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<jats:p>Connectivity is a hot topic these days, with a new White House effort on networking poised to expand the capacity of existing federal high-speed networks and join with a university-based effort to improve campus links. The goal is to design the next information superhighway.</jats:p>

<jats:p> <jats:bold>BRUSSELS</jats:bold> —An independent review panel charged last week that the European Union's (EU's) flagship research program “lacks focus and is underachieving.” The broadside came just as EU officials are preparing to seek approval for the next 4-year block of funds for the program, known as Framework 5. </jats:p>

<jats:p> <jats:bold>HOUSTON</jats:bold> —NASA and the National Science Foundation are weighing new rules that would severely restrict investigators who want to parcel out their samples of the 12 known martian meteorites. The problem, says a new report, is simple: The more hands, the more chance of contamination. </jats:p>

<jats:p>The news of the first successful cloning of an adult mammal has sent ethical shock waves around the world. As a result, in many countries, officials and even some scientists are calling for new or strengthened legislation to outlaw human cloning, although at this early date, no concrete measures have been proposed.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Dolly, the lamb cloned from an udder cell of an adult ewe, has sparked an intense debate about the prospect of human cloning. But researchers say it's still unclear how practical cloning of animals, let alone humans, will be. The procedure so far is inefficient; the group that created Dolly made 277 previous attempts. And no one yet knows whether the cloning procedure, which involves transferring nuclei from adult cells into eggs whose own nuclei have been removed, will work with other species.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Most stars are so distant that, even through the largest telescopes, they look like simple points of light. Now, by using the gravity of one star as a magnifying glass, a multinational team of astronomers has been able to pick out features on the face of a second star 30,000 light-years from Earth.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Say “African elephant,” and one pictures a vast savanna, where the largest land mammal mingles with lions, giraffes, and gazelles. In fact, about one-third of the continent's elephants live in its dark, often inaccessible rain forests, where the animals are difficult for researchers to spot, let alone study. But now, new research is bringing these huge, elusive creatures out of the shadows and shedding light on their role in rain-forest ecology and their social behavior.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Recent studies of elephant DNA suggest that forest and savanna elephants, generally thought of as separate subspecies, may, in fact, be entirely different species.</jats:p>

<jats:p> On <jats:related-article xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" ext-link-type="doi" page="1450" related-article-type="in-this-issue" vol="275" xlink:href="10.1126/science.275.5305.1450" xlink:type="simple">page 1450</jats:related-article> of this issue, a German-Canadian team of scientists reports on the unusual wings of the oldest flying vertebrate, the 250-million-year-old Coelurosauravus jaekeli. All other known flying animals have wings adapted from ribs or forelimbs, but this reptile's wings are supported by new bones that formed directly in the skin. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Add yet another startling ability to the DNA résumé. A Report in this issue ( <jats:related-article xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" ext-link-type="doi" page="1465" related-article-type="in-this-issue" vol="275" xlink:href="10.1126/science.275.5305.1465" xlink:type="simple">p. 1465</jats:related-article> ) presents evidence that the DNA double helix can perform chemistry at a distance. When light strikes a metal complex tethered to one end of a DNA molecule, a chemical change takes place far down the helix, causing a patch of damaged DNA to be mended. The feat supports the controversial possibility that DNA's unique structure allows it to behave like a conductive wire, which would be an even more impressive attribute. </jats:p>