Some Babies Are Born With Twisted Insides: here is the reason

Scientists have identified a possible cause for intestinal malrotation; a common but poorly understood condition present at birth in which the gut doesn't rotate properly during development.

Researchers found that exposure to the herbicide atrazine can disrupt gut rotation development in frog embryos, whose guts develop similarly to humans.

Because frog embryos develop in only a few days and are highly experimentally accessible, they allow us to quickly test new hypotheses about how and why development goes awry during malrotation.

The rotation process fails in about 1 in 500 human births, resulting in a displacement of the bowel known as intestinal malrotation. This malrotation can lead to severe complications, such as bowel obstructions from the intestine looping around itself, requiring surgery in early infancy.
Researchers zeroed in on atrazine as a potential cause after it had been discovered that the herbicide dramatically increased the frequency of intestinal rotation in the wrong direction in lab experiments on frogs.
Atrazine is one of the most widely used agricultural herbicides in several countries, although it is banned in some now.

Exposure to atrazine under laboratory conditions caused a metabolic imbalance in frog embryos that prevented cells from properly dividing, growing, or rearranging themselves, which disrupted several cellular processes in the gut. It became harder for the tissues to stretch normally, which made the gut tube shorter.

"The resultant decreased length of the gut tube consequently prevents the crucial hairpin loop of the intestine from achieving its normal anatomical position, compelling the intestine to coil in a reversed orientation," the study authors write.

According to the team, these gut development issues seem to stem from the fact that atrazine throws the body's redox reactions off balance. Imbalances between a cell's oxidants and antioxidants can play a role in diseases. Treating the frogs with antioxidants before they were exposed to atrazine prevented their guts from twisting the wrong way.

It's important to note that the frog embryos were exposed to 1,000 times the levels normally found in the environment, and these results don't prove that exposure to atrazine causes malrotation in humans.

That said, the findings emphasize the importance of metabolic pathways in gut development and highlight possible causes of intestinal malrotation, though there's a lot more to learn.

https://journals.biologists.com/dev/article/151/4/dev202020/343079/...

Part 2

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Magnetic effects at the origin of life? It's the spin that makes the difference

Biomolecules such as amino acids and sugars occur in two mirror-image forms—in all living organisms, however, only one is ever found. Why this is the case is still unclear. Researchers  have now found evidence that the interplay between electric and magnetic fields could be at the origin of this phenomenon.

The so-called homochirality of life—the fact that all biomolecules in living organisms only ever occur in one of two mirror-image forms—has puzzled a number of scientific luminaries, from the discoverer of molecular chirality, Louis Pasteur, to William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Nobel Prize winner Pierre Curie. A conclusive explanation is still lacking, as both forms have, for instance, the same chemical stability and do not differ from each other in their physicochemical properties. The hypothesis, however, that the interplay between electric and magnetic fields could explain the preference for one or the other mirror-image form of a molecule—so-called enantiomers—emerged early on.

Mirror images prefer opposing magnetic fields: And this is indeed the case, as a team of researchers reported in the journal Advanced Materials.

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The team coated a (non-magnetic) copper surface with small, ultra-thin "islands" of magnetic cobalt and determined the direction of the magnetic field in these using spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy; as mentioned before, this can run in two different directions perpendicular to the metal surface: North up or South up. They then deposited spiral-shaped chiral molecules—a 1:1 mixture of left- and right-handed heptahelicene molecules—onto these cobalt islands in ultrahigh vacuum.

Then they "simply" counted the number of right- and left-handed helicene molecules on the differently magnetized cobalt islands, almost 800 molecules in total, again using scanning tunneling microscopy. And lo and behold: Depending on the direction of magnetic field, one or the other form of the helicene spirals had settled preferentially.

Moreover, the experiments showed that the selection—the preference for one or the other enantiomer—not only occurs during the binding on the cobalt islands, but already beforehand.

Before the molecules take up their final (preferred) position on one of the cobalt islands, they migrate long distances across the copper surface in a significantly weaker bound precursor state in "search" for an ideal position. They are only bound to the surface by so-called van der Waals forces. These are merely caused by fluctuations in the electronic shell of atoms and molecules and are therefore relatively weak. The fact that even these are influenced by magnetism, i.e. the direction of rotation (spin) of the electrons, was not known thus far.

Part 2

Electrons with the 'wrong' spin are filtered out
Using scanning tunneling microscopy, the researchers were also able to solve another mystery, as they reported in the journal Small in November 2023. Electron transport—i.e. electric current—also depends on the combination of molecular handedness and magnetization of the surface.

Depending on the handedness of the bound molecule, electrons with one direction of spin preferentially flow—or "tunnel"—through the molecule, meaning that electrons with the "wrong" spin are filtered out. This chirality-induced spin selectivity had already been observed in earlier studies, but it remained unclear whether an ensemble of molecules is necessary for this or whether individual molecules also exhibit this effect.
The researchers think that these findings eventually cannot fully answer the question of the chirality of life.
However, they can imagine that in certain surface-catalyzed chemical reactions—such as those that could have taken place in the chemical "primordial soup" on the early Earth—a certain combination of electric and magnetic fields could have led to a steady accumulation of one form or another of the various biomolecules—and thus ultimately to the handedness of life.

Mohammad Reza Safari et al, Enantioselective Adsorption on Magnetic Surfaces, Advanced Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202308666

Part 3

Decimal point is older than thought
The decimal point was invented by Italian merchant and astronomer Giovanni Bianchini some 150 years before what was considered to be its first appearance. “I remember running up and down the hallways of the dorm with my computer trying to find anybody who was awake, shouting ‘look at this, this guy is doing decimal points in the 1440s!’” recalls historian Glen Van Brummelen, who discovered Bianchini’s number “with a dot in the middle” while teaching at a maths camp for kids. Bianchini’s training in economics might have given him a perspective different to that of his astronomer peers — who would have exclusively been using the sexagesimal (base 60) system — and his approach was perhaps too revolutionary to catch on until much later.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00473-2?utm_source=Live+...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0315086024000016...

Neanderthals' usage of complex adhesives reveals higher cognitive abilities, scientists discover

Neanderthals created stone tools held together by a multi-component adhesive, a team of scientists has discovered. Its findings, which are the earliest evidence of a complex adhesive in Europe, suggest these predecessors to modern humans had a higher level of cognition and cultural development than previously thought.

These astonishingly well-preserved tools showcase a technical solution broadly similar to examples of tools made by early modern humans in Africa, but the exact recipe reflects a Neanderthal 'spin,' which is the production of grips for handheld tools.

The researchers discovered traces of a mixture of ocher and bitumen on several stone tools, such as scrapers, flakes, and blades. Ocher is a naturally occurring earth pigment; bitumen is a component of asphalt and can be produced from crude oil, but also occurs naturally in the soil.

Overall, the development of adhesives and their use in the manufacture of tools is considered to be some of the best material evidence of the cultural evolution and cognitive abilities of early humans. Compound adhesives are considered to be among the first expressions of the modern cognitive processes that are still active today.

 Patrick Schmidt, Ochre-based compound adhesives at the Mousterian type-site document complex cognition and high investment, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl0822. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl0822

Electrons become fractions of themselves in graphene, study finds

The electron is the basic unit of electricity, as it carries a single negative charge. This is what we're taught in high school physics, and it is overwhelmingly the case in most materials in nature.

But in very special states of matter, electrons can splinter into fractions of their whole. This phenomenon, known as "fractional charge," is exceedingly rare, and if it can be corralled and controlled, the exotic electronic state could help to build resilient, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

To date, this effect, known to physicists as the "fractional quantum Hall effect," has been observed a handful of times, and mostly under very high, carefully maintained magnetic fields. Only recently have scientists seen the effect in a material that did not require such powerful magnetic manipulation.

Now, physicists have observed the elusive fractional charge effect, this time in a simpler material: five layers of graphene—an atom-thin layer of carbon that stems from graphite and common pencil lead. They report their results in Nature.

The fractional quantum Hall effect is an example of the weird phenomena that can arise when particles shift from behaving as individual units to acting together as a whole. This collective "correlated" behavior emerges in special states, for instance when electrons are slowed from their normally frenetic pace to a crawl that enables the particles to sense each other and interact. These interactions can produce rare electronic states, such as the seemingly unorthodox splitting of an electron's charge.

Researchers found that when five sheets of graphene are stacked like steps on a staircase, the resulting structure inherently provides just the right conditions for electrons to pass through as fractions of their total charge, with no need for any external magnetic field.

The results are the first evidence of the "fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect" (the term "anomalous" refers to the absence of a magnetic field) in crystalline graphene, a material that physicists did not expect to exhibit this effect.

 Long Ju, Fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect in multilayer graphene, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-07010-7. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-07010-7

Scientists invent ultra-thin, minimally-invasive pacemaker controlled by light

Millions of people around the world rely on pacemakers—small devices that regulate the electrical impulses of the heart in order to keep it beating smoothly. But to reduce complications, researchers would like to make these devices even smaller and less intrusive.

A team of researchers  has developed a wireless device, powered by light, that can be implanted to regulate cardiovascular or neural activity in the body. The featherlight membranes, thinner than human hair, can be inserted with minimally invasive surgery and contain no moving parts.

Published Feb. 21 in Nature, the results could help reduce complications in heart surgery and offer new horizons for future devices.

Bozhi Tian, Monolithic silicon for high-spatiotemporal translational photostimulation, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07016-9. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07016-9

Button batteries pose 'deadly' risk to toddlers

How Did an Aquarium Stingray Get Pregnant without a Mate?

Charlotte, a stingray at a North Carolina aquarium is pregnant—without a male stingray in her tank to impregnate her. Speculation is running wild that cohabitating sharks may be Charlotte’s mate. Here’s why that’s unlikely—and how the spontaneous pregnancy known as parthenogenesis is much, much cooler.

The Global Importance of Tipping Points in Antarctica

This video summarises the latest science on tipping points in Antarctica, as discovered by the research from the EU project TiPACCs. Listen to our scientists explaining the importance of studying the Antarctic Ice Sheet and surrounding ocean, the latest knowledge on changes in the continental shelf seas around Antarctica, whether the Antarctic Ice Sheet has already crossed a tipping point, what will happen when this tipping point is crossed, and what the latest developments are in coupled ocean - ice sheet modelling. Background: The Antarctic Ice Sheet covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent and is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. If the entire ice sheet were to disappear, this would cause sea levels globally to rise by nearly 60 meters on average. Ice loss from Antarctica has been increasing over the recent decades, and small changes in ocean conditions in the future could lead to long-lasting or even irreversible changes – with important implications for global sea-level rise.

First Ever Drug For Frostbite

Repurposed drugs have already passed important (and expensive) human safety testing and are therefore much cheaper (about US$40-80 million or £32-64 million) to develop for additional medical issues versus creating a new drug (about US$1-2 billion), making drug repurposing an attractive way to find new treatments.

Many drugs have been tried as potential treatments for severe frostbite. However, iloprost is the first to be put through a clinical trial where patients with severe frostbite were randomly allocated to receive iloprost or not.

The study found that 60 percent of the patients who did not receive iloprost had injuries sufficiently severe to warrant amputation, versus 0 percent of the patients who received iloprost.
While the total number of patients tested in this study was small at 47, the combined facts that there are no other approved pharmaceutical treatments for frostbite and the impressive digit-saving results found in this randomised human trial were sufficient to convince the FDA to approve this repurposed therapy for severe frostbite.
Iloprost works by expanding the blood vessels (called a vasodilator) of patients and stopping blood clots from forming. As frostbite causes constriction of blood vessels, this suggests one mechanism through which iloprost helps heal frostbitten tissue is by reversing this constriction.
However, whenever blood flow is reintroduced in such tissue, it can paradoxically worsen the injury and cause more damage. This is called "reperfusion injury" and is largely caused by a sudden influx of oxygen causing oxidative stress.

Interestingly, iloprost is not only a vasodilator but also reduces oxidative stress, suggesting this dual mechanism of action could help explain its impressive potential as a frostbite treatment.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-fi...

https://theconversation.com/a-drug-to-treat-frostbite-is-finally-av...

What is a Viral Vector Vaccine?

Vaccines have revolutionized modern medicine by helping a person's immune system prevent diseases. There are many kinds of vaccines that have different benefits based on how they are made. A Viral Vector vaccine is a new, revolutionary type of vaccine the uses RNA in a shell made of... Viruses??

What is mRNA, and how does it work?

A type of cyberattack that could set your smartphone on fire using its wireless charger

A team of security experts at the University of Florida working with security audit company CertiK has found that a certain class of cyberattacks could cause a smartphone to catch fire via its wireless charger. The team has posted a paper describing their research and results on the arXiv preprint server.

Inductive chargers are devices that can be used to charge a smartphone or other device without the need for plugging in a cable. Such devices work by making use of electromagnetic fields to transfer energy from one device to another through induction. In order for a smartphone to be charged properly on such a device, it must communicate with the charger through a Qi communication-based feedback control system. And in order for a wireless charger to work, it must be connected to an AC outlet.
But the charger, like a phone, cannot plug directly into the wall; it plugs instead into an adapter. And this, the researchers suggest, is where the system's vulnerabilities lie. They have found through testing that by attaching an intermediary device to the adapter, disruptions can be made to the Qi communication-based feedback control system, resulting in signals that can override controls that stop overcharging, which can lead to overheating, and in some cases a fire. They call such an attack a "VoltSchemer."
The research team has come up with three types of attacks that can occur with a VoltSchemer. According to the researchers, "A charger can be manipulated to control voice assistants via inaudible voice commands, damage devices being charged through overcharging or overheating, and bypass Qi-standard specified foreign-object-detection mechanism to damage valuable items exposed to intense magnetic fields."

The researchers tested multiple types of wireless chargers and phones and found they were all vulnerable. They have notified manufacturers and expect that changes will be made to overcome these vulnerabilities to protect consumers from VoltSchemer attacks.

Zihao Zhan et al, VoltSchemer: Use Voltage Noise to Manipulate Your Wireless Charger, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2402.11423

First-in-humans discovery reveals brain chemicals at work influencing social behaviour

In a study in Nature Human Behavior, scientists delve into the world of chemical neuromodulators in the human brain, specifically dopamine and serotonin, to reveal their role in social behaviour.

The research, conducted in Parkinson's disease patients undergoing brain surgery while awake, homed in on the brain's substantia nigra, a crucial area associated with motor control and reward processing.

 The international team of scientists revealed a previously unknown neurochemical mechanism for a well-known human tendency to make decisions based on social context—people are more likely to accept offers from computers while rejecting identical offers from human players.

The idea that people make decisions based on social context is not a new one in neural economic games. But now, for the first time, researchers show the impact of the social context may spring from the dynamic interactions of dopamine and serotonin.

When people make decisions, dopamine seems to closely follow and react to whether the current offer is better or worse than the previous one, as if it were a continuous tracking system. Serotonin, meanwhile, appears to focus only on the current value of the specific offer at hand, suggesting a more case-by-case evaluation.

This fast dance happens against a slower backdrop, where dopamine is overall higher when people play other human beings—in other words when fairness comes into play. Together, these signals contribute to our brain's overall assessment of value during social interactions.

Part 1

Dopamine levels are higher when people interact with another human as opposed to a computer. And here it was important that the scientists also measured serotonin to give them confidence that the overall response to social context is specific to dopamine.
Scientists have seen these signaling molecules before, but this is the first time they have seen them dance. No one has ever seen this dance of dopamine and serotonin in a social context before.
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Teasing out the meaning of the electrochemical signals recorded from patients in surgery was a major challenge that took years to solve. The raw data that they're collecting from patients isn't specific to dopamine, serotonin, or norepinephrine—it's a mixture of those. They 're essentially using machine-learning type tools to separate what's in the raw data, understand the signature, and decode what's going on with dopamine and serotonin.
In the new Nature Human Behavior study, researchers showed how the rise and fall of dopamine and serotonin are intertwined with human cognition and behaviour.
In Parkinson's disease, a significant loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the brainstem is a key characteristic that usually coincides with the onset of symptoms.

This loss impacts the striatum, a brain region heavily influenced by dopamine. As dopamine diminishes, serotonin terminals begin to sprout, revealing a complex interaction, as observed in rodent models.
Part 2

Psychiatry is an example of a medical field that could benefit from this approach, according to the researchers.

Enormous number of people in the world suffer from a variety of psychiatric conditions, and, in many cases, the pharmacological solutions do not work very well.
Dopamine, serotonin, and other neurotransmitters are in some ways intimately involved with those disorders. This effort adds real precision and quantitation to understand those problems. The one thing scientists can be sure of is this work is going to be extremely important in the future for developing treatments.

In first-of-their-kind observations in the human brain the scientists published in Neuron in 2020, researchers revealed dopamine and serotonin are at work at sub-second speeds to shape how people perceive the world and take action based on their perception.

More recently, in a study published in October in the journal Current Biology, the researchers used their method of recording chemical changes in awake humans to gain insight into the brain's noradrenaline system, which has been a longtime target for medications to treat psychiatric disorders.

And, in December, in the journal Science Advances, the team revealed that fast changes in dopamine levels reflect a specific computation related to how humans learn from rewards and punishments.

Part 3

Scientists made active measurements of neurotransmitters multiple times in different brain regions, and they have now reached the point where they are touching on crucial elements of what makes us human beings.

Dopamine and serotonin in human substantia nigra track social context and value signals during economic exchange, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01831-w. www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01831-w

Part 4

Drug limits dangerous reactions to allergy-triggering foods, pediatric study finds

A drug can make life safer for children with food allergies by preventing dangerous allergic responses to small quantities of allergy-triggering foods, according to a new study by scientists.

 The research published on Feb. 25 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The findings suggest that regular use of the drug, omalizumab,  could protect people from severe allergic responses, such as difficulty breathing, if they accidentally eat a small amount of a food they are allergic to.

This is a  promising new treatment for multi-food allergic patients.

Omalizumab, which the Food and Drug Administration originally approved to treat diseases such as allergic asthma and chronic hives, binds to and inactivates the antibodies that cause many kinds of allergic disease. Based on the data collected in the new study, the FDA approved omalizumab for reducing risk of allergic reactions to foods on Feb. 16.

Omalizumab was safe and did not cause side effects, other than some instances of minor reactions at the site of injection. This study marks the first time its safety has been assessed in children as young as 1.

New England Journal of Medicine (2024). DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2312382

Blindness from some inherited eye diseases may be caused by gut bacteria, news study suggests

Sight loss in certain inherited eye diseases may be caused by gut bacteria, and is potentially treatable by antimicrobials, finds a new study in mice.

 The international study observed that in eyes with sight loss caused by a particular genetic mutation, known to cause eye diseases that lead to blindness, gut bacteria were found within the damaged areas of the eye.

The authors of the new paper, published  in Cell say their findings suggest that the genetic mutation may relax the body's defenses, thus allowing harmful bacteria to reach the eye and cause blindness.

The gut contains trillions of bacteria, many of which are key to healthy digestion. However, they can also be potentially harmful.

The findings of this study suggest that simply using antimicrobials might help prevent deterioration in CRB1-associated inherited eye diseases. Future work will investigate whether this applies in humans.

CRB1-associated retinal degeneration is dependent on bacterial translocation from the gut, Cell (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.040. www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00108-9

Rural communities face greater risks of radon exposure compared to urban areas: Study

Researchers have found a link between radon exposure in rural homes based on how close they are to drilled groundwater wells. The transdisciplinary team was investigating why homes in rural communities often have a much higher concentration of radon compared with homes in urban areas.

The researchers from the faculties of medicine, science, and architecture looked at the geophysical makeup of areas, the style of home, as well as unique features on or near the property.

For years now all across the world, people have documented higher radon levels in homes in more rural communities compared to homes in urban communities.

It's the water wells—not the water, but the wells themselves appear to be acting as unintended straws for radon gas deep in the ground. Thankfully, lowering radon levels in a home is fixable.

Many rural properties and communities rely on well water. The researchers also tested the water for radon and found there is not enough radon in the well water to significantly contribute to the high radon being observed in indoor air. Instead, the problem appears to result from the drill hole space existing around water well pipes.

Radon is an invisible, odorless, tasteless, and radioactive gas. Naturally rising from under the ground and diluting to virtually nothing in outdoor air, radon gas is often drawn up and concentrated inside modern buildings to unnaturally high and cancer-causing levels. Prolonged radon gas exposure is the leading cause of lung cancer among non-tobacco users.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, found, on average, individuals living in rural communities were exposed to 30 percent higher residential radon levels than people living in urban communities.

 Selim M. Khan et al, Rural communities experience higher radon exposure versus urban areas, potentially due to drilled groundwater well annuli acting as unintended radon gas migration conduits, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-53458-6

Cosmic dust could have helped get life going on Earth

Life on our planet appeared early in Earth's history. Surprisingly early, since in its early youth our planet didn't have much of the chemical ingredients necessary for life to evolve. Since prebiotic chemicals such as sugars and amino acids are known to appear in asteroids and comets, one idea is that Earth was seeded with the building blocks of life by early cometary and asteroid impacts. While this likely played a role, a new study published in Nature Astronomy shows that cosmic dust also seeded young Earth, and it may have made all the difference.

Craig R. Walton et al, Cosmic dust fertilization of glacial prebiotic chemistry on early Earth, Nature Astronomy (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02212-z

Microplastics Found in Every Human Placenta Tested, Study Finds

It's been over three years since scientists first found microplastics swimming in four different human placentas, and as it turns out, that was just the tip of the iceberg. A few years later, at the start of 2023, researchers announced they had found microscopic particles of plastic waste in no fewer than 17 different placentas. By the end of 2023, a local study in Hawai'i analyzed 30 placentas that were donated between 2006 and 2021 only to find plastic contamination had increased significantly over time. Using a new technique, researchers have now identified tiny particles and fibers of plastic less than a micron in size in the largest sample of placentas yet. In all 62 tissue samples studied, the team found microplastics of various concentrations in every single one. These concentrations ranged from 6.5 to 685 micrograms per gram of tissue, which is much higher than levels found in the human bloodstream. No one yet knows what this plastic pollution is doing – if anything – to the health of the fetus or the mother. While microplastics have been found in every major organ of the human body, including the brain, it's unknown if these pollutants are temporary visitors or permanent and accumulating threats to health. As environmental plastic pollution continues to worsen, contamination of the placenta is on track to only increase, as humans breathe in and ingest more plastic than ever before.

And dose makes the poison!

https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.109...

Lake bottom testing shows plastics migrating down into sediment layers

A team of environmentalists, geographers and ecologists affiliated with several institutions in Europe has found that microplastics have migrated into multiple sediment layers in three lakes in Latvia. In their study, published in the journal Science Advances, the group drilled core samples from three lakes in Latvia and analyzed their contents for microplastics.

Research over the past few years has shown that microplastics have become pervasive around the planet, from soil where food is grown, to rivers, lakes and streams—and even the clouds. Prior research has also suggested that the Earth has entered a new geological age, moving from the Holocene Epoch to the Anthropocene, a change that most in the Earth science community believe began in the 1950s.

Most also agree that the transition is the result of human impact. And because plastics have been tied to so many of the changes that have occurred, some suggest using its presence as a barometer to measure the start of the Anthropocene. In this new study, the research team working in Latvia has found that doing so many not be feasible.

The work involved collecting core sediment samples from the bottom of three lakes in Latvia. Each of the samples was then analyzed to measure amounts of plastic. At the outset, the researchers assumed that sample portions preceding the creation and use of plastics would be zero. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

The researchers found plastics in sediment that had been deposited as far back as the early 1700s, a finding that indicates that plastics can migrate through sediment down to lower layers. This finding prevents the use of plastics as a barometer for the onset of the Anthropocene.

The researchers also note that because there are so many factors involved, including the type of soil that makes up sediment, material in the water and its temperature, and the many types of plastics found, studying their source would prove to be exceedingly challenging.

Inta Dimante-Deimantovica et al, Downward migrating microplastics in lake sediments are a tricky indicator for the onset of the Anthropocene, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi8136

Nanotweezers manipulate bacteriophages with minimal optical power, a breakthrough for phage therapy

Scientists  have developed a game-changing technique that uses light to manipulate and identify individual bacteriophages without the need for chemical labels or bioreceptors, potentially accelerating and revolutionizing phage-based therapies that can treat antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

With antibiotic resistance looming as a formidable threat to our health, scientists are on a constant quest for alternative ways to treat bacterial infections. As more and more bacterial strains outsmart drugs we have been relying on for decades, a possible alternative solution may be found in bacteriophages, which are viruses that prey on bacteria.

Phage therapy, the use of bacteriophages to combat bacterial infections, is gaining attraction as a viable alternative to traditional antibiotics. But there is a catch: Finding the right phage for a given infection is like searching for a needle in a haystack, while current methods involve cumbersome culturing, time-consuming assays.

Now, scientists  have developed on-chip nanotweezers that can trap and manipulate individual bacteria and virions (the infectious form of a virus) using a minimal amount of optical power. The study is published in the journal Small.

The nanotweezers are a type of optical tweezers, scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to hold and manipulate microscopic (e.g., virions) and even sub-microscopic objects like atoms in three dimensions. The light creates a gradient force that attracts the particles towards a high-intensity focal point, effectively holding them in place without physical contact.

Part 1

There are different types of optical tweezers. For example, free-space optical tweezers can manipulate an object in an open environment such as air or liquid without any physical barriers or structures guiding the light. But in this study, the researchers built nanotweezers embedded in an optofluidic device that integrates optical and fluidic technologies on a single chip.

The chip contains silicon-based photonic crystal cavities—the nanotweezers, which are essentially tiny traps that gently nudge the phages into position using a light-generated force field. The system allowed the researchers to precisely control single bacteria and single virions and acquire information about the trapped microorganisms in real time.

What sets this approach apart is that it can distinguish between different types of phages without using any chemical labels or surface bioreceptors, which can be time-consuming and sometimes ineffective. Instead, the nanotweezers distinguish between phages by reading the unique changes each particle causes in the light's properties. The label-free method can significantly accelerate the selection of therapeutic phages, promising faster turnaround for potential phage-based treatments.
The research also has implications beyond phage therapy. Being able to manipulate and study single virions in real time opens up new avenues in microbiological research, offering scientists a powerful tool for rapid testing and experimentation. This could lead to a deeper understanding of viruses and their interactions with hosts, which is invaluable in the ongoing battle against infectious diseases.

Nicolas Villa et al, Optical Trapping and Fast Discrimination of Label‐Free Bacteriophages at the Single Virion Level, Small (2024). DOI: 10.1002/smll.202308814

Part 2

You may be breathing in more tiny nanoparticles from your gas stove than from car exhaust

A new study has found that cooking on your gas stove can emit more nano-sized particles into the air than vehicles that run on gas or diesel, possibly increasing your risk of developing asthma or other respiratory illnesses.

Combustion remains a source of air pollution across the world, both indoors and outdoors. Researchers found that cooking on your gas stove produces large amounts of small nanoparticles that get into your respiratory system and deposit efficiently.

Based on these findings, the researchers would encourage turning on a kitchen exhaust fan while cooking on a gas stove.

Recent studies have found that children who live in homes with gas stoves are more likely to develop asthma. But not much is known about how particles smaller than 3 nanometers, called nanocluster aerosol, grow and spread indoors because they're very difficult to measure. These super tiny nanoparticles are so small that you're not able to see them. They're not like dust particles that you would see floating in the air. After observing such high concentrations of nanocluster aerosol during gas cooking, we can't ignore these nano-sized particles anymore, say scientists. This would mean that adults and children could be breathing in 10 to 100 times more nanocluster aerosol from cooking on a gas stove indoors than they would from car exhaust while standing on a busy street.

Since most people don't turn on their exhaust fan while cooking, having kitchen hoods that activate automatically would be a logical solution.

 Brandon Boor et al, Dynamics of nanocluster aerosol in the indoor atmosphere during gas cooking, PNAS Nexus (2024). DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae044. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/art … /3/2/pgae044/7614671

AI reveals prostate cancer is not just one disease

Artificial Intelligence has helped scientists reveal a new form of aggressive prostate cancer that could revolutionize how the disease is diagnosed and treated in the future.

The study published in Cell Genomics reveals that prostrate cancer, which affects one in eight men in their lifetime, includes two different subtypes termed evotypes.

The discovery was made by an international team led by the University of Oxford, and the University of Manchester, who applied AI on data from DNA to identify two different subtypes affecting the prostate.

The team hopes their findings could save thousands of lives in future and revolutionize how prostate cancer is diagnosed and treated. Ultimately, it could provide tailored treatments to each individual patient according to a genetic test which will also be delivered using AI.

This understanding is pivotal as it allows us to classify tumors based on how the cancer evolves rather than solely on individual gene mutations or expression patterns.

The researchers used AI to study changes in the DNA of prostate cancer samples (using whole genome sequencing) from 159 patients.

They identified two distinct cancer groups among these patients using an AI technique called neural networks. These two groups were confirmed by using two other mathematical approaches applied to different aspects of the data. This finding was validated in other independent datasets from Canada and Australia.

They went on to integrate all the information to generate an evolutionary tree showing how the two subtypes of prostate cancer develop, ultimately converging into two distinct disease types termed "evotypes."

Genomic evolution shapes prostate cancer disease type, Cell Genomics (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2024.100511. www.cell.com/cell-genomics/ful … 2666-979X(24)00038-7

Taking the motion sickness out of space travel

In lab experiments, aerospace engineers spin and rock human subjects--all in an effort to help prevent motion sickness when astronauts return to Earth and land in the choppy ocean.

How humans lost their tails
Researchers have shown that humans and other apes carry a DNA insertion in a gene called TBXT that other primates with tails, such as monkeys, don’t have. And mice carrying similar alterations to their genomes have short or absent tails. “They clearly show that this change contributes to tail loss. But it’s not the only one,” says human geneticist Malte Spielmann. Apes aren’t the only primates without tails, suggesting that the trait evolved multiple times. “Probably, there are multiple ways of losing a tail during development. Our ancestors chose this way,” says co-author Bo Xia.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00610-x?utm_source=Live+...

‘Epigenetic’ editing cuts cholesterol in mice

An alternative to genome editing can reduce the activity of a gene that affects cholesterol levels without changing the DNA sequence — and does so for an extended period, according to a study1 in mice.

Scientists achieved this effect by changing each animal’s ‘epigenome’, one feature of which is a collection of chemical tags that are bound to DNA and affect gene activity. After the treatment, activity of the targeted gene dropped and remained low for the 11 months over which the mice were studied.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00563-1?utm_source=Live+...

Want fewer microplastics in your tap water? Try boiling it first

Nano- and microplastics are seemingly everywhere—water, soil and the air. While many creative strategies have been attempted to get rid of these plastic bits, one unexpectedly effective solution for specifically cleaning up drinking water might be as simple as brewing a cup of tea or coffee.

As reported in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, boiling and filtering calcium-containing tap water could help remove nearly 90% of the nano- and microplastics present.

Contamination of water supplies with nano- and microplastics (NMPs), which can be as small as one-thousandth of a millimeter in diameter or as large as 5 millimeters, has become increasingly common. The effects of these particles on human health are still under investigation, though current studies suggest that ingesting them could affect the gut microbiome. Some advanced drinking water filtration systems capture NMPs, but simple, inexpensive methods are needed to substantially help reduce human plastic consumption.

So researchers wanted to see whether boiling could be an effective method to help remove NMPs from both hard and soft tap water.

The researchers collected samples of hard tap water. 

Samples were boiled for five minutes and allowed to cool. Then, the team measured the free-floating plastic content. Boiling hard water, which is rich in minerals, will naturally form a chalky substance known as limescale, or calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Results from these experiments indicated that as the water temperature increased, CaCO3 formed incrustants, or crystalline structures, which encapsulated the plastic particles.

Researchers say that over time, these incrustants would build up like typical limescale, at which point they could be scrubbed away to remove the NMPs. They suggest any remaining incrustants floating in the water could be removed by pouring it through a simple filter such as a coffee filter.

In the tests, the encapsulation effect was more pronounced in harder water—in a sample containing 300 milligrams of CaCO₃ per liter of water, up to 90% of free-floating MNPs were removed after boiling. However, even in soft water samples (less than 60 milligrams CaCO₃ per liter), boiling still removed around 25% of NMPs. The researchers say that this work could provide a simple, yet effective, method to reduce NMP consumption.

Drinking Boiled Tap Water Reduces Human Intake of Nanoplastics and Microplastics, Environmental Science & Technology Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00081

Study identifies multi-organ response to seven days without food

New findings reveal that the body undergoes significant, systematic changes across multiple organs during prolonged periods of fasting. The results demonstrate evidence of health benefits beyond weight loss, but also show that any potentially health-altering changes appear to occur only after three days without food.

The study, published in Nature Metabolism, advances our understanding of what's happening across the body after prolonged periods without food.

By identifying the potential health benefits from fasting and their underlying molecular basis, researchers provide a road map for future research that could lead to therapeutic interventions—including for people that may benefit from fasting but cannot undergo prolonged fasting or fasting-mimicking diets, such as ketogenic diets.

Over millennia, humans have developed the ability to survive without food for prolonged periods of time. Fasting is practiced by millions of people throughout the world for different medical and cultural purposes, including health benefits and weight loss. Since ancient times, it has been used to treat diseases such as epilepsy and rheumatoid arthritis.

During fasting, the body changes its source and type of energy, switching from consumed calories to using its own fat stores. However, beyond this change in fuel sources, little is known about how the body responds to prolonged periods without food and any health impacts—beneficial or adverse—this may have. New techniques allowing researchers to measure thousands of proteins circulating in our blood provide the opportunity to systematically study molecular adaptions to fasting in humans in great detail.

The researchers observed the body switching energy sources—from glucose to fat stored in the body—within the first two or three days of fasting. The volunteers lost an average of 5.7 kg of both fat mass and lean mass. After three days of eating after fasting, the weight stayed off—the loss of lean was almost completely reversed, but the fat mass stayed off.

For the first time, the researchers observed the body undergoing distinct changes in protein levels after about three days of fasting—indicating a whole-body response to complete calorie restriction. Overall, one in three of the proteins measured changed significantly during fasting across all major organs. These changes were consistent across the volunteers, but there were signatures distinctive to fasting that went beyond weight loss, such as changes in proteins that make up the supportive structure for neurons in the brain.

For the first time, scientists were able to see what's happening on a molecular level across the body when people fast. Fasting, when done safely, is an effective weight loss intervention. Popular diets that incorporate fasting—such as intermittent fasting—claim to have health benefits beyond weight loss.

The new results provide evidence for the health benefits of fasting beyond weight loss, but these were only visible after three days of total caloric restriction—later than scientists previously thought.

While fasting may be beneficial for treating some conditions, oftentimes, fasting won't be an option to patients suffering from ill health. Scientists hope that these findings can provide information about why fasting is beneficial in certain cases, which can then be used to develop treatments that patients are able to do.

Systemic proteome adaptions to 7-day complete caloric restriction in humans, Nature Metabolism (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s42255-024-01008-9

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New microbiome insights could help boost immunotherapy for a range of rare cancers

The microbiome can identify those who benefit from combination immunotherapy across multiple different cancers, including rare gynecological cancers, biliary tract cancers and melanoma.

Researchers have identified specific strains of bacteria that are linked with a positive response to combination immunotherapy in the largest study of its kind.

The study, published in Nature Medicine, details a signature collection of microorganisms in an individual's gut bacteria that may help identify those who would benefit from combination immunotherapy and help explain why the efficacy of this treatment is otherwise hard to predict.

In the future, understanding more about these bacteria strains can help drive the development of next-generation probiotics, known as "live biotherapeutic products," that focus on modulating the microbiome to support combination immunotherapy from the inside.

Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that harnesses the body's immune system to target the cancer. While it can be very effective, it only works in a proportion of recipients across a wide range of cancers. As with all cancer treatments, immunotherapy can have multiple side effects. Therefore, being able to predict who is most likely to respond to treatment helps ensure that patients do not endure these unnecessary side effects for no medical benefit.

This study used samples collected in a large, multi-center Australian clinical trial where combination immunotherapy was effective in 25% of people with a broad range of advanced rare cancers, including rare gynecological cancers, neuroendocrine neoplasms, and upper gastrointestinal and biliary cancers.

The clinical trial focused on a type of combination immunotherapy known as immune checkpoint inhibitors. These anti-cancer agents block the body's immune checkpoint proteins, allowing the immune cells to destroy cancer cells. In this case, the immunotherapy blocked the PD-1 and CTLA-4 checkpoints.

Researchers used stool samples from clinical trial patients and performed deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing to map all the organisms within the participants' microbiomes, down to the strain level.

They discovered multiple strains of bacteria in those who responded well to treatment, many of which had not been cultivated before. This allowed them to identify a microbiome signature that was found in patients who responded well to treatment.

In addition to this, the team used this signature to train a machine learning model that could predict who would benefit from combination immunotherapy. They conducted a meta-analysis of previous studies and found that their signature could be applied to different cancers, such as melanoma; and across countries, to predict individuals whose cancer would likely respond to combination immunotherapy.

Part 1

However, when applied to patients who received just one of the immunotherapy drugs, targeting the immune checkpoint receptor PD-1 only, the machine learning model could not identify those who would respond to treatment.

This suggests that the relationship between gut microbiota and treatment response is specific for particular therapeutic combinations. The researchers therefore suggest that future development of diagnostics tests or therapeutics that rely on the gut microbiome should be tailored to the immunotherapy regimen, regardless of cancer type.

This step towards personalized medicine may help extend cancer treatments to more people and can match individuals to therapies that would benefit them the most.

 A gut microbial signature for combination immune checkpoint blockade across cancer types, Nature Medicine (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-02823-z

Part 2

An overgrowth of nerve cells appears to cause lingering symptoms after recurrent UTIs

A perplexing problem for people with recurring urinary tract infections (UTIs) is persistent pain, even after antibiotics have successfully cleared the bacteria.

researchers have identified the likely cause—an overgrowth of nerve cells in the bladder.

The finding, appearing  in the journal Science Immunology on March 1, provides a potential new approach to managing symptoms of recurring UTIs that would more effectively target the problem and reduce unnecessary antibiotic usage.

Urinary tract infections account for almost 25% of infections in women. Many are recurrent UTIs, with patients frequently complaining of chronic pelvic pain and urinary frequency, even after a round of antibiotics. 

This new study, for the first time, describes an underlying cause and identifies a potential new treatment strategy.

Researchers collected bladder biopsies from recurrent UTI patients who were experiencing pain despite no culturable bacteria in their urine. Using biopsies from people without UTIs as a comparison, they found evidence that sensory nerves were highly activated in the UTI patients, explaining the persistent sense of pain and urinary frequency.

Further studies in mice revealed the underlying events, with unique conditions in the bladder that prompt activated nerves in the lining to bloom and grow with each infection.

Typically, during every bout of UTI, epithelial cells  laden with bacteria are sloughed off, and significant destruction of nearby nerve tissue occurs. These events trigger a rapid repair program in the damaged bladder involving massive regrowth of destroyed nerve cells.

This immune response, including repair activities, is led by mast cells—which are immune cells that fight infection and allergens. Mast cells release chemicals called nerve growth factor, which drive overgrowth and increase sensitivity of nerves. The result is pain and urgency.

The researchers were able to address these symptoms by treating study mice with molecules that suppress production of the mast-cell generated nerve growth factor.

 Byron Hayes et al, Recurrent infections drive persistent bladder dysfunction and pain via sensory nerve sprouting and mast cell activity, Science Immunology (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciimmunol.adi5578. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adi5578

Asian elephants mourn, bury their dead calves: Study

Asian elephants loudly mourn and bury their dead calves, according to a study by Indian scientists that details animal behavior reminiscent of human funeral rites.

Researchers identified five calf burials conducted by the giant mammals in the north of India's Bengal region in 2022 and 2023, according to the study published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa this week.

They found in each case that a herd carried the deceased calf by the trunk and legs before burying it in the earth with its legs facing upward.

In one instance the herd loudly roared and trumpeted around the buried calf, the authors wrote.

The study found only calves are carried away for burial, owing to the "non-feasibility" of transporting heavier adult elephants by the rest of their herds.

The elephants buried the calves in irrigation canals on tea estates, hundreds of meters away from the nearest human settlements.

Elephants are known for their social and cooperative behavior but calf burial had previously only been "briefly studied" in African elephants—remaining unexplored among their smaller Asian cousins, the study said.

Wild elephants in both Africa and Asia are known to visit carcasses at different stages of decomposition, but this study found different behaviors from the herds it studied.

In all five cases the  herd "fled the site within 40 minutes of burial" and later avoided returning to the area, instead taking different parallel routes for migration.

Parveen Kaswan et al, Unearthing calf burials among Asian Elephants Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia: Proboscidea: Elephantidae) in northern Bengal, India, Journal of Threatened Taxa (2024). DOI: 10.11609/jott.8826.16.2.24615-24629

Can volcanic super eruptions lead to major cooling? Study suggests no

New research suggests that sunlight-blocking particles from an extreme eruption would not cool surface temperatures on Earth as severely as previously estimated.

Some 74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano in Indonesia exploded with a force 1,000 times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The mystery is what happened after that—namely, to what degree that extreme explosion might have cooled global temperatures.

When it comes to the most powerful volcanoes, researchers have long speculated how post-eruption global cooling—sometimes called volcanic winter—could potentially pose a threat to humanity. Previous studies agreed that some planet-wide cooling would occur but diverged on how much. Estimates have ranged from 3.6°F to 14°F (2°C to 8°C).

In a new study published in the Journal of Climate, a team from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University in New York used advanced computer modeling to simulate super-eruptions like the Toba event. They found that post-eruption cooling would probably not exceed 2.7°F (1.5°C) for even the most powerful blasts.

The relatively modest temperature changes scientists found most compatible with the evidence could explain why no single super-eruption has produced firm evidence of global-scale catastrophe for humans or ecosystems.

To qualify as a super eruption, a volcano must release more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 cubic kilometers) of magma. These eruptions are extremely powerful—and rare. The most recent super-eruption occurred more than 22,000 years ago in New Zealand. The best-known example may be the eruption that blasted Yellowstone Crater in Wyoming about 2 million years ago.

The researchers showed to what extent the diameter of the volcanic aerosol particles influenced post-eruption temperatures. The smaller and denser the particles, the greater their ability to block sunlight.

By simulating super-eruptions over a range of particle sizes, the researchers found that super-eruptions may be incapable of altering global temperatures dramatically more than the largest eruptions of modern times. For instance, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines caused about a half-degree drop in global temperatures for two years.

This is another example of why geoengineering via stratospheric aerosol injection is a long, long way from being a viable option.

Zachary McGraw et al, Severe Global Cooling After Volcanic Super-Eruptions? The Answer Hinges on Unknown Aerosol Size, Journal of Climate (2023). DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0116.1

Rich countries found to use six times more resources, generate 10 times the climate impact: Report

The extraction of the Earth's natural resources tripled in the past five decades, related to the massive build-up of infrastructure in many parts of the world and the high levels of material consumption, especially in upper-middle and high-income countries.

Material extraction is expected to rise by 60% by 2060 and could derail efforts to achieve not only global climate, biodiversity, and pollution targets but also economic prosperity and human well-being, according to a report published today by the UN Environment Program (UNEP)-hosted International Resource Panel.

The 2024 Global Resource Outlook, developed by the International Resource Panel with authors from around the globe and launched during the sixth session of the UN Environment Assembly, calls for sweeping policy changes to bring humanity to live within its means and reduce this projected growth in resource use by one third while growing the economy, improving well-being, and minimizing environmental impacts.

The triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution is driven from a crisis of unsustainable consumption and production. We must work with nature instead of merely exploiting it, say the experts.

Specific recommendations include:

Institutionalizing resource governance and defining resource use paths especially the consideration of sustainable resource use in strategies to implement Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and improving the ability of countries to benchmark and set targets for resource consumption and productivity. Directing finance towards sustainable resource use by reflecting the true costs of resources in the structure of the economy (i.e., subsidies, regulation, taxes, nudges, infrastructure, and planning). Additional recommendations include channeling private finance towards sustainable resource use and incorporating resource-related risk into Public and Central Bank mandates.
Mainstreaming sustainable consumption options by making sure consumers have the right information, have access to and are able to afford sustainable goods and services. Such measures must be coupled with regulation to disincentivize or ban resource-intensive options (like non-essential single-use plastic products).
Making trade an engine of sustainable resource use by creating a level playing field where the true environmental and social costs of goods are reflected in prices by introducing MEAs into trade agreements, for example.
Creating circular, resource-efficient and low impact solutions, and business models to include refuse, reduce, eco-design, reuse, repair, and recycling, as well as supportive regulation and evaluation of existing systems.
Implemented together, these policies can transform the built environment, mobility, food, and energy systems, resulting in an upsurge in renewable energies and energy efficiency, decarbonization of material production, more walkable and cyclable cities with better public transportation and remote work opportunities, as well as reduced food loss and waste. High- and upper-middle-income countries would see a dietary shift away from animal protein and more compact cities, while lower-income economies would experience a rise in resource use to enable dignified living.
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Such systemic shifts are projected to peak resource extraction by 2040 and then decrease use to only 20% above 2020 levels by 2060. Greenhouse gas emissions would drop by over 80%, stocks of transport-related materials and building materials would fall by 50 and 25% respectively, and land used-use for agriculture would fall by 5%. Concurrently, food production would increase by 40% to support populations; even where there is growth and food security, the global economy would grow by 3%, and the Human Development Index would improve by 7%, boosting incomes and well-being.

Given the failure so far to deliver on many policy commitments in MEAs and the urgency of the triple planetary crisis, the report supports immediate actions, following the principle of "best available science."

Millions of online research  papers have disappeared

A check on more than 7 million scholarly publications labelled with unique digital object identifiers (DOIs) reveals that 28% are missing from online archives. “Many people have the blind assumption that if you have a DOI, it’s there forever,” says Mikael Laakso, who studies scholarly publishing. But it costs money to preserve digital content, and archiving involves infrastructure, technology and expertise that many smaller organizations do not have access to.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00616-5?utm_source=Live+...

The windshield phenomenon (or windscreen phenomenon) is the observation that fewer dead insects accumulate on the windshields and front bumpers of people's cars since the early 2000s. It has been attributed to a global decline in insect populations caused by human activity, e.g. use of pesticides.

Tiny worms can tolerate Chornobyl radiation

The 1986 disaster at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant transformed the surrounding area into the most radioactive landscape on Earth. Humans were evacuated, but many plants and animals continue to live in the region, despite the high levels of radiation that persist nearly four decades later.

A new study by researchers appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that exposure to chronic radiation from Chornobyl has not damaged the genomes of microscopic worms living there today—which doesn't mean that the region is safe, the scientists caution, but suggests that these worms are exceptionally resilient.

In recent years, researchers have found that some animals living in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone—the region in northern Ukraine within an 18.6-mile radius of the power plant—are physically and genetically different from their counterparts elsewhere, raising questions about the impact of chronic radiation on DNA.

Did the sudden environmental shift select for species, or even individuals within a species, that are naturally more resistant to ionizing radiation?

To find the answer researchers  turned to nematodes, tiny worms with simple genomes and rapid reproduction, which makes them particularly useful for understanding basic biological phenomena. These worms live everywhere, and they live quickly, so they go through dozens of generations of evolution.

Part 1

With Geiger counters in hand to measure local levels of radiation and personal protective gear to guard against radioactive dust, they gathered worms from samples of soil, rotting fruit, and other organic material. Worms were collected from locations throughout the zone with different amounts of radiation.

After collecting samples in the field, the team brought them to Mousseau's field lab in a former residential home in Chornobyl, where they separated hundreds of nematodes from the soil or fruit. From there, they headed to a Kyiv hotel, where—using travel microscopes—they isolated and established cultures from each worm.

Back in the lab,  the researchers continued studying the worms—part of which involved freezing them.

They can cryopreserve worms, and then thaw them for study later. That means that they can stop evolution from happening in the lab, something impossible with most other animal models, and very valuable when they want to compare animals that have experienced different evolutionary histories.

They focused their analyses on 15 worms of a nematode species called Oscheius tipulae, which has been used in genetic and evolutionary studies. They sequenced the genomes of the 15 O. tipulae worms from Chornobyl and compared them with the genomes of five O. tipulae from other parts of the world.

The researchers were surprised to find that using several different analyses, they could not detect a signature of radiation damage on the genomes of the worms from Chornobyl.

This doesn't mean that Chornobyl is safe—it more likely means that nematodes are really resilient animals and can withstand extreme conditions, according to the scientists.  They also don't know how long each of the worms we collected was in the Zone, so they can't be sure exactly what level of exposure each worm and its ancestors received over the past four decades.

Wondering whether the lack of genetic signature was because the worms living in Chornobyl are unusually effective at protecting or repairing their DNA, the researchers designed a system to compare how quickly populations of worms grow and used it to measure how sensitive the descendants of each of the 20 genetically distinct worms were to different types of DNA damage.

While the lineages of worms were different from each other in how well they tolerated DNA damage, these differences didn't correspond to the levels of radiation at each collection site. Their findings suggest that worms from Chornobyl are not necessarily more tolerant of radiation and the radioactive landscape has not forced them to evolve.

The results give researchers clues into how DNA repair can vary from individual to individual—and despite the genetic simplicity of O. tipulae, could lead to a better understanding of natural variation in humans.

Sophia C. Tintori et al, Environmental radiation exposure at Chornobyl has not systematically affected the genomes or chemical mutagen tolerance phenotypes of local worms, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2314793121

Part 2

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To improve a fusion reaction, use weaknesses as strengths

In the Japanese art of Kintsugi, an artist takes the broken shards of a bowl and fuses them back together with gold to make a final product more beautiful than the original.

That idea is inspiring a new approach to managing plasma, the super-hot state of matter, for use as a power source. Scientists are using the imperfections in magnetic fields that confine a reaction to improve and enhance the plasma in an approach outlined in a paper in the journal Nature Communications.

This approach allows you to maintain a high-performance plasma, controlling instabilities in the core and the edge of the plasma simultaneously. That simultaneous control is particularly important and difficult to do. That's what makes this work special.

This is the first time any research team has validated a systematic approach to tailoring magnetic field imperfections to make the plasma suitable for use as a power source. These magnetic field imperfections are known as error fields.

This method was proven to enhance plasma stability under different plasma conditions, for example, when the plasma was under conditions of high and low magnetic confinement.