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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2016 at 9:28am

A nanomaterial-based, wide-color-varying fluorescent test paper much like classical pH test paper, has been developed to detect arsenic in water. The paper describing it was published in Analytical Chemistry.
To develop this test paper, the team used modified red quantum dots to obtain super-sensitivity to arsenic(III), or As(III). A small amount of cyan carbon dots with spectral blue-green components were added to produce a composited red fluorescence. The sensory solution was then printed onto a piece of filter paper.

In the presence of As(III), a range of colors is displayed—from red to cyan—clearly detecting a dosage scale as low as 5 parts per billion (ppb). According to World Health Organization’s guidelines, 10 ppb of As(III) in drinking water is considered safe.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.analchem.6b01248

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2016 at 8:47am

Laser-Scanning Tech Reveals Hidden Cities in Cambodia
Archaeologists in Cambodia say they uncovered previously unknown hidden cities near the Temples of Angkor Wat, which is part of one of the most important archaeological sites in Southeast Asia.

Using airborne laser scanning technology and covering an area of more than 734 square miles, experts revealed multiple cities that are around 900 to 1,400 years old. Some are so large that they rival the size of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

“We have entire cities discovered beneath the forest that no one knew were there,” said Dr. Damian Evans, an Australian archaeologist with the Cambodian Archaeological Lidar (light detection and ranging) Initiative (CALI), which has been mapping the country.

This study, one of the largest of its kind, was an extension of a previous survey in 2012 that uncovered a large, interconnected system between cities. The results of the 2015 study, were released in full on 13th June, 2016, in the Journal of Archaeological Science, show the full scale of the city and subsequently the Khmer Empire, which at its peak in the 12th century, may have been the largest empire on Earth.

The discoveries not only expand on the collective history of the region, but also might give researchers clues into the empire’s collapse around the 15th century.

“There’s an idea that somehow the Thais invaded and everyone fled down south–that didn’t happen, there are no cities [revealed by the aerial survey] that they fled to,” Evans said. “It calls into question the whole notion of an Angkorian collapse.”

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Air Pollution Gives Storm Clouds a Stronger, Longer Life

More particulate matter in the air can build stronger, longer-lasting thunderstorms over the tropics, leading to more extreme storms. 

Clouds are built of tiny aerosol particles of dust or pollution from fossil fuel burning that suck up water vapor. Now these cloud particles with time they combine with each other, and become big. And when they become big, due to gravity, they fall out, and we call it rain.

When more aerosols seed the air, like in places with lots of industrial or agricultural pollution, the same amount of water vapor gets absorbed by a larger number of aerosols… meaning tinier-than-usual cloud particle size.

That's important, because it makes the cloud bigger and larger and stronger and live longer. Three to 24 hours longer. And it can produce more extreme storms when the rain finally comes. The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Sudip Chakraborty et al., Relative influence of meteorological conditions and aerosols on the...]

A silver lining:  longer-lasting clouds also reflect more light back into space, which could end up somewhat cooling the planet!

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2016 at 8:42am

Tiny fossils show how environment affects species
Fossils resembling miniaturised popcorn that date back millions of years provide the first statistical evidence that number of species on Earth depends on how the environment changes, according to a new study.
By analysing the fossil record of microscopic aquatic creatures called planktonic foraminifera, the research from University of Southampton in the UK shows that environmental changes put a cap on species richness.
A changing environment alters how many species we see - the spatial gradient of more species in the tropics than at the poles is pervasive evidence for its large-scale impact.
Analyses of how species numbers have changed over time have assumed that any limit has always been the same, even through periods of massive climate upheaval.
New data reject this idea of fixed rules for competition among species and instead show that the limit to the number of species that can co-exist on Earth is much more dynamic. Climate and geology are always changing, and the limit changes with them.
While previous research typically focused individually on either biological, climate change or geological explanations, this new research examined the co-dependence of these factors on how species interact.
Looking at the fossil history of 210 evolutionary species of macroperforate planktonic foraminifera in the Cenozoic Era from 65 million years ago to the present, the study found that the number of species was almost certainly controlled by competition among themselves and probably kept within a finite upper limit.
Scientists used mathematical models to reveal how environmental changes influence both the rate of diversification among species and how many species can co-exist at once.
New results suggest that the world is full of species, but that the precise fullness varies through time as environmental changes alter the outcome of competition among species.
Scientists have long argued that environmental changes are likely to impact the number of species that can co-exist on Earth, but the fossil record is usually too incomplete for powerful statistical testing.
"Microfossils - especially planktonic foraminifera - give us a record with almost no gaps".
The study was published in the journal Ecology Letters.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2016 at 6:00am

When we watch and listen to someone speak, our brain combines the visual information of the movement of the speaker’s mouth with the speech sounds that are produced by this movement.
A part of the continuous speech stream called the envelope, which is the slow rising and falling in the amplitude of the speech, was tracked in auditory areas of the brain. Conversely, the visual cortex tracked mouth movements. So what role does tracking the lip movements of a speaker play in speech perception?
Two areas of the brain actively track lip movements during speech. The first area was the visual cortex. This presumably tracks the lips as a visual signal. The second area was the left motor cortex. The ability of the motor cortex to track lip movements is important for understanding audiovisual speech. Some scientists suggest that the motor system helps to predict the upcoming sound signal by simulating the speaker’s intended mouth movement.
- eLifesciences

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 15, 2016 at 5:51am

Now honeybees have to fight another adversity! Climate change.

Spring's bloom may not smell so sweet anymore, as pollutants from power plants and automobiles destroy flowers' aromas, a new study suggests. The finding could help explain why some pollinators, particularly bees, are declining in certain parts of the world. 

Researchers at the University of Virginia created a mathematical model of how the scents of flowers travel with the wind. The scent molecules produced by the flowers readily bond with pollutants such as ozone, which destroys the aromas they produce.

So instead of wafting for long distances with the wind, the flowery scents are chemically altered. Essentially, the flowers no longer smell like flowers.

"The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters [3,300 to 4,000 feet]; but in today's polluted environment downwind of major cities, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters [650 to 980 feet]," said study team member Jose D. Fuentes.

With flowers no longer advertising their presence over as large an area, pollinators are forced to search farther and longer to pick up the hint of their scent. They may also have to rely more on their sight than what they smell.

Bees depend on flower nectar for food, and if they have a hard time finding the flowers, they can't sustain their populations. Other studies, along with the experiences of farmers, have indicated that bee populations are dropping in places such as California and the Netherlands. Fuentes and his team think air pollution may be the reason.

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, is detailed online in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 14, 2016 at 5:34am

According to a new study, the primate brain is "pre-adapted" to face any situation!

A new neuroscience study has shown how the brain anticipates all of the new situations that it may encounter in a lifetime by creating a special kind of neural network that is "pre-adapted" to face any eventuality.

Enel et al at the INSERM in France investigate one of the most noteworthy properties of primate behavior, its diversity and adaptability. Human and non-human primates can learn an astonishing variety of novel behaviors that could not have been directly anticipated by evolution - we now understand that this ability to cope with new situations is due to the "pre-adapted" nature of the primate brain.

This study shows that this seemingly miraculous pre-adaptation comes from connections between neurons that form recurrent loops where inputs can rebound and mix in the network, like waves in a pond, thus called "reservoir" computing. This mix of the inputs allows a potentially universal representation of combinations of the inputs that can then be used to learn the right behaviour for a new situation.

The authors demonstrate this by training a reservoir network to perform a novel problem solving task. They then compared the activity of neurons in the model with activity of neurons in the prefrontal cortex of a research primate that was trained to perform the same task. Remarkably, there were striking similarities in the activation of neurons in both the reservoir model and the primate.

This breakthrough shows that we have taken big step towards understanding the local recurrent connectivity in the brain that prepares primates to face unlimited situations. This research shows that by allowing essentially unlimited combinations of internal representations in the network of the brain, one of them is always on hand for the given situation.

The study is published in PLOS Computational Biology.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 11, 2016 at 8:38am

4 New Elements Get Names
The proposed names for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 are nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson respectively, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Iupac) has announced.
The criteria states an element may be named after a mythological figure or concept, geological place, scientist, elemental property, or mineral.
Nihonium (elemental symbol Nh) is the proposed name for element-113. The element was synthesised by Kosuke Morita’s group at RIKEN in Japan after they bombarded a bismuth target with zinc-70 nuclei in 2004 and 2012. Named after Japan, the element will be the first East Asian name to appear on the periodic table if ratified.
Scientists based in Russia and the US who discovered elements 115 and 117 have put forward the names moscovium (Mc) and tennessine (Ts), respectively. A collaboration between the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Russia and the Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, US, elements 115 and 117 were both created in 2010. Both element names take their cues from geographical regions. Moscovium is named after Moscow, where the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research is based. Named after Tennessee, tennessine is a tribute to the region where a large amount of superheavy element research is conducted in the US.
The same group has also named element-118 oganesson (Og), in honour of the Russian nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian who led the team that synthesised element-117.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 11, 2016 at 8:21am

Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? How do you tackle it? Scientists found a new and very promising solution!

Carbon dioxide emissions from an electric power plant have been captured, pumped underground and solidified—the first step toward safe carbon capture and storage, according to a paper published on 9th June, 2016, in the journal Science.

( Rapid carbon mineralization for permanent disposal of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6291/1312 )

Scientists working at the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant near Reykjavik, Iceland, were able to pump the plant’s carbon dioxide-rich volcanic gases into deep underground basalt formations, mix them with water and chemically solidify the carbon dioxide.

When basalt—a volcanic rock that makes up roughly 70 percent of the earth’s surface—is exposed to carbon dioxide and water, a chemical reaction occurs, converting the gas to a chalk-like solid material. Scientists previously thought it wasn’t possible to capture and store carbon this way because earlier studies suggested it could take thousands of years for large amounts of carbon dioxide to be converted to chalk.

But Scientists, working on a project called CarbFix, were able to do it in two years.

Turning Carbon Emissions to Stone from Earth Institute on Vimeo.

Risks that carbon dioxide will escape into the atmosphere while it is being stored underground are greatly diminished because the solidification process occurs so quickly.

In the future, we could think of using this for power plants in places where there’s a lot of basalt—and there are many such places.

Scientists need to do more research into how different kinds of basalt affect the way carbon dioxide solidifies before the CarbFix process can be used worldwide.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 10, 2016 at 6:00am

New 3-Parent IVF Technique found Safe in Lab
A study of a new 3-parent IVF technique designed to reduce the risk of mothers passing hereditary diseases to their babies has found it is likely to work well and lead to normal pregnancies, British scientists said.
Having completed pre-clinical tests involving more than 500 eggs from 64 donor women, researchers from Britain's Newcastle University said the technique, called “early pronuclear transfer”, does not harm early embryonic development.
The technique also showed promise in being able to "greatly reduce" the level of faulty mitochondria in the embryo, the researchers said - confirming hopes that it is likely to reduce the risk of mothers passing on debilitating and often life-limiting mitochondrial disease to their children.
"The key message is that we have found no evidence the technique is unsafe. Embryos created by this technique have all the characteristics to lead to a pregnancy," said Doug Turnbull, director of Newcastle's Center for Mitochondrial Research, who co-led the study.
"This study using normal human eggs is a major advance in our work towards preventing transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease," he added.
Pronuclear transfer involves intervening in the fertilization process to remove mitochondria, which act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells, and which, if faulty, can cause inherited fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy.
The treatment is known as "three-parent" in vitro fertilization (IVF) because the babies, born from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor.
The results of this study are published on 8th June, 2016 in the journal Nature.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 3, 2016 at 10:41am

New 'Einstein ring' discovered
The PhD student Margherita Bettinelli, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), together with an international team of astrophysicists has recently discovered an unusual astronomical object: an Einstein ring. These phenomena, predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity, are quite rare but scientifically interesting. The interest is sufficiently strong that this object has been given its own name: the "The Canarias Einstein ring". The research was carried out by the Stellar Populations group at the IAC, led by Antonio Aparicio and Sebastian Hidalgo. The results were published in the international journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
An Einstein ring is a distorted image of a verydistant galaxy, which is termed "the source". The distortion is produced by the bending of the light rays from the source due to amassive galaxy, termed "the lens", lying between it and the observer. The stronggravitational field produced by the lens galaxy distorts the structure of space-time in its neighbourhood, and this does not only attract objects which have a mass, but also bends the paths of light. When the two galaxies are exactly aligned, the image of the more distant galaxy is converted into an almost perfect circle which surrounds the lens galaxy. The irregularities in the circle are due to asymmetries in the source galaxy.
This "Canarias Einstein ring" is one of the most symmetrical discovered until now and is almost circular, showing that the two galaxies are almost perfectly aligned, with a separation on the sky of only 0.2 arcseconds. The source galaxy is 10,000 million light years away from us. Due to the expansion of the Universe, this distance was smaller when its light started on its journey to us, and has taken 8,500 million years to reach us. We observe it as it was then: a blue galaxy which is beginning to evolve, populated by young stars which are forming at a high rate. The lens galaxy is nearer to us, 6,000 million light years away, and is more evolved. Its stars have almost stopped forming, and its population is old.

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