Science news

• Researchers confirm 'lost continent' below Mauritius

  02-02-2017 23:37 via cbc.ca
  
  A layover on a trip to India began a research odyssey that has led scientists to verify the existence of a "lost continent" under the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
  
  Read more

• ESA Selects German Engineer to Join 2009 Astronaut Class, Eight Years Later

  02-02-2017 23:29
  
  A German engineer has been named to the European Space Agency's (ESA) astronaut class — of 2009. Eight years ago, Matthias Maurer finished as one of the 10 finalists for Europe's astronaut corps, but was passed over for the 2009 class. Now, after the six candidates who were chosen have each made one spaceflight and are in line for a second, Maurer has begun his training at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne.
  
  Read more

• Drought-easing California snow heaviest in 22 years

  02-02-2017 23:08
  
  PHILLIPS STATION, Calif. (AP) — Clambering through a snowy meadow with drifts up to the tree branches, California's water managers measured the state's vital Sierra Nevada snowpack Thursday at a drought-busting and welcome 173 percent of average.
  
  Read more

• Cone snails wander in circles, lose focus with boosted CO2

  02-02-2017 23:00
  
  Deadly cone snails wander in circles and become less capable hunters when exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide in seawater.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• New data fuel debate on universe’s expansion rate

  02-02-2017 22:38
  
  Quasar observations add to discrepancy in measurements of the universe’s expansion speed.
  
  Read more

• Scientists to march against Trump's stance on science

  02-02-2017 22:37 via cbc.ca
  
  U.S. scientists will mark Earth Day by marching on Washington in protest at U.S. President Donald Trump's stance on climate change and on science they consider under threat from ideology, organizers said on Thursday.
  
  Read more

• Study helps explain why uranium persists in groundwater at former mining sites

  02-02-2017 22:32
  A recent study helps describe how uranium cycles through the environment at former uranium mining sites and why it can be difficult to remove.
  
  Read more

• Lab specializes in analyzing brittle portion of polar ice cores

  02-02-2017 22:32
  Tiny air bubbles compressed within a polar ice core make some sections brittle to the touch, but one ice core lab knows how to handle this delicate part of the chemical analysis, thus making the dating of the entire ice core possible.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• NASA Probe That Buzzed Pluto Fires Engine for 2019 Flyby of Next Target

  02-02-2017 22:31
  
  NASA's New Horizons spacecraft performed a brief engine burn yesterday (Feb. 1) in preparation for its January 2019 flyby of a small, distant object known as 2014 MU69. "One mile per hour may not sound like much, but over the next 23 months, as we approach MU69, that maneuver will add up to an aim point refinement of almost 6,000 miles [10,000 kilometers]," mission principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. The New Horizons t
  
  Read more

• Particle accelerators: Size matters

  02-02-2017 22:30
  A beam of electrons was first observed to be accelerated with a ‘gradient’ – or energy transfer rate - of 300 MV/m, which is very high for present-day accelerators, in a device rather like a microchip. This was made of silica glass and powered by a commercial laser beam, at the SLAC laboratory in the USA. It opens the way to build a particle accelerator “on a chip” much more cheaply than conventional ones. However, few studies have been done of the all-important qua
  
  Read more

• 'Overly Optimistic'? NASA's 2020 Mars Rover Faces Challenges

  02-02-2017 22:21
  
  An independent review has identified several areas of concern in the development of NASA's next Mars rover, which the space agency aims to launch in July 2020. The technologies required for the 2020 Mars rover mission's sample-collecting system appear to be relatively immature, for example, and five of the robot's seven science instruments feature a "condensed development schedule," said a new report by NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG). These and several other issues may affect Mars 2020
  
  Read more

• Scientists illuminate role of staph toxins in bacterial sepsis

  02-02-2017 22:13
  Staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria are a significant concern for hospitalized infants, children and anyone with implanted medical devices. The bacteria can infect the bloodstream causing sepsis. Severe bacterial sepsis is characterized by an extreme immune response, inflammation, reduced blood flow, clotting, and organ failure. A new study is helping scientists to understand this issue.
  
  Read more

• Peroxide ingestion, promoted by alternative medicine, can be deadly

  02-02-2017 22:13
  High-concentration peroxide, sometimes promoted in alternative medicine circles for cleanses or as a so-called 'natural cure,' can lead to numerous life-threatening ailments and death itself, according to a new report.
  
  Read more

• Observatory releases 2 billion pixel image of stunning region of Milky Way

  02-02-2017 21:26 via cbc.ca
  
  The European Southern Observatory has released one of the largest images it has ever captured showing a rich region in our Milky Way.
  
  Read more

• California at heaviest snowpack in 22 years

  02-02-2017 21:12
  
  PHILLIPS STATION, Calif. (AP) — Sierra Nevada snow drifts are at a drought-busting 173 percent of average, with the most snow recorded since 1995, California water managers said Thursday.
  
  Read more

• [Working Life] A retirement ‘hobby’

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: John H. Borden
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Using global data for election predictions

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Barbara R. Jasny
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Ultrafast studies using liquid cells

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Marc S. Lavine
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] The yeast mitoribosome

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Valda Vinson
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Tethering DNA for packing purposes

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Guy Riddihough
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Synapse remodeling during sleep

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Peter Stern
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Stem cells on a mission

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Yevgeniya Nusinovich
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Sensitive skin for feeling the heat

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Marc S. Lavine
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Protected from atherosclerosis by TFEB

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Wei Wong
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Peroxisome inheritance and differentiation

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Beverly A. Purnell
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Getting a sense of atomically thin materials

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Ian S. Osborne
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] From lofty goals to on-the-ground success

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Expressed preferences among methyl groups

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Jake Yeston
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Engineering HIV immunity

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Angela Colmone
  
  Read more

• [This Week in Science] Activating DNA repair

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Author: Valda Vinson
  
  Read more

• [Special Issue Perspective] Prediction and explanation in social systems

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Historically, social scientists have sought out explanations of human and social phenomena that provide interpretable causal mechanisms, while often ignoring their predictive accuracy. We argue that the increasingly computational nature of social science is beginning to reverse this traditional bias against prediction; however, it has also highlighted three important issues that require resolution. First, current practices for evaluating predictions must be better standardized. Second, theoretic
  
  Read more

• [Special Issue Perspective] Predicting human behavior: The next frontiers

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Machine learning has provided researchers with new tools for understanding human behavior. In this article, we briefly describe some successes in predicting behaviors and describe the challenges over the next few years.
  Authors: V. S. Subrahmanian, Srijan Kumar
  
  Read more

• [Special Issue Perspective] Predicting armed conflict: Time to adjust our expectations?

  02-02-2017 21:06
  This Essay provides an introduction to the general challenges of predicting political violence, particularly compared with predicting other types of events (such as earthquakes). What is possible? What is less realistic? We aim to debunk myths about predicting violence, as well as to illustrate the substantial progress in this field.
  Authors: Lars-Erik Cederman, Nils B. Weidmann
  
  Read more

• [Special Issue Perspective] Data-driven predictions in the science of science

  02-02-2017 21:06
  The desire to predict discoveries—to have some idea, in advance, of what will be discovered, by whom, when, and where—pervades nearly all aspects of modern science, from individual scientists to publishers, from funding agencies to hiring committees. In this Essay, we survey the emerging and interdisciplinary field of the “science of science” and what it teaches us about the predictability of scientific discovery. We then discuss future opportunities for improving predictions derived fro
  
  Read more

• [Special Issue Perspective] Bringing probability judgments into policy debates via forecasting tournaments

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Political debates often suffer from vague-verbiage predictions that make it difficult to assess accuracy and improve policy. A tournament sponsored by the U.S. intelligence community revealed ways in which forecasters can better use probability estimates to make predictions—even for seemingly “unique” events—and showed that tournaments are a useful tool for generating knowledge. Drawing on the literature about the effects of accountability, the authors suggest that tournaments may hold e
  
  Read more

• [Special Issue Perspective] Beyond prediction: Using big data for policy problems

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Machine-learning prediction methods have been extremely productive in applications ranging from medicine to allocating fire and health inspectors in cities. However, there are a number of gaps between making a prediction and making a decision, and underlying assumptions need to be understood in order to optimize data-driven decision-making.
  Author: Susan Athey
  
  Read more

• [Special Issue News] The pulse of the people

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Could online data enhance polling as a forecasting tool, or even replace it? Polling, whether done by phone or door-to-door, is labor intensive and expensive. And response rates have fallen to single digits, leaving pollsters to rely on a thin and biased sample. By contrast, analyzing tweets, for instance, allows researchers to track the political opinions of millions of people directly, second by second, and the data are free. But polling and Twitter analyses both failed to predict the winner o
  
  Read more

• [Retrospective] Vera Cooper Rubin (1928—2016)

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Vera Rubin, who died on 25 December 2016, was a force of nature. More importantly, she was a student of nature. It was her careful study of the motion of stars that convinced astronomers that there was more to galaxies than met the eye. Astronomers say she discovered compelling evidence for “dark matter.” Vera would have said that she was just an observer reporting the data and that it was possible that our understanding of gravity is inadequate or that nature harbors some other anomaly. She
  
  Read more

• [Research Article] Coupling organelle inheritance with mitosis to balance growth and differentiation

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Balancing growth and differentiation is essential to tissue morphogenesis and homeostasis. How imbalances arise in disease states is poorly understood. To address this issue, we identified transcripts differentially expressed in mouse basal epidermal progenitors versus their differentiating progeny and those altered in cancers. We used an in vivo RNA interference screen to unveil candidates that altered the equilibrium between the basal proliferative layer and suprabasal differentiating layers f
  
  Read more

• [Report] Ultrastructural evidence for synaptic scaling across the wake/sleep cycle

  02-02-2017 21:06
  It is assumed that synaptic strengthening and weakening balance throughout learning to avoid runaway potentiation and memory interference. However, energetic and informational considerations suggest that potentiation should occur primarily during wake, when animals learn, and depression should occur during sleep. We measured 6920 synapses in mouse motor and sensory cortices using three-dimensional electron microscopy. The axon-spine interface (ASI) decreased ~18% after sleep compared with wake.
  
  Read more

• [Report] The structure of the yeast mitochondrial ribosome

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Mitochondria have specialized ribosomes (mitoribosomes) dedicated to the expression of the genetic information encoded by their genomes. Here, using electron cryomicroscopy, we have determined the structure of the 75-component yeast mitoribosome to an overall resolution of 3.3 angstroms. The mitoribosomal small subunit has been built de novo and includes 15S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and 34 proteins, including 14 without homologs in the evolutionarily related bacterial ribosome. Yeast-specific rRNA a
  
  Read more

• [Report] Magnetic resonance spectroscopy of an atomically thin material using a single-spin qubit

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Two-dimensional (2D) materials offer a promising platform for exploring condensed matter phenomena and developing technological applications. However, the reduction of material dimensions to the atomic scale poses a challenge for traditional measurement and interfacing techniques that typically couple to macroscopic observables. We demonstrate a method for probing the properties of 2D materials via nanometer-scale nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) spectroscopy using individual atomlike impuriti
  
  Read more

• [Report] Improving election prediction internationally

  02-02-2017 21:06
  This study reports the results of a multiyear program to predict direct executive elections in a variety of countries from globally pooled data. We developed prediction models by means of an election data set covering 86 countries and more than 500 elections, and a separate data set with extensive polling data from 146 election rounds. We also participated in two live forecasting experiments. Our models correctly predicted 80 to 90% of elections in out-of-sample tests. The results suggest that g
  
  Read more

• [Report] Imaging rotational dynamics of nanoparticles in liquid by 4D electron microscopy

  02-02-2017 21:06
  In real time and space, four-dimensional electron microscopy (4D EM) has enabled observation of transient structures and morphologies of inorganic and organic materials. We have extended 4D EM to include liquid cells without the time resolution being limited by the response of the detector. Our approach permits the imaging of the motion and morphological dynamics of a single, same particle on nanometer and ultrashort time scales. As a first application, we studied the rotational dynamics of gold
  
  Read more

• [Report] Homer1a drives homeostatic scaling-down of excitatory synapses during sleep

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Sleep is an essential process that supports learning and memory by acting on synapses through poorly understood molecular mechanisms. Using biochemistry, proteomics, and imaging in mice, we find that during sleep, synapses undergo widespread alterations in composition and signaling, including weakening of synapses through removal and dephosphorylation of synaptic AMPA-type glutamate receptors. These changes are driven by the immediate early gene Homer1a and signaling from group I metabotropic gl
  
  Read more

• [Report] Formation of α-chiral centers by asymmetric β-C(sp3)–H arylation, alkenylation, and alkynylation

  02-02-2017 21:06
  The enzymatic β-C–H hydroxylation of the feedstock chemical isobutyric acid has enabled the asymmetric synthesis of a wide variety of polyketides. The analogous transition metal–catalyzed enantioselective β-C–H functionalization of isobutyric acid–derived substrates should provide a versatile method for constructing useful building blocks with enantioenriched α-chiral centers from this abundant C-4 skeleton. However, the desymmetrization of ubiquitous isopropyl moieties by organometal
  
  Read more

• [Report] DNA-PKcs structure suggests an allosteric mechanism modulating DNA double-strand break repair

  02-02-2017 21:06
  DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (DNA-PKcs) is a central component of nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ), repairing DNA double-strand breaks that would otherwise lead to apoptosis or cancer. We have solved its structure in complex with the C-terminal peptide of Ku80 at 4.3 angstrom resolution using x-ray crystallography. We show that the 4128–amino acid structure comprises three large structural units: the N-terminal unit, the Circular Cradle, and the Head. Conformational differenc
  
  Read more

• [Report] Bacillus subtilis SMC complexes juxtapose chromosome arms as they travel from origin to terminus

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Structural maintenance of chromosomes (SMC) complexes play critical roles in chromosome dynamics in virtually all organisms, but how they function remains poorly understood. In the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, SMC-condensin complexes are topologically loaded at centromeric sites adjacent to the replication origin. Here we provide evidence that these ring-shaped assemblies tether the left and right chromosome arms together while traveling from the origin to the terminus (>2 megabases) at rates
  
  Read more

• [Policy Forum] An ecosystem-based deep-ocean strategy

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Increasing exploration and industrial exploitation of the vast and fragile deep-ocean environment for a wide range of resources (e.g., oil, gas, fisheries, new molecules, and soon, minerals) raises global concerns about potential ecological impacts (1–3). Multiple impacts on deep-sea ecosystems (>200 m below sea level; ∼65% of the Earth's surface is covered by deep ocean) caused by human activities may act synergistically and span extensive areas. Cumulative impacts could eventually
  
  Read more

• [Perspective] Synaptic scaling in sleep

  02-02-2017 21:06
  Sleep appears to be a universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom (1) and lack of sleep leads to severe cognitive disruption (2). Yet, the biological function of sleep is unknown. On pages 507 and 511 of this issue, de Vivo et al. (3) and Diering et al. (4), respectively, provide a peek into the nightlife of synapses, the neural connections in the nervous system. The studies reveal substantial alterations in the structure and molecular machinery of synapses during sleep.
  Authors: László Acsády
  
  Read more

Follow @ScienceUKnews on Twitter!