Cohen India Slashes Estimate

slowed, the nuclei may never be accelerated
to 40 EeV, he says.
Whatever its cause, the fall-off leads some
to question the need to build a bigger array, as
the Auger team hopes to do in the Northern
Hemisphere. Once you see the cutoffeven if
you disagree about what it isthen building a
bigger detector hardly gets you anything,
because there are so few higher energy particles
to capture, says Gordon Thomson, a Hi-Res
member from Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Members of the Hi-Res and
AGASA teams are building a detector in Utah
Capturing
carbon
Autism and
the synapse
184
190
called the Telescope Array, which will be threeeighths the size of Auger. That may be just the
right size, Thomson says.
Others say that only a bigger array can
amass enough data to trace the fall-off in
detail. Now we understand that above the
GZK cutoff there are ten times less cosmic
rays than we thought 10 years ago, so we may
need a detector ten times as big as Auger,
says Masahiro Teshima of the Max Planck
Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany,
who worked on AGASA and is working on
the Telescope Array.
The few highest energy, straightest flying

particles will be crucial for determining
whether high-energy cosmic rays emanate
from particular points or patches in the sky, says
James Cronin of the University of Chicago, Illinois, who, with Watson, dreamed up the Auger
array in the early 1990s. Such anisotropy
might reveal the rays origins, and if we can
show an anisotropy, then thats a brilliant breakthrough, he says. Mapping the sky could take a
decadealthough Cronin and Watson hint
they may have already seen something exciting
thats not yet ready for release. ADRIAN CHO
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on September 16, 2011
FOCUS
HIV/AIDS
Contrary to previous estimates, India does not accurate as they can be, says epidemiolo- sentinel surveillance sites, like clinics for
have more HIV-infected people than any gist Peter Ghys, who heads the UNAIDS pregnant women. But such analyses capture
country in the world, says a new analysis by branch that produces the oft-cited estimates more data from urban than rural areas and
government health officials. Improved and for most countries.
miss many high-risk groups such as injecting
widened surveys of the countrys massive popIn the past, Indias HIV estimates have drug users or men who have sex with men.
ulation has led Indias National AIDS Control relied heavily on a limited number of The new analysis includes data from 400 new
Organization (NACO) to slash
sentinel sites added since
by more than half the estimated
2006there were just 764 in
number of people infected,
2005as well as voluntary
from 5.7 million to 2.5 million.
blood samples taken from
NACO, which announced the
more than 100,000 people in a
new figures on 6 July, says HIV
national household survey.
thus infects 0.36% of the counNACOs estimates of HIVtrys adults, rather than 0.9%.
infected people still are far
The figures are now much more
from exact, ranging from 2 milrealistic, says N. K. Ganguly,
lion to 3.1 million. But thats
the head of the Indian Council
more certainty than portrayed
of Medical Research in New
by UNAIDS in 2006, which
Delhi who chaired a meeting
estimated Indias HIV-infected
that reviewed the new NACO
population at 3.4 million to
numbers. Ganguly, who long
9.4 million. The range is some
worried that epidemiologists
indication that at the time we
had exaggerated the scale of
were not as confident as we are
Indias epidemic, adds that he
today about the estimates,
Country
HIV/AIDS cases Adult prevalence Population
was very happy that a look
says UNAIDSs Ghys.
(millions)
(%)
(millions)
back analysis also found that
The lowered estimates and
HIV was not gaining ground in
the reanalysis of data back to
South Africa
5.5
18.6
44
this huge country.
2002 indicate that the country
Nigeria
2.9
3.9
135
The Joint United Nations
has had a stable epidemic with
India
2.5
0.3
1,129
Programme on HIV/AIDS
a marginal decline last year,
Mozambique
1.8
16.1
21
(UNAIDS), which advised
NACO says. This challenges
Swaziland
0.22
33.4
1.1
NACO and earlier issued the
the idea that India is on an
United States
1.2
0.6
301
higher estimate, supports the
African trajectorywith the
new f igures. Were much No longer number one. Much wider sampling, including a national household survey virus moving from concenmore confident that the esti- that goes well beyond the sentinel surveillance sites, like the clinic above in Kolkata, trated risk groups such as sex
mates being put out are as has led to new, lower estimates of size of the AIDS epidemic in India.
workers and truck drivers to
CREDITS: MALCOLM LINTON (PHOTO); UNAIDS/CIA/NACO (DATA)
India Slashes Estimate of HIV-Infected People
www.sciencemag.org
SCIENCE
VOL 317
Published by AAAS
13 JULY 2007
179
SCIENCESCOPE
seeing worrying rates of people who fail to
respond to treatment and need more expensive
second-line drugs, she says.
According to an April report issued by
UNAIDS, the World Health Organization,
and UNICEF, India had just over 55,000 people
receiving anti-HIV drugs as of November
2006. The report, which relied on the old
calculations of HIV prevalence, estimated
that the number of people in need of immediate treatment ranged from 627,000 to
1.6 million. The new numbers mean fewer
people need treatment today and will need
treatment in the future, says Ghys. Yet he,
too, cautions that this doesnt suddenly make
scaling up treatment simple.
UNAIDSs latest figures estimate that
39.5 million people worldwide are infected
with HIV, which the revised Indian numbers
would lower to 36.3 million. South Africa
now has the unfortunate distinction of having
more HIV-infected people5.5 million as of
2005than any country in the world.
JON COHEN
AWARDS
CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): NOAA; 2007 PRINCE OF ASTURIAS FOUNDATION
Science Wins Communication Award

Science and Nature have jointly
been named recipients of
t h e prestigious 2007 Prince of
Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.
The award is made annually by
Spains Prince of Asturias Foundation, formed in 1980 under the presidency
of His Royal Highness
Prince Felipe de
Borbn, heir to the
throne of Spain. The
foundation honors
accomplishments by
individuals, groups, or
organizations in eight
categories: communication and humanities,
social sciences, ar ts,
letters, scientif ic and
technical research, international cooperation,
concord, and sports.
In a statement, the
foundation noted: Some of
the most important and innovative work of the last 150 years has appeared
on the pages of Science and Nature, thus contributing to the birth and development of
many disciplines, including Electromagnetism, Relativity, Quantum Theory, Genetics,
Biochemistry and Astronomy. In 2001,

the international community learned of the
description of the human genome from the
pages of both publications.
This years awardees in other categories are
former Vice President Al Gore (international
cooperation), Bob Dylan (arts), developmental
geneticists Gins Morata of the Spanish
National Research Council and Peter
Lawrence of Cambridge University
in the United Kingdom (scientific
and technical research),
and Hebrew writer and
professor Amos Oz of
the Ben-Gurion University in Israel (letters).
Awards for social sciences, sports, and concord have not yet been
announced.
We are delighted
and deeply honored that
our journals contributions to public discourse
on science and technology have been recognized by Spains Crown
Prince Foundation, said Sciences Editorin-Chief Donald Kennedy.
The awards will be presented at a ceremony in Oviedo, Spain, in October.
www.sciencemag.org
SCIENCE
VOL 317
Published by AAAS
Winds of Change
The head of the
U.S. National Hurricane Center in
Miami, Florida, has
been placed on leave
after a rebellion by
fellow forecasters
and staff. William
Proenza (left), a
longtime National
Weather Service official and forecaster, has
publicly complained about the centers
budget since becoming director 7 months
ago. One gripe was that its parent agency, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), hadnt prepared to replace
the aging QuikSCAT, a NASA satellite. Proenza
had warned that its loss could worsen 3-day
hurricane track forecasts by 16%.
But prominent center staff questioned the
satellites importance. And, in an unusually
public letter last week, 23 of 50 center staff
called for Proenzas removal, lamenting the
unfortunate public debate over the centers
forecasting ability. In May, NOAA chief Conrad
Lautenbacher called Proenzas bluntness one
reason why we love him, but in a letter this
week to center staff, he said there was anxiety
and disruption at the center and that Proenza
was leaving. Officials, who arent saying why the
move was made, have put center deputy Edward
Rappaport in charge.
ELI KINTISCH
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on September 16, 2011
the general populationa controversial assertion made by epidemiologist Richard

Feachem, former head of the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
(Science, 23 April 2004, p. 504). India expert
and epidemiologist Robert Bollinger of Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland,
co-authored a 9 October 2004 Lancet article
with Indian colleagues that explicitly criticized
Feachems prediction. Frankly, I wouldnt be
surprised if there were 6.1 million or 5 million
or 2.5 million infected people, but the point is
the epidemic is different in India, says
Bollinger. A key distinction, he says, is outside
of commercial sex workers, Indian women
rarely have more than one sexual partner at the
same time, a major driver of epidemics.
Suniti Solomon, who runs a private clinic in
Chennai, YRG Care, stresses that India still
faces a formidable challenge. Whatever the
numbers, if we are complacent the virus
will spread faster, says Solomon. And she
says many infected people still do not have
access to anti-HIV drugs. The country is also
Space Probes Add Side Trips

NASA is sending two decorated veterans out to
collect more scientific data. After already
having traveled 3.2 billion kilometers to pick
up 1 microgram of dust from comet Wild 2
and having dropped it back to Earth for analysis, NASAs Stardust spacecraft will be visiting
comet Tempel 1 in 2011. NASAs Deep Impact
spacecraft fired a massive copper projectile at
the comet on 4 July 2005, and researchers
want Stardust to image the resulting impact
crater to learn about the structure and porosity
of the comets nucleus. A revisit is always a
good idea, says Gerhard Schwehm, head of
solar system science at the European Space
Agency, although he warns that Stardusts
hardware was designed for a different purpose.
Meanwhile, Deep Impact also has been
given a new assignment. It plans to fly past
comet Boethin on 5 December 2008 after
looking for transiting planets around other
stars. NASA science chief Alan Stern says the
new missions get more from our budget.
13 JULY 2007
GOVERT SCHILLING
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slowed, the nuclei may never be accelerated

The few highest energy, straightest flying

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on September 16, 2011

CREDITS: MALCOLM LINTON (PHOTO); UNAIDS/CIA/NACO (DATA)

India Slashes Estimate of HIV-Infected People

CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): NOAA; 2007 PRINCE OF ASTURIAS FOUNDATION

Science Wins Communication Award

Biochemistry and Astronomy. In 2001,

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on September 16, 2011

the general populationa controversial assertion made by epidemiologist Richard

Space Probes Add Side Trips

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