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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 26, 2024 at 10:27am

 Unintended consequences of fire suppression

The escalation of extreme wildfires globally has prompted a critical examination of wildfire management strategies. A new study reveals how fire suppression ensures that wildfires will burn under extreme conditions at high severity, exacerbating the impacts of climate change and fuel accumulation.

The study used computer simulations to show that attempting to suppress all wildfires results in fires burning with more severe ecological impacts, with accelerated increases in burned area beyond those expected from fuel accumulation or climate change.

Fire suppression has unintended consequences, say the researchers. We've known for a long time that suppressing fires leads to fuel accumulation. Here, the researchers show a separate counter-intuitive outcome.

Though fire suppression reduces the overall area burned, it mainly eliminates low- and moderate-intensity fires. As a result, the remaining fires are biased to be more extreme. The study, "Fire suppression makes wildfires more severe and accentuates impact...," published in Nature Communications, shows how this "suppression bias" causes average fire severity to increase substantially.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 26, 2024 at 10:06am

Merck identified techniques that can help it imitate the effects of these crystals on Earth as it works to develop a drug that can be stored at room temperature.

Still, it can take years between research in space and the wide availability of a drug developed there.

Cancer research in space began more than 40 years ago but has become "revolutionary" in recent years.

Biden launched a "Cancer Moonshot" initiative in 2016, when he was then vice president, echoing a speech by John F. Kennedy some 60 years earlier outlining the bold goal of sending an American to the moon.

The goal of the "Moonshot" is to halve the death rate from cancer over the next quarter century, saving four million lives, according to the White House.

Political realities may hinder that ambitious goal, though. Congress has earmarked just over $25 billion to NASA for 2024, two percent less than the previous year and well below what the White House had sought.

"The ability of space to capture the imagination is huge. And space cancer research has a firm goal: "It can save lives." and should be pursued, according to the scientific community.

Source: AFP

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 26, 2024 at 10:03am

Space research in anti-cancer fight

Experiments in the weightless environment of space have led to "crazy progress" in the fight against cancer, NASA officials say.

Not only do cells in space age more rapidly, speeding up research, their structures are also described as "purer."

They all don't clump together (as they do) on Earth because of gravity. They are suspended in space enabling better analysis of their molecular structures.

Research conducted in space can help make cancer drugs more effective.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck has conducted research on the ISS with Keytruda, an anti-cancer drug that patients now receive intravenously.

Its key ingredient is difficult to transform into a liquid. One solution is crystallization, a process often used in drug manufacturing.

In 2017, Merck conducted experiments to see if the crystals would form more rapidly in space than on Earth.

Two pictures taken  demonstrate the difference. The first showed a blurry, transparent spot. But on the second, a large number of clear gray spots had emerged.

That photo showed that smaller, more uniform crystals were forming in space—and "forming better".

Thanks to such research, researchers will be able to make a drug that can be administered by injection in a doctor's office instead of through long and painful chemotherapy treatments.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 26, 2024 at 9:41am

Scientists develop ultra-thin semiconductor fibers that turn fabrics into wearable electronics

Scientists  have developed ultra-thin semiconductor fibers that can be woven into fabrics, turning them into smart wearable electronics. Their work has been published in the journal Nature.

To create reliably functioning semiconductor fibers, they must be flexible and without defects for stable signal transmission. However, existing manufacturing methods cause stress and instability, leading to cracks and deformities in the semiconductor cores, negatively impacting their performance and limiting their development.

Scientists conducted modeling and simulations to understand how stress and instability occur during the manufacturing process. They found that the challenge could be overcome through careful material selection and a specific series of steps taken during fiber production.

They developed a mechanical design and successfully fabricated hair-thin, defect-free fibers spanning 100 meters, which indicates its market scalability. Importantly the new fibers can be woven into fabrics using existing methods.

To demonstrate their fibers' high quality and functionality, the  research team developed prototypes. These included a smart beanie hat to help a visually impaired person cross the road safely by receiving alerts on a mobile phone application; a shirt that receives information and transmits it through an earpiece, like a museum audio guide; and a smartwatch with a strap that functions as a flexible sensor that conforms to the wrist of users for heart rate measurement even during physical activities.

The researchers think that their innovation is a fundamental breakthrough in the development of semiconductor fibers that are ultra-long and durable, meaning they are cost-effective and scalable while offering excellent electrical and optoelectronic (meaning it can sense, transmit and interact with light) performance.

Zhixun Wang et al, High-quality semiconductor fibres via mechanical design, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06946-0

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 26, 2024 at 8:54am

Cool paint coatings help pedestrians feel up to 1.5 degrees Celsius cooler in urban setting, a field study finds

A real-world study by researchers  has shown that the use of cool paint coatings in cities can help pedestrians feel up to 1.5 degrees Celsius cooler, making the urban area more comfortable for work and play.

Cool paint coatings contain additives that reflect the sun’s heat to reduce surface heat absorption and emission. They have been touted as one way to cool down the urban area and mitigate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, a phenomenon in which urban areas experience warmer temperatures than their outlying surroundings.

Researchers have conducted a first of its kind real-world study in the tropics to comprehensively evaluate how well cool paint coatings work in reducing city heat.

The team coated the roofs, walls, and road pavements of an industrial area in Singapore and found that by comparison with an adjacent uncoated area, the coated environment was up to two degrees Celsius cooler in the afternoon, with pedestrian thermal comfort level improving by up to 1.5 degrees Celsius, measured using the Universal Thermal Climate Index - a common international standard for human outdoor temperature sensation that takes into account temperature, relative humidity, thermal radiation, and wind speed.

This  study provides evidence that cool paint coatings reduce heat build-up and contribute to the cooling of the urban environment. This is a minimally intrusive solution for urban cooling that has an immediate effect, compared to other options that often require major urban redevelopment to deploy. Moreover, by reducing the amount of heat absorbed in urban structures, we also reduce heat load in buildings, consequently reducing indoor air-conditioning energy consumption.

E. V. S. Kiran Kumar Donthu, Yong Ping Long, Man Pun Wan, Mandi Zhou, Bing Feng Ng. Dynamics of cool surface performance on urban microclimate: A full-scale experimental study in Singapore. Sustainable Cities and Society, 2024; 102: 105218 DOI: 10.1016/j.scs.2024.105218

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 25, 2024 at 9:26am

New research shows unintended harms of organic farming

Although organic agricultural practices generally improve environmental conditions such as soil and water quality, the trade-offs aren't very well understood.

Organic farming is often touted as a more sustainable solution for food production, leveraging natural forms of pest control to promote eco-friendly cultivation.

But a new study published in Science on Thursday finds that expanding organic cropland can lead to increased pesticide use in surrounding non-organic fields, offsetting some environmental benefits.

These harmful "spillover effects" can be mitigated if organic farms are clustered together and geographically separated from conventional farms, the researchers found.

Organic fields could harbour more beneficial species that prey on insects, such birds, spiders and predatory beetles and fewer pests. Or, the lack of chemical pesticides and genetically modified seeds could mean they harbour more pests.

The researchers found that surrounding organic agriculture leads to an increase in pesticide use on conventional fields, but also leads to a larger decrease on nearby organic fields, with the effect manifesting primarily in insecticides, which specifically target insects. The level of pesticides in conventional fields decreased the further away they were from organic fields.

But the situation could be completely remedied if organic fields were grouped together, the researchers found. Spatially clustering organic fields and spatially separating organic and conventional fields could reduce the environmental footprint of both organic and conventional cropland, the team concluded.

 Farmers' decisions about pesticide are influenced by the presence of nearby organic fields—but it's not fully clear why.

The value of the crops, their susceptibility to pests, and farmers' personal risk tolerances likely all play roles.

Which mobile pests are involved, where they originate in the landscape, or how and why they move across the landscape are poorly understood, according to the researchers  calling for more research in this area.

Ashley E. Larsen et al, Spillover effects of organic agriculture on pesticide use on nearby fields, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adf2572

Erik Lichtenberg, Collateral impacts of organic farming, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.ado4083

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 24, 2024 at 10:56am

The World's First 'Unconventional' Superconductor was Found in Nature

Few materials have the uncanny talent of carrying a current with virtually no resistance in what is known as superconductivity. The smallest handful of those can be found in nature. Scientists have discovered that one material with a formula found in nature is capable of superconducting at low temperatures without using the typical quantum trickery, making it the first unconventional superconductor of its kind. Superconductors are fascinating and also hugely useful, because they conduct electricity without energy loss. This is typically thanks to their electrons sharing identity in what are known as Cooper pairs, allowing them to slip through a jumble of atoms with relative ease. Cooper pairs in unconventional superconductors link up in ways that weren't described in early models on superconductivity, ways that also mean they appear at higher temperatures. Through a series of detailed lab tests, an international team of researchers found that the mineral miassite – already known to be a superconductor – can show the properties of an unconventional superconductor. That miassite occurs in nature as well as being something scientists can synthesize in the lab makes it even more unusual. However, it's worth pointing out that it's unlikely any pieces of miassite found in nature would ever have the purity required to function as an unconventional superconductor. you think that this is something which is produced deliberately during a focused search, and it cannot possibly exist in nature. But it turns out it does. Three different tests were used to establish the unconventional superconductivity of miassite, including the London penetration depth test, which measures the reaction of the material to a weak magnetic field. Another test involved creating defects in the material, which can affect the temperature at which it becomes a superconductor. Unconventional superconductors are much more sensitive to the disorder caused by these defects than conventional superconducting materials. The discovery was made as part of efforts to find new, novel materials to advance fields such as quantum science.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-024-00456-w

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 23, 2024 at 10:53am

Accumulation of 'junk proteins' identified as one cause of aging and possible source of ALS

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a degenerative disease. The neurons responsible for movement begin to die and muscle control is progressively lost, leading to a fatal outcome. The causes of ALS are currently unknown, and there is no effective treatment.

In a paper published in Molecular Cell, researchers provide the first evidence that a possible cause of the hereditary type of ALS—familial ALS—is the accumulation in motor neurons of "junk proteins," proteins with no function that wrongly accumulate and prevent the cell from functioning properly.

Specifically, these non-functional proteins that accumulate are ribosomal proteins, which normally form ribosomes, molecular factories in charge of protein production.

Most patients with hereditary ALS share mutations in a gene called C9ORF72. This mutation results in the production of toxic proteins—or peptides—rich in the amino acid arginine. In a previous work,  the same researchers took the first steps to understand why these peptides are toxic. The reason is that these toxins stick to DNA and RNA "as if they were tar," affecting virtually all reactions in the cell that use these nucleic acids.

Thus, this study provides a new hypothesis for understanding the origin of ALS, by suggesting that it has a similar origin to another group of rare diseases known as ribosomopathies, also associated with an excess of non-functional ribosomal proteins (in the case of ALS, this problem is restricted to motor neurons).

The new study also opens a new front in a different area, aging research. The authors propose a new causal factor in the aging process, which until now would have been overlooked: nucleolar stress, a mechanism by which organelles called nucleoli react to various damages in the cell.

In this new work, scientists report a new model that explains how nucleolar stress induces toxicity in animal cells, and they provide direct evidence that it accelerates aging in mammals. This is the first experimental evidence that generating nucleolar stress accelerates aging.

Nucleolar stress caused by arginine-rich peptides triggers a ribosomopathy and accelerates aging in mice, Molecular Cell (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2024.02.031. www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fu … 1097-2765(24)00173-4

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 23, 2024 at 10:31am

Prosopometamorphopsia: a condition where people see  'demonic' face distortions

Imagine if every time you saw a face, it appeared distorted. Well, for those who have a very rare condition known as prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), which causes facial features to appear distorted, that is reality.

Prosopometamorphopsia explains, "Prosopo comes from the Greek word for face 'prosopon' while 'metamorphopsia' refers to perceptual distortions.  Specific symptoms vary from case to case and can affect the shape, size, color, and position of facial features. The duration of PMO also varies; it "can last for days, weeks, or even years.

A new Dartmouth study published in the "Clinical Pictures" section of The Lancet reports on a unique case of a patient with PMO. The research is the first to provide accurate and photorealistic visualizations of the facial distortions experienced by an individual with PMO.

The patient, a 58-year-old male with PMO, sees faces without any distortions when they are viewed on a screen and on paper, but he sees distorted faces that appear "demonic" when viewed in-person. Most PMO cases however, see distortions in all contexts, so his case is especially rare and presented a unique opportunity to accurately depict his distortions.

Scientists have heard from multiple people with PMO that they have been diagnosed by psychiatrists as having schizophrenia and put on anti-psychotics, when their condition is a problem with the visual system,  according to the researchers.

And it's not uncommon for people who have PMO to not tell others about their problem with face perception because they fear others will think the distortions are a sign of a psychiatric disorder.

"It's a problem that people often don't understand."

Through their paper, the researchers hope to increase public awareness of what PMO is.

Visualising facial distortions in prosopometamorphopsia, The Lancet (2024). www.thelancet.com/journals/lan … (24)00136-3/fulltext

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 23, 2024 at 10:23am

Messenger RNAs with multiple 'tails' could lead to more effective therapeutics: researchers

Messenger RNA (mRNA) made its big leap into the public limelight during the pandemic, thanks to its cornerstone role in several COVID-19 vaccines. But mRNAs, which are genetic sequences that instruct the body to produce proteins, are also being developed as a new class of drugs. For mRNAs to have broad therapeutic uses, however, the molecules will need to last longer in the body than those that make up the COVID vaccines.

Researchers have engineered a new mRNA structure by adding multiple "tails" to the molecules that boosted mRNA activity levels in cells by five to 20 times. They  also showed that their multi-tailed mRNAs lasted two- to three-times longer in animals compared to unmodified mRNA, and when incorporated into a CRISPR gene-editing system, resulted in more efficient gene editing in mice.

The new mRNAs, reported in Nature Biotechnology, could potentially be used to treat diseases that require long-lasting treatments that edit genes or replace faulty proteins.

Scientists have shown that non-natural structures can function so much better than naturally occurring ones. This research has given them a lot of confidence in their ability to modify mRNA molecules chemically and topologically.

Branched chemically modified poly(A) tails enhance the translation capacity of mRNA, Nature Biotechnology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-024-02174-7

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