[In Brief] News at a glance
In science news around the world, Japan loses contact with its recently launched ASTRO-H x-ray observatory, a yellow fever outbreak ravages Luanda and depletes the World Health Organization's stockpile of vaccines, Ecuador names its first marine sanctuary around some of the waters of the Galápagos islands, the U.S. House of Representatives budget committee releases a plan that would eliminate the Department of Commerce and curb many research programs at the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, Japan's Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector begins its first test run, and more. Also, embattled trachea surgeon Paolo Macchiarini is fired from the Karolinska Institute. And a new expedition to climb Mount Everest—a joint effort between a Welsh athlete and the University of South Wales, Pontypridd, in the United Kingdom—gets underway, with an eye to studying the mechanisms that link hypoxia with cognitive decline and dementia.