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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 9, 2021 at 10:26am

Why Arctic soil can go slip-sliding away

Slow-moving arctic soils form patterns that, from a distance, resemble those found in common fluids such as drips in paint and birthday cake icing. Los Alamos researchers and their collaborators analyzed existing arctic soil formations and compared them to viscous fluids, determining that there is a physical explanation for this pattern that is common to both Earth and Mars landscapes.

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Algae blooms harmful to aquaculture: UN global assessment

Potentially lethal marine algae blooms have not increased in number over the last three decades, but pose a serious threat to aquaculture, according to a UN global assessment released recently.

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Bacteria-sized robots take on microplastics and win by breaking the...

Small pieces of plastic are everywhere, stretching from urban environments to pristine wilderness. Left to their own devices, it can take hundreds of years for them to degrade completely. Catalysts activated by sunlight could speed up the process, but getting these compounds to interact with microplastics is difficult. In a proof-of-concept study, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces developed self-propelled microrobots that can swim, attach to plastics and break them down.

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Normal breathing sends saliva droplets 7 feet; masks shorten this

The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control recommend keeping a certain distance between people to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These social distancing recommendations are estimated from a variety of studies, but further research about the precise mechanism of virus transport from one person to another is still needed.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 9, 2021 at 10:23am

Subatomic particle seen changing to antiparticle and back

Physicists have proved that a subatomic particle can switch into its antiparticle alter-ego and back again, in a new discovery revealed recently.

The extraordinarily precise measurement was made by UK researchers using the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN.

It has provided the first evidence that charm mesons can change into their antiparticle and back again.

For more than 10 years, scientists have known that charm mesons, subatomic particles that contain a quark and an antiquark, can travel as a mixture of their particle and antiparticle states.

It is a phenomenon called mixing.

However, this new result shows for the first time that they can oscillate between the two states.

Armed with this new evidence, scientists can try to tackle some of the biggest questions in physics around how particles behave outside of the Standard Model.

One being, whether these transitions are caused by unknown particles not predicted by the guiding theory.

The research, submitted to Physical Review Letters and available on arXiv.

Observation of the mass difference between neutral charm-meson eigenstates. arXiv:2106.03744v1 [hep-ex] arxiv.org/abs/2106.03744

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-subatomic-particle-antiparticle.html?...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 9, 2021 at 10:07am

Scientists can predict which women will have serious pregnancy complications

Women who will develop potentially life-threatening disorders during pregnancy can be identified early when hormone levels in the placenta are tested, a new study has shown.

Pregnancy disorders affect around one in ten pregnant women. Nearly all of the organ systems of the mother's body need to alter their function during pregnancy so that the baby can grow. If the mother's body cannot properly adapt to the growing baby this leads to major and common issues including fetal growth restriction, fetal over-growth, gestational diabetes, and preeclampsia—a life-threatening high blood pressure in the mother.

Many of these complications lead to difficult labors for women with more medical intervention and lifelong issues for the baby including diabetes, heart issues and obesity.

Pregnancy disorders are usually diagnosed during the second or third trimester of gestation when they have often already had a serious impact on the health of the mother and baby. The current methods to diagnose pregnancy disorders are not sensitive or reliable enough to identify all at risk pregnancies.

Now scientists have found a way to test hormone levels in the placenta to predict which women will have serious pregnancy complications.

This study found hormonal biomarkers from the placenta could indicate which women would have pregnancy complications. We found that these biomarkers are present from the first trimester of pregnancy, normally women are only diagnosed with complications during the second or third trimester when disorders may already have had serious consequences for the health of the mother and her developing baby.

Nature Communications Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-02214-x

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-scientists-women-pregnancy-c...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 9, 2021 at 9:45am

Defying body clock linked to depression and lower wellbeing

People whose sleep pattern goes against their natural body clock are more likely to have depression and lower levels of wellbeing, according to a largescale new study.

This research also found the most robust evidence to date that being genetically programmed to be an early riser is protective against major depression, and improves wellbeing. Researchers suggest this may be because society is set up to be more aligned to early risers, through the standard 9-5 working pattern.

Molecular Psychiatry (2021). www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01157-3

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-defying-body-clock-linked-de...

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Climate change is making ocean waves more powerful, threatening to ...

Sea level rise isn't the only way climate change will devastate the coast. Our research, published today, found it is also making waves more powerful, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 8, 2021 at 11:35am

Studies reveal skull as unexpected source of brain immunity

he immune system is the brain’s best frenemy. It protects the brain from infection and helps injured tissues heal, but it also causes autoimmune diseases and creates inflammation that drives neurodegeneration.

Two new studies in mice suggest that the double-edged nature of the relationship between the immune system and the brain may come down to the origins of the immune cells that patrol the meninges, the tissues that surround the brain and spinal cord. In complementary studies published June 3 in the journal Science, two teams of researchers unexpectedly found that many of the immune cells in the meninges come from bone marrow in the skull and migrate to the brain through special channels without passing through the blood.

These skull-derived immune cells are peacekeepers, dedicated to maintaining a healthy status quo. It’s the other immune cells, the ones that arrive from the bloodstream, that seem to be the troublemakers. They carry genetic signatures that mark them as likely to promote autoimmunity and inflammation, and they become more abundant with aging or under conditions of disease or injury. Taken together, the findings reveal a key aspect of the connection between the brain and the immune system that could inform our understanding of a wide range of brain disorders.

1. Andrea Cugurra, Tornike Mamuladze, Justin Rustenhoven, Taitea Dykstra, Giorgi Beroshvili, Zev J. Greenberg, Wendy Baker, Zach Papadopoulos, Antoine Drieu, Susan Blackburn, Mitsuhiro Kanamori, Simone Brioschi, Jasmin Herz, Laura G. Schuettpelz, Marco Colonna, Igor Smirnov, Jonathan Kipnis. Skull and vertebral bone marrow are myeloid cell reservoirs for the meninges and CNS parenchyma. Science, 2021; eabf7844 DOI: 10.1126/science.abf7844

https://researchnews.cc/news/7122/Studies-reveal-skull-as-unexpecte...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210603171058.htm

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 8, 2021 at 11:00am

World's first blood test for real-time monitoring of cancer treatme...

Cancer patients who are undergoing targeted therapy can look forward to a new blood test that could tell their doctors whether the treatment is working, within one day after the start of the treatment. This will significantly speed up the evaluation process and enable doctors to make adjustments to the treatment plan, if necessary, to improve patients' chances of recovery.

Sijun Pan et al, Extracellular vesicle drug occupancy enables real-time monitoring of targeted cancer therapy, Nature Nanotechnology (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-021-00872-w

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How coronavirus aerosols travel through lungs

More than 65% of inhaled coronavirus particles reach the deepest region of our lungs where damage to cells can lead to low blood oxygen levels, new research has discovered, and more of these aerosols reach the right lung than the left.

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Infrared imaging leaves invasive pythons nowhere to hide

For more than 25 years, Burmese pythons have been living and breeding in the Florida Everglades, where they prey on native wildlife and disrupt the region's delicate ecosystems. A new study shows that infrared cameras could make it easier to spot these invasive snakes in the Florida foliage, providing a new tool in the effort to remove them.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 8, 2021 at 10:47am

Bacteriophages  prove to be more effective at fighting antibiotic resistance when trained

The threat of antibiotic resistance rises as bacteria continue to evolve to foil even the most powerful modern drug treatments. By 2050, antibiotic resistant-bacteria threaten to claim more than 10 million lives as existing therapies prove ineffective.

Bacteriophage, or "phage," have become a new source of hope against growing antibiotic resistance. Ignored for decades by western science, phages have become the subject of increasing research attention due to their capability to infect and kill bacterial threats.

A new project  has provided evidence that phages that undergo special evolutionary training increase their capacity to subdue bacteria. Like a boxer in training ahead of a title bout, pre-trained phages demonstrated they could delay the onset of bacterial resistance.

The trained phage had already experienced ways that the bacteria would try to dodge it. It had 'learned' in a genetic sense. It had already evolved mutations to help it counteract those moves that the bacteria were taking. Scientists are using phage's own improvement algorithm, evolution by natural selection, to regain its therapeutic potential and solve the problem of bacteria evolving resistance to yet another therapy.

The researchers are now extending their findings to research how pre-trained phages perform on bacteria important in clinical settings, such as E. coli. They are also working to evaluate how well training methods work in animal models.

Joshua M. Borin et al, Coevolutionary phage training leads to greater bacterial suppression and delays the evolution of phage resistance, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2104592118

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-viruses-effective-antibiotic-resistan...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 8, 2021 at 10:28am

Turning off lights can save migrating birds from crashing into buildings

Every night during the spring and fall migration seasons, thousands of birds are killed when they crash into illuminated windows, disoriented by the light. But a new study in PNAS shows that darkening just half of a building's windows can make a big difference for birds. Using decades' worth of data and birds collected by Field Museum scientists at Chicago's McCormick Place convention center, the researchers found that on nights when half the windows were darkened, there were 11 times fewer bird collisions during spring migration and 6 times fewer collisions during fall migration than when all the windows were lit.

This  research provides the best evidence yet that migrating birds are attracted to building lights, often causing them to collide with windows and die. And that turning off the lights can save the birds.

Benjamin M. Van Doren el al., "Drivers of fatal bird collisions in an urban center," PNAS (2021). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2101666118

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-migrating-birds.html?utm_source=nwlet...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 8, 2021 at 10:20am

part 2:

Scientists have known that energized particles that emanate from the sun—such as electrons racing at approximately 45 million miles per hour—precipitate along the Earth's magnetic field lines into the upper atmosphere, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen molecules, kicking them into an excited state. These excited molecules relax by emitting light, producing the colorful hues of the aurora.

The theory was supported by spacecraft missions that frequently found Alfven waves traveling Earthward above auroras, presumably accelerating electrons along the way. Although space-based measurements had supported the theory, limitations inherent to spacecraft and rocket measurements had prevented a definitive test.

The physicists were able to find confirmatory evidence in a series of experiments conducted at the Large Plasma Device (LPD) in UCLA's Basic Plasma Science Facility, a national collaborative research facility supported jointly by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-physicists-definitive-evidence-aurora...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 8, 2021 at 10:20am

Physicists report definitive evidence how auroras are created

The aurora borealis, or northern lights, that fill the sky in high-latitude regions have fascinated people for thousands of years. But how they're created, while theorized, had not been conclusively proven till recently.

In a new study, a team of physicists  reports definitive evidence that the most brilliant auroras are produced by powerful electromagnetic waves during geomagnetic storms. The phenomena, known as Alfven waves, accelerate electrons toward Earth, causing the particles to produce the familiar atmospheric light show.

The study, published online June 7 in the journal Nature Communications, concludes a decades-long quest to demonstrate experimentally the physical mechanisms for the acceleration of electrons by Alfven waves under conditions corresponding to Earth's auroral magnetosphere.

Measurements revealed this small population of electrons undergoes 'resonant acceleration' by the Alfven wave's electric field, similar to a surfer catching a wave and being continually accelerated as the surfer moves along with the wave.

 Laboratory measurements of the physics of auroral electron acceleration by Alfvén waves, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23377-5 , www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23377-5

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