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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 9, 2017 at 7:07am

Some farming practices destroy Earthworms...

The digging, stirring and overturning of soil by conventional ploughing in tillage farming is severely damaging earthworm populations around the world, say scientists.

The findings published in the scientific journal Global Change Biology show a systematic decline in earthworm populations in soils that are ploughed every year. The deeper the soil is disturbed the more harmful it is for the earthworms.

The scientists from the University of Vigo, Spain, and University College Dublin, Ireland, analysed 215 field studies from across 40 countries dating back as far as 1950. Each of the studies investigated earthworm populations under conventional tillage and other forms of reduced tillage.

According to the findings, the earthworm populations most vulnerable to tillage are larger earthworms that move between layers of soil and create permanent burrows between them (anecic earthworms). Small earthworms that live in the top layers of soil and convert debris to topsoil (epigeic earthworms) were also found to be highly susceptible.

Farming practices that involve no-tillage, Conservation Agriculture and shallow non-inversion tillage were shown to significantly increase earthworm populations. The scientists note that these reduced tillage practices are increasingly being adopted world-wide due to their environmental benefits in terms of erosion control and soil protection.

Conventional tillage decreases the abundance and biomass of earthworms and alters their community structure in a global meta-analysis

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13744/abstract;jsess...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 5, 2017 at 8:48am

Smell sensors that diagnose diseases

Each of us has a unique "odourprint" made up of thousands of organic compounds. These molecules offer a whiff of who we are, revealing age, genetics, lifestyle, hometown — even metabolic processes that underlie our health. Yes, the smell of someone's skin, breath and bodily fluids can be suggestive of illness. The breath of diabetics sometimes smells of rotten apples, experts report; the skin of typhoid patients, like baking bread. Now, researchers are trying to build an inexpensive odor sensor for quick, reliable and noninvasive diagnoses. The field finally seems on the cusp of succeeding.

Britain's National Health Service is paying for a 3,000-subject clinical trial to test an odor analysis sensor's ability to diagnose lung cancer. The company that makes the unit says clinicians can change the software to sniff out other diseases.

A similar diagnostic technology is being developed in Israel. Those researchers published a paper in ACS Nano in December showing that their artificially intelligent nano-array could distinguish among 17 diseases with up to 86 percent accuracy.

In addition to these groups, teams in the United States, Austria, Switzerland and Japan also are developing odor sensors to diagnose disease.

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Artificial blood made safer...

Bioinspired Polydopamine-Coated Hemoglobin as Potential Oxygen Carrier with Antioxidant Properties

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.biomac.7b00077

n a study published in Biomacromolecules, researchers describe a promising blood substitute that could effectively carry oxygen and also scavenge for potentially damaging free radicals. Blood transfusions can save the lives of patients who have suffered major blood loss, but hospitals don't always have enough or the right type on hand. Red blood cells carry the protein hemoglobin, which performs the essential function of delivering oxygen to the body's tissues. Scientists have tried developing chemically modified hemoglobin—which by itself is toxic—as a blood substitute but have found that it forms methemoglobin. This form of the protein doesn't bind oxygen and thus decreases the amount of oxygen that blood delivers in the body. In addition, the generation of methemoglobin produces hydrogen peroxide, which leads to cell damage. In the present study, a team of researchers led by Dr. Wang Quan from the Beijing Institute of Transfusion Medicine wanted to see if packaging hemoglobin in a benign envelope could get around these problems. The researchers developed a one-step method for wrapping hemoglobin in polydopamine, or PDA, which has been widely studied for biomedical applications. A battery of lab tests showed that the PDA-coated hemoglobin effectively carried oxygen, while preventing the formation of methemoglobin and hydrogen peroxide. In addition, it caused minimal cell damage, and acted as an effective antioxidant, scavenging for potentially damaging free radicals and reactive oxygen species.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 3, 2017 at 9:24am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 29, 2017 at 7:34am

Scientists have found a way to trigger artificial photosynthesis, turning greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into clean air and producing energy at the same time.

The research team  from University of Central Florida (UCF) in the US created a way to trigger a chemical reaction in a synthetic material called metal-organic frameworks (MOF) that breaks down carbon dioxide into harmless organic materials.

The process is similar to photosynthesis in which plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and sunlight into food. However, instead of producing food, the new method produces solar fuel.

The chemical reaction is triggered by blue light mimicking the blue wavelength of sunlight, and converts carbon dioxide into two reduced forms, formate and formamides, which can be used as energy sources.

The findings were published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 27, 2017 at 6:29am

Indian space agency ISRO  is seeking proposals  for space-based experiments to study Venus.

The Announcement of Opportunity (AO) is for space experiments by institutions in the country, and the last date for receiving the proposals is May 19, 2017, the Bengaluru- headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

Those sending the proposals for Venus orbiter mission may be currently involved in planetary exploration studies, or development of science instruments for space, or willing to develop the experiments.

Find more details here: http://www.isro.gov.in/announcement-of-opportunity-ao-space-based-e...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 25, 2017 at 7:08am

When conservative Christians challenge the teaching of evolution in US schools?

When climate change deniers start ruling the world?

When anti-vaccinators start challenging microbiologists?

When pollution is killing hundreds?

It is time scientists came out on the streets and protested. That is exactly what happened throughout  the world on Saturday, 22nd April, 2017. 

'Only facts, no alternatives please!' Screamed the scientific community.

And the message got out loud and clear! 

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2017 at 11:49am

Scientists Created a Fluid With 'Negative Mass'

Researchers in the US say they've created a fluid with negative mass in the lab... 

What it means is that, unlike pretty much every other known physical object, when you push this fluid, it accelerates backwards instead of moving forwards. Such an oddity could tell scientists about some of the strange behaviour that happens within black holes and neutron stars.

 

Negative mass?! What is it?

Hypothetically speaking, matter should be able to have negative mass in the same way that an electric charge can be either negative or positive.

On paper that works, but it's still debated in the science world whether negative mass objects can really exist without breaking the laws of Physics. Isaac Newton's 2nd law of motion is often written as the formula f=ma, or force equals an object's mass times its acceleration.

If we rewrite it as acceleration is equal to a force divided by the object's mass, and make the mass negative, it would have negative acceleration - just imagine sliding a glass across a table and having it push back against your hand.

This is possible, and previous theoretical research has shown some evidence that negative mass could exist within our Universe without breaking the theory of general relativity.

many physicists think that negative mass could be linked to some of the weird things we've detected in the Universe, such as dark energy, black holes and neutron stars

Now researchers from WS univ. they've successfully managed to get a fluid of superchilled atoms to act as though it has negative mass - and suggest it could finally be used to study some of the stranger phenomena happening in the deep Universe.

To create this strange fluid, the team used lasers to cool rubidium atoms to a fraction above absolute zero, creating what's known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. 

In this state, particles move incredibly slowly and follow the strange principles of quantum mechanics, rather than classical physics - which means they start to behave like waves, with a location that can't be precisely pinpointed.

The particles also sync up and move in unison, forming what's known as a superfluid - a substance that flows without losing energy to friction.

The team used lasers to keep this superfluid at the icy temperatures, but also to trap it in a tiny bowl-like field measuring less than 100 microns across.

While the superfluid remained contained in that space it had regular mass and, as far as Bose-Einstein condensates go, was pretty normal. But then the team forced the superfluid to escape.

Using a second set of lasers, they kicked the atoms back and forth to change their spin, breaking the 'bowl' and allowing the rubidium to come rushing out so fast that it behaved as if it had negative mass.

Once you push, it accelerates backwards. It looks like the rubidium hits an invisible wall.

It's yet to be seen whether this escaping superfluid will be reliable and accurate enough to test out some of the very strange suggestions about negative mass in the lab, and before we get too excited, other teams need to replicate the results independently.

But the research has now been published in the  Physical Review Letters 

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.155301

 

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 20, 2017 at 8:47am

Stand up and march for science

On April 22, protesters will converge in cities around the world to march for scientific freedom and integrity. 

Do join us and support science.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 18, 2017 at 6:38am

Scientists have created a device that can literally extract water from the air using solar power which could one day provide “personalized water” to those in areas affected by chronic drought.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California Berkeley published their findings in the journal Science on 13th April, 2017.

The invention can harvest water from the atmosphere in conditions where relative humidity is as low as 20 percent, which makes it potentially usable in many of the planet's driest regions.

Atmospheric water is a resource equivalent to ~10% of all fresh water in lakes on Earth. However, an efficient process for capturing and delivering water from air, especially at low humidity levels (down to 20%), has not been developed. Now the scientists report the design and demonstration of a device based on porous metal-organic framework-801 [Zr6O4(OH)4(fumarate)6] that captures water from the atmosphere at ambient conditions using low-grade heat from natural sunlight below one sun (1 kW per square meter). This device is capable of harvesting 2.8 liters of water per kilogram of MOF daily at relative humidity levels as low as 20%, and requires no additional input of energy.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/04/12/science.aam8743

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 11, 2017 at 7:57am

Personalised cancer treatment ...

• Drugs need to be specific for each patient’s genetic and immunological profile

• Side-effects of medication can be predicted by first testing them on stem cells

• The studies could lead to mapping of ethno-specific adverse effects of cancer drugs

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep41238

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14565

http://www.scidev.net/global/genomics/news/personalised-cancer-gene...

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