News Summaries

In science news around the world this week, the World Bank is fretting over urban flooding in Asia, a synthetic biology report is being ignored, and the inaugural flight of Europe's new Vega rocket went off without a hitch.

This week's Newsmakers are Ed Weiler, who says the Obama Administration's attacks on a Mars mission led to his resignation as head of NASA's science mission last September; Scottish microbiologist Anne Glover, who took office as the first European Chief Scientific Advisor; and Barbara Cannon, the first non-Swedish president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

A 93-kilogram meteorite recovered from musician Sting's Lake House estate in the United Kingdom's rural Wiltshire may shed some light on ice-age Britain. Lonely Chinese researchers isolated by shyness and long lab hours now have an online dating service designed just for them. And this week's numbers quantify meters of Antarctic ice drilled, the percentage of fresh water used agriculturally, and the amount donated to launch two postdoctoral fellowships in developmental health.

While legislators are demanding big cuts in federal spending, President Barack Obama sent Congress a clear message in the 2013 budget he submitted this week: Don't cut research.Author: Jeffrey Mervis

The Office of Science and Technology Policy is facing its own tough budget choices this year as it tries to coordinate research activities across the government.Author: Jeffrey Mervis

The debate over whether journals should publish the full details of how two labs engineered the deadly avian influenza strain H5N1 so that it spreads more easily among ferrets, and presumably humans, shows that knowledge cuts both ways.Author: Jon Cohen

On 2 February at the New York Academy of Sciences, Michael Osterholm and Peter Palese, both prominent influenza researchers, debated just how deadly the avian virus known as H5N1 is to humans.Author: Jon Cohen

The legal jousting over California's Proposition 8 has helped highlight a growing body of research on the psychological and socioeconomic aspects of same-sex relationships.Author: David Malakoff

On 8 February, the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute announced that a team of its engineers and scientists had drilled through nearly 4 kilometers of Antarctic ice to Lake Vostok.Author: Carolyn Gramling

What sparked the first cities? Digs in Kuwait and Syria are reshaping how archaeologists see the first stirrings of urban life.Author: Andrew Lawler