Stay or leave? A tale of two virus strategies revealed by math

As small and relatively simple as they may be, even viruses have strategies. Now, researchers in Japan report that they can evaluate two of these strategies through a combination of biology and math, providing a new tool for insight into viruses that could be used to develop better treatments.

Unable to reproduce on their own, viruses replicate by infecting a living organism's cells and getting the cells to make copies of them. Two main options exist for copies of a virus's genetic structure made in the cell: stay in the cell as a template for making even more copies or get packaged as a new virus and leave in an attempt to infect other cells.

Each option comes with trade-offs, so an individual virus's strategy of how much weight to place on each one should directly influence the progression of an infection and any health problems it may cause.

"While such strategies are expected to be in play, showing the existence of the strategy itself has been difficult.

Mathematical model the behavior of two hepatitis C virus strains now provides a means to evaluate two such strategies.

While one of the studied virus strains causes severe and sudden symptoms, the other is a genetically modified version developed in the laboratory to increase virus production, which is important for creating stocks of viruses for the development of treatments and vaccines.

By finding the range of model parameters that reasonably reproduce the experimentally observed results, they could quantify differences in behavior between the two strains. In particular, they estimated that the fraction of replicated genetic code packaged by the lab-developed strain to make new viruses was three times that for the other strain, indicating the preference of a leave strategy for the former and a stay strategy for the latter.

"The stay strategy initially produces copies of the genetic code faster, while the leave strategy emphasizes newly infecting cells,

Such strategies may be common in other chronic virus infections, and understanding them could help us develop effective therapeutic methods to counter individual virus strategies

"Should a viral genome stay in the host cell or leave? A quantitative dynamics study of how hepatitis C virus deals with this dilemma," PLOS Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000562

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-tale-virus-strategies-revealed-math.html

Chemists craft molecular scalpels to clear unwanted proteins from cell surfaces

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-chemists-craft-molecular-scalpels-unw...

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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-stem-cells-optic-nerve-enabl...

Researchers discover stem cells in the optic nerve that enable preservation of vision

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https://phys.org/news/2020-07-nano-sponges-solid-acid-carbon-dioxid...

Nano-sponges of solid acid transform carbon dioxide to fuel and plastic waste to chemicals

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Scientists test a 'bispecific' antibody that helps T cells zero in on treatment-resistant cancers

Although immunotherapy has achieved increasing prominence in the panoply of innovative cancer treatments, it remains an imperfect tool—too many tumors simply do not respond.

To the rescue is an evolving class of engineered proteins that go by the unusual name of bispecific antibodies. As their name implies, these proteins have dual recognition capability: They are engineered to home in on a T cell surface receptor as well as bind to the surface antigen of a cancer cell itself. The aim is to bring the two types of cells together and to activate the tumor annihilating capability of T cells.

Regeneron's anticancer innovation has grown out of a sobering reality: Certain cancers have developed deceptive strategies allowing them to resist immunotherapy. Resistance among cancers is as daunting a concern as infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria.

Several common cancers have a noteworthy history of thwarting checkpoint blockade immunotherapy, a treatment that relies on the strength of T cells to kill tumors. The investigational bispecific antibodies are designed to help overcome cancer-cell resistance.

Checkpoint blockade immunotherapy is itself an innovative form of cancer therapy that relies on drugs known as immune checkpoint inhibitors. This class of therapeutics is designed to treat multiple forms of cancer by engaging the body's immune system—its T cells—to recognize and attack malignant cells. Keytruda, a medication that helped revolutionize the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer, is a checkpoint inhibitor.

All checkpoint inhibitors are based on a deceptively simple principle: Cancer cells possess a protein dubbed PD-L1. T cells have a surface protein called PD1. Tricky cancer cells use their PD-L1 proteins to elude T cells, to get past the guards—the checkpoints—an activity that allows tumors to proliferate and spread.

Multiple cancers that range from Hodgkins lymphoma to lung, bladder, ovarian and kidney cancers may initially respond to checkpoint inhibitors, but soon develop resistance. The Regeneron team studied two bispecific antibodies that each target a T cell protein dubbed CD28. At the same time, they analyzed two tumor-specific antigens. The bispecific antibodies attracted both T cells and the cancer antigens, enhancing the potential of cancer cell death by T cells.

Waite and colleagues found that bispecific antibodies enhanced the effectiveness of treating the anti-PD-1 checkpoint blockade in mouse models. The scientists also say the combination sensitized, previously resistant tumors to treatment. The bispecific antibodies showed few signs of toxicity and did not provoke dangerous systemic responses from T cells.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-scientists-bispecific-antibo...

Janelle C. Waite et al. Tumor-targeted CD28 bispecific antibodies enhance the antitumor efficacy of PD-1 immunotherapy, Science Translational Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aba2325

How human sperm really swim: New research challenges centuries-old assumption

A breakthrough in fertility science by researchers from Bristol and Mexico has shattered the universally accepted view of how sperm 'swim'.

More than three hundred years after Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used one of the earliest microscopes to describe human sperm as having a "tail, which, when swimming, lashes with a snakelike movement, like eels in water", scientists have revealed this is an optical illusion.

Using state-of-the-art 3-D microscopy and mathematics, now scientists

have pioneered the reconstruction of the true movement of the sperm tail in 3-D.

Using a high-speed camera capable of recording over 55,000 frames in one second, and a microscope stage with a piezoelectric device to move the sample up and down at an incredibly high rate, they were able to scan the sperm swimming freely in 3-D.

The ground-breaking study, published in the journal Science Advances, reveals the sperm tail is in fact wonky and only wiggles on one side. While this should mean the sperm's one-sided stroke would have it swimming in circles, sperm have found a clever way to adapt and swim forwards. Human sperm figured out if they roll as they swim, much like playful otters corkscrewing through water, their one-sided stoke would average itself out, and they would swim forwards. The sperms' rapid and highly synchronized spinning causes an illusion when seen from above with 2-D microscopes—the tail appears to have a side-to-side symmetric movement, "like eels in water", as described by Leeuwenhoek in the 17th century.

The present discovery shows sperm have developed a swimming technique to compensate for their lop-sidedness and in doing so have ingeniously solved a mathematical puzzle at a microscopic scale: by creating symmetry out of asymmetry. The otter-like spinning of human sperm is however complex: the sperm head spins at the same time that the sperm tail rotates around the swimming direction. This is known in physics as precession, much like when the orbits of Earth and Mars precess around the sun.

This discovery will revolutionize our understanding of sperm motility and its impact on natural fertilization. So little is known about the intricate environment inside the female reproductive tract and how sperm swimming impinge on fertilization. These new tools open our eyes to the amazing capabilities sperm have.

"Human sperm uses asymmetric and anisotropic flagellar controls to regulate swimming symmetry and cell steering" Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba5168

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-human-sperm-centuries-old-assumption....

Cell competition in the thymus is crucial in a healthy organism

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-cell-competition-thymus-crucial-healt...

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https://phys.org/news/2020-07-secret-quantum.html?utm_source=nwlett...

Sharing a secret... the quantum way

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https://phys.org/news/2020-07-reveals-hard-polyester.html?utm_sourc...

Research reveals why it's hard to get the smell out of polyester

Why does that favourite shirt, the one you've been wearing around the house since COVID-19 started, still stink, even after regular washing?

Chances are it contains polyester, which means that funky smell isn't going to go away, according to a new University of Alberta study.

Laundering experiments showed that odorants—smelly compunds like those in sweat—are more attracted to polyester than to other fabrics like cotton, and don't completely wash out.

"We found that polyester isn't easily releasing those sweaty-smelling compounds, and repeated wearing puts more of them into the fibre, so over time there's this buildup of odour. 

Polyester and cotton knit fabrics were soiled with three odorants and then put through several wash cycles with various detergents; laundering proved more effective at removing the stinky compounds from cotton than from polyester, according to the study, published in the Textile Research Journal.

Polyester is a non-polar fibre—meaning it repels water—which is why it dries quickly, but that also means it naturally attracts oil from our skin, which can lead to body odour. 

The good news is, that favourite stinky shirt will probably only get to a certain level of smelliness. Between five and 10 wash cycles, there were no significant differences in the amounts of odorants extracted from the fabric, the study showed.

The research gives more insight into why popular solutions like antimicrobial textiles only partly address the issue of stinky fabrics.

Not everyone will wind up with permanently smelly polyester clothing. It depends on their personal body chemistry.

M Mukhtar Abdul-Bari et al. Retention and release of odorants in cotton and polyester fabrics following multiple soil/wash procedures, Textile Research Journal (2020). DOI: 10.1177/0040517520914411

Scientists put visions of letters in blind people’s brains

Stimulating the brain in specific ways can generate mental images of simple shapes

https://massivesci.com/articles/visual-cortex-letters-electrical-st...

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Paralyzed man has sense of touch restored by brain-machine interface

This is the first BMI to restore movement and touch simultaneously

https://massivesci.com/articles/bmi-brain-machine-interface-burkhar...

https://theconversation.com/climate-denial-hasnt-gone-away-heres-ho...

Climate denial hasn’t gone away – here’s how to spot arguments for delaying climate action

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https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/jul/30/herd-immunity-i...

Herd immunity in India may generate only in pockets, can be short-lived: Scientists

Concerns about Waning COVID-19 Immunity Are Likely Overblown

The decline seen in some studies is normal, experts say. But scientists must wait to see whether infection confers long-term protection

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/concerns-about-waning-co...

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https://theconversation.com/stonehenge-how-we-revealed-the-original...

Stonehenge: how scientists revealed the original source of the biggest stones

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https://theconversation.com/10-things-we-do-that-puzzle-and-scare-h...

10 things we do that puzzle and scare horses

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https://www.sciencealert.com/paediatricians-explain-what-we-know-ab...

Do Children Spread COVID-19? Paediatricians Break Down What We Know So Far

The Science Behind Mental Toughness

Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190712120244.htm

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How to protect yourself from media manipulation on energy issues and other contentious matters

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-media-energy-issues-contentious.html

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Scientists uncover a new RNA-modifying enzyme

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-cell-scientists-uncover-rna-modifying...

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Scientists Create Giant “Artificial Atoms” to Enable Quantum Processing and Communication in One

https://scitechdaily.com/mit-scientists-create-giant-artificial-ato...

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Hydroxychloroquine can’t stop COVID-19. It’s time to move on, scientists say

An abundance of scientific data shows that the drug isn’t an effective COVID-19 treatment

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-19-coronavirus-hydroxychl...

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https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-why-hydroxychloroquine-doesn-t-...

Here's Why Hydroxychloroquine Doesn't Block The Coronavirus in Human Lung Cells

Wasps can  attack and kill a baby bird

Humans Might Be So Sickly Because We Evolved to Avoid a Single Devastating Disease

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-evolved-a-way-to-beat-a-deadly-infe...

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https://www.sciencealert.com/the-discovery-of-a-rare-glassy-metal-c...

Scientists Discover Strange 'Glassy' State of Metal That Could Boost Lithium Batteries

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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-theaitre-theatre-written-machin...

A theatre play written entirely by machines

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** Early Mars was covered in ice sheets, not flowing rivers: study

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-early-mars-ice-sheets-rivers.html?utm...

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https://phys.org/news/2020-08-hair-haircut.html?utm_source=nwletter...

Your hair knows (or shows) what you eat and how much your haircut costs

Trying to answer the most difficult questions: A new test to investigate the origin of cosmic structure $$

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cosmic.html?utm_source=nwletter&u...

Daniel Green et al. Signals of a Quantum Universe, Physical Review Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.251302

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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-energy-demands-limit-brains-...

Energy demands limit our brains' information processing capacity

Our brains have an upper limit on how much they can process at once due to a constant but limited energy supply, according to a new UCL study using a brain imaging method that measures cellular metabolism.

The study found that paying attention can change how the brain allocates its limited energy; as the brain uses more energy in processing what we attend to, less energy is supplied to processing outside our attention focus.

It takes a lot of energy to run the human brain. We know that the brain constantly uses around 20% of our metabolic energy, even while we rest our mind, and yet it's widely believed that this constant but limited supply of energy does not increase when there is more for our mind to process.

"If there's a hard limit on energy supply to the brain, we suspected that the brain may handle challenging tasks by diverting energy away from other functions, and prioritizing the focus of our attention. findings suggest that the brain does indeed allocate less energy to the neurons that respond to information outside the focus of our attention when our task becomes harder. This explains why we experience inattentional blindness and deafness even to critical information that we really want to be aware of.

Journal of Neuroscience (2020). DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2368-19.2020

Scientists discover secret behind Earth's biodiversity hotspots

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-secret-earth-biodiversity-...

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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-verge.html?utm_source=nwletter&...

Computer programmers may soon design the ultimate program: A program that designs programs.

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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-method-defend-smart-home-cybera...

Researchers develope new method to defend against smart home cyberattacks

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** Microplastics: tiny crustaceans can fragment them into even smaller nanoplastics

https://theconversation.com/microplastics-tiny-crustaceans-can-frag...

When a Black Hole Fails to Do Its Job? find out what happens in this video

Protection against terrorist attacks with homemade explosives

Terrorist attacks often feature the use of homemade explosives. For the police and security forces to be able to take appropriate precautions and assess the damage after an attack, they need access to the right kind of tools. A research team from the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI, has now developed a sophisticated risk-analysis system to help prevent such attacks. At the same time, the software-based system assists with the forensic investigation of such incidents. It can therefore support the police to foil attacks with homemade explosives and protect the public at major gatherings and other events.

Researchers developed a software tool that analyzes and quantifies the expected damage from a homemade bomb with almost no need for reconstruction. This gives the police a system that helps not only with the prevention of an attack but also with the forensic assessment of the potential damage. 

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-terrorist-homemade-explosives.h...

Antioxidant-rich foods like black tea, chocolate, and berries may increase risk for certain cancers, new study finds

Cancer in the small intestine is quite rare, whereas colo-rectal cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death for men and women. What is it about the colon that seems to attract cancer?

Cancer mutations are not necessarily bad actors in and of themselves. In fact, in certain micro-environments like the gut, these mutations can actually help the body to fight cancer, not spread it. However, if the gut microbiome produces high levels of metabolites, like those found in certain bacteria and antioxidant-rich foods like black tea and hot cocoa, then it acts as a particularly hospitable environment to mutated genes and will accelerate the growth of bowel cancers.

Researchers kept gut microbiomes in mind as they took a closer look at gastrointestinal cancers, and may have found the reason why only 2% of cancers take root in the small intestine, whereas a whopping 98% of cancers take place in the colon. One major difference between these two organs is their levels of gut bacteria: the small intestine contains few, whereas the colon contains multitudes.

Scientists are beginning to pay more and more attention to the role gut microbiomes play in our health: both their positive effects and, in this case, their sometimes pernicious role in aiding and abetting disease

TP53 is a gene found in every cell. It produces a protein called p53 which acts as the cell's barrier, suppressing genetic mutations in the cell. However, when p53 becomes damaged, it no longer protects the cell; quite the opposite: It drives the cancer, helping tumors spread and grow.

What's in this flora that makes colon cancer spread so quickly? A close analysis identified the culprit: gut flora that produces metabolites, aka "antioxidants", which are found in high concentrations in foods such as black tea, hot chocolate, nuts and berries. Tellingly, when the scientists fed mice an antioxidant-rich diet, their gut flora accelerated p53's cancer-driver mode. This finding is of particular concern to those patients with a family history of colorectal cancer.

The extent to which microbiomes affect cancer mutations—in some cases, entirely changing their nature is quite alarming.

The gut microbiome switches mutant p53 from tumor-suppressive to oncogenic, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2541-0 , www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2541-0

Does Coronavirus Linger? What We Know About How Viruses Hide in The Brain And Testes

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-we-know-so-far-about-chron...

A chronic or persistent infection continues for months or even years, during which time virus is being continually produced, albeit in many cases at low levels. Frequently these infections occur in a so-called immune privileged site.

There are a few places in the body that are less accessible to the immune system and where it is difficult to eradicate all viral infections. These include the central nervous system, the testes and the eye.

It is thought that the evolutionary advantage to having an immune privileged region is that it protects a site like the brain, for example, from being damaged by the inflammation that results when the immune system battles an infection.

An immune privileged site not only is difficult for the immune system to enter, it also limits proteins that increase inflammation. The reason is that while inflammation helps kill a pathogen, it can also damage an organ such as the eye, brain or testes.

The result is an uneasy truce where inflammation is limited but infection continues to fester.

But there is another way that a virus can hide in the body and reemerge later.

A latent viral infection occurs when the virus is present within an infected cell but dormant and not multiplying. In a latent virus, the entire viral genome is present, and infectious virus can be produced if latency ends and the infections becomes active.

The latent virus may integrate into the human genome – as does HIV, for example – or exist in the nucleus as a self-replicating piece of DNA called an episome.

A latent virus can reactivate and produce infectious viruses, and this can occur months to decades after the initial infection. Perhaps the best example of this is chickenpox, which although seemingly eradicated by the immune system can reactivate and cause herpes zoster decades later.

Fortunately, chickenpox and zoster are now prevented by vaccination. To be infected with a virus capable of producing a latent infection is to be infected for the rest of your life.

Malignant bone cancer diagnosed in a dinosaur for the first time

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-malignant-cancer-dinosaur.html?utm_so...

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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-blood-baby-brain-hours-birth...

Blood test could diagnose baby brain damage just hours after birth

An early blood test could detect which babies deprived of oxygen at birth are at risk of serious neurodisabilities like cerebral palsy and epilepsy.

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Large study confirms vitamin D does not reduce risk of depression in adults

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-large-vitamin-d-depression-a...

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https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cern-indications-rare-higgs-boson.htm...

CERN experiments announce first indications of a rare Higgs boson process

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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-windows-thumbs-ccleaner.html?ut...

Windows 10 turns thumbs down on CCleaner

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https://theconversation.com/these-dogs-are-trained-to-sniff-out-the...

Dogs are being trained to sniff out the coronavirus. Most have a 100% success rate

Why microwaving liquids is different from other heating techniques, and how this issue can be resolved

Water heated in a microwave just isn't the same. 

Typically, when a liquid is being warmed, the heating source—a stove, for example—heats the container from below. By a process called convection, as the liquid toward the bottom of the container warms up, it becomes less dense and moves to the top, allowing a cooler section of the liquid to contact the source. This ultimately results in a uniform temperature throughout the glass.

Inside a microwave, however, the electric field acting as the heating source exists everywhere. Because the entire glass itself is also warming up, the convection process does not occur, and the liquid at the top of the container ends up being much hotter than the liquid at the bottom.

By designing a silver plating to go along the rim of a glass, the group was able to shield the effects of the microwave at the surface of the liquid. The silver acts as a guide for the waves, reducing the electric field at the top and effectively blocking the heating. This creates a convection process similar to traditional approaches, resulting in a more uniform temperature.

Placing silver in the microwave may seem like a dangerous idea, but similar metal structures with finely tuned geometry to avoid ignition have already been safely used for microwave steam pots and rice cookers.

"After carefully designing the metal structure at the appropriate size, the metal edge, which is prone to ignition, is located at weak field strength, where it can completely avoid ignition, so it is still safe. 

Solids don't undergo convection, so getting your leftovers to warm up uniformly is a completely different challenge.

"For solids, there is no simple way to design a bowl or plate in order to achieve a much better heating result. 

We can change the field distribution, but the change is very small, so the improvement is limited."

The group is considering other ways to improve nonuniformity in solid foods

"Multiphysics analysis for unusual heat convection in microwave heating liquid," AIP Advances (2020). aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0013295

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-microwaving-liquids-techniques-issue....

Droplet spread from humans doesn't always follow airflow

The flow physics of someone coughing is complex, involving turbulent jets and droplet evaporation.

And the rise of COVID-19 has revealed the gaps in our knowledge of the physics of transmission and mitigation strategies."

One such gap in the physics is a clear, simple description of where individual droplets go when ejected.

As a person breathes, they emit droplets of various sizes that don't necessarily follow the airflow faithfully.

"We represent breathing as a point source of both air and droplets and include a point sink to model the effect of extraction of air and droplets. 

To take their size and density differences into account, we use the Maxey-Riley equation, which describes the motion of a small but finite-sized rigid sphere through a fluid."

This work gives researchers a general framework to understand the droplet dispersion. The model simplicity demonstrates that bimodality could actually be a property of the droplets themselves, and the group provides formulas to predict when such droplets will have short ranges.

"Our study shows there isn't a linear relation between droplet size and displacement—with both small and large droplets traveling further than medium-sized ones

We can't afford to be complacent about small droplets. PPE is an effective barrier to large droplets but may be less effective for small ones."

As a solution, Mehendale came up with the idea of creating an aerosol extractor device. The team is working on plans to manufacture the aerosol extractor to keep clinicians safe during a wide range of aerosol-generating procedures routinely performed in medicine and dentistry. Extraction units placed near the droplet sources can effectively trap droplets, if their diameters fall below that of a human hair.

"This has important implications for the COVID-19 pandemic," said Cummins. "Larger droplets would be easily captured by PPE, such as masks and face shields. But smaller droplets may penetrate some forms of PPE, so an extractor could help reduce the weakness in our current defense against COVID-19 and future pandemics."

Mehendale said a better understanding of the droplet behavior will help "inform the safety guidelines for aerosol-generating procedures, and it will be relevant during the current and future pandemics, as well as for other infectious diseases. This mathematical model may also serve as the basis of modeling the impact on droplet dispersion of ventilation systems existing within a range of clinical spaces."

 "The dispersion of spherical droplets in source-sink flows and their relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic," Physics of Fluids, aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0021427

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-droplet-humans-doesnt-airflow.html?ut...

Casimir force used to control and manipulate objects

The weirdness of quantum physics. In reality a perfect vacuum does not exist—even in empty space at zero temperature, virtual particles, like photons, flicker in and out of existence.

"These fluctuations interact with objects placed in vacuum and are actually enhanced in magnitude as temperature is increased, causing a measurable force from "nothing"—otherwise known as the Casimir force.

This is handy because we live at room temperature. We have now shown it's also possible to use the force to do cool things. But to do that, we need to develop precision technology that allows us control and manipulate objects with this force.

Researchers were able to measure the Casimir force and manipulate the objects through a precision microwave photonic cavity, known as a re-entrant cavity, at room-temperature, using a setup with a thin metallic membrane separated from the re-entrant cavity, exquisitely controlled to roughly the width of a grain of dust.

"Because of the Casimir force between the objects, the metallic membrane, which flexed back and forth, had its spring-like oscillations significantly modified and was used to manipulate the properties of the membrane and re-entrant cavity system in a unique way.

"This allowed orders of magnitudes of improvement in force sensitivity and the ability to control the mechanical state of the membrane."

J. M. Pate et al. Casimir spring and dilution in macroscopic cavity optomechanics, Nature Physics (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-0975-9

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-casimir.html?utm_source=nwletter&...

Indian vaccine producer Bet Big on Head Start in Coronavirus Vaccine Race

The world’s largest vaccine producer, the Serum Institute, announced a plan to make hundreds of millions of doses of an unproven inoculation. It’s a gamble with a huge upside. And huge risks.

The Serum Institute of India makes 1.5 billion doses of vaccines every year. It has put its might behind the coronavirus-vaccine candidate being develo..., UK, and is preparing to produce 500 doses each minute in the hopes that trials will prove the vaccine’s efficacy. The company’s output will be split 50–50 between India and the rest of the world, with a focus on poorer countries.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/world/asia/coronavirus-vaccine-i...

“I keep a series of Post-it notes at my desk, which I update each day with the number of lives lost to Covid… When I’m feeling drained, I look at that number.”
How scientists are working selflessly to help the world … and how they are getting motivated to work day and night …

In their own words : “I keep a series of Post-it notes at my desk, which I update each day with the number of lives lost to Covid … When I’m feeling drained, I look at that number.”

And get back to work - Virologist Katherine McMahan who is working on a potential vaccine for covid 19

“I keep a series of Post-it notes at my desk, which I update each d...

Virologist Katherine McMahan is working on a potential vaccine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts (with Dutch Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutica), that has shown promise in monkeys. (The New York Times | 13 min read)
Reference: Nature paper

Can a quantum strategy help bring down the house?

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/water-beetle-frog-eaten-alive-escape-death-butt-excretion?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=latest-newsletter-v2&utm_source=Latest_Headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest_Headlines

Water beetles can live on after being eaten and excreted by a frog

One insect crawled through the amphibian’s insides in just six minutes

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** Some spiders may spin poisonous webs laced with neurotoxins

Image cloaking tool thwarts facial recognition programs

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-image-cloaking-tool-thwarts-fac...

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Study suggests embryos could be susceptible to coronavirus

Genes that are thought to play a role in how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects our cells have been found to be active in embryos as early as during the second week of pregnancy, say scientists at the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The researchers say this could mean embryos are susceptible to COVID-19 if the mother gets sick, potentially affecting the chances of a successful pregnancy.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-embryos-susceptible-coronavi...

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https://phys.org/news/2020-08-disparities-common-air-pollutant-visi...

Disparities in a common air pollutant are visible from space

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Land use changes may increase disease outbreak risks

Global changes in land use are disrupting the balance of wild animal communities in our environment, and species that carry diseases known to infect humans appear to be benefiting, according to a new study

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-disease-outbreak.html?utm_source=nwle...

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New study reveals lower energy limit for life on Earth

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-reveals-energy-limit-life-earth.html?...

**The yin and yang of inflammation controlled by a single molecule

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have now identified a protein called histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) as the orchestrator of the immune system's inflammation response to infection. By using both specially cultured cells and small animal models, HDAC3 was found to be directly involved in the production of agents that help kill off harmful pathogens as well as the restoration of homeostasis, the body's state of equilibrium. This work, published in Nature, shows that some of the methods being tested to fight cancer and harmful inflammation, such as sepsis, that target molecules like HDAC3 could actually have unintended and deadly consequences.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-yin-yang-inflammation-molecu...

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Research reveals microplastic content levels in seafood

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-reveals-microplastic-content-seafood....

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https://phys.org/news/2020-08-drivers-world-poorest-cities-windows....

Drivers from the world's poorest cities who keep their windows down are exposed to 80 percent more air pollution

Scientists build ultra-high-speed terahertz wireless chip

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-ultra-high-speed-terahertz...

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Tested positive for COVID-19? Here’s what happens next – and why day 5 is crucial

https://theconversation.com/tested-positive-for-covid-19-heres-what...

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Here’s how we’re growing meat in labs instead of in animals

A tissue engineer writes the cultured meat explainer you’ve been looking for

https://massivesci.com/articles/what-is-cultured-meat/?utm_source=d...

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These five scientific fields win the most Nobel Prizes

https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/these-five-scientific-fields-...

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200804134737.htm

Increased global mortality linked to arsenic exposure in rice-based diets

Ammonium nitrate has the chemical formula NH₄NO₃. Produced as small porous pellets, or “prills”, it’s one of the world’s most widely used fertilisers.

It is also the main component in many types of mining explosives, where it’s mixed with fuel oil and detonated by an explosive charge.

For an industrial ammonium nitrate disaster to occur, a lot needs to go wrong. Tragically, this seems to have been the case in Beirut.

Ammonium nitrate does not burn on its own.

Instead, it acts as a source of oxygen that can accelerate the combustion (burning) of other materials.

For combustion to occur, oxygen must be present. Ammonium nitrate prills provide a much more concentrated supply of oxygen than the air around us. This is why it is effective in mining explosives, where it’s mixed with oil and other fuels.

At high enough temperatures, however, ammonium nitrate can violently decompose on its own. This process creates gases including nitrogen oxides and water vapour. It is this rapid release of gases that causes an explosion.

Ammonium nitrate decomposition can be set off if an explosion occurs where it’s stored, if there is an intense fire nearby. The latter is what happened in the 2015 Tianjin explosion, which killed 173 people after flammable chemicals and ammonium nitrate were stored together at a chemicals factory in eastern China.

While we don’t know for sure what caused the explosion in Beirut, footage of the incident indicates it may have been set off by a fire – visible in a section of the city’s port area before the explosion happened.

It’s relatively difficult for a fire to trigger an ammonium nitrate explosion. The fire would need to be sustained and confined within the same area as the ammonium nitrate prills.

Also, the prills themselves are not fuel for the fire, so they would need to be contaminated with, or packaged in, some other combustible material.

https://theconversation.com/what-is-ammonium-nitrate-the-chemical-t...

Why shaving dulls even the sharpest of razors

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dulls-sharpest-razors.html?utm_source...

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How cells keep growing even when under attack

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cells.html?utm_source=nwletter&ut...

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Researchers show how to make non-magnetic materials magnetic

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-non-magnetic-materials-magnetic.html?...

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An electrical switch for magnetism

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-electrical-magnetism.html?utm_source=...

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Thermal chaos returns quantum system to its unknown past

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-thermal-chaos-quantum-unknown.html?ut...

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In northern China, scientists have found what may be the 2 billion-year-old birthmarks of Earth's first supercontinent

https://sciencex.com/news/2020-08-northern-china-scientists-billion...

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Chemists create the brightest-ever fluorescent materials

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-chemists-brightest-ever-fluorescent-m...

Quantum Entanglement - The Weirdness Of Quantum Mechanics

Here is the best place on Earth to see stars, according to science

The stars literally twinkle less here because there is hardly any 'atmospheric turbulence' — a phenomenon that confounds scientists the world over.

https://www.livescience.com/best-stargazing-on-earth-dome-a.html

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Brain noise contains unique signature of dream sleep

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-brain-noise-unique-signature...

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https://phys.org/news/2020-08-science-biodegradable-algae-based-fli...

science behind biodegradable algae-based flip-flops

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Transgender and gender-diverse individuals more likely to be autistic: study

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-transgender-gender-diverse-i...

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Glass-like wood insulates heat, is tough, blocks UV and has wood-grain pattern

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-glass-like-wood-insulates-tough-block...

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Hormones control paternal interest in offspring

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-hormones-paternal-offspring.html?utm_...

People who feel dizzy when they stand up may have higher risk of dementia

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-people-dizzy-higher-dementia...

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New stem cell model to study how cancer arises

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-stem-cell-cancer.html?utm_so...

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https://phys.org/news/2020-08-link-atlantic-hurricanes-weather-east...

Researchers find link between Atlantic hurricanes and weather system in East Asia

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https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-crispr-gene-messages-early...

Scientists use CRISPR to knock down gene messages early in development

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Why deforestation and extinctions make pandemics more likely

 A viper’s zig-zag colors help blur their predators’ vision

Scientists previously thought that animals’ color patterns were either warning signs or camouflage — on these snakes, they are both

https://massivesci.com/articles/snakes-predation-camouflage-evoluti...

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  ‘Hyper urban’ coyote genomes are growing apart their from city and rural cousins

Humans’ built environment has consequences even for creatures that seem to thrive in cities

https://massivesci.com/articles/city-coyotes-rural-carnivores-habit...

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 Chameleons do more than change color – their bones glow in the dark

Famous for camouflage, their visual communication turns out to run even deeper

https://massivesci.com/articles/chameleons-glow-dark-skeletons-anim...

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DNA from an ancient, unidentified ancestor was passed down to humans living today

A new analysis of ancient genomes suggests that different branches of the human family tree interbred multiple times, and that some humans carry DNA from an archaic, unknown ancestor.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200806153558.htm

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 Four reasons why some people become ‘super smellers’ – from pregnancy to genetic differences

https://theconversation.com/four-reasons-why-some-people-become-sup...

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 Here's How Exploding Stars Forged The Calcium in Your Teeth And Bones

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-how-the-calcium-in-your-teeth-a...

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 Here's What Happens in Your Body When You Overeat Just Once

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-happens-in-your-body-when-...

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 Common Colds May Have 'Primed' Some People's Immune Systems For COVID-19

https://www.sciencealert.com/common-colds-may-have-primed-some-peop...

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New Hybrid Species Remix Old Genes Creatively

 Open windows to help stop the spread of coronavirus

COVID is not only spread by touch and droplets sprayed from the mouth and nose but, importantly, via a third route too. The third infection pathway is in very tiny airborne particles of liquid and material, known as aerosols, that stay suspended in the air for a long time. If the virus attaches to these tiny particles, it can float on the air and spread much further. An effective way to reduce this spread is to purge the air containing those aerosols from rooms by simply opening the windows. By  opening a window to let the virus escape, the amount of it in a room can be reduced, leading to a lower risk of infection.

To prevent COVID from spreading:

• Medical experts promote hand washing, protective clothing, cleaning surfaces, spatial distancing, fewer people in lifts, and the wearing of face masks – all practical and effective actions.

• Heating, ventilating and cooling (HVAC) engineers recommend limiting the spread of the virus with expensive, high-efficiency particulate air and ultraviolet filters for climate-control systems in buildings that work well for those who can afford them.

• Architects, when looking at the impacts of COVID on buildings often deal with issues of social and physical distancing within buildings, and toy with the idea of the “end of tall buildings”, or the effect of the shift to home-working on the energy efficiency of our homes.

Simply opening windows have added benefits of the thermal, emotional and sensual delight of a cooling breeze on the skin on a warm day. Or the relief of clean, fresh air pouring into a stuffy room.

https://theconversation.com/open-windows-to-help-stop-the-spread-of...

** A titanate nanowire mask that can eliminate pathogens

Researchers are working on a membrane made of titanium oxide nanowires, similar in appearance to filter paper but with antibacterial and antiviral properties. Their material works by using the photocatalytic properties of titanium dioxide: when exposed to ultraviolet radiation, the fibers convert resident moisture into oxidizing agents such as hydrogen peroxide, which have the ability to destroy pathogens.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200807093800.htm

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 SpaceX Just Launched 57 New Starlink Satellites With Controversial Sun Shades

https://www.sciencealert.com/spacex-just-launched-57-new-satellites...

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** Some Coronavirus Patients Are Getting Rashes, And It May Signal Underlying Issues

Patients with severe coronavirus may experience rashes and lesions indicative of underlying blood clots, a new report suggests.


In the paper, published in JAMA Dermatology Wednesday, researchers described four New York City patients who were intubated with severe coronavirus and had skin complications.  Even though all patients received therapy to help prevent blood clots when they were admitted, all developed clots in their skin and were thought to have pulmonary embolisms, or an artery blockage in the lung. The findings are a lesson to other healthcare professionals to take skin manifestations as a potential sign of abnormal underlying blood clots, which can lead to strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, and other potentially fatal complications.


https://www.sciencealert.com/some-coronavirus-patients-are-getting-...

Sonocytology

How Do Our Cells Produce Sound?

The motion of molecular motors (motor proteins) in transporting cell organelles and setting the stage for cell activities like cell division, muscle contraction, etc. is believed to be root cause for cellular sounds. The study of the sounds of a cell is called sonocytology. 

Well, not really, but your cells do sing and they might be able to give opera singers a run for their money.

Researchers in the year 2004 discovered that cells vibrate; when those vibrations are amplified, they sound like squeals. Also, each individual cell is thought to vibrate uniquely. Scientists argue that decoding these squeals could help us recognize the state of a cell and thus predict the arrival of a disease. This study of the sounds of a cell is called sonocytology (“sonos” ~ sound, “cytology” ~ study of cell structure and function).

https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/how-do-our-cells-produce-s...

https://www.nature.com/articles/423106b

The extra hygiene precautions we’re taking for COVID-19 won’t weaken our immune systems

https://theconversation.com/no-the-extra-hygiene-precautions-were-t...

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 Why Are Only 10% of People Left-Handed? Here's What Scientists Know So Far

https://www.sciencealert.com/why-are-only-10-of-people-left-handed-...

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 We May Have 'Recycled' a Key Region of Our Brains as Humans Learned to Read

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-may-have-recycled-parts-of-our-brai...

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Mpemba effect: Why hot water can freeze faster than cold

https://phys.org/news/2010-03-mpemba-effect-hot-faster-cold.html

Theories for the Mpemba effect have included:

• • faster evaporation of hot water, which reduces the volume left to freeze

• • formation of a frost layer on cold water, insulating it

• different concentrations of solutes such as carbon dioxide, which is driven off when the water is heated

The problem is that the effect does not always appear, and cold water often freezes faster than hot water.

 Recent observations show supercooling is involved. water usually supercools at 0°C and only begins freezing below this temperature. The freezing point is governed by impurities in the water that seed ice crystal formation. Impurities such as dust, bacteria, and dissolved salts all have a characteristic nucleation temperature, and when several are present the freezing point is determined by the one with the highest nucleation temperature.

 When researchers took two water samples at the same temperature and placed them in a freezer, they found that one would usually freeze before the other, presumably because of a slightly different mix of impurities. They then removed the samples from the freezer, warmed one to room temperature and the other to 80°C and then froze them again. The results were that if the difference in freezing point was at least 5°C, the one with the highest freezing point always froze before the other if it was heated to 80°C and then re-frozen.

The researchers said the hot water cools faster because of the bigger difference in temperature between the water and the freezer, and this helps it reach its freezing point before the cold water reaches its natural freezing point, which is at least 5°C lower. They also said all the conditions must be controlled, such as the location of the samples in the freezer, and the type of container, which they said other researchers had not done.

The effect now known as the Mpemba effect was first noted in the 4th century BC by Aristotle, and many scientists have noted the same phenomenon in the centuries since Aristotle’s time. It was dubbed the Mpemba effect in the 1960s when schoolboy Erasto Mpemba from Tanzania claimed in his science class that ice cream would freeze faster if it was heated first before being put in the freezer. The laughter ended only when a school inspector tried the experiment himself and vindicated him.

Physicists Demonstrate a Weird Effect Where Heating Particles Causes Them to Freeze!

https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-demonstrated-a-weird-effect...

The idea of freezing particles by warming them is counterintuitive, to say the least. But physicists have shown how specially designed mixtures 'melt' in the dark but crystallise the moment the lights come on, thanks to their unique thermal activity.

Instead of bouncing the particles around and spreading them out, the researchers showed that by using light to heat up the mixture, they were able to lock particles in place and force them to clump together, as if they were frozen. 

Researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK carried out their experiments on a colloid made up of water, polystyrene and small droplets of oil coated in DNA to better understand the dynamics taking place between them when warmed by light. 

particles suspended in a temperature gradient flow away from hot spots towards cooler ones. 

So it'd stand to reason that if we heated suspensions of oil, focussing on the boundary with its watery surrounds, you would expect the mix of molecules to jiggle with excitement, bumping and grinding their way towards cooler areas and causing the fluids to move.

There's even a term for this oil and water flow; the Marangoni effect.

Putting it simply, the contrasting surface tension between oil and water makes each susceptible to variations in temperature in slightly different ways, forcing their particles to scatter.

Small particles freezing when warmed by light

New reports in Physics

1. Time-reversal of an unknown quantum state

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-time-reversal-unknown-quantum-state.h...

2. Robotics

Exploring the interactions between sound, action and vision in robotics

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-exploring-interactions-action-v...

3. 

Discovery of massless electrons in phase-change materials provides next step for future electronics

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-discovery-massless-electrons-phase-ch...

4. Understanding vacuum fluctuations in space

An international research team of scientists has created structures in which light fields interact with electrons so strongly that the quantum vacuum itself is significantly altered. Using extremely short bursts of light, they interrupted this coupling much faster than the timescale of a vacuum fluctuation and observed an intriguing ringing of the emitted electromagnetic field, indicating the collapse of the vacuum state. Their key achievement could improve our understanding of the nature of nothingness—the vacuum of space itself, paving a way toward photonics exploiting vacuum fluctuations. The results are published in the current issue of Nature Photonics.

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-vacuum-fluctuations-space.html?utm_so...

Environment:

!. 

Agriculture replaces fossil fuels as largest human source of sulfur to the environment

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-agriculture-fossil-fuels-largest-huma...

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Breakthrough demonstrates photosynthetic hacks can boost yield, conserve water

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-breakthrough-photosynthetic-hacks-boo...

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Researchers use nanocellulose to create materials with new properties

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nanocellulose-materials-properties.ht...

Biology:

1. Imaging method highlights new role for cellular 'skeleton' protein

While your skeleton helps your body to move, fine skeleton-like filaments within your cells likewise help cellular structures to move. Now,  researchers have developed a new imaging method that lets them monitor a small subset of these filaments, called actin. 

Until now, it's been really hard to tell where individual actin molecules of interest are, because it's difficult to separate the relevant signal from all the background."

With the new imaging technique, the researchers have been able to home in on how actin mediates an important function: helping the cellular "power stations" known as mitochondria divide in two. The work, which appeared in the journal Nature Methods on August 10, 2020, could provide a better understanding of mitochondrial dysfunction, which has been linked to cancer, aging, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Actin chromobody imaging reveals sub-organellar actin dynamics, Nature Methods (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41592-020-0926-5 , www.nature.com/articles/s41592-020-0926-5

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-imaging-method-highlights-role-cellul...

Medicine: 

Gulf War illness, chronic fatigue syndrome distinct illnesses, study suggests

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-gulf-war-illness-chronic-fat...

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How to get more cancer-fighting nanoparticles to where they are needed

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cancer-fighting-nanoparticles.html?ut...

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Nanocatalysts that remotely control chemical reactions inside living cells

The enzymes responsible for catalytic reactions in our body's biological reactions are difficult to use for diagnosis or treatment as they react only to certain molecules or have low stability. Many researchers anticipate that if these issues are ameliorated or if artificial catalysts are developed to create a synergetic effect by meeting the enzymes in the body, there will be new ways to diagnose and treat diseases. In particular, if artificial catalysts that respond to external stimuli such as magnetic fields are developed, new treatment methods that remotely control bioreactions from outside the body can become a reality.

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nanocatalysts-remotely-chemical-react...

Breakthrough technology purifies water using the power of sunlight

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-breakthrough-technology-purifie...

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Transgender and gender diverse people up to six times more likely to be autistic – new study

https://theconversation.com/transgender-and-gender-diverse-people-u...

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Heatwaves don’t just give you sunburn – they can harm your mental health too

https://theconversation.com/heatwaves-dont-just-give-you-sunburn-th...