science.org SCIENCEPHOTO: GOES-WEST SATELLITE/NOAA/RAMMB/CIRAU.S. global science lead ebbs
INNOVATION |The United States does
not—and cannot—lead the world in sci-
ence, the National Science Foundation’s
top advisory board told U.S. policymakers
this week in a review of recent trends.
This year’s edition of the National Science
Board’s biennial Science and Engineering
Indicators—a quantitative assessment of
the global research enterprise—confirms
the United States has lost its top rank-
ing to China on several metrics in recent
years, including the overall number of
published papers and patents issued, and
is no longer unrivaled in selected fields.
“It would be the height of hubris to think
we could lead in everything,” says the
board’s Julia Phillips, a retired physicist.
“The important thing is for the United
States to decide where it cannot be No. 2.”
The board emphasized the need to expand
the U.S. domestic scientific workforce and
retain support for collaborative research
across borders. “And if we continue to lead
the world in basic research,” Phillips says,
“then we’re still in a really good position.”Gift funds academic software
COMPUTING |Schmidt Futures, a phi-
lanthropy co-founded by former Google
CEO Eric Schmidt, said this week it will
give universities $40 million over the
next 5 years to help their scientists obtain
better software for use in their research.
Academic researchers often rely on shaky,
homemade computer software written
by students and postdoctoral research-
ers, and some U.S. research grants that do
pay for software engineering only cover a
part-time position. The Virtual Institute
for Scientific Software will fund centers
at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
Johns Hopkins University, the University
of Cambridge, and the University of
Washington to hire full-time software
engineers, paying salaries high enough to
compete with industry and government.Alzheimer’s drug faces roadblock
DRUG DEVELOPMENT |In a highly
unusual move, U.S. Medicare administra-
tors proposed last week to sharply limitNEWS
Bosom peril
Synonym for breast cancer, among the growing number of “tortured phrases” found
by researchers in more than 3000 journal articles. The phrases may have been
created by automatic paraphrasing software used to defeat plagiarism detection software —
which can introduce technical errors. (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)A
s officials assessed the extent of death and damage caused by last
week’s rapid, violent volcanic eruption in Tonga, scientists began
to piece together the global impact of the rare event. The explosion
at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai on 15 January caused a tsunami
and likely created the highest cloud recorded in 3 decades, its ash
and smoke rising 39 kilometers, according to an early estimate.The eruption, perhaps fueled by the lava’s contact with cold shallow sea-
water, had the force of a hydrogen bomb, its rapidly rising gases creating
atmospheric ripples that wrapped around the planet several times—the
first time such a wave has been captured by modern satellites. Although
the ash lofted into the stratosphere by the volcano could slightly cool lo-
cal temperatures for the next few months, the volcano created little in the
way of longer lived, light-blocking particles—such as those seen after the
eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, which lowered the global average
temperature by about a half-degree for 2 years.
A volcano’s massive plume spread across some 260 kilometers, as captured by the GOES-West satellite.
VOLCANOLOGY
Eruption in Tonga is biggest in 30 years
IN BRIEF
Edited by Jeffrey Brainard248 21 JANUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6578