Science news

• These weather events turned extreme thanks to human-driven climate change

  14-12-2017 22:53
  
  Ruling out natural variability, scientists say several of 2016’s extreme weather events wouldn’t have happened without human-caused climate change.
  
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• Horrific mating strategy appears to benefit both male and female redback spiders

  14-12-2017 22:40
  A mating strategy among redback spiders where males seek out immature females appears to benefit both sexes, a new study has found.
  
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• Better way to weigh millions of solitary stars

  14-12-2017 22:40
  Astronomers have come up with a new and improved method for measuring the masses of millions of solitary stars, especially those with planetary systems.
  
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• Six-decade-old space mystery solved with shoebox-sized satellite called a CubeSat

  14-12-2017 22:32
  A 60-year-old mystery about the source of energetic, potentially damaging particles in Earth's radiation belts has been solved using data from a shoebox-sized satellite built and operated by students. The satellite is called a CubeSat.
  
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• Valley fever cases see major spike in November, experts say

  14-12-2017 21:33
  An uptick in reported cases of Valley fever indicates a likely sharp increase in infections next year. At the same time, federal clearance for a rapid assay test developed with assistance from the University of Arizona should help reduce delays in diagnosing the respiratory fungal disease caused by spores found in area soils.
  
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• One in five materials chemistry papers may be wrong, study suggests

  14-12-2017 21:33
  Can companies rely on the results of one or two scientific studies to design a new industrial process or launch a new product? In at least one area of materials chemistry, the answer may be yes -- but only 80 percent of the time.
  
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• Northeast farmers weigh warming climate, drenched fields

  14-12-2017 21:33
  Farmers in the Northeast are adapting to longer growing seasons and warming climate conditions -- but they may face spring-planting whiplash as they confront fields increasingly saturated with rain, according to a research paper.
  
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• MRSA risk at northeast Ohio beaches

  14-12-2017 21:33
  A study conducted in 2015 shows a higher-than-expected prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at beaches around Lake Erie.
  
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• Mechanism identified of impaired dendritic cell function that weakens response to cancer

  14-12-2017 21:33
  The mechanism implicated in the defective function of tumor-associated dendritic cells (DCs), a specialized type of immune cells that expose the antigens on their surface to activate the T cells, has now been revealed by researchers.
  
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• Food-induced anaphylaxis common among children despite adult supervision

  14-12-2017 21:33
  At least a third of reactions in children with food-induced anaphylaxis to a known allergen occur under adult supervision, according to a new study. The findings reveal that inadvertent exposures to a known food allergen in children are frequent, and in the majority of supervised reactions, adults other than the child's parents were present.
  
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• Conserving the forests

  14-12-2017 21:33
  Certification programs are being reevaluated as options for sustaining tropical forests, explain scientists.
  
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• Bioluminescent worm found to have iron superpowers

  14-12-2017 21:33
  Researchers have made a discovery with potential human health impacts in a parchment tubeworm, found to have ferritin with the fastest catalytic performance ever described.
  
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• Saturn’s rings are surprisingly young and may be from shredded moons

  14-12-2017 21:30
  
  Final data from the Cassini spacecraft put a date and a mass on the gas giant’s iconic rings.
  
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• Google crunches data to help NASA find two new planets

  14-12-2017 21:25
  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Google and NASA said on Thursday that advanced computer analysis identified two new planets around distant stars, including one that is part of the first star system with as many planets as Earth's solar system.
  
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• First Snapshot of Zika-Affected Toddlers Portends a Life of Struggle

  14-12-2017 20:45 via rss.sciam.com
  Children exposed to the virus in utero are now missing developmental milestones
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Geminid meteor shower dazzles over northern hemisphere

  14-12-2017 20:39 via bbc.co.uk
  If you missed the annual Geminid meteor shower, cameras captured the celestial display over China.
  
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• Alberta's wind farm deal scored 'pretty remarkable price,' energy researcher says

  14-12-2017 19:30 via cbc.ca
  Three companies were picked on Wednesday after a competitive, international auction to build four wind energy farms in the province's south.
  
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• Star system has record eight exoplanets

  14-12-2017 19:27 via bbc.co.uk
  Nasa finds a distant star circled by eight planets, equal to the complement in our own Solar System.
  
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• Neonicotinoids at 'chronic levels' in UK rivers, study finds

  14-12-2017 19:27 via bbc.co.uk
  Neonicotinoids have increasingly been linked to problems in bee populations.
  
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• Vasohibins/SVBP are tubulin carboxypeptidases (TCPs) that regulate neuron differentiation

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Reversible detyrosination of α-tubulin is crucial to microtubule dynamics and functions, and defects have been implicated in cancer, brain disorganization, and cardiomyopathies. The identity of the tubulin tyrosine carboxypeptidase (TCP) responsible for detyrosination has remained unclear. We used chemical proteomics with a potent irreversible inhibitor to show that the major brain TCP is a complex of vasohibin-1 (VASH1) with the small vasohibin binding protein (SVBP). VASH1 and its homolo
  
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• Vasohibins encode tubulin detyrosinating activity

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Tubulin is subjected to a number of posttranslational modifications to generate heterogeneous microtubules. The modifications include removal and ligation of the C-terminal tyrosine of -tubulin. The enzymes responsible for detyrosination, an activity first observed 40 years ago, have remained elusive. We applied a genetic screen in haploid human cells to find regulators of tubulin detyrosination. We identified SVBP, a peptide that regulates the abundance of vasohibins (VASH1 and VASH2). Vasohibi
  
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• The nanoscale circuitry of battery electrodes

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Developing high-performance, affordable, and durable batteries is one of the decisive technological tasks of our generation. Here, we review recent progress in understanding how to optimally arrange the various necessary phases to form the nanoscale structure of a battery electrode. The discussion begins with design principles for optimizing electrode kinetics based on the transport parameters and dimensionality of the phases involved. These principles are then used to review and classify variou
  
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• Synthesis of ultrasmall, homogeneously alloyed, bimetallic nanoparticles on silica supports

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Supported nanoparticles containing more than one metal have a variety of applications in sensing, catalysis, and biomedicine. Common synthesis techniques for this type of material often result in large, unalloyed nanoparticles that lack the interactions between the two metals that give the particles their desired characteristics. We demonstrate a relatively simple, effective, generalizable method to produce highly dispersed, well-alloyed bimetallic nanoparticles. Ten permutations of noble and ba
  
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• Structural basis of membrane disruption and cellular toxicity by {alpha}-synuclein oligomers

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Oligomeric species populated during the aggregation process of α-synuclein have been linked to neuronal impairment in Parkinson’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders. By using solution and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance techniques in conjunction with other structural methods, we identified the fundamental characteristics that enable toxic α-synuclein oligomers to perturb biological membranes and disrupt cellular function; these include a highly lipophilic el
  
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• Single-stranded DNA and RNA origami

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Self-folding of an information-carrying polymer into a defined structure is foundational to biology and offers attractive potential as a synthetic strategy. Although multicomponent self-assembly has produced complex synthetic nanostructures, unimolecular folding has seen limited progress. We describe a framework to design and synthesize a single DNA or RNA strand to self-fold into a complex yet unknotted structure that approximates an arbitrary user-prescribed shape. We experimentally construct
  
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• Reducing the stochasticity of crystal nucleation to enable subnanosecond memory writing

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Operation speed is a key challenge in phase-change random-access memory (PCRAM) technology, especially for achieving subnanosecond high-speed cache memory. Commercialized PCRAM products are limited by the tens of nanoseconds writing speed, originating from the stochastic crystal nucleation during the crystallization of amorphous germanium antimony telluride (Ge2Sb2Te5). Here, we demonstrate an alloying strategy to speed up the crystallization kinetics. The scandium antimony telluride (Sc0.2Sb2Te
  
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• Purcell effect for active tuning of light scattering from semiconductor optical antennas

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Subwavelength, high–refractive index semiconductor nanostructures support optical resonances that endow them with valuable antenna functions. Control over the intrinsic properties, including their complex refractive index, size, and geometry, has been used to manipulate fundamental light absorption, scattering, and emission processes in nanostructured optoelectronic devices. In this study, we harness the electric and magnetic resonances of such antennas to achieve a very strong dependence
  
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• Poly[n]catenanes: Synthesis of molecular interlocked chains

  14-12-2017 19:25
  As the macromolecular version of mechanically interlocked molecules, mechanically interlocked polymers are promising candidates for the creation of sophisticated molecular machines and smart soft materials. Poly[n]catenanes, where the molecular chains consist solely of interlocked macrocycles, contain one of the highest concentrations of topological bonds. We report, herein, a synthetic approach toward this distinctive polymer architecture in high yield (~75%) via efficient ring closing of ratio
  
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• Multiplex recording of cellular events over time on CRISPR biological tape

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Although dynamics underlie many biological processes, our ability to robustly and accurately profile time-varying biological signals and regulatory programs remains limited. Here we describe a framework for storing temporal biological information directly in the genomes of a cell population. We developed a "biological tape recorder" in which biological signals trigger intracellular DNA production that is then recorded by the CRISPR-Cas adaptation system. This approach enables stable recording ov
  
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• Monitoring and manipulating Higgs and Goldstone modes in a supersolid quantum gas

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Higgs and Goldstone modes are collective excitations of the amplitude and phase of an order parameter that is related to the breaking of a continuous symmetry. We directly studied these modes in a supersolid quantum gas created by coupling a Bose-Einstein condensate to two optical cavities, whose field amplitudes form the real and imaginary parts of a U(1)-symmetric order parameter. Monitoring the cavity fields in real time allowed us to observe the dynamics of the associated Higgs and Goldstone
  
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• Eudicot plant-specific sphingolipids determine host selectivity of microbial NLP cytolysins

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Necrosis and ethylene-inducing peptide 1–like (NLP) proteins constitute a superfamily of proteins produced by plant pathogenic bacteria, fungi, and oomycetes. Many NLPs are cytotoxins that facilitate microbial infection of eudicot, but not of monocot plants. Here, we report glycosylinositol phosphorylceramide (GIPC) sphingolipids as NLP toxin receptors. Plant mutants with altered GIPC composition were more resistant to NLP toxins. Binding studies and x-ray crystallography showed that NLPs
  
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• Enzyme-free nucleic acid dynamical systems

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Chemistries exhibiting complex dynamics—from inorganic oscillators to gene regulatory networks—have been long known but either cannot be reprogrammed at will or rely on the sophisticated enzyme chemistry underlying the central dogma. Can simpler molecular mechanisms, designed from scratch, exhibit the same range of behaviors? Abstract chemical reaction networks have been proposed as a programming language for complex dynamics, along with their systematic implementation using short sy
  
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• Disorder-induced optical transition from spin Hall to random Rashba effect

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Disordered structures give rise to intriguing phenomena owing to the complex nature of their interaction with light. We report on photonic spin-symmetry breaking and unexpected spin-optical transport phenomena arising from subwavelength-scale disordered geometric phase structure. Weak disorder induces a photonic spin Hall effect, observed via quantum weak measurements, whereas strong disorder leads to spin-split modes in momentum space, a random optical Rashba effect. Study of the momentum space
  
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• Comprehensive computational design of ordered peptide macrocycles

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Mixed-chirality peptide macrocycles such as cyclosporine are among the most potent therapeutics identified to date, but there is currently no way to systematically search the structural space spanned by such compounds. Natural proteins do not provide a useful guide: Peptide macrocycles lack regular secondary structures and hydrophobic cores, and can contain local structures not accessible with l-amino acids. Here, we enumerate the stable structures that can be adopted by macrocyclic peptides com
  
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• Anomalous spin correlations and excitonic instability of interacting 2D Weyl fermions

  14-12-2017 19:25
  The Coulomb interaction in systems of quasi-relativistic massless electrons has an unscreened long-range component at variance with conventional correlated metals. We used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements to reveal unusual spin correlations of two-dimensional Weyl fermions in an organic material, causing a divergent increase of the Korringa ratio by a factor of 1000 upon cooling, in marked contrast to conventional metallic behavior. Combined with model calculations, we show that thi
  
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• Analysis of Fusobacterium persistence and antibiotic response in colorectal cancer

  14-12-2017 19:25
  Colorectal cancers comprise a complex mixture of malignant cells, nontransformed cells, and microorganisms. Fusobacterium nucleatum is among the most prevalent bacterial species in colorectal cancer tissues. Here we show that colonization of human colorectal cancers with Fusobacterium and its associated microbiome—including Bacteroides, Selenomonas, and Prevotella species—is maintained in distal metastases, demonstrating microbiome stability between paired primary and metastatic tumo
  
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• Activation of surface lattice oxygen in single-atom Pt/CeO2 for low-temperature CO oxidation

  14-12-2017 19:25
  To improve fuel efficiency, advanced combustion engines are being designed to minimize the amount of heat wasted in the exhaust. Hence, future generations of catalysts must perform at temperatures that are 100°C lower than current exhaust-treatment catalysts. Achieving low-temperature activity, while surviving the harsh conditions encountered at high engine loads, remains a formidable challenge. In this study, we demonstrate how atomically dispersed ionic platinum (Pt2+) on ceria (CeO2), whi
  
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• FCC votes to roll back U.S. net neutrality protections

  14-12-2017 19:17 via cbc.ca
  The Federal Communications Commission voted to roll back U.S. laws designed to ensure a free and open internet, a controversial yet expected decision that critics say hands control of web traffic to a small number of billion-dollar companies.
  
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• U.S. religion is increasingly polarized

  14-12-2017 17:51
  
  Organized religion in the United States increasingly belongs to fervent believers, a new study finds.
  
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• Three-man crew returns from space station: NASA TV

  14-12-2017 17:38
  (Reuters) - A capsule carrying U.S., Russian and Italian astronauts from the International Space Station landed in Kazakhstan on Thursday after a five-month mission, a NASA TV live broadcast showed.
  
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• The wet road to fast and stable batteries

  14-12-2017 16:18
  An international team of scientists has discovered an anode battery material with superfast charging and stable operation over many thousands of cycles.
  
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• Climate scientists study the odds of a U.S. megadrought

  14-12-2017 16:18
  To help untangle fact from speculation, scientists have developed a 'robust null hypothesis' to assess the odds of a megadrought -- one that lasts more than 30 years -- occurring in the western and southwestern United States.
  
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• Deadly heart rhythm halted by noninvasive radiation therapy

  14-12-2017 16:17
  Radiation therapy often is used to treat cancer patients. Now, doctors have shown that radiation therapy -- aimed directly at the heart -- can be used to treat patients with a life-threatening heart rhythm. They treated five patients with irregular heart rhythms, called ventricular tachycardia, who had not responded to standard treatments. The therapy resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of ventricular tachycardia episodes.
  
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• That Feeling in Your Bones

  14-12-2017 16:16
  Rainy weather has long been blamed for achy joints and back pain. Past research has yielded mixed results. New analysis tracking visits to the doctor with daily rainfall found no relationship between the two.
  
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• Researchers shine a spotlight on illegal wild orchid trade

  14-12-2017 16:15
  Large-scale commercial trade of wild orchids is a pressing, but little-recognized conservation problem, according to researchers.
  
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• New material lowers the energy consumption associated with ethylene production

  14-12-2017 16:15
  Researchers are developing a zeolite which will allow users to separate ethylene using 25 per cent less energy than with current methods.
  
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• Insight into how infants learn to walk

  14-12-2017 16:14
  Ten-week-old babies can learn from practicing walking months before they begin walking themselves, say researchers.
  
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• Breathing exercises help asthma patients with quality of life

  14-12-2017 16:14
  A new study has found that people who continue to get problems from their asthma, despite receiving standard treatment, experience an improved quality of life when they are taught breathing exercises. The majority of asthma patients have some degree of impaired quality of life.
  
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• DNA: Supercoiling pushes molecular handcuffs along chromatin fibres

  14-12-2017 16:13
  As it squeezes down the chromatin fiber, the cohesin protein complex extrudes a growing loop of DNA -- a bit like the quick-lacing system of trail-running shoes. But what is powering the movement of the protein? A team of scientists has found that the driving force could be the supercoiling of upstream DNA. Their research is thereby adding a key piece to the puzzle of gene expression regulation.
  
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• Hydrogen production: protein environment makes catalyst efficient

  14-12-2017 16:12
  The interaction of protein shell and active center in hydrogen-producing enzymes is crucial for the efficiency of biocatalysts. A team specifically analyzed the role of hydrogen bonds in certain enzymes from green algae, the hydrogenases.
  
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