Science - USA (2020-08-21)

sciencemag.org SCIENCE

PHOTO: ARECIBO OBSERVATORY

Africa halts wild poliovirus

INFECTIOUS DISEASES | After a long fight,

Africa has wiped out the wild poliovirus.

The last case occurred 4 years ago, and on

25 August, the independent Africa Regional

Certification Commission, acting on behalf

of the World Health Organization, is

expected to officially declare the continent

free of the wild virus. Africa came close

before, going 2 years without a case until

2016, when the wild virus appeared seem-

ingly out of the blue in Borno state in

northeastern Nigeria, where the militant

group Boko Haram reigns, and paralyzed

four children. Polioviruses derived from

the oral polio vaccine continue to circulate

and cause paralysis across Africa; wiping

them out has proved extremely difficult.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are now the last

bastions of the wild virus.

U.K. replaces health agency

COVID-19 | Facing criticism over its

response to the COVID-19 pandemic,

the U.K. government announced on

18 August that it will replace England’s

disease-control agency with a United

Kingdom–wide one focused on infectious

diseases. The move merges Public Health

England (PHE) with England’s contact

tracing program, NHS Test and Trace, and

the U.K. Joint Biosecurity Centre, to create

the new agency, the National Institute for

Health Protection. Its interim leader will be

businesswoman and Conservative parlia-

mentarian Dido Harding, who had headed

NHS Test and Trace. PHE’s work on obesity

and other noncommunicable health condi-

tions will be shifted to local authorities, but

the government has not yet clarified how.

Critics said the change was poorly conceived

and questioned whether the new agency

is set up to succeed, citing a need for close

coordination with the National Health

Service’s hospital-based scientists.

Redo for radiocarbon dates

GEOCHRONOLOGY | The first update of

carbon dating in nearly a decade, published

last week, allows scientists to probe 5000

years further into the past and revises the

timing of big events in human history.

NEWS

IN BRIEF

“

We have tried to make this work, but it is not working.

”

Barbara Rimer, dean of public health at the University of

North Carolina, Chapel Hill, as it moved to online-only instruction, just 1 week

after in-person classes resumed, because campus COVID-19 cases surged.

Edited by Jeffrey Brainard

T

he iconic Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico was damaged

on 10 August when a snapped steel cable smashed into a receiver

and tore a 30-meter gash in its 307-meter-wide dish. No one was

injured during the early morning incident. The damage to the

dish is not critical, but the broken cable has destabilized a plat-

form holding receiver antennas high above the dish. Managers

have halted observations for at least 2 weeks while investigations are

carried out, and no cost estimate or restart schedule will be available

before then, says Ramon Lugo of the University of Central Florida,

which manages the observatory for the National Science Foundation.

Engineers are examining what went wrong with the 23-year-old cable,

whether a temporary replacement can be rigged up, and what damage

was done to the antennas. Set in a depression in the hills, Arecibo was

the world’s largest single dish for 5 decades until a Chinese telescope

surpassed it in 2016 and is still widely used for astronomy, planetary

science, and atmospheric research.

Arecibo’s dish lost 250 of its 40,000 panels when a cable broke—less damage than this view suggests.

ASTRONOMY

Arecibo telescope damage assessed

886 21 AUGUST 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6506

Published by AAAS