Science news

• U.S. space companies aim to help Brazil rocket base lift off

  08-03-2018 23:46
  BRASILIA (Reuters) - U.S. companies eager to tap into the fast-growing market for low-cost satellite launches could become the first customers when Brazil's Alcantara space center near the equator opens as a commercial spaceport, executives and Brazilian officials said.
  
  Read more

• The debate over how long our brains keep making new nerve cells heats up

  08-03-2018 23:14
  
  Adult humans don’t have newborn nerve cells in a memory-related part of the brain, a controversial paper suggests.
  
  Read more

• Fluoroquinolones linked to increased risk of acute aortic disease

  08-03-2018 22:25
  New research lends additional support to a link between treatment with fluoroquinolone antibiotics and an increased risk of acute aortic disease.
  
  Read more

• Formation of bacterial spores

  08-03-2018 22:15
  Bacterial spores store information about the individual growth history of their progenitor cells, thus retaining a "memory" that links the different stages of the bacterial life cycle. The spore memory could give rise to various adaptive behaviors in microbes.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Give double-layer graphene a twist and it superconducts

  08-03-2018 22:10
  
  When graphene layers are twisted to a “magic angle,” the material superconducts.
  
  Read more

• Anthropologists show how migrant communities physically grow taller when they leave hardship behind

  08-03-2018 22:07
  A new study has shown that migrant populations moving to more affluent countries grow physically taller over relatively short periods of time.
  
  Read more

• Newer drugs make hepatitis C-positive kidneys safe for transplant

  08-03-2018 21:30
  
  People without hepatitis C did not contract the disease after receiving successful transplants of infected kidneys along with newer antiviral drugs.
  
  Read more

• Diamonds reveal sign of the deepest water known inside Earth

  08-03-2018 20:22
  
  A rare form of ice crystal in the gems could have formed only at the crushing pressures found in the mantle.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Amelia Earhart: Island bones 'likely' belonged to famed pilot

  08-03-2018 20:11 via bbc.co.uk
  A new study claims the remains discovered on a Pacific island are a 99% match with the explorer.
  
  Read more

• You Can't Handle the Truth--at Least on Twitter

  08-03-2018 20:00 via rss.sciam.com
  False information is about 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than faithful reports of actual events, researchers find-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
  Read more

• Who spreads fake news? On Twitter, humans are more likely culprits than bots, new study suggests

  08-03-2018 20:00 via cbc.ca
  False news shared on Twitter spreads "significantly farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth," according to a new study from a Twitter-funded research lab — which also found that humans, and not bots, are more likely to spread false news.
  
  Read more

• On Twitter, the lure of fake news is stronger than the truth

  08-03-2018 20:00
  
  An analysis of more than 4.5 million tweets discussing false and true stories reveals that in the Twittersphere, fake news gets more views.
  
  Read more

• Translocation of a gut pathobiont drives autoimmunity in mice and humans

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Despite multiple associations between the microbiota and immune diseases, their role in autoimmunity is poorly understood. We found that translocation of a gut pathobiont, Enterococcus gallinarum, to the liver and other systemic tissues triggers autoimmune responses in a genetic background predisposing to autoimmunity. Antibiotic treatment prevented mortality in this model, suppressed growth of E. gallinarum in tissues, and eliminated pathogenic autoantibodies and T cells. Hepatocyte–E. ga
  
  Read more

• Thermal proximity coaggregation for system-wide profiling of protein complex dynamics in cells

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Proteins differentially interact with each other across cellular states and conditions, but an efficient proteome-wide strategy to monitor them is lacking. We report the application of thermal proximity coaggregation (TPCA) for high-throughput intracellular monitoring of protein complex dynamics. Significant TPCA signatures observed among well-validated protein-protein interactions correlate positively with interaction stoichiometry and are statistically observable in more than 350 annotated hum
  
  Read more

• The spread of true and false news online

  08-03-2018 19:40
  We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories o
  
  Read more

• Sustained climate warming drives declining marine biological productivity

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Climate change projections to the year 2100 may miss physical-biogeochemical feedbacks that emerge later from the cumulative effects of climate warming. In a coupled climate simulation to the year 2300, the westerly winds strengthen and shift poleward, surface waters warm, and sea ice disappears, leading to intense nutrient trapping in the Southern Ocean. The trapping drives a global-scale nutrient redistribution, with net transfer to the deep ocean. Ensuing surface nutrient reductions north of
  
  Read more

• Strong spin-photon coupling in silicon

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Long coherence times of single spins in silicon quantum dots make these systems highly attractive for quantum computation, but how to scale up spin qubit systems remains an open question. As a first step to address this issue, we demonstrate the strong coupling of a single electron spin and a single microwave photon. The electron spin is trapped in a silicon double quantum dot, and the microwave photon is stored in an on-chip high-impedance superconducting resonator. The electric field component
  
  Read more

• Single-cell Wnt signaling niches maintain stemness of alveolar type 2 cells

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Alveoli, the lung’s respiratory units, are tiny sacs where oxygen enters the bloodstream. They are lined by flat alveolar type 1 (AT1) cells, which mediate gas exchange, and AT2 cells, which secrete surfactant. Rare AT2s also function as alveolar stem cells. We show that AT2 lung stem cells display active Wnt signaling, and many of them are near single, Wnt-expressing fibroblasts. Blocking Wnt secretion depletes these stem cells. Daughter cells leaving the Wnt niche transdifferentiate into
  
  Read more

• Response to Comment on "The growth pattern of Neandertals, reconstructed from a juvenile skeleton from El Sidron (Spain)"

  08-03-2018 19:40
  The comment by DeSilva challenges our suggestion that brain growth of the El Sidrón J1 Neandertal was still incomplete at 7.7 years of age. Evidence suggests that endocranial volume is likely to represent less than 90% adult size at El Sidrón as well as Neandertal male plus Krapina samples, in line with further evidence from endocranial surface histology and dural sinus groove size.
  
  Read more

• Nascent DNA methylome mapping reveals inheritance of hemimethylation at CTCF/cohesin sites

  08-03-2018 19:40
  The faithful inheritance of the epigenome is critical for cells to maintain gene expression programs and cellular identity across cell divisions. We mapped strand-specific DNA methylation after replication forks and show maintenance of the vast majority of the DNA methylome within 20 minutes of replication and inheritance of some hemimethylated CpG dinucleotides (hemiCpGs). Mapping the nascent DNA methylome targeted by each of the three DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) reveals interactions between
  
  Read more

• Local transformations of the hippocampal cognitive map

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Grid cells are neurons active in multiple fields arranged in a hexagonal lattice and are thought to represent the "universal metric for space." However, they become nonhomogeneously distorted in polarized enclosures, which challenges this view. We found that local changes to the configuration of the enclosure induce individual grid fields to shift in a manner inversely related to their distance from the reconfigured boundary. The grid remained primarily anchored to the unchanged stable walls and
  
  Read more

• Ice-VII inclusions in diamonds: Evidence for aqueous fluid in Earths deep mantle

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Water-rich regions in Earth’s deeper mantle are suspected to play a key role in the global water budget and the mobility of heat-generating elements. We show that ice-VII occurs as inclusions in natural diamond and serves as an indicator for such water-rich regions. Ice-VII, the residue of aqueous fluid present during growth of diamond, crystallizes upon ascent of the host diamonds but remains at pressures as high as 24 gigapascals; it is now recognized as a mineral by the International Mi
  
  Read more

• Gut bacteria selectively promoted by dietary fibers alleviate type 2 diabetes

  08-03-2018 19:40
  The gut microbiota benefits humans via short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production from carbohydrate fermentation, and deficiency in SCFA production is associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). We conducted a randomized clinical study of specifically designed isoenergetic diets, together with fecal shotgun metagenomics, to show that a select group of SCFA-producing strains was promoted by dietary fibers and that most other potential producers were either diminished or unchanged in patients w
  
  Read more

• Defining the earliest step of cardiovascular lineage segregation by single-cell RNA-seq

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Mouse heart development arises from Mesp1-expressing cardiovascular progenitors (CPs) that are specified during gastrulation. The molecular processes that control early regional and lineage segregation of CPs have been unclear. We performed single-cell RNA sequencing of wild-type and Mesp1-null CPs in mice. We showed that populations of Mesp1 CPs are molecularly distinct and span the continuum between epiblast and later mesodermal cells, including hematopoietic progenitors. Single-cell transcrip
  
  Read more

• Comment on "The growth pattern of Neandertals, reconstructed from a juvenile skeleton from El Sidron (Spain)"

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Rosas et al. (Reports, 22 September 2017, p. 1282) calculate El Sidrón J1 to have reached only 87.5% of its adult brain size. This finding is based on an overestimation of Neandertal brain size. Pairwise comparisons with a larger sample of Neandertal fossils reveal that it is unlikely that the brain of El Sidrón would have grown appreciably larger.
  
  Read more

• Coherent, atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenide superlattices with engineered strain

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Epitaxy forms the basis of modern electronics and optoelectronics. We report coherent atomically thin superlattices in which different transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers—despite large lattice mismatches—are repeated and laterally integrated without dislocations within the monolayer plane. Grown by an omnidirectional epitaxy, these superlattices display fully matched lattice constants across heterointerfaces while maintaining an isotropic lattice structure and triangular symme
  
  Read more

• Chemically induced proximity in biology and medicine

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Proximity, or the physical closeness of molecules, is a pervasive regulatory mechanism in biology. For example, most posttranslational modifications such as phosphorylation, methylation, and acetylation promote proximity of molecules to play deterministic roles in cellular processes. To understand the role of proximity in biologic mechanisms, chemical inducers of proximity (CIPs) were developed to synthetically model biologically regulated recruitment. Chemically induced proximity allows for pre
  
  Read more

• C1orf106 is a colitis risk gene that regulates stability of epithelial adherens junctions

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Polymorphisms in C1orf106 are associated with increased risk of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, the function of C1orf106 and the consequences of disease-associated polymorphisms are unknown. Here we demonstrate that C1orf106 regulates adherens junction stability by regulating the degradation of cytohesin-1, a guanine nucleotide exchange factor that controls activation of ARF6. By limiting cytohesin-1–dependent ARF6 activation, C1orf106 stabilizes adherens junctions. Consistent w
  
  Read more

• A liquid-liquid transition in supercooled aqueous solution related to the HDA-LDA transition

  08-03-2018 19:40
  Simulations and theory suggest that the thermodynamic anomalies of water may be related to a phase transition between two supercooled liquid states, but so far this phase transition has not been observed experimentally because of preemptive ice crystallization. We used calorimetry, infrared spectroscopy, and molecular dynamics simulations to investigate a water-rich hydrazinium trifluoroacetate solution in which the local hydrogen bond structure surrounding a water molecule resembles that in nea
  
  Read more

• Penguins pose for selfie in Antarctica

  08-03-2018 19:18 via bbc.co.uk
  Two Emperor penguins stumbled across a camera that was left by an Australian Antarctic explorer.
  
  Read more

• Watch Now: The Weirdest Stars in the Universe

  08-03-2018 16:35 via rss.sciam.com
  Astronomer Emily Levesque discusses the strangest stellar phenomena known to science-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
  Read more

• Planet Jupiter's winds run deep

  08-03-2018 13:44 via bbc.co.uk
  Nasa's Juno mission begins to unravel the mysteries of the gas giant's interior structure.
  
  Read more

• $1 Fentanyl Test Strip Could Be a Major Weapon against Opioid ODs

  08-03-2018 13:30 via rss.sciam.com
  As the deadly crisis refuses to wane, cities search for unconventional responses to overdoses-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
  Read more

• Nerve agents

  08-03-2018 13:01 via bbc.co.uk
  A nerve agent was used to poison a Russian former spy and his daughter. What are they and what do they do?
  
  Read more

• 50 years ago, pulsars burst onto the scene

  08-03-2018 13:00
  
  Thousands of pulsars have been discovered since the announcement of their detection 50 years ago.
  
  Read more

• Thawing permafrost causes 'browning' of lakes, upsetting aquatic ecosystems, study says

  08-03-2018 10:00 via cbc.ca
  Northern freshwater lakes are turning brown as permafrost thaws and introduces more organic carbon into the water, according to a new study published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters.
  
  Read more

• Women regret sex less when they take the initiative

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Women regret casual sex more than men do -- but less so if they take the initiative and the sex was good.
  
  Read more

• What do iPhones, Halloween candy, and sushi have in common?

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Journal of Retailing at New York University) How people seek to express their uniqueness is played out in many ways -- one of the more subtle ways is how they choose products when presented with product-related information in various colors, versus in black and white or a uniform color.
  
  Read more

• Watching others makes people overconfident in their own abilities

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Association for Psychological Science) Watching YouTube videos, Instagram demos, and Facebook tutorials may make us feel as though we're acquiring all sorts of new skills but it probably won't make us experts, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
  
  Read more

• Unveiling the depths of Jupiter's winds

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Weizmann Institute of Science) Are the colorful bands just a pretty surface phenomenon, or are they a significant stratum of the planet? The Weizmann Institute's Prof. Yohai Kaspi led this research in which measurements from NASA's Juno spacecraft were analyzed to reveal that the stripes -- belts of strong winds circling the planet - extend to a depth of about 3,000 km.
  
  Read more

• UCLA researchers develop a new class of two-dimensional materials

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering of Applied Science) A UCLA research team has developed a new kind of artificial "superlattices" -- materials comprised of alternating layers of ultra-thin "two-dimensional" sheets, which are only one or a few atoms thick. Unlike current state-of-the art superlattices, in which alternating layers have similar atomic structures, these alternating layers have radically different structures, properties and functions, something not previously available.
  
  Read more

• UBC researchers invent new method to create self-tinting windows

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (University of British Columbia) UBC chemistry researchers have developed a simple, cost-effective technique for making smart windows that could lead the way for wide-scale adoption of this energy-saving technology.
  
  Read more

• Thirdhand smoke found to increase lung cancer risk in mice

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Researchers at Berkeley Lab identified thirdhand smoke, the toxic residues that linger on indoor surfaces and in dust long after a cigarette has been extinguished, as a health hazard nearly 10 years ago. Now a new study has found that it also increases lung cancer risk in mice.
  
  Read more

• The 'architecture of life' described by computer modeling

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard) While most of biology and medicine focus on the key roles genes and chemicals play in living systems, the spatial arrangement of the components that make up those systems and the physical forces they experience are being increasingly recognized as equally important. A new study from the Wyss institute finds that Nature uses tensional integrity, or 'tensegrity' (a principle well-known in architectural design), to stabilize the shap
  
  Read more

• Teen gamers have as many friends as non-gamers

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Uppsala University) Young digital gamers do not have fewer friends at school than their non-gamer peers, two new research articles from Uppsala University indicate.
  
  Read more

• Study shows bowel care is top concern for those with spinal cord injury

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Simon Fraser University) A study by SFU research Victoria Claydon reveals that bowel care, followed by sexual function, bladder function and pain were of key concern. Surprisingly, one of the lowest-ranked concerns was using a wheelchair for mobility.
  
  Read more

• Study sheds light on the genetic origins of the two sexes

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Donald Danforth Plant Science Center) This new study punches a hole in the idea that increased genetic complexity of sex chromosomes accompanied the origin of sexes.
  
  Read more

• Study says Mekong River dams could disrupt lives, environment

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences) The Mekong River traverses six Southeast Asian countries and supports the livelihoods of millions of people. New efforts to provide hydroelectric power to a growing and modernizing population include more than eight proposed main-stem dams and 60 or more existing tributary dams in the lower Mekong basin. A new article from University of Illinois and Iowa State University scientists lays out what dam constructio
  
  Read more

• Social stress leads to changes in gut bacteria, study finds

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Georgia State University) Exposure to psychological stress in the form of social conflict alters gut bacteria in Syrian hamsters, according to a new study by Georgia State University.
  
  Read more

• Simulation and experiment help TU Dresden researchers study next-generation semiconductors

  08-03-2018 06:00
  (Gauss Centre for Supercomputing) Researchers at TU Dresden are refining methods for studying next-generation organic semiconductors by using a combination of experiments and supercomputing resources at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre.
  
  Read more

Follow @ScienceUKnews on Twitter!