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http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/07/your-brain-wad-paper (“For decades, scientists have struggled to relate the amount of folding in a species' brain to some other characteristic. ...
But now, ... have found a mathematical relation for folding in mammals' brains that appears to be universal. Using data for 62 different species, the duo plotted the area of cortex times the square root of its thickness versus of the exposed area of the brain. All the data points fell on a single universal curve—for both lissencephalic and gyrencephalic species—as the researchers report online today in Science. And the curve showed that the combination of total area and thickness grew with the exposed outer area raised to the power 1.25—just as the area of a circle grows with its radius raised to the power 2.”)
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/jul/02/spectrometer-made-from-quantum-dots-is-compact-and-low-cost (“The first-ever spectrometer made from quantum dots has been unveiled by Jie Bao of Tsinghua University in China and Moungi Bawendi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. According to its inventors, the instrument could be produced commercially to be as small, inexpensive and simple as a mobile-phone camera. Such compact spectrometers could find a wide range of applications, from gathering scientific data on space missions to sensors integrated within household appliances.”)
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150702-paradoxical-crystal-baffles-physicists/ (“The material, a much-studied compound called samarium hexaboride or SmB6, is an insulator at very low temperatures, meaning it resists the flow of electricity. Its resistance implies that electrons (the building blocks of electric currents) cannot move through the crystal more than an atom’s width in any direction. And yet, Sebastian and her collaborators observed electrons traversing orbits millions of atoms in diameter inside the crystal in response to a magnetic field — a mobility that is only expected in materials that conduct electricity.”)
Superconductivity Record Bolstered by Magnetic Data Measurements show that hydrogen sulfide superconducts much closer to room temperature than other materials do (“Scientists in Germany have observed the common molecule hydrogen sulfide superconducting at a record-breaking 203 kelvin (–70 ˚C) when subjected to very high pressures.”)
Confronting the crystalline sponge (Amazing stuff to subject liquids to x-ray crystallography. “In 2013, Makoto Fujita’s group at the University of Tokyo in Japan unveiled a powerful tool that gave scientists the ability to analyse oils and liquids by x-ray crystallography, a seemingly impossible task. Upon incorporating these compounds into crystalline hosts, their molecules became ordered, and the compounds became susceptible to diffraction. … It should however facilitate structure refinement, especially with respect to reliably locating the guest molecules in the electron density map”)
Laser beams make lightning tunnels (Perhaps one day in the not so distant future humans will be able to control lightning! “Scientists have discovered a way to control the path of a spark as it arcs between two electrodes, they report today in Science Advances. ... Shooting laser beams at the gas between the electrodes. The affected gas becomes super hot and gains an electrical charge, transforming into a plasma. That plasma attracts the spark and guides it along, as though the electricity were traveling through a tunnel.”) Here is related article.
Dissolving Surface May Form Titan's Lakes (“Although it had long been suspected that Titan could operate a hydrocarbon equivalent of Earth's hydrological cycle (evaporation, condensation, rain-out and accumulation of liquids), it wasn't until Cassini's radar mapping that we knew there were indeed bodies of surface liquid on this distant moon.”)
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/06/graphene-beyond-hype (Good primer on the current application of graphene)
Nomadic herders left a strong genetic mark on Europeans and Asians (“In the studies, published online today in Nature, two rival teams of geneticists analyzed the DNA from 170 individuals who lived at key archaeological sites in Europe and Asia 5000 to 3000 years ago. Both teams found strong evidence that a wave of nomadic herders known as the Yamnaya from the Pontic-Caspian, a vast steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea and as far east as the Caspian Sea, swept into Europe sometime between 5000 and 4800 years ago; along the way, they may have brought with them Proto-Indo-European, the mysterious ancestral tongue from which all of today’s 400 Indo-European languages spring. These herders interbred with local farmers and created the Corded Ware culture of central Europe, named for the twisted cord imprint on its pottery. Their genes were passed down to northern and central Europeans living today, as one of the teams posted on a preprint server earlier this year and published today.
But in a new twist, one of the studies also found that the Yamnaya headed east from their homeland in the Eurasian steppe lands, moving all the way to the Altai Mountains of Siberia, where they replaced local hunter-gatherers. This means that this distinctive culture of pastoralists, who had ox-driven wagons with wheels and whose warriors rode horses, dominated much of Eurasia, from north-central Europe to central Siberia and northern Mongolia. They persisted there until as recently as 2000 years ago.
”)
Setting the circadian clock/The first successful transplant of a circadian rhythm into a naturally non–circadian species could lead to precisely timed release of drugs and other innovative therapeutic applications Here is the corresponding Harvard Medical School news article. (“have harnessed the circadian mechanism found in cyanobacteria to transplant the circadian wiring into a common species of bacteria that is naturally non–circadian. The novel work, which for the first time demonstrates the transplant of a circadian rhythm, is reported in a new study in Science Advances.”)
Re-booting the human gut/A Wyss Institute team aims to leverage genetically engineered microbes to combat gastrointestinal illnesses (Very promising! “Silver and Way will hijack Nature's own mechanisms to create genetically engineered bacteria that are programmed to identify and kill harmful pathogenic bacteria. Building off their previous pioneering work, the synthetic bacteria will be engineered to detect the chemical signature given off by gastrointestinal inflammation. Then, once inflammation is detected, a series of genetic circuits in the synthetic bacteria will be triggered to attack invading bugs and restore healthy equilibrium in the gastrointestinal tract.
Taken in probiotic pill form, the microbial task force could potentially result in greatly reduced length of illness, returning military personnel and vacationers to their activities much sooner and with less chance of serious side effects.
”)
Research Paints More Complete Picture of Sleep and Memory (“The new study in experimental animals reveals the biological underpinnings of the earlier psychology studies, pointing to the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopaminergic activity is known to regulate various types of “plasticity”—the ability of the brain to change in direct response to learning and memory formation. That ability includes forgetting as well.
The study shows that increasing sleep, with either a sleep-promoting drug or by genetic stimulation of the neural sleep circuit, decreases signaling activity by dopamine, while at the same time enhancing memory retention. Conversely, increasing arousal stimulates dopamine signaling and accelerates forgetting.”)
Drawing order from disorder to unravel Ebola’s lethality (This finding might have wider application! “The virulence of Ebola virus strains appears to be innately linked to the degree of disorder in proteins that form their nucleocapsids. Computational analysis has revealed that strains responsible for the most lethal outbreaks of Ebola show significantly higher levels of intrinsic protein disorder [IPD] than less virulent strains, in a discovery that could constitute a major breakthrough in understanding the pathogen’s behaviour.”)
The Vagus Nerve: A Back Door for Brain Hacking Doctors stimulate a nerve in the neck to treat epilepsy, heart failure, stroke, arthritis, and a half dozen other ailments (This is very promising! “Vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS, got its start in the 1990s, when Cyberonics, of Houston, developed an implanted stimulator to treat particularly tough cases of epilepsy. … ElectroCore has developed the first vagus nerve stimulator that isn’t implanted: It’s a handheld device you simply press against your neck.”)
Diabetes Has a New Enemy: Robo-Pancreas Sensors, actuators, and algorithms can automatically control blood sugar (“the artificial pancreas. It links data from an implanted blood-sugar sensor to a computer, which then controls how a pump worn on the hip dribbles insulin under the skin through a pipette.”)
Pill endocrine disruptor cleaned up by catalyst (“A family of iron-based catalysts could cut the cost of removing an endocrine disrupting synthetic oestrogen used in oral contraceptive pills from water supplies in half, according to a study by a team from Brunel University, UK, and Carnegie Mellon University, US”)
Continuous liquid interface production of 3D objects (“Although three-dimensional (3D) printing is now possible using relatively small and low-cost machines, it is still a fairly slow process. This is because 3D printers require a series of steps to cure, replenish, and reposition themselves for each additive cycle. Tumbleston et al. devised a process to effectively grow solid structures out of a liquid bath. The key to the process is the creation of an oxygen-containing “dead zone” between the solid part and the liquid precursor where solidification cannot occur. The precursor liquid is then renewed by the upward movement of the growing solid part. ”)
Ultrafast Camera Captures Images at the Speed of Light Contact/Novel camera could reveal biological phenomena previously unseen (“an ultrafast camera that can acquire two-dimensional images at 100 billion frames per second, a speed capable of revealing light pulses and other phenomena previously too fast to be observed. … While other research groups have achieved higher frame rates (trillion f/s), Wang’s camera is the world’s fastest 2D camera that doesn’t require an external flash or multiple exposures. This distinction makes the camera particularly apt for imaging ultrafast, non-repetitive phenomena such as a single laser pulse or the short-lived, intermediate states of a biochemical reaction.”)
Laser Weapons Get Real Long a staple of science fiction, laser weapons are edging closer to the battlefield—thanks to optical fibers (Good summary article about laser weapons)
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/05/scientists-find-way-create-supersized-fruit (“scientists discovered a feedback loop involving two genes, one to stimulate stem cell production and the other to hold production in check. A shortage of the latter, a gene called CLAVATA3, leads to plumped up beefsteaks, the team reports today in Nature Genetics. This gene’s protein requires a chain of three sugar molecules to work right, and shortening that chain yields ever larger fruit, the scientists report.”)
On the Horizon: A Magnetic Zap that Strengthens Memory Magnetic stimulation may help stave off age-related cognitive decline (“a new study, in which people who learned associations (such as a random word and an image) after transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) were better able to learn more pairings days and weeks later—with no further stimulation needed. TMS uses a magnetic coil placed on the head to increase electrical signaling a few centimeters into the brain. Past studies have found that TMS can boost cognition and memory during stimulation, but this is the first to show that such gains can last even after the TMS regimen is completed.”)
http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/05/feature-new-shape-fusion (Great update on nuclear fusion)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/05/22/harvard-study-could-chinese-thunder-god-vine-plant-be-cure-all-for-weight-loss (“In a paper published in the journal Cell on Thursday, scientists said an extract made from the plant reduces food intake and has led to a dramatic 45 percent decrease in body weight in obese mice.
Study author Omut Ozcan, an endocrinologist at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said the substance appears to work by enhancing a fat-derived hormone called leptin that signals to the body when it has enough fuel and energy.”)
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