Force of nature gave life its asymmetry

'Left-handed' electrons destroy certain organic molecules faster than their mirror versions.
Weak Nuclear Force Shown to Give Asymmetry to Biochemistry of Life
"Left-handed" electrons have been found to destroy certain organic molecules faster than their mirror versions

http://www.nature.com/news/force-of-nature-gave-life-its-asymmetry-...

Cold Atom Laboratory Chills Atoms to New Lows
Nasa's Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) mission has succeeded in producing a state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, a key breakthrough for the instrument leading up to its debut on the International Space Station in late 2016.
According to Nasa, a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is a collection of atoms in a dilute gas that have been lowered to extremely cold temperatures and all occupy the same quantum state, in which all of the atoms have the same energy levels. At a critical temperature, atoms begin to coalesce, overlap and become synchronized. The resulting condensate is a new state of matter that behaves like a giant — by atomic standards — wave.
"CAL's ground testbed is the coolest spot at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at 200 nano-Kelvin (200 billionths of 1 Kelvin)," CAL Project Scientist Rob Thompson at JPL in Pasadena, California said. "Achieving Bose-Einstein condensation in our prototype hardware is a crucial step for the mission."
While so far, the Cold Atom Laboratory researchers have created Bose-Einstein condensates with rubidium atoms, eventually they will also add in potassium. The behavior of two condensates mixing together will be fascinating for physicists to observe, especially in space.

Besides merely creating Bose-Einstein condensates, CAL provides a suite of tools to manipulate and probe these quantum gases in a variety of ways. It has a unique role as a facility for the atomic, molecular and optical physics community to study cold atomic physics in microgravity, said David Aveline of JPL, CAL ground testbed lead.

"Instead of a state-of-the-art telescope looking outward into the cosmos, CAL will look inward, exploring physics at the atomic scale".

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-325

The Science Of Blue Light And Why You Maybe Can't Sleep At Night
https://www.upworthy.com/the-science-of-blue-light-and-why-you-mayb...

Higgs Boson to the World Wide Web: 7 Big Discoveries Made at CERN
http://news.yahoo.com/higgs-boson-world-wide-7-big-discoveries-made...

Automating Scientific Discovery
The power of computers to juggle vast quantities of data has proved invaluable to science. In the early days, machines performed calculations that would have taken humans far too long to perform by hand. More recently, data mining has found relationships that were not known to exist—noticing, for instance, a correlation between use of a painkiller and incidence of heart attacks. Now some computer scientists are working on the next logical step—teaching machines to run experiments, make inferences from the data, and use the results to perform new experiments. In essence, they wish to automate the scientific process.

One team of researchers, from Cornell and Vanderbilt universities and CFD Research Corporation, took a significant step in that direction when they reported last year that a program of theirs had been able to solve a complex biological problem. They focused on glycolysis, the metabolic process by which cells—yeast, in this case—break down sugars to produce energy. The team fed their algorithm with experimental data about yeast metabolism, along with theoretical models in the form of sets of equations that could fit the data.

The team seeded the program with approximately 1,000 equations, all of which had the correct mathematical syntax but were otherwise random. The computer changed and recombined the equations and ranked the results according to which produced answers that fit the data—an evolutionary technique that has been used since the early 1990s. The key step, explains Hod Lipson, associate professor of computing and information science at Cornell, was to not only rank how the equations fit the data at any given point in the dataset, but also at points where competing models disagreed.
Read more here:
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/5/148614-automating-scientific-d...

Cancer: How the immune system spots tumors
The receptor protein Dectin-1 recognizes structures found on cancerous cells, and then triggers an anti-tumor immune response. http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e04476#sthash.I8siNatR.dpuf

Lower IQ in Children Linked to Chemical in Water
Babies born to mothers with high levels of perchlorate during their first trimester are more likely to have lower IQs later in life, according to a new study
Maternal perchlorate levels in women with borderline thyroid function during pregnancy and the cognitive development of their offspring; Data from the Controlled Antenatal Thyroid Study.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25057878

Rabies can be eliminated from around the world, say Scots scientists
“Vaccinating dogs is the single-most effective way of eliminating rabies."
If you can vaccinate more than 70% of dogs through sustained campaigns, it is enough to interrupt transmission in the reservoir population so that the disease if eliminated.
That is how rabies has been purged from most industrialised countries and why South America is so close to eradicating dog-transmitted rabies from the whole American continent.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/294128-glasgow-university-scientists-sa...

Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota
What makes life sweet for those of us who are counting calories is artificial sweeteners. Diet soda gives a sweet carbonated fix. A packet of artificial sweetener in your coffee or tea makes it a delicious morning dose.

But a new study, published September 17 in Nature, found that the artificial sweetener saccharin has an unintended side effect: It alters the bacterial composition of the gut in mice and humans. The new bacterial neighborhood brings with it higher blood glucose levels, putting the humans and the murine counterparts at risk for diabetes.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13793...

The Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine 2014 was given to three people this time-divided, one half awarded to John O'Keefe, the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain".
The brain has a GPS-like function that enables people to produce mental maps and navigate the world — a discovery for which three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine this year. The findings might help scientists design tests that can pick up the very earliest signs of the mind-robbing disease, whose victims lose their spatial memory and get easily lost.

O'Keefe discovered the first component of the brain's positioning system in 1971. He found that a certain type of nerve cell was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room. Other nerve cells were activated when the rat moved to another place. He demonstrated that these "place cells" were building up a map, not just registering visual input.
In 2005, the Mosers identified another type of nerve cell — the "grid cell" — that generates a coordinate system for precise "positioning and path-finding".
The laureates' discoveries marked a shift in scientists' understanding of how specialized cells work together to perform complex cognitive tasks. They have also opened new avenues for understanding cognitive functions such as memory, thinking and planning.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014 was awarded jointly to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".
The invention of an energy source that lights up our computer and/or mobile phone screens and holds promise to brighten up the quality of life of over 1.5 billion people around the world.
The laureates were rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source — the blue light-emitting diode (LED).

According to the committee, the laureates' inventions revolutionized the field of illumination technology.

New, more efficient, cheaper and smarter lamps are developed all the time. White LED lamps can be created in two different ways. One way is to use blue light to excite a phosphor so that it shines in red and green. When all colours come together, white light is produced.

The laureates were rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source — the blue light-emitting diode (LED).

According to the committee, the laureates' inventions revolutionized the field of illumination technology.

New, more efficient, cheaper and smarter lamps are developed all the time. White LED lamps can be created in two different ways. One way is to use blue light to excite a phosphor so that it shines in red and green. When all colours come together, white light is produced.

The other way is to construct the lamp out of three LEDs, red, green and blue, and let the eye do the work of combining the three colours into white.

LED lamps are thus flexible light sources, already with several applications in the field of illumination — millions of different colours can be produced.
The invention of the LED however will be highly beneficial and safer than older light sources. For example, fluorescent light has mercury whereas LEDs doesn't. In future, it can be used to sterilise water as we know that UV light can kill bacteria and viruses. It has been known since 1671 that to get white light, we have to combine red, green and blue light. Red and green light has been around for half a century. Now we have blue which we can effectively mix and create new white light sources.
The LED lamp holds great promise: due to low power requirements it can be powered by cheap local solar power.

‘Virological Penicillin’ Found In Chinese Traditional Medicine
Researchers have isolated the first compound that can directly act on viral infectious agents, an miRNA found in honeysuckle used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Research has validated the use of honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) to treat viral infections, showing that it contains a plant microRNA (miRNA) which directly targets influenza A viruses (IAV) including H1N1, H5N1 and H7N9. This research has been published in Cell Research.
http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/cr2014130a.html

If you are one of those who supports organic farming this news is for you to have a rethink :

Manure fertilizer increases antibiotic resistance

"Why Mental Rehearsals Work."
A common theory is that mental imagery activates some of the same neural pathways involved in the actual experience, and a recent study in Psychological Science lends support to that idea. The finding helps to explain why imagined rehearsals can improve your game. The mental picture activates and strengthens the very neural circuits—even subconscious ones that control automated processes like pupil dilation—that you will need to recruit when it is time to perform.
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/scientificamericanmind0914...

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 was awarded jointly to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy"/ for making "an optical microscope into a nanoscope"/ Ability to See Single Molecules .

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday that for a long time, optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light.

Helped by fluorescent molecules, the Nobel laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nano dimension.

The prize was given "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy".

The techniques they developed enabled extremely high resolution images to be produced using optical microscopy. Their work circumvented the problem of the ‘diffraction limit’ – the inability of light microscopy to distinguish between structures smaller than half the wavelength of visible light or about 200nm. This advance allowed nanoscale structures – including individual molecules – to be visualised within cells while they are still alive, something that isn’t possible with techniques such as electron microscopy.

In India several farmers commit suicide each year. People blame this trend on failed crops, loan payment failure, multinational seeds that don't yield good results here etc. But a recent research work shows the problem from another angle .
Pesticide use by farmers linked to high rates of depression and suicides.
Experts say that some of the chemicals used to control pests may make matters worse by changing farmers’ brain chemistry. Recent research has linked long-term use of pesticides to higher rates of depression and suicide. Evidence also suggests that pesticide poisoning – a heavy dose in a short amount of time – doubles the risk of depression.
The causes are complex. There “are millions, even billions, of chemical reactions that make up the dynamic system that is responsible for your mood, perceptions, and how you experience life”. Some research suggests that the chemicals that farmers and their workers spread on fields may alter some of these brain chemicals. The studies don’t prove that pesticides cause depression, but animal testing indicates that it’s possible, said Cheryl Beseler, an environmental health researcher at Colorado State University. In rat tests pesticides have altered brain cells, neurotransmitters and production of a protective acid. In France, farmers who used herbicides were nearly twice as likely to have been treated for depression than those who didn’t use herbicides, according to a study published last year. Most insecticides work by disrupting insects' nerve cells. At high enough doses, they can alter human nerve cells as well.
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/oct/pesticides...

''Morning glory clouds'' are long bands of cigar-shaped formations can stretch up to 1,000 kilometres in length. And they can only be seen reliably in one place in the world - Australia’s Gulf Country township around the Gulf of Carpenteria in northwestern Queensland, each spring.

They look like some kind of alien wormhole, but the iconic roll shape of the cloud is actually caused by a drop in temperature, a spike in pressure and strong sea breezes. Because of these conditions, air at the front edge of the cloud is moving up rapidly, while the air at the back is dropping, rolling the cloud into a neat little cylinder. It’s been reported that up to 10 of these clouds can appear across the sky at one time, up to 2 kilometres off the ground.

The morning glory clouds can travel at an incredible speed of 10 to 20 metres per second - that’s around 60 kilometres per hour - with new cloud continuously being formed at the leading edge while being eroded from behind. While scientists still don’t fully understand the weather conditions that lead to the clouds, they’re associated with humidity in the area and strong sea breezes across the Gulf of Carpenteria, which are the conditions that occur here each spring between late Spetember and early November.
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20140810-26303.html

Viruses can turn their DNA from a solid to a liquid to infect your cells
New research has found that viruses have a remarkable biological ability - they can transform their DNA from a glassy solid into a fluid-like state to help them infect cells.
Two new studies, both led by Alex Evilevitch from Carnegie Mellon University and published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Chemical Biology, show that, when the conditions are right, viruses are capable of covering their frozen and highly pressurised DNA into a liquid that can invade host cells.

The breakthrough could help scientists to create new antiviral drugs.
http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/v10/n10/full/nchembio.1628.html

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Cancer Research:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/report/cancer-research-advances/?...

People make immediate judgments about images they are shown, which could impact on their decisions, even before their brains have had time to consciously process the information, a study of brainwaves led by the University Of Melbourne has found.

Published in PLoS ONE, the study is the first in the world to show that it is possible to predict abstract judgments from brain waves, even though people were not conscious of making such judgments. The study also increases our understanding of impulsive behaviours and how to regulate it. 


http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....

Scientists in South Korea have developed a reversible electrochemical mirror (REM) that can switch between a transparent and reflective state, and remain reflective for up to two hours without external electrical power. Such mirrors could be used in smart windows to control lighting and reduce cooling costs for buildings.

Humans are changing the planet so fast that many scientists are now referring to this epoch as the Anthropocene.
Throughout Earth’s history, a host of different processes have molded and shaped the planet. Rocks from space pelted our planet’s surface. Continents drifted. Volcanoes erupted. The mix of gases in our planet’s atmosphere changed, over and over again. Temperatures at or near Earth’s surface ran cold — then hot. The chemical recipe of the seas also changed. Life emerged — and began to steadily evolve in response to Earth’s constant and often wrenching changes. Life, in turn, reshaped Earth. From the smallest bacterium to the tallest tree, all of life on Earth contributes to the chemical and physical changes that make our planet what it is today. One species, however, has come to dominate: People.

Beginning with our early ancestors and their taming of fire, humans have put technology to use in altering Earth. Our use of science and engineering sets us apart from all other organisms. We are constantly modifying the land, oceans and atmosphere. Our impact is so great that some scientists think we have become the dominant force of change. Accordingly, these experts propose we have entered a new geologic epoch of our own making.

" Anthropocene". The term Anthropocene to describe how humans rose to become the dominant force of change on Earth.

Scientists prepare for change of epoch
Scientists from around the world met this week to decide whether to call time on the Holocene epoch after 11,700 years and begin a new geological age called the Anthropocene - to reflect humankind's deep impact on the planet.

For decades, researchers have asked whether humanity's impact on the Earth's surface and atmosphere mean we have entered the Anthropocene - or new human era.
You can no longer distinguish what is man-made from what is natural."

A group of geologists, climate scientists, ecologists and an expert in international law that have been conducting research since 2009, all met face-to-face for the first time in Berlin on Thursday and Friday to discuss the issue.

They appeared to agree it is time for a change of epoch.

Science has begun to progress into areas previously occupied by philosophy and the humanities at large. These incursions have not gone unchallenged. Debates are flaring up.

‘Science must have a place at the policy table,’ world leaders urge at special UN meeting
Science, technology and innovation are central in forging development policy and solving some of the world’s most pressing problems including in education, health care and peace and security, eminent scientists and world leaders said, marking today at United Nations Headquarters the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
Organized by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and CERN, the event “60 Years of Science for Peace” held in New York, highlighted the role that science has played in peaceful collaboration, innovation and development, as well as decades of cooperation between the two organizations.
Ban Ki Moon said: “The arms race absorbed scientific talent and financial resources that could have been used to address the pressing problems facing humanity,” he said.

Fortunately, science is far more often a powerful force for progress and human well-being, especially in developing countries. Now science must be used to accelerate achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the future sustainable development goals.

“Whether we are trying to address climate change, stop the Ebola virus, deal with cybersecurity threats, or curb nuclear proliferation, we need scientists with a clear vision and a commitment to work together to find solutions,” Mr. Ban said.

He also made a plea for greater efforts to attract more women and girls to science and technology-related fields. “Unleashing women's innovation potential must be a priority,” he added.
Indeed, ECOSOC’s President Martin Sajdik said, science has the potential to significantly impact all three dimensions of sustainable development– economic, social and environmental.
Read more here: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=49122#.VEcPtVc0qXU

Marvels of medical science:

Brain games don't benefit the elderly much say scientists:

A joint statement signed by 69 leading psychologists and neuroscientists from around the world has criticized the "exaggerated and misleading claims" made by commercial interests that "brain games" help senior citizens prevent declining brain functions. The statement was issued by the Stanford Center for Longevity and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

Laura Carstensen, a Stanford psychology professor and the director of the Center for Longevity, was quoted by a Stanford statement saying that as baby boomers enter their golden years, commercial companies are all too often promising quick fixes for cognition problems through products that are unlikely to produce broad improvements in everyday functioning.

"It is customary for advertising to highlight the benefits and overstate potential advantages of their products," she said. "But in the case of brain games, companies also assert that the products are based on solid scientific evidence developed by cognitive scientists and neuroscientists. So we felt compelled to issue a statement directly to the public."

While brain games may target very specific cognitive abilities, there is very little evidence that improvements transfer to more complex skills that really matter, like thinking, problem solving and planning, according to the scholars. While it is true that the human mind is malleable throughout a lifetime, improvement on a single task - like playing computer-based brain games - does not imply a general, all-around and deeper improvement in cognition beyond performing better on just a particular game, according to them.

"We object to the claim that brain games offer consumers a scientifically grounded avenue to reduce or reverse cognitive decline when there is no compelling scientific evidence to date that they do. ... The promise of a magic bullet detracts from the best evidence to date, which is that cognitive health in old age reflects the long-term effects of healthy, engaged lifestyles."

As the researchers point out, the time spent on computer games takes away from other activities like reading, socializing, gardening and exercising that may benefit cognitive functions.

How science saved Eiffel Tower:
https://student.societyforscience.org/article/how-science-saved-eif...

U.S. Suspends Risky Disease Research
The government will cease funding "gain-of-function" studies that make viruses more dangerous
The US government surprised many researchers on October 17 when it announced that it will temporarily stop funding new research that makes certain viruses more deadly or transmissible. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is also asking researchers who conduct such ‘gain-of-function’ experiments on influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) to stop their work until a risk assessment is completed — leaving many unsure of how to proceed.
But, some microbiologists call the plan “a knee-jerk reaction”. “There is really no evidence that these experiments are in fact such high risk,” he says. “A lot of them are being done by very respectable labs, with lots of precautions in place.”
http://www.nature.com/news/us-suspends-risky-disease-research-1.16192
http://www.nature.com/news/controversial-h5n1-influenza-work-likely...

The marvels of Science!
'Dead' hearts transplanted into living patients in world first

In a breakthrough, a team of doctors, including an Indian-origin surgeon, today said they have successfully performed the world's first heart transplant in Australia using a "dead heart", a major development that could save many lives.

The procedure, using hearts that had stopped beating, has been described as a "paradigm shift" that will herald a major increase in the pool of hearts available for transplantation.

It is predicted the breakthrough will save the lives of 30 per cent more heart transplant patients.

Until now, transplant units have relied solely on still- beating donor hearts from brain-dead patients.

But the team at the lung transplant unit of St Vincent's Hospital here announced they had transplanted three heart failure patients using donor hearts that had stopped beating for 20 minutes.

It was possible thanks to a new technology. The incredible development of the preservation solution with this technology of being able to preserve the heart, resuscitate it and to assess the function of the heart has made this possible.

Hearts are the only organ that is not used after the heart has stopped beating - known as donation after circulatory death.

Beating hearts are normally taken from brain-dead people, kept on ice for around four hours and then transplanted to patients.

The novel technique used in Sydney involved taking a heart that had stopped beating and reviving it in a machine known as a "heart-in-a-box".

The heart is kept warm, the heartbeat is restored and a nourishing fluid helps reduce damage to the heart muscle.

Ten Species That Are Evolving Due to the Changing Climate
From tropical corals to tawny owls, some species are already being pushed to evolve—but adaptation doesn’t guarantee survival.

Table Corals, Thyme, Pink Salmon , Tawny Owls, Pitcher plant mosquitoes, Banded snails, Sockeye Salmon, Red squirrels, Fruit flies, and Great Tits.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ten-species-are-evolvi...

Cancer cells can ‘infect’ normal neighbours

Tiny RNAs shed by tumours can transform healthy cells into cancerous ones.
When a cancer cell throws out its trash, it can turn healthy neighbours into fellow tumour cells, researchers have found.

Many cells, including cancerous ones, shed thousands of tiny membrane-bound vesicles called exosomes that contain proteins, DNA and RNA. The process is thought to be a waste-management system, but it may also facilitate cell-to-cell communication: some of these vesicles can then merge with other cells and dump their payload inside.

In a study published online on 23 October in Cancer Cell1, researchers show that when human breast-cancer exosomes can cause tumours when mixed with normal cells then injected into mice. The results could pave the way to finding markers to monitor the progression of cancer, and possibly even point to targets for therapies.
http://www.nature.com/news/cancer-cells-can-infect-normal-neighbour...

Scientists have opened the blood-brain barrier for the first time
For the first time in humans, researchers have managed to penetrate the brain’s protector, meaning that doctors will be able to deliver drugs to previously inaccessible parts of the brain.
The blood-brain barrier is a network of cells that separates the brain from the rest of the body, preventing harmful toxins and chemicals in the blood stream from entering the brain tissue. This blocking mechanism makes it very difficult to deliver drugs to the brain for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders and cancer.

This protective barrier has been opened in animals but never in humans, until now. A medical start-up company CarThera in France, have opened and closed the barrier on demand with the help of an ultrasound brain implant and an injection of microbubbles.

The findings were presented last week at the Focused Ultrasound symposium in the US by Michael Canney, a neuroscientist at CarThera. The study involved the treatment of glioblastoma - the most aggressive form of brain cancer - in four patients. Patients with glioblastoma usually need surgery to remove the tumour, after which they are given chemotherapy drugs to destroy any remaining cancerous cells. The blood-brain barrier becomes leaky when a tumour is present, so a small amount of the drugs are able to enter the brain.
To penetrate the barrier, the surgeons first inserted a tiny ultrasound brain implant into the patients’ skulls. They then injected microbubbles to counter the ultrasound imaging. When the ultrasound’s pulses collided with the bubbles, it caused them to vibrate, pushing apart the cells of the blood-brain barrier. To confirm the observations, an MRI scan showed that the microbubbles were effectively crossing the blood-brain barrier.
The team estimate that the novel approach keeps the barrier open for up to six hours, allowing enough time to deliver high dosages of the drugs.

Erratic rain patterns can change the taste of your tea
You may have noticed that sometimes your brew tastes ‘different’. According to a new study, this is because shifting rain patterns affect key compounds in tea that determine its flavour.
There are a number of major antioxidant compounds found in tea leaves that influence its taste and health properties. The concentration of secondary metabolites, which are the compounds in tea that determine its quality and health benefits, can be up to 50 percent lower following an extreme monsoon, as suggested in a study by researchers at Montana State University in the US.

The results, which are published in PLOS ONE, are based on a chemical analysis of samples of Camellia sinensis - a plant from which many popular teas, such as green tea, oolong, and black tea, are harvested. Each of these teas are processed differently to attain varying levels of oxygen, which give them their unique flavour.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/msu-nss102214.php

People with implants such as pacemakers, cochlear implants and spinal cord pain relief implants, can’t go near an MRI machine due to its magnetic force. Not only does it risk pulling their implants out, it also has 10 times the radio frequency of a microwave oven, and can cook tissue surrounding any devices containing an electrode in the body.

However, MRIs are an important part of diagnosing diseases such as cancer, so right now scientists are urgently trying to develop devices that will help doctors to better treat patients with implants. That’s where this human fish tank, named the phantom case, comes in.
Researchers at the University of Waikato in New Zealand have created a human-shaped fish tank that’s filled with jelly, and they’re sticking implants into it in order to create medical devices that can travel through MRI machines.
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/news-events/media/2014/10human-replicant-a...

“So many people are fitted with medical equipment such as spinal cord, deep brain and cochlear implants and pacemakers, but if you have one of these devices, you can’t go into an MRI machine because of the electromagnetic and magnetic risks,” said engineering professor Jonathan Scott from the University of Waikato in a press release. “Our goal is to find a non-magnetic material for the electrode that that won’t be affected by the [radio frequency] fields.”

Scott became involved in the project after hearing about recipients of spinal cord implants who couldn’t undergo potentially life-saving MRI scans.

Algal virus found in humans, slows brain activity
It’s not such a stretch to think that humans can catch the Ebola virus from monkeys and the flu virus from pigs. After all, they are all mammals with fundamentally similar physiologies. But now researchers have discovered that even a virus found in the lowly algae can make mammals its home. The invader doesn’t make people or mice sick, but it does seem to slow specific brain activities.

The virus, called ATCV-1, showed up in human brain tissue several years ago, but at the time researchers could not be sure whether it had entered the tissue before or after the people died. Then, it showed up again in a survey of microbes and viruses in the throats of people with psychiatric disease. Pediatric infectious disease expert Robert Yolken from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues were trying to see if pathogens play a role in these conditions. At first, they didn't know what ATCV-1 was, but a database search revealed its identity as a virus that typically infects a species of green algae found in lakes and rivers.
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/10/algal-virus-found-humans...

Ecologist Mark Browne knew he’d found something big when, after months of tediously examining sediment along shorelines around the world, he noticed something no one had predicted: fibers. Everywhere. They were tiny and synthetic and he was finding them in the greatest concentration near sewage outflows. In other words, they were coming from us.

In fact, 85% of the human-made material found on the shoreline were microfibers, and matched the types of material, such as nylon and acrylic, used in clothing.

It is not news that microplastic – which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines as plastic fragments 5mm or smaller – is ubiquitous in all five major ocean gyres. And numerous studies have shown that small organisms readily ingest microplastics, introducing toxic pollutants to the food chain.

But Browne’s 2011 paper announcing his findings marked a milestone, according to Abigail Barrows, an independent marine research scientist based in Stonington, Maine, who has helped to check for plastic in more than 150 one-liter water samples collected around the world. “He’s fantastic – very well respected” among marine science researchers, says Barrows. “He is a pioneer in microplastics research.”
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es201811s

Some good news: relieved to hear this. As long as religion doesn't clash with science and hinder its progress, scientists will have open minds about considering co-existing with religion.

Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are right and God isn't 'a magician with a magic wand'

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”.

“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.

He added: “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment.