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

Strange it may seem but according to a new study Camouflaging Octopi & Squids Are Colourblind!

Several cephalopods manage to blend beautifully with their surroundings, but they themselves are actually colorblind, finds a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Cephalopods—cuttlefish, squid and octopus—are renowned for their fast color changes and remarkable camouflage abilities. Previous investigations of vision and visual pigment evolution in aquatic predators, however, have focused on fish and crustaceans, generally ignoring the cephalopods. Soft-bodied cephalopods are attractive for studying the evolution of vision as they have camera-like eyes, sharing many similarities in optics, anatomy and function with fish. According to Professor Justin Marshall and Dr. Chung Wensung from the Queensland Brain Institute, the goal of the study was to investigate how these creatures adapt to the light conditions in different habitats. The researchers found that squids have the ability to adapt their vision depending on the color and depth of the water they live in. This ability is called evolved spectral tuning, as they can change their visual focus from green, in coastal waters, to blue, to match deep sea conditions. “These engaging and charismatic animals can display complex, bright color patterns on their skin, but our studies have reconfirmed beyond doubt that they are colorblind,” Marshall said. “It is ironic then that humans still struggle to spot them in the natural habitat where their camouflage is perfectly matched with the surroundings.” Marshall said this latest research into cephalopods provided fascinating insights into how the remarkably intelligent creatures interacted with their world. 

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/283/1838/20161346

A Failed Supernova

A star that mysteriously disappeared might be the first confirmed case of a failed supernova, a star that tried to explode but couldn’t finish the job. A newborn black hole appears to have been left behind to snack on the star’s remains.

In 2009, a star in the galaxy NGC 6946 flared up over several months to become over 1 million times as bright as the sun. Then, it seemed to vanish. While the star could just be hiding behind a wall of dust, new observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, reported online September 6 at arXiv.org, strongly suggest that the star did not survive. A faint trickle of infrared light, however, emanates from where the star used to be. The remnant glow probably comes from debris falling onto a black hole that formed when the star died.

Black holes are typically thought to form in the aftermath of a supernova, the explosive death of a massive star. But multiple lines of evidence have recently hinted that not all heavyweights go out with a bang. Some stars might skip the supernova and collapse into a black hole. Until now, though, evidence that this happens has been either spotty or indirect.

“This is the first really solid observational evidence for a failed supernova".

Egyptian researchers have developed a bandage embedded with nanoparticles for the treatment of wounds using the anti-epilepsy drug Phenytoin, known for its capacity to treat skin injuries.

The bandage can heal wounds in a few days, after just one application to soft tissue. Wounds normally take several days to a few weeks to heal completely, and some may only heal after several months or up to two years.

Even though Phenytoin is known for its potential to accelerate wound healing, some of its properties limit its effectiveness. For example, a low percentage of the drug can be absorbed into the blood circulation. It also doesn’t cover the entire wounded area, which interferes with the efficiency of healing.

To overcome these challenges, a research team from Zewail City of Science and Technology in Egypt, led by Ibrahim M. El-Sherbiny, the director of the Center for Materials Science, embedded the drug into a bandage consisting of nanoparticles carried on nanofibers.
“This allowed a well-controlled release of phenytoin, distributing it effectively, which, boosts its efficiency.”

The results of the study, published last May in the Journal of Applied Materials & Interfaces, also confirmed an improvement in the formation of granulation tissue — a fibrous connective tissue which grows from the base of the wound until it fills it, and replaces the blood clot that formed after the wound was received.

World's first baby born with 'three parents' reports New Scientist

A Jordanian couple has been trying to start a family for almost 20 years. Ten years after they married, she became pregnant, but it ended in the first of four miscarriages.

In 2005, the couple gave birth to a baby girl. It was then that they discovered the probable cause of their fertility problems: a genetic mutation in the mother’s mitochondria. Their daughter was born with Leigh syndrome, which affects the brain, muscles and nerves of developing infants. Sadly, she died aged six. The couple’s second child had the same disorder, and lived for 8 months.

Using a controversial “three-parent baby” technique , the boy was born on 6 April 2016. He is showing no signs of disease.

The boy’s mother carries genes for Leigh syndrome, a fatal disorder that affects the developing nervous system. Genes for the disease reside in DNA in the mitochondria, which provide energy for our cells and carry just 37 genes that are passed down to us from our mothers. This is separate from the majority of our DNA, which is housed in each cell’s nucleus.

Around a quarter of her mitochondria have the disease-causing mutation. While she is healthy, Leigh syndrome was responsible for the deaths of her first two children. The couple sought out the help of John Zhang and his team at the New Hope Fertility Center in New York City.

Zhang has been working on a way to avoid mitochondrial disease using a so-called “three-parent” technique. In theory, there are a few ways of doing this. The method approved in the UK is called pronuclear transfer and involves fertilising both the mother’s egg and a donor egg with the father’s sperm. Before the fertilised eggs start dividing into early-stage embryos, each nucleus is removed. The nucleus from the donor’s fertilised egg is discarded and replaced by that from the mother’s fertilised egg.

But this technique wasn’t appropriate for the couple – as Muslims, they were opposed to the destruction of two embryos. So Zhang took a different approach, called spindle nuclear transfer. He removed the nucleus from one of the mother’s eggs and inserted it into a donor egg that had had its own nucleus removed. The resulting egg – with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor – was then fertilised with the father’s sperm.

Zhang’s team used this approach to create five embryos, only one of which developed normally. This embryo was implanted in the mother and the child was born nine months later. 

The team avoided destroying embryos, and used a male embryo, so that the resulting child wouldn’t pass on any inherited mitochondrial DNA. 

A remaining concern is safety. Last time embryologists tried to create a baby using DNA from three people was in the 1990s, when they injected mitochondrial DNA from a donor into another woman’s egg, along with sperm from her partner. Some of the babies went on to develop genetic disorders, and the technique was banned. The problem may have arisen from the babies having mitochondria from two sources.

When Zhang and his colleagues tested the boy’s mitochondria, they found that less than 1 per cent carry the mutation. Hopefully, this is too low to cause any problems; generally it is thought to take around 18 per cent of mitochondria to be affected before problems start.

The child will be monitored and we need more of these cases to judge teh effectiveness of this technique. 

Galaxy made of dark matter? Among the thousand-plus galaxies in the Coma cluster, a massive clump of matter some 300 million light-years away, is at least one — and maybe a few hundred — that shouldn’t exist.

Dragonfly 44 is a dim galaxy, with one star for every hundred in our Milky Way. But it spans roughly as much space as the Milky Way. In addition, it’s heavy enough to rival our own galaxy in mass, according to results published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters at the end of August. That odd combination is crucial: Dragonfly 44 is so dark, so fluffy, and so heavy that some astronomers think it will either force a revision of our theories of galaxy formation or help us understand the properties of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that interacts with normal matter via gravity and not much else. Or both.

There are several theories going around in the Astronomy circles now about them. And people are trying to figure out things and find answers to the Qs 'why, what, how, whether etc.'.

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to pioneering work on autophagy

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was given to Yoshinori Ohsumi

 of the Tokyo Institute of Technology for basic research describing a fundamental housekeeping function of the cell—a process called autophagy. From the Greek for "self-eating," autophagy is the straightforward mechanism by which a cell digests certain large internal structures and semi-permanent proteins in a continual cleanup process. The process may have evolved as a response to starvation, in which cells cannibalized some of their own parts in order to continue living. But over the eons it has become an essential tool used by cells to maintain their own health, resist infection and possibly even fight cancer.

Autophagy is particularly important in cells such as neurons, which tend to live a long time and thus need to be constantly renewed and refurbished. The process takes place in the cytoplasm, the jelly-like fluid that fills the cell outside the nucleus. The workings of the cytoplasm are so complex . . . that it is constantly becoming gummed up with the detritus of its ongoing operations. Autophagy is, in part, a cleanup process: the trash hauling that enables a cell whose cytoplasm is clotted with old bits of protein and other unwanted sludge to be cleaned out." Problems with autophagy may contribute to neuronal damage in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Ohsumi chose the transport of materials to the yeast vacuoles as his research project and got several awards for his pioneering work. Autophagy is fundamental to a cell's continued good health and have even specialized in describing particular types of autophagy—such as the digestion and degradation of worn-out mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell) and the endoplasmic reticulum, which assembles, folds and delivers proteins to the rest of the cell.

Strange phenomena explanations get Nobel Physics prizes

 The 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics went to work explaining the topological underpinnings of superconductivity and other strange phenomena.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 was split, with one half going to David J. Thouless at the University of Washington, and the other half going to F. Duncan M. Haldane at Princeton University and J. Michael Kosterlitz at Brown University. The Prize was awarded for the theorists’ research in condensed matter physics, particularly their work on topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter, phenomena underlying exotic states of matter such as superconductors, superfluids and thin magnetic films. Their work has given new insights into the behavior of matter at low temperatures, and has laid the foundations for the creation of new materials called topological insulators, which could allow the construction of more sophisticated quantum computers.

Topology is a branch of mathematics that studies properties that only change incrementally, in integer steps, rather than continuously. 

This work “has told us that quantum mechanics can behave far more strangely than we could have guessed, and we really haven’t understood all the possibilities yet".

Molecular Machine-Makers get the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

A three people who built motors and devices a fraction the size of a human hair has set the stage for a new type of industry

Bernard Feringa, Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Sir J. Fraser Stoddart got it for building machines on the tiniest of scales—the nanometer scale, a thousand times smaller than the width of a hair, or a billionth of a meter. Molecular motors and elevators and muscles, and even miniature four-wheel-drive cars, were cited by the Nobel Committee as some of the inventions of the three scientists, who mastered construction techniques and the ability to create energy to make things move.

Nanoscale machines based on these design principles have already begun to shape the future of medicine - nanobots that can be sent through blood vessels and nanomaterials that can monitor vital organ health. 

To avoid distortion of facts, govt mulls grading science literature

In order to prevent distortion of facts and makescientific literature more credible, the Ministry of Science and Technology is considering a plan under which books related to science could be graded and validated by experts.

The experts will comprise scientists from several laboratories under the Ministry of Science and Technology, which has three departments and over 50 institutes researching on a wide range of topics.

The exercise would be voluntary and is aimed at making science literature more credible.

"We have realised that a lot of distortion takes place while presenting scientific facts and concepts. For example, we came across a book under which the concept of osmosis was fundamentally wrong.

"There are several such instances where facts are distorted," said Manoj Kumar Patairiya, Director of National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR).

NISCAIR, is an institute under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a department under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Patairiya said scientific journals, newspapers and regular journals have some level of quality control but same is not the case when someone publishes a book on science.

Referring to new discoveries pertaining to the formation of universe and earth, Patairiya said, several books still carry the age-old concepts on how earth came into existence.

"At a time when we have a system of quality control for everything, then why not for science literature. The plan is to validate, accredit science books by a core team of experts. We have resources comprising experts from various institutes under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

"The publishers can approach us and we can vet the material before it goes for publishing. This move will also help the publishers and authors," Patairiya said.

"We are planning to start it for Hindi and English and extend it to other regional languages later," Patairiya said.

-PTI