Science Simplified!

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 5, 2016 at 6:50am

Monsoon forecast is becoming a difficult process. With more than 70% of India’s 1.25 billion citizens engaged in agriculture and relying on weather predictions to decide when they will sow their seeds and harvest their crops.
But getting the forecast right remains a challenge, thanks to the complex — and still poorly understood — ways in which South Asia’s monsoon rains are influenced by everything from atmospheric and ocean temperatures to air quality and global climate trends. Even the amount of ice in Antarctica is suspected to have an impact.

And it’s only getting harder to figure out, scientists say, as the monsoon becomes increasingly erratic.

A new study released Friday in the journal Science Advances helps clear up a bit of the mystery, by showing that man-made climate change is responsible for most of the change seen in ocean surface temperatures near the equator across Asia, which in turn affect regional rainfall patterns including the Indian monsoon.

By showing that link, the study indicates future ocean warming in the region, which could in turn increase the amount of rainfall during monsoons, strengthen cyclones and increase precipitation over East Asia.

“This has important implications for understanding changes in rainfall patterns for a large, and vulnerable population across Asia,” said oceanographer Evan Weller, who led the research team while he was at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, before recently shifting to Monash University in Australia.

The study looks specifically at a mid-oceanic body called the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, which holds some of the world’s warmest seawaters and spans the western Pacific to the eastern Indian Ocean.

Scientists have long known that India’s monsoons are partly influenced by that warm pool. And they’ve known that the pool has been expanding — and warming — for decades. That expansion and warming have already caused some sea rise around islands in Asia.

It wasn’t entirely clear why the pool was changing, until now.

Weller and his team compared data observations with several climate models, and deduced that rising greenhouse gases along with aerosols and other atmospheric pollutants were the dominant cause of the pool’s warming and expansion over the past 60 years, though regional climate variations also had some effect.

But one thing is clear: If climate change trends continue, and by most indications they will, forecasters will have to consider the warm pool in their monsoon predictions. And by demonstrating how greenhouse gases are the dominant driver of changes in the warm pool, the team has added another dimension that can help improve climate models.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2016 at 8:45am

Bacteria block mosquitoes from transmitting Zika, chikungunya viruses!
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have confirmed that a benign bacterium called Wolbachia pipientis can completely block transmission of Zika virus in Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species responsible for passing the virus to humans.

Matthew Aliota, a scientist at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) and first author of the paper -- published today (July 1, 2016) in the journal Scientific Reports -- says the bacteria could present a "novel biological control mechanism," aiding efforts to stop the spread of Zika virus.
Researchers led by Jorge Osorio, a UW-Madison professor of pathobiological sciences, and Scott O'Neill of the the Eliminate Dengue Program (EDP) and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, are already releasing mosquitoes harboring the Wolbachia bacterium in pilot studies in Colombia, Brazil, Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia to help control the spread of dengue virus. Their work is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

An important feature of Wolbachia is that it is self-sustainable, making it a very low-cost approach for controlling mosquito-borne viral diseases that are affecting many tropical countries around the world.

In two of researchers initial study sites in Australia, approximately 90 percent of the mosquitoes continue to be infected with Wolbachia after initial release more than six years ago.
Wolbachia can be found in up to 60 percent of insects around the world, including butterflies and bees. While not typically found in the Aedes aegypti mosquito -- the species that also transmits dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses -- scientists discovered in the early 1990s that Wolbachia could be introduced to the mosquito in the lab and would prevent the mosquitoes from transmitting dengue virus.

Zika virus belongs to the same family as dengue virus and Aliota and Osorio.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2016 at 7:21am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2016 at 6:17am

Good News: Ozone hole in Antarctica is recovering!

Global regulation of chlorine compounds is giving the atmosphere time to heal, even as volcanic eruptions interfere.

A new analysis shows that, on average, the hole — which forms every Southern Hemisphere spring, letting in dangerous ultraviolet light — is smaller and appears later in the year than it did in 2000.

The 1987 global treaty called the Montreal Protocol sought to reduce the ozone hole by banning chlorofluorocarbons, chlorine-containing chemicals — used as refrigerants in products such as air conditioners — that accelerated ozone loss in the stratosphere. The study shows that it worked.

The finding was reported on June 30th in Science.

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STING Operation Against Pathogens Researchers have shed light on how STING, an innate immune sensor that triggers inflammation, is activated to eliminate viruses or bacteria. 

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have revealed the mechanism underlying the activation of STING, an innate immune sensor that triggers inflammation to remove foreign pathogens. This discovery, published in Nature Communications, provides therapeutic targets for treating infections and inflammatory diseases. When cells are infected with foreign matter such as DNA viruses or bacteria, the foreign DNA is sensed by STING, which is embedded in the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), an important site of protein production in a cell. STING then triggers the release of type I interferon and other inflammatory responses to eliminate the foreign substance. This essential basic cellular response is part of the innate immune system that recognizes and eliminates pathogens from our bodies. However, it was unclear why STING responded to foreign DNA. Additionally, although it is known that STING translocates from the ER to a location close to the nucleus when it detects foreign DNA, the role of this translocation remained unknown. In the present study, the research group of Assistant Professor Kojiro Mukai, Associate Professor Tomohiko Taguchi and Professor Hiroyuki Arai at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences found that STING is activated at the Golgi, a part of the cell that is involved in protein transport, as opposed to the ER. Furthermore, the activation of STING requires palmitoylation, a type of protein modification, at the Golgi. The unique lipid environment of the Golgi is also essential for the activation of STING. In various inflammatory diseases such as autoimmune disease and cancer, STING is often activated, causing an abnormal inflammatory response. Thus, the findings offer new opportunities to treat such diseases by suppressing the palmitoylation of STING or the manipulation of the Golgi lipid composition.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160621/ncomms11932/full/ncomms119...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 30, 2016 at 6:49am

Life-saving news: New Helium deposits found in Tanzania

Using a new technique, scientists have discovered reserves of helium in Tanzania said to be equivalent to seven times the amount of the noble gas consumed worldwide each year. The new source could alleviate recurrent shortages of helium that have plagued users of scientific instruments and medical imaging equipment.

Working with the start-up firm Helium One, scientists at Oxford and Durham universities uncovered the reserves in Tanzania’s East African Rift Valley. The researchers theorize that intense heat from volcanic activity in the Rift Valley releases helium in ancient crustal rock. The gas then accumulated in underground reservoirs.

The scientist say they have combined methods used in oil exploration with seismic images of gas-trapping structures and calculations from independent experts to estimate helium reserves of 1.5 billion m3 in just one part of the Rift Valley.

Today, helium is recovered as a by-product of natural gas extraction. But with prices of helium now about four times higher than they were a decade ago, prospectors are looking for new sources. The Tanzania helium reserve would be the first to be discovered and developed intentionally

The scientists presented the findings on June 28 at the Goldschmidt Conference, a gathering of geochemistry experts in Yokohama, Japan.

- Chemical and Engineering News

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 27, 2016 at 5:02am

Warning: Looking at your smartphone while lying in bed at night could wreak havoc on your vision.
Two women went temporarily blind from constantly checking their phones in the dark, say doctors who are now alerting others to the unusual phenomenon.
The solution: Make sure to use both eyes when looking at your smartphone screen in the dark.
In Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, doctors detailed the cases of the two women, ages 22 and 40, who experienced "transient smartphone blindness" for months.
The women complained of recurring episodes of temporary vision loss for up to 15 minutes. They were subjected to variety of medical exams, MRI scans and heart tests. Yet doctors couldn't find anything wrong with them to explain the problem.
But minutes after walking into an eye specialist's office, the mystery was solved.
"I simply asked them, 'What exactly were you doing when this happened?'" recalled Dr. Gordon Plant of Moorfield's Eye Hospital in London.
He explained that both women typically looked at their smartphones with only one eye while resting on their side in bed in the dark—their other eye was covered by the pillow.
"So you have one eye adapted to the light because it's looking at the phone and the other eye is adapted to the dark," he said.
When they put their phone down, they couldn't see with the phone eye. That's because "it's taking many minutes to catch up to the other eye that's adapted to the dark," Plant said.
He said the temporary blindness was ultimately harmless, and easily avoidable, if people stuck to looking at their smartphones with both eyes.
One of the women was relieved the short-term blindness didn't signal a more serious problem like an imminent stroke. He said the second woman was more skeptical and kept a rigorous monthslong diary tracking her fleeting vision loss before she finally believed him. But she couldn't stop checking her phone for messages from bed, he said.
Dr. Rahul Khurana, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, called it a fascinating hypothesis but said two cases weren't enough to prove that one-eyed smartphone use in the dark caused the problem. He also doubted whether many smartphone users would experience the phenomenon.
Khurana, who acknowledged that he's an avid cellphone user, said that he and his wife tried to recreate the scenario on a recent evening, but had difficulty checking their phones with only one eye. "It was very odd," he said.
Source: New England Journal of Medicine

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 24, 2016 at 5:27am

New Way To Create Fuel From Waste Plastics
Scientists have found a way to use plastic trash to create a cleaner diesel-like fuel that could power vehicles, an advance that may turn landfills into potential energy sources in future.

The researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of California in the US hope to scale up the technique to allow for it to be used in actually reducing plastic trash.

Plastics break down very slowly causing them to pile up in landfills and serving as the source material in artificial island creation in oceans.

Scientists have been looking for ways to degrade plastics, particularly polyethylene, the most common kind produced, but until now have not been able to find inexpensive and scalable means.

The new method involves mixing the plastics with an organometallic catalyst, made from readily available molecules that were then doped with metal iridium, 'Phys.org' reported.

The reaction caused the bonds holding the plastic together to weaken, allowing them to be more easily torn apart.

Researchers were able to use the broken down material to create a diesel-like fuel which they claim could be used to power vehicles and other motors.

Burning the fuel is also cleaner than burning other combustible materials, they said.

The research was published in the journal Science Advances.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 24, 2016 at 5:24am

Why is life not possible without water?
According to scientists...
Water is the basic unit of life and it is impossible to live without it. Ever wondered why? A new study has an explanation that may answer many such questions.

Ohio State University lead researcher Dongping Zhong along with his team shed new light on how and why water is essential to life. Zhong called the study a ‘major step forward’ in the understanding of water-protein interactions.

The study finds the strongest evidence that proteins can't fold themselves, but can fold into particular shapes to enable biological reactions.

Zhong, who is also a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and his team used ultra-fast laser pulses to take snapshots of water molecules moving around a DNA polymerase, the kind of protein that helps DNA reproduce.
The findings showed how water molecules typically flow around each other at picosecond speeds, while proteins fold at nanosecond speeds, 1,000 times slower.
Previously, Zhong’s group demonstrated that the water molecules slow down when they encounter a protein. Water molecules are still moving 100 times faster than a protein when they connect with it.

In the new study, the researchers were able to determine that the water molecules directly touched the protein’s ‘side chains,’ the portions of the protein molecule that bind and unbind with each other to enable folding and function. The researchers were also able to note the timing of movement in the molecules.

Water can’t arbitrarily shape a protein, Zhong explained. Proteins can only fold and unfold in a few different ways depending on the amino acids they’re made of.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 22, 2016 at 6:09am

Right use of hand sanitizers:
Q: How much time should we spend on cleaning our hands with sanitizers?
A scientific answer: To kill bacteria, rub for at least 15 to 30 seconds. After 45 seconds, you’re not doing much more good!
To provide more evidence-based guidance on hand sanitizer use, scientists from Geneva University Hospitals in Switzerland used E. coli bacteria to contaminate the hands of 23 health care workers. Then each person received a 3-milliliter squeeze of hand sanitizer. Participants were instructed to rub for different amounts of time, ranging from 10 to 60 seconds. The concentration of bacteria plunged after 10 and 15 seconds of friction, and then dropped slightly more after 30 seconds. But significant reductions in bacteria stopped at the 45-second mark — a curious finding that researcher Daniela Pires says she and her colleagues cannot explain.

The research was presented June 18 at ASM Microbe 2016, a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology and the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

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Q: Where do kids get their tooth decay microbes?

Scientific reply: Very little from mothers! Very limited quantity from the kisses mom's present their children!

New data show that the most common cause of tooth decay, the bacterium Streptococcus mutans (that cause dental caries), doesn’t always come from mother-to-child transmission.

Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham studied 119 children in rural Alabama and 414 of their household contacts, tracking the path of S. mutans. Contrary to expectation, 40 percent of the children did not share any strains with their mothers. Instead, those strains usually overlapped with those of siblings and cousins. And 72 percent of children carried a strain of S. mutans that no one else in the family had, probably picked up from other children at school, day care or other locations. The research was presented June 17 at ASM Microbe 2016, a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology and the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

These findings indicate the importance of considering horizontal, as well as vertical, acquisition of S. mutans in prevention strategies for dental caries.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 22, 2016 at 5:50am

Host Inflammatory Response to Mosquito Bites Enhances the Severity of Arbovirus Infection
Some mosquito-borne viruses appear to benefit from their victims’ immune responses to bug bites. Simply put, the body’s defensive reaction to pathogens, including dengue or West Nile, acts as a handmaiden for the viruses themselves. The first glimpses into exactly how these pathogens manage to hijack the body’s defense systems to enhance disease were revealed recently in a new mouse study.
When immune cells travel to the itchy, red site of a mosquito bite, they may inadvertently be infected with a mosquito-borne virus and then help spread the infection throughout the body. The resulting higher viral loads make the recipient sicker than would be the case if the virus were introduced without a bite. This revelation points to a potential new target for combating mosquito-borne diseases: the bite site itself.
The research team found that neutrophils, white blood cells that act as the body’s first line of defense against invaders, fuel inflammation at the bite site—thus trapping the virus there. A few hours later immune system responders called myeloid cells show up and become infected, and their cellular machinery is hijacked to replicate the virus. The immune-system soldiers then help spread the virus in the body, ultimately increasing morbidity and mortality.
Within a day, most mice that received a bite and subsequent virus-jab showed a 10-fold increase in virus numbers at the site of infection, compared with mice that had only been inoculated with virus. Such high viral loads allow the virus to more readily spread to remote tissues—and may also boost chances of transmitting the disease to other carriers. The higher virus count also proved lethal for many bite victims.
To confirm that neutrophils and myeloid cells help the virus thrive, the researchers conducted separate experiments that depleted the neutrophils or blocked myeloid cells from deploying. In both altered states the mice actually had lower viral loads and got less sick.
The new findings are particularly alluring for researchers because they may point to one target—the bite site—for fighting disease formation more effectively. “If you can inhibit bite inflammation, you could have a way of stopping viruses before they establish infection.

http://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(16)30205-9

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