Science news

• [This Week in Science] Uranium in the deep sea

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: H. Jesse Smith
  
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• [This Week in Science] Taking the pulse of optimization

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Ian S. Osborne
  
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• [This Week in Science] Soil microbes yield insecticidal peptide

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Pamela J. Hines
  
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• [This Week in Science] Rejuvenating viral vectors

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author:AC
  
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• [This Week in Science] Radicals push proteins beyond genes

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Nicholas S. Wigginton
  
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• [This Week in Science] Keeping hearts and blood vessels young

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Wei Wong
  
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• [This Week in Science] Exotic molecule tests fundamental symmetry

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Jelena Stajic
  
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• [This Week in Science] Complex transcription factor interactions

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Laura M. Zahn
  
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• [This Week in Science] Can Europe's migratory birds be saved?

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink
  
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• [This Week in Science] Assessing smoke damage in cancer genomes

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Paula A. Kiberstis
  
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• [Special Issue Review] Pain regulation by non-neuronal cells and inflammation

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Acute pain is protective and a cardinal feature of inflammation. Chronic pain after arthritis, nerve injury, cancer, and chemotherapy is associated with chronic neuroinflammation, a local inflammation in the peripheral or central nervous system. Accumulating evidence suggests that non-neuronal cells such as immune cells, glial cells, keratinocytes, cancer cells, and stem cells play active roles in the pathogenesis and resolution of pain. We review how non-neuronal cells interact with nociceptive
  
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• [Special Issue Review] Neural circuits for pain: Recent advances and current views

  03-11-2016 23:20
  The mammalian nervous system encodes many different forms of pain, from those that arise as a result of short-term low-grade interactions with noxious thermal, chemical, or mechanical sources to more serious forms of pain induced by trauma and disease. In this Review, we highlight recent advances in our understanding of the neural circuits that encode these types of pain. Promising therapeutic strategies based on recent advances are also highlighted.
  Authors: Cedric Peirs, Rebecca P. Seal
  
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• [Special Issue Review] Exploring pain pathophysiology in patients

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Although animal models of pain have brought invaluable information on basic processes underlying pain pathophysiology, translation to humans is a problem. This Review will summarize what information has been gained by the direct study of patients with chronic pain. The techniques discussed range from patient phenotyping using quantitative sensory testing to specialized nociceptor neurophysiology, imaging methods of peripheral nociceptors, analyses of body fluids, genetics and epigenetics, and th
  
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• [Special Issue Review] Deconstructing the sensation of pain: The influence of cognitive processes on pain perception

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Phenomena such as placebo analgesia or pain relief through distraction highlight the powerful influence cognitive processes and learning mechanisms have on the way we perceive pain. Although contemporary models of pain acknowledge that pain is not a direct readout of nociceptive input, the neuronal processes underlying cognitive modulation are not yet fully understood. Modern concepts of perception—which include computational modeling to quantify the influence of cognitive processes—suggest
  
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• [Research Article] A transcription factor hierarchy defines an environmental stress response network

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Environmental stresses are universally encountered by microbes, plants, and animals. Yet systematic studies of stress-responsive transcription factor (TF) networks in multicellular organisms have been limited. The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) influences the expression of thousands of genes, allowing us to characterize complex stress-responsive regulatory networks. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing, we identified genome-wide targets of 21 ABA-related TFs to construct a comprehens
  
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• [Report] Ocean mixing and ice-sheet control of seawater 234U/238U during the last deglaciation

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Seawater 234U/238U provides global-scale information about continental weathering and is vital for marine uranium-series geochronology. Existing evidence supports an increase in 234U/238U since the last glacial period, but the timing and amplitude of its variability has been poorly constrained. Here we report two seawater 234U/238U records based on well-preserved deep-sea corals from the low-latitude Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Atlantic 234U/238U started to increase before major sea-level r
  
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• [Report] Mutational signatures associated with tobacco smoking in human cancer

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Tobacco smoking increases the risk of at least 17 classes of human cancer. We analyzed somatic mutations and DNA methylation in 5243 cancers of types for which tobacco smoking confers an elevated risk. Smoking is associated with increased mutation burdens of multiple distinct mutational signatures, which contribute to different extents in different cancers. One of these signatures, mainly found in cancers derived from tissues directly exposed to tobacco smoke, is attributable to misreplication o
  
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• [Report] Injury-induced ctgfa directs glial bridging and spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Unlike mammals, zebrafish efficiently regenerate functional nervous system tissue after major spinal cord injury. Whereas glial scarring presents a roadblock for mammalian spinal cord repair, glial cells in zebrafish form a bridge across severed spinal cord tissue and facilitate regeneration. We performed a genome-wide profiling screen for secreted factors that are up-regulated during zebrafish spinal cord regeneration. We found that connective tissue growth factor a (ctgfa) is induced in and ar
  
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• [Report] Buffer-gas cooling of antiprotonic helium to 1.5 to 1.7 K, and antiproton-to–electron mass ratio

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Charge, parity, and time reversal (CPT) symmetry implies that a particle and its antiparticle have the same mass. The antiproton-to-electron mass ratio Mp¯/me can be precisely determined from the single-photon transition frequencies of antiprotonic helium. We measured 13 such frequencies with laser spectroscopy to a fractional precision of 2.5 × 10−9 to 16 × 10−9. About 2 × 109 antiprotonic helium atoms were cooled to temperatures between 1.5 and 1.7 kelvin by using buffer-gas cooling in
  
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• [Report] A selective insecticidal protein from Pseudomonas for controlling corn rootworms

  03-11-2016 23:20
  The coleopteran insect western corn rootworm (WCR) (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte) is a devastating crop pest in North America and Europe. Although crop plants that produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) proteins can limit insect infestation, some insect populations have evolved resistance to Bt proteins. Here we describe an insecticidal protein, designated IPD072Aa, that is isolated from Pseudomonas chlororaphis. Transgenic corn plants expressing IPD072Aa show protection from WCR insect i
  
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• [Report] A fully programmable 100-spin coherent Ising machine with all-to-all connections

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Unconventional, special-purpose machines may aid in accelerating the solution of some of the hardest problems in computing, such as large-scale combinatorial optimizations, by exploiting different operating mechanisms than those of standard digital computers. We present a scalable optical processor with electronic feedback that can be realized at large scale with room-temperature technology. Our prototype machine is able to find exact solutions of, or sample good approximate solutions to, a vari
  
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• [Report] A coherent Ising machine for 2000-node optimization problems

  03-11-2016 23:20
  The analysis and optimization of complex systems can be reduced to mathematical problems collectively known as combinatorial optimization. Many such problems can be mapped onto ground-state search problems of the Ising model, and various artificial spin systems are now emerging as promising approaches. However, physical Ising machines have suffered from limited numbers of spin-spin couplings because of implementations based on localized spins, resulting in severe scalability problems. We report
  
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• [Policy Forum] Water strategies for the next administration

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Issues around fresh water are not particularly high on the U.S. political agenda. They should be. Water problems directly threaten food production, fisheries, energy generation, foreign policy, public health, and international security. Access to safe, sufficient, and affordable water is vital to well-being and to the economy. Yet U.S. water systems, once the envy of the world, are falling into disrepair, and new threats loom. Drinking water disasters in Flint, Michigan, droughts and floods incr
  
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• [Letter] Time for responsible peatland agriculture

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Authors: Lahiru S. Wijedasa, Susan E. Page, Christopher D. Evans, Mitsuru Osaki
  
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• [Letter] Protecting China's soil by law

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Authors: Jinnan Wang, Qing Hu, Xiahui Wang, Xiaoliang Li, Xiao Jin Yang
  
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• [Letter] Oil extraction imperils Africa's Great Lakes

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Erik Verheyen
  
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• [Essay] Parsing reward from aversion

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Starting from the moment we hear our alarms in the morning, our emotions guide the thousands of decisions we make every day. More specifically, it is the valence of our emotions that determines our subsequent behavior. Valence is a concept that was originally defined in psychology and corresponds to the value we assign to the perceptions of our external and internal environments (1). Valence varies from negative, when we are afraid or anxious, to positive, when we are happy or peaceful. In the c
  
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• [Essay] One brain, many genomes

  03-11-2016 23:20
  We each begin life as a single cell harboring a single genome, which—over the course of development—gives rise to the trillions of cells that make up the body. From skin cells to heart cells to neurons of the brain, each bears a copy of the original cell's genome. But as anyone who has used a copy machine or played the childhood game of “telephone” knows, copies are never perfect. Every cell in an individual actually has a unique genome, an imperfect copy of its cellular ancestor differe
  
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• [Essay] Building connections

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Much of a child's first year is spent asleep, punctuated by the occasional feeding, fit, or flatulence. The serenity is only skin deep, as a flurry of action goes on beneath. The brain is building itself at a frantic pace during this year, forming millions of synapses per second. Remarkably, speed does not incur a cost in precision—children reach their first birthday with specific, largely mature patterns of connectivity already formed, ready to become terrible at 2. How the brain manages this
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Worms remodel immune responsiveness

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Caroline Ash
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Sourcing hydrogen directly from wax

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Jake Yeston
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Layered haircut underlies hearing

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Pamela J. Hines
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Cognition, behavior, and the globus pallidus

  03-11-2016 23:20
  Author: Peter Stern
  
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• [Book Review] Priceless

  03-11-2016 23:20
  In Virtual Competition, law professors Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke begin with a scary premise: What if computers could collude? How would we even know it was happening, and what could we do about it?
  Author: Barry Nalebuff
  
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• [Book Review] Against all odds

  03-11-2016 23:20
  In A Most Improbable Journey, Walter Alvarez tells the story of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity using the interdisciplinary approach of Big History, which combines traditional historical scholarship with scientific insights. He aims to instill in his readers a sense of wonder that, despite enormous odds, there exists a planet (Earth) supremely suited for life. At the same time, Alvarez seeks to cultivate an expanded view of the nature of history, replete with contingency and consequent imp
  
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• [This Week in Science] TYK2's balancing act

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Author: Orla M. Smith
  
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• [This Week in Science] Spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Author: Pamela J. Hines
  
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• [This Week in Science] Shrinking spectrometers

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Author: Ian S. Osborne
  
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• [This Week in Science] Shaking the lattice uncovers universality

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Author: Jelena Stajic
  
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• [This Week in Science] Scientific impact—that is the Q

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Author: Barbara R. Jasny
  
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• [This Week in Science] A global genetic suppression network

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Author: Laura M. Zahn
  
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• [Research Article] Quantifying the evolution of individual scientific impact

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Despite the frequent use of numerous quantitative indicators to gauge the professional impact of a scientist, little is known about how scientific impact emerges and evolves in time. Here, we quantify the changes in impact and productivity throughout a career in science, finding that impact, as measured by influential publications, is distributed randomly within a scientist’s sequence of publications. This random-impact rule allows us to formulate a stochastic model that uncouples the effects
  
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• [Research Article] Posttranslational mutagenesis: A chemical strategy for exploring protein side-chain diversity

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Posttranslational modification of proteins expands their structural and functional capabilities beyond those directly specified by the genetic code. However, the vast diversity of chemically plausible (including unnatural but functionally relevant) side chains is not readily accessible. We describe C (sp3)–C (sp3) bond-forming reactions on proteins under biocompatible conditions, which exploit unusual carbon free-radical chemistry, and use them to form Cβ–Cγ bonds with altered side chains.
  
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• [Research Article] Exploring genetic suppression interactions on a global scale

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Genetic suppression occurs when the phenotypic defects caused by a mutation in a particular gene are rescued by a mutation in a second gene. To explore the principles of genetic suppression, we examined both literature-curated and unbiased experimental data, involving systematic genetic mapping and whole-genome sequencing, to generate a large-scale suppression network among yeast genes. Most suppression pairs identified novel relationships among functionally related genes, providing new insights
  
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• [Report] Universal space-time scaling symmetry in the dynamics of bosons across a quantum phase transition

  03-11-2016 22:09
  The dynamics of many-body systems spanning condensed matter, cosmology, and beyond are hypothesized to be universal when the systems cross continuous phase transitions. The universal dynamics are expected to satisfy a scaling symmetry of space and time with the crossing rate, inspired by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. We test this symmetry based on Bose condensates in a shaken optical lattice. Shaking the lattice drives condensates across an effectively ferromagnetic quantum phase transition. After
  
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• [Report] Microresonator soliton dual-comb spectroscopy

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Measurement of optical and vibrational spectra with high resolution provides a way to identify chemical species in cluttered environments and is of general importance in many fields. Dual-comb spectroscopy has emerged as a powerful approach for acquiring nearly instantaneous Raman and optical spectra with unprecedented resolution. Spectra are generated directly in the electrical domain, without the need for bulky mechanical spectrometers. We demonstrate a miniature soliton-based dual-comb system
  
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• [Report] A chemical biology route to site-specific authentic protein modifications

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Many essential biological processes are controlled by posttranslational protein modifications. The inability to synthetically attain the diversity enabled by these modifications limits functional studies of many proteins. We designed a three-step approach for installing authentic posttranslational modifications in recombinant proteins. We first use the established O-phosphoserine (Sep) orthogonal translation system to create a Sep-containing recombinant protein. The Sep residue is then dephospho
  
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• [Perspective] Tips for battling billion-dollar beetles

  03-11-2016 22:09
  In the never-ending war on insect pests, the widespread soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is one of the greatest heroes. Insecticidal crystalline (Cry) proteins and vegetative insecticidal proteins (Vips) from Bt are treasured for their effectiveness against some devastating pests and their safety for beneficial insects, wildlife, and people (1). Sprays containing Bt proteins have been used for more than 70 years and remain valuable in organic and conventional agriculture, forestry, and
  
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• [Perspective] Migratory birds under threat

  03-11-2016 22:09
  The populations of migratory bird species that breed in Europe and overwinter in sub-Saharan Africa are declining considerably faster than those of nonmigratory resident species or of migratory species that overwinter in Europe (1). Likely factors are habitat changes due to changes in land use, illegal killing and taking along the northern African coasts, and climate-induced changes in timing of migration and breeding. However, not only European trans-Saharan migrants are declining fast. This ho
  
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• [Perspective] How tobacco smoke changes the (epi)genome

  03-11-2016 22:09
  Worldwide, more than 1 billion people are tobacco smokers. Cigarette smoking drastically increases the risk of lung cancer. However, many other cancer types also occur more frequently in smokers than in nonsmokers, including cancers of the oral cavity, larynx, pharynx, esophagus, liver, cervix, pancreas, bladder, and kidney. Genome sequencing efforts are beginning to provide more sophisticated clues as to the processes at work that are shaping the mutational landscape of tumors. On page 618 of t
  
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