Paul Shepson, an atmospheric chemist at Purdue University in West Lafayette Indiana, led a team that received about US$1. 5 Â million from the National Institute of Standards
this month (8 november), directed the public health minister to ban GMO imports until the country is able to certify that they have no negative impact on people's health.
In a statement to the press, the cabinet said there was a lack of sufficient information on the public health impact of such foods.
data and knowledge demonstrating that GMO foods are not a danger to public health, it added.
the Department of health announced an independent review to assess whether to merge their activities. See go. nature. com/gciolp for more.
Stem-cell reforms California s US$3-billion stem-cell agency the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) in San francisco is to reform its governance structure to minimize conflicts of interest,
The disease has attacked already coffee crops in South and Central america. See go. nature. com/epwshp and page 587 for more.
and senior vice-president at the UK-based drug firm Pfizer, died on 22 Â January. Cox s research group at Pfizer aimed to find a way to arrange clinical-trial participants on the basis of their genetic make-up.
He was also a member of one of the teams that led the Human genome Project,
Global Fund boost Germany has announced a donation of  1  billion (US$1. 3  billion) to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS
Tuberculosis and Malaria for the period 2012-16, of which  600  million is new money.
But the long stalemate between growers and the fungus behind the devastating disease has broken with the fungus taking the advantage.
from sequencing its genome to crossbreeding coffee plants with resistant strains. Caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix,
The disease is so universal that it"is not going to be eradicated; or the only way to eradicate the disease in practice is to eradicate all of the coffee,
says Mccook. By 1970, the fungus had been detected in Brazil, and severe outbreaks were seen in Costa rica in 1989
a plant pathologist at Costa rica s Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher education Center, based in San Josã.
But changes to management practices had brought the disease mostly under control.""Coffee rust was considered a solved problem by most of the coffee growers
"People didn t fear the disease. The outbreak may have taken hold because of patchy use and effectiveness of fungicides.
And in Africa, Noah Phiri, a plant pathologist working in Nairobi for the not-for-profit development organization CABI,
that the government has supported research into developing resistant strains of coffee through crossbreeding. The introduction of resistant strains, together with improved weather monitoring to help predict rust outbreaks,
has meant that fewer than 10%of plants now need to be treated with fungicide, down from 60%four years ago,
and to find molecular markers that distinguish between different strains of the pathogen and that could be used to develop tailored strategies for its control.
as well as from Kenya, India, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, to screen for resistant coffee plants and to analyse varieties of the pathogen."
"Scientists need to continuously develop resistant varieties in order to keep coffee leaf rust disease at bay, Phiri says."
where it is required to provide local solutions to the epidemics, he says
Obama rekindles climate hopesthroughout his reelection campaign, US President Barack Obama rarely said the words climate change.
Bayer, a chemical company based in Leverkusen, Germany, which manufactures imidacloprid and clothianidin, said in a statement that it does not believe that the EFSA s reports"alter the quality
Discovery of goat facility adds to antibody provider's woesa herd of 841 goats has kicked up a stir for one of the world s largest antibody suppliers after US agricultural officials found the animals including 12
in poor health in an unreported antibody production facility owned by California-based Santa cruz Biotechnology."
In 2012, Santa cruz Biotechnology ranked as the second-largest supplier in the US$1. 6-billion global market for research antibodies, according to an international survey by The Scientist and market-research firm Frost & Sullivan
Neuroscientist Erik Ullian at the University of California, San francisco, says that the industry giant develops more hard-to-find antibodies for speciality applications than its rivals."
"Sometimes Santa cruz is the only option that we have for trying an antibody. But for years, the company has run foul of animal regulators.
Animal officials at the National institutes of health (NIH) would not comment specifically on the USDA findings or the use of Santa cruz Biotechnology products by NIH-supported researchers.
The NIH's public health services policy on animal welfare which since 1985 has governed the use of animals
and animal products by NIH-funded researchers exempts purchases of off-the-shelf antibodies. On 11 january, the Animal Welfare Institute petitioned the NIH director Francis Collins
and the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare at NIH to remove this exemption. According to an 18 december 2012 follow-up inspection by the USDA
two of the 12 animals found in poor health in October have since been euthanised as a result of their conditions,
and some but not all of the sick goats are receiving appropriate medical treatment and monitoring
Seven days: 4 10 january 2013gemini Observatory/AURAORION bullets shot in detail The Gemini South telescope in Chile has been fitted with five lasers
which two researchers working with adult stem cells challenged the legality of the National institutes of health (NIH) funding the work,
NIH director Francis Collins said he was pleased"very with the 7 Â January decision. See go. nature. com/ouwpo2 for more.
with countries claiming that there is new information on harm caused by the crops that is yet to be evaluated.
US food safety On 4 january, the US Food and Drug Administration released the first of its long-awaited proposals for protecting food safety.
stance on food-borne illness. One of the two proposed regulations requires food makers to develop plans for preventing contamination;
the other sets safety standards for farms that grow produce, including, for example, permitted levels of microbes in irrigation water.
NIHSUCCESS rates stuck The success rate for grant applicants to the US National institutes of health (NIH) remained unchanged at a historic low of 18%in 2012 (see graph),
Sally Rockey, the NIH s deputy director for extramural research, wrote on her Rock Talk blog that the rate for research project grants was the same as that in the 2011 fiscal year,
Boston pathogen lab The US National institutes of health (NIH) will support a plan for a laboratory in Boston, Massachusetts,
to work with some of the world s most dangerous pathogens. On 2 Â January, the NIH announced its final determination that Boston University s National Emerging Infectious diseases Laboratory poses little risk to the surrounding community.
The laboratory, which had been under review at NIH since 2001, must win approvals from state and local authorities before it can upgrade its research to biosafety level 4, the highest level of containment.
Pharma split Abbott laboratories has spun off its drug-discovery business into an independent company called Abbvie,
it said on 2 Â January. Abbott based in Abbott Park, Illinois, will retain its medical devices, diagnostics, nutritional products and generic pharmaceutical business.
Abbvie, headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois, previously functioned as an Abbott subsidiary; it earned US$17. 4 Â billion in 2011.
The now-separate firm plans to expand the market for its blockbuster anti-inflammatory antibody Humira (adalimumab),
and to push forward candidate drugs that include several hepatitis  C antivirals. Stem-cell transfer  Pioneering biotechnology company Geron is shedding its assets in human embryonic stem cells.
The company, based in Menlo Park, California, announced its plans on 7 Â January. It will transfer cell lines, its early clinical programme in spinal-cord injury,
and some 400 patents and patent applications to a subsidiary of Biotime, a company in Alameda,
California, which is run by two former Geron heads. Geron funded initial academic work to isolate human embryonic stem cells in the 1990s,
but current management said that the technology is a poor investment. Fetal DNA sale A firm that develops noninvasive tests for fetal DNA was sold to DNA-sequencing leader Illumina of San diego, California, for US$350 Â million,
Verinata Health, based in Redwood City, California, markets a test for chromosomal abnormalities, such as Down s syndrome,
On the same day, Illumina s share price dropped by 7%after drug giant Roche said that it did not plan to buy the company.
and protection and health research in the region. Source: MUNICH REAROUND 9, 500 people lost their lives last year in natural disasters less than one-tenth of the ten-year average.
They are much more complex than sponges they have nerves, muscles, tissue layers and light sensors, all of which the sponges lack."
For example, Moroz and his team found that comb jellies grow their nerves with unique sets of genes."
and having a whole range of effects on the environment and public health, says Sutton. According to a report commissioned by the United nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and launched on 18 february by the Global Partnership on Nutrient Management and International Nitrogen Initiative, nitrogen pollution causes US$200-US$2, 000
Early patents on gene-use restriction technologies later rebranded as terminator technology by activists opposed to them described a genetic modification that switched on production of a toxin that would kill off developing plant embryos.
and food safety groups are concerned about contamination of food crops with products from a new generation of crops engineered to produce chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
A team of scientists in the United states and Canada has reconstructed now the appearance and anatomy of this creature the forebear of all'placental'mammals,
using a record-breaking data set of anatomical traits and genetic sequences. The critter turned out to be a tree-climbing
It gave birth to blind, hairless young, one at a time. Its brain was folded highly, and it had three pairs of molars on each jaw."
500 anatomical traits almost ten times as many as any previous study. These included traits from 86 living and extinct mammals."
"The terminology used for certain anatomical traits varies from group to group, says study co-author Nancy Simmons, curator in charge of the department of mammalology at the American Museum of Natural history in New york."
The researchers bolstered their anatomical results with DNA, or molecular data, from the living species. They uploaded all their data, definitions and supporting pictures to Morphobank,
For example, grouping animals according to their anatomy alone puts physically similar species such as pangolins, anteaters and aardvarks in the same tight group,
Alert over South korea toxic leaksby Mid-december, the chill winter winds had stripped South korea s trees bare.
On 27 september 2012, about eight tonnes of highly toxic hydrogen fluoride (HF) gas, which dissolves in the moisture in air to form droplets of corrosive hydrofluoric acid, burst from the Hube Global chemical plant in Gumi.
Thousands of local citizens say that inhaling the acid has damaged their health. Exposure to HF can trigger an irregular heartbeat
and the long-term health effects include chronic lung disease. The government has said that it will pay about 36.4 Â billion won (US$33. 4 Â million) in compensation to citizens and local businesses.
says Lim Hyun-Sul, a researcher in preventive medicine at Dongguk University in Gyeongju. Lim, who has been treating patients for HF exposure
since the 1990s, says that preparation is key.""Protocols must be prepared thoroughly in advance, including education of factory workers, firefighters, medical doctors and public servants about the risks of toxic chemicals.
Hydrofluoric acid is used commonly by the electronics industry to etch patterns into silicon chips, and as South korea has become one of the world s leading electronics exporters in recent years,
But thousands of residents soon complained of nausea, chest pains and rashes, suggesting that the all-clear had been sounded too early.
Eleven days after the accident, the national government designated the area a special disaster zone,
So far more than 12,000 Â people have claimed compensation for their injuries, and Woo Kuck Hyeun,
an occupational and environmental physician at Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital in Gumi, is leading a follow-up study of those exposed to the gas."
Woo explains that the survey is modelled on a two-year health investigation that followed a 1987 leak at an oil refinery in Texas,
recreated the trauma, says Kim Sangho, an elementary-school teacher, explaining why he has returned not yet to his home."
Mapping the H7n9 avian flu outbreakssources: Multiple, including WHO and Xinhua News agency. To download map file to view in Google earth,
The first known cases of human infection with H7n9 were reported in China on 31 march, with two cases in Shanghai on the eastern seaboard and one in the neighbouring province of Anhui.
Risk maps developed for human infection by another, well-established avian flu virus H5n1 may help to target H7n9 surveillance and control efforts.
The map shows human cases of H7n9 (blue circles) superimposed on a risk map developed for H5n1,
and health officials to target their surveillance and control efforts. For H5n1, researchers integrate large data sets that combine information on many potentially important factors, such as poultry trade routes,
Marius Gilbert, a co-author of one such study published in PLOS Pathogens in 20111, and an expert in the epidemiology and ecology of avian flu viruses at the Free University of Brussels, says that
although the risk factors for H7n9 may be given different the current dearth of information, H5n1 risk maps are probably a good starting point for identifying areas most at risk.
In what Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford university Clinical Research Unit in Ho chi minh city, Vietnam, describes as an extraordinary effort,
As Peter Horby, director of the Oxford university Clinical Research Unit in Hanoi, Vietnam, and colleagues point out in a World view in Nature this week,
Then the public-health and clinical community will need to assess, carefully and quickly, whether it represents a single imported case of animal-to-human transmission,
an animal epidemic that has spread abroad, or the international spread of a partially or fully human-adapted virus. Maps presented are for data-visualization purposes only;
or Medicine for his work on gene expression and how it is controlled. While working at the Pasteur institute in Paris, he identified regulatory proteins that bind to DNA,
preventing its transcription into RNA and thus dampening the expression of cellular enzymes. Jacob explained how feedback from the cell s environment changes the activity of the regulatory proteins.
Toxic letters A Mississippi man suspected of sending letters laced with the deadly toxin ricin to US President Barack Obama
and Republican senator Roger Wicker (Mississippi) was charged with threatening injury and death by the Federal bureau of investigation on 18 april.
which is 1, 000 times more toxic than cyanide. The toxin is most lethal when inhaled or injected;
there is no antidote, but symptoms can be treated. The suspect, Paul Kevin Curtis, of Corinth, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
See go. nature. com/xgnin4 for more. Rocket launch The Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Virginia,
Lawsuit settlement Cancer researcher Philippe Bois has settled a lawsuit against the US Department of health and human services (DHHS) over scientific misconduct, according to an announcement on 18 Â April.
A former postdoctoral researcher at St jude Children s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, Bois last year successfully challenged a DHHS judge s denial of his request for a defence hearing.
and medical devices fell by 28 %and investment in clean technology declined by 35%relative to the previous quarter.
even though burning them would cause a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. 24-25 april On World Malaria Day (25 april),
scientists review research advances at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. go. nature. com/wfnyw227-30 april Flu pandemics,
the resurgence of measles and antimicrobial resistance are discussed all at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology
and Infectious diseases meeting in Berlin. go. nature. com/jyfhwf
Europe debates risk to beesdebate over neonicotinoids has become fierce. Conservation groups and politicians in the United kingdom and Europe have called for a ban on their use,
but agricultural organizations have said that farmers will face hardship if that happens. Next Monday, European governments will take a crucial vote on
Scientists, meanwhile, are vigorously debating whether the studies on neonicotinoids and the health of honeybees and bumblebees,
Neonicotinoids, which poison insects by binding to receptors in their nervous systems have been in use since the late 1990s.
and reproduce1-6 (see The buzz over bee health). The past year has seen a raft of papers about the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees.
because many of the lab studies that have shown harm may have fed bees unrealistically high doses of neonicotinoids.
Even if neonicotinoids are not directly responsible for colony collapse disorder, they could play a part by making bees more susceptible to the parasitic mite Varroa destructor and the parasitic fungus Nosema apis,
HIV in breastmilk spikes at weaningthe amount of HIV in an infected mother s breast milk spikes
The findings are likely to add urgency to efforts to ensure that infected mothers without access to formula take antiretroviral drugs throughout
and abruptly are no more likely to avoid contracting HIV than do those who continue to breastfeed, a finding from in a randomized clinical trial of 958 HIV-infected women in Lusaka,
Grace Aldrovandi, a paediatrician at the Saban Research Institute at the Children's Hospital Los angeles in California,
The milk from women who then stopped breastfeeding abruptly contained markedly higher levels of HIV than did milk from the women who continued to breastfeed exclusively:
including how much HIV was in the mother s blood. The team also analysed changes within individual women,
HIV levels in milk rose markedly between samples taken just before weaning and those taken two weeks later;
"Weaning leads to increases in HIV concentrations in breast milk. That s the big message of the paper, says Aldrovandi."
adds Lynne Mofenson, head of the Maternal and Pediatric Infectious disease Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland.
She says it is critical that antiretroviral therapy be given to the mother or infant for the entire duration of breastfeeding, throughout weaning,
if mother-to-child transmission of HIV is to be prevented. The current practice of giving mothers one to two weeks of anti-retroviral therapy after weaning may not be enough,
the authors say, given that weaning is a stop-and-start, often protracted, process in real life.
says Catherine Hankins, deputy director of science at the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development.
The authors hypothesize that HIV crosses more easily from blood to milk during weaning because the tight junctions between mammary epithelial cells become leaky,
whether intensified therapy at the time of weaning helps to reduce transmission
H7n9 bird flu poised to spreadthe H7n9 avian flu virus greatly expanded its geographical range over the weekend,
with two new  human cases reported in Beijing in the north of China, and another two in Henan province in the centre.
But the World Health Organisation confirmed on Saturday that Chinese authorities are investigating two suspicious clusters of human cases.
Though these can arise by infection from a common source, they can also signal that limited human-to-human transmission has occurred.
says Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford university Clinical Research Unit in Ho chi minh city, Vietnam. The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau also announced today that a 4-year-old contact of a 7-year-old girl who had been hospitalized with the virus tested positive for the virus too,
despite showing no symptoms. This is the first asymptomatic case. Along with several mild cases already reported
That is because reduced virulence can often point to further genetic adaptation of the virus to infection of human beings and thus greater potential to spread.
with 63 infections and 14 deaths reported as of Monday, up from 24 cases barely a week ago.
or accelerates, H7n9 could be a significant public health problem even if it remains an infection that people catch from animals,
says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public health in Boston, Massachusetts. Genetic analyses of the new virus show that it has several mutations making it more adapted to humans than is H5n1.
This looks very different from H5n1, says Farrar. We never saw this number of presumed avian/animal to human transmissions in such a short space of time.
or control because it does not cause serious illness in poultry and other birds has been reinforced by the new cases in Beijing and Henan province.
and tell public health workers where the public health threat lies. But with H7n9, it is only the appearance of new human cases that shows where the silent spread in birds
interim head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisations's Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases (EMPRES) in Rome.
says Marius Gilbert, an expert in the epidemiology and ecology of avian flu viruses at the Universitã libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.
Organic pollutants poison the roof of the worldtoxic chemicals are accumulating in the ecosystems of The himalayas and the Tibetan plateau,
and others are used widely as pesticides or herbicides or in the manufacture of solvents, plastics and pharmaceuticals.
such as the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and the herbicide Agent orange, can cause diseases such as cancers, neurological disorders, reproductive dysfunction and birth defects.
and Tibetan plateau are rife with those toxic compounds. To trace the sources of those pollutants
"They do not emit any of those toxic compounds, says Xu, "but are forced to shoulder the burden of their impact
Urgent search for flu sourcevirologists know its name: H7n9. What they don t yet know is
whether this novel avian influenza virus first reported in humans in China less than two weeks ago will rapidly fizzle out,
or morph into a virus that can spread easily between people and spark a deadly pandemic.
and trying to trace people who have been exposed to infected patients. Chinese health authorities say that they have 400 laboratories looking for genetic changes in the virus."We are going to be bated sitting with breath over the next month to find out what happens,
says Michael Osterholm, who heads the University of Minnesota s Center for Infectious disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis. As Nature went to press,
24 human cases, including 8 Â deaths, had been reported in 11 Â cities, some a few hundred kilometres apart,
Scientists urgently want to find out which sources are stoking the human infections that result in flu-like symptoms and, in most reported cases, severe pneumonia.
some patients had contact with poultry or other animals just before falling ill, whereas others had Not late last week,
The genetic sequences of the H7n9 viruses found in the birds are highly similar to those isolated from human patients,
says Chao-Tan Guo, a virologist at the Zhejiang Academy of Medical sciences in Hangzhou. Although the virus might have come from other sources
says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist at the University of Hong kong. Sources: WHO/ECDC/Xinhua state mediabut the various bird species found to be infected may not be the original source,
because much cross-infection can occur in live markets. Investigators must now trace which farms
Researchers know that H7 flu viruses mainly infect wild birds such as ducks, geese, waders and gulls,
Kwok-Yung Yuen, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Hong kong, notes the proximity of the reported human cases to the Yangtze river delta
"There is very little specific information on the source of this particular virus strain, its ecology or reservoir,
He also co-convenes the Asia-Pacific Working group on Migratory Waterbirds and Avian influenza with the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO.
creating a reservoir that might lead to continued, sporadic human infections. Health authorities in China are trying to learn to what extent that has happened already.
Unlike its cousin H5n1 which has killed millions of birds and several hundred people in Asia and elsewhere since 2003 H7n9 does not cause serious bird disease,
greatly complicating efforts to control it, says Vincent Martin, interim head of the FAO s Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases (EMPRES) in Rome.
It would be next to impossible to detect H7n9 through routine surveillance for sick poultry among China s 6 Â billion domestic birds."
says Masato Tashiro, a virologist at the Influenza Virus Research center in Tokyo, the World health organization s influenza reference
and research centre in Japan. Each time the virus encounters new human hosts, it has fresh opportunities to mutate
and track new cases of suspicious severe pneumonia and their close contacts, and to isolate people if necessary.
Researchers working on the molecular biology of the virus say that it seems to derive from a reassortment of genetic material from at least three known bird-flu groups (see Nature http//doi. org/k4j;
Because flu viruses evolve rapidly, comparing viral sequences from each of the human cases might reveal
says Andrew Rambaut, an expert in the evolution of human viral pathogens at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
If many patients have very similar viral sequences then that would imply human spread; if viral sequences are more diverse,
it would imply that each person had picked separately up infections from birds. Only four sequences from four human cases are so far available,
and posting them on the GISAID flu database. If human-to-human transmission does start to occur,
Humanity has never been exposed widely to H7 or N9 flu viruses, and so lacks resistance to these subtypes.
If a pandemic were to occur, it would probably have a severe toll. But it is too early to predict how events will unfold;
experts in emerging infectious disease are only just becoming acquainted with the latest villain in their roster
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