Science news

• Cassini’s ring dive offers first close-up of Saturn’s cloud tops

  27-04-2017 23:49
  
  Cassini has completed its first dive between Saturn and its rings. Along the way, it snapped stunning pics of the planet’s atmosphere.
  
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• Canadian Space Agency gets $80.9 million to develop new technologies

  27-04-2017 21:44 via cbc.ca
  
  The previously announced funds will support a radar instrument that would be used to study the surface of Mars, and applications of quantum computing in space currently being explored at the University of Waterloo.
  
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• University of Toronto researchers discover 507-million-year old sea creature

  27-04-2017 21:41 via cbc.ca
  
  A new fossil has been discovered by Canadian researchers that is shedding light on the evolution of insects, millipedes and centipedes.
  
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• Can't hack it in high altitudes? It's all about genetics

  27-04-2017 20:00 via cbc.ca
  
  A new study published in the Open Access journal PLOS has discovered 5 different genetic changes that have allowed Tibetans to thrive in the low oxygen world at the base of Mount Everest.
  
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• Ancient DNA bucks tale of how the horse was tamed

  27-04-2017 20:00
  
  DNA from ancient horses reveals early domestication involved plenty of stallions.
  
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• Water harvesting from air with metal-organic frameworks powered by natural sunlight

  27-04-2017 19:26
  Atmospheric water is a resource equivalent to ~10% of all fresh water in lakes on Earth. However, an efficient process for capturing and delivering water from air, especially at low humidity levels (down to 20%), has not been developed. We report the design and demonstration of a device based on a porous metal-organic framework {MOF-801, [Zr6O4(OH)4(fumarate)6]} that captures water from the atmosphere at ambient conditions by using low-grade heat from natural sunlight at a flux of less than 1 su
  
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• The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940

  27-04-2017 19:26
  We estimated rates of "absolute income mobility"—the fraction of children who earn more than their parents—by combining data from U.S. Census and Current Population Survey cross sections with panel data from de-identified tax records. We found that rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s. Increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates alone cannot restore absolute mobility to the rates experie
  
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• RETINOBLASTOMA RELATED1 mediates germline entry in Arabidopsis

  27-04-2017 19:26
  To produce seeds, flowering plants need to specify somatic cells to undergo meiosis. Here, we reveal a regulatory cascade that controls the entry into meiosis starting with a group of redundantly acting cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitors of the KIP-RELATED PROTEIN (KRP) class. KRPs function by restricting CDKA;1–dependent inactivation of the Arabidopsis Retinoblastoma homolog RBR1. In rbr1 and krp triple mutants, designated meiocytes undergo several mitotic divisions, resulting in th
  
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• Rechargeable nickel-3D zinc batteries: An energy-dense, safer alternative to lithium-ion

  27-04-2017 19:26
  The next generation of high-performance batteries should include alternative chemistries that are inherently safer to operate than nonaqueous lithium-based batteries. Aqueous zinc-based batteries can answer that challenge because monolithic zinc sponge anodes can be cycled in nickel–zinc alkaline cells hundreds to thousands of times without undergoing passivation or macroscale dendrite formation. We demonstrate that the three-dimensional (3D) zinc form-factor elevates the performance of ni
  
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• Pcdh{alpha}c2 is required for axonal tiling and assembly of serotonergic circuitries in mice

  27-04-2017 19:26
  Serotonergic neurons project their axons pervasively throughout the brain and innervate various target fields in a space-filling manner, leading to tiled arrangements of their axon terminals to allow optimal allocation of serotonin among target neurons. Here we show that conditional deletion of the mouse protocadherin α (Pcdhα) gene cluster in serotonergic neurons disrupts local axonal tiling and global assembly of serotonergic circuitries and results in depression-like behaviors. Ge
  
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• Nucleic acid detection with CRISPR-Cas13a/C2c2

  27-04-2017 19:26
  Rapid, inexpensive, and sensitive nucleic acid detection may aid point-of-care pathogen detection, genotyping, and disease monitoring. The RNA-guided, RNA-targeting clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) effector Cas13a (previously known as C2c2) exhibits a "collateral effect" of promiscuous ribonuclease activity upon target recognition. We combine the collateral effect of Cas13a with isothermal amplification to establish a CRISPR-based diagnostic (CRISPR-Dx), providi
  
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• Multicluster Pcdh diversity is required for mouse olfactory neural circuit assembly

  27-04-2017 19:26
  The vertebrate clustered protocadherin (Pcdh) cell surface proteins are encoded by three closely linked gene clusters (Pcdhα, Pcdhβ, and Pcdh). Here, we show that all three gene clusters functionally cooperate to provide individual mouse olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) with the cell surface diversity required for their assembly into distinct glomeruli in the olfactory bulb. Although deletion of individual Pcdh clusters had subtle phenotypic consequences, the loss of all three cluster
  
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• Measurement of the small-scale structure of the intergalactic medium using close quasar pairs

  27-04-2017 19:26
  The distribution of diffuse gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM) imprints a series of hydrogen absorption lines on the spectra of distant background quasars known as the Lyman-α forest. Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations predict that IGM density fluctuations are suppressed below a characteristic scale where thermal pressure balances gravity. We measured this pressure-smoothing scale by quantifying absorption correlations in a sample of close quasar pairs. We compared our measurements
  
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• Intersection of diverse neuronal genomes and neuropsychiatric disease: The Brain Somatic Mosaicism Network

  27-04-2017 19:26
  Neuropsychiatric disorders have a complex genetic architecture. Human genetic population-based studies have identified numerous heritable sequence and structural genomic variants associated with susceptibility to neuropsychiatric disease. However, these germline variants do not fully account for disease risk. During brain development, progenitor cells undergo billions of cell divisions to generate the ~80 billion neurons in the brain. The failure to accurately repair DNA damage arising during re
  
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• Formation of matter-wave soliton trains by modulational instability

  27-04-2017 19:26
  Nonlinear systems can exhibit a rich set of dynamics that are inherently sensitive to their initial conditions. One such example is modulational instability, which is believed to be one of the most prevalent instabilities in nature. By exploiting a shallow zero-crossing of a Feshbach resonance, we characterize modulational instability and its role in the formation of matter-wave soliton trains from a Bose-Einstein condensate. We examine the universal scaling laws exhibited by the system and, thr
  
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• Direction-specific van der Waals attraction between rutile TiO2 nanocrystals

  27-04-2017 19:26
  Mutual lattice orientations dictate the types and magnitudes of forces between crystalline particles. When lattice polarizability is anisotropic, the van der Waals dispersion attraction can, in principle, contribute to this direction dependence. We report measurement of this attraction between rutile nanocrystals, as a function of their mutual orientation and surface hydration extent. At tens of nanometers of separation, the attraction is weak and shows no dependence on azimuthal alignment or su
  
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• Anticancer sulfonamides target splicing by inducing RBM39 degradation via recruitment to DCAF15

  27-04-2017 19:26
  Indisulam is an aryl sulfonamide drug with selective anticancer activity. Its mechanism of action and the basis for its selectivity have so far been unknown. Here we show that indisulam promotes the recruitment of RBM39 (RNA binding motif protein 39) to the CUL4-DCAF15 E3 ubiquitin ligase, leading to RBM39 polyubiquitination and proteasomal degradation. Mutations in RBM39 that prevent its recruitment to CUL4-DCAF15 increase RBM39 stability and confer resistance to indisulam’s cytotoxicity.
  
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• Ancient genomic changes associated with domestication of the horse

  27-04-2017 19:26
  The genomic changes underlying both early and late stages of horse domestication remain largely unknown. We examined the genomes of 14 early domestic horses from the Bronze and Iron Ages, dating to between ~4.1 and 2.3 thousand years before present. We find early domestication selection patterns supporting the neural crest hypothesis, which provides a unified developmental origin for common domestic traits. Within the past 2.3 thousand years, horses lost genetic diversity and archaic DNA tracts
  
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• A multifunctional catalyst that stereoselectively assembles prodrugs

  27-04-2017 19:26
  The catalytic stereoselective synthesis of compounds with chiral phosphorus centers remains an unsolved problem. State-of-the-art methods rely on resolution or stoichiometric chiral auxiliaries. Phosphoramidate prodrugs are a critical component of pronucleotide (ProTide) therapies used in the treatment of viral disease and cancer. Here we describe the development of a catalytic stereoselective method for the installation of phosphorus-stereogenic phosphoramidates to nucleosides through a dynamic
  
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• NASA successfully pilots spacecraft between Saturn and its rings

  27-04-2017 18:21 via cbc.ca
  
  NASA announced Thursday morning its Cassini spacecraft was successful in its historic first dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings.
  
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• Zika hides out in body’s hard-to-reach spots

  27-04-2017 18:00
  
  Zika virus sticks around in the central nervous system and lymph nodes of monkeys.
  
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• Science minister considers forcing universities to attract more female research chairs

  27-04-2017 16:42 via cbc.ca
  
  ​Canada's science minister says universities aren't doing the heavy lifting to appoint more female research chairs, so she wants to force their hands.
  
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• Amazon is adding a camera to its newest Echo smart speaker

  27-04-2017 16:00 via cbc.ca
  
  The first version of its Echo speaker still hasn't been released in Canada, but technology giant Amazon is already unveiling an update to the device which now includes a camera that can take pictures of its surroundings on command.
  
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• How a mushroom gets its glow

  27-04-2017 15:00
  
  For the first time, biologists have pinpointed the compound that lights up in fungal bioluminescence.
  
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• Facebook Launches "Moon Shot" Effort to Decode Speech Direct from the Brain

  27-04-2017 12:45 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Can the social media giant’s bold claims live up to the hype?
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• The scales of the ocellated lizard are surprisingly coordinated

  27-04-2017 12:00
  
  The mazelike patterns of the ocellated lizard’s skin follow a set of rules from computer science.
  
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• Slender face identified as novel marker for left-handedness

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (University of Washington Health Sciences/UW Medicine) Individuals with a slender lower face are about 25 percent more likely to be left-handed. This unexpected finding was identified in 13,536 individuals who participated in three national surveys conducted in the United States. This association may shed new light on the origins of left-handedness, as slender jaws have also been associated with susceptibility to tuberculosis, a disease that has shaped human evolution and which today affects 2 b
  
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• Ripples in the cosmic web

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (University of California - Santa Barbara) A team of astronomers has made the first measurements of small-scale ripples in primeval hydrogen gas using rare double quasars.
  
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• NRL breakthrough enables safer alternative to lithium-ion batteries

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (Naval Research Laboratory) Researchers at NRL have developed a breakthrough alternative to fire-prone lithium-ion batteries.
  
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• NJIT graduate student wins IBM fellowship to develop brain-inspired computing systems

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (New Jersey Institute of Technology) S. R. Nandakumar, a graduate student in electrical engineering, has won a coveted IBM Ph.D. fellowship to support his work on computer systems that mimic the architecture of the human brain.
  
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• NASA sees vertical wind shear affecting Tropical Storm Muifa

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Vertical wind shear can weaken a tropical cyclone and that's what's happening to the now weaker Tropical Depression Muifa in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. NASA gathered rainfall information about the storm as wind shear continued to weaken it.
  
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• NASA sees formation of Tropical Storm Frances near Darwin

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Tropical Storm Frances has formed in the Beagle Gulf, east of the Timor Sea near Darwin, Australia, and NASA's Aqua satellite captured a clear image of the storm.
  
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• Meteorologists posit new theory behind 'blood red' sky in Munch's The Scream

  27-04-2017 06:00 via cbc.ca
  
  While many art aficionados credit the brooding red sky in The Scream to Edvard Munch's troubled psyche, a new paper posits a more scientific theory.
  
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• Mapping the edge of reality

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (RMIT University) Australian and German researchers have collaborated to develop a genetic algorithm to confirm the rejection of classical notions of causality.
  
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• Grant to model human memory and learning for machines

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (University of California - Davis) A multi-university study led by a neuroscientist at UC Davis aims to vastly deepen understanding by developing a computer model of how the brain forms, stores and retrieves complex memories. The goal is that the model will have human-like abilities to remember, understand and learn from events.
  
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• Food insecurity can affect your mental health

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (Elsevier Health Sciences) Food insecurity (FI) affects nearly 795 million people worldwide. Although a complex phenomenon encompassing food availability, affordability, utilization, and even the social norms that define acceptable ways to acquire food, FI can affect people's health beyond its impact on nutrition. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine determined that FI was associated with poorer mental health and specific psychosocial stressors across global regio
  
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• First global simulation yields new insights into ring system

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (National Institutes of Natural Sciences) A team of researchers in Japan modeled the two rings around Chariklo, the smallest body in the Solar System known to have rings.This is the first time an entire ring system has been simulated using realistic sizes for the ring particles. The simulation revealed that the ring particles are much smaller than predicted or that an undiscovered shepherd satellite around Chariklo is stabilizing the ring.
  
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• Engineers investigate a simple, no-bake recipe to make bricks from Martian soil

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (University of California - San Diego) Explorers planning to settle on Mars might be able to turn the planet's soil into bricks without needing to use an oven or additional ingredients. Instead, they would need to apply pressure to compact the soil--the equivalent of a blow from a hammer. These are findings of a study published in Nature Scientific Reports on April 27, 2017. The study was authored by a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego.
  
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• Dr. Sei Lee presented with 2017 Yoshikawa Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (American Geriatrics Society) The AGS today announced that Sei Lee, MD, MAS, Associate Professor in the Division of Geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), will be honored with the 2017 Thomas and Catherine Yoshikawa Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in Clinical Investigation. Dr. Lee will deliver a plenary presentation on individualizing preventive care for older men and women at the AGS 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting (May 18-20 in San Antonio, Texas).
  
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• Dr. Richard Allman to deliver prestigious 2017 Henderson Lecture

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (American Geriatrics Society) The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) announced that Richard M. Allman, MD, Chief Consultant for Geriatrics & Extended Care Services, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), will deliver the prestigious Henderson State-of-the-Art Lecture at the AGS 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting (May 18-20; San Antonio, Texas). Dr. Allman's lecture, 'Building, Sustaining, and Promoting Age-Friendly Health Systems,' will focus on the role of leadership, research, education, and qual
  
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• Dr. Barbara Resnick -- eminent nurse, researcher, mentor -- honored for commitment to geriatrics

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (American Geriatrics Society) Barbara Resnick, PhD, CRNP, FAAN, FAANP, AGSF, a Past President of the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and a pillar for geriatrics research, education, and clinical practice, will be honored by her AGS peers this May with one of their highest accolades: the David H. Solomon Public Service Award.
  
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• Didactics to highlight physician experience in the ED the night of Orlando mass shooting

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (Society for Academic Emergency Medicine) Two didactics presented by emergency physicians describe what it was like in the emergency department of Orlando Health's Orlando Regional Medical Center the night of the mass-casualty incident.
  
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• Crime and virtual punishment

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (University of Utah) Students from the University of Utah have created a new mobile 'game' for the iPhone and Android devices that demonstrates how software algorithms used by many of the nation's judicial courts to evaluate defendants could be biased like humans. Justice.exe is a free app in which the player chooses the minimum or maximum sentence for a series of convicted criminals, and the software's algorithm eventually tries to predict how the player would punish criminals.
  
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• Augmented reality increases maintenance reliability at a space station

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland) An international project led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed a new augmented reality (AR) tool for the ESA.
  
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• Arizona State University wins record 14 NSF career awards

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (Arizona State University) ASU earns 14 prestigious National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards.
  
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• American Geriatrics Society voices opposition to amended American Health Care Act

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (American Geriatrics Society) Following a review of the recently released MacArthur Amendment to the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) remains opposed to this legislation that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and which AGS experts believe would harm access to key health services for older adults, caregivers, and healthcare professionals.
  
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• AGS honors expert & emerging geriatrics leaders at 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (American Geriatrics Society) Celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2017, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) announced that it will honor more than 15 leading researchers, clinicians, educators, and emerging health professionals who have made outstanding contributions to high-quality, person-centered care for older adults. Awards will be presented at the AGS 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting, May 18-20, 2017 (pre-conference program on May 17), at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in
  
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• AGS honors Dr. Maura Brennan for commitment to training future leaders in geriatrics

  27-04-2017 06:00
  
  (American Geriatrics Society) The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) today announced that Maura Brennan, MD, AGSF, FACP, FAAHPM, HMDC, a champion of education in geriatrics and Chief in the Division of Geriatrics, Palliative Care, and Post-Acute Medicine at Baystate Health in Springfield, Mass., will be honored with the 2017 Dennis W. Jahnigen Award.
  
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• Robots rising: How far do we want them to go?

  27-04-2017 04:39 via cbc.ca
  
  The TED Conference in Vancouver explored the promise and threats of artificial intelligence in a session called "our robot overlords."
  
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