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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 31, 2021 at 9:10am

Study: COVID-19 does not enter DNA

Researchers are refuting claims that COVID-19 corona virus can enter a person's DNA.

The researchers say the claims have led to "scaremongering" and people should not hesitate to be vaccinated.

Research published in Cell Reports showed there was no evidence of COVID-19—or the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines—entering DNA.

The evidence refutes this concept being used to fuel vaccine hesitancy.

Scientists conducted the research to assess now widely spread findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggesting positive COVID-19 tests long after recovery are due to the virus being incorporated into DNA.

Researchers now looked into their claims that the human cells and machinery turned COVID-19 RNA into DNA, causing permanent mutations.

They assessed the claims in cells grown in the laboratory, conducted DNA sequencing and found no evidence of COVID-19 in DNA.

From a public health point of view, scientists affirmed  that there are no concerns that the virus or vaccines can be incorporated into human DNA.

Nathan Smits et al, No evidence of human genome integration of SARS-CoV-2 found by long-read DNA sequencing, Cell Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109530

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-covid-dna.html?utm_source=nw...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 30, 2021 at 11:23am

Water transformed into shiny, golden metal

Electrons from a droplet of sodium and potassium turn water into a metallic material that conducts electricity.

Researchers have transformed water into a metallic material by forming a thin layer of water around electron-sharing alkali metals. The water stayed in a metallic state for only a few seconds, but the experiment did not require the high pressures that are normally needed to turn non-metallic materials into electrically conductive metals. Scientists say that seeing the water take on a golden shine was a highlight of their career, and a reminder that science can be fun.

Water transformed into shiny, golden metal

Electrons from a droplet of sodium and potassium turn water into a metallic material that conducts electricity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02065-w?utm_source=Natur...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 30, 2021 at 10:20am

Rainfall becomes increasingly variable as climate warms Climate models predict that rainfall variability over wet regions globally will be greatly enhanced by global warming, causing wide swings between dry and wet conditions, according to a joint study by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Met Office, the UK's national meteorological service.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 30, 2021 at 10:18am

New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered

Yesterday  the LHCb experiment at CERN has presented a new discovery at the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP). The new particle discovered by LHCb, labeled as T_cc⁺, is a tetraquark—an exotic hadron containing two quarks and two antiquarks. It is the longest-lived exotic matter particle ever discovered, and the first to contain two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks.

Quarks are the fundamental building blocks from which matter is constructed. They combine to form hadrons, namely baryons, such as the proton and the neutron, which consist of three quarks, and mesons, which are formed as quark-antiquark pairs. In recent years a number of so-called exotic hadrons—particles with four or five quarks, instead of the conventional two or three—have been found. The present  discovery is of a particularly unique exotic hadron.

The new particle  contains two charm quarks and an up and a down antiquark. 

https://home.cern/news/news/physics/twice-charm-long-lived-exotic-p...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 30, 2021 at 9:15am

More carbon emissions will kill more people; here's how many

A just-published study coins a new metric: the "mortality cost of carbon." That is, how many future lives will be lost—or saved—depending on whether we increase or decrease our current carbon emissions. If the numbers hold up, they are quite high. The study was published recently in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers saw a major gap in current estimates of the social cost of carbon—the dollar figure that economists attach to each ton of emissions, based on future damages it is expected to inflict. A complex and highly malleable number, the social cost of carbon underpins how governments worldwide formulate climate policies,  by suggesting how much we should be willing to pay today in order to avert damages in the future. Yet, while recent studies project that climate change will cause millions of premature deaths, current estimates of the social cost of carbon rely on outdated research that does not include those projections. Scientists now attempts to add in the new data.

Based on the decisions made by individuals, businesses or governments, this tells you how many lives will be lost, or saved. It quantifies the mortality impact of those decisions. It brings this question down to a more personal, understandable level.

Assuming that emissions continue to increase on their current high path, researchers came up with a number: 2.26×10^-4, or 0.000226 excess deaths this century per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted beyond the current rate of emissions. That is: For every 4,434 metric tons of CO₂ that we add beyond the 2020 rate of emissions, we will kill one person. 

This implies that we must cut emissions in a big way now, and reach full decarbonization by 2050. The result would be only 2.4 degrees of warming by 2100. As a result, by scientists' calculation, excess deaths would drop to 9 million by 2100—a saving of 74 million lives.

All these figures are subject to political finagling.

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/07/29/more-carbon-emissions-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2021 at 12:24pm

Dark mode may not save battery life as much as anticipated

When Android and Apple operating system updates started giving users the option to put their smartphones in dark mode, the feature showed potential for saving the battery life of newer phones with screens that allow darker-colored pixels to use less power than lighter-colored pixels.

But dark mode is unlikely to make a big difference to battery life with the way that most people use their phones on a daily basis, says a new study by  researchers.

That doesn't mean that dark mode can't be helpful, though.

 Researchers found that switching from light mode to dark mode saves only 3%-9% power on average for several different OLED smartphones.

This percentage is so small that most users wouldn't notice the slightly longer battery life. But the higher the brightness when switching from light mode to dark mode, the higher the energy savings.

Pranab Dash et al, How much battery does dark mode save?, Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (2021). DOI: 10.1145/3458864.3467682

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-dark-mode-battery-life.html?utm...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2021 at 12:18pm

Motivation depends on how the brain processes fatigue

How do we decide whether or not an activity which requires work is 'worth the effort'? Researchers  have shown that the willingness to work is not static, and depends upon the fluctuating rhythms of fatigue.

Fatigue—the feeling of exhaustion from doing effortful tasks—is something we all experience daily. It makes us lose motivation and want to take a break. Although scientists understand the mechanisms the brain uses to decide whether a given task is worth the effort, the influence of fatigue on this process is not yet well understood.

The research team conducted a study to investigate the impact of fatigue on a person's decision to exert effort. They found that people were less likely to work and exert effort—even for a reward—if they were fatigued. The results are published in Nature Communications.

Intriguingly, the researchers found that there were two different types of fatigue that were detected in distinct parts of the brain. In the first, fatigue is experienced as a short-term feeling, which can be overcome after a short rest. Over time, however, a second, longer term feeling builds up, stops people from wanting to work, and doesn't go away with short rests.

Tanja Müller et al, Neural and computational mechanisms of momentary fatigue and persistence in effort-based choice, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24927-7

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2021 at 12:08pm

Earth's 'vital signs' worsening as humanity's impact deepens

The global economy's business-as-usual approach to climate change has seen Earth's "vital signs" deteriorate to record levels, an influential group of scientists said recently, warning that several climate tipping points were now imminent.

The researchers, part of a group of more than 14,000 scientists who have signed on to an initiative declaring a worldwide climate  emergency, said that governments had consistently failed to address the root cause of climate change: "the overexploitation of the Earth".

Of 31 "vital signs"—key metrics of planetary health that include greenhouse gas emissions, glacier thickness, sea-ice extent and deforestation—they found that 18 hit record highs or lows.

For example, despite a dip in pollution linked to the pandemic, levels of atmospheric CO2 and methane hit all-time highs in 2021.

Greenland and Antarctica both recently showed all-time low levels of ice mass, and glaciers are melting 31 percent faster than they did just 15 years ago, the authors said.

Both ocean heat and global sea levels set new records since 2019, and the annual loss rate of the Brazilian Amazon reached a 12-year high in 2020.

Echoing previous research, they said that forest degradation linked to fire, drought and logging was causing parts of the Brazilian Amazon to now act as a source of carbon, rather than absorb the gas from the atmosphere.

Livestock such as cows and sheep are now at record levels, numbering more than four billion and with a mass exceeding that of all humans and wild land mammals combined, they said.

We need to respond to the evidence that we are hitting climate tipping points with equally urgent action to decarbonise the global economy and start restoring instead of destroying nature, they stressed.

The researchers said there was "mounting evidence that we are nearing or have already crossed" a number of climate tipping points.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/bio...

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-earth-vital-worsening-humanity-impact...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 29, 2021 at 10:51am

The Hidden Beauty of Rainbows

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 28, 2021 at 10:35am

Physicists Have Figured Out How We Could Make Antimatter Out of Light

A new study by scientists has demonstrated how researchers may be able to create an accelerating jet of antimatter from light.

A team of physicists has shown that high-intensity lasers can be used to generate colliding gamma photons – the most energetic wavelengths of light – to produce electron-positron pairs. This, they say, could help us understand the environments around some of the Universe's most extreme objects: neutron stars.

The process of creating a matter-antimatter pair of particles – an electron and a positron – from photons is called the Breit-Wheeler process, and it's extremely difficult to achieve experimentally.

The probability of it taking place when two photons collide is very small. You need very high-energy photons, or gamma rays, and a lot of them, in order to maximize the chances of observation.

We don't yet have the capability to build a gamma-ray laser, so the photon-photon Breit-Wheeler process currently remains experimentally unachieved. But a team of physicists led by Yutong He of the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) has proposed a new workaround that, according to their simulations, could actually work.

It consists of a plastic block, carved with a pattern of criss-crossing channels on the micrometer scale. Two powerful lasers, one on either side of the block, fire strong pulses at this target.

"When the laser pulses penetrate the sample, each of them accelerates a cloud of extremely fast electrons. 

These two electron clouds then race toward each other with full force, interacting with the laser propagating in the opposite direction."

The resulting collision is so energetic that it produces a cloud of gamma photons. These gamma photons should collide with each other to produce electron-positron pairs,  in accordance with Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Even more excitingly, this process should generate powerful magnetic fields that collimate the positrons (rather than the electrons) into strongly accelerated, jet-shaped beams. In a distance of just 50 micrometers, the researchers found, the acceleration should increase the energy of the particles to one gigaelectronvolt.

Using a complex computer simulation, the researchers tested their model, and found that it should work, even when using less powerful lasers than previous proposals.

Not only would the collimation and acceleration of the positron beam improve the detection rate of the particles, but it bears a strong similarity to the powerful collimated particle jets beamed out by strongly magnetic, rapidly rotating neutron stars known as pulsars.

Scientists believe that processes that take place close to these stars could result in clouds of gamma radiation, similar to their proposed experiment.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-021-00636-x

https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-figured-out-how-we-cou...

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