Science news

• Police sketch created with DNA technology is potentially useless or even misleading, says scientist

  22-02-2018 23:56 via cbc.ca
  Calgary police hired a U.S. biotech company to create a picture of a woman using only her DNA — but a scientist says the evidence behind the prediction simply isn't there.
  
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• Mutation explains why some people are more vulnerable to viral brain infection

  22-02-2018 23:14
  Scientists identified mutations in a single gene that impair immunity to viruses in a region of the brain called the brain stem.
  
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• Analysis finds lower IQ in children with chronic kidney disease

  22-02-2018 23:14
  An analysis of published studies indicates that children with chronic kidney disease may have lower intellectual functioning compared than children in the general population. Compared with children with mild-to-moderate stage kidney disease and with kidney transplants, children on dialysis had the lowest IQ scores. Deficits were evident for attention, memory, and executive function domains.
  
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• Federal budget to spend up to $1 billion on cybersecurity

  22-02-2018 23:00 via cbc.ca
  Next week’s federal budget is expected to make a significant investment in building up Canada's cyber defences and encouraging tech firms and talented programmers to work with the federal government, CBC News has learned.
  
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• With cost removed, women choose more effective contraceptive methods

  22-02-2018 22:21
  Researchers evaluated women's contraception choices if cost is not a factor.
  
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• Turning light upside down

  22-02-2018 22:21
  Researchers have developed a 'hyperbolic metasurface' on which light propagates with completely reshaped wavefronts. The achievement towards a more precise control and monitoring of light is particularly relevant to the technological challenges of miniaturizing optical devices for sensing and signal processing.
  
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• The global footprint of fisheries

  22-02-2018 22:21
  The global fishing fleet is so big it can be seen from space. Really.
  
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• Sweet, bitter, fat: Genetics play a role in kids' snacking patterns

  22-02-2018 22:21
  The types of snacks a child chooses could be linked to genetics, a new study found. The study investigated whether genetic variants in taste receptors related to sweet, fat and bitter tastes influence the snacks preschoolers choose and found nearly 80 per cent carried at least one of these genotypes that could predispose them to poor snacking habits. These findings could help parents tailor their kids' diets based on their genetics of taste.
  
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• Scientists isolate cancer stem cells using novel method

  22-02-2018 22:21
  Researchers have devised a new technique to isolate aggressive cells thought to form the root of many hard-to-treat metastasized cancers -- a significant step toward developing new drugs that might target these cells.
  
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• Researchers adapt HIV test in developing rapid diagnostic test for Zika virus

  22-02-2018 22:21
  Researchers are developing a novel test for Zika virus that uses saliva to identify diagnostic markers of the virus in a fraction of the time of current commercial tests.
  
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• New crystal structures reveal mysterious mechanism of gene regulation by the 'magic spot'

  22-02-2018 22:21
  Using an innovative crystallization technique for studying 3D structures of gene transcription machinery, researchers revealed new insights into the long debated action of the 'magic spot' -- a molecule that controls gene expression in E. coli and many other bacteria when the bacteria are stressed. The study contributes to fundamental understanding of how bacteria adapt and survive under adverse conditions and provides clues about key processes that could be targeted in the search for new antibi
  
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• Beetroot juice supplements may help certain heart failure patients

  22-02-2018 22:21
  Beetroot juice supplements may help enhance exercise capacity in patients with heart failure, according to a new proof-of-concept study. Exercise capacity is a key factor linked to these patients' quality of life and even survival.
  
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• As pediatric use of iNO increased, mortality rates dropped

  22-02-2018 22:19
  Scientists have analyzed data from pediatric patient visits over a 10-year period at 47 children's hospitals and found as inhaled nitric oxide use and costs increased mortality rates dropped modestly.
  
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• New mapping shows just how much fishing impacts the world’s seas

  22-02-2018 21:40
  
  Industrial fishing now occurs across 55 percent of the world’s ocean area while only 34 percent of Earth’s land area is used for agriculture or grazing.
  
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• Science Says: European art scene began with Neanderthals

  22-02-2018 21:28 via cbc.ca
  From the murky depths of Spanish caves comes a surprising insight: Neanderthals created art.
  
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• Neanderthals, not modern humans, created these cave paintings

  22-02-2018 21:28 via cbc.ca
  From the murky depths of Spanish caves comes a surprising insight: Neanderthals created art.
  
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• Monkey Vocabulary Decoded

  22-02-2018 21:02
  From short 'tsiks' and 'ekks' to drawn-out 'phees' -- all the sounds produced by marmoset monkeys are made up of individual syllables of fixed length, according to a new study. The smallest units of vocalization and their rhythmic production in the brain of our relatives could also have been a prerequisite of human speech.
  
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• Global Virome Project is hunting for more than 1 million unknown viruses

  22-02-2018 20:53
  
  Scientists are searching for viruses lurking in animals that could threaten human health.
  
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• Surprising new study redraws family tree of domesticated and 'wild' horses

  22-02-2018 20:51
  New research overturns a long-held assumption that Przewalski's horses, native to the Eurasian steppes, are the last wild horse species on Earth.
  
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• Newly designed molecule binds nitrogen

  22-02-2018 20:51
  Chemists have developed a boron-based molecule capable of binding nitrogen without assistance from a transition metal. This might be the first step towards the energy-saving production of fertilizers.
  
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• Evolutionary change in protein function respects biophysical principles

  22-02-2018 20:51
  Some molecular biologists who study the proteins that regulate cell operations do not confine their research to understanding the molecules' current roles. They also look deep into the proteins' evolutionary past to explore what structures have allowed proteins with new functions to develop in response to new needs.
  
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• DNA gets away: Scientists catch the rogue molecule that can trigger autoimmunity

  22-02-2018 20:51
  A research team has discovered the process -- and filmed the actual moment -- that can change the body's response to a dying cell. Importantly, what they call the 'Great Escape' moment may one day prove to be the crucial trigger for autoimmune diseases like arthritis.
  
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• Understanding the wetting of micro-textured surfaces can help give them new functionalities

  22-02-2018 20:50
  The wetting and adhesion characteristics of solid surfaces critically depend on their fine structures. However, until now, our understanding of exactly how the sliding behavior of liquid droplets depends on surface microstructures has been limited. Now, physicists have conducted experimental and theoretical studies on the friction of liquid droplets on micro-structured surfaces.
  
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• Toenail fungus gives up sex to infect human hosts

  22-02-2018 20:50
  The fungus that causes athlete's foot and other skin and toenail infections may have lost its ability to sexually reproduce as it adapted to grow on human hosts. The discovery that this species may be asexual -- and therefore nearly identical at the genetic level -- uncovers potential vulnerabilities that researchers could exploit in designing better antifungal medications. The findings appear online in Genetics.
  
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• The Australian government's plan for the biocontrol of the common carp presents several risks

  22-02-2018 20:50
  Scientists are calling on the Australian authorities to review their decision to introduce the carp herpes virus as a way to combat the common carp having colonized the country's rivers. They not only believe that this measure will be ineffective but that it also represents a risk to ecosystems.
  
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• Quantum recurrence: Everything goes back to the way it was

  22-02-2018 20:50
  When a complex system is left alone, it will return to its initial state with almost perfect precision. Gas particles in a container, for example, will return almost exactly to their starting positions after some time. For decades, scientists have investigated how this 'Poincaré Recurrence Theorem' can be applied to the world of quantum physics. Now, researchers have successfully demonstrated a kind of 'Poincaré recurrence' in a multi-particle quantum system.
  
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• Positive results for larotrectinib against TRK-fusion cancer

  22-02-2018 20:50
  55 patients representing 17 cancer types tested positive for TRK fusion and were treated with larotrectinib. Overall response rate was 75 percent.
  
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• Engineers advance capability of wearable tech

  22-02-2018 20:50
  Creating the perfect wearable device to monitor muscle movement, heart rate and other tiny bio-signals without breaking the bank has inspired scientists to look for a simpler and more affordable tool. Now, researchers have developed a practical way to monitor and interpret human motion, in what may be the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to wearable technology.
  
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• C-sections and gut bacteria increase risk of childhood obesity

  22-02-2018 20:50
  New research has found that overweight and obese women are more like to have children who are overweight or obese by three years of age -- and that bacteria in the gut may be partially to blame.
  
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• Cave art suggests Neandertals were ancient humans’ mental equals

  22-02-2018 20:12
  
  Ancient humans’ close relatives also created rock art and shell ornaments, studies assert.
  
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• The last wild horses aren’t truly wild

  22-02-2018 20:00
  
  The ancestor of today’s domesticated horses remains a mystery after a new analysis of ancient horse DNA.
  
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• Ultrafast optical ranging using microresonator soliton frequency combs

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Light detection and ranging is widely used in science and industry. Over the past decade, optical frequency combs were shown to offer advantages in optical ranging, enabling fast distance acquisition with high accuracy. Driven by emerging high-volume applications such as industrial sensing, drone navigation, or autonomous driving, there is now a growing demand for compact ranging systems. Here, we show that soliton Kerr comb generation in integrated silicon nitride microresonators provides a rou
  
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• U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art

  22-02-2018 19:39
  The extent and nature of symbolic behavior among Neandertals are obscure. Although evidence for Neandertal body ornamentation has been proposed, all cave painting has been attributed to modern humans. Here we present dating results for three sites in Spain that show that cave art emerged in Iberia substantially earlier than previously thought. Uranium-thorium (U-Th) dates on carbonate crusts overlying paintings provide minimum ages for a red linear motif in La Pasiega (Cantabria), a hand stencil
  
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• Tracking the global footprint of fisheries

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Although fishing is one of the most widespread activities by which humans harvest natural resources, its global footprint is poorly understood and has never been directly quantified. We processed 22 billion automatic identification system messages and tracked >70,000 industrial fishing vessels from 2012 to 2016, creating a global dynamic footprint of fishing effort with spatial and temporal resolution two to three orders of magnitude higher than for previous data sets. Our data show that indu
  
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• Structures of human PRC2 with its cofactors AEBP2 and JARID2

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Transcriptionally repressive histone H3 lysine 27 methylation by Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) is essential for cellular differentiation and development. Here we report cryo–electron microscopy structures of human PRC2 in a basal state and two distinct active states while in complex with its cofactors JARID2 and AEBP2. Both cofactors mimic the binding of histone H3 tails. JARID2, methylated by PRC2, mimics a methylated H3 tail to stimulate PRC2 activity, whereas AEBP2 interacts with
  
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• Structural principles that enable oligomeric small heat-shock protein paralogs to evolve distinct functions

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Oligomeric proteins assemble with exceptional selectivity, even in the presence of closely related proteins, to perform their cellular roles. We show that most proteins related by gene duplication of an oligomeric ancestor have evolved to avoid hetero-oligomerization and that this correlates with their acquisition of distinct functions. We report how coassembly is avoided by two oligomeric small heat-shock protein paralogs. A hierarchy of assembly, involving intermediates that are populated only
  
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• Soliton microcomb range measurement

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Laser-based range measurement systems are important in many application areas, including autonomous vehicles, robotics, manufacturing, formation flying of satellites, and basic science. Coherent laser ranging systems using dual-frequency combs provide an unprecedented combination of long range, high precision, and fast update rate. We report dual-comb distance measurement using chip-based soliton microcombs. A single pump laser was used to generate dual-frequency combs within a single microreson
  
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• Single-cell bioluminescence imaging of deep tissue in freely moving animals

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Bioluminescence is a natural light source based on luciferase catalysis of its substrate luciferin. We performed directed evolution on firefly luciferase using a red-shifted and highly deliverable luciferin analog to establish AkaBLI, an all-engineered bioluminescence in vivo imaging system. AkaBLI produced emissions in vivo that were brighter by a factor of 100 to 1000 than conventional systems, allowing noninvasive visualization of single cells deep inside freely moving animals. Single tumorig
  
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• Response to Comment on "The whole-soil carbon flux in response to warming"

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Temperature records and model predictions demonstrate that deep soils warm at the same rate as surface soils, contrary to Xiao et al.’s assertions. In response to Xiao et al.’s critique of our Q10 analysis, we present the results with all data points included, which show Q10 values of >2 throughout the soil profile, indicating that all soil depths responded to warming.
  
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• Patient-derived organoids model treatment response of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) have recently emerged as robust preclinical models; however, their potential to predict clinical outcomes in patients has remained unclear. We report on a living biobank of PDOs from metastatic, heavily pretreated colorectal and gastroesophageal cancer patients recruited in phase 1/2 clinical trials. Phenotypic and genotypic profiling of PDOs showed a high degree of similarity to the original patient tumors. Molecular profiling of tumor organoids was matched to d
  
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• Nitrogen fixation and reduction at boron

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Currently, the only compounds known to support fixation and functionalization of dinitrogen (N2) under nonmatrix conditions are based on metals. Here we present the observation of N2 binding and reduction by a nonmetal, specifically a dicoordinate borylene. Depending on the reaction conditions under which potassium graphite is introduced as a reductant, N2 binding to two borylene units results in either neutral (B2N2) or dianionic ([B2N2]2–) products that can be interconverted by respectiv
  
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• Molecular structure of human P-glycoprotein in the ATP-bound, outward-facing conformation

  22-02-2018 19:39
  The multidrug transporter permeability (P)–glycoprotein is an adenosine triphosphate (ATP)–binding cassette exporter responsible for clinical resistance to chemotherapy. P-glycoprotein extrudes toxic molecules and drugs from cells through ATP-powered conformational changes. Despite decades of effort, only the structures of the inward-facing conformation of P-glycoprotein are available. Here we present the structure of human P-glycoprotein in the outward-facing conformation, determine
  
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• Infrared hyperbolic metasurface based on nanostructured van der Waals materials

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Metasurfaces with strongly anisotropic optical properties can support deep subwavelength-scale confined electromagnetic waves (polaritons), which promise opportunities for controlling light in photonic and optoelectronic applications. We developed a mid-infrared hyperbolic metasurface by nanostructuring a thin layer of hexagonal boron nitride that supports deep subwavelength-scale phonon polaritons that propagate with in-plane hyperbolic dispersion. By applying an infrared nanoimaging technique,
  
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• Detection and localization of surgically resectable cancers with a multi-analyte blood test

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Earlier detection is key to reducing cancer deaths. Here, we describe a blood test that can detect eight common cancer types through assessment of the levels of circulating proteins and mutations in cell-free DNA. We applied this test, called CancerSEEK, to 1005 patients with nonmetastatic, clinically detected cancers of the ovary, liver, stomach, pancreas, esophagus, colorectum, lung, or breast. CancerSEEK tests were positive in a median of 70% of the eight cancer types. The sensitivities range
  
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• Coral reefs will transition to net dissolving before end of century

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Ocean acidification refers to the lowering of the ocean’s pH due to the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere. Coral reef calcification is expected to decrease as the oceans become more acidic. Dissolving calcium carbonate (CaCO3) sands could greatly exacerbate reef loss associated with reduced calcification but is presently poorly constrained. Here we show that CaCO3 dissolution in reef sediments across five globally distributed sites is negatively correlated with the aragonite
  
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• Comment on "The whole-soil carbon flux in response to warming"

  22-02-2018 19:39
  In a compelling study, Hicks Pries et al. (Reports, 31 March 2017, p. 1420) showed that 4°C warming enhanced soil CO2 production in the 1-meter soil profile, with all soil depths displaying similar temperature sensitivity (Q10). We argue that some caveats can be identified in their experimental approach and analysis, and that these critically undermine their conclusions and hence their claim that the strength of feedback between the whole-soil carbon and climate has been underestimated in te
  
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• Breakup of last glacial deep stratification in the South Pacific

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Stratification of the deep Southern Ocean during the Last Glacial Maximum is thought to have facilitated carbon storage and subsequent release during the deglaciation as stratification broke down, contributing to atmospheric CO2 rise. Here, we present neodymium isotope evidence from deep to abyssal waters in the South Pacific that confirms stratification of the deepwater column during the Last Glacial Maximum. The results indicate a glacial northward expansion of Ross Sea Bottom Water and a Sout
  
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• BAK/BAX macropores facilitate mitochondrial herniation and mtDNA efflux during apoptosis

  22-02-2018 19:39
  Mitochondrial apoptosis is mediated by BAK and BAX, two proteins that induce mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization, leading to cytochrome c release and activation of apoptotic caspases. In the absence of active caspases, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) triggers the innate immune cGAS/STING pathway, causing dying cells to secrete type I interferon. How cGAS gains access to mtDNA remains unclear. We used live-cell lattice light-sheet microscopy to examine the mitochondrial network in mouse embry
  
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• Mutation 'gives bats edge over deadly viruses'

  22-02-2018 19:13 via bbc.co.uk
  A single mutation in an immunity gene may explain why bats can carry deadly viruses and not get sick.
  
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• SpaceX launches experimental Starlink internet satellites

  22-02-2018 18:11 via cbc.ca
  SpaceX has launched a Spanish satellite and two experimental internet-beaming satellites into space.
  
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