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

A Crossover Study of Noodle Soup Consumption in Melamine Bowls and Total Melamine Excretion in Urine
People who used melamine-made bowls to consume high-temperature noodle soup can excrete high amounts of melamine into the urine.

Melamine exposure remains common even after the 2008 melamine-tainted baby formula incident in China, which resulted in 6 deaths and approximately 50 000 hospitalizations. A continuous low-dose melamine exposure has been linked to urolithiasis in both children and adults. Another source of melamine exposure is melamine tableware.4 In a pilot study, researchers in China asked 16 healthy volunteers (age range, 20-27 years) to consume 500 mL of hot noodle soup (initial temperature, 90°C) served in melamine bowls in the morning of October 2011. then they collected from each participant 1 spot urine sample immediately before and at 2-hour intervals for 12 hours after consuming the noodle soup. This experiment simulated the natural situation; thus, not all participants provided urine samples at every 2-hour interval. However, all urine samples from all participants were collected after consumption for 12 hours. Postconsumption mean urinary melamine concentrations, corrected for urinary creatinine, initially increased sharply, peaked at 4 to 6 hours, and then declined sharply for 2 hours and then less steeply for the remainder of the monitoring period. The researchers therefore investigated if consumption of hot noodle soup served in melamine bowls would increase total urinary melamine excretion.
Melamine tableware may release large amounts of melamine when used to serve high-temperature foods. The brand of melamine bowls used in this study was chosen from the 5 brands we tested previously.4 The amount of melamine released into food and beverages from melamine tableware varies by brand, so the results of this study of 1 brand may not be generalized to other brands. The use of nonbreakable melamine tableware is common in our daily life. Although the clinical significance of what levels of urinary melamine concentration has not yet been established, the consequences of long-term melamine exposure still should be of concern.
Chronic Exposure To Melamine Through Tableware A simple switch from melamine-containing tableware to stainless steel ones can help reduce environmental exposure to melamine.
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558449
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b01965

Smart windows that can block heat but allow sunlight!

Yes, you heard it right! By using this material in "smart windows", you could reduce home energy use by taking full advantage of both the heat and the visible light provided by the sun each day. Researchers have developed a material that can do just that.

The material is a type of dual-band electrochromic material. "Dual-band" refers to the two types of nanocrystals contained within the material itself. In this case, the first nanocrystal allows you to block visible light while the second targets heat-producing infrared light. "Electrochromic" means that you can flip between light- and heat-blocking modes using a jolt of electricity.

This material was first described by researchers, including University of Texas Chemical Engineering Prof. Delia Milliron, in an article in Nature in 2013. This month, Milliron and her team published a new article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, which explores how an advanced version of this material could be built into a film for use on windows.

According to this paper, a window coating containing a single component ­— doped titania nanocrystals - can selectively block visible light or infrared radiation. It can also switch from heat- to light-blocking mode using a weak jolt of electricity in a matter of minutes (previous versions of the material could take hours to switch). All told, this material can block up to 80% of visible light or 90% of near-infrared light.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7462/full/nature12398.html

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.5b04933?journalCode=jacsat

Researchers led by Ian Mitchell, a psychologist at the University of Birmingham in England, conducted a meta-analysis, which reveals that both oxytocin and alcohol reduce fear, anxiety and stress while increasing trust, generosity and altruism. Yet both also increase aggression, risk taking and “in-group” bias—favoring people similar to ourselves at the expense of others, according to the paper published in August in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.
The scientists posit that these similarities probably exist because oxytocin and alcohol act at different points in the same chemical pathway in the brain. Oxytocin stimulates release of the neurotransmitter GABA, which tends to reduce neural activity. Alcohol binds to GABA receptors and ramps up GABA activity. Oxytocin and alcohol therefore both have the general effect of tamping down brain activity—perhaps explaining why they both lower inhibitions.

Clinical trials have uncovered further interplay between the two in demonstrating that a nasal spray of oxytocin reduces cravings and withdrawal symptoms in alcoholics. These findings inspired a new study, published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, which suggests oxytocin and alcohol do more than just participate in the same neural pathway: they may physically interact.

A natural cooking oil additive, invented by Malaysian scientists and claimed to make palm oil healthier, is not all itclaims to be, other researchers say.

The additive is an extract derived from plants of the citrus family, and has been developed and patented by researchers at the Institute of Bioscience at the University Putra Malaysia. It is sold under the commercial name Afdhal, and is marketed as a way of reducing oil consumption.

“A better solution would be to find ways to reduce the consumption of fried foods, rather than re-use oil and maintain or increase consumption of fried foods.”
But other scientists say they are sceptical about the product’s properties without seeing the data.
The claims detailed in the product’s patent application are not based on sound scientific research, says Ibrahim, who is also a researcher in medicinal and natural products chemistry at University Kebangsaan Malaysia. “In fact it mentioned that the actual mechanism oil of adsorption by the product was not fully understood,” he says.
Reusing oil is not the solution to protect human health or the environment, says Bronwen Powell, a researcher in forests and food security at the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia.
“A better solution,” she says, “would be to find ways to reduce the consumption of fried foods, rather than re-use oil and maintain or increase consumption of fried foods”.

The studies that back up the claims about Afdhal have not been published in peer-reviewed publications, however. This is in order to keep the information about the plant’s extracts secret, says one of its inventors, Suhaila Mohamed, a research fellow at the Institute of Bioscience.
Reusing oil is not the solution to protect human health or the environment, says Bronwen Powell, a researcher in forests and food security at the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia. “A better solution,” she says, “would be to find ways to reduce the consumption of fried foods, rather than re-use oil and maintain or increase consumption of fried foods”.
-scidev.net

Egyptian method filters seawater in minutes
The technology is based on salt-attracting membranes and vaporising heat

The membranes are made of cellulose acetate powder which is cheap to make

Even remote communities could use the technique – with just membranes and fire
http://www.scidev.net/global/water/news/egyptian-filters-seawater-e...

You see a person on the road and wonder why he or she resembles your friend even though the person doesn't have any close relationship with the latter.

The word doppelgänger is often used in a more general sense to describe any person who physically or behaviorally resembles another person.

According to scientists the concept of having an unrelated identical twin is less a cool mysterious gift this beautiful world gives us and more a boring genetic math probability game.

The idea behind this theory was posed by Michael Sheehan, an assistant professor of neurobiology and behavior, and explained in an interview with LiveScience.

Sheehan says although there are large amounts of aesthetic variables our genetic makeups can churn out, at the end of the day there are only a finite amount of possibilities.

This means while there are billions of ways we can all look different, there are only just that: billions of ways we can look different.

Sheehan told LiveScience,

There is only so much genetic diversity to go around… If you shuffle that deck of cards so many times, at some point, you get the same hand dealt to you twice.

More bluntly, Sheehan believes there is a high probability of people in this world having doppelgängers because there are only so many ways faces can be structured.

Dr. Arthur Beaudet, a professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, told LiveScience because how we look is decided based off of our genetic makeups, doppelgängers could actually be distant relatives, whether the pairs know it or not.

http://www.livescience.com/52103-does-everyone-have-a-look-alike.html

New hominid species discovered in South Africa
Researchers have discovered a brand new species of human ancestor buried deep inside a South African cave system. The fossils uncovered included 15 partial skeletons, making it the biggest single discovery of its kind in Africa.

But what's most exciting is that this new ancestor, named Homo naledi, may have been one of the first members of our genus, and may change our understanding of human evolution forever. The mass discovery also suggests that the species may have been ritualistic - a trait thought to be unique to humans ( I think, this is a controversial statement without evidence - Krishna).
H. naledi could have lived in Africa up to 3 million years ago ( yet to be confirmed).

The species walked upright at a height of around 150 centimetres.
Despite their height, they also had a tiny brain only slightly larger than a chimpanzee's, with a volume of around 450 to 550 cubic centimetres.
The skeletons suggest that H. naledi wasn't carrying much body weight, with researchers estimating an average weight of around 45 kg. Their bodies also appear to have been built to walk long distances.
H. naledi had small, modern-looking teeth and feet similar to humans, but more primitive fingers.
It's believed ( but there is no evidence) the bodies of these individuals were buried in the chamber intentionally, possibly as some type of burial ritual. No evidence of that kind of behaviour has been seen in such a primitive human ancestor before.
The fossils exhibit a combination of primitive features that bring to mind our ancient australopithecine predecessors (including Lucy and her ilk) and features that are associated with Homo. For instance, the pelvis has a flared shape like that seen in Australopithecus, whereas the leg and foot resemble those of Homo sapiens. Likewise, the skull combines a small braincase with a cranium that is otherwise built like that of early Homo. The teeth, meanwhile, are small like those of modern humans, yet the third molar is larger than the other molars—a pattern associated with australopithecines. And the upper limb pairs an Australopithecus-like shoulder and fingers with a Homo-like wrist and palm. Standing about 1.5 meters tall, with a small brain, clever hands and a body built for upright-walking as well as climbing, this creature possessed a unique mosaic of traits that Berger and his co-authors think reveals a new species of human. Given the many Homo-like traits evident in the bones—particularly in those regions that contact the environment (namely, feet, hands and teeth)—the team put the creature in the genus Homo, rather than Australopithecus, calling it H. naledi.

The fossils were discovered inside the Rising Star cave system, 48 km northwest of Johannesburg. They were named after the Dinaledi chamber where they were found.
Currently the researchers believe that H. naledi may sit between Homo habilis and Homo erectus on the family tree.
The species could be thought of as a "bridge" between primates and modern humans.
http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560

More than three million people around the world die prematurely because of air pollution, scientists have estimated.

Most of the deaths occur in Asia, where large numbers of people in countries such as India and China use highly polluting methods of heating and cooking in their homes.

In the US, traffic pollution made the biggest contribution to global death rates while in Europe, Russia and eastern Asia, agricultural sources had the greatest impact.

Outdoor air pollution includes ozone, a toxic form of oxygen, and tiny sooty particles that lodge in the lungs.

The study, published in the journal Nature, was conducted by combining a global atmospheric chemistry model with population data and health statistics.

Scientists predict that premature mortality from air pollution could double by 2050 with a death toll of 6.6 million lives per year.

Relationship between nitrates in Beetroot and muscle power

Funny side of science: Ig Nobel Prizes.
A 17th century Moroccan sultan had 888 children in 30 years.

All mammals take about 21 seconds to urinate, give or take 13 seconds.

When you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, it walks like dinosaurs are thought to have walked.

Scientists actually studied this stuff.

Seriously.

And they got tongue in cheek awards for their efforts Thursday night at Harvard University.

They are known as the "Anti-Nobel" awards and are also called the Ig Nobel Prizes.

They are for "achievements that first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK," the ceremony`s slogan says.

For instance, the physics award went to the three Georgia Tech University scientists who concluded that all mammals take about the same time to relieve themselves.

The award: a 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollar bill. It is worth a few cents. In Zimbabwe, inflation is rampant.

The winner of the group received the award from an actual Nobel winner, the 2007 economics laureate, American Eric Maskin.

In mathematics, the committee chose two Austrians who used statistical analysis to study whether -- as legend claims -- Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed during the years from 1697 through 1727 to father 888 children.

With four wives and a harem of 500 other women the answer was yes, the researchers concluded.

On other areas, aside from research, the committee gave an economics award to police in Bangkok for offering to pay policemen extra cash if they refuse to take bribes.

'Tree of life' encompassing all of life created
Tracing back to the beginning of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago, scientists have created the first "tree of life" for the roughly 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes.

Tens of thousands of smaller trees have been built over the years for select branches of the tree of life--some containing upwards of 100,000 species--but this is the first time those results have been combined into a single tree that encompasses all of life, the study said.

A collaborative effort among 11 institutions, the tree depicts the relationships among living things as they diverged from one another over time.

Understanding how the millions of species on Earth are related to one another helps scientists discover new drugs, increase crop and livestock yields, and trace the origins and spread of infectious diseases such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Ebola and influenza.
Rather than build the tree of life from scratch, the researchers pieced it together by compiling thousands of smaller chunks that had already been published online and merging them into a gigantic "supertree" that encompasses all named species.
"Many participants on the project contributed hundreds of hours tracking down and cleaning up thousands of trees from the literature, then selecting 484 of them that were used to generate the draft tree of life," study first author Cody Hinchliff from University of Idaho in the US.

Combining the 484 trees was a painstaking process that took three years to complete, Stephen Smith, assistant professor at University of Michigan in the US, pointed out.

The end result is a digital resource that is available free online for anyone to use or edit, much like a "Wikipedia" for evolutionary trees.

The findings were published on 18th Sept., 2015 in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

A newly invented and ultra-cheap water cleaning process is looks promising.

Developed by a team of researchers at Alexandria University in Egypt, the procedure uses a desalination technique called pervaporation to remove the salt from sea water and make it drinkable. Specially made synthetic membranes are used to filter out large salt particles and impurities so they can be evaporated away, and then the rest is heated up, vapourised, and condensed back into clean water.
Crucially, the membranes can be made in any lab using cheap materials that are available locally, and the vaporisation part of the process doesn't require any electricity. This means the new method is both inexpensive and suitable for areas without a regular power supply - both factors that are very important for developing countries.

The technique not only desalinates the seawater, it's capable of removing sewage and dirt from it too. The researchers combined expertise in oceanography, chemical engineering, agricultural engineering and biosystems engineering to come up with the solution, and their work has now been published in the journal Water Science and Technology.
The technology implemented in the study is much better than reverse osmosis, the technology currently used in Egypt and most of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
Unfortunately for those who are waiting for this type of technology, a lot of work is required before it can be put into action: the academics working on the project have to set up a pilot test that proves their theories correct on a large scale. There's also the issue of how to deal with the waste produced from the process.

What's certain is that a new procedure like this could have a huge impact on the lives of millions of people - according to Water.org

Quantum teleportation over 100  km of fiber using highly efficient superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors
Quantum teleportation is an essential quantum operation by which we can transfer an unknown quantum state to a remote location with the help of quantum entanglement and classical communication. Since the first experimental demonstrations using photonic qubits and continuous variables, the distance of photonic quantum teleportation over free-space channels has continued to increase and has reached >100  km. On the other hand, quantum teleportation over optical fiber has been challenging, mainly because the multifold photon detection that inevitably accompanies quantum teleportation experiments has been very inefficient due to the relatively low detection efficiencies of typical telecom-band single-photon detectors. Here, we report on quantum teleportation over optical fiber using four high-detection-efficiency superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs). These SNSPDs make it possible to perform highly efficient multifold photon measurements, allowing us to confirm that the quantum states of input photons were successfully teleported over 100 km of fiber with an average fidelity of 83.7±2.0%.
https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/abstract.cfm?uri=optica-2-10-832

Washing your hands with antibacterial soap containing triclosan – the most common microbe-killing ingredient used in these soaps – may be no better than ordinary plain soap, according to South Korean researchers. This confirms previous studies which have reached similar conclusions and could help settle the controversy of triclosan use.
Triclosan is widely known for its antimicrobial properties, and was first introduced in hospital scrub soap in the 1970s. Currently, 0.3% triclosan is the maximum amount permitted in consumer soaps in most countries and several studies under lab conditions have shown that soaps containing this amount tend to be no more effective at killing bacteria on hands than plain soap.

Furthermore, triclosan remains controversial with reports of various adverse effects, including allergies and carcinogenic impurities.

Min-Suk Rhee and colleagues at Korea University, Seoul, say they have found compelling evidence that triclosan-containing soap is no better than plain soap. They believe their study is more accurate than previous work because they only used one variable – the presence or absence of 0.3% triclosan – and fixed all of the other factors which can affect the results.

The team exposed 20 bacterial strains to plain and triclosan-containing soaps for 20s at room temperature and then slightly warmer temperatures – conditions that were chosen to simulate home hand washing. They also contaminated the hands of volunteers with Serratia marcescens bacteria to test how well each soap removed bacteria.

The results revealed there was no significant difference in bactericidal activity between plain soap and antibacterial soap at either test temperature, although after 9 hours the soap containing triclosan showed significantly greater bactericidal effects.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/09/antibacterial-soap-triclo...

Why a simple definition of species is hard to come by.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150924-species-definition-video/?u...

Reasons some scientists gave why most of the scientists and innovators are professors:
Self-education: You learn the most by explaining to others. I know more about MOS-transistors after teaching a class on MOS transistors last semester than I ever did by taking three classes taught by three different teachers on this subject during my graduate and undergraduate studies.
Cheap-labor: in form of graduate students. In a research lab setting, it is really hard to find collaborators, but who needs collaborators when you can have really smart people working for you for practically free?
Control on information: How many scientists do you know who work at Microsoft Research or IBM Research? Even if you know them, these companies keep most of their research secret, so you probably don't know about their work. But, professors have complete control over how much information they want to release to public.
Recognition: One has to be a really great scientist to be known. But, professors get recognition quite easily through teaching so many students and open nature of universities.
Posterity: A professor's Ph.D. students keep his name and field alive even after he retires or dies.
Opportunity to pursue long-term research: academic setting provides the opportunity to conduct focused research, which may not have an immediate payoff, but will have great long-term impact. Most "real" breakthroughs are made after long term research - over several years, or even decades. With very few notable exceptions, industry is currently focused on short term research which has immediate payoff. Enterprises like Bell Labs that reported fundamental research have collapsed. Majority of companies are interested only in incrementally modifying ideas and algorithms that already exist. On the contrary, academicians focus on knowledge creation that produces a ripple effect - eventually creating value for all stakeholders.
Encapsulation from economics risk: In academia, you can work on ideas that may have a small chance of working, but if they do, they will produce a huge impact. In other words, academia is more forgiving in allowing your projects to fail. One can keep trying new ideas over and over again - attacking the problem with multiple strategies until success is achieved! If you work in a commercially driven enterprise, you may be fired if you are not able to produce something viable over a short time. This is expected - a manager is unlikely to fund your work on a project that has a small chance to workout, or will bring revenue after a hiatus of a decade! On the other hand, several examples exist where academic scientists have focused on a single important problem for decades, solved it successfully and were then awarded a Nobel prize (or at least found immense intellectual satisfaction). I must mention, however, that these days funding for academic research is getting scarce, which is discouraging scientists from thinking big.

But I think complete independence is the right answer if this assumption  is really true!- Krishna