Science news

• Health Canada proposes ban on pesticide linked to bee deaths

  24-11-2016 23:16 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A controversial pesticide, linked to a decline in insect species, may soon be banned in Canada.
  
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• Why your body's internal clock might need a tune-up

  24-11-2016 23:12 via cbc.ca
  
  In the fight against diabetes and obesity, one important factor may have been overlooked: our molecular clock.
  
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• [Working Life] Family-friendly science

  24-11-2016 23:05
  Author: Amanda Zellmer
  
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• [This Week in Science] Tuning nanoparticle strain

  24-11-2016 23:05
  Author: Phil Szuromi
  
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• [This Week in Science] Bringing carbon-silicon bonds to life

  24-11-2016 23:05
  Author: Nicholas S. Wigginton
  
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• 'We've been deceived': Many clinical trial results are never published

  24-11-2016 23:00 via cbc.ca
  
  A new online tool finds that between 2006 and 2014, 45 per cent of studies registered on the world's leading clinical trials database are missing results — with nine Canadian universities and research hospitals among the top 100 worst offenders.
  
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• This is your brain on fentanyl: How the powerful opioid kills

  24-11-2016 23:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid — a painkiller similar to morphine. But its recreational use is becoming a public health crisis and increasing problem for law enforcement across the country.
  
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• [This Week in Science] Targeting the ligand in hypophosphatemia

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Leslie K. Ferrarelli
  
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• [This Week in Science] Status alters immune function in macaques

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Laura M. Zahn
  
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• [This Week in Science] Protecting memories from stress

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Peter Stern
  
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• [This Week in Science] Open sesame!

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Stella M. Hurtley
  
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• [This Week in Science] Mega-earthquakes go the flat way

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Brent Grocholski
  
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• [This Week in Science] Making perfect atomic arrays

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Jelena Stajic
  
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• [This Week in Science] Increasing viral threats from mosquitoes

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink
  
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• [This Week in Science] For cell reprogramming, context matters

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Paula A. Kiberstis
  
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• [This Week in Science] Digital reconstruction of human development

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Beverly A. Purnell
  
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• [This Week in Science] Better health? Prepare to sweat

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Caitlin Czajka
  
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• [Special Issue Review] Mechanisms linking circadian clocks, sleep, and neurodegeneration

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Disruptions of normal circadian rhythms and sleep cycles are consequences of aging and can profoundly affect health. Accumulating evidence indicates that circadian and sleep disturbances, which have long been considered symptoms of many neurodegenerative conditions, may actually drive pathogenesis early in the course of these diseases. In this Review, we explore potential cellular and molecular mechanisms linking circadian dysfunction and sleep loss to neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on
  
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• [Special Issue Review] Immunity around the clock

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Immunity is a high-cost, high-benefit trait that defends against pathogens and noxious stimuli but whose overactivation can result in immunopathologies and sometimes even death. Because many immune parameters oscillate rhythmically with the time of day, the circadian clock has emerged as an important gatekeeper for reducing immunity-associated costs, which, in turn, enhances organismal fitness. This is mediated by interactions between extrinsic environmental cues and the intrinsic oscillators of
  
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• [Special Issue Review] Circadian time signatures of fitness and disease

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Biological clocks are autonomous anticipatory oscillators that play a critical role in the organization and information processing from genome to whole organisms. Transformative advances into the clock system have opened insight into fundamental mechanisms through which clocks program energy transfer from sunlight into organic matter and potential energy, in addition to cell development and genotoxic stress response. The identification of clocks in nearly every single cell of the body raises que
  
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• [Special Issue Review] Circadian physiology of metabolism

  24-11-2016 21:33
  A majority of mammalian genes exhibit daily fluctuations in expression levels, making circadian expression rhythms the largest known regulatory network in normal physiology. Cell-autonomous circadian clocks interact with daily light-dark and feeding-fasting cycles to generate approximately 24-hour oscillations in the function of thousands of genes. Circadian expression of secreted molecules and signaling components transmits timing information between cells and tissues. Such intra- and intercell
  
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• [Special Issue Perspective] Circadian clocks: Not your grandfather’s clock

  24-11-2016 21:33
  The last 20 years have seen the rapid evolution of our understanding of the molecular genes and networks that enable almost all forms of life to generate 24-hour—or circadian—rhythms. One finding has been particularly exciting: that the molecular circadian clock resides in almost all of the cells of the body and that the clock regulates the timing of many cellular and signaling pathways associated with multiple disease states. Such advances represent a new frontier for medicine: circadian me
  
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• [Special Issue News] The scientific night shift

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Working nights is unavoidable, or at least commonplace, in certain scientific fields. If you want to study bat behavior or stellar nebulae or sleep physiology, you may have to become half-nocturnal yourself, and scientists who sign up for the night shift encounter problems that just don't arise during the day. They tumble down embankments in the pitch black, nod off midexperiment, and grow paranoid in the witching hours. It's a tough gig, and for these and other reasons psychologists and sleep e
  
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• [Research Article] Tissue damage and senescence provide critical signals for cellular reprogramming in vivo

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Reprogramming of differentiated cells into pluripotent cells can occur in vivo, but the mechanisms involved remain to be elucidated. Senescence is a cellular response to damage, characterized by abundant production of cytokines and other secreted factors that, together with the recruitment of inflammatory cells, result in tissue remodeling. Here, we show that in vivo expression of the reprogramming factors OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, and cMYC (OSKM) in mice leads to senescence and reprogramming, both coex
  
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• [Research Article] An interactive three-dimensional digital atlas and quantitative database of human development

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Current knowledge about human development is based on the description of a limited number of embryonic specimens published in original articles and textbooks, often more than 100 years ago. It is exceedingly difficult to verify this knowledge, given the restricted availability of human embryos. We created a three-dimensional digital atlas and database spanning the first 2 months of human development, based on analysis of nearly 15,000 histological sections of the renowned Carnegie Collection of
  
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• [Report] The ATG conjugation systems are important for degradation of the inner autophagosomal membrane

  24-11-2016 21:33
  In macroautophagy, cytoplasmic contents are sequestered into the double-membrane autophagosome, which fuses with the lysosome to become the autolysosome. It has been thought that the autophagy-related (ATG) conjugation systems are required for autophagosome formation. Here, we found that autophagosomal soluble N-ethylmaleimide–sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) syntaxin 17–positive autophagosome-like structures could be generated even in the absence of the ATG conjugation s
  
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• [Report] Social status alters immune regulation and response to infection in macaques

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Social status is one of the strongest predictors of human disease risk and mortality, and it also influences Darwinian fitness in social mammals more generally. To understand the biological basis of these effects, we combined genomics with a social status manipulation in female rhesus macaques to investigate how status alters immune function. We demonstrate causal but largely plastic social status effects on immune cell proportions, cell type–specific gene expression levels, and the gene expre
  
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• [Report] Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress

  24-11-2016 21:33
  More than a decade of research has supported a robust consensus: Acute stress impairs memory retrieval. We aimed to determine whether a highly effective learning technique could strengthen memory against the negative effects of stress. To bolster memory, we used retrieval practice, or the act of taking practice tests. Participants first learned stimuli by either restudying or engaging in retrieval practice. Twenty-four hours later, we induced stress in half of the participants and assessed subse
  
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• [Report] Mega-earthquakes rupture flat megathrusts

  24-11-2016 21:33
  The 2004 Sumatra-Andaman and 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquakes highlighted gaps in our understanding of mega-earthquake rupture processes and the factors controlling their global distribution: A fast convergence rate and young buoyant lithosphere are not required to produce mega-earthquakes. We calculated the curvature along the major subduction zones of the world, showing that mega-earthquakes preferentially rupture flat (low-curvature) interfaces. A simplified analytic model demonstrates that hetero
  
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• [Report] Directed evolution of cytochrome c for carbon–silicon bond formation: Bringing silicon to life

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Enzymes that catalyze carbon–silicon bond formation are unknown in nature, despite the natural abundance of both elements. Such enzymes would expand the catalytic repertoire of biology, enabling living systems to access chemical space previously only open to synthetic chemistry. We have discovered that heme proteins catalyze the formation of organosilicon compounds under physiological conditions via carbene insertion into silicon–hydrogen bonds. The reaction proceeds both in vitro and in viv
  
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• [Report] Direct and continuous strain control of catalysts with tunable battery electrode materials

  24-11-2016 21:33
  We report a method for using battery electrode materials to directly and continuously control the lattice strain of platinum (Pt) catalyst and thus tune its catalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Whereas the common approach of using metal overlayers introduces ligand effects in addition to strain, by electrochemically switching between the charging and discharging status of battery electrodes the change in volume can be precisely controlled to induce either compressive or te
  
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• [Report] Atom-by-atom assembly of defect-free one-dimensional cold atom arrays

  24-11-2016 21:33
  The realization of large-scale fully controllable quantum systems is an exciting frontier in modern physical science. We use atom-by-atom assembly to implement a platform for the deterministic preparation of regular one-dimensional arrays of individually controlled cold atoms. In our approach, a measurement and feedback procedure eliminates the entropy associated with probabilistic trap occupation and results in defect-free arrays of more than 50 atoms in less than 400 milliseconds. The techniqu
  
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• [Report] An atom-by-atom assembler of defect-free arbitrary two-dimensional atomic arrays

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Large arrays of individually controlled atoms trapped in optical tweezers are a very promising platform for quantum engineering applications. However, deterministic loading of the traps is experimentally challenging. We demonstrate the preparation of fully loaded two-dimensional arrays of up to ~50 microtraps, each containing a single atom and arranged in arbitrary geometries. Starting from initially larger, half-filled matrices of randomly loaded traps, we obtain user-defined target arrays at u
  
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• [Policy Forum] Ten policies for pollinators

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Earlier this year, the first global thematic assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) evaluated the state of knowledge about pollinators and pollination (1, 2). It confirmed evidence of large-scale wild pollinator declines in northwest Europe and North America and identified data shortfalls and an urgent need for monitoring elsewhere in the world. With high-level political commitments to support pollinators in the United States
  
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• [Perspective] Teaching nature the unnatural

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Silicon is found in nature in many inorganic forms, some of which are constructed by living organisms. Yet, no known biological molecule contains a carbon–silicon (C–Si) bond, and no biological processes to form C–Si bonds have been identified. On page 1048 of this issue, Kan et al. (1) show that natural as well as reengineered enzymes can promote C–Si bond formation. The resulting chiral compounds mostly consist of one of the two possible stereoisomers (enantiomers).
  Authors: Hendrik F.
  
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• [Perspective] Susan Lindquist (1949–2016)

  24-11-2016 21:33
  On 27 October, Susan Lee Lindquist, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), died of cancer at the age of 67. She was a formidable academic leader, dedicated mentor, beloved friend, and devoted wife and mother who will be deeply missed. Susan was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1949 to parents of Swedish and Italian ancestry. This rich blend of genes and cultures was reflected in her ability to balance the dramatic against the carefully reasoned. She earned a bachelor's degree
  
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• [Perspective] Proinflammatory primates

  24-11-2016 21:33
  If you have the choice, don't be a low-ranking, female rhesus monkey. As with many primates, rhesus social groups feature stable, linear dominance hierarchies. Those at the bottom work harder for their calories, have less access to social support (e.g., grooming), and are more subject to displacement aggression from a dominant individual (1). Not surprisingly, primate social subordination can produce adverse health outcomes. Depending on the species, gender, and setting, this includes elevated c
  
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• [Perspective] Mosquitoes on the move

  24-11-2016 21:33
  The mosquito Aedes aegypti rose to global attention around 1900 when it was shown to be the vector of yellow fever, a viral disease that was ravaging the New World. After World War II, a partly successful program was mounted to eliminate this invader from the New World through the use of DDT. By the late 1960s, however, the urgency for eliminating Ae. aegypti receded after the widespread use of an effective yellow fever vaccine. Eradication efforts were suspended, and the mosquito reestablished
  
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• [Perspective] Closing the loop

  24-11-2016 21:33
  In 1963, the term autophagy was coined by Christian de Duve (Nobel Laureate, 1974) to denote the degradation of cellular self-constituents by the lysosome (1). In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for “his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy” (2). Such discoveries led to the unveiling of autophagy as an evolutionarily conserved pathway that functions in differentiation and development, physiology, and protection against aging and many disease
  
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• [Introduction to Special Issue] On the clock

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Our bodies' internal timepieces drive daily rhythms and influence health
  Authors: L. Bryan Ray, John Travis
  
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• [In Depth] Rogue protein's partners offer hope in Parkinson's disease

  24-11-2016 21:33
  It has been 8 years since an astonishing observation persuaded many scientists that the misfolded protein implicated in Parkinson's disease spreads from brain cell to brain cell, like an infection. Last week, findings presented at the huge annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience further buttressed the theory that spread of the rogue protein, called α-synuclein, is responsible for the progressive disease, which is marked by tremor, stiff movements, depression, and, ultimately, dementia. S
  
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• [In Depth] Republicans ready a regulatory rollback

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Get ready for a regulatory reckoning. President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-dominated Congress are poised to erase scores of science-rooted regulations and directives issued by President Barack Obama and his administration. Likely targets include rules and executive orders that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, require agencies to consider climate change as they make policy, protect sensitive environments from energy development, and improve public health. Many will take time to u
  
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• [In Depth] Graveyard of cold slabs mapped in Earth's mantle

  24-11-2016 21:33
  The x-ray of Earth's interior is coming into focus. In December, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California, a team of Dutch scientists will announce a catalog of 100 tectonic plates that have descended into the mantle, with information about their age, size, and related surface rock records, based on their own imaging and other studies. This "atlas of the underworld" is part of a movement by geoscientists to rewind the clock on ocean crust lost to subd
  
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• [In Depth] Gas changes signal eruptions

  24-11-2016 21:33
  By monitoring gases emitted from the mouths of volcanoes, scientists could provide days to weeks of warning before an eruption. The latest evidence comes from studies of volcanoes monitored as part of the Volcano Deep Earth Carbon Degassing initiative, where scientists used hardy, long-lived sensors to measure the ratio of carbon to sulfur gases emitted before eruptions. In principle, a jump in the ratio can signal when a fresh injection of magma is rising from deep in the crust—a prelude to a
  
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• [In Depth] Catching ancient maize domestication in the act

  24-11-2016 21:33
  In a dramatic example of the power of domestication, beginning some 9000 years ago people in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest transformed the unappetizing grass called teosinte into the many-kerneled maize that today feeds hundreds of millions around the world. Researchers had already identified a handful of genes involved in this transformation. Now, studies of ancient DNA by two independent research groups show what was happening to the plant's genes middomestication, about 5000 years ago. The sn
  
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• [Feature] The wanderers

  24-11-2016 21:33
  The famous site of Dmanisi, Georgia, offers an unparalleled glimpse into a harsh early chapter in human evolution, when primitive members of our genus Homo struggled to survive in a new land far north of their ancestors' African home, braving winters without clothes or fire and competing with fierce carnivores for meat. The 4-hectare site has yielded beautifully preserved fossils that are the oldest hominins known outside of Africa, including five skulls, about 50 skeletal bones, and an as-yet-u
  
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• [Editors' Choice] THz-driven magnetism goes nonlinear

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Jelena Stajic
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Fast action with little effect

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Keith T. Smith
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Continuing the dialog via experiment

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Gilbert Chin
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Cardiac side effect

  24-11-2016 21:33
  Author: Lisa D. Chong
  
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