Hachimoji DNA and RNA : A genetic system with eight building blocks!

Expanding the genetic code

DNA and RNA are naturally composed of four nucleotide bases that form hydrogen bonds in order to pair. Hoshika et al. added an additional four synthetic nucleotides to produce an eight-letter genetic code and generate so-called hachimoji DNA. Coupled with an engineered T7 RNA polymerase, this expanded DNA alphabet could be transcribed into RNA. Thus, new forms of DNA that add information density to genetic biopolymers can be generated that may be useful for future synthetic biological applications.

Researchers reported DNA- and RNA-like systems built from eight nucleotide “letters” (hence the name “hachimoji”) that form four orthogonal pairs. These synthetic systems meet the structural requirements needed to support Darwinian evolution, including a polyelectrolyte backbone, predictable thermodynamic stability, and stereoregular building blocks that fit a Schrödinger aperiodic crystal. Measured thermodynamic parameters predict the stability of hachimoji duplexes, allowing hachimoji DNA to increase the information density of natural terran DNA. Three crystal structures show that the synthetic building blocks do not perturb the aperiodic crystal seen in the DNA double helix. Hachimoji DNA was then transcribed to give hachimoji RNA in the form of a functioning fluorescent hachimoji aptamer. These results expand the scope of molecular structures that might support life, including life throughout the cosmos.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6429/884

Scientists turn carbon dioxide back into coal!

Scientists have harnessed liquid metals to turn carbon dioxide back into solid coal, in research that offers an alternative pathway for safely and permanently removing the greenhouse gas from our atmosphere. The new technique can convert CO2 back into carbon at room temperature, a process that's efficient and scalable. A side benefit is that the carbon can hold electrical charge, becoming a supercapacitor, so it could potentially be used as a component in future vehicles.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190226112429.htm

Night-vision ‘super-mice’ created using light-converting nanoparticles

Scientists Watched  as Heat Moved at the Speed of Sound!

A rare phenomenon seen in just a handful of materials at forbidding temperatures has been detected within “warm” graphite—a finding that could aid future microelectronics.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/03/13/science.aav3548

A common food additive may make the flu vaccine less effective

A common food additive may make it more difficult to fight the flu.

Vaccinated mice that got food containing the additive, tert-butylhydroquinone (tBHQ), took three days longer to recover from the flu than mice that ate tBHQ-free food. The unpublished result suggests the common additive may make flu vaccines less effective, toxicologist Robert Freeborn of Michigan State University in East Lansing reported April 7 at the 2019 Experimental Biology meeting.  

The additive helps stabilize fats and is used as a preservative for a wide variety of foods, including some cooking oils, frozen meat products — especially fish fillets — and processed foods such as crackers, chips and other fried snacks. Food manufacturers aren’t required to put the ingredient on labels, so “it’s hard to know everything it’s in,” says Freeborn.

In separate experiments, unvaccinated mice eating tBHQ in their food had more virus RNA in their lungs than mice that didn’t eat it. The tBHQ eaters also had inflammation and increased mucus production deeper in their lungs than usual, Freeborn and colleagues found.  

The researchers don’t know exactly how the additive hampers flu fighting, but it may be because it increases activity of an immune system protein called Nrf2. Increased activity of that protein might reduce the number of virus-fighting immune cells in the mice. That possibility remains to be tested.

R. Freeborn et al. The immune response to influenza is suppressed by the synthetic food additive and Nrf2 activator, tert-butylhydroquinone (tBHQ). 2019 Experimental Biology, Orlando, April 7, 2019.

A Danish study of 657,461 children showed that children who were not vaccinated for MMR had a higher rate of autism than the children who were vaccinated with MMR. Large Danish Study: Autism Not Linked to MMR Vaccine

Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports.

The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.

“These humans appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information. And yet, somehow, they have developed defenses that, for all intents and purposes, have rendered those faculties totally inactive. As facts have multiplied, their defenses against those facts have only grown more powerful.” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said.

While scientists have no clear understanding of the mechanisms that prevent the fact-resistant humans from absorbing data, they theorize that the strain may have developed the ability to intercept and discard information enroute from the auditory nerve to the brain.

“The normal functions of human consciousness have been completely nullified,” Logsdon said.

While reaffirming the gloomy assessments of the study, Logsdon held out hope that the threat of fact-resistant humans could be mitigated in the future.

“Our research is very preliminary, but it’s possible that they will become more receptive to facts once they are in an environment without food, water, or oxygen,” he said.

https://www.thescinewsreporter.com/2019/04/scientists-earth-endange...

Rice husks can remove microcystin toxins from water

Scientists at The University of Toledo have discovered that rice husks can effectively remove microcystin from water, a finding that could have far-reaching implications for communities along the Great Lakes and across the developing world.

An abundant and inexpensive agricultural byproduct, rice husks have been investigated as a water purification solution in the past. However, this is the first time they have been shown to remove microcystin, the toxin released by harmful algal blooms.

The results of the study were recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Researchers found the rice husks removed more than 95 percent of microcystin MC-LR -- the most common type found in Lake Erie -- in concentrations of up to 596 parts-per-billion (ppb). Even in concentrations approaching 3,000 ppb, more than 70 percent of the MC-LR was removed, and other types of MCs were removed as well.

Researchers from England’s Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology have successfully created E. coli bacteria with entirely human-made DNA, marking a milestone in the burgeoning field of synthetic biology and paving the way for future innovation built on so-called “designer” bacteria.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature, the synthetic genome is by far the largest of its kind. The product of a two-year research campaign, the redesigned DNA consists of four million segments—four times more than the previous record holder. Perhaps most impressively, the bacteria contain just 61 codons, as opposed to the 64 found in nearly all living creatures. Despite this seeming disparity, the synthetic bacteria appear to function much like normal E. coli. The main differences are a slower growth rate and longer length.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1192-5

Hypertension found in children exposed to flower pesticides

In Ecuador, roses for Mother's Day sold around the world is major export crop, but pesticides used to grow and treat those flowers may be affecting health of children living nearby

In a study published online May 21, 2019 in the journal Environmental Research, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found higher blood pressure and pesticide exposures in children associated with a heightened pesticide spraying period around the Mother's Day flower harvest. This study involved boys and girls living near flower crops in Ecuador.

Researchers assessed 313 boys and girls, ages 4 to 9, residing in floricultural communities in Ecuador. The children were examined up to 100 days after the Mother's Day harvest. The analyses are part of a long-term study of environmental pollutants and child development in Ecuador.

Researchers  observed that children examined sooner after the Mother's Day harvest had higher pesticide exposures and higher systolic and diastolic blood pressures compared to children examined later. In addition, children who were examined within 81 days after the harvest were three times more likely to have hypertension than children examined between 91 and 100 days.

There is some evidence that insecticides, such as organophosphates, can increase blood pressure. Organophosphates and several other classes of insecticides and fungicides are commonly used to treat flowers for pests before export.

In a previous study, the same people had reported that children examined sooner after the harvest displayed lower performances in tasks of attention, self-control, visuospatial processing and sensorimotor than children examined later.

"These new findings build upon a growing number of studies describing that pesticide spray seasons may be affecting the development of children living near agricultural spray sites. They highlight the importance of reducing the exposures to pesticides of children and families living near agriculture."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935119302889

Measles erases the immune system’s memory

How Bacteria Become Drug-Resistant While Exposed to Antibiotics

Escherichia coli is capable of synthesizing drug-resistant proteins even in the presence of antibiotics designed to cripple cell growth. That’s the finding by a group of French researchers reporting on May 23 in Science. They also discovered how the bacteria manage this feat: a well-conserved membrane pump shuttles antibiotics out of the cell—just long enough to buy the cells time to receive DNA from neighbor cells that codes for a drug-resistant protein. 

Many bacterial membranes are known to harbor a multidrug efflux pump known as AcrAB-TolC, which is capable of shuttling a wide range of antibiotics out of cells. 

They found that the mutants, although they received the plasmid bearing the genetic code for TetA from neighboring cells, weren’t capable of synthesizing TetA protein. Without the functional efflux pump, the mutants can’t shuttle the tetracycline out of the cells. As levels of the antibiotic surged inside the cells, they could no longer make proteins or grow. 

When functional, the AcrAB-TolC pump buys the bacteria time by keeping antibiotic concentrations just low enough for the cells to synthesize the resistance proteins encoded in the plasmid DNA, according to the researchers. Ultimately, bacteria can become resistant while still under the influence of antibiotics. 

S. Nolivos et al., “Role of AcrAB-TolC multidrug efflux pump in drug-resistance acquisition by plasmid transfer,” Science, doi:10.1126/science.aax6620, 2019. 

Severe air pollution can cause birth defects, deaths

Researchers from Texas A&M University have determined that harmful particulate matter in the atmosphere can produce birth defects and even fatalities during pregnancy using the animal model.

The team of researchers from Texas A&M's Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Geosciences, the Texas A&M Health Science Center, and colleagues from the University of California-San Diego has had their findings published in the current issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Using female rats, the team examined the adverse health effects of exposure to fine particulate matter consisting of ammonium sulfate commonly found in many locations around the world. 

During winter months in China and India, where severe haze events frequently occur, fine particulate matter levels were especially high at several hundred micrograms per cubic meter, the team concluded.

Air pollution is a century-old problem for much of the world. According to the World Health Organization, 9 out of 10 people worldwide breathe air containing high level of pollutants, and 1 of every 9 global deaths can be attributed to exposure to air pollution, totaling over 7 million premature deaths a year.

Sulfate is mainly produced from coal burning, which is a major energy source for much of the world in both developed and developing countries. Ammonium is derived from ammonia, which is produced from agricultural, automobile, and animal emissions.

The results also show that prenatal exposure to air pollution may not dispose offspring to obesity in adulthood. Previous studies have shown such pollution to impair metabolic and immune systems in animal offspring, but this team's study shows definitive proof of decreased fetal survival rates, and also shortened gestation rates that can result in smaller body weight, in addition to damage to brains, hearts and other organs in the adult rat models.

Clinical Trials Involving Fecal Transplants have their own risks

The US Food and Drug Administration issued a safety alert for fecal transplant procedures after two immune-compromised patients contracted drug-resistant infections, according to a statement from the agency’s website. The patients received transplants from the same donor, and one of the patients died. As a result, the agency plans to suspend clinical trials involving the procedure.

Fecal matter transplants (FMT) are not yet officially approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “While we support this area of scientific discovery, it’s important to note that FMT does not come without risk,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, says in a brief statement on the agency’s website. Marks does not state how many clinical trials will be affected, but says it was “not just a few.”
The FDA warns that fecal matter should be tested for drug-resistant bacteria. Today’s safety communication underscores the importance of why new therapies are thoroughly studied to ensure the benefits of taking them outweigh the risks to patients, and they will continue to aggressively monitor clinical trials to ensure patients are protected when safety concerns arise.

Here is a heart-warming news:  In Science the world Still Trusts!  Despite pseudo-science's dirty dance! 
Roughly 7 in 10 people around the world say they trust scientists and want to learn more about science and health, an international survey shows

Alternative to plastics: Seafood shells

We are facing plastic pollution like hell. 

Some scientists think it’s possible to tackle the  problem at once. Crustaceans’ hardy shells contain chitin, a material that, along with its derivative chitosan, offers many of plastic’s desirable properties and takes only weeks or months to biodegrade, rather than centuries.

The challenge is getting enough pure chitin and chitosan from the shells to make bio-based “plastic” in cost-effective ways. 

Chitin is one of the most abundant organic materials in the world, after cellulose, which gives woody plants their structure. In addition to crustaceans, chitin is found in insects, fish scales, mollusks and fungi. Like plastic, chitin is a polymer, a molecular chain made from repeating units. The building block in chitin, N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, is a sugar related to glucose. Chitin and chitosan are antibacterial, nontoxic and used in cosmetics, wound dressings and pool-water treatments, among other applications.

Only thing that stands in between using it and plastic is viable and green technology to obtain chitin. Right now scientists are trying various methods - using microbes to obtain chitin is one of them.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/seafood-shells-chitin-plastic-f...

Cleaning water and then producing electricity by using bacteria!

Sounds unbelievable but true!

Sewage treatment plants use bacteria to metabolise the organic material in waste water now.  At the end of the process, the microbes can make up a third by weight of the leftovers to be disposed of. Before being put in landfill, this “microbe cake” itself needs to be heat-sterilised and chemically treated, which uses a lot of energy.

Microbial fuel cells have long been touted as the way forward. The idea is that the biochemistry involved in metabolising the contaminants can yield electricity to help power the process. But fuel cells of this kind have been very difficult to scale up outside the lab.

Some companies use strains of Geobacter and another microbe called Shewanella oneidensis   to process the sludge. Its proprietary mix of organisms has one key advantage – the bacteria liberate some electrons as they respire, effectively turning the whole set-up into a battery. This has the added benefit of slowing bacterial growth, so that at the end of the process you have electricity and no microbe cake.

“The bacteria that purify the water also liberate electrons, turning the set-up into a battery“

A common gut virus that maps our travels

A San Diego State University researcher has found evidence that a virus nicknamed crAssphage, found in the guts of about 70 percent of the world's population, has a country-specific biomarker that changes rapidly as humans travel from one location to another.

Bioinformatics researcher and professor Rob Edwards' study is the first to examine the global similarity of viruses in the human microbiome. His research also suggests that a relative of this crAssphage was living in primates and may have evolved alongside humans for millions of years. The research will be published in Nature Microbiology July 8th.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/sdsu-acg070519.php

Machine learning has helped scientists identify bat species which could host Nipah virus, the cause of lethal outbreaks afflicting people in South and Southeast Asia. These results, published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, also flagged four new bat species as surveillance priorities. Nipah virus is a highly lethal, emerging henipavirus that can be transmitted to people from the body fluids of infected bats. Eating fruit or drinking date palm sap that has been contaminated by bats has been flagged as a transmission pathway. Once infected, people can spread the virus directly to other people, sparking an outbreak. Domestic pigs are also bridging hosts that can infect people. There is no vaccine and the virus has a high mortality rate. 

India is home to an estimated 113 bat species. Just 31 of these species have been sampled for Nipah virus, with 11 found to have antibodies that signal host potential. The team compiled published data on bat species known to carry Nipah and other henipaviruses globally. Data included 48 traits of 523 bat species, including information on foraging methods, diet, migration behaviors, geographic ranges and reproduction. They also looked at the environmental conditions in which reported spillovers occurred. Then they applied a trait-based machine learning approach to a subset of species that occur in Asia, Australia, and Oceana. Their algorithm identified known Nipah-positive bat species with 83 percent accuracy. It also identified six bat species that occur in Asia, Australia and Oceana that have traits that could make them competent hosts and should be prioritized for surveillance. Four of these species occur in India, two of which are found in Kerala.

The study is a starting point for the research needed to contain Nipah at its source.

https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd....

Combination Strategy Nearly Eliminates Invasive Mosquitoes in Field

Researchers use two techniques—Wolbachia infection and irradiation—to suppress reproduction in populations of Asian tiger mosquitoes at two study sites in China.

Asian tiger mosquitoes (Aedes albopictus) are among the world’s most invasive mosquito species and can spread dengue and Zika viruses. In a study published on July 17 in Nature, an international team of researchers has virtually eradicated populations of the insects from two residential areas in China.

The researchers infected the insects with the bacterium Wolbachia to limit embryo viability and, as an added precaution, irradiated mosquitoes to induce sterility, and then released millions of male mosquitoes, which don’t bite, at their test sites. The males mated with local females, resulting in a drastic reduction in the populations of A. albopictus. 

This work is promising for control of these mosquitoes in local populations.

In some of the world’s least-developed countries, spacing births two years apart, instead of one, can nearly halve infant mortality rates, a study finds.

Short birth intervals have been linked to poor health outcomes for moms and infants for decades, though the exact causes aren’t clear. Research has shown that the mothers’ bodies can struggle to recover and provide nutrients to children. In addition, siblings that are close in age may compete for the same resources, crucially breast milk, and are exposed to similar diseases.  

Babies born in the shortest birth intervals to uneducated mothers living in countries with high infant mortality — at least 100 babies dying for every 1,000 births — were in the greatest danger. (The researchers used infant mortality rate as a proxy for a country’s level of development.) In those circumstances, babies born within one year of an older sibling had around a 22 percent chance of dying before age 1. That chance dropped to about 13 percent when the birth interval increased to two years.

J. Molitoris, K. Barclay and M. Kolk. When and where birth intervals matter for child survival: An intern.... Demography. Published online July 3, 2019. doi: 10.1007%2Fs13524-019-00798-y.

E. Rogers and R. Stephenson. Examining temporal shifts in the proximate determinants of fertilit... Journal of Biosocial Science. Vol. 50, July 2018, p. 551. doi: 10.1017/S0021932017000529

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In sailing, rock climbing, construction, and any activity requiring the securing of ropes, certain knots are known to be stronger than others. A new mathematical model predicts a knot's stability.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-mathematical-stability.html?utm_sourc...

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World's most efficient lithium-sulfur battery. A battery, which has the potential to power your phone for five continuous days, or enable an electric vehicle to drive more than 1000km without needing to "refuel".

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-supercharging-tomorrow-team-wor...

Scientists are worried about social media driven pseudo-science. Myths about the international climate crisis are part of a growing trend for 'pseudoscience' spread on social media sites like Youtube.

A new report from a German university academic has revealed that the algorithm which drives how people find content on the internet is spreading misinformation. It was found that d more than half (107) of the clips claimed climate change was a conspiracy or denied humans were causing it. Those videos received the highest number of views.

Youtube is an important information source for many people when they want to find information about science and research.

He explained that conspiracy theorists latched onto scientific-style language such as ‘climate engineering’, ‘geoengineering’ or in another example of pseudoscience, ‘chemtrails’.

This strategy could be identified as an attempt to manufacture internet bias in favour of the worldview of ‘chemtrail’ conspiracy theorists.

Dr Allgaier added that social media platforms which do not exercise editorial control provide fertile ground for opponents of mainstream science because there are no ‘gatekeepers and hence no quality control’.

The pseudoscience issue goes beyond the climate crisis and chemtrails. Infectios diseases and vaccines are a prominent area of misinformation both online and in print.

Perhaps the best-known example is the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine which some have claimed has harmful effects on children.

In another health conspiracy, rumours that chicken meat spread a bout of Nipah virus in the Indian state of Kerala in 2018 which killed 17 people were spread virally on WhatsApp.

Scientists believe the incident was sparked by fruit bats but the unfounded rumour chicken was to blame spread when one person duplicated the letterhead of the District Medical officer and spread the story online.

Diabetes can increase cancer risk
For years, scientists have been trying to solve a medical mystery: Why do people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of developing some forms of cancer? Today, researchers report a possible explanation for this double whammy. They found that DNA sustains more damage and gets fixed less often when blood sugar levels are high compared to when blood sugar is at a normal, healthy level, thereby increasing one's cancer risk.

The researchers will present their results at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2019 National Meeting & Exposition.
According to researchers, "As the incidence of diabetes continues to rise, the cancer rate will likely increase, as well."Scientists have suspected that the elevated cancer risk for diabetics arises from hormonal dysregulation. "In people with type 2 diabetes, their insulin is not effectively carrying glucose into cells," they explain. "So the pancreas makes more and more insulin, and they get what's called hyperinsulinemia." In addition to controlling blood glucose levels, the hormone insulin can stimulate cell growth, possibly leading to cancer. Also, most people with type 2 diabetes are overweight, and their excess fat tissue produces higher levels of adipokines than those at a healthy weight. These hormones promote chronic inflammation, which is linked to cancer. "The most common idea is that the increased cancer risk has to do with hormones" . "That's probably part of it, but there hasn't been a lot of solid evidence."

Now they looked for a specific type of damage in the form of chemically modified DNA bases, known as adducts, in tissue culture and rodent models of diabetes. Indeed, they found a DNA adduct, called N^2-(1-carboxyethyl)-2'-deoxyguanosine, or CEdG, that occurred more frequently in the diabetic models than in normal cells or mice. What's more, high glucose levels interfered with the cells' process for fixing it. "Exposure to high glucose levels leads to both DNA adducts and the suppression of their repair, which in combination could cause genome instability and cancer". 

They even found evidence for it.  http://bit.ly/acs2019sandiego

Sticky mucus may thwart alcohol-based hand sanitizers’ ability to fight the flu.

Flu viruses encased in mucus drops from infected people’s spit can withstand the alcohol in hand sanitizers for more than two minutes, researchers report September 18 in mSphere. Researchers dotted volunteers’ fingers with either mucus or saline solution containing the flu virus, then measured how long it took to inactivate the virus in both wet and dry samples.

A five-microliter drop — about the size of a pinhead — of mucus-coated flu virus took more than half an hour to dry, almost twice as long as saline. Drying time was important because previous studies tested sanitizers’ killing ability on dry viruses, and didn’t account for mucus’s moistening power.

A hand sanitizer containing 31 percent alcohol inactivated flu viruses in saline solution within 20 seconds. And in already dried mucus, that process took just under eight seconds. But moist mucus shielded flu viruses from alcohol, keeping the viruses viable for up to 2 minutes and 39 seconds, Ryohei Hirose, an infectious disease researcher at the Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Japan, and his colleagues found. That may be long enough for health care workers to unwittingly transfer virus-infected mucus from one person to another.

The team didn’t test whether rubbing the sanitizer over the skin causes the alcohol to penetrate the mucus and kill viruses faster, Hirose says. Rubbing might help, he acknowledged. But there’s already an easy way to kill flu viruses: Washing hands with plain water or with soap killed viruses within 30 seconds, even when the mucus was still wet.

R. Hirose et al. Situations leading to reduced effectiveness of current hand hygiene.... mSphere. Published online September 18, 2019. doi: 10.1128/mSphere.00474-19

Algae inside blood vessels could act as oxygen factories

An unconventional way to get O₂ to nerve cells might one day aid stroke patients

Using algae as local oxygen factories in the brain might one day lead to therapies for strokes or other damage from too little oxygen, researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich said October 21 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

The researchers injected either green algae (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii) or cyanobacteria (Synechocystis) into tadpoles’ blood vessels, creating an eerie greenish animal. Both algae species make oxygen in response to light shining through the tadpoles’ translucent bodies.

When the researchers depleted the oxygen in the liquid surrounding a disembodied tadpole head, eye nerves fell silent and stopped firing signals. But a few minutes after a flash of algae-activating light, the nerves started firing signals again, the researchers found.

This work does “motivate further exploration of unconventional approaches to advance the treatments for brain hypoxia, including stroke.”

https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/index.html#!/7883/presentation/...

New light on how bacteria evolves resistance to drugs

Bacterial Evolution: The road to resistance

The way that bacteria grow – either floating in liquid or attached to a surface – affects their ability to evolve antimicrobial resistance and our ability to treat infections.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/52092?utm_source=content_alert&a...

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Why kids may be at risk from vinyl floors and fire-resistant couches

Chemicals called semivolatile organic compounds have been linked to health problems

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chemicals-vinyl-floors-fire-res...

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How Exercise Reprograms the Brain.As researchers unravel the molecular machinery that links exercise and cognition, working out is emerging as a promising neurotherapy.

https://www.the-scientist.com/features/this-is-your-brain-on-exerci...

World scientists’ warning of a climate emergency

A new report by 11,258 scientists in 153 countries from a broad range of disciplines warns that the planet “clearly and unequivocally faces a climate emergency,” and provides six broad policy goals that must be met to address it.

Infectious bacteria communicate to avoid antibiotics

A bacterial infection is not just an unpleasant experience - it can also be a major health problem. Some bacteria develop resistance to otherwise effective treatment with antibiotics. Therefore, researchers are trying to develop new types of antibiotics that can fight the bacteria, and at the same time trying to make the current treatment with antibiotics more effective.

Researchers are now getting closer to this goal with a type of bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is notorious for infecting patients with the lung disease cystic fibrosis. In a new study, researchers found that the bacteria send out warning signals to their conspecifics when attacked by antibiotics or the viruses called bacteriophages which kill bacteria.

'We can see in the laboratory that the bacteria simply swim around the 'dangerous area' with antibiotics or bacteriophages. When they receive the warning signal from their conspecifics, you can see in the microscope that they are moving in a neat circle around. It is a smart survival mechanism for the bacteria. If it turns out that the bacteria use the same evasive manoeuvre when infecting humans, it may help explain why some bacterial infections cannot be effectively treated with antibiotics', says researcher Nina Molin Høyland-Kroghsbo, Assistant Professor at the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences and part of the research talent programme UCPH-Forward.

One United Organism

In the study, which is a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen and the University of California Irvine, researchers have studied the growth and distribution of bacteria in petri dishes. Here, they have created environments that resemble the surface of the mucous membranes where an infection can occur - as is the case with the lungs of a person with cystic fibrosis.

In this environment, researchers can see both how bacteria usually behave and how they behave when they are affected by antibiotics and bacteriophages.

Chinese scientists programme stem cells to ‘fight and destroy’ cancer

We heard the consequences of AGW ( human-caused change of global warming). Like wildfires, hurricanes and floods that forced thousands of people to evacuate, damage property, and erase tangible reminders of our past.

Like more ubiquitous, but less publicized, are the millions of people who are exposed to heat waves, long-term droughts, rising sea levels, and eroding coastlines, forcing them to move elsewhere or spend large sums of money building communities that are habitable.

Each of these responses represent a challenge to our mental health. For instance, people exposed to life-threatening extreme weather events are more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety.

People exposed to prolonged heat waves are more likely to make poor decisions that place them at risk for death or severe injury. People exposed to long-term drought are more likely to experience depression, interpersonal violence and thoughts of suicide. People exposed to sea level rise and coastal erosion are more likely to experience anxiety and interpersonal conflict with others in their community.

These mental health challenges are perhaps the most overlooked consequences of climate change and need a thorough understanding to deal with them.

Increasing temperatures and heatwaves, the spread of emerging infectious illnesses, and the widespread concerns about food security in drought-plagued regions of the world all threaten our physical health.

Environmental changes that threaten our livelihoods, access to food, and habitability of our communities lead to widespread unemployment and poverty, civil conflict, and dislocation.

Biomimicry - the process of mimicing nature for our benefit. Plants serve as the inspiration for new energy technologies — and more efficient agriculture. So scientists are now looking to hack photosynthesis for a greener planet.

Photosynthesis comes as naturally to plants as breathing does to people. This process converts the simple ingredients of carbon dioxide, water and sunlight into energy. Photosynthesis allows plants to grow. In turn, we rely on photosynthesis as the foundation for our life on Earth.  

When sunlight touches the leaves of a plant it does more. It powers a chemical reaction that converts one type of energy into another. Those plant leaves contain plenty of water. That water is made of oxygen atoms bonded to hydrogen atoms. The sun’s energy can excite electrons inside the water molecule enough that the bonds split.

This triggers a reaction “that takes the oxygen away from the water. And that becomes the oxygen in the air that we all breathe. Meanwhile, Hydrogen from the water gets smushed together with the carbon dioxide [in air], and that makes sugar. People and all other animals use this sugar — glucose — as an energy source from food. Plants become the food that our bodies can convert into energy. Essentially, photosynthesis is the reason we can exist.

Artificial photosynthesis: 

Scientists have already begun copying, or mimicking, photosynthesis. Their artificial processes also use light to split oxygen and hydrogen — for energy. The dream is to eventually replace fossil fuels. If people could make energy from sun, air and water — as plants do — it would cut down on planet-warming releases of carbon dioxide. It also could create a huge new source of renewable energy.

Many researchers look to solar fuels — fuels made from sunlight — as “green” replacements for today’s carbon-based fossil fuels. These include oil, gas and coal.

Scientists around the world are experimenting with devices — think of them as artificial leaves.

Scientists’ brains shrank a bit after an extended stay in Antarctica. The effects of isolation and a monotonous environment may be to blame

Socially isolated and faced with a persistently white polar landscape, a long-term crew of an Antarctic research station saw a portion of their brains shrink during their stay, a small study finds.

“It’s very exciting to see the white desert at the beginning,” says physiologist Alexander Stahn, who began the research while at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin. “But then it’s always the same.”

The crew of eight scientists and researchers and a cook lived and worked at the German research station Neumayer III for 14 months. Although joined by other scientists during the summer, the crew alone endured the long darkness of the polar winter, when temperatures can plummet as low as –50° Celsius and evacuation is impossible. That social isolation and monotonous environment is the closest thing on Earth to what a space explorer on a long mission may experience, says Stahn, who is interested in researching what effect such travel would have on the brain.

Animal studies have revealed that similar conditions can harm the hippocampus, a brain area crucial for memory and navigation . For example, rats are better at learning when the animals are housed with companions or in an enriched environment than when alone or in a bare cage, Stahn says. But whether this is true for a person’s brain is unknown.

Stahn, now at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and his colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging to capture views of the team members’ brains before their polar stay and after their return. On average, an area of the hippocampus in the crew’s brains shrank by 7 percent over the course of the expedition, compared with healthy people matched for age and gender who didn’t stay at the station, the researchers report online December 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

But there are good reasons to believe that this change is reversible, Stahn says. While the hippocampus is highly vulnerable to stressors like isolation, he says, it is also very responsive to stimulation that comes from a life filled with social interactions and a variety of landscapes to explore.

A.C. Stahn et al. Brain changes in response to long Antarctic expeditions. New England Journal of Medicine. Published online December 4, 2019. doi:10.1056/NEJMc1904905.

Researchers find over 40 new species of fish in one lake

Salt Could Play a Role in Allergies

An Acoustic Password Enhances Auditory Learning in Juvenile Brood Parasitic Cowbirds

Most songbirds learn to sing by copying songs they hear around them. But young brown-headed cowbirds face a problem: they aren't raised by their own kind. Female cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of more than 100 different kinds of birds, foisting the work of chick-rearing onto unwitting foster-parents. a new paper describes how the cowbird chicks may learn to recognize and sing their own species’ songs. Researchers 

found that part of the answer appears to be a "password" -- a simple call that the birds know innately. This password activates learning mechanisms in young cowbirds' brains, prompting them to remember other vocalizations they hear at the same time.  Males raised in isolation will develop something that resembles a cowbird song, but with important differences. In the wild, young males change their developing songs to match the songs of other cowbirds in their vicinity, leading to regional differences or "accents."

Females don't sing, but they have a simple "chatter call" that develops normally regardless of what a female hears growing up. They use it in a variety of contexts, including immediately after hearing a song they like. Because the chatter call is innate and is often paired with songs, the researchers suspected it might function as a password to help young cowbirds learn.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31237-0

Hyper-authorship where more than 1000 people contribute to a single research paper is increasing proving that research now reflects the increasingly global nature of research across several fields. Between 2009 and 2013, 573 manuscripts listing 1,000 co-authors or more were published, according to a report released on 4 December by the Institute for Scientific Information  (ISI).

Most People don't trust women with science. If I SAY MY NETWORK IS NOVEL AND UNIQUE DO YOU AGREE? Why don't people trust science with women?Because men are more likely than women to call their science ‘excellent’ and most people agree with them! Should women too do what men do? This network is my answer to all of them, whether anybody agree with em or not. 

Immunity Isn’t the Body’s Only Defense System
Symbiotic bacteria, metabolism, and stress pathways can all help animals tolerate, rather than succumb, to disease.

https://www.the-scientist.com/infographics/infographic--immunity-is...

https://www.the-scientist.com/features/could-tolerating-disease-be-...

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We have vaccination problems where people try to cheat healthcare workers. So scientists now are trying invisible ink to know whether kids have been vaccinated or not. Technology to beat the cheaters!

“Keeping track of vaccinations remains a major challenge in the developing world, and even in many developed countries, paperwork gets lost, and parents forget whether their child is up to date. Now a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers has developed a novel way to address this problem: embedding the record directly into the skin.

Along with the vaccine, a child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with a special cell-phone filter, combined with an app that shines near-infrared light onto the skin. The dye would be expected to last up to five years, according to tests on pig and rat skin and human skin in a dish.” 

There may be other concerns that patients have about being ‘tattooed,’ carrying around personal medical information on their bodies or other aspects of this unfamiliar approach to storing medical records.  Different people and different cultures will probably feel differently about having an invisible medical tattoo.”

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How about using beauty to communicate science? Miss America 2020 not only won the beauty contest by conducting a science experiment on stage,  but also will spend a year advocating for Mind Your Meds, a drug safety and prevention programme. Ummm!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50862408

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Personalized Nutrition Companies’ Claims Overhyped: Scientists

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/personalized-nutrition-c...

Using sticky plastic models with differently painted surfaces, researchers showed that zebra stripes painted onto the body can protect against biting insects. 

Relative to a striped mannequin, a brown painted model attracted 10 times more horseflies, while a beige one lured in twice the number as the striped figure. 

The stripes likely make the skin less attractive to horseflies, the researchers reported January 16 in Royal Society Open Science. Some indigenous people paint their bodies, and those markings could provide some protection from the bloodsuckers and diseases they carry, according to the authors. 

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A sign that aliens could stink

A molecule that’s known for its smelly and poisonous nature on Earth may be a sure-fire sign of extraterrestrial life.

Phosphine is among the stinkiest, most toxic gases on Earth, found in some of the foulest of places, including penguin dung heaps, the depths of swamps and bogs, and even in the bowels of some badgers and fish. This putrid “swamp gas” is also highly flammable and reactive with particles in our atmosphere.

Most life on Earth, specifically all aerobic, oxygen-breathing life, wants nothing to do with phosphine, neither producing it nor relying on it for survival.

Now MIT researchers have found that phosphine is produced by another, less abundant life form: anaerobic organisms, such as bacteria and microbes, that don’t require oxygen to thrive. The team found that phosphine cannot be produced in any other way except by these extreme, oxygen-averse organisms, making phosphine a pure biosignature — a sign of life (at least of a certain kind).

In a paper recently published in the journal Astrobiology, the researchers report that if phosphine were produced in quantities similar to methane on Earth, the gas would generate a signature pattern of light in a planet’s atmosphere. This pattern would be clear enough to detect from as far as 16 light years away by a telescope such as the planned James Webb Space Telescope. If phosphine is detected from a rocky planet, it would be an unmistakable sign of extraterrestrial life.

http://news.mit.edu/2019/phosphine-aliens-stink-1218

Can you imagine your smart TV spying on you? And manufacturers selling your information for a fee?  It could be happening! How can you stop it? Find out ...

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-smart-tv-spying-step-by-step.ht...

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Breakthrough study on molecular interactions could improve development of new medicines and other therapies for diseases such as cancer, HIV and autoimmune diseases.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-breakthrough-molecular-interactions-m...

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A study suggests the way some chemicals displace natural fats in skin cells may explain how many common ingredients trigger allergic contact dermatitis, and encouragingly, suggests a new way to treat the condition.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-molecular-link-allergic-reac...

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HIV patients lose smallpox immunity despite childhood vaccine, AIDS drugs.
Called HIV-associated immune amnesia, the finding could explain why people living with HIV still tend to have shorter lives on average.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-hiv-patients-smallpox-immuni...

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Air pollution can worsen bone health

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-air-pollution-worsen-bone-he...

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Seeing without eyes? This marine creature can do this expanding boundaries of vision!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-vision/no-eyes-no-proble...

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Government of India is trying to make the science outreach  mandatory and researchers have to include this as part of their outcome report! Good for science communication!

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/centre-bats-for-science-outr...

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Robotic architecture inspired by pelican eel: Origami unfolding and skin stretching mechanisms

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-robotic-architecture-pelican-ee...

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Scientists have developed a new method for detecting oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres that may accelerate the search for life.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-scientists-method-oxygen-exoplanets.h...

How medical breakthroughs help save lives:

1. Artificial intelligence and digital therapeutics will be employed at most levels of scientific inquiry and healthcare, from identifying predictors of risk, diagnosing and monitoring disease, and personalizing treatment options, to revolutionizing the management and delivery of health care.

2. New biomarkers -- a traceable substance that is introduced into the body in order to examine how a part of the body is functioning -- will permit more rapid and precise diagnosis and directed treatment of diseases.

3. An increase in the use of wearable devices that more accurately characterize and treat chronic illness will allow for rapid and customized intervention.

4. Gene therapy and tissue engineering, once the stuff of science fiction, will see expanded use to correct disease-causing genetic alterations and acquired cell, organ or body part dysfunction.

5. New technologies and therapies will improve or cure certain diseases or injuries of the nervous system. The quality of life of those afflicted will improve using sensors to restore sight and hearing, electrical activity to restore mobility to paralyzed limbs, and new drugs for disorders such as Alzheimer and Parkinson disease.

6. Studies of the microbiome – the microorganisms that live within our bodies – will allow better understanding of how this ecosystem impacts our health and how its manipulation can be used to prevent and treat disease.

7. Major advances in surgery, with devices, non-invasive approaches and 3D printing technology becoming more widely adopted.

8. New vaccines and immunologic approaches will be developed to counter infectious diseases and certain cancers.

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/01/the-2020s-heres-how-medical-brea...

Researchers have developed a new kind of bandage that helps blood to clot and doesn't stick to the wound. This marks the first time that scientists have combined both properties in one material.

 they developed and tested various superhydrophobic materials—which are, like Teflon, extremely good at repelling liquids such as water and blood. The goal was to find coatings for devices that come into contact with blood, for example heart-lung machines or artificial heart devices.

One of the materials tested demonstrated some unexpected properties: not only did it repel blood, but it also aided the clotting process. Although this made the material unsuitable for use as a coating for blood pumps and related devices, the researchers quickly realized that it would work ideally as a bandage.

Repelling blood and achieving fast clotting are two different properties are both beneficial in bandages: blood-repellent bandages do not get soaked with blood and do not adhere to the wound, so they can be later removed easily, avoiding secondary bleeding. Substances and materials that promote clotting, on the other hand, are used in medicine to stop bleeding as quickly as possible. However, to date, no materials that simultaneously repel blood and also promote clotting have been available—this is the first time that scientists have managed to combine both these properties in one material.

The researchers took a conventional cotton gauze and coated it with their new material—a mix of silicone and carbon nanofibers. They were able to show in laboratory tests that blood in contact with the coated gauze clotted in only a few minutes. Exactly why the new material triggers blood clotting is still unclear and requires further research, but the team suspects that it is due to the interaction with the carbon nanofibers.

They were also able to show that the coated gauze has an antibacterial effect, as bacteria have trouble adhering to its surface. In addition, animal tests with rats demonstrated the effectiveness of the new bandage.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-bandage-material-adhering-wound.html?...

'Bilingual' molecule connects two basic codes for life

The nucleic acids of DNA encode genetic information, while the amino acids of proteins contain the code to turn that information into structures and functions. Together, they provide the two fundamental codes underlying all of life.

Now scientists have found a way to combine these two main coding languages into a single "bilingual" molecule.

The Journal of the American Chemical Society published the work

The synthesized molecule could become a powerful tool for applications such as diagnostics, gene therapy and drug delivery targeted to specific cells.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-bilingual-molecule-basic-codes-life.h...

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New ideas to consider: How bacteria self-destruct to fight viral infections - design that could be employed to improve treatment of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections by refining phage therapy.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-team-bacteria-self-destruct-viral-inf...

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Plants learning a pest's language and using it to drive it away? Yes, researchers found this happening in nature!

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-roundworm-language.html?utm_source=nw...

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An 18-carat real gold nugget made of plastic! Researchers have created an incredibly lightweight 18-carat gold, using a matrix of plastic in place of metallic alloy elements.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-carat-gold-nugget-plastic.html?utm_so...

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Why prolonged protests and social unrest like we are now having in this part of the world are not good for your health? Because protest-hit Hong Kong sees surge in depression, PTSD: study

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-protest-hit-hong-kong-surge-...

Scientists develop 'Twitter' for cells to understand their communication mechanism.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/vfi-sd011020.php

Sci-com through cartoons 

First 'living' robots. These "xenobots" can move toward a target, pick up a payload (like a medicine that needs to be carried to a specific place inside a patient)—and heal themselves after being cut: a living, programmable organism ...

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-team-robots.html?utm_source=nwl...

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The first translation of the methods -complex mathematical methods of hydrodynamic stability theory, a subfield of fluid mechanics- which combine physics and applied mathematics, into medicine to reduce blood clots in artificial heart valves.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-blood-clots-artificial-heart-valves.h...

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Device keeps human livers alive for one week outside of the body. This breakthrough may increase the number of available organs for transplantation, saving many lives of patients .

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-device-human-livers-alive-week.html?u...

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The neurobiology of suicide: The biochemical mechanisms in the brain underlying suicidal behavior are beginning to come to light, and researchers hope they could one day lead to better treatment and prevention strategies.

https://www.the-scientist.com/features/what-neurobiology-can-tell-u...

In a step toward practical quantum computing, researchers from MIT, Google, and elsewhere have designed a system that can verify when quantum chips have accurately performed complex computations that classical computers can't.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-quantum-chips-correctly.html?utm_sour...

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Exposure to toxic chemicals in flame retardants and pesticides, still resulted in more than a million cases of intellectual disability in the developed world alone

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-flame-retardants-pesticides-...

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Life's clockwork: Scientist shows how molecular engines keep us ticking

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-life-clockwork-scientist-molecular.ht...

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Controlled phage therapy can target drug-resistant bacteria while sidestepping potential unintended consequences

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-phage-therapy-drug-resistant-bacteria...

Researchers discover new strategy in the fight against antibiotic resistance that weakens bacteria by preventing them from cooperating.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-strategy-antibiotic-resistance.html?u...

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Nice strategy: scientists hope to create a solution for chronic infections that do not respond to antibiotic treatment, after having discovered mechanisms for listening in on sleeping bacteria.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-scientists-defeat-infections-bacteria...