Richard Stone

1 week ago | science.org | Richard Stone

Israel’s attack today on Iran’s top military commanders and nuclear facilities has eroded the Islamic nation’s capacity to enrich uranium, nonproliferation experts say, and reportedly killed six researchers, two of whom played prominent roles in past clandestine nuclear weapons R&D. “Israel appears to have targeted top-echelon scientists who would enable the regime to develop nuclear weapons,” says Andrea Stricker, an Iran specialist at the nonprofit Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

3 weeks ago | science.org | Richard Stone |Dennis Normile

High on the Tibetan Plateau, China appears to be laying the groundwork for what will be the largest optical telescope in the Northern Hemisphere—and perhaps briefly, in the world. But to the puzzlement of some astronomers, China has been keeping a tight lid on plans for its 14.5-meter Large Optical Telescope (LOT), with only glancing references in a handful of abstracts and Chinese media reports. “As far as I can tell, it’s real.

2 months ago | science.org | Richard Stone

Days after celebrating the publication in Science of a paper he co-authored on gene expression in mice, cell biologist Tang Fuchou of Peking University was whiplashed by the deepening trade war between China and the United States. Last week, citing new tariffs imposed by China on U.S. goods, Addgene, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit repository of circular DNA strands called plasmids, canceled a contract to supply them to Tang’s lab.

2 months ago | portside.org | Richard Stone

Sunday Science: 50-Year-Old Bioweapons Treaty Is Dangerously Flawed, Researchers Say Published April 13, 2025 Some of the world’s deadliest toxins are found in marine creatures such as the puffer fish and the blue-ringed octopus. For many, there is no antidote. So when U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials in 2019 confronted their Chinese counterparts with concerns about experiments with marine neurotoxins being conducted in China’s military labs, they were hoping for reassurance.

2 months ago | science.org | Richard Stone

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has barred scientists in China and five other “countries of concern” from accessing 21 biomedical databases, which hold information on genetic variation, cancer cases, neurodegenerative diseases, and more. The 2 April move by President Donald Trump’s administration, which ramps up a longer running effort to prevent foreign access to data deemed sensitive, also halts projects involving the databases that include collaborators in the named countries.