In science news around the world this week, an Italian official will also be a defendant in the earthquake trial, Japanese experts have questioned the safety of—and need for—nuclear power, biodiversity in the Andes is threatened, and Nobelists are lobbying for a gigantic neutrino experiment.

Thomas Edison is still number one when it comes to invention. Researchers think they know why the male orb-web spider will often voluntarily break off his whole sex organ while it's still lodged in the female's abdomen: It continues to transfer sperm into the female long after the male has fled or been consumed. A British seismologist has a geologic twist on the classic nightstand "word-a-day" calendar: the daily rock. And this week's numbers quantify the price offered for DNA sequencing company Illumina and the percentage of plant collectors who have found more than 50% of the world's known species.

This week's Newsmakers are Janet Rowley of the University of Chicago, Brian Druker of the Oregon Health & Science University, Nicholas Lydon of Blueprint Medicines, and Masato Sagawa of Intermetallics Co., winners of the Japan Prizes; Scott Doney, whose nomination to be chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been withdrawn by the White House; Johannes Vogel, an expert on fern genetics, who took over as director of Berlin's Natural History Museum this week; and Paul Alivisatos of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Charles Lieber of Harvard University, Jacob Bekenstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ronald Evans of the Salk Institute, Michael Aschbacher of the California Institute of Technology, and Luis Caffarelli of the University of Texas, Austin, winners of the Wolf Prizes.

How concerned should people be that what happened in the controversial experiments that exposed ferrets to H5N1 avian influenza viruses engineered to be more transmissible will apply to humans?<br><br>Author: Jon Cohen

The Broad Institute received a $32.5 million gift last week to take on one of the biggest challenges in biology: mapping the molecular "circuitry" inside several kinds of mammalian cells.<br><br>Author: Jocelyn Kaiser

Last week, Fomalhaut b, an exoplanet that once enjoyed celebrity status, faced an identity crisis after astronomers failed to spot it in a new round of observations.<br><br>Author: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

With new sequencing centers in Europe and the United States, BGI hopes its growing clout will help deliver the benefits promised by genomics—and revenue to pay off a mounting debt.<br><br>Author: Dennis Normile

When spillways were opened to divert the flooding Mississippi last spring, scientists studying the waters sought data that might help restore the river's eroding delta.<br><br>Author: Carolyn Gramling

The high price of oil is driving technological innovation that has reversed the decline in U.S. oil production, but the world will increasingly depend on OPEC and “non-oil” oil.<br><br>Author: Richard A. Kerr