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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2020 at 6:21am

Did you know lime juice burns your skin in the sun? Find out why ….

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2020 at 6:14am

Scientists develop new compound which kills both types of antibiotic resistant superbugs

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-compound-antibiotic-resist...

https://www.quora.com/q/sciencecommunication/Scientists-develop-new...    check %%

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Plant protein discovery could reduce need for fertilizer

Researchers have discovered how a protein in plant roots controls the uptake of minerals and water, a finding which could improve the tolerance of agricultural crops to climate change and reduce the need for chemical fertilizers.

Guilhem Reyt et al, Uclacyanin Proteins Are Required for Lignified Nanodomain Formation within Casparian Strips, Current Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.07.095

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-protein-discovery-fertilizer.html?utm...

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India will supply coronavirus vaccines to the world — will its people benefit?

The country will struggle to make and distribute enough doses to control its own massive outbreak, scientists say.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02507-x?utm_source=Natur...

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Scientists just created the first lab-grown human breast milk

This may spell the beginning of the end for infant formula

https://massivesci.com/articles/cultured-breastmilk-biomilq-new-har...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2020 at 5:57am

Uncovering the genetics behind heart attacks that surprise young, healthy women

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-uncovering-genetics-heart-yo...

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Researchers identify nanobody that may prevent COVID-19 infection

Researchers  have identified a small neutralizing antibody, a so-called nanobody, that has the capacity to block SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells. The researchers think this nanobody has the potential to be developed as an antiviral treatment against COVID-19.

An alpaca nanobody neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 by blocking receptor interaction, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18174-5 , www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18174-5

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-nanobody-covid-infection.html?utm_sou...

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Nano particles for healthy tissue

"Eat your vitamins" might be replaced with "ingest your ceramic nano-particles" in the future as space research is giving more weight to the idea that nanoscopic particles could help protect cells from common causes of damage.

Oxidative stress occurs in our bodies when cells lose the natural balance of electrons in the molecules that we are made of. This is a common and constant occurrence that is part of our metabolism but also plays a role in the aging process  and several pathological conditions, such as heart failure, muscle atrophy and Parkinson's disease.

The best advice for keeping your body in balance and avoiding oxidative stress is still to have a healthy diet and eat enough vitamins, but nanoparticles are showing promising results in keeping cells in shape.

When in space, astronauts have been shown to suffer from more oxidative stress due to the extra radiation they receive and as a by-product of floating in weightlessness, so researchers in Italy were keen to see if nanoparticles would have the same protective effect on cells on the International Space Station as on Earth.

The effect the researchers observed seems to imply that nanoparticles work better and longer than traditional antioxidants such as vitamins.

Giada Graziana Genchi et al. Modulation of gene expression in rat muscle cells following treatment with nanoceria in different gravity regimes, Nanomedicine (2018). DOI: 10.2217/nnm-2018-0316

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-nano-particles-healthy-tissue.html?ut...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2020 at 5:51am

The genetics of blood: A global perspective

What's the risk of different human populations to develop a disease? To find out, a team of researchers created an international consortium to study the blood of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

By testing more than 45 million genetic variations in each participant, they have found more than 5,000 mutations in human DNA that affect the blood characteristics of populations around the world.

Close to 750,000 participants from five major populations—European, African, Hispanic, East Asian and South Asian—were tested to see the effect of genetic mutations on characteristics in their blood.

These characteristics include such things as hemoglobin concentration and platelet counts.

Each human population is subject to different environments. 

Over thousands of years these environmental pressures have resulted in the progressive appearance of variations in DNA, called genetic mutations, which can influence our physical characteristics, such as skin size or color, but also our risk of getting certain diseases.

This observation (of how the environment affects how people's appearance and health vary in different parts of the world) represents the cornerstone of the theory of evolution by natural selection proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859.

This new study shows  that the vast majority of mutations associated with blood cells were common to all five major population groups.

he researchers also found about 100 mutations whose effect was restricted to certain populations and which, it turns out, are not found in people of European descent.

For example, in individuals of South Asian origin, the researchers identified a mutation in the interleukin-7 gene that stimulates the secretion of this molecule and thus increases the levels of lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell in the immune system) circulating in their blood.

Of course, this kind of mutation can affect the health of people of South Asian origin, it 's hypothesised.  It's thought that this mutation could influence their capacity to resist certain infections or develop diseases like blood cancer.

By comparing the genetic results obtained in each population, the researchers were able to prioritize certain genes that appear to have an overall effect on blood cell production.

This will make it possible, over the long term, to improve ways of predicting the risk of suffering from certain diseases and to develop new, more effective treatments.

Ming-Huei Chen et al, Trans-ethnic and Ancestry-Specific Blood-Cell Genetics in 746,667 Individuals from 5 Global Populations, Cell (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.045

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-genetics-blood-global-perspe...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2020 at 5:40am

Fastest growing plant ….

The world record for the fastest growing plant belongs to certain species of the 45 genera of bamboo, which have been found to grow at up to 91 cm (35 in) per day or at a rate of 0.00003 km/h (0.00002 mph). According to the RHS Dictionary of Gardening, there are approximately 1,000 species of bamboos.

Fastest growing plant

The Guinness World Records Official site with ultimate record-breaking facts & achievements. Do you want to set a world record? Are you Officially Amazing?

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/fastest-growing-....

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2020 at 5:36am

New experimental evidence that the quantum world is even stranger than we thought

New experimental evidence of a collective behavior of electrons to form "quasiparticles" called "anyons" has been reported by a team of scientists .

Anyons have characteristics not seen in other subatomic particles, including exhibiting fractional charge and fractional statistics that maintain a "memory" of their interactions with other quasiparticles by inducing quantum mechanical phase changes. The name "anyon" due to their strange behavior because unlike other types of particles, they can adopt "any" quantum phase when their positions are exchanged.

Before the growing evidence of anyons in 2020, physicists had categorized particles in the known world into two groups: fermions and bosons. Electrons are an example of fermions, and photons, which make up light and radio waves, are bosons. One characteristic difference between fermions and bosons is how the particles act when they are looped, or braided, around each other. Fermions respond in one straightforward way, and bosons in another expected and straightforward way.

Anyons respond as if they have a fractional charge, and even more interestingly, create a nontrivial phase change as they braid around one another. This can give the anyons a type of "memory" of their interaction.

Anyons only exist as collective excitations of electrons under special circumstances.

J. Nakamura et al. Direct observation of anyonic braiding statistics, Nature Physics (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-1019-1

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-evidence-quantum-world-stranger-thoug...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 4, 2020 at 7:35am

For the first time scientists captured images of cells at work inside our lungs

Discovery provides new insights on how our immune system battles deadly bacteria and viruses like flu and COVID-19

Scientists have discovered how to capture 'live' images of immune cells inside the lungs. The group is the first in the world to find a way to record, in real time, how the immune system battles bacteria impacting the alveoli, or air sacs, in the lungs of mice. The discovery has already provided new insights about the immune systems' cleaners, called alveolar macrophages.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200903115735.htm

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How screen time and green time may affect youth psychological outcomes

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-screen-green-affect-youth-ps...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 4, 2020 at 6:55am

Toy boats float upside down underneath a layer of levitated liquid

The upward force of buoyancy keeps objects afloat even in unusual conditions

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/toy-boats-float-upside-down-und...

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Flamboyant cuttlefish exposed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AwFr5lmhcw&feature=emb_logo

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Only one in ten medical treatments are backed by high-quality evidenc e

 https://theconversation.com/only-one-in-ten-medical-treatments-are-...

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https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-is-there-gravity-14406...

why is there gravity?

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 4, 2020 at 6:13am

In butterfly battle of sexes, males deploy 'chastity belts' but females fight back

Some male butterflies go to extreme lengths to ensure their paternity—sealing their mate's genitalia with a waxy "chastity belt" to prevent future liaisons. But female butterflies can fight back by evolving larger or more complex organs that are tougher to plug. Males, in turn, counterattack by fastening on even more fantastic structures with winglike projections, slippery scales or pointy hooks.

It's a battle that pits male and female reproductive interests against one another, with the losing sex evolving adaptations to thwart the winner's strategies.

Could this sexual one-upmanship ultimately result in new species? It's a longstanding hypothesis and one that would help explain how butterflies became so diverse. But this last one proved wrong, as species evolution has other factors too to consider. 

 

Found in about 1% of butterfly species, external mating plugs, also known as sphragis, can resemble a scab or a blob of petroleum jelly in some species while others take astonishingly architectural forms.

But they all serve the same purpose: enforcing female monogamy. Because a female butterfly fertilizes the majority of her eggs with sperm from her last partner, males have a vested interest in blocking rivals. Females, however, stand to benefit by mating with more than one male. Another partner may provide higher-quality sperm, and multiple mating events can increase the genetic diversity of offspring. Plus, females get a health.

To help guarantee their own successors, males in plug-producing species omit the courtship behavior that often precedes mating in other butterflies. Instead, "males pursue the females, grab them midair and drag them to the ground," Carvalho said. After depositing their sperm, males excrete a pre-molded mating plug, which hardens on the female's abdomen.

Plugs may indirectly constrain males as well. Making a mating plug is an expensive investment of time and resources, potentially limiting how many females a male can inseminate. Whether females can remove the plug requires further study, but in her fieldwork and museum specimen analysis, Carvalho noted the structures were often partially broken or missing in species with smaller, more delicate plugs. In species with large, complex plugs, she usually found the structures intact and rarely encountered a female without one—a sign that males may be "winning."

This study revealed some female victories as well. In the evolutionary family tree constructed for Acraeini butterflies, evidence ‘s found that mating plugs originated once across the tribe and were subsequently lost in some species, suggesting a successful female counteroffensive. Wide variations in the shape and size of female genitalia also hint at attempts to render mating plugs ineffective.

Ana Paula S Carvalho et al, Is Sexual Conflict a Driver of Speciation? A Case Study With a Tribe of Brush-footed Butterflies, Systematic Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syaa070

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-butterfly-sexes-males-deploy-chastity...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 4, 2020 at 5:53am

LHC creates matter from light

The Large Hadron Collider plays with Albert Einstein's famous equation, E = mc², to transform matter into energy and then back into different forms of matter. But on rare occasions, it can skip the first step and collide pure energy—in the form of electromagnetic waves.

Last year, the ATLAS experiment at the LHC observed two photons, particles of light, ricocheting off one another and producing two new photons. This year, they've taken that research a step further and discovered photons merging and transforming into something even more interesting: W bosons, particles that carry the weak force, which governs nuclear decay.

This research doesn't just illustrate the central concept governing processes inside the LHC: that energy and matter are two sides of the same coin. It also confirms that at high enough energies, forces that seem separate in our everyday lives—electromagnetism and the weak force—are united.

Inside CERN's accelerator complex, protons are accelerated close to the speed of light. Their normally rounded forms squish along the direction of motion as special relativity supersedes the classical laws of motion for processes taking place at the LHC. The two incoming protons see each other as compressed pancakes accompanied by an equally squeezed electromagnetic field (protons are charged, and all charged particles have an electromagnetic field). The energy of the LHC combined with the length contraction boosts the strength of the protons' electromagnetic fields by a factor of 7500.

When two protons graze each other, their squished electromagnetic fields intersect. These fields skip the classical "amplify" etiquette that applies at low energies and instead follow the rules outlined by quantum electrodynamics. Through these new laws, the two fields can merge and become the "E" in E=mc².

"If you read the equation E=mc² from right to left, you'll see that a small amount of mass produces a huge amount of energy because of the c² constant, which is the speed of light squared. But if you look at the formula the other way around, you'll see that you need to start with a huge amount of energy to produce even a tiny amount of mass.

The LHC is one of the few places on Earth that can produce and collide energetic photons, and it's the only place where scientists have seen two energetic photons merging and transforming into massive W bosons.

The generation of W bosons from high-energy photons exemplifies the discovery that won Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics: At high energies, electromagnetism and the weak force are one in the same.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-lhc.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_...

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/lhc-creates-matter-from-light

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