“For me, the best health news of the previous
decade is the fact that the long-overdue influenza
pandemic has been so moderate in its impact….

Although the virus has not yet delivered any devastating surprises, we have seen some surprises on other fronts. We anticipated problems in producing enough vaccine fast enough, and this did indeed happen. But we did not anticipate that people would decide not to be vaccinated…. The days when health officials could issue advice based on the very best medical and scientific data and expect populations to comply may be fading. It may no longer be sufficient to say that a vaccine is safe, or testing complied with all regulatory standards, or a risk is real. In my view, this is a new communications challenge that we may need to address.” — MARGARE T CHAN, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, IN AN ADDRESS TO I TS EXECUTIVE BOARD IN GENEVA ON JANUARY 18

SN Online www.sciencenews.org

DELETED SCENES BLOG A medical council cited poor methods and conflict-of-interest concerns in slamming a paper connecting vaccines and autism, prompting the paper’s retraction. See “Journal retracts flawed study linking MMR vaccine and autism.”

Science Past | FROM THE ISSUE OF FEBRUARY 27, 1960
HUMAN SPIES FOR RUSSIA CHEAPER THAN SATELLI TES — It
would be cheaper for Russia to spy on the U. S. through
normal channels than by putting a reconnaissance satel-
lite into orbit…. Russian agents in the U. S.
can glean vast amounts of solid informa-
tion merely by reading several major
metropolitan daily newspapers.... The
Department of Defense thus takes the
attitude that the object recently found
circling the earth in a polar orbit probably
was the last stage of Russia’s Lunik III and not a recon-
naissance satellite…. Spy satellites, when perfected, prob-
ably will be able to gather information by watching or by
listening. They can watch by using either photographic or
infrared equipment. They can listen with sensitive radios.

Science Future

March 16 After a week of interviews, the winner of Intel Science Talent Search 2010 is announced at a gala in Washington, D.C. See www.societyforscience.org

March 16–19 Researchers from various disciplines meet in Miami to discuss the state of the Arctic environment. See soa.arcus.org

LIFE

Picnic basket. Check. Pepper spray, rocks, rubber slugs. Check, check, check. Park rangers find these tools do keep bears away from human visitors, but not as effectively as making food inaccessible. See “Keeping black bears wild.”

March 21–25 The American Chemical Society hosts its spring meeting in San Francisco. See www.acs.org

Introducing...

A new species of lungless caecilian has turned up, only the
second lungless one known. Caecilians look like worms
but are amphibians. The new species, Caecilita iwokramae,
lives in Guyana’s Iwokrama Forest. In 1997, a survey team
collected an 11.2-centimeter–long female caecilian with no
lungs or nostrils. In 2009, Marvalee
Wake of the University of California,
Berkeley and a colleague named the
species, which they suspect may
breathe through its skin. Plenty of
salamanders do so, but biologists
know of just one frog and now two
caecilians that breathe without lungs. 5mm

MATTER & ENERGY Some chemical reactions can mix themselves, no stirring rod required. Read “Self-stirring liquids.”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH/DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; KAREN LAUBENSTEIN/U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE; WAKE AND DONNELLY JOURNAL: PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B: BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES