Physicists entangle more than a dozen photons efficiently

.Physicists  have managed to entangle more than a dozen photons efficiently and in a defined way. They are thus creating a basis for a new type of quantum computer. 

The phenomena of the quantum world, which often seem bizarre from the perspective of the common everyday world, have long since found their way into technology. For example, entanglement: a quantum-physical connection between particles that links them in a strange way over arbitrarily long distances. It can be used, for example, in a quantum computer—a computing machine that, unlike a conventional computer, can perform numerous mathematical operations simultaneously. However, in order to use a quantum computer profitably, a large number of entangled particles must work together. They are the basic elements for calculations, so-called qubits.

Photons, the particles of light, are particularly well suited for this because they are robust by nature and easy to manipulate. Researchers  have now succeeded in taking an important step towards making photons usable for technological applications such as quantum computing: For the first time, a research team generated up to 14 entangled photons in a defined way and with high efficiency.

The trick to this experiment was that they used a single atom to emit the photons and interweave them in a very specific way. To do this, the researchers placed a rubidium atom at the center of an optical cavity—a kind of echo chamber for electromagnetic waves. With laser light of a certain frequency, the state of the atom could be precisely addressed. Using an additional control pulse, the researchers also specifically triggered the emission of a photon that is entangled with the quantum state of the atom.

They  repeated this process several times and in a previously determined manner.

In between, the atom was manipulated in a certain way—in technical jargon: rotated. In this way, it was possible to create a chain of up to 14 light particles that were entangled with each other by the atomic rotations and brought into a desired state.

Because the chain of photons emerged from a single atom, it could be produced in a deterministic way. This means: in principle, each control pulse actually delivers a photon with the desired properties.

 Philip Thomas et al, Efficient generation of entangled multiphoton graph states from a single atom, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04987-5

Eye movements in REM sleep mimic gazes in the dream world

When our eyes move during REM sleep, we’re gazing at things in the dream world our brains have created, according to a new study by researchers.

REM sleep — named for the rapid eye movements associated with it — has been known since the 1950s to be the phase of sleep when dreams occur. But the purpose of the eye movements has remained a matter of much mystery and debate. 

This new work showed that these eye movements aren’t random. They’re coordinated with what's happening in the virtual dream world of the mouse.This work gives us a glimpse into the ongoing cognitive processes in the sleeping brain and at the same time solves a puzzle that’s triggered the curiosity of scientists for decades.

some experts hypothesized that these REM movements may be following scenes in the dream world, but there was little way to test it, and the experiments that could be done (noting a dreamers’ eye direction and then waking them up to ask where they were looking in the dream) provided contradictory results. Many researchers wrote off REM movements as random actions, perhaps to keep the eyelids lubricated.

Given much more advanced technology, researchers now were able to look at “head direction” cells in the brains of mice, who also experience REM sleep. These cells act something like a compass, and their activity shows researchers which direction the mouse perceives itself as heading. 

The team simultaneously recorded data from these cells about the mouse’s heading directions while monitoring its eye movements. Comparing them, they found that the direction of eye movements and of the mouse’s internal compass were precisely aligned during REM sleep, just as they do when the mouse is awake and moving around.  

The research team found that the same parts of the brain — and there are many of them — coordinate during both dreaming and wakefulness, lending credence to the idea that dreams are a way of integrating information gathered throughout the day. 

How those brain regions work together to produce this generative ability is the mystery .

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8852

A battery powered by moisture from the air

Autoimmune disorders increase risk of cardiovascular disease

About 5% of the population in the world suffer from multiple autoimmune disorders. Examples are rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, systemic sclerosis, lupus erythematosus and type I diabetes. Although earlier research has suggested associations between some of these disorders and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, these studies were often too small and limited to selected autoimmune or selected cardiovascular conditions to draw conclusive evidence on the necessity of cardiovascular disease prevention among patients with autoimmune disease, until now.

An international research team now presented the outcome of a thorough epidemiological investigation into possible links between 19 of the most common autoimmune disorders and cardiovascular disease. The results of the study show that patients with autoimmune disease have a substantially higher risk (between 1.4 and 3.6 times depending on which autoimmune condition) of developing cardiovascular disease than people without an autoimmune disorder. This excess risk is comparable to that of type 2 diabetes, a well-known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The research shows for the first time that cardiovascular risks affect autoimmune disease as a group of disorders, rather than selected disorders individually.

In the research paper, which will be published in The Lancet, the authors show that the group of 19 autoimmune disorders they have studied accounts for about 6% of cardiovascular events. Importantly, excess cardiovascular risk was visible across the whole cardiovascular disease spectrum, beyond classical coronary heart disease, including infection-related heart disorders, heart inflammation, as well as thromboembolic and degenerative heart disorders, suggesting the implications of autoimmunity on cardiovascular health are likely to be much broader than originally thought.

Furthermore, the excess risk was not explained by traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, blood pressure, BMI, smoking, cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Another noteworthy finding: the excess risk is particularly high among patients with autoimmune disorders under 55 years and suggests that autoimmune disease is particularly important in causing premature cardiovascular disease, with the potential to result in a disproportionate loss of life years and disability.

 Autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular risk: a populationbased study on 19 autoimmune diseases and 12 cardiovascular diseases in 22 million individuals in the UK, The Lancet (2022). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01349-6

How light and temperature work together to affect plant growth

Plants lengthen and bend to secure access to sunlight. Despite observing this phenomenon for centuries, scientists do not fully understand it. Now, Salk scientists have discovered that two plant factors—the protein PIF7 and the growth hormone auxin—are the triggers that accelerate growth when plants are shaded by canopy and exposed to warm temperatures at the same time.

The findings, published in Nature Communications on August 29, 2022, will help scientists predict how plants will respond to climate change—and increase crop productivity despite the yield-harming global temperature rise.

Right now, we grow crops in certain densities, but our findings indicate that we will need to lower these densities to optimize growth as our climate changes. Understanding the molecualr basis of how plants respond to light and temperature will allow us to fine-tune crop density in a specific way that leads to the best yields.

Part 1

During sprouting, seedlings rapidly elongate their stems to break through the covering soil to capture sunlight as fast as possible. Normally, the stem slows down its growth after exposure to sunlight. But the stem can lengthen rapidly again if the plant is competing with surrounding plants for sunlight, or in response to warm temperatures to increase distance between the hot ground and the plant's leaves. While both environmental conditions—canopy shade and warm temperatures—induce stem growth, they also reduce yield.

In this study, the scientists compared plants growing in canopy shade and warm temperatures at the same time—a condition that mimics high crop density and climate change. The scientists used the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, as well as tomato and a close relative of tobacco, because they were interested to see if all three plant species were affected similarly by this environmental condition.

Across all three species, the team found that the plants grew extremely tall when simultaneously trying to avoid the shade created by neighboring plants and being exposed to warmer temperatures. On a molecular level, the researchers discovered that transcription factor PIF7, a protein that helps turn genes "on" and "off," was the dominant player driving the increased rapid growth. They also found that the growth hormone auxin increased when the crops detected neighboring plants, which fostered growth in response to simultaneous warmer temperatures. This synergistic PIF7-auxin pathway allowed the plants to respond to their environments and adapt to seek the best growing conditions.

A related transcription factor, PIF4, also stimulated stem elongation during warm temperatures. However, when shade and increased temperatures were combined, this factor no longer played an important role.

The researchers think that there is another player, yet to be discovered, that is boosting the effect of PIF7 and auxin. They hope to explore this unknown factor in future studies.

Global temperatures are increasing, so we need food crops that can thrive in these new conditions.

Scientists now  identified key factors that regulate plant growth during warm temperatures, which will help us to develop better-performing crops to feed future generations.

 PIF7 is a master regulator of thermomorphogenesis in shade, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32585-6

Part 2

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OPEN Access: The US has ruled all taxpayer-funded research must be free to read.

Last week, the United States announced an updated policy guidance on open access that will substantially expand public access to science not just in America, but worldwide.

As per the guidance, all US federal agencies must put in place policies and plans so anyone anywhere can immediately and freely access the peer-reviewed publications and data arising from research they fund.

The policies need to be in place by the end of 2025, according to President Biden’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/breakthroug...

Mars' Moon Phobos Eclipses the Sun, as Seen by Curiosity

This video clip shows the larger of the two moons of Mars, Phobos, passing directly in front of the sun, in an eclipse photographed by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

Khufu branch of Nile River once flowed close enough to Giza to carry the stones needed to build the pyramids

A team of researchers  has found evidence that shows the Khufu branch of the Nile River once ran so close to Giza that it could have been used to carry the stones that were used to build the famous pyramids. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of fossilized pollen grains found in the sediments around Giza and what it showed them about the history of the Khufu branch.

In their work, the researchers obtained core sediment samples that have been collected from several sites in and around Giza over the years and then took a close look at the fossilized pollen grains trapped in them for thousands of years.

By combining results from prior studies that involved studying the rock layers surrounding the pyramids, they found that they were able to reconstruct the history of the Khufu branch as it flowed and ebbed in the area over the prior 8,000 years. Then, looking at the timeline and flow of the branch, they found its levels were high enough that it reached nearly all the way to Giza—7 kilometers from the Nile—during the times when three of the major pyramids (Menkaure, Khafre and Khufu) were built—approximately 4,000 years ago.

The researchers note that the pollen grain fossils they found were mostly from flowering grasses like the ones that line the Nile River today. They also found evidence of a few marsh plants, which typically grow on the edges of lakes—and that showed that the Khufu branch remained at high levels in the area long enough for nature to consider it permanent.

The researchers also found that not long after the reign of King Tutankhamun, levels of the branch began to drop, leading to a much more arid environment. Other studies of bones and teeth from mummies of the time also showed the area becoming much drier. The researchers suggest that others using the same techniques could learn more about how changing river flow impacted other ancient civilizations.

 Hader Sheisha et al, Nile waterscapes facilitated the construction of the Giza pyramids during the 3rd millennium BCE, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2202530119

Breakthrough results in developing an oral insulin tablet

A team of researchers working on developing oral insulin tablets as a replacement for daily insulin injections have made a game-changing discovery.

Researchers have discovered that insulin from the latest version of their oral tablets is absorbed by rats in the same way that injected insulin is.

These exciting results show that scientists are on the right track in developing an insulin formulation that will no longer need to be injected before every meal, improving the quality of life, as well as mental health, of more than nine million type 1 diabetics around the world.

Researchers  are now seeing nearly 100 percent of the insulin from their tablets go straight into the liver. In previous attempts to develop a drinkable insulin, most of the insulin would accumulate in the stomach.

Even after two hours of delivery, researchers did not find any insulin in the stomachs of the rats they tested now. It was all in the liver and this is the ideal target for insulin—it's really what they wanted to see.

The team developed a different kind of tablet that isn't made for swallowing, but instead dissolves when placed between the gum and cheek.

This method makes use of the thin membrane found within the lining of the inner cheek and back of the lips (also known as the buccal mucosa). It delivered all the insulin to the liver without wasting or decomposing any insulin along the way.

Similar to the rapid-acting insulin injection, this new oral delivery tablet absorbs after half an hour and can last for about two to four hours long.

Now human trials are awaited. 

Yigong Guo et al, Production of high loading insulin nanoparticles suitable for oral delivery by spray drying and freeze drying techniques, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-13092-6

Living in timber cities could avoid emissions, without using farmla...

Housing a growing population in homes made out of wood instead of conventional steel and concrete could avoid more than 100 billion tons of emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 until 2100, a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research shows. These are about 10% of the remaining carbon budget for the 2°C climate target. Besides the harvest from natural forests, newly established timber plantations are required for supplying construction wood. While this does not interfere with food production, a loss of biodiversity may occur if not carefully managed, according to the scientists. The study is the first to analyze the impacts of a large-scale transition to timber cities on land use, land-use change emissions, and long-term carbon storage in harvested wood products.

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Researchers reveal how salt may play into climate warming

A team of Skoltech researchers has published a series of three papers dealing with various aspects of how salt from the ocean water and other salts penetrate into frozen soil that contains gas hydrates—icelike crystals composed of water and gas, mostly methane. This so-called salt migration affects the rate at which permafrost melts as global warming advances. Taking that process into account is therefore necessary for accurate climate change modeling. The research findings are reported in papers dated June 27 and July 9 in the journal Geosciences, and in the July 5 paper in Energy & Fuels.

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Shape of coronavirus affects its transmission, study finds

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, images of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, have been seared in our minds. But the way we picture the virus, typically as a sphere with spikes, is not strictly accurate. Microscope images of infected tissues have revealed that coronavirus particles are actually ellipsoidal, displaying a wide variety of squashed and elongated shapes.

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Compound found in trees has potential to kill drug-resistant bacteria

University of Portsmouth researchers have found a naturally occurring compound, known as hydroquinine, has bacterial killing activity against several microorganisms.

New research in mice offers clues into how the brain processes sensory information from internal organs

Most of us think little of why we feel pleasantly full after eating a big holiday meal, why we start to cough after accidentally inhaling campfire smoke, or why we are hit with sudden nausea after ingesting something toxic. However, such sensations are crucial for survival: they tell us what our bodies need at any given moment so that we can quickly adjust our behavior.

Yet historically, very little research has been devoted to understanding these basic bodily sensations—also known as internal senses—that are generated when the brain receives and interprets input from internal organs.

Now, a team led by researchers at Harvard Medical School has made new strides in understanding the basic biology of internal organ sensing, which involves a complicated cascade of communication between cells inside the body.

In a study conducted in mice and published Aug. 31 in Nature, the team used high-resolution imaging to reveal spatial maps of how neurons in the brain stem respond to feedback from internal organs.

They found that feedback from different organs activates discrete clusters of neurons, regardless of whether this information is mechanical or chemical in nature—and these groups of neurons representing different organs are topographically organized in the brain stem. Moreover, they discovered that inhibition within the brain plays a key role in helping neurons selectively respond to organs.

The research is only a first step in elucidating how internal organs communicate with the brain. However, if the findings are confirmed in other species, including humans, they could help scientists develop better therapeutic strategies for diseases such as eating disorders, overactive bladder, diabetes, pulmonary disorders, and hypertension that arise when internal sensing goes awry.

Stephen Liberles, A brainstem map for visceral sensations, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05139-5. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05139-5

Researchers find spaceflight may be associated with DNA mutations, increased risk of heart disease and cancer

Astronauts are at higher risk for developing mutations—possibly linked to spaceflight—that can increase the risk of developing cancer and heart disease during their lifetimes, according to a first-of-its kind study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

A team of researchers collected blood samples from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronauts who flew space shuttle missions between 1998 and 2001. They discovered DNA mutations, known as soamtic mutations, in the blood-forming system ( hematopoietic stem cells)  in all 14 astronauts studied.

Their findings, published in the August issue of Communications Biology, suggest that spaceflight could be associated with these mutations and emphasize the importance of ongoing blood screening of astronauts throughout their careers and during their retirement to monitor their health.

Somatic mutations are mutations that occur after a person is conceived and in cells other than sperm or egg cells, meaning they cannot be passed on to offspring. The mutations identified in this study were characterized by the overrepresentation of blood cells derived from a single clone, a process called clonal hematopoiesis (CH).

Such mutations are frequently caused by environmental factors, such as exposure to ultraviolet radiation or certain chemicals, and may be a result of cancer chemo- or radiotherapy. There are few signs or symptoms associated with CH; most patients are identified after genetic testing of their blood for other diseases. Although CH is not necessarily an indicator of disease, it is associated with a higher risk for cardiovascular disease and blood cancer.

Astronauts work in an extreme environment where many factors can result in somatic mutations, most importantly space radiation, which means there is a risk that these mutations could develop into clonal hematopoiesis. Given the growing interest in both commercial spaceflights and deep space exploration, and the potential health risks of exposure to various harmful factors that are associated with repeated or long-duration exploration space missions.

 Agnieszka Brojakowska et al, Retrospective analysis of somatic mutations and clonal hematopoiesis in astronauts, Communications Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03777-z

Excessive blue light from our gadgets may accelerate the aging process

Too much screen use has been linked to obesity and psychological problems. Now a new study has identified a new problem—a study in fruit flies suggests our basic cellular functions could be impacted by the blue light emitted by these devices. These results are published in Frontiers in Aging.

Excessive exposure to blue light from everyday devices, such as TVs, laptops, and phones, may have detrimental effects on a wide range of cells in our body, from skin and fat cells, to sensory neurons. 

This work is the first to show that the levels of specific metabolites—chemicals that are essential for cells to function correctly—are altered in fruit flies exposed to blue light. This study suggests that avoidance of excessive blue light exposure may be a good anti-aging strategy. 

Highlights of this work:

Blue light exposure caused significant differences in the levels of metabolites measured by the researchers in the cells of fly heads. In particular, they found that the levels of the metabolite succinate were increased, but glutamate levels were lowered.

Succinate is essential for producing the fuel for the function and growth of each cell. High levels of succinate after exposure to blue light can be compared to gas being in the pump but not getting into the car.

Another troubling discovery was that molecules responsible for communication between neurons, such as glutamate, are at the lower level after blue light exposure.

The changes recorded by the researchers suggest that the cells are operating at suboptimal level, and this may cause their premature death, and further, explain their previous findings that blue light accelerates aging.

"LEDs have become the main illumination in display screens such as phones, desktops and TVs, as well as ambient lighting, so humans in advanced societies are exposed to blue light through LED lighting during most of their waking hours. The signaling chemicals in the cells of flies and humans are the same, so the there is potential for negative effects of blue light on humans too, according to researchers.

Jun Yang et al, Chronic blue light leads to accelerated aging in Drosophila by impairing energy metabolism and neurotransmitter levels, Frontiers in Aging (2022). DOI: 10.3389/fragi.2022.983373

Scientists eavesdrop on communication between fat and brain

For years, it was assumed that hormones passively floating through the blood were the way that a person's fat—called adipose tissue—could send information related to stress and metabolism to the brain. Now,  Research scientists report in Nature that newly identified sensory neurons carry a stream of messages from adipose tissue to the brain.

The discovery of these neurons suggests for the first time that your brain is actively surveying your fat, rather than just passively receiving messages about it. The implications of this finding are profound.

This is yet another example of how important sensory neurons are to health and disease in the human body.

In mammals, adipose tissue stores energy in the form of fat cells and, when the body needs energy, releases those stores. It also controls a host of hormones and signaling molecules related to hunger and metabolism. In diseases including diabetes, fatty liver disease, atherosclerosis and obesity, that energy storage and signaling often goes awry. Researchers have long known that nerves extend into adipose tissue, but suspected they weren't sensory neurons that carry data to the brain. Instead, most hypothesized that the nerves in fat belonged mostly to the sympathetic nervous system—the network responsible for our fight-or-flight response, which switches on fat-burning pathways during times of stress and physical activity. Attempts to clarify the types and functions of these neurons have been difficult; methods used to study neurons closer to the surface of the body or in the brain don't work well deep in adipose tissue, where nerves are hard to see or to stimulate.

Part 1

The experiments revealed that when the brain doesn't receive sensory messages from adipose tissue, programs triggered by the sympathetic nervous system—related to the conversion of white fat to brown fat—become overly active in fat cells, resulting in a larger than normal fat pad with especially high levels of brown fat, which breaks down other fat and sugar molecules to produce heat. Indeed, the animals with blocked sensory neurons—and high levels of sympathetic signaling—had increased body temperatures.

The findings suggest that the sensory neurons and sympathetic neurons might have two opposing functions, with sympathetic neurons needed to turn on fat burning and the production of brown fat, and sensory neurons required to turn these programs down.

This tells us that there's not just a one-size-fits-all instruction that brain sends adipose tissue. It's more nuanced than that; these two types of neurons are acting like a gas pedal and a brake for burning fat.

Li Ye, The role of somatosensory innervation of adipose tissues, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05137-7. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05137-7

Part 2

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How the brain generates rhythmic behaviour

Many of our bodily functions, such as walking, breathing, and chewing, are controlled by brain circuits called central oscillators, which generate rhythmic firing patterns that regulate these behaviours.

neuroscientists have now discovered the neuronal identity and mechanism underlying one of these circuits: an oscillator that controls the rhythmic back-and-forth sweeping of tactile whiskers, or whisking, in mice. This is the first time that any such oscillator has been fully characterized in mammals.

The research team found that the whisking oscillator consists of a population of inhibitory neurons in the brainstem that fires rhythmic bursts during whisking. As each neuron fires, it also inhibits some of the other neurons in the network, allowing the overall population to generate a synchronous rhythm that retracts the whiskers from their protracted positions.

 Shwetha Srinivasan et al, Ligand-induced transmembrane conformational coupling in monomeric EGFR, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31299-z

Climate change: 

This Hot Summer Is One of the Coolest of the Rest of Our Lives

Heat waves broke temperature records around the world this past summer, but it will still be one of the coolest summers of the next few decades!

Physicists on Earth are experimenting with matter which is about 3 billion times colder than deep space!

Physicists have used atoms about 3 billion times colder than interstellar space to open a portal to an unexplored realm of quantum magnetism.

Unless an alien civilization is doing experiments like these right now, anytime this experiment is running at Kyoto University, Japan,  it is making the coldest fermions in the universe. Fermions are not rare particles. They include things like electrons and are one of two types of particles that all matter is made of.

Fermions are not rare particles. They include things like electrons and are one of two types of particles that all matter is made of.

Researchers used lasers to cool its fermions, atoms of ytterbium, within about one-billionth of a degree of absolute zero, the unattainable temperature where all motion stops. That's about 3 billion times colder than interstellar space, which is still warmed by the afterglow from the Big Bang.

The payoff of getting this cold is that the physics really changes. The physics starts to become more quantum mechanical, and it lets you see new phenomena.

 Shintaro Taie, Observation of antiferromagnetic correlations in an ultracold SU(N) Hubbard model, Nature Physics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-022-01725-6. www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01725-6

Mice grow bigger on the rainier sides of mountains: It might be a new rule of nature.

Scientists studying mice from the Andes Mountains in Patagonia noticed something they couldn't explain: the mice from the western side of the mountains were bigger than the ones from the east, but DNA said that they were all from the same species. The researchers examined the skulls of 450 mice from the southern tip of South America, and found that existing biological laws didn't explain the size differences. Instead, in a new paper in the Journal of Biogeography, the scientists put forth a new hypothesis: the mice on the western slopes were bigger because that side of the mountain range gets more rain, which means there's more plentiful food for the mice to eat.

There are a bunch of ecogeographic rules that scientists use to explain trends that we see again and again in nature. With this paper, researchers might have found a new one: the rain shadow effect can cause changes of size and shape in mammals.

Some individuals of the mice species were really big, and some were really small. Researchers thought they were different species. But their mitochondrial DNA suggested that they were one species, even though they're so different.

Part 1

There are lots of "rules" of nature explaining patterns that we see in life. For instance, Bergmann's rule explains why animals of the same species are bigger in higher latitudes. White-tailed deer in Canada are larger and bulkier than their skinny Floridian cousins. Bergmann's rule explains that this is because having a thicker body in relation to your surface area helps you retain heat better, the same way that big pieces of food take longer to cool down than smaller bites.

To try to find a pattern to explain the differences in size, the researchers used statistical analyses to compare measurements of 450 mouse skulls. They then tried to map their findings onto different biological rules to see if any fit. Bergmann's rule didn't work; there wasn't a strong correlation between mouse size and how far north or south the specimen lived. Other rules emphasize the role of temperature or precipitation, with mixed results for different groups and situations. This team did not find that latitude, or one of 19 other bioclimatic, temperature, or precipitation variables, best described the mice's varying shapes and sizes. However, there did seem to be a pattern with longitude— how far east or west the mice lived.

This might be related to what biologists call the "resource rule." This rule suggests that where there are more resources, individuals from the same species tend to be larger than where there are fewer resources. For instance, some deer mice that are found in deserts and other habitats tend to be smaller in drier portions of their habitats. Another hypothesis suggests that some animals tend to be smaller in mountains versus adjacent plains in North America. This new study found a mixed result of these rules.

 Noé de la Sancha et al, Andean rain shadow effect drives phenotypic variation in a widely distributed Austral rodent, Journal of Biogeography (2022).

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Carbon dioxide should cost 3.6 times more than US price, study says

Each ton of carbon dioxide that exits a smokestack or tailpipe is doing far more damage than what governments take into account, researchers conclude in a scientific paper published recently. 

Major hurricanes pack more rain, while extremes of wildfire, drought and downpours are all happening more often and with more intensity due to climate change, causing loss of communities, homes and lives all over the world. But what is the actual cost in dollar terms of the carbon emissions driving climactic change?

That's what researchers from a variety of fields—science, economics, medicine—are trying to figure out through a metric called the social cost of carbon, a price that represents the total climate damage caused to society through carbon emissions. It's been used in the past to justify tougher limits on carbon emissions and more spending on climate solutions, like transitioning to renewable energy and natural flood protection.

Currently, the United States government uses a price of $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted, but the researchers wrote in the journal Nature that the price should be $185 per ton—3.6 times higher than the current U.S. standard.

David Anthoff, Comprehensive Evidence Implies a Higher Social Cost of CO₂, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05224-9. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05224-9

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Circadian rhythm disruption found to be common among mental health disorders

Anxiety, autism, schizophrenia and Tourette syndrome each have their own distinguishing characteristics, but one factor bridging these and most other mental disorders is circadian rhythm disruption, according to a team of neuroscience, pharmaceutical sciences and computer science researchers .

In an article published recently in the Nature journal Translational Psychiatry, the scientists hypothesize that CRD is a psychopathology factor shared by a broad range of mental illnesses and that research into its molecular foundation could be key to unlocking better therapies and treatments.

Circadian rhythms regulate our bodies' physiological activity and biological processes during each solar day. Synchronized to a 24-hour light/dark cycle, circadian rhythms influence when we normally need to sleep and when we're awake. They also manage other functions such as hormone production and release, body temperature maintenance and consolidation of memories. Effective, nondisrupted operation of this natural timekeeping system is necessary for the survival of all living organisms.

Circadian rhythms are intrinsically sensitive to light/dark cues, so they can be easily disrupted by light exposure at night, and the level of disruption appears to be sex-dependent and changes with age. One example is a hormonal response to CRD felt by pregnant women; both the mother and the fetus can experience clinical effects from CRD and chronic stress.

Circadian rhythms play a fundamental role in all biological systems at all scales, from molecules to populations. This new work analysis found that circadian rhythm disruption is a factor that broadly overlaps the entire spectrum of mental health disorders.

The telltale sign of circadian rhythm disruption—a problem with sleep—was present in each disorder.While  the focus was on widely known conditions including autism, ADHD and bipolar disorder, researchers argue that the CRD psychopathology factor hypothesis can be generalized to other mental health issues, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, food addiction and Parkinson's disease. The researchers found ample evidence of the connection by thoroughly examining peer-reviewed literature on the most prevalent mental health disorders.

Amal Alachkar et al, The hidden link between circadian entropy and mental health disorders, Translational Psychiatry (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41398-022-02028-3

Researcher unlocks mystery of 'chemo-brain,' identifies possible treatment

Though chemotherapy can be lifesaving, the cancer treatment often leaves patients suffering from debilitating side effects, including cognitive impairments in processing speed, memory, executive function and attention. Dubbed "chemo brain," these lingering symptoms can dramatically impact patients' quality of life long after they have completed their cancer treatments.

This is the first evidence that chemotherapy alters an important cellular pathway called sphingolipid metabolism in critical areas of the brain linked to cognitive function.

Currently, there are no FDA-approved drugs to mitigate these deficits. In breakthrough findings, researchers have uncovered some of the molecular events that happen when chemotherapy drugs cause these deficits. More promising still, they've found that an already-approved FDA drug designed to treat multiple sclerosis also appears to work to reduce chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment (CRCI).

 Silvia Squillace et al, Sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1 activation in the central nervous system drives cisplatin-induced cognitive impairment, Journal of Clinical Investigation (2022). DOI: 10.1172/JCI157738

Study finds enzyme in the brain is a 'metastat' for body weight

An enzyme found in the brain acts as a major regulator of body weight,  researchers have discovered. In a new study, they found that removing the enzyme from neurons in a part of the brain known as the hypothalamus led mice to gain weight and burn less fat. This finding, they say, suggests that the enzyme could be a target for treating metabolic disease.

The findings were published Aug. 31 in Science Advances.

Dysregulated metabolism is implicated in a host of metabolic disorders, including obesity and diabetes. The hypothalamus region of the brain is essential for metabolic control and the area known as the ventromedial hypothalamus is known to regulate body weight, eating, and glucose balance. How the ventromedial hypothalamus does this, however, is less clear.

For the study,  researchers focused on an enzyme called O-linked b-D-N-acetylglucosamine transferase, or OGT. Though researchers have a partial understanding of the enzyme’s role in other parts of the body — such as mediating nutritional and hormonal regulation in different organs and tissues — what it does in the brain is largely unknown.

As a first step, researchers observed what happened to OGT in neurons of the ventromedial hypothalamus when food intake was adjusted. They found that when mice consumed less food, OGT levels went up.

This suggested that OGT plays an important role as a nutrient sensor in this neuron population.

To better understand this role, researchers bred mice that lacked OGT in neurons of the ventromedial hypothalamus. They found that the mice gained weight very quickly on a normal diet, becoming much heavier than typical mice even though they were eating the same amount of food and were just as physically active.

A key difference was that the mice without OGT expended less energy than their counterparts.

Just sitting at rest, you burn energy because you need to maintain the vital functions of the body, such as breathing, digestion, and brain activity. And though the mice lacking OGT weren’t less physically active, they burned less energy at this basal level.

They also responded differently to fasting. When the body has adequate amounts of food, its preferred fuel is glucose. But when you fast, your glucose runs out quickly. The body then taps into its fat stores in order to meet energy demands.

But in the study, mice lacking OGT didn’t burn fat as much as other mice when food was restricted.

The problem had to do with glucose-sensing, said the researchers. The ability to sense glucose is essential for keeping it at the level the body needs. If neurons can’t sense glucose properly, they won’t make necessary metabolic adjustments, such as telling the body to burn fat. In the study, neurons without OGT didn’t sense glucose as well as those with the enzyme.

Without OGT, the body can’t sense that less food is coming in, and then it doesn’t tell its fat tissues to burn fat. Researchers liken OGT to a thermostat, or a “metastat,”  since OGT is crucial for metabolic homeostasis.


And that set point will be different from individual to individual.

Because of this, OGT could be a target for treating metabolic diseases. It’s possible that, in the future, a drug could be used to target OGT in ventromedial hypothalamus neurons to fine-tune a person’s body weight set point, adjusting it if it’s too high or too low.

One day we might be able to reprogram a person’s metastat to achieve desired body weight, the researchers think.

https://news.yale.edu/2022/08/31/study-finds-enzyme-brain-metastat-...

Your blood type could predict your risk of having a stroke before age 60, new study suggests

A person's blood type may be linked to their risk of having an early stroke, according to a new meta-analysis done by researchers. Findings were published today in the journal Neurology. The meta-analysis included all available data from genetic studies focusing on ischemic strokes, which are caused by a blockage of blood flow to the brain, occurring in younger adults under age 60.

The number of people with early strokes is rising. These people are more likely to die from the life-threatening event, and survivors potentially face decades with disability. Despite this, there is little research on the causes of early strokes.

Researchers conducted the study by performing a meta-analysis of 48 studies on genetics and ischemic stroke that included 17,000 stroke patients and nearly 600,000 healthy controls who never had experienced a stroke. They then looked across all collected chromosomes to identify genetic variants associated with a stroke and found a link between early-onset stroke—occurring before age 60—and the area of the chromosome that includes the gene that determines whether a blood type is A, AB, B, or O.

The study found that people with early stroke were more likely to have blood type A and less likely to have blood type O (the most common blood type)—compared to people with late stroke and people who never had a stroke. Both early and late stroke were also more likely to have blood type B compared to controls. After adjusting for sex and other factors, researchers found those who had blood type A had an 16 percent higher risk of having an early stroke than people with other blood types. Those who had blood type O had a 12 percent lower risk of having a stroke than people with other blood types.

The researchers emphasized that the increased risk was very modest and that those with type A blood should not worry about having an early-onset stroke or engage in extra screening or medical testing based on this finding.

Genetic Contributions to Early and Late Onset Ischemic Stroke, Neurology (2022). dx.doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000201006

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The physics of walking: For multi-legged creatures, it's a lot like slithering

New polar ring galaxy discovered

Astronomers report the detection of a new polar ring galaxy using the data obtained with the Subaru Telescope as part of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP). 

The so-called polar ring galaxies (PRGs) are systems composed of an S0-like galaxy and a polar ring, which remain separate for billions of years. In general, these outer polar rings, composed of gas and stars, are aligned roughly in a perpendicular orientation with respect to the major axis of the central host galaxy.

However, although more than 400 PRG candidates have been discovered to date, only dozens of them have been confirmed as real polar ring galaxies by follow-up spectroscopic observations.

Minoru Nishimura, Kazuya Matsubayashi, Takashi Murayama, Yoshiaki Taniguchi, A New Polar Ring Galaxy Discovered in the COSMOS Field. arXiv:2208.12388v1 [astro-ph.GA], arxiv.org/abs/2208.12388

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Training astronauts to be scientists on the moon

Astronauts with their sights on the moon are receiving world-class geology training during the fifth edition of ESA's Pangaea campaign. From choosing landing sites for a future Artemis mission, to designing science operations for the lunar surface, the course challenges space explorers to become field scientists.

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Breakthrough in addressing glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer

Researchers capture live footage of virus infecting cell

In a first, scientists have captured on video all the steps a virus follows as it enters and infects a living cell in real time and in three dimensions.

Scientists achieved the feat by using advanced imaging called lattice light sheet microscopy as well as chemical and genetic manipulation.

The first part of the video shown here follows a virus engineered to sprout SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins (labeled pink) as it is captured at a cell surface and engulfed by a cellular compartment called an endosome. The virus then fuses with the endosome membrane and injects its genetic material (labeled blue) inside the cell—the steps necessary to kick off a cycle of viral infection and replication.

The second part of the video shows many such viruses inside the cell. The video covers 4 minutes of activity, with snapshots taken every 4 seconds.

The findings, published Sept. 1 in PNAS, provide new insights into the fundamental mechanics of viral infection and could point the way to new methods for intervening before the onset of COVID-19.

The researchers' work reveals that viruses can't fuse with the membrane and release their genomes unless they're bathed in a slightly acidic environment. Experiments indicated that the pH must fall between 6.2 and 6.8, just shy of neutral and on par with bodily fluids such as saliva and urine. Endosomes have such acidity, and the team's measurements confirmed that this is also the pH range inside a typical human nose, where SARS-CoV-2 infection often begins.

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/breaking-entering

Webb Captures A Cosmic Tarantula

Watch this special Space Sparks episode to learn more about the stellar nursery called 30 Doradus, as captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

Researchers discover toxin that kills bacteria in unprecedented ways

Researchers  have discovered a previously unknown bacteria-killing toxin that could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics.

The study shows that the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, known to cause hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, secretes a toxin that has evolved to kill other  species of bacteria.

The key aspect of his discovery is not just that this toxin kills bacteria, but how it does so.This research is significant, because it shows that the toxin targets essential RNA molecules of other bacteria, effectively rendering them non-functional. It's a total assault on the cell because of how many essential pathways depend on functional RNAs. This toxin enters its target, hijacks an essential molecule needed for life, and then uses that molecule to disrupt normal processes.

Researchers say that this development holds great potential for future research that could eventually lead to new innovations that combat infection-causing bacteria.

They think the newly-discovered vulnerability can be exploited for future antibiotic development.

An ADP-ribosyltransferase toxin kills bacterial cells by modifying structured non-coding RNAs, Molecular Cell (2022).

How tardigrades survive dehydration

Some species of tardigrades, or water bears as the tiny aquatic creatures are also known, can survive in different environments often hostile or even fatal to most forms of life. For the first time, researchers describe a new mechanism that explains how some tardigrades can endure extreme dehydration without dying. They explored proteins that form a gel during cellular dehydration. This gel stiffens to support and protect the cells from mechanical stress that would otherwise kill them. These proteins have also been shown to work in insect cells and even show limited functionality in human cultured cells.

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Next generation of hearing aids could read lips through masks

A new system capable of reading lips with remarkable accuracy even when speakers are wearing face masks could help create a new generation of hearing aids.

Physicists discover new rule for orbital formation in chemical reactions

Squeaky, cloudy or spherical—electron orbitals show where and how electrons move around atomic nuclei and molecules. In modern chemistry and physics, they have proven to be a useful model for quantum mechanical description and prediction of chemical reactions. Only if the orbitals match in space and energy can they be combined—this is what happens when two substances react with each other chemically. In addition, there is another condition that must be met, as researchers  have now discovered: The course of chemical reactions also appears to be dependent on the orbital distribution in momentum space. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.

 Xiaosheng Yang et al, Momentum-selective orbital hybridisation, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32643-z

Light accelerates conductivity in nature's 'electric grid'

The natural world possesses its own intrinsic electrical grid composed of a global web of tiny bacteria-generated nanowires in the soil and oceans that "breathe" by exhaling excess electrons.

In a new study, researchers discovered that light is a surprising ally in fostering this electronic activity within biofilm bacteria. Exposing bacteria-produced nanowires to light, they found, yielded an up to a 100-fold increase in electrical conductivity.

The dramatic current increases in nanowires exposed to light show a stable and robust photocurrent that persists for hours.

The results could provide new insights as scientists pursue ways to exploit this hidden electrical current for a variety of purposes, from eliminating biohazard waste and creating new renewable fuel sources.

Almost all living things breathe oxygen to get rid of excess electrons when converting nutrients into energy. Without access to oxygen, however, soil bacteria living deep under oceans or buried underground over billions of years have developed a way to respire by "breathing minerals," like snorkeling, through tiny protein filaments called nanowires.

When bacteria were exposed to light, the increase in electrical current surprised researchers because most of the bacteria tested exist deep in the soil, far from the reach of light. Previous studies had shown that when exposed to light nanowire-producing bacteria grew faster.

In the new study researchers concluded that a metal-containing protein known as cytochrome OmcS—which makes up bacterial nanowires—acts as a natural photoconductor: the nanowires greatly facilitate electron transfer when biofilms are exposed to light.

It is a completely different form of photosynthesis. Here, light is accelerating breathing by bacteria due to rapid electron transfer between nanowires.

Researchers are exploring how this insight into bacterial electrical conductivity could be used to spur growth in optoelectronics—a subfield of photonics that studies devices and systems that find and control light—and capture methane, a greenhouse gas known to be a significant contributor to global climate change.

Neu, J., Shipps, C.C., Guberman-Pfeffer, M.J. et al. Microbial biofilms as living photoconductors due to ultrafast electron transfer in cytochrome OmcS nanowires. Nat Commun, 2022 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32659-5

Physicists invent intelligent quantum sensor of light waves

Physicists have demonstrated an atomically thin, intelligent quantum sensor that can simultaneously detect all the fundamental properties of an incoming light wave.

The research, published April 13 in the journal Nature, demonstrates a new concept based on quantum geometry that could find use in health care, deep-space exploration and remote-sensing applications.

Typically, when you want to characterize a wave of light, you have to use different instruments to gather information, such as the intensity, wavelength and polarization state of the light. Those instruments are bulky and can occupy a significant area on an optical table. Now we have a single device—just a tiny and thin chip—that can determine all these properties simultaneously in a very short time.

The device exploits the unique physical properties of a novel family of two-dimensional materials called moiré metamaterials. The 2D materials have periodic structures and are atomically thin. If two layers of such a material are overlaid with a small rotational twist, a moiré pattern with an emergent, orders-of-magnitude larger periodicity can form. The resulting moiré metamaterial yields electronic properties that differ significantly from those exhibited by a single layer alone or by two naturally aligned layers.

The sensing device that physicists now chose to demonstrate their new idea incorporates two layers of relatively twisted, naturally occurring bilayer graphene, for a total of four atomic layers.

Chun Ning Lau et al, Reproducibility in the fabrication and physics of moiré materials, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04173-z

Modern humans generate more brain neurons than Neandertals

What makes modern humans unique has long been a driving force for researchers. Comparisons with our closest relatives, the Neandertals, therefore provide fascinating insights. The increase in brain size, and in neuron production during brain development, are considered to be major factors for the increased cognitive abilities that occurred during human evolution. However, while both Neandertals and modern humans develop brains of similar size, very little is known about whether modern human and Neandertal brains may have differed in terms of their neuron production during development.

Researchers now show that the modern human variant of the protein TKTL1, which differs by only a single amino acid from the Neandertal variant, increases one type of brain progenitor cells, called basal radial glia, in the modern human brain. Basal radial glial cells generate the majority of the neurons in the developing neocortex, a part of the brain that is crucial for many cognitive abilities. As TKTL1 activity is particularly high in the frontal lobe of the fetal human brain, the researchers conclude that this single human-specific amino acid substitution in TKTL1 underlies a greater neuron production in the developing frontal lobe of the neocortex in modern humans than Neandertals.

Only a small number of proteins have differences in the sequence of their amino acids—the building blocks of proteins—between modern humans and our extinct relatives, the Neandertals and Denisovans. The biological significance of these differences for the development of the modern human brain is largely unknown. In fact, both, modern humans and Neandertals, feature a brain, and notably a neocortex, of similar size, but whether this similar neocortex size implies a similar number of neurons remains unclear.

The researchers focus on one of these proteins that presents a single amino acid change in essentially all modern humans compared to Neandertals, the protein transketolase-like 1 (TKTL1). Specifically, in modern humans TKTL1 contains an arginine at the sequence position in question, whereas in Neandertal TKTL1 it is the related amino acid lysine. In the fetal human neocortex, TKTL1 is found in neocortical progenitor cells, the cells from which all cortical neurons derive. Notably, the level of TKTL1 is highest in the progenitor cells of the frontal lobe.

Researchers observed that basal radial glial cells, the type of neocortical progenitors thought to be the driving force for a bigger brain, increased with the modern human variant of TKTL1 but not with the Neandertal variant. As a consequence, the brains of mouse embryos with the modern human TKTL1 contained more neurons.

They found that with the Neandertal-type of amino acid in TKTL1, fewer basal radial glial cells were produced than with the modern human-type and, as a consequence, also fewer neurons. This shows us that even though we do not know how many neurons the Neandertal brain had, we can assume that modern humans have more neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain, where TKTL1 activity is highest, than Neandertals.

Anneline Pinson et al, Human TKTL1 implies greater neurogenesis in frontal neocortex of modern humans than Neandertals, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abl6422. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl6422

Intelligent microscopes for detecting rare biological events

Now researchers need not wait for hours together to image bacterial cells division

Biophysicists have now found a way to automate microscope control for imaging biological events in detail while limiting stress on the sample, all with the help of artificial neural networks. Their technique works for bacterial cell division, and for mitochondrial division. The details of their intelligent microscope are described in Nature Methods.

Suliana Manley, Event-driven acquisition for content-enriched microscopy, Nature Methods (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41592-022-01589-x. www.nature.com/articles/s41592-022-01589-x

Two new trials find no link between vitamin D supplements and reduced risk of COVID-19

Two large clinical trials published by The BMJ today show that boosting vitamin D levels in adults during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was not associated with protection against respiratory tract infections or COVID-19.

Vitamin D metabolites have long been recognized to support innate immune responses to respiratory viruses and bacteria, and some studies have shown that vitamin D may protect against respiratory tract infections, particularly among those who are vitamin D-deficient.

Vitamin D has therefore received much attention for its potential role in preventing and treating COVID-19, but most studies published so far are observational and have shown mixed results.

The first trial was carried out in the UK between December 2020 and June 2021 and involved 6,200 adults (16 years and over) not using vitamin D supplements at enrollment.

Half (3,100 participants) were offered a vitamin D blood test and those found to have low vitamin D levels (2,674; 86%) received either 3200 IU/day or 800 IU/day of vitamin D supplements for six months, while the other half (controls) received no test or supplements.

Neither of the vitamin D doses showed any effect on diagnosed acute respiratory tract infections or lateral flow test or RT-PCR-confirmed COVID-19 cases over a six-month follow-up period. The number of adverse events was similar between groups, and no serious adverse event was attributed to study supplements.

The second trial was conducted in Norway between November 2020 and June 2021 using cod liver oil, which contains low doses of vitamin D and vitamin A as well as omega-3 fatty acids.

A total of 34,741 adults (18-75 years) who were not using vitamin D supplements received either 5 mL cod liver oil or 5 mL placebo (corn oil) daily for six months. The majority of participants (86%) who were tested had adequate vitamin D levels at the start of the study.

Again, the researchers found no effect of cod liver oil on acute respiratory infections or PCR-confirmed COVID-19, compared with placebo. The cod liver oil group had no more side effects than the placebo group and only low-grade side effects were reported.

Effect of a test-and-treat approach to vitamin D supplementation on risk of all cause acute respiratory tract infection and covid-19: phase 3 randomised controlled trial (CORONAVIT), The BMJ (2022). DOI: 10.1136/bmj-2022-071230

The first known surgical amputation

Prehistoric child’s amputation is oldest surgery of its kind

The skeleton of a person who lived 31,000 years ago bears hallmarks of the deliberate removal of their lower left leg — the earliest known surgery of its kind. Discovered in a limestone cave in Borneo, the remains pre-date the previous oldest known case of limb amputation by more than 20,000 years. The person appears to have survived for at least six to nine years after the surgery.

Antibiotics given in infancy may have adverse impact on adult gut health

Preterm and low birth-weight babies are routinely given antibiotics to prevent⁠—not just treat⁠—infections, which they have a high risk of developing. A new study published in The Journal of Physiology has found that early life exposure to antibiotics in neonatal mice has long-lasting effects on their microbiota, enteric nervous system, and gut function. This could mean that babies given antibiotics may grow up to experience gastrointestinal issues.

This discovery by a research team  is the first to show that antibiotics given to neonatal mice yields these long-lasting effects that result in disturbed gastrointestinal function, including the speed of motility through the gut and diarrhea-like symptoms in adulthood.

The research team gave mice an oral dose of vancomycin every day for the first ten days of their lives. They were then reared normally until they were young adults, and their gut tissue was looked at to measure its structure, function, microbiota, and nervous system. The investigators found that changes were also dependent on the sex of the mice. The females had long whole gut transit and the males had lower fecal weight than the control group. Both males and females had greater fecal water content, which is a diarrhea-like symptom.

Neonatal antibiotics have long-term sex-dependent effects on the enteric nervous system, The Journal of Physiology (2022). DOI: 10.1113/JP282939

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Gut microbes may lead to therapies for mental illness, study reports

The role of the microbiome in intestinal and systemic health has garnered close attention among researchers for many years. Now evidence is mounting that this collection of microorganisms in the human gut can also impact a person's neurological and emotional health, according to a recent perspective article in Science by a UT Southwestern researcher.

Scientists are unraveling the relationship of the microbiome to the brain, including connections to diseases such as depression and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). 

Jane A. Foster, Modulating brain function with microbiota, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abo4220

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A plastic film that can kill viruses using room lights

Researchers  have developed a plastic film that can kill viruses that land on its surface with room light. The self-sterilizing film is the first of its kind—it is low cost to produce, can be readily scaled and could be used for disposable aprons, tablecloths, and curtains in hospitals. It is coated with a thin layer of particles that absorb UV light and produce reactive oxygen species—ROS. These kill viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.

The technology used to create the film also ensures it is degradable—unlike the current disposable plastic films it would replace, which is much more environmentally friendly. The breakthrough could lead to a significant reduction in the transmission of viruses in healthcare environments but also in other settings that uses plastic films—for example, food production factories.

Researchers tested the film for anti-viral activity using four different viruses—two strains of influenza A virus, a highly-stable picornavirus called EMCV and SARS-CoV-2—exposing it to either UVA radiation or with light from a cool white light fluorescent lamp.

They found that the film is effective at killing all of the viruses—even in a room lit with just white fluorescent tubes.

Ri Han et al, Flexible, disposable photocatalytic plastic films for the destruction of viruses, Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2022.112551

Scientists discover how air pollution triggers lung cancer

Scientists  have identified the mechanism through which air pollution triggers lung cancer in non-smokers, a discovery one expert hailed as "an important step for science—and for society".

The research illustrated the health risk posed by the tiny particles produced by burning fossil fuels, sparking fresh calls for more urgent action to combat climate change. It could also pave the way for a new field of cancer prevention.

Scientists presented the research, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, at the European Society for Medical Oncology's annual conference in Paris.

Air pollution has long been thought to be linked to a higher risk of lung cancer in people who have never smoked.

Researchers found that exposure to tiny PM2.5 pollution particles—which are less than 2.5 microns across—led to an increased risk of mutations in the EGFR gene. In laboratory studies on mice, they  showed that the particles caused changes in the EGFR gene as well as in the KRAS gene, both of which have been linked to lung cancer.

Finally, they analyzed nearly 250 samples of human lung tissue never exposed to carcinogens from smoking or heavy pollution.

Even though the lungs were healthy, they found DNA mutations in 18 percent of EGFR genes and 33 percent of KRAS genes.

They're just sitting there and the mutations seem to increase with age. On their own, they probably are insufficient to drive cancer.

But when a cell is exposed to pollution it can trigger a "wound-healing response" that causes inflammation. And if that cell harbours a mutation, it will then form a cancer.

In another experiment on mice, the researchers showed that an antibody could block the mediator—called interleukin 1 beta—which sparks the inflammation, stopping cancer from getting started in the first place.

LBA1 'Mechanism of action and an actionable inflammatory axis for air pollution induced non-small cell lung cancer in never smokers' will be presented by Charles Swanton during Presidential Symposium 1 on Saturday, 10 September, 16:30 to 18:00 CEST in Paris Auditorium. Annals of Oncology, Volume 33 Supplement 7, September 2022. www.esmo.org/meetings/esmo-congress-2022

Study finds antibiotics may make melanoma worse, by depleting the gut microbiome

The use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in mice with malignant melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, accelerated their metastatic bone growth, likely because the drugs depleted the mice's intestinal flora and weakened their immune response, according to a new study by researchers.

The findings underscore the importance of the gut microbiome in overall health and suggest that doctors should carefully weigh the gastrointestinal effects when they use antibiotic therapies while treating cancer or other diseases.

Any disease or therapy that harms the gut microbiome could have a negative impact on our health.

This new study  found that the gut microbiome restrains the progression of melanoma bone lesions in mice by promoting the expansion of intestinal natural-killer (NK) cells and T helper (Th1) cells and enhancing their migration to the tumour site. Using oral antibiotics depleted the gut microbiome and reduced the population of intestinal NK cells and Th1 cells. This made the mice more vulnerable for tumour growth. They had a higher melanoma tumor burden than control mice whose gut microbiomes were intact.

https://www.jci.org/articles/view/157340

Research says  the best way to soothe a crying infant is by carrying them on a 5-minute walk

Most parents have experienced frustration when their infants cry excessively and refuse to sleep. Scientists have found that the best strategy to calm them down is by holding and walking with them for five minutes. This evidence-based soothing strategy is presented in a paper published September 13 in the journal Current Biology.

Many parents suffer from babies' nighttime crying. That's such a big issue, especially for inexperienced parents, that can lead to parental stress and even to infant maltreatment in a small number of cases.

researchers compared 21 infants' responses while under four conditions: being held by their walking mothers, held by their sitting mothers, lying in a still crib, or lying in a rocking cot. The team found that when the mother walked while carrying the baby, the crying infants calmed down and their heart rates slowed within 30 seconds. A similar calming effect occurred when the infants were placed in a rocking cot, but not when the mother held the baby while sitting or placed the baby in a still crib.

This suggests that holding a baby alone might be insufficient in soothing crying infants, contradicting the traditional assumption that maternal holding reduces infant distress. At the same time, movement has calming effects, likely activating a baby's transport response. The effect was more evident when the holding and walking motions continued for five minutes. All crying babies in the study stopped crying, and nearly half of them fell asleep.

But when the mothers tried to put their sleepy babies to bed, more than one-third of the participants became alert again within 20 seconds. The team found that all babies produced physiological responses, including changes in heart rate, that can wake them up the second their bodies detach from their mothers. However, if the infants were asleep for a longer period before being laid down, they were less likely to awaken during the process, the researchers found.

They recommend that parents hold crying infants and walk with them for five minutes, followed by sitting and holding infants for another five to eight minutes before putting them to bed. The protocol, unlike other popular sleep training approaches such as letting infants cry until they fall asleep themselves, aims to provide an immediate solution for infant crying. 

You might ask, don't we already know this? 

But we need science to understand a baby's behaviours, because they're much more complex and diverse than we thought. What you think you know is different from what a scientific study reveals.

Kumi O. Kuroda, A method to soothe and promote sleep in crying infants utilizing the Transport Response, Current Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.041. www.cell.com/current-biology/f … 0960-9822(22)01363-X

The blood stem cell research that could change medicine of the future

Biomedical engineers and medical researchers have independently made discoveries about embryonic blood stem cell creation that could one day eliminate the need for blood stem cell donors.

The achievements are part of a move in regenerative medicine towards the use of "induced pluripotent stem cells" to treat disease, where stem cells are reverse engineered from adult tissue cells rather than using live human or animal embryos.

But while we have known about induced pluripotent stem cells since 2006, scientists still have plenty to learn about how cell differentiation in the human body can be mimicked artificially and safely in the lab for the purposes of delivering targeted medical treatment.

Two studies have emerged  in this area that shine new light on not only how the precursors to blood stem cells occur in animals and humans, but how they may be induced artificially.

In a study published today in Cell Reports, researchers demonstrated how a simulation of an embryo's beating heart using a microfluidic device in the lab led to the development of human blood stem cell "precursors," which are stem cells on the verge of becoming blood stem cells.

 They made a device mimicking the heart beating and the blood circulation and an orbital shaking system which causes shear stress—or friction—of the blood cells as they move through the device or around in a dish."

These systems promoted the development of precursor blood stem cells which can differentiate into various blood components—white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets and others. They were excited to see this same process—known as hematopoiesis—replicated in the device.

And in an article published in Nature Cell Biology in July, another group of researchers revealed the identity of cells in mice embryos responsible for blood stem cell creation. They researchers looked for the mechanism that is used naturally in mammals to make blood stem cells from the cells that line blood vessels, known as endothelial cells. They  identified the cells in the embryo that can convert both embryonic and adult endothelial cells into blood cells in the process.

Both studies are significant steps towards an understanding of how, when, where and which cells are involved in the creation of blood stem cells. In the future, this knowledge could be used to help cancer patients, among others, who have undergone high doses of radio- and chemotherapy, to replenish their depleted blood stem cells.

 Robert E. Nordon, Mimicry of embryonic circulation enhances the hoxa hemogenic niche and human blood development, Cell Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111339. www.cell.com/cell-reports/full … 2211-1247(22)01167-6

Vashe Chandrakanthan et al, Mesoderm-derived PDGFRA+ cells regulate the emergence of hematopoietic stem cells in the dorsal aorta, Nature Cell Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41556-022-00955-3

New phases of water detected

Scientists  have discovered that water in a one-molecule layer acts like neither a liquid nor a solid, and that it becomes highly conductive at high pressures.

Much is known about how "bulk water" behaves: it expands when it freezes, and it has a high boiling point. But when water is compressed to the nanoscale, its properties change dramatically.

By developing a new way to predict this unusual behavior with unprecedented accuracy, the researchers have detected several new phases of water at the molecular level.

Water trapped between membranes or in tiny nanoscale cavities is common—it can be found in everything from membranes in our bodies to geological formations. But this nanoconfined water behaves very differently from the water we drink.

Until now, the challenges of experimentally characterizing the phases of water on the nanoscale have prevented a full understanding of its behaviour. But in a paper published in the journal Nature, researchers describe how they have used advances in computational approaches to predict the phase diagram of a one-molecule thick layer of water with unprecedented accuracy.

The researchers found that water which is confined into a one-molecule thick layer goes through several phases, including a "hexatic" phase and a "superionic" phase. In the hexatic phase, the water acts as neither a solid nor a liquid, but something in between. In the superionic phase, which occurs at higher pressures, the water becomes highly conductive, propelling protons quickly through ice in a way resembling the flow of electrons in a conductor.

The researchers found that the one-molecule thick layer of water within the nanochannel showed rich and diverse phase behavior. Their approach predicts several phases which include the hexatic phase—an intermediate between a solid and a liquid—and also a superionic phase, in which the water has a high electrical conductivity. The hexatic phase is neither a solid nor a liquid, but an intermediate, which agrees with previous theories about two-dimensional materials.

Angelos Michaelides, The first-principles phase diagram of monolayer nanoconfined water, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05036-x. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05036-x