Science news

• Yahoo took 18 months to launch probe after breach detected

  10-11-2016 23:50 via cbc.ca
  
  Yahoo detected evidence that a hacker had broken into its computer network at least 18 months before launching an investigation that discovered personal information had been stolen from about 500 million user accounts.
  
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• Say hola to La Niña

  10-11-2016 23:34
  
  La Niña, El Niño’s meteorological sister, has officially taken over and could alter weather patterns throughout the world this winter.
  
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• [Working Life] The problem with ‘alternative’

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Maryam Zaringhalam
  
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• [This Week in Science] Why we are losing sea ice

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: H. Jesse Smith
  
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• [This Week in Science] Watching as helium goes topsy-turvy

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Jake Yeston
  
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• [This Week in Science] RNAi soothes the path to quiescence

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Guy Riddihough
  
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• [This Week in Science] Resolving a ticklish problem

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Peter Stern
  
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• [This Week in Science] Lifelong protection against severe influenza

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Caroline Ash
  
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• [This Week in Science] Identifying genes under recent selection

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Laura M. Zahn
  
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• [This Week in Science] Global spread of aggressive mycobacteria

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Caroline Ash
  
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• [This Week in Science] CRISPR screens illuminate enhancer function

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Laura M. Zahn
  
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• [This Week in Science] Coordinated scission of N–H or O–H bonds

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Jake Yeston
  
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• [This Week in Science] British squirrels infected with leprosy

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Caroline Ash
  
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• [This Week in Science] Biological inspiration for reduction

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Nicholas S. Wigginton
  
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• [This Week in Science] AIMing to block tissue damage

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Kristen L. Mueller
  
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• [This Week in Science] Aggregation by design

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Valda Vinson
  
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• [This Week in Science] Accumulating impacts

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Sacha Vignieri
  
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• [This Week in Science] A new paradigm for IP3 signaling

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Nancy R. Gough
  
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• [This Week in Science] A look at early multiple sclerosis

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Katrina L. Kelner
  
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• [This Week in Science] A cool route to nanospectroscopy

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Ian S. Osborne
  
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• [Review] The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Most ecological processes now show responses to anthropogenic climate change. In terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, species are changing genetically, physiologically, morphologically, and phenologically and are shifting their distributions, which affects food webs and results in new interactions. Disruptions scale from the gene to the ecosystem and have documented consequences for people, including unpredictable fisheries and crop yields, loss of genetic diversity in wild crop varie
  
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• [Research Article] RNA interference is essential for cellular quiescence

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Quiescent cells play a predominant role in most organisms. Here we identify RNA interference (RNAi) as a major requirement for quiescence (G0 phase of the cell cycle) in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. RNAi mutants lose viability at G0 entry and are unable to maintain long-term quiescence. We identified suppressors of G0 defects in cells lacking Dicer (dcr1Δ), which mapped to genes involved in chromosome segregation, RNA polymerase–associated factors, and heterochromatin formation. We propose a mo
  
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• [Research Article] Potent protection against H5N1 and H7N9 influenza via childhood hemagglutinin imprinting

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Two zoonotic influenza A viruses (IAV) of global concern, H5N1 and H7N9, exhibit unexplained differences in age distribution of human cases. Using data from all known human cases of these viruses, we show that an individual’s first IAV infection confers lifelong protection against severe disease from novel hemagglutinin (HA) subtypes in the same phylogenetic group. Statistical modeling shows that protective HA imprinting is the crucial explanatory factor, and it provides 75% protection against
  
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• [Research Article] De novo design of a biologically active amyloid

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Most human proteins possess amyloidogenic segments, but only about 30 are associated with amyloid-associated pathologies, and it remains unclear what determines amyloid toxicity. We designed vascin, a synthetic amyloid peptide, based on an amyloidogenic fragment of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2), a protein that is not associated to amyloidosis. Vascin recapitulates key biophysical and biochemical characteristics of natural amyloids, penetrates cells, and seeds the aggrega
  
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• [Report] The DNA-sensing AIM2 inflammasome controls radiation-induced cell death and tissue injury

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Acute exposure to ionizing radiation induces massive cell death and severe damage to tissues containing actively proliferating cells, including bone marrow and the gastrointestinal tract. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this pathology remain controversial. Here, we show that mice deficient in the double-stranded DNA sensor AIM2 are protected from both subtotal body irradiation–induced gastrointestinal syndrome and total body irradiation–induced hematopoietic failure
  
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• [Report] Systematic mapping of functional enhancer–promoter connections with CRISPR interference

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Gene expression in mammals is regulated by noncoding elements that can affect physiology and disease, yet the functions and target genes of most noncoding elements remain unknown. We present a high-throughput approach that uses clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) interference (CRISPRi) to discover regulatory elements and identify their target genes. We assess >1 megabase of sequence in the vicinity of two essential transcription factors, MYC and GATA1, and ident
  
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• [Report] Single-molecule optomechanics in “picocavities”

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Trapping light with noble metal nanostructures overcomes the diffraction limit and can confine light to volumes typically on the order of 30 cubic nanometers. We found that individual atomic features inside the gap of a plasmonic nanoassembly can localize light to volumes well below 1 cubic nanometer (“picocavities”), enabling optical experiments on the atomic scale. These atomic features are dynamically formed and disassembled by laser irradiation. Although unstable at room temperature, pic
  
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• [Report] Red squirrels in the British Isles are infected with leprosy bacilli

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Leprosy, caused by infection with Mycobacterium leprae or the recently discovered Mycobacterium lepromatosis, was once endemic in humans in the British Isles. Red squirrels in Great Britain (Sciurus vulgaris) have increasingly been observed with leprosy-like lesions on the head and limbs. Using genomics, histopathology, and serology, we found M. lepromatosis in squirrels from England, Ireland, and Scotland, and M. leprae in squirrels from Brownsea Island, England. Infection was detected in overt
  
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• [Report] Observing the ultrafast buildup of a Fano resonance in the time domain

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Although the time-dependent buildup of asymmetric Fano line shapes in absorption spectra has been of great theoretical interest in the past decade, experimental verification of the predictions has been elusive. Here, we report the experimental observation of the emergence of a Fano resonance in the prototype system of helium by interrupting the autoionization process of a correlated two-electron excited state with a strong laser field. The tunable temporal gate between excitation and termination
  
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• [Report] Observed Arctic sea-ice loss directly follows anthropogenic CO2 emission

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Arctic sea ice is retreating rapidly, raising prospects of a future ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer. Because climate-model simulations of the sea-ice loss differ substantially, we used a robust linear relationship between monthly-mean September sea-ice area and cumulative carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to infer the future evolution of Arctic summer sea ice directly from the observational record. The observed linear relationship implies a sustained loss of 3 ± 0.3 square meters of September
  
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• [Report] Neural correlates of ticklishness in the rat somatosensory cortex

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Rats emit ultrasonic vocalizations in response to tickling by humans. Tickling is rewarding through dopaminergic mechanisms, but the function and neural correlates of ticklishness are unknown. We confirmed that tickling of rats evoked vocalizations, approach, and unsolicited jumps (Freudensprünge). Recordings in the trunk region of the rat somatosensory cortex showed intense tickling-evoked activity in most neurons, whereas a minority of cells were suppressed by tickling. Tickling responses pre
  
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• [Report] Emergence and spread of a human-transmissible multidrug-resistant nontuberculous mycobacterium

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Lung infections with Mycobacterium abscessus, a species of multidrug-resistant nontuberculous mycobacteria, are emerging as an important global threat to individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF), in whom M. abscessus accelerates inflammatory lung damage, leading to increased morbidity and mortality. Previously, M. abscessus was thought to be independently acquired by susceptible individuals from the environment. However, using whole-genome analysis of a global collection of clinical isolates, we sh
  
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• [Report] Detection of human adaptation during the past 2000 years

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Detection of recent natural selection is a challenging problem in population genetics. Here we introduce the singleton density score (SDS), a method to infer very recent changes in allele frequencies from contemporary genome sequences. Applied to data from the UK10K Project, SDS reflects allele frequency changes in the ancestors of modern Britons during the past ~2000 to 3000 years. We see strong signals of selection at lactase and the major histocompatibility complex, and in favor of blond hair
  
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• [Report] Coordination-induced weakening of ammonia, water, and hydrazine X–H bonds in a molybdenum complex

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Although scores of transition metal complexes incorporating ammonia or water ligands have been characterized over the past century, little is known about how coordination influences the strength of the nitrogen-hydrogen and oxygen-hydrogen bonds. Here we report the synthesis of a molybdenum ammonia complex supported by terpyridine and phosphine ligands that lowers the nitrogen-hydrogen bond dissociation free energy from 99.5 (gas phase) to an experimentally measured value of 45.8 kilocalories pe
  
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• [Report] Attosecond dynamics through a Fano resonance: Monitoring the birth of a photoelectron

  10-11-2016 23:30
  The dynamics of quantum systems are encoded in the amplitude and phase of wave packets. However, the rapidity of electron dynamics on the attosecond scale has precluded the complete characterization of electron wave packets in the time domain. Using spectrally resolved electron interferometry, we were able to measure the amplitude and phase of a photoelectron wave packet created through a Fano autoionizing resonance in helium. In our setup, replicas obtained by two-photon transitions interfere w
  
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• [Report] A bioinspired iron catalyst for nitrate and perchlorate reduction

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Nitrate and perchlorate have considerable use in technology, synthetic materials, and agriculture; as a result, they have become pervasive water pollutants. Industrial strategies to chemically reduce these oxyanions often require the use of harsh conditions, but microorganisms can efficiently reduce them enzymatically. We developed an iron catalyst inspired by the active sites of nitrate reductase and (per)chlorate reductase enzymes. The catalyst features a secondary coordination sphere that aid
  
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• [Policy Forum] Precaution and governance of emerging technologies

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Precautionary approaches to governance of emerging technology call for constraints on the use of technology whose outcomes include potential harms and are characterized by high levels of complexity and uncertainty. Although articulated in a variety of ways, proponents of precaution often argue that its essential feature is to require more evaluation of a technology before it is put to use, which increases the burden of proof that its overall effect is likely to be beneficial. Critics argue that
  
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• [Perspective] Science of the World Wide Web

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Ten years ago, Wikipedia was still in its infancy (and totally dismissed by the establishment), Facebook was still restricted to university users, Twitter was in beta testing, and improving search capabilities was the topic that dominated Web conference research agendas. There were virtually no smartphones, online surveillance of activity and data storage was largely unknown beyond security services, and no one knew that being a data scientist was one day going to be “the sexiest job in the wo
  
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• [Perspective] Making the cut in the dark genome

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Noncoding elements encompass more than 98% of the human genome and have been linked to regulatory sequences that contribute to human health and disease (1). Since the publication of the human genome sequence, considerable effort has been made to annotate functional elements, including noncoding regulatory regions—i.e., cisregulatory regions and noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) that are involved in transcriptional regulation. Transcription factors often associate with hundreds to thousands of binding si
  
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• [Perspective] Leprosy in red squirrels

  10-11-2016 23:30
  In 1873, the Norwegian doctor Armauer Hansen helped to lay the foundations of modern microbiology when he discovered that leprosy was an infectious disease, not an inherited condition. However, his attempts to cultivate the rod-shaped bacilli that he had observed in microscopic studies of tissues from leprosy patients were unsuccessful, emphasizing the unique growth requirements of these bacilli. Even today, Mycobacterium leprae, the causative organism of leprosy, cannot be grown on culture medi
  
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• [Perspective] First flu is forever

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Influenza is a threat that has been with humans throughout history, fueled by a constant race between host immunity and viral evolution. Control strategies rely on annual immunizations and require frequent updates of the vaccine, an expensive, cumbersome, and not always foolproof process. Efforts are therefore under way to develop vaccines that confer broadly cross-protective immunity to diverse influenza strains. Cross-immunity is pervasive in nature; in multistrain viral diseases such as influ
  
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• [Perspective] Deborah S. Jin (1968–2016)

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Deborah S. Jin was a world leader in ultracold gases and a pioneering intellectual in quantum systems consisting of strongly interacting particles. She spent much of her career as a U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicist at JILA (formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics) in Boulder, Colorado, where she undertook a string of challenging experiments, including the creation of the first Fermi gas of atoms and the formation of a condensate of pa
  
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• [Perspective] Ammonia activation at a metal

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Although ammonia (NH3) is made on a vast scale for use in fertilizers, its use as a chemical feedstock or as an energy carrier is much more limited. Many reactions that occur easily with its substitution products (amines) are sluggish for NH3, in part because of the difficulty of activating the N-H bond. For fuel cells, NH3 is attractive because it does not generate greenhouse gases, as do methanol and methane (1), and is more easily stored than hydrogen (H2). Amine-containing organic molecules
  
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• [Letter] The promise of negative emissions—Response

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Authors: Kevin Anderson, Glen Peters
  
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• [Letter] The promise of negative emissions

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Klaus S. Lackner
  
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• [Letter] Keeping creationism out of classrooms

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Author: Glenn Branch
  
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• [In Depth] Study suggests hidden epidemic in CF patients

  10-11-2016 23:30
  Between 5% and 10% of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients become infected with Mycobacterium abscessus, a pathogen that thrives in the excess of thick mucus amassing in the airways of CF patients. Some of them die as a result. Until recently, scientists believed that patients picked up the microbe at random, from the soil or water. But an analysis of hundreds of bacterial genomes from patients around the world, published in this week's issue of Science, suggests that the bacterium has adapted to human
  
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• [In Depth] NSF says: Out with the old telescopes, in with the new

  10-11-2016 23:30
  The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is carrying out an unprecedented yard sale of some older telescopes so that it can save $40 million annually and operate a new generation of observatories. It has already arranged to offload or share costs for five telescopes, saving $12 million a year. But not enough bargain hunters have yet stepped forward to secure a future for two of the agency's most iconic telescopes, the giant radio dishes in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and Green Bank, West Virginia. O
  
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• [In Depth] How the body learns to hurt

  10-11-2016 23:30
  After 50 years, the neuroscience of pain has a new player. In 1966, researchers traced how the brain learns from repeated stimulation. They found that triggering neurons in one part of the hippocampus—a sliver of brain tissue key to memory—can make linked, distant neurons more likely to fire for many hours afterward, a phenomenon now known as long-term potentiation (LTP). LTP leaves its mark by strengthening some connections between synapses–the connections between brain cells—and not ot
  
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• [In Depth] Fusion reactor fuels up with bomb ingredient

  10-11-2016 23:30
  The Z Machine, at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, creates an overwhelming magnetic field using banks of electrical capacitors. The field pinches a cylinder the size of a pencil eraser so fast and furiously that hydrogen atoms inside fuse into helium, releasing energy. But until now, the fuel inside the tiny tube has been limited to deuterium, a hydrogen with one neutron. In a fusion shot in August, Sandia scientists for the first time added a dash of tritium, hydrogen wi
  
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