Science news

• Two-dimensional materials gets a new theory for control of properties

  19-10-2017 23:16
  Desirable properties including increased electrical conductivity, improved mechanical properties, or magnetism for memory storage or information processing may be possible because of a theoretical method to control grain boundaries in two-dimensional materials, according to materials scientists.
  
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• The birth of a new protein

  19-10-2017 23:16
  A yeast protein that evolved from scratch can fold into a compact three-dimensional shape -- contrary to the general understanding of young proteins. Recent evidence suggests new genes can arise from the non-coding sections, or 'junk,' DNA and that those new genes could code for brand-new proteins. Scientists thought such newly evolved proteins were works-in-progress that could not fold into complex shapes the way more ancient proteins do.
  
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• Climate shifts shorten marine food chain off California

  19-10-2017 23:16
  Environmental disturbances such as El Niño shake up the marine food web off Southern California, new research shows, countering conventional thinking that the hierarchy of who-eats-who in the ocean remains largely constant over time.
  
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• Be concerned about how apps collect, share health data, expert says

  19-10-2017 23:16
  Americans should be concerned about how health and wellness apps collect, save and share their personal health data, a medical media expert says.
  
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• Laws to protect athletes’ brains do reduce concussions — eventually

  19-10-2017 23:11
  
  Recurrent concussions among high school athletes went down about 2½ years after traumatic brain injury laws were on the books, a new study finds.
  
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• Research yields test to predict bitter pit disorder in Honeycrisp apples

  19-10-2017 22:43
  A test to determine whether bitter pit -- a disorder that blindsides apple growers by showing up weeks or months after picking -- will develop in stored Honeycrisp apples was developed by a team of researchers, promising to potentially save millions of dollars annually in wasted fruit.
  
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• Three million Americans carry loaded handguns daily, study finds

  19-10-2017 22:42
  An estimated 3 million adult American handgun owners carry a firearm loaded and on their person on a daily basis, and 9 million do so on a monthly basis, new research indicates. The vast majority cited protection as their primary reason for carrying a firearm. It is the first research in more than 20 years to scrutinize why, how often, and in what manner US adults carry loaded handguns.
  
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• TBI laws effective at reducing rate of recurrent concussions, new study shows

  19-10-2017 22:42
  A recent study from the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital done in conjunction with researchers from Colorado School of Public Health at the University at Colorado and Temple University used data from a large, national sports injury surveillance system to determine the effect of state-level TBI laws on trends of new and recurrent concussions among US high school athletes.
  
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• More permissive concealed-carry laws linked to higher homicide rates

  19-10-2017 22:42
  Easier access to concealed firearms is associated with significantly higher rates of handgun-related homicide, according to a new study.
  
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• Field trips of the future?

  19-10-2017 22:42
  A biologist examines the benefits and drawbacks of virtual and augmented reality in teaching environmental science.
  
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• Humans May Be Influencing Bird Evolution in Their Backyards

  19-10-2017 21:20 via rss.sciam.com
  Great tits in the U.K. have developed longer beaks, possibly to gain access to bird feeders
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• The next wave of bird flu could be worse than ever

  19-10-2017 20:33
  
  Deadly bird flu can pass between ferrets through the air.
  
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• A 'monster' discovery: Tiny translucent crustacean a 1st in Canada's Arctic

  19-10-2017 19:57 via cbc.ca
  What has eight hairy legs, one eye, no mouth and haunts the frigid waters below the frozen ocean? A speck of a creature you'd never know exists in Canada's Arctic, were it not for one researcher's accidental discovery off the shores of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
  
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• Disabled Chinese space lab likely to crash to Earth in coming months

  19-10-2017 19:31 via cbc.ca
  A defunct, yacht-sized Chinese space lab is expected to fall out of orbit and crash to Earth in coming months.
  
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• Ultraslow waves on the nanoscale

  19-10-2017 19:22
  There has recently been a surge of interest in the physics and applications of broadband ultraslow waves in nanoscale structures operating below the diffraction limit. They range from light waves or surface plasmons in nanoplasmonic devices to sound waves in acoustic-metamaterial waveguides, as well as fermions and phonon polaritons in graphene and van der Waals crystals and heterostructures. We review the underlying physics of these structures, which upend traditional wave-slowing approaches ba
  
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• Taxon-restricted genes at the origin of a novel trait allowing access to a new environment

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Taxon-restricted genes make up a considerable proportion of genomes, yet their contribution to phenotypic evolution is poorly understood. We combined gene expression with functional and behavioral assays to study the origin and adaptive value of an evolutionary innovation exclusive to the water strider genus Rhagovelia: the propelling fan. We discovered that two taxon-restricted genes, which we named geisha and mother-of-geisha, specifically control fan development. geisha originated through a d
  
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• Single polymer growth dynamics

  19-10-2017 19:22
  In chain-growth polymerization, a chain grows continually to reach thousands of subunits. However, the real-time dynamics of chain growth remains unknown. Using magnetic tweezers, we visualized real-time polymer growth at the single-polymer level. Focusing on ring-opening metathesis polymerization, we found that the extension of a growing polymer under a pulling force does not increase continuously but exhibits wait-and-jump steps. These steps are attributable to the formation and unraveling of
  
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• Rotary and linear molecular motors driven by pulses of a chemical fuel

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Many biomolecular motors catalyze the hydrolysis of chemical fuels, such as adenosine triphosphate, and use the energy released to direct motion through information ratchet mechanisms. Here we describe chemically-driven artificial rotary and linear molecular motors that operate through a fundamentally different type of mechanism. The directional rotation of [2]- and [3]catenane rotary molecular motors and the transport of substrates away from equilibrium by a linear molecular pump are induced by
  
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• Response to Comment on "Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition"

  19-10-2017 19:22
  McMichael et al. state that we overlooked the effects of post-Columbian human activities in shaping current floristic patterns in Amazonian forests. We formally show that post-Columbian human influences on Amazonian forests are indeed important, but they have played a smaller role when compared to the persistent effects of pre-Columbian human activities on current forest composition.
  
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• Recent natural selection causes adaptive evolution of an avian polygenic trait

  19-10-2017 19:22
  We used extensive data from a long-term study of great tits (Parus major) in the United Kingdom and Netherlands to better understand how genetic signatures of selection translate into variation in fitness and phenotypes. We found that genomic regions under differential selection contained candidate genes for bill morphology and used genetic architecture analyses to confirm that these genes, especially the collagen gene COL4A5, explained variation in bill length. COL4A5 variation was associated w
  
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• Quantum control of molecular collisions at 1 kelvin

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Measurement of vector correlations in molecular scattering is an indispensable tool for mapping out interaction potentials. In a coexpanded supersonic beam, we have studied the rotationally inelastic process wherein deuterium hydride (HD) (v = 1, j = 2) collides with molecular deuterium (D2) to form HD (v = 1, j = 1), where v and j are the vibrational and rotational quantum numbers, respectively. HD (v = 1, j = 2) was prepared by Stark-induced adiabatic Raman passage, with its bond axis aligned
  
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• Natural polyreactive IgA antibodies coat the intestinal microbiota

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Large quantities of immunoglobulin A (IgA) are constitutively secreted by intestinal plasma cells to coat and contain the commensal microbiota, yet the specificity of these antibodies remains elusive. Here we profiled the reactivities of single murine IgA plasma cells by cloning and characterizing large numbers of monoclonal antibodies. IgAs were not specific to individual bacterial taxa but rather polyreactive, with broad reactivity to a diverse, but defined, subset of microbiota. These antibod
  
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• MOF-derived cobalt nanoparticles catalyze a general synthesis of amines

  19-10-2017 19:22
  The development of base metal catalysts for the synthesis of pharmaceutically relevant compounds remains an important goal of chemical research. Here, we report that cobalt nanoparticles encapsulated by a graphitic shell are broadly effective reductive amination catalysts. Their convenient and practical preparation entailed template assembly of cobalt-diamine-dicarboxylic acid metal organic frameworks on carbon and subsequent pyrolysis under inert atmosphere. The resulting stable and reusable ca
  
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• Learning-enhanced coupling between ripple oscillations in association cortices and hippocampus

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Consolidation of declarative memories requires hippocampal-neocortical communication. Although experimental evidence supports the role of sharp-wave ripples in transferring hippocampal information to the neocortex, the exact cortical destinations and the physiological mechanisms of such transfer are not known. We used a conducting polymer-based conformable microelectrode array (NeuroGrid) to record local field potentials and neural spiking across the dorsal cortical surface of the rat brain, com
  
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• Encoding of vinylidene isomerization in its anion photoelectron spectrum

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Vinylidene-acetylene isomerization is the prototypical example of a 1,2-hydrogen shift, one of the most important classes of isomerization reactions in organic chemistry. This reaction was investigated with quantum state specificity by high-resolution photoelectron spectroscopy of the vinylidene anions H2CC and D2CC and quantum dynamics calculations. Peaks in the photoelectron spectra are considerably narrower than in previous work and reveal subtleties in the isomerization dynamics of neutral v
  
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• Ectopic colonization of oral bacteria in the intestine drives TH1 cell induction and inflammation

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Intestinal colonization by bacteria of oral origin has been correlated with several negative health outcomes, including inflammatory bowel disease. However, a causal role of oral bacteria ectopically colonizing the intestine remains unclear. Using gnotobiotic techniques, we show that strains of Klebsiella spp. isolated from the salivary microbiota are strong inducers of T helper 1 (TH1) cells when they colonize in the gut. These Klebsiella strains are resistant to multiple antibiotics, tend to c
  
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• Destruction and reformation of an iron-sulfur cluster during catalysis by lipoyl synthase

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Lipoyl synthase (LipA) catalyzes the last step in the biosynthesis of the lipoyl cofactor, which is the attachment of two sulfhydryl groups to C6 and C8 of a pendant octanoyl chain. The appended sulfur atoms derive from an auxiliary [4Fe-4S] cluster on the protein that is degraded during turnover, limiting LipA to one turnover in vitro. We found that the Escherichia coli iron-sulfur (Fe-S) cluster carrier protein NfuA efficiently reconstitutes the auxiliary cluster during LipA catalysis in a ste
  
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• Defibrillation of soft porous metal-organic frameworks with electric fields

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Gas transport through metal-organic framework membranes (MOFs) was switched in situ by applying an external electric field (E-field). The switching of gas permeation upon E-field polarization could be explained by the structural transformation of the zeolitic imidazolate framework ZIF-8 into polymorphs with more rigid lattices. Permeation measurements under a direct-current E-field poling of 500 volts per millimeter showed reversibly controlled switching of the ZIF-8 into polar polymorphs, which
  
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• D4 dopamine receptor high-resolution structures enable the discovery of selective agonists

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Dopamine receptors are implicated in the pathogenesis and treatment of nearly every neuropsychiatric disorder. Although thousands of drugs interact with these receptors, our molecular understanding of dopaminergic drug selectivity and design remains clouded. To illuminate dopamine receptor structure, function, and ligand recognition, we determined crystal structures of the D4 dopamine receptor in its inactive state bound to the antipsychotic drug nemonapride, with resolutions up to 1.95 angstrom
  
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• Crystal structure of the human lysosomal mTORC1 scaffold complex and its impact on signaling

  19-10-2017 19:22
  The LAMTOR [late endosomal and lysosomal adaptor and MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase) and mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin) activator] complex, also known as "Ragulator," controls the activity of mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) on the lysosome. The crystal structure of LAMTOR consists of two roadblock/LC7 domain–folded heterodimers wrapped and apparently held together by LAMTOR1, which assembles the complex on lysosomes. In addition, the Rag guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) associat
  
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• Comment on "Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition"

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Levis et al. (Research Articles, 3 March 2017, p. 925) concluded that pre-Columbian tree domestication has shaped present-day Amazonian forest composition. The study, however, downplays five centuries of human influence following European arrival to the Americas. We show that the effects of post-Columbian activities in Amazonia are likely to have played a larger role than pre-Columbian ones in shaping the observed floristic patterns.
  
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• Chaos-assisted broadband momentum transformation in optical microresonators

  19-10-2017 19:22
  The law of momentum conservation rules out many desired processes in optical microresonators. We report broadband momentum transformations of light in asymmetric whispering gallery microresonators. Assisted by chaotic motions, broadband light can travel between optical modes with different angular momenta within a few picoseconds. Efficient coupling from visible to near-infrared bands is demonstrated between a nanowaveguide and whispering gallery modes with quality factors exceeding 10 million.
  
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• Adrenergic nerves activate an angio-metabolic switch in prostate cancer

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Nerves closely associate with blood vessels and help to pattern the vasculature during development. Recent work suggests that newly formed nerve fibers may regulate the tumor microenvironment, but their exact functions are unclear. Studying mouse models of prostate cancer, we show that endothelial β-adrenergic receptor signaling via adrenergic nerve–derived noradrenaline in the prostate stroma is critical for activation of an angiogenic switch that fuels exponential tumor growth. Mech
  
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• A liquid metal reaction environment for the room-temperature synthesis of atomically thin metal oxides

  19-10-2017 19:22
  Two-dimensional (2D) oxides have a wide variety of applications in electronics and other technologies. However, many oxides are not easy to synthesize as 2D materials through conventional methods. We used nontoxic eutectic gallium-based alloys as a reaction solvent and co-alloyed desired metals into the melt. On the basis of thermodynamic considerations, we predicted the composition of the self-limiting interfacial oxide. We isolated the surface oxide as a 2D layer, either on substrates or in su
  
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• Phoenix tracks: Edmonton palaeontologist retraces the stone footsteps of dinosaurs

  19-10-2017 18:09 via cbc.ca
  An Edmonton palaeontologist is relying on ancient folklore to retrace the stone footprints of giant dinosaurs.
  
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• Rogers Communications sees 'anemic' iPhone 8 demand

  19-10-2017 18:08 via cbc.ca
  The CEO of Rogers Communications says he is seeing little demand for Apple's iPhone 8, adding to concerns about prospects for sales of the device.
  
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• Facebook launches 'election integrity initiative' to fight hacking and fake news

  19-10-2017 17:53 via cbc.ca
  Amid questions about the social network's impact on last year's American presidential vote, Facebook Canada is launching an "election integrity initiative" in advance of the next Canadian federal election.
  
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• Oil company proposes Arctic drilling from artificial island

  19-10-2017 16:28 via cbc.ca
  Within a few years, America could be extracting oil from federal waters in the Arctic Ocean, but it won't be from a remote drilling platform.
  
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• Boeing invests in autonomous flight tech provider Near Earth Autonomy

  19-10-2017 16:12
  (Reuters) - Boeing Co said on Thursday it invested in Near Earth Autonomy, a Pittsburgh-based firm that develops technologies enabling autonomous flight such as drones.
  
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• Canadian cities in the hunt for Amazon's HQ2 — but is it worth the shot?

  19-10-2017 15:32 via cbc.ca
  The possibility of a Canadian city turning into the next Seattle — Amazon's existing home — is tempting, but experts say it's a risky proposition that comes with some drawbacks, like making operations more challenging for local technology companies.
  
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• How a Canadian astrophysics star aims to find life on exoplanets

  19-10-2017 15:12 via cbc.ca
  Sara Seager, an award-winning Canadian astrophysicist, has pledged to spend the rest of her life hunting for 'another Earth' outside our solar system. Here's why she thinks finding life on other planets is within reach, and how she thinks we can find it.
  
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• Canada's 'super secret spy agency' is releasing a malware-fighting tool to the public

  19-10-2017 14:55 via cbc.ca
  The Communications Security Establishment acknowledges it needs to do a better job of explaining to Canadians what it does.
  
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• Carbon case history

  19-10-2017 14:15 via bbc.co.uk
  Prof Joanna Haigh from Imperial College London explains why this gas has played a crucial role in shaping the Earth's climate.
  
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• A brief history of the Earth's CO2

  19-10-2017 14:15 via bbc.co.uk
  Prof Joanna Haigh from Imperial College London explains why this gas has played a crucial role in shaping the Earth's climate.
  
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• 'It's disgusting': Alberta woman targeted by revenge porn breaks silence

  19-10-2017 14:00 via cbc.ca
  Alberta resident Michelle lives in fear that her children will discover an explicit photograph of her that she can’t erase from the internet.
  
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• 50 years ago, engineers tried catching commercial planes in nets

  19-10-2017 13:00
  
  Fifty years ago, aviation experts tried helping commercial aircraft come to a stop during landing by catching them in massive nets. The idea crash-landed for commercial flights, but it’s still used in the military.
  
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• Engulfed in Opioid Deaths, Ohio Turns to Science

  19-10-2017 12:45 via rss.sciam.com
  State attempts to accelerate high-tech solutions after treatment and law enforcement fail to stem overdose fatalities
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Getting the gear: With cod making a comeback, N.L. looks to Iceland for best ways to catch it

  19-10-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  Iceland is seen as a world leader in the seafood industry, and fish harvesters from this province are checking out some of the innovative gear. Part 1 in a series from Jane Adey of The Broadcast.
  
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• Alarm over decline in flying insects

  19-10-2017 09:07 via bbc.co.uk
  Flying insects have declined by more than 75% in 30 years in German nature reserves, alarming ecologists.
  
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• Yoga and aerobic exercise together may improve heart disease risk factors

  19-10-2017 06:00
  (American College of Cardiology) Heart disease patients who practice yoga in addition to aerobic exercise saw twice the reduction in blood pressure, body mass index and cholesterol levels when compared to patients who practiced either Indian yoga or aerobic exercise alone, according to research to be presented at the 8th Emirates Cardiac Society Congress in collaboration with the American College of Cardiology Middle East Conference Oct. 19-21, 2017 in Dubai.
  
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