Science Simplified!

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 25, 2013 at 8:26am

Creatures Living Together Don’t Have To Evolve Differently After All
Evolutionary scientists have long argued that species that live together must evolve in different ways in order to avoid direct competition with each other, but new research published Sunday in the journal Nature suggests otherwise.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Joe Tobias of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology studied ovenbirds, one of the most diverse families of birds in the world, in order to conduct an in-depth analysis of the processes that result in the evolution of species differences.

They found that even though bird species that occurred together were typically more varied than those that lived apart, this was “simply an artifact of species being old by the time they meet,” the researchers said. Once differences in the age of species was accounted for, they found that coexisting species tended to be more similar than those types of birds that evolved separately – the opposite of what Charles Darwin claimed in Origin of Species.

“It’s not so much a case of Darwin being wrong, as there is no shortage of evidence for competition driving divergent evolution in some very young lineages,” Dr. Tobias said in a statement. “But we found no evidence that this process explains differences across a much larger sample of species.”

“The reason seems to be linked to the way new species originate in animals, which almost always requires a period of geographic separation,” he added. “By using genetic techniques to establish the age of lineages, we found that most ovenbird species only meet their closest relatives several million years after they separated from a common ancestor. This gives them plenty of time to develop differences by evolving separately.”

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113034219/evolution-of-specie...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2013 at 7:28am

Confirmed: Girls Mature Faster
British scientists say female human brains do, in fact, mature faster than male brains do -- and they know why.

In a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, researchers announced the reorganization of brain connections, as an individual transitions from childhood to adulthood, begins earlier in girls and is a likely reason girls mature faster than boys during their teen years.

The study was part of the Human Green Brain project funded by the British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which provides government funding for research. The project examines human brain development.

http://www.latinpost.com/articles/5087/20131222/its-been-confirmed-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2013 at 7:27am

Parasitic DNA Multiplies In Aging Tissues
The genomes of organisms from humans to corn are replete with “parasitic” strands of DNA that, when not suppressed, copy themselves and spread throughout the genome, potentially affecting health. Earlier this year Brown University researchers found that these “retrotransposable elements” were increasingly able to break free of the genome’s control in cultures of human cells. Now in a new paper in the journal Aging, they show that RTEs are increasingly able to break free and copy themselves in the tissues of mice as the animals aged. In further experiments the biologists showed that this activity was readily apparent in cancerous tumors, but that it also could be reduced by restricting calories.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113034106/parasitic-dna-multi...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2013 at 7:14am

A Call for Urgent Talks on Mutant Flu-Strain Research

The benefits and risks of "gain-of-function" research into highly pathogenic microbes with pandemic potential must be evaluated, scientists say
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-call-for-urgent-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2013 at 6:49am

Reward scientists working for human rights

Many efforts to support human rights require voluntary contributions by experts

Scientists have volunteered to assess reports of chemical attacks in Syria

Scientists should be rewarded for such public work as well as for publishing research

http://www.scidev.net/global/human-rights/opinion/reward-scientists...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2013 at 11:45am

‘Science’ also tops for 2013
While Oxford University Press, the British publisher of the Oxford dictionaries, declared those little smartphone self-portraits its winner last month, the folks at Merriam-Webster announced “science” on Tuesday.
“The more we thought about it, the righter it seemed in that it does lurk behind a lot of big stories that we as a society are grappling with, whether it’s climate change or environmental regulation or what’s in our textbooks,” said John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc., based in Springfield, Mass.

Science, he said, is connected to broad cultural oppositions — science versus faith, for instance — along with the power of observation and intuition, reason and ideology, evidence and tradition. Of particular note, to Merriam-Webster, anyway, is fallout from the October release of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.”

Gladwell, a popularizer of scientific thought and research in best-sellers and The New Yorker magazine, takes on the challenges of obstacles and the nature of disabilities and setbacks in the book. But he leaves science itself — according to some critics — as a rhetorical device for his main mission of storytelling.
With the explosion of information and technology, are we all scientists?

“You have scientists writing long pieces, purportedly reviews of his new book, basically criticizing him, and then his response is: ‘Hey, buddy. I’m not a scientist. I’m a writer who’s trying to promote the work of scientists. To contextualize it. To make it accessible.’ You know, ‘Don’t blame me for not being a scientist’ is basically his response,” Sokolowski said.

Jason Silva is neither scientist nor academic. He’s a “techno optimist,” filmmaker, “performance philosopher” and host of the popular “Brain Games” show on the National Geographic Channel.

“Ooh, that’s awesome,” he said upon learning of science’s dictionary shout-out. “People are increasingly scientifically minded, and that makes me very happy.”
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/entertainment/in-your-face-self...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2013 at 11:37am

Gaia 'billion-star surveyor' lifts off

The Gaia mission will make a very precise 3D map of our Milky Way galaxy
It is Europe's successor to the Hipparcos satellite which mapped some 100,000 stars
The one billion to be catalogued by Gaia is still only 1% of the Milky Way's total
But the quality of the new survey promises a raft of discoveries beyond just the stars themselves
Gaia will find new asteroids, failed stars, and allow tests of physical constants and theories
Its map of the sky will be a reference frame to guide the investigations of future telescopes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25426424#!

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 21, 2013 at 8:16am

Scientists Discover New Surprising Details About Table Salt
An international team of scientists has discovered a surprise hidden in the first chemical compound that children learn about: table salt.

Under certain high pressure conditions, table salt, scientifically known as sodium chloride, can take on some surprising forms that violate standard chemistry predictions. The findings, published in Science, may hold the key to answering lingering questions about planet formation.

The researchers used advanced algorithms to predict an array of possible stable structural outcomes that would result from compressing rock salt. Using a diamond anvil at DESY’s X-ray source PETRA III, they put the salt under high pressure of 200,000 atmospheres. They added an extra “dash” of either sodium or chlorine, creating new “forbidden” compounds like Na3Cl and NaCl3.
Such compounds require a completely different form of chemical bonding with higher energy. Because nature always favors the lowest state of energy, such compounds should not happen.
These compounds are thermodynamically stable and once made, remain so indefinitely,” says Zhang. “Classical chemistry forbids their very existence. Classical chemistry also says atoms try to fulfil the octet rule – elements gain or lose electrons to attain an electron configuration of the nearest noble gas, with complete outer electron shells that make them very stable. Well, here that rule is not satisfied.”

The results of these experiments help to explore a broader view of chemistry. “I think this work is the beginning of a revolution in chemistry,” Oganov says. “We found, at low pressures achievable in the lab, perfectly stable compounds that contradict the classical rules of chemistry. If you apply rather modest pressure, 200,000 atmospheres – for comparison purposes, the pressure at the centre of the Earth is 3.6 million atmospheres – much of what we know from chemistry textbooks falls apart.”

“Here on the surface of the earth, these conditions might be default, but they are rather special if you look at the universe as a whole,” Konôpková explains. What may be “forbidden” under ambient conditions on earth, can become possible under more extreme conditions.
This discovery could lead to new, practical applications, say the researchers.

“When you change the theoretical underpinnings of chemistry, that’s a big deal,” Goncharov says. “But what it also means is that we can make new materials with exotic properties.”

Among the compounds Oganov and his team created are two-dimensional metals, where electricity is conducted along the layers of the structure.

“One of these materials – Na3Cl – has a fascinating structure,” Oganov says. “It is comprised of layers of NaCl and layers of pure sodium. The NaCl layers act as insulators; the pure sodium layers conduct electricity. Systems with two-dimensional electrical conductivity have attracted a lot interest.”

The research team hopes that the table salt experiments will only be the beginning of the discovery of completely new compounds. “If this simple system is capable of turning into such a diverse array of compounds under high-pressure conditions, then others likely are, too,” Goncharov explains. “This could help answer outstanding questions about early planetary cores, as well as to create new materials with practical uses.”

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113033114/salt-chemistry-surp...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 20, 2013 at 8:00am

Dog dust may benefit infant immune systems
Microbes from pet-owning houses protected mice against allergy, infection

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dog-dust-may-benefit-infant-imm...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 20, 2013 at 7:59am

Ancient bond holds life together, literally
Animal tissues and organs may require a specific link between sulfur and nitrogen
The rise of multicellular structures in animals may have hinged on a chemical link between sulfur and nitrogen atoms.

In animal tissues and organs, cells lock into a scaffold of collagen proteins that allows the cells to stick together and coordinate activities, such as tissue repair. Sulfur-nitrogen connections called sulfilimine bonds form essential links that keep the protein scaffold together, researchers have now discovered.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-bond-holds-life-togethe...

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