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GALVESTON, Texas — What causes a virus to suddenly begin infecting large numbers of people?

Scientists have long known that the process they call "viral emergence" involves a wide variety of factors. Some are changes in the environment, either generated by natural causes or human activity. Others are internal, arising from accidental changes — mutations —in the virus' genetic code.

For much of the time our T cells—the white blood cells that act as the police of the immune system—are in what immunologists call a "quiescent state," a sort of standby mode. For years, scientists have wondered if quiescence occurred by default or whether T cells need to work at remaining silent. Now, researchers at The Wistar Institute provide the first direct proof that a protein, called Foxp1, actively maintains this state of quiescence in T cells until the cells are called upon by other parts of the immune system.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University-led sequencing of the Selaginella moellendorffii (spikemoss) genome - the first for a non-seed vascular plant - is expected to give scientists a better understanding of how plants of all kinds evolved over the past 500 million years and could open new doors for the identification of new pharmaceuticals.

PULLMAN, Wash.—A group of leading scientists, economists and farmers is calling for a broad shift in federal policies to speed the development of farm practices that are more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.

Writing in the journal Science, they say current policies focus on the production of a few crops and a minority of farmers while failing to address farming's contribution to global warming, biodiversity loss, natural resource degradation, and public health problems.

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have taken a machine already in use for the measurement of impurities in semiconductors and used it to analyze immune cells in far more detail than has been possible before. The new technology lets scientists take simultaneous measurements of dozens of features located on and in cells, whereas the existing technology typically begins to encounter technical limitations at about a half-dozen.

Transformative changes in markets, policy and science, rather than just incremental changes in farming practices and technology, will be critical if the United States is to achieve long-term sustainability in agriculture, according to a nationwide team of agriculturists that includes a University of California, Davis, animal scientist.