[News & Analysis] Infectious Disease: Israel's Silent Polio Epidemic Breaks All the Rules

Science 8 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6159 pp. 679-680
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6159.679 Infectious Disease Twenty-five years after it was dispatched, wild poliovirus is back and circulating widely in Israel but, surprisingly, there have been no cases. Like many other wealthy countries, Israel relies on the inactivated polio vaccine, or IPV, to protect against this crippling disease. Paradoxically, Israel's very high vaccination rate is what has allowed the virus to circulate silently for months.

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[News & Analysis] Paleontology: The Ears Have It: First Snakes Were Burrowers, Not Swimmers

Science 8 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6159 p. 683
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6159.683-a Paleontology One of paleontology's sharpest debates concerns whether the first snakes crawled on land or swam in the water. Data on the inner ear anatomy of living and fossil snakes, presented at a recent meeting, suggest that snakes evolved from terrestrial, burrowing ancestors.

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[News & Analysis] Intellectual Property: California Moves Shake Up Prenatal Gene Testing Market

Science 8 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6159 p. 680
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6159.680 Intellectual Property Sequenom's 2001 patent on a method of isolating fetal DNA from a mother's bloodstream to test for Down syndrome was thrown out by a U.S. court in San Francisco. Judge Susan Illston rested her decision in part on the recent Supreme Court ruling that natural phenomena like genes cannot be patented. Illston also wrote that Sequenom's patented idea was not sufficiently inventive.

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[News & Analysis] Has Program to Rotate Scientists at NSF Spun Out of Control?

Science 8 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6159 p. 683
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6159.683-b A program that brings scientists temporarily to the National Science Foundation keeps the agency on the cutting-edge of scientific discovery. But members of Congress and the foundation's inspector general have raised several questions about how the program operates. And the scientists themselves lack the usual workplace protections, as one recent rotator discovered to her misfortune.

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[News & Analysis] Planetary Science: Orbiting MAVEN Mission Set to Trace a Planet's History in Thin Martian Air

Science 8 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6159 p. 681
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6159.681 Planetary Science The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), a NASA spacecraft to be launched to Mars later this month, will try to decipher billions of years of planetary history from careful study of the martian atmosphere. Eons ago, planetary scientists believe, Mars had a thick atmosphere that sheltered a surface awash with water—conditions in which life could have emerged and thrived. Today, that atmosphere is thin and depleted, and Mars is a cold, barren desert. What caused this remarkable transformation? Until now, planetary scientists have attempted to answer such questions mainly from the planet's surface. MAVEN will take a new course: flying through the outer fringes of Mars's atmosphere, measuring gases and monitoring conditions with eight instruments. The measurements should help researchers figure out how the solar wind, asteroid impacts, and chemical reactions gradually depleted the Red Planet's atmosphere.

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[News & Analysis] Science and the Military: Soldier-Scientists Join Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

Science 8 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6159 p. 682
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6159.682 Science and the Military Over the past 5 years, a novel U.S. Army program has deployed soldier-scientists in 10 Afghan provinces as part of a counterinsurgency strategy to stem reliance on the Taliban. The program has spent $42 million on more than 680 projects, such as coring trees for climate records, shifting farmers from growing poppy for opium, and assessing the Taliban's potential to generate income from mining in their strongholds.

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[News & Analysis] Neuroscience: Tissue Imaging Method Makes Everything Clear

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Satellite sandwich technique improves analysis of geographical data

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