Image courtesy of CDC/Taronna Maines
Pandemic Avian Flu Genes Made Public
A lab-made virus that could spread global death is the stuff of science-fiction thrillers. But this year researchers published the ingredients for just such a contagion—a culmination of widespread debate about whether the recipe should be made public or locked away.
For decades scientists have warned of a potential repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic, which claimed tens of millions of lives. The avian (H5N1) influenza virus drew the most attention. A decade ago, it killed tens of millions of birds, and any person who contracted the virus faced grim odds—the mortality rate is about 60 percent. Fortunately, the H5N1 virus did not spread in the air and thus could not infect humans easily, and outbreaks remained confined to small areas.
In 2011 two research groups independently discovered the genetic mutations necessary to make the H5N1 virus airborne and therefore more easily transmissible. They showed that ferrets infected with the mutant strains could transmit the virus to healthy ferrets caged nearby.
Concerns that bioterrorists could use the data to weaponize the virus led government officials, scientists and journal editors to hold off publishing the mutation information. Proponents argued that the data would help epidemiologists know what to watch out for if H5N1 mutated in the wild and better enable them to prepare countermeasures. That argument, plus the fact that many scientists had already obtained access to the information, led the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity to green-light the publications of the papers. The first appeared in the June 21 issue of Nature. —Philip Yam
More:
» Contagion: Controversy Erupts over Man-Made Pandemic Avian Flu Virus
» Controversial Bird-Flu Research Published: How Worried Should We Be?
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17 Comments
Add CommentSome of these choices seem odd.. Hard to believe Hurricane Sandy, despite being a big news story, is the top Science news of 2012.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReading these kind of feels like "sensational" was more important than "news" in the choices.
FYI: The comment about ovarian stem cells (" If confirmed, the finding would overturn the long-held notion that women are not born with all the eggs they will ever have.") should be corrected. The long-held notion is that women ARE born with all the eggs they will ever have.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSharp eyes! Thanks for catching that--it is now fixed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSincerely,
Philip Yam
Managing Editor, Online
A big storm is not science. Neither is a guy jumping out of an airplane. Unless, of course, the guy predicted that he would cause the big storm by jumping out of the plane. There was plenty of real science this year; why demean it by implying that newsworthiness is somehow comparable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLooks like we've got some grumpy-pants saying these stories aren't science. If you think Baumgardner just jumped out of a balloon from that altitude without doing some physics beforehand, you are dead wrong (and he would be dead-dead) and I think any meteorologist would say there is plenty of science behind the weather. Just because the stories didn't go into great detail doesn't mean there isn't science there. Take a chill pill.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry but to put a huricane over the discovery of the Higgs Boson is laughable at best. It doesn't even mention CERN for 'gods' sake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBesides it was the European weather center that first predicted superstorm Sandy would hit New York. While the main US forecasting model GFS had it going for the Atlantic untill days later. Such an early prediction by ECMWF is what is really impressive science here. Only in things like Star Trek did we imagine humans one day being able to so accurately being able to predict a storm. Certain US forecasters have called for a noble prize for the European Weather Center for this breakthough of early predictions.
And what about the discovery of a planet at Alpha Centaury by ESO the European Southern Observatory for big science of the year. A planet at the closest star system to earth. Even NASA labeled this the greatest astronomical discovory in a decade. Not to mention all the other planets confirmed with HARPS this year even in the habitable zone of some stars.
The biggest science story of 2012 has yet to happen.That is of course that the World is coming to an end on 12-21-12 is a hoax.Hopefully all the writers and scientist predicting this will be out of a job.Publishing the 10 top stories of 2012 before the end of the year is jumping the gun a bit isn't it.As for the Sandy hurricane,the statement that it the first to do so coming from the south and then turning west and hitting the eastern shoreline is a untrue.Although it was a big storm,it was still only a Category 1 hurricane when it came ashore.The reason there was so much damage was because there were so many buildings built directly on or nearby the shore that weren't designed to survive a hurricane.There have been many other storms with a much greater loss of life.In fact the tornadoes that hit earlier in year the took many more lives.Don't get me wrong the loss of life anywhere is terrible.I feel for the families that lost kin,friends,and property.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought the biggest story would be the inappropriate use of Comic Sans at a huge scientific announcement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow they think there's two kinds of Higgs Bosons. I bet they're just getting started in the usual quarky way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about the fiscal cliff? There is a lot of science involved in jumping off cliffs. Like physics, gravity, and trajectory:-) Also, what about Benghazi smoke inhalation story? I'm sure you could find something scientific about that. No, but seriously I think either Higs or Mars should have made number 1.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese choices are just not odd, they are strategically selected to further an ideological paradigm. To wit, the ENCODE project found the vast majority of supposed "junk DNA" has function, arrangement and organization that directly contradicts evolutionary expectations, yet the writer bold-face lies and states that the ENCODE results are "expected from evolutionary theory." Is he a sock-puppet or a useful idiot?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The Higgs represents the final chapter in the story of 21st-century particle physics." The 20th maybe. The 21st has a long way to go!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It completes the Standard Model, the theoretical description of all the known particles and forces." No. It doesn't incorporate gravity. A rather important force.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I think one of the biggest stories of 2012 was what the Large Hadron Collider did NOT find.
no string/brane exotica,
no sparticles,
no WIMPs (they have been AWOL for 40 years),
no supersymmetry exotica,
no extra-dimensions,
no magnetic monopoles,
no mini-black holes,
no Randall-Sundrum 5-D phenomena (gravitons, K-K gluons, etc.),
no evidence for ADS/CFT duality,
no colorons,
no leptoquarks,
no lazy photons,
no fractionally charged particles,
and nothing beyond the standard model, which has 26-30 adjustable parameters, and which cannot say anything about the dark matter [i.e., virtually everything], or gravitation.
Then there is the 120 orders-of-magnitude vacuum energy density crisis.
Then there is the unnatural and theoretically awkward conventional Planck mass, which bears no resemblance to anything in nature.
Is it reasonable to just say: "Well, we have to go to yet higher energies", and make that dodge sound credible by saying that 'we expected this' when in fact the pre-LHC hype about what would be found was laid on thick and the present non-results were called "The Nightmare Scenario"?
The relevant question is: Do we keep adding epicycles to the faltering old paradigm of particle physics/cosmology, or do we begin the search for a revolutionary new paradigm that can make definitive predictions, that can be (and has been) experimentally verified, and that can provide simple and natural answers to fundamental problems?
Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
Fractal Cosmology
Half of these aren't even "science", much less "top ten science"... What has obamacare, sandy, daredevil stunts have to do with science? Some of the other ones are also technology/engineering (sorry wolowitz), not science. Media has dumbed down science so much that even a publication calling itself "scientific american" doesn't know or care about what science is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting how many people misread this as to be Top 10 Science Discoveries list although it was clearly explained in the first sentence that it is a list of Top 10 Stories in the news that show how science and society are intertwined.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe public spent 10 billion dollars on the LHC and so far all they got in return was a back-of-the-cereal-box "Higgs Mechanism" that purports to explain how particles get their masses (the substandard model of particle physics otherwise treats subatomic particles as massless!!!).
On the bright side, the unfolding "Nightmare Scenario" tells anyone with an open and questioning mind that a whole new unified paradigm for understanding the cosmos is very badly needed.
Therefore, in the end the LHC may be worth the money and the effort, although not in the way true believers in the substandard paradigm had hoped.
Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
Fractal Cosmology
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheck out this latest effort from supersymmetry die-hards.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.6971
"Simply Unnatural Supersymmetry"
Authors are Nima Arkani-Hamed, Arpit Gupta, David E. Kaplan, Neal Weiner, Tom Zorawski
These academics want to forge straight ahead over the Platonic Cliff of Delusion.
The question is: How many lemmings will blindly follow, assuming that mathematical erudition implies wisdom?
Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
Fractal Cosmology