Big Data: Astronomical or Genomical?
Genetics is poised to overtake astronomy, YouTube and Twitter as a data-generating champion, Michael Schatz, a quantitative geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and colleagues say. Challenges for collecting, analyzing, storing and sharing genetic data are already at least on par with some of the other most demanding big data endeavors, the researchers report July 7 in PLOS Biology.

The amount of genetic data doubles about every seven months. By 2025, researchers may have deciphered, or sequenced, 100 million to 2 billion human genomes — each the full set of genetic instructions for a person and each containing more than 3 billion DNA bases. Researchers are also compiling genetic data from thousands of species of microbes, animals and plants. No one knows for sure how much genetic information is currently available; thousands of laboratories around the world have DNA sequencing machines and most of the data are not yet in public databases.
If the doubling trend continues, genetics will soon catch up to radio astronomy’s vast data collections, Schatz says. He proposes that “genomical” may one day replace “astronomical” as an expression of gargantuan proportions. “Whether people will adopt ‘genomical,’ only time will tell,” he says.

Abstract

Genomics is a Big Data science and is going to get much bigger, very soon, but it is not known whether the needs of genomics will exceed other Big Data domains. Projecting to the year 2025, we compared genomics with three other major generators of Big Data: astronomy, YouTube, and Twitter. Our estimates show that genomics is a “four-headed beast”—it is either on par with or the most demanding of the domains analyzed here in terms of data acquisition, storage, distribution, and analysis. We discuss aspects of new technologies that will need to be developed to rise up and meet the computational challenges that genomics poses for the near future. Now is the time for concerted, community-wide planning for the “genomical” challenges of the next decade.

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbi...

Our obligations — work, family and friends — often don’t line up with when our bodies want to sleep. Scientists call this phenomenon, the result of that shift in sleep schedule, social jetlag. It may also be associated with wider waistlines. As we learn more about how our body clocks work, it might help to think about how our own schedules can shift.

Social jetlag isn’t just about being groggy. Using a group of more than 1,000 New Zealanders from the town of Dunedin, followed throughout their lives and questioned regularly about their health, Parsons and other scientists showed that as little as a two-hour difference between weekday and weekend sleep schedules was associated with a higher body mass index, compared with people with no social jetlag. “It was an additional two [kilograms] of fat mass at age 38,” Parsons says. The authors published the work on January 20 in the International Journal of Obesity.

Social jetlag, obesity and metabolic disorder: investigation in a cohort study.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25601363

'Living against our internal clock' may contribute to metabolic dysfunction and its consequences. Further research aimed at understanding that the physiology and social features of social jetlag may inform obesity prevention and have ramifications for policies and practices that contribute to increased social jetlag, such as work schedules and daylight savings time.

This is another magic of science: Removing cataracts without surgery! The “fog” often seen by patients who have cataracts is a glob of broken proteins, stuck together in a malfunctioning clump. When healthy, these proteins, called crystallins, help the eye’s lens keep its structure and transparency. But as humans and animals alike get older, these crystallin proteins start to come unglued and lose their ability to function. Then they clump together and form a sheathlike obstruction in the lens, causing the signature “steamy glass” vision that accompanies cataracts. Currently, the only treatment for cataracts is surgery—lasers or scalpels cut away the molecular grout that builds in the eye as cataracts develop, and surgeons sometimes replace the lens. But now, a team of scientists and ophthalmologists has tested a solution in dogs that may be able to dissolve the cataract right out of the eye’s lens. And the solution is itself a solution: a steroid-based eye drop.
A research team led by University of California (UC), San Diego, molecular biologist Ling Zhao came up with the eye drop idea after finding that children with a genetically inherited form of cataracts shared a mutation that stopped the production of lanosterol, an important steroid in the body. When their parents did not have the same mutation, the adults produced lanosterol and had no cataracts.

So the researchers wondered: What if lanosterol helped prevent or reduce cataracts? The team tested a lanosterol-laden solution in three separate experiments. First, they used human lens cells to test how effectively lanosterol shrank lab models of cataracts. They saw a significant decrease. Then, they progressed to rabbits suffering from cataracts. At the end of the 6-day experiment, 11 of 13 rabbits had gone from having severe or significant cataracts to mild cataracts or no cataracts at all. Finally, the team moved on to dogs, using a group of seven, including black Labs, Queensland Heelers, and Miniature Pinschers with naturally occurring cataracts. The dogs responded just as the researchers hoped to the lanosterol solution, which was given in the form of both eye injections and eye drops. The dogs’ lenses showed the same type of dissolving pattern as the human and rabbit lens cells.
The improvement was remarkable—researchers could tell just by looking at the dogs’ eyes that the cataracts had decreased. But the exact mechanism of how lanosterol manages to disperse the mass of proteins remains unknown.
http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2015/07/eye-drops-could-dissolve-...

Genes influence academic ability across all subjects
Scientists have shown that the genes influencing numerical skills are the same ones that determine abilities in reading, arts and humanities.

A recent study suggests that if you have an academic Achilles heel, environmental factors such as a teaching are more likely to be to blame.

The findings add to growing evidence that school performance has a large heritable component, with around 60% of the differences in pupil’s GCSE results being explained by genetic factors.
Although scientists are yet to pinpoint specific genes, the latest work, published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that the same ones are involved across subjects.

''Pleiotropy across academic subjects at the end of compulsory education''
http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150723/srep11713/full/srep11713.html

Some interesting news that says to get better research results more than 50 scientists have created a website to help biologists avoid poor-quality chemical reagents that undermine experiments in molecular biology and drug discovery.
http://www.chemicalprobes.org/
Chemical probes are small molecules designed to bind to a specific protein and disrupt its function. They are valuable tools for biologists trying to find out what a particular protein does in a cell, or for drug-discoverers gauging whether interfering with a function could form the basis of a therapy. But probes often interfere with unintended proteins, and their reliability can vary by cell type and by species. That can lead scientists who rely on such probes to make—and publish—unwarranted conclusions.
Unreliable probes have earlier led to thousands of papers with uninterpretable results as well as a failed clinical trials.
The new portal will recommend probes for use with particular proteins as well as specify recommended experimental systems and concentrations at which to use the reagents.
http://www.nature.com/news/scientists-unite-to-warn-against-flawed-...

''Inferior frontal gyrus''. What is it? A brain area. Why is it important?
Because it makes us what we are, yes, human beings!
Neuroscientists recently have identified an area of the brain that might give the human mind its unique abilities, including language. The area lit up in human, but not monkey, brains when they were presented with different types of abstract information.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%290072...

Wang, L., Uhrig, L., Jarraya, B. & Dehaene, S. Curr. Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.06.035 (2015).

Cooking rice by repeatedly flushing it through with fresh hot water can remove much of the grain’s stored arsenic, researchers have found—a tip that could lessen levels of the toxic substance in one of the world’s most popular foods.
Rice takes up more arsenic (which occurs naturally in water and soil as part of an inorganic compound) than do other grains. High levels of arsenic in food have been linked to different types of cancer, and other health problems.
The findings are reported in PLoS ONE.

Here we eat lots of spices. And it seems that is good for living a long time!

Consumption of spicy foods and total and cause specific mortality: population based cohort study

http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3942

Spicy food in the diet seems to contribute to longevity, a study of thousands of people in a Chinese registry finds.

Men who ate spicy food at least once a week were 10 percent less likely to die during the seven-year study period than were those with a more bland diet. Women had a mortality decrease of 12 to 22 percent during the study period with regular spicy food consumption, and eating it three or more times a week was associated with the biggest decrease.

These observational data don’t establish that spicy foods reduces mortality. But the findings suggest that men who ate spicy food three or more times a week had fewer fatal respiratory diseases.  For women, the strongest associations were seen in respiratory and cardiac diseases and infections.

The scientists speculate that capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers, might underlie the benefits.

Scientists reveal their most embarrassing mistakes in the field
https://twitter.com/hashtag/fieldworkfail?vertical=default
Twitter hashtag #fieldworkfail.

Caused two fire accidents while using inflammable chemicals. Made all my colleagues run away #fieldworkfail

#FieldWorkFail proves science is a horrifyingly messy process

Being a scientist isn't always such a glamorous job. This new hasht...

The best thing on Twitter right now: #fieldworkfail recounts brilliant stories of science gone wrong.

Top 10 Science Moments on The Daily Show [Video]
(Jon Stewart's)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/jon-stewart-s-top-...

Did you think CNG is safe? Then think again says CSIR chief.

Exhaust from CNG vehicles contains nano carbon particles, needs to be studied seriously: CSIR chief

The natural gas (CNG)-run buses are harmful for humans as they emit 'nano carbon' particles which can cause cancer, according to a study conducted by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Though the study was conducted on a very limited sample size in Delhi, CSIR took the findings seriously owing to the health hazard it poses to humans and alerted the Central government for further follow up, CSIR's Director General Dr M O Garg said on 7th Aug., 2015.

A study conducted by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) claims buses that run on compressed natural gas (CNG) emit 'nanocarbon' particles that can cause cancer. While the study was conducted on a limited sample size in Delhi, CSIR alerted the central government due to the severity of the threat it poses to the health of the residents.

The study was conducted along with a professor from Alberta University, who has developed a device to measure and analyze particles emitted by vehicles. This machine was installed on the exhaust of a natural gas-run DTC bus in Delhi.

The study can change the perception that natural gas is a clean fuel as it does not emit any visible smoke, which is in contrast to smoke emitted by diesel-run vehicles and perceived as harmful for humans.

He explained, "Natural gas is supposed to be a clean fuel when used in internal combustion engines, right? But, I don't think people realize that what you see (smoke) is perhaps better than what you don't see (no smoke from CNG vehicles). Can you imagine that we found nanocarbon particles coming out of from natural gas combustion. These particles are moving around in the atmosphere and going straight into your lungs through your nose. It then enters into your blood through membranes."

Dr Garg said these nanocarbon particles are carcinogenic, and the government has been alerted about its effects.

Warning : But this is not a published work. Just a speculation. And my instincts tell something is wrong here and it could be an erroneous  representation of facts - Krishna.

To 'Beat The Heat', caused by climate change, Fish in oceans Swim To Greater Depths
In this recent study, researchers tagged 60 redthroat emperor fish at Heron Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef. All the fish were equipped with transmitters that identified them individually and signaled their depth to an array of receivers around the island.

After monitoring the fish for up to a year, researchers found that fish were less likely to be found on the reef slope on warmer days; they think that many may escape to deeper water as a result of warmer temperatures.

The researchers also kept certain factors in mind, including temperature, air pressure, wind, rainfall and moon phases as reasons for the shift. Yet they discovered that the only significant correlation was due to temperature- the redthroat emperor were consistently monitored when water was less than 24 degrees Celsius.

Lead researcher Dr Leanne Currey noted how most studies examined the effect that ocean warming would have on fish biology and not how the animals would distribute themselves to compensate for higher temperatures.

"This is a commercially important fish and we are looking at a significant depth shift".

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/28658/20150807/fish-and-...

There could be a genetic reason for why you either love or hate some smells
When it comes to food, there are few items so divisive as coriander - or cilantro, as it's called in North and Central America. Some people love its fresh flavour, while others swear it tastes like soap. And it turns out a genetic variant that affects how we process aromas might at least partially explain the difference in opinion.

Back in 2012, genetic testing company 23andMe surveyed the DNA of nearly 30,000 people of European background, who'd answered a survey about whether they loved or hated coriander. Out of the 11,851 participants who declared that they liked coriander and the 14,604 who insisted it tasted like soap, they found two genetic variants that were associated with the preferences, and the strongest variant was located within a cluster of known olfactory-receptor genes.
A genetic variant near olfactory receptor genes influences cilantro
preference
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1209.2096v1.pdf

Light in the universe is fading according to scientists

An international team of astronomers studying 200,000 galaxies has measured the energy generated within a large portion of space more precisely than ever before, discovering that it's only half what it was 2 billion years ago and fading - the Universe is slowly dying. Researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia used seven of the world's most powerful telescopes to observe galaxies at 21 different wavelengths from the far ultraviolet to the far infrared.

Initial observations were conducted using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales and supporting observations were made by two orbiting space telescopes operated by NASA and another belonging to the European Space Agency.

All energy in the Universe was created in the Big Bang with some portion locked up as mass. Stars shine by converting this mass into energy as described by Einstein's famous equation E=MC2.

"While most of the energy sloshing around was created in the aftermath of the Big Bang, additional energy is constantly being released by stars as they fuse elements like hydrogen and helium together".

"This newly released energy is either absorbed by dust as it travels through the host galaxy, or escapes into intergalactic space and travels until it hits something such as another star, planet, or very occasionally a telescope mirror." The Universe is fated to decline from here on in, like an old age that lasts forever.

Source: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

MIT physicists have created a superfluid gas, the so-called Bose-Einstein condensate, for the first time in an extremely high magnetic field. The magnetic field is a synthetic magnetic field, generated using laser beams, and is 100 times stronger than that of the world’s strongest magnets. Within this magnetic field, the researchers could keep a gas superfluid for a tenth of a second — just long enough for the team to observe it. The researchers report their results this week in the journal Nature Physics.
A superfluid is a phase of matter that only certain liquids or gases can assume, if they are cooled to extremely low temperatures. At temperatures approaching absolute zero, atoms cease their individual, energetic trajectories, and start to move collectively as one wave.

Superfluids are thought to flow endlessly, without losing energy, similar to electrons in a superconductor. Observing the behavior of superfluids therefore may help scientists improve the quality of superconducting magnets and sensors, and develop energy-efficient methods for transporting electricity.

But superfluids are temperamental, and can disappear in a flash if atoms cannot be kept cold or confined. The MIT team combined several techniques in generating ultracold temperatures, to create and maintain a superfluid gas long enough to observe it at ultrahigh synthetic magnetic fields.
Observation of Bose–Einstein condensation in a strong synthetic magnetic field
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3421.html

Power of pupils is in their shape
Vertical and horizontal pupils provide visual advantages for predators and prey respectively, researchers say
Visual fuzziness might actually help some animals catch prey. Out-of-focus areas created by vertically elongated pupils help predators triangulate the distance to objects, scientists proposed on August 7 in Science Advances. Prey animals may gain different visual advantages from pupil shapes that provide panoramic views.

Cats, foxes and many other predators that ambush prey have vertical pupils. Through these narrow slits, vertical objects appear sharp over great distances, the scientists report. Horizontal shapes are clear over a more limited distance, quickly going out of focus as an object moves farther away. This rapidly blurring vision should make it easy to detect even subtle changes in distance, the researchers say. That makes blur a good estimate of distance, says study author Martin Banks, a vision scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. A stalking predator might rely upon an object’s fuzziness to judge its location.

The benefits of this mix of visual cues make good sense.
Many herbivores, like horses and deer, have horizontal, rectangular pupils, rather than vertical slits. The authors don’t think these pupils help with depth perception. But rectangular pupils probably have their own advantages, the authors report, including better panoramic vision and shielding of potentially blinding overhead light. These benefits could help grazing prey spot – and flee from – an approaching slit-eyed hunter.

These visual benefits could explain why predators and prey evolved their pupil shapes.
But vision scientist Ronald Kröger of Lund University in Sweden warns against assuming that an animal’s habits caused the evolution of a certain pupil shape. Counterexamples exist of predators without slit pupils and herbivores with them, he says. Additionally, many predators and prey animals, including most birds – which were excluded from the study’s analysis – have circular pupils.

But evolution is complex, and the new hypotheses about the advantages of pupil shape only address one aspect of the evolution of vision, Banks says. “There are multiple forces that push the eye to evolve in multiple ways.”

Misrepresentation of findings of new CSIR study:
Read the story I posted below on 10th Aug., that says CNG is bad for us. Now read this story that says the findings are not presented properly...

( I have warned you then, mind you!)
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has condemned the recent attempt to misrepresent the findings of the new study that has been jointly carried out by the CSIR, IIP-Dehradun and University of Alberta.

The statements from CSIR have claimed, without presenting the full study and the facts in the public domain, that CNG buses emit more ultrafine particles than diesel buses and are a health hazard. When CSE obtained the draft findings from CSIR it was stunned to see a very different message from the study.

Their own findings have shown that the conventional CNG buses in India have already achieved emissions levels for all pollutants including ultrafine particle number very close or better than Euro VI emissions standards that are yet to be implemented. Diesel buses are far behind.

The ultrafine emissions from Indian CNG buses are higher only from the Canadian diesel bus with advanced particulate traps meeting one of the global best standards.

This motivated campaign against CNG buses in India, and defiance of what science is saying, will harm not only the CNG bus programme that has given enormous public health benefits but will also jeopardise the policy decision to leapfrog emissions standards roadmap to Euro VI by 2020 to cut dangerous diesel emissions, said CSE in a statement.

The government of India is dragging its feet in the face of strong opposition from the diesel industry. Diesel technology and fuels need the most drastic transformation in Indian transport sector today to protect public health, CSE added.

Good news for smokers who want to quit: nicotine addiction therapy.

with Nicotine-Chomping Bacteria

Researchers isolated a bacterial enzyme that could break down nicotine before smokers get the buzz that keeps them coming back for more.

A New Strategy for Smoking Cessation: Characterization of a Bacterial Enzyme for the Degradation of Nicotine

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.5b06605

The nicotine-degrading enzyme NicA2, a flavin-containing protein produced by Pseudomonas putida. When it was added the enzyme to mouse serum, doped with a cigarette's worth of nicotine, (the enzyme was stable at human body temperature) was able to cut the half-life of nicotine from a couple hours to less than 15 minutes—that is, it greatly accelerated nicotine’s disappearance.

But the enzyme isn't ready for use yet. It's bacterial—so "you're going to get an immune response, immune surveillance from it." And right now, the other important half-life, that of the enzyme in serum, is only 3 days. So it won’t stick around long enough to be an effective vaccine.

These problems still have to be solved.

A new study showing that women have slightly lower resting metabolic rates than men, and thus have a higher temperature at which they are most comfortable is proving a gender bias in offices. The study’s authors contend that current methods for designing air conditioning systems do not take this metabolic difference into account. The study argues for changes in air conditioning design standards, but differences in resting metabolic rate have little to do with why women are cold in the office. It has far more to do with who sets the thermostat than with metabolism differences or system design.
Buildings are generally designed to meet standard guidelines for heating and cooling. The building’s ability to keep us cool is based on a series of complex equations that take into account humidity, air temperature, airflow, radiant temperature and the metabolism of the humans theoretically present.

But these complex equations are based on a single metabolic average, says Boris Kingma, a biophysicist at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands — the average metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man who weighs 70 kilograms, or about 154 pounds.
The women had an average resting metabolic rate of 48 watts per square meter, significantly lower than the average used to calculate heating and cooling needs in buildings. Women are also comfortable at higher temperatures — between 23° and 26° Celsius (or 74° and 79° Fahrenheit) — than those previously calculated. Kingma and coauthor Wouter van Marken Litchenbelt reported their findings August 3 in Nature Climate Change.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2...

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) published their official definition of what constitutes a planet in this memo: https://www.iau.org/static/resol... in 2006. In short, it said that:

1) a planet directly orbits the Sun. That excludes moons because although they indirectly orbit the Sun, they directly orbit a planet.

2) a planet is massive enough that gravity overcomes rigid body forces and results in a round, almost spherical shape. That excludes the asteroids.

3) a planet has used its mass to sweep up the trash in its neighborhood.

Australian researchers have developed a nano-sized capsule that can be delivered to a patient intravenously to immediately target and break down the blot clots that cause heart attacks and strokes.

No only does the minuscule device start working within minutes, it’s portable, which means it can be used in emergency situations before the patient has even made it to hospital. "This can be given in the ambulance straight away so you really save a lot of time and restore the blood flow to the critical organs much faster than currently possible".
Around 80 percent of all strokes occur when a fatty deposit or blood clot blocks an artery that supplies blood to the brain. If this formation of blood clots, known as thrombosis, happens to block blood flow to the heart, a heart attack can follow. The longer the brain or heart are without oxygenated blood, the greater the risk that vital tissues will begin to die, so breaking down these clots as soon as possible is key.

If the team can get their device commercialised, it’s set to make a huge difference to the many heart attack and stoke patients who don’t actually respond to current treatments.
The new nanocapsule device only releases the medication in areas where a clot is growing exponentially and blocking a vessel and doesn't have the side effect of unnecessary internal bleeding. "The drug-loaded nanocapsule is coated with an antibody that specifically targets activated platelets, the cells that form blood clots.""
"Once located at the site of the blood clot, thrombin - a molecule at the centre of the clotting process - breaks open the outer layer of the nanocapsule, releasing the clot-busting drug. We are effectively hijacking the blood clotting system to initiate the removal of the blockage in the blood vessel."
http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/news/new-clot-busting-treatment-targe...
New clot-busting treatment targets number one killer

New type of glass produced...
When Prof. Juan de Pablo and his collaborators set about to explain unusual peaks in what should have been featureless optical data, they thought there was a problem in their calculations. In fact, what they were seeing was real. The peaks were an indication of molecular order in a material thought to be entirely amorphous and random: Their experiments had produced a new kind of glass.
Their unforeseen discovery, reported in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and chosen by Science as an editor's choice paper in Materials Science, could offer a simple way to improve the efficiency of electronic devices such as light-emitting diodes, optical fibers and solar cells. It also could have important theoretical implications for understanding the still surprisingly mysterious materials called glasses.

The scientists grew the glass by vaporizing large organic molecules in a high vacuum and depositing them slowly, thin layer by thin layer, onto a substrate at a precisely controlled temperature. When the sample was thick enough, they analyzed it using spectroscopic ellipsometry—a technique that measures the way incident light or laser radiation interacts with the material being investigated.
The answer, the scientists discovered, lay in the way the material was created. In liquids—and glass is a type of liquid—the molecules at the surface interact with molecules in the air, sometimes causing them to pack together and line up differently than the randomly arrayed molecules in the bulk of the liquid. The vapor deposition process used in the experiments amounts to laying down one "surface" on top of another. The molecules in each layer get "trapped" in the orientation they had when they were truly, however briefly, on the surface.

In order for this to happen, the researchers discovered, the glass must be grown within the relatively narrow temperature range at which a liquid changes into a solid-like glass. Varying the temperature within that window allows the scientists to "tune" the degree of order. Once the deposition process is finished, the material is stable and changing temperatures within a wide range doesn't affect it.

Only a small fraction of the molecules in the group's samples are oriented in a different direction than the rest of the glass molecules. But that is enough to change the optical properties of these materials tremendously. The group will continue to investigate these new materials, trying different molecules and looking to find out if they can enhance the effect.

A theoretical investigation of these findings also awaits.

http://phys.org/news/2015-08-molecular-scientists-unexpectedly-glas...

Whistled Turkish alters language asymmetries
Whistled languages represent an experiment of nature to test the widely accepted view that language comprehension is to some extent governed by the left hemisphere in a rather input-invariant manner. Indeed, left-hemisphere superiority has been reported for atonal and tonal languages, click consonants, writing and sign languages. The right hemisphere is specialized to encode acoustic properties like spectral cues, pitch, and melodic lines and plays a role for prosodic communicative cues. Would left hemisphere language superiority change when subjects had to encode a language that is constituted by acoustic properties for which the right hemisphere is specialized? Whistled Turkish uses the full lexical and syntactic information of vocal Turkish, and transforms this into whistles to transport complex conversations with constrained whistled articulations over long distances . The comprehension of vocally vs. whistled identical lexical information in native whistle-speaking people of mountainous Northeast Turkey has been tested in this study. It was found that that whistled language comprehension relies on symmetric hemispheric contributions, associated with a decrease of left and a relative increase of right hemispheric encoding mechanisms. The results demonstrate that a language that places high demands on right-hemisphere typical acoustical encoding creates a radical change in language asymmetries. Thus, language asymmetry patterns are in an important way shaped by the physical properties of the lexical input.

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900794-0

Acoustic stealth - this is what gives owls an edge over their prey...
A new study says ... Owls are equipped with state-of-the-art stealth technology to help them swoop on prey undetected.
The night hunters have feathers that absorb aerodynamic sound and suppress the vibrations that occur when a bird flaps its wings.

During flight, an owl’s feathers extract mechanical energy and convert it into heat. The result is perfect silence as the bird approaches to within inches of a mouse or vole.
Scientists used lasers and high-speed cameras to analyse and compare long-eared owl, eagle, and pigeon feathers during flight.
While differing in size, all three birds have a similar “flapping” style.

Lead researcher Jinkui Chu, from Dalian University of Technology in China, said: “Many owls have a unique and fascinating ability to fly so silently that they are out of their prey’s hearing range, due to their feather structure.

“This behaviour has long been of interest to engineers, as we seek to apply the owl’s noise-reduction mechanisms to other purposes and situations that benefit society.

“Now, however, we know the owls’ silent flight ability is even more superior than we thought.

“You could say of all birds it is the ‘king of acoustic stealth’. It not only manages to suppress aerodynamic noise when gliding, but also mechanical noise caused by vibration during flying.

“This is remarkable, considering the sudden jumping, bending and twisting the wings are subjected to when flapping and the noise that creates for other birds.

“In the scientific world, the process used to eliminate this mechanical noise is called ’damping’ — which means the extraction of mechanical energy from a vibrating system usually by converting it into heat and allowing it to remain steady.”

Abrupt changes in Indian summer monsoon strength during 33,800 to 5500 years B.P.
Abstract

Speleothem proxy records from northeastern (NE) India reflect seasonal changes in Indian summer monsoon strength as well as moisture source and transport paths. We have analyzed a new speleothem record from Mawmluh Cave, Meghalaya, India, in order to better understand these processes. The data show a strong wet phase 33,500–32,500 years B.P. followed by a weak/dry phase from 26,000 to 23,500 years B.P. and a very weak phase from 17,000 to 15,000 years B.P. The record suggests abrupt increase in strength during the Bølling-Allerød and early Holocene periods and pronounced weakening during the Heinrich and Younger Dryas cold events. We infer that these changes in monsoon strength are driven by changes in temperature gradients which drive changes in winds and moisture transport into northeast India.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064015/abstract

Delayed Development of Brain Connectivity in Adolescents With Schizophrenia and Their Unaffected Siblings
Some Siblings can overcome Schizophrenia Risk by altering their genetic predisposition to the disease.
Despite their shared genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, siblings of patients with childhood-onset schizophrenia are eventually able to catch up with normally developing peers. The study documenting these findings, published in JAMA Psychiatry, opens up new avenues for treating the hugely debilitating condition. “The greatest risk for schizophrenia is family history, but the majority of siblings of individuals with the disorder are unaffected,” said Dr. Andrew Zalesky from the University of Melbourne, lead author of the study. “So why are these brothers and sisters able to overcome the risk? Looking for these biological factors that protect a person from developing schizophrenia opens up a new direction in the search for treatments.” Zalesky and his team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to map the brains of 109 children with childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS), from ages 12 to 24. They compared the images with scans taken of the participants’ brothers and sisters without COS to see if similar brain changes took place over time. The siblings without COS showed similar delays in brain connectivity while growing up, but these connections tended to normalise or ‘catch up’ to those of normally developing adolescents. Zalesky said the ability of the siblings to catch up and develop important brain circuitry means there is a degree of resilience to their risk for schizophrenia.
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2396494

Antibiotic resistance in wild life is mainly because of  Water.  It seems to be the most important medium exposing animals to antibiotic resistance, with water-associated species such as hippos and waterbucks having higher levels of multi-drug resistant microorganisms.

• Bacteria from wildlife and humans have similar resistance

• Resistance could accumulate up the food chain

• Approach may allow early detection of antimicrobial resistance epidemics

In addition, bacteria resistant to multiple drugs were more common in animals, such as baboons, warthogs and mongooses, which live in urbanised areas, and in carnivorous species.
Resistance may accumulate up the food chain making apex predators such as crocodile, leopard and hyena important ecosystem sentinels.

How to keep surfaces dry underwater is what is bothering the scientific community for a long time. Now we might have found the answers to teh question.
Northwestern Univ. engineers have examined a wide variety of surfaces that can do just that—and, better yet, they know why.

The research team is the first to identify the ideal "roughness" needed in the texture of a surface to keep it dry for a long period of time when submerged in water. The valleys in the surface roughness typically need to be less than one micron in width, the researchers found. That's really small—less than one millionth of a meter—but these nanoscopic valleys have macroscopic impact.

Understanding how the surfaces deflect water so well means the valuable feature could be reproduced in other materials on a mass scale, potentially saving billions of dollars in a variety of industries, from antifouling surfaces for shipping to pipe coatings resulting in lower drag. That's science and engineering, not serendipity, at work for the benefit of the economy.
The trick is to use rough surfaces of the right chemistry and size to promote vapor formation, which we can use to our advantage. When the valleys are less than one micron wide, pockets of water vapor or gas accumulate in them by underwater evaporation or effervescence, just like a drop of water evaporates without having to boil it. These gas pockets deflect water, keeping the surface dry, according to the new finding.
In a study published by Scientific Reports, Patankar and his co-authors explain and demonstrate the nanoscale mechanics behind the phenomenon of staying dry underwater.
The researchers also report that nature uses the same strategy of surface roughness in certain aquatic insects, such as water bugs and water striders. Small hairs on the surfaces of their body have the less-than-one-micron spacing, allowing gas to be retained between the hairs.
The researchers focused on the nanoscopic structure of surfaces, which, at the nanoscale, are somewhat akin to the texture of a carpet, with tiny spike-like elevations separated by valley-shaped pores in between.

When submerged, water tends to cling to the top of the spikes, while air and water vapor accrue in the pores between them. The combination of trapped air and water vapor within these cavities forms a gaseous layer that deters moisture from seeping into the surface below. When the researchers looked at the rough surfaces under the microscope, they could see clearly the vacant gaps—where the protective water vapor is.
They demonstrated that when the valleys are less than one micron in width, they can sustain the trapped air as well as vapor in their gasified states, strengthening the seal that thwarts wetness.

Source: Northwestern Univ.

http://www.rdmag.com/news/2015/08/engineers-identify-how-keep-surfa...

Computers from DNA:
Scientists have found a way to 'switch' the structure of DNA using copper salts and EDTA (Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) - an agent commonly found in shampoo and other household products.

It was previously known that the structure of a piece of DNA could be changed using acid, which causes it to fold up into what is known as an 'i-motif'.

But new research published today in the journal Chemical Communications reveals that the structure can be switched a second time into a hair-pin structure using positively-charged copper (copper cations). This change can also be reversed using EDTA.

The applications for this discovery include nanotechnology - where DNA is used to make tiny machines, and in DNA-based computing - where computers are built from DNA rather than silicon.

It could also be used for detecting the presence of copper cations, which are highly toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms, in water.
A potential application of this finding could be to create logic gates for DNA based computing. Logic gates are an elementary building block of digital circuits - used in computers and other electronic equipment. They are traditionally made using diodes or transistors which act as electronic switches.

"This research expands how DNA could be used as a switching mechanism for a logic gate in DNA-based computing or in nano-technology."

'Reversible DNA i-motif to hairpin switching induced by copper (ii) cations' is published in the journal Chemical Communications.

http://phys.org/news/2015-08-uea-dna.html#jCp

Who do you think is the top predator in the world? It is the human being, according to scientists!

''The unique ecology of human predators''

A study into the effectiveness of predatory animals has placed people head and shoulders above other top carnivores such as the lion and wolf on land and the shark and killer whale in the sea.

The researchers estimate that ocean fishing has resulted in humans exploiting adult fish populations at about 14 times the rate of other marine predators, while humans have hunted and killed adult land animals at around nine times the rate of other animal predators.

Human hunting and fishing has had an extraordinary impact on the natural world and its ruthless efficiency is laid bare in a detailed survey of 2,125 species of terrestrial and marine predators around the world, published in the journal Science.

The study revealed that human hunting and fishing is qualitatively different to the predatory behaviour shown by other species. It has, for instance, concentrated on killing mature adult animals rather than their offspring, which the scientists have likened to eating into the “reproductive capital” rather than the “reproductive interest” of the natural world.

The study found that humans show another remarkable hunting trait by their ability to target other top predators as potential prey, especially in the sea where the decimation of top carnivores such as sharks, tuna fish and marlin has fundamentally changed the balance of some marine ecosystems.

Our impacts are as extreme as our behaviour and the planet bears the burden of our predatory dominance….These are extreme outcomes that non-human predators seldom impose.

Some herbivore populations kept in check by neither predators nor diseases have exploded, robbing food resources from a diversity of life, from insects important to humanity to birds we cherish, according to the scientists.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6250/858

Scientists have exposed a chink in the armour of disease-causing bugs, with a new discovery about a protein that controls bacterial defences. Bacteria react to stressful situations - such as running out of nutrients, coming under attack from antibiotics or encountering a host body’s immune system - with a range of defence mechanisms. These include constructing a resistant outer coat, growing defensive structures on their surface or producing enzymes that break down the DNA of an attacker.

The new research shows that a protein called sigma54 holds a bacterium’s defences back until it encounters stress, at which point the protein rearranges its structure to trigger the defences into action. The range of defences that sigma54 controls is so broad that the scientists are moving quickly to learn how to block its action and disable some of the bacteria's armour with new antibiotics.

The findings of the study are published recently in the journal Science by researchers at Imperial College London with collaborators at Peking University in China, Pennsylvania State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the USA.

Structures of the RNA polymerase-s54 reveal new and conserved regulatory strategies. Yun Yang, Vidya C. Darbari, Nan Zhang, Duo Lu, Robert Glyde, Yiping Wang, Jared Winkelman, Richard L. Gourse, Katsuhiko S. Murakami, Martin Buck, Xiaodong Zhang. Science, 2015
Science news source:
Imperial College London

Treatments for the same opportunistic bacteria found in cystic fibrosis patients can work in one area in the lung and be less effective in others. The reason, reported August 20 in Cell Host & Microbe, is that bacteria become isolated from one another and evolve region-specific traits. Researchers saw differences in bacterial nutritional requirements, host defenses, and antibiotic resistance. The findings suggest that other chronic infections may yield similar bacterial diversity.

To understand how chronic bacterial infections persist in the face of antibiotics and immune defenses, researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine dissected human lungs removed from patients with cystic fibrosis at the time of lung transplantation and collected thousands of one type of bacteria, pseudomonas, from different lung regions. The team found that while all of the pseudomonas in a lung were descendants of a single strain, each region contained a vast array of sibling bacteria that functioned differently.

"What made this so important to us is that the bacterial populations inhabiting different lung regions varied dramatically in terms of their antibiotic resistance and virulence," says lead author Dr. Peter Jorth. "This diversity could affect the patients' health."

When the investigators analyzed the genetic codes of the bacteria, the DNA sequences revealed that diversity arose because bacterial cells had become isolated in different lung regions and then evolved locally, much like Darwin's famed finches in the Galapagos.

The DNA sequences also suggest that traits that evolved over years or even decades may persist in bacteria inhabiting different lung regions and may provide a type of "memory" of past conditions and treatments that strengthen the bacteria.

"Even when a single strain of bacteria causes a chronic infection, evolution with human organs can produce diverse families of related bacteria," says senior author Dr. Pradeep Singh. "This may be part of what makes treatment so difficult, because when bacteria sensitive to one kind of stress are killed, functionally different siblings are there to take their place."

The researchers' next challenge is to use their understanding of how bacteria change during infection to find new ways to attack the diverse mixtures of bacteria that are present and to improve treatment for patients.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S193131281500298X
Bacteria Evolve Differences within the Lungs of Patients with Cystic Fibrosis

Every year, more strains of bacteria develop resistance to the antibiotics we use to treat deadly infections. At The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) scientists have been working to develop new forms of these drugs, including an antibiotic called arylomycin—but tests have shown that it is possible for bacteria to become resistant to arylomycin, too.

Now, scientists at TSRI have discovered that the important human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus, develops resistance to this drug by “switching on” a previously uncharacterized set of genes.

“This explains why antibiotic resistance rates in some bacteria are higher than in others,” said TSRI Professor Floyd Romesberg, senior author of the new study. “Resistance depends on this little set of genes that no one knew could contribute to tolerating the arylomycins.”

These findings were published this week by the journal mBio.
"An Alternative Terminal Step of the General Secretory Pathway in Staphylococcus aureus"
http://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01178-15

Here are some surprising findings on the neuro-science of perception:

1. The photoreceptors in the retina are activated by dark, not by light. (Visual phototransduction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_phototransduction#In_the_dark
2. There are 10x more neural connections going backwards in the visual system than going forward (feedback vs. feedforward)* (Perception Lecture Notes: LGN and V1).
3. Human vision is so sensitive that it is possible to register a single photon. (Page on nyu.edu) http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/perception/lecturenotes/V1/lg...
4. Human hearing is so sensitive that an eardrum displacement of 1 atom width can be heard. (Page on illinois.edu) https://courses.physics.illinois.edu/phys406/lecture_notes/p406pom_...
5. If a light flashes in the distance in the dark while your eye is moving, you will see it in the wrong place (Perisaccadic mislocalizaton: Page on sciencedirect.com). http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273%2803%2900003-5?_retu...
6. If you view colored objects in a room lit with "single frequency" light, all the colors disappear and everything looks gray. (Exhibit: Monochromatic Room) http://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/central-gallery/monochromatic-room
7. The tuning of neurons can be so specific that a neuron was found in one patient's hippocampus that responded to photos of Jennifer Aniston, but only when she was pictured without Brad Pitt. ** (Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7045/abs/nature03687.html

* This ratio only applies to the first stage of vision, from LGN to V1.
** This does not mean that the brain encodes information using "grandmother cells". See this paper by the authors of the study: Page on ucla.edu http://www.cnl.ucla.edu/CNL%20Publications/7.pdf

Some interesting things on trust:

What most people don't know is that trust can be something reasoned and actually has at least 12 properties. If all 12 of those properties can be verified positively you have close to 100% reason to trust. What we know is that the average person is content to trust with just 2 properties fulfilled and when drunk or in an emotional state, 1 property will suffice. There are tricks and fallacies which are perpetuated because they feel like they are fulfilling a trust property when they aren't. The two biggest fallacies perpetuated as trust reasons are transitive trusts (used in things like Amazon reviews) and Composability which has you trust based on majority (used in things like political speeches and "wisdom of crowds"). Now if you know this then you can protect yourself or you can manipulate others pretty well. So you can sell yourself on 1 trust property really well, like say Visibility, which shows your "transparency" and others think you are open about your motives or results then you can cheat like hell on the other 11 properties and scam your way through the populace.

There's details on this research in chapter 5 here: Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM) but there's new research coming out as this is 4 years old already. http://www.isecom.org/research/osstmm.html

Human biology in general has some cool stuff that not many are aware of.

1. While the brain appears to be lacking any gross movement to the layman, the microglial cells in your brain have projections that sweep your brain and slurp up debris and what not. This is estimated to happen every few hours or so.

2. There is a gene called CLOCK (obviously) that plays a central role in regulating your circadian rhythm. Recent papers have even showed how this gene can regulate the functions of your immune cells.

3. You can now potentially sequence your genome for <1000 dollars. Or sequence the genome of a bacteria sitting at your home using a USB-powered device. 4. A new layer in the cornea called Dua layer was discovered as late as 2013. The discovery of this layer is now helping improve corneal surgeries and prevent rejections of corneal transplants. 5. Human retina has a million photoreceptors. Even if we only consider two possible states of existence (0/1), there are >1e300,000 possible bits of information. And this number is estimated to be beyong the Bremmermann's limit. Evolution has done a perfect job!

For more reading:

1. stanford.edu The brain’s silent majority: http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2009fall/article6.html
2. TH17 cell differentiation is regulated by the circad... [Science. 2013]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=24202171
3. $1,000 genome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1,000_genome
4. USB stick can sequence DNA in seconds https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21495-usb-stick-can-sequence...
5. Medscape: Dua Layer https://login.medscape.com/login/sso/getlogin?urlCache=aHR0cDovL3d3...
6. Transcomputational problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcomputational_problem

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are flashes of gamma rays associated with extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the brightest electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several hours. The initial burst is usually followed by a longer-lived "afterglow" emitted at longer wavelengths (X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, microwave and radio).

Most observed GRBs are believed to consist of a narrow beam of intense radiation released during a supernova or hypernova as a rapidly rotating, high-mass star collapses to form a neutron star, quark star, or black hole. A subclass of GRBs (the "short" bursts) appear to originate from a different process – this may be due to the merger of binary neutron stars. The cause of the precursor burst observed in some of these short events may be due to the development of a resonance between the crust and core of such stars as a result of the massive tidal forces experienced in the seconds leading up to their collision, causing the entire crust of the star to shatter.
All GRBs observed to date have occurred well outside the Milky Way galaxy and have been harmless to Earth. However, if a GRB were to occur within the Milky Way, and its emission were beamed straight towards Earth, the effects could be devastating for the planet.
Depending on its distance from Earth, a GRB and its ultraviolet radiation could damage even the most radiation resistant organism known, the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans. These bacteria can endure 2,000 times more radiation than humans. Life surviving an initial onslaught, including those located on the side of the earth facing away from the burst, would have to contend with the potentially lethal after-effect of the depletion of the atmosphere's protective ozone layer by the burst.
A Gamma ray burst can cause a mass extinction event anytime on Earth and we wont be able to do anything about it. We won't even see it coming !!!
A gamma ray burst (GRB) releases more energy in few seconds than that our sun will produce in its entire lifetime. Though these events are rare, astrophysicists think there is a 90 % chance that GRBs have caused at least one mass extinction event on Earth in the past.
Longer-term, gamma ray energy may cause chemical reactions involving oxygen and nitrogen molecules which may create nitrogen oxide then nitrogen dioxide gas, causing photochemical smog. The GRB may produce enough of the gas to cover the sky and darken it. Gas would prevent sunlight from reaching Earth's surface, producing a "cosmic winter" effect – a similar situation to an impact winter, but not caused by an impact. GRB-produced gas could also even further deplete the ozone layer.

Dry air is heavier then wet air.

Yes, this fact sounds bit counterintuitive, and surprisingly the misconception of air getting "soaked with water" is widespread even between people who studied physics. Moreover, even some meteorology students often forget this.

It is not exactly new finding, but a centuries old one. At the same time, the explanation is quite easy - water molecules have lower molar weight than molecules of N2 O2 and few other gasses, and as a result the water vapour is less dense than dry atmospheric air. Therefore the wet air, which is essentially a mix of dry air with little bit of water vapour, is slightly less dense than the dry air of the same temperature.
Not like the difference is too big, but still significant enough to play vital role in formation of some storms, as well as those dangerous heatwaves.

At the same time, the misconception of air absorbing in water like a sponge is still widespread and probably would not change soon.

Scientists in countries affected by mosquito-borne diseases are less aware of the latest research on these diseases than those from countries where those diseases are not endemic, a study has found.

Diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are more prevalent in poorer countries, but these are also places where scientific communication is weaker and research institutions cannot afford access to journals and conferences, the study says. This leads to ignorance and widespread misconceptions about the state of research on the diseases mosquitoes transmit, which limits the ability of scientists from poorer countries to do ground-breaking work, the authors warn.

“Scientists from disease-endemic countries are not usually involved in the development of innovative biotech approaches against vector-borne diseases.”
The study was published in Parasites & Vectors on 10 August.
http://www.parasitesandvectors.com/content/8/1/414

Universal flu vaccine is not far away...

Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) have found a way to induce antibodies to fight a wide range of influenza subtypes—work that could one day eliminate the need for repeated seasonal flu shots.

A yearly flu shot provides some protection from flu epidemics, subtypes not covered by the vaccine can emerge rapidly. This phenomenon was evident in the 2009 spread of the H1N1 (“swine flu”) subtype that killed an estimated 151,700 to 575,400 people worldwide.

In the last decade, several studies from TSRI, Janssen and other institutions have shown that some people are capable of making powerful antibodies that can fight many subtypes of influenza at once by targeting a site on the influenza virus that does not mutate rapidly. Unfortunately, these “broadly neutralizing antibodies,” or bnAbs, are rare.

Still, the tantalizing existence of broadly neutralizing antibodies led Janssen and TRSI to try creating an influenza vaccine specially designed to elicit them.

Researchers zeroed in on a possible target: a protein on the surface of influenza, called hemagglutinin (HA). HA is present on all subtypes of influenza, providing the key viral “machinery” that enables the virus to enter cells. Most importantly, the long “stem” region of HA, which connects the virus to cells, plays such a crucial role that mutations at the site are unlikely to be passed on. If the body can make an immune response against the HA stem, it’s difficult for the virus to escape.

To create antibodies against the HA stem, the research team looked to influenza’s own structure, specifically the universal recognition site of the broadly protective antibody CR9114 in the HA stem (described by Dreyfus et al., Science 2012). This vaccine candidate was designed, produced and tested by a team of scientists led by Jaap Goudsmit, head of the Janssen Prevention Center, the paper’s first author Antonietta Impagliazzo (responsible for the design) and co-senior author Katarina Radošević.

The effort represents the first time scientists have been able to cut off the variable head region of HA, designing features able to stabilize the conformation of the original protein, and at the same time faithfully mimicking the key broadly neutralizing site. The ultimate goal was to use this synthetic version of the HA stem in a vaccine to teach the body to make powerful antibodies against influenza virus, priming it to fight off a variety of flu strains.

The scientists then studied the response of rodent and nonhuman primate models given one of several candidate immunogens. They found that animals given one especially stable immunogen produced antibodies that could bind with HAs in many influenza subtypes, even neutralizing H5N1 viruses (“avian” or “bird” flu).

The reseaScientists at TSRI studied the structure of the immunogen at every point in the process. Using the imaging techniques of electron microscopy (led by TSRI Associate Professor Andrew Ward and postdoctoral fellow Ryan Hoffman) and x-ray crystallography (led by Wilson and TSRI Staff Scientist Xueyong Zhu), the team showed that the most promising candidate immunogen mimicked the HA stem and that antibodies could bind with the immunogen just as they would with a real virus.

With proof that an immunogen can elicit antibodies against the stem region, Wilson said the next step in this research is to see if the immunogen can do the same in humans.

The research was published online ahead of print on August 24 by the journal Science.

Source: Scripps Institute

Wormhole Created in Lab Makes Invisible Magnetic Field
The materials to make a magnetic wormhole already exist and are much simpler to come by. In particular, superconductors, which can carry high levels of current, or charged particles, expel magnetic field lines from their interiors, essentially bending or distorting these lines. This essentially allows the magnetic field to do something different from its surrounding 3D environment, which is the first step in concealing the disturbance in a magnetic field.
The technology could have applications on Earth
For instance, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines use a giant magnet and require people to be in a tightly enclosed central tube for diagnostic imaging.

But if a device could funnel a magnetic field from one spot to the other, it would be possible to take pictures of the body with the strong magnet placed far away, freeing people from the claustrophobic environment of an MRI machine
To do that, the researchers would need to modify the shape of their magnetic wormhole device. A sphere is the simplest shape to model, but a cylindrical outer shell would be the most useful.

"If you want to apply this to medical techniques or medical equipment, for sure you will be interested in directing toward any given direction. "A spherical shape is not the most practical geometry."

The study was conducted at Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.

http://www.livescience.com/51925-magnetic-wormhole-created.html