Posted: 1/31/2017
- Genetically Modified Bacteria Could Eat Away The World’s Massive Plastic Problem (This could take care of another manufactured hysteria! “... bacteria called Pseudomonas putida are genetically modified to “eat” polyethylene-terephthalate (PET), a common type of plastic that’s proliferating in the oceans and on the land. Essentially, … “Plasticure-BGU“ spreads these bacteria on plastic particles, so that the plastic eventually breaks down … as a biproduct of this process, will produce electricity by utilizing the energy released from PET’s bonds”)
- The discovery of how LSD changes a protein’s structure may explain why the drug is so powerful, and why its trips are so long and strange (“By freezing an LSD molecule bound to a single brain cell receptor as a crystal in a lab, researchers were able to get a 3-D x-ray image of the drug and the protein locked together. “My lab has been trying to do this since the early 1990s,” … It is the first 3-D image of a psychedelic bound to a brain receptor, … But when an LSD molecule lands on the receptor, the molecule snags onto a portion of the protein and folds it over itself as the molecule binds to the receptor. “There was this lid that came over the molecule. It looked like it trapped LSD in the receptor,” … “That immediately suggested to us why LSD lasts so long.” … It begins to explain not only why standard recreational doses have this profound effect, but also why microdoses (about 10 micrograms of LSD) might have an effect.””)
- Physicists unveil new form of matter—time crystals (“Last year, … sketched out the phases surrounding a time crystal and what to measure in order to confirm that this new material is actually a stable phase of matter. This stimulated two teams to build a time crystal, the first examples of a non-equilibrium form of matter. … Two groups followed … blueprint and have already created the first-ever time crystals. The groups … reported their successes, using two totally different setups … Time crystals repeat in time because they are kicked periodically … that they are the first of a large class of new materials that are intrinsically out of equilibrium, unable to settle down to the motionless equilibrium of, for example, a diamond or ruby. … The time crystal created … a conga line of 10 ytterbium ions whose electron spins interact, similar to the qubit systems being tested as quantum computers. To keep the ions out of equilibrium, the researchers alternately hit them with one laser to create an effective magnetic field and a second laser to partially flip the spins of the atoms, repeating the sequence many times. Because the spins interacted, the atoms settled into a stable, repetitive pattern of spin flipping that defines a crystal. Time crystals were first proposed in 2012 by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, and last year theoretical physicists at Princeton University and UC Santa Barbara's Station Q independently proved that such a crystal could be made.”)
- ‘Metallic hydrogen’ claim faces fiery scrutiny from scientists, Metallic hydrogen, once theory, becomes reality (Looks like this claim needs more verification! Are we closer to a room temperature superconductor? “To create it … squeezed a tiny hydrogen sample at 495 gigapascal, or more than 71.7 million pounds-per-square inch - greater than the pressure at the center of the Earth. … metallic hydrogen is predicted to be metastable," …. if you take the pressure off, it will stay metallic, similar to the way diamonds form from graphite under intense heat and pressure, but remains a diamond when that pressure and heat is removed. … as the most powerful rocket propellant yet discovered.”)
- Synthetic nanoparticles achieve the complexity of protein molecules (“... The researchers … established the structure of Au246, one of the largest and most complex nanoparticles created by scientists to-date and the largest gold nanoparticle to have its structure determined by X-ray crystallography. Au246 turned out to be an ideal candidate for deciphering the complex rules of self- assembly because it contains an ideal number of atoms and surface ligands and is about the same size and weight as a protein molecule. … They found that the ligands in the nanoparticles self-assembled into rotational and parallel patterns that are strikingly similar to the patterns found in proteins' secondary structure. This could indicate that nanoparticles of this size could easily interact with biological systems, providing new avenues for drug discovery. … The researchers also found that Au246 particles form by following two rules. First, they maximize the interactions between atoms, a mechanism that had been theorized but not yet seen. Second the nanoparticles match symmetric surface patterns, a mechanism that had not been considered previously. The matching … shows that the components of the particle can recognize each other by their patterns and spontaneously assemble into the highly ordered structure of a nanoparticle.”)
- Caught Sending Chemical Messages A virus that infects bacteria listens to messages from its relatives when deciding how to attack its hosts (This could be huge! “Viruses sense chemical signals left behind by their forebears so they can decide whether to kill or just to infect their hosts. The discovery—in viruses that attack Bacillus bacteria—marks the first time that any type of viral communication system has ever been found. … The team first injected phi3T into a flask of Bacillus subtilis bacteria, and found that the virus tended to kill the bacteria. Then they filtered the contents of this flask to remove bacteria and viruses—but keeping small proteins—and fed this ‘conditioned medium’ to a fresh culture of bacteria and phages. That changed what the phage did: it was now more likely to slip its genome into the bacteria, rather than kill it. … After a two-and-a-half year search … discovered that arbitrium was a short viral protein that seeps out of infected bacteria after death. When levels of arbitrium build up—after a large number of cells have died — phages stop killing off the remaining bacteria and retreat to lie dormant in bacterial genomes instead. … identified two further phi3T proteins that measure levels of arbitrium and then influence the nature of subsequent infections. … found more than 100 different arbitrium-like systems, most of them in the genomes of other Bacillus viruses. “Phages broadcast in different frequencies. They speak in different languages and they can hear only the language that they speak,” he adds.”)
- Hundreds of elusive protein structures pinned down from genome data (“... “This is a major step forward” in determining how proteins fold … The new work predicts 614 protein structures, representing 12% of the estimated 5211 protein families for which no experimental structure exists. … that they’ve used their technique in conjunction with metagenome sequencing, in which researchers sequence vast swaths of genome data from unknown organisms in the ocean and soil. By sifting through the sequence data, they were able to track enough coevolving amino acids to pin down the structures of 614 proteins,”)
- AI Software Learns to Make AI Software Google and others think software that learns to learn could take over some work done by AI experts. (When software trumps human design! “If self-starting AI techniques become practical, they could increase the pace at which machine-learning software is implemented across the economy. Companies must currently pay a premium for machine-learning experts, who are in short supply. … termed “automated machine learning” … are terming “learning to learn” could also help lessen the problem of machine-learning software needing to consume vast amounts of data on a specific task in order to perform it well. … in which learning software designed deep-learning systems that matched human-crafted ones on standard tests for object recognition.”)
- Neutrons and a 'bit of gold' uncover new type of quantum phase transition (“ … the discovery of a new type of quantum phase transition. This unique transition happens at an elastic quantum critical point, or QCP, where the phase transition isn't driven by thermal energy but instead by the quantum fluctuations of the atoms themselves.”)
- Mathematical Model Reveals the Patterns of How Innovations Arise The work could lead to a new approach to the study of what is possible, and how it follows from what already exists. (“... created the first mathematical model that accurately reproduces the patterns that innovations follow. The work opens the way to a new approach to the study of innovation, of what is possible and how this follows from what already exists. The notion that innovation arises from the interplay between the actual and the possible was first formalized by the complexity theorist Stuart Kauffmann. In 2002, Kauffmann introduced the idea of the “adjacent possible” as a way of thinking about biological evolution. … The result is that the model reproduces Heaps’ and Zipf’s Laws as they appear in the real world—a mathematical first.”)
- Study suggests surprising reason killer whales go through menopause (To save resources and to care for younger!)
- Smile! Researchers have found a natural alternative to painful tooth fillings (Love Serendipity! “In tests on mice, the drug, tideglusib, successfully triggered stem cells that are located in the soft pulp center of a tooth to restore a tooth’s original dentine … Tideglusib, initially meant for Alzheimer’s patients, has already passed clinical safety trials, which could mean this treatment will hit the market sooner rather than later. ”)
- America's Long-Overdue Opioid Revolution Is Finally Here Thanks to advances in neuroscience, researchers are beginning to disentangle powerful pain relief from addiction, overdose and death (A painkiller revolution in the making! Good synopsis! This article is about Oliceridine, PZM21, and UMB425)
- New model could help scientists design materials for artificial photosynthesis (Approaching the holy grail of artificial synthesis! “Understanding the sensitive interplay between the self-assembled pigment superstructure and its electronic, optical, and transport properties is highly desirable for the synthesis of new materials and the design and operation of organic-based devices”)
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