Science - USA (2021-11-12)

NEWS | IN BRIEF

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PHOTO: PAUL TAFFOREAU

greater than other diseases for which
vaccination is now routine. Surveys by
the Kaiser Family Foundation suggest
about 30% of parents plan to vaccinate
their children immediately.

Asian languages’ origin pinpointed

LINGUISTICS |For more than 100 years,
linguists have debated when, where,
and how a group of languages spoken
today across central and eastern Asia,
including those in the Japanese, Korean,
Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic fami-
lies, emerged. A new study combining
linguistic, genetic, and archaeological data
suggests these Transeurasian languages
share a common origin and spread early
with agriculture. Researchers compared
ancient DNA from 23 individuals, stretch-
ing back to 7500 B.C.E., representing
populations across Eurasia, to modern
reference genomes to construct a rough
family tree. The team mapped those
relations onto data from hundreds of
archaeological sites as well as etymo-
logical similarities in modern languages to
puzzle out the evolution of these ancient
people’s material culture and language.
Taken together, the researchers report this

week in Nature, the evidence indicates the

Transeurasian languages originated about

9000 years ago with millet farmers in

the West Liao River Valley in present-day

northeastern China, then spread and split

apart throughout the continent.

Octogenarian earns physics Ph.D.

PHYSICS |Manfred Steiner finally has the

degree he always wanted. This fall, the

89-year-old hematologist earned a doctor-

ate in theoretical physics from Brown

University. As a young man, Steiner

dreamed of pursing physics, but his

mother and uncle persuaded him to focus

on medicine. He obtained his M.D. in 1955

and a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1967 before

serving on the medical faculty at Brown

from 1968 to 1994. Steiner began taking

physics courses there in 2000 and success-

fully defended his thesis in September, the

university announced last week. The work

describes how the boundary between the

two broad classes of quantum particles,

bosons and fermions, might be blurred

depending on whether the particles are

confined to 1D or 2D spaces. In 2020,

only 1.2% of recipients of doctorates from

U.S. institutions in the physical and earth

sciences was over age 45, according to the

National Science Foundation’s Survey of

Earned Doctorates. The median age

was 29.6 years.

U.S. drops firm after bad doses

COVID19 |Emergent BioSolutions

announced last week the termination of

its $600 million contract with the U.S.

government under which the Maryland

company would have manufactured

millions of doses of a COVID-19 vaccine

developed by AstraZeneca. The cancel-

lation comes 8 months after 15 million

doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-

vaccine, also being made at Emergent’s

Baltimore plant, were contaminated with

an ingredient of the AstraZeneca vaccine,

and production there was temporar-

ily halted. Since then, the company has

struggled to meet U.S. Food and Drug

Administration requirements for produc-

ing either vaccine. Emergent will continue

to produce anthrax vaccine for the United

States at its Lansing, Michigan, facility,

and recently signed a contract to pro-

duce a messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine

for the Canadian company Providence

Therapeutics at its Winnipeg facility.

78%

Share of U.S. adults who believe or are

unsure of at least one of eight false

COVID-19 statements tested in a survey.

About one-third believe or are unsure

about at least half. The false statements

include that pregnant women should

not get the COVID-19 vaccine and that

it has been shown to cause infertility.

(Kaiser Family Foundation)

18%

Share of scientific journal articles

that showed evidence of plagiarism,

according to a meta-analysis.

Eight percent exhibited signs of

“major” plagiarism, such as reusing

ideas and findings. In a 2014 study

combining multiple surveys,

just 2% of scientists confessed to

the practice. (Scientometrics)

BY THE NUMBERS

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798 12 NOVEMBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6569

IMAGING

Intense x-ray beams offer

new views inside organs

Scientists have used an x-ray synchrotron

to produce some of the most detailed

images ever made of whole human

organs. By combining extremely bright

x-ray and more laserlike beams from the

recently upgraded European Synchrotron

Radiation Facility with a scanning method

called hierarchical phase contrast

tomography, researchers from ESRF

and University College London traced

anatomical details as small as

5 microns in postmortem organs.

In an image of a lung from a

54-year-old (left), blue limns the

airways, red traces unobstructed

blood vessels, and yellow marks

clogged ones. Researchers used

the technique to show how

COVID-19 damages blood ves-

sels in the lung, ESRF said last

week. The synchrotron’s x-rays,

up to 100 billion times brighter

than a conventional hospital

x-ray, are too intense to be

used to examine living tissue.

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