EDITORIAL

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Surely it is unnecessary to remind Sciences readers that we are in the middle of a run-up to a U.S.presidential election. Theyyouhave a big stake in the outcome, because even more than in2000, science and technology issues will undergird many of the critical policy decisions of thenext administration. Accordingly, as we have done before, Sciences editorial and news staffs satdown to think up the most important and challenging questions about science that we could poseto these candidates and their staffs. In mid-June, we sent the questions around to the science

policy mavens in each campaign, asking that they respond by mid-August. Senator Kerry met that deadline,barely. President Bush took 3 weeks more, so we let him have an untimed exam and got longer answers.

We are not going to trouble you with a point-by-point comparison of the candidates views. But a fewareas are worth some special attention, starting with the very first question, which was identical to the oneasked in 2000. We asked both candidates to choose their science and technologypriorities. Four years ago, candidate Bush emphasized education. This year,he emphasized bandwidth, research toward a hydrogen economy, and recruiting science and technology to fight terrorism. Candidate Kerrylooked for a balanced research support portfolio, put changing stem cellpolicy near the top, and promised to elevate the Science Adviser position toits former status as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.

The climate change query produced some interesting differences. Bushquoted sentences from a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report thatindicated uncertainty about the effects of anthropogenic sources of globalwarming in this century, but omitted reference to the recent report from hisown administrations task force that accepted the importance of those effects. He then turned tohis plans for research on clean coal and hydrogen technology. By contrast, Kerry called the evidence for human involvement in global warming convincing and supported a cap-and-tradesystem that would resemble that in the McCain-Lieberman bill now before the U.S. Senate.

In their responses on space, both candidates said good things but ducked an important choice.Bush reprised his man-Moon-Mars (3M) project and talked entirely about human exploration.Kerry praised NASA and spoke of both manned and robotic successes. But neither he nor Bushdealt realistically with costs, especially not the price tag for 3M or other manned missions, nordid they realistically approach the challenging question of which kind of space exploration produces thegreater scientific yield per dollar invested.

Theres an interesting area of disagreement about matters of fact. Bush asserts that he holds firmlyto NSDD 189, the 1985 Reagan doctrine declaring that there is no information or knowledge controlmechanism short of classification. Kerry claims that instead Bush has created a murky area of sensitive but not classified information that is subject to control. It is to be hoped that Bush will turnout to be right on this one, but he will need to convince the Department of Commerce that it has goneoff message by attempting to assert exactly that kind of control in university contracts.

Where do we find agreement? Well, its no surprise that both men love the National Institutes of Healthbudget and support this administrations record of completing its doubling from $13 billion to $27 billion.Both praise the Ocean Commission report and say they will work to follow its recommendations. They boththink that foreign students are an asset to the United States and cite our long history of benefiting from suchexchanges. Kerry criticizes aspects of the implementation of the visa program, whereas Bush cites surveysthat show that the majority of land-grant institutions have suffered no losses in foreign applicants, but theiragreement outweighs their differences. Andwonder of wonders!both support the role of peer reviewand merit-based competition in allocating federal funds for research. The only difference is in how they label legislative intrusion in the process: Kerry comes right out and calls it pork.

But in case this analysis makes them look like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, look at their answerscarefully. The president and his Democratic challenger have some real differences about core scientificissues: climate change, space, stem cells, and the Endangered Species Act, among others. Theres a lotof important stuff here, and it will repay careful reading.

Donald KennedyEditor-in-Chief

The Candidates Speak

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A panel of outside experts chosen by theDepartment of Veterans Affairs (VA) hasconcluded that there is a probable link be-tween neurotoxins such as sarin gas and themysterious ailments that struck veterans ofthe 199091 Gulf War. This conclusionina draft report obtained by Science andscheduled for release later this monthis atodds with other analyses of Gulf War illness,including an August report from the Instituteof Medicine (IOM). The VA study also rec-ommends that the VA invest at least $60 mil-lion over the next 4 years for additional GulfWar illness research. VA officials declinedto comment prior to the reports release onhow they might respond.

The VA panel, chaired by former DefenseDepartment official and Vietnam veteranJames Binns, was formed in 2002, morethan 3 years after Congress passed a lawmandating both a new research panel to ad-vise the VA secretary and an expansiveIOM review of Gulf War research and treat-ments. The VA has been under pressurefrom veterans to de-emphasize the view thatstress and trauma were chief drivers of GulfWar illness. Its clear that something differ-ent happened to 1991 Gulf War veterans,says veteran Stephen Robinson, executive

director of the National Gulf War ResourceCenter in Silver Spring, Maryland, and amember of the VA panel.

The authors of the new report argue thatneurotoxins are the likeliest explanation forthe fatigue, muscle and joint pain, memoryloss, and dizziness that has plagued tens ofthousands of Gulf War veterans. On the 11-member panel are several veterans and sixphysician-scientists, including a well-knownadvocate for this controversial theory: Epi-demiologist Robert Haley of the University ofTexas Southwestern Medical Center in Dal-las. Haley says he was added to the panel af-ter VA Secretary Anthony Principi learned ofhis views and spent a half-day with him inTexas discussing his work in May of 2001.

But many scientists who study Gulf Warcases are unconvinced that low levels of saringas, pesticides, or the pyridostigmine bromidepills that troops took to protect them fromnerve gas can explain Gulf War illness. Forone, they say, its difficult to determine whichtroops were exposed to what. Furthermore,many animal and human studies have failed toshow that low doses of neurotoxins can causethe kind of problems Gulf War veterans expe-rience (Science, 2 February 2001, p. 812).

I dont know of any serious expert reviewthat has come to these conclusions, says Si-mon Wessely, director of the Kings Centrefor Military Health Research in London.Wessely, like many researchers in the field,believes that Gulf War illness arose from acombination of the stress of war, the use ofexperimental vaccines, and possibly expo-sures to environmental hazards such as oil-well fires. Because Gulf War ailments arespread evenly across different branches of

VA Advisers Link Gulf War Illnesses to Neurotoxins

E P I D E M I O L O G Y

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.Europe is ready to scrap theplanned collaboration on what is supposed tobe a global fusion reactor. Thats the messagefrom a meeting last week of research ministersfrom the 25 European Union (E.U.) countries,who set a late-November deadline for decid-ing whether to press ahead with a French sitefor the $5 billion International ThermonuclearExperimental Reactor (ITER).

Last month, outgoing E.U. research com-missioner Philippe Busquin expressed regretfor not having closed the file on ITER,whose partnersthe E.U., China, Japan,Russia, South Korea, and the UnitedStateshave been split for nearly a year overwhether to locate the reactor in France orJapan. But in a parting shot, Busquin drafted

a letter saying that several ITER partnershave a very strong preference for the siteof Cadarache in southern France and wouldsupport an initiative from the Union to un-block the situation. Last week the ministersappear to have followed his advice, callingon the European Commission to make everyeffort to negotiate an agreement to build atCadarache involving as many partners aspossible and to report back at the councilsnext meeting on 2526 November.

The council also ordered the commissionto figure out how to fund the project withouttaking any extra money from E.U. coffers. After the council meeting, French researchminister Franois dAubert told reporters thatFrance would double its ITER funding to

$1.12 billion, accounting for roughly 20% ofthe costs. With the E.U. having pledged 40%and Russia and China likely to stake 10%each, that leaves 20% to make up throughcost savings or by enlisting new memberssuch as Canada, India, and Switzerland.

The United States and South Korea havevoiced support for building ITER at a site innorthern Japan. And the E.U.s solo approachcarries increased risk that the success of theproject could be compromised. It would be atragedy if this leads to an ITER without theUnited States and Japan, says one Europeanfusion scientist. Worse still, however, would bethe possibility of two rival ITERs, one inFrance and one in Japanor none at all.

DANIEL CLERY

Exposed? A VA panel says nerve gas in IraqsKhamisiyah weapons depot, shown here after it wasdemolished, likely contributed to Gulf War illness.

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the military, including both the Navy and theArmy, Wessely says, the culprits ought to befactors that nearly all troops confronted.

Some experts on Gulf War illness whoasked to remain unnamed worry that tyingGulf War illness to neurotoxins overlooks alarge number of studies that question thelink. For example, a VA-funded study byLarry Davis of the New Mexico VA HealthCare System and his colleagues surveyed1000 Gulf War veterans and 1100 veterans

not deployed to the Persian Gulf. The re-searchers found no evidence of damage toperipheral nerves that distinguished GulfWar veterans from the others.

Haley says the panel considered alterna-tive viewpoints before arriving at its conclu-sion. Neurobiologist and physician BeatriceGolomb, a panel member from the Univer-sity of California, San Diego, adds: Therewas surprising agreement among the peoplewho put this report together.

But the panel appears to be largely on itsown. In August, an IOM report reviewing lit-erature on sarin gas and Gulf War illness con-cluded that there was inadequate/insufficientevidence to link low-dose exposure withpersistent neurological symptoms. Still, LynnGoldman, an epidemiologist at Johns Hop-kins University and chair of yet another IOMpanel on Gulf War illness, says that it may betoo early to rule out any specific cause of thismysterious malady. JENNIFER COUZIN

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Hoping to allay ongoing controversy aboutindustry consulting by its staff, National In-stitutes of Health (NIH) officials plan to im-pose a 1-year ban on all outside paid activi-ties for industry. NIH deputy director Ray-nard Kington, who announced the proposedmoratorium last week, says it will allow NIHto sort out possible ethics lapses and devisea rigorous oversight system. But others wor-ry that the move will further strain valuableties with companies and make it tougher forNIH to keep top scientists.

The proposed ban comes after months ofcongressional scrutiny of NIH policies,sparked by a Los Angeles Times story last De-cember that reported that some high-rankingNIH scientists had received hundreds of thou-sands of dollars in payments from industrythat posed at least the appearance of a conflictof interest. In June, the House Oversight andInvestigations subcommittee announced that

some 100 consulting activities reported bydrug companies did not show up in NIHsown records (Science, 2 July, p. 25). Afterfinding that some of these deals probablywere not appropriately reviewed, NIH has de-cided it needs a 1-year pause to complete itsoverall review and make sure newprocedures and training are in place,Kington said last week. His memoacknowledges that NIH has foundvulnerabilities in our system.

Kington says NIH will then de-termine whether to make the banpermanent or allow consulting ona limited basis. Clearly, we be-lieve theres value in some of theserelationships, Kington says. NIHalready plans, however, to perma-nently ban industry consulting bysenior staff members and thosewho oversee grants.

The moratorium is not a hugeshock, say some NIH scientists,because previously approved out-side activities were suspended inFebruary for another review. Those consult-ing arrangements that were reapproved andnew ones can continue until the ban takes ef-fect, which probably wont be for a couple ofmonths because NIH first has to propose anew regulation. (NIH says there are 66 ac-tive arrangements.) After that, scientists canstill advise industryif they do it for free aspart of their job.

Some scientists say the temporary banwill bring welcome clarity, because the rulesare confusing now. And scientific exchangeswith industry will not end: Science willmove forward, says Robert Desimone, in-tramural research director for the NationalInstitute of Mental Health, who leaves this

month to head the Massachusetts Instituteof Technologys McGovern Institute.

But others say the pausewhich mightend up being closer to 2 yearscould beharmful. Youre going to end up losing peo-ple from the intramural program, predicts

Harold Varmus, presi-dent of MemorialSloan-Kettering CancerCenter in New YorkCity, who as NIH di-rector loosened therules on consulting in1995. Several re-searchers at NIH whoconsult declined tocomment for attribu-tion but suggested thatcompanies may droptheir NIH advisers forspecific projects andsuspend the work whilelooking elsewhere foradvice. This could bothjeopardize ongoing re-

search and damage NIH scientists relation-ships with the companies, some say.

National Academy of Sciences presidentBruce Alberts, who co-chaired a high-levelpanel earlier this year that advised NIH tocontinue to permit some industry consulting,says the moratorium is appropriate. However,he warns against a permanent ban, noting thathis panel concluded that certain interactionscouldnt take place. For example, governmentemployees on official duty are forbidden fromsigning a confidentiality agreement; compa-nies prefer such agreements so that they canprotect shared information. I think it wouldbe a mistake if this [the ban] were the long-term policy, Alberts says. JOCELYN KAISER

NIH Proposes Temporary Ban on Paid ConsultingC O N F L I C T O F I N T E R E S T

Taking a breather. Deputy di-rector Raynard Kington saysNIH needs time to address vul-nerabilities in its ethics system.Parkfield Happens

A scientific event nearly 20 years over-due occurred 28 September near thecentral California town of Parkfield(population 37) when a magnitude 6.0earthquake struck. It was much antic-ipated but long delayed, says seismol-ogist Ross Stein of the U.S. GeologicalSurvey (USGS) in Menlo Park, Califor-nia. Attracted by Parkfields history ofquakes every 20 or 30 years, seismolo-gists installed millions of dollars of in-struments starting in the 1980sandthen waited. This is the most wellrecorded earthquake in history, saysUSGSs Michael Blanpied.

RICHARD A. KERR

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French Scientists UnhappyDespite Boost in BudgetPARISFrench scientists are disappointedwith the governments science spendingplan for 2005. But they are not yetprotesting the moves. Research ministerFranois dAubert last week fulfilled apromise (Science, 28 May, p. 1233) by un-veiling a plan to channel an additional$1.2 billion a year into public and privateresearch through 2007. The amount in-cludes $400 million for a new nationalresearch agency and funding for 150 ad-ditional academic scientists next year.

But the planned increases dont fullyoffset past cuts, critics say. And plans forthe new agency are very vague, saysAlain Trautmann, co-director of the cellbiology department at the Cochin Insti-tute and a leader of protests that forcedthe government to backtrack on pro-posed cuts. For instance, its not clearwhether the agency will focus on basic orapplied studies.

The government expects to firm upspending and management plans nextmonth, after the research communitypresents ideas for reforms due to takehold next year. In the meantime, sciencegroups say they could be back in thestreets early next year if the governmentdoesnt address their concerns.

BARBARA CASASSUS

Seeing Planetary DoubleNASA should think twice before movingahead with two separate missions to findextrasolar planets, says a National Academyof Sciences report requested by the spaceagency in January and released this week.

NASA initially intended to pursue justone of two methods for detecting distantEarth-sized planets that might harbor life:an infrared interferometer, or a coronagraphfor the Terrestrial Planet Finder probe. But inJanuary, NASA decided to do both.Thecoronagraph would be launched in 2014,followed in 2020 by a joint U.S.-European interferometer.

The possibility of combining data fromboth missions is intriguing, said the 11-member academy panel led by WendyFreedman of the Carnegie Observatories inPasadena, California. But NASA needs tomake a stronger scientific case for thecoronagraph mission, which it describes asexpensive and challenging. Ultimately,funding both missions could delay or evenpreclude other space science efforts listedin the communitys 2000 decadal plan, thepanel says. NASA has not yet responded tothe report. ANDREW LAWLER

ScienceScope

Planetary scientists probing the martian at-mosphere through the Mars Express orbiterreport that both methane and water tend to beconcentrated over the same three equatorialregions of Mars, regions covered by water-enriched soils. The new find further stokestalk of life on Mars, which flared up lastMarch (Science, 26 March, p. 1953) when thesame researchers first spotted methane onMars. The gas could be coming from lifeburied beneath the inhospitable surface. Butthe association with water raises a new possi-bility: that researchers are finally seeing wispsof the icy subterranean vault where much ofthe planets long-lost water may be stored.

At last weeks International Mars Con-ference in Ischia, Italy, Vittorio Formisanoof the Institute of Physics of InterplanetarySpace in Romethe principal investigatoron the Planetary FourierSpectrometer (PFS) instru-ment on the European MarsExpressrefined the pictureof methane on Mars. Lastspring, he and PFS teammembers announced the firstdetection of martian methaneat a concentration of about10 parts per billion.

This time, Formisanocould say that the methane isconcentrated over the samethree equatorial regionsAra-bia Terra, Elysium Planum,and Arcadia-Memnoniawhere water vapor is concen-trated by a factor of 2 to 3 inthe lower atmosphere. Andthose are also three regions,Formisano says, where the U.S. MarsOdyssey orbiter has detected signs of waterin the upper meter of martian soil, in theform of ice or hydrated minerals. The co-incidence of atmospheric water, methane,and soil water points to a common sourceunderground, says Formisano. Then onecan speculate as to what that source is.

The methane naturally calls to mindmethane-generating bacteria that could livebeneath a few kilometers of frozen crust.The accompanying watera key prerequi-site for lifesupports that picture. On theother hand, an erupting volcano, a simmer-ing hot spring, or even abiotic reactions be-tween rock and cold ground water couldproduce methane and water vapor, too.

But some researchers say another sourcemay be more likely still: an exotic mix ofmethane trapped molecule by molecule incrystalline cages of water ice. Long knownon Earth from beneath the deep seabed and

within permafrost (Science, 13 February, p.946), such hydrates could form anywherebetween 15 meters and as much as severalthousand meters beneath the martian sur-face, according to calculations published in2000 by Michael Max of Marine Desalina-tion Systems in Washington, D.C., andStephen Clifford of the Lunar and Plane-tary Institute in Houston, Texas.

On Earth, hydrate methane usually comesfrom bacteria decomposing organic matter;on Mars, either life or chemical water-rockreactions could be responsible. Either way,Clifford notes, the martian methane couldhave been generated and trapped eons ago,as the planet cooled and freezing tempera-tures crept down through a waterloggedcrust. Planetary geologists have seen abun-dant signs that water shaped the surface of

early Mars (Science, 6 August, p. 770), andmost assume that at least some of that watersank beneath the surface and still residesthere. But theyve never detected any. Now,they could be seeing it leak out as themethane hydrate slowly decomposes.

The methane-water coincidence is a realneat observation, says Clifford, even if itdoesnt uniquely point to life. It does havesome hurdles to clear yet, however. The de-tails of the original PFS methane detectionhave yet to be published, leaving open thepossibility that a small part of water vaporsspectral signature has been mistaken for aspectral line of methane. And planetary scien-tists find it curious that any regional concen-tration can be recognized at all, because mar-tian weather mixes methane around the planetin a matter of months. Things may get clearerin the next couple of months as PFS data, aswell as telescopic observations, come out.

RICHARD A. KERR

Heavy Breathing on Mars?P L A N E TA RY S C I E N C E

Mars too? Methane-trapping water ice, common on Earth, may alsobe present on Mars, leaking water and methane into the atmosphere.

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A Senate spending panel has done some cre-ative accounting to meet the presidents re-quest for NASA and the National ScienceFoundation (NSF) in a tight budget year. Butthe strategy comes at a price that many sci-entists may find objectionable, and there isno guarantee that the sub-terfuge will even hold upwhen Congress returns afterthe November elections tocomplete its work on theoverdue 2005 budget.

A bitterly partisan presi-dential campaign, a massivedeficit, and the ongoing warin Iraq have made it harderfor legislators to cut thedeals normally required topass the 13-piece federalbudget, and the slice that in-cludes NSF and NASA isone of the most contentious.Last week the Senate Appro-priations Committee tiptoedthrough that minefield by declaring $2 bil-lion in the $93 billion bill to be emergencyfunding and, therefore, exempt from a self-imposed spending cap. Some $800 millionof that largesse went to NASAfor get-ting the shuttle ready to fly again andpreparing a mission to rescue the failingHubble Space Telescope. That raised

NASAs budget to $16.4 billion, some$200 million more than the presidents re-quest and $1.2 billion above the level ap-proved earlier by its counterpart panel inthe House of Representatives.

The emergency label also allowed legisla-

tors to meet the presidents NSF request for$5.74 billion. That represents a 3% boostover current spending instead of a 2% cut, to$5.47 billion, adopted by the House panel. Inanother bit of good news, a separate Senatecommittee last week approved the nomina-tion of acting director Arden Bement, raisinghopes that he will be confirmed before the

Senate recesses later this month.The larger Senate figure for NSF in-

cludes some unpleasant surprises, however.The most unsettling is the panels rejectionof three new starts in NSFs major facili-ties account. The panel saved a total of$82 million by blocking funding to beginconstruction of a high-energy physics proj-ect called RSVP, a refurbished oceandrilling vessel, and a network of ecologicalobservatories. The House has funded thefirst two. At the same time, the Senate panelreminded NSF of its promise to request$50 million next year for an Alaska-basedresearch vessel, a home-state project fa-vored by panel chair Ted Stevens (RAK).

The legislators also cautioned NSF tofollow a recent report from the NationalAcademies on how it decides which big newprojects to fund (Science, 16 January, p. 299). Congress ordered that report afterscientists complained about a growing back-log of projectsa situation that, ironically,would recur if the panels no new startsdictum prevails.

NASA gets a $200 million increase overthe presidents requestbut much of it is eat-en up by congressional earmarks, projects notbacked by the agency. The committee warnedthe agency not to forget science in its push toreturn humans to the moon and called for aNational Academy of Sciences panel to ex-amine the role of science in the new explo-ration effort. This action came the same weekthat a new study by the National Academieswarned NASA not to sacrifice solar physicsfor its new exploration initiative.

ANDREW LAWLER AND JEFFREY MERVIS

NSF, NASA Meet 2005 Request After Bonus From Senate Panel

U . S . S C I E N C E B U D G E T

Suit Seeks to Ease Trade Embargo RulesJournals should be free to edit and publisharticles by scientists and other authors liv-ing in countries under U.S. trade embar-goes, says a suit filed this week by a coali-tion of publishers and authors. Currentregulations require U.S. publishers and au-thors to seek a government license beforeworking with authors in Iran, Cuba, andSudan; these rules violate trade laws andthe freedom of speech, according to thesuit, f iled 27 September in U.S. federalcourt in New York City.

The issue has been simmering sinceOctober 2003, when the Treasury Depart-ments Office of Foreign Assets Control(OFAC) ruled that U.S. journals neededprior government approval to publish workfrom embargoed countries (Science, 10October 2003, p. 210). After a heated dis-cussion with publishers, OFAC reversedthat ruling 6 months ago but asserted thatactivities leading to the substantive or

artistic alteration or enhancement of ma-terials from the embargoed countries werestill prohibited without a license. In a 2 April letter to the Institute of Electricaland Electronics Engineers, OFAC DirectorRichard Newcomb explained that theagency was enforcing the Trading with theEnemy Act and the International Emer-gency Economic Powers Act.

But OFACs regulations are illegal, saythe Association of American Publishers, As-sociation of American University Presses(AAUP), PEN American Center, and Ar-cade Publishing. The plaintiffs argue thatOFAC has violated 1988 and 1994 revi-sions to these laws that exempt informa-tion and informational materials fromtrade embargoes. OFAC maintains that the1988 and 1994 revisions do not apply toinformational materials that are not fullycreated and in existence.

The restrictive regulations should be

stricken from the books because they violatethe very statutes that OFAC is purporting toenforce, says Peter Givler, executive direc-tor of AAUP. OFACs rulings have alreadyhad a chilling effect on the publishing cli-mate, says Givler, citing a recent decision bythe University of Alabama Press to suspendplans for publishing archaeology and historybooks by Cuban scholars.

Publishers were compelled to take the le-gal route because of OFACs double-talk,says Mark Brodsky of the American Instituteof Physics. Sometimes they say editing thatinvolves changing syntax will require a li-cense; when pressure is put on them, theysay its not necessary. Publishing should notbe subject to the whims of the bureaucracy.

OFAC spokesperson Molly Millerwisesays the agency has no comment on the suit,which asks the government to remove thepublishing restrictions.

YUDHIJIT BHATTACHARJEE

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New StartsNEON $12.0 $0 $0Ocean drilling vessel $40.8 $30.0 $0RSVP $30.0 $30.0 $0

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Experts Probe Flu Death,Call for Poultry VaccinationA 26-year-old woman in Thailand who diedof avian influenza earlier this month proba-bly contracted the disease from her daugh-ter, researchers said this week. But WorldHealth Organization (WHO) scientists arecautiously optimistic that the developmentis not the start of a major outbreak. Mean-while, several global health groups are call-ing for increased vaccination of SoutheastAsias poultry flocks in a bid to corral thedangerous H5N1 virus.

Researchers say the woman, who livedin the Bangkok area, had returned to a ru-ral village in northern Thailand to care forher sick daughter, who probably contract-ed the virus from local chickens. Thedaughter was cremated before re-searchers could collect tissue samplesthat could confirm her illness. But tissuesamples from the mother proved positivefor H5N1. The womans sister has alsotested positive for the virus and is in ahospital isolation ward.

Evidence to date suggests a case ofnonsustained, dead-end transmission,says WHO virologist Klaus Sthr. Similarcases have been documented in the past.But until the WHO collaborating center inAtlanta, Georgia, analyzes the new sam-ples, experts wont know definitivelywhether the virus has mutated to a moredangerous form. So far, says Sthr, Thaiauthorities have detected no increase inrespiratory disease among villagers orhealth workers who cared for the patients.

To keep the virus in check, governmentsshould be vaccinating and not just cullingpoultry flocks, the United Nations Food andAgriculture Organization and the World Or-ganisation for Animal Health said in a 28September statement. China and Indonesiaalready have vaccination programs. But Thai-land and other nations do not, in part be-cause poultry exporters fear importingcountries will ban products from vaccinatedbirds, which dont exhibit flu symptoms butcan still carry the virus.

DENNIS NORMILE

Boehlert Has BypassRepresentative Sherwood Boehlert(RNY) is taking an unexpected breakfrom his duties as chair of the House Sci-ence Committee. Boehlert this week un-derwent triple coronary bypass surgery atthe National Naval Medical Center inBethesda, Maryland, after doctors discov-ered several blocked arteries. Hes expect-ed to be back to work within weeks.

DAVIDMALAKOFF

Diatoms are an enigma. Neither plant noranimal, they share biochemical features ofboth. Though simple single-celled algae,they are covered with elegant casingssculpted from silica.

Now a team of 45 biologists has taken abig step toward resolving the paradoxical na-ture of these odd microbes. They have se-quenced the genome of Thalassiosirapseudonana, which lives in salt water and isa lab favorite among diatom experts. Thework should prove useful to ecologists, geol-ogists, and even biomedical researchers, saysEdward Theriot, a diatom systematist at theUniversity of Texas, Austin: Weve justjumped a generation ahead by having thiskind of understanding of this genome.

Diatoms date back 180 million years, andremnants of their silica shells make up porousrock called diatomite that is used in industrialfilters. Today diatoms occupy vast swaths ofocean and fresh water, where they play a keyrole in the global carbon cycle. Diatomphotosynthesis yields 19 billion tons of or-ganic carbon, about 40% of the marine car-bon produced each year; thus, by processingcarbon dioxide into solid matter, they repre-sent a key defense against global warming.

Many marine organisms feaston diatoms. When conditions areripe, the algae can multiply at as-tonishing rates, creating oceanblooms that are sometimes tox-ic. These blooms can suffocatenearby marine life or make a toxinthat harms people who eat infect-ed shellfish. This is a group oforganisms that has amazing im-portance in global ecology, saysDeborah Robertson, an algal phys-iologist at Clark University inWorcester, Massachusetts.

Since 2002, Daniel Rokhsar, agenomicist at the DOE JointGenome Institute in Walnut Creek,California, and his colleagues have been un-raveling the genome of T. pseudonana. Theywere aided by a technique called optical map-ping, in which stretched-out chromosomesare nicked by enzymes and viewed through alight microscope. Those nicked pieces ofDNA stay in order and enable the sequencersto assemble almost all the bases in the correctplace on the right chromosomes.

The draft genome consists of 34 millionbases, Rokhsar, E. Virginia Armbrust, anoceanographer at the University of Wash-ington, Seattle, and their colleagues reporton page 79 of this issue. They ultimatelyfound about 11,500 genes along the di-atoms chromosomes and along the DNA

in its chloroplast and mitochondria. Analyses of these genes and the pro-

teins they encode confirm that diatomshave had a complex history. Like other earlymicrobes, they apparently acquired newgenes by engulfing microbial neighbors.Perhaps the most significant acquisitionwas an algal cell that provided the diatomwith photosynthetic machinery.

Some biologists hypothesize that diatomsbranched off from an ancestral nucleated mi-crobe from which plants and animals laterarose, a theory supported by the identificationof T. pseudonana genes in some plant and an-imal genomes. As diatoms, plants, and ani-mals evolved, each must have shed differentgenes from this common ancestor. As a result,diatoms were left with what looks like a mixof plant and animal DNA, plus other genesthat are remnants of the engulfed algae.

The new data support this complex scenario, says Robertson. Some 182 T.pseudonana proteins are related only to redalgae proteins; another 865 proteins arefound just among plants. About half theproteins encoded by the rest of the di-atoms genes are equally similar to coun-terparts in plants, animals, and red algae.

The newly analyzed genome has alsobegun to shed light on how a diatom con-structs its intricately patterned glass shell.So far, Rokhsar and his colleagues haveuncovered a dozen proteins involved in thedeposition of the silicon and expect to findmore. Such progress could be a boon tomaterials scientists. Being able to under-stand [silica processing] should have apayoff in nanofabrication, says Robertson.

Currently, a mere 100 or so researcherscall themselves diatom specialists. With thegenome in hand, interest in diatoms is goingto expand, Theriot predicts: It will help putdiatoms on everyones radar.

ELIZABETH PENNISI

DNA Reveals Diatoms ComplexityGENET I C S

Aqueous snowflake. The sequence of a diatom should reveal the secrets of its decorative shell.

Published by AAAS

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SANTA FE, NEW MEXICOBarely 15 monthsinto a 5-year term, Robert Eisenstein hasstepped down as president of the Santa FeInstitute (SFI) here. His sudden departurelast month has reopened debate about howto run the $7 million institute, which hasdone pioneering work on chaos theory andcomplex systems.

The chemistry didnt work, says RobertDenison, a financier and chair ofthe institutes board of trustees.It just wasnt a good fit. Deni-son says that the twin issues of at-tracting scientific talent and fund-ing were key factors in theboards decision. I look forwardvery much to a return to life as afull-time research scientist andeducator, says Eisenstein, aphysicist and former senior man-ager at the National ScienceFoundation who is remaining atSFI as a resident faculty member.

Founded in 1984 by physicistsGeorge Cowan, Murray Gell-Mann, and others, SFI bills itselfas a unique environment for vis-iting and resident scientists. The culture isshaped by a constantly changing cast of char-acters, the result of a strict no-tenure rule:Resident faculty members receive a 3-yearappointment, renewable once, while hun-

dreds of other scientists come for periodsranging from one day to several years. Thisspring, as three of SFIs core faculty mem-bers approached the end of their secondterms, two accepted tenured academic jobs:Walter Fontana at Harvard Medical Schoolssystems biology program, and James Crutch-field at a new Center for Computational Sci-ence at the University of California, Davis.

The third, J. Doyne Farmer, had his contractextended this summer by a special action ofthe board of trustees.

The personnel moves created anxietyabout the next generation of SFI scientists

and whether they would enhance the searchfor answers to the hard interdisciplinary prob-lems that have attracted people to SFI. Thisplace runs on people and their ideas, saysresident faculty member Ellen Goldberg, animmunologist who stepped down at the endof 2002 after 6 years as president. As presi-dent you try to bring in people familiar withhow universities operate but frustrated bytheir inability to pursue their ideas within tra-ditional academic boundaries.

Bob took a lot of heat for what happened,even though it was board policy, and [the de-

parting faculty] landed great jobs,says Denison. I might have actedsooner [to replace them], but Bobfelt that he needed to know wherewe were headed before he could re-cruit and raise money. Eisensteinsoft-expressed desire to apply SFIsscience to societal problems and toinject more science into the localschools, Denison adds, bumped upagainst faculty members who sawthose efforts as a possible distractionfrom SFIs primary mission to dofundamental research.

Eisenstein plans to work onglobal sustainability, problemslinked to scaling phenomena, andscience education. Denison says

that he hopes to name an interim presidentshortly and that SFI has begun an interna-tional search for someone who combinesscientific achievement with fundraising andorganizational skills. JEFFREY MERVIS

Santa Fe Institute Seeks PresidentN O N P R O F I T W O R L D

Bright ideas. A gorgeous campus in the mountains is one attraction ofthe Santa Fe Institute.

Pioneering Prevention Institute Declares BankruptcyA small but influential U.S. research instituteknown for exploring links between lifestyleand cancer has closed its doors after 35 years.The Institute for Cancer Prevention (IFCP),the only center funded by the National CancerInstitute (NCI) that focused solely on preven-tion, declared bankruptcy last week and haslaid off its roughly 100 employees.

Researchers at the Valhalla, NewYorkbased institute are devastated, andoutsiders are lamenting the demise of agroup that helped launch the field of cancerpreventionthe idea that proper diet andbehavior can ward off cancer. I feel so an-gry, so unhappy. Scientists here really putthis place on the map, says Karam El-Bayoumy, IFCPs director of research. Mean-while, some employees want an investigationinto what led to the institutes downfall.

Originally called the American HealthFoundation, the institute was founded in1969 by physician Ernst L. Wynder, who 19years earlier had published a landmark studylinking smoking and lung cancer. The foun-

dations scientists and clinicians built an in-ternational reputation for research intoeverything from tobacco carcinogenesis tothe protective effects of green tea. It reallywas the flag bearer for cancer prevention,says oncologist Steven Clinton of Ohio StateUniversity in Columbus.

By the time Wynder died in 1999, how-ever, the institute was in financial trouble. Torejuvenate the group, the board hired DonaldW. Nixon of the Medical University of SouthCarolina, who changed its name and expand-ed clinical research. But its problems grewworse: In January, Nixon informed the boardthat IFCP had overdrawn funds provided byapproximately 15 NCI grants to meet its $18-million-a-year budget. NCI subsequentlycalculated that IFCP owed it $5.7 million.

We were caught totally by surprise,says Michael Epstein, chair of IFCPs boardand an attorney with Weil, Gotshal &Manges in New York City. IFCP explored anumber of possible solutions, Epstein says,including selling the lease on its building or

merging with another group willing to takeon the debt. But on 21 September, after NCIrefused to advance the institute any moremoney and a biotech company rejected alast-ditch merger offer, IFCP filed for Chap-ter 11 bankruptcy. A federal judge has sinceappointed a trustee to liquidate its assets.

Some employees accuse Nixon of mis-management and question the cost of the in-stitutes Manhattan office. They have askedNew York officials to probe several of IFCPsactions, including its alleged failure to makesome employee retirement payments over thepast year. Nixon could not be reached.

In the meantime, NCI has offered tohelp researchers move their grants and lab-oratories to other institutions; at least fiveof the 15 or so principal investigators aremoving 315 kilometers to PennsylvaniaState Universitys medical campus in Her-shey. Hopefully, science will continue tobe served, says Epstein, albeit at otherinstitutions.

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Ellen Berty was driving home from her special-education job when the call came,on the cell phone shed bought expressly forthis purpose. The caller spoke the magicalwords every person needing a transplantdreams of hearing: We have a match. In her Mazda convertible, Berty let out ayell of triumph. Id won the contest of mylife, she recalls thinking on that sunny Juneday 3 years ago.

Ten hours later,Berty lay sedated in a radiology suite at the National Institutesof Health (NIH) inBethesda, Maryland,while doctors delicate-ly injected a yellowishgreen solution into avein feeding into herliver. The mix heldhundreds of thousandsof islets, cells from thepancreas of a manwhod died suddenly.These cells were sup-posed to supply Bertywith the critical hor-mone insulin shedlacked for 40 years,ever since being diag-nosed with type I dia-betes at the age of 13.

Bertys islet-cell transplant is part of a vastglobal experiment, a test of a therapy thatsbeen hailed as the greatest hope for curingtype I diabetes. Five years after physicians inEdmonton began transplanting islets under anew and widely celebrated protocol, the long-term results of this strategy are beginning toemerge. They paint a nuanced and still unfin-ished picture of a treatment that some doctorsconcede is riskier than they expected and lesseffective than they had hoped.

The NIH trial in which Berty enrolledreflects the promise and peril of thesetransplants. Berty has been one of thelucky ones. She stayed off insulin injec-tions for 2 years after her transplant. To-day, shes back on a low dose, but she hasrelatively few side effects from the im-munosuppressive drugs she takes to pre-vent islet rejection. Like most islet recipi-

ents, Berty also has none of the diabetescomplications she suffered before.

Still, Berty was NIHs last islet-transplantpatient. After treating her and five others,NIH stopped accepting new volunteers, itsphysicians increasingly anxious that anti-rejection drugs, which must be taken for life,were spawning problems worse than those thetransplanted islets were solving.

Other centers disagreed. They continuedtesting the procedure, and today more than300 patients have received islets under theprotocol crafted by the Edmonton team. NIH,the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation(JDRF), other nonprofit organizations, andseveral European governments have pouredhundreds of millions of dollars into coaxingthese transplants to work. But as islet trans-plants expand and less experienced centerslaunch islet programs, its become less clearwhat work really means.

The original goal of islet transplants hasbeen met: Lifelong diabetics receiving newislets have been able to abandon, at least fora time, insulin shots. According to an NIHsurvey published last month, 22 of 38 isletrecipients were still off insulin a year aftertheir transplant. Those numbers sag withtime, though, and its not known how long

transplanted islets can thrive, or whatskilling them when they fail.

A more pressing question is whether in-sulin independence is enough. A sizable mi-nority of islet recipients struggle with newhealth problems, from painful mouth ulcersto anemia to kidney disease, largely attrib-uted to the combination of antirejectiondrugs prescribed by the Edmonton protocol.

And no one knowswhether patients givenislets actually livelonger than theywould have withoutthem. A controversialstudy from some ofthe NIH scientistswho treated Bertyhints that the risk of ashortened life spanmight be real.

Physicians arelaunching clinical tri-als to improve thesafety and effective-ness of islet trans-plants, but theyre farfrom offering this experimental therapyto all but the most severely affected dia-betes patients. For one,there arent enough

cadaver pancreases to go around. Althoughmany are looking at stem cells as a renewablesource of islets, thats still a distant prospect.

Aldo Rossini, director of the diabetes di-vision at the University of MassachusettsMedical School in Worcester, compares thecurrent state of islet transplants to theWright brothers first flight. They flew acouple hundred feeta remarkable accom-plishment at the time, he notes. Still, saysRossini, no one could have expected us tofly to California in that plane.

Measures of successSince 1972, when Paul Lacy, a researcherat Washington University in St. Louis,cured diabetic rats by giving them healthyislets, transplanters have sought to extendthat success to humans. The approachseemed obvious: In type I diabetes, the CR

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Will the Edmonton protocol, hailed as a major step toward a cure for type I diabetes, hold up in the long run?

Islet Transplants Face Test of Time

News Focus

All smiles, in this case. Ellen Berty and her NIH doctor David Harlan both say her islet trans-plant was a success. But Harlan worries that not everyone has been so lucky.

Published by AAAS

bodys immune system mistakenlyattacks insulin-producing islet cellsin the pancreas, and by the time thesymptoms of diabetes surface, mostof these islet cells are gone. But inmore than 400 human islet trans-plants beginning in the 1970s, doc-tors couldnt get transplanted cellsto stick. Many suspected that, ironi-cally, the steroid drugs given to prevent islet rejection were also tox-ic to islet cells.

Then in the summer of 2000, thedreary world of islet transplantschanged forever. A team at the University of Alberta in Edmonton,Canada, reported in The New EnglandJournal of Medicine that theyd givenislets to seven diabetes patients undera new regimen, and after roughly ayear, all seven were still off insulin.

Unlike earlier islet transplants, theEdmonton protocol didnt involvesteroids. Led by James Shapiro, theEdmonton team combined three anti-rejection drugs, one of which, sirolimus, hadrecently begun human testing. It also gavepatients islet cells from multiple pancreases.

The groups report instantly becamemedical legend. Here, says David Nathan,director of the diabetes center at Massachu-setts General Hospital in Boston, was thisabsolute miracle.

Research funders quickly responded toEdmontons success. JDRF, one of the coun-trys wealthiest and most powerful diseaseadvocacy groups, declared islet transplants atop priority, and since 2000 it has poured$225 million into the field. Hospitals in theUnited States and Europe raced to set upislet-transplant centers, and patients flockedto them in droves. Emory Universitys 18-month-old islet-transplant program has field-ed 5500 inquiries from patients, says surgeonChristian Larsen, its director. Constrained bystrict entry criteria and a tight budget, Emoryhas given transplants to just six.

Like others in the field, Larsen believesthat ideal islet-transplant candidates are pa-tients who, despite their best efforts, cannotcontrol their blood sugar. More dangerously,their bodies have lost the ability to senseblood sugar lows, resulting in sudden faint-ing spells, seizures, and even comas ordeath. For patients like Berty, who sufferedmiddle-of-the-night seizures and blackoutswhile driving, the condition is terrifyingand profoundly disruptive. Its these patientsmaybe 1% of type I diabeticswho islet transplanters welcomed into clini-cal trials. Every patient we take on,theyre near deaths door or in desperatestraits, says Shapiro.

Transplanters quickly found, however,

that the success of the Edmonton protocol istough to sustain; the new islets seem to fadeover time. Experienced islet-transplant cen-ters like Edmonton, the University of Miami,and the University of Minnesota, TwinCities, boast insulin independence rates of80% to 90% a year after transplant, far high-er than the rates of many smaller centers.After 3 years, that falls to 60% among Mia-mis patients, says Camillo Ricordi, scientif-ic director of the Diabetes Research Institutethere. Mark Atkinson, a pathologist whostudies diabetes at the University of Florida,Gainesville, and research chair of JDRF, re-cently reviewed unpublished data on patientsfrom Edmonton, 3 to 4 years after theirtransplants. Between 12% and 25% were in-sulin independent, he says. Among the origi-nal Edmonton seven, only two remain off in-sulin, says Shapiro.

Something is not going in the right direc-tion long term, says Ricordi. One possibility,he says, is that the antirejection drugs, al-though less toxic to islets than steroids, stillharm the cells.Some nondiabeticpatients taking thedrugs after receiv-ing liver, heart, orkidney transplants have developed diabetes,notes David Sutherland, chief of transplanta-tion at the University of Minnesota.

A more fundamental problem may be thatthe immunosuppressive drugs cant erase theunderlying autoimmune response that killeda patients original islets. These peopledont like islets, no matter whose they are,says Peter Senior, an endocrinologist at theUniversity of Alberta.

Another explanation for islet fail-ure is that patients may be receivingtoo few islets, even if they get cellsfrom multiple donors. A normal pan-creas has roughly 1 million islets, butcurrent techniques allow only about400,000, at most, to be extracted froma donor pancreas. Moreover, un-known numbers die soon after theyretransplanted, forcing the rest to laborunusually hard to supply enough in-sulin. The islet cells may just poopout over time, says Sutherland.

Edmonton found that giving pa-tients islets from as many as threepancreases could sustain insulin pro-duction longer. But pancreases are ascarce and costly resource. Fewerthan 2000 are donated each year, andmost go toward whole-organ pan-creas transplants for diabetes. In theUnited States, they also cost from$15,000 to $25,000 each.

Increasingly, however, trans-planters are wondering whether in-

sulin independence, a goal pushed heavilyby islet-transplant centers, funders, andmany patients, is the only yardstick bywhich to measure islet-transplant success.Patients like Ellen Berty and others whohave gone back on insulin have found thatpartial islet function can stave off the hypo-glycemia they experienced before theirtransplants. This has doctors hoping thatislet transplants might prevent long-termcomplications of diabetes, even if recipi-ents still need some insulin. Even iftheyre not off insulin, says Shapiro, theirproblems go away.

Walking a tightropeBut what if the therapy is as bad as the dis-ease? Last month, the risky nature of thesetransplants was underscored by NIHs firstreport from its Collaborative Islet TransplantRegistry. None of the 86 islet recipients NIHsurveyed died from the procedure. But theagency cataloged 20 serious adverse eventslinked to islet transplants. They include four

cases of life-threatening neutropenia, a de-pletion of white blood cells caused by anti-rejection drugs. Islet transplants are still in-credibly experimental, says Ricordi.

Amy Parker learned that the hard way.Parker, who asked that her real name not beused, was diagnosed with type I diabetes as ateenager. As her disease became progressive-ly more unmanageable, she began havingseizures from low blood sugar, and blood

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Out and in. After extracting islets from a pancreas, doctors in-fuse them into a diabetes patient.

Here was this absolute miracle.David Nathan, Massachusetts General Hospital

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vessels behind her eyes started to leak. Sheneeded multiple laser eye surgeries to pre-serve her vision.

In 1999, soon after Edmonton began itsrevolutionary set of islet transplants for pa-tients like her, she applied. In November andDecember 2002, Parker underwent two sepa-rate islet transplants.

Then, her new ordeal began.Since receiving the transplants, her in-

sulin requirements have dropped toa quarter of what they once were,and she no longer suffers seizuresor hypoglycemia. But every dayshe experiences deathly horribleheadaches, a result of the anti-rejection drugs, she learned. Twosummers ago, she began having troublebreathing while on a family vacation inBritish Columbia. In July, she was switchedfrom the drug sirolimus, a possible culprit,to mycophenolate, another immunosuppres-sant. If that fails to help her, says Parker, shemay drop out of the study and lose her islets.

The experimental nature of islet trans-plants was further driven home last June atthe American Diabetes Association meetingin Orlando, Florida, where the Edmontonteam released troubling kidney function dataon its first 45 islet-transplant patients. Ofthe five patients Edmonton has followed for 4 years, two have quite bad renal out-comes, including one who has requireddialysis, says Senior. Overall, a third of the45 have high levels of a protein in theirurine thats normally a harbinger of declin-ing kidney function.

On the other hand, about a fifth of dia-betes patients typically develop kidney dis-

ease. Says Senior, These peoplemay well have ended up withkidney failure irrespective oftransplant. The question is, arethese drugs hastening that?

Changing courseIts mixed news like this that hasdampened enthusiasm among ahandful of doctors who once be-lieved islet transplants wereready for patients. One is DavidHarlan, a diabetes specialist atthe National Institute of Diabetesand Digestive and Kidney Dis-eases (NIDDK) in Bethesda,Maryland, who treated Berty.Like his colleagues around theworld, Harlan was enthralled bythe Edmonton protocol when itfirst appeared. In late 2000, hepulled together a transplant teamand more than $1 million in NIH funding to launch an islet-transplant program at NIH. From29 December 2000 through 14

June 2001the date of Bertys transplanthe and his colleagues performed transplantsin six women with severe type I diabetes.

The team quickly grew troubled by whatit was seeing. Looked at through the lens ofdiabetes, the picture was relatively rosy:Four of six patients became insulin inde-pendent, and three stayed that way for atleast a year and a half. Even those who stillneeded some insulin no longer suffered the

hypoglycemic episodes that had driven themto this experimental trial in the first place.

But problems abounded. Two patients, in-cluding one off insulin, had to discontinueimmunosuppressants because of the intolera-ble side effects, such as deteriorating kidneyfunction, and their bodies rejected the isletcells. Even Ellen Berty, the NIH success sto-ry, ran into some trouble. In her first year af-ter the transplant, the antirejection drugscontributed to a severe foot infection andcaused mouth ulcers so large that NIH den-tists photographed them for use in a text-book. For Harlan, the price NIH islet recipi-ents were paying didnt seem worth it.

When you expand the experience, youfind problems that were not expected, saysAntonio Secchi, head of the transplant pro-gram at Milans University Vita-Salute SanRaffaele, one of about four major Europeanislet-transplant centers. Two of his centers10 islet recipients who became insulin inde-

pendent have since dropped out of the pro-gram because of drug side effects.

One central question that preoccupiesHarlan is whether islet recipients will livelonger than those in comparable health whodont receive transplants. Its too early toanswer that question directly, so Harlanturned to data on pancreas transplants.They have been used for years in much theway islet transplants are now, althoughmost are given to diabetes patients who also need kidneys.

Harlan and his colleagues examined datafrom 124 transplant centers in the UnitedStates from 1995 to 2000 and arrived at anunsettling conclusion: Patients receiving asolitary pancreas or a pancreas after a kid-ney transplant were more likely to die within4 years than those still on the waiting list.

Published last December in the Journalof the American Medical Association, the ar-ticle touched off a furor. Many transplantsurgeons disputed its results. MinnesotasSutherland and his colleague Rainer Gruess-ner have reanalyzed the data, and Sutherlandsays theyve arrived at a conclusion oppositeto Harlans. Some patients in Harlans study,says Sutherland, were on the waiting list ofmore than one hospital and ended up beingcounted twice. The study also excluded pa-tients awaiting pancreas transplants who hadvery poor kidney function; Harlan worriedthat that might produce misleading results,but Sutherland believes those patientsshould be included.

Concerns about long-term survival afteran islet transplant, however, mustbe weighed against the improvedquality of life that many transplantrecipients experience, at least ini-tially. The psychological benefitof insulin independence is poten-tially enormous, says Emorys

Larsen, and its hard to understand for anondiabetic.

Rita Hart, 46, is off insulin after under-going three transplants at Miami over 2

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Donation in demand. Islet cells such as theseare in short supply for transplants.

Believer. James Shapiro pioneered the Edmonton protocol, inwhich more than 300 patients with diabetes have participated.

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years, the last in July 2003. Before hertransplant, diabetes was consuming her lifeand complications were piling up. I waslosing hope, she says. Now, despite drugside effects that include anemia, she feelsvastly more optimistic.

Its striking how many patients ask for athird transplant, says Senior. Even with allthe side effects and all the downsides, theystill think its a good thing.

And so Edmonton, like many other islet-transplant centers, continues to grow. Today,more than 25 hospitals have performed islettransplants that hew closely to the Edmontonprotocol. NIH will soon announce $75 millionin awards for a new clinical islet transplanta-tion consortium in which centers will collabo-rate on islet studies. Although Harlan endedhis islet-transplant trial early, the agency be-lieves the treatment is worth pursuing. This isnot a black-and-white issue, says AllenSpiegel, director of NIDDK.

Roadblocks to expansionNew money, however, will go only so far:Islet transplants are extraordinarily expen-sive, costing up to $200,000 in the UnitedStates for one patient in the first year. Anti-rejection drugs add another $30,000 annual-ly after that. At centers like Miami, wheremost patients remain part of a protocol, theprice of successof supporting patients foryears after a transplantis becoming pro-hibitive, says Rodolfo Alejandro, an en-docrinologist and director of the clinicalislet-transplant program at the University ofMiami. (Costs in Canada are somewhatlower because theres no charge for organs,and the Alberta health care system agreedin 2001 to pay for transplants for Albertaresidents.) Because theyre still consideredexperimental, most United States islet trans-plants are funded by NIH, JDRF, and some-times by pharmaceutical companies thatmanufacture immunosuppressants.

Costs are one roadblock to performingthe kind of large, controlled studies thatsome say are needed before islet transplantscan shift from being an experimental therapyto being one approved by the U.S. Food andDrug Administration (FDA). Some islettransplanters, like Alejandro, believe that oneoption is for FDA to approve the therapy un-der its existing orphan drug category, mak-ing it available to essentially the same pa-tients getting islets nowthose with un-controlled diabetes. That way, it could becovered by insurance. A year ago, FDA helda public advisory committee meeting inGaithersburg, Maryland, and agency offi-cials made clear they want certain issues ad-dressed first. Those include consistency inhow islets are processed and a better assess-ment of the risk-benefit balance.

No matter how FDA rules, major hurdles

stand in the way of islet transplants goingmainstream. First, the shortage of donorpancreases means scientists must find a re-newable source of islets. One popular optionwould involve using some type of stem cell.This year, JDRF has committed more than$8 million to stem cell research, more than$6 million of it to human embryonic stemcell work. Yet creating islets from stem cellsisnt imminent, according to Larsen and other transplanters.

Milder immunosuppressive regimensmight come more rapidly. One study thats

gearing up at Miami calls for giving islet re-cipients a dose of bone marrow cells culledfrom the donors vertebrae, to try to help pa-tients better tolerate the islet cells.

Current islet recipients, and the manymore people with diabetes hoping for a trans-plant, are eagerly awaiting the day when islettransplants are easier to come by and gentlerto receive. But Berty remains upbeat. A bookshes written chronicling her experience cameout this spring. Its title: I Used to Have Type 1Diabetes: Kiss My Islets.

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On a small beach in southeastern Floridanear Fort Lauderdale, marine biologistJeanette Wyneken races to collect as manyloggerhead sea turtle nests as possible be-fore the full brunt of Hurricane Frances hits.She fills her car with all she can carry andrecords the GPS coordinates of the nests shemust leave behind, hoping that they will stillbe there when she returns. Her efforts arenot entirely selfless, though: Shes also guar-anteeing that, while the storm wreaks havocoutside, her research on a threatened speciescan continue in the lab.

Wynekenlike many scientists at south-eastern universities and institutionsfaced arare challenge in this seasons record stringof hurricanes. Many had to battle power out-ages, flooding, and even police barricades tokeep their work on track. Not all succeeded.The hurricanesCharley, Frances, Ivan, andJeannedestroyed sensitive equipment andreagents, set back research, postponed con-ferences, and forced the extension of grantdeadlines. This chain of storms has been ahuge disruption, says University of SouthFlorida oceanographer Frank Muller-Karger,whose St. Petersburg lab had to move itscomputers into bathrooms to avoid losingdata when Charley hit. Its been an incredi-bly stressful period.

At Cape Canaveral, even beforeFrances began pounding the beaches, sci-entists at the Kennedy Space Center facedsome tough choices. Packing our space-craft up would set the launch date back atleast 2 weeks and cost a couple milliondollars, says Neil Gehrels, who headsNASAs Swift gamma ray observing satel-lite project. But he was loath to take achance, because NASA is very cautiouswith its equipment.

In the end, Gehrels instructed his teamto seal the satellite in an airtight metal con-tainer and move it to a secure hangar. Hisprudence proved correct. The space centertook a direct hit from Frances, suffering theworst damage since it was established in1963. Even though the launch date was de-layed by the move and subsequent evacua-

tion of personnel, Gehrels says the alterna-tive would have been much worse. Swiftwould have taken 5 years to rebuild, hesays, to say nothing of the cost.

Packing up and evacuating wasnt the pre-ferred option for all southeastern scientists,however. When Hurricane Ivan looked like it

Science Weathers the StormsResearchers struggle to keep their work on track in the wake of recent hurricanes

Research Community

Space scuttle. Hurricane Frances shredded thewalls of a Kennedy Space Center building usedto assemble shuttle parts.

Published by AAAS

was on a collision course for New Orleans,Tulane University parasitologist Paul Brind-ley decided to move his wife and 9-year-olddaughter into his lab on the fifth floor of theuniversitys environmental research building.We thought wed be safer hunkered downthere than at home, he says. Brindleybrought beans for his family to eat and airmattresses for them to sleep on and kept hisdaughter calm by letting her play games onhis office computer. Meanwhile, he venturedinto his workspace to transfer his schisto-somes to liquid nitrogen and plug his freezersinto backup generator outletsjust in case.

A backup generator was the first thing togo at the University of Florida, Gainesville,biochemist Arthur Edison discovered whenhe got a frantic call at 3 a.m. on the morn-ing Frances struck. Edison runs the univer-sitys Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imag-ing and Spectroscopy Facility, which relieson a $2 million system of superconductingmagnets to study everything from structuralbiology to Alzheimers disease. The mag-nets need power to stay cold, he says;otherwise, they can fail in 8 hours. Edisonhad to wait until morning to check on themagnets because the town was flooded andunder curfew. When he entered the buildingunder police escort, he discovered that theentire institute was on the fritz. The wholeplace was beeping, he says.

Edisons magnets were fine because theynever lost power, but other equipment hadfailed. He spent several hours plugging pow-erless machines into working outlets andmoving his colleagues sensitive reagentsfrom dead freezers into working ones. Still, itcould have been worse. Remembering how

Tropical Storm Allison drowned more than35,000 lab animals at Baylor College ofMedicine in Houston, Texas, in 2001, Edisonand others had spent the days before the hurricane sandbagging doors and tapingwindows shut.

While some were trying to keep water outof their labs, Wyneken was trying to bring itinhoping to save her loggerhead turtles.Hurricane Frances had knocked out the pow-er to the pumps in her building at Florida At-lantic University in Boca Raton, stopping theflow of fresh seawater to the turtle tanks.Rather than risk using contaminated waterfrom the nearby beach, Wyneken made a 72-kilometer trek up the coast to fill the 50-kilocontainers in her truck with water from theJuno Beach Marine Life Center. On the wayback, she had to get special permission tocross closed bridges and hiked through a car-pet of downed ficus trees.

Many graduate students undertook simi-lar physical risks to keep from losing thesisprojects they had spent years working on.When Hurricane Ivan veered toward the Al-abama shoreline, Charlyn Partridge, a biol-ogy Ph.D. student working at the Universityof South Alabama in Mobile, ignored herparents pleas to seek shelter at their homein Louisiana. Instead, she headed straightfor the basement of the universitys life sci-ences building. While the Federal Emer-gency Management Agency set up shop onthe f irst floor, Partridge dissected herpipefish to collect the daily readings sheneeded for sexual selection studies. If Ihad missed a day, I would have lost a monthof work and may not have been able to fin-ish my project on time, she says. Partridge

acknowledges that she took a risk by goingto the lab. But you need to make sureeverything thats important to you is safe,she says. That also includes the research.

Although no one welcomed the storms,some research actually benef ited fromthem. Hurricane Charley damaged sensorson marine research buoys being used byUniversity of South Florida oceanographerRobert Weisberg, but he left equipmentrunning when Frances hit. As a result, wegot a really nice data set, he says. And itwas totally unplanned. Weisberg says that,although Frances caused some damage,sensors recorded changes in water temper-ature and current that will eventually beassimilated into models that may help im-prove hurricane forecasting.

Wyneken is beginning to see a brightside as well. The first eggs she saved onthe beach have begun to hatch, and she be-lieves she will be able to collect good dataon how young turtles adapt to their envi-ronment. Sometimes you have to do somecrazy things for science, she says. Butwhen you see a whole nest of baby turtleshatching with their big brown eyes andbig floppy feet, it makes all of your effortsand hassles seem worthwhile.

Wynekens turtles are still going to needsome luck. In the coming weeks, she willtag them for further study and release themonto the now-damaged beach where sherescued them. Once they make their wayback to the water, theyll contend with pred-ators, starvation, andas Hurricane Jeannemade clear last weeka storm season thatis far from over. DAVID GRIMMWith reporting by Sean Bruich.

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Storm survivors. Marine biologist Jeanette Wyneken made a risky trek to supply her loggerhead turtles with fresh seawater after Hurricane Francesknocked out power to her lab. Later, she released hatchlings from nests she had saved from the storm, just days before Hurricane Jeanne struck.

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GIBRALTAROne day in 1848, when workerswere blasting in a quarry on the Rock ofGibraltar, out of the dust and rubble tumbleda strange-looking human skull. It had a jut-ting, prognathous face, thick brow ridges,and an elongated brain case. The skull waspresented to the Gibraltar Scien-tific Society, which had no ideawhat to make of it and put it instorage. Eight years later, minersworking in a limestone cave inGermanys Neander Valley cameacross a similar skull. This time,scientists concluded that it was asort of primitive human, and soin time Neandertal rather thanGibraltarian became an epithetfor brutish behavior.

But today respect is growingfor the Neandertals, whosebrains were slightly bigger thanthose of our own species andwho survived more than 100,000years of sharp fluctuations in cli-mate. Last month, when morethan 100 archaeologists and an-thropologists gathered here forthe third triannual meeting onNeandertals and modern hu-mans,* much of the discussioncentered on the Neandertalsabilities and culture.

For example, although Nean-dertals had always been consid-ered cold hardy, some re-searchers now conclude that Ne-andertals must have reliedchiefly on their material culture, rather thantheir cold-adapted biology, to brave the chillof Ice Age Europe. Other researchers madecontroversial claims that Neandertals werefull partners in the cultural innovations thatswept through Europe beginning about45,000 years ago, creating their own origi-nal tools and jewelry. Although not every-one at the meeting was willing to go thisfar, most agreed with anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Instituteof Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig,Germany, that Neandertals were complexhominids doing complex things.

Feeling the chillOne fact that is not in contention is that Ne-andertals, who first appeared in Europe andWestern Asia about 150,000 years ago andapparently thrived until their extinction about25,000 years ago, were well adapted to cold

northern latitudes. The Neandertal body waschunkier and more muscular than that ofmodern humans, and their limbs were some-what shorterall features thought to help re-duce heat loss. In Gibraltar, however, Univer-sity College London anthropologist LeslieAiello presented new data that challenge thisconventional wisdom. In collaboration withphysiologist Peter Wheeler of Liverpool JohnMoores University, Aiello set out to deter-mine what it really felt like to be a Neandertal living in Ice Age Europe.

Aiello and Wheeler first tested the hy-pothesis that the Neandertals stout bodywould have kept it significantly warmer.They calculated a parameter called thelower critical temperature, the limit at

which a human must increase its internalheat production (usually by eating more) tomaintain a body temperature of 37C. Usingformulas that factor in the thermal conduc-tance of the skin, body surface area, andestimated basal metabolism rate, Aiello andWheeler compared Neandertals, modern hu-mans, and the tall, slim form of Homo erec-tus found in Africa. To their surprise, thelower critical temperature differed very littleamong all three: 27.3C for Neandertals,28.2C for modern humans, and 28.5C forHomo erectus. I f ind this astounding,Aiello said. The Neandertal body form willkeep it a bit warm, but not enough to live in

a very cold environment.But just how cold was it?

Aiello and Wheeler addressedthis question with the help of apioneering research effort knownas the Stage 3 Project, led by Cambridge University geo-archaeologist Tjeerd van Andel.This work has generated a wealthof new data about climatic condi-tions in Europe between 60,000and 24,000 years ago, the periodof Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (Science, 6 February, p. 759). Be-cause modern humans arrived inEurope around 40,000 years ago,Stage 3 includes the crucial peri-od during which Neandertals andmodern humans coexisted.

One of the major achieve-ments of the Stage 3 Project is an estimate of the wind-chillfactora much better indicatorof conditions than temperaturealoneat hundreds of sitesknown to have been occupied byprehistoric humans. The projectwas able to achieve excellentresolution, creating a Europe-wide grid of 60-kilometer-by-60-kilometer squares and time

slices that vary between 3000 and 10,000years in duration.

Aiello and Wheeler looked at the wind-chill factors for 457 Neandertal and mod-ern human sites. They found that as thelast Ice Age approached, a large number ofthe Neandertal sites would have turnedpositively frigid. For example, Neandertalsliving at Kulna Cave in Moravia about25,000 years ago would have faced winterwind chills of 24C. Aiello and Wheelernext calculated how much insulation theNeandertals would have needed using aunit of insulation called the clo. One clois roughly equal to wearing a modernWestern business suit or having 1 centi-meter of body hair or 2 centimeters of

Dressed for Success: NeandertalCulture Wins RespectNeandertals made jewelry and must have worn clothingbut were they as sophisticatedas modern humans? Researchers gathered at a high-level meeting to find out

Paleoanthropology

Suited up. Despite their supposedly cold-adapted bodies, Neandertalsmust have worn clothing at least as warm as a business suit.

* Perspectives on Human Origins, Gibraltar, 2629August 2004.

Published by AAAS

body fat. They found that even if Neander-tals had worn one clo of insulation, for ex-ample in the form of animal skins, towardthe latter half of Stage 3, many Neandertalsites would still have been unbearable. De-spite their supposed cold-hardiness, Nean-dertals would have needed a great deal ofclothing and shelter to survive in theseplaces, probably calling forth all of theircultural and material resources.

Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that Neandertals usually chose to live in areaswhere winter wind-chill temperatures werewarmer than those occupied by the culturallymore sophisticated modern humans. For ex-ample, Aiello and Wheeler found that dur-ing the period 37,000 to 22,000 years ago,Neandertals faced median winter windchills of 16C at their sites, while at sitesassociated with modern cultures the windchills ranged from 20C to 23C. Thatsuggests that the culturally advanced mod-erns were even better equipped to fight thecoldand so might have had a competitiveedge against the Neandertals during thecoming Ice Age. Neandertals did extremelywell for a long time, Aiello concluded.The only difference was that now they hadmodern humans to compete with them.

This argument made sense to many researchers at the meeting. AnthropologistChris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, for example, suggeststhat Neandertal clothes were probably lesseffective insulators than those sported bymodern humans. There is no evidence ofsewing needles from any Neandertal sites,Stringer points out, whereas many modernhuman sites have such needles.

But some participants argued that Nean-dertals, at least during the earliest periods ofcoexistence with modern humans about40,000 years ago, were just as capable ofmaking clothes as their supposed competi-tors. Needles do not appear until much laterafter 25,000 years agoeven at modern

human sites, notes archaeologist FrancescodErrico of the University of Bordeaux inFrance. We know from use-wear analysis[of bone and stone tools] that Neandertalswere working and scraping animal skins.And some of their bone tools, dErrico says,could easily have been used to make holesin animal skins, even if they did not haveactual needles.

Beads, bones, and brainsInferences about Neandertal tailoring abili-ties quickly led to a broader debate aboutwhether Neandertals overall were culturallyinferior to modern humans during the shorttime that the two groups coexisted. At themeeting, dErrico, along with University ofLisbon archaeologist Joo Zilho, sparkedfierce debate with arguments to buttresstheir view that Neandertals and modernswere cultural near-equals.

The debate is tied closely to thechronology of several archaeological cul-tures (Science, 2 March 2001, p. 1725).For most of their history, Neandertalsmade stone flakes, scrapers, and axes col-lectively known as the Mousterian culture.When modern humans arrived in Europe,they began producing a different culturecalled the Aurignacian, consisting of moresophisticated stone and bone tools as wellas personal ornaments such as beads. Thelater Aurignacian was also characterizedby the beginnings of cave art, and thesedramatic developments are sometimes re-ferred to as the Upper Paleolithic revolu-tion. Right around the time that modernhumans arrived, however, the Neandertalsunderwent a cultural shift, creating beadsand tools, called Chtelperronian, thatclosely resemble the early Aurignacian.Most archaeologists have assumed that theNeandertals were copying the modern hu-mans through a process of acculturation,but dErrico, Zilho, and their co-workershave argued insistently that the Chtel-

perronian represented an independent cultural achievement.

At Gibraltar, dErrico and Zilho contin-ued their attack on the acculturation theory.DErrico proposed an alternative multi-species model for the rise of modern behav-ior, in which both Neandertals and modernsfully participated in the Upper Paleolithicrevolution. In a sweeping review of the ar-chaeological evidence across Europe, dErrico maintained that modern behaviorappeared at different times and at differentplaces. And he challenged the notion thatthe Neandertals had simply copied the moderns. His own study of beads fromChtelperronian sites, carried out with post-doc Marian Vanhaeren, showed that Nean-dertals often made beads from perforated an-imal teeth, whereas moderns usually madebeads from bone and shells and used differ-ent perforation techniques. And at Grotte du Renne, a French site occupied first by Neandertals and later by modern humans, dErrico argued that the Neandertals madesophisticated bone awls earlier and in muchgreater numbers than their supposedly more modern successors.

Zilho attempted to drive the pointhome with a review of the radiocarbon dat-ing for sites across Europe. In one of themeetings most hotly contested talks, hedismissed on technical grounds dates of40,000 years or earlier at two key centralEuropean Aurignacian sites and concludedthat there was no reliable evidence for anyAurignacian artifacts before 36,500 yearsago. If true, this could mean that theChtelperronian, which most archaeolo-gists agree can be dated to at least 40,000years ago, arose in Europe before the ar-rival of modern humans and that the Nean-dertals might have launched Europes Upper Paleolithic revolution all by them-selves. The Chtelperronian comes beforethe Aurignacian by many millennia, Zilho concluded.

These arguments received a hostile re-action from some researchers at the meeting.Hublin points out that this time period isright at the limit of radiocarbon datings ca-pabilities. It makes no sense to ask if theAurignacian was 36,000 years ago or 38,500years ago when we have such big margins oferror, he says.

Nevertheless, despite the vigorous de-bates, most researchers at the meetingagreed that the Neandertals long, success-ful reign in Eurasia probably means that thecognitive gap between them and modernhumans was not as great as many expertsonce thought. The Neandertals had bigbrains, and they must have been using themfor something, says Aiello. The gap isclosing, but we havent fully closed it yet.

MICHAEL BALTER

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Tailors tools? Neandertal bone awls could have been used to pierce skins to make clothing.

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Ever since Isaac Newton noted that spinningtennis balls follow curving trajectories, sci-entists and engineers have puzzled over theflight of spherical balls. Now, a new analysissuggests that volleyball is the oddest ballgame of all, as the big, light orb regularly

enters a curious state in which one half ex-periences much greater aerodynamic dragthan the other does.

The observation explains why a volleyballcan swerve unpredictably by as much as ameterif its moving slowly enough. It alsoputs a new spin on a bit of common wisdomabout ball sports, says Ken Bray, a physicist atthe University of Bath, U.K. Everybody al-ways argued that all ball sports are played inthis comfortable regime where the drag isconstant [with velocity], Bray says. But itturns out in volleyball thats not the case.

When a ball moves through the air, a longtangle of swirling air trails behind it. Flap-ping like a flag in the wind, this turbulentwake pulls straight back on the ball andslows it downthe phenomenon known as

drag. At low speeds, the wake is large and thedrag is high, but if a ball moves faster than acertain speed, the wake suddenly shrinks andthe drag plummets. The speed range in whichthe drag changes rapidly is known as thedrag crisis, and balls moving in it can behave

unpredictably.In most sports, the balls hurtle

so fast that the drag has bottomedout and the drag crisis nevercomes into play. But not so forvolleyball, reports ThomasCairns, a mathematician at theUniversity of Tulsa in Oklahomawho coached the womens volley-ball team there for 17 years.Cairns and his students video-taped volleyballs launched from aserving machine and then ana-lyzed their trajectories with acomputer. In some serves theballs moved with topspin, inwhich the top of the ball rotatestoward the oncoming air and thebottom rotates away from it.When that happens, the top of theball effectively moves fasterthrough the oncoming air than thebottom half does. Cairns foundthat the trajectories of someserves made sense only if the topof the ball was moving fastenough relative to the air to avoidthe drag crisis, while the bottomhalf was moving so slowly itdipped into it.

This unusual half-and-halfstate played havoc with the balls

trajectory and could reverse another key ef-fect of spin: the aerodynamic lift force thatcan make a ball swerve up or down or side toside. In spite of its name, the lift ordinarilypushes a ball with topspin down, as the spin-ning ball turns against the turbulent wakelike a gear turning against a toothed rail.That means a serve with topspin ordinarilysinks faster than a similar serve with nospin. But Cairns observed a serve with top-spin that floated farther than a matchingspinless serve. He also saw spinning servesthat swerved sideways, but in the directionopposite to the way spinning balls normallycurve. Cairns even spotted a few serves thatswerved first one way and then the other.

Ultimately, Cairns hopes to figure outhow to predict and control those effects.

Wed like to get to the point where you cansay to the player, Hit it this fast if you wantit to do this or that, he says. But certaincompetitive players already seem to take ad-vantage of the strange aerodynamic effects,says Rabindra Mehta, an aerodynamicist atNASAs Ames Research Center in MoffettField, California. The men get up there andtry to hit the ball as hard as they can, hesays. But if you watch the women, they hitit at about 15 meters per second, which iswhere this effect comes in.

When throwing, the arm works against itselfand wastes energy. But a new mechanicalanalysis suggests that such seemingly profli-gate efforts actually enable the limb to flingthings farther.

In throwing and other physica