SCIENCE science.orgPHOTO: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND MEDICAL CENTER
And one federal agency, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency,
already has begun to give top-ranked
proposals a second look, based on the
foreign ties of the scientist submitting
the proposal, before making any award.Chinese tire of ‘zero COVID’ policy
COVID19 | As the 13 million residents of
the city of Xi’an endure a third week of lock-
down after a December 2021 outbreak, many
Chinese are losing patience with the coun-
try’s “zero COVID” strategy. People expressed
outrage on social media after a graphic
4 January post about a woman in her last
month of pregnancy whose admission to
a Xi’an hospital for abdominal pain was
delayed because her most recent COVID-
test was no longer valid; she had a stillbirth
at the hospital entrance, blood pooling at
her feet. (The original post has disappeared.)
Authorities say the tough measures have
nearly ended Xi’an’s outbreak, the worst in
China since the disease broke out in Wuhan,
in early 2020. Since 9 December 2021, Xi’an
has logged more than 2000 Delta variant
infections, but on 10 January, it reported
just 13 new cases. China has now detected
its first community cases of the Omicron
variant, sending more cities into lockdown
and raising concerns about the impact on
the Winter Olympic Games, starting on 4
February in Beijing.Ticks with Lyme overwinter better
ECOLOGY | More ticks carrying the bacte-
rium that causes Lyme disease survived the
winter in Nova Scotia than did uninfected
ones in a new study of 600 of the arach-
nids kept outside in small vials. “Winter
conditions may favor the ability of infected
ticks to find hosts and continue to spread
disease,” says Laura Ferguson, an eco-
immunologist at Dalhousie University.
And infected ticks were more active dur-
ing fluctuating wintry temperatures in
the lab, Ferguson and colleagues reported
at the annual meeting of the Society of
Integrative and Comparative Biology in
Phoenix last week. The finding suggests
the variable winter conditions brought on
by climate change could boost the odds
people will encounter Lyme-infected ticks.New research cannabis imminent
BIOMEDICINE | Two companies are
preparing to ship cannabis to academic
and commercial clients for research use,
having won long-awaited registrations
that break the University of Mississippi’s
54-year monopoly on U.S. research cannabisproduction. Groff North America, based in
Red Lion, Pennsylvania, harvested its first
crop on 30 December 2021 and expects
to ship cannabis preparations in the first
quarter of this year to clients including uni-
versities and biopharmaceutical companies.
The Biopharmaceutical Research Company
(BRC), based in Castroville, California,
plans to harvest its first crop intended
for research customers in about 8 weeks.
The company is also developing cannabis
research programs with Washington State
University and the University of California,
Davis. Groff North America and BRC won
bulk manufacturing registrations from the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in May and
June 2021, respectively.Dutch science head takes office
PEOPLE | Theoretical physicist Robbert
Dijkgraaf, who since 2012 has headed
the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS)
in Princeton, New Jersey, was sworn in
as minister of education, culture, andscience in the Netherlands on 10 January.
Dijkgraaf, a popular science communica-
tor, newspaper columnist, and talk show
guest in his home country, had called
for an increase in government funding
for science, currently some €6.2 billion
annually. He will get his wish: The new
center-right coalition of four parties has
agreed to launch a €5 billion fund for R&D,
to be spent over the next decade. IAS—
which was home to Albert Einstein and
many other great scientists—announced
in November 2021 that Dijkgraaf will be
succeeded by medieval historian David
Nirenberg, dean of the University of
Chicago Divinity School, in July.China pioneers small reactor
ENERGY | A Chinese utility last month
connected the world’s first commercial-scale
small nuclear power plant of its kind to the
electric grid. Several nations are pursuing
small modular reactors—compact units
that can be mass produced—because theyBIOMEDICINEMan receives pig heart
S
urgeons last week performed the first pig-to-human heart transplant on a
57-year-old man with a life-threatening heart condition who was ineligible for a
human donor organ. The heart, provided by the biotechnology company Revivicor,
came from a pig genetically engineered to prevent its organs from prompting
immune rejection by the human body. The patient was doing well 4 days after the
7 January transplant, according to surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical
Center, but rejection remained a risk. If the strategy proves successful and safe long-
term, pig organs could offer a long-hoped-for supply for people awaiting transplants.Surgeons examine the
genetically engineered
pig heart transplanted
into a person last week.14 JANUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6577 125