Science news

• Endangered Cuban crocodiles come home

  13-07-2017 22:55
  Conservationists have released 10 Cuban crocodiles (Crocodylus rhombifer) into Cuba’s Zapata Swamp as part of an ongoing recovery strategy for this Critically Endangered species.
  
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• Complex gas motion in the centre of the Milky Way

  13-07-2017 22:54
  Our solar system is located in the outer regions of the Milky Way, a disk-shaped galaxy with an approximate diameter of 100,000 light years. From Earth, its appearance can only be observed indirectly, by measuring positions and movements of stars and gas clouds. In addition to luminous stars, a substantial portion of the visible matter in our Milky Way is interstellar gas. Gas clouds in the so-called central molecular zone (CMZ) -- the innermost 1,500 light years of the Milky Way -- move on an e
  
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• Cancer cells force normal cells to mimic viruses to help tumors spread, resist treatment

  13-07-2017 22:54
  In a study that could explain why some breast cancers are more aggressive than others, researchers say they now understand how cancer cells force normal cells to act like viruses – allowing tumors to grow, resist treatment, and spread. The virus mimic is detected in the blood of cancer patients, particularly in cases of an aggressive type known as triple-negative breast cancer. Researchers say cracking the code of how this process works opens up the possibility of targeting this mechanism
  
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• MMA fighters, boxers may have signs of long-term brain injury in blood

  13-07-2017 22:53
  Boxers and mixed martial arts fighters may have markers of long-term brain injury in their blood, according to a study.
  
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• Tracking leishmaniasis in dogs, wild animals and sand flies in Brazil

  13-07-2017 21:50
  Researchers have surveyed the environmentally protected area in Campinas, Southeastern Brazil, which has undergone several changes by human action, especially the implementation of condominiums, and revealed that more than one percent of dogs, as well as some opossums and insect species in the area carry the parasite responsible for the most dangerous form of leishmaniasis.
  
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• Neil Armstrong's moon bag to fetch up to $4 million at auction

  13-07-2017 21:50
  
  NEW YORK (Reuters) - The long-lost bag used by U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong to bring back to Earth the first samples of moon dust is expected to sell for up to $4 million when it is auctioned with other space memorabilia next week in New York City.
  
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• Bacterium actively drives colorectal cancer tumor cell growth

  13-07-2017 21:50
  A subspecies of the bacterium Streptococcus gallolyticus appears to actively promote the development of colorectal cancer, according to new research.
  
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• Juno Delivers Stunning New Views of Great Red Spot

  13-07-2017 21:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Scientists and the public are dazzled by images from the spacecraft’s close encounter with Jupiter’s largest—and the solar system’s most famous—storm
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• These bacteria may egg on colon cancer

  13-07-2017 20:26
  
  Streptococcus gallolyticus may goad colon cancer growth.
  
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• Ravens pass tests of planning ahead in unnatural tasks

  13-07-2017 20:20
  
  Clever birds may have evolved their own broad powers of apelike thinking about the future.
  
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• Pinpointing the Brain's Motivation Switch

  13-07-2017 20:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Researchers identify neurons important for the drive to win in mice
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• Nevermore, or Tomorrow? Ravens Can Plan Ahead

  13-07-2017 20:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Like great apes, the canny corvids seem capable of delaying gratification 
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• Brain activity helps build an alpha male

  13-07-2017 20:00
  
  In mice, nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex influence whether an individual is dominant or submissive.
  
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• When an emerging disease becomes endemic

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Epidemics, such as HIV in the early 1980s and Ebola in 2014, inspire decisive government investment and action, and individual and societal concern, sometimes bordering on panic. By contrast, endemic diseases, such as HIV in 2017 and tuberculosis, struggle to maintain the same attention. For many, the paradox is that endemic disease, in its totality, continues to impose a far higher public health burden than epidemic disease. Overall, the swift political response to epidemics has resulted in suc
  
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• Tuning quantum nonlocal effects in graphene plasmonics

  13-07-2017 19:27
  The response of electron systems to electrodynamic fields that change rapidly in space is endowed by unique features, including an exquisite spatial nonlocality. This can reveal much about the materials’ electronic structure that is invisible in standard probes that use gradually varying fields. Here, we use graphene plasmons, propagating at extremely slow velocities close to the electron Fermi velocity, to probe the nonlocal response of the graphene electron liquid. The near-field imaging
  
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• Snap deconvolution: An informatics approach to high-throughput discovery of catalytic reactions

  13-07-2017 19:27
  We present an approach to multidimensional high-throughput discovery of catalytic coupling reactions that integrates molecular design with automated analysis and interpretation of mass spectral data. We simultaneously assessed the reactivity of three pools of compounds that shared the same functional groups (halides, boronic acids, alkenes, and alkynes, among other groups) but carried inactive substituents having specifically designed differences in masses. The substituents were chosen such that
  
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• Response to Comment on "Molecular and neural basis of contagious itch behavior in mice"

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Liljencrantz et al. report the failure of observing contagious itch behavior using mice injected with histamine as the demonstrators. Analysis of their results shows that the histamine model is limited by inadequate frequency and duration of scratching bouts required for contagious itch test. To streamline the contagious itch test, the screen paradigm is highly recommended.
  
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• Reconciling solar and stellar magnetic cycles with nonlinear dynamo simulations

  13-07-2017 19:27
  The magnetic fields of solar-type stars are observed to cycle over decadal periods—11 years in the case of the Sun. The fields originate in the turbulent convective layers of stars and have a complex dependency upon stellar rotation rate. We have performed a set of turbulent global simulations that exhibit magnetic cycles varying systematically with stellar rotation and luminosity. We find that the magnetic cycle period is inversely proportional to the Rossby number, which quantifies the i
  
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• Ravens parallel great apes in flexible planning for tool-use and bartering

  13-07-2017 19:27
  The ability to flexibly plan for events outside of the current sensory scope is at the core of being human and is crucial to our everyday lives and society. Studies on apes have shaped a belief that this ability evolved within the hominid lineage. Corvids, however, have shown evidence of planning their food hoarding, although this has been suggested to reflect a specific caching adaptation rather than domain-general planning. Here, we show that ravens plan for events unrelated to caching—t
  
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• Opportunities and challenges in modeling emerging infectious diseases

  13-07-2017 19:27
  The term "pathogen emergence" encompasses everything from previously unidentified viruses entering the human population to established pathogens invading new populations and the evolution of drug resistance. Mathematical models of emergent pathogens allow forecasts of case numbers, investigation of transmission mechanisms, and evaluation of control options. Yet, there are numerous limitations and pitfalls to their use, often driven by data scarcity. Growing availability of data on pathogen genet
  
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• Mouse models of acute and chronic hepacivirus infection

  13-07-2017 19:27
  An estimated 71 million people worldwide are infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). The lack of small-animal models has impeded studies of antiviral immune mechanisms. Here we show that an HCV-related hepacivirus discovered in Norway rats can establish high-titer hepatotropic infections in laboratory mice with immunological features resembling those seen in human viral hepatitis. Whereas immune-compromised mice developed persistent infection, immune-competent mice cleared the virus within 3 to 5
  
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• Improving vaccine trials in infectious disease emergencies

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Unprecedented global effort is under way to facilitate the testing of countermeasures in infectious disease emergencies. Better understanding of the various options for trial design is needed in advance of outbreaks, as is preliminary global agreement on the most suitable designs for the various scenarios. What would enhance the speed, validity, and ethics of clinical studies of such countermeasures? Focusing on studies of vaccine efficacy and effectiveness in emergencies, we highlight three nee
  
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• History of winning remodels thalamo-PFC circuit to reinforce social dominance

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Mental strength and history of winning play an important role in the determination of social dominance. However, the neural circuits mediating these intrinsic and extrinsic factors have remained unclear. Working in mice, we identified a dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) neural population showing "effort"-related firing during moment-to-moment competition in the dominance tube test. Activation or inhibition of the dmPFC induces instant winning or losing, respectively. In vivo optogenetic-base
  
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• High-temperature quantum oscillations caused by recurring Bloch states in graphene superlattices

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Cyclotron motion of charge carriers in metals and semiconductors leads to Landau quantization and magneto-oscillatory behavior in their properties. Cryogenic temperatures are usually required to observe these oscillations. We show that graphene superlattices support a different type of quantum oscillation that does not rely on Landau quantization. The oscillations are extremely robust and persist well above room temperature in magnetic fields of only a few tesla. We attribute this phenomenon to
  
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• Guanine glycation repair by DJ-1/Park7 and its bacterial homologs

  13-07-2017 19:27
  DNA damage induced by reactive carbonyls (mainly methylglyoxal and glyoxal), called DNA glycation, is quantitatively as important as oxidative damage. DNA glycation is associated with increased mutation frequency, DNA strand breaks, and cytotoxicity. However, in contrast to guanine oxidation repair, how glycated DNA is repaired remains undetermined. Here, we found that the parkinsonism-associated protein DJ-1 and its bacterial homologs Hsp31, YhbO, and YajL could repair methylglyoxal- and glyoxa
  
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• Global analysis of protein folding using massively parallel design, synthesis, and testing

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Proteins fold into unique native structures stabilized by thousands of weak interactions that collectively overcome the entropic cost of folding. Although these forces are "encoded" in the thousands of known protein structures, "decoding" them is challenging because of the complexity of natural proteins that have evolved for function, not stability. We combined computational protein design, next-generation gene synthesis, and a high-throughput protease susceptibility assay to measure folding and
  
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• Germ line-inherited H3K27me3 restricts enhancer function during maternal-to-zygotic transition

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Gametes carry parental genetic material to the next generation. Stress-induced epigenetic changes in the germ line can be inherited and can have a profound impact on offspring development. However, the molecular mechanisms and consequences of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance are poorly understood. We found that Drosophila oocytes transmit the repressive histone mark H3K27me3 to their offspring. Maternal contribution of the histone methyltransferase Enhancer of zeste, the enzymatic compon
  
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• Effects of network modularity on the spread of perturbation impact in experimental metapopulations

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Networks with a modular structure are expected to have a lower risk of global failure. However, this theoretical result has remained untested until now. We used an experimental microarthropod metapopulation to test the effect of modularity on the response to perturbation. We perturbed one local population and measured the spread of the impact of this perturbation, both within and between modules. Our results show the buffering capacity of modular networks. To assess the generality of our finding
  
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• Driving improvements in emerging disease surveillance through locally relevant capacity strengthening

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) threaten the health of people, animals, and crops globally, but our ability to predict their occurrence is limited. Current public health capacity and ability to detect and respond to EIDs is typically weakest in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Many known drivers of EID emergence also converge in LMICs. Strengthening capacity for surveillance of diseases of relevance to local populations can provide a mechanism for building the cross-cutting and flex
  
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• Control and local measurement of the spin chemical potential in a magnetic insulator

  13-07-2017 19:27
  The spin chemical potential characterizes the tendency of spins to diffuse. Probing this quantity could provide insight into materials such as magnetic insulators and spin liquids and aid optimization of spintronic devices. Here we introduce single-spin magnetometry as a generic platform for nonperturbative, nanoscale characterization of spin chemical potentials. We experimentally realize this platform using diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers and use it to investigate magnons in a magnetic insulat
  
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• Comment on "Molecular and neural basis of contagious itch behavior in mice"

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Yu et al. (Reports, 10 March 2017, p. 1072) state that contagious itch occurs in mice based on imitative scratching in normal mice observing excessive scratching in genetically modified demonstrator mice. However, despite employing multiple behavioral analysis approaches, we were unable to extend these findings to normal mice observing the well-established histamine model of acute itch in demonstrator mice.
  
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• All-oxide-based synthetic antiferromagnets exhibiting layer-resolved magnetization reversal

  13-07-2017 19:27
  Synthesizing antiferromagnets with correlated oxides has been challenging, owing partly to the markedly degraded ferromagnetism of the magnetic layer at nanoscale thicknesses. Here we report on the engineering of an antiferromagnetic interlayer exchange coupling (AF-IEC) between ultrathin but ferromagnetic La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 layers across an insulating CaRu1/2Ti1/2O3 spacer. The layer-resolved magnetic switching leads to sharp steplike hysteresis loops with magnetization plateaus depending on the re
  
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• Major Science Report Lays Out a Plan to Tamp Down Opioid Crisis

  13-07-2017 18:30 via rss.sciam.com
  
  The National Academies report includes recommendations for federal agencies, states and medical personnel
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• 'Unquestionably qualified': Ex-astronaut Julie Payette formally introduced as Canada's next GG

  13-07-2017 18:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Former astronaut Julie Payette says she is embracing her new role as Canada's next governor general with humility, love of country and a promise to work for Canadians from all walks of life.
  
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• Bialowieza Forest: Poland sued over ancient woods logging

  13-07-2017 17:01 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Polish logging in one of Europe's last remaining primeval forests is to go to the EU's top court.
  
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• Record number of environmental activists killed around the world

  13-07-2017 13:18 via bbc.co.uk
  
  At least 200 campaigners in 24 countries were killed in 2016, according to a new report from Global Witness.
  
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• Behold Jupiter's Great Red Spot

  13-07-2017 12:18 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A Nasa probe returns the most detailed pictures ever of one of the Solar System's biggest storms.
  
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• Rising temps may mean fewer passengers on airplane flights

  13-07-2017 11:30
  
  Global warming could force airplanes to carry a lighter load — and fewer passengers —on each flight.
  
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• UK animal experiments fall by 5% - annual figures

  13-07-2017 11:14 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Home Office annual figures show that animal experiments in the UK fell by 5% in 2016.
  
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• Why the Antarctic ice shelf broke apart and what it means

  13-07-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Sometime over the past few days, a 6,000-square-kilometre piece of ice broke off Antarctica and began its journey into open waters. Here's what might happen next.
  
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• Researchers create low-cost glove that can interpret ASL into text

  13-07-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  A new project out of the University of California San Diego shows how wearable technology could integrate with the way people live as we work more directly with technology, and that high-tech doesn't have to come with a high cost.
  
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• Timelapse of museum's new star attraction

  13-07-2017 07:33 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Which creature is taking the place of Dippy the dinosaur?
  
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• Blue whale takes centre-stage at Natural History Museum

  13-07-2017 06:01 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Move over Dippy - Earth's biggest animal is now the star attraction at the Natural History Museum.
  
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• Yes, the sun is an ordinary, solar-type star after all

  13-07-2017 06:00
  
  (American Association for the Advancement of Science) The Sun is a solar-type star, a new study claims -- resolving an ongoing controversy about whether the star at the center of our Solar System exhibits the same cyclic behavior as other nearby, solar-type stars.
  
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• Why a single nuke's impact shouldn't only be measured in megatons

  13-07-2017 06:00
  
  (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) New calculations by University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers show that even a limited nuclear strike could cause devastating climate change, resulting in widespread drought and famine that could cost a billion lives.
  
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• Tiny cellular antennae key to fat formation in muscle

  13-07-2017 06:00
  
  (University of California - San Francisco) Like it or not, as we age, our muscle cells are slowly exchanged, one by one, for fat cells. This process quickens when we injure a muscle, and an extreme form of this process is also seen in muscle-wasting diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Now, scientists at UC San Francisco have shown that cellular antennae called cilia, found on fat-forming cells interspersed in muscle, play a key role in this muscle-to-fat transformation.
  
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• The BGRF and Diversity.AI announce a new tool to assess organizational diversity

  13-07-2017 06:00
  
  (Biogerontology Research Foundation) As part of the Biogerontology Research Foundation's partnership with Diversity.AI, scientists from Diversity.AI, Youth Laboratories, University of Virginia, Insilico Medicine, University of Oxford, the Center for Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen and the Biogerontology Research Foundation release the results of their first pilot study on the subject of age-based discrimination.
  
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• Surging heat may limit aircraft takeoffs globally

  13-07-2017 06:00
  
  (The Earth Institute at Columbia University) Rising temperatures due to global warming will make it harder for many aircraft around the world to take off in coming decades, says a new study. During the hottest parts of the day, 10 to 30 percent of fully loaded planes may have to remove some fuel, cargo or passengers, or else wait for cooler hours to fly, the study concludes.
  
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• Study suggests route to improving rechargeable lithium batteries

  13-07-2017 06:00
  
  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) In a study that suggests a route to improving rechargeable lithium batteries, MIT researchers report that smooth surfaces may prevent harmful deposits from working their way into a solid electrolyte.
  
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• Study links maternal obesity during pregnancy to behavioral problems in boys

  13-07-2017 06:00
  
  (Elsevier) Maternal obesity and child neurodevelopmental problems have both increased in the US and scientists have suggested a possible link. A new study has found that the heavier mothers were when they entered pregnancy, the higher the risk of behavior problems for their sons. However, it did not show the same effects in girls. The results are reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
  
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