Mechanisms of charge transfer and redistribution in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 revealed by high-energy optical conductivity
Researchers from Singapore and Germany have found a new way to study the curious properties observed at the interface of materials.
An international team led by researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a technique to study the interface between materials, shedding light on the curious properties that arise when two materials are put together.

Studying material interfaces is part of a research area known as condensed matter physics. When matter is condensed, mutual interactions between particles alters physical behavior, giving rise to exotic properties. A better understanding of how materials interface allows scientists to tweak material properties to possibly develop better solar cells, superconductors and smaller hard drives.

“If you put two materials together, you can create completely new properties. For instance, two non-conducting, non-magnetic insulators can become conducting and in some cases ferromagnetic and superconducting at their interface,” explains NUS Assistant Professor Andrivo Rusydi, who led the research.

The team investigated the electrical conductivity of strontium titanate and lanthanum aluminate, two insulators that become conductors at their interface. They observed that conductivity was ten-fold less than what was predicted theoretically, meaning that 90 percent of the expected electrons were missing.

To find the missing electrons, the team used high-energy reflectivity and spectroscopic ellipsometry experiments which flooded the interface with a wide range of energy. This revealed electrons that were bound within the molecular lattice, which prevented them from moving and explained the observed low conductivity.

The team’s new approach and insights, which culminated in a recent publication with Nature Communications, will be used for further investigations on the basic interface characteristics among materials.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140414/ncomms4663/full/ncomms4663...

Research at the University of Adelaide has shed new light onto the possible causes of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which could help to prevent future loss of children’s lives.

Researchers in the University’s School of Medical Sciences have found that telltale signs in the brains of babies that have died of SIDS are remarkably similar to those of children who died of accidental asphyxiation.
'β-Amyloid precursor protein staining of the brain in sudden infant and early childhood death'
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nan.12109/abstract;jsess...

Parts of Antarctica, one of the coldest places on Earth, were as warm as today's California coast about 40 million years ago with temperatures as high as 17 degrees Celsius, a new study has found.

Researchers also found that the polar regions of the southern Pacific Ocean once registered 21st-century Florida heat.

The findings underscore the potential for increased warmth at Earth's poles and the associated risk of melting polar ice and rising sea levels, the researchers said.

Led by scientists at Yale University, the study focused on Antarctica during the Eocene epoch, 40-50 million years ago, a period with high concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and consequently a greenhouse climate.

Today, Antarctica is year-round one of the coldest places on Earth, and the continent's interior is the coldest place, with annual average land temperatures far below zero degrees Fahrenheit.

The new measurements can help improve climate models used for predicting future climate, according to co-author Hagit Affek, associate professor of geology & geophysics at Yale.
-PTI

Agenetic disease has been cured in living, adult animals for the first time using a revolutionary genome-editing technique that can make the smallest changes to the vast database of the DNA molecule with pinpoint accuracy.

Scientists have used the genome-editing technology to cure adult laboratory mice of an inherited liver disease by correcting a single "letter" of the genetic alphabet which had been mutated in a vital gene involved in liver metabolism. A similar mutation in the same gene causes the equivalent inherited liver disease in humans — and the successful repair of the genetic defect in laboratory mice raises hopes that the first clinical trials on patients could begin within a few years, scientists said.

The success is the latest achievement in the field of genome editing. This has been transformed by the discovery of Crispr, a technology that allows scientists to make almost any DNA changes at precisely defined points on the chromosomes of animals or plants.

Crispr — pronounced "crisper" — was initially discovered in 1987 as an immune defence used by bacteria against invading viruses. Its powerful genome-editing potential in higher animals, including humans, was only fully realised in 2012 and 2013 when scientists showed that it can be combined with a DNAsniping enzyme called Cas9 and used to edit the human genome . Since then there has been an explosion of interest in the technology because it is such a simple method of changing the individual letters of the human genome — the 3 billion "base pairs" of the DNA molecule — with an accuracy equivalent to correcting a single misspelt word in a 23-volume encyclopaedia.

In the latest study, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used Crispr to locate and correct the single mutated DNA base pair in a liver gene known as LAH, which can lead to a fatal build-up of the amino acid tyrosine in humans and has to be treated with drugs and a special diet. The researchers effectively cured mice suffering from the disease by altering the genetic make-up of about a third of their liver cells using the Crispr technique, which was delivered by high-pressure intravenous injections.

"We basically showed you could use the Crispr system in an animal to cure a genetic disease, and the one we picked was a disease in the liver which is very similar to one found in humans," said professor Daniel Anderson of MIT, who led the study.

"The disease is caused by a single point mutation and we showed that the Crispr system can be delivered in an adult animal and result in a cure. We think it's an important proof of principle that this technology can be applied to animals to cure disease," Anderson said. "The fundamental advantage is that you are repairing the defect , you are actually correcting the DNA itself," he said. "What is exciting about this approach is that we can actually correct a defective gene in a living adult animal."

Jennifer Doudna, of the University of California, Berkeley , who was one of the codiscoverers of the Crispr technique , said professor Anderson's study is a "fantastic advance" because it demonstrates that it is possible to cure adult animals living with a genetic disorder.

"Obviously there would be numerous hurdles before such an approach could be used in people, but the simplicity of the approach, and the fact that it worked, really are very exciting," professor Doudna said. "I think there will be a lot of progress made in the coming one to two years in using this approach for therapeutics and other real-world applications," she added.
''Scientists ‘edit’ DNA to correct adult genes and cure diseases ''
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/revealed-scientists-edit-...

Risk factors for food allergy.

The dual-allergen exposure hypothesis is the theory that exposure to food allergens through the skin can lead to allergy, while consumption of these foods at an early age may actually result in tolerance. Depending on the balance of these exposures, either tolerance or allergy will “win.” Children with eczema, for example, have a disrupted skin barrier that could allow exposure to food proteins in the environment – such as peanut oil in creams or peanut residue on tables. Under the hypothesis, if these children avoid peanuts but are still exposed to them in the environment, they might be more likely to develop peanut allergy.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/food-matters/2014/04/23/prevent...

Despite efforts to prevent food allergy (FA) in children, IgE-mediated FAs are increasing in westernized countries. Previous preventive strategies, such as prolonged exclusive breast-feeding and delayed weaning onto solid foods, have recently been called into question. The present review considers possible risk factors and theories for the development of FA. An alternative hypothesis is proposed, suggesting that early cutaneous exposure to food protein through a disrupted skin barrier leads to allergic sensitization and that early oral exposure to food allergen induces tolerance. Novel interventional strategies to prevent the development of FA are also discussed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22464642

Animal Kingdom Communication
UM researcher discovers the most effective animal signal strategies.
There are all sorts of signaling strategies in nature. Peacocks puff out their feathers and spread their colorful tails; satin bowbirds build specialized stick structures, called bowers, and decorate them with blue and shiny objects; and European bitterling males show off bright nuptial coloration during spawning season. Each species has evolved a unique method to communicate with others.
“Signaling can have profound fitness implications for individuals that are either signaling or receiving the signal,” says Gavin M. Leighton, author of a new study on the effectiveness of signaling systems.

“For instance, individuals may signal to attract mates, or they may signal to rivals in order to defend a territory. Additionally, many biological models of cooperative behavior require individuals to signal how cooperative they were in past interactions.”
Effective communication is not just about the signaler, according to the study, the receiver also needs to assess the signaler efficiently. For instance, one of the most effective strategies from the perspective of female birds is assessing groups of males called leks, where females can assess multiple males in a short period of time.
“When receivers had to assess individual signalers one at a time, the accuracy of their ranking of signalers decreased compared to when all the signalers could be observed simultaneously.”
The study also shows that individuals that used non-food items, like a twig, in their signaling display had the least effective strategy. Surprisingly, individuals that invest in ecological structures, such as building a nest, improved the ability of the females to rank signalers, but the effect was fairly weak.
“The most unexpected finding was that investing in some sort of temporally stable structure only weakly improved the ability for receivers to assess signalers,” Leighton, said. “I originally suspected that investing in a structure would allow individuals to quickly convey their signaling effort over time in a single, observable feature. While I did find that structures helped, the effect was not as strong as other the other variables.”
In order to investigate specific characteristics of systems and provide the ranking of signalers by receivers, Leighton designed a computer model that represents salient features of many signaling systems, across a variety of scenarios. The model is called an agent-based model. It allows the researcher to program individual entities with specified behaviors. Then, the software provides the ranking information to the researcher. Included in the analyses were different species of birds, fishes and insects.

“The study systematically models a series of behavioral and ecological conditions. To the best of my knowledge no one has performed a general analysis of these different types of signaling systems.”
The study assumes that in every scenario individuals had perfect memory. In other words, when a receiver saw a signaling individual, they were able to unambiguously assign this effort to a specific individual. In nature, individuals probably make errors in assigning signaling effort or forget the effort of individuals over time.
“By itself, this seems like an unwarranted assumption, however, it is not easy to compare across signaling systems where memory also varies with the species in question,” Leighton says.
In the future, the researcher would like to include variation in the memory of individual receivers in these models. “There may be effects of imperfect memory that influence signaling effectiveness and I think this would be a good next step.”
http://www.miami.edu/index.php/news/releases/animal_kingdom_communi...

Virus-Inspired Coating Protects DNA Nanostructures In The Body
Nanomedicine: A lipid coating could protect DNA drug carriers in the bloodstream
Nanomedicines made from self-assembling DNA structures could last longer inside the bloodstream with a lipid bilayer coating similar to the ones worn by some viruses (ACS Nano 2014, DOI: 10.1021/nn5011914). This protection strategy could make it possible to test new kinds of DNA nanotherapies in animals and bring them to the clinic, the developers say.

DNA is a versatile building block for making nanoparticles with precise shapes that can perform complex tasks. For example, in 2012, researchers used DNA to fashion a drug-carrying box with two locks made from DNA; the box opens to release the drug only if both locks are bound to certain proteins on a target cell (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1214081). But researchers struggle to test this and other DNA nanotechnology in animals. Any free-floating DNA in the bloodstream is rapidly destroyed by enzymes. Researchers haven’t yet figured out how to package these DNA machines so that they can survive long enough in the body to do their work.

To solve this problem, William M. Shih, a synthetic biologist at Harvard University, looked to nature for inspiration. Viruses, which are essentially groups of genes that use living cells to replicate, have already developed strategies to endure in the bloodstream. One is to coat themselves with a protective lipid bilayer.

Shih decided to mimic this strategy. He first designed a simple octahedron-shaped wireframe of DNA using software his group had previously developed. Given the dimensions of a structure, this software generates a recipe list of DNA strands that will self-assemble into the desired shape. A DNA synthesis company makes the strands, and the researchers mix them in the lab.

Each strut in the DNA octahedron is made up of six 28-nm-long double helices held together by shorter strands. The Harvard group created attachment points on the interior and exterior surfaces of the octahedron using single-stranded pieces of DNA. On the interior, these handles bind to complementary DNA strands that carry fluorescent dyes so that the scientists could track the particles in animals. The exterior handles bind to complementary strands carrying lipids.

This created a 50-nm-diameter DNA octahedron with “greasy plugs” on it, Shih says. “Then we take this hairball and mix it with a solution of giant liposomes in surfactant.” The lipids from the liposomes stick to the plugs, eventually creating a continuous coating on the DNA frame. The completed structure is about 70 to 80 nm in diameter.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/web/2014/04/Virus-Inspired-Coating-P...

Inspired by the fist-like club of a mantis shrimp, a team of researchers led by University of California, Riverside, in collaboration with University of Southern California and Purdue University, have developed a design structure for composite materials that is more impact resistant and tougher than the standard used in airplanes.

Neuroscientists Discover Brain Circuits Involved in Emotion

Neuroscientists have discovered a brain pathway that underlies the emotional behaviours critical for survival.
New research by the University of Bristol, published in the Journal of Physiology today [23 April], has identified a chain of neural connections which links central survival circuits to the spinal cord, causing the body to freeze when experiencing fear.

Understanding how these central neural pathways work is a fundamental step towards developing effective treatments for emotional disorders such as anxiety, panic attacks and phobias.

An important brain region responsible for how humans and animals respond to danger is known as the PAG (periaqueductal grey), and it can trigger responses such as freezing, a high heart rate, increase in blood pressure and the desire for flight or fight.

This latest research has discovered a brain pathway leading from the PAG to a highly localised part of the cerebellum, called the pyramis. The research went on to show that the pyramis is involved in generating freezing behaviour when central survival networks are activated during innate and learnt threatening situations.

The pyramis may therefore serve as an important point of convergence for different survival networks in order to react to an emotionally challenging situation.
-Journal of Physiology

Royal Statistical Society looking for volunteer scientists
Date: 22 Apr 2014

The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is looking for volunteer scientists to take part in their programme of delivering science and statistics training to journalists.

Volunteers attend a ‘train the trainer’ workshop before signing up to deliver sessions at news outlets and journalism schools throughout the UK. Having successfully run the course for three years, the RSS is looking to widen their pool of volunteers.

Anyone interested in taking part should contact Vinet Campbell, National Coordinator for Science Journalism Training at V.Campbell@rss.org.uk. More information can also be found at their website.
http://www.statslife.org.uk/resources/for-journalists

Breakthrough harnesses light for controlled chemical reaction
When chemist Tehshik Yoon looks out his office window, he sees a source of energy to drive chemical reactions. Plants "learned" to synthesize chemicals with sunlight eons ago; Yoon came to the field a bit more recently. But this week, in the journal Science, he and three collaborators detail a way to use sunlight and two catalysts to create molecules that are difficult to make with conventional techniques.

In chemistry, heat and ultraviolet (UV) light are commonly used to drive reactions. Although light can power reactions that heat cannot, UV has disadvantages, says Yoon, a chemistry professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. The UV often used in industry carries so much energy that "it's dangerous to use, unselective, and prone to making unwanted by-products."

Many chemicals exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other, and Yoon is interested in reactions that make only one of those images.

"It's like your hands," Yoon says. "They are similar, but not identical; a left-hand glove does not fit the right hand. It's the same way with molecules in biology; many fail unless they have the correct 'handedness,' or 'chirality.'"

The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, is concerned about controlling chirality in drugs, but making those shapes is a hit-or-miss proposition with UV light, Yoon says.

He says the new technique answers a question posed by a French chemist in 1874, who suggested using light to make products with controlled chirality. "Chemists could never do that efficiently, and so the prejudice was that it was too difficult to do."
- University of Wisconsin-Madison

Ocean microbes display remarkable genetic diversity
Scientists in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) recently performed a cell-by-cell genomic analysis on a wild population of Prochlorococcus living in a milliliter -- less than a quarter teaspoon -- of ocean water, and found hundreds of distinct genetic subpopulations.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Citizen scientists match research tool when counting sharks
Shark data collected by citizen scientists may be as reliable as data collected using automated tools, according to results published April 23, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gabriel Vianna from The University of Western Australia and colleagues.
http://blogs.plos.org/citizensci/2012/12/31/top-citizen-science-pro...

Could the menstrual cycle have shaped the evolution of music?
Sexual selection theory posits fertility role in complex music
Menstrual cycle phase alters women's sexual preferences for composers of more complex music
Over 140 years ago Charles Darwin first argued that birdsong and human music, having no clear survival benefit, were obvious candidates for sexual selection. Whereas the first contention is now universally accepted, his theory that music is a product of sexual selection through mate choice has largely been neglected. Here, I provide the first, to my knowledge, empirical support for the sexual selection hypothesis of music evolution by showing that women have sexual preferences during peak conception times for men that are able to create more complex music. Two-alternative forced-choice experiments revealed that woman only preferred composers of more complex music as short-term sexual partners when conception risk was highest. No preferences were displayed when women chose which composer they would prefer as a long-term partner in a committed relationship, and control experiments failed to reveal an effect of conception risk on women's preferences for visual artists. These results suggest that women may acquire genetic benefits for offspring by selecting musicians able to create more complex music as sexual partners, and provide compelling support for Darwin's assertion ‘that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex’.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1784/20140403

Gene therapy with electrical pulses spurs nerve growth
Electrical current from a cochlear implant has guided corrective genetic material into inner ear cells and stimulated nerve regeneration in deaf guinea pigs. The treatment improved the animals’ hearing sensitivity and range, researchers report April 24 in Science Translational Medicine. The gene therapy technique, which does not use viruses that could induce immune reactions, holds promise for improving the hearing of people with cochlear implants. It may also have applications in deep brain stimulation, the scientists say.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/gene-therapy-electr...

Pain makes female mice less amorous, but males ignore burning injections in pursuit of females, a new study finds. The results, published in the April 23 Journal of Neuroscience, highlight stark differences between male and female sexual behavior in mice.
Pain Reduces Sexual Motivation in Female But Not Male Mice
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/17/5747

Channel Makeover Bioengineered To Switch Off Neurons
Scientists have bioengineered, in neurons cultured from rats, an enhancement to a cutting edge technology that provides instant control over brain circuit activity with a flash of light.
Deisseroth’s team had pioneered the use of light pulses to control brain circuitry in animals genetically engineered to be light-responsive — optogenetics. Genes that allow the sun to control light-sensitive primitive organisms like algae, melded with genes that make fluorescent marker proteins, are fused with a deactivated virus that delivers them to specific types of neurons which they become part of — allowing pulses of light to similarly commandeer brain cells.

When a neuron fires depends on the balance of ions flowing across the cell membrane, so being able to experimentally control this cellular machinery is critical for understanding how the brain works. But until now, the optogenetic tools for turning off neurons have been much less powerful than for turning them on — a weak inhibitory pump, moving only one ion per photon of light, versus an efficient excitatory channel.

Stanford bioengineers and their colleagues recently discovered the crystal structure of channelrhodopsin, the protein borrowed from algae to achieve optogenetic control of neurons. To transform this excitatory channel into an effective inhibitory channel, the team systematically introduced mutations into the channel’s gene, gradually reshaping its structure through molecular engineering into one with optimal inhibitory properties. To become an effective inhibitory channel, its central pore needed to be lined with positive instead of negatively charged amino acids to be converted from a cation (positive ion)-conducting into an anion (negative ion) -conducting channel.

It turns out that there are economies of scale afforded by the transformed channel — the more the inhibition, the less light required to achieve the desired biological effect. This raises possible future therapeutic applications, such as in the management of pain, said Deisseroth.
http://www.nih.gov/news/health/apr2014/nimh-24.htm

Skin Layer Grown From Human Stem Cells Could Replace Animals In Drug, Cosmetics Testing

Suspended for teaching science!
A Los Angeles high school science teacher is returning to the classroom two months after being suspended over concerns that two students had assembled "dangerous" science projects under his supervision.

Both projects overseen by teacher Greg Schiller were capable of launching small objects. A staff member at the downtown Cortines School of Visual & Performing Arts had raised concerns about one of them. Both are common in science fairs.

"I am very excited to be back with my students and help them prepare for the Advanced Placement tests, which are a week away," Schiller said Thursday. "We have a lot of work ahead of ourselves.”

In a meeting with a senior district administrator, Schiller was told he could return to work Friday, L.A. Unified confirmed.

His classes include Advanced Placement Biology and Advanced Placement Psychology.

Parents and students had quickly rallied behind Schiller. Facebook pages were launched; petitions were circulated. Some students complained that they were being taught by unqualified substitutes. Supporters vowed to rally every Thursday and Friday until his return. A walkout and protest at L.A. Unified school district headquarters was planned for Monday.

Schiller, 43, had volunteered to help students with entries for science contests. He assisted them with ideas related to chemistry and physics, even though he didn't teach those subjects.

Schiller had yet to see either finished display when a school employee noticed one on exhibit in the cafeteria on Feb. 26. Pieces of the other project were in Schiller's classroom.

One of the projects, called a coil gun, was made by ninth-grader Asa Ferguson. It used a magnetic charge powered by an AA battery to launch a small object several feet. His parents, Rogan and Susan Ferguson, both are teachers in L.A. Unified.

The other project was designed to use air pressure for propulsion. A more powerful version was tried out by President Obama at a recent White House science fair.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-teacher-reinstated-2014...

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-teacher-reinstated-2014...

The strikingly beautiful snow leopards are in "real danger" and there was need to observe, study and develop ways to conserve this rare and endangered species as only 400-700 of the world's best mountain climbers remain in India, according to a leading conservation organisation.

Launching a campaign "Save Our Snow Leopards", WWF-India said that poaching is the major challenge for the protection of this so magnificent species found high altitude Himalayan region.

Snow leopards are poached for their pelts while their bones and other body parts are also in demand for use in traditional Asian medicines, it said.

Retaliatory killing of snow leopards is also a major threat faced by the species since they often attack livestock, causing economic loss to local communities, WWF-India said.

Snow leopards also face habitat and prey loss with the increase of human settlements and developmental activities in their territories.

The snow leopard is found across almost 1,29,000 sq kms in India, in the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.

"But with an estimated population of only 400-700 in India, there is a dire need to observe, study and develop ways to help conserve this rare and endangered species," it said.

The WWF-India said that the snow leopard is at the apex of the mountain eco-system and is also an indicator species for the high altitude mountain ecosystem.

"By protecting the snow leopard, we ensure the conservation of our fragile mountain landscapes that are one of the largest sources of freshwater for the Indian subcontinent," it said.

The WWF-India said that "Save Our Snow Leopards" is a call for each of us to come forward in support of the snow leopard.
-PTI

Scientists have come up with a way to make whole brains transparent, so they can be labelled with molecular markers and imaged using a light microscope. The technique, called CLARITY, enabled its creators to produce the detailed 3D visualisations you see in this video. It works in mouse brains and human brains; here the team use it to look into the brain of a 7-year-old boy who had autism.

Original research paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12107
Nature News story: http://www.nature.com/news/see-throug...

A new study published online in the Journal of Applied Physiology shows additional benefits of consuming a blend of soy and dairy proteins after resistance exercise for building muscle mass. Researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch found that using a protein blend of soy, casein and whey post-workout prolongs the delivery of select amino acids to the muscle for an hour longer than using whey alone. It also shows a prolonged increase in amino acid net balance across the leg muscle during early post-exercise recovery, suggesting prolonged muscle building. The study was conducted by researchers from UTMB in collaboration with DuPont Nutrition and Health. "This study sheds new light on how unique combinations of proteins, as opposed to single protein sources, are important for muscle recovery following exercise and help extend amino acid availability, further promoting muscle growth," said Blake B. Rasmussen, chairman of UTMB's Department of Nutrition and Metabolism and lead researcher of the study.

The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers is an Emmy-nominated web series and site from PBS’s NOVA. This is where you can learn about cutting-edge science and engineering, the amazing people who do that work, and the things they do when their lab coats come off – win beauty pageants, wrestle professionally, become rock stars and magicians, etc. Scroll down to explore the lives of some gifted and inspiring people who are changing our world… and having a great time while they’re doing it.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/secretlife/video-profiles/

Almost a third of malaria drugs failed quality tests

Around 30 per cent of samples tested since 1946 were falsified or substandard

These put patients’ health at risk and could lead to drug-resistant malaria

Sixty-three malaria-endemic nations lack publicly available drug quality data
http://www.scidev.net/global/malaria/news/almost-a-third-of-malaria...

Water-testing lab packed into a pill
Want to know if your water supply is contaminated? Drop this pill in a vial of water and if the colour changes, there's your answer ! Scientists have solved the problem of cumbersome, painfully slow water-testing by putting the potentially life-saving technology into a tiny pill.

The team at McMaster University has reduced the sophisticated chemistry required for testing water safety to a simple pill, by adapting technology found in a dissolving breath strip. Instead of shipping water to the lab, they have created a way to take the lab to the water, putting potentially lifesaving technology into the hands of everyday people.

The development has the potential to dramatically boost access to quick and affordable testing around the world. "We got the inspiration from the supermarket," said Carlos Filipe, who worked on the project.

The idea occurred to Sana Jahanshahi-Anbuhi , a PhD student in Chemical Engineering who came across the breath strips while shopping and realized the same material used in the dissolving strips could have broader applications.

The technology is expected to have significant public health applications for testing water in remote areas and in developing countries that lack proper testing infrastructure.

The researchers have now created a way to store precisely measured amounts of enzymes and other active agents in pills made from the same naturally occurring substance used in breath strips, putting lab-quality science within instant and easy reach of people who need quick answers to questions such as whether their water is safe.
-Agencies

Green jet fuel:

An EU-funded research project called Solar Jet has produced the world's first 'solar' jet fuel from water and carbon dioxide. Researchers have successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene using concentrated light as a hightemperature energy source.

The project is still at an experimental stage and just a glassful of jet fuel was produced in lab conditions using simulated sunlight.

The four-year Solar-Jet project was launched in June 2011 and is receiving 2.2 million EU funding from the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.

In the next phase of the project, the partners plan to optimize the solar reactor and assess whether the technology will work on a larger scale and at competitive cost. Finding new, sustainable sources of energy will remain a priority under Horizon 2020, the seven-year EU research and innovation programme launched on Jan 1, 2014.

European commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Maire Geoghegan-Quinn said, "This technology means we might one day produce cleaner and plentiful fuel for planes, cars and other forms of transport. This could greatly increase energy security and turn one of the main greenhouse gases responsible for global warming into a useful resource."

Concentrated light— simulating sunlight —was used to convert carbon dioxide and water to synthesis gas (syngas ) in a high-temperature solar reactor containing metaloxide based materials developed at ETH Zurich . The syngas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) was then converted into kerosene by Shell.

Although producing syngas through concentrated solar radiation is still at an early stage of development, the processing of syngas to kerosene is being deployed by companies including Shell on a global scale. Combining the two approaches has the potential to provide secure, sustainable and scalable supplies of aviation fuel as well as diesel and gasoline, or even plastics.

In the first step, concentrated light - simulating sunlight - was used to convert carbon dioxide and water to synthetic gas known as syngas.

This was done in a high-temperature solar reactor containing metal-oxide based materials.

The syngas - a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide - was then converted into kerosene by Shell using the established Fischer-Tropsch process.

Although producing syngas through concentrated solar radiation is still at an early stage of development, the processing of syngas to kerosene is already being deployed by companies, including Shell, on a global scale.

Combining the two approaches has the potential to provide secure, sustainable and scalable supplies of aviation fuel as well as diesel and gasoline, or even plastics.

Mother’s Womb Can Influence Baby’s Genome:Study
A study of umbilical cord tissue from 237 Asian individuals showed that the interaction between the genome and the prenatal environment can have a profound impact on epigenetic variation.
" The effect of genotype and in utero environment on inter-individual variation in neonate DNA methylomes"

Abstract

Integrating the genotype with epigenetic marks holds the promise of better understanding the biology that underlies the complex interactions of inherited and environmental components that define the developmental origins of a range of disorders. The quality of the in utero environment significantly influences health over the lifecourse. Epigenetics and in particular DNA methylation marks have been postulated as a mechanism for enduring effects of the prenatal environment. Accordingly, neonate methylomes contain molecular memory of the individual in utero experience. However, inter-individual variation in methylation can also be a consequence of DNA sequence polymorphisms that result in methylation quantitative trait loci (methQTLs) and, potentially, the interaction between fixed genetic variation and environmental influences. We surveyed the genotypes and DNA methylomes of 237 neonates and found 1423 punctuate regions of the methylome that were highly variable across individuals, termed variably methylated regions (VMRs), against a backdrop of homogeneity. MethQTLs were readily detected in neonatal methylomes and genotype alone best explained about 25% of the VMRs. We found that the best explanation for 75% of VMRs was the interaction of genotype with different in utero environments, including maternal smoking, maternal depression, maternal BMI, infant birth weight, gestational age and birth order. Our study sheds new light on the complex relationship between biological inheritance as represented by genotype and individual prenatal experience and suggests the importance of considering both fixed genetic variation and environmental factors in interpreting epigenetic variation.
http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2014/04/07/gr.171439.113

Asians, African Americans and Pacific Islanders have a higher risk of the autoimmune disorder Graves’ disease than Caucasians, according to a study.
''Variation in Rates of Autoimmune Thyroid Disease by Race/Ethnicity in US Military Personnel''
Researchers in Australia have found that ethnicity affects rates of the thyroid disorder Graves’ disease.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1860451

South Korean scientists have discovered how the colon hedges against cancerous cellular mutation.
South Korean scientist Cho Kwang-Hyun has identified the cancer inhibitory mechanism of the colon tissue, providing insights into the cause of colorectal cancer.
'' The APC Network Regulates the Removal of Mutated Cells from Colonic Crypts''
http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247%2814%2900157-0...

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard
Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking
Students retain information better with pens than laptops
Writing notes by hand may lead to deeper understanding of lecture material, study suggests

Abstract

Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/22/0956797614524581

Beware of False or Misleading Claims for Treating Autism
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/UCM394800...
“There is no cure for autism,” the bulletin states. “So products or treatments claiming to ‘cure’ autism do not work as claimed. The same is true of many products claiming to ‘treat’ autism. Some may carry significant health risks.”

“Autism Speaks and its many partners are working diligently to find treatments for autism that are safe and effective,” comments developmental pediatrician Paul Wang, Autism Speaks senior vice president and head of medical research. “We know that parents often are desperate to find help for their children. It’s tragic when unscrupulous companies take advantage of these families by pushing so-called treatments that are not only ineffective, but may be costly and dangerous.”

Technique traces DNA direct to your ancestor's home 1,000 years ago
A new ground breaking technique has been developed which can locate the village your ancestors lived 1,000 years ago and hence trace back DNA formation.

Previously scientists had been able to link DNA formation to within a 700 km area which in a continent like Europe is very unreliable.

The Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool created by Eran Elhaik from the University of Sheffield and Tatiana Tatarinova from the University of Southern California works similarly to a satellite navigation system.

The new technique has been 98% successful in locating worldwide populations to their right geographic regions down to their village and/ or island of origin.

The breakthrough has massive implications for life-saving personalized medicine, advancing forensic science and for the study of populations whose ancestral origins are under debate such as African Americans, Roma gypsies and European Jews.

Genetic admixture occurs when individuals from two or more previously separated populations interbreed. This results in the creation of a new gene pool representing a mixture of the founder gene pools.

Elhaik said, "What we have discovered here is a way to find not where you were born but where your DNA was formed up to 1,000 years ago by modelling these admixture processes. What is remarkable is that we can do this so accurately that we can locate the village where your ancestors lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago — until now this has never been possible."

Such processes were extremely common in history during migrations and invasions. When the Vikings invaded Britain and Europe in the 11th century and settled with locals some of them formed a new Viking-Anglo-Saxon gene pool but some married other Vikings and maintained their original gene pool allowing GPS to trace their Scandinavian origins.

Discovery of a certain genotype might indicate the potential for a genetic disease and suggest that diagnostic testing be done. Also as scientists learn more about personalized medicine there is evidence that specific genotypes respond differently to medications — making this information potentially useful when selecting the most effective therapy and appropriate dosage.

To demonstrate how accurate GPS predictions are, Elhaik analyzed data from 10 villages in Sardinia and over 20 islands in Oceania. The team was able to place a quarter of the residents in Sardinia directly to their home village and most of the remaining residents within 50km of their village.

The results for Oceania were no less impressive with almost 90% success of tracing islanders exactly to their island.

Tatarinova has now developed a website making GPS accessible to the public. "To help people find their roots, I developed a website that allows anyone who has had their DNA genotyped to upload their results and use GPS to find their ancestral home," Tatarinova said.

Fiber's ability to curb appetite may come from gut molecules traveling to and acting on the brain, not the gut alone. As mice digest fiber, their guts release a molecule called acetate that appears to influence appetite suppression chemicals sent from the brain, researchers report April 29 in Nature Communications. The finding could open up new possibilities for weight management, the scientists say. It's unclear exactly how the gut-made acetate influences the brain chemicals that regulate appetite, and it's unknown wheather the amount of fiber given to the mice in the study would be part of a realistic diet.

A new study shows how the mammalian brain can distinguish the signal from the noise. Brain cells in the primary auditory cortex can both turn down the noise and increase the gain on the signal. The results show how the brain processes sound in noisy environments, and might eventually help in the development of better voice recognition devices, including improvements to cochlear implants for those with hearing loss. Not to mention getting Siri to understand you on a chaotic street corner.
''Mechanisms of noise robust representation of speech in primary auditory cortex''
the auditory system maintains a robust representation of speech in noisy and reverberant conditions by preserving the same statistical distribution of responses in all conditions. Reconstructed stimulus from population of cortical neurons resembles more the original clean than the distorted signal. We show that a linear spectrotemporal receptive field model of neurons with a static nonlinearity fails to account for the neural noise reduction. Although replacing static nonlinearity with a dynamic model of synaptic depression can account for the reduction of additive noise, only the combined model with feedback gain normalization is able to predict the effects across both additive and reverberant conditions.
Abstract

Humans and animals can reliably perceive behaviorally relevant sounds in noisy and reverberant environments, yet the neural mechanisms behind this phenomenon are largely unknown. To understand how neural circuits represent degraded auditory stimuli with additive and reverberant distortions, we compared single-neuron responses in ferret primary auditory cortex to speech and vocalizations in four conditions: clean, additive white and pink (1/f) noise, and reverberation. Despite substantial distortion, responses of neurons to the vocalization signal remained stable, maintaining the same statistical distribution in all conditions. Stimulus spectrograms reconstructed from population responses to the distorted stimuli resembled more the original clean than the distorted signals. To explore mechanisms contributing to this robustness, we simulated neural responses using several spectrotemporal receptive field models that incorporated either a static nonlinearity or subtractive synaptic depression and multiplicative gain normalization. The static model failed to suppress the distortions. A dynamic model incorporating feed-forward synaptic depression could account for the reduction of additive noise, but only the combined model with feedback gain normalization was able to predict the effects across both additive and reverberant conditions. Thus, both mechanisms can contribute to the abilities of humans and animals to extract relevant sounds in diverse noisy environments.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/17/1318017111

When E. coli cells aren't hanging out in a crowd, the rate at which their genes mutate to resist the antibiotic rifampicin increases up to threefold. The finding shows that the microbes' ability to develop antibiotic resistance depends on a gene that helps the bacterial cells communicate. Manipulating this type of crosstalk among bacterial cells may provide a way to slow the pervasive emergence of antibiotic resistance, researchers suggest April 29 in Nature Communications.

Excessive regulations turning scientists into bureaucrats
Scientists and institutions pinpointed regulations they believe are ineffective or inappropriately applied to research, and audit and compliance activities that take away research time and result in university over-regulation.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/05/01/excessive.regulations.t...