters for astronauts docked with the pieces of the international space station already in orbit, a critical step in creating a full-time orbiting laboratory. Meanwhile, NASA bureaucrats put the finishing touches on a realignment of the agency's struggling biology effort that should bolster fundamental research and allow scientists to make better use of the facility, scheduled to be completed in 2005. The two events raise the hopes of U.S. academic space life scientists that their discipline is at last on the ascent at NASA.

LIVING WITH A STARIn February, the president requested a $20 million downpayment on a 12-year, $1-billion-plus effort, called Living With a Star, to launch a flotilla of satellites to study the sun and the streams of particles it hurls into space. The data are expected to give researchers critical insight into the sun's inner workings as well as a window on space weather, which has a profound effect on Earth's climate as well as terrestrial communications. But the initiative has become mired in controversy that includes a bureaucratic tug-of-war, a debate over research goals, and questions about the propriety of a lucrative contract to manage it.

BOSTON-- This month, Boston University, which directs the Framingham Heart Study, a massive government effort begun in 1948 to monitor the cardiovascular health of more than 10,000 residents of this suburb of Boston, announced plans to form a bioinformatics company that will mine the data. The university will own 20% of Framingham Genomic Medicine Inc., which hopes to raise $21 million to begin modernizing the immense database and packaging it in a format that will be valuable to the pharmaceutical industry. The plan raises a host of difficult ethical issues, including patient privacy, academic conflicts of interest, and reciprocal value to the Framingham residents whose medical data will form the basis for the new enterprise.

NATIONAL ACADEMIESThe chiefs of the National Academy of Sciences and its sister groups, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, have set their sights on restructuring the National Research Council (NRC), the huge think-tank-like operation responsible for most of the reports, meetings, and workshops carried out each year by the academies. On the agenda are proposals that would streamline the Byzantine NRC structure, raise additional revenue from state governments and other nonfederal sources, and extend its influence beyond its bread-and-butter reports on topics ranging from defending the country against nuclear attacks to improving minority health care.

SPACE SCIENCEFor years NASA Administrator Dan Goldin has demanded that scientists and engineers do more with less. Now several reports say that the "faster, cheaper, better" strategy, while good in theory, was poorly implemented. In the next month a battery of congressional hearings will air the issues raised by these reports, while NASA scrambles to come up with a new plan for Mars exploration ([see sidebar][1]). [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/288/5463/33

ACADEMIC EARMARKSAcross the country, dozens of universities, museums, and research organizations scored windfalls in NASA's 2000 budget in the form of unrequested spending, called earmarks, inserted by Congress. Although academic pork projects are nothing new in the federal budget, the dollar amounts at NASA are increasing dramatically, and space science's share has risen even more steeply. The specially designated projects are also beginning to pose a significant threat to established agency research programs and peer-reviewed science, say NASA officials.

NASALast week, a Senate panel granted NASA its full $13.6 billion request for 2000, but voted only $2.08 billion for space science in 2000, $43 million less than this year's budget and a hefty $120 million shy of what was requested. The cut was especially painful because the committee granted both NASA and the National Science Foundation the overall amounts the White House asked for--thanks to a critical decision by Senate Republican leaders to break strict budget caps.

The managers of a giant laser project have proposed drastically shrinking the National Ignition Facility to curb rising costs, a step that could reduce its chances of achieving an important scientific goal in fusion research. But the downsizing will not eliminate cost overruns at the facility, and scientists in laser fusion and other fields are also worried that the Department of Energy might tax their programs to complete the world9s largest laser project.

About 30 members of the isolated Mashco Piro tribe, who live in a remote forested area in the Peruvian Amazon, have been contacting outsiders more and more frequently on the edge of their land in Manu National Park. Anthropologists report more than 100 sightings since 2014, including repeated calls to boats passing on a river, and the group has raided a nearby village and killed two villagers. Tour operators sell tickets for "human safaris" along the river. The Peruvian government announced last month that it would attempt to help and potentially contact the tribe, but some fear the government plan for contact could further jeopardize the group. The case highlights an ongoing international debate about how to best help emerging tribes, who lack immunity to common diseases and are among the most vulnerable people on the planet (see Science, 5 June, p. 679).

As a child, Marcelino Pinedo Cecilio lived in a huge longhouse in the Amazon rainforest with his family and tribe. They grew manioc, yucca, peanuts, corn, and jungle potato, sometimes using a root with spines to clear fields. Then, one day in the 1950s, an outsider visited their village. Soon after, villagers developed a sore throat and burning fever. Many died, and the tribe scattered. Like so many indigenous peoples since the arrival of Europeans, Cecilio's group was likely struck down by a common Western disease—maybe influenza or whooping cough—inadvertently carried by the visitor. It is an old story, repeated often since 1492. Today's isolated tribes are in the same position as New World peoples 5 centuries ago, with immune systems naive to Western pathogens.

The only way to get to the frontier town of Puerta Esperanza, Peru, is by infrequent airplane flights or a monthlong river trip through Brazil. Miguel Piovesan, the town priest, says the isolation has left townspeople without access to medical care or modern conveniences. Piovesan wants a road, as do other priests, local small businessmen, and politicians keen to develop the Amazon. But advocates for the environment and for indigenous people decry the plan for the road. If built, it would cut through a long swath of the protected land, and bring a flood of outsiders, pathogens, alcohol, and material goods, they say. In this view, a road will simply destroy the forest on which indigenous people, both isolated and not, depend.

Scientists in the U.S. Global Change Research Program point with pride to an accurate forecast of the recent El NiA±o as a demonstration of the success of the multibillion-dollar effort to understand Earth9s climate system. But that example may not be enough to head off concerns that the complex and multidisciplinary program has generated too little in the way of concrete results. Long a target of political conservatives, the global change program is now being urged by its supporters to take a more focused approach and to come up with ways to quantify its progress.

After 3 years of rocky budgets and partisan criticism, the Department of Energy (DOE) appears to be on the upswing, as civilian basic science is riding high both in the White House and on Capitol Hill and a host of new scientific facilities are slated to open soon. But it remains unclear whether more money will solve continuing problems in managing its network of 26 laboratories or in coordinating R&D efforts across the department.

A strong economy and broad support in Congress augur well for R&D to do even better in next year9s budget battles than it did this year. There are already signs that the era of stagnant budgets may be over: When Congress adjourned last week, it had increased R&D spending for 1998 by 4%--twice the amount requested by the White House. And a growing number of politicians are talking about how R&D spending could rise significantly next year if the deficit disappears as early as next year rather than in 2002, as projected in this summer9s budget agreement. But any new round of spending is sure to trigger stiff competition.

Mars Pathfinder9s success and a stable of new missions signal real progress in NASA9s push for smaller, cheaper, and faster spacecraft. The results have rejuvenated the planetary science community and reversed a bleak period in which most of the agency9s science resources had been shifted to such projects as the international space station, Earth-orbiting environmental satellites, and large observatories.

Jack Gibbons is planning to leave after more than 4 years as the president9s science adviser. John Deutch, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and old Washington hand, is said to be the leading candidate to succeed Gibbons, in what Administration officials hope will be a move to revitalize the office

LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA —Managers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hope that a $1.1 billion laser-fusion facility will change the culture of the nuclear weapons lab, strengthen collaborations with civilian scientists, and cement its future as an important national resource.

The drastic cuts in spending on federal R&D proposed by House Republicans in 1995 failed to materialize, and last month the 104th Congress went home after approving a 1997 budget that will boost federal spending on science by 4%, including a whopping 7% increase for the National Institutes of Health. But long-term funding prospects remain uneven regardless of who wins in November.

A program to connect the Department of Energy9s (DOE9s) weapons labs with industry is in a shambles after Congress decided it strayed from the labs9 primary mission to defend the country. The resulting sharp drop in funding has forced lab officials to terminate or cut back on so-called Cooperative Research and Development Agreements, angering companies that had entered into such partnerships. Energy officials concede that they may have gone too far in touting the value of such arrangements, but lab managers say that they haven9t given up on the concept of working with industry.

Internal squabbling, reduced funding, and a lack of political support are forcing U.S. neutron researchers to play catch-up to Europe and Japan in their quest for new, cutting-edge facilities. The problem is compounded, say researchers, by a lack of respect for a field that is making important contributions to basic knowledge about the structure of matter and helping to develop new products with billion-dollar markets. “We're the Rodney Dangerfield of scientific facilities,” sighs Bill Appleton, associate director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which operates one of the countryd's three neutron-source reactors.

The Department of Energy's (DOE's) $8-billion-a-year network of laboratories is scrambling to survive budget cuts and political pressure to define missions. Ironically, the financial pressures come at a time when new facilities are providing researchers with unprecedented scientific opportunities. Can the labs reinvent themselves in time? A 2-day “war game” suggests it will be hard to head off a lab-closing commission.

The U.S. space agency is trying to reform its science portfolio at the same time its budget and staff are shrinking. Officials have big plans, but researchers say that it would be a mistake to move too quickly.

The cancellation of the US Advanced Neutron Source will add to a growing shortage of prime facilities and increase Europe`s lead in the field. This article discusses the significance of this decision for neutron source technology both in the US and Europe, and the significance of this technology in the future. The demand for neutrons is growing rapidly. Europe, in spite of the number of powerful sources available, is pursuing a scattered course of development, with scientists divided about how to fill the neutron gap. In the meantime the US is back to the drawing board, both in terms of what to build and how and where to build it, though Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the preferred site.

On a tidy farm in the mountains of northwest Vietnam, Chinese biologist Jianlin Han expertly grabs a nervous red jungle fowl recently captured in this region9s quickly disappearing forest. The bird—which sports a long and dangerously sharp spur—is part of Han9s hands-on effort to breed better animals to benefit the rural poor, while at the same time gathering a massive data set to understand the genetic underpinnings of the domestic chicken.

Last month, on the heels of a land mine accident that severely injured two Afghans working on the site, Taliban-launched rockets landed just a few hundred meters from a unique complex of 1500-year-old Buddhist monasteries in Afghanistan. But many archaeologists say the greatest threat comes not from the Taliban but from the Western-backed government: It intends to order the team to withdraw from the central part of the site at the end of the year so that Chinese miners can begin tapping a rich vein of copper that sits beneath the ancient statues and paintings. Archaeologists are lobbying for more time, noting that mining efforts are not likely to begin for more than a year.

Nearly 15 years ago, two fishers in the waters off the southern coast of Sri Lanka hauled up a stone slab etched with ancient Hindu symbols. During a brief 2008 dive, archaeologists retrieved pottery and glass ingots. Then, in December 2011, researchers began the first systematic dives to examine what appears to be the oldest known shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, radiocarbon dated to between the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.E. Because almost nothing was known about seafaring in this time and place, the wreck promises to remake our understanding of the region and era, team members say.

Sudanese officials said last week that their government intends to move ahead with three massive dams along the Nile River and its tributaries, threatening hundreds of largely unexplored ancient sites. Archaeologists are gearing up to record and save what they can, but they fear being drawn into a political dispute over the controversial multibillion-dollar projects, which aim to generate electricity and expand agriculture in struggling Sudan. Engineers and archaeologists gathered at the British Museum in London for a sometimes-stormy emergency meeting designed to alert scientists to the impending cultural-heritage crisis.

ArchaeologyThe Near East, birthplace of farming, animal domestication, cities, empires, and writing, exerts a powerful pull on archaeologists. The region is also the birthplace of modern archaeology itself, which began in the 19th century amid the mounds of Mesopotamia. Yet at the Eighth International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, the field's first gathering since the Arab Spring unleashed unrest from Morocco to Oman, researchers were worried about the future of archaeology's flagship subdiscipline. More than 120 foreign teams were abruptly shut out of Syria, Egypt is taking a xenophobic turn, parts of Iraq remain prone to violence, and Iran remains virtually sealed off. Even peaceful countries are more difficult for foreign archaeologists to access. Although about 600 scientists crowded the halls to listen to nearly 500 presentations, there was a note of quiet desperation in the air.

Mass warfare and civilization share a 6000-year history. The killing field at Tell Brak, about 500 kilometers northeast of Damascus near the Iraqi border, documents what is perhaps the world9s oldest known large massacre or organized battle. When the violence occurred in about 3800 B.C.E., this settlement was evolving into one of the world9s first fledgling cities. What took place here and at other sites where complex societies were starting to coalesce is of particular interest to researchers studying human violence. Some scientists argue that civilization replaced tribal anarchy with a more organized way of life that reduced rates of violence (see p. 829). But recent finds around the world suggest an upsurge, not a decline, in violence during the key period when societies transitioned from the simpler organization of tribes and chiefdoms into complex urban life.