1. CONTENTS 700 & 7557 NOVEMBER 2014 VOLUME 346 ISSUE 6210Bacteria make norovirusmore infectiousNEWSIN BRIEF680 Roundup of the weeks newsINSIGHTSPERSPECTIVES696 THE OTHER HALF OF THE UNIVERSE?A large previously unknown populationof stars inhabits intergalactic spaceBy S. H. Moseley REPORT P. 732698 SEARCHING FOR NEW BRANCHES ONTHE TREE OF LIFEIs there undiscovered life that differsfundamentally from that in the threeknown domains?By T. Woyke and E. M. Rubin700 LEAPING THE NOROVIRUS HURDLEBacteria and B cells solve the problemof culturing human norovirus in thelaboratoryBy C. M. Robinson and J. K. Pfeiffer REPORT P. 755701 LOCAL SYNTHESIS AND DISPOSALNew experimental strategies revealspatial and temporal features of proteinsynthesis and degradation in cellsBy S. Shao and R. S. Hegde RESEARCH ARTICLE 716;REPORTS PP. 748 & 751703 COPING WITH LOW OCEAN SULFATEDid sulfate-reducing microbes exist inthe Archean ocean? By Y. Ueno REPORTS PP. 735, 739, & 742704 SIMULATIONS PROVIDE A RARELOOK AT REAL MELTINGAdvanced computational methods allowsampling of rare events and revealmultiple pathways in melting of metalsBy A. van de Walle REPORT P. 729709706 BRAZILS ENVIRONMENTALLEADERSHIP AT RISKMining and dams threaten protectedareas By J. Ferreira et al.BOOKS ET AL.709 THE THEORY OF EVERYTHINGJ. Marsh, director; reviewed by V. Thompson709 WHAT IF?By R. MunroeLETTERS710 HIDDEN EFFECTS OF MOUSE CHOWBy L. Augenlicht710 EARTHSHAKING ENERGYDEVELOPMENT PLANSBy H. Yang et al.710 ONLINE BUZZ: CLINICAL TRIALS711 GIVE YOUNG SCIENTISTS A LEVELPLAYING FIELDBy P. C. JordanDEPARTMENTS679 EDITORIALJournals unite for reproducibilityBy Marcia McNutt782 WORKING LIFEReflections of a woman pioneerBy Vijaysree VenkatramanScience Staff ..............................................676New Products .............................................768Science Careers .........................................770683698IN DEPTH683 PLAN TO PROTECT GREAT BARRIERREEF UNDER FIREContinuing degradation threatens reef sWorld Heritage Site status By D. Normileand L. Dayton684 DELAYS HINDER EBOLA GENOMICSFor months, no sequences from the virushave been released By G. Vogel685 WHATS KILLING THE REINDEER?Conservationists and herders in Norwaydiffer about whether to blame predatorsor overpopulation By E. Kintisch686 AN INTERNET RESEARCH PROJECTDRAWS CONSERVATIVE IRETruthy project at Indiana Universityanalyzes Twitter traffic to understandpatterns of political discourseBy J. Mervis687 GENETICS MAY FOSTER BUGSTHAT KEEP YOU THINTwin study shows genes influence gutmicrobiome By E. PennisiFEATURES688 A GLIMPSE OF COSMIC DAWNAstronomers are attempting to lookback to when the first stars and galaxieslit up and changed the universe foreverBy D. Clery692 RARE EARTHSoil scientists are tracking downrare and endangered soils in aquest to documentand preservepedodiversity By M. Tennesen7 NOVEMBER 2014 SCIENCE sciencemag.org VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 673Published by AAAS

2. CONTENTS 7597 NOVEMBER 2014 VOLUME 346 ISSUE 6210RESEARCHIN BRIEF712 From Science and other journalsREVIEW715 ECONOMICSEconomics in the age of big dataL. Einav and J. LevinREVIEW SUMMARY; FOR FULL TEXT:dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1243089RESEARCH ARTICLES716 LOCAL TRANSLATIONPrinciples of ER cotranslationaltranslocation revealed by proximity-specificribosome profilingC. H. Jan et al.RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY; FOR FULL TEXT:dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1257521 PERSPECTIVE P. 701; REPORT P. 748717 NANOMATERIALSCasting inorganic structures withDNA molds W. Sun et al.RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY; FOR FULL TEXT:dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1258361718 THE RIBOSOMEStructure of the large ribosomalsubunit from human mitochondriaA. Brown et al.REPORTS722 QUANTUM SPIN LIQUIDSCoherent transmutation of electronsinto fractionalized anyonsM. Barkeshli et al.717SCIENCE sciencemag.orgStructure of the HIV-1 envelopeprotein subunit gp120718725 PHOTOCHEMISTRYReduction of aryl halides by consecutivevisible light-induced electron transferprocesses I. Ghosh et al.729 PHASE TRANSFORMATIONMicroscopic mechanisms of equilibriummelting of a solid A. Samanta et al. PERSPECTIVE P. 704732 EARLY UNIVERSEOn the origin of near-infraredextragalactic background lightanisotropy M. Zemcov et al. PERSPECTIVE P. 696EARLY EARTH735 Sulfate was a trace constituent ofArchean seawater S. A. Crowe et al.739 Neoarchean carbonateassociatedsulfate records positive 33Sanomalies G. Paris et al.ON THE COVERA composite imageof individuallyphotographed insectsillustrates a smallfraction of theirenigmatic diversity.Scientists from the1KITE project used adata set of 1478 protein-codinggenes from 144 insect species toMCKEANE742 Large sulfur isotopefractionations associated withLESLEY Neoarchean microbial sulfatereduction I. Zhelezinskaia et al.AMUNTS/ PERSPECTIVE P. 703ALEXEY MIDDLE) (IMAGE: 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 675 745 ANIMAL BEHAVIORBats jamming bats: Food competitionthrough sonar interferenceA. J. Corcoran and W. E. Conner748 LOCAL TRANSLATIONTargeting and plasticity ofmitochondrial proteins revealed byproximity-specific ribosome profilingC. C. Williams et al. PERSPECTIVE P. 701;RESEARCH ARTICLE P. 716751 QUALITY CONTROLQuality control of inner nuclearmembrane proteins by the Asi complexO. Foresti et al. PERSPECTIVE P. 701755 NOROVIRUSEnteric bacteria promote human andmouse norovirus infection of B cellsM. K. Jones et al. PERSPECTIVE P. 700; PODCAST759 HIV ENTRYConformational dynamics of singleHIV-1 envelope trimers on the surfaceof native virions J. B. Munro et al.763 INSECT PHYLOGENOMICSPhylogenomics resolves the timingand pattern of insect evolutionB. Misof et al.provide reliable estimates on controversialdates of origin and relationships of allmajor insect groups. See page 763. 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Subrahmanian, U. of MarylandIra Tabas, Columbia U.Sarah Teichmann, Cambridge U.John Thomas, North Carolina State U.Shubha Tole, Tata Institute of Fundamental ResearchChristopher Tyler-Smith, The Wellcome TrustSanger Inst.Herbert Virgin, Washington U.Bert Vogelstein, Johns Hopkins U.Cynthia Volkert, U. of GttingenDouglas Wallace, Dalhousie U.David Wallach, Weizmann Inst. of ScienceIan Walmsley, U. of OxfordDavid A. Wardle, Swedish U. of Agric. SciencesDavid Waxman, Fudan U.Jonathan Weissman, U. of California,San FranciscoChris Wikle, U. of Missouri (S)Ian A. Wilson, The Scripps Res. Inst. (S)Timothy D. Wilson, U. of VirginiaRosemary Wyse, Johns Hopkins U.Jan Zaanen, Leiden U.Kenneth Zaret, U. of Pennsylvania School of MedicineJonathan Zehr, U. of California, Santa CruzLen Zon, Childrens Hospital BostonMaria Zuber, MITBOOK REVIEW BOARDDavid Bloom, Harvard U., Samuel Bowring, MIT, Angela Creager, Princeton U.,Richard Shweder, U. of Chicago, Ed Wasserman, DuPont676 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPublished by AAAS 4. EDITORIALJournals unite for reproducibilityReproducibility, rigor, transparency, and inde-pendentverification are cornerstones of thescientific method. Of course, just because a re-sultis reproducible does not necessarily makeit right, and just because it is not reproduc-ibledoes not necessarily make it wrong. Atransparent and rigorous approach, however,can almost always shine a light on issues of repro-ducibility.This light ensures that science moves for-ward,through independent verifications as well as thecourse corrections that come from refutations and theobjective examination of theresulting data.It was with the goal ofstrengthening such approachesin the biomedical sciences thata group of editors representingover 30 major journals, represen-tativesfrom funding agencies,and scientific leaders assembledat the AAAS headquarters inJune of 2014 to discuss prin-ciplesand guidelines for pre-clinicalbiomedical research.The gathering was convened bythe U.S. National Institutes ofHealth, Nature,* and Science.The discussion ranged fromwhat journals were alreadydoing to address reproduc-ibilityand the effectiveness ofthose measures, to the mag-nitudeof the problem and thecost of solutions. The attend-eesagreed on a common setof Principles and Guidelines inReporting Preclinical Research(www.nih.gov/about/reporting-preclinical-research.htm) thatlist proposed journal policiesand author reporting require-ments...scientific journalsare standing togetherin their convictionthat reproducibilityand transparency areimportant...to promote transparency and reproducibility.The new guidelines suggest that journals includein their information for authors their policies for sta-tisticalanalysis and how they review the statisticalaccuracy of work under consideration. Any imposedpage limits should not discourage reproducibility.The guidelines encourage using a checklist to ensurethe reporting of important experimental parameters,such as standards used, number and type of replicates,statistics, method of randomization, whether experi-menterswere blind to the conduct of the experiment,how the sample size was determined, and what crite-riawere used to include or exclude any data. Journalsshould recommend the deposition of data in publicrepositories where available and link data bidirection-allyto the published paper. Journals should stronglyencourage, as appropriate, that all materials used inthe experiment be shared with those who wish to repli-catethe experiment. Once a journal publishes a paper,it assumes the obligation to consider publication of arefutation of that paper, subject to its usual standardsof quality.The more open-ended por-tionof the guidelines suggeststhat journals establish bestpractices for image-based data(such as screening for manipu-lationand storing full-resolu-tionarchival versions) and howto describe experiments morecompletely. An example foranimal experiments is report-ingthe source, species, strain,sex, age, husbandry, inbred andstrain characteristics, or trans-genicanimals, etc. For cell lines,one might report the source,authentication, and myco-plasmacontamination status.The existence of these guide-linesdoes not obviate the needfor replication or independentverification of research results,but should make it easier toperform such replication.Some of the journals at themeeting already had imple-mentedall or most of theseprinciples and guidelines. Butthe important point is that alarge number of scientific jour-nalsare standing together in their conviction that re-producibilityand transparency are important issues.As partners to the research enterprise in the communi-cationand dissemination of research results, journalswant to do their part to raise the standards for thebenefit of all scientists and the benefit of society. Thehope is that that these guidelines will not be viewed asonerous, but as part of the quality control that justifiesthe public trust in science.Marcia McNuttEditor-in-ChiefScience Journals Marcia McNutt10.1126/science.aaa1724*See www.nature.com/news/1.16259. A list of all journals and publishers signatory to the principles and guidelinesis at www.nih.gov/about/reporting-preclinical-research.htm.SCIENCE sciencemag.org 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 679IMAGES: (INSET) SORBETTO/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; (RIGHT) STACEY PENTLAND PHOTOGRAPHYPublished by AAASDownloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 6, 2014 5. One penis, or two?680 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 sciencemag.org SCIENCECREIDTS: (TOP TO BOTTOM) PATRICK TSCHOPP/HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL/DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS; JO SCOTT, LIZ ALLEN, AMY BRAND ET AL./BIOMED CENTRAL DESIGN TEAMAROUND THE WORLDEbola fears hamper U.S. meetingsNEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA | Fears of theEbola virus are barring researchers fromtwo scientific meetings in New Orleans.Several scientistsincluding representa-tivesof the World Health Organizationand the Centers for Disease Control andPreventionhad to cancel their trip to theannual meeting of the American Societyof Tropical Medicine and Hygiene thisweek after the state of Louisiana barredattendees who had treated Ebola patientsor been in Guinea, Sierra Leone, or Liberiain the previous 3 weeks. The same ruleswill affect the annual convention of theAmerican Public Health Association(APHA), held in New Orleans from 15 to19 November, says APHA ExecutiveDirector Georges Benjamin. Meanwhile,two infectious diseases meetings in Europewent ahead as planned this week becauseno Ebola travel restrictions applied in theirhost cities, Vienna and Stockholm. http://scim.ag/Ebolamtgban, http://scim.ag/EbolaEurGermans boost research fundingBERLIN | After months of deadlock,German politicians agreed on 30 Octoberto a 25.3 billion ($31.6 billion) fundingpackage for universities and research insti-tutesthrough 2020. The bulk of the newmoney, 19.3 billion, will go to universities.Nonuniversity research organizations likethe DFG funding agency, the Max PlanckSociety, and the Leibniz Association willreceive 3% annual budget increases from2016 through 2020, down from recent 5%yearly increases. Funding for overheadcostsa long-simmering issuewill risefrom 20% to 22%. The countrys ExcellenceInitiative, a competition between universi-tiesfor extra funding, will also continue,though details wont be worked out untilafter an evaluation of the program is fin-ishedin early 2016.Badges clarify co-authors rolesLONDON | A collection of science,publishing, and software groups is devel-opinga solution to the problem of howto identify the contributions of each of aNEWSIN BRIEFAfrica has become powerless, confused,disoriented, and totally helpless, resorting to internationalaid, begging for everything. Nigerian Academy of Science President Oyewale Tomori, criticizing Africas responseto Ebola at an emerging diseases meeting in Vienna last week. http://scim.ag/TomoriIn the last spiral ofan embryonic python,paired penises areforming.Ever wonder why men have one penis while snakeshave two? The genetic instructions specifying theorgans development are essentially the same inreptiles and mammals. So to understand the dif er-ences,Harvard University developmental biologistPatrick Tschopp and colleagues traced penis devel-opmentin mouse and snake embryos. Signals from thecloaca, a cavity destined to become the lower gut, initi-atepenis formation in both animalsbut in snakes, thepenis arises from what would have been the beginningsof the rear legs, whereas in mice, cells destined to becomethe tail take on that task, the team reported this week inNature. As in real estate, location is everything: The ro-dentcloaca is by the solo tail-to-be and taps some of thosecells for the peniswhile the snake cloaca is by where twolimbs used to form, so it gets two penises instead of just one.Thus, penis formation is an example of deep homology: Insteadof a common cellular ancestry, the same organ in dif erent species hasa common molecular ancestry. http://scim.ag/penisevPublished by AAASDownloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 6, 2014 6. papers authors: digital badgessuch ascomputation, investigation, and datavisualizationthat detail what each authordid for the work. Authors can link thebadges to their profiles elsewhere on theWeb. The collaboration, which includesBioMed Central, the Public Library ofScience, Mozilla Science Lab, and ORCID(an effort to assign researchers digitalidentifiers), presented the project at theMozilla Festival in London late last month.Early prototypes are scheduled to launchnext year, according to Amye Kenall, journaldevelopment manager of open data initia-tivesand journals at BioMed Central.http://scim.ag/_digitalbadgesSciences memory deepensBOSTON | Todays scientists are standingon the shoulders of giants, relying on thework of their predecessorsto whom theygive a nod by citing their papers. But isthe work of those predecessors becom-ingobsolete, as scientists choose to citemore recent work? In a paper posted onarXiv, the team behind Google Scholarweighed in this week with a study of theirown massive data set. The team analyzedpapers published between 1990 and 2013and compared the publication dates ofcitations listed in them. The results shouldgive older scientists reason to cheer:The fraction of citations that are at least10 years older than the paper citing themhas increased steadily, from 28% in 1990to 36% in 2013, the team reports.http://scim.ag/papercitesClimate report sounds alarmCOPENHAGEN | Climate change is takinghold and will bring worrying impactsbut there is still time to limit the dam-age.That is the message delivered bythe Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChanges (IPCCs) Synthesis Report,released this week, which caps work onthree massive studies issued by IPCCover the past year, comprising the groupsfifth assessment of climate science andmitigation since 1990. The core messagefrom the IPCC is the growing urgency ofaction, said Bob Perciasepe, president ofthe Arlington, Virginiabased Center forClimate and Energy Solutions, in a state-ment.The scientists have done their job.Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO),is in hot water after suggesting in arecent radio interview with the AustralianBroadcasting Corporation (ABC) thatCSIRO investigate water divining, or dows-ing.SIPANASA/Now its up to governments to do theirs.KOWSKY/New research chief touts dowsingJOEL SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA | Larry Marshall, thePHOTO: next CEO of Australias leading researchagency, the Commonwealth Scientific andSCIENCE sciencemag.org 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 681 Experiments lost in rocket explosionSix seconds after liftoff, on 28 October an unmanned Antares rocket commis-sionedby NASA and bound for the International Space Station (ISS) explodedjust over the launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia. The explosion of the rocket,built by Orbital Sciences Corp., incinerated numerous scientific experimentson board as well as 748 kg of supplies for the six astronauts on the ISS. Amongthe losses were 18 experiments by students from across the United States andCanada; a high-resolution camera developed by the Southwest Research Institute inSan Antonio, Texas, to observe the chemical composition of meteors entering Earthsatmosphere; and an experiment to test materials for their suitability as solar sails,which use radiation pressures from stars to propel spacecraft without burning fuel.http://scim.ag/AntaresrocketAlthough it is a little out there, hetold Caption ABC, here its of the thisagencys job to push theenvelope. photo above CSIRO captionscientists are keepingtheir here heads to come.down in the wake of a 5.45%(AU$111.4 million) budget cut that will seeup to 420 jobs eliminated by June 2015,along with the closure of eight researchfacilities. But experts outside the agencydecried the interest in dowsing expressedby a Silicon Valley venture capitalist witha doctorate in physics. Im appalled, saysJohn Williams of the Wentworth Groupof Concerned Scientists and former chiefof CSIRO Land and Water.http://scim.ag/CSIROdowsingAn unmanned rocket boundfor the ISS exploded shortlyafter its launch 28 October.Published by AAAS 7. NEWS | IN BRIEFPlant biologist Uma Nagendras aerial dance was the overall winner.682 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTOS: (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP) UMA NAGENDRA; COURTESY OF OMID KOKABEE; MICHELE AND TOM GRIMM/ALAMYVaccine may slow koalas declineQUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA | Help maybe on the way for koalas, whose numbershave declined from millions in the1700s to as few as 43,000 today. Inaddition to urbanization, which hasdecimated the eucalyptus forest koalaslive in, and deaths due to cars and dogs,a chlamydia epidemic is ravaging themarsupials populations, causing blind-ness,infertility, and death. But last week,microbiologists at the University of theSunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia,announced that a vaccine helps stemthe course of disease. Peter Timms andhis colleagues examined and put radiocollars on 60 koalas, vaccinating halfof them. Of that half, uninfected koalaswere protected, koalas already infecteddid not get sicker, and their eye infectionsimproved, they said. They hope to getmore funding to extend the vaccinationprogram.NEWSMAKERSPetition for jailed studentAn open letter signed by31 Nobel laureates thatcalls for the release ofjailed Iranian physicsPh.D. student OmidKokabee was deliveredto the Iranian missionto the United Nationslast week, along withearlier petitions signed by more than14,000 people. Kokabee, 32, has been inprison since January 2011 (http://scim.ag/Kokabeetrial). He was studying theinteraction of lasers and plasma at theUniversity of Texas, Austin, when he wasarrested and was later condemned to10 years for espionage. In April 2013,Kokabee claimed in an open letter thathe was jailed for refusing to cooperatewith a military research project. In earlyOctober, Irans supreme court acceptedKokabees lawyers appeal and ordereda retrial. Kokabee was also awarded theAAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibilityprize last week. (AAAS publishes Science.)Italian physicist to lead CERNFabiola Gianotti will be the next director-generalof CERN, the European particlephysics laboratory near Geneva,Switzerland, which is home to the worldsbiggest atom smasher, the Large HadronCollider (LHC). A staff member at CERN,Gianotti, 52, served from March 2009 toFebruary 2013 as spokeswoman for the3000 researchers working with ATLAS, oneof four gargantuan particle detectors fedby the LHC. In that position, she partici-patedin the biggest event in particlephysics in decades: On 4 July 2012, she andthe representative for rival detector CMSreported that the two teams had indepen-dentlydiscovered the long-sought Higgsboson. Gianotti will take over fromRolf-Dieter Heuer on 1 January 2016.The trees and the tornado: Winner of Dance Your Ph.D.A circus extravaganza by plant biologist-cum-aerialist Uma Nagendra depictingplant-soil interactions in the aftermath of a tornado is the overall winner of thisyears Dance Your Ph.D. contest, co-sponsored by Science. Nagendra, a Ph.D.student at the University of Georgia, Athens, demonstrates how tornadoesdestruction can offer tree seedlings a respite from parasitic soil fungi. Nagendra,also the biology category winner, will receive $1000 and a trip to Stanford Universityin May 2015, where her video will be screened. The three other category winners, eachof whom will receive $500, include: Hans Rinderknecht of the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology in Cambridge, who explained how he uses light to trigger nuclear fusion;Saioa Alvarez of the University of the Basque Country in Leioa, Spain, for her danceexplaining the chemistry of emulsions like mayonnaise; and David Manzano Cosanoof the Complutense University of Madrid, who danced about the history of technologyand colonialism in the Pacific. http://scim.ag/DancePhD2014BY THE NUMBERS$193billionChinas record-high research anddevelopment expenditures in 2013, accordingto the National Bureau of Statistics,the Ministry of Science and Technology,and the Ministry of Finance.Koala populations arebeing decimated bya chlamydia epidemic.Published by AAAS 8. NEWSBy Dennis Normile and Leigh DaytonAustralias Great Barrier Reef is un-derassault from fishers, agriculturalrunoff, and coastal development,and now climate change looms asa threat. But it was the prospect ofhumiliationa threat by the WorldHeritage Committee to list the reef as indangerthat finally spurred the Australiangovernment to act. It has crafted what itcalls a comprehensive strategy to protect thereef s values while allowing sustainabledevelopment and use. Scientists who havereviewed the draft plan are not impressed.The plan fails to effectively address anyof the pressures the reef is facing, accordingto a statement last week from the Austra-lianAcademy of Science, which argued thatmuch bolder action is required to preventfurther degradation. Scientists hope thegovernment will considerably strengthenthe Reef 2050 Long-Term SustainabilityPlan before submitting it to the World Heri-tageCommittee early next year.Australia created the 344,400-square-kilometerGreat Barrier Reef Marine Parkoff the state of Queensland in 1975, alongwith a Marine Park Authority to protect it.Conservation efforts were bolstered in 1981,after the reef was designated a World Heri-tageThough well-managed, Australias GreatBarrier Reef is deteriorating.IMAGESSite in recognition of its outstandingGETTY universal value.DOUBILET/Yet conditions at the reef have deterio-rated.In a 2012 report in the Proceedingsof the National Academy of Sciences, GlennDAVID Death of the Australian Institute of Ma-rinePHOTO: Science in Townsville and colleaguesreported that the reef s coral cover shrunkSCIENCE sciencemag.org 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 683 by half between 1985 and 2012. The cul-prits,Deaths group found, were cyclones,predation by crown-of-thorns starfish,and bleachingloss of the corals photo-syntheticorganisms when the water getstoo warm. Without intervention, the teamwarned, the GBR may lose the biodiversityand ecological integrity for which it waslisted as a World Heritage Area.The Great Barrier Reef s decline hasalarmed scientists around the world. Thefact that a very well managed reef systemis still showing substantial deteriorationshould be cause for general concern, be-causeit reveals how pervasive our impactsare and how serious the consequences arefor coral reefs, says Peter Sale, a reef ecolo-gistand professor emeritus at the Universityof Windsor in Canada. It has also alarmedthe World Heritage Committee, whichwarned last summer that in the absence ofa long-term plan by early next year, it wouldconsider listing the reef as in danger. Thatwould be such a public shame for Austra-lia,says Selina Ward, a reef ecologist at theUniversity of Queensland, St. Lucia.The draft 2050 plan acknowledges thatmore work is needed to address threatsto the reef and calls for targets on waterquality, biodiversity, ecosystem health, andeconomic and community benefits. But theacademy points out that many importanttargets are not quantified, nor are they con-nectedto any mechanisms through whichthey can be achieved. The Australian CoralReef Society adds that the plan anticipatesport expansion and dredging and sets anobjective of completing such work with nodetrimental impact on the health and resil-ienceof the Great Barrier Reef. However,states the society, There is no indication ofthe method to achieve this ambitious objec-tive.Nor, states the Australian Museum,does the plan address the long term viabil-ityof fisheries and endangered species.For a long-term conservation strategy, theplan pays little attention to climate change,says Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Cen-treof Excellence for Coral Reef Studies inTownsville. It notes that climate change willlead to more frequent bleaching and extremeweather events. But it doesnt offer any so-lutions,Hughes says. Earlier this year, theAustralian government repealed the nationscarbon tax and is promoting the developmentof coal deposits for export from Queensland.The Australian government says it is lis-teningto critics, but hasnt tipped its handon how it may revise the plan. We appreci-atecommunity engagement in how we canbetter manage the reef, wrote an environ-mentministry representative in an e-mailto Science. He did note that the plan ac-knowledgesthat climate change is a globalproblem which requires global action,and is being addressed by the governmentthrough other policies.We hope that the government will im-provethe plan, and wed like to help withthat, Hughes says. A final plan must besubmitted to the World Heritage Commit-teeby 1 February, after which an advisorypanel will review it and present a recom-mendationat the committees annual meet-ingin Bonn in June. At a 2 October pressconference, Environment Minister GregHunt said hes optimistic the committeewill maintain the reef s current status. IN DEPTHCONSERVATIONPlan to protect Great Barrier Reef under fireContinuing degradation threatens reef s World Heritage Site statusPublished by AAASDownloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 6, 2014 9. INFECTIOUS DISEASESBy Gretchen VogelAs the Ebola epidemic sweeps throughWest Africa, scientists lack key ge-neticdata to answer a question thathas provoked much worried specu-lation:Is the virus becoming moretransmissible or more deadly, or ac-quiringchanges that would let it evade diag-nostictests or vaccines? Thousands of bloodsamples from Ebola patients have been sit-tingin refrigerators in Africa and Europe,untouched. And, as Science went to press,the few groups that have new sequence datahave not made them public.Researchers are eager for a close-up lookat how the virus may be evolving. Besidesanswering questions about its virulence,genomic data could reveal details aboutthe epidemic, including hotspots of trans-missionand how often the virus has escapedfrom its animal reservoir to humans, saysAndrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologistwho studies infectious diseases at the Uni-versityof Edinburgh in the United Kingdom.If it can be done on a timely basis, you canreally get insight into what is going on. Butfaced with the all-consuming public healthresponse to the epidemic, bureaucratic ob-stacles,and chaotic record keeping, scien-tistshave had to wait.In August, the world got its closest mo-lecularlook at the virus so far, when re-searcherspublished 99 genomes of virusesfrom 78 patients who were infected in oraround Kenema, Sierra Leone, from lateMay to mid-June. That analysis, publishedonline on 28 August inScience, included morethan half of the knowncases in Sierra Leoneat the time.The sequence data,which the researchersdeposited in publicdatabases as soon asthey were generated,showed how the virus changed as it passedfrom person to person at the start of the Si-erraLeone outbreak, with one variant dis-appearingas another gained prominenceamong later cases. Since then, the outbreakhas exploded into an epidemicit hasnow sickened more than 13,000 and killed5000but the team, led by Pardis Sabeti andStephen Gire at the Broad Institute in Cam-bridge,Massachusetts, has been unable toimport any new samples from Sierra Leone.Other groups have been similarly stymied.Several researchers say that getting exportapproval from beleaguered health ministrieshas been tough. I can only assume that thesystem is so overwhelmed that processingsamples beyond simple diagnostic tests isnot high priority, says Rambaut, who wasa co-author on the August sequence paper.Stephan Gnther, a virologist at the Ber-nhardNocht Institute for Tropical Medicine(BNI) in Hamburg, Germany, and coordi-natorof the European Mobile Laboratory(EMLab) consortium, says they have beenunable to export samples from Nigeria orLiberia. But BNI has been receiving samplesfrom the EMLab mis-sionin Guinea sinceMarch and now hasclose to 3000, he says.(BNI is storing them inits high-security lab onbehalf of the Guineangovernment, whichstill owns them.)Gnther and his col-leagueshave not yet sequenced any of thesamples, because consortium staff membershave been busy supporting diagnostic cen-tersin affected countries. We are all busywith fieldwork, Gnther says. Personnelis a bit of a problem. That should ease, hesays, with a new 1.7 million ($2.1 million)award from the European Union to EMLabfor Ebola research.In France, the Institut Pasteur, whereearly samples from Guinea were first iden-tifiedas Ebola, also experienced delaysexporting samples from West Africa butplans to start sequencing new viral ge-nomessoon. The institutes lab in Dakarrecently received samples from Guinea,says Felix Rey, who is coordinating theinstitutes Ebola task force in Paris. TheDakar lab will extract RNA and send itto Paris for high-throughput sequencing.We hope to have sequenced viruses froma couple of hundred samples in the nextmonth or so, Rey says.Sabeti and her colleagues should soonget their Sierra Leone samples, whichfinally were cleared for export andarrived in the United States lastweek, says Robert Garry of Tu-laneUniversity in New Orleans,Louisiana, who collaborates withSabeti. But to speed the research,she and her colleagues are try-ingto secure funding to send se-quencingmachines to West Africa.If we cant get the samples here, we will getthe sequencers there, she says. The effortwill build on the researchers ongoing workwith the African Centre of Excellence forGenomics of Infectious Diseases, a consor-NEWS | IN DEPTHsciencemag.org SCIENCEILLUSTRATION: VIRALZONE/SIB SWISS INSTITUTE OF BIOINFORMATICSDelays hinder Ebola genomicsFor months, no sequences from the virus have been releasedWe are all busy withfieldwork personnel isa bit of a problem.Stephan Gnther, Bernhard NochtInstitute for Tropical MedicineA changeable foeThe proteins that enable the Ebola virus to spread and cause disease are encoded by sevenprotein-sheathed genes. Mutations in the gene for the glycoprotein could affect the efficacyof antibody-based treatments. Other genes, such as those for polymerase and transcriptionfactor VP30, can affect how quickly the virus replicates.684 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210Published by AAASDownloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 6, 2014 10. By Eli Kintisch, in Nordkapp, NorwayAn ecologists study of reindeer hastouched off a firestorm in this landof ice, tundra, and Sami herders,who tend vast numbers of the semi-domesticatedanimals. Each year, theherders file compensation claims fortens of thousands of reindeer deaths thatthey blame on carnivores, primarily lynx andwolverines. Ecologist Torkild Tveraa, how-ever,pins the blame on overpopulation: Theland simply cannot support the herds, whichnumber roughly 180,000 here in Finnmark,Norways most northern region.Tveraa, who is with the Norwegian In-stitutefor Nature Research in Troms, firstpresented his case in a government-fundedreport last year, and he added new analysisin a study published in the October issue ofthe Journal of Applied Ecology. The govern-menthas pointed to the findings as exoner-atingthe threatened lynx and wolverines,which are already protected by strict hunt-inglimits. To the Sami, however, the studythreatens an economic lifeline.To receive compensation, a herder mustprove that a dead reindeer was killed by alynx or wolverine. Thats hard when herd-ersfind remains of only 5% to 10% of thereindeer that they lose. The government ap-provedjust a quarter of more than 60,000such applications in 2011. The claims none-thelessare lucrative: That year, Sami herdersin Norway received $11 million in predatorpayments, or two-thirds of what they re-ceivedLANGELANDfrom meat sales.To find out how much damage the preda-torsKNUT really do, Tveraas team combined theirPHOTO: own data on reindeer health since 2000with herd sizes reported by herders, obser-vationsSCIENCE sciencemag.org 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 685 of lynx and wolverines, and satellitedata on grazing areas. They found that asa factor in reindeer mortality, food scarcitywas two to three times more significantthan lynx, and more than 20 times moresignificant than wolverines.Tveraa has a very solid basis for thesefindingsa very large data set collectedover a very long time series, says Terje B,head of wildlife management in the Norwe-giangovernments environment division inTrondheim. In the global canon of human-carnivoreconflict research, Tveraas robuststudy, says Matt Hayward, an ecologist atBangor University in the United Kingdom,goes against the grain of papers saying, Itsthe predators fault. Other experts agreethat the findings are plausible. Its sort ofofficial: We have too many reindeer, saysEmil Halvorsrud, a wildlife official in Lak-selv.Large herds are becoming less sustain-able,he says, as a warming subarctic climateresults in more slush and rain in winter,leaving pastures covered in ice.Ellinor Jma, with the Sami ReindeerHerders Association of Norway in Karasjok,agrees that overpopulation is a factor in somedeaths. We may have too many reindeer insome areas of Finnmark, she concedes. Butin the middle of the country, reindeer healthis goodand we still have heavy losses,which she blames on predation.B hopes Tveraas findings will show howecological data could underpin a new com-pensationsystem the government has pro-posedto launch in 2017. Tveraa underscoresthat he doesnt take sides in the debate. Wehear: Oh, since your research is paid for bythe government, you are only there to pro-tectthe carnivores, he says. Thats not so,he insists: The data speak for themselves. tium of universities and research institutesin the United States, Nigeria, Sierra Leone,and Senegal, which for several years hasbeen training African researchers in the useof genomics tools.Blood samples alone arent enough forgenomic studies. Investigators need to knowat least where each patient was from; ideallythey will also have clinical information suchas whether he or she survived. Only whenyou have those pieces of information canyou come up with useful information fromthe sequences, Gnther saysand becauseof spotty record keeping, that informationis often missing. He and his colleagues areworking with Doctors Without Borders andthe World Health Organization to matchsamples with relevant information, but set-tingup a database is time- and labor-inten-sive,he says.Meanwhile, the few Ebola virus sequencesthat have been generated since that ini-tialbatch from Sierra Leone have not beenmade public. The U.S. Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention (CDC) announcedin August that it had sequenced Ebola virussamples from patients treated in the UnitedStates. But the data have not been placed inany public sequence repositories. Thats un-fortunate,Rambaut says. As the U.S. casesare from Liberia and we have zero sequencesfrom there so far, even one genome wouldbe interesting and potentially useful, hesays. Duncan MacCannell, a bioinformat-icsspecialist at CDC in Atlanta, told Sciencethat the sequences had been actively sharedand discussed with the public health com-munity.He says CDC is working to submitthe sequences to a public database.New sequences probably wont show thatthe virus is finding new ways to attack orspread, Rambaut says. Instead, the prize isa clearer picture of the outbreak. A clusterof closely related viruses might point to ahotspot of transmission, he says, while un-expectedlydiverse sequences would suggestthat many cases were going undetected.Sequence data could also help researcherstell whether there has been more than oneanimal-to-human introduction.Earlier sequence data did suggest thatthe virus was undergoing rapid changes,but that is not necessarily a sign that it isbecoming more dangerous, Rambaut says.Most RNA viruses mutate quickly, but ad-aptationand functional change is a muchslower process. Measles mutates nearlyas quickly as Ebola virus, but it has neverevolved to escape the lifelong immunity ofpreviously infected or vaccinated individu-als.Even in an outbreak this big, Rambautsays, I see no reason to suspect the viruswill radically change its life cycle or itsmode of transmission. Sami herder PerAnders Eira wranglesa reindeer calf innorthern Norway.ECOLOGYWhats killing the reindeer?Conservationists and herders in Norway differ aboutwhether to blame predators or overpopulationPublished by AAAS 11. By Jeffrey MervisThe truth about Truthy has become ascarce commodity.Truthy is a 4-year-old academicstudy of how information spreads onTwitter. The work, by researchers atIndiana University (IU), Blooming-ton,has been cited favorably in mainstreammedia reports about the broader phenom-enonof online memesmessages aboutideas, issues, and eventsandthe role they can play in ev-erythingfrom shaping protestmovements to signaling out-breaksof disease. But recentlythe Indiana project fell afoulof another Internet phenom-enonhow some messagescan spread even if they arenot correct.In the past few months,Truthy has become the target of wither-ingattacks from conservative bloggers andpoliticians. In particular, they have char-acterizeda 4-year, $920,000 grant the sci-entistsreceived in 2011 from the NationalScience Foundation (NSF) as an attempt bythe U.S. government to monitor and restrictfree speech. The attacks are not simply amisunderstanding of our research, sayscomputer scientist Filippo Menczer, theprincipal investigator on the NSF grant.They are a deliberate attempt to distortwhat we have done.Menczers work, which is also supportedby the militarys Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency and by the private JamesS. McDonnell Foundation, is rooted in thegrowing field of complex, nonlinear feed-backsystems. It has become a very hot topicof research, notes Menczer, who is the direc-torof IUs Center for Complex Networks andSystems Research. The field includes studiesof natural systems such as planetary orbitsand climateand also social ones, such asthe spread of information on Twitter. Twit-teritself has begun awarding grants to aca-demicswho want to study its daily torrent ofmore than half a billion tweets.Under the NSF grant, Menczer and hiscolleagues have studied Twitter messagesto shed light on the nature of social dis-course.Some of their early work on U.S. po-liticaldebate, for example, found evidenceof a growing polarization, in which peoplecommunicate mostly with those who holdsimilar views on any particular issue ratherthan trying to engage those who disagreewith them. More recently, the researchersexamination of the 2013 protests againstthe Turkish government found that themovement became more democratic overtime, with a growing number of peopleshaping the direction of the protest. The re-searchersalso hope to learn how to differ-entiatememes spread by real people fromthose broadcast by automated software,a technique used by some businesses andadvocacy groups to create the illusion of agroundswell of public interest in an issue.This summer, Truthy itself fell underscrutiny, starting with a 25 August piecein The Washington Free Beacon, a con-servativeonline news website. Its head-lineproclaimed that the U.S. governmentis Creating [a] Database to Track HateSpeech on Twitter. Within days, severalconservative commentators jumped on theanti-Truthy bandwagon. So some bureau-cratdecides whether you are being hatefulor misinforming peoplewhat could pos-siblygo wrong? a reporter for Fox Newsasked sarcastically.Elizabeth Harrington, who wrote the FreeBeacon story, says she was just doing herjob. One of the areas that I cover is howgovernment is spending taxpayers money,and I found this grant interesting, she ex-plains.The whole premise of the projectstruck me as questionable, and I hadntseen any other coverage of this aspect ofthe research.Many of the critical storiesquote selectively from a Truthygrant abstract on NSFs websiteto argue that the research is anexample of the Obama adminis-trationstargeting of conserva-tives.The Free Beacon story, forexample, says NSF is financingthe creation of a web service thatwill monitor suspicious memesand what it considers false and misleadingideas, with a major focus on political activ-ityonline. But those phrases actually applyto an online platform that the researcherscreated to give the public a chance to com-menton anything being tweeted. The sci-entistswerent deciding which tweets weresuspicious, nor targeting any particularideological position.686 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTOS: (TOP TO BOTTOM) OZAN KOSE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF INDIANA UNIVERSITYProtesters in Istanbuls Taksim Gezi Park in 2013 usedsocial media to spread their message.SOCIAL SCIENCEAn Internet research projectdraws conservative ireTruthy project at Indiana University analyzes Twitter trafficto understand patterns of political discourseThe headlines aresaying something thatis completely false andfabricated.Filippo Menczer, Indiana UniversityPublished by AAASDownloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 6, 2014 12. MICROBIOLOGYBy Elizabeth PennisiGut microbes are soldiers in the battleof the bulge, researchers have learnedin the past few years, with some or-ganismsseeming to promote thin-nessand others triggering weightgain. The makeup of such microbesis known to be influenced by a persons dietand environment. Now, a study of twinsshows that genetics can also provide an edgein the microbial battle. Researchers identi-fieda microbe that appears to keep waist-linestrimand found that genes influenceits abundance. Its the first really strongevidence that human gut microbiology isgenetically controlled, says geneticist OlufPedersen of the University of Copenhagen,who wasnt involved in the study.The work, published in the 6 Novemberissue of Cell, raises hopes for microbial treat-mentsfor obesity. But microbial ecologistRuth Ley of Cornell University and her col-leaguesoriginally wanted to answer a morebasic question: Do genes affect the makeupof the gut microbiome? Like many research-ersIMAGEStrying to distinguish environmentalGETTY from inherited influences, they turned toBOBBE/twins. Working with colleagues runninga large-scale project called TwinsUK, theLELAND team collected more than 1000 stool sam-plesfrom 171 identical and 245 fraternalPHOTO: pairs of twins, as well as 173 samples fromunrelated individuals. Among these people,SCIENCE sciencemag.org 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 687 NEWS | IN DEPTH322 were overweight and 183 were obese.Previous twin studies had failed to identifya genetic connection to microbiome diver-sityand abundance, but those studies lookedat the microbiome as a whole. The new studyinstead takes a species-by-species approach.By sequencing and analyzing DNA fromthe fecal samples, Cornell graduate studentJulia Goodrich and her colleagues foundmore than 9600 genetically distinct micro-bialspecies. Most microbes varied accord-ingto environmental factors, but some wereapparently influenced by genetics, becausethey were more similar in identical twinsthan in fraternal twins. The genetic makeupof these twins may affect gutphysiology or biochemistry ina way that favors the growthof some microbes over others,the researchers suggest.The microbes most stronglyaffected by genes belong to arecently discovered, ratherobscure family of bacteriacalled Christensenellaceae. Tothe researchers surprise, thisfamily was most abundant inlean twins and rare in obeseones. To see how the microbesmight influence weight, Leyand her team transferred fecalmaterial from lean and obesetwins into germ-free mice.The weight gain in the micemirrored that of the humansdonating the feces. And when Goodrichsupplemented feces from obese twins withone of the microbes, Christensenella minuta,and gave them to mice, the mice stayed lean.The microbe has some aspect of being ableto influence weight, says Cornell geneticistand co-author Andrew Clark.We want to see if [the microbe] can bedeveloped as a probiotic for helping peoplemaintain their weight once theyve lost it,Ley says. But she and her colleagues firstneed to figure out how C. minuta exertsits effects and whether such a treatmentwould work only in people genetically dis-posedto supporting it. At this point, saysNita Salzman, a pathologist at the Medi-calCollege of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, tothink about a probiotic is almost certainlyan oversimplification. The headlines are saying somethingthat is completely false and fabricated,Menczer told the Columbia Journalism Re-view,which covered the flap in September.We are not defining hate speech. We are nottracking people. We dont have a database.New findings are posted regularly on theprojects website and written up in regularacademic journals, he explained, and noth-ingis being secretly funneled to a govern-mentagency for some nefarious purpose.Even so, conservative commenters havecontinued to pillory the work. A 17 Octoberop-ed in The Washington Post by Ajit Pai, oneof two Republicans on the five-member Fed-eralCommunications Commission, calledthe project an attempt to squint for andsquelch political comments. The federalgovernment has no business spending yourhard-earned money on a project to monitorpolitical speech on Twitter, Pai asserted.Senior Republican lawmakers are alsosuspicious of Truthy. Representative LamarSmith (RTX), the chair of the science com-mitteein the U.S. House of Representa-tives,said hes adding the grant to his listof questionable research projects that NSFhas funded over the years (Science, 10 Octo-ber,p. 152). [T]his one appears to be worsethan a simple misuse of public funds,Smith said in a 21 October press release.Truthy takes its name from truthiness,a word satirist Stephen Colbert invented forhis television show, The Colbert Report. In a2006 interview, Colbert explained why hecoined the word. It used to be, everyonewas entitled to their own opinion, but nottheir own facts, Colbert noted. But thatsnot the case anymore. Facts matter not atall. Perception is everything. Its certainty[that counts].Ironically, the NSF solicitation for theprogram that is funding Menczers teamnotes that the growth of social media mayaggravate social conflict because it offers acommon platform to parties who may notknow or trust each other. Those conflictscan easily snowball online, the program so-licitationnoted.NSF officials warned Menczer that at-temptingto defend himself could backfire,he notes. They said, Be very careful. Youdont want to talk about politics. Thats notwhat you do. Even so, the Truthy research-ershave posted a running rebuttal on theirwebsite, including what the project is andisnt, and Menczer says hes willing to speakwith those he views as bona fide reporterswho want to know about my work.The teams current NSF grant ends nextsummer, and Menczer isnt sure if hell sub-mita new proposal to the agency. But if hedoes, he predicts that we will probably stayaway from anything to do with politics. Genetics may foster bugsthat keep you thinTwin study shows genes influence gut microbiomeIdentical twins are likely to carry similar kinds of microbes in theirguts, making them likely to have similar weights.Published by AAAS 13. NEWSA glimpse of688 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: PETE WHEELERThey may be the strangest tele-scopeson Earth. They have nodomes, no giant mirrors, no steer-ableradio dishesjust scatteredarrays of simple antennas, some onpoles as tall as a person, others re-semblingrobot spiders or bizarregarden furniture. These antennaarraysone in Northern Europe,one in South Africa, a third in Australiacant point at particular heavenly targets.Instead, they passively take in whatever sig-nalscome their way and feed them to dis-tantsupercomputers where the real work ofdetection is done.The otherworldly instruments have anotherworldly target. They are probing atime so far back in the universes historythat there was very little to see: just a fewof the very earliest stars and galaxies. Andtheir quarry is not the scattered points oflight at that early epoch, but the diffuseocean of gas between them, where a pro-foundchange was taking place.By some 400,000 years after the big bang,the expansion of the universe had cooled themaelstrom of particles and energy formed inthe instant of creation. The result was a darkfog of gas, mostly hydrogen. The universesdark ages had begun. It took many mil-lionsof years for the gas, which was cool andelectrically neutral, to slowly swirl togetherto form stars and galaxiesand when it did,the gas itself was transformed.The most distant galaxies astronomerscan now see, about a billion years after theFEATURESAstronomers are attempting to look back to when the first starsand galaxies lit up and changed the universe foreverBy Daniel CleryPublished by AAASDownloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 6, 2014 14. NEWSbig bang, live in a universe full of ionizedhydrogenbare protons with their elec-tronsstripped away. Just as the lights cameon, something must have ionized all theuniverses hydrogen. The most likely cul-pritsare the early stars and galaxies them-selves,but to do this they would have hadto be very different from the stars and gal-axieswe can see today: bigger, more violent,more exotic. Astronomers are desperate toknow morebut not much can be gleanedfrom scattered lights in a fog more than13 billion light-years away.In 1997, however, British astronomerMartin Rees and colleagues Piero Madau andAvery Meiksin suggested that astronomerslook for a signal from the early neutral hy-drogenitself. In a hydrogen atom, the centralproton and the orbiting electron normallyhave opposite magnetic orientations. Whensome energy source flips them into the sameorientation, the atom quickly relaxes backinto its ground state and emits a microwavephoton, at a wavelength of 21 centimeters.Unlike the neutral gas, ionized hydrogenemits no such radiation. Rees et al. sug-gestedthat if astronomers could detect the21-centimeter radiation from the so-calledepoch of reionization (EoR), they might seeradiation-free bubbles of ionized hydrogenaround whatever was ionizing the gas. Thesize and distribution of those bubbles couldprovide information about the nature of thesources and the timing of reionization.Astronomers began thinking about whatit would take to detect such a signal. As 21-cm radiation from the EoR travels acrossthe universe, cosmic expansion stretchesits wavelength to about 2 meters. Conven-tionalradio telescopes are mostly blind tosuch long wavelengths, and a purpose-builtdish would be impractically large. But therewas another way: an array of simple anten-nasand some heavy-duty number crunch-ing.As astrophysicist Don Backer of theUniversity of California (UC), Berkeley, saidat the time: All you need is paperclips anda supercomputer.Now, several of these paperclips-and-supercomputerSignal and noiseThe faint radio signal coming from the epoch of reionization is almost drowned out by theforeground noise from sources in deep space, our own galaxy, and closer to home.LOFARtelescopes are in hot pur-suitASTRON/of the first detection of the EoR signal.They hope to glimpse something within theJELI/next year or twoand the stakes could beV. enormous. Scientists say the 21-cm radia-tionFROM could open up a floodgate of informa-tionADAPTED about the astrophysics and cosmologyof this unstudied part of the universes his-tory,CREDIT: perhaps comparable to the discoveriesthat have flowed from studying the cosmicSCIENCE sciencemag.org 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 689 microwave background left over from thebig bang. But detecting the primordial ra-diosignal amid the cacophony of other ra-diosources, earthbound and astronomical,is akin to hearing a whisper amid a crowdof cheering sports fans. Were learning allthe lessons, says Judd Bowman of ArizonaState University, Tempe, chief scientist ofone of the new instruments, the MurchisonWidefield Array (MWA) in Australia. Werehopeful and eager.The largest of the telescopes in the huntthe Low Frequency Array, or LOFARbristlesin the middle of a peat bog in the north-ernNetherlands. One of its creators, coprincipal investigator (PI) Michiel Brentjensof ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute forRadio Astronomy, in Dwingeloo, calls itthe most unimpressive radio telescope inthe world. Hes right: Its just a thicket ofhundreds of white plastic poles about theheight of a person, braced by guy ropes. Theguys are the antennas, no different in prin-ciplefrom a rooftop TV antenna. Large lowboxes under tarpaulin covers contain more,smaller antennas. A few scattered electricalcabinets hum ominously.LOFAR is an interferometer, a device thatcombines signals from widely spaced detec-torsto extract information from the differ-encesbetween them. The core of the arrayin and around the peat bog at Exloo has24 clusters, each containing more than850 antennas, spanning a 4-kilometer-widearea; another 14 clusters are scatteredaround the Netherlands, plus another fivein Germany and one each in France, Swe-den,and the United Kingdom. (More areunder construction in Germany and Po-land.)Widely spaced stations give the in-terferometerfiner resolution, enabling it tozoom in on smaller patches of sky.But the location of LOFAR is far fromideal. The Dutch government provided53 million to build the array so long as itscore was sited in the north of the country tohelp build up high-tech infrastructure there.Besides the boggy terrain, LOFAR has tocontend with interference from nearby radiosources, including the 88-to-108 megahertzband of FM broadcasts, which are slap in themiddle of the frequencies LOFAR is trying todetect. The signals from all the radio andTV transmitters in [the FM] band are justphenomenal, says LOFAR PI Ger de Bruynof ASTRON. Theyre a million times brighter[than the EoR signal], so you cant observethere. Fortunately, the team found that themain hunting ground for EoR signals, about150 MHz, seemed to be very quiet, he says.The other main arrays are sensibly situ-atedin remote radio-quiet areas. TheThe Murchison Widefield Array in Australia is using2000 simple spiderlike antennas and massivecomputer power to detect the faint signal of theionization of the universe.Milky Way foregroundsDecelerated electronsSupernova remnantsAccelerated particlesWavelength stretched by expanding spaceSignalreceivedat earthRadiation from neutral hydrogenEpoch ofreionizationExtragalactic foregrounds signalRadio galaxies and clustersPublished by AAAS 15. 690 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 sciencemag.org SCIENCECREDIT: SKA ORGANISATION/SWINBURNE ASTRONOMY PRODUCTIONSPrecision Array for Probing the Epoch ofReionization (PAPER)Backers brainchildis in the semidesert Karoo region of SouthAfrica. Its garden chairlike antennas havebeen growing in number since 2009 andhave now reached 128. The third instru-ment,MWA, sits on the semiarid plainsof Western Australia, a few hundred kilo-metersnorth of Perth. MWA was instigatedby a group of U.S. institutions that wereoriginally part of the LOFAR project. Theyparted company with the Dutch over the is-sueof building LOFAR in the noisy environ-mentof the Netherlands and set out to buildtheir own array, teaming up with research-ersin Australia, New Zealand, and India.The resulting telescope has 2048 spider-likeantennas arranged in 128 four-by-fourtiles. Its in good shape and running well,Bowman says.But building the arrays is, in a sense,the easy part. The antennas are old tech-nology,says theorist Saleem Zaroubi ofthe University of Groningen in the Neth-erlands,a co-PI on LOFAR. They have nomoving parts and so cannot focus on aparticular spotthey simply pick up every-thingcoming from the sky. It falls to dis-tantsupercomputers to make sense of thesignals, processing them to calibrate theinstrument, focus on a part of the sky, andseparate the signal from the noise. Suchsoftware telescopes offer the advantageof becoming more powerful as computersdo, even without changes to the antennason the ground.The biggest challenge the arrays face ispicking out the extremely feeble EoR sig-nalfrom all the other radio sources at thesame frequency. In our Milky Way galaxy,radio waves at those frequencies comefrom sources including supernova rem-nants,charged particles accelerated by thegalaxys own magnetic field, and radiationfrom electrons colliding with ions insidehydrogen clouds. Outside the Milky Way,countless radio galaxies and galaxy clustersalso broadcast their own signals. Models ofthe EoR signal suggest that these other ra-diosources are between 1000 and 100,000times brighterwhich means astronomersmust identify them and strip them out.No images or catalogs of sources exist forthis poorly studied part of the spectrum; theteams must map it out themselves beforethey can discount it from their data. Aftersubtracting all the foregrounds, the signal-to-noise ratio is still one-tenth. You have tounderstand the noise [and] find out ways toquantify it, says ASTRONs Brentjens.Once thats done, investigators will berewarded not with an image of the neutralhydrogen at the EoR, but rather a powerspectrum: a statistical analysis of how the ra-diosignal varies across the sky. It will revealwhether the biggest variations occur oversmall distances or large oneswhether thebubbles of ionized gas were small, the handi-workof individual stars, or galaxy-sized cavi-ties.The teams should also be able to watchreionization unfold over time. The EoR mayhave lasted millions of years; 21-cm radia-tionfrom earlier in its history will have trav-eledfarther and thus will be stretched out toa longer wavelength and a lower frequencythan later radiation. So a signal detected at140 MHz will be from an earlier time thanone at 160 MHz.As interferometers are sensitive to differ-ences,the middle of the EoRwhen half theuniverse is neutral and half ionizedwillproduce the strongest signal. So the teamswill be scanning the frequencies for a signalthat has a peak and then drops off fartherinto the past (when more of the universewas neutral) and farther toward the present(when more of the universe was ionized).These telescopes hope to learn two basicthings: when the EoR happened and howlong it lasted, Bowman says. That shouldbe easy to read when they detect a signal.All three teams are optimistic that theywill soon get their first glimpse of the EoR.Were getting pretty close to what theoristspredict the signal level is, and we expect todo two or three times better with the datathat is coming in right now, De Bruyn says.He hopes LOFAR will get a first-order re-To do what we do, you haveto be hopelessly optimistic,but also brutally realistic.Saleem Zaroubi, University of GroningenNEWS | FEATURESPublished by AAAS 16. sult by next year. The PAPER and MWAteams are similarly hopeful. But MWAsBowman adds that those projections are allbased on theoretical models of the EoR sig-nal.If there is no detection by 2020, he ac-knowledges,that will be a disappointmentfor the community.Because of the amount of signal process-ingrequired and the many different assump-tionsthat underlie the calculations, therellbe no eureka moment. Itll be hard to con-vinceourselves [of the detection], Brentjenssays. Even harder will be convincing the rivalteams. I worry about this a lot, says AaronParsons of UC Berkeley, who is head ofPAPER. I hope journal editors are verycareful. Its very important that papers arereviewed by people who are really knowl-edgeable.And we have to be very careful notto overstate claims.A confirmed and reliable signal from thetime of reionization could amount to whatsome researchers are calling a COBE mo-mentfor astrophysics. COBE was the NASAsatellite that, in 1992, revealed the size offluctuations in the microwave backgroundand opened a floodgate of results in cos-mology.A glimpse of the EoR would giveastrophysicists their own origins story anda starting point for studying the very firstthings to shine.The Square Kilometre Array (left, in an artistsconception) will use dishes and static antennas topick up different radio frequencies. LOFAR (above)mingles low-frequency antennas (brown specks) withhigher frequency ones (inside dark tiles).ASSENFOTO, Knocking out an electron and ionizinghydrogen takes quite a lot of energy, so anyTOP-potential ionizing source needs to produce a PHOTO: lot of photons at high energiesultravioletor higher. Its expected that the first stars toSCIENCE sciencemag.org 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 691 form in the universe were unlike any that ex-istnow because they were made of almostpure hydrogen, without any of the heavierelements that were forged inside stars as theuniverse aged. Pure hydrogen stars, knownas population III stars, should grow to enor-moussize before their internal furnacesignitehundreds or even thousands of timesas massive as our sun. Big stars burn bright,hot, and fast, making them a perfect sourceof ionizing radiation. But do they form inisolation, or does dark matter draw the hy-drogeninto galaxies first? Or were bigger,more powerful sources such as quasarshugely luminous galactic nuclei centeredon supermassive black holesthe engine ofreionization? Theorists speculating aboutthe EoR have also invoked more exotic driv-ers,including decaying dark matter and cos-micstrings. Were shooting in the dark. Wehave no idea what they are, Zaroubi says.The existing arrays probably wont be ableto answer all of these questions. To reallyunderstand how the first stars form andwhat early galaxies were like needs the nextgeneration of instrument, Parsons says.The LOFAR team hopes to build up its ar-raywith more stations and faster computing.But the PAPER and MWA teams are joiningforces to build a new, more powerful instru-mentcalled HERA, the Hydrogen Epoch ofReionization Array. HERAs antennas will bestatic wire-mesh dishes pointing straight up.The joint team has won $2 million to builda test array of 37 dishes in the Karoo, usingPAPERs infrastructure. This alone will haveup to three times the sensitivity of PAPER,Parsons says. Then the team will seek up to$20 million to build an array of 350 dishesby 2019. Well turn the tables on theoristsand really start to drive theory, really ad-vanceour understanding, he says.Looming on the horizon is the next gen-eration:the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).This enormous international project will bebuilt mostly in South Africa, starting in 2018,and will target everything from galaxy evo-lutionto signals from extraterrestrial intelli-gence.But part of the array, to be sited at theMurchison Radio-astronomy Observatory,home of MWA, will collect low-frequency ra-diationwith a quarter of a million antennasspread over 100 kilometers. With its hugecollecting capacity, SKA will be able to movebeyond statistical observations and produceimages. Well see the structures themselvesdirectly. Thats a huge step, Zaroubi says.But first the rival teams need to catch thatfirst glimpse of early light. They will haveto overcome radio interference, computingchallenges, and the deafening noiseandthey must hope that theoretical models ofthe EoR signal are correct. Says Zaroubi: Todo what we do, you have to be hopelessly op-timistic,but also brutally realistic. You needboth sides. Published by AAAS 17. NEWS | FEATURESRARE EARTH692 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: USDA FOREST SERVICEresearchers would have talked up the idea.But in recent years, efforts to identify theworlds rare and endangered soils have beengaining momentum. Aided by increasinglypowerful geographic information systemsand Earth-observing sensors, researchershave begun mapping pedodiversitythedistribution and extent of different soils.This past summer, for example, Chineseresearchers released the first-ever pedo-diversitysurvey of that huge nation, iden-tifyingnearly 90 endangered soilsas wellas at least two dozen that have already goneextinct. Similar surveys suggest unique dirtis also in danger in the United States, Eu-rope,and Russia, the victim of agricultureand development.Soil extinction carries potentially weightyimplications, researchers say. Healthy,diverse soils are not only key to food pro-duction,but they also sustain a diversity ofspecies and ecosystemsand can serve ashelpful guides to restoring ravaged soils-capes.We bury our people in it, walk onit, and yet too easily forget it, says soilscientist James Bockheim of the Universityof Wisconsin, Madison, a co-editor of Pedo-diversity,the first major scholarly book onSoil scientists are tracking down rare andendangered soils in a quest to documentandpreserve pedodiversity By Michael TennesenIn a verdant woodland on the CalhounExperimental Forest in South Caro-lina,soil scientist Daniel Richter peersinto a gash in the ground. Its a kindof earthen operating room, where re-searchershave sliced open the soil toexamine its subterranean profile. Inthe layers of sand and clay, Richter seestelltale signs of past ecological trauma.Nearly all the thick, yellow-brown topsoilthat once capped this layered soil, namedthe Cecil, has been eroded away. Its decapi-tated,says Richter, a professor at Duke Uni-versityin Durham, North Carolina. We arelooking at a natural soilscape that 150 yearsof cotton, corn, wheat, and tobacco farminghave all but destroyed.The Calhoun isnt the only place wherethe Cecils head has gone missing. The soilcovers some 40,000 square kilometers of thesoutheastern United States and is a regionalicon, with North Carolina naming it the of-ficialstate soil. But in many places, Richtersays, intact Cecil is now endangered, andmay be nearly extinct.Endangered dirt? Not that long ago, fewPublished by AAASDownloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 6, 2014 18. In a South Carolina forest, soil scientist Daniel Richter dissects a soil profile that, by the 1950s (opposite page), had been severely damaged by more than a century of farming.the topic, published last year. Why not pro-tectsoils as we do plants and animals?Some researchers are urging govern-mentsto do just that, by creating reservesfor rare and endangered soils that bardestructive agricultural practices and de-velopment.Before a rare soil can be pro-tected,however, it has to be identified andmapped, an effort still hampered by sparsedata, competing classification schemes,and technical debates over concepts andmethods. Some help could come from newtechnologies that have the potential to cutsurvey costs by more than 80%. But creatingtrustworthy maps still takes an element ofgroundtruthing, says soil researcher AlexMcBratney of the University of Sydney inAustralia. Which means getting out therewith a shovel.88Number ofendangered soiltypes in China24PHOTOGRAPHYHUMANS HAVE BEEN CHARACTERIZINGDUKE and mapping soils for at least 3000 years. LAZARUS/The ancient Egyptians identified at leasttwo types, which helped determine landprices. In feudal China, officials recognizedJARED at least nine classes based on color, texture,PHOTO: and moisture content. Today, nations haveadopted an array of classification schemesSCIENCE sciencemag.org 7 NOVEMBER 2014 VOL 346 ISSUE 6210 693 based on numerous soil characteristics, in-cludingits geological and climatic setting,parent rock, age, texture, moisture content,color, and chemical signature. The U.S. gov-ernmentssystem recognizes some 20,000soil series, typically named after places.Like life forms, they are classifiedin a hierarchy: a dozen orderscomprising thousands of smallergroups and families. The orderGelisol, for instance, includes po-larsoils typified by permafrost,while Histosols are sodden soilsfound in wetlands.The Cecil is an Ultisol, whichare typically leached, acid forestsoils found in humid areas. Itwas first mapped in 1899 at a sitein Cecil County, Maryland, andusually has granular, yellowishtopsoil up to 20 cm thick, under-lainNumber ofextinct soil typesin Chinaby sticky red clays flecked with mica, ashiny mineral.In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as theconcept of biodiversity was becoming abuzzword in biological circles, soil scien-tistsbegan to discuss how they, too, couldmeasure and protect diversity. By then, theproblem of soil loss from erosion, farming,and development was well-understood.But just how many soils were rare or con-finedto small areas wasnt clear. In 1992,McBratney argued for efforts to fill thatgap in a paper that is believed to mark thefirst use of the word pedodiver-sity(although another soil scien-tist,Juan Jos Ibez of SpainsNational Research Council in Ma-drid,the other co-editor of Pedo-diversity,was writing extensivelyin Spanish about similar conceptsat the time).Tallying pedodiversity turnsout to be a complicated endeavor.Like biologists measuring biodi-versity,soil scientists confrontconceptual and technical di-lemmas,such as when to lumpor split soil species, and howbest to calculate single numbers, or indexscores, that reflect an areas diversity andallow easier comparisons between regions.Soil nomenclature can be confusing, too.Different nations often use different namesfor the same soils, for instance, or the samename for different soils. In Russia, somePublished by AAAS 19. NEWS | FEATURESGround assault. California made the San Joaquin soilthe states official dirt in 1997, but stopped short ofprotecting it from farmers who break up its hard subsoilwith explosives (top, in 1916) and machines in order toplant crops.sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTOS: (TOP TO BOTTOM) POP LAVAL FOUNDATION; STEVEN C. WILSON; ED DARACK/SCIENCE FACTION/CORBISsoils still carry folk names originally coinedby peasants.STILL, soil researchers have begun to revealthe magnitude of the threat to rare soils.In 2003, a team led by Ronald Amundsonof the University of California (UC), Berke-ley,published a pair of milestone studiesdocumenting pedodiversity in the UnitedStates. Analyzing government data that de-tailedthe distribution of some 13,000 soilseries, the researchers identified more than4500 rare soils that each covered fewerthan 1000 hectares, often the product ofunique geological and ecological histories.They also found 508 endangered soilsones disturbed by farming, urbanization,or other human activities across at leasthalf their historic range. An additional31 soils were essentially extinct, they re-portedin Ecosystemsdisturbed across morethan 90% of their historic range. I