China's pollution is causing millions of premature deaths.

A team of researchers led by Professor Zhu Tong from Peking university used PM2.5 data from over 500 ground observation stations in China, re-analyzing them using a newly developed integrated exposure-response (IER) model to estimate the risk of premature death due to exposure to PM2.5. They found that 84 percent of China’s population live in areas where the yearly average PM2.5 exceeded 35 micrograms per cubic meter, the upper limit set in ambient air quality standards by the World Health Organization. Their model predicted that this exposure to high PM2.5 levels resulted in 1.37 million premature deaths, of which 50 percent, 28 percent and 12 percent were due to cerebrovascular disease, ischemic heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease respectively. The study also points out that if the concentration of PM2.5 meets the WHO standards, the risk of premature death can decrease by 39 percent, 23 percent and 66 percent respectively, revealing the non-linear relationship between the decrease of PM2.5 and the improvement of different health conditions. 

Estimating adult mortality attributable to PM_2.5 exposure in China with assimilated PM_2.5 concentrations based on a ground monitoring network

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310956

The Postmortem Skin Microbiome to Estimate the Postmortem Interval

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.01...

Necrobiome. Heard about it before? It is the microbiological ecology of dead bodies. The genetic signatures of that microbial community as it waned and waxed after death can be used to build an algorithm that could pinpoint a corpse's time of death, to an accuracy of just two summertime days and can be used in forensic science.

Scientists face Intimidation and death threats in the US!

Troubling Signs for Science under Trump

The next four years are looking grim for science in America

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/troubling-signs...

Vera Rubin Didn't Discover Dark Matter

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/vera-rubin-didnt-di...

Languages Are Still a Major Barrier to Global Science

A third of new scientific findings are published in languages other than English, contributing to biases in our understanding and hinderances to the advance of science and research, a new study has found.

English is now considered the common language of global science. All major scientific journals seemingly publish in English, despite the fact that their pages contain research from across the globe.

Language hinders new findings getting through to practitioners in the field and causes the international community missing important science, said researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK.

They argue that whenever science is only published in one language, barriers to the transfer of knowledge are created.

The researchers call on scientific journals to publish basic summaries of a studys key findings in multiple languages and universities to encourage translations as part of their outreach evaluation criteria.

The researchers point out an imbalance in knowledge transfer in countries where English is not the mother tongue - much scientific knowledge that has originated there is available only in English and not in their local languages.

Researchers surveyed the web platform Google Scholar in a total of 16 languages for studies on biodiversity conservation published during a single year, 2014.

Of the over 75,000 documents, including journal articles, books and theses, some 35.6 per cent were not in English.

Of these, the majority was in Spanish (12.6 per cent) or Portuguese (10.3 per cent). Simplified Chinese made up six per cent and three per cent were in French.

Random sampling showed that only around half of non-English documents included titles or abstracts in English.

This means that around 13,000 documents on conservation science published in 2014 are unsearchable using English keywords.

This can result in sweeps of current scientific knowledge - known as systematic reviews - being biased towards evidence published in English, researchers said.

This, in turn, may lead to over-representation of results considered positive or statistically significant, and these are more likely to appear in English language journals deemed high-impact.

In addition, information on areas specific to countries where English is not the mother tongue can be overlooked when searching only in English.

For environmental science, this means important knowledge relating to local species, habitats and ecosystems - but also applies to diseases and medical sciences.

But native English speakers tend to assume that all the important information is available in English which is not the case in real terms. On the other hand, non-native English speakers tend to think carrying out research in English is the first priority, often ending up ignoring non-English science and its communication.

The research was published in the journal PLOS Biology.

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

Disturbing facts: Approximately half of studies published on new medical treatments leave out at least some of the adverse effects they uncovered, according to a recent analysis in PLOS Medicine. A team of British researchers conducted the review after coming across individual cases of missing side effects in medical literature, which includes studies from pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and academics. To determine how widespread the problem was, they analyzed 28 journal articles that together cross-checked the published data from more than 500 clinical studies with their original data sets. The review's results quantitatively confirm that some drugs may have side effects not even doctors know about—which means treatments may not be as safe as they appear.

• These findings suggest that researchers should search beyond journal publications for information on side effects of treatments.
• These findings also support the need for the drug industry to release full data on side effects so that a complete picture can be given to health professionals, policy makers, and patients.

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pm...

Reporting of Adverse Events in Published and Unpublished Studies of Health Care Interventions: A Systematic Review

People who live near roads laden with heavy traffic face a higher risk of developing dementia than those living further away, possibly because pollutants get into their brains via the blood stream, according to researchers in Canada.

A study in The Lancet medical journal found that people who lived within 50 metres (55 yards) of high-traffic roads had a 7.0 percent higher chance of developing dementia compared to those who lived more than 300 metres away from busy roadways.

Air pollutants can get into the blood stream and lead to inflammation, which is linked with cardiovascular disease and possibly other conditions such as diabetes. This study suggests air pollutants that can get into the brain via the blood stream can lead to neurological problems.

Carbon Chemistry: What is new...Carbon can exceed four-bond limit

A molecule originally proposed more than 40 years ago breaks the rules about how carbon connects to other atoms, scientists have confirmed. In this unusual instance, a carbon atom bonds to six other carbon atoms. That structure, mapped for the first time using X-rays, is an exception to carbon’s textbook four-friend limit, researchers report in the Jan. 2 Angewandte Chemie.

Atoms bond by sharing electrons. In a typical bond two electrons are shared, one from each of the atoms involved. Carbon has four such sharable electrons of its own, so it tends to form four bonds to other atoms.

But that rule doesn’t always hold. In the 1970s, German scientists made an unusual discovery about a molecule called hexamethylbenzene. This molecule has a flat hexagonal ring made of six carbon atoms. An extra carbon atom sticks off each vertex of the ring, like six tiny arms. Hydrogen atoms attach to the ring’s arms. And leftover electrons zip around the middle of the ring, strengthening the bonds and making the molecule more stable. 

When the scientists removed two electrons from the molecule, leaving it with a positive charge, some evidence suggested it might dramatically change its shape. It seemed to rearrange so that one carbon atom was bonded to six other carbons.

A  different lab has revisited the question. 

When hexamethylbenzene lost two electrons, it reordered itself. One carbon atom jumped out of the ring and took a new position on top, turning the flat hexagonal ring into a five-sided carbon pyramid. And the carbon on top of the pyramid was indeed bonded to six other carbons — five in the ring below, and one above.

This molecule is very exceptional. Though scientists have found other exceptions to carbon’s four-bond limit, this is the first time carbon has been shown associating with this many other carbon atoms.

When scientists measured the length of the molecule’s chemical bonds, the top carbon’s six bonds were each a bit longer than an ordinary carbon-carbon bond. A longer bond is generally less strong. So by picking more partners, that carbon has a slightly weaker connection to each one.

The carbon isn’t making six bonds in the sense that we usually think of a carbon-carbon bond as a two-electron bond. That’s because the carbon atom still has only four electrons to share. As a result, it spreads itself a bit thin by sharing electrons among the six bonds.

Another theory on how the moon came into existence...

Our moon formed about 4.5 billion years ago, between twenty million and a hundred million years after Earth took shape. How exactly it formed is a matter of debate. Did it accrete in tandem with Earth, from the same proto-planetary stuff, or did it spin off afterward? Is it our fraternal twin or an identical one? Or was it adopted, drawn into our gravitational sway as it passed by? Since the nineteen-eighties, the consensus has centered on the single-impact hypothesis, sometimes known as the Big Splash or the Big Splat, which supposes that the moon formed when a planet-size object, often called Theia, crashed into Earth and sent a huge mass of debris into orbit. But today, in a paper in Nature Geoscience, a team of Israeli researchers is proposing an equally compelling origin story: the moon, they say, is the product not of one impact but of at least a dozen—and it isn’t just one moon but an amalgam of the many moons that came before it.

Hair cells could heal wounds without scars forming...

Scientists found that in mouse during wound healing adipocytes regenerate from myofibroblasts, a cell type thought to be differentiated and non-adipogenic. Myofibroblast reprogramming required neogenic hair follicles, which triggered BMP signaling and then activation of adipocyte transcription factors expressed during development. Overexpression of the BMP antagonist, noggin, in hair follicles or deletion of the BMP receptor in myofibroblasts prevented adipocyte formation. Adipocytes formed from human keloid fibroblasts when treated with either BMP or when placed with human hair follicles in vitro. Thus, they identified the myofibroblast as a plastic cell type that may be manipulated to treat scars in humans.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/01/04/science.aai8792

The toll fetal alcoholic syndrome takes...

Worldwide, an estimated 1,19,000 children are born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) each year, a new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows.

The study, published in The Lancet Global Health, provides the first-ever estimates of the proportion of women who drink during pregnancy, as well as estimates of FAS by country, World Health Organization (WHO) region and worldwide.

Globally, nearly 10 per cent of women drink alcohol during pregnancy, with wide variations by country and WHO region. In some countries, more than 45 per cent of women consume alcohol during pregnancy.

Nearly 15 per 10,000 people around the world are estimated to have FAS, the most severe form of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). FAS is characterized by mental, behavioural and learning problems, as well as physical disabilities. Not every woman who drinks while pregnant will have a child with FAS. "We estimated that one in 67 mothers who drink during pregnancy will deliver a child with FAS," says lead author Dr. Svetlana Popova, Senior Scientist in CAMH's Institute for Mental Health Policy Research.

Although it's well established that alcohol can damage any organ or system in the developing fetus, particularly the brain, it's still not known exactly what makes a fetus most susceptible, in terms of the amount or frequency of alcohol use, or timing of drinking during pregnancy. Other factors, such as the genetics, stress, smoking and nutrition also contribute to the risk of developing FASD.

"The safest thing to do is to completely abstain from alcohol during the entire pregnancy," says Dr. Popova.

Rocks collected during the Apollo 14 mission made researchers finally pinpoint the exact age of the Moon, and it turns out, our lunar neighbour is an incredible 4.51 billion years old.

These findings suggest that the Moon was formed roughly 60 million years after the Solar System first formed, making it up to 140 million years older than previous estimates.

The reason we've never been able to accurately date the age of the Moon in the past is that there's very few well-preserved Moon rocks left on its surface.

Most of the rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts are breccias - mixes of different rocks that have been mashed together by the meteorite strikes that plague the Moon, thanks to its lack of atmosphere.

So instead of trying to find chunks of rock that had been there since the early days, the team instead turned to zircon - a mineral that would have formed as the Moon was cooling from its fresh, molten state into the rocky satellite we see today.

Once formed, zircon crystals stay perfectly intact as little time signatures of geological events. Studying zircon allows researchers to see when parts of the rock solidified, which is exactly what they needed to figure out when the Moon had fully formed.

This mineral is just the king when you try to understand any processes, because it is amazingly sturdy.

The team performed a process known as uranium-lead dating on zircon samples that were extracted from the Apollo 14 space rocks.

This required them to liquefy the zircon samples in acid, destroying the space rock artefacts.

But inside the zircon, the team was able to pull out four different elements: uranium, lead, lutetium, and hafnium.

Since uranium - a radioactive element - eventually turns into lead after long periods of time, the researchers could analyse how long the lead had been forming, giving them an accurate date of the Moon’s birth.

The ratios of lutetium and hafnium in the zircon also indicated how long the mineral had been around for.

Combining these analytical techniques, the team found that the Moon is 4.51 billion years old, making it far older than we previously thought, and providing us with a more accurate picture of how our Solar System formed.

Nightmare realized: Woman Killed by a Superbug Resistant to Every Available Antibiotic. The bacteria could fend off 26 different drugs!

Public health officials from Nevada are reporting on a case of a woman who died in Reno in September from an incurable infection. Testing showed the superbug that had spread throughout her system could fend off 26 different antibiotics.

“It was tested against everything that’s available in the United States … and was not effective,” said Dr. Alexander Kallen, a medical officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of health care quality promotion.

The case involved a woman who had spent considerable time in India, yes, you heard it right, and get alarmed, where multi-drug-resistant bacteria are more common than they are in the US. She had broken her right femur — the big bone in the thigh — while in India a couple of years back. She later developed a bone infection in her femur and her hip and was hospitalized a number of times in India in the two years that followed. Her last admission to a hospital in India was in June of last year.

The unnamed woman — described as a resident of Washoe County who was in her 70s — went into hospital in Reno for care in mid-August, where it was discovered she was infected with what is called a CRE — carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae. That’s a general name to describe bacteria that commonly live in the gut that have developed resistance to the class of antibiotics called carbapenems — an important last-line of defense used when other antibiotics fail. CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden has called CREs “nightmare bacteria” because of the danger they pose for spreading antibiotic resistance.

In the woman’s case, the specific bacteria attacking her was called Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bug that often causes of urinary tract infections.

Testing at the hospital showed resistance to 14 drugs — all the drug options the hospital had. A sample was sent to the CDC in Atlanta for further testing, which revealed that nothing available to US doctors would have cured this infection.

The woman in Nevada was cared for in isolation; the staff who treated her used infection control precautions to prevent spread of the superbug in the hospital.

How Ants Use Vision When Homing Backward

Ants can navigate over long distances between their nest and food sites using visual cues. Recent studies show that this capacity is undiminished when walking backward while dragging a heavy food item. This challenges the idea that ants use egocentric visual memories of the scene for guidance. Can ants use their visual memories of the terrestrial cues when going backward? Recent research results suggest that ants do not adjust their direction of travel based on the perceived scene while going backward. Instead, they maintain a straight direction using their celestial compass. This direction can be dictated by their path integrator  but can also be set using terrestrial visual cues after a forward peek. If the food item is too heavy to enable body rotations, ants moving backward drop their food on occasion, rotate and walk a few steps forward, return to the food, and drag it backward in a now-corrected direction defined by terrestrial cues. Furthermore, ants can maintain their direction of travel independently of their body orientation. It thus appears that egocentric retinal alignment is required for visual scene recognition, but ants can translate this acquired directional information into a holonomic frame of reference, which enables them to decouple their travel direction from their body orientation and hence navigate backward. This reveals substantial flexibility and communication between different types of navigational information: from terrestrial to celestial cues and from egocentric to holonomic directional memories.

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(16)31466-X

Scientists are considering psychological fake news vaccine

The appearance of fake news on websites and social media has inspired scientists to develop a "vaccine" to immunise people against the problem.

A University of Cambridge study devised psychological tools to target fact distortion.

Researchers suggest "pre-emptively exposing" readers to a small "dose" of the misinformation can help organisations cancel out bogus claims.

Stories on the US election and Syria are among those to have caused concern.

"Misinformation can be sticky, spreading and replicating like a virus," said the University of Cambridge study's lead author Dr Sander van der Linden.

"The idea is to provide a cognitive repertoire that helps build up resistance to misinformation, so the next time people come across it they are less susceptible."

The study, published in the journal Global Challenges, was conducted as a disguised experiment.

More than 2,000 US residents were presented with two claims about global warming.

The researchers say when presented consecutively, the influence well-established facts had on people were cancelled out by bogus claims made by campaigners.

But when information was combined with misinformation, in the form of a warning, the fake news had less resonance.

Cities eating into world’s farm lands

• By 2030 the world could lose 30 million hectares of farm lands to cities

• Asia and Africa accounts for 80 per cent of the losses with China as worst hit

• Forest lands will likely be converted to replace the losses in agricultural lands

By 2030, the world could lose millions of fertile agricultural lands to expanding cities with Asia and Africa accounting for 80 per cent of the total farm losses, a study finds.
 
Analysing satellite data on croplands and their productivity using year 2000 as the reference point and comparing it with urban area projections for 2030, international researchers found that 30 million hectares of crop lands will be lost to growing cities – an area equivalent to the Philippines. Of this, Asia and Africa will lose 24 million hectares of prime agricultural land.

With cities becoming hubs of economic activity, large-scale changes are expected. However, the authors say this is the first study to quantify the effect of urbanisation on crop lands at global, continental, and country levels. The study was carried out by researchers from Austria, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, and United States.
 
The croplands that are going to disappear by 2030 have productivity that is almost twice the global average and accounted for about 3—4 per cent of global crop production in 2000.
 
China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the US top countries set to lose cropland to urbanisation. The productivity of rice, wheat, maize, and soybean are most likely to be affected, though there are significant variations at regional levels.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/12/20/1606036114

Scientists have discovered 'smart cancer cells' - and realized why a type of breast cancer drug stops working in some patients. The early-stage findings, from an international team led by Imperial College London and the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, reveal some breast tumours evolve to make their own 'fuel supply', rendering treatments powerless.

The team, whose findings are published in the journal Nature Genetics, hope their work will increase treatment options for patients whose cancer has returned.

Around 70 per cent of breast cancers are so-called ER positive, which means the cancer cells contain a receptor for the hormone oestrogen. It is this hormone that fuels the tumours.

Patients with this type of cancer are offered one of two drugs after surgery to prevent the cancer coming back.

One of these drugs, called tamoxifen, prevents oestrogen from binding to DNA in cancer cells, while the second type of treatment, called aromatase inhibitors, prevents residual oestrogen from being produced in other tissues.

However both tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors stop working in around one in three patients.

Scientists assumed the tumours developed resistance in some way.

in the latest study, the team discovered that in one in four patients taking aromatase inhibitors, the tumours had increased production of aromatase in the cancer cells. The tumours appear to do this by increasing the number of aromatase genes, in a process called amplification.

This allowed the cancer cells to effectively make their own oestrogen, without relying on external sources of the hormone, explained Dr Luca Magnani, co-lead author of the research from the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial: “For the first time we have seen how breast cancer tumours become resistant to aromatase inhibitors. The treatments work by cutting off the tumour’s fuel supply – oestrogen – but the cancer adapts to this by making its own fuel supply.”

The researchers also discovered that tumours become resistant in different ways, depending on whether tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors are used.

Almost none of the tumours in patients taking tamoxifen had increased production of aromatase to boost their oestrogen supply - and the team are now planning further studies into how cancer cells become resistant to tamoxifen.

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3773.html?WT...

Scientists to oppose Donald Trump in huge ‘March for Science’ in Washington

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have announced the development of the first stable semisynthetic organism. Building on their 2014 study in which they synthesized a DNA base pair, the researchers created a new bacterium that uses the four natural bases (called A, T, C and G), which every living organism possesses, but that also holds as a pair two synthetic bases called X and Y in its genetic code.

TSRI Professor Floyd Romesberg and his colleagues have now shown that their single-celled organism can hold on indefinitely to the synthetic base pair as it divides. Their research was published January 23, 2017, online ahead of print in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

Doomsday clock advanced!

It's now 2 ½ minutes to “midnight,” according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which warned Thursday that the end of humanity may be near.

The group behind the famed Doomsday Clock announced at a news conference that it was adjusting the countdown to the End of it All by moving the hands 30 seconds closer to midnight — the closest the clock has been to Doomsday since 1953, after the United States tested its first thermonuclear device, followed months later by the Soviet Union's hydrogen bomb test.

In announcing that the Doomsday Clock was moving 30 seconds closer to the end of humanity, the group noted that in 2016, “the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change.”

But the organization also cited the election of President Trump in changing the symbolic clock.

The scientists' message: Climate change exists...there are no alternative facts here.

 “This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a US presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.”

Joint Statements on Climate Change from National Academies of Science Around the World

A joint statement issued by the Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Turkish Academy of Sciences, and Royal Society (UK).

National academies of sciences from around the world have published formal statements and declarations acknowledging the state of climate science, the fact that climate is changing, the compelling evidence that humans are responsible, and the need to debate and implement strategies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Not a single national science academy disputes or denies the scientific consensus around human-caused climate change. A few examples of joint academy statements since 2000 on climate are listed here. Many national academies have, in addition, published their own reports and studies on climate issues. 

The Science of Climate Change (Statement of 17 National Science Academies, 2001)

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/292/5520/1261

Rising temperatures could boost toxic mercury levels in fish by up to seven times the current rates, say Swedish researchers.

In experiments, they found that extra rainfall drives up the amount of organic material flowing into the seas.

This alters the food chain, adding another layer of complex organisms which boosts the concentrations of mercury up the line. The study has been published in the journal, Science Advances.

RNA clay offers green alternative to plant pesticides

• RNA clay is a promising non-GM technology that may replace pesticides

• Virus-specific RNA only kills the targeted pathogen when sprayed onto plants

• Several companies are already working on commercialising RNA clay

A nano-sized bio-degradable clay-comprising double stranded ribonucleic acid (dsRNA) could offer a cost-effective, clean and green alternative to chemical-based plant pesticides.
 
Australian researchers from the University of Queensland have successfully used a gene-silencing spray, named BioClay, a combination of biomolecules and clay, to protect tobacco plants from a virus for 20 days with a single application. Their study has been published in Nature Plants.
 
“When BioClay is sprayed onto a plant, the virus-specific dsRNA is slowly released from the clay nanosheets into the plant. This activates a pathway in the plant that is a natural defence mechanism. The dsRNA is chopped up into small bits of RNA by enzymes of this pathway. These small bits attack the virus when it infects the plant without altering the plant genome”. 

Health effects of long-duration spaceflight can have on the human body: A new study has found that space travel can change the volume of gray matter in different parts of the brain, which may be a result of fluids shifting due to a lack of gravity, and the brain working overtime to relearn the basics of movement in a strange new environment.

Humans evolved to thrive in conditions here on Earth, so it's not surprising that once taken beyond our home turf, we're subjected to a range of health issues. Without gravity constantly pushing down on the body, bones and muscles can lose mass over time, an issue that astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) try to mitigate through rigorous exercise regimes. Cosmic radiation can also be a serious hazard once we leave the protection of the Earth's electromagnetic field, and early results from an ongoing NASA study has found that long stays in space can actually alter a person's DNA.

This new study, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, focused on the brain. The team took MRI scans of 26 astronauts – 12 of which stayed just two weeks as shuttle crew members, while the other 14 lived on the ISS for six months. In all cases, the volume of gray matter increased and decreased in different parts of the brain, and the longer the astronauts spent in space, the more dramatic those changes were.

Researchers found large regions of gray matter volume decreases, which could be related to redistribution of cerebrospinal fluid in space. Gravity is not available to pull fluids down in the body, resulting in so-called puffy face in space. This may result in a shift of brain position or compression. Fluid displacement due to a lack of gravity has been known to cause all sorts of health issues for space travellers, most notably blurry vision. But on the plus side, one of the most marked increases in gray matter occurred in the parts of the brain responsible for controlling and sensing the legs. This, the researchers propose, could be due to the fact that moving in zero gravity is a completely different experience to getting around on Earth, meaning the astronauts are essentially learning to walk all over again. The researchers aren't sure exactly what's going on in the brain when the changes occur, but it may be the result of neurons creating new connections. A follow-up study will examine what effects these changes may have on a person's cognition and brain function, as well as how long these changes may last after returning to Earth.

The research was published in the journal Nature Microgravity.

LIGO Can Also Make Gravitational Waves

It's been almost a year now since the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the greatest scientific discovery of 2016.

Though the first gravitational waves were actually detected in September 2015, it was only after additional detections were made in June 2016 that LIGO scientists finally confirmed that the elusive waves exist, solidifying Albert Einstein's major prediction in his theory of relativity.

Now, the most sensitive detector of spacetime ripples in the world turns out to also be the best producer of gravitational waves.

"When we optimise LIGO for detection, we also optimise it for emission [of gravitational waves]," said physicist Belinda Pang from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena according to a report in Science.

Pang was speaking at a meeting of the American Physical Society last week, representing her team of physicists.

Gravitational waves are ripples that are produced when massive objects warp spacetime.

They essentially stretch out space, and according to Einstein, they can be produced by certain swirling configurations of mass. Using uber-sensitive twin detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, LIGO is able to detect this stretching of space.

Once they realised they could detect gravitational waves, the physicists posited that the sensitivity of their detectors would enable them to efficiently generate these ripples, too.

New artificial pollinators!

With bee population getting dwindled in some areas of the world, pollination is becoming difficult endangering agricultural production. But now scientists have found a solution! 

Sticky, insect-sized drones could act as pollinators

Japanese scientists have developed tiny insect-sized drones coated with horse hair and a sticky gel that may help pollinate crops in future and offset the costly decline of bee populations worldwide.

The undersides of these artificial pollinators are coated with horse hairs and an ionic gel just sticky enough to pick up pollen from one flower and deposit it onto another.

“The findings, which will have applications for agriculture and robotics, could lead to the development of artificial pollinators and help counter the problems caused by declining honeybee populations,” said Eijiro Miyako, a chemist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Nanomaterial Research Institute in Japan.

“We believe that robotic pollinators could be trained to learn pollination paths using global positioning systems and artificial intelligence,” said Miyako.

The threat of invasive species...

Invasive species can devastate ecosystems. They damage crops, clog rivers, threat native animals and cost farmers and homeowners billions of dollars to control each year. People aren’t the only ones suffering: The invaders have been linked to the decline of some four in every 10 endangered or threatened species.

 Since 1800, the rate at which alien species have been reported around the world has skyrocketed, with almost 40% of them discovered since 1970. Not all nonnative or “alien” species are a problem to a particular environment only those that adversely affect the environment, which are known as “invasive.”

Altogether, the scientists found 16,926 records of alien species of plant, mamm..., they report in Nature Communications.

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14435

The introduction of nonnative plants exploded in the 1800s thanks to the growth of globalized trade, and it has remained high ever since. Mammals and fish peaked around 1950. But other groups, including algae, mollusks, and insects rose steeply after 1950, thanks to climate change and the post–World War II wave of global trade. For those plants and animals that can easily stow away in the ballast of ships, there is a strong correlation between the spread of nonnative species and the market value of goods imported into each region.

How can we control them? Biosecurity and quarantine measures have worked for some more obvious taxa, so we know we can take actions that have positive outcomes. Conservationists hope that better awareness of the threats of species, coupled with improved global biosecurity, will continue to slow the spread of nonnative species. Some researchers predict the rate of spread will reach a saturation point before tailing off. Unfortunately, recent data suggest that may be a long way off.

When pollution becomes too high to negate the goodness of exercise? A disaster!

Air pollution is just one of the many crises we’re dealing with across the world. The health impact of air pollution continues to astound us and if you’re the health conscious sort, a new study is bound to upset you. It states that some cities are so polluted that 30 minutes of exercise does more harm than good.

The study was published in the journal Preventive Medicine and it used cycling as the sample activity to simulate exercise. The study assumed an average cycling speed of 12-14 kilometres an hour to check its impact on the body. The results are shocking.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743516000402

In north Indian cities such as Allahabad and Gwalior, cycling for more than 30 minutes is bad for health, the study said. In New Delhi, one hour is when the 'breakeven point' is reached. If PM2.5 levels are above a certain level, then any kind of outdoor activity could lead to serious health problems even without exercise. It's not hard to see why the effect will be severe on those who run or cycle outdoors in that kind of weather.

The study did use cycling as a way to measure impact of pollution on exercise but it says that the same numbers apply to similar activities such as slow jogging. If you are training for half marathon, you might want to consider alternatives such as training indoors. The report claims that breathing polluted air has been linked with heart disease, stroke, and even some cancers.

A giant neuron found wrapped around entire mouse brain

WHO releases list of world’s most dangerous superbugs

For the first time ever, the World Health Organization has drawn up a list of the highest priority needs for new antibiotics.

The list, which was released 27th Feb., 2017, enumerates 12 bacterial threats, grouping them into three categories: critical, high, and medium.

The full list is:

Priority 1: Critical
1. Acinetobacter baumannii, carbapenem-resistant
2. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, carbapenem-resistant
3. Enterobacteriaceae, carbapenem-resistant, ESBL-producing

Priority 2: High
4. Enterococcus faecium, vancomycin-resistant
5. Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant, vancomycin-intermediate and resistant
6. Helicobacter pylori, clarithromycin-resistant
7. Campylobacter spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant
8. Salmonellae, fluoroquinolone-resistant
9. Neisseria gonorrhoeae, cephalosporin-resistant, fluoroquinolone-resistant

Priority 3: Medium
10. Streptococcus pneumoniae, penicillin-non-susceptible
11. Haemophilus influenzae, ampicillin-resistant
12. Shigella spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/bacteria-antibiot...

 

A pair of bacterial genes may enable genetic engineering strategies for curbing populations of virus-transmitting mosquitoes.

Bacteria that make the insects effectively sterile have been used to reduce mosquito populations. Now, two research teams have identified genes in those bacteria that may be responsible for the sterility, the groups report online February 27 in Nature and Nature Microbiology.

Wolbachia bacteria “sterilize” male mosquitoes through a mechanism called cytoplasmic incompatibility, which affects sperm and eggs. When an infected male breeds with an uninfected female, his modified sperm kill the eggs after fertilization. When he mates with a likewise infected female, however, her eggs remove the sperm modification and develop normally.

When the researchers took two genes from the Wolbachia strain found in fruit flies and inserted the pair into uninfected male Drosophila melanogaster, the flies could no longer reproduce with healthy females.

D.P. LePage et al. Prophage WO genes recapitulate and enhance Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility. Nature. Published online February 27, 2016. doi:10.1038/nature21391.

J.F. Beckmann, J.A. Ronau and M. Hochstrasser. A Wolbachia deubiquitylating enzyme induces cytoplasmic incompatibility. Nature Microbiology. Published online February 27, 2016. doi: 10.1038/nmicrobiol.2017.7.

How science is getting attacked...

US government is not alone in questioning the findings of science. In the past five years, the people and government of Germany have turned against nuclear power; Thabo Mbeki, while president of South Africa, denied that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes AIDS; and the Harper administration of Canada forbade its scientists to speak freely about climate change (this went on for nearly a decade), among other examples. Here in the US, a number of prominent politicians deny scientists’ findings that the first years of the 21st century have been the planet’s hottest on record, and that 2014, 2015, and 2016 have each succeeded the previous as the hottest year on record. Of course, denial is a far easier stance for governments to take: Denying global warming means there’s no reason to do anything about it. 

Malaria parasites make human hosts attract mosquitoes...

Malaria parasites produce a chemical that causes infected people to emit odours attractive to mosquitoes. The chemical, HMBPP, stimulates red blood vessels to produce carbon dioxide and volatile compounds. The discovery of the chemical’s role could be key to controlling malaria, a major disease.

The malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum produces a molecule which makes infected humans emit carbon dioxide and other volatile compounds that attract mosquitoes and help them spread the disease more efficiently, a study has found. 

The molecule, HMBPP, works by stimulating red blood cells, says Ingrid Faye, researcher at the Department of Molecular Bioscience, Stockholm University (SU) and corresponding author of the study, published in Science  (February 9, 2017). 

Time crystals: New form of matter...

We have heard about three dimensional crystals such as salt, snow flakes etc. Now two groups of scientists have created a new kind of crystals, whose existence was first suggested by Wilczek who proposed time crystals in 2012, while wondering whether certain properties changing in time, rather than in space, could yield new phases of matter,  repeats a pattern across the fourth dimension—time.

Harvard scientists created time crystals from synthetic diamond while a University of Maryland team used charged atoms of the element ytterbium.  Two groups of scientists report that they’ve observed exotic time crystals, systems of atoms whose properties arrange themselves, or “crystallize” in time like the way solids can crystallize in space. The two groups’ vastly different atomic arrangements aren’t perpetual motion machines, weapons, or time travel devices—but their strange behavior sheds light on a whole new class of materials with properties different from any solid, liquid or gas you’ve ever encountered.

An appropriately tuned laser would flip the spins by 180 degrees. A second, identical laser burst would return the spins to their original position.

Any slight shifts to the frequency of the laser pulses would cause the ions spins to rotate by an amount different from 180 degrees. So they would not reach their starting orientation after two bursts from the spin-flip laser.

In a time crystal, the additional laser pulses introduce disorder and interactions, which make the system resilient to shifts in the frequency of the spin-flip laser. So the system cycles through a repeating pattern.

The researcher also verified that the time crystals were a closed system, and thus no energy is lost outside to the world. Also, the matter appears to have property similar to supercomputers.

http://www.nature.com/news/the-quest-to-crystallize-time-1.21595

In a remote West African village, a revolutionary genetic experiment is on its way — if residents agree to it...

Scientists in Burkina Faso are engaged in what could be the most promising, and perhaps one of the most frightening, biological experiments of our time. They are preparing for the possible release of swarms of mosquitoes that, until now, have been locked away in a research lab behind double metal doors and guarded 24/7.

The goal: to nearly eradicate the population of one species of mosquito, and with it, the heavy burden of malaria across Africa.

These scientists are planning to release mosquitoes equipped with “gene drives,” a technology that overrides nature’s genetic rules to give every baby mosquito a certain trait that normally only half would acquire. Once such an insect gets out into the wild, it will move indiscriminately and spread its modified trait without respect for political borders.

No living thing — no mammal, insect, or plant — with a gene drive has ever been set free. But if all goes as planned, it might happen here, in a remote village of about a thousand people, where the residents don’t even have a word for “gene.”

Despite such barriers, this is in some ways the most logical place to carry out the experiment. Nowhere does malaria exact a higher toll than here in sub-Saharan Africa, where hundreds of thousands die from the disease every year. And Burkina Faso already houses one of Africa’s highest-profile malaria research laboratories.

scientists still face a challenge: making sure that people understand and accept the newfangled genetic technology behind it all. That means building trust and doing basic education — explaining not only the impact of genetically engineered insects arriving in their homes, but also what genetics is in the first place.

Source: https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/14/malaria-mosquitoes-burkina-faso/

Nutrition deficiency caused by climate change

Evidence builds for lessening of certain micronutrients, protein in plants

A dinner plate piled high with food from plants might not deliver the same nutrition toward the end of this century as it does today. Climate change could shrink the mineral and protein content of wheat, rice and other staple crops, mounting evidence suggests.

Selenium, a trace element essential for human health, already falls short in diets of one in seven people worldwide. Studies link low selenium with such troubles as weak immune systems and cognitive decline. And in severely selenium-starved spots in China, children’s bones don’t grow to normal size or shape. This vital element could become sparser in soils of major agricultural regions as the climate changes, an international research group announced online February 21 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Likewise, zinc and iron deficiencies could grow as micronutrients dwindle in major crops worldwide, Harvard University colleagues Samuel Myers and Peter Huybers and collaborators warned in a paper published online January 6 in the Annual Review of Public Health. Futuristic field experiments on wheat and other major crops predict that more people will slip into nutritional deficits late in this century because of dips in protein content, Myers reported February 16 at the Climate and Health Meeting held in Atlanta.

G.D. Jones et al. Selenium deficiency risk predicted to increase under future climate.... Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online February 21, 2017. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1611576114.

S.S. Myers et al. Climate change and global food systems: Potential impacts on food s.... Annual Review of Public Health. Published online January 6, 2017. doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031816-044356.

S.S. Myers et al. Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition. Nature. Vol. 510, June 5, 2014, p. 139. doi: 10.1038/nature13179.

Synthetic yeast is about to become a reality

Scientists have constructed five more yeast chromosomes from scratch. The new work, reported online March 9 in Science, brings researchers closer to completely lab-built yeast. 

scientists might also be able to tinker with a synthetic yeast cell more efficiently than a natural one, allowing more precise engineering of everything from antiviral drugs to biofuels.

Boeke was part of a team that reported the first synthetic yeast chromosome in 2014. Now, several hundred scientists in five countries are working to make all 16 Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast chromosomes and integrate them into living cells. With six chromosomes finished, Boeke hopes the remaining 10 will be built by the end of 2017.

Each synthetic chromosome is based on one of S. cerevisiae’s, but with tweaks for efficiency. Researchers cut out stretches of DNA that can jump around and cause mutations, as well as parts that code for the same information multiple times.  

When the researchers put chunks of synthetic DNA into yeast cells, the cells swapped out parts of their original DNA for the matching engineered snippets.

Yeast is a eukaryote — it stores its DNA in a nucleus, like human cells do. Eventually, this research could produce synthetic chromosomes for more complicated organisms.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6329/1040

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6329/eaaf4597

Good news for people who dye their hair...Safer Hair Dye

You no more need to worry about allergic reactions while dying your hair. Because Researchers from Gyeongsang National University have mimicked melanin to produce a dye that is less allergenic than the existing chemical used to dye hair black. Their report appears in the journal ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering. 

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.7b00031

Particles that cover the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, are "electrically charged" and can cling together for months, scientists have found for the first time.

When the wind blows hard enough, Titan's non-silicate granules get kicked up and start to hop in a motion referred to as saltation. As they collide, they become frictionally charged, like a balloon rubbing against your hair, and clump together in a way not observed for sand dune grains on Earth - they become resistant to further motion. They maintain that charge for days or months at a time and attach to other hydrocarbon substances, much like packing peanuts used in shipping boxes here on Earth.

"If you grabbed piles of grains and built a sand castle on Titan, it would perhaps stay together for weeks due to their electrostatic properties," said Josef Dufek, from Georgia Institute of Technology in the US.

"Any spacecraft that lands in regions of granular material on Titan is going to have a tough time staying clean. Think of putting a cat in a box of packing peanuts," Dufek. The electrification findings may help explain an odd phenomenon. Prevailing winds on Titan blow from east to west across the moon's surface, but sandy dunes nearly 300 feet tall seem to form in the opposite direction.

"These electrostatic forces increase frictional thresholds," said Josh Mendez Harper, a doctoral student at Georgia Tech. "This makes the grains so sticky and cohesive that only heavy winds can move them. The prevailing winds aren't strong enough to shape the dunes," said Mendez Harper.

The findings have just been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

A Graphene-Based Sieve That Turns Seawater Into Drinking Water

We need drinking water but with the ever shrinking drinkable water sources, we have to make do with saline water available abundantly in seas and oceans across the world. Scientists now have found a way to convert sea water to pure water.
The invention of a graphene-oxide membrane that sieves salt right out of seawater is unique.

At this stage, the technique is still limited to the lab, but it's a demonstration of how we could one day quickly and easily turn one of our most abundant resources, seawater, into one of our most scarce - clean drinking water.

The team, led by Rahul Nair from the University of Manchester in the UK, has shown that the sieve can efficiently filter out salts, and now the next step is to test this against existing desalination membranes.
Graphene-oxide membranes have long been considered a promising candidate for filtration and desalination, but although many teams have developed membranes that could sieve large particles out of water, getting rid of salt requires even smaller sieves that scientists have struggled to create.

One big issue is that, when graphene-oxide membranes are immersed in water, they swell up, allowing salt particles to flow through the engorged pores.

The Manchester team overcame this by building walls of epoxy resin on either side of the graphene oxide membrane, stopping it from swelling up in water.
This allowed them to precisely control the pore size in the membrane, creating holes tiny enough to filter out all common salts from seawater.

The key to this is the fact that when common salts are dissolved in water, they form a 'shell' of water molecules around themselves.

"Water molecules can go through individually, but sodium chloride cannot. It always needs the help of the water molecules," Nair said.

"The size of the shell of water around the salt is larger than the channel size, so it cannot go through."

Not only did this leave seawater fresh to drink, it also made the water molecules flow way faster through the membrane barrier, which is perfect for use in desalination.

"When the capillary size is around one nanometre, which is very close to the size of the water molecule, those molecules form a nice interconnected arrangement like a train," Nair explained .

"That makes the movement of water faster: if you push harder on one side, the molecules all move on the other side because of the hydrogen bonds between them. You can only get that situation if the channel size is very small."

Graphene oxide is also a lot easier and cheaper to make in the lab than single-layers of graphene, which means the technology will be affordable and easy to produce.
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2017.2...

Chemical weapons - how they work - video

Thousands of people are hurt during flights each year as turbulence causes aircraft to rise or fall rapidly without warning. Most cases are minor but there are hundreds of serious injuries and dozens of deaths, mainly on small planes.

Rising carbon dioxide emissions are increasing the temperature difference between bands of air at cruising altitude, according to research by the University of Reading. This strengthens the jet stream, the ribbon of strong winds which flows from west to east around the planet.

The acceleration of the jet stream is causing it to become less stable. Layers of air within it move at different speeds and this difference is increasing as the planet warms, producing more turbulence for aircraft.

The researchers found that the growth in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere expected by 2050 could increase severe turbulence by at least 85 per cent.

During such severe turbulence, an aircraft’s altitude can deviate suddenly by around 100ft up or down, causing anyone unbuckled and any unsecured object to be thrown around the cabin.

The study, published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, said that increased turbulence might not result in a rise in injuries if airlines became better at forecasting it and taking avoiding action.

Personalised cancer treatment ...

• Drugs need to be specific for each patient’s genetic and immunological profile

• Side-effects of medication can be predicted by first testing them on stem cells

• The studies could lead to mapping of ethno-specific adverse effects of cancer drugs

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep41238

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14565

http://www.scidev.net/global/genomics/news/personalised-cancer-gene...