Host Inflammatory Response to Mosquito Bites Enhances the Severity of Arbovirus Infection
Some mosquito-borne viruses appear to benefit from their victims’ immune responses to bug bites. Simply put, the body’s defensive reaction to pathogens, including dengue or West Nile, acts as a handmaiden for the viruses themselves. The first glimpses into exactly how these pathogens manage to hijack the body’s defense systems to enhance disease were revealed recently in a new mouse study.
When immune cells travel to the itchy, red site of a mosquito bite, they may inadvertently be infected with a mosquito-borne virus and then help spread the infection throughout the body. The resulting higher viral loads make the recipient sicker than would be the case if the virus were introduced without a bite. This revelation points to a potential new target for combating mosquito-borne diseases: the bite site itself.
The research team found that neutrophils, white blood cells that act as the body’s first line of defense against invaders, fuel inflammation at the bite site—thus trapping the virus there. A few hours later immune system responders called myeloid cells show up and become infected, and their cellular machinery is hijacked to replicate the virus. The immune-system soldiers then help spread the virus in the body, ultimately increasing morbidity and mortality.
Within a day, most mice that received a bite and subsequent virus-jab showed a 10-fold increase in virus numbers at the site of infection, compared with mice that had only been inoculated with virus. Such high viral loads allow the virus to more readily spread to remote tissues—and may also boost chances of transmitting the disease to other carriers. The higher virus count also proved lethal for many bite victims.
To confirm that neutrophils and myeloid cells help the virus thrive, the researchers conducted separate experiments that depleted the neutrophils or blocked myeloid cells from deploying. In both altered states the mice actually had lower viral loads and got less sick.
The new findings are particularly alluring for researchers because they may point to one target—the bite site—for fighting disease formation more effectively. “If you can inhibit bite inflammation, you could have a way of stopping viruses before they establish infection.

http://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(16)30205-9

Right use of hand sanitizers:
Q: How much time should we spend on cleaning our hands with sanitizers?
A scientific answer: To kill bacteria, rub for at least 15 to 30 seconds. After 45 seconds, you’re not doing much more good!
To provide more evidence-based guidance on hand sanitizer use, scientists from Geneva University Hospitals in Switzerland used E. coli bacteria to contaminate the hands of 23 health care workers. Then each person received a 3-milliliter squeeze of hand sanitizer. Participants were instructed to rub for different amounts of time, ranging from 10 to 60 seconds. The concentration of bacteria plunged after 10 and 15 seconds of friction, and then dropped slightly more after 30 seconds. But significant reductions in bacteria stopped at the 45-second mark — a curious finding that researcher Daniela Pires says she and her colleagues cannot explain.

The research was presented June 18 at ASM Microbe 2016, a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology and the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

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Q: Where do kids get their tooth decay microbes?

Scientific reply: Very little from mothers! Very limited quantity from the kisses mom's present their children!

New data show that the most common cause of tooth decay, the bacterium Streptococcus mutans (that cause dental caries), doesn’t always come from mother-to-child transmission.

Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham studied 119 children in rural Alabama and 414 of their household contacts, tracking the path of S. mutans. Contrary to expectation, 40 percent of the children did not share any strains with their mothers. Instead, those strains usually overlapped with those of siblings and cousins. And 72 percent of children carried a strain of S. mutans that no one else in the family had, probably picked up from other children at school, day care or other locations. The research was presented June 17 at ASM Microbe 2016, a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology and the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

These findings indicate the importance of considering horizontal, as well as vertical, acquisition of S. mutans in prevention strategies for dental caries.

Why is life not possible without water?
According to scientists...
Water is the basic unit of life and it is impossible to live without it. Ever wondered why? A new study has an explanation that may answer many such questions.

Ohio State University lead researcher Dongping Zhong along with his team shed new light on how and why water is essential to life. Zhong called the study a ‘major step forward’ in the understanding of water-protein interactions.

The study finds the strongest evidence that proteins can't fold themselves, but can fold into particular shapes to enable biological reactions.

Zhong, who is also a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and his team used ultra-fast laser pulses to take snapshots of water molecules moving around a DNA polymerase, the kind of protein that helps DNA reproduce.
The findings showed how water molecules typically flow around each other at picosecond speeds, while proteins fold at nanosecond speeds, 1,000 times slower.
Previously, Zhong’s group demonstrated that the water molecules slow down when they encounter a protein. Water molecules are still moving 100 times faster than a protein when they connect with it.

In the new study, the researchers were able to determine that the water molecules directly touched the protein’s ‘side chains,’ the portions of the protein molecule that bind and unbind with each other to enable folding and function. The researchers were also able to note the timing of movement in the molecules.

Water can’t arbitrarily shape a protein, Zhong explained. Proteins can only fold and unfold in a few different ways depending on the amino acids they’re made of.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

New Way To Create Fuel From Waste Plastics
Scientists have found a way to use plastic trash to create a cleaner diesel-like fuel that could power vehicles, an advance that may turn landfills into potential energy sources in future.

The researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of California in the US hope to scale up the technique to allow for it to be used in actually reducing plastic trash.

Plastics break down very slowly causing them to pile up in landfills and serving as the source material in artificial island creation in oceans.

Scientists have been looking for ways to degrade plastics, particularly polyethylene, the most common kind produced, but until now have not been able to find inexpensive and scalable means.

The new method involves mixing the plastics with an organometallic catalyst, made from readily available molecules that were then doped with metal iridium, 'Phys.org' reported.

The reaction caused the bonds holding the plastic together to weaken, allowing them to be more easily torn apart.

Researchers were able to use the broken down material to create a diesel-like fuel which they claim could be used to power vehicles and other motors.

Burning the fuel is also cleaner than burning other combustible materials, they said.

The research was published in the journal Science Advances.

Warning: Looking at your smartphone while lying in bed at night could wreak havoc on your vision.
Two women went temporarily blind from constantly checking their phones in the dark, say doctors who are now alerting others to the unusual phenomenon.
The solution: Make sure to use both eyes when looking at your smartphone screen in the dark.
In Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, doctors detailed the cases of the two women, ages 22 and 40, who experienced "transient smartphone blindness" for months.
The women complained of recurring episodes of temporary vision loss for up to 15 minutes. They were subjected to variety of medical exams, MRI scans and heart tests. Yet doctors couldn't find anything wrong with them to explain the problem.
But minutes after walking into an eye specialist's office, the mystery was solved.
"I simply asked them, 'What exactly were you doing when this happened?'" recalled Dr. Gordon Plant of Moorfield's Eye Hospital in London.
He explained that both women typically looked at their smartphones with only one eye while resting on their side in bed in the dark—their other eye was covered by the pillow.
"So you have one eye adapted to the light because it's looking at the phone and the other eye is adapted to the dark," he said.
When they put their phone down, they couldn't see with the phone eye. That's because "it's taking many minutes to catch up to the other eye that's adapted to the dark," Plant said.
He said the temporary blindness was ultimately harmless, and easily avoidable, if people stuck to looking at their smartphones with both eyes.
One of the women was relieved the short-term blindness didn't signal a more serious problem like an imminent stroke. He said the second woman was more skeptical and kept a rigorous monthslong diary tracking her fleeting vision loss before she finally believed him. But she couldn't stop checking her phone for messages from bed, he said.
Dr. Rahul Khurana, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, called it a fascinating hypothesis but said two cases weren't enough to prove that one-eyed smartphone use in the dark caused the problem. He also doubted whether many smartphone users would experience the phenomenon.
Khurana, who acknowledged that he's an avid cellphone user, said that he and his wife tried to recreate the scenario on a recent evening, but had difficulty checking their phones with only one eye. "It was very odd," he said.
Source: New England Journal of Medicine

Life-saving news: New Helium deposits found in Tanzania

Using a new technique, scientists have discovered reserves of helium in Tanzania said to be equivalent to seven times the amount of the noble gas consumed worldwide each year. The new source could alleviate recurrent shortages of helium that have plagued users of scientific instruments and medical imaging equipment.

Working with the start-up firm Helium One, scientists at Oxford and Durham universities uncovered the reserves in Tanzania’s East African Rift Valley. The researchers theorize that intense heat from volcanic activity in the Rift Valley releases helium in ancient crustal rock. The gas then accumulated in underground reservoirs.

The scientist say they have combined methods used in oil exploration with seismic images of gas-trapping structures and calculations from independent experts to estimate helium reserves of 1.5 billion m3 in just one part of the Rift Valley.

Today, helium is recovered as a by-product of natural gas extraction. But with prices of helium now about four times higher than they were a decade ago, prospectors are looking for new sources. The Tanzania helium reserve would be the first to be discovered and developed intentionally

The scientists presented the findings on June 28 at the Goldschmidt Conference, a gathering of geochemistry experts in Yokohama, Japan.

- Chemical and Engineering News

Good News: Ozone hole in Antarctica is recovering!

Global regulation of chlorine compounds is giving the atmosphere time to heal, even as volcanic eruptions interfere.

A new analysis shows that, on average, the hole — which forms every Southern Hemisphere spring, letting in dangerous ultraviolet light — is smaller and appears later in the year than it did in 2000.

The 1987 global treaty called the Montreal Protocol sought to reduce the ozone hole by banning chlorofluorocarbons, chlorine-containing chemicals — used as refrigerants in products such as air conditioners — that accelerated ozone loss in the stratosphere. The study shows that it worked.

The finding was reported on June 30th in Science.

--

STING Operation Against Pathogens Researchers have shed light on how STING, an innate immune sensor that triggers inflammation, is activated to eliminate viruses or bacteria. 

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have revealed the mechanism underlying the activation of STING, an innate immune sensor that triggers inflammation to remove foreign pathogens. This discovery, published in Nature Communications, provides therapeutic targets for treating infections and inflammatory diseases. When cells are infected with foreign matter such as DNA viruses or bacteria, the foreign DNA is sensed by STING, which is embedded in the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), an important site of protein production in a cell. STING then triggers the release of type I interferon and other inflammatory responses to eliminate the foreign substance. This essential basic cellular response is part of the innate immune system that recognizes and eliminates pathogens from our bodies. However, it was unclear why STING responded to foreign DNA. Additionally, although it is known that STING translocates from the ER to a location close to the nucleus when it detects foreign DNA, the role of this translocation remained unknown. In the present study, the research group of Assistant Professor Kojiro Mukai, Associate Professor Tomohiko Taguchi and Professor Hiroyuki Arai at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences found that STING is activated at the Golgi, a part of the cell that is involved in protein transport, as opposed to the ER. Furthermore, the activation of STING requires palmitoylation, a type of protein modification, at the Golgi. The unique lipid environment of the Golgi is also essential for the activation of STING. In various inflammatory diseases such as autoimmune disease and cancer, STING is often activated, causing an abnormal inflammatory response. Thus, the findings offer new opportunities to treat such diseases by suppressing the palmitoylation of STING or the manipulation of the Golgi lipid composition.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160621/ncomms11932/full/ncomms119...

Bacteria block mosquitoes from transmitting Zika, chikungunya viruses!
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have confirmed that a benign bacterium called Wolbachia pipientis can completely block transmission of Zika virus in Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species responsible for passing the virus to humans.

Matthew Aliota, a scientist at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) and first author of the paper -- published today (July 1, 2016) in the journal Scientific Reports -- says the bacteria could present a "novel biological control mechanism," aiding efforts to stop the spread of Zika virus.
Researchers led by Jorge Osorio, a UW-Madison professor of pathobiological sciences, and Scott O'Neill of the the Eliminate Dengue Program (EDP) and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, are already releasing mosquitoes harboring the Wolbachia bacterium in pilot studies in Colombia, Brazil, Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia to help control the spread of dengue virus. Their work is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

An important feature of Wolbachia is that it is self-sustainable, making it a very low-cost approach for controlling mosquito-borne viral diseases that are affecting many tropical countries around the world.

In two of researchers initial study sites in Australia, approximately 90 percent of the mosquitoes continue to be infected with Wolbachia after initial release more than six years ago.
Wolbachia can be found in up to 60 percent of insects around the world, including butterflies and bees. While not typically found in the Aedes aegypti mosquito -- the species that also transmits dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses -- scientists discovered in the early 1990s that Wolbachia could be introduced to the mosquito in the lab and would prevent the mosquitoes from transmitting dengue virus.

Zika virus belongs to the same family as dengue virus and Aliota and Osorio.

Monsoon forecast is becoming a difficult process. With more than 70% of India’s 1.25 billion citizens engaged in agriculture and relying on weather predictions to decide when they will sow their seeds and harvest their crops.
But getting the forecast right remains a challenge, thanks to the complex — and still poorly understood — ways in which South Asia’s monsoon rains are influenced by everything from atmospheric and ocean temperatures to air quality and global climate trends. Even the amount of ice in Antarctica is suspected to have an impact.

And it’s only getting harder to figure out, scientists say, as the monsoon becomes increasingly erratic.

A new study released Friday in the journal Science Advances helps clear up a bit of the mystery, by showing that man-made climate change is responsible for most of the change seen in ocean surface temperatures near the equator across Asia, which in turn affect regional rainfall patterns including the Indian monsoon.

By showing that link, the study indicates future ocean warming in the region, which could in turn increase the amount of rainfall during monsoons, strengthen cyclones and increase precipitation over East Asia.

“This has important implications for understanding changes in rainfall patterns for a large, and vulnerable population across Asia,” said oceanographer Evan Weller, who led the research team while he was at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, before recently shifting to Monash University in Australia.

The study looks specifically at a mid-oceanic body called the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, which holds some of the world’s warmest seawaters and spans the western Pacific to the eastern Indian Ocean.

Scientists have long known that India’s monsoons are partly influenced by that warm pool. And they’ve known that the pool has been expanding — and warming — for decades. That expansion and warming have already caused some sea rise around islands in Asia.

It wasn’t entirely clear why the pool was changing, until now.

Weller and his team compared data observations with several climate models, and deduced that rising greenhouse gases along with aerosols and other atmospheric pollutants were the dominant cause of the pool’s warming and expansion over the past 60 years, though regional climate variations also had some effect.

But one thing is clear: If climate change trends continue, and by most indications they will, forecasters will have to consider the warm pool in their monsoon predictions. And by demonstrating how greenhouse gases are the dominant driver of changes in the warm pool, the team has added another dimension that can help improve climate models.

Soy diesel found to be less toxic than other fuels
Unlike conventional diesel, fuel made from soybeans does not directly damage lung cells, a lab study has shown.

“Some of the soybean biodiesel presently being used in Brazil does not exhibit direct adverse effects on human lung cells nor [does it] induce inflammatory response,” says the paper, published in the August issue of the journal Toxicology in Vitro.

To assess the fuels’ toxic effects, researchers from Brazil and Puerto Rico exposed lung cell cultures to particles emitted by the combustion of four types of fuel: commercial diesel from fossil fuel sources, pure soy-based biodiesel, soy-based biodiesel with additives and ethanol with additives.

After exposure, the scientists counted the proportion of cells that survived to assess the fuels’ toxicity, and measured the quantity of cytokines the cells produced. Cytokines are proteins secreted by certain cells, including lung cells, involved in the regulation of inflammatory processes. An increase in their production can cause damage to the cells.

Adriana Gioda, a chemist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and co-author of the paper, says this study is the first demonstration that soy-based biodiesel does not cause a significant toxic reaction in lung cells.

However, the authors warn that these results should not be “considered as an absolute positive outcome” and should pave the way for further studies in live animals.
 

Viral hepatitis kills as many as malaria, TB or HIV/AIDS, finds study
Viral hepatitis has become one of the leading causes of death and disability across the globe – killing at least as many people annually as TB, malaria or HIV/AIDS. This is the finding of new research from scientists at Imperial College London and University of Washington, who analysed data from 183 countries collected between 1990 and 2013.


Viral hepatitis exists in five forms – A, B, C, D and E and is transmitted through bodily fluids, or, in the case of A and E, through food or drink contaminated with faeces.

A majority of the deaths – 96 per cent - were due to hepatitis B and C which cause liver damage (cirrhosis), and liver cancer. Symptoms include fatigue, jaundice and nausea, however in many people the infection is symptomless - and so an individual may not know they are infected until they develop serious complications.

The researchers, who published their findings in journal The Lancet, found that viral hepatitis deaths increased by 63 per cent over the 23-year period. The study, which was co-led by scientists at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, found deaths from viral hepatitis were higher in high and middle-income countries than lower income countries. The authors say the overall disease burden is now more evenly divided between higher and lower income nations.
The team say we now urgently need international measures to address this crisis.
Although there are effective treatments and vaccines for viral hepatitis, there is very little money invested in getting these to patients –especially compared to malaria, HIV/AIDS and TB. We now have a viral hepatitis global action plan approved in May by the World Health Assembly, and we now need to implement it.
The researchers found deaths from acute infection, cirrhosis and liver disease caused by viral hepatitis had increased by 63 per cent from 890,000 in 1990 to 1.45 million in 2013.

By comparison, in 2013, 1.3 million people worldwide died from AIDS, 1.4 million from TB, and 855,000 from malaria, according to a 2015 study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
In the current study, most hepatitis deaths were found to occur in East Asia, and the majority of global deaths were due to hepatitis B and C. One potential reason for the high number of deaths from hepatitis B and C is these strains cause long-term infections with very few immediate symptoms. They can therefore progress silently until they trigger serious liver damage or cancer. Although we have had an effective hepatitis B vaccine for some years, there is still a large proportion of the world which is unvaccinated. We have no similar vaccine for hepatitis C.

Source: Imperial College London

Big Bang or Big Bounce?

Perfect Quantum Cosmological Bounce

A new study of the early universe reveals how it could have been formed from an older collapsing universe, rather than being brand new.

The universe is currently expanding and it is a common theory that this is the result of the 'Big Bang' - the universe bursting into existence from a point of infinitely dense and hot material.

However, physicists have long debated this idea as it means the universe began in a state of complete breakdown of physics as we know it. Instead, some have suggested that the universe has alternated between periods of expansion and contraction, and the current expansion is just one phase of this.

This so-called 'Big Bounce' idea has been around since 1922, but has been held back by an inability to explain how the universe transitions from a contracting to an expanding state, and vice versa, without leading to an infinite point.

Now, in a new study published today in Physical Review Letters, Dr Steffen Gielen from Imperial College London and Dr Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, have shown how the Big Bounce might be possible.

Cosmological observations suggest that during its very early life, the universe may have looked the same at all scales - meaning that the physical laws that that worked for the whole structure of the universe also worked at the scale of the very small, smaller than individual atoms. This phenomenon is known as conformal symmetry.

In today's universe, this is not the case - particles smaller than atoms behave very differently to larger matter and the symmetry is broken. Subatomic particle behaviour is governed by what is called quantum mechanics, which produces different rules of physics for the very small.

For example, without quantum mechanics, atoms would not exist. The electrons, as they whizz around the nucleus, would lose energy and collapse into the centre, destroying the atom. However, quantum mechanics prevents this from happening.

In the early universe, as everything was incredibly small, it may have been governed solely by the principles of quantum mechanics, rather than the large-scale physics we also see today.

In the new study, the researchers suggest that the effects of quantum mechanics could prevent the universe from collapsing and destroying itself at end of a period of contraction, known as the Big Crunch. Instead, the universe would transition from a contracting state to an expanding one without collapsing completely.

http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.021301

Malaria teamwork makes it more dangerous to humans
Getting infected by two malaria species can improve conditions for the second species, making the disease more dangerous and persistent than lone infections, a mouse study shows.

According to a paper made public on 5 July, being infected with both Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax can provide this second parasite species with more of the resources it needs to prosper.

This is because P. falciparum attacks red blood cells of all ages but when the blood regenerates it offers more subsistence for P. vivax, which prefers to attack young red blood cells, the researchers say.

'The findings challenge ideas that one species will outcompete the other', says coauthor Sarah Reece, a biologist at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. “This explains why infections involving two parasite species can pose a greater health risk to patients.”

Humans are a bit more complicated than mice, because the nature of the immune response actually leads over time to protection from disease severity.

In their paper, the authors admit it will be hard to translate their research into applicable knowledge for human treatment. They write that previous infections and the ability of P. vivax to remain in the body at a dormant stage can complicate the picture of coinfections. 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12639/abstract;jsess...

Improving climate predictions with the help of cluster satellites
A team of small, shoebox-sized satellites, flying in formation around the Earth, could estimate the planet’s reflected energy with twice the accuracy of traditional monolith satellites, according to an MIT-led study published online in Acta Astronautica. If done right, such satellite swarms could also be cheaper to build, launch, and maintain.

The researchers, led by Sreeja Nag, a former graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), simulated the performance of a single large, orbiting satellite with nine sensors, compared with a cluster of three to eight small, single-sensor satellites flying together around the Earth. In particular, the team looked at how each satellite formation measures albedo, or the amount of light reflected from the Earth — an indication of how much heat the planet reflects.
The team found that clusters of four or more small satellites were able to look at a single location on Earth from multiple angles, and measure that location’s total reflectance with an error that is half that of single satellites in operation today. Nag says such a correction in estimation error could significantly improve scientists’ climate projections.
“Total outgoing radiation is actually one of the biggest uncertainties in climate change, because it is a complex function of where on Earth you are, what season it is, what time of day it is, and it’s very difficult to ascertain how much heat leaves the Earth,” Nag says. “If we can estimate the reflectance of different surface types, globally, frequently, and more accurately, which a cluster of satellites would let you do, then at least you’ve solved one part of the climate puzzle.”
“The Earth does not reflect equally in all directions,” Nag says. “If you don’t get these multiple angles, you might under- or overestimate how much it’s reflecting, if you have to extrapolate from just one direction.”

Today, satellites that measure the Earth’s albedo typically do so with multiple cameras, arranged on a single satellite. For example, NASA’s Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on the Terra satellite houses nine cameras that take images of the Earth from a fan-like arrangement of angles. Nag says the drawback of this design is that the cameras have a limited view, as they are not designed to change angles and can only observe within a single plane.

Instead, the team proposes a cluster of small satellites that travel around the Earth in a loose formation, close enough to each other to be able to image the same spot on the ground from their various vantage points. Each satellite can move within the formation, taking pictures of the same spot at the same time from different angles.

“Over time, the cluster would cover the whole Earth, and you’d have a multiangular, 3-D view of the entire planet from space, which has not been done before with multiple satellites,” Nag says. “Moreover, we can use multiple clusters for more frequent coverage of the Earth.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576516303149

Astronomers find a freak Frankenstein galaxy made of parts of other galaxies
The unassuming galaxy turns out to have a lot of parts taken from galaxies that came before.
About 250 million light-years away, there's a neighborhood of our universe that astronomers had considered quiet and unremarkable. But now, scientists have uncovered an enormous, bizarre galaxy possibly formed from the parts of other galaxies.

A new study to be published in the Astrophysical Journal reveals the secret of UGC 1382, a galaxy that had originally been thought to be old, small and typical. Instead, scientists using data from NASA telescopes and other observatories have discovered that the galaxy is 10 times bigger than previously thought and, unlike most galaxies, its insides are younger than its outsides, almost as if it had been built using spare parts.
"This rare, 'Frankenstein' galaxy formed and is able to survive because it lies in a quiet little suburban neighborhood of the universe, where none of the hubbub of the more crowded parts can bother it," said study co-author Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, California. "It is so delicate that a slight nudge from a neighbor would cause it to disintegrate."
As it turns out, UGC 1382, at about 718,000 light-years across, is more than seven times wider than the Milky Way. It is also one of the three largest isolated disk galaxies ever discovered, according to the study. This galaxy is a rotating disk of low-density gas. Stars don't form here very quickly because the gas is so spread out.

But the biggest surprise was how the relative ages of the galaxy's components appear backwards. In most galaxies, the innermost portion forms first and contains the oldest stars. As the galaxy grows, its outer, newer regions have the youngest stars. Not so with UGC 1382. By combining observations from many different telescopes, astronomers were able to piece together the historical record of when stars formed in this galaxy -- and the result was bizarre.

"The center of UGC 1382 is actually younger than the spiral disk surrounding it," Seibert said. "It's old on the outside and young on the inside. This is like finding a tree whose inner growth rings are younger than the outer rings."

The unique galactic structure may have resulted from separate entities coming together, rather than a single entity that grew outward. In other words, two parts of the galaxy seem to have evolved independently before merging -- each with its own history.
More galaxies like this may exist, but more research is needed to look for them.

"By understanding this galaxy, we can get clues to how galaxies form on a larger scale, and uncover more galactic neighborhood surprises".
- Astronomy.com

Bright light accelerates ageing in mice

Exposure to artificial light weakens rodent’ muscles and bones, but risks to humans are not clear 

Lucassen and Johanna Meijer, a neuroscientist at Leiden, report  in Current Biology that a constant barrage of bright light prematurely ages mice, playing havoc with their circadian clocksand causing a cascade of health problems.

Mice exposed to constant light experienced bone-density loss, skeletal-muscle weakness and inflammation; restoring their health was as simple as turning the lights off. The findings are preliminary, but they suggest that people living in cities flooded with artificial light may face similar health risks.

Many previous studies have hinted at a connection between artificial light exposure and health problems in animals and people. Epidemiological analyses have found that shift workers have an increased risk of breast cancer, metabolic syndrom and osteoporosis. People exposed to bright light at night are more likely to have cardiovascular disease and often don’t get enough sleep.

And disruption of the biological clock alone might not cause the health effects reported in the study, says Steven Lockley, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Poor sleep and light itself can each affect health, so an altered circadian clock may not be to blame.

The study should be a warning to people who work in intensive-care facilities or long-term care facilities, and to shift workers.

http://www.nature.com/news/bright-light-accelerates-ageing-in-mice-...

Species Biodiversity has fallen below 'safe' level on majority of land on Earth, a recent study reported in Science  says. 

Each year humans use more land for buildings, roads, industries and agriculture purposes. That may not always cause extinctions, it does reduce the number of species within specific ecosystems. When bio-diversity drops too low ecosystems can loose their resilience and even stop functioning.

 In many parts of the world, we are approaching a situation where human intervention might be needed to sustain ecosystem function, according to the study. 

Biodiversity intactness within most biomes (especially grassland biomes), most biodiversity hotspots, and even some wilderness areas is inferred to be beyond the boundary. Such widespread transgression of safe limits suggests that biodiversity loss, if unchecked, will undermine efforts toward long-term sustainable development.

The greatest changes have happened in those places where most people live, which might affect physical and psychological wellbeing. To address this, we will have to preserve the remaining areas of natural vegetation and restore human-used lands

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6296/288

A research project led by The Australian National University (ANU) has closed an important gap in the understanding of a fundamental process of life -- the creation of proteins based on recipes called RNA.

RNAs are short-lived copies of genetic information stored in DNA. They are read by cellular ribosomes, which translate the recipes into proteins to become the main building blocks of life.

Lead researcher Professor Thomas Preiss from The John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) at ANU, said the new understanding would open up avenues for treatment of a wide range of diseases including cancer, heart disease and a spectrum of rarer genetic diseases.
The research team took snapshots of how ribosomes distribute along the RNA strings, paying particular attention to how ribosomes make sure they read the recipe from the correct starting point.

Cells throughout the body contain the same complete blueprint for life in their DNA.

"To create and maintain cells as diverse as those in the brain, bone or liver requires great precision in terms of which RNA recipes are made available, where and when.
How efficiently and accurately ribosomes read and translate the recipes is also critical.

For example, ribosomes are known to become over-active in cancer.
The research confirms a 40-year-old theory that explains how the ribosome correctly picks up the beginning of the code, even though the code usually only begins some distance inside the RNA string.
Research team member Dr Nikolay Shirokikh from ANU said the project examined where the two components of the ribosome started to attach to RNA strings.

"The theory was that the smaller half of the ribosome attaches itself to the very beginning of the RNA and then scans along the string until it finds the start signal of the recipe. There, the larger half joins and the whole ribosome begins to manufacture a protein," Dr Shirokikh said.

"Our ribosome snapshot approach has finally provided proof that the scanning model is correct. We also gained new insight into how fast the ribosome can complete the different tasks and how other cellular components come in to help it along."
The ribosome snapshot data generated with the new technique was made available to scientists globally via an app for high-content data visualisation developed at the Monash Bioinformatics Platform.
The research has been published in the journal Nature.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature18647...

Scientists explain Why the turtle got its shell
Burrowing power, not protection may have triggered carapace evolution
Turtle shells didn’t get their start as natural armor, it seems. The reptiles’ ancestors might have evolved partial shells to help them burrow instead, new research suggests. Only later did the hard body covering become useful for protection.

The findings might also help explain how turtles’ ancestors survived a mass extinction 250 million years ago that wiped out most plants and animals on earth, scientists report online July 14 in Current Biology.

Most shelled animals, like armadillos, get their shells by adding bony scales all over their bodies. Turtles, though, form shells by gradually broadening their ribs until the bones fuse together. Fossils from ancient reptiles with partial shells made from thickened ribs suggest that turtles’ ancestors began to suit up in the same way.

It’s an unusual mechanism, says Tyler Lyson, a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science who led the study. Thicker ribs don’t offer much in the way of protection until they’re fully fused, as they are in modern turtles. And the modification makes critical functions like moving and breathing much harder — a steep price for an animal to pay. So Lyson suspected there was some advantage other than protection to the partial shells.

It’s a very plausible idea, although many other animals burrow but don’t have these specializations.

T. Lyson et al. Fossorial origin of the turtle shell. Current Biology. Vol. 26, July 25, 2016, p. 1. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.020.

A family of related, exotic particles, each made up of four quarks, has been discovered. The finding could hold clues about the evolution of the universe, the researchers said.

The four newfound tetraquarks, now called X(4140), X(4274), X(4500) and X(4700), each are composed of two quarks and two antiquarks (the antimatter partners of quarks). Yet each of the newfound particles has a different mass and different subatomic properties. They are considered a family of tetraquark siblings because of having the same quark composition and arrangement.

Quarks are elementary particles, the building blocks of protons and neutrons. Until the recent discoveries of tetra and even pentaquarks, physicists thought quarks grouped only into pairs or triplets. The newfound tetraquark family is even more distinct because the family members are made up of heavy, exotic types of quarks — known as charm quarks and strange quarks — which are not found in everyday materials.
Skwarnicki and Britton detailed their discoveries in the June issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07898

How bees cool their homes...
When a honeybee colony gets hot and bothered, the crisis sets tongues wagging. Middle-aged bees stick their tongues into the mouths of their elders, launching these special drinker bees to go collect water. That’s just one detail uncovered during a new study of how a colony superorganism cools in hot weather.
Honeybees communicate about collecting water and work together in deploying it as air-conditioning. The tests show just how important water is for protecting a colony from overheating.
Bees often get as much water as they need in the nectar they sip. But they do need extra water at times, such as during overheating in the center of the nest where eggs and young are coddled. When researchers artificially heated that zone in two colonies confined in a greenhouse, worker bees fought back. They used their wings to fan hot air out of the hive. “You can put your hand in the opening of a hive on a hot day and feel the blast of air that’s being pushed out.
Several hundred bees also move out of the nest to cluster in a beardlike mass nearby. Their evacuation reduces body heat within the nest and opens up passageways for greater airflow.
The bees also had a Plan C — evaporative cooling. Middle-aged bees inside a hive walked toward the nest entrance to where a small number of elderly bees, less than 1 percent of the colony, hang out and wait until water is needed.
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/219/14/2156.abstract

Researchers in China and the UK have attempted to define and measure human intelligence and discover how intellect works. The research team, which includes researchers from Fudan University, quantified the brain’s dynamic functions and identified how different parts of the brain interact with each other at different times. The work was published in Brain. Using resting-state magnetic resonance imaging analysis on thousands of people’s brains around the world, the research has found that the areas of the brain that are associated with learning and development show high levels of variability, meaning that they change their neural connections with other parts of the brain more frequently—over a matter of minutes or seconds. On the other hand, regions of the brain that aren’t associated with intelligence—the visual, auditory, and sensory-motor areas—show small variability and adaptability. What the researchers found was that the more variable a brain is, and the more its different parts frequently connect with each other, the higher a person’s IQ and creativity are.
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/139/8/2307

Open-source drug discovery a success
Researchers from around the world collaborate
In what is being called the first-ever test of open-source drug-discovery, researchers from around the world have successfully identified compounds to pursue in treating and preventing parasite-borne illnesses such as malaria as well as cancer.

Starting in late 2011, the Medicines for Malaria Venture, based in Geneva, Switzerland, distributed 400 diverse compounds with antimalarial activity free of charge to 200 labs in 30 countries. One-third of the labs reported their results in a paper published today in PLOS Pathogens, "Open source drug discovery with the Malaria Box compound collection for neglected diseases and beyond."

The results have ignited more a dozen drug-development projects for a variety of diseases.

"The trial was successful not only in identifying compounds to pursue for anti-malarials, but it also identified compounds to treat other parasites and cancer," said lead author Wesley Van Voorhis. To help lead the project, Van Voorhis took a sabbatical from his roles as a University of Washington professor of medicine (allergy and infectious diseases) and director of the Center for Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases.

The National Cancer Institute is now working on a colon cancer drug that emerged from the testing, Van Voorhis said. Several European labs are working on anti-worm compounds, and numerous U.S. labs are investigating drugs to combat other parasites. Medicines for Malaria Venture is also working with pharmaceutical companies GSK and Novartis on related anti-malarials, he added.

In their paper, researchers cited the lack of interaction between academia and industry as a major curb to innovation in drug discovery.
Much of the global resource in biology is present in universities, whereas the focus of medicinal chemistry is still largely within industry. Open-source drug discovery, with sharing of information, is clearly a first step towards overcoming that gap," they wrote.

The Malaria Box distributed 400 diverse druglike molecules that were most often found in industry collections, helping to bridge the gap between industry and academia.

This open-access effort was so successful that Medicines for Malaria Venture has begun to distribute another set of compounds with broader potential applicability, called the Pathogen Box. The box is available now to scientific labs globally.
Source: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON HEALTH SCIENCES/UW MEDICINE

Graphene-based sheets make dirty water drinkable simply and cheaply!
Engineers at the Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) have developed graphene-based biofoam sheets that can be laid on dirty or salty dams and ponds to produce clean drinking water, using the power of the sun. This new technique could be a cheap and simple way to help provide fresh water in countries where large areas of water are contaminated with suspended particles of dirt and other floating matter.

The biofilm is created as a two-layered structure consisting of two nanocellulose layers produced by bacteria. The lower layer contains pristine cellulose, while the top layer also contains graphene oxide, which absorbs sunlight and produces heat. The system works by drawing up water from underneath like a sponge where it then evaporates in the topmost layer, leaving behind any suspended particulates or salts. Fresh water then condenses on the top, where it can be drawn off and used.

The results of this research were recently published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Source: Washington University in St.Louis

What factors affect contact lens discomfort? Optometry and Vision Science presents research update.

up to 50 percent of contact lens wearers experience dryness or discomfort at least occasionally. New research aimed at understanding and managing this common and complex problem is presented in the special August issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/wkh-wfa080116.php

Io’s Atmosphere Collapses
Jupiter's shadow makes this volcanic moon's atmosphere freeze solid once per day
Jupiter's active moon Io has a collapsible atmosphere: New views show the satellite's shroud of sulfur dioxide freezing when Io enters its planet's shadow each day and converting back to gas when the moon emerges.
Io, Jupiter's fifth moon, is the solar system's most volcanically active body; plumes of the sulfur dioxide gas bursts from multiple active volcanoes, reaching up to 300 miles (480 kilometers) above the moon's surface at a scalding 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius). The Jupiter moon's surface, on the other hand, is frigidly cold, and gets even colder when Jupiter blocks out the sun—which prompts the atmospheric collapse.

Io's atmosphere is in a constant state of collapse and repair, and shows that a large fraction of the atmosphere is supported by sublimation of sulfur dioxide ice

Neonicotinoid insecticides become inadvertent insect contraceptives!

Over the last year, beekeepers in some parts of the world  lost nearly half of their honeybee hives. And there are a lot of suspected culprits for this so-called beepocalypse—from parasitic mites, to viruses, to simple land use changes. But a recent study pointed to another possibility: poor sperm quality among the drone bees, leading to colony crashes. And now another group of researchers may have found a reason for the subpar sperm: neonicotinoid pesticides. These substances contain chemicals similar to nicotine and affect insect nervous systems. 

"So for the drones that were exposed to pesticides during development, it appears there were more dead sperm in their reproductive tracts." 

Williams and his colleagues studied the effects of two neonicotinoid pesticides on honeybee drones, genetically assigned to mate with queens. 

But in 20 honeybee hives Williams and his collaborators found that those drones exposed to standard environmental levels of the pesticides were shorter-lived, thus having fewer opportunities to mate. And even if the drones did survive, they had nearly 40 percent fewer living sperm than did control bees—meaning the pesticides were acting like honeybee contraceptives. 

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/283/1835/20160506

Transfer of mitochondria from astrocytes to neurons after stroke

Under duress, nerve cells get a little help from their friends. Brain cells called astrocytes send their own energy-producing mitochondria to struggling nerve cells. Those gifts may help the neurons rebound after injuries such as strokes, scientists propose in the July 28 Nature.

It was known that astrocytes — star-shaped glial cells that, among other jobs, support neurons — take in and dispose of neurons’ discarded mitochondria. Now it turns out that mitochondria can move the other way, too. This astrocyte-to-neuron transfer is surprising.
Mitochondria produce the energy that powers cells in the body. Scientists have spotted the organelles moving into damaged cells in other parts of the body, including the lungs, heart and liver. The new study turns up signs of this mitochondrial generosity in the brain.

Not only do the mitochondria make it into neurons, they actually help. Neurons with donated mitochondria better survived their starvation diet. When grown in dishes without extra mitochondria floating around, neurons were less able to weather the poor conditions, the researchers found.

Further experiments suggest that the transfer happens not just in lab dishes, but in the brains of mice. A day after mice received a strokelike injury, astrocyte-produced mitochondria showed up inside their neurons. The gift giving seems to depend on a protein called CD38, which sits on the outside of astrocytes and may detect distress signals. When CD38 wasn’t functioning, the mice had fewer mitochondria in their neurons. What’s more, the mice were worse at balancing on wires than mice with normal CD38 behavior, a deficit that may be linked to having too few mitochondria in neurons.

The results bolster the idea that mitochondria donations between cells may have tremendous therapeutic potential

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v535/n7613/full/nature18928.html

Carbon Nanotubes: Ultrabreathable and Protective Membranes with Sub-5 nm Carbon Nanotube Pores 

to protect soldiers from biological and chemical threats, a team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists has created a material that is highly breathable yet protective from biological agents.

This material is the first key component of futuristic smart uniforms that also will respond to and protect from environmental chemical hazards. The research appears in the July 27 edition of the journal,Advanced Materials 

The LLNL team fabricated flexible polymeric membranes with aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) channels as moisture conductive pores. The size of these pores (less than 5 nanometers, nm) is 5,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

To provide high breathability, the new composite material takes advantage of the unique transport properties of carbon nanotube pores. By quantifying the membrane permeability to water vapor, the team found for the first time that, when a concentration gradient is used as a driving force, CNT nanochannels can sustain gas-transport rates exceeding that of a well-known diffusion theory by more than one order of magnitude.

These membranes also provide protection from biological agents due to their very small pore size — less than 5 nanometers (nm) wide. Biological threats like bacteria or viruses are much larger and typically more than 10-nm in size. 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201670197/full

The stimulation hypothesis

The mighty monsoon winds that periodically bring rains that drench India first billowed around 12.9 million years ago, new research shows. The work provides the best look yet at the conditions that fostered the modern monsoon.

By examining sediments piled up around Indian Ocean islands, researchers uncovered a geologic history of the South Asian monsoon stretching back tens of millions of years. The monsoon winds began abruptly, researchers report online July 20 in Scientific Reports. That speedy start-up suggests that factors such as global cooling were at play in addition to the rise of the Himalayan mountain range, which scientists typically blame for the monsoon’s inception.

Rainfall during the summer monsoon season accounts for more than 70 percent of India’s annual precipitation. The temperature difference between the continent and the adjacent Indian Ocean drives the winds. During winter, warm air over the ocean rises and draws in cool air from the land to the north. In summer, the land becomes warmer and the winds flip direction.

The snow and high elevation of the Himalayas drive the temperature difference between the land and sea. But the mountains grew over tens of millions of years, making it difficult to determine exactly when conditions favorable to the monsoon began. Previous estimates ranged from around 28.7 million to 7 million years ago.

Monsoon winds drive currents in the ocean, which in turn carry ocean sediments across the sea. Sediment accumulates in mounds similar to snowdrifts when currents are strong. The strong currents also pull nutrients from the seafloor toward the surface, boosting biological activity that in turn draws oxygen from the water. That lower oxygen supply leaves a chemical trace in the sediments.

The researchers drilled around 500 meters into the seafloor and extracted sediments dating back roughly 25 million years. A weaker precursor to the modern monsoon existed roughly 25 million years ago, the sediment data suggest. Around 12.9 million years ago, however, the winds revved up to their modern strength over the course of about 300,000 years, a relatively short time compared with the formation of the Himalayas.

The strengthening of the monsoon lines up with a period of global cooling and the growth of the polar ice caps. That climate shift may have boosted the temperature difference between the land and sea, supercharging the winds, the researchers propose.

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep29838

For the first time scientists can see where molecular tags known as epigenetic marks are placed in the brain.

These chemical tags — which flag DNA or its protein associates, known as histones —don’t change the genes, but can change gene activity. Abnormal epigenetic marks have been associated with brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, depression and addiction.

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston devised a tracer molecule that latches onto a protein that makes one type of epigenetic mark, known as histone acetylation.

The scientists then used PET scans to detect where a radioactive version of the tracer marked the brains of eight healthy young adult men and women, the researchers report August 10 in Science Translational Medicine. Further studies could show that the marks change as people grow older or develop a disease. The team studied only healthy young volunteers so can’t yet say whether epigenetic marking changes with age or disease.

Being Unfit Nearly as Harmful as Smoking!

In a recent study it was found that low levels of aerobic capacity – or being unfit – actually represented a higher death risk than high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.

Among the risks of a premature death, only smoking cast a longer fatal shadow.

“The advantages of being physically active one’s entire life are crystal clear,” says researcher Per Ladenvall at Salgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg.

Why is being in poor physical shape so risky?

“Probably a lot of factors are contributing here. In addition to hypertension and high cholesterol values, those who are in poor shape often have insulin resistance or poor blood sugar regulation. Added to that, they have components in their blood which cause blood clots,” explains Ladenvall.

“They can also have poor resistance against diseases, so that when they fall ill it will more often have a fatal outcome than among persons who are fit,” he adds. Ladenvall works at the University’s Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine.

The study also found that the better the oxygen uptake the lower the risk of early death among the men. Or to put it simply – they lived longer.

Being Unfit Nearly as Harmful as Smoking!
In a recent study it was found that low levels of aerobic capacity – or being unfit – actually represented a higher death risk than high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.
Among the risks of a premature death, only smoking cast a longer fatal shadow.
“The advantages of being physically active one’s entire life are crystal clear,” says researcher Per Ladenvall at Salgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg.
Why is being in poor physical shape so risky?
“Probably a lot of factors are contributing here. In addition to hypertension and high cholesterol values, those who are in poor shape often have insulin resistance or poor blood sugar regulation. Added to that, they have components in their blood which cause blood clots,” explains Ladenvall.
“They can also have poor resistance against diseases, so that when they fall ill it will more often have a fatal outcome than among persons who are fit,” he adds. Ladenvall works at the University’s Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine.
The study also found that the better the oxygen uptake the lower the risk of early death among the men. Or to put it simply – they lived longer.

The dodgy academic journals publishing anti-vaxxers and other 'crappy science'
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-dodgy-academic-journals-publishi...

Quantum satellite launch is helping China develop a communications system that ‘cannot be hacked’

Scientists think that using technology harnessing quantum physics is the key to beating electronic snoopers.

China launched the first-ever quantum satellite Monday (Aug. 15) in an effort to help develop an unhackable communications system.

The launch of the world’s first “quantum satellite” is just the beginning of China’s ambitious plans to develop a communications system that cannot be cracked by hackers, according to a lead engineer on the project.

The satellite was launched from the Jiuquan space centre in Gansu province in northwest China this week.

One of the tasks during the satellite’s mission will be to try and send coded communications back to earth that cannot be read by eavesdroppers. How is this possible? High quality Physics!

"Entangled" particles are intimately and curiously linked to each other; even if they're separated by billions of miles of space; a change in one somehow affects the others.

QUESS will send messages to ground stations using entangled photons. Such a system is theoretically impossible to hack. In addition, any attempts to eavesdrop would be picked up via an induced change in the photons' state.

It will attempt to do so by transmitting information through photons, tiny particles found in subatomic or quantum physics.

Researchers believe that information sent through photons cannot be intercepted or analysed by people without the right codes.

The mission to establish a hacker-proof communication link between space and earth requires scientists to carefully adjust the satellite’s position so it can beam single photons on to a targeted area just a few square metres wide on the ground.

They also need to test and fine tune each scientific device on the satellite . Similar ground-based quantum communications systems have also been set up in the US, Europe and Japan, but China has the largest network and is leading the development of the technology in space.

A wiretap splits off a large number of electrons to read the signal and still leaves enough electrons in the line to carry the same signal to the legitimate recipient.

A quantum network, however, carries information by photons and under the law of quantum physics it is impossible to measure their properties without altering them.

If an eavesdropper tries to copy the quantum states, this introduces errors in the transmitted key and gets noticed by the legitimate users.

Some experts think that one possible way of hacking the system a Trojan Horse. It involves firing an extra beam of light at one key part of the communications equipment and light reflected back would carry information processed by the system.

But commercial quantum network applications had been deployed in many countries, but not a single report of a security breach had been reported so far.

China thinks .. To be a quantum hacker you must have a PhD in quantum physics, that’s the minimum requirement. Such a high entry barrier will keep most hackers out of this game.

A black hole analogue, which traps sound instead of light, generates "Hawking radiation," a key prediction by the theoretical physicist. 

Stephen Hawking proposed in 1974 that quantum effects at the event horizon might cause black holes to be…not completely black. 

Recently scientists observed spontaneous Hawking radiation, stimulated by quantum vacuum fluctuations, emanating from an analogue black hole in an atomic Bose–Einstein condensate. Correlations are observed between the Hawking particles outside the black hole and the partner particles inside. These correlations indicate an approximately thermal distribution of Hawking radiation. They found that the high-energy pairs are entangled, while the low-energy pairs are not, within the reasonable assumption that excitations with different frequencies are not correlated. The entanglement verifies the quantum nature of the Hawking radiation. The results are consistent with a driven oscillation experiment and a numerical simulation.

http://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3863.epdf?referrer_access_token...

The link between pollinator problems and neonicotinoids, a group of agricultural pesticides commonly associated with declines in honeybees, continues to build with two new studies published this week.

Within species, a population’s odds of going extinct increased with use of the pesticides, the research team worked on this  writes in the August 16 Nature Communications. That goes for both wild bees that forage on oilseed rape, and those that don’t — though populations of known foragers were three times as likely to disappear.

Taken together, the results add some long-term data to the idea that even though wild species aren’t pollinating neonicotinoid-doused crops, the effects of exposure may still appear at the regional and national level. 

Impacts of neonicotinoid use on long-term population changes in wild bees in England

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160816/ncomms12459/full/ncomms124...

"Biological Pollution"

Most countries in the world have little capacity to deal effectively with invasive species, a study suggests.

The spread of non-native species threatens livelihoods and biodiversity, but the issue is worsened by global trade, travel and climate change.

Writing in Nature Communications journal, and international team forecast how the spread of species could change over the 21st Century.

They show that one-sixth of the world's land surface is vulnerable to invasion.

However, they predict that non-native plants, animals and microbes will increasingly threaten developing countries with some of the last remaining biodiversity hotspots, due to increased air travel and the expansion of agriculture.

This could endanger livelihoods and food security in fragile economies that are ill-prepared to deal with the expansion of invasive organisms.

Rampant globalisation will lead to invasions in countries with the least capability to deal with them. Low-income countries stand to lose a lot by having their natural resources sapped by invasive species.

Invasive species often travel as stowaways or contaminants in goods imported by planes and ships. They also arrive as exotic pets or plants that subsequently escape or are released deliberately into the wild.

This can pose challenges native species that have evolved over thousands of years to be well adapted to their ecosystems. Consequently, new arrivals can quickly change the nature of a whole region and often outcompete native organisms for resources and habitat.

Burmese pythons originally arrived in the US as exotic pets, but they escaped and quickly established themselves in the Florida Everglades, where they have contributed to a catastrophic decline in native mammals.

In Europe, forests and woods have been transformed by introduced diseases and pests such as Dutch elm disease and Ash dieback.

Biological invasions in the developing world so far have included influxes of Diamondback moths, which can devastate broccoli, cabbage and other crops; Panama disease, which wiped out banana plantations in central and south America; and prickly pear, which devastated grassland in Africa, leading to cattle being malnourished.

A possible four-phase coexistence in a single-component system

Explanation...

Japanese scientists have shown through simulations that four phases of a substance can coexist at thermal equilibrium, where all parts are at the same temperature and pressure—a situation that seemingly goes against the laws of thermodynamics. 

For different phases to coexist in equilibrium at constant temperature T and pressure P, the condition of equal chemical potential μ must be satisfied. This condition dictates that, for a single-component system, the maximum number of phases that can coexist is three. Historically this is known as the Gibbs phase rule, and is one of the oldest and venerable rules of thermodynamics. In the paper published the researchers make use of the fact that, by varying model parameters, the Gibbs phase rule can be generalized so that four phases can coexist even in single-component systems. To systematically search for the quadruple point, they used a monoatomic system interacting with a Stillinger–Weber potential with variable tetrahedrality. Their study indicates that the quadruple point provides flexibility in controlling multiple equilibrium phases and may be realized in systems with tunable interactions, which are nowadays feasible in several soft matter systems such as patchy colloids.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160825/ncomms12599/full/ncomms125...

After launching the world's first hack-free satellite,  China has tested its first quantum radar which could detect objects, including stealth aircraft, within the range of 100 kilometres.

The first Chinese quantum radar was developed by the Intelligent Perception Technology Laboratory of the 14th Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC)

Quantum radar is a device that uses quantum entanglement photons to provide better detection capabilities than conventional radar systems.

The method would be useful for tracking targets with a low radar cross section, such as modern aircraft using stealth technology or targets employing active countermeasures to jam or baffle enemy radar.

The technology may also find use in biomedicine, since quantum radar requires lower energy and can be used to non-invasively probe for objects with low reflectivity, such as cancer cells.

Earlier, China launched the world s first quantum communications satellite, which uses quantum entanglement for cryptography.

Filtering sea water 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.

Researchers at Alexandria University in Egypt have unveiled a cost-effective desalination technology which can filter highly salty water in minutes.

The technology is based on membranes containing cellulose acetate powder, produced in Egypt. The powder, in combination with other components, binds the salt particles as they pass through, making the technique useful for desalinating seawater. 

The membrane we fabricated can easily be made in any laboratory using cheap ingredients, which makes it an excellent option for developing countries.

The technology uses pervaporation, a technique by which the water is first filtered through the membrane to remove larger particles and then heated until it vaporises. The vapour is then condensed to get rid of small impurities, and clean water is collected.

This method can be used to desalinate water which contains different types of contamination, such as salt, sewage and dirt. This kind of water is difficult to clean quickly using existing procedures.

Desalination of simulated seawater by purge-air pervaporation using an innovative fabricated membrane

http://wst.iwaponline.com/content/72/5/785

Great News!

France just became the first country to ban all plastic plates, cups, and utensils.

With reports like 'By 2050, there'll be more plastic than fish in our oceans'*, we feel disheartened. But France has shown a way to tell us that need not be the case.

France just passed a law that says all plastic plates, cups, and utensils will be banned by 2020, and replacements will need to be made from biologically sourced materials that can be composted. 

The new law follows a total ban on plastic shopping bags in July, and is part of the country’s Energy Transition for Green Growth Act - a plan to make France a world leader in adopting more environmentally friendly practices, and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the new law, the distribution of disposable plastic bags at supermarket check-outs has been banned as of July, and plastic bags will be prohibited in fruit and vegetable departments from 1 January 2017.

A ban on the distribution of disposable cooking utensils, cups, and plates will be enforced in 2020, which will give manufacturers time to adjust.

Local ministers stipulated that in three years’ time, 50 percent of the material used to procure such items will have to be organic and compostable, and that proportion will rise to 60 percent by 2025.

The news has been welcomed by conservation groups around the world, and with predictions that by 2050, there'll be more plastic than fish in our oceans, is the kind of definitive action that’s needed if we’re going to have any chance of mitigating the problem of waste in a growing global population. 

* http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdf