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Here is your customized Science X Newsletter for December 26, 2016:
Spotlight Stories Headlines
Astronomy & Space news
 | Scientists plan to send greetings to other worldsAfter decades of fruitless scanning the skies for alien messages, scientists say it's time to try a basic rule of etiquette: Say "hello" first. |
 | NASA climate scientist and astronaut Sellers dies at 61Piers Sellers, a climate scientist and former astronaut who gained fame late in life for his eloquent commentary about the earth's fragility and his own cancer diagnosis, has died. He was 61. |
Technology news
 | Website charts Santa's journey around the globeAn online Santa tracker run by a Canadian and American defense agency mapped the jolly old gift-giver's path around the globe Saturday, in what has become a Yuletide tradition. |
 | Time for a change: This diaper alerts caregiver when it is wet(Tech Xplore)—University researchers have been focusing on developing a smart diaper that tells you when it's wet and uses its urine content as power to relay the message. You can thank researchers at Ritsumeikan University in Japan for this idea. |
 | Israel ministers approve bill to remove online 'incitement'Israeli ministers have approved a bill that would allow a court to order sites such as Facebook and YouTube to remove material found to be "incitement," which they say contributes to Palestinian violence. |
 | Acciona returns to Dakar Rally with electric carSpanish energy firm Acciona said Monday it will compete in the Dakar Rally next month in Latin America for the third straight year with the only electric vehicle of the gruelling off-road race. |
 | Thai police charge man in hacking attacks on gov't sitesPolice in Thailand on Monday charged a suspect with participating in recent hacking attacks on government computers that were billed as a protest against a restrictive law governing internet use. |
Medicine & Health news
 | Scientists discover new mechanism of how brain networks formScientists have discovered that networks of inhibitory brain cells or neurons develop through a mechanism opposite to the one followed by excitatory networks. Excitatory neurons sculpt and refine maps of the external world throughout development and experience, while inhibitory neurons form maps that become broader with maturation. This discovery adds a new piece to the puzzle of how the brain organizes and processes information. Knowing how the normal brain works is an important step toward understanding the nature of neurological conditions and opens the possibility of finding treatments in the future. The results appear in Nature Neuroscience. |
 | Is there such a thing as an emotional hangover? Researchers find that there isEmotional experiences can induce physiological and internal brain states that persist for long periods of time after the emotional events have ended, a team of New York University scientists has found. This study, which appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also shows that this emotional "hangover" influences how we attend to and remember future experiences. |
 | Researchers develop automated melanoma detector for skin cancer screeningEven experts can be fooled by melanoma. People with this type of skin cancer often have mole-looking growths on their skin that tend to be irregular in shape and color, and can be hard to tell apart from benign ones, making the disease difficult to diagnose. |
 | Does Santa's diet, lifestyle earn him a stocking full of coal?(HealthDay)—Santa might want to put a ho-ho-hold on some of his potentially damaging lifestyle habits, such as eating millions of cookies on Christmas Eve. |
 | Stanford manufactures gene-engineered cells to cure the incurableTo the list of cool new things made in Silicon Valley, add this: Life, improved. |
 | Synthetic stem cells could offer therapeutic benefits, reduced risksResearchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University have developed a synthetic version of a cardiac stem cell. These synthetic stem cells offer therapeutic benefits comparable to those from natural stem cells and could reduce some of the risks associated with stem cell therapies. Additionally, these cells have better preservation stability and the technology is generalizable to other types of stem cells. |
Potential drug appears to ease effects of Prader-Willi syndromeDuke Health researchers have identified a drug-like small molecule that, in animal experiments, appears to be an effective treatment for a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome. | |
Research reveals the importance of long non-coding RNA regulating cellular processesScientific research over the past decade has concentrated almost exclusively on the 2 percent of the genome's protein coding regions, virtually ignoring the other 98 percent, a vast universe of non-coding genetic material previously dismissed as nothing more than 'junk.' Now, a team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) reveals that one type—called long non-coding RNA (lncRNA)—may be critically important for controlling cellular components in a tissue-specific manner. Published online today in the journal Nature, the new research points to an lncRNA's key role in helping control processes related to muscle regeneration and cancer. | |
 | Fat fuels the road to cancer cell spreadCancer cells spread to other sites in the body through promoting the growth of new 'roads' to travel on. In a study to be published on December 26th in the top scientific journal, Nature, an international and multidisciplinary team of researchers, led by Prof. Dr. Peter Carmeliet (VIB-KU Leuven), discovered how a shift to increased fat utilization is required for the development and growth of these 'roads', termed lymphatic vessels - a special kind of blood vessels. This discovery paves the way towards developing therapeutics to limit lymphatic vessel growth in cancer by targeting fat utilization. |
 | Researchers map how the brain processes faces from sight to recognitionAt a glance, you can recognize a friend's face whether they are happy or sad or even if you haven't seen them in a decade. How does the brain do this—recognize familiar faces with efficiency and ease despite extensive variation in how they appear? |
 | Single protein may hold secret to treating Parkinson's disease and moreNew details learned about a key cellular protein could lead to treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's, Huntington's, Alzheimer's, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). |
 | Minnesota beats rest of country in banning germ-killerMinnesota's first-in-the nation ban on soaps containing the once ubiquitous germ-killer triclosan takes effect Jan. 1, but the people who spearheaded the law say it's already having its desired effect on a national level. |
FDA OKs first treatment for rare genetic disorderThe Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first treatment for children and adults with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic disorder marked by progressive muscle weakness that's the most common genetic cause of death in infants. | |
Sick Dutch boy's nail-varnish dare nets over 2.5 mn eurosA terminally ill six-year-old Dutch boy, who hoped to raise a few hundred euros by daring people to paint their nails, has raised more than 2.5 million euros. | |
 | Fecal calprotectin levels ID severity of Crohn's in small bowel(HealthDay)—Fecal calprotectin (FC) levels correlate with the severity of Crohn's disease (CD) of the small bowel, as identified by balloon-assisted enteroscopy and computed tomography enterography (CTE), according to a study published in the January issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. |
 | Research for post-craniotomy analgesia uneven in quality(HealthDay)—Studies reporting pharmacological and adjuvant analgesic modalities for post-craniotomy pain control have significant divergence in their research methods, according to a review published online Dec. 20 in Pain Practice. |
 | Laughter is good medicine for nursing home residents(HealthDay)—Laughter therapy improves the quality of life of nursing home residents, according to a study published online Dec. 16 in the Journal of Clinical Nursing. |
Report: Drug price spikes threaten patient health, economic stabilityStaggering hikes as high as 5000% in prices of some prescription drugs threaten the health of Americans who can't afford vital medicines as well as the broader economic stability of households across the U.S., a new congressional report warned Wednesday. | |
Novel drug may help repair failing heartsCimaglermin, a new experimental drug, may help restore cardiac function after heart failure, according to a first-in-man study published today in JACC: Basic to Translational Science. | |
Hospital readmission rates decrease after passage of ACA financial penaltiesThe Affordable Care Act (ACA) instituted financial penalties against hospitals with high rates of readmissions for Medicare patients with certain health conditions. A new analysis led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Massachusetts General Hospital has found that the penalties levied under the law's Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program were associated with reduced readmissions rates and that the poorest performing hospitals achieved the greatest reductions. The research appears online in The Annals of Internal Medicine on December 27, 2016. | |
Biology news
 | 'Ant-like' bees among new desert species identified by USU entomologistThough declines in bee populations have heightened awareness of the importance of pollinating insects to the world's food supply, numerous bee species remain undescribed or poorly understood. |
 | Biology's 'breadboard': cGAL, a temperature-robust GAL4-UAS system for C. elegansThe human brain, the most complex object in the universe, has 86 billion neurons with trillions of yet-unmapped connections. Understanding how it generates behavior is a problem that has beguiled humankind for millennia, and is critical for developing effective therapies for the psychiatric disorders that incur heavy costs on individuals and on society. The roundworm C elegans, measuring a mere 1 millimeter, is a powerful model system for understanding how nervous systems produce behaviors. Unlike the human brain, it has only 302 neurons, and has completely mapped neural wiring of 6,000 connections, making it the closest thing to a computer circuit board in biology. Despite its relative simplicity, the roundworm exhibits behaviors ranging from simple reflexes to the more complex, such as searching for food when hungry, learning to avoid food that previously made it ill, and social behavior. |
 | Could disease 'tolerance' genes give new life to UK ash trees?Researchers at the University of York have identified genetic markers for disease tolerance that suggest UK ash trees may have a fighting chance against a fungal infection, which has the potential to wipe out 90% of the European ash tree population. |
 | Sprinting towards extinction? Cheetah numbers crash globallyThe world's fastest land animal, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), is sprinting towards the edge of extinction and could soon be lost forever unless urgent, landscape-wide conservation action is taken, according to a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. |
 | Finnish phone app finds reindeer, helps to avoid road killThere's good news for Rudolph and his friends—an app is helping officials reduce the number of reindeer killed in traffic accidents in Finland. |
 | Baby orangutans rescued in Thai police stingThai police rescued two baby orangutans in a sting operation after undercover officers arranged to buy the primates over a mobile phone messaging app from wildlife traffickers for nearly $20,000, officials said. |
Iran culls birds after avian flu outbreakIran has killed hundreds of thousands of birds in recent weeks as avian flu spreads across seven provinces of the country, officials have reported. | |
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