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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 4, 2021 at 9:29am

Antimicrobial Resistance, HAIs and the Environment!

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 4, 2021 at 9:17am

Proving The Impossible

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2021 at 10:20am

Microbes in cow stomachs can break down plastic

Plastic is notoriously hard to break down, but researchers  have found that bacteria from a cow's rumen—one of the four compartments of its stomach—can digest certain types of the ubiquitous material, representing a sustainable way to reduce plastic litter.

The scientists suspected such bacteria might be useful since cow diets already contain natural plant polyesters.

Thye  looked at three kinds of polyesters. One, polyethylene terephthalate, commonly known as PET, is a synthetic polymer commonly used in textiles and packaging. The other two consisted of a biodegradable plastic often used in compostable plastic bags (polybutylene adipate terephthalate, PBAT), and a biobased material (Polyethylene furanoate, PEF) made from renewable resources.

They obtained rumen liquid from a slaughterhouse in Austria to get the microorganisms they were testing. They then incubated that liquid with the three types of plastics they were testing (which were tested in both powder and film form) in order to understand how effectively the plastic would break down.

According to their results, which were recently published in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, all three plastics could be broken down by the microorganisms from cow stomachs, with the plastic powders breaking down quicker than plastic film. 

Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, DOI: 10.3389/fbioe.2021.684459a , www.frontiersin.org/articles/1 … ioe.2021.684459/full

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-microbes-cow-stomachs-plastic.html?ut...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2021 at 9:54am

Groundbreaking methane synthesis discovery

An interdisciplinary team of scientists recently published research casting new light on a previously unknown element of the carbon cycle, thanks to data collected from Yellowstone National Park over more than a decade.

The study is the subject of a new paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science titled "Aerobic Bacterial Methane Synthesis."

They began studying the microbiology of Yellowstone Lake in 2007. While collecting data to analyze the lake's chemistry and the interaction of various microbes in the lake with the park's underlying thermal features, they noticed something seemed off. They came across some lake water gas chemistries that didn't make  sense.

That discrepancy illustrated what has been termed the "methane paradox." For years, scientists have understood that when microorganisms produce methane, they do it anaerobically, meaning they don't use oxygen. But in the surface waters of the lake where the team was seeing methane, none of those organisms were found.

Methane is a naturally occurring gas made up of carbon and hydrogen atoms. It is the byproduct of a number of biological processes, though human activities like mining coal and refining natural gas also produce methane. It is a greenhouse gas known to be much more potent when trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, which is why many researchers are interested in identifying where in the biosphere it is created and where it goes.

When they did the DNA extraction from the lake water, they couldn't find the anaerobic organisms that are usually responsible for the presence of methane. Instead, they discovered aerobic bacteria were involved, isolating a bacterium called Acidovorax, which then allowed them to begin understanding this process.

Thye used analytical equipment to identify the presence of methylamine and glycine betaine in the lake water, biochemicals the team hypothesized to be key in the process of methane production. To test the theory, they narrowed down which gene the Acidovorax bacteria needed to convert methylamine or glycine betaine into methane.

They could break this down to a basic discovery about methylamine conversion to methane under aerobic conditions

Through a series of microbial experiments and extensive analysis of the wider biological community present in the lake samples, scientists identified a known gene that encodes aspartate aminotransferase, or AAT, that seemed to be catalyzing the methane synthesis.

This is a fundamentally different process from anaerobic methane synthesis

Qian Wang et al, Aerobic bacterial methane synthesis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2019229118

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-team-publishes-groundbreaking-methane...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2021 at 6:59am

Scientists identify long-sought marker for COVID vaccine success

Knowing which signatures in the blood predict protection against COVID-19 could speed the development of new vaccines.

Researchers developing the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine have identified biomarkers that can help to predict whether someone will be protected by the jab they receive.

The team at the University of Oxford, UK, identified a ‘correlate of protection’ from the immune responses of trial participants — the first found by any COVID-19 vaccine developer. Identifying such blood markers, scientists say, will improve existing vaccines and speed the development of new ones by reducing the need for costly large-scale efficacy trials.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01778-2?utm_source=Natur...

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2021 at 6:55am

Russia races Tom Cruise and Musk for first movie in space

Six decades after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth, earning Moscow a key win in the Cold War, Russia is again in a space race with Washington.

This time though the stakes are somewhat glitzier.

On October 5, one of Russia's most celebrated actresses, 36-year-old Yulia Peresild is blasting off to the International Space Station (ISS) with film director Klim Shipenko, 38.

Their mission? Shoot the first film in orbit before the Americans do.

If their plan falls into place, the Russians are expected to beat Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise and Hollywood director Doug Liman, who were first to announce their project together with NASA and Space X, the company of billionaire Elon Musk.

Its plot, which has been kept under wraps by the crew and Russia's space agency, has been revealed by Russian media outlets to feature a doctor dispatched urgently to the ISS to save a cosmonaut.

In preparation for this 21st-century space race, Peresild has since late May been undergoing intensive training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City outside Moscow.

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-russia-tom-cruise-musk-movie.html?utm...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2021 at 6:47am

Scientists discover a new class of memory cells in the brain

Scientists have long searched in vain for a class of brain cells that could explain the visceral flash of recognition that we feel when we see a very familiar face, like that of our grandmothers. But the proposed "grandmother neuron"—a single cell at the crossroads of sensory perception and memory, capable of prioritizing an important face over the rabble—remained elusive.

Now, new research reveals a class of neurons in the brain's temporal pole region that links face perception to long-term memory. It's not quite the apocryphal grandmother neuron—rather than a single cell, it's a population of cells that collectively remembers grandma's face. The findings, published in Science, are the first to explain how our brains inculcate the faces of those we hold dear.

"A fast link between face perception and memory in the temporal pole" Science (2021). science.sciencemag.org/lookup/ … 1126/science.abi6671

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-scientists-class-memory-cell...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2021 at 6:43am

Physicists observationally confirm Hawking's black hole theorem for the first time

There are certain rules that even the most extreme objects in the universe must obey. A central law for black holes predicts that the area of their event horizons—the boundary beyond which nothing can ever escape—should never shrink. This law is Hawking's area theorem, named after physicist Stephen Hawking, who derived the theorem in 1971.

Fifty years later, physicists at MIT and elsewhere have now confirmed Hawking's area theorem for the first time, using observations of gravitational waves. Their results appear yesterday (2nd July,2021) in Physical Review Letters.

In the study, the researchers take a closer look at GW150914, the first gravitational wave signal detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), in 2015. The signal was a product of two inspiraling black holes that generated a new black hole, along with a huge amount of energy that rippled across space-time as gravitational waves.

If Hawking's area theorem holds, then the horizon area of the new black hole should not be smaller than the total horizon area of its parent black holes. In the new study, the physicists reanalyzed the signal from GW150914 before and after the cosmic collision and found that indeed, the total event horizon area did not decrease after the merger—a result that they report with 95 percent confidence.

Their findings mark the first direct observational confirmation of Hawking's area theorem, which has been proven mathematically but never observed in nature until now. The team plans to test future gravitational-wave signals to see if they might further confirm Hawking's theorem or be a sign of new, law-bending physics.

Testing the black-hole area law with GW150914, Physical Review Letters (2021). journals.aps.org/prl/accepted/ … 4336d883136eb53c122b

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-physicists-observationally-hawking-bl...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2021 at 6:39am

Lowering Blood Pressure in 5 Minutes

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 1, 2021 at 12:06pm

Solving a murder case with physics

In 2009, famed music producer Phil Spector was found guilty of the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, who was found dead from a single gunshot to her mouth at close range in Spector's California mansion.

During the trial, the attorney argued that Spector couldn't have been the shooter because his white dinner jacket only had a handful blood droplets on it. If he shot Clarkson, the jacket would be covered with blood.

After watching a film about the trial, UIC Distinguished Professor Alexander Yarin was intrigued by the scientific questions it raised. Yarin and his colleagues from Iowa State University—Assistant Professor James Michael and Associate Professor Daniel Attinger— started researching blood spatter, and their recent papers show how Spector could be the shooter and remain relatively free of blood droplets.

The researchers discovered that the gases released from a gun's muzzle brakes escape in a series of turbulent vortex rings, which causes a phenomenon called "blood back spatter"—the blood that travels back toward the shooter—to reverse direction away from the shooter.

At shortrange shooting, the muzzle gasses interfere with the blood back spatter and deflect droplets. Researchers did simulations  and found that there are scenarios where droplets can be turned around completely and land behind the victim. Experiments confirmed that prediction.

In addition, the researchers noted that a shooter could stand in a certain position or at a specific angle and all backward blood spatter would be turned around, keeping the shooter clean.

Gen Li et al, Blood backspatter interaction with propellant gases, Physics of Fluids (2021). DOI: 10.1063/5.0045214

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-case-physics.html?utm_source=nwletter...

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