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.

Food Used to Fatten Animals Could Feed 3 Billion: Study
If all the food used to fatten up cows, chickens and pigs went straight to people instead, it would feed several billion more people than the food does today, according to a new study. "We've taken 10,000 years to get to the point of growing as much food as we are doing now," said Paul West, a food expert at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.
''Leverage points for improving global food security and the environment''
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6194/325

The plastics in your food:
The next time you ask for a plate of sea food you may have unknowingly ordered plastic as a side dish in it!

According to an alarming study by University of Exeter, tiny plastic particles polluting our seas are entering the bodies of marine creatures through their gills.

These microplastics take over six times longer to leave the body compared to standard digestion.

"About one 10th of the plastic we throw away ends up in the marine environment. In 2013, 11 million tonnes of plastic entered the seas. Wave action, heat and ultra-violet (UV) damage then break it up into microplastic," explained lead researcher Andrew Watts.

The research showed how these microplastics get into the body of the common shore crab, after sticking to hair-like 'setae' structures in the crabs.

"Many studies on microplastics only consider ingestion as a route of uptake into animals. The results we have just published stress other routes such as ventilation," Watts added.

The same could apply for other crustaceans, molluscs and fish - simply any animal which draws water into a gill-like structure to carry out gas exchange, researchers noted.

The longer these plastics are retained within the animal the more the chances are of being passed up the food chain.

"This is a human issue. We have put this plastic there, mostly accidently but it is our problem to solve. The best way to do this is to reduce our dependency on plastic. It comes back to the old phrase: reduce, reuse and recycle," Watts concluded.

The study was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

How media people are twisting and spinning things to mislead people to make them believe in what they beleive:
''Aliens on the Moon' TV Show Adds Weird UFO Twists to Apollo Tales''
What one person sees as a overly magnified image with distortions that merely form strange patterns, another person sees as incontrovertible proof that extraterrestrials have left giant antennas, spaceships and industrial complexes on the moon.
The footage was later proven to be fake.
The Story Behind the 'Alien Autopsy' Hoax
The film—purporting to depict the post mortem of an extraterrestrial who died in a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947—was part of a "documentary" that aired on the Fox television network.
http://www.livescience.com/742-story-alien-autopsy-hoax.html
The heart of "Aliens on the Moon" is a review of decades-old photographs from the Apollo missions, with commentary by sources ranging from former Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Edgar Mitchell to old standbys on the UFO scene (MUFON analyst Marc D'Antonio, "Dark Mission" co-author Mike Bara and physicist John Brandenburg, plus photo lab workers Donna Hare and Ken Johnston).
many of the show's seemingly baffling mysteries can be resolved much more easily, by looking at higher-resolution imagery from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. For example, straight-line tracks that UFO fans might interpret as evidence of massive machines on the moon are more clearly seen as the result of rolling boulders.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/aliens-moon-tv-show-adds-weird...

Myopia and Level of Education
Main Outcome Measures

Prevalence and magnitude of myopia in association with years spent in school and level of post-school professional education.
Results

Individuals who graduated from school after 13 years were more myopic (median, −0.5 diopters [D]; first quartile [Q1]/third quartile [Q3], −2.1/0.3 D) than those who graduated after 10 years (median, −0.2 D; Q1/Q3, −1.3/0.8 D), than those who graduated after 9 years (median, 0.3 D; Q1/Q3, −0.6/1.4 D), and than those who never finished secondary school (median, 0.2 D; Q1/Q3, −0.5/1.8 D; P<0.001, respectively). The same holds true for persons with a university degree (median, −0.6 D; Q1/Q3, −2.3/0.3 D) versus those who finished secondary vocational school (median, 0 D; Q1/Q3, −1.1/0.8 D) or primary vocational school (median, 0 D; Q1/Q3, −0.9/1.1 D) versus persons without any post-school professional qualification (median, 0.6 D; Q1/Q3, −0.4/1.7 D; P<0.001, respectively). Of persons who graduated from school after 13 years, 50.9% were myopic (SE, ≤−0.5 D) versus 41.6%, 27.1%, and 26.9% after 10 years, in those who graduated after 9 years, and in those who never graduated from secondary school, respectively (P<0.001). In university graduates, the proportion of myopic persons was higher (53%) than that of those who graduated from secondary (34.8%) or primary (34.7%) vocational schools and than in those without any professional training (23.9%; P<0.001, respectively). In multivariate analyses: higher school and professional levels of education were associated with a more myopic SE independent of gender. There was a small effect of age and SNPs. Conclusions Higher levels of school and post-school professional education are associated with a more myopic refraction. Participants with higher educational achievements more often were myopic than individuals with less education. http://www.aaojournal.org/article/S0161-6420%2814%2900364-9/abstract

Kidney Stone Risk Creeps North as Climate Changes
A link between heat and the painful stones
As ambient temperatures increase, your fluid losses through skin increase. With more water coming out as sweat and less coming out as urine, minerals can build up and form stones. In cold weather, researchers suspect, people dehydrate in warm, dry indoor air.

And you might have this effect without even realizing the fluid loss through your skin is increasing.

Not realizing you're dehydrated is a big part of the problem. In drier climates, people may not have puddles of sweat to gauge how much water they're losing. This is especially important when people migrate to warmer areas and aren't used to drinking more water.
- http://www.eenews.net/

Cancer treatment clears two Australian patients of HIV

Patients' virus levels became undetectable after bone-marrow therapy with stem cells.
http://www.nature.com/news/cancer-treatment-clears-two-australian-p...

Cheap Nasal Spray May Save Snakebite Victims
A novel, nasal spray-based approach may help reduce the toll, according to researchers.
A team of researchers, led by Matthew Lewin, from the California Academy of Sciences, United States, and Stephen Samuel, from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, says a simple nasal spray containing a substance called neostigmine can reduce snakebite fatalities.

“It would be one ingredient primarily directed against rapid onset paralysis—one of the causes of fast death following snakebite,” Lewin tells SciDev.Net. “It is inexpensive and available everywhere in the world.”

If combined with atropine, a substance that is absorbed through the nose, neostigmine would have few ill effects, according to Lewin.

The team tested the nasal spray on mice injected with fatal doses of venom from the Indian cobra. Mice treated with the spray outlived those that were not given it and, in many cases, survived, according to a study they published in the Journal of Tropical Medicine.
The nasally administrated drug is an alternative to antivenoms, Lewin says. He argues that, besides being expensive, antivenoms can vary in effectiveness depending on factors including the snake’s diet, the time of year and the geographic location.

Furthermore, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month reports that it may be harder than originally thought to develop an antivenom that works against many snakebites.

“We discovered that the genetics of the animals can be very similar, yet their venoms very different,” the lead author, Nicholas Casewell, from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom.
Using six related snakes—the Saharan horned viper, the puff adder and four species of saw-scaled vipers—Casewell and colleagues discovered that various genetic regulatory processes act at different stages of toxin production.

These processes result in major differences in toxin composition, and these different toxins cause different pathologies or levels of toxicity when they are injected, and they also undermine antivenom treatment.
There are about 500 species of dangerous, venomous snakes worldwide.
Antivenom is necessary, but not sufficient to manage this problem. Its limitations are fairly well known at this point and we need a better bridge to survival.

The nasal spray could be a cheap, fast and easy method to treat the paralysis caused by snakebites.
In 2013, to see if neostigmine could be absorbed through the human nose, Lewin tried the spray on himself, after being infused with a drug to induce awake paralysis in a manner similar to cobra venom. He made a completely recovery in a little over two hours, as described in Clinical Case Reports. Clinical trials of the spray are now planned in India.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jtm/2014/131835/

Parts of the primordial soup in which life arose have been maintained in our cells today according to scientists at the University of East Anglia. Research published today in the Journal of Biological Chemistry reveals how cells in plants, yeast and very likely also in animals still perform ancient reactions thought to have been responsible for the origin of life -- some four billion years ago.
The new research shows how small pockets of a cell -- known as mitochondria -- continue to perform similar reactions in our bodies today. These reactions involve iron, sulfur and electro-chemistry and are still important for functions such as respiration in animals and photosynthesis in plants.
For example small pockets of a cell called mitochondria deal with electrochemistry and also with toxic sulfur metabolism. These are very ancient reactions thought to have been important for the origin of life.

The new research has shown that a toxic sulfur compound is being exported by a mitochondrial transport protein to other parts of the cell. We need sulfur for making iron-sulfur catalysts, again a very ancient chemical process.

The work shows that parts of the primordial soup in which life arose has been maintained in our cells today, and is in fact harnessed to maintain important biological reactions.
The research was carried out at UEA and JIC in collaboration with Dr Hendrik van Veen at the University of Cambridge.
Source: http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2014/July/primordial-soup

Not enough funding for basic science in India: Kalam (Scientist and former President of India)
He called for 'big' investment to promote researches in higher education
Former President A P J Abdul Kalam today said there is not enough funding for basic science in India and called for 'big' investment to promote researches in higher education.

"There is not enough funding for basic sciences in India. We have to invest in a big way and I am pushing that idea," Kalam told PTI on the sidelines of a lecture at the IIM-Shillong here.
- PTI

Carbs and gut microbes fuel colon cancer
Sugar-loving bacteria support the emergence of tumors in mice
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2814%2900736-3

Gut Microbial Metabolism Drives Transformation of Msh2-Deficient Colon Epithelial Cells
The etiology of colorectal cancer (CRC) has been linked to deficiencies in mismatch repair and adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) proteins, diet, inflammatory processes, and gut microbiota. However, the mechanism through which the microbiota synergizes with these etiologic factors to promote CRC is not clear. We report that altering the microbiota composition reduces CRC in APCMin/+MSH2−/− mice, and that a diet reduced in carbohydrates phenocopies this effect. Gut microbes did not induce CRC in these mice through an inflammatory response or the production of DNA mutagens but rather by providing carbohydrate-derived metabolites such as butyrate that fuel hyperproliferation of MSH2−/− colon epithelial cells. Further, we provide evidence that the mismatch repair pathway has a role in regulating β-catenin activity and modulating the differentiation of transit-amplifying cells in the colon. These data thereby provide an explanation for the interaction between microbiota, diet, and mismatch repair deficiency in CRC induction.

•Gut microbiota induce colon cancer in genetically sensitized MSH2-deficient mice
•Reduced dietary carbohydrates decreased polyp frequency in APCMin/+MSH2−/− mice
•The carbohydrate metabolite butyrate induces colon cancer in APCMin/+MSH2−/− mice
•MSH2 regulates β-catenin activity and/or transit-amplifying cell differentiation

Swimmers have to be careful about not only the infections they get from bacteria and virus but also harm caused by brain eating amoeba  Naegleria fowleri that dwells in dwells in warm freshwater lakes and rivers and usually targets children and young adults. Once in the brain it causes a swelling called primary meningoencephalitis. The infection is almost universally fatal.

The amoeba has strategies to evade the immune system, and treatment options are meager partly because of how fast the infection progresses.

But research suggests that the infection can be stopped if it is caught soon enough. So what happens during an N. fowleri infection?

The microscopic amoebae, which can be suspended in water or nestled in soil, enter the body when water goes up the nose. After attaching to the mucous membranes in the nasal cavity, N. fowleri burrows into the olfactory nerve, the structure that enables our sense of smell and leads directly to the brain. It probably takes more than a drop of liquid to trigger a Naegleria infection; infections usually occur in people who have been engaging in water sports or other activities that may forcefully suffuse the nose with lots of water—diving, waterskiing, wakeboarding, and in one case a baptism dunking.

It turns out that "brain eating" is actually a pretty accurate description for what the amoeba does. After reaching the olfactory bulbs, N. fowleri feasts on the tissue there using suction-cup-like structures on its surface. This destruction leads to the first symptoms—loss of smell and taste—about five days after the infection sets in.

From there the organisms move to the rest of the brain, first gobbling up the protective covering that surrounds the central nervous system. When the body notices that something is wrong, it sends immune cells to combat the infection, causing the surrounding area to become inflamed. It is this inflammation, rather than the loss of brain tissue, that contributes most to the early symptoms of headache, nausea, vomiting and stiff neck. Neck stiffness in particular is attributable to the inflammation, as the swelling around the spinal cord makes it impossible to flex the muscles.

As N. fowleri consumes more tissue and penetrates deeper into the brain, the secondary symptoms set in. They include delirium, hallucinations, confusion and seizures. The frontal lobes of the brain, which are associated with planning and emotional control, tend to be affected most because of the path the olfactory nerve takes. But after that there’s kind of no rhyme or reason—all of the brain can be affected as the infection progresses.

Ultimately what causes death is not the loss of grey matter but the extreme pressure in the skull from the inflammation and swelling related to the body’s fight against the infection. Increasing pressure forces the brain down into where the brain stem meets the spinal cord, eventually severing the connection between the two. Most patients die from the resulting respiratory failure less than two weeks after symptoms begin.

- SA

Depleted Uranium Could Turn Carbon Dioxide into Valuable Chemicals
New reactions could convert excessive CO2 into building blocks for materials like nylon
European scientists have synthesised uranium complexes that take them a step closer to producing commodity chemicals from carbon dioxide.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/07/uranium-carbon-dioxide-ox...