The science of human decomposition:
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/28/7078151/body-farm-texas-freeman-ranch...

And more good news:

The Government of Kerala will team up with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to promote science education and research among students. ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan on Monday backed Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s proposal to use the euphoria created by the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) to ignite young minds and encourage students to take to science.

Cephalopods, which include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, are among nature’s most skillful camouflage artists, able to change both the color and texture of their skin within seconds to blend into their surroundings — a capability that engineers have long struggled to duplicate in synthetic materials. (Learn more: http://mitsha.re/1o3Ensl)

Now, a team of researchers has come closer than ever to achieving that goal, creating a flexible material that can change its color or fluorescence and its texture at the same time, on demand, under remote control.

Using a naturally occurring protein, scientists have designed a drug nanocarrier that can deliver high doses of cancer drugs to tumors.
Harnessing Nature’s Design To Reduce Chemo Side-Effects
Using a naturally-occurring protein, researchers have designed a nanocarrier that can deliver a high concentration of drugs specifically to tumors. These results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help reduce the side effect of chemotherapy drugs.

In recent years, nanotechnology has been applied to develop drug nanocarriers that can precisely target and kill tumor cells, reducing damages to normal tissue. An ideal nanocarrier for drug delivery should be able to carry high doses of therapeutic drugs, target at tumor cells specifically and have favorable physicochemical properties and biocompatibility.

However, integrating all these characteristics into a single carrier has been complicated. So far, no targeted nanoparticle system has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, reflecting in part the complexity of designing particles that meet all of the criteria required for accurate drug delivery.

Professor Yan Xiyun and her colleagues at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences have recently discovered a nanocarrier ideal for efficient anti-tumor drug delivery. They used a naturally-occurring protein, H-ferritin, to form a nanocage that does not require any surface functionalization or property modulation. The new nanocarrier specifically delivers high doses of the therapeutic drug doxorubicin to tumor cells and completely inhibits tumor growth with only a single dose treatment, while exhibiting excellent safety profiles and biocompatibility.

The idea of employing naturally existed materials for targeted drug delivery, instead of focusing on complex particle engineering is a shift in the design concept of drug carriers. The authors hope that it will lead to new directions and methodologies in developing new safe and biocompatible nanomaterials in vivo.
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/41/14900

Mental Leaps Cued by Memory’s Ripples

The same mental processes that organize memories may also coordinate how we make decisions.
http://www.quantamagazine.org/20141022-mental-leaps-cued-by-memorys...

Aircraft that are propelled by beams of light and not fuel...

A new method for improving the thrust-generated by laser-propulsion systems may bring people one step closer to practical use, scientists say. The method, developed by physicists Yuri Rezunkov of the Institute of Optoelectronic Instrument Engineering, Russia and Alexander Schmidt of the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute in Saint Petersburg, Russia has been described in The Optical Society's (OSA) journal Applied Optics.
Currently, the maximum speed of a spacecraft is limited by the amount of fuel that it can carry. Achieving higher speeds means that more fuel must be burned — fuel that has to be carried by the craft, researchers said. These burdensome loads can be reduced, however, if a laser — located at a remote location and not on the spacecraft — were used to provide additional propulsive force. A number of systems have been proposed that can produce such laser propulsion. One of the most promising systems involves a process called laser ablation, in which a pulsed laser beam strikes a surface, heats it up, and burns off material to create a plasma plume — a column of charged particles that flow off the surface.

The outflowing of plasma plume generates additional thrust to propel the craft.

Rezunkov and Schmidt describe a new system that integrates a laser-ablation propulsion system with the gas blasting nozzles of a spacecraft.

Combining the two systems, researchers found, can increase the speed of the gas flow out of the system to supersonic speeds while reducing the amount of burned fuel.

The researchers show that the effectiveness of current laser-propulsion techniques is limited by instability of supersonic gases as they flow through the gas nozzle, as well as production of shock waves that "choke" the nozzle. But those effects can be reduced with the help of a laser-ablation plasma plume. Coupling ablation jet with supersonic gas flow through the nozzle, they found, significantly improves the overall thrust. "These techniques can be used not only for launching small satellites but also for additional acceleration of supersonic aircrafts to achieve Mach 10 and more," Rezunkov said.

Why Scientists Make Promises They Can't Keep
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/scientists-make-pr...

Scientists step up work to find and contain 'the Ebolas of the future'

scientists are stepping up efforts to prevent the next pandemic.Teams of researchers have fanned out across the globe, trapping bats in China, rats in Vietnam and monkeys in West Africa in an effort to identify dangerous viruses before they cross into humans. Others are working in labs, screening hundreds of thousands of compounds to disarm the pathogens.

“Instead of chasing the last epidemic, which is how we practiced historically, we want to be proactive, to get ahead of the curve,” said Dr. Jonna Mazet, a veterinary epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis, and director of PREDICT, a government-funded network of scientists who hunt viruses in disease hotspots around the world.

In the last five years, PREDICT researchers, who work in 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, have identified 800 new viruses.

Evaluation of mycotoxins, mycobiota, and toxigenic fungi in selected medicinal plants of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Herbal medicines such as licorice, Indian rennet and opium poppy, are at risk of contamination with toxic mould, according to a new study published in Fungal Biology. The authors of the study, from the University of Peshawar, Pakistan say it’s time for regulators to control mold contamination.
Medicinal plant samples were analyzed for mycotoxin and mould contamination.
•

Natural occurrence of aflatoxins and ochratoxin A was detected in the samples.
•

Exceeding levels of mould contamination mainly Aspergillus and Penicillium were shown.
•

Contamination might be due to poor storage, transport, and handling conditions.
•

Isolated fungal spp. revealed toxigenic potential after culturing on synthetic media.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878614614000981

Mechanism for spontaneous HIV 'cure'
French scientists said on Tuesday they had found the genetic mechanism by which two HIV-infected men may have experienced a "spontaneous cure", and said it offered a new strategy in the fight against AIDS.

Both men were infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), one of them 30 years ago, but never developed AIDS symptoms.

The AIDS-causing virus remained in their immune cells but was inactivated because its genetic code had been altered, the scientists said.

The change appeared to be linked to increased activity of a common enzyme named APOBEC, they theorized.

The "apparent spontaneous cure" throws up an intriguing avenue for drug engineers, the team said in a statement.

The work, published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection, was carried out by scientists at France's Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).

Fabiola Gianotti, an Italian physicist who garnered global attention 2 years ago when she and another physicist announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, has been named the next director-general of CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, where that momentous discovery was made. Gianotti will take over for current director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer on 1 January 2016, the laboratory announced.
CERN boasts the world's biggest atom smasher, the 27-kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and an annual budget equal to $1.1 billion, making it the de facto global center of particle physics. Gianotti will be the 16th director-general in the laboratory's 60-year history. She will also be the first woman, which has some leading female particle physicists cheering.

Gianotti's rise to lead one of the top global scientific institutions in the world was not always a role she saw in her future. Her initial education in Milan focused on literature, art history, ancient languages and music, the latter inspiring her to pursue a possible career in piano performance at the Milan Conservatory. But the big questions raised by her studies moved her to find answers through other disciplines.
“I thought that physics, the little bit I knew of it, would allow me to address those questions in a more practical way,” she says. “I mean, being able to give answers.”

At age 25, with a PhD in particle physics from the University of Milan, Gianotti joined CERN where the Large Hadron Collider is housed. In 2009, she became project leader of the Atlas collaboration, one of two teams working separately to find the Higgs in the collider data. As the group's spokesperson and coordinator, Gianotti had the honor of announcing the discovery of the elusive particle on July 4, 2012
As part of her new role, Gianotti not only intends to spearhead new discoveries using CERN's 16.7 mile-long Large Hadron Collider, but also promote the sciences as something that can be harmonized with the arts.

She developed a passion for cooking that remains with her today, while at school she devoured Greek, Latin and philosophy. She also took up classical dance with the aim, she once decided, of becoming a ballerina – though not any old ballerina. She had to be a star of the Bolshoi Ballet. Music remains a fundamental influence and taught her a rigorous approach to life.

"Art and physics are much closer than you would think," she told MyHero.com "Art is based on very clear, mathematical principles like proportion and harmony. At the same time, physicists need to be inventive, to have ideas, to have some fantasy."

The bizarre behavior of the quantum world — with objects existing in two places simultaneously and light behaving as either waves or particles — could result from interactions between many 'parallel' everyday worlds, a new theory suggests.

“It is a fundamental shift from previous quantum interpretations,” says Howard Wiseman, a theoretical quantum physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, who together with his colleagues describes the idea in Physical Review X.

Making tiny machines that can move through blood and other fluids that have inconsistent consistencies, or viscosities, is tough. Now scientists say that their “micro-scallop” is up to the task. The device has two shells attached at a single hinge. Magnets control how quickly the shells flap open and shut. Depending on those speeds, the viscocity of the fluid between the shells can change, propelling the 300-micrometer-wide scallop forward. The design could pave the way for similar swimmers to travel through blood and tissue and deliver therapeutic drugs to targeted areas, researchers report November 4 in Nature Communications.

Direct brain-to-brain connection has been established between humans for the second time

Scientists in the US have successfully linked the brains of six people, allowing one person to control the hands of another using just their thoughts.
Researchers from the University of Washington in the US have managed to non-invasively link-up two people’s brains and allowed them to communicate without speaking.

This is the second time they’ve succeeded in creating this brain-to-brain communication, one year after they first showed it was possible, and it brings the ability closer to real-world applications.

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

Virus pushing tigers towards extinction
Adding to the existing pressures of habitat loss, poaching and depletion of prey species, a new threat to tiger populations in the wild has surfaced in the form of a lethal virus.

According to a new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), canine distemper virus (CDV) has the potential to be a significant driver in pushing the tigers towards extinction.

While CDV has recently been shown to lead to the deaths of individual tigers, its long-term impacts on tiger populations had never before been studied, researchers said.

The authors evaluated these impacts on the Amur tiger population in Russia's Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Zapovednik (SABZ), where tiger numbers declined from 38 individuals to 9 in the years 2007 to 2012.

In 2009 and 2010, six adult tigers died or disappeared from the reserve, and CDV was confirmed in two dead tigers - leading scientists to believe that CDV likely played a role in the overall decline of the population.

Joint investigations of CDV have been an ongoing focus of scientists since its first appearance in tigers in 2003.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....

Possible alternative to antibiotics: scientists from the University of Bern have developed a novel substance for the treatment of severe bacterial infections without antibiotics, which would prevent the development of antibiotic resistance

Scientists have developed the first effective alternative to antibiotics in what is being described as a major development in the battle against superbugs.

A patient trial showed the drug was effective at eradicating the MRSA superbug. Scientists say it is unlikely the infection could develop resistance against the new treatment which is already available as a cream for skin infections.

Researchers hope to develop a pill or injectable version of the drug within five years.

Scientists beat cancer protein by 'turning it against itself'

In a new study, scientists have a new way to beat one of the most hard to pin down target proteins in cancer cells, by turning the protein's own molecular machinations against it.

Researchers at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center used a specially crafted compound to disrupt the protein's ability to rev up its own production and that of other proteins involved in tumor cell growth. The result, in laboratory samples of neuroblastoma cancer cells and in mice with an aggressive form of neuroblastoma, was death of the cancer cells and retreat of the animals' tumors, with little or no harm to normal cells. Neuroblastoma is a pediatric cancer that begins in embryonic nerve cells and generally occurs in infants and young children.

The study focused on a cell protein called MYCN, one of a family of proteins that are notorious not only for stimulating the growth and proliferation of cancer cells, but also for their ability to evade targeted drug therapies. Researchers now hope that the approach may prove effective against some of the many other cancers also characterized by a surplus of MYC-family proteins in tumor cells.

MYCN and its kin are "transcription factors," proteins that bind to DNA and influence the rate at which genetic information is used by the cell - essentially serving as brightener/dimmer switches for gene activity. Lead author Edmond Chipumuro said that as per recent studies, when transcription factors like MYC were mutated or overabundant, they could have a cancerous effect. They cause a global rise in gene expression, making genes throughout the cell more active.

Although very rare in children older than 10, neuroblastoma has been by far the most common cancer in infants. It accounts for about 7 percent of all cancers in children, and 15 percent of all pediatric cancer deaths.

Chemical biologists led by Dana-Farber's Nathanael Gray, PhD, designed and custom-made a compound called THZ1 that forms a particularly strong bond with CDK7, which is one of the many proteins used in the assembly of a super-enhancer, rendering the protein essentially nonfunctional. When researchers treated laboratory samples of MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma cells with THZ1, the tumor cells died, but normal cells were unaffected. When they used the agent to treat mice with this type of neuroblastoma, the tumors shrank markedly, with no negative side effects for the animals.

Study's senior author, Rani George explained because normal cells didn't acquire super-enhancers on these master regulators, the agent had a profound impact on neuroblastoma tissue but not on normal tissue.

-Journal CELL

Mindfulness-based cancer recovery and supportive-expressive therapy maintain telomere length relative to controls in distressed breast cancer survivors
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full
Researchers in Canada have found the first evidence to suggest that support groups that encourage meditation and yoga can actually alter the cellular activity of cancer survivors.
Good news but let us wait and watch for more evidence in this regard.

How human existence doesn't have to cost the Earth
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429941.000-how-human-existe...

--

A six year study examining the nutritional content of crops exposed to atmospheric CO2 levels projected by mid-century found worrisome drops in zinc and iron in wheat grains as well as reduced protein levels in wheat as well as rice grains -- a particularly troubling find considering that millions around the world who depend on wheat and rice for most of their iron and zinc already might not be getting enough.
-Harvard School of Public Health; BigThink.

New study on Jupiter's red spot:
The ruddy colour of Jupiter's mysterious Great Red Spot is due to the effects of sunlight rather than chemicals from beneath the planet's clouds, a new NASA study has found.

According to a new analysis from NASA's Cassini mission, the reddish-rosy crimson colour is likely a product of simple chemicals being broken apart by sunlight in the planet's upper atmosphere.

The results contradict the other leading theory for the origin of the spot's striking colour - that the reddish  colour - chemicals come from beneath Jupiter's clouds.

In the lab, the researchers blasted ammonia and acetylene gases - chemicals known to exist on Jupiter - with ultraviolet light, to simulate the Sun's effects on these materials at the extreme heights of clouds in the Great Red Spot.

This produced a reddish material, which the team compared to the Great Red Spot as observed by Cassini's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS).

They found that the light-scattering properties of their red concoction nicely matched a model of the Great Red Spot in which the red-coloured material is confined to the uppermost reaches of the giant cyclone-like feature.

Bengaluru to house Asia’s first Science Gallery
Where Art and Science collide goes the motto of Science Gallery. In four years, Bengaluru will witness a similar collision when it houses Asia's first and the world's third such prestigious gallery.

It will offer science enthusiasts in the country a chance to meet the world's biggest brains and learn about their research and innovations. The Science Gallery is likely to be set up at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 2018.

The Karnataka government on Thursday signed a memorandum of agreement with Science Gallery International (SGI), Dublin, Ireland. The first SG was set up in Dublin in 2008 and the second one is coming up in London by 2016.

Whole-Genome Sequencing of the World’s Oldest People
Analysis of world's oldest people reveals there's no gene for long life

Scientists have sequenced the entire genome of 17 of the world’s oldest living people to find that their secret is… they have no secret. Or if they do, it's just really good at hiding.

http://www.plosone.org/article/authors/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourn...
http://www.sciencealert.com/analysis-of-world-s-oldest-living-peopl...

Update on knee replacements
Two major studies published this year, researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond conducted a surgical-validity assessment. Using criteria developed in Europe, they concluded that knee replacements could be judged appropriate for only those whose arthritis in the knee was medically proven to be advanced. This means not just severe pain but also impaired physical function, like an inability to climb stairs, get out of a chair or walk without aid. Based on others' work done in Spain, the researchers also determined that surgical replacements were better suited for patients older than 65. Their reasoning? The implanted materials wear out after a couple of decades, meaning a 45-yearold patient might need an additional knee replacement during his lifetime.
In a separate study , the same researchers also found that people who were good candidates for surgery benefited substantially from the sur gery , reporting much less knee pain and much better physical functioning in the months immediately following the procedure and again two years later. On one commonly used measure of knee function, their scores improved by about 20 points on average. By contrast, subjects whose surgeries the scientists deemed inappropriate did not improve much. After a year, their scores on knee function had risen by only about two points.
The message is not that people should wait until their knees break down completely before replacing them. But they should question the need for surgery . If you do not have bone-on-bone arthritis, in which all of the cushioning cartilage in the knee is gone, think about consulting a physical therapist about exercise programs that could strengthen the joint, reducing pain and disability. Losing weight helps, too.
-Virginia Commonwealth University

Race Finished (Book)
Is there any biological foundation for current or past "racial" distinctions?
Like I said before there isn't!
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/race-finished

A team of astronomers has solved the mystery as to why certain young galaxies flame out in a blaze of glory.

These young "starburst" galaxies that would shut down their star formation to join a category scientists call "red and dead" had puzzled astronomers for long.

Starburst galaxies result from the merger or close encounter of two separate galaxies.

"To form stars you need dense gas. When the gas gets dense enough and is not too hot, small portions of of that gas can collapse to form stars. Without a lot of cool dense gas, stars cannot be formed," said Gregory Rudnick, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas in the US.

Previous research showed spouts of gas shooting outward from such galaxies at up to two million miles per hour.

But astronomers did not know of what led to the gas being expelled.

Rudnick and fellow researchers found that energy from the star formation itself created a shortage of gas within the starburst galaxies, shutting down the potential for further crafting of stars.

There is so much star formation that it is possible the energy from the star formation itself is able to stop the star formation," Rudnick added.

Black holes once thought to be responsible for causing these outflows did not have any role to play in them, said the study that appeared in the journal Monthly Notices.

This is why some galaxies lose their star forming ability.

Adaptive evolution: Can we read the future from a tree?
A new method uses genealogies based on sequence data to predict short-term evolutionary patterns.
http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e05060

Scientists Sequence Genomes of 17 World’s Oldest Living People to see if they could uncover the genetic basis for extreme human longevity.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....
Supercentenarians are the world’s oldest people, living beyond 110 years of age. 74 are alive worldwide, with 22 living in the United States.

Dr Kim and his colleagues from Stanford University, the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and the University of California Los Angeles, performed whole-genome sequencing on 17 supercentenarians to explore the genetic basis underlying their extreme longevity.
One possibility is that a specific mutation could alter the protein-coding region in a gene and confer a significant increase in longevity. Such a mutation could act in a dominant or recessive fashion, and might be shared by a significant fraction of the supercentenarian genomes.”

“Another possibility is that there may be a gene that confers extreme longevity when it is altered by any one of a number of protein alterations.”

“Many of the supercentenarians may carry variants in the same gene, but the variant in each supercentenarian may be different. The variants could act in a dominant fashion and affect only one of the two alleles. Or else they could act in a recessive fashion such that both alleles would be affected, either with the same variant or with different mutations in each allele.”

The scientists analyzed rare protein-altering variants, but found no significant evidence of enrichment for a single rare protein-altering variant or for a gene harboring different rare protein altering variants in the supercentenarians compared to control genomes (379 European individuals from the 1000Genomes Project).

– Moldy houses are hard on the lungs, and new results in mice suggest that they could also be bad for the brain. Inhaling mold spores made mice anxious and forgetful, researchers reported November 15 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Cheryl Harding, a psychologist at the City University of New York, and colleagues dripped low doses of spores from the toxic mold Stachybotrys into mouse noses three times per week. After three weeks, the mice didn’t look sick. But they had trouble remembering a fearful place. The mice were also more anxious than normal counterparts. The anxiety and memory deficits went along with decreases in new brain cells in the hippocampus — a part of the brain that plays a role in memory — compared with control mice.

Harding and colleagues also found that the behaviors linked to increased inflammatory proteins in the hippocampus. Exposure to mold’s toxins and structural proteins may trigger an immune response in the brain. The findings, Harding says, may help explain some of the conditions that people living in moldy buildings complain about, such as anxiety and cognitive problems.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mold-may-mean-bad-news-brain

Antiviral microbicides effective against HIV in lab tests have had inconsistent results in people. A new study that includes semen and vaginal fluids, often missing elements in laboratory studies, finds that semen actually inhibits microbicides from killing HIV.

But the study, published in the November 12 Science Translational Medicine, also finds that semen didn’t diminish the antiviral effect of one microbicidal drug called maraviroc, which works differently from others. While most microbicides target components of HIV itself, maraviroc targets the receptor protein that serves as the entry point on cells that HIV is seeking to invade.

Maraviroc stopped infection when tested in cervical cells exposed to semen-treated HIV, suggesting that agents targeting these protein receptors on cells might be more promising than those aimed at the virus itself.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/semen-seems-counter...

Science and magic:

The magician deals out six cards and asks the spectator to reveal only the color of each card. The spectator then chooses one of them and the Phoney app miraculously predicts his or her card.

A lot of science in this illusion. Part of it was a matter of probability. “Think of it as a sequence of six, where each card can be a 1 or a 0, black or red,” Williams says. “That’s 26, or 64 different combinations. There are only 52 cards in a deck, so we have enough information.”

There was also a cognitive element. people studied card preferences, and found that subjects had a strong inclination toward high-ranking cards, red cards and hearts. They programmed this app to recognize these preferences when predicting which card the spectator had chosen.

During the actual performance, several illusions happen at once. First, a fresh deck of cards is cut but never actually shuffled. Then, as the spectator calls out each card’s color, the magician uses a fake lock screen—Watch the video again, carefully!—to enter that information into the system. Finally, the app combines preprogrammed preferences with probability calculations to choose the most likely card. Magicians have a lot of experience, and a lot of that depends on the human component—[they] use the fact that human beings are what they are. Of course, that’s all based on mathematical principles.

Were Neanderthals a Separate Species? Scientists Say Yes, By a Nose

Our genes suggest that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, and that's led some anthropologists to claim Homo neanderthalensis should be considered a subspecies of Homo sapiens rather than a separate species. But other researchers disagree, and one team of specialists says the Neanderthals' nasal anatomy proves they were a species of their own. The comparisons of 3-D coordinates from CT scans of ancient fossils are published in the November issue of The Anatomical Record. "By looking at the complete morphological pattern, we can conclude that Neanderthals are our close relatives, but they are not us," Jeffrey Laitman, an anatomist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said in a news release.

Two new subatomic particles whose existence was predicted by Canadian particle physicists have been detected at the world's largest particle collider.

The discovery of the particles, known as Xi_b'- and Xi_b*-, were announced by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research today and published online on the physics preprint server Arxiv.They have been submitted to the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.
The new particles are baryons – a type of particle each made up of three elemental subatomic particles called quarks. The protons and neutrons that make up atoms are also baryons, but the new particles are about six times more massive than a proton.

That's because they contain a very heavy kind of quark called a b quark – also known as a beauty or bottom quark. The two other quarks in the particles are the d or down quark – a very light type of quark that is also found in protons and neutrons – and a middleweight strange quark.

Shaping the oral microbiota through intimate kissing
http://www.microbiomejournal.com/content/2/1/41
. A single 10-second smooch can transfer tens of millions of bacteria from one partner to the other. That’s the finding from a study.
More than 700 different bacteria are estimated to live in the human mouth. To find out how macking mixes microbes, Dutch scientists asked 21 couples to French kiss.
Similarity indices of microbial communities show that average partners have a more similar oral microbiota composition compared to unrelated individuals, with by far most pronounced similarity for communities associated with the tongue surface. An intimate kiss did not lead to a significant additional increase of the average similarity of the oral microbiota between partners. However, clear correlations were observed between the similarity indices of the salivary microbiota of couples and self-reported kiss frequencies, and the reported time passed after the latest kiss. In control experiments for bacterial transfer, we identified the probiotic Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium marker bacteria in most kiss receivers, corresponding to an average total bacterial transfer of 80 million bacteria per intimate kiss of 10 s.

This study indicates that a shared salivary microbiota requires a frequent and recent bacterial exchange and is therefore most pronounced in couples with relatively high intimate kiss frequencies. The microbiota on the dorsal surface of the tongue is more similar among partners than unrelated individuals, but its similarity does not clearly correlate to kissing behavior, suggesting an important role for specific selection mechanisms resulting from a shared lifestyle, environment, or genetic factors from the host. Furthermore, our findings imply that some of the collective bacteria among partners are only transiently present, while others have found a true niche on the tongue’s surface allowing long-term colonization.

Banking culture primes people to cheat

Individual bankers behave honestly — except when they think about their jobs.
http://www.nature.com/news/banking-culture-primes-people-to-cheat-1...

To be a swift runner you need strong muscles, a powerful heart, determination and — symmetrical knees? That’s what scientists learned when they studied some of the world’s top sprinters.
Among the very best sprinters in the world, knee symmetry predicts who’s going to be the best of the best.
- Plos One

IIT-M Joins CERN to Explore The Secrets of The Universe
Led by an expert who was part of the ATLAS experiment that helped find the Higgs Boson by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras has become a full member of a collaboration with the Geneva-based organisation in search of the structure of the universe.

While reputed institutions including TIFR, BARC and a few others have been partnering with CERN, IIT-M is the first IIT to come on board of the prestigious LHC experiment.

According to Prafulla Kumar Behera, an associate professor with the department of physics, this initiative will help the institute strengthen its capabilities in fundamental research. "CERN is home to a lot of innovations, including the world wide web. This collaboration is like a bridge that would connect us to the highest level of scientific research while offering them our talent and expertise," Behera told The New Indian Express.

Besides him, another faculty, James Libby, and two PhD scholars have come on board on the CMS collaboration.

Tufts Study Finds Big Rise In Cost Of Drug Development
Pharmaceuticals: Benchmark report sees the cost of bringing a drug to market approaching $3 billion
http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/web/2014/11/Tufts-Study-Finds-Big-Ri...

Deceptive Practices in Drugs Research Could Become Harder
The proposed crack-down would close loopholes that allow researchers to hide negative findings and harmful side effects

US government cracks down on clinical-trials reporting

Proposed regulations would close loopholes that allow researchers to hide negative data.
http://www.nature.com/news/us-government-cracks-down-on-clinical-tr...

Horizontal gene transfer: Antibiotic genes spread far and wide
The genes responsible for antibiotics can spread between the three domains of life—Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryotes.

The genes for proteins with antibacterial properties are capable of spreading across stunning evolutionary distances (Metcalf et al., 2014). Their results suggest that our search for new antibiotics needs to be broadened if we are to take full advantage of the variety of antibacterial compounds that exist in nature.
Genes are able to move between organisms in a process known as horizontal gene transfer. This happens most frequently between individuals of the same, or closely-related species (Andam and Gogarten 2011) and is thought to be responsible for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes between bacteria. However, genes can also occasionally move between distantly-related individuals, including from one domain of life, such as Bacteria, to either Archaea or Eukaryotes (Lundin et al., 2010). Whether a gene is successfully transferred depends on a number of constraints. For instance, if the organisms inhabit different environments, there are fewer opportunities to transfer genes. Once transferred, a gene may not be compatible with the recipient, or may not provide it with an advantage. Despite these constraints, some genes have spread, via horizontal transfer, to all three domains of life, and such transfer events may have been extensive during evolution .
http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e05244#sthash.ukduippX.dpuf

How DNA Damage Leads To Cancer
Scientists have identified the protein Rad54B as a key regulator of genomic stability, making it a potential target for cancer therapy.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141111/ncomms6426/full/ncomms6426...

New light on heart disease:
Scientists now think that inflammation is a key factor in heart disease.

The older thinking was that plaque in coronary arteries caused heart attacks. Now the thinking is that it’s also due to some living tissue under plague that gets inflamed and that disrupts the plaque. We already knew statins ameliorate heart disease, and always thought it was through lipids, but here’s a new pathway.
And Statins May Protect People from Air Pollution
Statins, prescribed to lower cholesterol and reduce risks of heart attacks and strokes, seem to diminish inflammation that occurs after people breathe airborne particles.
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/nov/statins-an...
The studies on these are still underway and we will report them when the results are published.

Hormone estrogen may shield the brain after an injury
Inflammation goes down when the sex hormone increases around an injury
Estrogen can protect the brain from harmful inflammation following traumatic injury, a new study in zebra finches suggests. Boosting levels of the sex hormone in the brain might help prevent the cell loss that occurs following damage from injuries such as stroke.

Estrogen levels quadrupled around the damaged area in both male and female zebra finches after researchers gave them experimental brain injuries, Colin Saldanha and colleagues at American University in Washington, D.C., reported November 17 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. When the scientists prevented finch brains from making estrogen, inflammatory proteins at damaged sites increased.

The helpful estrogen didn’t come from gonads. It’s made within the brain by support cells called astrocytes close to the injury.

Injury inflames the brain. Initially, this inflammation recruits helpful cells to the damaged area and aids in recovery. But the long-term presence of inflammatory proteins can cause harm, killing off brain cells and reducing functions such as movement and memory. The researchers hope that by understanding how estrogen reduces inflammatory proteins, therapies might boost this natural estrogen production to keep harmful inflammation at bay.
- http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=6a2113dc...