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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 17, 2025 at 2:18pm

RNA has newly identified role: Repairing serious DNA damage to maintain the genome

Your DNA is continually damaged by sources both inside and outside your body. One especially severe form of damage called a double-strand break involves the severing of both strands of the DNA double helix.

Double-strand breaks are among the most difficult forms of DNA damage for cells to repair because they disrupt the continuity of DNA and leave no intact template to base new strands on. If mis-repaired, these breaks can lead to other mutations that make the genome unstable and increase the risk of many diseases, including cancer, neurodegeneration and immunodeficiency.

Cells primarily repair double-strand breaks by either rejoining the broken DNA ends or by using another DNA molecule as a template for repair. However, researchers discovered that RNA, a type of genetic material best known for its role in making proteins, surprisingly plays a key role in facilitating the repair of these harmful breaks.

These insights could not only pave the way for new treatment strategies for genetic disorders, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, but also enhance gene-editing technologies.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51457-9

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 17, 2025 at 2:11pm

Artificial light in big cities is extending the growing season of urban plants

Artificial light may be lengthening the growing season in urban environments by as much as 3 weeks compared to rural areas, according to an analysis of satellite data from 428 urban centers in the Northern Hemisphere over 7 years, published in Nature Cities.

Rapid urbanization is leading to hotter and brighter cities. More specifically, buildings and concrete absorb and radiate heat, causing urban heat islands, in which urban areas have higher atmospheric temperatures throughout the day and night compared to their surroundings. Likewise, the amount of artificial light at night has increased by 10% in cities within the past decade.

Light and temperature also largely regulate plant growing seasons. For example, increased lighting and temperature cause trees in cities to bud and flower earlier in the spring and change color later in the autumn than trees in rural surroundings.

Researchers analyzed satellite observations, taken between 2014 and 2020, of 428 cities in the Northern Hemisphere—including New York City, Paris, Toronto, and Beijing—and data on artificial light at night, near-surface air temperature and plant growing seasons.

They  found that the wattage of artificial light at night increases exponentially from rural areas towards urban centers. Meng and colleagues suggest that this increased amount of light appears to influence the start and end of urban growing seasons more than the increase of temperature from rural to urban areas.

They also found that the effect of artificial light is especially pronounced at the end of the growing season compared to its influence on the start. More specifically, the start of the growing season is an average of 12.6 days earlier than in rural surroundings and the end is 11.2 days later in the cities analyzed.

The authors suggest that the effect of artificial light on the growing season may be further complicated by the relatively recent general switch from high-pressure sodium lamps to LED lighting, which plants may be more responsive to.

Lvlv Wang et al, Artificial light at night outweighs temperature in lengthening urban growing seasons, Nature Cities (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44284-025-00258-2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 17, 2025 at 1:23pm

Seeing clearly through thick fog: Researchers develop ultra-low noise, high sensitivity photodetector

Technologies enabling safe visual recognition in low-visibility environments are gaining increasing attention across sectors such as autonomous driving, aviation, and smart transportation. Thick fog remains a major challenge on highways, mountainous roads, and airport runways, where vision-based recognition systems frequently fail.

Traditional visible light cameras, LiDAR, and thermal infrared (IR) sensors experience a sharp drop in signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) under scattering conditions, making object and pedestrian detection unreliable. To overcome these challenges, researchers are seeking near-infrared (NIR) sensors that can operate stably and with low noise in real-world conditions.

A research team  has developed a high-sensitivity organic photodetector (OPD) that maintains ultra-low noise performance even in light-scattering environments.

The study is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

The team successfully reconstructed transmission images in simulated fog and smoke conditions and quantitatively verified the sensor's performance.

The study is notable as it presents the first experimental demonstration of a hardware-based visibility enhancement system in realistic fog-like environments—following the team's earlier development of an AI-based software fog removal technology that received a CES 2025 Innovation Award.

Based on this achievement, the team is advancing a software-hardware integrated solution for visibility enhancement, targeting applications in autonomous driving, smart transportation infrastructure, and drone-based surveillance.

A core innovation of the OPD lies in a self-assembled monolayer electronic blocking layer developed by the team, called 3PAFCN.

This layer, characterized by a deep HOMO energy level and high surface energy, effectively suppresses dark current and reduces interfacial charge traps, thereby enhancing device stability and responsiveness.

Through this structural innovation, the OPD achieved a low noise current of 2.18 fA, along with the highest detectivity reported among NIR OPDs of its kind—surpassing the performance of commercial silicon-based photodetectors and indicating strong commercialization potential.

The team also constructed a laboratory environment simulating real fog, where they conducted single-pixel imaging experiments using the new OPD. Even under low-light conditions where visible-spectrum sensors failed to detect targets, the OPD successfully captured optical signals and reconstructed object shapes.

Seunghyun Oh et al, Robust Imaging through Light‐Scattering Barriers via Energetically Modulated Multispectral Organic Photodetectors, Advanced Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202503868

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 17, 2025 at 12:13pm

First artificial solar eclipses created by two European satellites

A pair of European satellites have created the first artificial solar eclipses by flying in precise and fancy formation, providing hours of on-demand totality for scientists.

The European Space Agency released the eclipse pictures at the Paris Air Show this week. Launched late last year, the orbiting duo have churned out simulated solar eclipses since March while zooming tens of thousands of miles (kilometers) above Earth.

Flying 492 feet (150 meters) apart, one satellite blocks the sun like the moon does during a natural total solar eclipse as the other aims its telescope at the corona, the sun's outer atmosphere that forms a crown or halo of light.

It's an intricate, prolonged dance requiring extreme precision by the cube-shaped spacecraft, less than 5 feet (1.5 meters) in size. Their flying accuracy needs to be within a mere millimeter, the thickness of a fingernail. This meticulous positioning is achieved autonomously through GPS navigation, star trackers, lasers and radio links.

Dubbed Proba-3, the $210 million mission has generated 10 successful solar eclipses so far during the ongoing checkout phase. The longest eclipse lasted five hours.

Scientists already are thrilled by the preliminary results that show the corona without the need for any special image processing.

Source: ESA

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 17, 2025 at 11:55am

Astronomers have located the universe's 'missing' matter

A new landmark study has pinpointed the location of the universe's "missing" matter, and detected the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) on record. Using FRBs as a guide, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and Caltech have shown that more than three-quarters of the universe's ordinary matter has been hiding in the thin gas between galaxies, marking a major step forward in understanding how matter interacts and behaves in the universe.

They've used the new data to make the first detailed measurement of ordinary matter distribution across the cosmic web. The research is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

For decades, scientists have known that at least half of the universe's ordinary, or baryonic matter—composed primarily of protons—was unaccounted for. Previously, astronomers have used techniques including X-ray emission and ultraviolet observations of distant quasars to find hints of vast amounts of this missing mass in the form of very thin, warm gas in between galaxies. Because that matter exists as hot, low-density gas, it was largely invisible to most telescopes, leaving scientists to estimate but not confirm its amount or location.

Enter FRBs—brief, bright radio signals from distant galaxies that scientists only recently showed could measure baryonic matter in the universe, but until now could not find its location. In the new study, researchers analyzed 60 FRBs, ranging from ~11.74 million light years away—FRB20200120E in galaxy M81—to ~9.1 billion light years away—FRB 20230521B, the most distant FRB on record. This allowed them to pin down the missing matter to the space between galaxies, or the intergalactic medium (IGM).

 Thanks to FRBs, we now know that three-quarters of it is floating between galaxies in the cosmic web. In other words, scientists now know the home address of the "missing" matter.

By measuring how much each FRB signal was slowed down as it passed through space, researchers tracked the gas along its journey. They shine through the fog of the intergalactic medium, and by precisely measuring how the light slows down, we can weigh that fog, even when it's too faint to see.

The results were clear: Approximately 76% of the universe's baryonic matter lies in the IGM. About 15% resides in galaxy halos, and a small fraction is burrowed in stars or amid cold galactic gas.

This distribution lines up with predictions from advanced cosmological simulations, but has never been directly confirmed until now.

This is a triumph of modern astronomy.

Liam Connor et al, A gas-rich cosmic web revealed by the partitioning of the missing baryons, Nature Astronomy (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02566-y

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 16, 2025 at 12:15pm

Tumour microbes contribute to resistance
A signalling molecule produced by bacteria in breast tumours can help the cancer resist certain treatments. The cancer drug trastuzumab blocks the action of a protein called HER2, which cancer cells use to grow. Pseudomonas aeruginosa — a bacterial species commonly found in breast tumours — produces a molecule called 3oc, mainly to kill immune cells. But researchers found that 3oc has an off-target effect: it activates a chemical pathway in breast cancer cells that triggers HER2 production, dampening the effect of trastuzumab.

A Bacterial Signaling Molecule Lends Tumors Drug Resistance

Aggressive breast cancer can become unresponsive to monoclonal antibody treatment, but targeting tumor-resident bacteria may extend its effectiveness.

https://www.the-scientist.com/a-bacterial-signaling-molecule-lends-...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2421710122

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2025 at 11:49am

Study Finds a Potential Downside to Vigorous Exercise

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2025 at 9:51am

Why the salmon on your plate contains less omega-3 than it used to

It has long been known that eating oily fish such as salmon is the best way to consume long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. These are essential for brain development, mental health and cognition. In salmon, omega-3 fatty acids must come from the fish's diet. For farmed fish, this means fishmeal and fish oil—so–called "marine ingredients" made from ground-up wild fish such as anchovy and fish by-products.

But the global supply of omega-3s is severely limited, whether from farmed or wild seafood. Many of the key fisheries supplying marine ingredients reached full exploitation in the mid-1990s. Since the growth of salmon aquaculture, increasing volumes of the limited marine ingredients supply have been taken up by fish farming.

This has raised concerns over sustainability and inflated the cost of these ingredients. The result has been a steady decline in the proportion of fish oil in farmed salmon diets, which has been replaced by plant oils. But these oils do not contain long-chain omega-3s.
In turn, the amount of omega-3s in a portion of salmon halved between 2006 and 2015. However, the salmon industry increasingly uses omega-3 as a key selling point for its product—two portions of farmed Scottish salmon per week would meet the recommended intake for an adult at current levels.
Moreover by trimming and removing skins and heads, the amount of omega-3 is reduced more.

Source: https://theconversation.com/why-the-salmon-on-your-plate-contains-l...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2025 at 9:38am

Novel coating shields iron from rust with 99.6% efficiency

Researchers have developed a highly effective dual-layer coating that provides 99.6% protection against iron corrosion. The breakthrough combines a thin molecular primer with a durable polymer layer, creating a strong, long-lasting barrier against rust. This innovation could significantly reduce maintenance costs and extend the lifespan of iron-based materials used in construction, transportation, and manufacturing.

The new research presents a solution by combining two protective layers that work together to create a strong and long-lasting barrier. The first layer is an ultra-thin coating made of N-Heterocyclic Carbene (NHC) molecules, which form a tight bond with the iron surface.

This primer layer ensures that the second layer—a polymer-based coating—sticks firmly, creating a highly stable and durable protective shield. Thanks to this improved adhesion, the coating remains intact even in harsh conditions, such as prolonged exposure to saltwater.

Experiments showed that this dual-layer system dramatically reduced the amount of corrosion, with tests conducted in a highly corrosive saltwater environment confirming its exceptional efficiency. By forming a strong chemical connection between the iron and the protective layers, this method offers far greater durability than conventional coatings, which often wear down or peel off over time.

Linoy Amar et al, Self‐Assembled Monolayer of N‐Heterocyclic Carbene as a Primer in a Dual‐Layer Coating for Corrosion Protection on Iron, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2025). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202422879

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2025 at 9:20am

Nanoplastics can disrupt gut microbes in mice by interfering with extracellular vesicle-delivered microRNA

Nanoplastics can compromise intestinal integrity in mice by altering the interactions between the gut microbiome and the host, according to a paper in Nature Communications. The study explores the complex interactions of nanoplastics with the gut microenvironment in mice.

Nanoplastics are pieces of plastic less than 1,000 nanometers in diameter, which are created as plastics degrade. Previous research has suggested that nanoplastic uptake can disrupt the gut microbiota; however, the underlying mechanism behind this effect is poorly understood.

Researchers  used RNA sequencing, transcriptomic analysis and microbial profiling to analyze the effects of polystyrene nanoplastics on the intestinal microenvironment when ingested in mice. They found that nanoplastic accumulation in the mouse intestine was linked to altered expression of two proteins involved in intestinal barrier integrity (ZO-1 and MUC-13), which could disrupt intestinal permeability.

The nanoplastics were also shown to induce an intestinal microbiota imbalance, specifically an increased abundance of Ruminococcaceae, which has been implicated in gastrointestinal dysfunction in previous research.

These findings suggest a mechanism by which nanoplastics may affect the microbiota and the intestinal environment in mice. However, research would be needed to explore the ways in which nanoplastic accumulation could affect humans.

 Wei-Hsuan Hsu et al, Polystyrene nanoplastics disrupt the intestinal microenvironment by altering bacteria-host interactions through extracellular vesicle-delivered microRNAs, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59884-y

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