10 Science News Roundup #11

Here are 10 science news that I find interesting and important to take note.

Trends in drug development – One third of all drugs on the American market act on the same kind of important cell receptor — the G protein-coupled receptors. A major mapping of these drugs has found that their pharmacological mechanisms are becoming more complex. The mapping also reveals rapid developments especially within Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, asthma and diabetes. Science Daily

How flu shot manufacturing forces influenza to mutate – The common practice of growing influenza vaccine components in chicken eggs disrupts the major antibody target site on the virus surface, rendering the flu vaccine less effective in humans. Science Daily

Building a sustainable future: Urgent action needed – We need to act urgently to increase the energy efficiency of our buildings as the world’s emerging middle classes put increasing demands on our planet’s energy resources. Science Daily

Aliens Probably Went Through Natural Selection Just Like Us – Science fiction normally depicts aliens in one of two ways. The first is that they look almost identical to us (hello Star Trek). The other is they are something wildly beyond our imagination, say, the heptapods in Arrival. IFLScience

Photons are caught behaving like superconducting electrons – Light is a fan of the buddy system. Photons, or particles of light, have been spotted swapping energy with partners. This chummy behavior resembles how electrons pair up in materials that conduct current without resistance, known as superconductors, researchers report in a paper accepted in Physical Review Letters. Science News

Zika hasn’t been in the news much, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone – Less than a year after the World Health Organization declared Zika is no longer a public health emergency, the virus seems to have fallen from public consciousness, at least outside of heavily affected areas. The mosquito-borne virus staged a massive assault on the Western Hemisphere in 2015 and 2016 (SN: 12/24/16, p. 19), but this year, Zika appears to be in retreat. Science News

Extremely Rare Case in US as Woman Gets Pregnant While Already Pregnant – An extremely rare case of a woman becoming pregnant while already pregnant has occurred in the US, with a mother unwittingly giving birth to ‘twins’ who were not conceived at the same time. Science Alert

Alzheimer’s Could Actually Start Elsewhere in The Body And Not The Brain, Says Study – Alzheimer’s disease is usually described as a degenerative neurological condition, one that is commonly associated with memory loss and confusion. Science Alert

This Monster Planet With a Tiny Star Poses a Planetary Formation Puzzle – Astronomers have found something they thought was impossible: a gas giant roughly the size of Jupiter orbiting a white dwarf half the mass and size of the Sun. Science Alert

Yellowstone’s massive volcano could erupt more frequently than scientists thought – SEATTLE, WASHINGTON—Some 630,000 years ago, the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming recorded its last catastrophic eruption, forming a caldera that nearly spans the park’s width and belching a thick layer of ash, or tephra, across North America. Science

10 Science News Roundup #8

Here are 10 science news that I find interesting and important to take note.

How fever in early pregnancy causes heart, facial birth defects – Duke researchers now have evidence indicating that the fever itself, not its root source, is what interferes with the development of the heart and jaw during the first three to eight weeks of pregnancy. Science Daily

When the brain’s wiring breaks – Among all the bad things that can happen to the brain when it is severely jolted — in a car accident, for example — one of the most common and worrisome is axon damage. Axons are the long stalks that grow out of the bodies of neurons and carry signals to other neurons. They are part of the brain’s “wiring,” and they sometimes grow to amazing lengths — from the brain all the way down to the spinal cord. But axons are thin and fragile. When the brain receives a strong blow, axons are often stressed past their structural limits. They either break or swiftly degenerate. Science Daily

Superbugs may meet their match in these nanoparticles – Antibiotics may have a new teammate in the fight against drug-resistant infections. Researchers have engineered nanoparticles to produce chemicals that render bacteria more vulnerable to antibiotics. These quantum dots, described online October 4 in Science Advances, could help combat pathogens that have developed resistance to antibiotics (SN: 10/15/16, p. 11).

Secret Supereruption That Once Changed The World Found In North America – Yellowstone’s supervolcano gets all the attention these days, but it’s not the only vessel of apocalyptic eruptions. Today, there are several spots around the world that could bring about a game-changing eruption, and volcanologists are always on the hunt for ancient ones that until now have slipped beneath the radar.

Turns Out The Great Barrier Reef Can Actually Heal Itself, But We Have to Help It – he Great Barrier Reef is suffering from recent unprecedented coral bleaching events. But the answer to part of its recovery could lie in the reef itself, with a little help. In our recent article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, we argue that at least two potential interventions show promise as means to boost climate resilience and tolerance in the reef’s corals: assisted gene flow and assisted evolution.

Bright light therapy at midday helped patients with bipolar depression – Daily exposure to bright white light at midday significantly decreased symptoms of depression and increased functioning in people with bipolar disorder, a recent Northwestern Medicine study found. Science Daily

NASA Is Running Out of The Most Precious Ingredient Needed For Future Space Missions – Classroom models lie – our Solar System isn’t a bunch of bright, closely nestled orbs. Instead, other planets are separated from Earth by unfathomable distances – and are often too cold, dim, and remote for any spacecraft to explore on solar power alone. Science Alert

EPA Says “The War on Coal Is Over” in Major Reversal of Obama’s Clean Power Plan – The Trump administration has formally announced its plan to repeal the Clean Power Plan – President Obama’s key policy to cut greenhouse gas emissions produced by power plants. Science Alert

This Is How Online Dating Has Changed The Very Fabric of Society – Digital match-making services have done more than just change how we find our perfect squeeze; they’re changing the fundamental nature of our social networks. According to a pair of researchers investigating online dating, the way we’re looking for love (and lust) is connecting communities in completely novel ways, breaking down boundaries and possibly even making for stronger long-term relationships. Science Alert

How to make the cosmic web give up the matter it’s hiding – Evidence is piling up that much of the universe’s missing matter is lurking along the strands of a vast cosmic web. A pair of papers report some of the best signs yet of hot gas in the spaces between galaxy clusters, possibly enough to represent the half of all ordinary matter previously unaccounted for. Previous studies have hinted at this missing matter, but a new search technique is helping to fill in the gaps in the cosmic census where other efforts fell short. The papers were published online at arXiv.org on September 15 and September 29. Science News

10 Science News Roundup #7

Trio wins physics Nobel Prize for gravitational wave detection – Subtle cosmic vibrations kicked up by swirling black holes have captured the public imagination — and the minds of the physics Nobel Prize committee members, too. Three scientists who laid the groundwork for the first direct detection of gravitational waves have won the Nobel Prize in physics. Rainer Weiss of MIT, and Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, both of Caltech, will share the 9-million-Swedish-kronor (about $1.1 million) prize, with half going to Weiss and the remainder split between Thorne and Barish. Science News

First evidence of the body’s waste system in the human brain discovered – By scanning the brains of healthy volunteers, researchers at the National Institutes of Health saw the first, long-sought evidence that our brains may drain some waste out through lymphatic vessels, the body’s sewer system. The results further suggest the vessels could act as a pipeline between the brain and the immune system. Science Daily

New approach for AIDS: Lock HIV in reservoir cells, to die through apoptosis – With the successful suppression of the AIDS virus (HIV) through medication, the focus turns toward its eradication. Researchers from Kumamoto University in Japan have developed a new compound that is key to the destruction of HIV. When the compound is introduced into infected cells, viral budding (release) is suppressed thereby confining it within the host cells. The cells then die naturally through apoptosis (cell death). It is hoped that this treatment will lead to the complete recovery from AIDS in the near future. Science Daily

US Mom Could Be Jailed For Refusing To Vaccinate Her Son Against Potentially Life-Threatening Diseases – A mom from Detroit could serve jail time over her refusal to vaccinate her son. Rebecca Bredow was ordered by Oakland County judges on September 27 to vaccinate her boy within a week. Her time has nearly run out. IFLScience

A Strict Diet of Potato, Meat And Cereal Made a Boy Go Blind – There may not be much truth to the old folk wisdom that carrots make your eyesight better, but it turns out that not eating your veg will almost certainly make it worse. Doctors have described the case of an 11-year-old boy who presented to their clinic in Canada with severe vision loss, due to a highly restrictive diet. The culprit? A lack of vitamin A. Science Alert

A Rare Element From The Edge of The Periodic Table Is Breaking Quantum Mechanics – There’s a lot we don’t know about the actinides. On the periodic table, this series of heavy, radioactive elements hangs at the bottom, and includes a host of mysterious substances that don’t naturally occur on Earth. Science Alert

Mini-kidneys grown in lab reveal renal disease secrets – By creating and manipulating mini-kidney organoids that contain a realistic micro-anatomy, UW Medicine researchers can now track the early stages of polycystic kidney disease. The organoids are grown from human stem cells. Science Daily

Castaway critters rafted to U.S. shores aboard Japan tsunami debris – The 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan’s coast cast an enormous amount of debris out to sea — way out. Japanese marine life took advantage of the new floating real estate and booked a one-way trip to America. From 2012 to 2017, at least 289 living Japanese marine species washed up on the shores of North America and Hawaii, hitching rides on fishing boats, docks, buoys, crates and other nonbiodegradable objects, a team of U.S. researchers report in the Sept. 29 Science. Science News

Grass-fed cows won’t save the climate, report finds – f you thought eating only “grass-fed” hamburgers could absolve you from climate change guilt, think again. There’s a lack of evidence that livestock (such as cattle, sheep, and goats) dining on grassland has a lower carbon footprint than that fed on grains, as some environmentalists and “pro-pastoralists” claim, according to a new report by an international group of researchers led by the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), based at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Science

Quantum Mechanics Effect Appears To Prove We Are Not Living In A Simulation – From René Descartes to the Wachowskis (directors of the Matrix trilogy, amongst others) to Elon Musk, many have envisioned that our existence is just part of the scheme of a superior intelligence and our lives are merely part of a simulated reality. There’s obviously no evidence for it and there are actually many arguments against it, and now researchers think they have found a physical property that occurs in metals that cannot be simulated, telling us once and for all that our lives, good or bad, are actually real. IFLScience

10 Science News Roundup #4

Here are 10 science news that I find interesting and important to take note.

USA threatened by more frequent flooding – The East Coast of the United States is threatened by more frequent flooding in the future. Science Daily

How openings in Antarctic sea ice affect worldwide climate – In 1974, images acquired from NOAA satellites revealed a puzzling phenomenon: a 250,000 square kilometer opening in the winter sea ice in the Weddell Sea, south of South America. Science Daily

Looking stressed can help keep the peace – Scratching is more than an itch — when it is sparked by stress, it appears to reduce aggression from others and lessen the chance of conflict. Science Daily

The sun’s strongest flare in 11 years might help explain a solar paradox – A series of rapid-fire solar flares is providing the first chance to test a new theory of why the sun releases its biggest outbursts when its activity is ramping down. Science News

Brain chemical lost in Parkinson’s may contribute to its own demise – The brain chemical missing in Parkinson’s disease may have a hand in its own death. Science News

A Monster ‘Fatberg’ The Size of 20 Elephants Is Clogging London’s Sewer Right Now – Those ‘flushable’ wipes sure are a gross problem. Combined with nappies (diapers), condoms, tampons and congealed fat, they can stick together to form a gargantuan ‘fatberg’, like the one currently clogging up a section of London’s sewers. Science Alert

Uncontacted Tribe in The Amazon Reportedly Massacred by Illegal Gold Miners – Prosecutors in Brazil are investigating reports that illegal gold miners allegedly massacred up to 10 members of a remote, uncontacted tribe in the Brazilian Amazon. Science Alert

Lost Spanish Town Emerges From A Reservoir During A Drought – A drought has caused the ruins of a lost Spanish town to emerge out of the waters that usually cover it, revealing the remains of the old town as it stood when it was abandoned decades ago. IFLScience

Scientist Slams Climate Change Deniers In Brilliant Viral Post – The overwhelming consensus on climate change in the scientific community is that it’s real, and it’s man-made. The most commonly-cited figure is that 97.1 percent of scientific studies support the view that climate change is caused by humans. IFLScience

Scientists Just Added a Shocking 20 New Branches to The Tree of Life – Scientists have identified the genomes of close to 8,000 microorganisms from samples taken out in the field – and around a third of them are distinct from any life forms known to science, adding a crazy 20 new branches to our tree of microscopic life. Science Alert