Science news

• Lemurs eating less live longer, and even look younger

  05-04-2018 23:11 via cbc.ca
  French researchers have discovered that mouse lemurs on a diet with daily calories cut by nearly a third lived longer than the same primates on a regular diet.
  
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• Microplastics may enter freshwater and soil via compost

  05-04-2018 22:17
  
  Compost is pinpointed as a source of plastic pollution, but environmental fate and effects unknown.
  
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• X-linked genes help explain why boys of all ages face higher respiratory risk

  05-04-2018 21:55
  Human airways already demonstrate gender-based differences in DNA methylation signatures at birth, providing an early hint of infants who may be predisposed to develop respiratory disorders later in life.
  
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• Climate change risk reporting becomes hot topic among investors

  05-04-2018 21:31 via cbc.ca
  A year-long review of climate change risk disclosures to investors by large Canadian publicly-traded companies has found huge disparities in practices between corporations and industries.
  
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• Injecting gene cocktail into mouse pancreas leads to human-like tumors

  05-04-2018 21:00
  A researcher has invented a unique method to generate, in mice, pancreatic tumors that resemble human pancreatic cancer. This will be a tool researchers can use to develop new drugs that extend patients' lives, and it is a tool researchers have not had at their disposal before.
  
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• Human drug trials are compromised by poor reporting of animal research

  05-04-2018 21:00
  Poor animal study design and reporting thwarts the ethical review of proposed human drug trials, according to a new study.
  
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• Coral bleaching threatens the diversity of reef fish

  05-04-2018 21:00
  New research reveals that global warming also affects fish who depend on corals. The Great Barrier Reef is revered for its kaleidoscope of color. New international research reveals that coral bleaching events not only whitewash corals, but can also reduce the variety of fish occupying these highly valued ecosystems.
  
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• Human brains make new nerve cells — and lots of them — well into old age

  05-04-2018 20:50
  
  In humans, new neurons are still born in old brains, new research suggests.
  
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• Not just housekeeping: A new way to control protein production in stem cells

  05-04-2018 20:10
  Thousands of distinct cell types are needed to build a fully developed newborn. Individual cells take on their identities by switching on distinct sets of genes, producing different sets of RNA and protein molecules. So far, the overall rate of protein synthesis has been regarded as a "housekeeping" activity that does not play a major role in defining cell types. New results now show this is not quite true.
  
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• Cancer genes characterized using ground-breaking new method

  05-04-2018 20:10
  All cells in our body carry the dictionary of genetic information, the human genome. However, their shape and function are determined by which genes are read from this dictionary and translated into proteins, the building blocks of a cell. The “reading” of active genes starts with their transcription into so-called messenger RNAs (mRNAs), a process that is controlled through a complex network of transcriptional regulators. Mutations in these regulators can alter the function and iden
  
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• Why cells with identical genes perform unique jobs

  05-04-2018 20:09
  A newly discovered family of proteins -- present in humans and all complex animals -- are key players in controlling how stem cells specialize and in how embryos develop. These families of proteins may also represent key targets for drug developers looking to design new therapeutic options for some cancer patients.
  
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• Which education systems are best? Look past the superficial numbers

  05-04-2018 20:09
  International large-scale education assessments (ILSAs) are used to compare the performance of countries' educational systems, but these rankings can be misleading and should not be the sole determinant informing educational policy, experts caution.
  
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• New source of global nitrogen discovered

  05-04-2018 20:09
  Not all of the nitrogen on the planet comes from the atmosphere, according to a new study. Up to a quarter comes from Earth's bedrock. The discovery could greatly improve climate change projections. 
  
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• New actors identified in atherosclerosis

  05-04-2018 20:09
  Stroke and heart attack are the leading cause of death in the Western world. Scientists have now used a special technique to get a clearer picture of the cells involved and their activity.
  
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• How 'microbial axolotl' repairs itself

  05-04-2018 20:09
  In a new study, researchers report new insights into the regenerative capabilities of Stentor, a single celled model organism for regeneration biology. The study used novel gene expression methods that allowed the researchers to identify over one thousand genes that are involved in the regeneration process of individual stentor cells.
  
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• Cysticercosis epidemiology in Spain: What's new?

  05-04-2018 20:09
  Cysticercosis, an infection caused by larval cysts of a pork tapeworm, is a leading cause of seizures and epilepsy in many parts of the world. Now, researchers have for the first time assessed the impact of cysticercosis hospitalizations in Spain.
  
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• Did You Buy Bitcoins? Your Brain's Anatomy Might Be to Blame

  05-04-2018 19:45 via rss.sciam.com
  Scans show people who can endure greater risk share certain neurological features-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Triggered recruitment of ESCRT machinery promotes endolysosomal repair

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Endolysosomes can be damaged by diverse materials. Terminally damaged compartments are degraded by lysophagy, but pathways that repair salvageable organelles are poorly understood. Here we found that the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery, known to mediate budding and fission on endolysosomes, also plays an essential role in their repair. ESCRTs were rapidly recruited to acutely injured endolysosomes through a pathway requiring calcium and ESCRT-activating factors
  
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• Structure of the herpes simplex virus 1 capsid with associated tegument protein complexes

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Herpes simplex viruses (HSVs) rely on capsid-associated tegument complex (CATC) for long-range axonal transport of their genome-containing capsids between sites of infection and neuronal cell bodies. Here we report cryo–electron microscopy structures of the HSV-1 capsid with CATC up to 3.5-angstrom resolution and atomic models of multiple conformers of capsid proteins VP5, VP19c, VP23, and VP26 and tegument proteins pUL17, pUL25, and pUL36. Crowning every capsid vertex are five copies of h
  
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• Real-time imaging of DNA loop extrusion by condensin

  05-04-2018 19:41
  It has been hypothesized that SMC protein complexes such as condensin and cohesin spatially organize chromosomes by extruding DNA into large loops. We directly visualized the formation and processive extension of DNA loops by yeast condensin in real time. Our findings constitute unambiguous evidence for loop extrusion. We observed that a single condensin complex is able to extrude tens of kilobase pairs of DNA at a force-dependent speed of up to 1500 base pairs per second, using the energy of ad
  
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• Observation of fractional Chern insulators in a van der Waals heterostructure

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Topologically ordered phases are characterized by long-range quantum entanglement and fractional statistics rather than by symmetry breaking. First observed in a fractionally filled continuum Landau level, topological order has since been proposed to arise more generally at fractional fillings of topologically nontrivial Chern bands. Here we report the observation of gapped states at fractional fillings of Harper-Hofstadter bands arising from the interplay of a magnetic field and a superlattice
  
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• Modular radical cross-coupling with sulfones enables access to sp3-rich (fluoro)alkylated scaffolds

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Cross-coupling chemistry is widely applied to carbon-carbon bond formation in the synthesis of medicines, agrochemicals, and other functional materials. Recently, single-electron–induced variants of this reaction class have proven particularly useful in the formation of C(sp2)–C(sp3) linkages, although certain compound classes have remained a challenge. Here, we report the use of sulfones to activate the alkyl coupling partner in nickel-catalyzed radical cross-coupling with aryl zinc
  
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• Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Previous research suggests that the complex symbolic, technological, and socioeconomic behaviors that typify Homo sapiens had roots in the middle Pleistocene <200,000 years ago, but data bearing on human behavioral origins are limited. We present a series of excavated Middle Stone Age sites from the Olorgesailie basin, southern Kenya, dating from ≥295,000 to ~320,000 years ago by argon-40/argon-39 and uranium-series methods. Hominins at these sites made prepared cores and points, exploited
  
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• Light-induced lattice expansion leads to high-efficiency perovskite solar cells

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Light-induced structural dynamics plays a vital role in the physical properties, device performance, and stability of hybrid perovskite–based optoelectronic devices. We report that continuous light illumination leads to a uniform lattice expansion in hybrid perovskite thin films, which is critical for obtaining high-efficiency photovoltaic devices. Correlated, in situ structural and device characterizations reveal that light-induced lattice expansion benefits the performances of a mixed-ca
  
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• Hepatic thrombopoietin is required for bone marrow hematopoietic stem cell maintenance

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) maintenance depends on extrinsic cues. Currently, only local signals arising from the bone marrow niche have been shown to maintain HSCs. However, it is not known whether systemic factors also sustain HSCs. We assessed the physiological source of thrombopoietin (TPO), a key cytokine required for maintaining HSCs. Using TpoDsRed-CreER knock-in mice, we showed that TPO is expressed by hepatocytes but not by bone marrow cells. Deletion of Tpo from hematopoietic cells,
  
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• Enzymatic construction of highly strained carbocycles

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Small carbocycles are structurally rigid and possess high intrinsic energy due to their ring strain. These features lead to broad applications but also create challenges for their construction. We report the engineering of hemeproteins that catalyze the formation of chiral bicyclobutanes, one of the most strained four-membered systems, via successive carbene addition to unsaturated carbon-carbon bonds. Enzymes that produce cyclopropenes, putative intermediates to the bicyclobutanes, were also id
  
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• Environmental dynamics during the onset of the Middle Stone Age in eastern Africa

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Development of the African Middle Stone Age (MSA) before 300,000 years ago raises the question of how environmental change influenced the evolution of behaviors characteristic of early Homo sapiens. We used temporally well-constrained sedimentological and paleoenvironmental data to investigate environmental dynamics before and after the appearance of the early MSA in the Olorgesailie basin, Kenya. In contrast to the Acheulean archeological record in the same basin, MSA sites are associated with
  
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• Early emergence of cortical interneuron diversity in the mouse embryo

  05-04-2018 19:41
  GABAergic interneurons (GABA, -aminobutyric acid) regulate neural-circuit activity in the mammalian cerebral cortex. These cortical interneurons are structurally and functionally diverse. Here, we use single-cell transcriptomics to study the origins of this diversity in the mouse. We identify distinct types of progenitor cells and newborn neurons in the ganglionic eminences, the embryonic proliferative regions that give rise to cortical interneurons. These embryonic precursors show temporally an
  
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• Cryo-EM structure of a herpesvirus capsid at 3.1 A

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Structurally and genetically, human herpesviruses are among the largest and most complex of viruses. Using cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM) with an optimized image reconstruction strategy, we report the herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) capsid structure at 3.1 angstroms, which is built up of about 3000 proteins organized into three types of hexons (central, peripentonal, and edge), pentons, and triplexes. Both hexons and pentons contain the major capsid protein, VP5; hexons also contai
  
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• CRMP2-binding compound, edonerpic maleate, accelerates motor function recovery from brain damage

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Brain damage such as stroke is a devastating neurological condition that may severely compromise patient quality of life. No effective medication-mediated intervention to accelerate rehabilitation has been established. We found that a small compound, edonerpic maleate, facilitated experience-driven synaptic glutamate AMPA (α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole-propionic-acid) receptor delivery and resulted in the acceleration of motor function recovery after motor cortex cryoinjury in mic
  
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• Convergent evidence for widespread rock nitrogen sources in Earths surface environment

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Nitrogen availability is a pivotal control on terrestrial carbon sequestration and global climate change. Historical and contemporary views assume that nitrogen enters Earth’s land-surface ecosystems from the atmosphere. Here we demonstrate that bedrock is a nitrogen source that rivals atmospheric nitrogen inputs across major sectors of the global terrestrial environment. Evidence drawn from the planet’s nitrogen balance, geochemical proxies, and our spatial weathering model reveal t
  
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• Chronology of the Acheulean to Middle Stone Age transition in eastern Africa

  05-04-2018 19:41
  The origin of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) marks the transition from a highly persistent mode of stone toolmaking, the Acheulean, to a period of increasing technological innovation and cultural indicators associated with the evolution of Homo sapiens. We used argon-40/argon-39 and uranium-series dating to calibrate the chronology of Acheulean and early MSA artifact–rich sedimentary deposits in the Olorgesailie basin, southern Kenya rift. We determined the age of late Acheulean tool assemblag
  
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• Cell cycle heterogeneity directs the timing of neural stem cell activation from quiescence

  05-04-2018 19:41
  Quiescent stem cells in adult tissues can be activated for homeostasis or repair. Neural stem cells (NSCs) in Drosophila are reactivated from quiescence in response to nutrition by the insulin signaling pathway. It is widely accepted that quiescent stem cells are arrested in G0. In this study, however, we demonstrate that quiescent NSCs (qNSCs) are arrested in either G2 or G0. G2-G0 heterogeneity directs NSC behavior: G2 qNSCs reactivate before G0 qNSCs. In addition, we show that the evolutionar
  
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• Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalskis horses

  05-04-2018 19:41
  The Eneolithic Botai culture of the Central Asian steppes provides the earliest archaeological evidence for horse husbandry, ~5500 years ago, but the exact nature of early horse domestication remains controversial. We generated 42 ancient-horse genomes, including 20 from Botai. Compared to 46 published ancient- and modern-horse genomes, our data indicate that Przewalski’s horses are the feral descendants of horses herded at Botai and not truly wild horses. All domestic horses dated from ~4
  
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• Computer system transcribes words users 'speak silently'

  05-04-2018 19:30
  Researchers have developed a computer interface that can transcribe words that the user verbalizes internally but does not actually speak aloud. Electrodes in the device pick up neuromuscular signals in the jaw and face that are triggered by internal verbalizations -- saying words 'in your head' -- but are undetectable to the human eye.
  
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• Lessons from lemurs: To make friends, show off your smarts

  05-04-2018 18:42
  Researchers show that clever lemurs -- some of our earliest primate relatives -- gain social standing as the result of their problem-solving skills.
  
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• This ancient lizard may have watched the world through four eyes

  05-04-2018 18:19
  
  A lizard that lived 50 million years ago had both a third and a fourth eye.
  
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• Tracking Aedes mosquito invasions in Panama

  05-04-2018 18:03
  Mosquitoes in the genus Aedes, which carry viruses causing yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika, invaded the crossroads of the Americas multiple times, by land and by sea.
  
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• The humble fruit fly continues to boost biomedical discovery

  05-04-2018 18:03
  Researchers have developed and made available a large versatile library of fruit flies that can be used to perform efficient and elegant in vivo gene-specific manipulations using the new protocol and gene-specific integration vector CRIMIC (CRISPR-Mediated Integrated Cassette).
  
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• Penguins go through the flow

  05-04-2018 18:03
  Colonies of breeding king penguins behave much like particles in liquids do, according to a new study. This 'liquid' organization and structure enables breeding colonies to protect themselves against predators while also keeping members together.
  
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• New butterfly species discovered nearly 60 years after it was first collected

  05-04-2018 18:03
  A butterfly collected by a teenager in Mexico nearly 60 years ago has been described as a new species.
  
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• Genetic link to IBS identified in women

  05-04-2018 18:03
  New research links certain DNA variants to increased risk of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in women. The findings might help explain why IBS is more common in women than in men.
  
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• Charting an underexplored landscape: The genitourinary microbiome

  05-04-2018 18:03
  More sensitive cultivation methods and precise 16S rRNA gene sequencing techniques have revealed that the human bladder hosts a significant microbiome and those diverse bacteria inside the bladder impact pediatric urologic diseases.
  
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• Cells that trigger flowering

  05-04-2018 18:03
  How do plants 'know' it is time to flower? A new study uncovers exactly where a key protein forms before it triggers the flowering process in plants.
  
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• Plastic bag litter falls in UK seas

  05-04-2018 16:17 via bbc.co.uk
  A study of litter in UK seas shows the number of plastic bags has fallen, amid a rise in other types of plastic rubbish.
  
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• Vegetables grown in Antarctic greenhouse harvested for 1st time

  05-04-2018 14:45 via cbc.ca
  Scientists in Antarctica have harvested their first crop of vegetables grown without earth, daylight or pesticides as part of a project designed to help astronauts cultivate fresh food on other planets.
  
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• Toxic chemicals turn a new material from porous to protective

  05-04-2018 14:00
  
  A new material switches from a comfortable, breathable form to a sealed-up, protective state when exposed to dangerous chemicals.
  
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• Fisheries emissions rising despite recent efforts, UBC study shows

  05-04-2018 14:00 via cbc.ca
  A shift to harvesting crustaceans like shrimp and lobster is feeding a growing carbon footprint for the world's fisheries, according to new research from the University of B.C.
  
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• How many scientists do you know in real life?

  05-04-2018 13:53
  Editor in Chief Nancy Shute ponders about memorable scientists and how we can make it easier for people to connect to their work.
  
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• Readers debate dinosaur designation and more

  05-04-2018 13:52
  Readers had questions about the dino family tree and Venus' habitability.
  
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