Advances in detecting and treating breast cancer offer an ever brightening outlook for women diagnosed in wealthy countries, but the recent progress has been far from uniform, and in poor countries mortality remains disproportionately high.

Scientists are looking for ways to spare women from aggressive treatment of ductal carcinoma in situ, a diagnosis that only sometimes leads to invasive breast cancer.

Since the discovery of BRCA1 and BRCA2, dozens more breast cancer genes have come to light. But what risk they pose—and what to tell women who carry them—remain quandaries.

For more than 2 decades, Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, has been a force behind the second biggest U.S. breast cancer research program.

In science news around the world, an Ebola outbreak in Guinea kills dozens, the United Kingdom budgets money for a big data institute and cell therapy manufacture, an online platform funded by the European Commission maps global environmental conflicts, and more.

Scientists aboard the Danish Eel Expedition study declining populations in the Sargasso Sea, while diplomats sign a nonbinding international agreement to protect the open-ocean region from pollution and overfishing. And German-based biotech company CureVac plans to honor Friedrich Miescher, the little-known discoverer of DNA, by converting his old lab in the kitchen of a medieval castle into a public exhibit.

Princeton University ecologist Simon Levin receives the 2014 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. And two investors known for their philanthropic contributions to biomedical research—Patrick McGovern and James Stowers—have passed away.

Last week, China's environment ministry reportedly began hammering out a plan to curb all sources of soil pollution by 2020 and to begin remediating filthy areas.

Twenty-five years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, researchers are still puzzling out the disaster's ecological impacts.

The genome sequence of an ancient modern human man from Siberia helps show when early Homo sapiens and Neandertals interbred.

Scientists hope that womb transplants can give women with a dysfunctional or missing uterus the option of bearing their own children, but the procedure is fraught with unique challenges and ethical dilemmas.

Curiosity rover team members are now reasonably confident that contaminants brought from Earth cannot entirely explain certain carbon compounds Curiosity spotted in martian rock.

Synthetic biologists reprogram the genetic circuitry of bacteria to create "living materials" that assemble themselves.

Two years after the first recorded deaths from MERS, most scientists agree that camels are key to the spread of the deadly disease. But containing it won't be easy.

Chromosome by chromosome, a global army of researchers and students is putting together the first synthetic eukaryote genome.

For two undergraduates, helping build a synthetic yeast genome proved much more than just another lab course.

Secord surveys the reception of eight books published in the United Kingdom around 1830 that "offered comprehensive perspectives on science and its meaning for human life."

Levinson's film presents the search for the Higgs with the Large Hadron Collider in the form of a compelling, personality-driven narrative.

A listing of books received at Science during the week ending 21 March 2014.

Strategic investments and coordination are needed for citizen science to reach its full potential.

Communication between different immune cells of the intestinal mucosa acts as a rheostat that maintains tolerance to gut microbes. [Also see Research Article by Morthaet al.]

Detection of a carbon dioxide gas cloud suggests the presence of an exoplanet further out from its host star than usual. [Also see Report by Dent et al.]

Reactions at mineral-fluid interfaces play a key role in processes ranging from the deep Earth to materials synthesis and nuclear waste storage.

Advances in detector technology and image processing are yielding high-resolution electron cryo-microscopy structures of biomolecules. [Also see Report by Amunts et al.]

The tuning of nanostructure plasmon resonances with bridging molecules offers opportunities for both plasmonics and molecular electronics. [Also see Research Article by Tan et al.]

Cholesterol metabolites can promote or suppress breast cancer, raising questions about how therapies might disrupt this balance.

Myeloid cells, innate lymphoid cells, and the cytokines they secrete cooperate to maintain immune tolerance in the gut. [Also see Perspective by Aychek and Jung]

Large investments in preschool children’s education, health care, and nutrition provide long-term health benefits.

The mitochondrial ribosome structure has substantially diverged from that of bacterial and eukaryotic ribosomes. [Also see Perspective by Kühlbrandt]

An asymmetric disk of dust and carbon monoxide indicates a recent large-scale collision or shepherding by an unseen planet. [Also see Perspective by Brandeker]

The motions of Brownian particles are tracked and evaluated on short time scales where solvent effects play a role.

The optical properties of silver plasmonic dimers depend on the selection of bridging molecules. [Also see Perspective by Nordlander]

A photonic crystal heterostructure is designed to provide optical selection based on propagation direction.

Consumption of carbon dioxide through silicate weathering is regulated by the intensity of the hydrologic cycle.

Similarities are revealed in the generation of internal water transport systems in moss and Arabidopsis.

A plant pathogen and its host compete for control over a key phosphorylation site in an innate immune receptor.

Somatic cells within the gonad produce a protein that stops Drosophila germ cells from becoming somatic.

Behavioral rhythms emerge from the interactions of many independent oscillators rather than from a group of master pacemakers.

Estimates are provided for the international flow of people over 5-year periods between 1990 and 2010.

On this week's show: a look back at the race for the BRCA1 gene, 20 years later and a roundup from our daily news site.

A weekly roundup of information on newly offered instrumentation, apparatus, and laboratory materials of potential interest to researchers.