Fossils of dinos killed by asteroid unveiled
A site in North Dakota has yielded what researchers contend are the first-known fossils of dinosaurs whose deaths can be directly linked to an asteroid impact that caused a major extinction some 66 million years ago. Reported last week, the discoveries, which have not been peer reviewed, also include pieces of amber that the team claims preserve shards of the asteroid itself, flung from the impact site in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Speaking at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, paleontologist Robert DePalma, now a graduate student at the University of Manchester, said his team recovered the amber from sedimentary layers thought to date to minutes or hours after the impact, found at a fossil-rich site known as Tanis. Inside the amber, researchers identified the mineralogical signature of a type of asteroid known as a carbonaceous chondrite—not a comet, as others have suggested. DePalma also presented two fossils from those layers, including a pterosaur embryo. The BBC filmed DePalma and colleagues’ work at Tanis for a documentary set to air this week. Some researchers support DePalma’s claims, whereas others remain skeptical until they see the evidence for themselves, The New York Times reported.
Fourth shot helps, for a while
A fourth dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine offers older people some protection against serious illness caused by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 but only a brief defense against being infected at all, researchers report. In a study published on 5 April in The New England Journal of Medicine, they describe data from Israel, where people 60 and older have been offered a second booster shot since early January. The team found that 4 weeks after their fourth shot of the messenger RNA vaccine, recipients were half as likely to be infected as people who had received only three shots. The second booster’s protection against infection, however, had waned almost completely after 8 weeks. But recipients were also less than one-third as likely to suffer from severe COVID-19 symptoms 4 weeks after the fourth shot, a defense that was still strong after 6 weeks, the longest period for which these data were available. The findings come as the BA.2 variant of Omicron increases COVID-19 cases in the United States and other countries. European health agencies said on 6 April they had observed no “substantial waning” of protection from severe COVID-19 in singly boosted people between ages 60 and 80 who are not immunocompromised, and so there was no “imminent need” for them to get a second booster dose.
Health equity work to me is not separate work. It’s one of the major challenges in modern medicine.
- Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo
- a Black physician-researcher, commenting in STAT after being named editor-in-chief of JAMA, which became embroiled last year in a debate over racism in medicine.
Professor’s conviction questioned
Franklin Tao, a chemical engineer at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, last week was found guilty of lying about his ties to a Chinese research institution—and then received reason to hope his conviction might be overturned. Instead of setting a date to sentence Tao, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson took the unusual step of asking federal prosecutors to explain why they believe Tao intended to defraud two U.S. agencies that had funded his research. In June 2019, Tao was the first academic scientist arrested under the U.S. government’s China Initiative, although he was never accused of economic espionage, the purported target of the initiative. In fall 2021, another academic scientist, Anming Hu, was acquitted of similar charges of failing to disclose ties to China after the judge in that case rejected the government’s claim that Hu had sought to cheat NASA. “There is a lot of commonality between that case and this one, factually,” Robinson told lawyers before the jury in Tao’s case reached its verdict. Tao has been on unpaid leave from the university since his arrest and faces mounting legal bills.
Scientists arrested in widespread climate protests
Researchers in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles were arrested last week after chaining themselves to a fence around the White House and the front doors of a J.P. Morgan Chase building, respectively, as part of global actions protesting governments’ failure to stop climate change. The demonstrations were organized by the coalition Scientist Rebellion and included a total of about 1000 participants in 25 countries, the group says. Demonstrators clashed with police in many locations, including in Madrid, where protesters in lab coats threw fake blood on the steps of the Spanish parliament. The protests were in response to the release this month of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, which implored world leaders to quickly switch to carbon-free energy. “We’re not joking, we’re not lying, we’re not exaggerating. This is so bad that we’re willing to take this risk,” NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus tweeted before being arrested in Los Angeles.
Elusive woodpecker seen again?
A team of scientists last week presented new evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), long feared extinct, persists in swampy forests of Louisiana. Other researchers have voiced skepticism; previous claims from other scientists have not been verified. Project Principalis has been searching for the species for 10 years, recently using drones and automated, ground-level cameras. In a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server, Steven Latta of the National Aviary and colleagues describe several photographs and videos of what they identify as multiple ivory-billed woodpeckers. “We are fully confident,” he says. In September 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed declaring the giant woodpecker extinct—the last conclusive evidence is from 1944—and removing it from the Endangered Species List. But in January, the service reopened a comment period to gather further evidence. Meanwhile, the researchers are continuing their search, including for traces of DNA.
Black people still wary of research
Fifty years after the infamous syphilis experiment in Tuskegee, Alabama, was exposed, Black Americans harbor cautious, nuanced views of medical research, according to a Pew Research Center survey released last week. One-third say medical researchers do a good job all or most of the time, and 46%—almost half—say they do some of the time. But more than half of the 3546 Black respondents described misconduct by medical researchers as a very or moderately big problem that hasn’t gotten better. Black Americans were more likely than all U.S. adults to say they have heard a lot (49%) or a little (26%) about the syphilis study, run by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932 to 1972. Researchers deliberately withheld treatment from Black men with the sexually transmitted disease, leading to a worsening of symptoms and preventable deaths among participants. Today, Black people volunteer to participate in clinical research at disproportionately low rates, which scientists attribute to both the Tuskegee study’s legacy and modern-day racism among health care professionals.
Donated cells shrink blood tumors
Donated immune cells, mixed in a dish with a molecule that helps them home in on blood cancer cells, caused striking improvement in most of 22 people with lymphoma who received experimental infusions, researchers said this week. The new treatment, reported at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, is simpler and less costly than therapies such as genetically engineered chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells. In the new approach, researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center used a “bispecific” antibody to connect a different type of immune cell, natural killer (NK) cells, with a surface protein on Hodgkin’s lymphoma cells, then infused the complexes into patients. Of the 22 lymphoma patients, none experienced serious side effects, and tumors shrank in 17 of 19 who could be evaluated. Although some tumors resumed growing, seven of 13 patients who received the highest dose of cells were still in remission after 5 to 11 months.
Europe will limit leading pesticide to spare pollinators
Just 7 years after authorizing outdoor use of the insecticide sulfoxaflor as a less toxic alternative to other products, the European Commission said last week it plans to ban it. The move will prohibit farmers in the European Union from treating crops with the widely used pesticide, manufactured by Corteva Agriscience. Regulators cited risks to the common bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) and other species of pollinators living next to farm fields. Sulfoxaflor threatens bees when they collect pollen and nectar containing the chemical. Its use will still be allowed in greenhouses, which regulators expect will protect wild bees from exposure. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not allow sulfoxaflor on crops, such as cotton, that attract bees. But both EPA and European countries have allowed emergency use of sulfoxaflor and other insecticides if crops are threatened with a devastating infestation, which some environmental advocates say is a loophole that will continue to harm pollinators.
One shot of HPV vaccine is enough
A single dose of vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) protects children and teens against later incidence of cervical cancer as well as two doses do, a World Health Organization (WHO) panel said this week—a finding that could allow health workers to stretch vaccine supplies and boost the number of people inoculated. In 2019, only 15% of girls worldwide had received two doses. Boys also receive the vaccine because HPV is linked to other kinds of cancers, but girls should receive priority, WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization said. Sexually transmitted HPV causes more than 95% of cervical cancer, the fourth most common type of cancer in women globally; 90% of these women live in low- and middle-income countries.
BY THE NUMBERS
1895.7
The 2021 level of atmospheric methane in parts per billion (ppb), a new record. The level of the powerful greenhouse gas rose 17 ppb last year, the largest absolute increase since modern records began in 1983. (U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
15.8%
Share of the world’s population who report a headache each day, on average, making it one of the most common health problems, a meta-analysis found. (The Journal of Headache and Pain)
46%
Portion of U.K. parents surveyed who call school work in physics “complicated,” which may be discouraging their children from studying the subject. (Institute of Physics)
Gun seizures don’t curb injuries
A closely watched 2016 California law that allows courts to temporarily take guns from people deemed a significant danger to themselves or others did not reduce the rate of firearm injuries in one metropolitan county, according to a first-of-its-kind study published last week in JAMA Network Open. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, and colleagues compared rates of firearm injuries from assaults and self-inflicted violence from 2016 to 2019 in San Diego county with those in a weighted combination of 27 other counties that issued far fewer such orders in that period. They found no significant differences in firearms injuries, and speculate that people who committed assaults after losing their firearms may have obtained new ones illicitly. A separate study by Stanford University researchers found that Californians living with someone who lawfully owns a firearm were more than twice as likely to be murdered than those living with nonowners. For at-home homicides, the risk was seven times as high, and 84% of victims were women, according to the study of more than 17 million Californians tracked for up to 12 years. The study was published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.