NEWS | IN BRIEF
sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: LEO SOLINAP/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCKits preliminary measurements agree with
recent data that indicate the Southern
Ocean—long thought to be a carbon sink—
may instead be emitting carbon dioxide,
puzzling and worrying scientists.Cosmic ray scope to look down
ASTROPHYSICS | On any given night,
dozens of Earth-based telescopes peer up
into the sky watching for the fluorescent
glow of particle showers produced by
high-energy cosmic rays slamming
into the atmosphere. On 22 August, an
international team will launch the first
telescope that will watch for those glows
by looking down, from a window on
the International Space Station (ISS).
By monitoring a larger piece of the
sky, the Mini–Extreme Universe Space
Observatory (Mini-EUSO) telescope could
detect more high-energy events than
telescopes on the ground, yielding clues
to the origins of cosmic rays. Scientists
hope its performance will lead to larger
instruments that would be attached to the
ISS or orbiting spacecraft. The Mini-EUSO
will also watch for lightning and the flash
of meteoroids entering the atmosphere.UC scientists quit journals
PUBLISHING | Thirty scientists in the
University of California (UC) system
announced last week that they will resign
from Cell Press editorial boards to pro-
test a 5-month impasse with the owner,
publishing giant Elsevier, over costs. The
researchers include Jennifer Doudna, co-
inventor of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing
technology, and Elizabeth Blackburn,
co-recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine. The protesters
are a minority of the approximately
110 UC faculty members on Cell Press
editorial boards and the more than 900 on
the boards of other Elsevier journals. UC
has sought a deal with Elsevier that would
make all UC-authored articles immediately
free to readers while lowering total costs
for its access to paywalled content.Antibiotics in U.S. poultry drop
AGRICULTURE | Antibiotic use in chick-
ens and turkeys has fallen sharply since
2013, according to the first analysis of U.S.
industry data. The share of U.S. hatchery
chicks that receive antibiotics—typicallyto prevent Escherichia coli infections—fell
from 93% to 17% between 2013 and 2017,
for example, according to a study pro-
duced by the Mindwalk Consulting Group
in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and funded
by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
and the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association.
The reductions, largely due to respon-
sible use and consumer demand, follow
an industry-led phaseout of medically
important antibiotics for boosting growth,
says study author Randall Singer of the
University of Minnesota in Saint Paul.Star biochemist out at Scripps
WORKPLACE | The Scripps Research
Institute (TSRI) in San Diego, California,
has ousted prominent biochemist Floyd
Romesberg for undisclosed reasons. The
high-profile biology research hub, recently
renamed Scripps Research, confirmed
Romesberg’s mid-June departure. In a
statement last week, Scripps Research said
it had investigated but found no violation
of Title IX, the 1972 law forbidding gender
discrimination by academic institutions
receiving federal funds. “However, Dr.
Romesberg is no longer with TSRI, we are
winding down his lab at the institute, and
we will not comment on any personnel
decision,” the statement said. Romesberg
made his name by creating a pair of novel
DNA bases and adding them to the genetic
code of a bacterium that then produced
novel proteins. He did not respond to
repeated interview requests.Computer joins exascale trio
ADVANCED COMPUTING | Officials at
the U.S. Department of Energy this week
announced plans to build a third U.S.
supercomputer operating at unprecedented
“exascale” speeds. The machine, dubbed
El Capitan, will reach 1.5 exaflops, or
1.5 quintillion calculations per second. That’s
more than seven times faster than Summit,
the current supercomputing record holder,
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
in Tennessee. El Capitan is expected
to be completed in late 2022 at a cost of
$600 million. Housed at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California,
the machine will help the National Nuclear
Security Administration ensure the safety
and effectiveness of U.S. nuclear weapons.
Two other exascale machines, dubbed
Aurora and Frontier, are already scheduled
for delivery at Argonne National Laboratory
and ORNL, beginning in 2021.PUBLIC HEALTHDengue emergency declared in the Philippines
D
engue was declared a national epidemic in the Philippines on 6 August. The island
country has already logged 146,062 cases and 622 deaths this year—nearly twice
the number of cases and deaths during the same period in 2018, according to the
Department of Health. Most of the deaths have occurred in children. In response
to the rapid spread, the government is stepping up efforts to find and destroy
mosquito breeding sites. In 2016, the Philippines was one of the first countries to begin
widespread use of a new dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia, in children, but that campaign
abruptly ended in November 2017 after the manufacturer revealed the shot increased
the risk of severe disease through an unusual mechanism called antibody-dependent
enhancement. About 1 million Filipino children received the vaccine, which is particularly
dangerous for those who have never been infected with the virus.A Filipino boy with dengue
rests under a mosquito net.SCIENCEMAG.ORG/NEWS
Read more news from Science online.626 16 AUGUST 2019 • VOL 365 ISSUE 6454