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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 7:59am

The Heliophysics Big Year

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 7:41am

Stealth swimmers: the fish that hide behind others to hunt

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 7:37am

Researchers discover antifungal molecule

Fungal infections are killing thousands of people each year, some with a morbidity rate of nearly 80%. The rise in fungal infections is due, in part, to the successful treatment of other diseases. As people live longer and successfully undergo treatments like chemotherapy and organ transplants, they often live with weakened immune systems. When drugs that treat arthritis and other ailments that also weaken immune systems are added to the mix, a perfect storm is created for potentially deadly fungal infections.

To make matters worse, only a handful of antifungal treatments are available, and even those are becoming less effective as fungi become more resistant. However,  researchers have recently published findings in the Journal of Natural Products indicating that a novel breakthrough treatment may have been discovered.
The molecule they're excited about is called persephacin. This antifungal discovery appears to work on a broad spectrum of infectious fungi, and it is reasonably non-toxic to human cells, which is a huge deal because many current treatments are toxic to the human body.

Fungi are found throughout the botanical world, and plants and fungi often work together. Some of these fungi kill competitors or deter insects from eating the plan. So researchers  hypothesized that if these plant-dwelling fungi, known as endophytes, could help the plants fight off infections by killing the invading fungi, then these molecules might also be able to protect humans and animals from fungal pathogens. As it turns out, they were right.

The researchers  developed a novel way to procure leaf samples using a laser device called the Fast Laser-Enabled Endophyte Trapper, or FLEET. This method helps generate samples in a sterile environment and drastically increases the number of samples that can be acquired.

Using traditional methods, they could process roughly four to six samples per minute. But the FLEET system is capable of aseptically generating between 500-600 tissue specimens in 10 minutes. This allowed them to rapidly screen more samples and enhanced the opportunity for potential drug discoveries. This is one of them. Antifungal resistance keeps evolving, and this could provide a new alternative. That's why this molecule is so exciting.

Lin Du et al, Persephacin Is a Broad-Spectrum Antifungal Aureobasidin Metabolite That Overcomes Intrinsic Resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus, Journal of Natural Products (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.3c00382

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 12, 2023 at 1:19pm

Muon magnetism dashes physics dreams
The most precise measurement of an elementary particle’s magnetism suggests that the ‘standard model’ of physics could be right after all. A discrepancy between predicted and measured values of the magnetic moment of the muon — a heavier cousin of the electron — was seen as a possible signal of undiscovered subatomic particles. Physicists at the Muon g – 2 experiment at Fermilab have now doubled the precision of the previous best measurement, to an estimated error of just 201 parts per billion. And an alternative theoretical prediction is in agreement with this result, suggesting there might not be any discrepancy to explain.

https://muon-g-2.fnal.gov/result2023.pdf?utm_source=Nature+Briefing...

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Soil is home to more than half of all life About 59% of all species on Earth live in soil, estimate researchers who reviewed global biodiversity data. This would make the ground the planet’s single most biodiverse habitat. The figure doubles an earlier estimate and could be even higher because so little is known about soil, the researchers suggest. It is home to 99% of Enchytraeidae worms, 90% of fungi, 86% of plants and more than 50% of bacteria — but only 3% of mammals live in it.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2304663120

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 12, 2023 at 1:00pm

Chemicals from maize roots influence wheat yield

Maize roots secrete certain chemicals that affect the quality of soil. In some fields, this effect increases yields of wheat planted subsequent to maize in the same soil by more than 4%. This was proven by researchers . While the findings from several field experiments show that these effects are highly variable, in the long term they may yet help to make the cultivation of grains more sustainable, without the need for additional fertilizers or pesticides.

Plants produce an abundance of special chemicals. Some of these are released into the soil and influence its quality. This, in turn, affects the next plant to grow in the soil. So far, little research has taken place on the extent to which the excreted chemicals can be used in agriculture to increase productivity.

Recently, however, researchers from the Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) at the University of Bern have conducted field experiments in this area. With their findings published in the scientific journal eLife, the researchers demonstrate that specialized metabolitesfrom the roots of the maize plant can bring about an increase in the yields of subsequently planted wheat under agriculturally realistic conditions.

On the basis of earlier studies conducted by researchers at the Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) at the University of Bern, it was known that so-called benzoxazinoids—natural chemicals which maize plants release through their roots—change the composition of microorganisms in the soil on the roots and therefore influence the growth of the subsequent plants that grow in the soil. The present study investigated whether plant-soil feedbacks of this kind also occur under realistic agricultural conditions.

During a two-year field experiment, two lines of maize were initially grown, only one of which released benzoxazinoids into the soil. Three varieties of winter wheat were then grown on the differently conditioned soils.

On this basis, it was possible to demonstrate that the excretion of benzoxazinoids improves germination and increases tillering, growth and crop yield.

In addition to the increased crop, lower levels of infestation by some pests were also observed. A yield increase of 4% may not sound spectacular, but it is still significant considering how challenging it has become to enhance wheat yields without additional inputs.

Valentin Gfeller et al, Plant secondary metabolite-dependent plant-soil feedbacks can improve crop yield in the field, eLife (2023). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.84988

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 12, 2023 at 11:28am

Advice to freeze out risk of thermal attacks

A team of computer security experts have developed a set of recommendations to help defend against "thermal attacks" which can steal personal information.

Thermal attacks use heat-sensitive cameras to read the traces of fingerprints left on surfaces like smartphone screens, computer keyboards and PIN pads.

Hackers can use the relative intensity of heat traces across recently-touched surfaces to reconstruct users' passwords.

Last year experts demonstrated how easily thermal images could be used to crack passwords.

They developed ThermoSecure, a system which used AI to scan heat-trace images and correctly guess passwords in seconds, alerting many to the threat of thermal attacks.

Their research,  presented as a paper at the USENIX Security Symposium conference in Anaheim, California, on Friday 11 August, also includes advice to manufacturers on how their devices could be made more secure. 

The team identified 15 different approaches described in previous papers on computer security which could reduce the risk of thermal attacks.

Those included ways to reduce the transfer of heat from users' hands, by wearing gloves or rubber thimbles, or changing the temperature of hands by touching something cold before typing.

Approaches suggested in the literature also included pressing hands against surfaces or breathing on them to obscure their fingerprint heat once they had finished typing.

Other suggestions for increased security focused on hardware and software. A heating element behind surfaces could erase traces of finger heat, or surfaces could be made from materials which dissipate heat more rapidly.

Security on public surfaces could be increased by introducing a physical shield which covers keys until heat has dissipated. Alternatively, eye-tracking inputs or biometric security could reduce the risk of successful thermal attacks.

The paper concludes with recommendations for users on how they can defend themselves against thermal attacks in public, and for device manufacturers on how safety measures could be built into future generations of hardware and software.

 In the Quest to Protect Users from Side-Channel Attacks—A User-Centred Design Space to Mitigate Thermal Attacks on Public Payment Terminals. www.usenix.org/conference/usen … 3/presentation/marky

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 11, 2023 at 10:30am

Repairing the heart with silicon nanowires and stem cell cardiomyocytes

A research group  has developed a strategy to improve heart repair using human pluripotent stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes combined with biodegradable and biocompatible electroconductive silicon nanowires.

In the paper, "Nanowired human cardiac organoid transplantation enables highly efficient and effective recovery of infarcted hearts," published in Science Advances, the authors detail how cells self-assemble to form organoids that mimic fundamental cardiac tissue–level functions and contain vascular networks that reduce the risk of apoptosis during oxygen deprivation.

Nanowired cardiac organoids, tiny living and contracting orbs of heart tissue with microscopic wires embedded, were fabricated from human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CMs) and cultured along with electroconductive silicon nanowires (e-SiNWs) so that the wires were integrated into the tissues. The engineered spheres were then injected into damaged and dying tissues of rat hearts.

While the use of cardiac organoids for tissue repair is not new, there have been limitations of low cell retention at the repair site, leading to moderate functional improvements and scalability issues.

The addition of nanowires increased the conductivity of the tissues, allowing them to synchronize better, facilitating better communication among cells and integration with the existing heart tissue.

Nanowired organoids achieved double the functional recovery in the rats, with a lower number of engrafted cells (~0.5 × 10⁶ hPSC-CMs per rat) compared to previous studies without nanowires in the hPSC-CMs (~10 × 10⁶ hPSC-CMs per rat).

Integrating e-SiNWs did not exacerbate inflamatory responses in healthy or damage repair settings, as expected from the biocompatible nature of silicon.

Nanowired cardiac organoids also exhibited significantly less apoptosis than wireless cardiac spheroids.

Yu Tan et al, Nanowired human cardiac organoid transplantation enables highly efficient and effective recovery of infarcted hearts, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf2898

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 11, 2023 at 10:08am

Researchers engineer bacteria that can detect tumor DNA

Pushing into a new chapter of technologically advanced biological sensors, scientists have engineered bacteria that can detect the presence of tumor DNA in a live organism.

Their innovation, which detected cancer in the colons of mice, could pave the way to new biosensors capable of identifying various infections, cancers and other diseases.

The advancement is described in the journal Science. Bacteria previously have been designed to carry out various diagnostic and therapeutic functions, but lacked the ability to identify specific DNA sequences and mutations outside of cells. The new "Cellular Assay for Targeted CRISPR-discriminated Horizontal gene transfer," or "CATCH," was designed to do just that.

Engineered bacteria detect tumor DNA

The new research is based on previous ideas related to horizontal gene transfer, a technique used by organisms to move genetic material between one another in a manner distinct from traditional parent-to-offspring genetic inheritance. While horizontal gene transfer is widely known from bacteria to bacteria, the researchers achieved their goal of applying this concept from mammalian tumors and human cells into bacteria.

The researchers are now adapting their bacteria biosensor strategy with new circuits and different types of bacteria for detecting and treating human cancers and infections.

 Robert M. Cooper et al, Engineered bacteria detect tumor DNA, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adf3974. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf3974

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 10, 2023 at 12:54pm

Physicists demonstrate how sound can be transmitted through vacuum

Did you think that sound waves can't travel through vacuum?

Physicists have demonstrated that in certain situations, sound can be transmitted strongly across a vacuum region!

In a recent article published in Communications Physics they show that in some cases, a sound wave can jump or "tunnel" fully across a vacuum gap between two solids if the materials in question are piezoelectric. In such materials, vibrations (sound waves) produce an electrical response as well, and since an electric field can exist in vacuum, it can transmit the sound waves.

The requirement is that the size of the gap is smaller than the wavelength of the sound wave. This effect works not only in audio range of frequencies (Hz–kHz), but also in ultrasound (MHz) and hypersound (GHz) frequencies, as long as the vacuum gap is made smaller as the frequencies increase.

In most cases the effect is small, but researchers also found situations where the full energy of the wave jumps across the vacuum with 100% efficiency, without any reflections. As such, the phenomenon could find applications in microelectromechanical components (MEMS, smartphone technology) and in the control of heat.

Zhuoran Geng et al, Complete tunneling of acoustic waves between piezoelectric crystals, Communications Physics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s42005-023-01293-y

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 10, 2023 at 12:34pm

Anti-bacterial virus treated antibiotic resistant infections with 86.6% success rate

A new international study conducted by the Israeli Phage Therapy Center (IPTC)  using phage PASA16 on compassionate basis to treat tough Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections, has shown promising results with an 86.6% success rate.

This research involving 16 patients with persistent infections represents the largest of its kind and brings encouraging findings. The study's success demonstrates the potential effectiveness of PASA16 phage therapy in tackling challenging Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections, paving the way for future clinical trials and encouraging further exploration of phage therapy as an alternative and auxiliary approach against antibiotic-resistant infections.

This study sheds light on the potential role of phages in combination with antibiotics in combating the hard-to-treat pathogen P. aeruginosa infections that were unresponsive to conventional treatments.

 Ran Nir-Paz, Refractory Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections treated with Phage PASA16: a compassionate use case series, Med (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.medj.2023.07.002. www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(23)00225-8

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