Science news

• Equifax says 143 million U.S. consumers may have been affected in cyberattack

  07-09-2017 23:30 via cbc.ca
  Equifax Inc. said after the close of stock markets on Thursday that it was the victim of a cybersecurity breach that may affect approximately 143 million U.S. consumers.
  
  Read more

• Hurricane Irma: Eye of the storm passes Hispaniola

  07-09-2017 23:04 via bbc.co.uk
  The International Space Station and an advanced weather satellite capture the deadly hurricane over Earth.
  
  Read more

• Drinks industry distorts alcohol cancer risk: scientists

  07-09-2017 23:02
  LONDON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - The alcohol industry uses denial, distortion and distraction to mislead people about the risks of developing cancer from drinking, often employing similar tactics to those of the tobacco industry, a study said on Thursday.
  
  Read more

• When a fungus invades the lungs, immune cells can tell it to self-destruct

  07-09-2017 23:01
  
  Immune system resists fungal infection by directing spores to their death.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Better understanding of 'one of the most complex organs' for better lung treatments

  07-09-2017 20:45
  Details of lung cell molecular pathways that promote or inhibit tissue regeneration have been reported by researchers. Their aim is to find new ways to treat lung disorders.
  
  Read more

• Mediterranean-style diet may eliminate need for reflux medications

  07-09-2017 20:30
  A plant-based, Mediterranean-style diet has been shown to provide the same medical benefits for treating laryngopharyngeal reflux as popular reflux medications, according to new research.
  
  Read more

• Interrupting Parkinson's disease

  07-09-2017 20:30
  Scientists have identified a toxic cascade that leads to neuronal degeneration in patients with Parkinson's disease and figured out how to interrupt it, reports a study. Intervening with an antioxidant early in the disease process may break the degenerative cycle and improve neuron function in Parkinson's, the study showed. Parkinson's is second most common neurodegenerative disorder.
  
  Read more

• Why are fossilized hairs so rare?

  07-09-2017 20:27
  When it comes to preserving body parts, fossilized hair is rare--five times rarer than feathers--despite being an important tool for understanding ancient species. This finding has researchers trying to determine if the lack of hair in the fossil record has to do with physical traits that might make it more difficult for hair to fossilize, or an issue with scientists' collection techniques that could lead to them missing important finds.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Ship exhaust makes oceanic thunderstorms more intense

  07-09-2017 20:27
  Thunderstorms directly above two of the world's busiest shipping lanes are significantly more powerful than storms in areas of the ocean where ships don't travel, according to new research.
  
  Read more

• Eighteenth century nautical charts reveal coral loss

  07-09-2017 20:27
  Centuries-old nautical charts, mapped by long-deceased sailors to avoid shipwrecks, have been used by modern scientists to study loss of coral reefs. A new study compared early British charts to modern coral habitat maps to understand changes to reef environments.
  
  Read more

• Discovery of chromosome motor supports DNA loop extrusion

  07-09-2017 20:26
  It is one of the mysteries in biology: how does a cell neatly distribute its replicated DNA between two daughter cells? Scientists are split into two camps: the first argues that condensing works like a hook, tying DNA together. The other camp thinks that the ring-shaped protein pulls the DNA inwards to create a loop. Now researchers from give the 'loop-extrustion camp' a boost: condensin does indeed have the putative 'motor power' on board.
  
  Read more

• Courts' critical, underappreciated role in climate policy

  07-09-2017 20:26
  Both climate lawsuits and their reliance on scientific data have increased over the past decade, the most extensive study to date shows.
  
  Read more

• Circadian clock's inner gears

  07-09-2017 20:26
  A set of core clock proteins organize themselves into a handful of molecular machines that control the precise workings of the body's circadian rhythms, new research has found.
  
  Read more

• Brain chemical lost in Parkinson’s may contribute to its own demise

  07-09-2017 20:12
  
  A dangerous form of the chemical messenger dopamine causes cellular mayhem in the very nerve cells that make it.
  
  Read more

• Why bats crash into windows

  07-09-2017 20:00
  
  Smooth, vertical surfaces may be blind spots for bats and cause some animals to face-plant, study suggests.
  
  Read more

• Structure of a symmetric photosynthetic reaction center-photosystem

  07-09-2017 19:33
  Reaction centers are pigment-protein complexes that drive photosynthesis by converting light into chemical energy. It is believed that they arose once from a homodimeric protein. The symmetry of a homodimer is broken in heterodimeric reaction-center structures, such as those reported previously. The 2.2-angstrom resolution x-ray structure of the homodimeric reaction center–photosystem from the phototroph Heliobacterium modesticaldum exhibits perfect C2 symmetry. The core polypeptide dimer
  
  Read more

• Sterilizing immunity in the lung relies on targeting fungal apoptosis-like programmed cell death

  07-09-2017 19:33
  Humans inhale mold conidia daily and typically experience lifelong asymptomatic clearance. Conidial germination into tissue-invasive hyphae can occur in individuals with defects in myeloid function, although the mechanism of myeloid cell–mediated immune surveillance remains unclear. By monitoring fungal physiology in vivo, we demonstrate that lung neutrophils trigger programmed cell death with apoptosis-like features in Aspergillus fumigatus conidia, the most prevalent human mold pathogen.
  
  Read more

• Quantum simulations with ultracold atoms in optical lattices

  07-09-2017 19:33
  Quantum simulation, a subdiscipline of quantum computation, can provide valuable insight into difficult quantum problems in physics or chemistry. Ultracold atoms in optical lattices represent an ideal platform for simulations of quantum many-body problems. Within this setting, quantum gas microscopes enable single atom observation and manipulation in large samples. Ultracold atom–based quantum simulators have already been used to probe quantum magnetism, to realize and detect topological q
  
  Read more

• Protecting unauthorized immigrant mothers improves their childrens mental health

  07-09-2017 19:33
  The United States is embroiled in a debate about whether to protect or deport its estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants, but the fact that these immigrants are also parents to more than 4 million U.S.-born children is often overlooked. We provide causal evidence of the impact of parents’ unauthorized immigration status on the health of their U.S. citizen children. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted temporary protection from deportation to more than 780
  
  Read more

• Probing the frontiers of particle physics with tabletop-scale experiments

  07-09-2017 19:33
  The field of particle physics is in a peculiar state. The standard model of particle theory successfully describes every fundamental particle and force observed in laboratories, yet fails to explain properties of the universe such as the existence of dark matter, the amount of dark energy, and the preponderance of matter over antimatter. Huge experiments, of increasing scale and cost, continue to search for new particles and forces that might explain these phenomena. However, these frontiers als
  
  Read more

• Paneth cells secrete lysozyme via secretory autophagy during bacterial infection of the intestine

  07-09-2017 19:33
  Intestinal Paneth cells limit bacterial invasion by secreting antimicrobial proteins, including lysozyme. However, invasive pathogens can disrupt the Golgi apparatus, interfering with secretion and compromising intestinal antimicrobial defense. Here we show that during bacterial infection, lysozyme is rerouted via secretory autophagy, an autophagy-based alternative secretion pathway. Secretory autophagy was triggered in Paneth cells by bacteria-induced endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, required
  
  Read more

• mTOR regulates metabolic adaptation of APCs in the lung and controls the outcome of allergic inflammation

  07-09-2017 19:33
  Antigen-presenting cells (APCs) occupy diverse anatomical tissues, but their tissue-restricted homeostasis remains poorly understood. Here, working with mouse models of inflammation, we found that mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR)–dependent metabolic adaptation was required at discrete locations. mTOR was dispensable for dendritic cell (DC) homeostasis in secondary lymphoid tissues but necessary to regulate cellular metabolism and accumulation of CD103+ DCs and alveolar macrophages in
  
  Read more

• Identification of a primordial asteroid family constrains the original planetesimal population

  07-09-2017 19:33
  A quarter of known asteroids is associated with more than 100 distinct asteroid families, meaning that these asteroids originate as impact fragments from the family parent bodies. The determination of which asteroids of the remaining population are members of undiscovered families, or accreted as planetesimals from the protoplanetary disk, would constrain a critical phase of planetary formation by unveiling the unknown planetesimal size distribution. We discovered a 4-billion-year-old asteroid f
  
  Read more

• High dislocation density-induced large ductility in deformed and partitioned steels

  07-09-2017 19:33
  A wide variety of industrial applications require materials with high strength and ductility. Unfortunately, the strategies for increasing material strength, such as processing to create line defects (dislocations), tend to decrease ductility. We developed a strategy to circumvent this in inexpensive, medium manganese steel. Cold rolling followed by low-temperature tempering developed steel with metastable austenite grains embedded in a highly dislocated martensite matrix. This deformed and part
  
  Read more

• Cold molecules: Progress in quantum engineering of chemistry and quantum matter

  07-09-2017 19:33
  Cooling atoms to ultralow temperatures has produced a wealth of opportunities in fundamental physics, precision metrology, and quantum science. The more recent application of sophisticated cooling techniques to molecules, which has been more challenging to implement owing to the complexity of molecular structures, has now opened the door to the longstanding goal of precisely controlling molecular internal and external degrees of freedom and the resulting interaction processes. This line of resea
  
  Read more

• Behavioral time scale synaptic plasticity underlies CA1 place fields

  07-09-2017 19:33
  Learning is primarily mediated by activity-dependent modifications of synaptic strength within neuronal circuits. We discovered that place fields in hippocampal area CA1 are produced by a synaptic potentiation notably different from Hebbian plasticity. Place fields could be produced in vivo in a single trial by potentiation of input that arrived seconds before and after complex spiking. The potentiated synaptic input was not initially coincident with action potentials or depolarization. This rul
  
  Read more

• Acoustic mirrors as sensory traps for bats

  07-09-2017 19:33
  Sensory traps pose a considerable and often fatal risk for animals, leading them to misinterpret their environment. Bats predominantly rely on their echolocation system to forage, orientate, and navigate. We found that bats can mistake smooth, vertical surfaces as clear flight paths, repeatedly colliding with them, likely as a result of their acoustic mirror properties. The probability of collision is influenced by the number of echolocation calls and by the amount of time spent in front of the
  
  Read more

• Researchers closer to uncovering a new feature in heart failure

  07-09-2017 19:29
  Each cell in the average human body contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, with four telomeres on each pair. Telomeres cover the end of the chromosome, protecting it from deterioration or fusion with adjacent chromosomes. While there is a length range for classifying a healthy telomere, researchers found, for the first time ever, that people with heart failure have shorter telomeres within the cells that make up the heart muscle (known as cardiomyocytes).
  
  Read more

• Human skin cells transformed directly into motor neurons

  07-09-2017 19:28
  Scientists have converted skin cells from healthy adults directly into motor neurons without going through a stem cell state. The technique makes it possible to study motor neurons of the human central nervous system in the lab. Unlike commonly studied mouse motor neurons, human motor neurons growing in the lab would be a new tool since researchers can't take samples of these neurons from living people but can easily take skin samples.
  
  Read more

• Shortened telomeres linked to dysfunction in Duchenne muscular dystrophy, researchers find

  07-09-2017 19:25
  A discovery about muscular dystrophy disorders has been made that suggests new possibilities for treatment. Researchers found that stem cells in the muscles of muscular dystrophy patients may, at an early age, lose their ability to regenerate new muscle, due to shortened telomeres.
  
  Read more

• New acid-free magnet recycling process created

  07-09-2017 19:25
  A new rare-earth magnet recycling process dissolves magnets in an acid-free solution and recovers high purity rare earth elements.
  
  Read more

• Curious properties: Researchers analyze flocking behavior on curved surfaces

  07-09-2017 19:25
  A murmuration of starlings. The phrase reads like something from literature or the title of an arthouse film. In fact, it is meant to describe the phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of these birds fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky.
  
  Read more

• SNAP benefits aren't enough to afford a healthy diet

  07-09-2017 18:56
  A new study finds that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps, only covers 43-60 percent of what it costs to consume a diet consistent with federal dietary guidelines for what constitutes a healthy diet. The study highlights the challenges lower-income households face in trying to eat a healthy diet.
  
  Read more

• Producing malaria treatment at large scales

  07-09-2017 18:56
  For the first time, production of the anti-malarial drug artemisinin has been achieved at an industrial scale using genetically engineered moss. This offers new hope for stabilizing artemisinin supplies and combatting malaria.
  
  Read more

• Lignin: Much more valuable than just as waste

  07-09-2017 18:03
  Lignin, a substance considered as a waste product in biomass and ethanol production, will now reach its proper value as bio-oil in new products.
  
  Read more

• Aspirin tablets help unravel basic physics

  07-09-2017 18:03
  Aspirin in form of small crystallites provides new insight into delicate motions of electrons and atomic nuclei. Set into molecular vibration by strong ultrashort far-infrared (terahertz) pulses, the nuclei oscillate much faster than for weak excitation. They gradually return to their intrinsic oscillation frequency, in parallel to the picosecond decay of electronic motions. An analysis of the terahertz waves radiated from the moving particles by in-depth theory reveals the strongly coupled char
  
  Read more

• Scanning tunneling microscopy measurements identify active sites on catalyst surfaces

  07-09-2017 18:02
  Chemistry live: using a scanning tunneling microscope, researchers were able for the very first time to witness in detail the activity of catalysts during an electrochemical reaction. The measurements show how the surface structure of the catalysts influences their activity. The new analysis method can now be used to improve catalysts for the electrochemical industry.
  
  Read more

• 'Rubber material' discovered that could lead to scratch-proof paint for car

  07-09-2017 18:02
  A stretchy miracle material has been discovered that could be used to create highly resistant smart devices and scratch-proof paint for cars, report investigators.
  
  Read more

• Direct evidence of sea level 'fingerprints' discovered

  07-09-2017 18:02
  The first observation of sea level 'fingerprints' -- tell-tale differences in sea level rise around the world in response to changes in continental water and ice sheet mass -- has been reported by researchers.
  
  Read more

• Nutrition has benefits for brain network organization

  07-09-2017 17:24
  Nutrition has been linked to cognitive performance, but researchers have not pinpointed what underlies the connection. A new study found that monounsaturated fatty acids -- a class of nutrients found in olive oils, nuts and avocados -- are linked to general intelligence, and that this relationship is driven by the correlation between MUFAs and the organization of the brain's attention network.
  
  Read more

• Cellular tango: Immune and nerve cells work together to fight gut infections

  07-09-2017 17:24
  Nerve cells in the gut play a crucial role in the body's ability to marshal an immune response to infection, according to a new study.
  
  Read more

• 3-D-printed biomaterials that degrade on demand

  07-09-2017 17:24
  The temporary structures, which can be degraded away with a biocompatible chemical trigger, could be useful in fabricating microfluidic devices, creating biomaterials that respond dynamically to stimuli and in patterning artificial tissue.
  
  Read more

• Connection between low oxygen levels, human gene discovered

  07-09-2017 17:23
  Researchers have established a link between hypoxia, a condition that reduces the flow of oxygen to tissues, and HOTAIR, a noncoding RNA or molecule that has been implicated in several types of cancer.
  
  Read more

• Biomarkers as predictive of sepsis as lengthy patient monitoring

  07-09-2017 17:23
  One measurement of key biomarkers in blood that characterize sepsis can give physicians as much information as hours of monitoring symptoms, a new study found.
  
  Read more

• Woolly rhinos may have grown strange extra ribs before going extinct

  07-09-2017 17:00
  
  Ribs attached to neck bones could have signaled trouble for woolly rhinos, a new study suggests.
  
  Read more

• You are what you think you eat

  07-09-2017 16:43
  Despite eating the same breakfast, made from the same ingredients, people consumed more calories throughout the day when they believed that one of the breakfasts was less substantial than the other, investigators have found.
  
  Read more

• Fifty–fifty split best for children of divorce, study suggests

  07-09-2017 16:43
  Preschool children in joint physical custody have less psychological symptoms than those who live mostly or only with one parent after a separation. In a new study of 3,656 children, researchers show that 3–5-year-olds living alternately with their parents after a separation show less behavioral problems and psychological symptoms than those living mostly or only with one of the parents.
  
  Read more

• Smartphone screen technology used to trick harmful bacteria

  07-09-2017 16:41
  Conducting plastics found in smartphone screens can be used to trick the metabolism of pathogenic bacteria, report scientists. By adding or removing electrons from the plastic surface, bacteria may be tricked into growing more or less. The method may find widespread use in preventing bacterial infections in hospitals or improve effectiveness in wastewater management.
  
  Read more

• Academic argues for changes in the laws governing modern warfare

  07-09-2017 16:41
  Modern warfare and terrorist acts often sees the killing of innocent civilians which presents complex challenges for the international legal framework governing the conduct of armed conflicts, explains a new report.
  
  Read more

• Genes behind gestation length, preterm delivery identified

  07-09-2017 16:39
  The genes that regulate gestational length and the likelihood of preterm delivery, have been identified in a study involving more than 50,000 women. An article describes the scientific breakthrough that can lead to improved health and survival among children.
  
  Read more

Follow @ScienceUKnews on Twitter!