Science news

• New Zika Study Finds Grave Outcomes for Some Pregnant Women

  10-03-2016 23:55
  Some pregnant women with Zika virus tend not to fare well, and neither do their fetuses, a new study finds. The researchers studied 88 pregnant women in Rio de Janeiro from September 2015 through February 2016, according to the study, published Friday (March 4) in the The New England Journal of Medicine.
  
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• Ruling party faction to challenge Gabon's Bongo at polls

  10-03-2016 23:12
  The leaders of a breakaway faction of Gabon President Ali Bongo's ruling party said on Thursday they would challenge him as he seeks to extend his rule over the oil-producing nation in elections later this year. Bongo won a disputed election in 2009 following the death of his father, longtime leader Omar Bongo, and is now nearing the end of his first seven-year term in office. The open dissent from some PDG members, who plan to put forward their own candidate, underscores the internal divisions
  
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• Researchers plan to drill deep into crater left by dino-killing asteroid

  10-03-2016 22:50 via cbc.ca
  
  Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid slammed into Earth, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs and most life on the planet. Now, researchers are drilling into the asteroid crater that formed the Gulf of Mexico to peer into the lives of the creatures that survived.
  
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• Tiny hummingbirds can fly a long, long way

  10-03-2016 22:14
  
  Some ruby-throated hummingbirds may be capable of flying more than 2,000 kilometers without stopping, scientists calculate.
  
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• Record leap in carbon dioxide seen in 2015

  10-03-2016 22:11
  
  The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased at a record pace last year, US government scientists reported, raising new concern about one of the top greenhouse gases and the effects of global warming.
  
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• Wild mountain lion may have killed Los Angeles Zoo koala

  10-03-2016 21:51
  
  LOS ANGELES (AP) — Officials believe P-22, a wild mountain lion that prowls a sprawling Los Angeles park, made a meal of a koala found mauled to death at the city's zoo.
  
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• Sexual Transmission of Zika More Common than Previously Believed

  10-03-2016 21:40 via rss.sciam.com
  
  The more scientists learn about the mosquito-borne virus “the worse things seem to get”
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Every vessel on the planet should be tracked to curb overfishing, new report says

  10-03-2016 21:39 via cbc.ca
  
  A team of international ocean scientists that includes a Dalhousie University ecologist is urging policy makers around the world to start tracking every vessel on the planet — the same way ride-hailing service Uber tracks cars.
  
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• U.S. Secretary of State Kerry to visit Saudi Arabia, France

  10-03-2016 21:20
  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will leave on Thursday for a visit to Saudi Arabia and France, the State Department said. In Hafr al-Batin, Saudi Arabia, Kerry will meet with senior Saudi officials to discuss the crises in Syria and Yemen as well as other security issues, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.
  
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• [This Week in Science] Tumors put in a vulnerable position

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Paula A. Kiberstis
  
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• [This Week in Science] Toxic tenant promotes bad bugs

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Angela Colmone
  
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• [This Week in Science] Timing the attack on cancer cells

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: L. Bryan Ray
  
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• [This Week in Science] Stochastic properties of phage promoter

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: L. Bryan Ray
  
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• [This Week in Science] Sticking it to T cells

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: John F. Foley
  
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• [This Week in Science] Sinking into the bulk of a Weyl semimetal

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Jelena Stajic
  
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• [This Week in Science] Signal problems in autism spectrum disorder

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Pamela J. Hines
  
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• [This Week in Science] Mining gut fungi to break down biomass

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Nicholas S. Wigginton
  
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• [This Week in Science] How the bacterial pilus works

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Stella M. Hurtley
  
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• [This Week in Science] Hidden fungal diversity

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink
  
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• [This Week in Science] Entangled frequency combs

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Ian S. Osborne
  
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• [This Week in Science] Describing dispersion forces

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Author: Phil Szuromi
  
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• [Technical Comment] Comment on “Math at home adds up to achievement in school”

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Berkowitz et al. (Reports, 9 October 2015, p. 196) described a randomized field experiment testing whether a math app designed to increase parent-child interaction could also bring academic benefits. A reanalysis of the data suggests that this well-designed trial failed to find strong evidence for the efficacy of the intervention. In particular, there was no significant effect of the intervention on math performance.
  Author: Michael C. Frank
  
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• [Special Issue News] Whose voice is that?

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Speaker recognition is a forensic field with a checkered history that is trying to find solid scientific ground. Past methods to compare recordings of human voices were often highly subjective and have been discredited. More objective alternatives have emerged and they are reliable when comparing standard sentences clearly spoken into a microphone, but real-world recordings are often still problematic. To improve accuracy, scientists are studying how factors like inebriation, emotional state, an
  
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• [Special Issue News] Who dropped the bomb?

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Many experts believe that a nuclear attack on U.S. soil is more likely than ever; a bomb set off in a city street is seen as the most likely scenario. The conceivable need to unmask a perpetrator, and mount an effective response, is propelling the emerging area of postdetonation forensics. Scientists are devising new sensors, manufacturing artificial fallout to hone analytical techniques, and studying how the glass formed in the furnace of an atomic blast would vary depending on the nature of th
  
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• [Special Issue News] When DNA is lying

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Greg Hampikian, who holds joint appointments in biology and criminal justice at Boise State University and heads the Idaho Innocence Project, has helped free innocent people from prison for more than 20 years by exploiting the power of DNA forensics—or by exposing its pitfalls. DNA evidence is virtually unassailable, and it has helped exonerate hundreds of wrongly convicted people. But new techniques make it possible to detect DNA at levels hundreds or even thousands of times lower than 30 yea
  
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• [Special Issue News] The microbial death clock

  10-03-2016 21:12
  When you die, a new life begins for the billions of microbes you carry with you. Waves of species start multiplying and breaking down your body. Microbes from the environment join in as well. Scientists think this procession can provide a microbial clock that can help investigators tell the time of death more precisely than they can with current methods, which rely on body temperature, rigor mortis, and insects. Studies in mice and at a so-called body farm, where human cadavers are placed outsid
  
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• [Special Issue News] The Bitcoin busts

  10-03-2016 21:12
  A string of recent arrests has shown that even with Bitcoin, the Internet currency beloved by computer scientists, libertarians, and criminals, privacy is not guaranteed. The data associated with transactions in Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency leave a forensic trail that can make one's entire financial history public information. Some academic researchers, operating in a new field at the crossroads of computer science, economics, and forensics, are trying to follow these trails. Partly
  
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• [Special Issue News] Sizing up the evidence

  10-03-2016 21:12
  For decades, forensic examiners have claimed that so-called pattern evidence—including footprints, tire tracks, shoeprints, and grooves on bullet cartridges—could conclusively link evidence to a suspect. After a landmark report in 2009 called such claims groundless, forensic science began grinding toward reform. In one example, the new Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence has begun developing statistical methods that describe the strength of pattern evidence. It's a pr
  
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• [Special Issue News] How hair can reveal a history

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Forensic hair analysis has developed a bad reputation. The technique has traditionally relied on traits such as color, thickness, and curvature to link a suspect to a crime scene. But an ongoing reanalysis of old cases by the U.S. Department of Justice found that analysts have often overstated their case in the courtroom. Now, sophisticated analytical techniques are giving hair a new role in forensics. The goal is no longer matching a suspect to a crime scene, but using hair to infer physical ch
  
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• [Special Issue News] Evidence on trial

  10-03-2016 21:12
  A report published in 2009 by the U.S. National Research Council found that forensic analysts had long overstated the strength of many types of evidence, including foot- and fingerprints, tire tracks, bullet marks, blood splatters, fire, and handwriting. Many innocent people have ended up behind bars as a result; even DNA evidence, widely seen as the golden standard, can finger the wrong person. This special issue of Science shows that forensic analysts are trying to do better. Many fields are t
  
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• [Special Issue News] Clues from the ashes

  10-03-2016 21:12
  The Mexican government's official story is that the bodies of 43 students who went missing in 2014 were burned at a dump outside the town of Cocula in the state of Guerrero. But José Torero, an internationally known fire investigator at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, in Brisbane, Australia, says the evidence doesn't add up. Burning so many bodies completely would have required a massive amount of energy, he says. Torero is trying to bring more science to the field of fire investigatio
  
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• [Special Issue News] A trail of microbes

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Humans carry a highly personal mix of hundreds of bacterial species that live in and on their bodies, and they shed these bacteria wherever they go. Some scientists think analyzing the molecular signature from these microbiomes might one day be used to place someone at a crime scene. The research field is still in its infancy, and some doubt that microbiomes are so individual that they can distinguish every human being. But even if they can't uniquely identify a person, the data could be used to
  
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• [Research Article] Wavelike charge density fluctuations and van der Waals interactions at the nanoscale

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Recent experiments on noncovalent interactions at the nanoscale have challenged the basic assumptions of commonly used particle- or fragment-based models for describing van der Waals (vdW) or dispersion forces. We demonstrate that a qualitatively correct description of the vdW interactions between polarizable nanostructures over a wide range of finite distances can only be attained by accounting for the wavelike nature of charge density fluctuations. By considering a diverse set of materials and
  
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• [Research Article] Rare variant in scavenger receptor BI raises HDL cholesterol and increases risk of coronary heart disease

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Scavenger receptor BI (SR-BI) is the major receptor for high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (HDL-C). In humans, high amounts of HDL-C in plasma are associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Mice that have depleted Scarb1 (SR-BI knockout mice) have markedly elevated HDL-C levels but, paradoxically, increased atherosclerosis. The impact of SR-BI on HDL metabolism and CHD risk in humans remains unclear. Through targeted sequencing of coding regions of lipid-modifying gene
  
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• [Research Article] Architecture of the type IVa pilus machine

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Type IVa pili are filamentous cell surface structures observed in many bacteria. They pull cells forward by extending, adhering to surfaces, and then retracting. We used cryo–electron tomography of intact Myxococcus xanthus cells to visualize type IVa pili and the protein machine that assembles and retracts them (the type IVa pilus machine, or T4PM) in situ, in both the piliated and nonpiliated states, at a resolution of 3 to 4 nanometers. We found that T4PM comprises an outer membrane pore, f
  
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• [Report] Simple universal models capture all classical spin physics

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Spin models are used in many studies of complex systems because they exhibit rich macroscopic behavior despite their microscopic simplicity. Here, we prove that all the physics of every classical spin model is reproduced in the low-energy sector of certain “universal models,” with at most polynomial overhead. This holds for classical models with discrete or continuous degrees of freedom. We prove necessary and sufficient conditions for a spin model to be universal and show that one of the si
  
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• [Report] Quasiparticle interference of the Fermi arcs and surface-bulk connectivity of a Weyl semimetal

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Weyl semimetals host topologically protected surface states, with arced Fermi surface contours that are predicted to propagate through the bulk when their momentum matches that of the surface projections of the bulk’s Weyl nodes. We used spectroscopic mapping with a scanning tunneling microscope to visualize quasiparticle scattering and interference at the surface of the Weyl semimetal TaAs. Our measurements reveal 10 different scattering wave vectors, which can be understood and precisely rep
  
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• [Report] Measurement of gene regulation in individual cells reveals rapid switching between promoter states

  10-03-2016 21:12
  In vivo mapping of transcription-factor binding to the transcriptional output of the regulated gene is hindered by probabilistic promoter occupancy, the presence of multiple gene copies, and cell-to-cell variability. We demonstrate how to overcome these obstacles in the lysogeny maintenance promoter of bacteriophage lambda, PRM. We simultaneously measured the concentration of the lambda repressor CI and the number of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) from PRM in individual Escherichia coli cells, and used
  
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• [Report] Generation of multiphoton entangled quantum states by means of integrated frequency combs

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Complex optical photon states with entanglement shared among several modes are critical to improving our fundamental understanding of quantum mechanics and have applications for quantum information processing, imaging, and microscopy. We demonstrate that optical integrated Kerr frequency combs can be used to generate several bi- and multiphoton entangled qubits, with direct applications for quantum communication and computation. Our method is compatible with contemporary fiber and quantum memory
  
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• [Report] Early-branching gut fungi possess a large, comprehensive array of biomass-degrading enzymes

  10-03-2016 21:12
  The fungal kingdom is the source of almost all industrial enzymes in use for lignocellulose bioprocessing. We developed a systems-level approach that integrates transcriptomic sequencing, proteomics, phenotype, and biochemical studies of relatively unexplored basal fungi. Anaerobic gut fungi isolated from herbivores produce a large array of biomass-degrading enzymes that synergistically degrade crude, untreated plant biomass and are competitive with optimized commercial preparations from Aspergi
  
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• [Report] Disordered methionine metabolism in MTAP/CDKN2A-deleted cancers leads to dependence on PRMT5

  10-03-2016 21:12
  5-Methylthioadenosine phosphorylase (MTAP) is a key enzyme in the methionine salvage pathway. The MTAP gene is frequently deleted in human cancers because of its chromosomal proximity to the tumor suppressor gene CDKN2A. By interrogating data from a large-scale short hairpin RNA–mediated screen across 390 cancer cell line models, we found that the viability of MTAP-deficient cancer cells is impaired by depletion of the protein arginine methyltransferase PRMT5. MTAP-deleted cells accumulate the
  
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• [Report] CLK2 inhibition ameliorates autistic features associated with SHANK3 deficiency

  10-03-2016 21:12
  SH3 and multiple ankyrin repeat domains 3 (SHANK3) haploinsufficiency is causative for the neurological features of Phelan-McDermid syndrome (PMDS), including a high risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We used unbiased, quantitative proteomics to identify changes in the phosphoproteome of Shank3-deficient neurons. Down-regulation of protein kinase B (PKB/Akt)–mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) signaling resulted from enhanced phosphorylation and activation of serine/threonine
  
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• [Report] Accelerated crystallization of zeolites via hydroxyl free radicals

  10-03-2016 21:12
  In the hydrothermal crystallization of zeolites from basic media, hydroxide ions (OH–) catalyze the depolymerization of the aluminosilicate gel by breaking the Si,Al–O–Si,Al bonds and catalyze the polymerization of the aluminosilicate anions around the hydrated cation species by remaking the Si,Al–O–Si,Al bonds. We report that hydroxyl free radicals (•OH) are involved in the zeolite crystallization under hydrothermal conditions. The crystallization processes of zeolites—such as Na�
  
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• [Policy Forum] Ending hide and seek at sea

  10-03-2016 21:12
  The ocean remains the least observed part of our planet. This deficiency was made obvious by two recent developments in ocean governance: the emerging global movement to create massive marine protected areas (MPAs) (1) and a new commitment by the United Nations (UN) to develop a legally binding treaty to better manage high-seas biodiversity (2). Both policy goals cause us to confront whether it is meaningful to legislate change in ocean areas that we have little capacity to observe transparently
  
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• [Perspective] Unraveling a pathway to autism

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental disorders with shared symptoms in the area of communication and language, restricted interests, and stereotyped and social behaviors. Causes lie in perturbations of brain development, which can be manifold, but genetic factors are prominent among these. Genetic studies have pointed to hundreds of causative or susceptibility genes in ASD, making it difficult to find common underlying pathogenic mechanisms. Careful di
  
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• [Perspective] To see the world in a grain of spins

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Grappling with our desire to understand nature, we construct models of the specific systems that we wish to study. Unsurprisingly, such models are generally highly tailored to the system of interest. But are all these models really that distinct? Or, could there be a universal model that can somehow describe the behavior of any system we could think of? On page 1180 of this issue, De las Cuevas and Cubitt (1) venture out to weave ideas from physics and computer science in an attempt to answer th
  
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• [Perspective] The time is right for multiphoton entangled states

  10-03-2016 21:12
  In photonics, fundamental advances depend critically on continual improvements in device coupling, transmission losses, and material functionality. These requirements are especially critical in quantum photonics—the manipulation of quantum properties of light—where every photon is precious. A stunning example of how improved capabilities can facilitate basic discovery occurred in late 2015, when a few percent improvement in the efficiency of single-photon detectors enabled a definitive looph
  
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• [Perspective] The invisible dimension of fungal diversity

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Taxonomy plays a central role in understanding the diversity of life, translating the products of biological exploration and discovery—specimens and observations—into systems of names that capture the relationships between species. Taxonomic names facilitate communication among scientists and the public and provide conceptual handles for complex phylogenetic hypotheses. However, taxonomy can be challenging, particularly for fungi and other microorganisms, which are morphologically simple and
  
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• [Perspective] Feeding on plastic

  10-03-2016 21:12
  An estimated 311 million tons of plastics are produced annually worldwide; 90% of these are derived from petrol. A considerable portion of these plastics is used for packaging (such as drinking bottles), but only ~14% is collected for recycling (1). Most plastics degrade extremely slowly, thus constituting a major environmental hazard (2), especially in the oceans, where microplastics are a matter of major concern (3). One potential solution for this problem is the synthesis of degradable plasti
  
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• [Letter] Streamlining China's protected areas

  10-03-2016 21:12
  Authors: Junsheng Li, Wei Wang, Jan Christoph Axmacher, Yuanyuan Zhang, Yanpeng Zhu
  
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