Science news

• Trump White House axes Nasa research into greenhouse gas cuts

  10-05-2018 22:32 via bbc.co.uk
  Cutting Nasa's research jeopardises the ability to measure climate change progress, a journal reveals.
  
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• Many oncologists recommend medical marijuana clinically despite not feeling sufficiently knowledgeable to do so

  10-05-2018 22:29
  While a wide majority of oncologists do not feel informed enough about medical marijuana's utility to make clinical recommendations, most do in fact conduct discussions on medical marijuana in the clinic and nearly half recommend it to their patients, say researchers who surveyed a population-based sample of medical oncologists.
  
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• First 3-D map of a gas cloud in space shows it’s flat like a pancake

  10-05-2018 22:25
  
  An interstellar gas cloud dubbed the Dark Doodad Nebula looks like a wispy, thin cylinder. But it’s actually a flat sheet.
  
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• Frogs are dying and Korea gets the blame

  10-05-2018 21:31 via cbc.ca
  The world’s frogs are dying at an unprecedented rate because of a fungus that degrades their skin until they suffocate. New research from the UK has identified where this fungus originated and all signs point to Korea.
  
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• Making next-generation preconception screening a reality for parents

  10-05-2018 21:02
  For those planning to become parents, advances in sequencing technologies could make preconception carrier screening more useful by looking at a much broader set of genes. A recent clinical study uncovered genetic variants that more targeted panels might have missed, but researchers believe interpretation challenges remain before this technology becomes more broadly available.
  
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• Food-carrying ants use collective problem solving to get through or around obstacles

  10-05-2018 21:02
  Ants working together to carry a large piece of food get around obstacles by switching between two types of motion: one that favors squeezing the morsel through a hole and another to seek a path around the barrier.
  
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• Ancient skull shows early 'baleen whale' had teeth

  10-05-2018 21:02
  Today's baleen whales (Mysticetes) support their massive bodies by filtering huge volumes of small prey from seawater using comb-like baleen in their mouths. But new evidence based on careful analysis of a 34-million-year-old whale skull from Antarctica -- the second-oldest 'baleen' whale ever found -- suggests that early whales actually didn't have baleen. Their had well-developed gums and teeth, which they apparently used to bite large prey.
  
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• A holistic approach for mycetoma management

  10-05-2018 21:02
  Mycetoma, a neglected tropical disease, can cause severe disfigurement and disability if not treated early. A holistic, community-based approach to detection and case management is effective at boosting disease prognoses, researchers now report.
  
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• A European origin for leprosy?

  10-05-2018 21:02
  New research by an international team has revealed that there was much more diversity in the leprosy strains circulating in Medieval Europe than previously thought. This finding, based on the sequencing of 10 new ancient genomes from the leprosy-causing bacterium Mycobacterium leprae, complicates prior assumptions about the origin and spread of the disease, and also includes the oldest M. leprae genome sequenced to date, from about 400 AD in the United Kingdom.
  
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• What gives bees their sweet tooth?

  10-05-2018 21:00
  Scientists have discovered bees linger on a flower, emptying it of nectar, because they have sugar-sensing taste neurons which work together to prolong the pleasure of the sweetness.
  
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• Shooting the Achilles heel of drug-resistant cancer

  10-05-2018 21:00
  Cancer cells that develop resistance to drugs, also develop a new vulnerability. If this can be identified, it may be exploited clinically. A team of cancer researchers has now exposed this acquired vulnerability in melanoma that has developed resistance to treatment with BRAF-inhibitors. The team then developed a new therapeutic strategy to selectively kill the drug-resistant cancer cells.
  
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• Global trade spreads deadly frog disease from Asia

  10-05-2018 21:00
  New research has revealed a deadly disease that threatens the survival of the world's frogs originated from East Asia, and global trade was almost certainly responsible for the disease's spread.
  
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• Depleted metabolic enzymes promote tumor growth in kidney cancer

  10-05-2018 21:00
  By integrating data on the function of essential metabolic enzymes with genetic, protein, and metabolic abnormalities associated with 'clear cell' renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), researchers have determined that enzymes important in multiple pathways are universally depleted in ccRCC tumors. Kidney cancer, one of the ten most prevalent malignancies in the world, has increased in incidence over the last decade, likely due to rising obesity rates.
  
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• Big fish produce disproportionately more and bigger eggs

  10-05-2018 21:00
  Contrary to prevailing dogma, plus-sized female fish invest disproportionately more in making eggs than smaller females. Therefore, taking a single big fish has a bigger impact on the fish population than taking multiple small ones.
  
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• Tau-Microtubule and Neurological Diseases

  10-05-2018 20:59
  Researchers have combined cutting-edge cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) with computational molecular modeling to produce a near atomic-resolution model of the interaction between microtubules -- crucial components of eukaryotic cell ultrastructure -- and microtubule-associated proteins called tau.
  
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• Prenatal marijuana use can affect infant size, behavior, study finds

  10-05-2018 20:59
  Smoking during pregnancy has well-documented negative effects on birth weight in infants and is linked to several childhood health problems. Now, researchers have found that prenatal marijuana use also can have consequences on infants' weight and can influence behavior problems, especially when combined with tobacco use.
  
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• Patients who have had an irregular heart beat can't ever be considered 'cured'

  10-05-2018 20:59
  Patients with an abnormal heart rhythm that can leave them at a higher risk of suffering from stroke still need treatment even after their heart rhythm seems to have returned to normal, say researchers.
  
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• New tool analyzes disease and drug effects with unprecedented accuracy and consistency

  10-05-2018 20:59
  A new protein analysis tool could increase the quality and accuracy of medical diagnosis and quicken the pace of pharmaceutical development.
  
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• Molecule could improve memory, reduce Alzheimer's degradation, study finds

  10-05-2018 20:59
  SERCA activator may improve memory and cognition for Alzheimer's patients by preserving calcium ion balance in neurons and offering a new therapeutic strategy for neurodegeneration drug development.
  
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• Levitation yields better neutron-lifetime measurement

  10-05-2018 20:59
  Being repulsive can have its advantages. In the case of an experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory's linear accelerator, a repulsive magnetic field and a clever detector system are allowing ultracold neutrons to be levitated so their actual lifetimes can be more accurately measured.
  
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• Divide and conquer: Creating better medicines with fewer side effects

  10-05-2018 20:59
  A new study describes a breakthrough technology with the power to create drugs with fewer unwanted side effects.
  
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• Chemists develop molecular switch for on-demand cargo release

  10-05-2018 20:59
  Chemists have found a molecular switch such that two compounds that would readily react with each other can be in the same solution, separated by a very thin membrane and kept from reacting with each other until a molecular switch is thrown.
  
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• Temperature-controlled turtle sex gene found

  10-05-2018 20:22 via bbc.co.uk
  Scientists have isolated the gene responsible for temperature-controlled sex determination in turtles.
  
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• There’s a genetic explanation for why warmer nests turn turtles female

  10-05-2018 20:00
  
  Scientists have found a temperature-responsive gene that controls young turtles’ sex fate.
  
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• Satellite data backs theory of North Korean nuclear site collapse

  10-05-2018 20:00
  
  After North Korea’s most recent nuclear test, two underground cave-ins occurred, possibly rendering the facility unusable, a new study suggests.
  
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• The histone demethylase KDM6B regulates temperature-dependent sex determination in a turtle species

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Temperature-dependent sex determination is a notable model of phenotypic plasticity. In many reptiles, including the red-eared slider turtle Trachemys scripta elegans (T. scripta), the individual’s sex is determined by the ambient temperature during egg incubation. In this study, we show that the histone H3 lysine 27 (H3K27) demethylase KDM6B exhibits temperature-dependent sexually dimorphic expression in early T. scripta embryos before the gonad is distinct. Knockdown of Kdm6b at 26°C
  
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• Structure, mechanism, and regulation of the chloroplast ATP synthase

  10-05-2018 19:40
  The chloroplast adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthase uses the electrochemical proton gradient generated by photosynthesis to produce ATP, the energy currency of all cells. Protons conducted through the membrane-embedded Fo motor drive ATP synthesis in the F1 head by rotary catalysis. We determined the high-resolution structure of the complete cF1Fo complex by cryo–electron microscopy, resolving side chains of all 26 protein subunits, the five nucleotides in the F1 head, and the proton pat
  
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• Structural basis for recognition of frizzled proteins by Clostridium difficile toxin B

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Clostridium difficile infection is the most common cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea in developed countries. The major virulence factor, C. difficile toxin B (TcdB), targets colonic epithelia by binding to the frizzled (FZD) family of Wnt receptors, but how TcdB recognizes FZDs is unclear. Here, we present the crystal structure of a TcdB fragment in complex with the cysteine-rich domain of human FZD2 at 2.5-angstrom resolution, which reveals an endogenous FZD-bound fatty acid acting as a c
  
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• Recent Asian origin of chytrid fungi causing global amphibian declines

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Globalized infectious diseases are causing species declines worldwide, but their source often remains elusive. We used whole-genome sequencing to solve the spatiotemporal origins of the most devastating panzootic to date, caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a proximate driver of global amphibian declines. We traced the source of B. dendrobatidis to the Korean peninsula, where one lineage, BdASIA-1, exhibits the genetic hallmarks of an ancestral population that seeded the panzoot
  
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• Rapid sea level rise in the aftermath of a Neoproterozoic snowball Earth

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Earth’s most severe climate changes occurred during global-scale "snowball Earth" glaciations, which profoundly altered the planet’s atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. Extreme rates of glacioeustatic sea level rise are predicted by the snowball Earth hypothesis, but supporting geologic evidence has been lacking. We use paleohydraulic analysis of wave ripples and tidal laminae in the Elatina Formation, Australia—deposited after the Marinoan glaciation ~635 million years ago&mdas
  
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• Natural selection interacts with recombination to shape the evolution of hybrid genomes

  10-05-2018 19:40
  To investigate the consequences of hybridization between species, we studied three replicate hybrid populations that formed naturally between two swordtail fish species, estimating their fine-scale genetic map and inferring ancestry along the genomes of 690 individuals. In all three populations, ancestry from the "minor" parental species is more common in regions of high recombination and where there is linkage to fewer putative targets of selection. The same patterns are apparent in a reanalysi
  
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• Metabolic regulation of transcription through compartmentalized NAD+ biosynthesis

  10-05-2018 19:40
  NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide in its oxidized state) is an essential molecule for a variety of physiological processes. It is synthesized in distinct subcellular compartments by three different synthases (NMNAT-1, -2, and -3). We found that compartmentalized NAD+ synthesis by NMNATs integrates glucose metabolism and adipogenic transcription during adipocyte differentiation. Adipogenic signaling rapidly induces cytoplasmic NMNAT-2, which competes with nuclear NMNAT-1 for the common subs
  
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• Measurement of the neutron lifetime using a magneto-gravitational trap and in situ detection

  10-05-2018 19:40
  The precise value of the mean neutron lifetime, n, plays an important role in nuclear and particle physics and cosmology. It is used to predict the ratio of protons to helium atoms in the primordial universe and to search for physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. We eliminated loss mechanisms present in previous trap experiments by levitating polarized ultracold neutrons above the surface of an asymmetric storage trap using a repulsive magnetic field gradient so that the stored
  
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• Magnetic seismology of interstellar gas clouds: Unveiling a hidden dimension

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Stars and planets are formed inside dense interstellar molecular clouds by processes imprinted on the three-dimensional (3D) morphology of the clouds. Determining the 3D structure of interstellar clouds remains challenging because of projection effects and difficulties measuring the extent of the clouds along the line of sight. We report the detection of normal vibrational modes in the isolated interstellar cloud Musca, allowing determination of the 3D physical dimensions of the cloud. We found
  
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• High-resolution cryo-EM analysis of the yeast ATP synthase in a lipid membrane

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthase comprises a membrane embedded Fo motor that rotates to drive ATP synthesis in the F1 subunit. We used single-particle cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to obtain structures of the full complex in a lipid bilayer in the absence or presence of the inhibitor oligomycin at 3.6- and 3.8-angstrom resolution, respectively. To limit conformational heterogeneity, we locked the rotor in a single conformation by fusing the F6 subunit of the stator
  
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• Handedness in shearing auxetics creates rigid and compliant structures

  10-05-2018 19:40
  In nature, repeated base units produce handed structures that selectively bond to make rigid or compliant materials. Auxetic tilings are scale-independent frameworks made from repeated unit cells that expand under tension. We discovered how to produce handedness in auxetic unit cells that shear as they expand by changing the symmetries and alignments of auxetic tilings. Using the symmetry and alignment rules that we developed, we made handed shearing auxetics that tile planes, cylinders, and sph
  
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• Fish reproductive-energy output increases disproportionately with body size

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Body size determines total reproductive-energy output. Most theories assume reproductive output is a fixed proportion of size, with respect to mass, but formal macroecological tests are lacking. Management based on that assumption risks underestimating the contribution of larger mothers to replenishment, hindering sustainable harvesting. We test this assumption in marine fishes with a phylogenetically controlled meta-analysis of the intraspecific mass scaling of reproductive-energy output. We sh
  
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• Efficient coding explains the universal law of generalization in human perception

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Perceptual generalization and discrimination are fundamental cognitive abilities. For example, if a bird eats a poisonous butterfly, it will learn to avoid preying on that species again by generalizing its past experience to new perceptual stimuli. In cognitive science, the "universal law of generalization" seeks to explain this ability and states that generalization between stimuli will follow an exponential function of their distance in "psychological space." Here, I challenge existing theoret
  
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• Asymmetric nucleophilic fluorination under hydrogen bonding phase-transfer catalysis

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Common anionic nucleophiles such as those derived from inorganic salts have not been used for enantioselective catalysis because of their insolubility. Here, we report that merging hydrogen bonding and phase-transfer catalysis provides an effective mode of activation for nucleophiles that are insoluble in organic solvents. This catalytic manifold relies on hydrogen bonding complexation to render nucleophiles soluble and reactive, while simultaneously inducing asymmetry in the ensuing transformat
  
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• An anatomic transcriptional atlas of human glioblastoma

  10-05-2018 19:40
  Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain tumor that carries a poor prognosis. The tumor’s molecular and cellular landscapes are complex, and their relationships to histologic features routinely used for diagnosis are unclear. We present the Ivy Glioblastoma Atlas, an anatomically based transcriptional atlas of human glioblastoma that aligns individual histologic features with genomic alterations and gene expression patterns, thus assigning molecular information to the most important morphologic
  
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• Record-breaking ocean heat fueled Hurricane Harvey

  10-05-2018 19:30
  Record-hot Gulf of Mexico waters supercharged Hurricane Harvey, fueling it with vast stores of water and setting the stage for devastating flooding after it stalled near Houston.
  
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• How do public 'report cards' affect physicians' treatment decisions?

  10-05-2018 19:30
  A new survey finds that two-thirds of interventional cardiologists have avoided potentially lifesaving procedures for high-risk patients when results are publicly reported.
  
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• Network Rail tree felling faces review over wildlife concerns

  10-05-2018 19:24 via bbc.co.uk
  Removing too much trackside vegetation harms the environment, wildlife charities say.
  
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• Democrats release 3,500 politically charged Facebook ads tied to Russia

  10-05-2018 19:01 via cbc.ca
  Democrats on the House intelligence committee have released more than 3,500 Facebook and Instagram ads that were created or promoted by a Russian internet agency, providing the fullest picture yet of Russia's attempt to sow racial and political division in the United States before and after the 2016 election.
  
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• UN puts brave face as climate talks get stuck

  10-05-2018 18:07 via bbc.co.uk
  Climate talks in Bonn officially suspended as countries fail to resolve differences about the Paris agreement.
  
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• Device could make underwater objects appear invisible to sonar

  10-05-2018 17:18 via bbc.co.uk
  Researchers have developed a device that could make objects appear invisible to sonar detection.
  
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• Archeologists find remains of Roman-era temple in Egypt

  10-05-2018 16:41 via cbc.ca
  The Antiquities Ministry said Thursday that the temple, which dates back to the reign of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, was found near the Siwa Oasis in the western desert. It includes the foundations of a large limestone building.
  
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• Risk of explosive eruption from Hawaii volcano rising, scientists warn

  10-05-2018 15:46 via cbc.ca
  Hawaii's Kilauea volcano could soon send boulders and ash shooting out of its summit crater in the kind of explosive eruption last displayed nearly a century ago.
  
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• Erupting Hawaiian volcano could shoot boulders skyward, USGS warns

  10-05-2018 15:46 via cbc.ca
  Hawaii's Kilauea volcano could soon send boulders and ash shooting out of its summit crater in the kind of explosive eruption last displayed nearly a century ago.
  
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• Even underground oilsands mines can harm forest wildlife

  10-05-2018 14:39 via cbc.ca
  Research suggests even underground oilsands mines have profound effects on forest animals, from wolves to moose to squirrels.
  
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