Pine Tree Branches Turned Into Effective Water Filtration Systems
Water Filtration Using Plant Xylem
Effective point-of-use devices for providing safe drinking water are urgently needed to reduce the global burden of waterborne disease. Here we show that plant xylem from the sapwood of coniferous trees – a readily available, inexpensive, biodegradable, and disposable material – can remove bacteria from water by simple pressure-driven filtration. Approximately 3 cm3 of sapwood can filter water at the rate of several liters per day, sufficient to meet the clean drinking water needs of one person. The results demonstrate the potential of plant xylem to address the need for pathogen-free drinking water in developing countries and resource-limited settings.
Main points of the study:
Plant xylem is a porous material with membranes comprising nanoscale pores. The researchers have reasoned that xylem from the sapwood of coniferous trees is suitable for disinfection by filtration of water. The hierarchical arrangement of the membranes in the xylem tissue effectively amplifies the available membrane area for filtration, providing high flow rates. Xylem filters were prepared by simply removing the bark of pine tree branches and inserting the xylem tissue into a tube. Pigment filtration experiments revealed a size cutoff of about 100 nm, with most of the filtration occurring within the first 2–3 mm of the xylem filter. The xylem filter could effectively filter out bacteria from water with rejection exceeding 99.9%. Pit membranes were identified as the functional unit where actual filtration of the bacteria occurred. Flow rates of about 4 L/d were obtained through ~1 cm2 filter areas at applied pressures of about 5 psi, which is sufficient to meet the drinking water needs of one person. The simple construction of xylem filters, combined with their fabrication from an inexpensive, biodegradable, and disposable material suggests that further research and development of xylem filters could potentially lead to their widespread use and greatly reduce the incidence of waterborne infectious disease in the world.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....

Scientific temper on the rise among Indians
Scientific temper amongst Indians has increased, according to scientist and poet Gouhar Raza here on Saturday. Citing a latest survey by National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS) carried out during Kumbh Mela of 2013, he said, while scientific temper remained stagnant across the world only China and India has reported a rise.

Raza, a 1979 batch M Tech (Power Apparatus and Systems) from IIT, Delhi is a scientist with NISTADS. He said people's interpretations from cultural and experiential knowledge base have given way to scientific reasoning and questioning. "Indians are getting wiser," he said.

Art and science are no different, Raza said quoting Einstein to make his point. "If a scientific equation is not beautiful it must be wrong. Both art and science, require creativity and have their own aesthetics."

-TNN

I never go anywhere near melas, pushkars etc. Because thousands bathing at a single place on river banks increases a lot of pollution. I ask people I know too not to attend them. These fairs, melas not only might make people sick in the short term but also can bring long term pollution problems. Now even judicial system has taken note of this.
Bombay HC forms panel to check pollution in Godavari for Kumbh fair
The Bombay high court has formed a committee headed by a divisional commissioner to monitor works of authorities concerned who are responsible to check pollution of Godavari river in the pilgrim town of Nashik, which is to host Kumbh festival in July-September next year.

The order was passed by Justices A S Oka and S C Gupte on a petition filed by Nasik residents praying for cleaning of Godavari, the second largest river in India after the Ganga, which is the main source of drinking water for Nashik and also used for disposing of industrial and domestic waste.

The high court-appointed panel would also comprise the commissioner of Nashik municipal corporation (NMC), Nashik district collector, representative of Maharashtra Pollution Control Board, an expert in the field appointed by the divisional commissioner, and a representative of National Environmental Engineering Research Institute.
-PTI

Psychotherapy course to treat severe depression in terminally ill cancer patients.
Scientists have carried out the first controlled medical experiment in 40 years with the hallucinogenic drug LSD which they used as part of a psychotherapy course to treat severe depression in terminally ill cancer patients.

Volunteers given high doses of LSD - which came to prominence in the hippy culture of the 1960s - showed a 20 per cent decline in their symptoms associated with the extreme anxiety of their medical condition, the researchers found.

The small pilot trial, which involved just 12 men and women, also showed that there were no severe side-effects of lysergic acid diethylamide, the psychoactive chemical commonly known as "acid". However, their depressive symptoms did get worse when given only low doses of LSD, the scientists said.
- The Independent

Four new gases that harm ozone layer found, despite bans: Study
Scientists have detected four new man-made gases that damage the Earth's protective ozone layer, despite bans on almost all production of similar gases under a 1987 treaty, a study showed on Sunday { three types of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbon) and one HCFC (hydrochlorofluorocarbon)}.

The experts were trying to pinpoint industrial sources of tiny traces of the new gases, perhaps used in making pesticides or refrigerants that were found in Greenland's ice and in air samples in Tasmania, Australia.

The ozone layer shields the planet from damaging ultraviolet rays, which can cause skin cancer and eye cataracts, and has been recovering after a phase-out of damaging chemicals under the UN's 1987 Montreal Protocol.

In total, the scientists estimated more than 74,000 tonnes of the four had been released to the atmosphere. None was present before the 1960s in Greenland's ice cores, according to the study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

That is only a small fraction of the million tonnes of CFCs produced every year at a 1980s peak, according to the team of scientists in Britain, Germany, Australia, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

These new observations do not present concern at the moment, although the fact that these gases are in the atmosphere and some are increasing needs investigation.

The gases are also likely to be powerful greenhouse gases, albeit in tiny amounts. CFCs are often thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

- Reuters

A new group of antibiotics to overcome drug-resistant microbes

Scientists have discovered a new class of antibiotics to fight deadly bacteria such as methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus and other drug-resistant bacteria that threaten public health.

The new class, called oxadiazoles , was discovered by University of Notre Dame researchers led by Mayland Chang and Shahriar Mobashery in silico (by computer ) screening and has shown promise in the treatment of MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureusis ) in mouse models.

MRSA is a bacterium that has developed resistance to penicillin and certain other groups of antibiotics . Researchers who screened 1.2 million compounds found that the oxadiazole inhibits a penicillin-binding protein, PBP2a, and the biosynthesis of the cell wall that enables MRSA to resist other drugs.

The oxadiazoles are also effective when taken orally. This is an important feature as there is only one marketed antibiotic for MRSA that can be taken orally, researchers said.

MRSA has become a global public-health problem since the 1960s because of its resistance to antibiotics. Only three drugs currently are effective treatments, and resistance to each of those drugs already exists. The researchers have been seeking a solution to MRSA for years.

- Agencies

http://wapo.st/1fjYbSG

The evolution of the first animals may have oxygenated Earth's oceans -- contrary to the traditional view that a rise in oxygen triggered their development. New research led by the University of Exeter contests the long held belief that oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans was a pre-requisite for the evolution of complex life forms.

The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, builds on the recent work of scientists in Denmark who found that sponges -- the first animals to evolve -- require only small amounts of oxygen.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/03/10/first.animals.oxygenate...

A different diet!
Harvard scientists have identified what may be the strangest of them all -- sunlight and electricity. Led by Peter Girguis, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences, and Arpita Bose, a post-doctoral fellow in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, a team of researchers showed that the commonly found bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris can use natural conductivity to pull electrons from minerals located deep in soil and sediment while remaining at the surface, where they absorb the sunlight needed to produce energy. The study is described in a February 26 paper in Nature Communications.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/03/11/a.shocking.diet

Life beyond the lab

Prof. Lim also hopes to dispel the perception that scientists are boring or predictable.

“Scientists are very creative and fun-loving people too! We often have interests in topics outside of our science that range from business to arts and culture, not to mention being multi-talented. Many scientists have hidden artistic talents.”

In fact, she highlights how her job is that of a teacher, writer, business person, motivator and counselor all rolled into one.

“I get to work with people: collaborators and students from different scientific and social backgrounds. The idea exchanges are exhilarating, especially when the ideas crystallize and materialize into scientific projects, and the results are subsequently communicated to the community,” she muses.
http://www.asianscientist.com/features/sierin-lim-scbe-ntu-2014/

Don’t Throw Out Your Garlic Sprouts
garlic sprout

Sprouted garlic contains many antioxidants that may boost the immune system and promote a healthy heart, according to a study.
“Sprouted” garlic — old garlic bulbs with bright green shoots emerging from the cloves — are normally considered to be past their prime and usually end up in the garbage can. But scientists now report that this type of garlic has even more heart-healthy antioxidant activity than its fresher counterparts.

Kim Jong-Sang and colleagues from Kyungpook National University in South Korea note that people have used garlic for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. Eating garlic or taking garlic supplements is touted as a natural way to reduce cholesterol levels, blood pressure and heart disease risk. It even may boost the immune system and help fight cancer
Garlic Sprouting Is Associated with Increased Antioxidant Activity and Concomitant Changes in the Metabolite Profile

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf500603v

Pathologies of hyperfamiliarity in dreams, delusions and déjà vu

Research from the University of Adelaide has delved into the reasons why some people are unable to break free of their delusions, despite overwhelming evidence explaining the delusion isn’t real.

In a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, University of Adelaide philosopher Professor Philip Gerrans says dreams and delusions have a common link – they are associated with faulty “reality testing” in the brain’s higher order cognitive systems.

‘Reality testing’ is the ability to challenge and revise thoughts prompted by anomalous experiences, and depends on activity in right dorsolateral prefrontal circuitry.
In someone who has problems with reality testing, that story might persist and may even be elaborated and translated into action. Such people can experience immense mental health difficulties, even to the point of becoming a threat to themselves or to others.
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00097/full

Even as conservation efforts at various levels continue to show hope for the future, the latest International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN) Red List of Birds (2013) shows that fifteen bird species in India continue to be critically endangered (CR).

Moreover, three other bird species now face greater danger than before. These species have been uplisted to Near Threatened (NT) and Vulnerable (VU) categories. Earlier they were better off and classified under Least Concern (LC) category. In India, organizations such as BNHS-India play a crucial role in researching and collating such information, as the BirdLife International (UK) country partner.

The species falling under the Critically Endangered category in India include migratory wetland species: Baer's Pochard, Siberian Crane and Spoon-billed Sandpiper; non-migratory wetland species: White-bellied Heron; grassland species: Bengal Florican, Great Indian Bustard, Jerdon's Courser and Sociable Lapwing; forest species: Forest Owlet and scavengers: Indian Vulture, Red-headed Vulture, White-backed Vulture and Slender-billed Vulture. Himalayan Quail and Pink-headed Duck are now considered Extinct for all practical purposes.

15 bird species in India critically endangered
-TNN

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Vaccination keeps children from hospitals
Flu Vaccine Keeps Connecticut Kids from Hospitals - study
After flu shot regulations upped Connecticut kids' vaccination rate, their hospitalization risk went down.
Impact of Requiring Influenza Vaccination for Children in Licensed Child Care or Preschool Programs — Connecticut, 2012–13 Influenza Season
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6309a1.htm?s_cid=mm6309a1_e

It only takes a quick jolt of electricity to get a swarm of cells moving in the right direction. Researchers at UC Berkeley found that an electrical current can be used to orchestrate the flow of a group of cells, an achievement that could establish the basis for more controlled forms of tissue engineering and for potential applications such as "smart bandages" that use electrical stimulation to help heal wounds.
Scientists 'herd' cells in new approach to tissue engineering
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/03/12/scientists.herd.cells.n...

Global Biogeochemical Cycles
In a study of the ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle, Siegel and his colleagues used nuggets to their advantage. They incorporated the lifecycle of phytoplankton and zooplankton — small, often microscopic animals at the bottom of the food chain —into a novel mechanistic model for assessing the global ocean carbon export. Their findings appear online in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291944-9224

Spontaneous fluctuations in neural responses to heartbeats predict visual detection
Each heartbeat creates a blip of neural activity in the brain, and that blip may help people better sense their world.

People were more likely to spot a flash of a hard-to-see ring when the image was presented right after a heartbeat, researchers report March 9 in Nature Neuroscience. The neural jolt produced by a heartbeat primes the brain to better detect the ring.

The results are an example of how bodily functions can have a big effect on the brain.
Spontaneous fluctuations of ongoing neural activity substantially affect sensory and cognitive performance. Because bodily signals are constantly relayed up to the neocortex, neural responses to bodily signals are likely to shape ongoing activity.
Using magnetoencephalography, scientists show that in humans, neural events locked to heartbeats before stimulus onset predict the detection of a faint visual grating in the posterior right inferior parietal lobule and the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, two regions that have multiple functional correlates and that belong to the same resting-state network. Neither fluctuations in measured bodily parameters nor overall cortical excitability could account for this finding. Neural events locked to heartbeats therefore shape visual conscious experience, potentially by contributing to the neural maps of the organism that might underlie subjectivity. Beyond conscious vision, the results show that neural events locked to a basic physiological input such as heartbeats underlie behaviorally relevant differential activation in multifunctional cortical areas.
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.3671.html

Zombie virus discovered
After lying dormant in Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years, the largest virus ever discovered is just as deadly as it was when mammoths roamed the Earth.
The virus targets amoebas rather than humans. But thawing, drilling and mining of ancient permafrost could potentially unleash viruses that infect people, say the scientists who discovered the giant virus.

Earth's mantle holds an ocean's worth of water. Scientists have found the first terrestrial sample of a water-rich gem which suggests that large volumes of water exist deep beneath the Earth.

An international team of scientists led by Graham Pearson, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Arctic Resources at the University of Alberta, has discovered the first-ever sample of a mineral called 'ringwoodite'. Analysis of the mineral shows it contains a significant amount of water — 1.5% of its weight — a finding that confirms scientific theories about vast volumes of water trapped 410 to 660 kilometres beneath the Earth, between the upper and lower mantle.

"This sample really provides extremely strong confirmation that there are local wet spots deep in the Earth in this area," said Pearson, a professor in the faculty of science. "That particular zone in the Earth, the transition zone, might have as much water as all the world's oceans put together," Pearson said.

Ringwoodite is a form of the mineral peridot, believed to exist in large quantities under high pressures in the transition zone.

Ringwoodite has been found in meteorites but, until now, no terrestrial sample has ever been unearthed because scientists have not been able to conduct fieldwork at extreme depths. Pearson's sample was found in 2008 in the Juina area of Mato Grosso, Brazil, where artisan miners unearthed the host diamond from shallow river gravels.

The diamond had been brought to the Earth's surface by a volcanic rock known as kimberlite — the most deeply derived of all volcanic rocks. Pearson said the discovery was almost accidental in that his team had been looking for another mineral when they found a three-millimetre-wide, dirty-looking, commercially worthless brown diamond.

- News Agencies

The five second rule to pick up food from the floor:

According to researchers,  final-year students at Birmingham’s Aston University, the 'five-second rule' that many of us think is okay is an actual scientific measure of how long your food is safe to eat for.

(But again I have watched a programme on Discovery channel sometime back that said it depends on the state of food. If it is very wet, it picks up lots of microbes from the floor. If it is dry less number of microbes get attached to it regardless of time it spent on the floor.)

According to this one there is a "significant time factor" on the transfer of bacteria from the floor to food - basically, you have five second window to pick it up before it stops being safe to eat.

The students placed toast, pasta, biscuits and a sweet on the floor to determine that food picked-up straight after being dropped is less likely to contain common bacteria such as E. coli.

They also determined that bacteria is least likely to transfer from carpeted surfaces, and most likely to transfer from laminate or tiled surfaces to moist foods which made contact with the floor for more than five seconds.

"Consuming food dropped on the floor still carries an infection risk as it very much depends on which bacteria are present on the floor at the time; however the findings of this study will bring some light relief to those who have been employing the “five-second rule” for years, despite a general consensus that it is purely a myth," Professor Anthony, who led the study, said.

"We have found evidence that transfer from indoor flooring surfaces is incredibly poor with carpet actually posing the lowest risk of bacterial transfer onto dropped food."

- News Agencies

A team of British and American scientists have taken an important step toward understanding how life arose on Earth. Their work is published in a new paper in the journal Astrobiology.

The Fuel Cell Model of Abiogenesis: A New Approach to Origin-of-Life Simulations
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2014.1140

Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers
The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers.

http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/2014/03/13/publishers-withdraw-1...

How grapevines got acne bacteria
Microbe is the first known animal pathogen to become dependent on a plant host — and could have helped in its domestication.
A common bacterium on human skin that is partly responsible for acne — has made itself at home in the grapevine. It is the first known instance of a human bacterial pathogen that has become dependent on a host from a different kingdom of life. Italian researchers report that a newly found strain of Propionibacterium acnes seems unable to live anywhere else than within grapevine cells, and speculate that this adaptation helped humans to domesticate the plant.
http://www.nature.com/news/how-grapevines-got-acne-bacteria-1.14812

Innovative solar-powered toilet developed by CU-Boulder ready for India unveiling
University of Colorado Boulder developed a toilet fueled by the sun that is being developed to help some of the 2.5 billion people around the world lacking safe and sustainable sanitation will be unveiled in India this month.

The self-contained, waterless toilet, designed and built using a $777,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has the capability of heating human waste to a high enough temperature to sterilize human waste and create biochar, a highly porous charcoal, said project principal investigator Karl Linden, professor of environmental engineering. The biochar has a one-two punch in that it can be used to both increase crop yields and sequester carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/03/12/innovative-solar-p...

How Mountains And Rivers Make Life Possible
Favorable conditions for life on Earth are enabled in part by the natural shuttling of carbon dioxide from the planet’s atmosphere to its rocky interior and back again. Now Stanford scientists have devised a pair of math equations that better describe how topography, rock compositions and the movement of water through a landscape affects this vital recycling process.

Scientists have long suspected that the so-called the geologic carbon cycle is responsible for Earth’s clement and life-friendly conditions because it helps regulate atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that acts to trap the sun’s heat. This cycle is also thought to have played an important role in slowly thawing the planet during those rare times in the past when temperatures dipped so low that the globe was plunged into a “snowball-Earth” scenario and glaciers blanketed the equator.

“Our equations suggest that different landscapes have different potentials for regulating the transfer of carbon dioxide,” said Kate Maher, an assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences who developed the equations along with her colleague, Environmental Earth System Science Professor Page Chamberlain. The research, which was supported by the National Research Foundation, is described in the March 14 issue of the journal Science.
- Science news agencies

The protein titin has been found to be the key to reversible muscle elasticity according to a report by Columbia University biological sciences professor Julio Fernandez and his team in the March 13, 2014, edition of the journal Cell.
Mechanical force exposes cryptic cysteines in titin to allow S-glutathionylation
S-glutathionylation of cryptic cysteines inhibits protein folding
S-glutathionylation of titin reversibly modulates the elasticity of cardiomyocytes
Modification of cryptic cysteines links redox environment to tissue mechanics
The researchers discovered that titin is not a passive muscle structure but plays an active chemical role when the muscles are stretched. Stretching the muscles exposed parts of the titin molecule that are susceptible to oxidation. Oxidation of the reactive parts of the titin molecule confers lasting and reversible muscle elasticity through the process of glutathionylation.
he discovery promises new methods to treat heart disease and muscle disease.

The researchers recommend the yoga position downward-facing dog as a means to extend titin to the greatest extent and therefore produce lasting muscle elasticity.
http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2814%2900150-0

Gastric bypass surgery may diminish knee pain in obese patients

Source: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

Gastric bypass surgery may diminish knee pain in obese patients with little or no osteoarthritis, according to new research. The study authors recommend that surgeons consider bariatric consultation for obese patients who have knee symptoms but lack advanced osteoarthritis or other conditions amendable to orthopaedic management.

Individual Variation in Contagious Yawning Susceptibility Is Highly Stable and Largely Unexplained by Empathy or Other Known Factors
The contagious aspect of yawning is a well-known phenomenon that exhibits variation in the human population. Despite the observed variation, few studies have addressed its intra-individual reliability or the factors modulating differences in the susceptibility of healthy volunteers. Due to its obvious biological basis and impairment in diseases like autism and schizophrenia, a better understanding of this trait could lead to novel insights into these conditions and the general biological functioning of humans. We administered 328 participants a 3-minute yawning video stimulus, a cognitive battery, and a comprehensive questionnaire that included measures of empathy, emotional contagion, circadian energy rhythms, and sleepiness. Individual contagious yawning measurements were found to be highly stable across testing sessions, both in a lab setting and if administered remotely online, confirming that certain healthy individuals are less susceptible to contagious yawns than are others. Additionally, most individuals who failed to contagiously yawn in our study were not simply suppressing their reaction, as they reported not even feeling like yawning in response to the stimulus. In contrast to previous studies indicating that empathy, time of day, or intelligence may influence contagious yawning susceptibility, we found no influence of these variables once accounting for the age of the participant. Participants were less likely to show contagious yawning as their age increased, even when restricting to ages of less than 40 years. However, age was only able to explain 8% of the variability in the contagious yawn response. The vast majority of the variability in this extremely stable trait remained unexplained, suggesting that studies of its inheritance are warranted.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....

Human brains react unconsciously to our body movements
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According to researchers from University College London and Cambridge University found evidence of a specialized mechanism in the human brain that takes in visual information about our body and triggers an instant, unconscious response.

The new study has shown that our brains have separate 'hard-wired' systems to visually track our own bodies, even if we are not paying attention to them. The network triggers reactions even before the conscious brain has time to process them.

Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
American science is increasingly becoming a private enterprise. In Washington , budget cuts have left the nation's research complex reeling. Labs are closing. Scientists are being laid off. Yet from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, science philanthropy is hot, as many of the richest Americans seek to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research.

The super-rich have mounted a private war on disease, with new protocols that break down walls between academia and industry to turn basic discoveries into effective treatments. They have rekindled traditions of scientific exploration by financing hunts for dinosaur bones and giant sea creatures. They are even beginning to challenge Washington in the costly game of big science, with innovative ships, undersea craft and giant telescopes — as well as the first private mission to deep space.

The new philanthropists represent the breadth of American business, people like Michael R Bloomberg, the former New York mayor (and founder of the media company that bears his name), James Simons (hedge funds) and David H Koch (oil and chemicals), among hundreds of wealthy donors. Especially prominent , though, are some of the boldest-face names of the tech world, among them Bill Gates (Microsoft), Eric E Schmidt (Google) and Lawrence J Ellison (Oracle).

This is philanthropy in the age of the new economy — financed with its outsize riches, practised according to its individualistic, entrepreneurial creed. Yet that personal setting of priorities is precisely what troubles some in the science establishment.

Many of the patrons, they say, are ignoring basic research — the kind that investigates the riddles of nature and has produced centuries of breakthroughs — for a jumble of popular, feelgood fields like environmental studies and space exploration.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/science/billionaires-with-big-ide...

Cosmic Inflation Theory Confirmed?

Gravitational Waves from Big Bang Detected

A curved signature in the cosmic microwave background light provides proof of inflation and spacetime ripples

Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of our best telescopes. All this, of course, was just theory. Researchers now announce the first direct evidence for this cosmic inflation. Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Their data also represents the first images of gravitational waves or ripples in space-time.
"This work offers new insights into some of our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin? These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation, they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was".

Bionic Plants Offer Superpowered Photosynthesis
Rebuilding plants into bionic superpowered energy photosynthesizers ( using nanotechnology)

A team of MIT researchers writing in the journal Nature Materials say they have discovered the first steps in a new field of science known as “plant nanobionics.”

The researchers found that they were able to boost a plant's ability to capture light energy by 30 percent by embedding carbon nanotubes in the chloroplast. They were also able to use another type of carbon nanotube to modify the plants to detect nitric oxide.

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat3890.html

Flowering Plants Need Sugar Transporter SWEET9 For Nectar Production
Nectar secretion requires sucrose phosphate synthases and the sugar transporter SWEET9

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13082...

Honey is being used since ages in India to treat burns and various wounds that might harbour microbes that cause infection. Now researchers have found that
HONEY could be the key in the battle against antibiotic resistance. As well as being a tasty treat, honey could be used to help fight infections, they said.
Scientists at Salve Regina University in the US said that honey has a combination of weapons to beat infection including hydrogen peroxide, acidity, high sugar concentration and polyphenols – all of which actively kill bacterial cells.

The Inflation Debate Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-inflation-summer/

Why I Still Doubt Inflation, in Spite of Gravitational Wave Findings

here is what I’d like to see: First, corroboration of the BICEP2 findings by other groups and observatories. Second, experiments from high-energy physics that provide some sort of corroborating evidence of the driving mechanism of inflation. Third, an explanation of why the Alice’s Restaurant Problem isn’t still a problem. Fourth, an explanation of why only inflation, and not other more conventional physical phenomena, can account for the gravity-wave findings.

When these conditions are met, I’ll be happy to admit I was wrong about inflation. But multiverses? Never!

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/03/17/why-i-st...

When would people lie? Interesting Question. Phsycologists are trying to learn about it.

Psychologists Shaul Shalvi, Ori Eldar and Yoella Bereby-Meyer tested the hypothesis that people are more likely to lie when they can justify the deception to themselves in a 2013 paper entitled “Honesty Requires Time (and Lack of Justifications),” published in Psychological Science. Subjects rolled a die three times in a setup that blocked the experimenter's view of the outcome and were instructed to report the number that came up in the first roll. (The higher the number, the more money they were paid.) Seeing the outcomes of the second and third rolls gave the participants an opportunity to justify reporting the highest number of the three; because that number had actually come up, it was a justified lie.

Some subjects had to report their answer within 20 seconds, whereas others had an unlimited amount of time. Although both groups lied, those who were given less time were more likely to do so. In a second experiment subjects rolled the die once and reported the outcome. Those who were pressed for time lied; those who had time to think told the truth. The two experiments suggest that people are more likely to lie when time is short, but when time is not a factor they lie only when they have justification to do so.

“By lying, we deny our friends access to reality—and their resulting ignorance often harms them in ways we did not anticipate. Our friends may act on our falsehoods, or fail to solve problems that could have been solved only on the basis of good information.”

A practical solution is to think of a way to tell the truth with tact.

nearly all of us shade the truth just enough to make ourselves or others feel better. By how much do we lie? About 10 percent, says behavioral economist Dan Ariely in his 2012 book The Honest Truth about Dishonesty (Harper).

Lying, Ariely says, is not the result of a cost-benefit analysis. Instead it is a form of self-deception in which small lies allow us to dial up our self-image and still retain the perception of being an honest person. Big lies do not.

More can be found at:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-science-tells-us-abo...

Knowing whether food has spoiled without even opening the container!
Research paper presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society shows how.
A color-coded smart tag could tell consumers whether a carton of milk has turned sour or a can of green beans has spoiled without opening the containers, according to researchers. The tag, which would appear on the packaging, also could be used to determine if medications and other perishable products were still active or fresh, they said.

This report on the color-changing food deterioration tags was presented recently as part of the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.
Watch the video to know how:

More information could be found on their website:
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2014/march...

What makes dark chocolate healthy?

The precise reason for the health benefits of dark chocolate: mystery solved

After decades of scientific inquiry, John Finley from Louisiana State University and colleagues have found what makes dark chocolate good for you according to their presentation on March 18, 2014, at the National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Dallas, Texas. The researchers fund that Bifidobacterium and lactic acid bacteria in the lower digestive tract love dark chocolate. The bacteria metabolize chemical components in dark chocolate into anti-inflammatory agents that reduce cardiovascular inflammation and the risk of stroke and heart disease. The researchers proved their concept using cocoa powder and human fecal bacteria in a glass digestive tract that simulated the human lower gut. Cocoa powder contains antioxidants and fiber that are not acted on by digestive enzymes or digestive secretions in the upper digestive tract and are not absorbed in the upper digestive tract. Lower digestive tract bacteria convert the antioxidants and fiber into smaller molecules that can be absorbed and used as anti-inflammatory agents and digestive regulators in the lower digestive tract. The researchers add that eating a prebiotic like garlic can assist the bacteria that metabolize dark chocolate by increasing the rate and of conversion of anti-inflammatory agents in dark chocolate to compounds the human body can absorb.

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2014/march...

Did you know? What are some things that programmers know, but most people don't?

The most difficult part of writing a program is not actually writing the program but rather determining what the client wants the program to do.
It is relatively easy to write the rules for what a program should do in cases where everything is working correctly; it is much more difficult to write the rules for what a program should do when things go wrong (see below).
A lot more can (and does) go wrong than you think: databases can become corrupt or lose their connection to your program; the connection between various computers may become unavailable due to networking issues; and the list goes on. This is largely due to the distributed nature of computer systems these days, in which multiple interconnected computers process what seems to you to be a single request.
A large part of what a program does is hide from you the gory details of when things go wrong (see above).
Good programming requires the ability to foresee what might go wrong and to account for it. Most non-programmers either don't believe what could go wrong or don't want to worry about it, and thus can get uncomfortable even thinking about the idea of things going wrong.
What may appear to be a very simple program (e.g. Google's site) may involve a huge, invisible supporting infrastructure that cost lots of time and money to build and maintain.
When you meet us at parties and learn what we do, we really don't want to hear the story about how you couldn't get a certain program to install/uninstall/run or how you might have a virus on your Windows PC. It would be like saying to a dentist you just met, "Oh, you're a dentist? I have this pain in my leg, what do you think is causing it?"
Just as you're usually not impressed when we brag about how much we know about computers, we're not impressed when you brag about how little you know about them.

New hypothesis explains earth's continued habitability
Researchers from USC and Nanjing University in China have documented evidence suggesting that part of the reason that Earth has become neither sweltering like Venus nor frigid like Mars lies with a built-in atmospheric carbon dioxide regulator -- the geologic cycles that churn up the planet's rocky surface. Scientists have long known that "fresh" rock pushed to the surface via mountain formation effectively acts as a kind of sponge, soaking up the greenhouse gas CO2. Left unchecked, however, that process would simply deplete atmospheric CO2 levels to a point that would plunge Earth into an eternal winter within a few million years during the formation of large mountain ranges like the Himalayas -- which has clearly not happened.

And while volcanoes have long been pointed to as a source of carbon dioxide, alone they cannot balance out the excess uptake of carbon dioxide by large mountain ranges. Instead, it turns out that "fresh" rock exposed by uplift also emits carbon through a chemical weathering process, which replenishes the atmospheric carbon dioxide at a comparable rate.

"Our presence on Earth is dependent upon this carbon cycle. This is why life is able to survive," said Mark Torres, lead author of a study disclosing the findings that appears in Nature on March 20. Torres, a doctoral fellow at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and a fellow at the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI), collaborated with Joshua West, professor of Earth Sciences at USC Dornsife, and Gaojun Li of Nanjing University in China.
Source: University of Southern California

Evolution Of Conch Size Driven By Humans
The first humans to pluck a Caribbean fighting conch from the shallow lagoons of Panama’s Bocas del Toro were in for a good meal. Smithsonian scientists found that 7,000 years ago, this common marine shellfish contained 66 percent more meat than its descendants do today. Because of persistent harvesting of the largest conchs, it became advantageous for the animal to mature at a smaller size, resulting in evolutionary change.

Human-driven evolution of wild animals, sometimes referred to as “unnatural selection,” has only previously been documented under scenarios of high-intensity harvesting, like industrialized fishing. “These are the first evidence that low-intensity harvesting has been sufficient to drive evolution,” said lead author Aaron O’Dea of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “The reason may be because the conch has been subjected to harvesting for a long period of time.” Published March 19 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the findings are based on a comparison of mature shell sizes prior to human settlement, from shells excavated from human trash heaps representing various points in the last few thousand years and from modern sites.

Source: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1782/20140159.ab...

Natural forests in the Amazon remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they emit - Nasa-led study
This means that the 5.5 million square kilometer forest is a crucial factor in reducing global warming. The new study, published in Nature Communications on March 18, is the first to measure tree deaths caused by natural processes throughout the Amazon forest.

Scientists: Don't pee in pools
Not only is peeing in the swimming pool antisocial, it could also harm your health, according to a study.
Scientists from China Agricultural University and Purdue University have found that uric acid in urine interacts with the disinfectants in swimming pools to produce harmful chemicals.

The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, showed that uric acid becomes chlorinated and acts as a precursor to the formation of the toxic gases cyanogen chloride (CNCl) and trichloramine (NCl3).

At high concentrations, CNCl is known to cause immediate injury to the eyes and respiratory system upon contact, and longer term problems in the central nervous system and heart. NCl3 has been linked to chronic health problems in adults and asthma in children.

In the article, the authors noted that since urination is under the voluntary control of swimmers, improved hygiene habits are essential to keep swimming pool water safe.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es405402r