SCIENCE science.orgPHOTO: WENYING LI/XINJIANG INSTITUTE OF CULTURAL RELICS AND ARCHAEOLOGY
the newly identified ceremonial platforms
were so large that ground-based research-
ers had missed that they were humanmade.
Researchers used publicly available lidar
data to map structures dating back to 1050
B.C.E. across an 84,500-square-kilometer
region. They found evidence for a stan-
dardized layout for the platforms based on
Mesoamerican cosmology. The design, which
may have first appeared at the ancient
Olmec site in San Lorenzo, exerted an archi-
tectural and cultural influence on later Maya
sites across the region, the team reports
this week in Nature Human Behaviour. The
team also found four additional layout types,
representing either different cultural influ-
ences or different points in time.MIT biologist sues for defamation
#METOO | David Sabatini, the prominent
biologist who resigned from the Whitehead
Institute for Biomedical Research in
August after a sexual harassment inves-
tigation, last week sued the institute and
its director for defamation. The lawsuit,
filed in Massachusetts state court, also
names a junior colleague who complained
that he sexually harassed her. In a 72-page
complaint, Sabatini alleges that he ended
a consensual affair with the colleague, who
ran a different Whitehead lab, and that
she then “became determined to destroy”
him and fabricated the harassment allega-
tions. “The Whitehead’s investigation was
a sham,” it says. Sabatini was also fired
by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
in August and placed on administrative
leave by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, which may revoke his tenure.
He has lost positions at multiple bio-
technology firms, according to the lawsuit,
which seeks unspecified damages. The
Whitehead Institute and its director, Ruth
Lehmann, declined to comment.Satellite will eye birth of elements
ASTROPHYSICS | NASA has selected a
gamma ray telescope as the latest small
astrophysics mission in its long-running
Explorers program, the agency said last
week. Scientists will use the $145 million
Compton Spectrometer and Imager, to be
launched in 2025, to study how stars forge
elements, by tracking gamma rays from
the decay of radioactive atoms produced
in supernovae. The mission will also study
other high-energy objects, such as giant
stars exploding as supernovae and matter-
gorging black holes in galactic centers.
And it will probe the mysterious origin of
positrons—the antimatter counterparts of
electrons—seen close to the Milky Way’scenter. The project team, based at the
University of California, Berkeley, spent
decades developing the telescope by flying
prototypes on high-altitude balloons.Predatory publisher rebrands
PUBLISHING | OMICS, a company based
in India that U.S. authorities hit with a
$50 million judgment in 2019 for deceptive
and predatory publishing practices, has
rebranded its journals to avoid the stigma,Ancient DNA from this
woman and other mummies
found in northwestern China
indicates they were not
immigrants, as was thought.ARCHAEOLOGYChina’s mysterious ‘Western’ mummies were locals
W
ith their red, blond, and brown hair and felt hats, the renowned Tarim
Basin mummies, first discovered in the early 20th century, have long been
seen as Westerners who migrated to a desert oasis in northwestern China
4000 years ago. Now, their ancient DNA reveals they were local people with deep
roots in Asia, the last known members of an ice age population that was once
widespread across Eurasia. But although they were inbred and genetically unrelated to
neighboring populations who migrated to the region, they nonetheless were culturally
cosmopolitan by the second millennium B.C.E.—adopting woolen clothing, wheat, barley,
sheep, goats, and cattle from unrelated herders, according to a study in this week’s issue
of Nature. An international team examined the genomes of 13 of the oldest mummies, all
of which had been naturally mummified by the basin’s dry, salty environment.29 OCTOBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6567 517a study in this week’s issue of Nature
reports. Most of its more than 700 journals
are now published by OMICS subsidiaries,
and some articles were backdated to before
the new subsidiaries were created. Among
the practices that drew the U.S. judgment
was charging authors fees for publishing
articles open access without providing peer
review; the study’s authors suggest “starv-
ing the Hydra” of these funds by pressing
OMICS and other predatory publishers to
post their peer reviews online.