* Biologists at Children’s Hospital in Boston identify two proteins that regulate aging in animals by boosting cells’ resistance to stress.
* The U.S. Geological Survey declares 2003 the deadliest earthquake year in a decade: 43,819 people killed, versus 1,711 in 2002.
* A leaked Pentagon report predicts global warming could bring severe and politically disruptive climate change within 10 years.
* Harvard develops 17 privately financed human stem cell lines and announces a new multimillion-dollar center to study them.
* Gulf War syndrome may result from low doses of DEET or anti-nerve-gas agents, says a Duke University pharmacologist.
* Astronomers spot a 900-mile-wide planetoid orbiting the sun past Pluto—the largest object found in the solar system since 1930.
* The Opportunity rover finds evidence that Mars was once soaking wet. The rover will now begin looking for signs of ancient lakes.
* Paleontologists find remains of two new dinosaur species, a lithe carnivore and a lumbering plant eater, in Antarctica.
