http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/how-stop-plague-four-...
How To Stop A Plague In 4 Easy Steps
Vaccinating mosquitoes can ward off malaria.
It's not the mosquito’s fault. Malaria is actually caused by the Plasmodium family of parasites, which is carried unwittingly by mosquitoes. And these parasites are tricky foes. Come up with a treatment or vaccine and the few that survive will still breed. But Johns Hopkins biologist Rhoel Dinglasan thinks he may have a way around that: vaccinating mosquitoes instead.

Dinglasan’s team has found that Plasmodium—at a crucial stage in its life cycle—needs to bind to a protein in the mosquito’s gut called AnAPN1. If you block this protein, you block transmission to humans. But how do you treat a mosquito? A teensy needle and steady hands? No. Here’s the clever part: You give people a vaccine against AnAPN1, turning them into living mosquito-treatment factories for years; their immune systems produce antibodies against AnAPN1. When mosquitoes bite vaccinated people, they’ll suck up the antibodies, which block AnAPN1 so that the mosquitoes can no longer pass along the disease. In lab tests, Dinglasan has shown that the antibodies can indeed make mosquitoes benign—although no less annoying.
A. VACCINATE

Give someone the vaccine against the mosquito-gut protein AnAPN1.
B. MANUFACTURE

The person’s immune system produces antibodies against AnAPN1 in his blood.
C. BITE

A mosquito ingests the antibodies, which bind to AnAPN1 and block the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium.
D. PREVENT

Plasmodium can’t live in the mosquito gut and, therefore, can’t be transmitted to people.

This article originally appeared in the September 2013 issue of Popular Science.

http://www.quora.com/Why-are-scientists-so-confident-that-their-the...
Why are scientists so confident that their theories are right, when history shows them to be wrong so often?

Scientists celebrating at CERN ( for not destroying the world!):

http://theconversation.com/lhc-celebrates-five-years-of-not-destroy...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=physicists-net-fra...
Physicists Net Fractal Butterfly

A decades-old search has closed in on the recursive pattern that describes electron behavior

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/09/12/scientific.societies.fa...

Scientific societies face 'modern challenges'

Natural working gears evolved long back before human beings invented them!!

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/353276/description/Born_...
Born half a century ago, chaos theory languished for years before taking the sciences by storm

From:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/science-selfies-huffpost-s...

Health kick can reverse the ageing process

Study conducted by the University of California suggests our genes may be a predisposition - but they are not our fate
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/new-study-finds-health-ki...

About Proteins that cause mad cow disease:

Brian-eating proteins: Infectious agents called prions can resist standard sterilization and are difficult to diagnose, posing tough challenges for hospitals.

Prions are unusual pathogens distinct from parasites, fungi, bacteria and viruses. They are misfolded proteins that can transform healthy proteins into sickly versions, leading to the death of cells. Particularly abundant in the brain, they took center stage in the late 1980s, during the mad cow outbreak in the U.K.  People who ate beef from infected cows ran the risk of contracting a variant of CJD. The panic brought to light the range of prion diseases that can affect humans and animals, including one that develops spontaneously. Called sporadic CJD, this spontaneous form strikes about one in every million people each year for no apparent reason. What’s more, the brain tissue from the unlucky few can infect healthy brains—hence, the worry over surgical transmission.

Ensuring neurosurgical tools are free of prions is difficult chiefly because prions resist standard sterilization procedures. To disinfect metal instruments, hospitals put them in an autoclave and steam-heat them to 121 degrees Celsius for about 15 minutes. That’s far more than what’s needed to wipe out pathogens such as bacteria and viruses, which succumb to mere boiling temperatures in about one minute. Although autoclaving greatly weakens prions, the process may not entirely wipe out these malevolent proteins.

Even when cleaned with  benzene, alcohol and formaldehyde doesn't make it weak! why prion-free guarantees are impossible: the disease has a long incubation period—long enough that an infected person would seem quite healthy and arouse no suspicion among hospital staff. Months can pass—and many patients exposed—before surgeons might learn of a CJD case and pull the tools out of use. Currently, researchers have no way of definitively diagnosing sporadic CJD except by autopsy. The incubation period for prion diseases can span decades.  “But thankfully it is a very rare disease.” Currently, there is no plan to test the infectivity of the surgical tools, which remain in quarantine and will likely be destroyed.

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=surgical-exposure-...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-exploit-the...
How to Exploit the Power of Diverse Minds

A good idea can be powerful. Many of them, in a network of diverse minds, can be more powerful still

Big corporations used to midwife good ideas from the research laboratory to the marketplace, but in the future that task will increasingly fall to a partnership of governments, commercial firms and universities.
To get different nations and institutions collaborating effectively on generating new technologies, we need new rules.
China is a rising star when it comes to innovation, but a closer look reveals that much of that work takes place in the labs of multinational corporations operating on Chinese soil.
Even though nations may differ in their levels of technological output, it is possible to compare how efficient they are at exploiting scientific research.
Mexico has difficulty translating its vibrant research into commercial technology, but the current government is trying to change that, in part by luring expat scientists back home.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/353363/description/Vitam...
Vitamin stops static electricity
Clearing out uncharged molecules may prevent charge buildup

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112952080/smells-grouped-into...
Just How Many Scents Can We Smell?
Of all the different odors and smells floating around the globe, scientists say humans can only detect ten basic categories of scents. Using a computerized model, sensory scientists now say they’ve developed a way to systematically categorize these smells.
After looking at smells through a mathematical model, the scientists say humans generally describe smells as either fragrant, woody/resinous, fruity (non-citrus), chemical, minty/peppermint, sweet, popcorn, and lemon. Perhaps some good news from this study: The scientists say there are only two categories which cause a human’s stomach to turn – those described as pungent and decayed.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/09/19/coma.researchers.observ...

Coma: Researchers observe never-before-detected brain activity
Researchers from the University of Montreal and their colleagues have found brain activity beyond a flat line EEG, which they have called Nu-complexes (from the Greek letter n). According to existing scientific data, researchers and doctors had established that beyond the so-called "flat line" (flat electroencephalogram or EEG), there is nothing at all, no brain activity, no possibility of life. This major discovery suggests that there is a whole new frontier in animal and human brain functioning. The researchers observed a human patient in an extreme deep hypoxic coma under powerful anti-epileptic medication that he had been required to take due to his health issues. "Dr. Bogdan Florea from Romania contacted our research team because he had observed unexplainable phenomena on the EEG of a coma patient. We realized that there was cerebral activity, unknown until now, in the patient's brain," says Dr. Florin Amzica, director of the study and professor at the University of Montreal's School of Dentistry.

Dr. Amzica's team then decided to recreate the patient's state in cats, the standard animal model for neurological studies. Using the anesthetic isoflurane, they placed the cats in an extremely deep -- but completely reversible -- coma. The cats passed the flat (isoelectric) EEG line, which is associated with silence in the cortex (the governing part of the brain). The team observed cerebral activity in 100% of the cats in deep coma, in the form of oscillations generated in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning processes. These oscillations, unknown until now, were transmitted to the master part of the brain, the cortex. The researchers concluded that the observed EEG waves, or Nu-complexes, were the same as those observed in the human patient.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-reveals-wh...
Science Reveals Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong
Digestion is far too messy a process to accurately convey in neat numbers. The counts on food labels can differ wildly from the calories you actually extract, for many reasons

Almost every packaged food today features calorie counts in its label. Most of these counts are inaccurate because they are based on a system of averages that ignores the complexity of digestion.
Recent research reveals that how many calories we extract from food depends on which species we eat, how we prepare our food, which bacteria are in our gut and how much energy we use to digest different foods.
Current calorie counts do not consider any of these factors. Digestion is so intricate that even if we try to improve calorie counts, we will likely never make them perfectly accurate.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ovulating-women-ar...
Ovulating Women Are Less Trusting

Women approaching peak fertility are more cautious when interacting with strangers
When women approach their most fertile time of the month, they tend to prefer potential sexual partners with more outward signs of genetic fitness, such as facial symmetry, according to past research. Now scientists find that women behave differently toward strangers in a nonsexual context, too. A paper in the April Biological Psychology showed that women near ovulation were less willing to trust strangers in an investment game, especially if the strangers were male and even more so if they were attractive men. Higher levels of the hormone estradiol, which peaks just before ovulation, were associated with less trust—a sign that the women's heightened wariness has roots in the physiology of the menstrual cycle. The finding supports the idea that at ovulation, women may unconsciously temper their increased attraction to masculine men by interacting with them more cautiously.

http://bcove.me/s0qyohop
DIY: Chemistry, art equals science to dye for

How the Seahorse Got its Shape from Steph Y on Vimeo.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-we-should-choo...
Why We Should Choose Science over Beliefs

Ideology needs to give way

By Michael Shermer

How to Unlock Life-Changing Technologies Now Waiting in the Labs

Miniature robots, personalized drugs and other potentially life-changing technologies lie waiting in the laboratory, lacking support. Here's how to fix the problem
State of the World's Science 2013 The growing connectedness of the world and the rising contribution of scientists and engineers from all continents have broadened the possibilities for human creativity »
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-unlock-life...

Box from Bot & Dolly on Vimeo.

https://soundcloud.com/fieldoffragments#!
New climate change report, 2013
Global Warming Is Real IPCC Repeats
The IPCC notes again that climate change is unequivocal so the question becomes what will be done to restrain its impacts

The oceans absorbing the majority of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases as well as the cooling contributions of volcanic eruptions.

After all, 1983-2012 appears to have been the warmest period in at least the last 1400 years and the last decade alone is the warmest on record.

there's more than enough coal, oil and natural gas left in the ground to cook the climate. That's part of the reason why the IPCC included a final paragraph on geoengineering, or large-scale attempts to alter the climate by either blocking sunlight or removing CO2 (or other greenhouse gases) from the atmosphere. Of course, there's "limited evidence" and "insufficient knowledge" about whether such approaches could even work, particularly without their own side effects, the IPCC notes.

And keep this in mind, some of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today will persist for centuries. Even if CO2 emissions stopped tomorrow, climate change would continue. In other words, humanity is in the process of setting the Earth's thermostat. The world has already warmed by roughly 0.85 degree C since 1880 and further heat extremes are "virtually certain." So the question is: how much hotter can we stand? Or as United Nations Secretary General Ban-ki Moon put it in a video address to the IPCC press conference: "The heat is on. Now we must act."

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/353592/description/Micro...
Microbes signal deceased's time of death
Germs accompany body's decay in consistent time sequence

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/10/01/scientists.who.share.da...
Scientists who share data publicly receive more citations

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/flowers-have-bloomed-for-...
Flowers have bloomed for 240m years

Flowers appeared on Earth 100 million years earlier than was previously thought, according to evidence from ancient fossilised pollen grains.

The beautifully preserved pollen, found in cores drilled from a site in northern Switzerland, is dated to 240 million years ago. Until recently scientists were convinced flowering plants only emerged in the Early Cretaceous period around 140 million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

In 2004, scientists identified much older flowering plant-like pollen from cores from the bottom of the Barents Sea, south of Spitsbergen in Norway, but the evidence was not conclusive. The new find appears to confirm an ancient origin for flowering plants, or angiosperms, which evolved from extinct cousins of conifers, ginkgos, cycads and seed ferns.

It also suggests the primitive flowers were blossoming across a broad ecological range. The research, led by Dr Peter Hochuli from the University of Zurich, appears in the latest issue of the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/10/01/alternative.antibiotics

Alternative to antibiotics
As they destroy bacteria very efficiently, plasmas constitute an alternative to chemical disinfectants and potentially to antibiotics, as well. How they achieve this effect has been investigated by biologists, plasma physicists and chemists at the Ruhr-Universität (RUB). Cold atmospheric-pressure plasmas attack the prokaryote's cell envelope, proteins and DNA. "This is too great a challenge for the repair mechanisms and the stress response systems of bacteria," says Junior Professor Dr Julia Bandow, Head of the Junior Research Group Microbial Antibiotic Research at the RUB. "In order to develop plasmas for specific applications, for example for treating chronic wounds or for root canal disinfection, it is important to understand how they affect cells. Thus, undesirable side effects may be avoided right from the start." The team reports in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Plasmas affect cell envelope, DNA and proteins

Depending on their specific composition, plasmas may contain different components, for example ions, radicals or light in the ultraviolet spectrum, so-called UV photons. Until now, scientists have not understood which components of the complex mixture contribute to which extent to the antibacterial effect. Julia Bandow's team has analysed the effect of UV photons and reactive particles, namely radicals and ozone, on both the cellular level and on the level of single biomolecules, namely DNA and proteins. On the cellular level, the reactive particles alone were most effective: they destroyed the cell envelope. On the molecular level, both plasma components were effective. Both UV radiation and reactive particles damaged the DNA; in addition, the reactive particles inactivated proteins.

No effective antibiotics in ten years' time?

Atmospheric-pressure plasmas are already being used as surgical tools, for example in nasal and intestinal polyp extraction. Their properties as disinfectants may also be of interest with regard to medical applications. "In ten years, bacteria might have developed resistance against all antibiotics that are available to us today," says Julia Bandow. Without antibiotics, surgery would become impossible due to high infection rates.
Source: Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=italy-abruzzo-eart...
Faulty Justice: Italian Earthquake Scientist Speaks Out against His Conviction

Geophysicist Enzo Boschi slams the poor communication that could put him behind bars for six years
Seismologists can only estimate probability and risk, they cannot predict the when and where of a quake.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/important-for-scientists-to-publi...
‘Important for scientists to publish work globally’

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/a-cure-for-jetlag-scienti...

A cure for jetlag? Scientists discover body clock 'reset button'

The findings could reduce the symptoms of jet lag after travelling through different time zones

Scientists have discovered the body clock 'reset button', taking them one step closer to tweaking the clock in order to make jet lag and shift work less painful.

The findings could reduce the symptoms of travelling through different time zones and working unsociable hours, which often makes people either tired or unable to sleep. Results from the study, published in journal Science, suggest the newly-found button could be used to switch the master clock to a new time zone, for example from London to Beijing, in just one day.

A team based at Kyoto University in Japan discovered the 'reset button' in the brain. There are clocks located throughout the body but the master clock is found within the brain, where it works to keep the body in tune with the world around us, creating fatigue at night and alertness during daylight.

The clock uses light to monitor time, but adjusts slowly. For every time zone travelled, it takes the body approximately a full day to catch up, according to the BBC.

http://www.guampdn.com/article/20131007/OPINION02/310070007
Good science news isn't covered

http://www.examiner.com/article/disinhibition-neurons-discovered
Disinhibition neurons discovered
Dr. Adam Kepecs led a group of a team of neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that is the first to elucidate a class of inhibitory neurons that specialize in inhibiting the action of other inhibitory neurons. The research was published in the Oct. 6, 2013, edition of the journal Nature.

The new class of neurons called VIP interneurons provides a secondary layer of inhibition of neuronal expression for both inhibitory neurons and minimizing the expression of neurons that cause excitation to occur in brain. The VIP interneurons release vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP) and function in the auditory cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex.

http://www.authintmail.com/news/science/health/new-treatments-tackl...
New treatments to tackle allergies
Scientists have zeroed-in on new treatments for people with allergies to grasses and to dust mites.

The treatments are from a new class of therapy, known as 'synthetic peptide immuno-regulatory epitopes', or SPIREs.

There are two treatments, one for grass allergy, which is commonly known as hay fever, and the other for dust mite allergy.

These are expected to help people who, as a reaction to grass pollen or the tiny bugs that live in house dust, have sneezing bouts, itching eyes and a running nose, impacting their productivity at school or work.

The two studies were conducted by Adiga Life Sciences, a joint venture between McMaster University and Circassia, a UK-based biotechnology company, and was supported by St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton.

It is estimated that these allergens together are responsible for more than 50 percent of allergic respiratory disease. Between 15 and 25 per cent of the population in North America and Europe is sensitive to pollen from different grass species.

One in four people is sensitised to house dust mites, more than any other common allergen, which includes millions of people in these regions, reports Science Daily.

Science comedy? Yes, why not?

http://fora.tv/v/c11174

Science Laughs: Science Comedian Brian Malow from Wonderfest on FORA.tv

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/10/08/brain.training.may.boos...

'Brain training' may boost working memory, but not intelligence
Brain training games, apps, and websites are popular and it's not hard to see why -- who wouldn't want to give their mental abilities a boost? New research suggests that brain training programs might strengthen your ability to hold information in mind, but they won't bring any benefits to the kind of intelligence that helps you reason and solve problems. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.