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

Extreme microbes living in hostile locations on Earth may be munching on cosmic rays that zip through space, says a study of a peculiar bacterium thriving in a dark gold mine.

AT LEAST two trillion galaxies — 10 times more than scientists thought — exist within the observable universe. And we can’t even see most of them.

A group of international astronomers compiled 20 years of images from the Hubble Space Telescope and other international observatories to create a 3D model of the 200 billion galaxies already estimated to exist.

But the model instead revealed that there are at least one trillion eight hundred billion more out there. Only 10 per cent of these are visible to us even with our strongest telescopes.

“It boggles the mind that over 90 per cent of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied,” said Christopher Conselice, who led the study published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal.

Since the scientists were observing deep space, they essentially gazed 13 billion light-years into the past and discovered that the early universe contained more galaxies than it does today. Many of those galaxies have since merged to form larger celestial objects.

Reading old books without opening them 

Scientists have devised a way to read without cracking a volume’s spine or risking paper cuts (and no, we’re not talking about e-books). The new method uses terahertz radiation — light with wavelengths that are between microwave and infrared waves — to view the text of a closed book. The technique is not meant for your average bookworm, but for reading rare books that are too fragile to open.

Barmak Heshmat of MIT and colleagues started small, with a nine-page book of thick paper that had one letter inked on each page. By hitting the book with terahertz radiation and looking at the reflected waves, the scientists could read the letters within.

Differences in the way the radiation interacts with ink and paper allowed the researchers to pick out shadowy outlines of the letters, and a letter-recognition algorithm automatically decoded the characters. The scientists could tell one page from another by using precise timing information: On the later pages, the waves penetrated deeper before reflecting and, therefore, took longer to return.

Historians also may be able to use the technique to find an artist’s signature hidden beneath layers of a painting. 

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12665

Scientists have found the first experimental evidence that an atomic nucleus can harbor bubbles. The unstable isotope silicon-34 has a bubblelike center with a paucity of protons. This unusual “bubble nucleus” could help scientists understand how heavy elements are born in the universe, and help scientists find new, ultraheavy stable isotopes.

In their quirky quantum way, protons and neutrons in a nucleus refuse to exist in only one place at a time. Instead, they are spread out across the nucleus in nuclear orbitals, which describe the probability that each proton or neutron will be found in a particular spot. Normally, due to the strong nuclear force that holds the two types of particles together, nuclei have a fairly constant density in their centers, regardless of the number of protons and neutrons they contain. In silicon-34, however, some scientists predicted that one of the proton orbitals that fills the center of the nucleus would be almost empty, creating a bubble nucleus. But not all theories agreed. “This was the reason for doing the experiment” .

In pursuit of the bubble nucleus, the scientists smashed silicon-34 nuclei into a beryllium target, which knocked single protons out of the nuclei to create aluminum-33. The resulting aluminum-33 nuclei were in excited, or high-energy, states and quickly dropped down to a lower energy by emitting photons, or light particles. By observing the energy of those photons, Sorlin and colleagues could reconstruct the orbital of the proton that had been kicked out of the nucleus.

The scientists found that they ejected few protons from the central orbital that theorists had predicted would be empty. While the orbital can theoretically hold up to two protons, it held only 0.17 protons on average. In silicon-34, the central proton density is about half that of a comparable nucleus, the scientists calculated, after taking into account other central orbitals that contain normal numbers of protons. (The density of neutrons in silicon-34’s center, however, is normal.)

As protons are added to nuclei, they fill orbitals in a sequential manner, according to the energy levels of the orbitals. Silicon-34 is special — it has a certain “magic” number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus. There are a variety of such magic numbers, which enhance the stability of atomic nuclei. A magic number of protons means that the energy needed to boost a proton into the next orbital is particularly high. This explains the bubble’s origin. For a proton to jump into the unfilled central orbital, it needs significantly more energy. So silicon-34’s center remains sparsely populated.  

It’s an interesting paper and indeed provides evidence for a bubble nucleus.  The research could help scientists understand the spin-orbit interaction, the interplay between a proton’s angular momentum in its orbital and its intrinsic angular momentum, or spin. The effect is important for keeping heavy nuclei stable. Figuring out the impact of that interaction in this unusual nucleus could help scientists better predict the potential location of the “island of stability,” a theorized region of the periodic table with heavy elements that may be stable for long periods of time.

A better grasp of the spin-orbit interaction could also help scientists learn how elements are forged in rare cosmic cataclysms such as the merging of two neutron stars. There, nuclei undergo a complex chain of reactions, swallowing up neutrons and undergoing radioactive decay. Modeling this process requires a precise understanding of the stability of various nuclei — a property affected by the spin-orbit interaction.

http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3916.html

A titanic volcano stopped a mega-sized earthquake in its tracks.

In April, pent-up stress along the Futagawa-Hinagu Fault Zone in Japan began to unleash a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. The rupture traveled about 30 kilometers along the fault until it reached Mount Aso, one of Earth’s largest active volcanoes. That’s where the quake met its demise, geophysicist Aiming Lin of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues report online October 20 in Science. The quake moved across the volcano’s caldronlike crater and abruptly stopped, the researchers found.

Geophysical evidence suggests that a region of rising magma lurks beneath the volcano. This magma chamber created upward pressure plus horizontal stresses that acted as an impassable roadblock for the seismic slip powering the quake, the researchers propose. This rare meetup, the researchers warn, may have undermined the structural integrity surrounding the magma chamber, increasing the likelihood of an eruption at Aso.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/10/19/science.aah4629

The continuing promotion of cranberry use to prevent recurrent UTI in the popular press or online advice seems inconsistent with the reality of repeated negative studies or positive studies compromised by methodological shortcomings.

Cranberries Don’t Prevent Urinary Tract Infections

Many think the fruit raises urine acidity and has a bacteria-battling compound 

Over the course of a year, taking cranberry capsules did nothing to stave off urinary tract infections (UTIs) among older women living in nursing homes, a U.S. study finds. There was no significant difference in the presence of bacteriuria plus pyuria in those who took cranberry capsules and those who took placebo capsules, the researchers found.

Originally, it was thought that eating or drinking cranberry products increased the acidity of urine and prevented UTIs. There was also speculation that proanthocyanidin in cranberries prevented bacteria from adhering to the bladder wall.

The results were published online October 27th in JAMA to coincide with presentation at Infectious Disease Week.

An interesting  similarity between human cells and neutron stars

According to new research, we share at least one similarity with the neutron stars: the geometry of the matter that makes us. 

Researchers have found that the 'crust' (or outer layers) of a neutron star has the same shape as our cellular membranes. This could mean that, despite being fundamentally different, both humans and neutron stars are constrained by the same geometry.

To understand this finding, we need to quickly dive into the weird world of nuclear matter, which researchers call 'nuclear pasta' because it looks a lot like spaghetti and lasagne. 

This nuclear pasta forms in the dense crust of a neutron star thanks to long-range repulsive forces competing with something called the strong force, which is the force that binds quarks together.

In other words, two powerful forces are working against one another, forcing the matter – which consists of various particles – to structure itself in a scaffold-like (pasta) way.

"When you have a dense collection of protons and neutrons like you do on the surface of a neutron star, the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic forces conspire to give you phases of matter you wouldn't be able to predict if you had just looked at those forces operating on small collections of neutrons and protons."

Now, it turns out that these pasta-like structures look a lot like the structures inside biological cells, even though they are vastly different.

This odd similarity was first discovered in 2014, when Huber was studying the unique shapes on our endoplasmic reticulum (ER) – the little organelle in our cells that makes proteins and lipids.

You can see the ER structures (left) compared to the neutron stars (right) below: 

University of California, Santa Barbara

The discovery brought both of the scientists together to compare and contrast the differences between the structures, such as the conditions required for them to form

Normally, matter is characterised by a phase – sometimes called its state – such as gas, solid, liquid Different phases are usually influenced by a plethora of various conditions, like how hot the matter is, how much pressure it’s under, and how dense it is.

These factors change wildly between soft matter (the stuff inside cells) and neutron stars (nuclear matter). After all, neutron stars form after supernovae explosions, and cells form within living things. With that in mind, it’s quite easy to see that the two things are very different.

For neutron stars, the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force create what is fundamentally a quantum mechanical problem.

"In the interior of cells, the forces that hold together membranes are fundamentally entropic and have to do with the minimisation of the overall free energy of the system. At first glance, these couldn't be more different."

The team’s work was published in Physical Review C.

Transient Weakening of Earth’s Magnetic Shield Probed by a Cosmic Ray Burst

The GRAPES-3 muon telescope located at TIFR's Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ooty recorded a burst of galactic cosmic rays of about 20 GeV, on 22 June 2015 lasting for two hours.

The burst occurred when a giant cloud of plasma ejected from the solar corona, and moving with a speed of about 2.5 million kilometers per hour struck our planet, causing a severe compression of Earth's magnetosphere from 11 to 4 times the radius of Earth. It triggered a severe geomagnetic storm that generated aurora borealis, and radio signal blackouts in many high latitude countries.

Earth's magnetosphere extends over a radius of a million kilometers, which acts as the first line of defence, shielding us from the continuous flow of solar and galactic cosmic rays, thus protecting life on our planet from these high intensity energetic radiations. Numerical simulations performed by the GRAPES-3 collaboration on this event indicate that the Earth's magnetic shield temporarily cracked due to the occurrence of magnetic reconnection, allowing the lower energy galactic cosmic ray particles to enter our atmosphere. Earth's magnetic field bent these particles about 180 degree, from the day-side to the night-side of the Earth where it was detected as a burst by the GRAPES-3 muon telescope around mid-night on 22 June 2015. The data was analyzed and interpreted through extensive simulation over several weeks by using the 1280-core computing farm that was built in-house by the GRAPES-3 team of physicists and engineers at the Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ooty.

Solar storms can cause major disruption to human civilization by crippling large electrical power grids, global positioning systems (GPS), satellite operations and communications.

The GRAPES-3 muon telescope, the largest and most sensitive cosmic ray monitor operating on Earth is playing a very significant role in the study of such events. 

http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.171101

Supersolids: strange state of matter

Two teams of scientists report the creation of supersolids, which are both liquid and solid at the same time. Supersolids have a crystalline structure like a solid, but can simultaneously flow like a superfluid, a liquid that flows without friction.

Research teams from MIT and ETH Zurich both produced supersolids in an exotic form of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Reports of the work were published online at arXiv.org on October 26 (by the MIT group) and September 28 (by the Zurich group).

Bose-Einstein condensates are created when a group of atoms, chilled to near absolute zero, huddle up into the same quantum state and begin behaving like a single entity. The scientists’ trick for creating a supersolid was to nudge the condensate, which is already a superfluid, into simultaneously behaving like a solid. To do so, the MIT and Zurich teams created regular density variations in the atoms — like the repeating crystal structure of a more typical solid — in the system. That density variation stays put, even though the fluid can still flow.

The two groups of scientists formed their supersolids in different ways. By zapping their condensate with lasers, the MIT group induced an interaction that gave some of the atoms a shove. This motion caused an interference between the pushed and the motionless atoms that’s similar to the complex patterns of ripples that can occur when waves of water meet. As a result, zebralike stripes — alternating high- and low-density regions — formed in the material,  indicating that it was a solid.

Applying a different method, the ETH Zurich team used two optical cavities — sets of mirrors between which light bounces back and forth repeatedly. The light waves inside the cavities caused atoms to interact and thereby arrange themselves into a crystalline pattern, with atoms separated by an integer number of wavelengths of light.

J. Li et al. Observation of the supersolid stripe phase in spin-orbit coupled Bo.... arXiv:1610.08194. Posted October 26, 2016.

J. Léonard et al. Supersolid formation in a quantum gas breaking continuous translati.... arXiv:1609.09053. Posted September 28, 2016.

New type of atomic bond

Scientists have for the first time observed a weak atomic bond – in which an electron can grab and trap an atom – that was theorised 14 years ago. Researchers at Purdue University in the US observed a butterfly Rydberg molecule, a weak pairing of two highly excitable atoms that they predicted would exist more than a decade ago.

Rydberg molecules are formed when an electron is kicked far from an atom’s nucleus. Chris Greene, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue, and colleagues theorised in 2002 that such a molecule could attract and bind to another atom.

For all normal atoms, the electrons are always just one or two angstroms away from the nucleus, but in these Rydberg atoms you can get them 100 or 1,000 times farther away. Following preliminary work in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we saw in 2002 the possibility that this distant
Rydberg electron could bind the atom to another atom at a very large distance.

This electron is like a sheepdog. Every time it whizzes past another atom, this Rydberg atom adds a little attraction and nudges it towards one spot until it captures and binds the two atoms together.

A collaboration involving Greene and his postdoctoral associate Jesus Perez-Rios at Purdue and researchers at the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany has now proven the existence of the butterfly Rydberg molecule, so named for the shape of its electron cloud.  This new binding mechanism, in which an electron can grab and trap an atom, is really new from the point of view of chemistry. It’s a whole new way an atom can be bound by another atom.

The researchers cooled Rubidium gas to a temperature of 100 nano-Kelvin, about one ten-millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Using a laser, they were able to push an electron from its nucleus, creating a Rydberg atom, and then watch it.

Whenever another atom happens to be at about the right distance, you can adjust the laser frequency to capture that group of atoms that are at a very clear internuclear separation that is predicted by our theoretical treatment.

They were able to detect the energy of binding between the two atoms based on changes in the frequency of light that the Rydberg molecule absorbed.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12820

Why Neanderthal DNA wasn't much successful...

Neanderthals and modern humans got separated  from a common ancestor about half a million years ago.

Living in colder climes in Eurasia, Neanderthals evolved barrel chests, large skulls and strong hands. In Africa, modern humans acquired shorter faces, a prominent chin and slender limbs. Then, roughly 50,000 years ago, the two species encountered one another and interbred, as modern humans spread out of Africa.

The legacy of this interbreeding has been the subject of much scientific inquiry in the past few years. Today, up to 4 percent of the genes of non-Africans are Neanderthal in origin.. These may have influenced a diverse range of traits, including keratin production, disease risk. Where did all the other Neanderthal DNA go? Why did a Neanderthal-human hybrid not prevail?

Two recent studies converge on an explanation. They suggest the answer comes down to different population sizes between Neanderthals and modern humans, and this principle of population genetics: In small populations, natural selection is less effective.

Neanderthals have this small population over hundreds of thousands of years, presumably because they’re living in very rough conditions. As a result, Neanderthals were more inbred than modern humans and accumulated more mutations that have a slightly adverse effect, such as increasing one’s risk of disease, but do not prevent one from reproducing .

After Neanderthals started mating with humans, natural selection in the larger human population started excluding.

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pg...

Birds and other marine animals are eating the plastic we discard into the ocean as it breaks down into small pieces.Why? 

Two scientists from the University of California, Davis think they have the answer: the birds are drawn by the smell of a dimethyl sulfide released by plastic -- the same chemical released by phytoplankton.

Some birds (which the paper describes as “procellariiform species”) have a strong sense of smell, and respond to a certain chemical, dimethyl sulfide, as a cue to find their prey. And in a study released on 16th Nov., 2016 in Science Advances, their suspicions were confirmed.

Dimethyl sulfide is released by phytoplankton as it gets eaten by a predator or breaks down in the ocean or on shore, signaling to these birds and others to come eat the phytoplankton’s predators (like krill).

Dr. Nevitt and Mr. Savoca found that the chemical is also released when tiny pieces of plastic are present in the ocean, often a result of “biofouling,” which describes the process when algae colonizes pieces of plastic, and then die or are eaten by other organisms.

In this study, the scientists used plastic beads of the type used in bottles, bags, textiles and hundreds of applications, ranging from four to six millimeters in diameter. After the microplastics had been in the ocean for about three weeks, dimethyl sulfide was found in the water and air around them in concentrations high enough that these types of birds may be able to smell, the scientists found, using tools that are otherwise meant for measuring sulfur in beer or wine.

The study suggests that the odor of dimethyl sulfide on or around marine plastic debris is “maladaptive foraging behavior” — that the birds are using their evolutionary traits to forage for food in ways that might be bad for them, causing problems like chemical toxicity or obstruction. According to the study, a recent projection model concluded that more than 99 percent of all seabird species will have eaten plastic debris by 2050.

Dr. Nevitt said that the study could have implications for other marine animals. Those that eat similar species to these birds — like baleen whales — or those that may also be attracted to dimethyl sulfide — like sea turtles — could be at risk. The researchers hope the study will help determine strategies for how to fight this growing environmental problem, as plastic pollution increases in the ocean.

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/11/e1600395

Popular heartburn drugs —  under investigation for possible links to dementia, kidney and heart problems — have a new health concern to add to the list. An analysis of almost 250,000 medical records in Denmark has found an association with stroke.

Researchers from the Danish Heart Foundation in Copenhagen studied patients undergoing gastric endoscopy from 1997 to 2012. About 9,500 of all patients studied suffered from ischemic strokes, which occur when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in the brain.

Overall, the risk of stroke was 21 percent higher in patients taking a proton pump inhibitor, a drug that relieves heartburn, the researchers reported November 15 during the American Heart Association’s annual meeting. While those patients also tended to be older and sicker to start with, the level of risk was associated with dose, the researchers found. People taking the lowest drug doses (between 10 and 20 milligrams a day, depending on the drug) did not have a higher risk. At the highest doses, though, Prevacid (more than 60 mg/day) carried a 30 percent higher risk and Protonix (more than 80 mg/day) a 94 percent higher risk. For Prilosec and Nexium, stroke risk fell within that range.  

Scientists have hacked a plant's genes to make it use sunlight more efficiently — a breakthrough that could eventually dramatically increase the amount of food grown.

How what you eat effects your gut...

Mucus plays a major role in your gut. There are antimicrobial peptides and proteins that are present in the environment. Bacteria live in your gut and forage on the carbohydrates. And it's a lubricant, it helps sweep contents down the GI tract, without injuring the epithelial layer. In the colon, the mucus builds a wall: a barrier against friendly bacteria, as well as pathogens that could be transiting through. But here's the problem: your gut bacteria may chew right through that wall—if you skimp on fiber in your diet. 

In the studies conducted on mice, extreme high-fiber diet helped keep the mucus barrier intact. But in mice that had zero fiber—or the kind of soluble fiber typically added to processed foods—the fiber-eating members of the gut dwindled. Their absence opened up more space for mucus-munching bacteria, which increased in number, and tore through the protective mucus wall—leaving intestinal cells open for microbial attack. The study's published in the journal Cell. 

Your diet could predispose how you react to an enteric pathogen. Eating natural vegetables, raw vegetables, cooked veggies, whole grains, is definitely good for you. Interestingly, the mice's gut bacteria bounced back within a day to a change in diet. 

A Dietary Fiber-Deprived Gut Microbiota Degrades the Colonic Mucus Barrier and Enhances Pathogen Susceptibility

http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(16)31464-7

Must read ... An open letter from women of science

 Women scientists' pledge...

https://500womenscientists.org/#our-pledge

The 'BIG Bell Test: worldwide quantum experiments powered by human randomness' aims to conduct a series of quantum experiments in labs around the world that, for the first time, will be controlled by human decisions made by

volunteers across the world. On November 30th, for the first time, participants around the world took part in a unique worldwide experiment with the aim of testing the laws of quantum physics. 

Coordinated by ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences, 12 laboratories from around the world collaborated for the BIG Bell Test: worldwide quantum experiments powered by human randomness with the aim of demonstrating experimentally that the nanoscale world is as strange as quantum physics predicts, consisting of particles in superstates that collapse only when observed; strange instantaneous interactions at a distance; predictions that were questioned by Einstein, who rejected them completely.

During the 48 hours during which it was November 30th somewhere on the planet, participants contributed to the initiative, generating sequences of zeros and ones through a video game to produce sequences of numbers that were as random as possible. Each of these bits was used to control the experimental conditions of the labs in real time. They moved mirrors, polarizing filters, waveplates—elements located on optical tables that affected the types of measurements made on the quantum systems in each lab.

All the participants provided scientists with millions of unpredictable, independent decisions that were used to measure their particles. This independence is a crucial feature for the conclusions of the Bell tests to be valid. Using the sequences provided by the participants, the scientists verified whether or not their particles were intertwined by the quantum entanglement that Einstein could not accept. In a nutshell, the Bell test states that experimentalists have to conduct their measurements with the help of human decisions and calculate the "Bell parameter" (also known as the parameter S). If the universe is predictable and without quantum entanglement, then S cannot be greater than two. That is, S should always be less than two. Otherwise, the inequality has been violated, indicating the presence of intrinsic quantum phenomena.

By 13:00 CET, the minimum number of participations needed to provide enough bits to power the experiments had already been surpassed, registering above 1000 bits per second in a stable manner over the course of several hours. By early afternoon CET, some of the labs had been able to obtain preliminary results, confirming violations of Bell's inequality, and thus confirming the predictions of quantum physics.

5th world conference on research integrity

May 18th to 31st, 2017, Amsterdam, The Nederlands

To  promote the integrity of research – from proper design methodology to ethical submission and publication to making research data available for re-use.

Themes include transparency and accountability, building on the premise that the honesty and reliability of research are best served by openly sharing all aspects of research and by taking personal responsibility for it. It also draws attention to the urgent need to fight questionable research practices. 

More details here: http://www.wcri2017.org/

The BIG Bell Test.

The experiment - coordinated by ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences in Spain - powered by human randomness is aimed to demonstrate that the microscopic world is in fact as strange as quantum physics predicts. 

Predictions such as particles behaving in a random way, determining their properties only when we look at them; strange instantaneous interactions at a distance - were all questioned by Einstein, who rejected them completely. 

During the 48 hours in which it was November 30th at different place on the planet, participants contributed to the initiative, generating sequences of zeros and ones as random as possible through a video game. 

Each of these bits was used to control in real-time the experimental conditions of the labs. 

They moved mirrors, polarising filters, waveplates - elements located on optical tables and that affect the type of measurements that are made on the different quantum systems in each lab. 

Together all the participants provided scientists with millions of unpredictable, independent decisions which were used to measure their particles. 

This independence is a crucial feature for the conclusions of the Bell tests to be valid. 

Using the sequences provided by the participants, the scientists have been able to verify whether or not their particles were intertwined by the "spooky action at a distance" that Einstein could not accept. 

The Bell test states that experimentalists have to do their measurements with the help of human decisions and calculate the "Bell parameter" (known as the parameter S). 

If the world is, as Einstein believes, predictable and without "spooky actions at a distance", then S cannot be greater than 2. Otherwise, the inequality has been violated, indicating the presence of intrinsically quantum phenomena. 

By 13:00 Central European Time (CET), the minimum number of participations needed to assure enough bits to power the experiments had already been surpassed, registering above 1,000 bits per second in a stable manner over the course of several hours. 

By early afternoon, some of the labs had been able to obtain preliminary results, confirming violations of Bell's inequality, and thus refuting Einstein, giving their complete support to the predictions of quantum physics. 

"The project required contributions from many people in very different areas: the scientists pushed their experiments to new limits, the public very generously gave us their time in support of science, and educators found new ways to communicate between these two groups," said Morgan Mitchell, professor at ICFO.

Effects of c- section births on evolution

Caesarean section (or C-section) deliveries can save lives when babies are too large to be born naturally - or if there are other health complications - but they also appear to be affecting how humans are evolving, scientists report.

In the past, larger babies and mothers with narrow pelvis sizes might both have died in labour.  Thanks to C-sections, that's now a lot less likely, but it also means that those 'at risk' genes from mothers with narrow pelvises are being carried into future generations.

Cases where a baby can't fit through the birth canal have increased from 30 in 1,000 births in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 today because of this C-section effect, according to estimates from researchers at the University of Vienna in Austria.  That's a significant shift in just half a century.

"Without modern medical intervention, such problems often were lethal and this is, from an evolutionary perspective, selection.

The team used a mathematical model based on obstructed child birth data to reach their estimates.

More detailed studies would be required to actually confirm the link between C-sections and evolution, as all we have now is a hypothesis based on the birth data. But Mitteroecker and his colleagues say it's important to consider the effect the rise in these procedures is having.

There are already a few conflicting evolutionary forces at work here, scientists think, in what's known as the obstetrical dilemma.

The 'dilemma' is that the larger a baby is when it's born, the more likely its chances of survival. At the same time, women have evolved with smaller pelvic sizes to aid upright walking and to limit the chances of premature births.

Both evolutionary pressures are working to try and keep babies healthy... but they're also working against each other.

"One side of this selective force - namely the trend towards smaller babies - has vanished due to caesarean sections.

This evolutionary trend will continue but perhaps only slightly and slowly.

Cliff-edge model of obstetric selection in humans

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/11/29/1612410113

Researchers from Egypt and Saudi Arabia have developed a simple way to manufacture an eco-friendly and affordable membrane that can efficiently adsorb oils spills from sea or waste water.

The membrane can recover quickly and easily for reuse — it can be applied at least 10 times with the same efficiency, according to a study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin.

The nanostructured polymer blend adsorbs oil and can be reused at least 10 times.It is made from natural materials friendly to the environment and aquatic organisms. Its capacity to work on a large scale, with oil spills at sea, has yet to be tested.

the study published last September tested blends of nanoscale polyvinyl alcohol polymers, considered to be among the most dissolvable and non-toxic biopolymers. They can also be manufactured relatively cheaply from biodegradable and biocompatible polymers.

A funny and scientific way of explaining Father Christmas:

The mystery of how Father Christmas can deliver presents to 700 million children in one night, fit down the chimney and arrive without being seen or heard has been explained in a scientific way by a physicist at the University of Exeter.

Santa and his reindeer zoom around the world at such speed that - according to relativity theory - they would shrink, enabling Father Christmas and a huge sack of presents to fit down chimneys.

Dr Katy Sheen, a physicist in the Geography department at the University of Exeter, has also found a scientific explanation for why Santa is not heard arriving by children, and why they rarely catch a glimpse of him on Christmas eve.

Santa's stealth delivery is partly explained by special relativity theory devised by Albert Einstein, whom Dr Sheen thinks bares a passing resemblance to Santa.

Relativity theory explains how Father Christmas can fit down the chimney. At the speeds he needs to travel to deliver presents to every child, Father Christmas shrinks - or gets thinner - in the direction he is travelling. And he has to be careful not to stop for a mince pie in a chimney, or he could grow back to full size!

Relativity also explains why Father Christmas appears not to have aged throughout the ages, because relativity can slow down clocks.

The physicist has calculated that Santa and his reindeer would have to travel at about 10 million kilometres per hour to deliver presents to every child expected to celebrate Christmas in 31 hours (taking into account world time zones).

If millions of children have been good, and deserve bigger stockings, he may need to travel even faster. Such speed would make him change from red to green and, at greater speeds, he would disappear! Children would not be able to recognise him as he would appear as a rainbow-coloured blur, eventually disappearing to the human eye.

Travelling at more than 200,000 times faster than Usain Bolt, the world's fastest man, the laws of physics explain why Father Christmas is rarely seen by children while delivering presents.

The Doppler effect would make Santa change colour because the light waves he releases would get squashed at such a high speed.

The Doppler effect also explains why children cannot hear Father Christmas arrive. As Santa and his sleigh approach, the sound of bells and his deep 'ho, ho, ho' would get higher and higher (like when an ambulance siren whizzes by) and then become completely silent, because he would move beyond human hearing range. Even the sound of Santa urging on Rudolph would become unrecognisable, and then inaudible to the human ear.

If children hear a bang on Christmas night, it may not be the sound of Santa dropping his presents, landing on their roof in his sleigh, or sliding down the chimney with a plop. Santa's reindeer could have broken the speed of sound, resulting in a 'sonic boom.'

Dr Sheen, a physicist working in the University of Exeter's Geography department, is not planning to present her research to a peer-reviewed journal (it's prepared with the festive spirit in mind), and has done the calculations in her own time to interest children in science and physics.

-Eureka Alert

A “crater” in Antarctica once thought to be the work of a meteorite impact is actually the result of ice melt, new research finds.

The hole, which is in the Roi Baudouin ice shelf in East Antarctica, is a collapsed lake — a cavity formed when a lake of meltwater drained — with a “moulin,” a nearly vertical drainage passage through the ice, beneath it, researchers found on a field trip to the area in January 2016.

Combining their fieldwork with satellite data and climate modeling, the researchers found that East Antarctica is more vulnerable to melt than was previously realized. Warm winds to the region blow away the snow cover, which darkens the surface of the ice, the team reported Dec. 12 in the journal Nature Climate Change. Darker surfaces absorb more heat from the sun than lighter surfaces, so they are more prone to melt. These floating ice sheets don’t contribute much to sea level rise ­— as they’re already in the ocean — but they provide an important backstop against the flowing of land-based ice from continental Antarctica into the ocean.

Earth’s surface is shattered by roads into over 600,000 fragments – more than half of which are smaller that one square kilometre – severely reducing the ability of ecosystems to function effectively, a new study has found.

Roads have made it possible for humans to access almost every region but this comes at a very high cost ecologically to the planet’s natural world. Despite substantial efforts to conserve the world’s natural heritage, large tracts of valuable roadless areas remain unprotected, researchers said.

The researchers from the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development in Germany used a dataset of 36 million kilometres of roads across the landscapes of the earth. They are dividing them into more than 600,000 pieces that are not directly affected by roads.

Of these remaining roadless areas only seven per cent are larger than 100 square kilometres. The largest tracts are to be found in the tundra and the boreal forests of North America and Eurasia, as well as some tropical areas of Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Only nine per cent of these areas undisturbed by roads are protected.

Roads introduce many problems to nature. For instance, they interrupt gene flow in animal populations,facilitate the spread of pests and diseases, and increase soil erosion and the contamination of rivers and wetlands.

Then there is the free movement of people made possible by road development in previously remote areas, which has opened these areas up to severe problems such as illegal logging, poaching and deforestation.

Most importantly, roads trigger the construction of further roads and the subsequent conversion of natural landscapes, a phenomenon the study labels “contagious development.”

“Our global map provides guidance on the location of the most valuable roadless areas,” said Pierre Ibisch, from the Eberswalde University. In many cases they represent remaining tracks of extensive functional ecosystems, and are of key significance to ecological processes, such as regulating the hydrological cycle and the climate,” said Ibisch.

The researchers used a large data base generated through crowd-sourcing platform to produce a global map for roadless.

All roads affect the environment in some shape or form including timber extraction tracks and minor dirt roads, and the impacts can be felt far beyond the road edge.