Science

Study of modern DNA shakes up ideas of when and where contact happened.

The Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, will be visible across areas like Seattle, Des Moines [Iowa], Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and Halifax [Nova Scotia] on Wednesday. That night the KP-index, which measures global auroral activity ranges from 0 to 9, will be at Kp-5. Anything above a Kp-5 rating means a geomagnetic storm will occur. On Thursday, the aurora will intensify as the KP-index increases, making the colorful lights more visible, according to The Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbank.

A new ferroelectric polymer that efficiently converts electrical energy into mechanical strain has been developed by Penn State researchers. This material, showing potential for use in medical devices and robotics, overcomes traditional piezoelectric limitations.

"This is profiteering, not innovation."

So Kamath went to Florida, where she identified individual anoles and tracked their movements day in, day out. Kamath studied the anoles “in a larger area, in a longer period of time than anyone else had ever done,” says Losos, who is now at Washington University in St. Louis. But instead of revealing territorial differences, this massive dataset showed that the anoles weren’t actually territorial in the first place.

Kamath looked into the historical record to see where the idea of anole territoriality originated. It started with a 1933 paper that described frequent sexual behavior between male lizards in the lab. The authors had concluded that this lab behavior must be “prevented by something” in the wild, Kamath says, which they inferred was the males protecting territories. “The very first conclusion,” she says, “was based on a homophobic response to observing male-male copulation.” That shaky conclusion caught on, and later researchers assumed it to be true.

A two-front biological and cyber attack could lead to a U.S. defeat before we know what hit us.

Major depression has previously been associated with abnormalities in REM sleep. Excess REM sleep would diminish noradrenaline, resulting in decreased binding to the ɑ-2 receptor in the medial frontal lobes comprised of the ACC and the medial prefrontal cortex. The absence of REM sleep with TSD may give some participants a break to improve top-down control of the amygdala, resulting in an antidepressant effect.

I would like to inquire about two specific topics related to phage and bacterial genetics. I would greatly appreciate any recommendations or research papers you can provide for further studying these subjects.

Question 1: Phage Genetic Material Storage in Bacteria for "Immunity" I am particularly interested in understanding how phage genetic material is stored in bacterial DNA after phage destruction, specifically through the CRISPR/Cas system. I would like to incorporate and explore the mechanisms and processes involved in this fascinating phenomenon in my scholarly thesis.

Question 2: Bacterial Integration and Utilization of Phage Genes After Successful Elimination of Phage Infection Another area I would like to address in my thesis is whether bacteria can integrate and utilize phage genes after successfully eliminating phage infections, directly for regulation or protein synthesis.

I greatly appreciate any guidance or resources you can provide. Thank you very much for your time and assistance.

Multiple southern states and a few midwestern states are at "extreme threat" levels of "wet bulb temperature".

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered how cells that let us hear can repair themselves after being damaged, an insight that could benefit efforts to treat and prevent hearing loss.

Jaguar attacks on pets and farm animals are a common problem, but after developing a drug-induced stomach ache, the big cats seem to learn not to kill certain animals

Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are highly versatile chemicals. These fluorine-containing organic molecules are the reason why rain drops simply slide off outdoor jackets. They are used in the greaseproof coating of paper food packaging and are key ingredients in fire-extinguisher foams and the protective gear worn by firefighters. PFAS were first introduced in the 1940s and since then, the number of products and areas in which they are used has grown astronomically.

Now, in a paper published today in Nature Communications, Nanglu and his co-authors report that the exquisitely-preserved 500-million-year-old fossil is a dead ringer for some tunicates today, with two siphons to filter organic particles from the water and complex musculature controlling the siphons. “It looks like a tunicate that died yesterday and just happened to fall down on some rock,” says Nicholas Treen, a developmental biologist at Princeton University who wasn’t involved in the work.

The disease was diagnosed in the Australian rules footballer Heather Anderson, who died at age 28 in November, a paper outlining the postmortem analysis said.

Companies making cultured meat are attracting billions of dollars of investment. Here are their biggest challenges.

Summary:

• Lab-grown meat could be available to consumers by 2023
• Don't expect the first available lab-grown meat to be affordable
• Growing meat from cells is difficult. Researchers are trying to 1) find the optimal starter cells, or 2) use immortal cells (think HeLa) which should be safe
• Conventional feed/culture for research labs come from cows, so ppl are developing plant-based alternatives. Unfortunately every company is using their own proprietary solution
• Health issues pertinent to meat will still be present, although lab-grown will be much better to animal welfare
• Lab-grown meat will take up far less land, but require a lot more energy per kilo compared to even beef

If you cannot access the article due to paywall, plz let me know.

TL;DR
UCSF researchers injected monkeys with a protein named "klotho" that has links to aging but its function is unknown. The group already did this in mice, this time they did it in monkeys; low-dose injection caused monkeys to do better on cognitive tasks.

I don't know what klotho is or why only low-dose injection worked but... I have never seen a study like this that actually worked before, so this is new and interesting to me. Interestingly this article has like one experiment but went into Nature Aging which is... quite surprising to me.

Research article (open access): https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-023-00441-x

As a deadly heat wave continues to ravage the U.S., new evidence suggests the human body may stop functioning optimally when outside temperatures climb to 104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

Research presented Thursday at the annual Society for Experimental Biology conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, suggests that temperatures in that range raise a person's resting metabolic rate — the amount of energy needed to function at rest.

Although the sun provides nearly all the energy needed to warm the planet, its contribution to climate change remains widely questioned. Many empirically based studies claim that it has a significant effect on climate, while others (often based on computer global climate simulations) claim that it has a small effect.

A new misinformation quiz shows that, despite the stereotype, younger Americans have a harder time discerning fake headlines, compared with older generations

Researchers find physically active short sleepers in their 50s and 60s suffer cognitive decline as fast as those who do less exercise

Definitely my favorite quote, by the CEO of Hydrogen Europe:

“Dung beetles spend hours rolling up balls of dung to attract females,” he said. “But there are some very smart dung beetles that just sit by the side and watch while others do hard work. Then they shoot in, take the dung ball, take the girl and run away with everything. That’s Joe Biden.”

Check out https://global-migration.iiasa.ac.at/

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) researchers have developed a new tool—the Global Migration Data Explorer—to help address the lack of data on global migration flows and provide a visual method for exploring migration patterns worldwide.

Decarbonising steel production is essential if we are to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, but this energy-intensive process has been hard to clean up - until now

A way to passively achieve cooling below ambient temperature, using non-toxic common chemicals. 40 minute video, but very informative.