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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 11, 2020 at 7:47am

Study finds fatty acid that kills cancer cells

Researchers have demonstrated that a fatty acid called dihomogamma-linolenic acid, or DGLA, can kill human cancer cells. The study found that DGLA can induce ferroptosis in an animal model and in actual human cancer cells. Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent type of cell death that was discovered in recent years and has become a focal point for disease research as it is closely related to many disease processes.

Implications of this work: If you could deliver DGLA precisely to a cancer cell, it could promote ferroptosis and lead to tumor cell death. Also, just knowing that this fat promotes ferroptosis might also affect how we think about conditions such as kidney disease and neurodegeneration where we want to prevent this type of cell death.

DGLA is a polyunsaturated fatty acid found in small amounts in the human body, though rarely in the human diet. 

It was discovered that feeding nematodes ( Caenorhabditis elegans ) a diet of DGLA-laden bacteria killed all the germ cells in the worms as well as the stem cells that make the germ cells. The way the cells died carried many signs of ferroptosis.

Researchers also showed that DGLA could induce ferroptosis in human cancer cells. They also found an interaction with another fatty acid class, called an ether lipid, that had a protective effect against DGLA. When they took out the ether lipids, the cells died faster in the presence of DGLA. The study also demonstrated that C. elegans can be a useful animal research model in the study of ferroptosis, a field that has had to rely mostly on cell cultures.

Source:  Developmental Cell (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2020.06.019

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-fatty-acid-cancer-cells.html...

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-fatty-acid-cancer-cells.html...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 11, 2020 at 7:14am

Plant communication:Detection of electrical signaling between tomato plants raises interesting questions

Plants can communicate with other plants using wireless pathways above and underground.  Some examples of these underground communication pathways are: (1) mycorrhizal networks in the soil; (2) the plants’ rhizosphere; (3) acoustic communication; (4) naturally grafting of roots of the same species; (5) signaling chemicals exchange between roots of plants; and (6) electrical signal transmission between plants through the soil. 

Plants have developed complex systems of communication. Electrical, mechanical, and chemical signals induced by above-ground stresses in plants can affect below ground communication between roots of neighboring plants. There are different electrical, chemical and electrochemical pathways for underground signaling between plants. Electrical signal transmission is fast in comparison with chemical signaling which is controlled by a slow diffusion. Electrostimulation of plants induces electrotonic potentials transmission in the electro-stimulated plants as well as the neighboring plants located in different pots regardless if plants are the same or different types.

The soil beneath our feet is alive with electrical signals being sent from one plant to another, according to new research. A paper published recently  used physical experiments and mathematical modeling to study transmission of electrical signals between tomato plants. It was found that electrical signal propagation within a plant and also between plants through a network of Mycorrhizal fungi that's ubiquitous in soil appears to act as circuitry.

Plants generate electric signals that propagate through their parts. When the roots of tomatoes are experimentally isolated from each other with an air gap, the electrical impedance of the gap is very large.

"The electrical signals won't go through this gap. However, when the plants are living in common soil, experiments conducted  found that the ground impedance is not very large and they can communicate by passing electrical signals to each other through the Mycorrhizal network in the soil.

The tomato research, which focused on experimental study and mathematical modeling of electrical signal propagation between plants of the same species, opens new doors to questions about whether plants communicate across species through fungi. The soil plays the role of a conductor.

Another issue is to study the plants' communications via electric waves through the air.

Alexander G. Volkov et al. Underground electrotonic signal transmission between plants, Communicative & Integrative Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1080/19420889.2020.1757207

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-electrical-tomato.html?utm_source=nwl...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 11, 2020 at 7:02am

Sea surface temperature has a big impact on coral outplant survival

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-sea-surface-temperature-big-impact.ht...

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Scientists discover protective Alzheimer's gene and develop rapid drug-testing platform

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Scientists propose plan to determine if Planet Nine is a primordial black hole

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 10, 2020 at 7:16am

Astronomers Detect Unexpected Class of Mysterious Circular Objects in Space

https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-unidentified-circles-have-b...

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https://www.sciencealert.com/hundreds-of-years-of-tree-rings-reveal...

Hundreds of Years of Tree Rings Reveal a Grim Anomaly That Began in The 20th Century

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/animals-use-social-dista...

Animals Use Social Distancing to Avoid Disease

Lobsters, birds and some primates use quarantine to ward off infections

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 10, 2020 at 6:32am

Reducing noise transmitted through an open window

A new device that can reduce the intensity of sound passing through open windows is presented in a proof-of-principle study in Scientific Reports. It fits into a two-panel sliding window and can decrease the perceived loudness of urban transportation noises by up to half (10 decibel reduction).

The device, assembled by Bhan Lam and colleagues, consists of 24 loudspeakers (each 4.5 cm in diameter), fixed in a grid pattern to bars attached to the inside of a window and one sensor located outside the window. If the sensor detects noise outside the building, the loudspeakers emit "anti-noise" at the same frequency as the detected noise but with inverted sound waves. This "anti-noise" cancels out the detected noise and reduces the volume of noise pollution entering the room, even when the window is open.

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-noise-transmitted-window.html?u...

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https://phys.org/news/2020-07-dark-discovery-microscopic-imaging-co...

Shining light into the dark: New discovery makes microscopic imaging possible in dark conditions

researchers have discovered a new way to more accurately analyze microscopic samples by essentially making them glow in the dark through the use of chemically luminescent molecules.

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https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/researchers-from-all-ove...

Researchers from All Over the World Pitch In to Fight COVID-19

Scientists are lending their expertise—whatever it may be—to help develop tests, medical devices, and other tools to try to save lives during the pandemic.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 10, 2020 at 6:25am

CERN: physicists report the discovery of unique new particle

The LHCb collaboration at CERN has announced the discovery of a new exotic particle: a so-called "tetraquark".

Many physicists struggled to accept that so many elementary particles could exist in the universe, in what had become known as the "particle zoo". George Zweig from Caltech and Murray Gell-Mann from CERN had struck upon the same solution. What if all these different particles were really made of smaller, unknown building blocks, in the same way that the hundred-odd elements in the periodic table are made of protons, neutrons and electrons? Zweig called these building blocks "aces", while Gell-Mann chose the term that we still use today: "quarks".

We now know that there are six different kinds of quarks—up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom. These particles also have respective antimatter companions with opposite charge, which can bind together according to simple rules based on symmetries. A particle made of a quark and an antiquark is called a "meson"; while three quarks bound together form "baryons". The familiar protons and neutrons that make up the atomic nucleus are examples of baryons.

This classification scheme beautifully described the particle zoo of the 1960s. However, even in his original paper, Gell-Mann realised that other combinations of quarks might be possible. For example, two quarks and two antiquarks might stick together to form a "tetraquark", while four quarks and an antiquark would make a "pentaquark".

"Exotic" properties are quite different from ordinary mesons. 

All tetraquarks and pentaquarks that have been discovered so far contain two charm quarks, which are relatively heavy, and two or three light quarks—up, down or strange. This particular configuration is indeed the easiest to discover in experiments.

But the latest tetraquark discovered by LHCb, which has been dubbed X(6900), is composed of four charm quarks. Produced in high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, the new tetraquark was observed via its decay into pairs of well-known particles called J/psi mesons, each made of a charm quark and a charm antiquark. This makes it particularly interesting as it is not only composed entirely of heavy quarks, but also four quarks of the same kind—making it a unique specimen to test our understanding on how quarks bind together.

https://theconversation.com/cern-physicists-report-the-discovery-of...

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-cern-physicists-discovery-unique-part...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 10, 2020 at 5:51am

Lung cancer in non-smokers likely to respond differently to treatment

Lung cancer in non-smokers is a diverse and distinct disease from that in smokers, and is likely to respond differently to targeted treatments, a major new study shows.

Scientists studied a population in Taiwan with high rates of lung cancer among non-smokers—and found a range of genetic changes which varied depending on a patient's age or sex.

Many non-smokers with lung cancer had signs of DNA damage from environmental carcinogens, with young women in particular having particular genetic changes which are known to drive cancer to evolve aggressively.

The study could lead to new treatments for non-smokers with lung cancer tailored to the newly identified genetic changes.

The researchers conducted a detailed analysis of genetic changes, gene activation, protein activity and cellular 'switches' in lung cancer to develop the most comprehensive overview of the biology of disease in non-smokers to date.

Looking at the genetics and the related proteins produced by cancer cells in the tumour samples, scientists found that some early-stage lung tumours in non-smokers were biologically similar to more advanced disease in smokers.

Tumours in women often had a particular fault in the well-known lung cancer gene EGFR, whereas in men the most common faults were in the KRAS and APC genes. These differences could affect the response to targeted drugs in men and women.

Picking out people with 'late-like' early-stage lung tumours could help guide treatment decisions, and patients could be monitored more closely for signs of their disease progressing.

The study found a pattern of genetic changes involving the APOBEC gene family in three-quarters of tumours of female patients under the age of 60, and in all women without faults in the EGFR gene.

APOBEC proteins play an important role in the function of the immune system—but they can be hijacked by cancers, speeding up evolution and the emergence of drug resistance, a key area of study in the ICR's new Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery.

Patients without EGFR faults tend to do better on immunotherapy, and so testing for APOBEC could help pick out women more likely to respond to this form of treatment.

The team also picked out groups of patients—particularly among older women—whose cancers had mutation patterns linked to cancer-causing substances in their environment such as pollutants.

Finally, the team identified 65 proteins that were overactive in lung tumours that matched with existing candidate drugs. They found that one protein that cuts away at the surrounding tissue, called MMP11, was linked to poorer survival—and could be explored as a marker for early detection.

This new study offers a deep dive into the biology of lung cancer in people who have never smoked. It reveals new ways of telling apart patients with different tumour characteristics that could be exploited with tailored treatment strategies.

Cell (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.012

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-lung-cancer-non-smokers-diff...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 10, 2020 at 5:43am

The human brain: not just large but finely shaped

Large brains have long differentiated humans and primates from other mammals and there is a clear evidence that brain mass increased through time.

 a new study by the University of New England, in collaboration with Italian and American institutes, has shown that the evolution of higher cognitive capacity is not only due to having a larger brain but also due to the brain having the "right" shape.

While brain size has long been the preferred measured trait for anthropological investigations, the brain is not uniform in shape and displays considerable structural variation.

The researchers were particularly interested in how humans evolved to have the distinct large, globular shaped brains we have today.

To answer the question they conducted a novel large-scale evolutionary analysis using a large samples of 3-D digital reconstructions of primate brains.

The team used 3-D shape analysis to measure the morphological variation between the different primate groups and a novel phylogenetic strategy to reconstruct the main morphological changes occurred through the primate lineage.

Their findings reveal that the brains of great apes such as chimpanzees and humans as well as papionin monkeys—baboons and macaques—are characterized by fast evolution and larger brain size. These characteristics sets them apart from smaller lemurs and New World monkeys which evolve more slowly.

The brains of papionins and great apes also have different structures.

"Humans and, to a minor extent, the great apes display a massive reorganization of the brain areas devoted to complex thinking, articulated language, social behaviour and problem solving such as the frontal lobe and the prefrontal cortex.

The teams' heat maps clearly show the great bulging prefrontal cortex of the human brain, whereas the brains of baboons are characterized by changes in the temporal and occipital regions.

G. Sansalone et al. Variation in the strength of allometry drives rates of evolution in primate brain shape, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0807

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-human-brain-large-finely.html?utm_sou...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 10, 2020 at 5:37am

5G networks have few health impacts, study finds

Fifth generation or 5G wireless technology, which began being deployed worldwide in 2019, provides faster connectivity and more bandwidth, meaning higher download speeds. But because 5G technology is so new, little is known about the potential health effects from its radiofrequency radiation, which is higher than the current industry standard 4G. The Oregon State study begins to change that.

Based on their study, the researchers don't think 5G radiation is that harmful.

Researchers conducted the research using embryonic zebrafish, a model organism often used to discover interactions between environmental stressors and biological systems. Zebrafish and humans have similar developmental processes and are similar on a genomic level, meaning zebrafish research can easily be applied to humans.

In the study, published July 9 in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers exposed embryonic zebrafish for two days to 3.5 GHz radiofrequency radiation, the frequency typically used by 5G-enabled cell phones.

They found no significant impacts on mortality, how the embryos formed or the embryos' behavioral response to light. They did find a modest impact on a test that measures the embryos' response to a sudden sound that they will investigate further.

Future research will look at the 5G radiation effects on the same zebrafish used in the study at a gene level and as they develop from embryos to adults, Dasgupta said. The researchers also would like to study the impacts of higher frequencies and higher exposure levels on zebra fish to keep pace with the changing cell phone industry.

The future research will use the same standardized experimental set up used in this study. It involves a box made of copper. The zebra fish embryos are placed on plates, which are put inside the box. The radiation enters the box through an antennae and the copper keeps it inside the box.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-5g-networks-health-impacts.h...

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 10, 2020 at 5:32am

Brain benefits of exercise can be gained with a single protein

A little-studied liver protein may be responsible for the well-known benefits of exercise on the aging brain, according to a new study in mice by scientists.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-brain-benefits-gained-protei...

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Extreme rainfall events cause top-heavy aquatic food webs

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15-foot-long skeleton of extinct dolphin suggests parallel evolution among whales

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Safer CRISPR gene editing with fewer off-target hits

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Languages will change significantly on interstellar flights

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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-team-ways-cool-super-white.html...

Cooling buildings without ACs: A research team of materials scientists has demonstrated ways to make super white paint that reflects as much as 98% of incoming heat from the sun. The advance shows practical pathways for designing paints that, if used on rooftops and other parts of a building, could significantly reduce cooling costs, beyond what standard white 'cool-roof' paints can achieve.

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