Posted: 12/23/2016
- New ultrasound technique is first to image inside live cells (“This new kind of sub-optical phonon (sound) imaging provides invaluable information about the structure, mechanical properties and behaviour of individual living cells at a scale not achieved before.”)
- RNA pathway plays key role in health, lifespan, fly study shows (“Humans and other animals carry rogue sequences of DNA in their genomes called transposable elements (TEs). To prevent passing TEs to their offspring, they employ the piRNA pathway in their reproductive organs to block the elements from being active in their sperm and eggs. … to show that the anti-TE activity of the piRNA pathway also operates in a normal non-reproductive body tissue, the fly fat body, and that it helps to sustain the life of the animal.”)
- Pregnancy resculpts women’s brains for at least 2 years (“In particular, gray matter shrinks in areas involved in processing and responding to social signals. … The changes occurred primarily in areas of the brain involved in social tasks like reading the desires and intentions of others from their faces and actions. The hippocampus, a region associated with memory, also lost volume. ”)
- Deep probe of antimatter puts Einstein’s special relativity to the test (“... with an experiment called ALPHA-2 have measured the wavelength of light absorbed by antihydrogen as the positron in it jumps between two particular levels—the so-called 1s and 2s levels. … they measured that "spectral line" to a precision of a few parts in 10 billion … In hydrogen, that line has been measured 100,000 times more precisely. Still, the result marks the beginning of antihydrogen spectroscopy, … The advance opens the way to precisely comparing hydrogen and antihydrogen and … special relativity requires antimatter to mirror matter … if that mirror relationship were not exact, then the basic idea behind special relativity couldn’t be exactly right … ”)
- Paleontologists provide a new look at a beautifully preserved fossil cephalopod (“... but rarely do paleontologists get to see the characteristic soft tissue anatomy of these many-armed swimmers. That makes a fossil found in the 165 million year old rock of France all the more wonderful. ...”)
- Discovery of bismuth superconductivity at extremely low temperature jeopardizes theory (This research comes out of India not from Indians researching in the U.S.! “The finding by the team has shed doubt on the reliability of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, because the metal does not have enough electrons to allow for partnering up—the means by which most semiconductors operate without resistance. It also now represents the lowest carrier density superconductor. ”)
- An ant’s kiss may hide a sneaky form of communication (About the evolutionary meaning of kissing? “... The finding suggests that saliva exchange could play yet-undiscovered roles in many other animals, from birds to humans, … Social insects—like ants, bees, and wasps—have long been known to pass food to one another through mouth-to-mouth exchange, a behavior known as trophallaxis. They store liquid food in “social stomachs,” or crops, from which they can regurgitate it later. It’s how nutrients are passed from foraging ants to nurse ants, and from nurses to the larvae in a colony. Other research has suggested that ants also use trophallaxis to spread the colony’s odor, helping them identify their own nest mates. … the researchers discovered that this social fluid contains a diverse array of chemicals, including growth-, digestion-, and immune-related proteins; nest mate recognition cues; and a juvenile hormone, important for regulating ant reproduction, development, and behavior. The discovery of the juvenile hormone was particularly unexpected.”)
- Your dog remembers more than you think (More on animals with episodic memory)
- New atlas depicts first two months of human development in 3-D (Shocking: “In their paper the researchers note that modern medical textbooks offer prospective doctors imagery of the first months of human conception that are wildly out of date—pictures and diagrams are from work done half a century ago or longer. Some are from the early 1900's. Some of the illustrations have even been made by artists attempting to apply what can be seen in the early development of other animals, such as mice ...”)
- Theory that challenges Einstein's physics could soon be put to the test (“Scientists behind a theory that the speed of light is variable - and not constant as Einstein suggested - have made a prediction that could be tested. … But some researchers have suggested that the speed of light could have been much higher in this early universe. … Structures in the universe, for example galaxies, all formed from fluctuations in the early universe – tiny differences in density from one region to another. A record of these early fluctuations is imprinted on the cosmic microwave background – a map of the oldest light in the universe – in the form of a 'spectral index'.”)
- China Is Building a Robot Army of Model Workers Can China reboot its manufacturing industry—and the global economy—by replacing millions of workers with machines? (China, a giant awakens and catches up very fast, e.g. buying robotics companies in Germany)
- Vaccines that rob microbes of iron could fight food poisoning, UTIs (This could be HUGE! Could this be a way to defeat bacteria of all kinds? Could this become a solution to antibiotics resistance?)
- Dutch unveil giant vacuum to clean outside air (If you include CO2 removal, then this could be the future! After water treatment finally comes air treatment! “The system is said to be able to suck in air from a 300-metre radius - and from up to seven kilometres ... upwards. It can treat some 800,000 cubic metres of air an hour, filtering out 100 percent of fine particles and 95 percent percent of ultra-fine particles”)
- New gene-editing technology successfully cures a genetic blood disorder in mice (“Unlike the popular CRISPR gene-editing technique, the new technology can be administered to living animals and it significantly decreases unwanted, off-target gene mutations. The new system consists of biocompatible nanoparticles containing PNAs [peptide nucleic acid], small nano-sized synthetic molecules in which a protein-like backbone is combined with the nucleobases found in DNA and RNA. PNA is designed to open up double-stranded DNA and bind near the target site in a highly specific manner without cutting anything. And the PNAs easily fit inside the nanoparticle delivery system, which is FDA-approved and has already been used to treat neurodegenerative diseases in humans. ... used next-generation PNA chemistry to design a PNA molecule called a gamma-PNA with a polyethylene glycol group on the side chain. This innovation makes the PNA water-soluble and biocompatible, which means that it doesn't bind to proteins and other biomolecules in a non-specific manner. Additionally, the specific stereochemistry of the polyethylene glycol group pre-organizes the PNA into a right-handed helical motif, making it bind to DNA more readily.”)
- New clues to how lithium soothes the bipolar brain may shed light on other mental illnesses (“Lithium treatment restored healthy numbers of dendritic spines in mice engineered to carry a genetic mutation that is more common in people with autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder than in unaffected people, ”)
- Cold May at Last Be Beatable After decades of disappointment there is a new flurry of vaccine activity (“Colds can also cause more physical harm than scientists previously appreciated. ... have discovered that some types of rhinovirus can invade deep into the lungs. Many cases of childhood pneumonia turn out to be caused by rhinoviruses. Rhinoviruses are especially dangerous for people who already have certain chronic disorders such as asthma, cystic fibrosis, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Even a mild cold can trigger runaway inflammation in their lungs. It turns out that the majority of asthma attacks are brought on by rhinoviruses. … They injected the vaccine into macaques and then later drew blood from the monkeys. When they mixed the viruses into the blood, they got a strong antibody response to 49 out of the 50 types [of rhinoviruses].”)
- Mouse egg cells made entirely in the lab give rise to healthy offspring (This is huge! “”)
- Unusual quantum liquid on crystal surface could inspire future electronics (“that the electrons, when kept at very low temperatures where their quantum behaviors emerge, can spontaneously begin to travel in identical elliptical paths on the surface of a crystal of bismuth, forming a quantum fluid state. … "This is the first visualization of a quantum fluid of electrons in which interactions between the electrons make them collectively choose orbits with these unusual shapes …”
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