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/

New Neurons In the Brain Keep Anxiety at Bay
The adult brain generates neurons every day. These cells help us to distinguish one memory from another—a finding that could lead to novel treatments for anxiety disorders

A study in the journal Cell reveals that a significant number of new neurons in the hippocampus — a brain region crucial for memory and learning — are generated in adult humans.

“It was thought for a long time that we are born with a certain number of neurons, and that it is not possible to get new neurons after birth,” says senior study author Jonas Frisén of the Karolinska Institute.

By Carbon-dating neurons the researchers measured the carbon-14 concentration in DNA from  the hippocampal neurons of deceased humans. They found that 1,400 new neurons in the dentate gyrus.area are added each day — 1.75% per year — during adulthood, and that this rate declines only modestly with age, suggesting that adult hippocampal neurogenesis may contribute to human brain function.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/atomic-bombs-help-solve-mystery-does-the-...

Top 9 Causes of Fatigue
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/health-fitness/prevention/medical-...

'Biggest prize in science' announced
The Breakthrough Prizes are awarded for recent achievements in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics.

The organisers describe them as the "biggest science awards in the world" as they offer the most prize money - $3m (£1.76m) for each.
such awards were important because they help to attract the "the best brains into science".

"Science has an undeserved reputation of being dry and unglamorous so anything that can be done to change that image is to be welcomed.
The Breakthrough Prizes were launched by a group of philanthropic technology billionaires including Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, and Yuri Milner, founder of investment firm Digital Sky Technologies.

Mr Milner said the aim of the prize was to "cultivate a positive image of science and rationalism, and an optimistic view of humanity's future".

"Outside the field of entertainment, intellectual brilliance is under-capitalized in our society. 58 years ago, one of the most famous men on earth was not an actor, athlete or musician, but a theoretical physicist. Albert Einstein's face was on magazine covers, in newspapers and on television, worldwide,"
His name was synonymous with genius. Yet most of today's top scientists - despite opening new windows onto the Universe, curing intractable diseases and extending human life - are unknown to the general public. The greatest thinkers of our age should be superstars, like the geniuses of screen and stadium."
- http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27926950
( I have been saying these words ever since I entered the field of science. Now others too realized the importance of science and scientists.  A recognition of value of  both! What a wonderful news! - Krishna)

With Prizes Like This, Who Needs a Nobel?

Tech titans  to make winners of the 'Oscars of science' into instant millionaires - but is it the right thing to do?
Silicon Valley hosts lavish ceremony for Breakthrough prize that aims to give scientists celebrity status and inspire interest in life's 'big questions'.

Now a handful of billionaire engineers have turned their attention to a social blight that affects their own kind: the lack of appreciation (and funding) for scientists.

This is among the most lucrative awards in science, almost triple the size of the Nobel prize, and bigger than the $1.7m Templeton prize. It's expected to be bigger and bolder than the last similar ceremony.

Breakthrough prize and the Fundamental Physics prize

with focus on the very short-term problems that have an immediate impact on our lives.

It's easy to see why science has struggled to get the public recognition it deserves till now: much of it goes over everyone's heads.

With the right combination of celebrity endorsement and cash, scientists touting the most complex theories can become modern-day celebrities - making people realize the importance of science.

However, there is criticism too:

Perhaps not surprisingly, Milner's prizes have come under some criticism from scientists and even a few Nobel prizewinners, who claim they benefit the egos of their founders more than anything else. They are, says one physicist quoted in Nature magazine, "buying the prestige of Nobel". After scientist Alexander Polyakov received his orb-like Fundamental Physics prize from Morgan Freeman last March, and instantly became a millionaire, he told Nature backstage that it was all an "interesting experiment. Such big prizes could have a positive impact," he added, "or they can be very dangerous."

Some also complain that these well-heeled prizes focus on established researchers who don't need lavish funding as much as peers in other, more obscure realms of science. They also don't give credit to the wide, collaborative networks of researchers whose collective efforts lead to breakthroughs as much as the work of lone geniuses. Criticism for lavishing so much money on a few researchers  rather than spreading the money more widely, and for downplaying collaboration is the main objection.

But the supporters say- these prizes inspire young people to follow in these scientists' footsteps. If they know recognition and large sums of money are within their grasp, even if it does take a big stroke of luck, they'll be more likely to start exploring those big questions themselves.

Mobile phones carry the personal microbiome of their owners

Most people on the planet own mobile phones, and these devices are increasingly being utilized to gather data relevant to our personal health, behavior, and environment. During an educational workshop, we investigated the utility of mobile phones to gather data about the personal microbiome — the collection of microorganisms associated with the personal effects of an individual. We characterized microbial communities on smartphone touchscreens to determine whether there was significant overlap with the skin microbiome sampled directly from their owners. We found that about 22% of the bacterial taxa on participants’ fingers were also present on their own phones, as compared to 17% they shared on average with other people’s phones. When considered as a group, bacterial communities on men’s phones were significantly different from those on their fingers, while women’s were not. Yet when considered on an individual level, men and women both shared significantly more of their bacterial communities with their own phones than with anyone else’s. In fact, 82% of the OTUs were shared between a person’s index and phone when considering the dominant taxa (OTUs with more than 0.1% of the sequences in an individual’s dataset). Our results suggest that mobile phones hold untapped potential as personal microbiome sensors.

Meadow JF, Altrichter AE, Green JL. (2014) Mobile phones carry the personal microbiome of their owners. PeerJ 2:e447 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.447

Scientists have discovered the secrets behind electric fish, using genetic studies that revealed how these exotic creatures developed an organ that can unleash a wicked jolt.

Researchers on 26th June, 2014, unveiled a genetic blueprint of the electric eel - a fearsome denizen of South America that can zap you with an electric field of up to 600 volts - as well as detailed genetic data on two other types of electric fish.
Even though six groups of electric fish have evolved independently in far-flung locales like the muddy waters of the Amazon and murky marine environments, they all seem to have reached into the same "genetic toolbox" to fashion their electricity-generating organ, they said.

The new study found that various electric fish rely on the same genes and biological pathways to build their electric organs from skeletal muscle despite the different appearance and body location of their organs.

Their electrical abilities stand as one of the wonders of nature alongside traits like bioluminescence in some insects and sea creatures and echolocation in bats and whales.
"This only arose in fish because water is a conductor of electricity while air is not. Thus, birds or terrestrial animals could not come up with this''.
There are hundreds of species of electric fish worldwide, with varying degrees of electric power.

Fish with weak electric power use it to navigate in dim waters and communicate with one another. Those like the electric eel - a serpentine freshwater predator up to 8 feet long (2.4 meters) that is not a true eel but rather a catfish relative - possessing a powerful jolt use it to stun or kill prey and repel enemies.
"Electric organs start out their lives as muscle precursor cells. Through a series of developmental steps, they become larger, more electrically excitable and lose their ability to contract".
All muscle cells have electrical potential because any muscle contraction releases a small amount of voltage. Certain fish exploited that by transforming ordinary muscle cells into a larger type of cell called an electrocyte that generates vastly higher voltages. The electric organ is made of these cells.

"Each electric organ cell makes only a small voltage, similar in magnitude to our own muscles. The secret of electric organs is that the cells are aligned in stacks and electrically insulated so that the voltages add like batteries in a series," University of Texas neuroscience professor Harold Zakon said.

The six groups include: South American knife fishes, African electric catfish, African elephant fish, stargazers, some skates and some rays. Scientists think the electric organ first appeared in a fish 150 million to 200 million years ago.

The study was published in the journal Science.

Smallest Force Ever Measured

Why we should trust scientists
Many of the world's biggest problems require asking questions of scientists — but why should we believe what they say? Historian of science Naomi Oreskes thinks deeply about our relationship to belief and draws out three problems with common attitudes toward scientific inquiry — and gives her own reasoning for why we ought to trust science.
http://www.ted.com/talks/naomi_oreskes_why_we_should_believe_in_sci...

Running cures blind mice

Exercise combined with visual stimulation helps to quickly restore vision in unused eye.
Sensory experience during locomotion promotes recovery of function in adult visual cortex.
Abstract

Recovery from sensory deprivation is slow and incomplete in adult visual cortex. In this study, we show that visual stimulation during locomotion, which increases the gain of visual responses in primary visual cortex, dramatically enhances recovery in the mouse. Excitatory neurons regained normal levels of response, while narrow-spiking (inhibitory) neurons remained less active. Visual stimulation or locomotion alone did not enhance recovery. Responses to the particular visual stimuli viewed by the animal during locomotion recovered, while those to another normally effective stimulus did not, suggesting that locomotion promotes the recovery only of the neural circuits that are activated concurrent with the locomotion. These findings may provide an avenue for improving recovery from amblyopia in humans.

http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e02798/abstract-1

http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e02798

An Escherichia coli trap in human serum albumin microtubes:
Human Protein Cleans Bacteria from Drinking Water
Microtubes made from albumin filter water with nearly 100 percent efficiency
Researchers in Japan have shown that they can remove Escherichia coli from drinking water using tiny tubes made of human serum albumin.
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2014/CC/c4cc03632h#!divAbstract

Speed of light slower than thought, says US scientist
A US scientist claims to have found evidence that suggests that the speed of light as described by Einstein's theory of general relativity is slower than has been thought. The theory of general relativity suggests light travels at 299,792,458 metres/second in a vacuum.

The claim by physicist James Franson of the University of Maryland claims to have found evidence that suggests the speed of light is actually slower than has been thought. Franson's is based on observations made of the supernova SN 1987A, which exploded in 1987. Researchers on Earth picked up the arrival of both photons and neutrinos from the blast but The arrival of the photons was later than expected by 4.7 hours. Scientists at the time attributed it to a likelihood had said that this may be because the photons were from another source.

But what if that wasn't what it was, Franson has proposed that this may actually be because light slows down as it travels due to a property of photons known as vacuum polarization - where a photon splits into a positron and an electron for a very short time before recombining back into a photon. That should create a gravitational differential, Franson noted, between the pair of particles, which would have a tiny energy impact when they recombine - enough to cause a slight bit of a slowdown during travel.

One lichen is actually 126 species and counting
Well-known tropical fungal partnership could be several hundred different kinds
A kind of lichen that biologists thought they knew well has turned out to consist of at least 126 distinct species — and maybe more than 400 — lumped under a single name.

Dictyonema glabratum isn’t some obscure, tiny organism.
A single macrolichen constitutes hundreds of unrecognized species
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/26/1403517111

Depression Makes Time Estimates More Accurate
Depressed people gauge time more accurately
When you are depressed, in which case your time-gauging abilities are pretty accurate reports PLOS ONE.
researchers in England and Ireland asked 39 students—18 with mild depression—to estimate the duration of tones lasting between two and 65 seconds and to produce tones of specified lengths of time.
Their results suggest that depressive realism, a phenomenon in which depressed people perceive themselves more accurately (and less positively) than typical individuals, may extend to aspects of thought beyond self-perception—in this case, time. They speculate that mindfulness treatments may be effective for depression, partly because they help depressed people focus on the moment, rather than its passing.

Controversial American scientist slammed for irresponsible flu research

Senior scientists have criticised an American university for allowing controversial research on enhancing a pandemic strain of flu virus to be undertaken in a laboratory with a relatively low level of biosecurity.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison was labelled irresponsible and negligent for allowing one of its scientists, Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka, to genetically manipulate pandemic H1N1 flu virus in a laboratory categorised as biosafety level-2
Professor Kawaoka has for the past four years been working on ways of mutating the 2009 pandemic strain of H1N1 flu so that it is no longer neutralised by the antibodies that provide immunity for the wider population.
Biosafety level-1 (BSL-1)

For work on bacteria and viruses that do not generally cause disease in healthy adults. Precautions, such as washing hands with anti-bacterial soaps, are minimal and the work can be done on an open bench-top.

Biosafety level-2 (BSL-2)

For infectious agents with a moderate hazard to health or the environment, such as viruses or bacteria that cause mild disease in humans or are difficult to contract by airborne transmission. Gloves and gowns.

Biosafety level-3 (BSL-3)

This is for agents that can cause severe or fatal diseases in humans, such as plague, yellow fever and West Nile virus. Requires protective clothing and fume cupboards where the work is carried out.

Biosafety level-4 (BSL-4)

The highest level of safety for the most dangerous pathogens, such as Ebola, Marburg and Lassa viruses. Measures include high-security buildings, multiple showers, positive-pressure personnel suits and air filters.
- The Independent

Studies that claimed simple way to make stem cells withdrawn after 'extensive' errors found
The scientists who reported in January that they'd found a startlingly simple way to make stem cells have withdrawn that claim, following accusations of falsified data. On Wednesday, July 2, 2014, the journal Nature released a statement from the scientists who acknowledged "extensive" errors and said they couldn't say "without a doubt" that their method works.

Elastic Cloaking Material Makes Objects “Unfeelable”
Move over, invisibility cloaks. There's a structure that can keep objects from being felt or jostled
Scientists have developed an "unfeelability cloak," a material that hides objects within it from being felt or touched. The researchers suggest that in the future such cloaks might find help protect objects from bumps and pokes that might otherwise harm them.
Invisibility cloaks work by smoothly guiding light waves around objects so the waves ripple along their original trajectories as if nothing were there to block them. Scientists have designed cloaking materials that work against other kinds of waves as well—for example, inaudibility cloaks hide objects from the acoustic waves used in sonar.
The unfeelability cloak is a so-called pentamode metamaterial, an artificial structure that, despite being a solid, can behave like a fluid; although difficult to compress, its shape is otherwise easy to shift. The specific material the researchers devised is a three-dimensional hexagonal lattice reminiscent of a honeycomb, with the rods making up this lattice wider at their middles than at their ends.
The scientists built the cloak around the object they intended to hide, a rigid hollow cylinder that itself could hide anything big enough to fit within it. To simultaneously create both the cloak and the cylinder, the researchers shone an infrared laser beam into a vat of light-sensitive fluid, with plastic shapes hardening where the laser beam had focused. The resulting cloak was made of rods only about 40 microns long and 10 microns thick at their widest points, built around a cylinder 750 microns in diameter with walls 125 microns wide.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140619/ncomms5130/full/ncomms5130...

Tibetans live high life thanks to extinct human relatives
Modern people’s DNA adaptation to altitude passed down from ancient Denisovans
Tibetans inherited a genetic adaptation to high altitudes from an extinct group of human relatives called Denisovans, a new study finds.

Researchers have known for years that Tibetans carry a genetic variant in the EPAS1 gene that allows them to survive at extreme altitudes where oxygen is scarce. But how that variant arose has been mysterious. Now researchers report July 2 in Nature that the high-altitude version of EPAS1 almost certainly came from Denisovans or from a related group of extinct humans.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tibetans-live-high-life-thanks-...

In the past, scientists concluded many of man’s defining qualities, such as legs made for walking upright and a large brain, evolved all at once. But according to a new study in the journal Science, shifts in climate caused these qualities to evolve separately.
''Evolution of early Homo: An integrated biological perspective ''
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/1236828.abstract

Based on analyses of fossil evidence, the study researchers said the shrinking of forests and expansion of savannas in East Africa led to walking upright, which freed our forebears’ hands up for the creation and use of stone tools.

“Unstable climate conditions favored the evolution of the roots of human flexibility in our ancestors,” said study author Richard Potts, curator of anthropology and director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “The narrative of human evolution that arises from our analyses stresses the importance of adaptability to changing environments, rather than adaptation to any one environment, in the early success of the genus Homo.”

The study team found the predecessors of Homo erectus didn’t evolve in a series of progressively advanced iterations. Instead, a patchwork of at least three species lived alongside each other and the evolution of these species was driven by long-term climate factors in the region.

Science behind Fireworks:
https://news.yahoo.com/video/science-behind-fireworks-090620867.html

Scientists from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore have developed a new non-invasive technique to identify dangerous and hazardous chemicals hidden inside any container including explosives.

This new technique, in addition, can also be used to as diagnostic tool for detection of tumors.

Prof Siva Umapathy from Inorganic and Physical Chemistry Department, IISc and his student Sanchita Sil, High Energy Materials Research Laboratory, Pune, said this new method can also be used for obtaining signals from samples which are concealed or packed inside containers such as commercial pastic bottles, thick papers, envelopes, coloured glass bottles etc.,

The novel technique is based on Raman spectroscopy--Universal Multile Angle Raman Sectroscopy (UMARS) and relies on illuminating the sample with the light source, which provides scattered light, offering molecular specific signatures to identify the chemical susstance, according to a research paper published in Nature Scientific Reports Journal dated June 16-2014.

Major Scientific Journal Joins Push to Screen Statistics in Papers It Publishes
Science's new policy follows efforts by other journals to bolster standards of data analysis
The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced on July 3. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings. “As most journals are weak in statistical review, this damages the quality of what they publish. For the majority of scientific papers nowadays statistical review is more essential than expert review”. Most biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review.
Manuscript will be flagged up for additional scrutiny by the journal’s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors (more than 100 scientists whom the journal regularly consults on papers) or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts.
Right step to improve the field of science!

Top science development journals dominated by Northern scholars

Southern researchers wrote or co-wrote fewer than 15 per cent of papers

Only seven per cent of board members came from developing nations

But papers in top journals may not be the best way to spread useful research

http://www.scidev.net/global/publishing/news/development-journals-n...

Organ–organ interactions could compound nanoparticle damage
Nanoparticles Could Damage Organs
Miniature version of intestine and liver shows the tiny particles could breach an important barrier
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/07/nanoparticle-liver-gastro...

Ten Million Genes Of Human Microbiome Sequenced
Researchers have generated the highest quality integrated gene set for the human gut microbiome to date—a close-to-complete catalogue of the microbes that reside inside us and outnumber our own cells ten to one. The results of this study have been published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

One of the most severe complications of hepatitis B is the development of liver cancer, which is responsible for approximately 745,000 deaths worldwide each year. Two new studies published in the journal Gastroenterology provide strong evidence that antiviral therapy can reduce the risk of liver cancer in patients with chronic hepatitis B infection.
Both papers support the accumulating evidence that, to avert the risk of liver cancer, antiviral therapy needs to be initiated early during the chronic hepatitis B infection, preferably before the stage of advanced fibrosis.
http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085%2814%2900445-4/abst...

Undisclosed stocks of small pox virus can exist!
Do you think Smallpox, officially preserved in only two repositories worldwide ( Since its eradication in 1980, smallpox officially exists in only two places: the CDC in Atlanta, and its Russian counterpart, the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR, in Novosibirsk), then think again. Because "variola”, the name of the virus that causes smallpox - may have been sitting alive and well in an unsecured US government refrigerator. On July 8, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that vials containing the deadly virus had been discovered in a cardboard box in the refrigerator, located on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland. A similarly forgotten stock of smallpox was found in a lab in eastern Europe in the 1990s, for instance, and more recently at the Swiss Serum and Vaccine Institute in Bern.
Most experts believe that numerous stocks exist around the world, whether in clandestine labs or preserved in tissue, such as the scabs used for immunizations into the 20th century. They believe that the box now found that held the smallpox vials dates back to the 1950s, but the virus is extremely stable in its powdered form and could still be infectious.
People don't excuse the negligent virologists if small pox virus escapes into the outer world again and ... Need I complete the sentence?
WHO are you listening? Take steps immediately to find undisclosed samples around the world and kill the virus before it spreads havoc again.

Story source: Nature

A team of researchers in the U.S. and Germany has measured the highest level of ultraviolet radiation ever recorded on the Earth’s surface. The extraordinary UV fluxes, observed in the Bolivian Andes only 1,500 miles from the equator, are far above those normally considered to be harmful to both terrestrial and aquatic life. The results are being published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Environmental Science.
“A UV index of 11 is considered extreme, and has reached up to 26 in nearby locations in recent years,” notes Cabrol. “But on December 29, 2003, we measured an index of 43. If you’re at a beach in the U.S., you might experience an index of 8 or 9 during the summer, intense enough to warrant protection. You simply do not want to be outside when the index reaches 30 or 40.”

The intense radiation coincided with other circumstances that may have increased the UV flux, including ozone depletion by increased aerosols from both seasonal storms and fires in the area. In addition, a large solar flare occurred just two weeks before the highest UV fluxes were registered. Ultraviolet spikes continued to occur – albeit at lower intensity – throughout the period of solar instability, and stopped thereafter. While the evidence linking the solar event to the record-breaking radiation is only circumstantial, particles from such flares are known to affect atmospheric chemistry and may have increased ozone depletion.

High UV-B exposure negatively affects the entire biosphere, not just humans. It damages DNA, affects photosynthesis, and decreases the viability of eggs and larvae. For these reasons, it is important to keep a close watch on UV flux levels.
- SETI Institute

Although feelings are personal and subjective, the human brain turns them into a standard code that objectively represents emotions across different senses, situations and even people, reports a new study by Cornell University neuroscientist Adam Anderson. “We discovered that fine-grained patterns of neural activity within the orbitofrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with emotional processing, act as a neural code which captures an individual’s subjective feeling,” says Anderson, associate professor of human development in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology and senior author of the study. “Population coding of affect across stimuli, modalities and individuals,” published online in Nature Neuroscience.

Two genes clear up psoriasis and eczema confusion
The two inflammatory skin disorders, often misdiagnosed, are distinguishable with a simple test
A test might prevent hundreds of thousands of misdiagnosed cases of skin disease by simply checking two genes, scientists report in the July 9 Science Translational Medicine.

Eczema and psoriasis are widespread, affecting 10 percent and 3 percent of the population, respectively. Both skin diseases produce itchy red patches that can look similar, even under the microscope. Accurate diagnosis is crucial because treatmentsfor one disease can exacerbate symptoms of the other.
Disease-specific genes could distinguish between the two, but so far scientists have searched in vain for such markers. The genes involved in each condition can differ between patients, so Eyerich and his colleagues compared tissue samples for eczema and psoriasis collected from 24 people afflicted with both disorders. After sequencing RNA from patients’ tissue samples, the team discovered 15 genes that could distinguish psoriasis from eczema.

The researchers screened the two best classifier genes, NOS2 and CCL27, among a second group of 34 patients, 16 with psoriasis and 18 with eczema. The researchers found that the two-gene test could discriminate between the disorders in every case.
-Science News.org

Quantum math makes human irrationality more sensible
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/quantum-math-makes-human-i...

Using spider toxins to study the proteins that let nerve cells send out electrical signals, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have stumbled upon a biological tactic that may offer a new way to protect crops from insect plagues in a safe and environmentally responsible way. Their finding -- that naturally occurring insect toxins can be lethal for one species and harmless for a closely related one -- suggests that insecticides can be designed to target specific pests without harming beneficial species like bees. A summary of the research, led by Frank Bosmans, Ph.D., an assistant professor of physiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will be published July 11 in the journal Nature Communications.

How researchers unearthed the saga of a tiny fern that may have saved the planet
55 million years ago, our planet had no polar ice caps; in fact, it nearly became a steamy, runaway greenhouse world, with CO2 levels exceeding 2,500 ppm. Then, all of a sudden, something intervened, causing a shift.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide began to drop, steadily generating today's world, with ice caps at both poles. But why did this happen? And better yet, could whatever triggered this drastic switch be used to temper today's climate?
Encompassing the period of time in question was a 26-foot-thick column of fossilized ferns, a species so small it can fit on your fingernail but is capable of doubling its mass in two days. It is called Azolla.
In 1878, German naturalist Heinrich Aton de Bary used Azolla to first illustrate his definition of the term symbiosis, or two unlike biological identities living together in unison. He used the example of Azolla paired with lichen to exemplify his new term but also noted a bacteria that seemed to be inherent to the fern, serving as an even more extreme example of symbiosis.
With their spongy, lobe-like leaves only a fraction of an inch long, Azolla float on the surface of bodies of fresh water, dangling long tendrils below. In these leaves, Azolla have created a microenvironment, co-evolving with tiny bacteria called cyanobacteria for an estimated 100 million years.

Over time, the bacteria lost the ability to live independently of the fern, but their photosynthetic machinery increased its nitrogen-fixing capability by a factor of between 12 and 20. The bacteria became the powerhouse of the fern leaf, super-concentrating its photosynthetic power, while gaining shelter and a continuous food source from the fern.
Being able to fix nitrogen so well also makes the fern a fantastic carbon sequesterer.
The researchers remained dumbfounded -that was, until one of them piped up that they also needed to consider the fern's carbon-capturing power in the context of this time period.

Researchers hadn't considered this property a likely factor in the fern's Arctic success, and for good reason. Even with abundant carbon and nitrogen to consume, the size of the plant and its limited access to fresh water make it almost inconceivable that it could even survive in the Arctic, let alone muster up enough power and mass to change the Earth's entire climate, saving our planet, perhaps, from a Venus-like, overheated oblivion.
If Azolla had grown to such proportions that it could have affected the climate to such a degree, what had stopped the so-far invincible fern in its tracks and led to the initial climate plunge? The more the team looked, the more they found evidence that made the Azolla saga even more unbelievable.
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060002785

Can the Fern That Cooled the Planet Do It Again?
Researchers hope to use the fernlike Azolla to reverse the global warming effects of burning fossil fuels
Azolla decreased half of the CO2 present at that time according to scientists some 55 million years ago when the Earth was dangerously overheated because of green house gases.
Can the fern do it again when the Earth is getting hot all over again because of acts of human beings?
Scientists are trying to find out.
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060002833

Art helping science:

DNA Origami (the art of paper folding was taken as inspiration here ) Delivers Anti-Cancer Drug
DNA origami could be used to deliver harmful anti-cancer drugs in a more targeted fashion, study shows.
Scientists have shown that DNA origami can be used for the targeted delivery of cancer drugs to tumor cells in mice. The study documenting these findings has been published in the journal ACS Nano.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn502058j
Abstract: Many chemotherapeutics used for cancer treatments encounter issues during delivery to tumors in vivo and may have high levels of systemic toxicity due to their nonspecific distribution. Various materials have been explored to fabricate nanoparticles as drug carriers to improve delivery efficiency. However, most of these materials suffer from multiple drawbacks, such as limited biocompatibility and inability to engineer spatially addressable surfaces that can be utilized for multifunctional activity. Here, we demonstrate that DNA origami possessed enhanced tumor passive targeting and long-lasting properties at the tumor region. Particularly, the triangle-shaped DNA origami exhibits optimal tumor passive targeting accumulation. The delivery of the known anticancer drug doxorubicin into tumors by self-assembled DNA origami nanostructures was performed, and this approach showed prominent therapeutic efficacy in vivo. The DNA origami carriers were prepared through the self-assembly of M13mp18 phage DNA and hundreds of complementary DNA helper strands; the doxorubicin was subsequently noncovalently intercalated into these nanostructures. After conducting fluorescence imaging and safety evaluation, the doxorubicin-containing DNA origami exhibited remarkable antitumor efficacy without observable systemic toxicity in nude mice bearing orthotopic breast tumors labeled with green fluorescent protein. Our results demonstrated the potential of DNA origami nanostructures as innovative platforms for the efficient and safe drug delivery of cancer therapeutics in vivo.

The Case for Inheritance of Epigenetic Changes in Chromosomes
Harmful chemicals, stress and other influences can permanently alter which genes are turned on without changing any of the genes' code. Now, it appears, some of these “epigenetic” changes are passed down to—and may cause disease in— future generations
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-case-for-inheritance-...

Science journals weigh up double-blind peer review

Staying up late could hurt a woman's fertility
Women who want to become pregnant or are expecting a baby should avoid light during the night, a new report suggests.

Darkness is important for optimum reproductive health in women, and for protecting the developing fetus, said study researcher Russel J. Reiter, a professor of cellular biology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
- Live science.com

In a review of studies published online July 1 in the journal Fertility and Sterility, Reiter and his colleagues evaluated previously published research, and summarized the role of melatonin levels and circadian rhythms on successful reproduction in females.
Melatonin, a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain in response to darkness, is important when women are trying to conceive, because it protects their eggs from oxidative stress, Reiter said. Melatonin has strong antioxidant properties that shield the egg from free-radical damage, especially when women ovulate, the findings reveal.

"If women are trying to get pregnant, maintain at least eight hours of a dark period at night," he advised. "The light-dark cycle should be regular from one day to the next; otherwise, a woman's biological clock is confused."
Eight hours of darkness every night is also optimal during pregnancy, and ideally, there should be no interruption of nighttime darkness with light, especially during the last trimester of a pregnancy, Reiter said.

Turning on the light at night suppresses melatonin production in women, and means the fetal brain may not get the proper amount of melatonin to regulate the function of its biological clock, he said.

Good News: Scientists find a way to kill Malarial parasites
Scientists may be able to entomb the malaria parasite in a prison of its own making, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report July 16 in Nature. As it invades a red blood cell, the malaria parasite takes part of the host cell's membrane to build a protective compartment. To grow properly, steal nourishment and dump waste, the parasite then starts a series of major renovations that transform the red blood cell into a suitable home.

But the new research reveals the proteins that make these renovations must pass through a single pore in the parasite's compartment to get into the red blood cell. When the scientists disrupted passage through that pore in cell cultures, the parasite stopped growing and died.

A separate study by researchers at the Burnet Institute and Deakin University in Australia, published in the same issue of Nature, also highlights the importance of the pore to the parasite's survival. Researchers believe blocking the pore leaves the parasite fatally imprisoned, unable to steal resources from the red blood cell or dispose of its wastes.

Aids conference says 100 researchers may have been on flight MH17

Session held ahead of Aids 2014 conference told email exchanges show about 100 attendees booked on flight MH17.
As many as 100 of the world’s leading HIV/Aids researchers and advocates may have been on the Malaysia Airlines flight that crashed in Ukraine, in what has been described as a “devastating” blow to efforts to tackle the virus.

Delegates to a plenary session held ahead of the Aids 2014 conference were told that email exchanges showed about 100 attendees were booked on the MH17 flight. The plane was downed in eastern Ukraine by what the US and Australian governments have described as a surface-to-air missile.
“These people were the best and the brightest, the ones who had dedicated their whole careers to fighting this terrible virus. It’s devastating.”
There were some serious HIV leaders on that plane. This will have ramifications globally because whenever you lose a leader in any field, it has an impact. That knowledge is irreplaceable.

"We've lost global leaders and also some bright young people who were coming through. It's a gut-wrenching loss. The scientific community is very sad.
But the community is very close-knit, like a family. They will unite and this will galvanise people to strive harder to find a breakthrough. Let's hope that, out of this madness, there will be new hope for the world.

Losing one expert is tragedy. Losing several of them at a time is the mother of all tragedies. It is sad times for the world of science.