Just days after the release of controversial new guidelines recommending against routine mammograms for most women under 50, a different group of medical professionals has announced that the frequency of Pap tests for cervical cancer detection should also be decreased for most women.

The new recommendations, published November 20 by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Obstetrics & Gynecology, state that women need not get the test until they are 21 years old and should only need the test every two years (and if, after 30, they have three clear tests in a row, women can get the exam only once every three years). Current guidelines encourage women to get the test every year starting three years after becoming sexually active (or at 21 if that comes first). Women known to be at higher risk (those with compromised immune systems or have had other abnormal tests) are still advised to seek more regular tests.

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Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking has emerged as a vastly popular way for computer users to democratize the transfer of information, allowing faster and easier sharing of images, documents and other files without the need for a centralized server. Unfortunately, and ironically, P2P is a little too democratic for the U.S. government, which has been victimized several times by the public disclosure of sensitive documents via file-sharing networks.

Stung most recently by last month's leak of a highly confidential House of Representatives' Ethics Committee document containing a list of ongoing investigations into financial dealings, travel and campaign donations, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday introduced the "Secure Federal File Sharing Act," a bill aimed at restricting the use of P2P file sharing software across the federal government. The proposed legislation would bar government employees and contractors from downloading, installing or using P2P file-sharing software such as Limewire without official approval, the Associated Press reports. The bill also would require the White House to develop rules for employees and contractors working on home or personal computers.

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A NASA rover mired in soft soil on Mars made its first escape attempt in months Tuesday, but the maneuver lasted less than a second before safety precautions shut it down.

The Spirit rover, which like its more mobile twin Opportunity was delivered to the Red Planet in 2004, has been stationary since May as mission managers sought to devise a plan to extricate it from a patch of rocks and loose soil known as Troy. Even with months of testing in a laboratory "sandbox" simulating Mars's terrain, NASA was unable to hatch a foolproof plan to free the rover, and mission leaders cautioned in a news conference last week that Spirit may be forced to live out the end of its mission in Troy.

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Most women would do fine to hold off until age 50 for their first mammograms and skip self-exams for breast lumps altogether, according to new government recommendations released Monday that came as a surprise to many in the medical community—and women in general.

The report, issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine, asserts that women can push back the date of their first mammograms by a decade (from the current recommendation of 40 years old), and healthy women from 50 to 74 should undergo the screening every other year, rather than annually. The recommendations cover healthy women who do not have a family history of breast cancer (or the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations), and the authors make clear that they lacked sufficient data to support recommendations for those in these risk groups.

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One year after pulling off one of the most audacious cyber crimes in history—a 12-hour spree during which more than 2,100 cash-dispensing machines in at least 280 cities on three continents were drained of a total of more than $9 million—a group of hackers is facing dozens of years in prison and millions of dollars in fines.

A federal grand jury last week indicted three eastern European men—plus a fourth individual known only as Hacker 3—on a number of charges for these crimes, including wire fraud, computer fraud and aggravated identity theft. Another three men, all from Estonia, were indicted on charges of access device fraud for their alleged related role using fraudulent PINs to steal money from the ATMs.

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When the presidents of the two nations that are responsible for 40 percent of Earth's climate-changing greenhouse gases sit down to talk, big things can happen. In the case of Barack Obama and Hu Jintao on Monday and Tuesday, that meant flatly stating that emission reduction targets should be set at an international negotiation on climate change in Copenhagen this December, along with financial assistance figures to help poorer countries mitigate emissions and adapt to a changing climate. Oh, and the world should cut back on deforestation.

Adding those three puzzle pieces together could amount to solving half the globe's climate problem despite involving just four countries—besides the U.S. and China, count in Brazil and Indonesia, which could do plenty by cutting back on their rainforest clearing activities.

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The Obama administration announced last month that people who buy or sell medical marijuana in the growing number of states that have decriminalized its therapeutic usage should not be targeted for arrest or prosecution by federal authorities. Now, the American Medical Association (AMA) has called for the federal government to go one step further in easing restrictions, the Los Angeles Times reported last week.

Although the new AMA policy is far from outright support of medically sanctioned pot smoking, delegates of the organization recommended at an interim meeting in Houston last week that marijuana be removed from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Schedule I category of drugs, which includes heroin and LSD. Drugs in this category are deemed unsafe with no currently acceptable medical use. With its recommendation, the AMA hopes to facilitate research on the clinical effects of smoking marijuana, as well as other delivery methods for the drug.

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Back in October 2006, I watched Christie's, Inc. auction off the remnants of the Star Trek franchise, the cultural icon that helped launch many a career in science (and science journalism). Will J. J. Abrams' rebooting of the franchise—the DVD and Blu-ray versions will be released on Tuesday—have the same effect as the original? Certainly, some of the old rules are gone—for instance, Abrams has taken liberties with the time line in ways the old Star Trek never did. (Remember why Kirk had to let Edith Keeler, the woman he loved, die?)

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Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off Monday afternoon from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning an 11-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The orbiter's six-member crew will deliver some 13 metric tons of parts to the station as NASA wraps up its final scheduled shuttle launches and seeks to complete construction of the station. After Atlantis's mission, designated STS-129, only five planned shuttle launches remain. And today's launch marks the start of the last shuttle mission for 2009.

Amidst the shuttle's cargo is a refurbished antenna assembly for communication between the space station and NASA's Tracking Data and Relay Satellite system. But the bulk of the payload is a pair of unpressurized shelves to hold spare parts on the outside of the station. Those carriers will arrive at the ISS preloaded with hardware, including a high-pressure oxygen tank, a power converter that works in concert with the ISS batteries and solar arrays, and a pair of 275-kilogram electric gyroscopes that can be used to maintain the station's attitude without firing thrusters.

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While visiting the rugged Falkland Islands in the 1830s, Charles Darwin puzzled over a local wolf that was the only endemic land-dwelling mammal and looked little like other canids on the mainland. By 1876, the Falklands wolf (Dusicyon australis) was extinct and with it threatened to go its mysterious history. But a new genetic analysis of five preserved specimens, published online last week in Current Biology, has chased away speculation about these baffling animals.

"How can something the size of a Labrador retriever end up on an island in sufficient numbers that a new population emerges and evolves into a new species," Robert Wayne, a professor of ecology and biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-author of the paper, noted in a prepared statement.

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