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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 4, 2021 at 11:35am

New software allows scientists to 'walk inside' fossil and mummy samples

New software will allow scientists to see data in 3-D and create life-like models of objects like fossils and mummies, making it possible to "zoom in" on smaller details without damaging the original.

The revolutionary software involved, called Drishti, is simple, but powerful.

Applications of the latest version, Drishti Paint, have been explained in a new paper published in Royal Society Open Science.

You can even 'walk around' inside the object to see what's there. 

After researchers scan the sample, they then have a set of 3-D data which can be digitally dissected effectively using this new tool. This is the first known tool that can perform this kind of 3-D segmentation directly on a volume of data.

According to the team, the software could prove especially useful when it comes to scientific communication and education.

It has already been used to create an identical model from a mummy sample, so the mummy can be studied closely without damaging the original sample.

It had been used to scan data of a fish fossil as a case study, but this new  procedure can be used in biological, medical and industrial research.

Drishti was first developed by NCI in 2004 and has been under continuous development since then

Importantly, the software is free and available online for anyone to use.

Yuzhi Hu et al. Three-dimensional segmentation of computed tomography data using Drishti Paint : new tools and developments, Royal Society Open Science (2020). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.201033

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-software-scientists-fossil-mummy-samp...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 4, 2021 at 9:27am

How Arctic Frogs Survive Being Frozen Alive

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 4, 2021 at 9:12am

There Is One Way Humans Could 'Safely' Enter a Black Hole, Physicists Say

However, there is a rather complicated catch: A human can do this only if the respective black hole is supermassive and isolated, and if the person entering the black hole does not expect to report the findings to anyone in the entire Universe.

https://theconversation.com/could-a-human-enter-a-black-hole-to-stu...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 4, 2021 at 8:38am

Nanotech plastic packaging could leach silver into some types of foods and beverages

Antimicrobial packaging is being developed to extend the shelf life and safety of foods and beverages. However, there is concern about the transfer of potentially harmful materials, such as silver nanoparticles, from these types of containers to consumables. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces illustrate that silver embedded in an antimicrobial plastic can leave the material and form nanoparticles in foods and beverages, particularly in sweet and sugary ones.

Some polymers containing nanoparticles or nanocomposites can slow the growth of microorganisms responsible for food and beverage spoilage and foodborne illness. Although these polymers are not currently approved for use in packaging , researchers are investigating various types of nanoparticle-embedded polymers that could be incorporated into containers in the future.

Tianxi Yang et al. Food and Beverage Ingredients Induce the Formation of Silver Nanoparticles in Products Stored within Nanotechnology-Enabled Packaging, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c17867

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-nanotech-plastic-packaging-leach-silv...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 4, 2021 at 8:36am

Cutting lock with pressure water

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 4, 2021 at 8:26am

Scientists uncover potential antiviral treatment for COVID-19

Researchers from the University of Nottingham have discovered a novel antiviral property of a drug that could have major implications in how future epidemics / pandemics—including COVID-19—are managed.

The study, published in Viruses, shows that thapsigargin is a promising broad spectrum antiviral, highly effective against COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2), a common cold coronavirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and the influenza A virus.

Given that acute respiratory virus infections caused by different viruses are clinically indistinguishable on presentation, an effective broad-spectrum that can target different virus types at the same time could significantly improve clinical management. An antiviral of this type could potentially be made available for community use to control active infection and its spread.

The key features based on cell and animal studies, which make thapsigargin a promising antiviral are that it is:

• effective against viral infection when used before or during active infection
• able to prevent a virus from making new copies of itself in cells for at least 48 hours after a single 30-minute exposure.
• stable in acidic pH, as found in the stomach, and therefore can be taken orally, so could be administered without the need for injections or hospital admission.
• not sensitive to virus resistance.
• at least several hundred-fold more effective than current antiviral options.
• just as effective in blocking combined infection with coronavirus and influenza A virus as in single-virus infection.
• safe as an antiviral (a derivative of thapsigargin has been tested in prostate cancer).

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-scientists-uncover-potential...

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 3, 2021 at 12:50pm

Why Do These Deadly Insects Look Like Flowers?

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 3, 2021 at 11:54am

Economic growth has 'devastating cost to nature', review finds

Humanity's unbridled growth in recent decades has come at a "devastating cost to nature" according a wide-ranging international review on the vital economic role played by our living planet.

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Why keeping one mature street tree is far better for humans and nat...

Thanks to Victorian street planners, many British streets were designed to be full of big trees and, with 84% of the population living in urban areas, most people are more likely to encounter trees in the streets than they are in forests.

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Scientists advocate breaking laws—of geography and ecology

Recent global calamities—the pandemic, wildfires, floods—are spurring interdisciplinary scientists to nudge aside the fashionable First Law of Geography that dictates "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."

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Scientists develop method to detect fake news

Social media is increasingly used to spread fake news. The same problem can be found on the capital market—criminals spread fake news about companies in order to manipulate share prices. Researchers at the Universities of Göttingen and Frankfurt and the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana have developed an approach that can recognize such fake news, even when the news content is repeatedly adapted. The results of the study were published in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 3, 2021 at 11:50am

Venus flytraps found to produce magnetic fields

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is a carnivorous plant that encloses its prey using modified leaves as a trap. During this process, electrical signals known as action potentials trigger the closure of the leaf lobes. An interdisciplinary team of scientists has now shown that these electrical signals generate measurable magnetic fields. Using atomic magnetometers, it proved possible to record this biomagnetism.

The problem is that the magnetic signals in plants are very weak, which explains why it was extremely difficult to measure them with the help of older technologies.

We know that in the human brain, voltage changes in certain regions result from concerted electrical activity that travels through nerve cells in the form of action potentials. Techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to record these activities and noninvasively diagnose disorders. When plants are stimulated, they also generate electrical signals, which can travel through a cellular network analogous to the human and animal nervous system.

Researchers have now demonstrated that electrical activity in the Venus flytrap is also associated with magnetic signals.The action potentials in a multicellular plant system produce measurable magnetic fields, something that had never been confirmed before.

The trap of Dionaea muscipula consists of bilobed trapping leaves with sensitive hairs, which, when touched, trigger an action potential that travels through the whole trap. After two successive stimuli, the trap closes and any potential insect prey is locked inside and subsequently digested. Interestingly, the trap is electrically excitable in a variety of ways: in addition to mechanical influences such as touch or injury, osmotic energy, for example salt-water loads, and thermal energy in the form of heat or cold can also trigger action potentials. For their study, the research team used heat stimulation to induce action potentials, thereby eliminating potentially disturbing factors such as mechanical background noise in their magnetic measurements.

While biomagnetism has been relatively well-researched in humans and animals, so far very little equivalent research has been done in the plant kingdom, using only superconducting-quantum-interference-device (SQUID) magnetometers, bulky instruments which must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures. For the current experiment, the research team used atomic magnetometers to measure the magnetic signals of the Venus flytrap. The sensor is a glass cell filled with a vapor of alkali atoms, which react to small changes in the local magnetic-field environment. These optically pumped magnetometers are more attractive for biological applications because they do not require cryogenic cooling and can also be miniaturized.

The researchers detected magnetic signals with an amplitude of up to 0.5 picotesla from the Venus flytrap, which is millions of times weaker than the Earth's magnetic field. "The signal magnitude recorded is similar to what is observed during surface measurements of nerve impulses in animals.

Anne Fabricant et al. Action potentials induce biomagnetic fields in carnivorous Venus flytrap plants, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-81114-w

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-venus-flytraps-magnetic-fields.html?u...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 3, 2021 at 11:43am

Temperature, humidity, wind predict second wave of pandemic

The 'second wave' of the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in much blame placed on a lack of appropriate safety measures. However, due to the impacts of weather, research suggests two outbreaks per year during a pandemic are inevitable.

Though face masks, travel restrictions, and social distancing guidelines help slow the number of new infections in the short term, the lack of climate effects incorporated into epidemiological models presents a glaring hole that can cause long-term effects.

Typical models for predicting the behavior of an epidemic contain only two basic parameters, transmission rate and recovery rate. These rates tend to be treated as constants, but  this is not actually the case. Temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed all play a significant role, so the researchers aimed to modify typical models to account for these climate conditions. They call their new weather-dependent variable the Airborne Infection Rate index.

When they applied the AIR index to models of Paris, New York City, and Rio de Janeiro, they found it accurately predicted the timing of the second outbreak in each city, suggesting two outbreaks per year is a natural, weather-dependent phenomenon. Further, the behavior of the virus in Rio de Janeiro was markedly different from the behavior of the virus in Paris and New York, due to seasonal variations in the northern and southern hemispheres, consistent with real data.

The authors emphasize the importance of accounting for these seasonal variations when designing safety measures.

As temperatures rise and humidity falls, scientists expect another improvement in infection numbers, though they note that mask and distancing guidelines should continue to be followed with the appropriate weather-based modifications.

Talib Dbouk and Dimitris Drikakis. Fluid dynamics and epidemiology: Seasonality and transmission dynamics. Physics of Fluids 33, 021901 (2021); doi.org/10.1063/5.0037640

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-temperature-humidity-pandemic.html?ut...

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