Science news

• Archeologist finds sunken German submarine from WWI

  21-09-2017 23:44 via cbc.ca
  The well-preserved wreck of a First World War German submarine, possibly still containing the remains of its 23 crew members, has been found off the Belgian coast.
  
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• Bright sparks

  21-09-2017 22:52 via bbc.co.uk
  The fast-growing US solar industry is at odds with itself - and the decision may be left to Trump.
  
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• If At First You Don't Succeed, Show Your Baby Again

  21-09-2017 22:45 via rss.sciam.com
  Infants who saw a researcher keep at a difficult task tried harder themselves
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• Sir David Attenborough on his hunt for the Kimodo Dragon

  21-09-2017 22:12 via bbc.co.uk
  Sir David Attenborough spoke to the BBC about Zoo Quest, the environment and the planet's future.
  
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• Deep sleep: Even jellyfish need their slumber

  21-09-2017 21:35
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even a jellyfish - one of Earth's first and most ancient animals - needs its sleep.
  
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• Feeling crabby: Plant-eating dinosaurs snacked on crustaceans

  21-09-2017 21:17
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some plant-eating dinosaurs apparently liked a side order of crabs to go with their usual salad.
  
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• Plate tectonics started at least 3.5 billion years ago

  21-09-2017 21:12
  
  Analyses of titanium in rock suggest plate tectonics began 500 million years earlier than thought.
  
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• Why the Mexico City Earthquake Shook Up Disaster Predictions

  21-09-2017 20:30 via rss.sciam.com
  Tuesday’s deadly quake did not come from the place many geologists thought would unleash the next “big one”
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• Preventing oilsands bird deaths not a 'realistic goal,' says U of A biologist

  21-09-2017 20:17 via cbc.ca
  Cannons, radar scanners and scarecrows will never be enough to completely prevent bird deaths in the oilsands, says a conservation expert charged with protecting waterfowl in open-pit mines.
  
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• Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays come from outside the Milky Way

  21-09-2017 20:00
  
  The biggest cosmic ray haul ever points toward other galaxies as the source of the rays, not our own.
  
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• Titanium isotopic evidence for felsic crust and plate tectonics 3.5 billion years ago

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Earth exhibits a dichotomy in elevation and chemical composition between the continents and ocean floor. Reconstructing when this dichotomy arose is important for understanding when plate tectonics started and how the supply of nutrients to the oceans changed through time. We measured the titanium isotopic composition of shales to constrain the chemical composition of the continental crust exposed to weathering and found that shales of all ages have a uniform isotopic composition. This can only
  
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• The hidden simplicity of subduction megathrust earthquakes

  21-09-2017 19:47
  The largest observed earthquakes occur on subduction interfaces and frequently cause widespread damage and loss of life. Understanding the rupture behavior of megathrust events is crucial for earthquake rupture physics, as well as for earthquake early-warning systems. However, the large variability in behavior between individual events seemingly defies a description with a simple unifying model. Here we use three source time function (STF) data sets for subduction zone earthquakes, with moment m
  
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• The growth pattern of Neandertals, reconstructed from a juvenile skeleton from El Sidron (Spain)

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Ontogenetic studies help us understand the processes of evolutionary change. Previous studies on Neandertals have focused mainly on dental development and inferred an accelerated pace of general growth. We report on a juvenile partial skeleton (El Sidrón J1) preserving cranio-dental and postcranial remains. We used dental histology to estimate the age at death to be 7.7 years. Maturation of most elements fell within the expected range of modern humans at this age. The exceptions were the
  
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• Teaching personal initiative beats traditional training in boosting small business in West Africa

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Standard business training programs aim to boost the incomes of the millions of self-employed business owners in developing countries by teaching basic financial and marketing practices, yet the impacts of such programs are mixed. We tested whether a psychology-based personal initiative training approach, which teaches a proactive mindset and focuses on entrepreneurial behaviors, could have more success. A randomized controlled trial in Togo assigned microenterprise owners to a control group (n
  
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• PAF1 regulation of promoter-proximal pause release via enhancer activation

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Gene expression in metazoans is regulated by RNA polymerase II (Pol II) promoter-proximal pausing and its release. Previously, we showed that Pol II–associated factor 1 (PAF1) modulates the release of paused Pol II into productive elongation. Here, we found that PAF1 occupies transcriptional enhancers and restrains hyperactivation of a subset of these enhancers. Enhancer activation as the result of PAF1 loss releases Pol II from paused promoters of nearby PAF1 target genes. Knockout of PAF
  
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• Observation of a large-scale anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above 8 x 1018 eV

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei arriving from outer space that reach the highest energies observed in nature. Clues to their origin come from studying the distribution of their arrival directions. Using 3 x 104 cosmic rays with energies above 8 x 1018 electron volts, recorded with the Pierre Auger Observatory from a total exposure of 76,800 km2 sr year, we determined the existence of anisotropy in arrival directions. The anisotropy, detected at more than a 5.2 level of significance, can be describ
  
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• Loss of a mammalian circular RNA locus causes miRNA deregulation and affects brain function

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Hundreds of circular RNAs (circRNAs) are highly abundant in the mammalian brain, often with conserved expression. Here we show that the circRNA Cdr1as is massively bound by the microRNAs (miRNAs) miR-7 and miR-671 in human and mouse brains. When the Cdr1as locus was removed from the mouse genome, knockout animals displayed impaired sensorimotor gating—a deficit in the ability to filter out unnecessary information—which is associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. Electrophysiologic
  
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• Liquid phase condensation in cell physiology and disease

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Phase transitions are ubiquitous in nonliving matter, and recent discoveries have shown that they also play a key role within living cells. Intracellular liquid-liquid phase separation is thought to drive the formation of condensed liquid-like droplets of protein, RNA, and other biomolecules, which form in the absence of a delimiting membrane. Recent studies have elucidated many aspects of the molecular interactions underlying the formation of these remarkable and ubiquitous droplets and the way
  
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• Interacting amino acid replacements allow poison frogs to evolve epibatidine resistance

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Animals that wield toxins face self-intoxication. Poison frogs have a diverse arsenal of defensive alkaloids that target the nervous system. Among them is epibatidine, a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonist that is lethal at microgram doses. Epibatidine shares a highly conserved binding site with acetylcholine, making it difficult to evolve resistance yet maintain nAChR function. Electrophysiological assays of human and frog nAChR revealed that one amino acid replacement, which evolv
  
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• Infants make more attempts to achieve a goal when they see adults persist

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Persistence, above and beyond IQ, is associated with long-term academic outcomes. To look at the effect of adult models on infants’ persistence, we conducted an experiment in which 15-month-olds were assigned to one of three conditions: an Effort condition in which they saw an adult try repeatedly, using various methods, to achieve each of two different goals; a No Effort condition in which the adult achieved the goals effortlessly; or a Baseline condition. Infants were then given a diffic
  
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• Inactivation of porcine endogenous retrovirus in pigs using CRISPR-Cas9

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Xenotransplantation is a promising strategy to alleviate the shortage of organs for human transplantation. In addition to the concerns about pig-to-human immunological compatibility, the risk of cross-species transmission of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) has impeded the clinical application of this approach. We previously demonstrated the feasibility of inactivating PERV activity in an immortalized pig cell line. We now confirm that PERVs infect human cells, and we observe the horizont
  
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• Global mRNA polarization regulates translation efficiency in the intestinal epithelium

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Asymmetric messenger RNA (mRNA) localization facilitates efficient translation in cells such as neurons and fibroblasts. However, the extent and importance of mRNA polarization in epithelial tissues are unclear. Here, we used single-molecule transcript imaging and subcellular transcriptomics to uncover global apical-basal intracellular polarization of mRNA in the mouse intestinal epithelium. The localization of mRNAs did not generally overlap protein localization. Instead, ribosomes were more ab
  
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• Dopamine oxidation mediates mitochondrial and lysosomal dysfunction in Parkinsons disease

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Mitochondrial and lysosomal dysfunction have been implicated in substantia nigra dopaminergic neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease (PD), but how these pathways are linked in human neurons remains unclear. Here we studied dopaminergic neurons derived from patients with idiopathic and familial PD. We identified a time-dependent pathological cascade beginning with mitochondrial oxidant stress leading to oxidized dopamine accumulation and ultimately resulting in reduced glucocerebrosidase
  
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• Angular momentum-induced delays in solid-state photoemission enhanced by intra-atomic interactions

  21-09-2017 19:47
  Attosecond time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy reveals that photoemission from solids is not yet fully understood. The relative emission delays between four photoemission channels measured for the van der Waals crystal tungsten diselenide (WSe2) can only be explained by accounting for both propagation and intra-atomic delays. The intra-atomic delay depends on the angular momentum of the initial localized state and is determined by intra-atomic interactions. For the studied case of WSe2, the
  
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• Ancient DNA sheds light on African history

  21-09-2017 18:08 via bbc.co.uk
  DNA from ancient remains is used to reconstruct thousands of years of population history in Africa.
  
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• Plant-eating dinosaurs 'strayed from veggie diet'

  21-09-2017 17:12 via bbc.co.uk
  The idea of plant-eating dinosaurs having a strict vegetarian diet is called into question.
  
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• Amazon reviewing sales algorithm after suggestions in U.K. that bomb-making ingredients be bought together

  21-09-2017 17:02 via cbc.ca
  Amazon says it is reviewing its website after a British news channel found that its product algorithm was suggesting customers buy products that when used together could build an explosive device.
  
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• Prepping for Alien Oceans, NASA Goes Deep

  21-09-2017 15:15 via rss.sciam.com
  Deep-sea observatory tests technologies for eventual exploration of Europa or other icy moons
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Shhhh! Some plant-eating dinos snacked on crunchy critters

  21-09-2017 15:00
  
  Scientists studying dinosaur poop found that some duck-billed dinos cheated on their vegetarian diets by snacking on crustaceans.
  
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• Intense storms provide the first test of powerful new hurricane forecast tools

  21-09-2017 14:07
  
  From Harvey to Maria, this year’s powerful hurricanes are giving scientists’ latest forecasting tools a trial by fire.
  
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• Google buys big piece of HTC in billion-dollar bet on devices

  21-09-2017 14:02 via cbc.ca
  Google is biting off a big piece of device manufacturer HTC for $1.1 billion US to expand its efforts to build phones, speakers and other gadgets equipped with its arsenal of digital services.
  
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• 'We are planning weekly rocket launches'

  21-09-2017 13:30 via bbc.co.uk
  The small satellite industry is the fastest growing part of the space sector "and they all require launch" says Rocket Lab boss Peter Beck.
  
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• Hurricane Maria: What Exactly Is a Category 4 Storm? [Slide Show]

  21-09-2017 13:15 via rss.sciam.com
  This year’s season has been particularly wild, with several category 4 and 5 storms. We explain the kind of damage to expect at each level
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• Blind Cave Fish Beat Back Diabetes Symptoms That Would Kill People

  21-09-2017 12:45 via rss.sciam.com
  The Mexican fish may have evolved strategies that could help humans survive an epidemic disease
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• DNA dogma

  21-09-2017 11:59 via bbc.co.uk
  Evolutionary biologist Matthew Cobb unpicks a lecture that, sixty years ago, set the course for the genetic revolution.
  
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• Uncertain future of the North Atlantic right whale linked to its tiny prey

  21-09-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  The fate of one of the world's largest living animals depends on one of the smallest. Scientists are studying a northward shift of the North Atlantic right whales and their speck-sized prey that could push the whales closer to extinction.
  
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• Spacecraft on its way to asteroid will slingshot past Earth on Friday

  21-09-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft — on a return mission to the far-off asteroid Bennu — will pass by Earth on Friday, and you're invited to wave as it goes by.
  
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• National Bank IT error exposed customer contact information online

  21-09-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  Hundreds of National Bank customers may have had their personal contact information and date of birth exposed online to other customers, the bank confirmed to CBC Toronto.
  
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• Facebook tightens ad policies after 'Jew-hater' fiasco

  21-09-2017 08:15 via cbc.ca
  Facebook is apologizing for letting advertisers use phrases like "Jew-haters" as a targeting criteria and for not noticing it until it was pointed out.
  
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• WWF and UCF study wildlife rangers, what motivates them?

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Central Florida) Wildlife rangers are on the front lines protecting our most iconic species -- tigers, elephants, gorillas and many others. But their challenges involve more than confrontations with wild animals and poachers.
  
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• Why this guide is the solution to your research woes

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (World Scientific) Have you ever marveled at a beautifully-written piece of research and wondered why? Or, been required to conduct one and doubted how? Or, needed to provide feedback and pondered what? Perhaps despite numerous books on research methods in the market, you find yourself at the starting line of your research journey? Fret not! World Scientific is here to save the day with 'Research Methods: A Practical Guide for Students and Researchers'.
  
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• Why poison frogs don't poison themselves

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Texas at Austin) Poison frogs harbor some of the most potent neurotoxins we know, yet scientists have long wondered -- how do these frogs keep from poisoning themselves? With a new paper published in the journal Science, scientists are a step closer to resolving that head-scratcher. And the answer has potential consequences for the fight against pain and addiction.
  
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• We must accelerate transitions for sustainability and climate change, experts say

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Sussex) We must move faster towards a low-carbon world if we are to limit global warming to 2 degrees C this century, experts have warned.
  
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• Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays come from galaxies far, far away

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (American Association for the Advancement of Science) A new study reveals that cosmic rays with the highest energies that make their way to Earth originated from outside our Milky Way galaxy.
  
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• Toilets for $10 or less are accelerating progress towards a major goal: Sanitation for all

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (Grand Challenges Canada) The Water Innovation Engine, a pioneering partnership led by the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to stimulate bold new ideas and approaches in the water sector, today launched the global "Urban Sanitation Challenge" with the announcement of a multi-million dollar investment in five projects.
  
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• The surprising, ancient behavior of jellyfish

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (California Institute of Technology) The discovery that primitive jellyfish sleep suggests that sleep is an ancient, evolutionarily conserved behavior.
  
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• Study links brain inflammation to suicidal thinking in depression

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (Elsevier) Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have increased brain levels of a marker of microglial activation, a sign of inflammation, according to a new study in Biological Psychiatry by researchers at the University of Manchester. Dr. Talbot and colleagues found that the increase in the inflammatory marker was present specifically in patients with MDD who were experiencing suicidal thoughts, pinning the role of inflammation to suicidality rather than a diagnosis of MDD itself.
  
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• Study confirms cosmic rays have extragalactic origins

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) International collaboration by scientists with the Pierre Auger Observatory confirms that most of the highest energy cosmicrays that reach the Earth come from outside the Milky Way galaxy.
  
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• Strong alcohol policies help reduce alcohol-involved homicides

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (Boston Medical Center) Stronger alcohol policies, including taxes and sales restrictions, have been shown to reduce the likelihood of alcohol involvement among homicide victims, according to a new study from Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University.
  
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• Stopping problem ice -- by cracking it

  21-09-2017 06:00
  (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Most efforts to control ice build-up on structures like wind turbines and solar cells involve creating a surface that repels water. But Norwegian researchers have engineered a different approach that allows ice to form on a surface, but then causes it to crack off.
  
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