DuPont's Power of Shunya wins four gold medals at DMAi Echo Awards in India
DuPont's 'Power of Shunya', a branded content and activation initiative, received four gold medals at the recently held DMAi Awards.
DuPont's “Power of Shunya”, a branded content and activation initiative, received four gold medals at the recently held Direct Marketing Association India (DMAi) Awards.

The initiative won gold medals in the categories of creativity in direct response, branded content, the craft of animation, and effectiveness. DMAi Awards, in alliance with DMA International Echo Awards, honour creative excellence in marketing and advertising campaigns that have raised the bar on originality, response strategy, interactivity and marketing impact.

At its core, the Power of Shunya is a collaborative and science driven platform consisting of two television series – The Quest for Zero and The Challenge for Zero. The programmes showcased companies and individuals that epitomise the spirit of Indian ingenuity and how science-driven solutions can help solve some of the key challenges facing India.

Jitin Munjal, regional director, South Asia & ASEAN, Corporate Marketing & Sales, DuPont, said, “At DuPont, we believe in the power of collaboration to address the world’s most important challenges. We created the Power of Shunya initiative to start a conversation about the various challenges facing India, and how science can play an important role in solving them. The success of this programme and these gold medals clearly demonstrate the power of branded content and activation efforts to build customer engagement and reinforce DuPont’s position as a preferred innovation partner and scientific thought leader.”

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/duponts-power-of-shunya-wins-f...

http://www.powerofshunya.com/Winner.aspx

Human Evolution Traded Brawn For Brains
Have you ever wondered why it is that monkeys, chimpanzees, apes and other primates are frighteningly strong compared to us humans? If your answer was yes, you are not alone. And now a new study goes in depth in explaining why and how this phenomenon has occurred evolutionarily.

If we take the primate as the most logical known last point in human evolution, then describing primate strength and cognitive abilities as superhuman and subhuman, respectively, would be incorrect. In fact, human strength and cognition would better be described as subprimate and superprimate, again, respectively.

Humans were able to walk out of the forests and slowly civilize over millenia, eventually mastering and manipulating our environments. As we have progressed, we have done such things as create the car and the airplane, land men on the moon, and surf this virtual landscape we call the worldwide web. All of that brain power required more and more energy. With a finite amount of energy able to be ingested, some human features had to suffer. Muscle strength, it turns out, was an excellent candidate for energy to be siphoned from.

This finding was discovered as the result of a study conducted by scientists from Shanghai’s CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology and other research teams based at the Max Planck Institutes in Germany. In their study, the teams investigated the evolution of metabolites – small molecules like sugar, vitamins, amino acids and neurotransmitters that represent key elements of our physiological functions. Their investigation showed how metabolite concentrations actually evolved in humans at a staggeringly fast pace compared to our primate cousins. This was especially true in two tissue areas: the brain and muscle.

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Exceptional Evolutionary Divergence of Human Muscle and Brain Metabolomes Parallels Human Cognitive and Physical Uniqueness
Metabolite concentrations reflect the physiological states of tissues and cells. However, the role of metabolic changes in species evolution is currently unknown. Here, we present a study of metabolome evolution conducted in three brain regions and two non-neural tissues from humans, chimpanzees, macaque monkeys, and mice based on over 10,000 hydrophilic compounds. While chimpanzee, macaque, and mouse metabolomes diverge following the genetic distances among species, we detect remarkable acceleration of metabolome evolution in human prefrontal cortex and skeletal muscle affecting neural and energy metabolism pathways. These metabolic changes could not be attributed to environmental conditions and were confirmed against the expression of their corresponding enzymes. We further conducted muscle strength tests in humans, chimpanzees, and macaques. The results suggest that, while humans are characterized by superior cognition, their muscular performance might be markedly inferior to that of chimpanzees and macaque monkeys.
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.10...

Smart WCup teams tap science to beat Brazil's heat
Trying to reproduce the environmental conditions that we will likely find, above all in Manaus, but also in Recife and Natal," team physician Enrico Castellacci said. "Players work on a specific program and then we evaluate their resistance to the fatigue, by monitoring their heartbeat and weight before and after the exercises."

Players cooled off by plunging their hands into icy water. Tipton said that technique was first developed to cool navy firefighters and works better than soaking the whole body in ice baths or fancy gizmos like air-conditioned vests and jackets packed with dry ice.
Doctors can analyze players' sweat to gauge how acclimatized they are and to tailor salt dosages in their rehydration drinks.
"Players need to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable''.
Some players use special sun-reflecting hair gel.
http://www.wkrn.com/story/25646049/smart-wcup-teams-tap-science-to-...

Scientists find compound to fight virus behind SARS, MERS
An international team of scientists say they have identified a compound that can fight coronaviruses, responsible for the SARS and MERS outbreaks, which currently have no cure.
Coronaviruses affect the upper and lower respiratory tracts in humans. They are the reason for up to a third of common colds.

A more severe strain of the virus, thought to have come from bats, triggered the global SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic in 2002, which killed nearly 800 people.

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a new strain discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and thought to have originated in camels. More deadly but less contagious, it has so far killed 193 people out of 636 confirmed cases.

Now, a team of scientists led by Edward Trybala from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Volker Thiel from the University of Bern, have discovered a compound called K22, which appears to block the ability of the virus to spread in humans.
In an article for specialist journal "PLOS Pathogens", the scientists explained that the virus reproduces in the cells that line the human respiratory system.

The virus takes over the membranes that separate different parts of human cells, reshaping them into a sort of protective armor in order to start its production cycle, and so creating "viral factories," Trybala told AFP.

K22 acts at an early stage in this process, preventing the virus from taking control of the cell membranes and so opening up "new treatment possibilities," he said.

"The results confirm that the use of the membrane of the host cell is a crucial step in the life-cycle of the virus," the researchers wrote. Their work shows that "the process is highly sensitive and can be influenced by anti-viral medications".

They said the recent SARS epidemic and MERS outbreak mean there should be urgent investment in testing K22 outside the laboratory and developing medicines.

While K22 still has a way to go before it can be tested on humans, that identification of this new strategy of combating coronaviruses will aid to develop an effective and safe antiviral drug.
- Agence France-Presse

Scientists discover how to make children eat vegetables

Study shows how parents can encourage their toddlers to eat more vegetables to inculcate healthy eating habits early on.
A new study by the University of Leeds Institute of Psychological Sciences shows that parents can, in fact, help their children be more willing to eat healthy foods by exposing them to it routinely at a younger age. The study offers insight into habits and tricks that will help get children eating even the ‘yuckiest’ of vegetables by choice.

The study, published in the journal Public Library of Science ONE (PLOS ONE), was conducted with participant babies and toddlers from the UK, France and Denmark. Participants were fed between one and 10 servings of a minimum of 100 g of one of three versions of artichoke puree: basic; sweetened with added sugar; or added energy with vegetable oil. Artichoke was chosen as it was unanimously the least-offered vegetable by the participants’ parents.

Evolution Sparks Silence of the Crickets
Males on two Hawaiian islands simultaneously went mute in just a few years to avoid a parasite
Populations of a male cricket on different Hawaiian islands have lost their ability to chirp as a result of separate, but simultaneous, evolutionary adaptations to their wings. The changes, which allow the insects to avoid attracting a parasitic fly, occurred independently over just 20 generations and are visible to the human eye, a study reveals.

The findings could help to shed light on the earliest stages of convergent evolution — when separate groups or populations independently evolve similar adaptations in response to natural selection.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evolution-sparks-silence-...

Delaying Vaccines Increases Risks—with No Added Benefits
Some parents delay vaccines out of a misinformed belief that it’s safer, but that decision actually increases the risk of a seizure after vaccination and leaves children at risk for disease longer
Concerns about vaccine safety have led up to 40 percent of parents in the U.S. to delay or refuse some vaccines for their children in hopes of avoiding rare reactions. Barriers to health care access can also cause immunization delays. But delaying some vaccines, in addition to leaving children unprotected from disease longer, can actually increase the risk of fever-related seizures, according to a new study.
The new study, published in the May 19 Pediatrics, found that administering the MMR shot or the less frequently used MMRV one (which includes the varicella, or chickenpox, vaccine) later, between 16 and 23 months, doubles the child’s risk of developing a fever-caused, or febrile, seizure as a reaction to the vaccine. The risk of a febrile seizure following the MMR is approximately one case in 3,000 doses for children aged 12 to 15 months but one case in 1,500 doses for children aged 16 to 23 months “This study adds to the evidence that the best way to prevent disease and minimize side effects from vaccines is to vaccinate on the recommended schedule.
It's not clear why the MMR and MMRV vaccines increase febrile seizure risk in the older children, but it may be simply that they receive the vaccines when they are already more susceptible to the seizures. Hambidge says evidence shows the immune system may still be maturing during the second year of life, and febrile seizures caused by viruses naturally peak around 16 to 18 months. Vaccines administered during this interval may increase the risk of fever, and therefore febrile seizures, because the vaccines rev up the immune system to mount a better immune response. These seizures do not cause any long-term health effects. Even though they’re scary for parents, these seizures are temporary events. They don’t recur and don’t cause epilepsy.
No evidence to date reveals any benefits to delaying vaccines. A study in 2010 showed that children who received delayed vaccinations performed no better at ages seven to 10 on behavioral and cognitive assessments than children who received their vaccines on time.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/delaying-vaccines-increas...

Risk factors for febrile seizures include developmental delay, discharge from a neonatal unit after 28 days, day care attendance, viral infections, a family history of febrile seizures, certain vaccinations, and possibly iron and zinc deficiencies. Febrile seizures may occur before or soon after the onset of fever, with the likelihood of seizure increasing with the child's temperature and not with the rate of temperature rise.

Vaccinations associated with increased risk include 2010 Southern Hemisphere seasonal influenza trivalent inactivated vaccine (Fluvax Junior and Fluvax); diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and whole-cell pertussis (DTP); and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). A Cochrane review and a review of 530,000 children receiving the MMR vaccine showed that the risk of febrile seizures increased only during the first two weeks after vaccination, was small (an additional one or two febrile seizures per 1,000 vaccinations), and was likely related to fever from the vaccine.
http://www.aafp.org/afp/2012/0115/p149.html

A genetic predisposition for febrile seizures has been postulated, although no susceptibility gene has been identified. Genetic abnormalities have been reported in persons with febrile epilepsy syndromes, such as severe myoclonic epilepsy in infancy and generalized epilepsy with febrile seizures plus (GEFS+).14 Most causes of febrile seizures are multifactorial, with two or more genetic and contributing environmental factors.

Vision Involves a Bit of Hearing, Too
Researchers could tell what sounds blindfolded volunters were hearing by analyzing activity in their visual cortexes.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/vision-involves-h...

Drug Developers Take a Second Look at Herbal Medicines
Desperate to develop new drugs for malaria and other ailments, researchers are running clinical trials with traditional herbal medicines—and generating promising leads

A Swedish-German research team has successfully tested a new method for the production of ultra-strong cellulose fibers at DESY’s research light source PETRA III. The novel procedure spins extremely tough filaments from tiny cellulose fibrils by aligning them all in parallel during the production process. The new method is reported in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
Hydrodynamic alignment and assembly of nanofibrils resulting in strong cellulose filaments
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140602/ncomms5018/full/ncomms5018...
Cellulose nanofibrils can be obtained from trees and have considerable potential as a building block for biobased materials. In order to achieve good properties of these materials, the nanostructure must be controlled. Here we present a process combining hydrodynamic alignment with a dispersion–gel transition that produces homogeneous and smooth filaments from a low-concentration dispersion of cellulose nanofibrils in water. The preferential fibril orientation along the filament direction can be controlled by the process parameters. The specific ultimate strength is considerably higher than previously reported filaments made of cellulose nanofibrils. The strength is even in line with the strongest cellulose pulp fibres extracted from wood with the same degree of fibril alignment. Successful nanoscale alignment before gelation demands a proper separation of the timescales involved. Somewhat surprisingly, the device must not be too small if this is to be achieved.

A failed replication draws a scathing personal attack from a psychology professor
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/10/failed-replicati...

Science sometimes gets things wrong. Scientists often get things wrong. But what makes science so powerful is how it responds to new evidence and how scientists learn from their mistakes.

http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-science-trust-and-psychology-in...

Anti-science politics in the US:

Democrats Have a Problem With Science, Too

We shouldn't let them off the hook just because Republicans are worse.

Take anti-GMO sentiment, for example. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) notes in its statement on the issue that “25 years of research involving more than 500 independent research groups” has found genetically modified foods to be no riskier than foods resulting from conventional breeding. Eating a GM tomato is just as safe as eating a non-GM tomato. The AAAS therefore opposes GMO labeling because it could “mislead and falsely alarm customers.” Though some polling has shown GMO labeling support to be about equal among Republicans, Democrats and Independents, looking at GMO-related legislation tells another story

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/democrats-have-a-pro...

Media Coverage of Medical Journals: Do the Best Articles Make the News?

Newspapers were more likely to cover observational studies and less likely to cover RCTs than high impact journals. Additionally, when the media does cover observational studies, they select articles of inferior quality. Newspapers preferentially cover medical research with weaker methodology.
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Newspapers were more likely to cover observational studies and less likely to cover randomized trials than high impact journals. Additionally, when the media does cover observational studies, they select articles of inferior quality. We present evidence that newspapers preferentially cover medical research with weaker methodology. Our findings add to the understanding of how journalists and medical researchers weight studies. Ultimately such understanding may facilitate communication between researchers and the media and promote coverage that is in the greatest interest of the public health.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....

How to report on foreign aid for science

Journalists should go beyond aid announcements and follow up results

Ask who is involved, not just who benefits — science aid should build capacity

Aid is important and complex: your job is to keep asking the tough questions
http://www.scidev.net/global/journalism/practical-guide/how-to-repo...

How genomics can tackle antimicrobial resistance
By decoding the genomes of a large number of bacteria, scientists will be able to understand how common pathogens respond to antibiotics and what genetic changes drive them to become resistant. They can therefore predict how resistance will develop and design strategies that could save millions of people, particularly in vulnerable areas such as developing countries, where healthcare infrastructure is more basic.
http://www.scidev.net/global/genomics/multimedia/genomics-antimicro...

Indian frogs kick up their heels
Some new species impress a potential mate with a dance
Some frogs use a little fancy footwork to get attention during mating season. A 12-year search of a 1,600-kilometer-long mountain range on India’s west coast has turned up 14 new frog species, including at least four “dancing frogs,” Indian researchers report May 8 in the Ceylon Journal of Science (Biological Sciences). This finding more than doubles the number of species in the genus Micrixalus, a group of frogs known for their dance moves. The amphibian boogie starts off with Micrixalus males calling to females, showing off their bright white throats. Then males tap their feet and finish off by stretching out a hind leg and whipping it around behind them. Called foot-flagging, this pretty maneuver isn’t just for show. Should a rival male intrude on the display, he may get kicked.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/indian-frogs-kick-their-heels

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh found people who spoke two or more languages had significantly better cognitive skills later in life
(Wow! I speak five languages! - K)
Learning a second language slows the speed at which brains age, a study has found, even if it learned in adulthood.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh found people who spoke two or more languages had significantly better cognitive skills later in life compared with what would be predicted from their IQ results in childhood.

The team, led by Dr Thomas Bak, from the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, looked at data taken from intelligence tests on 262 English people at 11-years-old who could all speak at least two languages.

The tests were then repeated when they were in their seventies.

From that group, 195 learned a second language before turning 18 and 65 had acquired a second language after that age.

Researchers found that reading, verbal fluency and intelligence were better than what was expected from their test in childhood, particularly with reading and intelligence.

This was the case even if the second language was acquired in adulthood.
The study was published in the journal Annals of Neurology

Scientists prove bees make mental maps
Previous theory indicated that bees oriented themselves only by noting their relative position to the Sun. New research shows that bees produce cognitive maps of the area they inhabit much like mammals do. The research was conducted led by James F. Cheeseman from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and colleagues from New Zealand, Germany, and the United States. The study was presented in the June 2, 2014, edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Spiders could be the key to saving bees from harmful toxins after researchers found a bio-pesticide created using spider venom and a plant protein is highly toxic to a number of insect pests – but safe for honeybees.
Common neonicotinoid pesticides are believed to be behind the catastrophic decline in honeybees and this decline could have a serious impact on food production.

A team at Newcastle University tested a combination of a natural toxin from the venom of an Australian funnel web spider and snowdrop lectin called Hv1a/GNA fusion protein bio-pesticide.

The researchers found this new pesticide allows honeybees to forage without harm, even when they received unusually high doses of it. Honeybees perform sophisticated behaviours while foraging that require them to learn and remember floral traits associated with food.
The team’s findings have been published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The secret to baby girls’ enhanced ability to survive to birth could lie in a risk-averse strategy, according to a study of placental gene expression.

Integrative transcriptome meta-analysis reveals widespread sex-biased gene expression at the human fetal–maternal interface

Abstract

As males and females share highly similar genomes, the regulation of many sexually dimorphic traits is constrained to occur through sex-biased gene regulation. There is strong evidence that human males and females differ in terms of growth and development in utero and that these divergent growth strategies appear to place males at increased risk when in sub-optimal conditions. Since the placenta is the interface of maternal–fetal exchange throughout pregnancy, these developmental differences are most likely orchestrated by differential placental function. To date, progress in this field has been hampered by a lack of genome-wide information on sex differences in placental gene expression. Therefore, our motivation in this study was to characterize sex-biased gene expression in the human placenta. We obtained gene expression data for >300 non-pathological placenta samples from 11 microarray datasets and applied mapping-based array probe re-annotation and inverse-variance meta-analysis methods which showed that >140 genes (false discovery rate (FDR) <0.05) are differentially expressed between male and female placentae. A majority of these genes (>60%) are autosomal, many of which are involved in high-level regulatory processes such as gene transcription, cell growth and proliferation and hormonal function. Of particular interest, we detected higher female expression from all seven genes in the LHB-CGB cluster, which includes genes involved in placental development, the maintenance of pregnancy and maternal immune tolerance of the conceptus. These results demonstrate that sex-biased gene expression in the normal human placenta occurs across the genome and includes genes that are central to growth, development and the maintenance of pregnancy

http://molehr.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/05/20/molehr.ga...

Antibiotic Resistance Revitalizes Century-Old Virus Therapy
The use of viruses that kill bacteria as a tool for treating infections are under study again by Western researchers and governments
http://www.nature.com/news/phage-therapy-gets-revitalized-1.15348

Climate change will make food less nutritious: Study
Plants make food from carbon dioxide in the air, using energy from sunlight. So, if carbon dioxide levels in the air are going up due to climate change, plants should be making more food, right? Wrong, says a new study published last week in the science journal Nature.

According to the study conducted by a team of US, Australian and Japanese scientists, carbon dioxide emissions are slowly making the world's staple food crops less nutritious. Wheat, maize, soybeans and rice will see their levels of nutrients iron and zinc, as well as proteins, go down between now and 2050.

Rice, maize, soybeans and wheat are the main source of nutrients for over 2 billion people living in poor countries. But with climate change and the rising amount of CO2 in the air we breathe, their already low nutrient value compared to meat, for instance, is set to decrease.

Probiotics prevent deadly complications of liver disease
Probiotics are effective in preventing hepatic encephalopathy in patients with cirrhosis of the liver, according to a study by the Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital, New Delhi.

Hepatic encephalopathy is the deterioration of brain function — a serious complication of liver disease.

The research shows that probiotics modify the gut microbiota to prevent hepatic encephalopathy.

According to experts, the results offer a safe, well tolerated and a cheaper alternative to current treatments.

Is de-extinction a real possibility?
Yes, says, this article:
Fact or Fiction?: Mammoths Can Be Brought Back from Extinction
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-mammoths-...

Scientists find world's highest number of song birds in the Himalayas
On 9 June 2014 India's Endangered reported: There is a new song they sing and that's what makes them unique. The results of the first ever mapping of birds in the eastern Himalayan region of India has confirmed that there are more than 360 different songbird species in the regions, most of which are not found anywhere else on the planet. Scientists add that the presence of so many species within this small geographical location may be the highest diversity of song birds in the world
http://www.globalgoodnews.com/science-news-a.html?art=1402261051292...

GM strains crash mosquito population in lab
Scientists have created mosquitoes that produce 95% male offspring, with the aim of helping control malaria.

Flooding cages of normal mosquitoes with the new strain caused a shortage of females and a population crash.

The system works by shredding the X chromosome during sperm production, leaving very few X-carrying sperm to produce female embryos.

In the wild it could slash numbers of malaria-spreading mosquitoes, reports the journal Nature Communications.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27765974

Classroom Decorations Can Distract Young Students
Five-year-olds in highly decorated classrooms were less able to hold their focus, spent more time off-task and had smaller learning gains than kids in bare rooms
''Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children
When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad''

A large body of evidence supports the importance of focused attention for encoding and task performance. Yet young children with immature regulation of focused attention are often placed in elementary-school classrooms containing many displays that are not relevant to ongoing instruction. We investigated whether such displays can affect children’s ability to maintain focused attention during instruction and to learn the lesson content. We placed kindergarten children in a laboratory classroom for six introductory science lessons, and we experimentally manipulated the visual environment in the classroom. Children were more distracted by the visual environment, spent more time off task, and demonstrated smaller learning gains when the walls were highly decorated than when the decorations were removed.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/05/20/0956797614533801.ab...

Microwave-based stroke diagnosis making global pre-hospital thrombolytic treatment possible
A helmet placed on the head of a stroke victim sends low-intensity microwaves through the brain to quickly determine whether a blockage or hemorrhage is taking place, making faster treatment possible.
When a person suffers a stroke quick treatment is crucial. But there are two very different kinds of strokes: some result from blood clots that block circulation within the brain, others are caused by ruptured vessels that spill blood into surrounding tissue. The use of clot-busting drugs when a hemorrhage is happening can cause additional injury or death. So doctors lose precious time waiting for stroke victims to get MRIs or CAT scans before they start treatment.

But soon EMT’s might be able to quickly tell whether patients have a blockage or a bleed—by having them wear a high-tech helmet.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden developed the prototype helmet and tested it on 45 stroke patients.

The gadget covers the head with a patchwork of antennas. As each antenna beams low-intensity microwaves through the head in sequence, the other antennas detect how the waves scatter. Any pooling blood from a hemorrhage causes deflections easily spotted on an attached computer.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&a...

How Data Beats Intuition at Making Selection Decisions
A recent meta-analysis by Kuncel, Klieger, Connelly and Ones found that, across multiple criteria in work and academic settings, when people combined hard data with their judgments, and those of others, their predictions were always less valid, and less predictive of real outcomes, than those generated by hard data alone.

“To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge,” Confucius once said. Algorithms using objective data lead to much greater accuracy in predicting widely valued outcomes such as job and academic performance. A true expert is someone who knows what they do not know—namely, that our intuition can fail us.
http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Kunce...

A study in Neurology  suggests that eating a lot of sugar or other carbohydrates can be hazardous to both brain structure and function.

Findings indicate that even in the absence of diabetes or glucose intolerance, higher blood sugar may harm the brain and disrupt memory function.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sugar-may-harm-brain-heal...

Magnetic Levitation Lifts Impurities from Pharmaceuticals
Separating therapeutic molecules from nonhelpful "twins" is tough, but a new magnetic method that can pull them apart may be the answer
''Separation and enrichment of enantiopure from racemic compounds using magnetic levitation ''
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2014/CC/c4cc02604g#!divAbstract

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/06/magnetic-levitation-separ...

The Science of Genius
Outstanding creativity in all domains may stem from shared attributes and a common process of discovery
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-of-genius-cre...

http://listverse.com/2007/10/06/top-10-geniuses/

Fatal toxins found in ‘edible’ wild mushrooms
A wild mushroom eaten by foraging enthusiasts across Europe has been found to contain dangerous and potentially lethal toxins. Chinese scientists believe they have identified the mushroom toxins that cause rhabdomyolysis – a sometimes fatal disease that can irreparably damages the kidneys – that was first reported 15 years ago in France. However, the toxins were not isolated from the mushroom Tricholoma equestre that was thought to be responsible for the deaths, but from Tricholoma terreum, its close relative, highlighting the complexity of fungus toxicology. These scientists are recommending that people who forage for mushrooms avoid eating both of these species.
The two new compounds are of medium toxicity, so it is possible that they work together, perhaps with other unknown mushroom toxins, in a cumulative way to cause lethal rhabdomyolysis.
A person would have to eat a portion of T. terreum every day for several days before the dose would be deadly. He says that it is fortunate that T. terreum, prized for its flavour, is only eaten in small quantities or there might have been more fatalities.
A combination of three types of mushroom toxins may have been responsible for more than 200 deaths in China.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/06/fatal-toxins-identified-e...

 Antimatter: Have you ever heard about Antimatter? You may have probably not heard of it much. Antimatter is basically a mirror image of existing matter and it is very difficult to make. This can be created by physicists at the world’s largest particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva, Switzerland. This material is scarcely available, only about a billionth of a gram can be made per year. It is so rare that even its potential uses are still largely not known. One of its explored uses is that antimatter shows some possibility of practical application in treating cancer. Not only can it be used as medicine, it can also be possibly used to fuel spaceships to the planets in future. Its price is nearly $62.5 trillion/gram.

 Californium 252: Californium is a radioactive transuranic element with its atomic number as 98 is a man-made element. It was discovered in 1950. It was created by scientists by bombarding the chemical element curium with alpha particles which resulted into a radioactive material. There are almost ten known versions, or isotopes of this material that exist. Few of its uses include treating certain forms of cancer and detecting gold and silver in ore or oil at the bottom of a well. It is true that californium is artificially made on Earth, but it is also said that certain stars that explode as super-novae may produce californium in space too. The actual price of californium is $27 million/gram.

Autoimmune diseases stopped in mice
Experimental treatment halted diabetes, MS without ruining rodents’ ability to fight infection
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/autoimmune-diseases-stopped-mice

In Pursuit of Truth:
Good Science / Bad Science
http://prointellects.com/goodbadscience.html

10 Scientific Ideas That Scientists Wish You Would Stop Misusing
http://io9.com/10-scientific-ideas-that-scientists-wish-you-would-s...

There is a difference in using words in science and art/literature. In art and literature perceptions differ from person to person depending on the region , culture etc. people are associated with and therefore usage can also differ. But in science the perception is based on facts and there can be only one fact given the conditions in which it is sought are same. You cannot give several names to it.  I think science has a universal language unlike other subjects. Therefore one has to follow it to avoid misconceptions.

The United Nations will seek ways to toughen environmental laws this week to crack down on everything from illegal trade in wildlife to mercury poisoning and hazardous waste.

The UN environment assembly (UNEA), a new forum of all nations including environment ministers, business leaders and civil society, will meet in Nairobi from June 23-27 to work on ways to promote greener economic growth.

That drive includes giving environmental laws more teeth.
- Reuters

Autism Risk Higher Near Pesticide-Treated Fields
Babies whose moms lived within a mile of crops treated with widely used pesticides were more likely to develop autism, according to new research
Organophosphates, pyrethroids near pregnant women raises risk 60-87 percent
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/jun/autism-and...
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/

Want To Protect Your PCs For Free? Go For Namo Anti-Virus Software
Homegrown IT firm Innovazion which has named its new antivirus software ‘NaMo’, the popular short name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will provide free protection to PC users against malware and virus attacks.

While the current version offers basic protection, the company plans to launch advanced versions of the software as well as those for Apple’s Mac PCs. The current software will also get regular updates.
http://www.siliconindia.com/news/technology/Want-To-Protect-Your-PC...

The calorie free sweetener erythritol is widely used in Asia; it is also gaining popularity in Europe and America. At the Vienna University of Technology, a new cheap method has been developed to produce erythritol from straw with the help of mould fungi.
Erythritol has many great advantages: it does not make you fat, it does not cause tooth decay, it has no effect on the blood sugar and, unlike other sweeteners, it does not have a laxative effect. In Asia it is already widely used and it is becoming more and more common in other parts of the world too. Up until now, erythritol could only be produced with the help of special kinds of yeast in highly concentrated molasses. At the TU Vienna, a method has now been developed to produce the sweetener from ordinary straw with the help of a mould fungus. The experiments have been a big success, and now the procedure will be optimized for industry.

From Straw via Sugar to Erythritol
Straw is often considered to be worthless and is therfore burnt, but it can be a precious resource. Some of its chemical components can be made into valuable products. First, the finely chopped straw has to be “opened up”: with the help of solvents, the cell walls are broken, the lignin is dissolved away. The remaining xylan and cellulose are then processed further.
“Usually the straw has to be treated with expensive enzymes to break it down into sugar”, says Professor Robert Mach (Vienna University of Technology). “In highly concentrated molasses, special strains of yeast can then turn the sugar into erythritol, if they are placed under extreme osmotic stress.”
Mould Fungus Makes Intermediate Step Obsolete
The enzymes opening up the straw can be obtained with the help of the mould fungus Trichoderma reesei. This kind of mould also plays the leading role in the new production process developed at the Vienna University of Technology.

Two big advantages have been achieved by genetically modifying the fungus: the process of obtaining the enzymes from mould cultures and chemically cleaning them used to be cumbersome – now the improved strain can be directly applied to the straw. Secondly, the mould can now produce erythritol directly from the straw. The intermediate step of producing molasses is not necessary any more and no yeast has to be used.
- http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/8864/