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outbreaks in previously polio-free coun-

tries or stamping them out fast enough

once they occur. Failure to eradicate polio

is “inexcusable,” IMB says. “The program is

failing children and families in the poorest

parts of the world.”

Human stem cell tests advanceMENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA | After a stalled

clinical trial and a change of ownership,

the first human embryonic stem cell

therapy to be tested in humans appears

to be back on track. Last month, Asterias

Biotherapeutics announced results from

an initial safety study of a potential spinal

cord injury treatment; last week, it won

Enter the Dragon: On 29 May, SpaceX and its

founder, billionaire Elon Musk, showed of a

prototype of the company’s newest Dragon

capsule, which it hopes will ferry astr o-

nauts to the International Space Station

in a few years. The capsule, a modifi ed

version of one that already carries cargo to the

station, would hold seven astronauts. Upon re-

entering Earth’s atmosphere, the craft would fi re

retrorockets and land upright, so that it might

be salvaged and reused. Hawthorne, California–

based SpaceX is one of three companies compet-

ing to build a crew carrier for NASA. The agency

wants to have it by 2017 so that it can stop pay-

ing Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, more than

$50 million apiece for rides to the space station.

NASA also continues to develop its own crewed

vehicle, Orion, as well as a rocket, the Space

Launch System, to take astronauts beyond low-

Earth orbit.

SpaceX unveils crew capsule

Elon Musk reveals the

company’s manned spacecraft.

NEWSI N B R I E F

AROUND THE WORLD

Polio goal at riskLONDON | The Global Polio Eradication

Initiative is at “extreme risk” of, once again,

missing its latest target—stopping

trans mission of the virus in 2014. So

concludes the initiative’s Independent

Monitoring Board (IMB) in a just-released

report. Although there were some bright

spots, such as a dramatic drop in cases in

Nigeria, overall global polio cases jumped

from 223 in 2012 to 407 in 2013. The situa-

tion is particularly dire in Pakistan, where

killings of vaccinators and political apathy

have disrupted vaccination. IMB also

blasts the program for not preventing new

“Intellectual disability is a condition, not a number.

”Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the Supreme Court’s 27 May majority decision in

Hall v. Florida. The court ruled that states cannot decide who is mentally competent

enough to qualify for the death penalty based on an IQ test score alone.

Pakistan has little hope of stopping polio this year.

Published by AAAS

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$14.3 million from the California Institute

for Regenerative Medicine for more trials.

Geron, the company that developed the

cells, launched a trial in 2010, but halted it

a year later to focus on anticancer therapies.

Asterias took over the project in 2013, and

now reports that five patients receiving the

treatment saw no adverse effects. Asterias

plans to test the therapy in the upper spine

and to study its effect at higher dosages.

http://scim.ag/Asterias

China’s lunar rover languishes BEIJ ING | After nearly half a year on the

moon, the lunar rover Yutu, or Jade Rabbit,

is alive but not kicking, according to Li

Benzheng, vice commander-in-chief of

China’s Lunar Exploration Program. On

25 January, as Yutu was about to go dor-

mant for the 2-week-long lunar night, it

suffered a mechanical failure that pre-

vented it from retracting its solar panels

to shield its electronics from the extreme

cold (Science, 31 January, p. 468). Engineers

feared Yutu would never wake up—but it

did and has survived several more lunar

nights. What went wrong is a mystery, and

because Yutu is still immobile, the data it

still sends have little scientific value. The

end is near, Li told Chinese media 28 May:

“Yutu could stop working any time now.”

NSF budget stays on trackWASHINGTON, D.C. | The National Science

Foundation (NSF) last week withstood

an assault on its 2015 budget. The Census

Bureau wasn’t so lucky. Despite complaints

by some Republicans about NSF’s support

for social science research, the U.S. House of

Representatives voted 321 to 87 to retain all

but $10 million of a $237 million increase

proposed by a House spending panel. That’s

more than double what the administration

has asked for. At the same time, members

cut $238 million from the bureau’s budget

request to prepare for the 2020 census,

allocating the money for police protec-

tion, salmon recovery, and other purposes.

The panel’s chair, Representative Frank

Wolf (R–VA), lamented the cuts by mock-

ingly declaring during floor debate that “I

announce that we are going to postpone the

2020 census … to 2021, or maybe to 2022.”

http://scim.ag/censuscuts

Researcher gives retraction OKKOBE, JAPAN | The lead author on two

controversial Nature papers describing

a method to reprogram mature cells into

stem cells has reportedly agreed to retract

one of them. According to the Japanese

press, stem cell researcher Haruko Obokata

of the RIKEN Center for Developmental

Biology indicated last week that she is

willing to retract a paper detailing the

capabilities of so-called stimulus-triggered

acquisition of pluripotency stem cells, but

not a paper explaining how to make them.

The 29 January papers drew accusations

of image manipulation and plagiarism. A

RIKEN investigating committee ruled in

April that these issues constituted research

misconduct. At least two of Obokata’s 10 co-

authors agreed to the retraction, Japanese

media reported, but the willingness to

retract only one paper may indicate linger-

ing disagreement among the researchers.

http://scim.ag/_retract

Lab closings down underSYDNEY, AUSTRALIA | Australia’s cash-

strapped national research body, the

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial

Research Organisation (CSIRO), will

shutter eight research facilities in the

wake of an austerity budget announced

by the federal government for 2014 to

2015. The CSIRO Directions Statement

2014, an internal planning document

obtained by Science, identifies labs slated

to close, including a horticultural facility

specializing in wine, table grapes, and

citrus fruit and Aspendale Laboratories,

a stronghold of marine and atmospheric

research. The document also details

cuts to research on geothermal energy,

liquid fuel, and marine biology. CSIRO

has already targeted radioastronomy

for heavy cuts. Even some members of

Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s conserva-

tive Liberal Party question the wisdom of

the cuts; Dennis Jensen, an engineer and

member of Parliament, told the Australian

Broadcasting Corporation last week: “I’m

worried about the future of science, quite

frankly.” http://scim.ag/Austbudcuts

Where are all the chickens?

There are an estimated 1 billion pigs, 1.4 billion cows, 1.9 billion sheep and goats,

and 20 billion chickens in the world—but nobody knows exactly how many of the

animals live where. That’s a problem in addressing many scientific issues, includ-

ing food security, economic development, climate change—to which livestock

is a significant contributor—and zoonotic diseases such as avian influenza.

Now, a team of researchers from five institutes, including the International Livestock

Research Institute and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,

has assembled a new set of livestock distribution maps, using updated country

estimates, advanced analytics, and new models that the scientists say provides a

far better picture than the last global data set, produced in 2007. Their methods are

described in a paper published in PLOS ONE last week. Maps and other data can

be downloaded from the Livestock Geo-Wiki website, which will be updated as new

census statistics become available.

Published by AAAS

NEWS | IN BRIEF

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NEWSMAKERS

Three Q’sWhat are your odds

of becoming principal

investigator (PI) of a

research group? Depends

on your publications,

suggest computational

biologist David van

Dijk of the Weizmann Institute of Science in

Rehovot, Israel, and colleagues in a 2 June

paper in Current Biology. The team built

a mathematical career model based on a

scientist’s publication record; Science talked

with van Dijk in an interview edited for

brevity. http://scim.ag/sciball

Q: Why study scientific careers?

A: Once in a while I like to use my skills to

tackle more general questions. Every grad

student dreams of a Nature, Cell, or Science

[NCS] paper—not just for the fame, but

to secure a job. We wondered whether it

would be possible to quantify the effect of

an NCS paper [on careers].

Q: What does your study reveal about the

academic rat race?

A: The easiest, [most] sensible way to

judge people you don’t know is probably

by past work, especially for funding agen-

cies and hiring committees. However, this

filtering method will miss some phe-

nomenal scientists. Making the scientific

community more conscious of this fact can

only improve things.

Q: What effect does this paper have on your

own chances of becoming a PI?

A: The model predicts that I have a 71%

chance of becoming a PI. After this study

is published … the model gives me a score

of 81%.

Hauser report releasedFour years after Harvard University

completed its investigation of psychologist

Marc Hauser, the institution’s report, with

redactions, is out—thanks to The Boston

Globe, which filed a Freedom of Information

Act request with the U.S. government. The

pages detail an exhaustive investigation:

Three committee members met 18 times

and interviewed 10 people and Hauser.

What they found was damning, including

numerous mismatches between submitted

papers and raw data. “Prof. Hauser repeat-

edly valued the primacy and impact of his

ideas above an accurate representation of

his scientific methods and the integrity of

the data,” the committee concluded. In 2012,

the federal Office of Research Integrity

found that Hauser had engaged in research

misconduct. He resigned from Harvard in

2011 but continues to write about language

and cognition. http://scim.ag/Hausermisc

BY THE NUMBERS

55,000“Facial recognition-quality” images

intercepted by the U.S. National Security Agency each day, out of the

millions of photographs published online, according to 2011 documents

obtained from former agency contractor Edward Snowden.

288Measles cases in the United States,

a record since the disease was considered eliminated 15 years ago, according to the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention.

70Percent of U.S. norovirus outbreaks from 2009 to 2012 that were linked

to infected food workers; 54% of those cases involved workers touch-

ing ready-to-eat foods with bare hands, according to the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention. Only 1% of norovirus outbreaks

were on cruise ships.

Zooming in on a fin

It’s not a peacock feather, but a zebrafish’s developing fin in this colorful image from the microscope of University of Wisconsin, Madison, developmental biologists. They are studying how environmental toxins can disrupt the expres-sion of sox9b, which makes a protein important to skeletal

development in both zebrafish and humans. (Sox9b’s protein is marked green, collagen is red, and DNA is blue.) The photo is among 46 stunning microscope portraits of cells and other biological structures from the plant, animal, and microbial world on display from June through November at Washington Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. The shots include an immune cell engulfing an anthrax bacterium, neatly patterned muscle fibers, misshapen cancer cells, spiky pollen grains, and the intricate mouthparts of a tick. The American Society for Cell Biology is sponsoring the exhibit, Life: Magnified (http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Life-Magnified.aspx), together with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

This zebrafish’s fin

is part of a new photo

exhibit, Life: Magnified.

Marc Hauser

Published by AAAS