News at a glance: Darwin’s letters, antiracism in science, and protecting LGBTQ+ field researchers

ASTRONOMY

Chile radio telescope array gains keener vision

ALMA, one of the world’s biggest radio telescope arrays, is getting hardware and software upgrades to allow it to collect much more data and produce sharper images. Announced last week, the latest modernizations to ALMA—officially the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, which sits high in the Chilean Andes—will cost $37 million and take 6 years to complete. Workers will upgrade the data transmission from the dishes to a central processor. They will also replace the heart of that processor, known as the correlator, a supercomputer that combines the input from individual dishes into composite images. The new correlator’s speed will effectively create 1000 more hours of observing time every year. And in an additional, previously funded upgrade project now underway, ALMA is getting new detectors sensitive to radio waves from 1.1 millimeters to 1.4 millimeters wavelength on each of its 66 dishes, allowing it to gain a clearer view of objects from the Solar System and the far reaches of the universe.

WORKPLACE

Protecting LGBTQ+ researchers

Research mentors and institutions should take precautions to safeguard LGBTQ+ ecologists from discrimination, sexual harassment, and violence when they do fieldwork in isolated areas, a working group says in a recent paper. The analysis, published last month in the Journal of Applied Ecology , describes LGBTQ+ researchers’ heightened risks and offers recommendations to minimize them . One is to develop field safety plans that, for example, outline inclusive housing and bathroom arrangements. Another is providing scientists with radios to help them stay in contact with one another in case a dangerous situation arises. In addition, research leaders should be aware whether researchers on a fieldwork team are out of the closet so that information can be protected as needed, especially in places where disclosure may be risky. A Science interview with the study’s authors is available here .

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Look, there’s America.
  • Chinese aeronautical scientist Wu Zhe
  • in a state-media video about a high-altitude airship he said his team launched in 2019. In the video, described in The New York Times , he points to a red line on a computer screen tracing the airship’s path near the U.S. southern border. Wu has helped lead China’s efforts to create balloons for civilian and military monitoring. The 2019 flight was not widely disclosed until the United States shot down a Chinese balloon off the South Carolina coast on 4 February.
HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Darwin’s letters go online

For 50 years, the Darwin Correspondence Project gathered, curated, and digitized more than 15,000 letters between the father of evolutionary biology and about 2000 correspondents. The project officially ended last month, and last week the 30th and final volume of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin rolled off the presses. The fruits of the project’s labor will live online, freely accessible through the Cambridge Digital Library. In addition to providing a peek into Darwin’s personal life, the letters illuminate the vast network of people who shaped, expanded, and critiqued the 19th century zoologist’s ideas. Gathering all the letters from dozens of repositories—and deciphering their handwriting—was a huge task, says James Secord, a science historian emeritus at the University of Cambridge who directed the effort since 2006. He says the mixture of serious scientific discussions and personal details, some quirky, made him and his team “feel like you’ve been living with someone most of your working life.” An exhibit showcasing the project begins on 4 May at the New York Public Library.

LEADERSHIP

U.S. fraud unit gets new chief

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which handles scientific fraud involving federally funded biomedical research, will soon have its first permanent leader in nearly 2 years. Sheila Garrity, an attorney with master’s degrees in public health and business, will take the helm in late March. Garrity has 18 years of experience leading research integrity efforts at Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University. ORI oversees investigations of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism and recommends sanctions, such as temporary funding bans for offenders. The office has often gone long stretches without a permanent director; its last one, Elisabeth Handley, served less than 2 years before assuming another federal position in June 2021. ORI recently began to review the Department of Health and Human Services’s 18-year-old scientific misconduct regulations and ORI’s review process, which some observers think is slow and inefficient.

PHYSIOLOGY

Centipede uses heat to ‘see’

Chinese red-headed centipede
The sensitive antennae of the Chinese red-headed centipede contain a heat sensor that reacts to light. SHILONG YANG

Chinese red-headed centipedes, which are sightless, use an unusual thermal sensor to detect sunlight , a study has found. The adaptation allows the venomous arthropod, Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans , to shelter in dark spots beneath forest leaves, lurking for prey and avoiding predators. The species is among the first arthropods identified as having this ability, although researchers have separately discovered it in some sightless species of fish and shrimp. A research team confirmed the trait in the centipedes, which lack light-sensing proteins, by covering their antennae in foil. This reduced their ability to move from bright to dark experimental chambers. The researchers also found the thermal receptor protein BRTNaC1 in their antennae, which the team concluded helps the animal detect the warmth of sunlight, they report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

DIVERSITY

Academies seek antiracist action

To advance diversity and inclusion within the scientific community, leaders must dismantle the power structures that lead to racial inequities , a U.S. national science academies panel said this week. Its report points to “institutional cultures that, intentionally or otherwise, create exclusionary and discriminatory environments” and issues 12 recommendations. One urges decision-makers to look for patterns of bias in data on graduate admissions, hiring, promotion, and awards. Other recommendations include conducting regular culture audits and drawing lessons from minority-serving institutions about “providing intentional and culturally responsive … support.” The report, Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations , was issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

MISCONDUCT

Journal rejects retraction

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences will not retract a 2016 paper on anemone fish behavior even though a lengthy university investigation found its data were fabricated. The paper, authored by marine ecologists Danielle Dixson of the University of Delaware (UD) and Anna Scott of Southern Cross University in Australia, is one of three studies that UD last year asked journal editors to retract after an independent investigation . Science retracted a paper in August 2022 as a result. But Proceedings B said in a 1 February editor’s note that its own investigation did not turn up enough evidence of fraud, in part because a correction by the authors solved a major discrepancy in the study’s timeline. Fish physiologist Timothy Clark of Deakin University, one of the whistleblowers in the case, calls the journal’s decision “infuriating.” Dixson and Scott did not respond to requests for comment. UD’s website still lists Dixson as a faculty member; a UD spokesperson did not answer Science ’s questions about the case.