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An expert panel today called for creating a massive data network that would combine cutting-edge genomic and molecular data on patients' diseases with their routine medical records. Such a database would be a boon for research and help move medical care into the era of "precision medicine," the panel says.

The National Research Council panel was formed last year at the request of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to consider how the more than 100-year-old system of disease classification should be changed to reflect insights from molecular biology. But the committee decided that "our challenge is bigger," said panel co-chair Susan Desmond-Hellmann, chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, at a press briefing today. Instead of a new classification, the nation needs a live network of data on individuals' molecular tests and health records. This system would be used to develop a new disease taxonomy and personalize medical care, according to the 108-page report, titled Toward Precision Medicine: Building a Knowledge Network for Biomedical Research and a New Taxonomy of Disease.

Precision medicine is already emerging in cancer diagnosis and treatment, the report says: some patients now receive drugs matched to a specific molecular marker in their tumor, and relatives can be tested for certain cancer risks. By contrast, a middle-aged man diagnosed with type II diabetes typically receives a 50-year-old drug that may or may not help him. And no type II diabetes risk tests are available for family members.

What's needed, the report says, is for patient's health records to be combined with layers of genomic and other molecular measurements, such as blood proteins and the microbes in a patient's gut. Like the GPS data used to make Google maps, these data could be plumbed in detail by researchers and used more superficially by others, such as doctors to treat patients, the report says. Separate databases would be combined to form a single network.

Some modest efforts like this already exist. For instance, the health care organization Kaiser Permanente is building a genetic database on 500,000 patients in the San Francisco area that will be used for disease studies. "We want to do it on a bigger scale," said panel co-chair Charles Sawyers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City at the briefing. (Another example, he says, is a plan by the Faroe Islands to sequence all 50,000 of its citizens' genomes and use the data for research and health care.)

Two small earthquakes that shook the Lancashire coast of northeast England and the nearby city of Blackpool earlier this year were probably caused by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking—a shale gas extraction technique that was being used nearby to explore its shale gas wells—according to a report released today. The energy company Cuadrilla Resources had begun an experimental drilling operation half a kilometer from the quakes' epicenter in March.

Fracking has caused concerns in some countries over its potential health and environmental impact—critics accuse it of contaminating drinking water with gas and the chemicals used for extraction—and it is banned in some countries and some U.S. states. Cuadrilla's is the first fracking operation conducted in the United Kingdom.

Feeling negative about your PubMed searches? You're not alone. Because of the way search engines are set up, searching for correlations between, say, "gene X" and "cancer," will return lots of positive results. On the other hand, studies that find no correlation—negative or null results—are tough to find (if they're published at all). Typing the word "not" into your search only makes matters worse: "gene X NOT cancer" returns only papers in which cancer isn't mentioned at all.

Luckily, there's now an app for finding those null results: BioNOT, a new search engine developed by biomedical informatician Hong Yu and graduate student Shashank Agarwal at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. The program's artificial intelligence scours PubMed for entered terms, such as "vaccines" and "autism," and returns papers with text showing the two are not related.

Persis Drell

Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory/L. A. Cicero

When Persis Drell took over 4 years ago as director of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, she vowed that she wouldn't keep the job any longer than necessary. Brought in to steer the Department of Energy (DOE) lab through a tricky change of mission, Drell said she would stick around long enough only to get the job done. Yesterday, she fulfilled that pledge, as SLAC announced that Drell will step down once her replacement has been found, likely by next summer. Drell plans to return to research and teaching.

"I never aspired to be a lab director," says Drell, who is the daughter of prominent SLAC theorist and arms-control expert Sidney Drell. However, in 2007 SLAC faced the daunting challenge of changing from a lab dedicated primarily to particle physics to a multipurpose lab featuring the world's first hard x-ray laser for experiments in materials sciences, condensed-matter physics, structural biology, and other fields. Officials at the Department of Energy (DOE), which owns SLAC, and Stanford University in neighboring Palo Alto, which manages it, convinced Drell that she should shepherd the lab into its new future. Drell says she accepted the job "because the lab needed me, because Stanford needed me."

A former researcher at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Migratory Bird Center has been found guilty of misdemeanor attempted cruelty to animals for sprinkling poison atop cat food intended for feral cats living in Washington, D.C. Yesterday's verdict, delivered by a judge in the D.C. Superior Court, marks the latest turn in the prosecution of wildlife biologist Nico Dauphiné, an outspoken advocate of the need to protect bird populations from feral cats.

Dauphiné had denied the allegation, but lost her case after a 3-day trial before a judge. She is scheduled to be sentenced later this month. The zoo accepted her resignation yesterday.

One of the Netherlands' leading social psychologists made up or manipulated data in dozens of papers over nearly a decade, an investigating committee has concluded.

Diederik Stapel was suspended from his position at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September after three junior researchers reported that they suspected scientific misconduct in his work. Soon after being confronted with the accusations, Stapel reportedly told university officials that some of his papers contained falsified data. The university launched an investigation, as did the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam, where Stapel had worked previously. The Tilburg commission today released an interim report (in Dutch), which includes preliminary results from all three investigations. The investigators found "several dozens of publications" in which fictitious data has been used. Fourteen of the 21 Ph.D. theses Stapel supervised are also tainted, the committee concluded. 

Stapel issued a statement today in which he apologizes to his colleagues and says he "failed as a scientist" and is ashamed of his actions. He has cooperated to an extent by identifying papers with suspect data, according to university officials. The investigation by the three universities is ongoing and should ultimately investigate more than 150 papers that Stapel has co-authored, including a paper published earlier this year in Science on the influence of a messy environment on prejudice. "People are in shock," says Gerben van Kleef, a social psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, who did not work directly with Stapel. "Everybody wonders how this could have happened and at this proportion."

One of Italy's most prestigious private biomedical research centers may have gained a new lease on life. On Friday, 28 October, an Italian bankruptcy court gave the green light to an offer made by the Institute for Works of Religion, more commonly known as the Vatican Bank, and Italian entrepreneur Victor Malacalza to rescue the deeply in debt San Raffaele del Monte Tabor Foundation, which runs a clinical research hospital, an internationally respected basic science institute, and more at a research park in Milan. Officials hope the bankruptcy court's endorsement of the plan, in which the Vatican and Malacalza would take over €500 million of debt and invest a further €250 million, will persuade funding bodies to resume now-frozen payments and stem a potential exodus of scientists. The foundation's creditors will next review details of the rescue plan and a hearing is set for January to confirm that enough of them are willing to accept the terms.

The San Raffaele Institute and Hospital are the research centerpieces of a major biomedical science park masterminded by priest Luigi Verzé, who formally remains chair of the San Raffaele del Monte Tabor Foundation. Originally a private hospital founded in 1971 that quickly grew into a cutting-edge medical center, the facility now contains more than 1000 hospital beds, employs hundreds of researchers, and has well-known research efforts in gene therapy and molecular medicine. But apparently due to poor investment decisions and overly ambitious expansion, Verzé's foundation accumulated a debt close to €1.5 billion. The details behind the huge debt are still obscure and criminal investigations into alleged corruption have begun; the Italian media has extensively covered the growing scandal, with the frenzy intensifying after Verze's close colleague, San Raffaele Hospital Vice President Mario Cal, shot himself to death in July, apparently troubled by the foundation's financial woes.

Adding more intrigue to complex saga, a still undisclosed American charity has said it would be willing to donate $1 billion to strengthen teaching and research at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, which is located in the science park. The university is administratively independent from the San Rafaele foundation, but some of that money could end up helping the foundation. "After the news of the debt," says Massimo Clementi, the dean of the medical school at the university, "the charity decided that 20% of the [donated] budget can be channeled to the Newco." (Newco is the temporary name for the reformed San Raffaele del Monte Tabor Foundation that would be created if the bankruptcy deal moves forward.)

According to San Raffaele researchers, scientific activity at the Milan campus remained regular until September, when the foundation's debt was revealed, shocking everybody at the lab benches. Most research granting agencies then put funding on standby, and some suppliers no longer would provide goods. One computer manufacturer even showed up to remove leased equipment, Nature reported last month. "We have nothing to do with the money hole and San Raffaele still represents a center of excellence," says Maria Grazia Roncarolo, immunologist and the institute's scientific director. "San Raffaele is at the top of the nation for translational medicine, with 566 ongoing clinical trials and 10,000 enrolled patients."

New York City today received bids from at least five university-based teams to build a science and engineering center in the city.

In July, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he would put up $100 million in seed money and land for universities and corporations willing to invest in a facility aimed at turning the metropolis into a high-tech hub similar to Silicon Valley. An economic analysis conducted earlier this year suggested that such an institute could generate as many as 30,000 jobs in the metropolis.

Eighteen partnerships representing 27 public and private groups initially expressed interest in the project. Although city officials would not comment on how many bids were received by today's 4 p.m. deadline, five groups announced that they had jumped into the ring. Three of the teams are led by New York state-based private institutions: Cornell, Columbia, and New York universities. All have multiple partners from academia and industry. The other two groups are led by Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is additionally partnering with NYU in its proposal. Bloomberg is expected to announce his pick by early 2012 and has said he hopes the winner will break ground on the new facility before he leaves office in 2013.

An advisory board to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this afternoon urged the U.S. government to launch a controversial trial of the anthrax vaccine in children. The 12-1 vote backs a September recommendation from a working group that spent about 3 months weighing the pros and cons of such a study and came out in favor of it.

Today's recommendation, by the National Biodefense Science Board (NBSB), isn't binding, and even if a study goes forward it will have to jump through many hoops before it can get up and running. That's because a trial like this one is almost without precedent in modern medical research: It involves giving children a vaccine that is almost certain not to benefit them, and that might harm them, all to protect other children from an unlikely scenario—a large-scale anthrax attack.

That said, "the science is clear that we need to do this," says Daniel Fagbuyi, the medical director of disaster preparedness and emergency management at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Fagbuyi chaired the NBSB Anthrax Vaccine Working Group with seven voting members, all of whom are also part of the NBSB. The lone dissenter on the vote was Patricia Quinlisk, state epidemiologist and medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health. Quinlisk chairs the NBSB and also sat on the working group, but said without elaborating that she could not support the recommendation.

The working group began considering a pediatric anthrax trial back in the spring at the government's request. The concern was that researchers have tested other vaccines given to children beforehand, to ensure that they're both safe and effective, but the anthrax vaccine never has been given to children. In a real disaster, medical personnel would be making decisions on the fly, uncertain whether children would react as adults do to the vaccine dose. For some vaccines, like tetanus, "the same dose is given to a 2-month-old infant and an NFL football player," says John Grabenstein, senior medical director for adult vaccines at Merck, who also sat on the working group and voted in favor of the recommendation this afternoon. Other vaccines, like hepatitis B and flu, are dosed differently in kids.

NPP lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Credit: NASA

Third time's the charm. Climate and weather researchers are breathing a bit easier today with this morning's successful launch of a NASA satellite that will provide data to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite lifted off at 2:48 a.m. local time from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, breaking a string of failed launches that downed two previous Earth-observing satellites.

NPP carries five science instruments designed to help researchers track everything from the ozone layer to ice cover, and to help them develop both long- and short-term forecasts. It is also supposed to test-drive technologies for NOAA's pending Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), a multi-spacecraft system plagued with technical delays and budget problems. The first JPSS launch is not expected until 2016 or 2017 at the earliest, and the $12 billion program has gotten extensive scrutiny from budget-conscious lawmakers.

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco has warned that skimping on funding for JPSS will leave scientists with fewer tools to collect critical data, and she used the NPP launch as an opportunity to talk up the need for the new satellites. "This year has been one for the record books for severe weather," she said in a statement. "The need for improved data from NPP and the next generation satellite system … has never been greater."

The launch of the $1.5 billion NPP—which was originally supposed to fly in 2006represents a rare bright spot for the U.S. Earth-observing community. In 2009, NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory, designed to monitor carbon dioxide levels, crashed back to Earth after its rocket failed, and earlier this year a similar accident destroyed NASA's Glory, designed to monitor atmospheric chemicals. NPP is expected to operate for at least 5 years.

A zebrafish facility at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

Credit: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology

A budding new Japanese graduate school backed by the likes of Nobel laureates Sydney Brenner, Susumu Tonegawa, Jerome Friedman, and others has cleared the last hurdle required to start teaching. Earlier today Japan's cabinet officially approved the law formally recognizing the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University. The school will welcome its first batch of students in September 2012.

Proposed in 2001, OIST started operations as a research institute in 2005 with a handful of scientists working in borrowed space, with Brenner serving as president and a board of governors stacked with scientific luminaries, including five Nobel laureates. OIST supporters, including domestic politicians and scientists, want to shake up Japan's universities by creating a new academic model emphasizing interdisciplinary research. It is also attempting to attract non-Japanese faculty members by using English for teaching and administrative affairs. The OIST Graduate University will start its academic years in September, instead of in April as is Japanese custom, to be more in sync with international norms. The institute is also charged with boosting the economy of Okinawa, Japan's least developed prefecture.

Jonathan Dorfan, a physicist and former director of what is now the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, becomes the university's first president on 1 November when the enabling law takes effect. But he has been on the job as president-elect since July 2010, overseeing the development of curriculum and the push to complete faculty recruitment. OIST claims to have attracted numerous academics at the top of their fields from institutions in Japan, the United States, and Europe. Meanwhile in spring 2010, OIST moved to its permanent home—a hillside campus in the village of Onna with stunning views of the East China Sea hosting a collection of buildings designed by Kornberg Associates, a San Diego-based firm headed by Kenneth Kornberg, the son and brother of Nobel laureates. Dorfan's next challenge will be convincing students he really is turning this subtropcal tourist destination into a haven for education and research.

Penrose Albright

Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

A veteran of U.S. national security policy debates has been chosen as the next director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the Department of Energy's two nuclear weapons research labs. Penrose Albright, a physicist with long experience in the U.S. government, will succeed George Miller, a career employee who had led the northern California lab for the past 5 years.

Albright now serves as the director of the global security program at Livermore. And his promotion to the top spot at the $1.6 billion lab is not necessarily an enviable gig, says Steven Aftergood, director of the government secrecy program at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists. "Any director will have to function within a tightly constrained and shrinking fiscal environment," he says. "It's a tough job even for a scientific or bureaucratic superstar."

But Aftergood says Albright, who previously served as an assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, should know how to navigate contentious Washington politics. "Dr. Albright is intimately familiar with the ways of Washington and its multiple pathologies," Aftergood says. "He probably has as good a chance as anyone of being a successful director."

Albright, 58, certainly hopes so. "This is the pinnacle of my career," he says. He assumes the directorship in December.

NASA’s prediction of comet Elenin’s orbit.

Credit: NASA

The comet Elenin, never more than a modest celestial ice ball, has broken into even smaller pieces, NASA announced 25 October. In itself, the observation is no big news, as roughly one in every 50 comets suffers a similar fate. However, some bloggers had predicted that Elenin's 16 October passage by Earth would trigger earthquakes and other natural disasters and accused NASA of covering up the threat. Although scientists had already debunked such claims, the press release reporting the comet's demise handles the controversy with a candor and panache that any fan of science or good writing should find gratifying.

Elenin is now a "trail of piffling particles that will remain on the same path as the original comet," DC Agle of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, writes in the release. He explains that the agglomeration of "uninspiring dust and ice" never got closer to Earth than 35.4 million kilometers and that once its debris passes out of the inner solar system it won't return for 12,000 years. The release simply acknowledges that some bloggers had accused NASA of trying to hide the truth. Without being condescending, it lays out the reasons why there never was a threat.

Bloggers had suggested that Elenin's gravitational tug would wreak havoc on Earth. To illustrate that such a scenario is farfetched, Agle quotes Donald Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL, who explains that Elenin's gravitational tug on Earth is weaker than that of his subcompact car. The two even work in an homage to the famed British comedy troupe Monty Python: Elenin, it seems, is "an ex-comet."

"I do my best to engage the NASA audience and it seemed appropriate to have a lighter touch on the keyboard for this story than some for others," says Agle, who has been writing for JPL for 8 years and has also written for television and for magazines. Agle says he received numerous e-mails and calls from people genuinely concerned about the threats that they had heard Elenin posed. "When they reach out to me or one of my colleagues at NASA, many simply want answers," he says. "They want to know more about their place in the universe, so I have to respect them for asking. After all, that is what NASA is all about."

The House of Representatives has approved the Arizona land swap on a primarily partisan vote of 235-186. Eight Republicans voted against the bill, and seven Democrats voted for it.

Archaeology groups are lining up against a proposal, currently being debated on the floor of the House of Representatives, to give a major copper mining company a large chunk of federal land in Arizona in exchange for private lands. The groups are particularly concerned that any mine built on the former federal land would destroy archeological sites near Oak Flat, a popular Arizona recreational area.

The trade would be "a blatant giveaway of the nation's public land to a single private stakeholder" and would set "a dangerous precedent," William F. Limp, president of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in Washington, D.C., argues with colleagues in a letter to lawmakers signed by eight archeology and historic preservation groups.

The proposal (H.R. 1904) would swap U.S. Forest Service land about 112 kilometers south of Phoenix for an array of privately owned lands elsewhere in the state. Under the arrangement, initially floated in 2005, Resolution Copper Co., an offshoot of global mining leader Rio Tinto, would get about 971 hectares of land believed to sit atop a vast deposit of high-quality copper. The federal government would get about 2144 hectares in exchange, including 1214 hectares of ecologically important land along the lower San Pedro River.

The Obama Administration has opposed the swap for a variety of reasons, many of which are described in the 24 October letter from the SAA, the American Rock Art Research Association in Arizona, the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Colorado and other groups. In particular, the trade carries no "assurances that priceless historic and cultural resources will be protected," they write. The bill exempts the transfer from prior reviews under environmental and historical preservation laws, they note, arguing that conducting such reviews "after land has been removed from federal control is clearly too little, too late, and not in the public interest." The House is expected to vote on the bill later this afternoon. ScienceInsider will be following the debate.

The Senate has yet to take up a companion measure, which would be necessary for the swap to move forward.

Human DNA isolates.

Credit: National Institutes of Health

The rules for a $10 million prize for leaps in genome sequencing just got a little easier—and a little harder. The Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by MEDCO was established in 2006 by the X PRIZE Foundation in Playa Vista, California, to encourage the rapid development of cheap, accurate human genome sequencing for medical purposes. At the time, the goal was to decipher 100 human genomes in 10 days for an all-inclusive cost of less than $10,000 a piece. Although eight organizations eventually signed on for the challenge, none actually tried to do the sequencing.

Since then, sequencing costs have plummeted, putting human genomes in the $10,000 range. But meeting the 10 days limit remained an impossible deadline. And the foundation and the sequencing community never really worked out how to judge the prize. As a result, they've decided to start over.

Today, in Nature Genetics and at a New York City press briefing, Larry Kedes and Grant Campany from the X PRIZE Foundation laid out the revised challenge, which includes a less tight deadline and other changes.

Under the new rules, starting 3 January 2013, the gun will go off on a race to sequence the genomes of 100 centenarians who are being identified by the foundation. The deadline will be 3 February, not 13 January, but winning the full prize will require that each genome cost no more than $1000. Entries will also have to meet stringent requirements for accuracy, 1 error per million bases, and completeness, 98%.

"I think [that price] is possible to achieve," says Granger Sutton, a computational biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland. "But also hitting all the other standards will be very challenging."

If no one succeeds, the judges will award lesser prizes in different categories as long as entries meet certain minimum standards. If more than one group satisfies the grand-prize requirements, then the winner will be whoever finishes first.

Peter Thiel

Credit: The Thiel Foundation

Working on a garage project that could make the world a better place but don't have the cash for that DNA sequencer you spotted on eBay? A new program launched by a billionaire tech entrepreneur has your back.

Breakout Labs is offering grants to independent researchers working on "radical" ideas. It's the brainchild of Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, whose foundation already supports aging and artificial intelligence research. The new venture follows on a project launched last year in which the Thiel Foundation gave $100,000 to 24 college students to drop out of school and pursue an entrepreneurial idea. Now Thiel wants to fund "revolutionary" science by do-it-yourself scientists and those with start-up companies that aren't far enough along to attract venture capital, a press release says.

At the Breakout Labs Web site, independent researchers can fill out a 10-page application that will be reviewed internally, then by two or three scientific experts, says program founder and executive director Lindy Fishburne. Applicants may have received federal funding previously, but must be now "working outside the confines of a traditional university research setup." They also need to hold full rights to their intellectual property. Preliminary data are not required, she adds, just "a really interesting hypothesis." Applications will be reviewed as they come in.

Geoengineering may not be a household name just yet, but its celebrity status seems to be on the rise. A new survey finds that public awareness of strategies aimed at manipulating Earth's climate is higher than earlier surveys suggested.

In recent years, geoengineering, a blanket term for techniques to cool global temperatures by doing things like planting more trees or thickening clouds, has gone from lunchroom pariah to potential new cool kid. A report published earlier this month by the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center, for instance, called for greater federal leadership on climate-tweaking science. Despite this uptick in interest, few researchers have explored just how much the public knows (or doesn't) about the topic. A quick-and-dirty survey reported in 2010 hinted that only 3% of Americans could effectively communicate what geoengineering science means.

To get a better sense of public attitudes, a research group led by energy specialist David Keith of Harvard University queried about 3000 men and women in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in late 2010. They found that about 8% of respondents could accurately describe geoengineering without prodding. When the group asked people to define the nearly-synonymous term "climate engineering," that number jumped to 45%, the researchers report today in Environmental Research Letters.

Why awareness seems to be climbing isn't clear, Keith says. But he notes that both scientific papers and media stories on issues related to geoengineering have soared in recent years.

According to one rare measure—call it the Aftergood index—the reputed security value of inventions patented in the United States is on the rise.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., tracks the number of U.S. patents classified as secret by the government each year and sequestered from public view. In fiscal year 2011, he reports in his blog, the number of patents put under wraps was 143, or 66% more than last year.

Most of these inventions, Aftergood believes, are likely improvements in technologies used in weapons systems; requests for classification come mainly from the U.S. military services and appear to be granted readily. Many such patents arise from work done by military contractors. But not all. This year, 11 of the 143 secret inventions are so-called "John Doe" patents that apparently had no government connection. For these inventors the classification may have come as a surprise. But it's hard to tell, since everything about the inventions is masked.

There's no way to judge whether the cloak of secrecy is being used wisely or not, Aftergood says. As far as he can determine, inventors are not objecting to secrecy orders, although some have demanded and received compensation for claimed losses resulting from past secrecy orders. But for those hoping to sell to the military, a secrecy order might serve as a badge of honor.

Is the rise in secrecy orders something to be concerned about? Not necessarily, Aftergood says, since "you don't want to be broadcasting" new military technology to the world. But he adds, "I would like to see an independent review to give confidence that this authority is being wisely exercised."

Part of the OPERA detector.

Credit: OPERA Collaborative

The OPERA collaboration, which made headlines around the world last month when it announced that it had apparently observed neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, has decided that it will carry out a new set of very precise measurements in order to check its controversial result. The decision means the group will delay submitting its result to a peer-reviewed journal by up to a month. The move also comes in the wake of heated disagreements between collaboration members regarding the solidity of its superluminal claim—and whether it was announced prematurely.

OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus) uses a detector located under the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy to study the properties of neutrinos that travel some 730 kilometers through the Earth's crust after being produced at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. In a paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server on 22 September, the collaboration reported that neutrinos observed between 2009 and 2011 appeared to have traveled faster than light, arriving about 60 nanoseconds earlier than precise calculations predicted they should.

Some members of the 160-strong collaboration, however, believe that further checks are needed to be absolutely sure that the result was not due to an error. And there has been intense discussion within the collaboration about whether those extra checks should be carried out before submitting the result to peer review. It now appears that those urging caution have prevailed, with a new set of measurements to be carried out ahead of any submission.

The new measurements will involve a change in the CERN neutrino beam. CERN makes the particles by colliding proton pulses with a graphite target, with each pulse being about 10,500 nanoseconds long. CERN has now split these pulses up so that each one consists of bunches lasting 1 to 2 nanoseconds; bunches are separated by gaps of 500 nanoseconds. The change means that it will be possible to tie each neutrino event recorded inside OPERA to a specific proton bunch, thus enabling a very precise measurement of the time it takes neutrinos to travel between the two labs. Previously, the collaboration had to carry out a statistical analysis to establish the time-of-flight, which involved comparing the temporal distribution of protons generated at CERN with that of the neutrinos detected at Gran Sasso. Critics had argued that this analysis might not be reliable.

Sources suggest that the collaboration will carry out the measurements over a period of 10 days, probably starting next week, and that in that time it should intercept around 12 neutrinos. It's possible that will generate enough data to disprove the announced result, or else to confirm an important part of the analysis behind the result.

The new checks follow scores of papers posted to arXiv by other physicists, either speculating on the theoretical implications of the superluminal claim or arguing that the claim is flawed in some way. One such paper, written by Andrew Cohen and Sheldon Glashow of Boston University, argues that the energy distribution of neutrinos observed by OPERA is not what would be expected if neutrinos within the beam were traveling faster than light, since these neutrinos would lose significant amounts of energy through the creation of pairs of electrons and positrons. Indeed, the ICARUS collaboration, which operates a second detector in Gran Sasso to intercept the CERN neutrinos, says that the energy distribution it has recorded is exactly that expected from non-faster than light neutrinos.