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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 30, 2024 at 8:02am

Virus that causes COVID-19 is widespread in wildlife

SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, is widespread among wildlife species, according to  new research published July 29, 2024 in Nature Communications. The virus was detected in six common backyard species, and antibodies indicating prior exposure to the virus were found in five species, with rates of exposure ranging from 40 to 60% depending on the species.

Genetic tracking in wild animals confirmed both the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and the existence of unique viral mutations with lineages closely matching variants circulating in humans at the time, further supporting human-to-animal transmission, the study found.

The highest exposure to SARS CoV-2 was found in animals near hiking trails and high-traffic public areas, suggesting the virus passed from humans to wildlife, according to scientists.

The findings highlight the identification of novel mutations in SARS-CoV-2 in wildlife and the need for broad surveillance, researchers say. These mutations could be more harmful and transmissible, creating challenges for vaccine development.

The scientists stressed, however, that they found no evidence of the virus being transmitted from animals to humans, and people should not fear typical interactions with wildlife.

Widespread exposure to SARS-CoV-2 in wildlife communities, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49891-w

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 30, 2024 at 7:54am

A passive, renewable, more efficient way to extract water from the atmosphere

Freshwater scarcity affects  billions of people in the world, primarily in arid and remote regions, as well as islands and coastal areas without freshwater sources. Climate change and population growth are only making the problem worse, and existing methods require an energy input, usually electrical.

Renewable energy can fix this and is required for these regions for drinking water and irrigation, using water extracted from the atmosphere.

It is estimated the atmosphere holds about 13 trillion tons of water, six times the freshwater in the globe's rivers; global warming allows the air to hold more water vapor, by a theoretical 7% per degree Celsius of warming.

Now engineers and scientists  have created a system that uses  solar energy to extract as much as 3 liters (0.8 gallons) of water per square meter per day from air, in a purely passive way, requiring no maintenance or human operators. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Existing solar-driven atmospheric water extraction (SAWE) systems typically rely on absorbing water vapor from the air. When the absorbing material reaches saturation, the system is sealed and exposed to sunlight, which begins the release of the captured water. They are an improvement over passive atmospheric water technologies such as fog and dew collection, and more available in other geographies and sites with climate constraints.

To design a passive, efficient, easily scalable and minimal-labor system, the group used a structure of multiple vertical microchannels, called mass transport bridges. The tubes, sitting in a container, are filled with a liquid salt solution that acts as a liquid absorber; they used lithium chloride.

Depending on the temperature distribution, the ambient temperature region, exposed to the environment, continuously captures atmospheric water and stores it in a container. When the system receives sunlight, the absorber converts the light into heat and generates concentrated water vapor in the high-temperature region.

The water vapor condenses on the chamber wall, producing freshwater. More captured water from the absorber's container moves uninterrupted to the high-temperature region.

At the same time, the concentrated liquid in the high-temperature region is transported back to the ambient temperature region via diffusion—the movement of molecules from a region of high concentration to low concentration—and by convection—the movement of the hotter, lower density solution through the colder, denser regions—enabling continuous capture of water vapor as long as sunlight is available.

Kaijie Yang et al, A solar-driven atmospheric water extractor for off-grid freshwater generation and irrigation, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50715-0

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2024 at 11:02am

Blood thinner stops cobra venom
A common blood thinner can fight the toxins in cobra venom, potentially preventing limb amputations caused by snakebites. Using the genetic editing tool CRISPR, researchers found that eliminating certain sugars on the outside of human cells allowed the cells to resist cobra toxins. In experiments with mice, a class of drugs known as heparinoids soaked up the toxin and shrank venom-induced wounds by 94%. The drugs worked against several cobra species’ venoms, but not against viper venoms.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adk4802?utm_source...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2024 at 10:58am

After each flight test, the team continuously improved the functionality of their technology.

Source: NASA

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2024 at 10:57am

NASA streams first 4K video from aircraft to space station and back

A team at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has streamed 4K video footage from an aircraft to the International Space Station and back for the first time using optical (laser) communications. The feat was part of a series of tests on new technology that could provide live video coverage of astronauts on the moon during the Artemis missions.

Historically, NASA has relied on radio waves to send information to and from space. Laser communications use infrared light to transmit 10 to 100 times more data faster than radio frequency systems.

Working with the Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA's Small Business Innovation Research program, Glenn engineers temporarily installed a portable laser terminal on the belly of a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft. They then flew over Lake Erie, sending data from the aircraft to an optical ground station in Cleveland. From there, it was sent over an Earth-based network to NASA's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where scientists used infrared light signals to send the data.

The signals traveled 22,000 miles away from Earth to NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), an orbiting experimental platform. The LCRD then relayed the signals to the ILLUMA-T (Integrated LCRD LEO User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) payload mounted on the orbiting laboratory, which then sent data back to Earth. During the experiments, High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking (HDTN), a new system developed at Glenn, helped the signal penetrate cloud coverage more effectively.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2024 at 9:50am

New study links brain microstructure to gender differences in mental health

A team of neuroscientists and behavioral specialists has found differences between male and female brain structure in areas associated with decision-making, memory processing and handling emotions.

In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group compared more than 1,000 brain scans to better understand why men and women are more prone to different kinds of brain illness.

Prior research has shown that male babies are three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism as they grow older than are female babies—they are also twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. On the other hand, female babies are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety or mood disorders later in life than are boys.

Mental health specialists have wondered for many years why there are differences, and many suspect that it is due to physical brain differences between the genders. The research team thinks they may have found evidence for such differences.

To spot possible gender differences in the brain, the researchers focused their attention on subcortical gray matter regions that prior researchers have associated with mental health, including the amygdala and the thalamus. They then analyzed MRI scans of 1,065 male and female brains, looking for differences in brain microstructure, such as the way cells are concentrated, their arrangement or even their physical characteristics.

The research team found what they describe as "large, sex-related differences in microstructures." They noted that such changes were still apparent after adjusting for age and the relative size of the brains under study. They also found diffusion metrics in the amygdala and thalamus that they believe could be associated with mental disorders such as anxiety, ADHD, social skills issues and depression.

They suggest that further study of diffusion MRI imagery could provide more insight into gender-based brain disorders.

Richard Watts et al, Sex and mental health are related to subcortical brain microstructure, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2403212121. www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2403212121

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2024 at 9:05am

Trees reveal climate surprise: Microbes living in bark remove methane from the atmosphere

Tree bark surfaces play an important role in removing methane gas from the atmosphere, according to a study published 24 July in Nature.

While trees have long been known to benefit the climate by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, this new research reveals a surprising additional climate benefit. Microbes hidden within tree bark can absorb methane—a powerful greenhouse gas—from the atmosphere.

An international team of researchers has shown for the first time that microbes living in bark or in the wood itself are removing atmospheric methane on a scale equal to or above that of soil. They calculate that this newly discovered process makes trees 10% more beneficial for climate overall than previously thought.

Methane is responsible for around 30% of global warming since pre-industrial times and emissions are currently rising faster than at any point since records began in the 1980s.

Although most methane is removed by processes in the atmosphere, soils are full of bacteria that absorb the gas and break it down for use as energy. Soil had been thought of as the only terrestrial sink for methane, but researchers now show that trees may be as important, perhaps more so.

Vincent Gauci, Global atmospheric methane uptake by upland tree woody surfaces, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07592-w. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07592-w

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2024 at 9:01am

Signs of Ancient Life on Mars?

NASA’s Perseverance rover has made very compelling observations in a Martian rock that, with further study, could prove that life was present on Mars in the distant past – but how can we determine that from a rock, and what do we need to do to confirm it? Morgan Cable, a scientist on the Perseverance team, takes a closer look.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 28, 2024 at 12:11pm

Neuroscientists discover brain circuitry of placebo effect for pain relief

The placebo effect is very real. Some placebo effects are so strong that individuals are convinced they received a real treatment meant to help them. This we've known for decades, as seen in real-life observations and the best double-blinded randomized clinical trials researchers have devised for many diseases and conditions, especially pain. And yet, how and why the placebo effect occurs has remained a mystery. Now, neuroscientists have discovered a key piece of the placebo effect puzzle.

 And the placebo effect—feeling better even though there was no "real" treatment—has been documented as a very real phenomenon for decades.

It is the human experience, in the face of pain, to want to feel better. As a result—and in conjunction with millennia of evolution—our brains can search for ways to help us feel better.

It releases chemicals, which can be measured.

Published now in Nature, researchers discovered a pain control pathway that links the cingulate cortex

 in the front of the brain, through the pons region of the brainstem, to cerebellum in the back of the brain.

They showed that certain neurons and synapses along this pathway are highly activated when mice expect pain relief and experience pain relief, even when there is no medication involved.

That neurons in our cerebral cortex communicate with the pons and cerebellum to adjust pain thresholds based on our expectations is both completely unexpected, given our previous understanding of the pain circuitry, and incredibly exciting. These results do open the possibility of activating this pathway through other therapeutic means, such as drugs or neurostimulation methods to treat pain.

This research provides a new framework for investigating the brain pathways underlying other mind-body interactions and placebo effects beyond the ones involved in pain.

Grégory Scherrer, Neural circuit basis of placebo pain relief, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07816-z. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07816-z

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 28, 2024 at 12:11pm

Biologists discover human-infecting parasite produces sterile soldiers like ants and termites

New research from scientists finds a tiny freshwater parasite known to cause health problems in humans defends its colonies with a class of soldiers that cannot reproduce.

The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences vaults this species of parasitic flatworm into the ranks of complex animal societies such as ants, bees and termites, which also have distinct classes of workers and soldiers that have given up reproduction to serve their colony.

When it gets into humans, usually via the consumption of raw or undercooked fish, this species of flatworm, Haplorchis pumilio, can cause gastrointestinal issues and, in severe cases, stroke or heart attack. Fully cooking fish or freezing any meant to be eaten raw for at least one week is enough to kill the trematodes, per Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

While there are no specific statistics for Haplorchis pumilio, foodborne trematode infections cause 2 million life years lost to disability and death worldwide every year.

Unlike bees and termites, the colonies of this species of flatworm are not underground or in a tree hollow, but inside the body of a live snail. The parasites don't kill the snail, but instead siphon off nutrients for years as they pump out free-swimming clones that search for fish, the flatworms' next host in their complex life cycle.

These flatworms could become invaluable tools to probe fundamental questions of sociobiology—like, 'how does this kind of social organization evolve?

This study is the first evidence for trematode soldiers that are so physically specialized to their task that they lack any reproductive tissues and appear permanently incapable of reproduction.

 Daniel C. G. Metz et al, The physical soldier caste of an invasive, human-infecting flatworm is morphologically extreme and obligately sterile, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2400953121

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