Science X Newsletter Week 21

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Here is your customized Science X Newsletter for week 21:

	Leg exercise is critical to brain and nervous system health Groundbreaking research shows that neurological health depends as much on signals sent by the body's large, leg muscles to the brain as it does on directives from the brain to the muscles. Published today in Frontiers in Neuroscience, the study fundamentally alters brain and nervous system medicine—giving doctors new clues as to why patients with motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy and other neurological diseases often rapidly decline when their movement becomes limited.
	New parts of the brain become active after students learn physics Parts of the brain not traditionally associated with learning science become active when people are confronted with solving physics problems, a new study shows.
Scientists reveal likely cause of childhood leukaemia A major new analysis reveals for the first time the likely cause of most cases of childhood leukaemia, following more than a century of controversy about its origins.
	Indian child dies from mother's 'snake bite' breast milk An Indian woman who was bitten by a snake in her sleep and unknowingly breastfed poisoned milk to her daughter has died along with the child, police said Friday.
	New evidence for existence of Planet Nine A large international team of researchers has found what they are describing as more evidence of the existence of Planet Nine. In their paper posted on the arXiv preprint server, the group describes the behavior of a newly discovered distant object as suggestive of an influence of a large planet.
	Exercise to stay young: 4-5 days a week to slow down your heart's aging Participating in exercise 4-5 days per week is necessary to keep your heart young, according to new research published in The Journal of Physiology. These findings could be an important step to develop exercise strategies to slow down such ageing.
	Daily egg consumption may reduce cardiovascular disease People who consume an egg a day could significantly reduce their risk of cardiovascular diseases compared with eating no eggs, suggests a study carried out in China, published in the journal Heart.
	Nanoparticles derived from tea leaves destroy lung cancer cells Nanoparticles derived from tea leaves inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells, destroying up to 80% of them, new research by a joint Swansea University and Indian team has shown.
	Hotter bodies fight infections and tumours better—researchers show how The hotter our body temperature, the more our bodies speed up a key defence system that fights against tumours, wounds or infections, new research by a multidisciplinary team of mathematicians and biologists from the Universities of Warwick and Manchester has found.
	Eating at night, sleeping by day swiftly alters key blood proteins Staying awake all night and sleeping all day for just a few days can disrupt levels and time of day patterns of more than 100 proteins in the blood, including those that influence blood sugar, energy metabolism, and immune function, according to new University of Colorado Boulder research published in the journal PNAS this week.
	Team cracks code to cheap, small carbon nanotubes Imagine a box you plug into the wall that cleans your toxic air and pays you cash.
	CRISPR-edited rice plants produce major boost in grain yield A team of scientists from Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has used CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to develop a variety of rice that produces 25-31 percent more grain and would have been virtually impossible to create through traditional breeding methods.
	Giant Chinese salamander is at least five distinct species, all heading toward extinction With individuals weighing in at more than 140 pounds, the critically endangered Chinese giant salamander is well known as the world's largest amphibian. But researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on May 21 now find that those giant salamanders aren't one species, but five, and possibly as many as eight. The bad news as highlighted by another report appearing in the same issue is that all of the salamanders—once thought to occur widely across China—now face the imminent threat of extinction in the wild, due in no small part to demand for the amphibians as luxury food.
	Depression speeds up brain aging, find psychologists Psychologists at the University of Sussex have found a link between depression and an acceleration of the rate at which the brain ages. Although scientists have previously reported that people with depression or anxiety have an increased risk of dementia in later life, this is the first study that provides comprehensive evidence for the effect of depression on decline in overall cognitive function (also referred to as cognitive state), in a general population.
	Widely used e-cigarette flavoring impairs lung function A new study has found that a common e-cigarette flavoring that has chemical characteristics similar to toxic chemicals found in cigarette smoke disrupts an important mechanism of the lungs' antibacterial defense system. The study was presented at the 2018 American Thoracic Society International Conference.
	Nanoparticles carrying two drugs can cross the blood-brain barrier and shrink glioblastoma tumors Glioblastoma multiforme, a type of brain tumor, is one of the most difficult-to-treat cancers. Only a handful of drugs are approved to treat glioblastoma, and the median life expectancy for patients diagnosed with the disease is less than 15 months.
	New materials, heated under high magnetic fields, could produce record levels of energy, model shows Imagine being able to power your car partly from the heat that its engine gives off. Or what if you could get a portion of your home's electricity from the heat that a power plant emits? Such energy-efficient scenarios may one day be possible with improvements in thermoelectric materials—which spontaneously produce electricity when one side of the material is heated.
	Birds from different species recognize each other and cooperate Cooperation among different species of birds is common. Some birds build their nests near those of larger, more aggressive species to deter predators, and flocks of mixed species forage for food and defend territories together in alliances that can last for years. In most cases, though, these partnerships are not between specific individuals of the other species—any bird from the other species will do.
	Rehabilitating lactate: From poison to cure George Brooks has been trying to reshape thinking about lactate—in the lab, the clinic and on the training field—for more than 40 years, and finally, it seems, people are listening. Lactate, it's becoming clear, is not a poison, it's the antidote.
	Quantum effects observed in photosynthesis Molecules that are involved in photosynthesis exhibit the same quantum effects as non-living matter, concludes an international team of scientists including University of Groningen theoretical physicist Thomas la Cour Jansen. This is the first time that quantum mechanical behavior was proven to exist in biological systems that are involved in photosynthesis. The interpretation of these quantum effects in photosynthesis may help in the development of nature-inspired light-harvesting devices. The results were published in Nature Chemistry on 21 May.

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