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

--

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.

Praying mantises are posing threat  to small birds...

A study by zoologists from Switzerland and the US shows: praying mantises all over the globe also include birds in their diet. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology has just published the results.

he researchers gathered and documented numerous examples of bird-eating mantises. In a systematic review, they were able to show that praying mantises from twelve species and nine genera have been observed preying on small birds in the wild. This remarkable feeding behavior has been documented in 13 different countries, on all continents except Antarctica. There is also great diversity in the victims: birds from 24 different species and 14 families were found to be the prey of mantises. "The fact that eating of birds is so widespread in praying mantises, both taxonomically as well as geographically speaking, is a spectacular discovery," comments Martin Nyffeler from the University of Basel and lead author of the study.

http://www.bioone.org/doi/10.1676/16-100.1

Role of uterine fluid: New light...

Once considered a simple medium for sperm and embryo transport, the functional spectrum of uterine fluid is now expanding. Novel molecular players, such as extracellular vesicles and mobile RNAs, have been detected in the uterine fluid of livestock, rodents, and humans. These novel molecules, together with previously known ions and proteins, ensure uterine fluid homeostasis and facilitate embryo–maternal interactions. 

These molecules may also carry information that mirrors maternal environmental exposure and possibly relay such information to the embryo via uterine fluid, generating long-term epigenetic effects on the offspring via embryonic and placental programming. Moreover, the development of systematic profiling of uterine fluid molecular signatures may now hold promise, relying on high-throughput methods and non-invasive biomarkers for clinical use.

http://www.cell.com/trends/molecular-medicine/fulltext/S1471-4914(17)30080-1?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1471491417300801%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Canadian researchers reconstituted an extinct poxvirus for $100,000 using mail-order DNA

A group led by virologist David Evans of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says it has synthesized the horsepox virus, a relative of smallpox, from genetic pieces ordered in the mail. Horsepox is not known to harm humans—and like smallpox, researchers believe it no longer exists in nature; nor is it seen as a major agricultural threat. But the technique Evans used could be used to recreate smallpox, a horrific disease that was declared eradicated in 1980. 

Scientifically, the achievement isn't a big surprise. Researchers had assumed it would one day be possible to synthesize poxviruses since virologists assembled the much smaller poliovirus from scratch in 2002. But the new work—like the poliovirus reconstitutions before it—is raising troubling questions about how terrorists or rogue states could use modern biotechnology. Given that backdrop, the study marks an important milestone, a proof of concept of what can be done with viral synthesis.

- Sciencemag.org

How climate change impacts flying...

Rising temperatures due to global warming will make it harder for many aircraft around the world to take off in coming decades, says a new study. During the hottest parts of the day, 10 to 30 percent of fully loaded planes may have to remove some fuel, cargo or passengers, or else wait for cooler hours to fly, the study concludes. The study, which is the first such global analysis, appeared recently in the journal Climatic Change.

As air warms, it spreads out, and its density declines. In thinner air, wings generate less lift as a plane races along a runway. Thus, depending on aircraft model, runway length and other factors, at some point a packed plane may be unable to take off safely if the temperature gets too high. Weight must be dumped, or else the flight delayed or canceled.

Average global temperatures have gone up nearly 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 Fahrenheit) since about 1980, and this may already be having an effect.

"This points to the unexplored risks of changing climate on aviation

A solution to reverse the worrying antibiotic resistance crisis may have been found...

 Salford University scientists claim they may have stumbled across a very simple way forward – even though they weren't looking for antibiotics.

They were looking into ways of inhibiting mitochondria, the 'powerhouse' of cells which fuel fatal tumours, when they made the discovery. 

The team sorted through 45,000 compounds, using a three-dimensional structure of the mitochondria. 

Using it, they identified 800 small molecules which may inhibit mitochondria based on their structural characteristics.

This was then whittled down into the most promising 10 compounds, according to the research published in the journal Oncotarget.

Their results showed that these synthetic compounds - without any additional chemical engineering - inhibited a broad spectrum of five types of common bacteria.

This included Streptococcus, Pseudomonas, E. coli and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). They also killed the pathogenic yeast, Candida albicans. 

Dubbed as 'mito-riboscins', they are equally, if not more, potent than standard antibiotics, the researchers said. 

http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/index.php?journal=oncotarg...[]=19084&path[]=61161

Motivational switch in the brain identified!

A research team in China may have done just that. The group isolated a small group of neurons in the brains of mice that play a critical role in persistent behavior, according to a study published today in Science. This handful of brain cells is known as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, or dmPFC, and it sits in a region integral for learning appropriate social behavior. When the team fired up the neurons using light, the dmPFC motivated the mice to win competitions in which they had previously lacked the will to succeed. In other words, “this might provide a new biological basis for what people call ‘grit,’” says Hailan Hu, a neuroscientist at Zhejiang University who led the research.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6347/162

Mental strength and history of winning play an important role in the determination of social dominance. However, the neural circuits mediating these intrinsic and extrinsic factors have remained unclear. Working in mice, we identified a dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) neural population showing “effort”-related firing during moment-to-moment competition in the dominance tube test. Activation or inhibition of the dmPFC induces instant winning or losing, respectively. In vivo optogenetic-based long-term potentiation and depression experiments establish that the mediodorsal thalamic input to the dmPFC mediates long-lasting changes in the social dominance status that are affected by history of winning. The same neural circuit also underlies transfer of dominance between different social contests. These results provide a framework for understanding the circuit basis of adaptive and pathological social behaviors.

Indian scientists are marching for science...

Scientists and science activists will take out a 'March for Science' in several states in India on August 9. The march is being organized in protest against the Centre's move to slash funds for science and technology research institutes. The scientists are demanding that at least three percent of the country's GDP be set apart for scientific growth and for government policy to promote scientific research instead of promoting superstitious beliefs.

Ahead of the march, a reception committee of 'India March for Science' will be constituted at the Library hall of Kerala State Science and Technology Museum here on July 14, said Rajeevan P P, faculty, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) and secretariat member of Breakthrough Science Society (BSS). The march is being organized on the lines of the previous  March for science taken out in 160 cities across the world on April 22 this year.

"Science in India is facing the danger of being eclipsed by a rising wave of unscientific beliefs and religious bigotry. Scientific research is suffering serious setback due to dwindling governmental support," Rajeevan said. This is despite the fact that scientists from India have played a commendable role in developing science.

The organizers said financial support to even premier institutions like Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), National Institute of Technology, and Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISERs) were slashed. Universities are facing shortage of funds to adequately support scientific research. Research funding agencies like DST, DBT and CSIR are reportedly impacted by reduced governmental support. Scientists in government laboratories are being asked to generate a part of their salary by commercialising their scientific output and from other sources.

The scientists have made an appeal for participation in the march by all who agree to four demands raised by them. They are allocation of at least 3% of GDP to scientific research and 10% towards education; stopping the propagation of unscientific, obscurantist ideas and religious intolerance and developing scientific temper, human values and spirit of inquiry in conformance with Article 51A of the Constitution; ensuring that the education system imparts only ideas that are supported by scientific evidence and enactment of policies based on evidence-based science.

Bright light at night stops or mostly controls mosquito bites

Exposing malaria-transmitting mosquitoes to light at two-hour intervals during the night or at late daytime could inhibit their biting behaviour and reducemalaria transmission, says a study.

The team behind the research, from the university of Notre Dame in the United States, note that the development of resistance to insecticides requires innovative approaches for controlling the malaria vector. 

Therefore, they explored the potential of using light to control mosquitoes’ feeding behaviour by exposing Anopheles gambiaemosquitoes — a key vector of malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa — to multiple pulses of bright light, especially in the night, when they are most likely to feed on human blood.
 
“When we subjected the mosquitoes to a series of pulses of light with a two-hour interval and presented throughout the entire night, we observed suppression of biting activity during most of the night,” says Giles Duffield, a co-author of the study published in the journal Parasites & Vectors last month (16 June).

The finding was most prominent during the early to middle of the night and at dawn, when people are least protected by the barrier of a bed net.
 
“Conversely, biting levels were significantly elevated when mosquitoes were exposed to a dark treatment during the late day, suggesting that light suppresses biting behaviour even during the late daytime,” the researchers note in the paper.

WE ARE MARCHING FOR SCIENCE ON 9th AUG., 2017. COME, JOIN US!

An appeal by scientists

India is marching for science.

Science in India is facing the danger of being eclipsed by a rising wave of unscientific beliefs and religious bigotry, and scientific research is suffering serious setback due to dwindling governmental support.

 Financial support to even premier institutions like IITs, NITs, and IISERs has been slashed. Universities are facing shortage of funds to adequately support scientific research. Research funding agencies like DST, DBT and CSIR are reportedly impacted by reduced governmental support. Scientists in government laboratories are being asked to generate a part of their salary by selling their inventions and from other sources.

We feel that the situation demands the members of scientific community to stand in defence of science and scientific attitude in an open and visible manner as done by scientists and science enthusiasts worldwide. Scientists, researchers, teachers, students, as well as all concerned citizens are participating in 'India March for Science' events throughout the country, particularly in the state capitals, on 9th August 2017, with the following demands:

• 1. Allocate at least 3% of GDP to scientific and technological research and 10% towards education

• 2. Stop propagation of unscientific, obscurantist ideas and religious intolerance, and develop scientific temper, human values and spirit of inquiry in conformance with Article 51A of the Constitution.

• 3. Ensure that the education system imparts only ideas that are supported by scientific evidence.

• 4. Enact policies based on evidence-based science.

In Hyderabad, my home city, we are marching from Press club, Basheerbagh to Nizam college. Please join us at 10.30 am.

Thank you!

 “Research should not be used for validation of prejudices and ideology.”

Thousands across India march in support of science

http://www.nature.com/news/thousands-across-india-march-in-support-...

http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2017/aug/09/forget...

India March for science, Hyderabad, Aug., 9th 2017

New fluorescent dyes for advance biological imaging

Specific chemical building blocks in fluorescent molecules called rhodamines can generate nearly any color scientists desire - ROYGBIV and beyond, researchers report September 4, 2017 in the journal Nature Methods.

The work offers scientists a way to adjust the properties of existing dyes deliberately, making them bolder, brighter, and more cell-permeable too. Such an expanded palette of dyes could help researchers better illuminate the inner workings of cells.

The research team lit up cell nuclei, made larval fruit fly brains shine, and highlighted visual cortex neurons in mice that had tiny glass windows fitted into their skulls.

Jonathan B. Grimm, Anand K. Muthusamy, Yajie Liang, Timothy A. Brown, William C. Lemon, Ronak Patel, Rongwen Lu, John J. Macklin, Philip J. Keller, Na Ji, and Luke D. Lavis, "A general method to fine-tune fluorophores for live-cell and in vivo imaging," Nature Methods. Published online September 4, 2017. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.4403

Indian uranium mine becomes dark matter lab

India’s very first uranium mine, the Jaduguda mine located in the state of Jharkhand, now hosts a laboratory for conducting experiments in fundamental physics.

The Jaduguda Underground Science Laboratory 550, built in a 37-square-meter cavern buried 905 metres and formerly used for storage, will focus on the search for dark matter. It was built by the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and it is expected to gather the country’s brightest experimental scientists interested in cutting-edge research.

Repurposing the cave in the 50-year-old mine managed by the Uranium Corporation of India required an initial investment of $32,000. Scientists considered this to be the best place to install a low-temperature cesium iodide detector because its depth would shield the device from other particles.

The site’s uranium deposits, which produce 25 per cent of the raw materials needed to fuel India’s nuclear reactors, are located some 300 metres away from the lab. Thus, physicists working there are not concerned about background radiation.

source.. mining.com

Climate change threatens 33% of all parasites. Good news? Bad news, according to scientists! Read why...

Because parasites play an important part in our Eco-system!

The study published in the journal Science Advances was completed with the help of the U.S. National Parasite Collection, as well as specialized databases of ticks, fleas, bee mites, and feather mites. What's more, 17 researchers from eight countries spent years tracking down different parasite specimens in order to understand the species' habitat and needs.

By using climate forecasts to determine how the 457 parasite species will react to the changing climate, researchers found they are evidently among the most threatened life forms on Earth with regards to climate change, even more so than their hosts. In fact, models show that about a third of parasites could go extinct by 2070 from the effects of habitat loss alone, with the more conservative models showing instead a 5 to 10 percent loss.

Why is it bad?

Parasites don't often good reputations as they are often responsible for diseases and infections. By definition, parasites are organisms that live and thrive at the expense of its host. But did you know that they are also important members of the ecosystem?

As small as they are and despite their negative reputations, parasites actually contribute to keeping wildlife populations in check, and in providing a large percentage of food chain links. Many parasites have complex life cycles that require being passed from one host to another. Because of this, having strong populations of parasites are often indicators of a healthy ecosystem.

"It means the system has a diversity of animals in it and that conditions have been consistent long enough for these complex associations to develop," said Anna J. Phillips of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. What's more, a wide range of parasites in an ecosystem means that they could compete with one another, therefore slowing down the spread of diseases. Without them, the ecosystem could be seriously affected.

Unfortunately, because of their bad reputation, they are often overlooked in studies regarding climate change and its impacts. It is only now that we see that they, too, are affected by the climate change. Because of the current study, scientists can look further into the implications of changing parasite populations. This is especially important as it could also lead to the thriving of other, possibly more invasive parasites as a result of the lack of competition.

Tropical forests have flipped from sponges to sources of carbon dioxide

The world’s tropical forests are exhaling — and it’s not a sigh of relief. Instead of soaking up climate-warming gases on balance, these so-called “lungs of the planet” are beginning to release them.

A new study based on analyses of satellite imagery of tropical Asia, Africa and the Americas suggests that tropical forests contribute more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than they remove. Much of that carbon contribution is due to deforestation, the conversion of forests to urban spaces such as farms or roads. But more than two-thirds comes from a less visible source: a decline in the number and diversity of trees in remaining forests, researchers report online September 28 in Science.

Intact forests can be degraded or disturbed by selective logging, environmental change, wildfires or disease.

In total, the researchers found, tropical forests emit 862 teragrams of carbon to the atmosphere annually — more than all cars in the United States did in 2015 — and absorb only 436 teragrams of carbon each year. Of that net loss of carbon to the atmosphere, 69 percent is from degraded forests and the rest from deforestation.

Some 60 percent of those carbon emissions came from tropical America, including the Amazon Basin. Africa’s tropical forests were responsible for about 24 percent of the carbon loss, and Asia’s forests for 16 percent.

The results are a wake-up call that there is an opportunity for improvement.

Quantum video chat links scientists

Ultrasecure quantum video chats are now possible across the globe.

In a demonstration of the world’s first intercontinental quantum link, scientists held a long-distance videoconference on September 29 between Austria and China. To secure the communication, a Chinese satellite distributed a quantum key, a secret string of numbers used to encrypt the video transmission so that no one could eavesdrop on the conversation. In the call, chemist Chunli Bai, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, spoke with quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger, president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

“It’s a huge achievement,” says quantum physicist Thomas Jennewein of the University of Waterloo in Canada, who was not involved with the project. “It’s a major step to show that this approach could be viable.”

Using a technique known as quantum key distribution, scientists share secret strings of numbers while ensuring that no eavesdroppers can intercept the code undetected. Those quantum keys are then used to encrypt information sent via traditional internet connections. Decoding the transmission requires the same key used for encryption, foiling would-be snoops.

- Science news.org

A team in China has taken a new approach to fixing disease genes in human embryos. The researchers created cloned embryos with a genetic mutation for a potentially fatal blood disorder, and then precisely corrected the DNA to show how the condition might be prevented at the earliest stages of development.

The report, published on 23 September in Protein & Cell, is the latest in a series of experiments to edit genes in human embryos. And it employs an impressive series of innovations, scientists say. Rather than replacing entire sections of genes, the team, led by Junjiu Huang at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, tweaked individual DNA letters, or bases, using a precision gene-editing technology developed in the United States.

Liang, P. et al. Protein Cell https://doi.org/10.1007/s13238-017-0475–6 (2017)

Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young are the joint winners of the 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, winning for their discoveries about how internal clocks and biological rhythms govern human life.

The three Americans won "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm," the Nobel Foundation says

    "Using fruit flies as a model organism, this year's Nobel laureates isolated a gene that controls the normal daily biological rhythm. They showed that this gene encodes a protein that accumulates in the cell during the night, and is then degraded during the day. Subsequently, they identified additional protein components of this machinery, exposing the mechanism governing the self-sustaining clockwork inside the cell. We now recognize that biological clocks function by the same principles in cells of other multicellular organisms, including humans.

    "With exquisite precision, our inner clock adapts our physiology to the dramatically different phases of the day. The clock regulates critical functions such as behavior, hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism."

Three scientists who laid the groundwork for the first direct detection of gravitational waves have won the Nobel Prize in physics. Rainer Weiss of MIT, and Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, both of Caltech, will share the 9-million-Swedish-kronor (about $1.1 million) prize, with half going to Weiss and the remainder split between Thorne and Barish.

Weiss, Thorne and Barish are pioneers of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO. On February 11, 2016, LIGO scientists announced they had spotted gravitational waves produced by a pair of merging black holes. This first-ever detection generated a frenzy of excitement among physicists and garnered front-page headlines around the world.

LIGO’s observation of gravitational waves directly confirmed a 100-year-old prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity — that rapidly accelerating massive objects stretch and squeeze spacetime, producing ripples  that travel outward from the source.

--

An imaging technique that freezes tiny biological objects such as proteins and viruses in place so that scientists can peer into their structures at the scale of atoms has won its developers the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, Joachim Frank of Columbia University and Richard Henderson of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, won for their contributions to the development of the technique, called cryo-electron microscopy, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced October 4. 

Pesticides in natural honey!

WHEN researchers collected honey samples from around the world, they found that three-quarters of them had a common type of pesticide suspected of playing a role in the decline of bees.

5000 years of science development in India is being shown in an exhibition in London, UK

• First written zero on a 1700-year-old birch bark manuscript

• Oldest artefact is set of weights that standardised mud brick production

• Exhibition at UK’s Science Museum in London

When the courts here banned bursting of Diwali fire crackers, several people , criticized it protested and disregarded the ban. But at what cost? Read this:

Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and death in the world today, responsible for an estimated 9 million premature deaths according to The Lancet Commission on pollution and health.

The new study, published in the journal The Lancet and written by more than 40 international health and environmental experts, uses data from the the Global Burden of Disease, an international study that examines trends across populations and estimates mortality from major diseases and their causes. It i t looked at the effects of air pollution, or air contaminated with things like gases and the burning of wood, charcoal and coal; water pollution, which includes contamination by things like unhygienic sanitation; and workplace pollution, where employees are exposed to toxins and carcinogens like coal or asbestos.

Air pollution was linked to 6.5 million deaths in 2015, water pollution was linked to 1.8 million deaths and workplace pollution was linked to nearly one million deaths. Deaths from pollution-linked diseases, like heart disease and cancer, were three times higher than deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, the researchers found.

The authors also found that 92% of pollution-related deaths happen in low- and middle-income countries. In growing countries like India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Madagascar and Kenya, the researchers say that up to one in four deaths can be tied to pollution. China and India had the greatest number of pollution-related deaths in 2015. That year, pollution in China was linked to 1.8 million deaths, and pollution in India was linked to 2.5 million deaths. 

The researchers note that their data are likely underestimates and do not reflect the entire burden of disease from pollution. For instance, the researchers didn't look at other contaminants, like the effects of endocrine disruptors, flame retardants and pesticides on human health and early deaths. Fuller says there isn't data of high enough quality or quantity on those health issues.