SCIENCE science.orgPHOTO: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
now at the University of Maryland’s Applied
Research Laboratory for Intelligence and
Security, will become acting deputy director
of the Advanced Research Projects Agency
for Health (ARPA-H) in June, Health and
Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra
said. Russell will help launch ARPA-H,
which Congress created earlier this year
as an arm of the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) with an initial budget of
$1 billion. But the new agency will not
recruit program managers, who will shape
its priorities, until Biden appoints a director,
acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak told a
House of Representatives panel. Russell is
a former program manager at the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, on
which Congress modeled ARPA-H, and has
also worked at the intelligence community’s
version of DARPA.Bones hint at warm-blooded dinos
PALEONTOLOGY | A new method using
molecular analysis of dinosaur bones sug-
gests some species had a high metabolic
rate, adding support to the hypothesis they
were warm-blooded. Paleontologists used
infrared spectroscopy and other methods
to determine the chemical components of
thigh bones of four dinosaur species and,
for comparison, a modern hummingbird.
In a study published last week in Nature,
they reported finding an abundance of
molecules known to be produced as waste
during oxygen inhalation; the authors noted
that warm-blooded animals take in more
oxygen than cold-blooded ones to keep their
body temperatures constant. The team says
the findings disprove hypotheses that most
dinosaurs had low metabolisms that pre-
vented them from surviving the global chill
precipitated by an asteroid strike 66 million
years ago. But other researchers not involved
in the study say the technique needs inde-
pendent confirmation.China to plant 70 billion trees
CLIMATE POLICY | China is striving to stop
increasing its carbon emissions by 2030 and
reduce them to net zero by 2060, climate
envoy Xie Zhenhua told the World Economic
Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, last
week. But the country’s 90 gigawatts of
coal-fired power plants under construction
and record levels of coal production “will
make delivering China’s climate targets
tougher” but not impossible, says Li Shuo,
a Greenpeace adviser in Beijing. In a new
commitment, Xie also said that in an expan-
sion of reforestation efforts, China will
plant and conserve 70 billion trees over the
next 10 years. By sequestering atmosphericcarbon, the trees will help reduce net emis-
sions, but they are not equivalent to leaving
fossil fuels “permanently locked away from
the atmosphere,” says Josep Canadell, direc-
tor of the Global Carbon Project, which
tracks greenhouse gas emissions.U.S. gets first exascale computer
COMPUTER HARDWARE | The United States
has its first computer that can top 1 quintil-
lion (10^18 ) operations per second, a measure
called an exaflop. Tests prove the Frontier
supercomputer at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory hit that mark, making it theworld’s most powerful machine, according
to the latest TOP500 list of supercomput-
ers, released this week. It may not be the
only exascale computer: In 2021, reports
surfaced that two supercomputers in China
had topped that threshold. But benchmark-
ing tests for them have not been submitted
to TOP500 sponsors, perhaps because of
China’s national security concerns, some
industry observers speculate. Powered by
8,730,112 computer chip “cores,” Frontier is
expected to support artificial intelligence
algorithms, using massive data sets to
explore topics in climate change, fusion
energy, biology, and materials science.Researchers try to keep pace with surging gun violence
T
wo devastating mass shootings in the United States in recent weeks—at a
Buffalo, New York, grocery store and an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school—have
renewed calls for scientific study of the causes and prevention of gun violence.
(Above, mourners grieve the school shooting.) For years, Congress blocked
funding for the research. But in 2020, lawmakers set aside $25 million for stud-
ies supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National
Institutes of Health. Rebecca Cunningham, a gun violence researcher at the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, talked with Science last week about prospects for this scholar-
ship. (A longer version of this interview is at https://scim.ag/3NC4Dwu. )“
We now have a bubbling up of scholars pivoting their
careers toward this pressing problem, and we’ve now had
national conferences where scientists can come together
and talk about the science of gun violence. From a scientific
standpoint, I think there is hope and progress.”
“
The more difficult news is we still are massively
underfunded compared to cancer or any other serious cause
of death among kids [or] the rest of our population.”
Rebecca Cunningham, University of Michigan, Ann ArborTHEY SAID IT3 JUNE 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6597 1029