SCIENCE science.orgPHOTO: MAHMOUD EL-KHAWAS/PICTURE ALLIANCE/GETTY IMAGES
under DOE’s sponsorship, the academies’
report says, noting the conflicts of interest
associated with its nuclear weapons facili-
ties. The report recommends the National
Institutes of Health fund epidemiological
and biological studies; DOE should over-
see computational work and modeling.
Congress must now decide whether to
appropriate the funding.Bees gets protected as ‘fish’
CONSERVATION | Four species of bumble
bees qualify for protection under California’s
Endangered Species Act because they fit a
loophole in the state’s definition of “fish,” an
appeals court ruled last week. Until now, the
state law protected no insect species. But a
state Court of Appeal based in Sacramento
pointed to California’s Fish and Game Code,
which includes in the definition of fish any
“mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, (or)
amphibian.” That wording covers any terres-
trial invertebrate, such as a bumble bee, the
court wrote. The ruling was celebrated by
conservation organizations and bemoaned
by agricultural groups, which argued that
extending the protection to the bumble
bees would burden farming operations. Bee
populations have declined across the United
States and elsewhere, posing threats to agri-
cultural crops and other plants that depend
on pollinators for healthy development.NIH grantees lax on foreign detail
RESEARCH SECURITY | A U.S. government
watchdog has found that many institu-
tions receiving funding from the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) don’t follow
federal rules on reporting foreign sources
of support, educating scientists about those
rules, and investigating possible conflicts
of interest. A 22 June report by the inspec-
tor general of NIH’s parent department
found, for example, that 36% of the more
than 600 institutions surveyed in late 2020
don’t require their faculty members to
disclose participation in another country’s
talent recruitment program and 37% don’t
distinguish between domestic and foreign
funding. Since 2018, NIH has been especially
vigilant in tracking grantees’ links to China
as part of a governmentwide campaign to
prevent the theft of U.S.-funded research
by that country. The report calls on NIH to
enforce the existing rules, which institutions
must obey as a condition of funding.Rice led to chicken domestication
EVOLUTION | People around the world
know chicken and rice is a winning
culinary combination. But now, scientistsIN FOCUS Egypt’s antiquities ministry last week unveiled a new collection of artifacts
from its Late Period (about 664 B.C.E. to 332 B.C.E.) found within the Saqqara
necropolis, near Cairo. The new discoveries from the previously excavated cemetery
include 150 bronze statues of ancient Egyptian deities and 250 wooden sarcophagi.say without rice, there might not have
been chickens. It wasn’t until humans
began clearing forest and sowing rice
seeds within the range of red jungle fowl
in Southeast Asia that some of these
wild pheasants swept down from the
trees to feed on the seeds—and evolved
into more docile chickens, according
to research published this week in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. This taming of the jungle fowl10 JUNE 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6598 1141happened much more recently than other
studies have estimated, according to the
comprehensive analysis of bones and
dates at more than 600 sites, which found
that some bones thought to be chickens
belonged to other animals. The authors
say the oldest chickens appear just
3250 to 3650 years ago at a rice farming
site in what is now central Thailand. Then,
chickens spread across Asia with rice and
millet farming.