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...

Stand up and march for science

On April 22, protesters will converge in cities around the world to march for scientific freedom and integrity. 

Do join us and support science.

Scientists Created a Fluid With 'Negative Mass'

 

When conservative Christians challenge the teaching of evolution in US schools?

Indian space agency ISRO  is seeking proposals  for space-based experiments to study Venus.

The Announcement of Opportunity (AO) is for space experiments by institutions in the country, and the last date for receiving the proposals is May 19, 2017, the Bengaluru- headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

Those sending the proposals for Venus orbiter mission may be currently involved in planetary exploration studies, or development of science instruments for space, or willing to develop the experiments.

Find more details here: http://www.isro.gov.in/announcement-of-opportunity-ao-space-based-e...

Scientists have found a way to trigger artificial photosynthesis, turning greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into clean air and producing energy at the same time.

The research team  from University of Central Florida (UCF) in the US created a way to trigger a chemical reaction in a synthetic material called metal-organic frameworks (MOF) that breaks down carbon dioxide into harmless organic materials.

The process is similar to photosynthesis in which plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and sunlight into food. However, instead of producing food, the new method produces solar fuel.

The chemical reaction is triggered by blue light mimicking the blue wavelength of sunlight, and converts carbon dioxide into two reduced forms, formate and formamides, which can be used as energy sources.

The findings were published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

Smell sensors that diagnose diseases

Each of us has a unique "odourprint" made up of thousands of organic compounds. These molecules offer a whiff of who we are, revealing age, genetics, lifestyle, hometown — even metabolic processes that underlie our health. Yes, the smell of someone's skin, breath and bodily fluids can be suggestive of illness. The breath of diabetics sometimes smells of rotten apples, experts report; the skin of typhoid patients, like baking bread. Now, researchers are trying to build an inexpensive odor sensor for quick, reliable and noninvasive diagnoses. The field finally seems on the cusp of succeeding.

Britain's National Health Service is paying for a 3,000-subject clinical trial to test an odor analysis sensor's ability to diagnose lung cancer. The company that makes the unit says clinicians can change the software to sniff out other diseases.

A similar diagnostic technology is being developed in Israel. Those researchers published a paper in ACS Nano in December showing that their artificially intelligent nano-array could distinguish among 17 diseases with up to 86 percent accuracy.

In addition to these groups, teams in the United States, Austria, Switzerland and Japan also are developing odor sensors to diagnose disease.

--

Artificial blood made safer...

Bioinspired Polydopamine-Coated Hemoglobin as Potential Oxygen Carrier with Antioxidant Properties

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.biomac.7b00077

n a study published in Biomacromolecules, researchers describe a promising blood substitute that could effectively carry oxygen and also scavenge for potentially damaging free radicals. Blood transfusions can save the lives of patients who have suffered major blood loss, but hospitals don't always have enough or the right type on hand. Red blood cells carry the protein hemoglobin, which performs the essential function of delivering oxygen to the body's tissues. Scientists have tried developing chemically modified hemoglobin—which by itself is toxic—as a blood substitute but have found that it forms methemoglobin. This form of the protein doesn't bind oxygen and thus decreases the amount of oxygen that blood delivers in the body. In addition, the generation of methemoglobin produces hydrogen peroxide, which leads to cell damage. In the present study, a team of researchers led by Dr. Wang Quan from the Beijing Institute of Transfusion Medicine wanted to see if packaging hemoglobin in a benign envelope could get around these problems. The researchers developed a one-step method for wrapping hemoglobin in polydopamine, or PDA, which has been widely studied for biomedical applications. A battery of lab tests showed that the PDA-coated hemoglobin effectively carried oxygen, while preventing the formation of methemoglobin and hydrogen peroxide. In addition, it caused minimal cell damage, and acted as an effective antioxidant, scavenging for potentially damaging free radicals and reactive oxygen species.

Some farming practices destroy Earthworms...

The digging, stirring and overturning of soil by conventional ploughing in tillage farming is severely damaging earthworm populations around the world, say scientists.

The findings published in the scientific journal Global Change Biology show a systematic decline in earthworm populations in soils that are ploughed every year. The deeper the soil is disturbed the more harmful it is for the earthworms.

The scientists from the University of Vigo, Spain, and University College Dublin, Ireland, analysed 215 field studies from across 40 countries dating back as far as 1950. Each of the studies investigated earthworm populations under conventional tillage and other forms of reduced tillage.

According to the findings, the earthworm populations most vulnerable to tillage are larger earthworms that move between layers of soil and create permanent burrows between them (anecic earthworms). Small earthworms that live in the top layers of soil and convert debris to topsoil (epigeic earthworms) were also found to be highly susceptible.

Farming practices that involve no-tillage, Conservation Agriculture and shallow non-inversion tillage were shown to significantly increase earthworm populations. The scientists note that these reduced tillage practices are increasingly being adopted world-wide due to their environmental benefits in terms of erosion control and soil protection.

Conventional tillage decreases the abundance and biomass of earthworms and alters their community structure in a global meta-analysis

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13744/abstract;jsess...

Some farming practices destroy Earthworms...

The digging, stirring and overturning of soil by conventional ploughing in tillage farming is severely damaging earthworm populations around the world, say scientists.

The findings published in the scientific journal Global Change Biology show a systematic decline in earthworm populations in soils that are ploughed every year. The deeper the soil is disturbed the more harmful it is for the earthworms.

The scientists from the University of Vigo, Spain, and University College Dublin, Ireland, analysed 215 field studies from across 40 countries dating back as far as 1950. Each of the studies investigated earthworm populations under conventional tillage and other forms of reduced tillage.

According to the findings, the earthworm populations most vulnerable to tillage are larger earthworms that move between layers of soil and create permanent burrows between them (anecic earthworms). Small earthworms that live in the top layers of soil and convert debris to topsoil (epigeic earthworms) were also found to be highly susceptible.

Farming practices that involve no-tillage, Conservation Agriculture and shallow non-inversion tillage were shown to significantly increase earthworm populations. The scientists note that these reduced tillage practices are increasingly being adopted world-wide due to their environmental benefits in terms of erosion control and soil protection.

Conventional tillage decreases the abundance and biomass of earthworms and alters their community structure in a global meta-analysis

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13744/abstract;jsess...

Inhaled Nanoparticles Accumulate at Sites of Vascular Disease

Inhaled nanoparticles can cross the lungs, entering the bloodstream, and accumulate in blood vessels and other bodily sites vulnerable to cardiovascular disease, a new study suggests. 
 
People around the world are constantly exposed to nanoparticles mostly emitted by vehicle exhaust, but the risks are greater in crowded Asian cities, which are seeing a dramatic rise in the number of vehicles on the roads.
 
In the study — the results of which were published on 26 April in ACS Nano — it was shown that healthy volunteers exposed to gold nanoparticles retained them in the body for as long as three months. Experiments on mice also reveal that nanoparticles accumulate in the liver and blood vessels.
 
Results from human studies have been inconsistent thus far, the authors write. But evidence showing that nanoparticles enter the blood circulation by escaping the lungs “provides a direct mechanism that can explain the link between environmental nanoparticles and cardiovascular disease”. It also has implications for managing potential risks of engineered nanoparticles, they add.
 
The link between environmental nanoparticles and cardiovascular disease could be explained by gold particles detected in surgical specimens of diseased carotid artery from patients at risk of stroke and at sites of vascular inflammation, according to the study.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.6b08551

Smile and the world thinks you are older! Don't believe? here is the proof!

A new study shows that smiling can make you appear to be two years older than if you wear a poker face. And if you reacted to that finding with a look of surprise - well, that expression might just have dropped years from your visage.

"We associate smiling with positive values and youth," said study co-author Melvyn Goodale, director of the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University. "Think of all the skin-care and toothpaste companies that sell the same idea every day."

But this study -- in which researchers flashed images of people with smiling, neutral and surprised expressions -- showed the opposite: participants perceived the surprised faces as the youngest and smiling faces the oldest.

"The striking thing was that when we asked participants afterwards about their perceptions, they erroneously recalled that they had identified smiling faces as the youngest ones," Goodale said. "They were completely blind to the fact they had 'aged' the happy-looking faces. Their perceptions and their beliefs were polar opposites."

Goodale said the aging effect of a smile stems from people's inability to ignore the wrinkles that form around the eyes during smiling. A look of surprise, on the other hand, smooths any wrinkles.

"It may seem counter-intuitive, but the study shows that people can sincerely believe one thing and then behave in a completely different way," Goodale said.

The study, "The effects of smiling on perceived age defy belief" is newly published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 

source: Eurekalert

Do statins help you avoid heart attacks and strokes? That depends on various things says a recent study

The benefits of statins for people older than 75 remain unclear, a new analysis finds. Statins did not reduce heart attacks or coronary heart disease deat... from any cause, compared with people not taking statins, researchers report online May 22 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Recently published guidelines cited insufficient data to recommend statins for people older than age 75 who don’t have a history of cardiovascular disease. The new analysis considered a subset of older adults enrolled in a study of heart attack prevention and mortality conducted from 1994 to 2002. The sample included 2,867 adults ages 65 and older who had hypertension, 1,467 of whom took a statin.

There was no meaningful difference in the frequency of heart attacks or coronary heart disease deaths between those who took statins and those who did not. There was also no significant difference in deaths from any cause, both overall and among participants ages 65 to 74 or those 75 and older.

Statin use may be associated with muscle damage and fatigue, which could especially impact older adults and put them at higher risk for physical decline, the authors say.

Science news

We all know that light travels faster than sound. That is why we see lightening first and then hear the sound of thunder later. Light travels roughly 800,000 times as fast as sound.

But an interesting thing about meteors is you can hear the sound and see their light at the same time! How is this possible? Now scientists explained the mystery...

The sound waves aren’t coming from the meteor itself, atmospheric scientists Michael Kelley of Cornell University and Colin Price of Tel Aviv University propose April 16 in Geophysical Research Letters. As the leading edge of the falling space rock vaporizes, it becomes electrically charged. The charged head produces an electric field, which yields an electric current that blasts radio waves toward the ground. As a type of electromagnetic radiation, radio waves travel at the speed of light and can interact with metal objects near the ground, generating a whistling sound that people can hear.

Just 0.1 percent of the radio wave energy needs to be converted into sound for the noise to be audible as the meteor zips by, the researchers estimate. This same process could explain mysterious noises heard during the aurora borealis, or northern lights. Like meteors, auroras have been known to emit radio wave bursts.

On the electrophonic generation of audio frequency sound by meteors

 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL072911/abstract

Contageous Vaccines! Future Perfect! Yes, you read it right!

When enough people get vaccinated, infectious diseases can’t spread easily and everyone benefits from herd immunity. 

But it’s hard to reach enough people for this to happen, especially in areas with poor public health infrastructure. So scientists are taking a leaf from the virus playbook. They’re devising vaccines and antiviral therapies that can spread from host to host.

These transmissible vaccines will likely first be used in animals that carry diseases that can infect people. Some may use a weakened version of the virus, or attach a piece of the pathogen to a benign virus. Other treatments are aimed at people who are already infected and will prey on the virus dwelling in their cells.

It’s early days for these kinds of vaccines and therapies, and scientists still have to show that they are effective and safe to use in wildlife or people. But they could tamp down the spread of HIV and other contagious diseases, and immunize people who would not otherwise be protected. Plus this strategy would be cheaper than vaccinating everyone by hand.

In some countries the vaccine for polio is given as an injection that carries dead poliovirus. But there’s another form of the vaccine that is taken by mouth and uses a weakened—but live—version of the virus. This version can briefly spread to other people before dying out. The World Health Organization has relied on the oral polio vaccine for its efforts to wipe out the disease worldwide.

But there is a drawback. Rarely, the live vaccine can mutate enough to revert back to its virulent form. The oral polio vaccine carries three strains of the virus, one of which has been eradicated in the wild but is also most likely to cause this problem. The WHO is switching to a vaccine that has only the two safer strains.

Many vaccines use live but weakened versions of the virus, including those for measles and chicken pox. The process that disables the virus so it can’t cause sickness also makes it less able to spread.

But it’s likely that some of these vaccines are still a little bit transmissible. This hasn’t been studied in depth, though. When these vaccines are designed, the focus is on making sure they can’t make people sick. 

If we did intentionally design transmissible vaccines, they might be more likely than regular vaccines to revert. That’s because they reach more people and have a chance to replicate and make new generations. That means more chances for mutations and evolution. One way around this would be to make a live vaccine that is only weakly transmissible. This vaccine would only spread a little bit before dying out. This kind of vaccine wouldn’t be able to eradicate a disease, but fewer people would need to be directly vaccinated. A weakly transmissible vaccine would still make a major dent in disease outbreaks.

Source: Popsci

In a study published in Nature Medicine, researchers have confirmed that the targeted removal of senescent cells can delay the development of osteoarthritis in mice. This research was been led by Dr. Kim Chaekyu of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who is now at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), and Dr. Jeon Ok Hee of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In the study, the research team describe a drug candidate that alleviates age-related degenerative joint conditions such as osteoarthritis by selectively destroying senescent cells. Their findings suggest that the selective removal of old cells from joints could reduce the development of post-traumatic osteoarthritis and allow new cartilage to grow and repair joints. 

Local clearance of senescent cells attenuates the development of post-traumatic osteoarthritis and creates a pro-regenerative environment

https://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v23/n6/full/nm.4324.html

Update on flourescent light treatment of babies with jaundice  ...

Update

Preemies aren’t the only babies at risk for jaundice. About 60 percent of full-term infants also develop the condition. Severe cases can cause brain damage if untreated. But today, some researchers warn that light therapy, now widely used, may not work for babies whose bilirubin levels are very high. And studies have begun to suggest a link between the therapy and certain childhood cancers . Though the risk of developing cancer is small, doctors should be cautious about prescribing the treatment, researchers wrote in 2016 in Pediatrics.

Phototherapy may slightly increase the risk of cancer in infancy, although the absolute risk increase is small. This risk should be considered when making phototherapy treatment decisions, especially for infants with bilirubin levels below current treatment guidelines.

A.C. Wickremasinghe et al. Neonatal phototherapy and infantile cancer. Pediatrics. Vol. 137, June 2016, e20151353. doi: 10.1542/peds.2015-1353.

Quantum communication...

A successful quantum communication network will rely on the ability to distribute entangled photons over large distances between receiver stations. So far, free-space demonstrations have been limited to line-of-sight links across cities or between mountaintops. Scattering and coherence decay have limited the link separations to around 100 km. Yin et al. used the Micius satellite, which was launched last year and is equipped with a specialized quantum optical payload. They successfully demonstrated the satellite-based entanglement distribution to receiver stations separated by more than 1200 km. The results illustrate the possibility of a future global quantum communication network.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6343/1140

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Scientists have solved a centuries-old mystery of "bright nights" - an unusual glow that appears in the sky after dark and lets observers see distant mountains, read a newspaper or check their watch.

Researchers suggest that when waves in the upper atmosphere converge over specific locations on Earth, it amplifies naturally occurring airglow, a faint light in the night sky that often appears green due to the activities of atoms of oxygen in the high atmosphere.

Normally, people do not notice airglow, but on bright nights it can become visible to the naked eye, producing the unexplained glow detailed in historical observations.

Modern observations of bright nights from Earth are practically nonexistent light pollution. Even devoted airglow researchers have never seen a true bright night.

However, even before the advent of artificial lighting, bright nights were rare and highly localised.

Researchers could see bright night events reflected in airglow data from the Wind Imaging Interferometer (WINDII), an instrument once carried by NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (1991-2005).

They searched for mechanisms that would cause airglow to increase to visible levels at specific locations.

Airglow comes from emissions of different colors of light from chemical reactions in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The green portion of airglow occurs when light from the sun splits apart molecular oxygen into individual oxygen atoms.

When the atoms recombine, they give off the excess energy as photons in the green part of the visible light spectrum, giving the sky a greenish tinge.

To find factors that would cause peaks in airglow and create bright nights, researchers searched two years of WINDII data for unusual airglow profiles.

They identified 11 events where WINDII detected a spike in airglow levels that would be visible to the human eye, two of which they describe in detail in the study.

Finally, the researchers matched up the events with the ups and downs of zonal waves, large waves in the upper atmosphere that circle the globe and are impacted by weather.

Potent Inhibitor of Drug-Resistant HIV-1 Strains Identified from the Medicinal Plant Justicia gendarussa

Justicia gendarussa, a medicinal plant collected in Vietnam, was identified as a potent anti-HIV-1 active lead from the evaluation of over 4500 plant extracts. Bioassay-guided separation of the extracts of the stems and roots of this plant led to the isolation of an anti-HIV arylnaphthalene lignan (ANL) glycoside, patentiflorin A (1). Evaluation of the compound against both the M- and T-tropic HIV-1 isolates showed it to possess a significantly higher inhibition effect than the clinically used anti-HIV drug AZT. Patentiflorin A and two congeners were synthesized, de novo, as an efficient strategy for resupply as well as for further structural modification of the anti-HIV ANL glycosides in the search for drug leads. Subsequently, it was determined that the presence of a quinovopyranosyloxy group in the structure is likely essential to retain the high degree of anti-HIV activity of this type of compounds. Patentiflorin A was further investigated against the HIV-1 gene expression of the R/U5 and U5/gag transcripts, and the data showed that the compound acts as a potential inhibitor of HIV-1 reverse transcription. Importantly, the compound displayed potent inhibitory activity against drug-resistant HIV-1 isolates of both the nucleotide analogue (AZT) and non-nucleotide analogue (nevaripine). Thus, the ANL glycosides have the potential to be developed as novel anti-HIV drugs.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.7b00004

Metagenomic sequencing study:

The test is the brainchild of researchers at the  University of California, San Francisco, led by neurologist Michael Wilson, biochemist Joseph DeRisi and infectious disease expert Charles Chiu. The group uses genetic-sequencing technology to identify mystery illnesses in people with encephalitis or meningitis (inflammation of the meninges, the membranes around the brain and spinal cord). This so-called metagenomic test analyzes all the DNA and RNA found in a sample of cerebrospinal fluid (meta means “beyond” in Greek). So any DNA or RNA that does not belong to the patient—including that from viruses, bacteria, parasites or fungi—shows up in the results.

Done correctly, metagenomic testing could radically change the way infections of the brain are diagnosed. An element of circular logic underlies most standard infectious disease tests. Doctors order individual tests for each bug they suspect might be causing the problem. But how do they know what is causing the problem if they have not yet done the test? Metagenomic sequencing, in contrast, casts the broadest possible net, which allows it to pick up unexpected or previously unknown pathogens. Scientists and doctors are looking at everything at once, which has the potential of replacing the myriad of lab tests with a single test.

Genetic sequencing of Cerebro-spinal fluid hailed as an advance over standard procedures for diagnosing brain infections

Hormones made by brain...

Bones give us structural support to out bodies. We all know that. Apart from that function, bones also make hormones. Do you know this fact?

Yes, there’s so much going on between bone and brain and all the other organs, it has become one of the most prominent tissues being studied at the moment.

At least four bone hormones found working in living systems, recent studies show, and there could be more. Scientists have only just begun to decipher what this messaging means for health. But cataloging and investigating the hormones should offer a more nuanced understanding of how the body regulates sugar, energy and fat, among other things.

Of the hormones on the list of bones’ messengers — osteocalcin, sclerostin, fibroblast growth factor 23 and lipocalin 2 — the last is the latest to attract attention. Lipocalin 2, which bones unleash to stem bacterial infections, also works in the brain to control appetite, physiologist Stavroula Kousteni of Columbia University Medical Center and colleagues reported in the March 16 Nature.

After mice eat, their bone-forming cells absorb nutrients and release a hormone called lipocalin 2 (LCN2) into the blood. LCN2 travels to the brain, where it gloms on to appetite-regulating nerve cells, which tell the brain to stop eating, a recent study suggests.

Geneticist Gerard Karsenty of Columbia University Medical Center found that osteocalcin — made by osteoblasts — helps regulate blood sugar. Osteocalcin circulates through the blood, collecting calcium and other minerals that bones need. When the hormone reaches the pancreas, it signals insulin-making cells to ramp up production, mouse experiments showed. Osteocalcin also signals fat cells to release a hormone that increases the body’s sensitivity to insulin, the body’s blood sugar moderator, Karsenty and colleagues reported in Cell in 2007. If it works the same way in people, Karsenty says, osteocalcin could be developed as a potential diabetes or obesity treatment.

Bad news for coral reef lovers...the 3 successive years of bleaching conditions damaged all but three of the 29 reefs that are or are contained within United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites. And the prognosis is grim: Without dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, all these reefs "will cease to host functioning coral reef ecosystems by the end of the century," predicts the report from UNESCO’s World Heritage Center in Paris.

Feel sad, because I love corals :(

Researchers have found material that removes synthetic pollutant dyes from water...

Researchers from Energy Safety Research Institute (ESRI) at Swansea University, U.K hold the key to the problem in the form of a novel, non-hazardous photocatalytic material.

The said material effectively removes dye pollutants from water, adsorbing more than 90 % of the dye and enhancing the rate of dye breakdown by almost ten times using visible light. The composite material as a combination of tungsten oxide and tantalum nitride, also provides a huge surface area for dye capture, being less than 40 billionths of a metre in diameter. The material was synthesized by heating the reaction mixture at high pressures inside a sealed container which involved growing ultra-thin “nanowires” of tungsten oxide on the surface of tiny particles of tantalum nitride. It further proceeded to break the dye down into smaller, harmless molecules using the energy provided by sunlight, in a process known as ‘photocatalytic degradation’. 

Having removed the harmful dyes, the catalyst can be simply filtered from the cleaned water and reused. Due to the exchange of electrons between the two materials, the test dye used within the study was broken down by the composite at around double the rate achieved by tantalum nitride on its own, while tungsten oxide alone was shown to be incapable of dye degradation.

The research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.