NEWS | IN BRIEF
sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY/JOSHUA STEVENS/U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEYmedia, announced plans to leave because
“it’s hard to do that work with a straight
face in a place that violated its own values
so clearly in working with Epstein.”
NSF fellowships show skew
GRADUATE STUDIES | Recipients at a
handful of elite universities again reaped a
large portion of the U.S. National Science
Foundation’s prestigious fellowships for
early career graduate students for this year,
a Science analysis indicates. Just 10 institu-
tions garnered 31% of the 2052 fellowships,
and 14% went to the top three—the
University of California, Berkeley; the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge; and Stanford University in
Palo Alto, California. The reason for the
pattern, which has persisted for many
years, is unclear; top institutions contacted
by Science declined to say how many of
their students applied. But the universi-
ties’ financial resources appear to be one
factor in helping applicants prepare. The
fellowships are open to U.S. citizens who
have completed no more than 12 months of
a graduate program in science, technology,
engineering, or math. Fellows are paid at
the high end of what a standard research
assistantship or teaching assistantship sti-
pend would net. They also receive access to
international research collaborations and
career development internships.Solar power could replace hydro
ENERGY | Solar panels could produce just
as much electricity as the 2603 hydroelectric
dams in the contiguous United States, but
use much less land, says a study published
online this week in Nature Sustainability.
If the dams were removed and solar arrays
installed on just 13% of the area that had
been submerged under reservoirs, the
solar cells could match the dams’ annual
generation of 275,000 gigawatt hours.
Many of the dams are aging and will
require maintenance or removal before
long; replacing them with solar would
bring environmental benefits such as
allowing fish to swim upstream, say study
authors John Waldman, a biologist at
Queens College, part of the City Universityof New York, and colleagues. Among the
obstacles: Until engineers develop better
batteries and systems for storing intermit-
tent solar power, hydropower is a more
dependable electricity supply. And dams
provide other benefits including flood
control, water supply, and recreation.Alarm over Indonesia capital plan
ENVIRONMENT | Indonesian President
Joko Widodo worried conservationists this
week by announcing a $33 billion plan to
move the country’s capital to the island of
Borneo from Jakarta, which endures air
pollution and crowding and is one of the
world’s fastest-sinking cities, making it
prone to floods. The shift, if approved by
Parliament, is to be completed by 2024; it
could accelerate development on Borneo
that is harming its endangered orangutans
and native tropical forests, environmen-
tal groups say. It’s unclear how much the
government would spend to help Jakarta,
home to more than 10 million people and
the country’s economic capital, to solve its
environmental problems.OCEAN SCIENCESubsea eruption creates pumice ‘raft’ in Pacific
S
ailors and scientists alike were surprised this month to discover a “raft” of
pumice larger than Manhattan floating in the Pacific Ocean, about 50 kilometers
northwest of Vava’u in Tonga. The suspected source: the eruption of an unnamed
undersea volcano, just 40 meters down. The pumice—formed from lava that
cooled and hardened—floats because it is porous. NASA’s Earth Observatory said
the agency’s Landsat 8 satellite recorded the raft on 13 August (above). Two days later,
the husband-and-wife crew of the catamaran ROAM reported on Facebook that they
had sailed into it, surrounded as far as they could see by “rocks from marble to bas-
ketball size such that water was not visible.” An undersea eruption in the same location
was reported in 2001, according to the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism
Program. Pumice rafts can drift for weeks or years before breaking up, and they play
an important role in long-distance dispersal of marine organisms, scientists say.
SCIENCEMAG.ORG/NEWS
Read more news from Science online.AWARDSScience wins journalism prizes
Members of our news team were
honored for articles published in 2018:Ann Gibbons won the David Perlman
Award for Excellence in Science
Journalism-News from the American
Geophysical Union for her 16 November
2018 story about the worst year to be
alive: 536.Paul Voosen received the Award for
Distinguished Science Journalism in the
Atmospheric and Related Sciences from
the American Meteorological Society
for his 27 July 2018 feature about the
creation of a new climate model.Jon Cohen and Jennifer Couzin-
Frankel were given a Health Care Print
Journalism Award by the National
Institute for Health Care Management
for a 13 June 2018 article about why
Florida is struggling to control HIV.Sanjay Kumar won a Red Ink Award
special mention from the Mumbai Press
Club for a 4 April 2018 article about
threats to fossil sites in India.846 30 AUGUST 2019 • VOL 365 ISSUE 6456
Published by AAAS