Stress alters children's genomes

Poverty and unstable family environments shorten chromosome-protecting telomeres in nine-year-olds.
Growing up in a stressful social environment leaves lasting marks on young chromosomes, a study of African American boys has revealed. Telomeres, repetitive DNA sequences that protect the ends of chromosomes from fraying over time, are shorter in children from poor and unstable homes than in children from more nurturing families.
http://www.nature.com/news/stress-alters-children-s-genomes-1.14997

A study found that up to half of 2 year olds were picky eaters. Food choosiness isn’t just a way for a kid to drive a parent mad. Pickiness actually makes sense: When kids are bombarded with new and unusual foods, sticking with safe, familiar choices is a good way to avoid eating something dangerous.
''Prevalence of picky eaters among infants and toddlers and their caregivers’ decisions about offering a new food''
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/yjada/article/S0...
Taste preferences start in the womb. Fetuses slurp up amniotic fluid, seasoned with whatever mom just ate. (You’re welcome for the seasoned amniotic fluid imagery.) These flavors, such as carrots or garlic, tap into the fetus’s taste system, which begins to form in the first trimester. The more exposure to a certain taste, the more a baby is to eventually like it. Babies whose mothers drank a lot of carrot juice while pregnant and breastfeeding preferred carrot-flavored cereal, for instance.
Familiarity breeds yum, in this case. And I was amazed when I saw just what familiarity means to young kids. Some recent work suggests that to get kids used to a certain flavor, that food should be offered and tasted anywhere from six to 14 times. That’s a whole lot of tasting. And lots of parents don’t have that kind of patience. Most parents reported giving their kids a new food three to five times before giving up. Only 6 to 9 percent of parents kept offering a new food six to 10 times.

This kind of intense exposure can transform a reviled food into a familiar one, making the kid more likely to eat it. One study had parents give their child a tiny taste of one of six raw vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, celery, green peppers or red peppers) every day for 14 days. After this intense tasting exposure, kids were more likely to eat the veggie, the researchers found.

''If your kid hates broccoli, try, try again
Repeated exposure to foods may be the antidote to picky eating''
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/if-your-kid-hates-bro...

A speedy particle from beyond the solar system is the new record holder for the highest-energy neutrino ever detected, researchers from the IceCube experiment announced April 7 at a meeting of the American Physical Society.

Buried under an Antarctic glacier, IceCube consists of thousands of detectors looking for flashes of light triggered when neutrinos, particles that barely interact with anything as they cruise the cosmos, collide with the ice. Incorporating a year’s worth of new data, researchers announced that IceCube detected nine additional high-energy neutrinos for a total of 37.

One of the nine neutrinos struck the ice with a record 2 million billion electron volts of energy. Continuing the tradition of naming neutrinos after Muppets, the scientists named it Big Bird.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/meet-big-bird-highe...

Hand Soap Ingredient Can Up Body Bacteria Burden
Residues of the antimicrobial agent triclosan can paradoxically boost bacterial growth in our bodies, by giving microbes a comfortable biofilm in which to rest.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/triclosan-biofilm...

An interdisciplinary research team of researchers has designed ultra-fast electrical circuits using quantum tunneling.
Quantum Tunneling Speeds Up Circuits
- http://www.nus.edu.sg/

Scientists in Taiwan has uncovered how a viral DNA polymerase breaks the golden Watson-Crick rule.
Replication of DNA occurs in all living organisms and forms the basis of biological inheritance. DNA is formed and replicated through the pairing of the four nucleotides, adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G) in a specific pattern: A pairs with T and C pairs with G. This is known as the Watson-Crick base-pairing rule. The synthesis of new strands of DNA is facilitated by enzymes called DNA polymerases.

Scientists have long been fascinated by the fidelity of the DNA polymerase reaction — the way in which the pairing rule is invariably followed. However, in recent years scientists have discovered polymerases that do not follow the Watson-Crick rule, and have sought explanations for how these enzymes function.

Recently published in the chemistry periodical Journal of American Chemistry, Tsai’s research investigated a DNA polymerase from the African swine fever virus named Pol X. Pol X is unusual because it can get G to pair with itself, on top of following the Watson-Crick rule.
In conventional DNA polymerization, the enzyme firsts binds to the DNA, and only subsequently the free nucleotides. This allows the DNA sequence to determine which nucleotide binds, restricting the binding to nucleotides complementary to the DNA template. The team found, however, that Pol X is able to bind nucleotides in the absence of DNA.

“Kinetic studies suggested that Pol X does not follow the established mechanistic paradigm that DNA polymerases bind DNA before binding to a nucleotide,” Tsai explained.

The results demonstrate the first solution structural view of DNA polymerase catalysis and a novel mechanism for non-Watson-Crick incorporation by a low-fidelity DNA polymerase.
''How a Low-Fidelity DNA Polymerase Chooses Non-Watson–Crick from Watson–Crick Incorporation''
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja4102375

Researchers have found that inflammation of the nervous system is higher in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) than in healthy people.

The study, published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, suggests that using positron emission tomography (PET) scans to detect brain inflammation could be an objective diagnostic test for CFS.
''Toward a clearer diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome''
http://www.riken.jp/en/pr/press/2014/20140404_1/

Scientists have found that drinking water can activate different areas of the brain, depending on whether the subject is thirsty or satiated.

Brains Know When To Stop Drinking Water
Our brains are hardwired to stop us from drinking more water than is healthy, according to a new brain imaging study led by The University Of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Australia.

The study found a ‘stop mechanism’ that controlled the brain signals telling an individual to stop drinking water when no longer thirsty, as well as the effects of drinking more water than required on the brain.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research used magnetic resonance imaging to scan two physiological conditions of the brain, starting with scanning brain regions during the experience of thirst. Participants were then removed from the scanner and asked to drink to satiation or ‘overdrink’ and returned for further scanning.

Different areas of the brain involved in emotional decision-making were activated when people drank water after becoming thirsty and when study participants followed instructions to keep drinking when no longer thirsty.” 



“The brain regions determining the signals to stop drinking have not previously been recognized in this context. It identifies an important component in regulation and this ‘stop mechanism’ may prevent complications from excessive water intake”.
Scientists have found that drinking water can activate different areas of the brain, depending on whether the subject is thirsty or satiated.

Our brains are hardwired to stop us from drinking more water than is healthy, according to a new brain imaging study led by The University Of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Australia.

The study found a ‘stop mechanism’ that controlled the brain signals telling an individual to stop drinking water when no longer thirsty, as well as the effects of drinking more water than required on the brain.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research used magnetic resonance imaging to scan two physiological conditions of the brain, starting with scanning brain regions during the experience of thirst. Participants were then removed from the scanner and asked to drink to satiation or ‘overdrink’ and returned for further scanning.


Researcher Professor Derek Denton from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne said the study provided insight into the human instincts that determine survival behavior and are also of medical importance. 



“Different areas of the brain involved in emotional decision-making were activated when people drank water after becoming thirsty and when study participants followed instructions to keep drinking when no longer thirsty.” 



“The brain regions determining the signals to stop drinking have not previously been recognized in this context. It identifies an important component in regulation and this ‘stop mechanism’ may prevent complications from excessive water intake,” he said.

Overdrinking can reduce the salt concentration of the blood that can result in the swelling of the brain, a potentially fatal condition. Also known as polydipsia, it has been found in some patients with schizophrenia and in some marathon runners.
“This is a study of elements of gratification and how the body programs accurate behavior. In revealing aspects of gratification control, the data are relevant to study the gratification of other instincts, such as food intake, salt intake and sexual behavior”.
''Regional brain responses associated with drinking water during thirst and after its satiation''
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/14/5379

Did Life Originate At Deep Sea Vents?
Recent research by geochemists Eoghan Reeves, Jeff Seewald, and Jill McDermott at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the first to test a fundamental assumption of this ‘metabolism first’ hypothesis, and finds that it may not have been as easy as previously assumed. Instead, their findings could provide a focus for the search for life on other planets. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

In 1977, scientists discovered biological communities unexpectedly living around seafloor hydrothermal vents, far from sunlight and thriving on a chemical soup rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and sulfur, spewing from the geysers. Inspired by these findings, scientists later proposed that hydrothermal vents provided an ideal environment with all the ingredients needed for microbial life to emerge on early Earth. A central figure in this hypothesis is a simple sulfur-containing carbon compound called “methanethiol” – a supposed geologic precursor of the Acetyl-CoA enzyme present in many organisms, including humans. Scientists suspected methanethiol could have been the “starter dough” from which all life emerged.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113118229/did-life-originate-...

You have never lived in reality. Instead your brain gathers bits and pieces of data from your sensory systems and builds a virtual simulation of the world.
One groundbreaking new illusion exploits the fact that our perception of motion emerges from the interaction between an object's actual motion and its background.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/best-illusions-of-the-yea...

The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites
http://www.livescience.com/13040-10-disgusting-parasites-zombie-ant...

Electronic cigarettes can change gene expression in a similar way to tobacco, according to one of the first studies to investigate the biological effects of the devices.
E-cigarettes affect cells
http://www.nature.com/news/e-cigarettes-affect-cells-1.15015

Scientists have found that the two drugs used across the world to treat swine flu — Tamiflu and Relenza — are no better than Paracetamol in relieving flu symptoms and are next to useless in preventing a pandemic.

Many countries including India have spent millions of dollars in stockpiling these two drugs fearing a swine flu pandemic.

According to an independent panel of scientists, companies behind the two drugs held back crucial information that showed just how ineffective they were in clinical trials.
Main anti-swine flu drugs found to be useless
_ Agencies

This is what happens when you pee in the pool
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/what-happens-when-you...

“For better or worse,” said Steven A. Edwards, a policy analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-m-eger/business-and-education-ex...

Scientists make a Mini Mars to mimic Red Planet dust

Martian dust can wreak havoc with sensitive equipment, so researchers have created a chamber that lets them simulate the Martian surface -- dust and all -- before that equipment heads to the Red Planet.
http://www.cnet.com/news/scientists-build-a-mini-mars-in-spain/

A new evolutionary reason for why many underfed lab animals live longer:
The most prominent theory involves what happens physiologically during times of food scarcity. When the living is good, natural selection favors organisms that invest energy in reproduction. In times of hardship, however, animals have fewer offspring, diverting precious nutrients to cell repair and recycling so they can survive until the famine ends, when reproduction begins anew. Cell repair and recycling appear to be substantial antiaging and anticancer processes, which may explain why underfed lab animals live longer and rarely develop old-age pathologies like cancer and heart disease.

The new hypothesis she proposes holds that during a famine animals escalate cellular repair and recycling, but they do so for the purpose of having as many progeny as possible during a famine, not afterward. They “make the best of a bad situation” to maximize their fitness in the present. “It’s an efficiency mode that the animal goes into,” she says. Adler and colleague Russell Bonduriansky published their reasoning in the March BioEssays.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300165/abstract
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hunger-gains-a-new-idea-o...

Just 1 Rock Concert or Football Game May Cause Permanent Hearing Damage
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2014/04/14/just-1-...

“Boys Can Be Anything”: Effect of Barbie Play on Girls’ Career Cognitions

Abstract

Play with Barbie dolls is an understudied source of gendered socialization that may convey a sexualized adult world to young girls. Early exposure to sexualized images may have unintended consequences in the form of perceived limitations on future selves. We investigated perceptions of careers girls felt they could do in the future as compared to the number of careers they felt boys could do as a function of condition (playing with a Barbie or Mrs. Potato Head doll) and type of career (male dominated or female dominated) in a sample of 37 U.S. girls aged 4–7 years old residing in the Pacific Northwest. After a randomly assigned 5-min exposure to condition, children were asked how many of ten different occupations they themselves could do in the future and how many of those occupations a boy could do. Data were analyzed with a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial ANOVA. Averaged across condition, girls reported that boys could do significantly more occupations than they could themselves, especially when considering male-dominated careers. In addition, girls’ ideas about careers for themselves compared to careers for boys interacted with condition, such that girls who played with Barbie indicated that they had fewer future career options than boys, whereas girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head reported a smaller difference between future possible careers for themselves as compared to boys. Results support predictions from gender socialization and objectification theories.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-014-0347-y

Behavioural impairment in reef fishes caused by ocean acidification at CO2 seeps
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2...

Fish are losing their survival instinct — even becoming attracted to the smell of their predators — as the world's oceans become more acidic because of climate change, new research said on Monday.

The study of fish in coral reefs off the coast of Papua New Guinea — where the waters are naturally acidic — showed the animals' behaviour became riskier.

"Fish will normally avoid the smell of a predator, that makes perfect sense," lead author Professor Philip Munday from Australia's James Cook University told AFP.

"But they start to become attracted to the smell of the predator. That's incredible.

"They also swim further from shelter and they are more active, they swim around more. That's riskier behaviour for them — they are more likely to be attacked by a predator."

Munday said the research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, was important given that about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is ultimately absorbed by the ocean, a process which results in the seas becoming more acidic.

Acidification around the reefs studied is at levels predicted to become ocean-wide by the end of the century as the climate changes.

Munday said the fish appeared to have failed to adapt to the conditions, despite living their whole lives exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide.

"They didn't seem to adjust within their lifetime," Munday said. "That tells us that they don't adjust when they are permanently exposed to these higher carbon dioxide levels and we would have to think about whether adaptation would be possible over the coming decades."

Munday said the "seep" to which the fish were exposed — in which carbon dioxide from undersea volcanic activity bubbles to the surface — was the perfect "natural laboratory" for the study.

Close to the seep there is no coral growth, but further away lies a unique coral reef zone with carbon dioxide levels similar to those forecast for future decades.

Co-author Jodie Rummer said while the increased carbon dioxide in the water affected how fish behaved, it did not appear to affect their athletic performance.

"The metabolic rates of fish from the seep area were the same as fish from nearby 'healthy' reefs," she said in a statement.

"So, it seems that future ocean acidification may affect the behaviour of reef fishes more than other aspects of their performance."

The research was conducted by James Cook's Coral Centre of Excellence, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Geographic Society.

Health risks from mobile wireless devices like phones and tablets are growing stronger, and require immediate action, says a new study. According to the BioInitiative Working Group, which released a mid-year update covering new science studies from 2012 to 2014, new studies intensify medical concerns about malignant brain tumours from cell phone use.

"There is a consistent pattern of increased risk for glioma (a malignant brain tumour ) and acoustic neuroma with use of mobile and cordless phones," said Lennart Hardell from Orebro University , Sweden. "Epidemiological evidence shows that radio frequency should be classified as a known human carcinogen. The existing FCC/IEEE and ICNIRP public safety limits are not adequate to protect public health," Hardell said.

The BioInitiative reports nervous system effects in 68% of studies on radio frequency radiation (144 of 211 studies) in 2014. This has increased from 63% in 2012 (93 of 150 studies). Studies of extremely-low frequency radiation are reported to cause nervous system effects in 90% of the 105 studies available in 2014.

Genetic effects (damage to DNA) from radio frequency radiation is reported in 65% (74 of 114 studies); and 83% (49 of 59 studies) of extremely low frequency studies. Wireless devices like phones and tablets are big sources of unnecessary biological stress to the mind and body that can chip away at resilience over time. The report warns against wireless in schools. Schools should provide internet access without Wi-Fi.
-Agencies

In a ground-breaking trial, researchers in the UK will test artificial blood made from human stem cells in patients for the first time.

The research, planned for 2016, could pave the way for manufacturing of blood on an industrial scale, which could even supersede donated blood as the main supply for patients.

"We have made red blood cells, for the first time, that are fit to go in a person's body. Before now, we haven't really had that," said Marc Turner, medical director at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, who is leading the 5 million pounds project at the University of Edinburgh.
_PTI

Five mutations could make bird flu spread easily
Handful of alterations can turn H5N1 avian influenza into virus that infects mammals through the air

Recently, A/H5N1 influenza viruses were shown to acquire airborne transmissibility between ferrets upon targeted mutagenesis and virus passage. The critical genetic changes in airborne A/Indonesia/5/05 were not yet identified. Here, five substitutions proved to be sufficient to determine this airborne transmission phenotype. Substitutions in PB1 and PB2 collectively caused enhanced transcription and virus replication. One substitution increased HA thermostability and lowered the pH of membrane fusion. Two substitutions independently changed HA binding preference from α2,3-linked to α2,6-linked sialic acid receptors. The loss of a glycosylation site in HA enhanced overall binding to receptors. The acquired substitutions emerged early during ferret passage as minor variants and became dominant rapidly. Identification of substitutions that are essential for airborne transmission of avian influenza viruses between ferrets and their associated phenotypes advances our fundamental understanding of virus transmission and will increase the value of future surveillance programs and public health risk assessments.
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2814%2900281-5

Revealing camouflaged bacteria
A research team at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel has discovered an protein family that plays a central role in the fight against the bacterial pathogen Salmonella within the cells. The so called interferon-induced GTPases reveal and eliminate the bacterium's camouflage in the cell, enabling the cell to recognize the pathogen and to render it innocuous. The findings are published in the current issue of the science magazine Nature. Bacteria have developed countless strategies to hide themselves in order to evade attack by the immune system. In the body, Salmonella bacteria use macrophages as host cells to ensure their survival and to be able to spread within the body. Their survival strategy is to nestle into a vacuole within the cytoplasm of a macrophage, hiding there and multiplying. While they are hidden there, the immune cells cannot detect the bacteria and fight them.

The recommendations include increasing hepatitis C screening, liver damage mitigation and how to select appropriate treatment for chronic infections.

WHO Issues First Hepatitis C Guidelines
Guidelines for the screening, care and treatment of persons with hepatitis C infection
http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/hepatitis/hepatitis-c-guidelines/en/

A research team reports in the April 16 Science Translational Medicine that after a small group of ferrets were exposed to the canine distemper virus—a close cousin of measles—and then three days later treated with a newly developed antiviral medication, the disease was completely suppressed.
All three of the exposed animals not only survived the virus but developed high amounts of protective antibodies against it, likely protecting them against future exposures (although the research team has not yet explored how long that immunity lasts). “We strongly support vaccination,” says study author Richard Plemper of the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University. “This drug was not developed as an alternative to vaccination but rather as an additional weapon in our arsenal against the virus that may enable us to improve disease management and rapidly silence outbreaks,” he says. The researchers hope that a therapeutic drug will be particularly useful for combating outbreaks in unvaccinated hotspots.
'Could an Oral Measles Drug Help the Unvaccinated?'
A medication designed to inhibit measleslike virus in infected ferrets shows promise
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-oral-measles-dru...

Opinion: Science Is Running Out of Things to Discover
The advancing age when Nobelists receive their prizes could suggest fewer breakthroughs are waiting to happen
The latest evidence is a "Correspondence" published today in the journal Nature. A group of six researchers, led by Santo Fortunato, professor of complex systems at Aalto University in Finland, points out that it is taking longer and longer for scientists to receive Nobel Prizes for their work.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140409-nobel-prize-...

(What rubbish?! We have lots to discover in life sciences, chemistry and Physics. Just taking into account only Astrophysics to write this article is dumb- Krishna)

Sperm RNA Carries Marks of Trauma
Stress alters the expression of small RNAs in male mice and leads to depressive behaviors in later generations
-Nature.com

Call for alternative identification methods for endangered species
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/04/17/call.alternative.identi...

Pine forests are chock full of wild animals and plant life, but there's an invisible machine underground. Huge populations of fungi are churning away in the soil, decomposing organic matter and releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Despite the vital role these fungi play in ecological systems, their identities have only now been revealed. A Stanford-led team of scientists has generated a genetic map of more than 10,000 species of fungi across North America. The work was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/04/17/stanford.biologists.hel...!+Science+News+-+Popular%29

Clean air: Fewer sources for self-cleaning
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/04/17/clean.air.fewer.sources...

New Memory Model Explains How Neurons Select Memories
Neuroscientists have discovered much about how long-term memories are stored in recent decades. For example, a number of proteins are quickly made in activated brain cells in order to create new memories for significant events, and some of those proteins remain at specific places on certain neurons for a few hours before breaking down.

It is this chain of biochemical occurrences that make it possible for people to remember key details about a particular event. However, one difficulty when it comes to modeling memory storage is trying to explain why only certain details and not everything that happened in that one or two hour window is retained.

Using data from previous research in the field as a starting point, Sejnowski and his colleagues developed a model that bridges the gap between molecular findings and memory systems observations in order to better explain how this 60 to 120 minute memory window works. Their findings, which could provide new insight in dealing with conditions such as Alzheimer’s and PTSD, appear in the latest edition of the journal Neuron.
- http://www.cell.com/neuron/home

New evidence of suicide epidemic among India's 'marginalized' farmers:
A new study has found that India's shocking rates of suicide are highest in areas with the most debt-ridden farmers who are clinging to tiny smallholdings -- less than one hectare -- and trying to grow 'cash crops', such as cotton and coffee, that are highly susceptible to global price fluctuations. The research supports a range of previous case studies that point to a crisis in key areas of India's agriculture sector following the 'liberalization' of the nation's economy during the 1990s. Researchers say that policy intervention to stabilize the price of cash crops and relieve indebted farmers may help stem the tide of suicide that has swept the Indian countryside.

Suicide rates vary sharply across the different Indian states. Building on the LSHTM study, researchers from Cambridge and UCL analysed suicide figures of 18 Indian states – as well as national crime and census statistics and surveying done by the Ministry of Agriculture – to create data models that investigated whether case studies of "farmer suicide" that concentrate on a few suicide hotspots could be generalised across India.

The team, from the Cambridge University's Department of Sociology and University College London's Department of Political Science, say they have found significant causal links showing that the huge variation in suicide rates between Indian states can largely be accounted for by suicides among farmers and agricultural workers.

Farmers at highest risk have three characteristics: those that grow cash crops such as coffee and cotton; those with 'marginal' farms of less than one hectare; and those with debts of 300 Rupees or more. Indian states in which these characteristics are most prevalent had the highest suicide rates. In fact, these characteristics account for almost 75% of the variability in state-level suicides.
Source: The lancet

First Earth-Size Planet That Could Support Life found
For the first time, scientists have discovered an Earth-size alien planet in the habitable zone of its host star, an "Earth cousin" that just might have liquid water and the right conditions for life.
The newfound planet, called Kepler-186f, was first spotted by NASA's Kepler space telescope and circles a dim red dwarf star about 490 light-years from Earth. While the host star is dimmer than Earth's sun and the planet is slightly bigger than Earth, the positioning of the alien world coupled with its size suggests that Kepler-186f could have water on its surface, scientists say. You can learn more about the amazing alien planet find in a video produced by Space.com.

"One of the things we've been looking for is maybe an Earth twin, which is an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a sunlike star," Tom Barclay, Kepler scientist and co-author of the new exoplanet research, told Space.com. "This [Kepler-186f] is an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a cooler star. So, while it's not an Earth twin, it is perhaps an Earth cousin. It has similar characteristics, but a different parent."

http://www.space.com/25530-earthsize-exoplanet-kepler-186f-habitabl...

Scientists have identified a long-sought fertility protein that allows sperm to dock to the surface of an egg. The finding, an important step in understanding the process that enables conception, could eventually spawn new forms of birth control and treatments for infertility.“It’s very important, because we now know two of the proteins that are responsible for the binding of sperm to the egg”.
- Nature.com

Refining The Language For Chromosomes
Researchers propose classification system revolutionizing communication of chromosomal abnormalities for research and clinical settings
'Describing Sequencing Results of Structural Chromosome Rearrangements with a Suggested Next-Generation Cytogenetic Nomenclature'
http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2814%2900172-4

The cause of neuronal death in Parkinson's disease is still unknown, but a new study proposes that neurons may be mistaken for foreign invaders and killed by the person's own immune system, similar to the way autoimmune diseases like type I diabetes, celiac disease, and multiple sclerosis attack the body's cells. The study was published April 16, 2014, in Nature Communications. "This is a new, and likely controversial, idea in Parkinson's disease; but if true, it could lead to new ways to prevent neuronal death in Parkinson's that resemble treatments for autoimmune diseases," said the study's senior author, David Sulzer, PhD, professor of neurobiology in the departments of psychiatry, neurology, and pharmacology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons.

The new hypothesis about Parkinson's emerges from other findings in the study that overturn a deep-seated assumption about neurons and the immune system.
http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/

Differences Between Neanderthals And Modern Man Caused By Genetic Switches
With Neanderthals and modern humans sharing more than 99.8 percent of their genetic material, the differences in DNA between the two species are fairly minimal and a new study has found that the differences seen in phenotypes are mostly caused by certain genes being “switched on” or “switched off.”

According to the study published in the journal Science, genetic switches that affect the size and shape of limbs, as well as those that affect the development of the brain, are the most pronounced differences.

The study brings up the importance of researching the epigenome, or the genetic aspects that are responsible for switching on or off certain genes. Recent research has revealed how the epigenome can affect everything from cancer risk to the subtle differences between identical twins, each of whom have a copy of the same genetic material. The switching off of genes is typically achieved through a process called methylation – in which a methyl group, comprised of a carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms, is attached to a gene.

To uncover the epigenomic differences between Neanderthals and moderns humans, scientists took genetic material from limb bones of a living person, a Neanderthal and a Denisovan – an extinct Stone Age human that lived in Eurasia.

The study team was able to find approximately 2,200 regions that were triggered in today’s humans, but switched off in either or both extinct species, or the other way around. One of the main differences identified by the team was a group of five genes called HOXD, which impacts the appearance and size of limbs. It was mainly silenced in both ancient species, the scientists said. The HOXD differences could explain Neanderthals’ characteristic shorter limbs, bowleggedness and oversized hands and fingers.

Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who was not directly involved in the study, told Reuters that the HOXD gene finding “may help to explain how these ancient humans were able to build stronger bodies, better adapted to the physical rigors of Stone Age life.”

The study team noted that the epigenome can be affected by lifestyle and environmental factors. This means that the differences observed could be unique to the individual sampled – rather than being representative on an entire species.

The researchers also found major epigenomic differences with respect to genes known to be related to neurological and psychiatric disorders such as autism and Alzheimer’s disease. These genes were silenced in the Neanderthal samples.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113124657/epigenome-neanderth...

A groundbreaking study published in PLOS ONE by Prof. Iris Berent of Northeastern University and researchers at Harvard Medical School shows the brains of individual speakers are sensitive to language universals. Syllables that are frequent across languages are recognized more readily than infrequent syllables. Simply put, this study shows that language universals are hardwired in the human brain.

LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS

Language universals have been the subject of intense research, but their basis remains elusive. Indeed, the similarities between human languages could result from a host of reasons that are tangential to the language system itself. Syllables like lbog, for instance, might be rare due to sheer historical forces, or because they are just harder to hear and articulate. A more interesting possibility, however, is that these facts could stem from the biology of the language system. Could the unpopularity of lbogs result from universal linguistic principles that are active in every human brain?
http://www.northeastern.edu/cos/2014/04/iris-berent/

Older women with gumption score high on compassion

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that older women, plucky individuals and those who have suffered a recent major loss are more likely to be compassionate toward strangers than other older adults.

The study is published in this month’s issue of the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291099-1166

Northwestern synthetic biology team has created a new technology for modifying human cells to create programmable therapeutics that could travel the body and selectively target cancer and other sites of disease.

Engineering cell-based, biological devices that monitor and modify human physiology is a promising frontier in clinical synthetic biology. However, no existing technology enabled bioengineers to build such devices that sense a patient’s physiological state and respond in a customized fashion.

“The project addressed a key gap in the synthetic biology toolbox,” says Joshua Leonard, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “There was no way to engineer cells in a manner that allowed them to sense key pieces of information about their environment, which could indicate whether the engineered cell is in healthy tissue or sitting next to a tumor.”

http://pubs.acs.org/journal/asbcd6

Genetic Study Tackles Slow Plant Domestication Mystery
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113124568/slow-plant-domestic...

The extent to which biodiversity change in local assemblages contributes to global biodiversity loss is poorly understood. We analyzed 100 time series from biomes across Earth to ask how diversity within assemblages is changing through time. We quantified patterns of temporal α diversity, measured as change in local diversity, and temporal β diversity, measured as change in community composition. Contrary to our expectations, we did not detect systematic loss of α diversity. However, community composition changed systematically through time, in excess of predictions from null models. Heterogeneous rates of environmental change, species range shifts associated with climate change, and biotic homogenization may explain the different patterns of temporal α and β diversity. Monitoring and understanding change in species composition should be a conservation priority.
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Biodiversity Survives Extinctions for Now
A meta-analysis of ecosystems finds that species losses in any given place do not yet translate to large changes in the number of different species in that place.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/biodiversity-surv...

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6181/296