672 15 FEBRUARY 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6428 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: AP PHOTO/DARIO LOPEZ-MILLSUC scores CRISPR patent win
BIOTECHNOLOGY | The University of
California (UC) has received a critical
patent for its invention of CRISPR, the
enormously popular genome-editing tool.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
notified UC last week that its patent had
been “allowed” and should be issued soon,
a step that may push the fierce legal war
over this valuable intellectual property
toward a treaty between sparring academic
institutions. The protracted fight has pitted
UC and its collaborators against a group
led by the Broad Institute in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Broad received many
CRISPR patents beginning in 2014. UC
unsuccessfully challenged them, but its
patent covers the fundamental invention of
CRISPR as a research tool. Companies hop-
ing to develop new medicines and crops
may have to license from both groups,
if they don’t reach a settlement. Europe,
meanwhile, has a separate patent system
that so far has given UC an edge.Holt to leave AAAS
SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES | Rush Holt
announced last week he will retire this fall
as CEO of AAAS in Washington, D.C., and
executive publisher of the Science family
of journals. A physicist, Holt, 70, came to
AAAS in 2015 after serving as a member
of the U.S. House of Representatives for
16 years. While looking for a successor for
Holt, AAAS is also recruiting an editor-in-
chief for the Science journals; the current
editor-in-chief, Jeremy Berg, announced in
October 2018 that he will leave in June.Small teams disrupt science
INNOVATION |Large teams have become
common in many scientific fields in recent
years. But a new study finds small teams
are more likely to generate novel ideas,
whereas heftier groups are more likely to
build incrementally on established ideas.
Researchers drew those conclusions,
reported in a 13 February letter in Nature,
by examining citation patterns for
65 million papers, patents, and software
products appearing from 1954 to 2014.
They applied a scale that defined theT
wo observatories in Mexico have reduced access and operations be-
cause of security threats, Mexico’s National Institute of Astrophysics,
Optics and Electronics (INAOE) in San Andrés Cholula announced
last week. Both the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) and the
High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory (HAWC)
are located on the Sierra Negra volcano in the state of Puebla.
Organized crime groups that steal oil and gasoline from pipelines in the
region have intensified highway robberies and carjackings as the govern-
ment has cracked down on fuel theft. The LMT typically hosts scientists
at night for observations and maintenance and engineering crews during
the day. It was poised to start observations with a new 50-meter dish be-
fore what INAOE astrophysicist and LMT Director David Hughes calls “a
severe security incident” caused him to dramatically reduce operations.
He declined to describe the incident or say exactly what is being done to
protect employees and collaborators. The HAWC, which studies cosmic
rays, is operated remotely, which means it can continue to collect data.
But planned equipment repairs have been canceled.NEWS
IN BRIEF
“
One giant leap for womankind.
”
Pop star Ariana Grande, in a new song, “NASA,” about
matters celestial and romantic that earned shout-out tweets from
the space agency and astronaut Buzz Aldrin.Edited by Jeffrey BrainardASTRONOMYViolence threatens
Mexican scopes
Mexico’s Large Millimeter
Telescope reduced operations,
which have included observations
of black holes and nascent stars.Published by AAASon February 14, 2019^http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from