Monday, January 28, 2019

Science X Newsletter Week 04

Dear Reader ,

Here is your customized Science X Newsletter for week 04:

Nanotechnology enables engineers to weld previously un-weldable aluminum alloy

An aluminum alloy developed in the 1940s has long held promise for use in automobile manufacturing, except for one key obstacle. Although it's nearly as strong as steel and just one-third the weight, it is almost impossible to weld together using the technique commonly used to assemble body panels or engine parts.

Alzheimer's disease: It may be possible to restore memory function, preclinical study finds

Research published today in the journal Brain reveals a new approach to Alzheimer's disease (AD) that may eventually make it possible to reverse memory loss, a hallmark of the disease in its late stages.

Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma

The old adage "use it or lose it" tells us: if you stop using your muscles, they'll shrink. Until recently, scientists thought this meant that nuclei—the cell control centers that build and maintain muscle fibers—are also lost to sloth.

Delaying newborn baths increases rates of breastfeeding

While it has been standard practice for decades to whisk newborns off to a bath within the first few hours of their birth, a new Cleveland Clinic study found that waiting to bathe a healthy newborn 12 or more hours after birth increased the rate of breastfeeding exclusivity during the newborn hospital stay.

Planetary collision that formed the moon made life possible on Earth

Most of Earth's essential elements for life—including most of the carbon and nitrogen in you—probably came from another planet.

New Zealand academic offers new explanation for Alexander the Great's death

It may have happened more than 2300 years ago, but the mystery of Alexander the Great's death could finally be solved, thanks to a University of Otago, New Zealand, academic.

A landscape unseen in over 40,000 years

Glacial retreat in the Canadian Arctic has uncovered landscapes that haven't been ice-free in more than 40,000 years and the region may be experiencing its warmest century in 115,000 years, new University of Colorado Boulder research finds.

Energizing the immune system to eat cancer

Immune cells called macrophages are supposed to serve and protect, but cancer has found ways to put them to sleep. Now researchers at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania say they've identified how to fuel macrophages with the energy needed to attack and eat cancer cells. It is well established that macrophages can either support cancer cell growth and spread or hinder it. But most tumors also express a signal called CD47, which can lull macrophages into a deep sleep and prevent them from eating. Researchers have found that rewiring macrophage metabolism can overcome this signal and act like an alarm clock to rouse and prepare macrophages to go to work. Their findings were published in Nature Immunology today.

Famous freak wave recreated in laboratory mirrors Hokusai's 'Great Wave'

A team of researchers based at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh have recreated for the first time the famous Draupner freak wave measured in the North Sea in 1995.

Ancient climate change triggered warming that lasted thousands of years

A rapid rise in temperature on ancient Earth triggered a climate response that may have prolonged the warming for many thousands of years, according to scientists.

Revealing the black hole at the heart of the galaxy

Including the powerful ALMA into an array of telescopes for the first time, astronomers have found that the emission from the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the galaxy comes from a smaller region than previously thought. This may indicate that a radio jet from Sagittarius A* is pointed almost directly toward us. The paper, led by the Nijmegen Ph.D. student Sara Issaoun, is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Astronomers use split images of quasars to produce a new estimate of the Hubble constant

The question of how quickly the universe is expanding has been bugging astronomers for almost a century. Different studies keep coming up with different answers—which has some researchers wondering if they've overlooked a key mechanism in the machinery that drives the cosmos.

Scientists warn of climate 'time bomb' for world's groundwater

Future generations face an environmental "time bomb" as the world's groundwater systems take decades to respond to the present day impact of climate change, scientists warned on Monday.

In surprising reversal, scientists find a cellular process that stops cancer before it starts

Just as plastic tips protect the ends of shoelaces and keep them from fraying when we tie them, molecular tips called telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes and keep them from fusing when cells continually divide and duplicate their DNA. But while losing the plastic tips may lead to messy laces, telomere loss may lead to cancer.

State-of-the-art climate model shows how we can solve crisis

We are already seeing the devastating consequences of global warming, with ever-rising sea levels, extreme storms, prolonged droughts and intensified bushfires. Now, after two years of research and modelling, scientists have come up with a groundbreaking new framework for achieving – and even beating – the target of limiting warming to 1.5°C.

Blood test detects Alzheimer's damage before symptoms

A simple blood test reliably detects signs of brain damage in people on the path to developing Alzheimer's disease—even before they show signs of confusion and memory loss, according to a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Germany.

Moon rock recovered by astronauts likely originated on Earth

In findings published overnight in science journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, a sample collected during the 1971 Apollo 14 lunar mission was found to contain traces of minerals with a chemical composition common to Earth and very unusual for the moon.

Gene-edited disease monkeys cloned in China

The first cohort of five gene-edited monkey clones made from fibroblasts of a monkey with disease phenotypes were born recently at the Institute of Neuroscience (ION) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Shanghai. The expression of BMAL1, a core circadian regulatory transcription factor, was knocked out in the donor monkey using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing at the embryo stage, and the fibroblasts of the donor monkey were used to clone five monkeys using the method of somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same method that generated Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, the first two cloned monkeys, last year. This major advance, reported in two articles in the journal National Science Review on January 24, demonstrates that a population of customized gene-edited macaque monkeys with uniform genetic background will soon be available for biomedical research.

New technology uses lasers to transmit audible messages to specific people

Researchers have demonstrated that a laser can transmit an audible message to a person without any type of receiver equipment. The ability to send highly targeted audio signals over the air could be used to communicate across noisy rooms or warn individuals of a dangerous situation such as an active shooter.

Neanderthal hunting spears could kill at a distance

Neanderthals have been imagined as the inferior cousins of modern humans, but a new study by archaeologists at UCL reveals for the first time that they produced weaponry advanced enough to kill at a distance.


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