RNAs proofread themselves!
Molecular photographs of an enzyme bound to RNA reveal a new, inherent quality control mechanism
Building a protein is a complicated process. Information is passed along from one messenger to another, creating the potential for errors every step of the way. There are separate, specialized enzymatic machines that proofread at each step, ensuring that the instructions encoded in our DNA are faithfully translated into proteins. Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have uncovered a new quality control mechanism along this path, but in a remarkable role reversal, the proofreading isn't done by an enzyme. Instead, one of the messengers itself has a built-in mechanism to prevent errors along the way.

The building blocks for proteins are carried by molecules known as transfer RNAs (tRNAs). tRNAs work with other cellular machinery to ensure that the building blocks - amino acids - are arranged in the proper order. But before a building block can be loaded onto a tRNA molecule, a three-part chemical sequence that scientists call "CCA" must be added to the tRNA. The letters are added by an appropriately named machine, the CCA-adding enzyme, and they mark the tRNA as a fully functional molecule.

If a tRNA is mutated, the CCA-adding enzyme duplicates its message. The letters now read "CCACCA," signaling that the tRNA is flawed. The cell rapidly degrades the aberrant tRNA, preventing the flawed message from propagating.

But how does the CCA-adding enzyme distinguish between normal and mutant tRNAs?

CSHL Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Leemor Joshua-Tor led a team of researchers to investigate how the CCA-adding enzyme makes this distinction. "We used X-ray crystallography - a type of molecular photography - to observe the enzyme at work, and we were surprised to find that the enzyme doesn't discriminate at all," explains Joshua-Tor. "In fact, it is the RNA that is responsible for proofreading itself."

The team used two tRNA-like molecules, called noncoding RNAs, to study the error-correcting mechanism. In previous work, Jeremy Wilusz, PhD, a former CSHL Watson School of Biological Sciences graduate student and an author on this current publication, found a noncoding RNA that is modified with a single CCA group, making it both stable and abundant. Another RNA used in the current study is normally present at negligible levels in cells, and Wilusz and CSHL Professor David Spector found that it is modified with a CCACCA sequence and is rapidly degraded. The difference between the two noncoding RNAs is a simple mutation, and the question the team addressed is how the presence of the mutation affects the addition of "CCA" sequences.

In work published in Cell's on line edition.
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2815%2900006-9

New light on comets: Courtesy Rosetta:
The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission has now found that Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko's is even stranger than initially expected.
The new comet findings, detailed in a special issue of the journal Science this week, are even calling into question an old axiom of comet research.
1. Many scientists have dubbed comets "dirty snowballs," but now it might be more appropriate to call this comet a "snowy dustball" because of its dust-to-gas ration.
2. Researchers working with Rosetta have found that the comet harbors organic compounds, carbon-based molecules that are sometimes known as the chemical building blocks of life. This marks the first time organic molecules have been detected on the surface of a comet's nucleus, according to Fabrizio Capaccioni, the principal investigator of the VIRTIS instrument on Rosetta.
3. The northern hemisphere of the comet's nucleus is also filled with dunes and ripples that look somewhat like geological markings on Earth, Mars and Venus. Comet 67P/C-G doesn't have a robust atmosphere and high gravity like those planets, and yet it still has structures resembling sand dunes. It's possible that the comet's outgassing in the active region on the comet could cause the odd surface features. The high-speed gas flows from the regions, expanding into the vacuum of space, and potentially creating the features.
4. If a person were to stand on the surface of the comet, he or she could jump very high into space because of Comet 67P/C-G's low gravity. The composition of the comet is also very diverse. You might sink in into the smooth dust where we find the thick snow-field like layers, other areas might be robust enough to carry you.
5. Comet 67P/C-G is very dark—darker than charcoal—without much water-ice on its surface potentially because it has taken multiple trips around the sun, burning off much of its ice. Right now, most of the comet's jet-creating activity is happening from the cliffs and pit walls.
6. Another study in Science this week also details new research about the temperature of the comet. It was found that the northern hemisphere of the comet is relatively warm, while the southern hemisphere is somewhat colder, indicating seasonal changes on Comet 67P/C-G.
7. Rosetta's findings have also potentially upturned a theory about how water was delivered to the early Earth. Many scientists think that comets brought Earth its water; however, the type of water found in Comet 67P/C-G is sodifferent from terrestrial water that some researchers are starting to second-guess that claim, opting instead to look at asteroids as the objects that delivered water to Earth at first.

- Space.com

I always wondered about this and I got a few answers to my questions now on psychopathics: It seems Psychopathic violent offenders' brains can't understand punishment!

Psychopathic violent offenders have abnormalities in the parts of the brain related to learning from punishment, according to an MRI study led by Sheilagh Hodgins and Nigel Blackwood. “One in five violent offenders is a psychopath. They have higher rates of recidivism and don't benefit from rehabilitation programmes. their research reveals why this is and can hopefully improve childhood interventions to prevent violence and behavioural therapies to reduce recidivism”.

Psychopathic offenders are different from regular criminals in many ways. Regular criminals are hyper-responsive to threat, quick-tempered and aggressive, while psychopaths have a very low response to threats, are cold, and their aggressively is premeditated. Evidence is now accumulating to show that both types of offenders present abnormal, but distinctive, brain development from a young age.”

In order to develop programs that prevent offending and rehabilitation programs that reduce re-offending, it is essential to identify the neural mechanisms underlying psychopath's persistent violent behaviour. They have been using Magnetic Resonance Imaging to study brain structure and function in a sample of violent offenders in England, one group with psychopathy and one without, and a sample of healthy non-offenders. They have found structural abnormalities in both gray matter and specific white matter fiber tracts among the violent offenders with psychopathy. Grey matter is mostly involved with processing information and cognition, while white matter coordinates the flow of information between different parts of the brain.

The researchers observed reductions in gray matter volumes bilaterally in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles relative to the other offenders and to the non-offenders. These brain regions are involved in empathy, the processing of pro-social emotions such as guilt and embarrassment, and moral reasoning. “Abnormalities were also found in white matter fiber tracts in the dorsal cingulum, linking the posterior cingulate cortex to the medial prefrontal cortex that were specifically associated with the lack of empathy that is typical of psychopathy. These same regions are involved in learning from rewards and punishment. In childhood, both psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders alike are repeatedly punished by parents and teachers for breaking rules and for assaulting others, and from adolescence onwards, they are frequently incarcerated. Yet they persist in engaging in violent behaviour towards others. Thus, punishment does not appear to modify their behaviour. They found that the violent offenders with psychopathy, as compared to both the violent offenders without psychopathy and the non-offenders, displayed abnormal responding to punishment within the posterior cingulate and insula when a previously rewarded response was punished. Deciding on what to do involves generating a list of possible actions, weighing the negative and positive consequences of each, and hopefully choosing the behaviour most likely to lead to a positive outcome. Offenders with psychopathy may only consider the possible positive consequences and fail to take account of the likely negative consequences. Consequently, their behavior often leads to punishment rather than reward as they had expected. “Punishment signals the necessity to change behaviour. Clearly, in certain situations, offenders have difficulty learning from punishment to change their behaviour.”

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366%2814...

Norovirus, the most common cause of gastroenteritis in the world, can be killed with "cold plasma," researchers in Germany have reported.

The virus, which elicits vomiting and diarrhea, has gained international notoriety for causing outbreaks on cruise ships.

However, such incidents represent merely a fraction of the tens of millions of cases that occur around the world each year.

The research appears in mBio journal.

Preventing norovirus outbreaks is complicated by the fact that the virus is highly resistant to several different chemical disinfectants.

Bleach, a chlorine-based solution, is currently the most effective treatment, but researchers are seeking more convenient alternatives.

One such alternative is cold plasma, also known as non-thermal plasma. This "fourth state of matter" consists of ionized gas molecules at room temperature. These ions can destroy many kinds of microbes, but their effect on viruses was less clear.

Inactivation of a Foodborne Norovirus Outbreak Strain with Nonthermal Atmospheric Pressure Plasma
http://mbio.asm.org/content/6/1/e02300-14.full

The hepatitis-liver cancer connection...
Using whole genomic sequencing, scientists from RIKEN in Japan have for the first time demonstrated the profound effect that chronic hepatitis infection and inflammation can have on the genetic mutations found in tumors of the liver, potentially paving the way to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which these chronic infections can lead to cancer. Recent studies have shown that particularly in Asia, infection with either hepatitis B or C is often associated with such cancers.
For the study, which was published in Nature Communications, the group performed whole genomic sequencing on 30 individual tumors classified as liver cancer displaying a biliary phenotype. This type of cancer originates in the liver, but is different from hepatocellular carcinoma, the dominant form of primary liver cancer, and is generally more aggressive, with poorer prognosis. They compared the data with 60 of the more-common hepatocellular carcinoma tumors. To study gene expression, they then examined RNA sequencing data from 25 of the biliary-phenotype cancers and 44 hepatocellular cancers.
Surprisingly, they found that although the patterns of gene expression—as shown by the RNA sequencing—differed between the hepatocellular carcinomas and the liver cancers with biliary phenotype and depended on the histological type, the overall pattern of mutations in the cells was actually similar between the tumors—of either type—that had emerged in patients who had had infections with either hepatitis C or B, and were different in patients without such infections. This same kind of clustering is also found in cancers with well-understood etiologies, such as melanoma (UV light) and lung cancer (smoking). According to Hidewaki Nakagawa of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences, who led the team, "This is an interesting finding and could indicate that the cancers—even of different histological types—in patients with hepatitis infections could be derived from similar cells, perhaps hepatic progenitor cells. In patients without hepatitis, we did not find any clustering, and this indicates that their cancers might have a very different cellular origin."

Through the analysis, researchers were also able to identify changes in mutations that are associated with more aggressive biliary-type liver cancers. Specifically, they found that mutations of KRAS and IDHs, which are linked to more aggressive cancers, were less common in the cancers in patients with chronic hepatitis.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150130/ncomms7120/full/ncomms7120...

Gravitational waves discovery now officially dead

Combined data from South Pole experiment BICEP2 and Planck probe point to Galactic dust as confounding signal.
A team of astronomers that last year reported evidence for gravitational waves from the early Universe has now withdrawn the claim. A joint analysis of data recorded by the team's BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole and by the European spacecraft Planck has revealed that the signal can be entirely attributed to dust in the Milky Way rather than having a more ancient, cosmic origin.

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced the long-awaited results on January 30, a day after a summary of it had been unintentionally posted online by French members of the Planck satellite team and then widely circulated before it was taken down.
http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-waves-discovery-now-offici...

Is there a The Best Position For Birth?
The time honored tradition of elevating women 15 degrees during birth does not actually reduce venous compression, study says.
New research is challenging what many obstetricians and physician anesthesiologists believe is the best way to position women during labor. According to a study published in Anesthesiology, the traditional practice of positioning women on their side does not effectively reduce compression of the inferior vena cava, a large vein located near the abdominal area that returns blood to the heart, as previously thought. "It is widely believed that lying women flat on their back during labor can lead to dangerously low blood pressure caused by the compression of both the inferior vena cava and the aorta due to the weight of the fetus," said Dr. Hideyuki Higuchi, study author from Tokyo Women's Medical University. "It is accepted by many physicians that positioning women on their side, with hips tilted at 15 degrees, during childbirth reduces this complication. However, our research found no evidence of aortic compression in pregnant women in any position and the recommended degree of tilt that most physicians follow did not reduce compression of the inferior vena cava at all. This is the first study to challenge this antiquated practice." In the study, magnetic resonance images (MRI) of ten pregnant women at full term and ten non-pregnant women were obtained for measurement of the abdominal aorta, the largest artery in the abdominal cavity, and the inferior vena cava. Measurements were taken while the women laid flat on their back and while tilted at 15, 30, and 45 degrees. Foam was placed under the right side of the study participants to achieve the desired amount of tilt. The study found that abdominal aortic blood volume did not differ significantly between pregnant and non-pregnant women regardless of the position in which they were placed. Conversely, inferior vena cava blood volume was significantly lower in pregnant women than in non-pregnant women when the women were positioned flat on their back, indicating almost complete compression of the vein. Inferior vena cava blood volume did not increase at 15 degrees, but partially increased at 30 degrees. An accompanying editorial commented favorably on the study's results, but offered a word of caution: "Although it would be great to be able to conclude by saying all of our patients in the delivery room should be placed in at least 30 degrees left lateral tilt after regional anesthetic, I have serious doubts that our obstetric colleagues would find it a reasonable position for cesarean delivery, particularly in obese patients," said editorial author Dr. Craig Palmer from the University of Arizona College of Medicine. "There quite probably are patients for whom the modest (15 degree) tilt we apply has a salutary effect. However, I will have to be less dogmatic about the practice. Kudos to the authors of this study for revisiting an 'ancient' practice, applying current technology to the matter, and shedding new light on an old routine." The article can be found at: Higuchi et al. (2015) Effect of Lateral Tilt Angle on the Volume of the Abdominal Aorta and Inferior Vena Cava in Pregnant and Nonpregnant Women Determined by Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Source: American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Mercury levels in Hawaiian Yellowfin tuna – known as ahi on the plate – are on the rise, scientists report February 2 in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

Data collected in 1998 and 2008 showed that mercury levels increased at a rate of about 3.8 percent per year, the researchers say. A tuna about 75 kilograms in size might have had about 0.4 parts per million of mercury in its body in 1998. In 2008, the same-sized fish would have had around 0.6 parts per million.

The tuna’s increase in toxic baggage mirrors increasing levels of mercury pollution from human activities, such as burning coal in power plants and mining.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.2883/abstract

Scientists unlock one of Nature’s best-kept secrets: How plants make natural medicines
Scientists at the John Innes Centre have discovered how plants make valuable natural products we rely on today for use as medicines, flavours and scents. This discovery has the potential to pave the way for the creation of entirely new drugs, flavourings and cosmetic ingredients.

Most plant-derived drugs, scents and flavours contain hydrocarbon rings in their structures – and until now exactly how Nature makes them has remained a mystery.

Recent work by a team of scientists at the John Innes Centre, led by Dr Paul O'Maille, resulted in the discovery of the origins of these cyclic or ring forming reactions in plants – which yield medicines like artemisinin: the most potent antimalarial drug, as well as flavours such as ginger and scents like bergamot.

The key to their success was breeding enzymes, the protein machinery that catalyses chemical reactions in plants. In particular they focused on enzymes that catalysed the formation of terpenes: the most diverse class of predominantly cyclic (ring-containing) natural products. By breeding a pair of enzymes, one that makes linear, less complex terpenes with one that makes cyclic terpenes, Dr Melissa Salmon, the lead author on the paper, was able to localize the trait of cyclization in the protein structure.
This research was published recently in Nature Communications.

Unconscious thought not so smart after all

Study on decision-making stokes controversy over power of distracted mind.
If you have to make a complex decision, will you do a better job if you absorb yourself in, say, a crossword puzzle instead of ruminating about your options? The idea that unconscious thought is sometimes more powerful than conscious thought is attractive, and echoes ideas popularized by books such as writer Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling Blink.

Science pours in from Rosetta comet mission
GM microbes created that can’t escape the lab
Crunch time for pet theory on dark matter

But within the scientific community, ‘unconscious-thought advantage’ (UTA) has been controversial. Now Dutch psychologists have carried out the most rigorous study yet of UTA — and find no evidence for it.

Their conclusion, published this week in Judgement and Decision Making, is based on a large experiment that they designed to provide the best chance of capturing the effect should it exist, along with a sophisticated statistical analysis of previously published data.
http://www.nature.com/news/unconscious-thought-not-so-smart-after-a...

A study, published in the journal Science recently, used a mathematical model to simulate the changes that take place during desertification and matched the theoretical results with real observations in termite-inhabited regions on the edge of deserts. And it was found that mounds of soil made by termites when they build their high-rise nests have been found to hold back the encroachment of deserts in dry, savannah grasslands threatened with desertification.
The ground surrounding termite mounds store nutrients and water better than it otherwise would, which allows plants to grow and flourish while the empty, termite-free land further away dries out, the researchers said.

A study discovered that the myriad of tiny underground tunnels created by termites when they build their multi-storey nests allow rainwater to penetrate the soil which helps to slow the spread of deserts in the dry grasslands of Africa, South America and Asia.

“The rain is the same everywhere, but because termites allow water to penetrate the soil better, the plants grow on or near the mounds as if there were more rain.
So, termites stop desertification! Termite mounds are a boon to ecology!

AVIAN INFLUENZA
Are Wild Birds to Blame?
Almost as soon as H5N1 avian influenza began its deadly sweep across Asia, people fingered migratory birds as likely culprits in its spread. Migrating birds offer an obvious way to connect the dots of H5N1 outbreaks along the east coast of Asia and, in just the past few months, its unexpected cross-continent jump to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. Moreover, researchers have long known that these birds commonly harbor less virulent flu viruses, and many wild birds mingle with Asia's free-ranging domestic poultry, which have been decimated by H5N1.

But avian experts have been almost universally skeptical that wild birds are spreading the virus. One reason is that sampling of tens of thousands of birds has failed to turn up a single healthy wild bird carrying the pathogenic strain of H5N1, which has caused the death of more than 100 million domestic birds—and at least 60 humans—in Asia. Evidence so far suggests that H5N1 kills wild ducks and geese nearly as efficiently as it does chickens. “Dead ducks don't fly” has been the refrain, as avian experts point out that sick and dying birds simply can't spread viruses very far. Instead, epidemiologists investigating the virus's jump, even to geographically far-flung regions, keep turning up evidence suggesting that the poultry trade and other human activities are responsible.

Now, however, evidence implicating wild birds is starting to convince even some of the doubters. “Until about 2 months ago, I was pretty skeptical on whether wild birds were playing a role,” says David Suarez, a virologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia. “But now I feel that there is much stronger evidence that wild birds are spreading the virus.” What changed his mind, he says, was the death of 100 or so ducks, gulls, geese, and swans from H5N1 at a remote lake in Mongolia that he believes can't be explained by human activities. And, he and others add, in an unexpected twist, it's beginning to look as though the culprits might not be the long-suspected migratory waterfowl but another yet-unidentified wild species.

The implications are huge. If wild birds are carrying the disease, says Suarez, “it will be difficult or impossible to control the spread from country to country.” Nailing down the answer became even more urgent last week with the confirmation that H5N1 has now entered Europe.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/310/5747/426.full?sid=2cf74c06-2d...

Psychobiotics: How gut bacteria mess with your mind

WE HAVE all experienced the influence of gut bacteria on our emotions. Just think how you felt the last time you had a stomach bug. Now it is becoming clear that certain gut bacteria can positively influence our mood and behaviour. The way they achieve this is gradually being uncovered, raising the possibility of unlocking new ways to treat neurobehavioural disorders such as depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

We acquire our intestinal microbes immediately after birth, and live in an important symbiotic relationship with them. There are far more bacteria in your gut than cells in your body, and their weight roughly equals that of your brain. These bacteria have a vast array of genes, capable of producing hundreds if not thousands of chemicals, many of which influence your brain.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129530.400-psychobiotics-ho...|NSNS|2015-0702-AUS-febemi2_apac|evergreen&utm_medium=EMP&utm_source=NSNS&utm_campaign=FebEMi2_APAC&utm_content=evergreen

Recent infections may curb risk of rheumatism
Recent gut and urinary tract infections may curb the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, suggests a new study from Karolinska Institutet published online in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. According to the researchers, one possible explanation could lie in the way in which these infections alter the types of bacteria resident in the gut (microbiome).

The research team set out to look at the impact of different types of infection on the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis in almost 6500 people living in south and central Sweden.
All participants were asked whether they had had any gut, urinary tract, or genital infections in the preceding two years. They were also asked if they had had prostatitis (inflamed prostate), or antibiotic treatment for sinusitis, tonsillitis/other throat infection, or pneumonia during this time.

Gut, urinary tract, and genital infections within the preceding two years were each associated with a significantly lowered risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis: 29 percent, 22 percent, and 20 percent, respectively. Further, having all three types of infection in the preceding two years was linked to a 50 percent lower risk, after taking account of influential factors.

By contrast, no such associations were found for recent respiratory infections and pneumonia. Factoring in smoking and socioeconomic background made no difference to the overall findings. However, since this is an observational study researchers point out that no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.
Conclusions Gastrointestinal and urogenital infections, but not respiratory infections, are associated with a significantly lowered risk of RA. The results indicate that infections in general do not affect the risk for RA, but that certain infections, hypothetically associated with changes in the gut microbiome, could diminish the risk.
http://ard.bmj.com/content/early/2015/01/16/annrheumdis-2014-206493

Copper's link to Parkinson’s Disease

Tuna keep their hearts warm in cold depths - how this is done?
It may be a little odd sounding, but tuna are very cold hearted creatures. No, they aren't unnecessarily cruel or stoic in life. Instead, they just can literally have cold hearts, with the organ somehow able to keep functioning even when deep-diving chills it to temperatures that would stop a human heart. Now researcher think they know how the fish is capable of this amazing feat.

Bluefin tuna have increasingly been spotted in East Greenland waters, and scientists are mystified as to what is driving this northward movement.
Bluefin Tuna Mysteriously Move to East Greenland Waters
The Pacific Bluefin tuna, a fish popular among sushi eaters, is verging on the brink of extinction as the global food market places
Sushi Eaters Push Bluefin Tuna Towards Extinction

"Tunas are at a unique place in bony fish evolution" researcher Barbara Block at Stanford University explained in a recent statement. "Their bodies are almost like ours - endothermic (warm blooded/bodied), but their heart is running as all fish at ambient temperatures. How the heart keeps pumping as the fish moves into the colder water is the key to their expanded global range."

As detailed in a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Block and her colleagues looked to bluefin tuna to learn more about this fascinating ability. A top predator of the Pacific Ocean, the bluefin are renown for their epic migrations, traveling far in search of prey and diving chillingly deep - up to 1000 meters below the ocean surface.

"When tunas dive down to cold depths their body temperature stays warm but their heart temperature can fall by 15°C within minutes," added Holly Shiels, from the University of Manchester. "The heart is chilled because it receives blood directly from the gills which mirrors water temperature. This clearly imposes stress upon the heart but it keeps beating, despite the temperature change. In most other animals the heart would stop."

Shiels, Block, and Manchester researcher Gina Gali reportedly used electromagnetic tags to monitor bluefins in their lengthy migration from the waters of Japan all the way to the Californian coast. The tags allowed them to measure the depth at which each fish swam on its journey, its internal body temperature at any one point, and the ambient water temperature surrounding it. This data was then reapplied in lab simulations using single tuna heart cells to see how they beat.

The trio found out that rushes of adrenaline during dives helped keep essential calcium circulating in the tunas' hearts, which kept them pumping their chilled blood.

"We were recording the fish swimming down into colder depths only to resurface quickly into the warmer surface waters, a so called 'bounce' dive," said Block. " From work at sea and in the lab we now know the fish hearts slow as they cool and as they resurfaced it sped up. Our findings suggest adrenalin, activated by the stress of diving, plays a key role in maintaining the heart's capacity to supply the body with oxygen."

Now the researchers are wondering if this is a new and unique mechanic among only tuna, or if other species have taken on this adaptation as well.

New type of chemical bond discovered : vibrational bond.
This vibrational bond seems to break the law of chemistry that states if you increase the temperature, the rate of reaction will speed up. Back in 1989, a team from the University of British Columbia investigated the reactions of various elements to muonium (Mu) - a strange, hydrogen isotope made up of an antimuon and an electron. They tried chlorine and fluorine with muonium, and as they increased the heat, the reaction time sped up, but when they tried bromine (br), a brownish-red toxic and corrosive liquid, the reaction time sped up as the temperature decreased.

Perhaps, thought one of the team, chemist Donald Flemming, when the bromine and muonium made contact, they formed a transitional structure made up of a lightweight atom flanked by two heavier atoms. And the structure was joined not by van der Waal’s forces - as would usually be expected - but by some kind of temporary ‘vibrational’ bond that had been proposed several years earlier.
"In this scenario, the lightweight muonium atom would move rapidly between two heavy bromine atoms, 'like a Ping Pong ball bouncing between two bowling balls,' Fleming says. The oscillating atom would briefly hold the two bromine atoms together and reduce the overall energy, and therefore speed, of the reaction.”
"Fundamental Change in the Nature of Chemical Bonding by Isotopic Substitution"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201408211/abstract
The research team watched as the light muonium and heavy bromine formed a temporary bond. “The lightest isotopomer, BrMuBr, with Mu the muonium atom, alone exhibits vibrational bonding in accord with its possible observation in a recent experiment on the Mu + Br2 reaction.
Accordingly, BrMuBr is stabilised at the saddle point of the potential energy surface due to a net decrease in vibrational zero point energy that overcompensates the increase in potential energy.”

In other words, the vibration in the bond decreased the total energy of the BrMuBr structure, which means that even when the temperature was increased, there was not enough energy to see an increase in the reaction time.

While the team only witnessed the vibrational bond occurring in a bromine and muonium reaction, they suspect it can also be found in interactions between lightweight and heavy atoms, where van der Waal’s forces are assumed to be at play.

"The work confirms that vibrational bonds - fleeting though they may be - should be added to the list of known chemical bonds

We are close to eradicating the second disease ever from the planet, the first one is small pox, now we have our sights set on Guinea worm disease.

There are only 126 cases of Guinea worm left in the world before the parasite is gone from humans forever. It is caused by the Guinea worm parasite, Dracunculiasis, and just happens to be one of the most horrible conditions. The Guinea worm infects people who drink water contaminated with its larvae, and it now only exists in four countries in Africa. But that wasn't always the case. In 1986, there were 3.5 million cases of infection reported across Africa and Asia.
A war was declared on the parasite by Carter Centre Foundation - and 30 years later, they are almost won. Thanks to their program, which uses filter technology and education to help disrupt the life cycle of the Guinea worm, the center has announced that there are now only 126 cases left of the parasite.
The life cycle of the Guinea worm is pretty terrifying in itself - once it's infected a host, the larvae develops into a pale worm that can stretch up to one metre long . This growth period lasts for around 12 months, during which time the host might not even know they're infected. And then a painful blister will suddenly appear somewhere on the host's body - usually the foot or another sensitive region. That's when the worst part begins - the worm starts to emerge out of its host's skin over an agonising 30-day period. In an attempt to ease this pain, the infected human often lays down in water to try to wash the worm out of their body or sooth the wounds - but this actually allows the worm to lay its eggs and start the whole cycle again.
The Carter Centre realised that although the disease was widespread, the fact that it was only caused by one parasite meant that it, effectively, could be stopped. They then worked with communities to explain the parasite's life cycle, and to keep them away from water while their worms exited their bodies.

But most importantly, they developed a simple and cheap straw filter to help eliminate parasites from drinking water. The "pipe filter" as it's called, involves a small piece of steel mesh inside a plastic drinking tube, and it ensures that the water being drunk is free of the tiny worms.

Of course, the parasites aren't gone just yet, and it's hard to know just how long it will take before we can say the disease is gone for good.

But it's inspiring to think that, simply by using education and very basic technology, we can stop a devastating disease in its track!

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/carter-center-gui...

This sea slug ‘feeds’ on sunlight using photosynthesis

Part flora, part fauna, this pretty green sea slug has gained the ability to photosynthesise by stealing genes from the algae it feeds on.
After decades of searching, scientists have finally found direct evidence to show that the emerald green sea slug (Elysia chlorotica) takes genes from the algae it eats to perform photosynthetic processes, just like a plant. This means it can get all the energy it needs from sunlight, allowing it to survive without food for months.

“There is no way on earth that genes from an alga should work inside an animal cell”. And yet here, they do. They allow the animal to rely on sunshine for its nutrition. So if something happens to their food source, they have a way of not starving to death until they find more algae to eat.

Scientists have known for over 40 years that the emerald green sea slug takes chloroplasts - organelles found in plant and algal cells that facilitate photosynthesis - from the yellow-green algae it eats, called Vaucheria litorea. Referred to as ‘kleptoplasty’, this process allows the chloroplasts to continue photosynthesising in their new sea slug home for up to nine months after transferring from the algae. By photosynthesising, the sea slug produces lipids when the energy from the sunlight is combined with water and carbon dioxide, which gives it all the nourishment it needs, no additional food required.
But exactly how the emerald green sea slug manages to maintain these organelles in working order for so long has proven to be a complex puzzle - one that was not made easier by an experiment completed by researchers at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany in 2013. The team gave their emerald green sea slugs a drug that completely halted any photosynthetic activity in their cells, but the slugs still managed to survive for 55 days, without any food. They ended up a little smaller and paler, so food wouldn’t have gone astray if they were offered it, but it was proof that the organelles they 'stole' from their last algae meal were somehow still working for them.
"In order to photosynthesise, the chloroplasts inside an alga depend on many genes in the alga’s own nucleus and the proteins for which they code. Tearing chloroplasts out of algal cells and asking them to make food inside a slug’s gut is like expecting the bottom half of a blender to puree some carrots sans the blade and glass jar.”

So where are these genes that the chloroplasts depend on? Reported in The Biological Bulletin, fluorescent DNA markers were used to track the genes from the algae as they made their way into the genetic material of both juvenile and adult emerald green sea slugs. And for the first time, the research team watched as these genes produced an enzyme that’s critical to the proper photosynthetic function of the chloroplasts.

“This paper confirms that one of several algal genes needed to repair damage to chloroplasts, and keep them functioning, is present on the slug chromosome. The gene is incorporated into the slug chromosome and transmitted to the next generation of slugs.”

So while the young emerald green sea slugs still need to feed on the algae to get their supply of chloroplasts, the genes they need to turn these chloroplasts in to little photosynthetic machines have already been passed down to them from their parents.

"Importantly, this is one of the only known examples of functional gene transfer from one multicellular species to another, which is the goal of gene therapy to correct genetically based diseases in humans.
Sources: The Marine Biological Laboratory Blog, Scientific American, Smithsonian.com

Efficient solar-to-fuels production from a hybrid microbial–water-splitting catalyst system

A new way to make fuel from sunlight: starve a microbe nearly to death, then feed it carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced with the help of voltage from a solar panel. A newly developed bioreactor feeds microbes with hydrogen from water split by special catalysts connected in a circuit with photovoltaics. Such a batterylike system may beat either purely biological or purely technological systems at turning sunlight into fuels and other useful molecules.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/06/1424872112

For Precision, Two Clocks Are Better Than One The optical lattice clocks use lasers to create “egg box” structures that contain single atoms, leading to unprecedented precision.
Cryogenic optical lattice clocks
http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.20...

So you think as your original age is just 31, you are likely to live another 40-50 years without any doubt. Is your thinking right ? Not necessarily according to new research.
"DNA methylation age of blood predicts all-cause mortality in later life"
We count our age in calendar years, but our bodies may not be counting the same way. Using a biological clock that compares the aging of a person’s DNA to their actual age, University of Queensland researchers have found some clear signals to life expectancy. Professor Naomi Wray, from UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), said the study found that people with a “biological” or DNA age greater than their true age were more likely to die younger, compared to those whose biological and true age were closely matched. “Last year, it was discovered that from a simple blood sample it is possible to predict a person’s age with a high degree of accuracy,” Wray said. “But it is not totally accurate, and some people’s predicted or ‘biological’ age is higher than their actual age and vice versa.” “Our study showed biological age really does seem to be tracking biological wear-and-tear.” The study, published in Genome Biology, used data from four independent studies that sampled almost 5,000 older people, of whom about 10 percent died in the following 14 years. Each participant’s biological age was measured from a blood sample at the outset. The research showed that those with a higher biological age compared to actual age had an increased risk of death. All four studies found the same pattern, with death linked to accelerated biological changes to DNA. Wray said the study could not look at what caused the DNA to change at an accelerated pace, nor was it an accurate predictor of death for an individual person. “However, it’s an important clue for future research in the study of cellular ageing,” she said. “What we’re seeing could be caused by environmental, lifestyle, genetic predispositions, or a combination of all these factors.” The QBI’s Dr. Allan McRae, who conducted analyses for the study, said biological ageing was measured by following DNA changes caused by a process known as methylation. “Methylation affects whether genes are turned on or off, which has important repercussions for conditions such as disease susceptibility, so it makes sense that the biological clock speeding up has impacts on how we age,” McRae said.
http://genomebiology.com/2015/16/1/25/abstract

Researchers have succeeded in inducing human embryonic stem cells to self-organize into a three-dimensional structure similar to the cerebellum, providing tantalizing clues in the quest to recreate neural structures in the laboratory. Their results have been published in Cell Reports.

Full details here:

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/articleSelectPrefsTemp?Redi...

How do medical journalists treat cancer-related issues?
http://ecancer.org/journal/9/full/502-how-do-medical-journalists-tr...
Where Do Medical Journalists Find Their Sources? Direct contact with patients and doctors is favored over press releases from pharmaceutical companies, a survey of journalists reveals.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo sent self-administered questionnaires to 364 medical journalists, who described their experiences in selecting stories, choosing angles, and performing research when creating cancer-centerd news pieces. The journalists reported that they did not find pharmaceutical press releases to be helpful, preferring direct contact with physicians as their most reliable and prized sources of information. Medical journalists also report using social media and personal connections to support their research.
All journalists reported difficulties in producing accurate and interesting cancer news stories. The most commonly reported concerns were the quality of source information, difficulty in understanding technical information and a shortage of background knowledge.
As medical knowledge advances rapidly, journalists may have increasing difficulty covering cancer-related issues .
This highlights the need for responsible healthcare reporting, the team suggests, which can be attained through journalistic communication with researchers and physicians, and the willingness of healthcare professionals to explain their work carefully and clearly.
Asian Scientist Magazine : http://www.asianscientist.com/2015/02/in-the-lab/medical-journalist...

How to tell whether people got enough sleep or not

Science is like magic! Watch the wonder of it!

Hand washing focus in hospitals has led to rise in worker dermatitis
A new study from The University of Manchester has revealed that the incidence of dermatitis has increased 4.5 times in health care workers following increased hand hygiene as a drive to reduce infections such as MRSA has kicked in.

Researchers from the University's Institute of Population Health studied reports voluntarily submitted by dermatologists to a national database which is run by the University (THOR), between 1996 and 2012. Sixty percent of eligible UK dermatologists used this database which is designed to report skin problems caused or aggravated by work.

They found that out of 7,138 cases of irritant contact dermatitis reported 1,796 were in healthcare workers. When the numbers were broken down by year, health workers were 4.5 times more likely to suffer from irritant contact dermatitis in 2012 as in 1996. In two control groups, cases declined or did not change.
( Irritant contact dermatitis (ICD) is inflammation of the skin typically manifested by erythema, mild edema, and scaling. Irritant contact dermatitis is a nonspecific response of the skin to direct chemical damage that releases mediators of inflammation predominately from epidermal cells. A corrosive agent causes the immediate death of epidermal cells, manifested by chemical burns and cutaneous ulcers.)
"Campaigns to reduce these infections through frequent hand washing have been very successful and many lives have been saved. However, we need to do all we can to prevent skin irritation among these frontline workers."
The implications of increasing levels of irritant dermatitis are potentially counter-productive to the aims of infection reducing campaigns. Other studies have identified that infections can remain present for longer on damaged and broken skin and having irritated skin can put people off washing their hands.
The paper, 'The impact of national level interventions to improve hygiene on the incidence of irritant contact dermatitis in healthcare workers: changes in incidence from 1996-2012 and interrupted times series analysis', was published in the British Journal of Dermatology.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjd.13719/abstract;jsess...

Evolutionary union after 60 million year breakup!
Scientists have discovered a delicate fern in the mountains of France that is the "love child" of two distantly-related groups of plants that have not interbred in 60 million years.

For most plants and animals, reuniting after such a long hiatus is thought to be impossible due to genetic and other incompatibilities between species that develop over time.

"Reproducing after such a long evolutionary breakup is akin to an elephant hybridizing with a manatee or a human with a lemur," said study co-author Kathleen Pryer, director of Duke University Herbarium.

The genetic analyses revealed that the fern was the result of a cross between an oak fern and a fragile fern - two distantly related groups that co-occur across much of the northern hemisphere but stopped exchanging genes and split into separate lineages some 60 million years ago.

"To most people they just look like two ferns, but to fern researchers these two groups look really different," Rothfels said.

Other studies have documented instances of tree frog species that proved capable of producing offspring after going their separate ways for 34 million years, and sunfish who hybridized after nearly 40 million years, but until now those were the most extreme reunions ever recorded.

"For most plant and animal species, reproductive incompatibility takes only a few million years at the most," said co-author Carl Rothfels from the University of California, Berkeley.

The sex lives of ferns may help explain why divergent fern lineages remain compatible for so long, the researchers say.

Fern sex is no different from other creatures.

But whereas many other plants rely on birds, bees or other animals to play matchmaker, all ferns need is wind and water.

The study appeared online in the journal American Naturalist.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/an.html

Blood copper and sulfur to aid liver cancer diagnosis
A new study reports that circulating blood of patients with liver cancers reveals isotopic selectivity for 'light' copper and sulfur. The study results have potential in the development of new diagnostic methods in liver cancer. The evidence of 'cancer driven imbalances' in the isotopic ratios of stable copper (65Cu/63Cu) and sulfur (34S/32S) in the blood of patients with hepatocellular carcinomas was provided by Dr. Vincent Balter of the Université de Lyon and his colleagues.

The research team has shown selective enrichment of the blood with the lighter stable isotopes of these elements, using novel techniques adapted from earth sciences methodologies. As well, the heavier 65Cu isotope was selectively enhanced in tumors. The study was published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/982

Raman spectroscopy could help neurosurgeons find those errant cancer cells. A team led by engineer Frédéric Leblond of Montreal Polytechnique and neurosurgeon Kevin Petrecca of McGill University, also in Montreal, has developed a Raman probe that distinguishes between normal and cancer cells. They showed their method could find previously undetectable cancer cells in the brains of glioma patients .
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/274/274ra19

“It’s very uncomfortable when you’re performing an operation and are not certain if you are removing all the cancer,” because missing some can impact a patient’s survival, Petrecca says. The Raman probe, he says, allows surgeons to spot cancer cells they might have thought were normal.

To use the tool, a surgeon simply holds a fiber-optic probe in contact with the brain tissue to collect a Raman spectrum. The researchers use an algorithm that statistically analyzes the data to differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells.

The next step is to run clinical trials to demonstrate that the Raman technique can improve surgery outcomes. He and his collaborators plan to start such a trial soon.

Persistent fungal root endophytes ( those living inside hosts) isolated from a wild barley species suppress seed-borne infections in a barley cultivar.
ABSTRACT: Ten fungal root endophytes were isolated from wild populations of Hordeum murinum ssp. murinum L. and inoculated onto untreated seeds of a barley cultivar using five artificial and one soil-based growth media. A co-inoculant of all ten isolates as well as two individual isolates successfully suppressed the development of seed-borne fungal infections on germinated and ungerminated seed. The two most successful isolates were also the most persistent as re-emergents and may provide real potential for development as crop inoculants. All isolates were more persistent in barley exposed to light after germination. The soil-based compost was associated with the greatest degree of seed-borne infection suppression, and the most successful artificial medium for suppressing seed-borne infections was also the medium with the most similar pH to the soil at the sampling sites. These results suggest a direct antagonistic effect of the fungal isolates on seed-borne pathogens without the induction of plant defences.
This information can be used to control plant diseases.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/268575042_Persistent_fungal...

--

And in humans ---

Electronic Medicine Fights Disease

Factors Underlying Different Myopia Prevalence between Middle- and Low-income Provinces in China
A study of 20,000 children shows that nearsightedness is twice as prevalent in middle-income areas than lower-income ones in China.
In one of the largest population-based studies ever conducted on nearsightedness in children, researchers have discovered that lower-income students in China have better vision than their middle-class counterparts. Data show that nearsightedness, also called myopia, is twice as prevalent in the middle-income province of Shaanxi compared to the poorer neighboring province of Gansu. The study was published in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Living in the middle-class area was associated with a 69 percent increased risk for nearsightedness, even after adjusting for other risk factors, such as time spent reading, outdoor activity and whether the student's parents wore glasses. Higher math scores were associated with increased myopia in all children while nearsightedness was less prevalent in males overall. The research team also looked at whether the use of blackboards, as opposed to textbooks, played a role in staving off myopia. Students in the lower-income area rely more on blackboards to learn in the classroom as they may have difficulty affording books, while students in the middle-income areas used blackboards less often.
They found that using blackboards had a "protective effect" against nearsightedness when examined as a variable alone, possibly because blackboards do not require the kind of close-up focusing that may increase myopia. However, when adjusting for other factors, they found no statistically significant differences between lower-income and middle-class students that might explain higher myopia prevalence in richer areas.
Previous studies have found that people who had higher levels of education and years spent in school were more likely to be nearsighted. Many researchers also postulate that exposure to certain kinds of light, particularly indoor versus outdoor light, may be responsible for the uptick in myopia. Recent studies of children and young adults in Denmark and across Asia show that more time outdoors and exposure to daylight is associated with less nearsightedness.
http://www.aaojournal.org/article/S0161-6420%2814%2901196-8/abstract

A single natural nucleotide mutation alters bacterial pathogen host tropism
Bacteria may be able to jump between species with greater ease than was previously thought
Researchers have found that a single genetic mutation in a strain of bacteria that infects humans enables it to also infect rabbits. The discovery has major implications for how we assess the risks associated with bacterial diseases that can pass between people and animals.

Scientists at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh studied a strain of bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus ST121, which is responsible for widespread epidemics in the global rabbit farming industry.

The team looked at the genetic make-up of ST121 to work out where the strain originated. They also tracked how changes in its genetic code enabled it to infect rabbits.

They concluded that ST121 most likely evolved as the result of a host jump from humans to rabbits around 40 years ago.

A genetic mutation at a single site in the bacterial DNA code was sufficient to convert a human strain into one that could infect rabbits.

The discovery transforms our understanding of the minimal genetic changes that are required for bacteria to infect different species. The results represent a paradigm shift in understanding of the minimal adaptations required for a bacterium to overcome species barriers and establish in new host populations.
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3219.html

It’s a firmly established fact straight from Biology 101: Traits such as eye color and height are passed from one generation to the next through the parents’ DNA.

But now, a new study in mice by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that the DNA of bacteria that live in the body can pass a trait to offspring in a way similar to the parents’ own DNA. According to the authors, the discovery means scientists need to consider a significant new factor – the DNA of microbes passed from mother to child – in their efforts to understand how genes influence illness and health.

The study appears online Feb. 16 in Nature.
Vertically transmissible fecal IgA levels distinguish extra-chromosomal phenotypic variation. Moon C, Baldridge MT, Wallace MA, Burnham C-AD, Virgin HW, Stappenbeck TS. Nature, Feb. 16, 2015

http://www.sciguru.org/newsitem/18448/mothers-can-pass-traits-offsp...

Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes Should Exercise After Dinner
Individuals with Type 2 diabetes have heightened amounts of sugars and fats in their blood, which increases their risks for cardiovascular diseases such as strokes and heart attacks. Exercise is a popular prescription for individuals suffering from the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes, but little research has explored whether these individuals receive more benefits from working out before or after dinner. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that individuals with Type 2 diabetes can lower their risks of cardiovascular diseases more effectively by exercising after a meal.
“This study shows that it is not just the intensity or duration of exercising that is important but also the timing of when it occurs,” said Jill Kanaley, professor in the MU Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology. “Results from this study show that resistance exercise has its most powerful effect on reducing glucose and fat levels in one’s blood when performed after dinner.”
Kanaley also found that improvements in participants’ blood sugar and fat levels were short-lived and did not extend to the next day. She suggests individuals practice daily resistance exercise after dinner to maintain improvements.

“Individuals who exercise in the morning have usually fasted for 10 hours beforehand,” Kanaley said. “Also, it is natural for individuals’ hormone levels to be different at different times of day, which is another factor to consider when determining the best time to exercise.”

In the future, Kanaley said she plans to research how exercising in the morning differs from exercising after dinner and how individuals’ hormone levels also affect exercise results.

The study, “Post-dinner resistance exercise improves postprandial risk factors more effectively than pre-dinner resistance exercise in patients with type 2 diabetes,” was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2014/12/23/japplphysiol.009...

A DNA hard drive has been built that can store data for 1 MILLION years

Scientists have found a way to preserve the world's data for millions of years, by storing it on a tiny strand of DNA preserved in glass.
When you think of humanity’s legacy, the most powerful message for us to leave behind for future civilisations would surely be our billions of terabytes of data. But right now the hard drives and discs that we use to store all this information are frustratingly vulnerable, and unlikely to survive more than a couple of hundred years.

Fortunately scientists have built a DNA time capsule that's capable of safely preserving all of our data for more than a million years.
Researchers already knew that DNA was ideal for data storage. In theory, just 1 gram of DNA is capable of holding 455 exabytes, which is the equivalent of one billion gigabytes, and more than enough space to store all of Google, Facebook and pretty much everyone else's data.

Storing information on DNA is also surprisingly simple - researchers just need to program the A and C base pairs of DNA as a binary '0', and the T and G as a '1'. But the researchers, led by Robert Grass from ETH Zürich in Switzerland, wanted to find out just how long this data would last.

DNA can definitely be durable - in 2013 scientists managed to sequence genetic code from 700,000-year-old horse bones - but it has to be preserved in pretty specific conditions, otherwise it can change and break down as it's exposed to the environment. So Glass's team decided to try to replicate a fossil, to see if it would help them create a long-lasting DNA hard drive.

"Similar to these bones, we wanted to protect the information-bearing DNA with a synthetic 'fossil' shell," explained Grass in a press release.
In order to do that, the team encoded Switzerland’s Federal Charter of 1921 and The Methods of Mechanical Theorems by Archimedes onto a DNA strand - a total of 83 kilobytes of data. They then encapsulated the DNA into tiny glass spheres, which were around 150 nanometres in diameter.

The researchers compared these glass spheres against other packaging methods by exposing them to temperatures of between 60 and 70 degrees Celsius - conditions that replicated the chemical degradation that would usually occur over hundreds of years, all crammed into a few destructive weeks.

They found that even after this sped-up degradation process, the DNA inside the glass spheres could easily be extracted using a fluoride solution, and the data on it could still be read. In fact, these glass casings seem to work much like fossilised bones.

Based on their results, which have been published in Angewandte Chemie, the team predicts that data stored on DNA could survive over a million years if it was stored in temperatures below -18 degrees Celsius, for example, in a facility like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is also known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’. They say it could last 2,000 years if stored somewhere less secure at 10 degrees Celsius - a similar average temperature to central Europe.

The tricky part of this whole process is that the data stored in DNA needs to be read properly in order for future civilisations to be able to access it. And despite advances in sequencing technology, errors still arise from DNA sequencing.
Robust Chemical Preservation of Digital Information on DNA in Silica with Error-Correcting Codes
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201411378/full

In this amazing video, scientists have sucked the air out of the container and managed to find a pressure/temperature combination that's near the triple point of the fluid, which has been identified as cyclohexane - the triple point is the very precise temperature and pressure at which the three states of matter (solid, liquid and gas) exist in thermodynamic equilibrium.
Cyclohexane at the Triple Point

Extreme strength observed in limpet teeth
Sea snail teeth: The Strongest Known Biological Structures
The teeth of limpets exploit distinctive composite nanostructures consisting of high volume fractions of reinforcing goethite nanofibres within a softer protein phase to provide mechanical integrity when rasping over rock surfaces during feeding. The tensile strength of discrete volumes of limpet tooth material measured using in situ atomic force microscopy was found to range from 3.0 to 6.5 GPa and was independent of sample size. These observations highlight an absolute material tensile strength that is the highest recorded for a biological material, outperforming the high strength of spider silk currently considered to be the strongest natural material, and approaching values comparable to those of the strongest man-made fibres. This considerable tensile strength of limpet teeth is attributed to a high mineral volume fraction of reinforcing goethite nanofibres with diameters below a defect-controlled critical size, suggesting that natural design in limpet teeth is optimized towards theoretical strength limits.
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/105/20141326

Potential new vaccine blocks every strain of HIV
A new drug candidate is so potent against all strains of HIV, researchers think it could work as a new kind of vaccine.

Developed by researchers from more than a dozen research institutions and led by a team at the Scripps Research Institute in the US, the drug is effective against doses of HIV-1, HIV-2 and SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) that have been extracted from humans or rhesus macaques - including what researchers consider to be the ‘hardest-to-stop’ variants. It worked against doses of HIV that are way higher than what would be transmitted between humans, and works for at least eight months after injection.
Scientists announce anti-HIV agent so powerful it can work in a vaccine
Source:
The Scripps Research Institute

THE CLOSEST KNOWN FLYBY OF A STAR TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM
http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/800/1/L17?fromSearchPage=true
a group of astronomers says it's determined that a small binary star system dubbed "Scholz's star" buzzed the edges of our solar system just 70,000 years ago. On the cosmic time scale, that's so recent that we could still practically wave goodbye from our front door.

At that point in history, there may have been both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans wandering around. In fact, some believe that is right around the point in history when we were just starting to get our evolutionary act together, developing things like languages, tools and really slick cave paintings that descendants would totally dig for eons.
Unfortunately, those early ancestors probably weren't together enough to notice a binary star hanging out at the edge of the Oort cloud, which is a comet cluster of sorts that basically envelopes our solar system at the furthest reaches of the sun's gravity. (Oort does sound like the sort of name a stereotypical caveman society might dream up for such a concept, though.)

The transient star would have passed within about 52,000 astronomical units (1 a.u. = the distance between Earth and our sun) or 0.8 light-years of us, according to a paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

To get a sense of how close that is, consider that the nearest star we know of today, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away.

Scholz's star was only passing through, though. The binary system kept on the move and is now 20 light-years away.

As it moved through the Oort cloud, the star system may have agitated the trillions of small bodies believed to be drifting around out there, potentially showering the inner solar system with comets. Not exactly the best kind of visitor to have in the neighborhood.

Doctors with conscience speak out
In order to benefit the hospital and meet its commercial needs, one has to do things like keeping patients in the hospital longer than necessary, and doing unnecessary investigations and procedures (including angioplasty) since there was pressure from the management of the hospital.
Read this eye opener here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Doctors-with-conscience-sp...