Science news

• Certain birth defects are on the rise since Zika arrived in the U.S.

  02-03-2017 23:36
  
  The rate of certain birth defects is much higher in babies born to Zika-infected mothers in the United States, the CDC reports.
  
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• Ancient human tree cultivation shaped Amazon landscape

  02-03-2017 23:32
  
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ancient indigenous peoples had a far more profound impact on the composition of the vast Amazon rainforest than previously known, according to a study showing how tree species domesticated by humans long ago still dominate big swathes of the wilderness.
  
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• Computer program wins at no-limit Texas Hold 'Em by trusting its gut

  02-03-2017 22:17 via cbc.ca
  
  A computer program has learned to win at one of the most complex poker games by copying a very human impulse — trusting its gut.
  
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• [Working Life] Sailing through uncertainty

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Kyle Frischkorn
  
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• [This Week in Science] Widespread resistance, localized relief

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Pamela J. Hines
  
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• [This Week in Science] Turning up the mantle temperature

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Brent Grocholski
  
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• [This Week in Science] Turning colloidal gold into clathrates

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Phil Szuromi
  
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• [This Week in Science] Pulling apart protein unfolding

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Valda Vinson
  
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• [This Week in Science] Protecting the heart from bad stress

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Wei Wong
  
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• [This Week in Science] Past human influences on Amazonian forest

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Andrew M. Sugden
  
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• [This Week in Science] Navigating regulated cell excitation

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Valda Vinson
  
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• [This Week in Science] Nanowarming improves cryopreservation

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Caitlin Czajka
  
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• [This Week in Science] Morphological mosaics in early Asian humans

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Andrew M. Sugden
  
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• [This Week in Science] Layer-specific interneuron activity

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Peter Stern
  
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• [This Week in Science] Indirect military alliances reduce war

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Aaron Clauset
  
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• [This Week in Science] How new species evolve

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink
  
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• [This Week in Science] Climate-driven selection

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Sacha Vignieri
  
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• [This Week in Science] Boron choreographs a double reaction

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Jake Yeston
  
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• [This Week in Science] An on-chip microwave source

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Ian S. Osborne
  
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• [This Week in Science] A reliable and efficient DNA storage architecture

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Laura M. Zahn
  
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• [This Week in Science] A pain killer without side effects

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Peter Stern
  
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• [This Week in Science] A framework for molecular assembly

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Author: Phil Szuromi
  
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• [Review] The atom, the molecule, and the covalent organic framework

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Just over a century ago, Lewis published his seminal work on what became known as the covalent bond, which has since occupied a central role in the theory of making organic molecules. With the advent of covalent organic frameworks (COFs), the chemistry of the covalent bond was extended to two- and three-dimensional frameworks. Here, organic molecules are linked by covalent bonds to yield crystalline, porous COFs from light elements (boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and silicon) that are characte
  
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• [Retrospective] Peter C. Nowell (1928–2016)

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Peter C. Nowell, a cancer researcher whose contributions to the field of tumor biology formed the basis of much of today's precision medicine, died in the early hours of 26 December 2016. He was 88 years old. With his passing, the scientific community lost a gifted scholar, a dedicated teacher and mentor, a true gentleman, and a good friend.
  Authors: Mark I. Greene, Jonni S. Moore
  
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• [Research Article] Structure of a eukaryotic voltage-gated sodium channel at near-atomic resolution

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Voltage-gated sodium (Nav) channels are responsible for the initiation and propagation of action potentials. They are associated with a variety of channelopathies and are targeted by multiple pharmaceutical drugs and natural toxins. Here, we report the cryogenic electron microscopy structure of a putative Nav channel from American cockroach (designated NavPaS) at 3.8 angstrom resolution. The voltage-sensing domains (VSDs) of the four repeats exhibit distinct conformations. The entrance to the as
  
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• [Research Article] Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition

  02-03-2017 21:53
  The extent to which pre-Columbian societies altered Amazonian landscapes is hotly debated. We performed a basin-wide analysis of pre-Columbian impacts on Amazonian forests by overlaying known archaeological sites in Amazonia with the distributions and abundances of 85 woody species domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples. Domesticated species are five times more likely than nondomesticated species to be hyperdominant. Across the basin, the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species in
  
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• [Report] Radical-polar crossover reactions of vinylboron ate complexes

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Vinyl boronic esters are valuable substrates for Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reactions. However, boron-substituted alkenes have drawn little attention as radical acceptors, and the radical chemistry of vinylboron ate complexes is underexplored. We show here that carbon radicals add efficiently to vinylboron ate complexes and that their adduct radical anions undergo radical-polar crossover: A 1,2-alkyl/aryl shift from boron to the α-carbon sp2 center provides secondary or tertiary alkyl boroni
  
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• [Report] Precipitation drives global variation in natural selection

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Climate change has the potential to affect the ecology and evolution of every species on Earth. Although the ecological consequences of climate change are increasingly well documented, the effects of climate on the key evolutionary process driving adaptation—natural selection—are largely unknown. We report that aspects of precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, along with the North Atlantic Oscillation, predicted variation in selection across plant and animal populations throughout m
  
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• [Report] Layer-specific modulation of neocortical dendritic inhibition during active wakefulness

  02-03-2017 21:53
  γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic inputs are strategically positioned to gate synaptic integration along the dendritic arbor of pyramidal cells. However, their spatiotemporal dynamics during behavior are poorly understood. Using an optical-tagging electrophysiological approach to record and label somatostatin-expressing (Sst) interneurons (GABAergic neurons specialized for dendritic inhibition), we discovered a layer-specific modulation of their activity in behaving mice. Sst interneuron subtypes
  
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• [Report] Late Pleistocene archaic human crania from Xuchang, China

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Two early Late Pleistocene (~105,000- to 125,000-year-old) crania from Lingjing, Xuchang, China, exhibit a morphological mosaic with differences from and similarities to their western contemporaries. They share pan–Old World trends in encephalization and in supraorbital, neurocranial vault, and nuchal gracilization. They reflect eastern Eurasian ancestry in having low, sagittally flat, and inferiorly broad neurocrania. They share occipital (suprainiac and nuchal torus) and temporal labyrinthin
  
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• [Report] Hidden dynamics in the unfolding of individual bacteriorhodopsin proteins

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Protein folding occurs as a set of transitions between structural states within an energy landscape. An oversimplified view of the folding process emerges when transiently populated states are undetected because of limited instrumental resolution. Using force spectroscopy optimized for 1-microsecond resolution, we reexamined the unfolding of individual bacteriorhodopsin molecules in native lipid bilayers. The experimental data reveal the unfolding pathway in unprecedented detail. Numerous newly
  
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• [Report] Experimental constraints on the damp peridotite solidus and oceanic mantle potential temperature

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Decompression of hot mantle rock upwelling beneath oceanic spreading centers causes it to exceed the melting point (solidus), producing magmas that ascend to form basaltic crust ~6 to 7 kilometers thick. The oceanic upper mantle contains ~50 to 200 micrograms per gram of water (H2O) dissolved in nominally anhydrous minerals, which—relative to its low concentration—has a disproportionate effect on the solidus that has not been quantified experimentally. Here, we present results from an experi
  
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• [Report] Epigenetic regulation of antagonistic receptors confers rice blast resistance with yield balance

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Crop breeding aims to balance disease resistance with yield; however, single resistance (R) genes can lead to resistance breakdown, and R gene pyramiding may affect growth fitness. Here we report that the rice Pigm locus contains a cluster of genes encoding nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) receptors that confer durable resistance to the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae without yield penalty. Among these NLR receptors, PigmR confers broad-spectrum resistance, whereas PigmS competitively atte
  
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• [Report] DNA Fountain enables a robust and efficient storage architecture

  02-03-2017 21:53
  DNA is an attractive medium to store digital information. Here we report a storage strategy, called DNA Fountain, that is highly robust and approaches the information capacity per nucleotide. Using our approach, we stored a full computer operating system, movie, and other files with a total of 2.14 × 106 bytes in DNA oligonucleotides and perfectly retrieved the information from a sequencing coverage equivalent to a single tile of Illumina sequencing. We also tested a process that can allow 2.18
  
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• [Report] Demonstration of an ac Josephson junction laser

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Superconducting electronic devices have reemerged as contenders for both classical and quantum computing due to their fast operation speeds, low dissipation, and long coherence times. An ultimate demonstration of coherence is lasing. We use one of the fundamental aspects of superconductivity, the ac Josephson effect, to demonstrate a laser made from a Josephson junction strongly coupled to a multimode superconducting cavity. A dc voltage bias applied across the junction provides a source of micr
  
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• [Report] Clathrate colloidal crystals

  02-03-2017 21:53
  DNA-programmable assembly has been used to deliberately synthesize hundreds of different colloidal crystals spanning dozens of symmetries, but the complexity of the achieved structures has so far been limited to small unit cells. We assembled DNA-modified triangular bipyramids (~250-nanometer long edge, 177-nanometer short edge) into clathrate architectures. Electron microscopy images revealed that at least three different structures form as large single-domain architectures or as multidomain ma
  
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• [Report] A nontoxic pain killer designed by modeling of pathological receptor conformations

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Indiscriminate activation of opioid receptors provides pain relief but also severe central and intestinal side effects. We hypothesized that exploiting pathological (rather than physiological) conformation dynamics of opioid receptor-ligand interactions might yield ligands without adverse actions. By computer simulations at low pH, a hallmark of injured tissue, we designed an agonist that, because of its low acid dissociation constant, selectively activates peripheral μ-opioid receptors at the
  
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• [Policy Forum] The need for a translational science of democracy

  02-03-2017 21:53
  The bitterly factious 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign was the culmination of several trends that, taken together, constitute a syndrome of chronic ailments in the body politic. Ironically, these destructive trends have accelerated just as science has rapidly improved our understanding of them and their underlying causes. But mere understanding is not sufficient to repair our politics. The challenge is to build a translational science of democracy that maintains scientific rigor while ac
  
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• [Perspective] Watching speciation in action

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Charles Darwin closed his first edition of On the Origin of Species with the poetic words: “There is grandeur in this view of life,…whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved” (1). Today, scientists are using genetics to understand how species multiply, and ecological and behavioral knowledge to understand why they do so. However, many questions re
  
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• [Perspective] Membrane proteins scrambling through a folding landscape

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Single-molecule force spectroscopy (SMFS) (1) measures the extension of a molecule when
  subjected to force. The folding of a protein can be explored by pulling on one
  terminus to unfold it; upon relaxation, it may refold toward its native states
  (2, 3). Transmembrane proteins
  typically unfold stepwise as structural segments (which can consist of parts of
  single or multiple secondary structures) are extracted from the membrane (see
  the figure, top panel) (4). Once extracted, the unfolded segment
  
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• [Perspective] Durable resistance to rice blast

  02-03-2017 21:53
  The blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae (Pyricularia oryzae) destroys rice crops worldwide (see the photo) (1) and now threatens global wheat production as well. Wheat blast disease has been spreading in South America since 1985, and last year it devastated wheat crops in Bangladesh (2, 3). Incorporation of resistance (R) genes into rice presents an effective, economical, and environmentally sound way to control blast (4). However, it takes years to move an R gene into a rice variety, whereas the hi
  
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• [Perspective] Clathrates grow up

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Although methane is a volatile gas, it can be efficiently trapped in ice, which can then be readily set on fire. Beyond the curiosity of this “burning ice,” caged methane is of great importance as one of the world's largest natural gas resources (1). In these materials, known as clathrates, methane molecules are tightly bound in nanometer-sized, regularly interspaced cages. Other inorganic materials, such as the silica mineral chibaite, can similarly encapsulate methane and higher hydrocarbo
  
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• [Perspective] A measure of mantle melting

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Earth's interior is hot, as is evident from geothermal heat flow, the existence of volcanoes, and the mobility of tectonic plates. But just how hot is it? The temperature increases rapidly with depth through the rigid lithosphere in order to conduct geothermal heat flow, but this cannot continue downward indefinitely without reaching the melting point of rocks. Yet there is no global molten layer below the lithosphere. The propagation of shear waves through the upper mantle shows that it is soli
  
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• [Letter] Protect Iran's ancient forest from logging

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Authors: Jörg Müller, Khosro Sagheb-Talebi, Simon Thorn
  
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• [Letter] Panama's impotent mangrove laws

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Authors: Gustavo A. Castellanos-Galindo, Lotta C. Kluger, Paul Tompkins
  
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• [Letter] Australia needs a wake-up call

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Authors: Nicole Shumway, Martine Maron, James E. M. Watson
  
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• [In Depth] Test blasts simulate a nuclear attack on a port

  02-03-2017 21:53
  At a time when a nuclear bomb smuggled by terrorists is as big a concern as one from a foreign power, delivered by missile or airplane, an attack at a port is likely scenario. But nuclear forensic specialists, who rely largely on nuclear test data collected years ago in western deserts, lack a clear picture of how energy from a detonation would propagate in the highly saturated geology of many U.S. port cities. To remedy that, the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency last October quietly staged
  
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• [In Depth] Sequencing all life captivates biologists

  02-03-2017 21:53
  At a biogenomics meeting in Washington, D.C., last week, researchers publicly unveiled the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP). The audacious goal of the still-unfunded effort is to decipher the genomes of every species, starting with the 1.5 million named eukaryotes—the group of organisms that includes all plants, animals, and single-celled organisms such as amoebas. Researchers drew parallels to the Human Genome Project, which also began as an ambitious, controversial, and technically daunting pro
  
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• [In Depth] Raising the drawbridge

  02-03-2017 21:53
  President Donald Trump's executive order banning U.S. entry of citizens from seven nations is on hold, but perhaps not for long. The travel ban, meant to last for 90 days as visa vetting procedures were overhauled, roiled students and researchers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. A court last month overturned it, but Trump has vowed to issue a streamlined order. Just how many scientists from each country might be hit? Iran, with its large academic community, seemed likely
  
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• [In Depth] Global telescope gears up to image black holes

  02-03-2017 21:53
  Last year researchers "heard" black holes for the first time, when they detected the gravitational waves unleashed as two of them crashed together and merged. Now, they want to see a black hole, or at least its silhouette. Next month, astronomers will harness radio telescopes across the globe to create the equivalent of a single Earth-spanning dish—an instrument powerful enough, they hope, to image black holes backlit by the incandescent gas swirling around them. Their targets are th
  
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