Science news

• Japanese scientists have created tiny robot bees... like the ones from Black Mirror

  09-02-2017 23:10
  
  The minuscule drones could protect us from disaster if bee numbers keep falling.
  
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• New details of Greenland ice loss revealed

  09-02-2017 22:38
  Less than a year after the first research flight kicked off NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland campaign, data from the new program are providing a dramatic increase in knowledge of how Greenland's ice sheet is melting from below.
  
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• Matters of the heart: Researchers create 3-D beating heart

  09-02-2017 22:38
  Matters of the heart can be complicated, but scientists have now found a way to create 3-D heart tissue that beats in synchronized harmony, like a heart in love, that will lead to better understanding of cardiac health and improved treatments. Researchers have devised a way to stick three different types of cardiac cells together, like Velcro, to make heart tissue that beats as one.
  
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• High-throughput, in vivo validation of candidate congenital heart disease genes

  09-02-2017 22:38
  Specific genetic errors that trigger congenital heart disease in humans can be reproduced reliably in Drosophila melanogaster -- the common fruit fly -- an initial step toward personalized therapies for patients in the future.
  
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• Gas hydrate breakdown unlikely to cause massive greenhouse gas release

  09-02-2017 22:38
  A recent interpretive review of scientific literature sheds light on the interactions of gas hydrates and climate.
  
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• E-Cig Risk: Teens Who Vape More Likely to Start Smoking Tobacco

  09-02-2017 22:23
  
  Teens who "vape" in high school are at increased risk for using tobacco cigarettes in the future, a new study found. The study discovered that teens who use electronic cigarettes, a practice also referred to as vaping, in the 12th grade were four times more likely to start smoking tobacco cigarettes within the next year, compared with teens who didn't vape in the 12th grade. The findings "contribute to the growing body of evidence supporting vaping as a 'one-way bridge' to cigarette smoking amon
  
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• Heavy Lifting at Work Linked to Decreased Fertility in Women

  09-02-2017 22:22
  
  Heavy lifting at work may take a toll on women's fertility, a new study suggests. In the study, which involved women undergoing fertility treatment, lifting or moving heavy things at work was linked with a reduction in biological markers of fertility. "Our study suggests that women who are planning pregnancy should be cognizant of the potential negative impacts that non-day shift and heavy lifting could have on their reproductive health," study co-author Lidia Mínguez-Alarcón, a re
  
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• Male Contraceptive 'Hydrogel' Passes Test in Rhesus Monkeys

  09-02-2017 22:21
  
  A new type of male contraceptive that blocks the flow of sperm effectively prevented pregnancy in female monkeys, a new study finds. The success of the contraceptive procedure in male monkeys means that human men may be up next in clinical trials, the researchers said in a statement.
  
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• Here's Why Pregnant Women Should Avoid Eating Licorice

  09-02-2017 22:20
  
  Children whose mothers ate the most licorice while pregnant had lower IQs than the children whose mothers ate little to no licorice during their pregnancy, according to the study, which was published Feb. 3 in the American Journal of Epidemiology. In addition, girls born to mothers who consumed high amounts of licorice during pregnancy reached puberty earlier than those born to mothers who ate little to no licorice, the researchers found. "The present findings suggest that pregnant women should
  
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• Like or Unlike? Facebook May Harm Health

  09-02-2017 22:19
  
  After a long week, if there's not much on TV, you may spend some time on Facebook. Could this decision hurt your health? Researchers found that "liking" people's posts and clicking links posted by friends was associated with worse reports of mental health, physical health and life satisfaction.
  
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• Winter Snowstorm Battering Northeast US Seen from Space

  09-02-2017 22:07
  
  NEW YORK — As a winter storm blew over the northeastern United States today, a weather-monitoring satellite caught the whole storm on camera from space.
  
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• Scientists use robots, drones to accelerate plant genetic research, improve crop yield

  09-02-2017 22:06
  A team of researchers is developing a robotic system of all-terrain rovers and aerial drones that can quickly and accurately gather and analyze data on the characteristics of crops.
  
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• [Working Life] Coping with class in science

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Curtis D. Holder
  
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• [This Week in Science] What drives divergence?

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Sacha Vignieri
  
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• [This Week in Science] Transitional approach to entanglement

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Jelena Stajic
  
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• [This Week in Science] Targeting proteins at the other sulfur

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Jake Yeston
  
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• [This Week in Science] Superresolution imaging in sharper focus

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Valda Vinson
  
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• [This Week in Science] Starving the pathogen

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Anand Balasubramani
  
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• [This Week in Science] Robustness of protein networks

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Laura M. Zahn
  
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• [This Week in Science] Multifunctional displays

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Ian S. Osborne
  
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• [This Week in Science] Misconceptions about measurement error

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink
  
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• [This Week in Science] Meteorite magnetism in the early solar system

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Keith T. Smith
  
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• [This Week in Science] Machine learning and quantum physics

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Jelena Stajic
  
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• [This Week in Science] Looking back to move forward

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Sacha Vignieri
  
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• [This Week in Science] Limiting potential for totipotency

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Beverly A. Purnell
  
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• [This Week in Science] Intraneuronal control of protein expression

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Stella M. Hurtley
  
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• [This Week in Science] Double trouble for the Deccan Traps

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Brent Grocholski
  
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• [This Week in Science] Chemically guided functional profiling

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Caroline Ash
  
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• [This Week in Science] Change for good

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Stella M. Hurtley
  
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• [This Week in Science] A target for intracranial aneurysms

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Wei Wong
  
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• [This Week in Science] A radical idea for blood pressure control

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Author: Yevgeniya Nusinovich
  
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• [This Week in Science] A protein to trim too-long telomeres

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Authors: Guy Riddihough, Stella M. Hurtley
  
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• [Review] Merging paleobiology with conservation biology to guide the future of terrestrial ecosystems

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Conservation of species and ecosystems is increasingly difficult because anthropogenic impacts are pervasive and accelerating. Under this rapid global change, maximizing conservation success requires a paradigm shift from maintaining ecosystems in idealized past states toward facilitating their adaptive and functional capacities, even as species ebb and flow individually. Developing effective strategies under this new paradigm will require deeper understanding of the long-term dynamics that gove
  
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• [Retrospective] M. G. K. Menon (1928–2016)

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon (MGK or Goku to friends) passed away peacefully on 22 November 2016 at his residence in New Delhi, India. He was 88 years old. Menon made pioneering contributions to particle physics and successfully implemented a grand vision for the scientific and technological growth of India.
  Authors: Badanaval Venkatasubba Sreekantan, Ram Cowsik
  
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• [Research Article] Solving the quantum many-body problem with artificial neural networks

  09-02-2017 21:53
  The challenge posed by the many-body problem in quantum physics originates from the difficulty of describing the nontrivial correlations encoded in the exponential complexity of the many-body wave function. Here we demonstrate that systematic machine learning of the wave function can reduce this complexity to a tractable computational form for some notable cases of physical interest. We introduce a variational representation of quantum states based on artificial neural networks with a variable n
  
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• [Research Article] Redox-based reagents for chemoselective methionine bioconjugation

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Cysteine can be specifically functionalized by a myriad of acid-base conjugation strategies for applications ranging from probing protein function to antibody-drug conjugates and proteomics. In contrast, selective ligation to the other sulfur-containing amino acid, methionine, has been precluded by its intrinsically weaker nucleophilicity. Here, we report a strategy for chemoselective methionine bioconjugation through redox reactivity, using oxaziridine-based reagents to achieve highly selective
  
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• [Research Article] Nanometer resolution imaging and tracking of fluorescent molecules with minimal photon fluxes

  09-02-2017 21:53
  We introduce MINFLUX, a concept for localizing photon emitters in space. By probing the emitter with a local intensity minimum of excitation light, MINFLUX minimizes the fluorescence photons needed for high localization precision. In our experiments, 22 times fewer fluorescence photons are required as compared to popular centroid localization. In superresolution microscopy, MINFLUX attained ~1-nm precision, resolving molecules only 6 nanometers apart. MINFLUX tracking of single fluorescent prote
  
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• [Research Article] Deficiency of microRNA miR-34a expands cell fate potential in pluripotent stem cells

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) efficiently generate all embryonic cell lineages but rarely generate extraembryonic cell types. We found that microRNA miR-34a deficiency expands the developmental potential of mouse pluripotent stem cells, yielding both embryonic and extraembryonic lineages and strongly inducing MuERV-L (MERVL) endogenous retroviruses, similar to what is seen with features of totipotent two-cell blastomeres. miR-34a restricts the acquisition
  
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• [Research Article] A prominent glycyl radical enzyme in human gut microbiomes metabolizes trans-4-hydroxy-l-proline

  09-02-2017 21:53
  The human microbiome encodes vast numbers of uncharacterized enzymes, limiting our functional understanding of this community and its effects on host health and disease. By incorporating information about enzymatic chemistry into quantitative metagenomics, we determined the abundance and distribution of individual members of the glycyl radical enzyme superfamily among the microbiomes of healthy humans. We identified many uncharacterized family members, including a universally distributed enzyme
  
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• [Report] TZAP: A telomere-associated protein involved in telomere length control

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Telomeres are found at the end of chromosomes and are important for chromosome stability. Here we describe a specific telomere-associated protein: TZAP (telomeric zinc finger–associated protein). TZAP binds preferentially to long telomeres that have a low concentration of shelterin complex, competing with the telomeric-repeat binding factors TRF1 and TRF2. When localized at telomeres, TZAP triggers a process known as telomere trimming, which results in the rapid deletion of telomeric repeats.
  
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• [Report] On the deep-mantle origin of the Deccan Traps

  09-02-2017 21:53
  The Deccan Traps in west-central India constitute one of Earth’s largest continental flood basalt provinces, whose eruption played a role in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. The unknown mantle structure under the Indian Ocean at the start of the Cenozoic presents a challenge for connecting the event to a deep mantle origin. We used a back-and-forth iterative method for time-reversed convection modeling, which incorporates tomography-based, present-day mantle heterogeneity to reconstr
  
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• [Report] Lifetime of the solar nebula constrained by meteorite paleomagnetism

  09-02-2017 21:53
  A key stage in planet formation is the evolution of a gaseous and magnetized solar nebula. However, the lifetime of the nebular magnetic field and nebula are poorly constrained. We present paleomagnetic analyses of volcanic angrites demonstrating that they formed in a near-zero magnetic field (<0.6 microtesla) at 4563.5 ± 0.1 million years ago, ~3.8 million years after solar system formation. This indicates that the solar nebula field, and likely the nebular gas, had dispersed by this
  
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• [Report] Gene duplication can impart fragility, not robustness, in the yeast protein interaction network

  09-02-2017 21:53
  The maintenance of duplicated genes is thought to protect cells from genetic perturbations, but the molecular basis of this robustness is largely unknown. By measuring the interaction of yeast proteins with their partners in wild-type cells and in cells lacking a paralog, we found that 22 out of 56 paralog pairs compensate for the lost interactions. An equivalent number of pairs exhibit the opposite behavior and require each other’s presence for maintaining their interactions. These dependent
  
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• [Report] Double-heterojunction nanorod light-responsive LEDs for display applications

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Dual-functioning displays, which can simultaneously transmit and receive information and energy through visible light, would enable enhanced user interfaces and device-to-device interactivity. We demonstrate that double heterojunctions designed into colloidal semiconductor nanorods allow both efficient photocurrent generation through a photovoltaic response and electroluminescence within a single device. These dual-functioning, all-solution-processed double-heterojunction nanorod light-responsiv
  
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• [Report] Deterministic entanglement generation from driving through quantum phase transitions

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Many-body entanglement is often created through the system evolution, aided by nonlinear interactions between the constituting particles. These very dynamics, however, can also lead to fluctuations and degradation of the entanglement if the interactions cannot be controlled. Here, we demonstrate near-deterministic generation of an entangled twin-Fock condensate of ~11,000 atoms by driving a arubidium-87 Bose-Einstein condensate undergoing spin mixing through two consecutive quantum phase transit
  
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• [Report] Decoupled ecomorphological evolution and diversification in Neogene-Quaternary horses

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Evolutionary theory has long proposed a connection between trait evolution and diversification rates. In this work, we used phylogenetic methods to evaluate the relationship of lineage-specific speciation rates and the mode of evolution of body size and tooth morphology in the Neogene and Quaternary radiation of horses (7 living and 131 extinct species). We show that diversification pulses are a recurrent feature of equid evolution but that these pulses are not correlated with rapid bursts in ph
  
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• [Report] Activity-dependent spatially localized miRNA maturation in neuronal dendrites

  09-02-2017 21:53
  MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression by binding to target messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and preventing their translation. In general, the number of potential mRNA targets in a cell is much greater than the miRNA copy number, complicating high-fidelity miRNA-target interactions. We developed an inducible fluorescent probe to explore whether the maturation of a miRNA could be regulated in space and time in neurons. A precursor miRNA (pre-miRNA) probe exhibited an activity-dependent increase in flu
  
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• [Report] A switch from canonical to noncanonical autophagy shapes B cell responses

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Autophagy is important in a variety of cellular and pathophysiological situations; however, its role in immune responses remains elusive. Here, we show that among B cells, germinal center (GC) cells exhibited the highest rate of autophagy during viral infection. In contrast to mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1–dependent canonical autophagy, GC B cell autophagy occurred predominantly through a noncanonical pathway. B cell stimulation was sufficient to down-regulate canonical autophagy t
  
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• [Policy Forum] Science advice in the Trump White House

  09-02-2017 21:53
  As President Trump takes office, he has the enormous undertaking of making thousands of political appointments across the federal government, including nearly 800 nominations requiring Senate confirmation. Among his top priorities should be to nominate a science adviser and to staff the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the single agency in the government responsible for the health of the entire federal science and technology (S&T) portfolio. OSTP is the sole voice in the White
  
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• [Perspective] TZAP or not to zap telomeres

  09-02-2017 21:53
  Telomeres play vital roles in genome stability, protecting chromosome ends from degradation and rearrangements. Telomere erosion with aging occurs in most human somatic cells. This limits cellular life span and suppresses uncontrolled proliferation of premalignant cells. On the other hand, short telomeres may prevent continued tissue renewal and contribute to organismal aging. Therefore, maintaining an optimal telomere length is crucial for long-term survival. On page 638 of this issue, Li et al
  
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