Wednesday Science News Roundup #26

Below are 10 science news that I found interesting and are related to topics I care about.

Alzheimer’s disease reversed in mouse model – Researchers have found that gradually depleting an enzyme called BACE1 completely reverses the formation of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice with Alzheimer’s disease, thereby improving the animals’ cognitive function. The study raises hopes that drugs targeting this enzyme will be able to successfully treat Alzheimer’s disease in humans. Science Daily

Experimental therapy restores nerve insulation damaged by disease – When the body attacks its own healthy tissues in an autoimmune disease, peripheral nerve damage handicaps people and causes persistent neuropathic pain when insulation on healing nerves doesn’t fully regenerate. Unfortunately, there are no effective ways to treat the condition. Now scientists describe an experimental molecular therapy that restores insulation on peripheral nerves in mice, improves limb function, and results in less observable discomfort. Science Daily

Poor fitness linked to weaker brain fiber, higher dementia risk – Scientists have more evidence that exercise improves brain health and could be a lifesaving ingredient that prevents Alzheimer’s disease. Science Daily

Ancient ozone holes may have sterilized forests 252 million years ago – Volcano-fueled holes in Earth’s ozone layer 252 million years ago may have repeatedly sterilized large swaths of forest, setting the stage for the world’s largest mass extinction event. Such holes would have allowed ultraviolet-B radiation to blast the planet. Even radiation levels below those predicted for the end of the Permian period damage trees’ abilities to make seeds, researchers report February 7 in Science Advances. Science News

The small intestine, not the liver, is the first stop for processing fructose – When it comes processing fructose, the liver is a pinch hitter for the small intestine. Science News

Humans are overloading the world’s freshwater bodies with phosphorus – Human activities are driving phosphorus levels in the world’s lakes, rivers and other freshwater bodies to a critical point. The freshwater bodies on 38 percent of Earth’s land area (not including Antarctica) are overly enriched with phosphorus, leading to potentially toxic algal blooms and less available drinking water, researchers report January 24 in Water Resources Research. Science News

Watch nerve cells being born in the brains of living mice – Brain scientists have filmed a first-of-a-kind birth video. It reveals specialized cells in the brains of mice dividing to create newborn nerve cells. Science News

Surprise Discovery Shows We Have Been Totally Wrong About The Size of Andromeda Galaxy – A new technique for measuring the mass of galaxies has been applied to our closest galactic neighbour – and it has found that the Andromeda galaxy is roughly the same size as the Milky Way, and not two to three times bigger as was previously thought. Science Alert

Scientists Just Found a Super-Powerful New Class of Antibiotics in Dirt – The modern medical era began when an absent-minded British scientist named Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find that one of the petri dishes he forgot to put away was covered in a bacteria-killing mould. He had discovered penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic. Science Alert

An Incredible New Type of Brain Implant Can Boost Memory by 15% – Neural implants that claim to boost memory function aren’t new, but a novel approach to the problem has led to a device that listens to the brain before responding. Science Alert

Wednesday Science News Roundup #23

Below are 10 science news that I found interesting and are related to topics I care about.

Screen-addicted teens are unhappy – Researchers found that teens who spent a lot of time in front of screen devices — playing computer games, using more social media, texting and video chatting — were less happy than those who invested time in non-screen activities like sports, reading newspapers and magazines, and face-to-face social interaction. The happiest teens used digital media for less than an hour per day. But after a daily hour of screen time, unhappiness rises steadily along with increasing screen time. Science Daily

New Eocene fossil data suggest climate models may underestimate future polar warming – A new international analysis of marine fossils shows that warming of the polar oceans during the Eocene, a greenhouse period that provides a glimpse of Earth’s potential future climate, was greater than previously thought. Science Daily

First evidence of winds outside black holes throughout their mealtimes – New research shows the first evidence of strong winds around black holes throughout bright outburst events when a black hole rapidly consumes mass. The study sheds new light on how mass transfers to black holes and how black holes can affect the environment around them. Science Daily

Dietary fiber protects against obesity and metabolic syndrome, study finds – Consumption of dietary fiber can prevent obesity, metabolic syndrome and adverse changes in the intestine by promoting growth of ‘good’ bacteria in the colon, according to a new study. Science Daily

MIT Engineers Have Designed a Chip That Behaves Just Like Brain Cell Connections – For those working in the field of advanced artificial intelligence, getting a computer to simulate brain activity is a gargantuan task, but it may be easier to manage if the hardware is designed more like brain hardware to start with. Science Alert

This New Brain Study Shows Why Some People Are More Creative Than Others – Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas. Like intelligence, it can be considered a trait that everyone – not just creative “geniuses” like Picasso and Steve Jobs – possesses in some capacity. Science Alert

Every Single Piece Of Plastic Packaging In The EU To Be Reusable Or Recyclable By 2030 – The European Union has launched an ambitious campaign against single-use plastic, in an urgent plan to rid the continent of the flood of damaging plastics that are now choking the rivers, oceans, and countryside. IFLScience

Retirement Makes Short-Term Memory Decline 38 Percent Faster In Old Age – Dementia and Alzheimer’s are growing problems in many Western nations as people are living longer. While a treatment for these cognitive conditions still evades detection, there are certain behaviors and lifestyle choices that are known to exasperate the issue. It now seems that retirement might be one of them. IFLScience

The world’s largest set of brain scans are helping reveal the workings of the mind and how diseases ravage the brain – ENIGMA, the world’s largest brain mapping project, was “born out of frustration,” says neuroscientist Paul Thompson of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In 2009, he and geneticist Nicholas Martin of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, were chafing at the limits of brain imaging studies. The cost of MRI scans limited most efforts to a few dozen subjects—too few to draw robust connections about how brain structure is linked to genetic variations and disease. The answer, they realized over a meal at a Los Angeles shopping mall, was to pool images and genetic data from multiple studies across the world. Science Mag

Stars with too much lithium may have stolen it – Something is giving small, pristine stars extra lithium. A dozen newly discovered stars contain more of the element than astronomers can explain. Science News

10 Science News Roundup #14

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

Beating heart patch is large enough to repair the human heart – Biomedical engineers at Duke University have created a fully functioning artificial human heart muscle large enough to patch over damage typically seen in patients who have suffered a heart attack. The advance takes a major step toward the end goal of repairing dead heart muscle in human patients. Science Daily

Three to four cups of coffee a day linked to longer life – Drinking coffee is “more likely to benefit health than to harm it” for a range of health outcomes, say researchers in The BMJ today. Science Daily

‘Arrow of time’ reversed in quantum experiment – Your lukewarm cup of coffee won’t suddenly heat itself up, no matter how long you put off the trek to the microwave. But the same rule doesn’t necessarily apply to quantum systems. Like chilly air warming a mug, heat can spontaneously flow from a cold quantum particle to a hotter one under certain conditions, researchers report November 10 at arXiv.org. This phenomenon seems to reverse the “arrow of time,” the idea that natural processes run forward but not in reverse (SN: 7/25/15, p. 15). Science News

Republicans Want To Force The Critically Endangered Red Wolf Into Extinction – The red wolf, Canis rufus, currently exists only as a small population in one part of North Carolina. It’s listed under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered, which means it’s one step away from being extinct in the wild. IFLScience

The Once-Deadly Scarlet Fever Is Making a Weird Comeback Around The World – After decades of decline, scarlet fever is once again on the rise in the UK and other places around the world, and doctors are scrambling to figure out why. Science Alert

Latest DNA Analysis Shows The Yeti Are Actually Just a Bunch of Bears – The Yeti of the mountains of Asia, hairy like a white ape, yet bipedal and standing taller than a man, is numbered among the world’s most beloved cryptids. Yet, for all the eyewitness accounts, physical evidence of the beast is proving tricky to pin down. Science Alert

The key to breaking down plastic may be in caterpillars’ guts – To destroy plastic, caterpillars go with their gut bacteria. Science News

Common cold viruses reveal one of their strengths – Common cold season is back, which has people wondering why we catch the same virus, year after year. Why don’t we ever develop immunity against the common cold? Professor Pierre Talbot at INRS has known about the incredible variability of coronaviruses for some time. They’re responsible for the common cold as well as many other infections, including neurological diseases. Along with his research associate Marc Desforges, Professor Talbot worked on a study recently published in Nature Communications about the ways in which coronaviruses adapt and evolve, becoming ever more effective at infecting hosts without being defeated by the immune system. Science Daily

Research Shows That Earthworms Can Thrive Even in Mars Soil – Good news, aspiring Martian farmers! The soil composition of Mars oughtn’t hinder earthworm reproduction, if experiments here on Earth are any indication. Science Alert

Powerful new cancer drugs are saving lives, but can also ignite diabetes or other autoimmune conditions – Last week, Yale University immunologist Kevan Herold spoke about a few of his newest diabetes patients to an unlikely audience: oncologists and cancer researchers. At the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer’s annual meeting in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Herold and other speakers described how a novel class of promising cancer drugs is causing type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases in some of those treated. Science Mag

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