Science news

• Relatively unknown gene linked to early emergence of blood diseases

  01-02-2018 23:34
  Researchers have discovered the contribution of a specific gene in the proper development of blood cells that give rise to hematopoietic stem cells. The findings identify a potential target for the development of treatments for some types of leukemia, anemia and other blood disorders.
  
  Read more

• Bacteria play critical role in driving colon cancers

  01-02-2018 23:34
  Patients with an inherited form of colon cancer harbor two bacterial species that collaborate to encourage development of the disease, and the same species have been found in people who develop a sporadic form of colon cancer, a research team finds.
  
  Read more

• Two-stage gas sensor reports on soil dynamics

  01-02-2018 23:33
  A robust two-stage microbial sensor will help researchers observe gene expression and the bioavailability of nutrients in environments like soil and sediments without disturbing them.
  
  Read more

• Polar bears finding it harder to catch enough seals to meet energy demands

  01-02-2018 23:33
  A new study finds polar bears in the wild have higher metabolic rates than previously thought, and as climate change alters their environment a growing number of bears are unable to catch enough prey to meet their energy needs.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Even small changes within an ecosystem can have detrimental effects

  01-02-2018 23:33
  A mutualistic relationship between species in an ecosystem allows for the ecosystem to thrive, but the lack of this relationship could lead to the collapse of the entire system. New research reveals that interactions between relatively small organisms are crucial to mutualistic relationships in an ecosystem dominated by much larger organisms, including trees and elephants.
  
  Read more

• Toward end of Ice Age, human beings witnessed fires larger than dinosaur killers

  01-02-2018 23:32
  About 12,800 years ago, thanks to fragments of a comet, humans saw an astonishing 10 percent of the Earth's land surface, or about 10 million square kilometers, consumed by fires.
  
  Read more

• Researchers observe electrons zipping around in crystals

  01-02-2018 23:32
  For the first time, scientists have tracked electrons moving through exotic materials that may make up the next generation of computing hardware, revealing intriguing properties not found in conventional, silicon-based semiconductors.
  
  Read more

• How does limited education limit young people?

  01-02-2018 23:32
  A recent nationally-representative US Department of Education study found that 28 percent of fall 2009 ninth-graders had not yet enrolled in a trade school or college by February 2016 -- roughly six-and-a-half years later.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Family impact of congenital Zika syndrome likely to last a lifetime

  01-02-2018 23:32
  The impact of congenital Zika syndrome on families will be substantial and will last a lifetime, given its severity and uncertainty about long-term outcomes for infants.
  
  Read more

• Developmental splicing program controlling neuronal maturation

  01-02-2018 23:32
  Scientists have determined that loss of Rbfox genes results in an 'embryonic like' splicing program.
  
  Read more

• Norway rats trade different commodities

  01-02-2018 23:31
  Researchers have shown for the first time in an experiment that also non-human animals exchange different kind of favors. Humans commonly trade different commodities, which is considered a core competence of our species. However, this capacity is not exclusively human as Norway rats exchange different commodities, too. They strictly follow the principle "tit for tat" -- even when paying with different currencies, such as grooming or food provisioning.
  
  Read more

• New mouse model makes stem cells light up green

  01-02-2018 23:31
  Multipotent stromal cells have long been a hot topic in medical research. Scientists have now found a way to specifically mark these stem cells. This makes it possible to analyze their distribution pattern and their function in living organisms.
  
  Read more

• Type 2 diabetes in cats a near purr-fect match to human version

  01-02-2018 22:46 via cbc.ca
  What's the difference between an older over-weight human, and an older, over-weight cat? Not much when it comes to Type 2 diabetes.
  
  Read more

• The North's 'apex predator' threatened by receding sea ice in the Beaufort Sea, study says

  01-02-2018 22:28 via cbc.ca
  A new study published Thursday in the journal Science sheds new light on the basic biology of the polar bear — and explores the threat receding sea ice may pose for its survival.
  
  Read more

• A blood test could predict the risk of Alzheimer’s disease

  01-02-2018 22:03
  
  A blood test can predict the presence of an Alzheimer’s-related protein in the brain.
  
  Read more

• Polar bears captured on collar cams

  01-02-2018 21:33 via bbc.co.uk
  High-tech tracking collars on polar bears reveal a growing Arctic struggle, say scientists.
  
  Read more

• A peek into polar bears’ lives reveals revved-up metabolisms

  01-02-2018 21:24
  
  Polar bears have higher metabolisms than scientists thought. In a world with declining Arctic sea ice, that could spell trouble.
  
  Read more

• New laser emits a more stable, energy-efficient light beam

  01-02-2018 20:35
  
  A new type of laser could emit more stable, energy-efficient light beams than its conventional counterparts.
  
  Read more

• Metabolism study signals more trouble ahead for polar bears

  01-02-2018 20:31
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A study of polar bear metabolism conducted near Alaska's Prudhoe Bay has provided more reason to worry about the future of these massive predators that prowl the Arctic.
  
  Read more

• House dust mites evolved a new way to protect their genome

  01-02-2018 20:28
  House dust mites are common pests with an unusual evolutionary history. They are tiny, free-living animals that evolved from a parasitic ancestor, which in turn evolved from free-living organisms millions of years ago.
  
  Read more

• Changes in genes involved in DNA repair and packaging linked to risk of multiple myeloma

  01-02-2018 20:28
  Researchers have identified two gene regions that contribute to multiple myeloma, an inherited cancer that occurs in bone marrow, through a new method that makes use of human disease pedigrees.
  
  Read more

• Polar bears 'running out of food'

  01-02-2018 20:21 via bbc.co.uk
  Tracking collars on female polar bears measure the animals' struggle to find food on diminishing Arctic ice.
  
  Read more

• Small molecules set up security system to defend the genome

  01-02-2018 20:15
  Thousands of short RNA molecules with diverse genetic sequences serve as security guards to identify and silence attempts to invade the genome, such as DNA inserted by viruses or parasitic elements known as transposons.
  
  Read more

• Oklahoma's earthquakes strongly linked to wastewater injection depth

  01-02-2018 20:15
  Human-made earthquakes in Oklahoma are strongly linked to the depth at which wastewater from the oil and gas industry are injected into the ground, according to a new study.
  
  Read more

• New water-splitting method could open path to hydrogen economy

  01-02-2018 20:15
  Researchers have found a way to more efficiently generate hydrogen from water - an important key to making clean energy more viable. Using inexpensive nickel and iron, the researchers developed a very simple, five-minute method to create large amounts of a high-quality catalyst required for the chemical reaction to split water.
  
  Read more

• New research advances spintronics technology

  01-02-2018 20:14
  Engineers have reported advances in so-called 'spintronic' devices that will help lead to a new technology for computing and data storage. They have developed methods to detect signals from spintronic components made of low-cost metals and silicon, which overcomes a major barrier to wide application of spintronics.
  
  Read more

• Meet the 'odderon': Large Hadron Collider experiment shows potential evidence of quasiparticle sought for decades

  01-02-2018 20:14
  A team of high-energy experimental particle physicists has uncovered possible evidence of a subatomic quasiparticle dubbed an 'odderon' that -- until now -- had only been theorized to exist.
  
  Read more

• Dancing Dwarf Galaxies Deepen Dark Matter Mystery

  01-02-2018 20:00 via rss.sciam.com
  A surprising alignment between small satellites of the galaxy Centaurus A challenges the standard model of cosmology-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
  Read more

• The piRNA targeting rules and the resistance to piRNA silencing in endogenous genes

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) silence transposons to safeguard genome integrity in animals. However, the functions of the many piRNAs that do not map to transposons remain unknown. Here, we show that piRNA targeting in Caenorhabditis elegans can tolerate a few mismatches but prefer perfect pairing at the seed region. The broad targeting capacity of piRNAs underlies the germline silencing of transgenes in C. elegans. Transgenes engineered to avoid piRNA recognition are stably expressed. Many end
  
  Read more

• Structure of the yeast oligosaccharyltransferase complex gives insight into eukaryotic N-glycosylation

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Oligosaccharyltransferase (OST) is an essential membrane protein complex in the endoplasmic reticulum, where it transfers an oligosaccharide from a dolichol-pyrophosphate–activated donor to glycosylation sites of secretory proteins. Here we describe the atomic structure of yeast OST determined by cryo–electron microscopy, revealing a conserved subunit arrangement. The active site of the catalytic STT3 subunit points away from the center of the complex, allowing unhindered access to s
  
  Read more

• Structure of a human catalytic step I spliceosome

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Splicing by the spliceosome involves branching and exon ligation. The branching reaction leads to the formation of the catalytic step I spliceosome (C complex). Here we report the cryo–electron microscopy structure of the human C complex at an average resolution of 4.1 angstroms. Compared with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae C complex, the human complex contains 11 additional proteins. The step I splicing factors CCDC49 and CCDC94 (Cwc25 and Yju2 in S. cerevisiae, respectively) closely intera
  
  Read more

• Reversibility of citrate synthase allows autotrophic growth of a thermophilic bacterium

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Biological inorganic carbon fixation proceeds through a number of fundamentally different autotrophic pathways that are defined by specific key enzymatic reactions. Detection of the enzymatic genes in (meta)genomes is widely used to estimate the contribution of individual organisms or communities to primary production. Here we show that the sulfur-reducing anaerobic deltaproteobacterium Desulfurella acetivorans is capable of both acetate oxidation and autotrophic carbon fixation, with the tricar
  
  Read more

• Probing optically silent superfluid stripes in cuprates

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Unconventional superconductivity in the cuprates coexists with other types of electronic order. However, some of these orders are invisible to most experimental probes because of their symmetry. For example, the possible existence of superfluid stripes is not easily validated with linear optics, because the stripe alignment causes interlayer superconducting tunneling to vanish on average. Here we show that this frustration is removed in the nonlinear optical response. A giant terahertz third har
  
  Read more

• Polarity compensation mechanisms on the perovskite surface KTaO3(001)

  01-02-2018 19:41
  The stacking of alternating charged planes in ionic crystals creates a diverging electrostatic energy—a "polar catastrophe"—that must be compensated at the surface. We used scanning probe microscopies and density functional theory to study compensation mechanisms at the perovskite potassium tantalate (KTaO3) (001) surface as increasing degrees of freedom were enabled. The as-cleaved surface in vacuum is frozen in place but immediately responds with an insulator-to-metal transition an
  
  Read more

• Patients with familial adenomatous polyposis harbor colonic biofilms containing tumorigenic bacteria

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Individuals with sporadic colorectal cancer (CRC) frequently harbor abnormalities in the composition of the gut microbiome; however, the microbiota associated with precancerous lesions in hereditary CRC remains largely unknown. We studied colonic mucosa of patients with familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), who develop benign precursor lesions (polyps) early in life. We identified patchy bacterial biofilms composed predominately of Escherichia coli and Bacteroides fragilis. Genes for colibactin
  
  Read more

• Patient HLA class I genotype influences cancer response to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy

  01-02-2018 19:41
  CD8+ T cell–dependent killing of cancer cells requires efficient presentation of tumor antigens by human leukocyte antigen class I (HLA-I) molecules. However, the extent to which patient-specific HLA-I genotype influences response to anti–programmed cell death protein 1 or anti–cytotoxic T lymphocyte–associated protein 4 is currently unknown. We determined the HLA-I genotype of 1535 advanced cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). Maximal heterozygo
  
  Read more

• Observation of chiral phonons

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Chirality reveals symmetry breaking of the fundamental interaction of elementary particles. In condensed matter, for example, the chirality of electrons governs many unconventional transport phenomena such as the quantum Hall effect. Here we show that phonons can exhibit intrinsic chirality in monolayer tungsten diselenide. The broken inversion symmetry of the lattice lifts the degeneracy of clockwise and counterclockwise phonon modes at the corners of the Brillouin zone. We identified the phono
  
  Read more

• High-energy, high-fat lifestyle challenges an Arctic apex predator, the polar bear

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Regional declines in polar bear (Ursus maritimus) populations have been attributed to changing sea ice conditions, but with limited information on the causative mechanisms. By simultaneously measuring field metabolic rates, daily activity patterns, body condition, and foraging success of polar bears moving on the spring sea ice, we found that high metabolic rates (1.6 times greater than previously assumed) coupled with low intake of fat-rich marine mammal prey resulted in an energy deficit for m
  
  Read more

• Different mutational rates and mechanisms in human cells at pregastrulation and neurogenesis

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Somatic mosaicism in the human brain may alter function of individual neurons. We analyzed genomes of single cells from the forebrains of three human fetuses (15 to 21 weeks postconception) using clonal cell populations. We detected 200 to 400 single-nucleotide variations (SNVs) per cell. SNV patterns resembled those found in cancer cell genomes, indicating a role of background mutagenesis in cancer. SNVs with a frequency of >2% in brain were also present in the spleen, revealing a pregastrul
  
  Read more

• Climate, ecosystems, and planetary futures: The challenge to predict life in Earth system models

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Many global change stresses on terrestrial and marine ecosystems affect not only ecosystem services that are essential to humankind, but also the trajectory of future climate by altering energy and mass exchanges with the atmosphere. Earth system models, which simulate terrestrial and marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles, offer a common framework for ecological research related to climate processes; analyses of vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation; and climate change mitigation. They pr
  
  Read more

• Aging and neurodegeneration are associated with increased mutations in single human neurons

  01-02-2018 19:41
  It has long been hypothesized that aging and neurodegeneration are associated with somatic mutation in neurons; however, methodological hurdles have prevented testing this hypothesis directly. We used single-cell whole-genome sequencing to perform genome-wide somatic single-nucleotide variant (sSNV) identification on DNA from 161 single neurons from the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of 15 normal individuals (aged 4 months to 82 years), as well as 9 individuals affected by early-onset neurode
  
  Read more

• A whirling plane of satellite galaxies around Centaurus A challenges cold dark matter cosmology

  01-02-2018 19:41
  The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are each surrounded by a thin plane of satellite dwarf galaxies that may be corotating. Cosmological simulations predict that most satellite galaxy systems are close to isotropic with random motions, so those two well-studied systems are often interpreted as rare statistical outliers. We test this assumption using the kinematics of satellite galaxies around the Centaurus A galaxy. Our statistical analysis reveals evidence for corotation in a narrow plane: Of
  
  Read more

• A primordial and reversible TCA cycle in a facultatively chemolithoautotrophic thermophile

  01-02-2018 19:41
  Inorganic carbon fixation is essential to sustain life on Earth, and the reductive tricarboxylic acid (rTCA) cycle is one of the most ancient carbon fixation metabolisms. A combination of genomic, enzymatic, and metabolomic analyses of a deeply branching chemolithotrophic Thermosulfidibacter takaii ABI70S6T revealed a previously unknown reversible TCA cycle whose direction was controlled by the available carbon source(s). Under a chemolithoautotrophic condition, a rTCA cycle occurred with the re
  
  Read more

• Scientists discover new field affecting metals solidification

  01-02-2018 18:59
  The discovery that this heretofore unknown 'bias field' is causing pattern formation alters the thinking that the formations had been caused only by the sound vibration or disturbances known in materials science as noise.
  
  Read more

• Photoreversible molecular switch changes the physical property of thermoresponsive polymer

  01-02-2018 18:59
  Researchers have developed a novel strategy to control the shapes of polymeric materials by utilizing photoresponsive molecular switches, which may evolve tractable stimuli-responsive soft materials.
  
  Read more

• How the most common DNA mutation happens

  01-02-2018 18:59
  Shape-shifters aren't just the stuff of fiction, they're real -- and they're inside our DNA. Researchers now describe how two mismatched bases in human DNA are able to change shape in order to avoid the body's natural defenses against genetic mutations.
  
  Read more

• Experimental therapy could boost stroke recovery

  01-02-2018 18:59
  An experimental therapy that targets the spinal cord may one day be key to spurring on enhanced recovery for stroke victims. By injecting a drug called chondroitinase ABC (ChABC) into the spinal cord of rats 28 days after they suffered a stroke, researchers found they were able to enhance recovery by inducing amplified rewiring of circuits connecting the brain to the spinal cord. When they also combined the spinal therapy with rehabilitative training, recovery amplified further.
  
  Read more

• Tracking microbial diversity through the terrestrial subsurface

  01-02-2018 18:33
  Scientists have investigate samples collected at Utah's Crystal Geyser over one of its complex, five-day eruption cycles.
  
  Read more

• Study of salts in water causing stir

  01-02-2018 18:33
  New insight into science that seems, on its surface, exceedingly simple -- what happens when you add salt to water -- could ultimately lead to a better understanding of biochemical processes in cells and perhaps advance sources of clean energy.
  
  Read more

• Hunger overrides sense of fullness after weight loss

  01-02-2018 18:33
  The levels of hormones that control hunger and fullness(satiety) both rise after weight loss, but individuals may only experience an increase in hunger, according to a new study.
  
  Read more

Follow @ScienceUKnews on Twitter!