Scientists Are Designing Artisanal Proteins for Your Body
The human body makes tens of thousands of cellular proteins, each for a particular task. Now researchers have learned to create custom versions not found in nature.
By CARL ZIMMERDEC. 26, 2017
Our bodies make roughly 20,000 different kinds of proteins, from the collagen in our skin to the hemoglobin in our blood. Some take the shape of molecular sheets. Others are sculpted into fibers, boxes, tunnels, even scissors.
A protein’s particular shape enables it to do a particular job, whether ferrying oxygen through the body or helping to digest food.
Scientists have studied proteins for nearly two centuries, and over that time they’ve worked out how cells create them from simple building blocks. They have long dreamed of assembling those elements into new proteins not found in nature.
But they’ve been stumped by one great mystery: how the building blocks in a protein take their final shape. David Baker, 55, the director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, has been investigating that enigma for a quarter-century.
Now, it looks as if he and his colleagues have cracked it. Thanks in part to crowdsourced computers and smartphones belonging to over a million volunteers, the scientists have figured out how to choose the building blocks required to create a protein that will take on the shape they want.
In a series of papers published this year, Dr. Baker and his colleagues unveiled the results of this work. They have produced thousands of different kinds of proteins, which assume the shape the scientists had predicted. Often those proteins are profoundly different from any found in nature.
This expertise has led to a profound scientific advance: cellular proteins designed by man, not by nature. “We can now build proteins from scratch from first principles to do what we want,” said Dr. Baker.
Scientists soon will be able to construct precise molecular tools for a vast range of tasks, he predicts. Already, his team has built proteins for purposes ranging from fighting flu viruses to breaking down gluten in food to detecting trace amounts of opioid drugs.
William DeGrado, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said the recent studies by Dr. Baker and his colleagues represent a milestone in this line of scientific inquiry. “In the 1980s, we dreamed about having such impressive outcomes,” he said.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/scie ... d=45305309
Articles of Interest in Science
Scientists have discovered why some people are left-handed
Are you a southpaw? Well, you might want to listen up, since scientists think they know why some people are left-handed. While it has to do with your body and your development, it seems as if your brain may not have any part of it. Shocker, right?
Our world today seems to favor righties — which is interesting, as a whopping 10% of us are left-handed. Back in the ’90s, studies revealed that older mothers — defined as women being pregnant in their 40’s and beyond — were twice as likely to have a left-handed baby. Women who gave birth between the ages of 30 to 35 had a 25% greater chance of giving birth to a leftie. Psychologist Stanley Coren, who performed the study, said that older mothers had more reasons to be stressed, which could also play a role. This is a study we might want to pay attention to, especially since more and more of us are delaying motherhood a bit. Perhaps if it pans out, lefties will rule the world someday.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/wha ... ailsignout
Are you a southpaw? Well, you might want to listen up, since scientists think they know why some people are left-handed. While it has to do with your body and your development, it seems as if your brain may not have any part of it. Shocker, right?
Our world today seems to favor righties — which is interesting, as a whopping 10% of us are left-handed. Back in the ’90s, studies revealed that older mothers — defined as women being pregnant in their 40’s and beyond — were twice as likely to have a left-handed baby. Women who gave birth between the ages of 30 to 35 had a 25% greater chance of giving birth to a leftie. Psychologist Stanley Coren, who performed the study, said that older mothers had more reasons to be stressed, which could also play a role. This is a study we might want to pay attention to, especially since more and more of us are delaying motherhood a bit. Perhaps if it pans out, lefties will rule the world someday.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/wha ... ailsignout
Brain Surgery in 3-D: Coming Soon to the Operating Theater
New “videomicroscopes” offer astounding images, helping surgeons
perform and collaborate on delicate brain and spine operations.
Excerpt:
The equipment produces magnified, high-resolution, three-dimensional digital images of surgical sites, and lets everyone in the room see exactly what the surgeon is seeing. The videomicroscope has a unique ability to capture “the brilliance and the beauty of the neurosurgical anatomy,” Dr. Langer said.
He and other surgeons who have tested it predict it will change the way many brain and spine operations are performed and taught. “The first time I used it, I told students that this gives them an understanding of why I went into neurosurgery in the first place,” Dr. Langer said.
But there is more to it than just the gee-whiz, Imax factor. The shared viewing makes 3-D surgery an ideal teaching tool. In addition, Dr. Langer and other doctors say the device is smaller and much less cumbersome than standard surgical microscopes and provides better light.
It can easily be moved and angled to show bits of anatomy that surgeons would otherwise have to twist and crane their necks to see. Two surgeons on opposite sides of the table can work together easily.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/heal ... dline&te=1
New “videomicroscopes” offer astounding images, helping surgeons
perform and collaborate on delicate brain and spine operations.
Excerpt:
The equipment produces magnified, high-resolution, three-dimensional digital images of surgical sites, and lets everyone in the room see exactly what the surgeon is seeing. The videomicroscope has a unique ability to capture “the brilliance and the beauty of the neurosurgical anatomy,” Dr. Langer said.
He and other surgeons who have tested it predict it will change the way many brain and spine operations are performed and taught. “The first time I used it, I told students that this gives them an understanding of why I went into neurosurgery in the first place,” Dr. Langer said.
But there is more to it than just the gee-whiz, Imax factor. The shared viewing makes 3-D surgery an ideal teaching tool. In addition, Dr. Langer and other doctors say the device is smaller and much less cumbersome than standard surgical microscopes and provides better light.
It can easily be moved and angled to show bits of anatomy that surgeons would otherwise have to twist and crane their necks to see. Two surgeons on opposite sides of the table can work together easily.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/heal ... dline&te=1
Genomics: Sequencing the world
There are 1.5m known species of eukaryotes, among them plants, animals and fungi. The Earth BioGenome Project, brainchild of some eminent biologists, wants to sequence their genomes within a decade. The hardest part of the task is the gathering of specimens. In this, the EBP should be helped by a collaboration, announced today, with another project cataloguing the Amazon’s biological data, writes our environment correspondent:
https://www.economist.com/news/science- ... lydispatch
There are 1.5m known species of eukaryotes, among them plants, animals and fungi. The Earth BioGenome Project, brainchild of some eminent biologists, wants to sequence their genomes within a decade. The hardest part of the task is the gathering of specimens. In this, the EBP should be helped by a collaboration, announced today, with another project cataloguing the Amazon’s biological data, writes our environment correspondent:
https://www.economist.com/news/science- ... lydispatch
You Are Shaped by the Genes You Inherit. And Maybe by Those You Don’t.
For centuries, people have drawn the line between nature and nurture.
In the nineteenth century, the English polymath Francis Galton cast nature-versus-nurture in scientific terms. He envisioned a battle between heredity and experience that shapes each of us.
“When nature and nurture compete for supremacy…the former proves the stronger,” Galton wrote in 1874.
Today, scientists can do something Galton couldn’t imagine: they can track the genes we inherit from our parents. They are gaining clues to how that genetic legacy influences many aspects of our experience, from our risk of developing cancer to our tendency to take up smoking.
But determining exactly how any particular variation in DNA shapes the course of our life is proving far trickier than Galton would have guessed. There is no clean line between nature and nurture: How a particular variant acts, if at all, may depend on your environment.
A study published on Thursday offers a striking new demonstration of this complexity. Genes may help determine how long children stay in school, the researchers found, but some of those genes operate at a distance — by influencing parents. The study was published in Science.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/scie ... dline&te=1
******
Yes, They’ve Cloned Monkeys in China. That Doesn’t Mean You’re Next.
Researchers in China reported on Wednesday that they have created two cloned monkeys, the first time that primates have been cloned with the technique that produced Dolly the sheep more than 20 years ago.
The long-tailed macaques, named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, were made from fetal cells grown in a petri dish. The clones are identical twins and carry the DNA of the monkey fetus that originally provided the cells, according to a study published in the journal Cell. They were born at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.
Dolly the sheep was produced from udder cells that had been frozen for six years. Until that feat, many researchers had thought that type of cloning was impossible, because it required taking adult cells and bringing them back to their original state, when sperm first fertilized egg.
The cell would then have to start to grow in a surrogate’s womb and to differentiate into an entire animal, genetically identical to the one that provided the initial cell.
But once cloning proved possible, researchers began improving their method and testing it on other species. Since Dolly was born, researchers have cloned 23 mammal species, including cattle, cats, deer, dogs, horses, mules, oxen, rabbits and rats.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/scie ... dline&te=1
*******
This Tiny Robot Walks, Crawls, Jumps and Swims. But It Is Not Alive.
Researchers in Germany have developed a robot that is about a seventh of an inch long and looks at first like no more than a tiny strip of something rubbery. Then it starts moving.
The robot walks, jumps, crawls, rolls and swims. It even climbs out of the pool, moving from a watery environment into a dry one.
The robot prototype is small enough to move around in a stomach or urinary system, said Metin Sitti, head of the physical intelligence department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, who led the research team.
The robot hasn’t been tested in humans yet, but the goal is to improve it for medical use — for instance, delivering drugs to a target within the body.
What is most unusual about the research, Dr. Sitti said, is that such a “minimalist robot” can achieve “all different type of motion possibilities to navigate in complex environments.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/scie ... dline&te=1
For centuries, people have drawn the line between nature and nurture.
In the nineteenth century, the English polymath Francis Galton cast nature-versus-nurture in scientific terms. He envisioned a battle between heredity and experience that shapes each of us.
“When nature and nurture compete for supremacy…the former proves the stronger,” Galton wrote in 1874.
Today, scientists can do something Galton couldn’t imagine: they can track the genes we inherit from our parents. They are gaining clues to how that genetic legacy influences many aspects of our experience, from our risk of developing cancer to our tendency to take up smoking.
But determining exactly how any particular variation in DNA shapes the course of our life is proving far trickier than Galton would have guessed. There is no clean line between nature and nurture: How a particular variant acts, if at all, may depend on your environment.
A study published on Thursday offers a striking new demonstration of this complexity. Genes may help determine how long children stay in school, the researchers found, but some of those genes operate at a distance — by influencing parents. The study was published in Science.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/scie ... dline&te=1
******
Yes, They’ve Cloned Monkeys in China. That Doesn’t Mean You’re Next.
Researchers in China reported on Wednesday that they have created two cloned monkeys, the first time that primates have been cloned with the technique that produced Dolly the sheep more than 20 years ago.
The long-tailed macaques, named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, were made from fetal cells grown in a petri dish. The clones are identical twins and carry the DNA of the monkey fetus that originally provided the cells, according to a study published in the journal Cell. They were born at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.
Dolly the sheep was produced from udder cells that had been frozen for six years. Until that feat, many researchers had thought that type of cloning was impossible, because it required taking adult cells and bringing them back to their original state, when sperm first fertilized egg.
The cell would then have to start to grow in a surrogate’s womb and to differentiate into an entire animal, genetically identical to the one that provided the initial cell.
But once cloning proved possible, researchers began improving their method and testing it on other species. Since Dolly was born, researchers have cloned 23 mammal species, including cattle, cats, deer, dogs, horses, mules, oxen, rabbits and rats.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/scie ... dline&te=1
*******
This Tiny Robot Walks, Crawls, Jumps and Swims. But It Is Not Alive.
Researchers in Germany have developed a robot that is about a seventh of an inch long and looks at first like no more than a tiny strip of something rubbery. Then it starts moving.
The robot walks, jumps, crawls, rolls and swims. It even climbs out of the pool, moving from a watery environment into a dry one.
The robot prototype is small enough to move around in a stomach or urinary system, said Metin Sitti, head of the physical intelligence department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, who led the research team.
The robot hasn’t been tested in humans yet, but the goal is to improve it for medical use — for instance, delivering drugs to a target within the body.
What is most unusual about the research, Dr. Sitti said, is that such a “minimalist robot” can achieve “all different type of motion possibilities to navigate in complex environments.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/scie ... dline&te=1
How to Understand Extreme Numbers
The late statistics wizard Hans Rosling, who died in February of 2017 at age 68, brought at least 10 toilet paper rolls to some of his beloved presentations. He would stack them into a tower on a table, each roll representing one billion people. In a 2012 talk at the Skoll World Forum, he used the rolls to show how, as the number of children in the world—2 billion—holds steady, the global population will rise from 7 billion to the (also indefinitely stable) figure of about 10 billion. “We are debating peak oil,” he remarked, “but we know that we have reached peak child.”
With his whimsical props and other colorful visualizations, Rosling was renowned as a translator between large, almost unfathomable numbers and the language of everyday experience. He understood that most of us need visualizations or analogies to mentally work with millions, billions, and other big powers of 10 that help define our world. They’re important for decisions that affect daily life, such as how money gets invested and which government policies you support. But just how well—or poorly—do people understand quantities in powers of 10? And how can we better equip ourselves to navigate them?
More...
http://nautil.us//blog/-how-to-understa ... 0-60760513
******
We Should Not Accept Scientific Results That Have Not Been Repeated
A few years ago, I became aware of serious problem in science: the irreproducibility crisis. A group of researchers at Amgen, an American pharmaceutical company, attempted to replicate 53 landmark cancer discoveries in close collaboration with the authors. Many of these papers were published in high-impact journals and came from prestigious academic institutions. To the surprise of everyone involved, they were able to replicate only six of those papers—approximately 11 percent.
As expected, this observation had wide reverberations throughout the scientific community. The inability to independently replicate scientific findings threatens to undermine trust in the institution of science.
Yet, as an experimental biologist, my initial reaction to this crisis was dismissive. I reaffirmed to myself that science is self-correcting, and that wrong ideas have a place within scientific discourse. After all, this is the very characteristic that distinguishes science from other human endeavors and gives it its nobility.
But as it turns out, irreproducibility in itself was not the problem—rather, it was its extent, which is becoming more apparent due to the exponential rise in scientific output (over 1.1 million scientific papers were indexed in PubMed in 2015). Widespread irreproducibility is often misconceived as intentional fraud—which does occur, and is documented by websites like Retraction Watch. But the majority of irreproducible research stems from a complex matrix of statistical, technical, and psychological biases that are rampant within the scientific community.
The institutionalization of science in the early decades of the 20th century created a scientific sub-culture, with its own reward systems, behaviors, and social norms. The rest of society sees this sphere a bit differently: Scientists are portrayed as selfless individuals who are solely motivated by curiosity and a hunger for knowledge. However, the existence of the irreproducibility crisis implies that other motives may also exist.
More...
http://nautil.us//blog/-how-to-understa ... 0-60760513
The late statistics wizard Hans Rosling, who died in February of 2017 at age 68, brought at least 10 toilet paper rolls to some of his beloved presentations. He would stack them into a tower on a table, each roll representing one billion people. In a 2012 talk at the Skoll World Forum, he used the rolls to show how, as the number of children in the world—2 billion—holds steady, the global population will rise from 7 billion to the (also indefinitely stable) figure of about 10 billion. “We are debating peak oil,” he remarked, “but we know that we have reached peak child.”
With his whimsical props and other colorful visualizations, Rosling was renowned as a translator between large, almost unfathomable numbers and the language of everyday experience. He understood that most of us need visualizations or analogies to mentally work with millions, billions, and other big powers of 10 that help define our world. They’re important for decisions that affect daily life, such as how money gets invested and which government policies you support. But just how well—or poorly—do people understand quantities in powers of 10? And how can we better equip ourselves to navigate them?
More...
http://nautil.us//blog/-how-to-understa ... 0-60760513
******
We Should Not Accept Scientific Results That Have Not Been Repeated
A few years ago, I became aware of serious problem in science: the irreproducibility crisis. A group of researchers at Amgen, an American pharmaceutical company, attempted to replicate 53 landmark cancer discoveries in close collaboration with the authors. Many of these papers were published in high-impact journals and came from prestigious academic institutions. To the surprise of everyone involved, they were able to replicate only six of those papers—approximately 11 percent.
As expected, this observation had wide reverberations throughout the scientific community. The inability to independently replicate scientific findings threatens to undermine trust in the institution of science.
Yet, as an experimental biologist, my initial reaction to this crisis was dismissive. I reaffirmed to myself that science is self-correcting, and that wrong ideas have a place within scientific discourse. After all, this is the very characteristic that distinguishes science from other human endeavors and gives it its nobility.
But as it turns out, irreproducibility in itself was not the problem—rather, it was its extent, which is becoming more apparent due to the exponential rise in scientific output (over 1.1 million scientific papers were indexed in PubMed in 2015). Widespread irreproducibility is often misconceived as intentional fraud—which does occur, and is documented by websites like Retraction Watch. But the majority of irreproducible research stems from a complex matrix of statistical, technical, and psychological biases that are rampant within the scientific community.
The institutionalization of science in the early decades of the 20th century created a scientific sub-culture, with its own reward systems, behaviors, and social norms. The rest of society sees this sphere a bit differently: Scientists are portrayed as selfless individuals who are solely motivated by curiosity and a hunger for knowledge. However, the existence of the irreproducibility crisis implies that other motives may also exist.
More...
http://nautil.us//blog/-how-to-understa ... 0-60760513
Physicists Create New Form Of Light
For the first time, scientists have watched groups of three photons interacting and effectively producing a new form of light.
In results published in Science, researchers suggest that this new light could be used to perform highly complex, incredibly fast quantum computations.
Photons are tiny particles that normally travel solo through beams of light, never interacting with each other. But in 2013 scientists made them clump together in pairs, creating a new state of matter. This discovery shows that interactions are possible on a greater scale.
More..
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ph ... ailsignout
For the first time, scientists have watched groups of three photons interacting and effectively producing a new form of light.
In results published in Science, researchers suggest that this new light could be used to perform highly complex, incredibly fast quantum computations.
Photons are tiny particles that normally travel solo through beams of light, never interacting with each other. But in 2013 scientists made them clump together in pairs, creating a new state of matter. This discovery shows that interactions are possible on a greater scale.
More..
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ph ... ailsignout
Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
Plants don’t get enough credit.
They move. You know this. Your houseplant salutes the sun each morning. At night, it returns to center.
You probably don’t think much of it. This is simply what plants do: Get light. Photosynthesize. Make food. Live.
But what about all the signs of plant intelligence that have been observed?
Under poor soil conditions, the pea seems to be able to assess risk. The sensitive plant can make memories and learn to stop recoiling if you mess with it enough. The Venus fly trap appears to count when insects trigger its trap. And plants can communicate with one another and with caterpillars.
Now, a study published recently in Annals of Botany has shown that plants can be frozen in place with a range of anesthetics, including the types that are used when you undergo surgery.
Insights gleaned from the study may help doctors better understand the variety of anesthetics used in surgeries. But the research also highlights that plants are complex organisms, perhaps less different from animals than is often assumed.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/scie ... dline&te=1
Plants don’t get enough credit.
They move. You know this. Your houseplant salutes the sun each morning. At night, it returns to center.
You probably don’t think much of it. This is simply what plants do: Get light. Photosynthesize. Make food. Live.
But what about all the signs of plant intelligence that have been observed?
Under poor soil conditions, the pea seems to be able to assess risk. The sensitive plant can make memories and learn to stop recoiling if you mess with it enough. The Venus fly trap appears to count when insects trigger its trap. And plants can communicate with one another and with caterpillars.
Now, a study published recently in Annals of Botany has shown that plants can be frozen in place with a range of anesthetics, including the types that are used when you undergo surgery.
Insights gleaned from the study may help doctors better understand the variety of anesthetics used in surgeries. But the research also highlights that plants are complex organisms, perhaps less different from animals than is often assumed.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/scie ... dline&te=1
Stephen Hawking Dies at 76; His Mind Roamed the Cosmos
A physicist and best-selling author, Dr. Hawking did not
allow his physical limitations to hinder his quest to answer
“the big question: Where did the universe come from?”
Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, died early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76.
A university spokesman confirmed the death.
“Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, said in an interview.
Dr. Hawking did that largely through his book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” published in 1988. It has sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris. His own story was the basis of an award-winning 2014 feature film, “The Theory of Everything.” (Eddie Redmayne played Dr. Hawking and won an Academy Award.)
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/obit ... 3053090315
********
Stephen Hawking, Force of Nature
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/opin ... 3053090315
********
Stephen Hawking’s Most Profound Gift to Physics
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/opin ... dline&te=1
A physicist and best-selling author, Dr. Hawking did not
allow his physical limitations to hinder his quest to answer
“the big question: Where did the universe come from?”
Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, died early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76.
A university spokesman confirmed the death.
“Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, said in an interview.
Dr. Hawking did that largely through his book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” published in 1988. It has sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris. His own story was the basis of an award-winning 2014 feature film, “The Theory of Everything.” (Eddie Redmayne played Dr. Hawking and won an Academy Award.)
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/obit ... 3053090315
********
Stephen Hawking, Force of Nature
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/opin ... 3053090315
********
Stephen Hawking’s Most Profound Gift to Physics
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/opin ... dline&te=1
How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’
Excerpt:
I have deep sympathy for the concern that genetic discoveries could be misused to justify racism. But as a geneticist I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among “races.”
Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades. These advances enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago — before the mixing in the Americas of the West African and European gene pools that were almost completely isolated for the last 70,000 years. With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.
Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases. For example, we now know that genetic factors help explain why northern Europeans are taller on average than southern Europeans, why multiple sclerosis is more common in European-Americans than in African-Americans, and why the reverse is true for end-stage kidney disease.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opin ... dline&te=1
Excerpt:
I have deep sympathy for the concern that genetic discoveries could be misused to justify racism. But as a geneticist I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among “races.”
Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades. These advances enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago — before the mixing in the Americas of the West African and European gene pools that were almost completely isolated for the last 70,000 years. With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.
Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases. For example, we now know that genetic factors help explain why northern Europeans are taller on average than southern Europeans, why multiple sclerosis is more common in European-Americans than in African-Americans, and why the reverse is true for end-stage kidney disease.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opin ... dline&te=1
Meet TESS, Seeker of Alien Worlds
NASA’s new spacecraft, to be launched next month, will give scientists a much clearer view of the planets orbiting stars near to us.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The search for cosmic real estate is about to begin anew.
No earlier than 6:32 p.m. on April 16, in NASA’s fractured parlance, a little spacecraft known as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, bristling with cameras and ambition, will ascend on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a blaze of smoke and fire and take up a lengthy residence between the moon and the Earth.
There it will spend the next two years, at least, scanning the sky for alien worlds.
TESS is the latest effort to try to answer questions that have intrigued humans for millenniums and dominated astronomy for the last three decades: Are we alone? Are there other Earths? Evidence of even a single microbe anywhere else in the galaxy would rock science.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/scie ... dline&te=1
NASA’s new spacecraft, to be launched next month, will give scientists a much clearer view of the planets orbiting stars near to us.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The search for cosmic real estate is about to begin anew.
No earlier than 6:32 p.m. on April 16, in NASA’s fractured parlance, a little spacecraft known as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, bristling with cameras and ambition, will ascend on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a blaze of smoke and fire and take up a lengthy residence between the moon and the Earth.
There it will spend the next two years, at least, scanning the sky for alien worlds.
TESS is the latest effort to try to answer questions that have intrigued humans for millenniums and dominated astronomy for the last three decades: Are we alone? Are there other Earths? Evidence of even a single microbe anywhere else in the galaxy would rock science.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/scie ... dline&te=1
How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math
Sorry, education reformers, it’s still memorization and repetition we need.
I was a wayward kid who grew up on the literary side of life, treating math and science as if they were pustules from the plague. So it’s a little strange how I’ve ended up now—someone who dances daily with triple integrals, Fourier transforms, and that crown jewel of mathematics, Euler’s equation. It’s hard to believe I’ve flipped from a virtually congenital math-phobe to a professor of engineering.
One day, one of my students asked me how I did it—how I changed my brain. I wanted to answer Hell—with lots of difficulty! After all, I’d flunked my way through elementary, middle, and high school math and science. In fact, I didn’t start studying remedial math until I left the Army at age 26. If there were a textbook example of the potential for adult neural plasticity, I’d be Exhibit A.
Learning math and then science as an adult gave me passage into the empowering world of engineering. But these hard-won, adult-age changes in my brain have also given me an insider’s perspective on the neuroplasticity that underlies adult learning. Fortunately, my doctoral training in systems engineering—tying together the big picture of different STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) disciplines—and then my later research and writing focusing on how humans think have helped me make sense of recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology related to learning.
More....
http://nautil.us//issue/17/big-bangs/ho ... 4-60760513
Sorry, education reformers, it’s still memorization and repetition we need.
I was a wayward kid who grew up on the literary side of life, treating math and science as if they were pustules from the plague. So it’s a little strange how I’ve ended up now—someone who dances daily with triple integrals, Fourier transforms, and that crown jewel of mathematics, Euler’s equation. It’s hard to believe I’ve flipped from a virtually congenital math-phobe to a professor of engineering.
One day, one of my students asked me how I did it—how I changed my brain. I wanted to answer Hell—with lots of difficulty! After all, I’d flunked my way through elementary, middle, and high school math and science. In fact, I didn’t start studying remedial math until I left the Army at age 26. If there were a textbook example of the potential for adult neural plasticity, I’d be Exhibit A.
Learning math and then science as an adult gave me passage into the empowering world of engineering. But these hard-won, adult-age changes in my brain have also given me an insider’s perspective on the neuroplasticity that underlies adult learning. Fortunately, my doctoral training in systems engineering—tying together the big picture of different STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) disciplines—and then my later research and writing focusing on how humans think have helped me make sense of recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology related to learning.
More....
http://nautil.us//issue/17/big-bangs/ho ... 4-60760513
Why New Antibiotics Are So Hard to Find
A dispatch from the front lines of the war against antibiotic resistance.
An 86-year-old patient arrives with a grisly foot injury.1 It’s badly infected—not a surprise, given his chronic untreated Type 2 diabetes. What is surprising is that meropenem, a broad spectrum antibiotic, and vancomycin, known as the antibiotic of last resort, have absolutely no effect.
The doctors know something bad is going on. But, even expecting the worst, the test results surprise them. The man’s foot is infected with not one, but three different bacteria: Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Acinetobacter lwoffii. Each is multi-drug resistant. The hospital, located in Brazil, simply doesn’t have the resources to deal with the situation. The patient is transferred to a larger hospital, but enough damage has already been done to his foot to require amputation.
West_BRACTION HERO: Computer illustration showing antimicrobial peptides penetrating a bacteriums membrane.Nicolle R. Fuller / Science Photo Library / Shutterstock
This real story, reported in 2012, is one of many. There was also the 57-year old woman in Washington, D.C. whose heart failure was caused by a penicillin-resistant bacteria.2 Or the woman who died in quarantine after being admitted to a Nevada hospital with an infection resistant to every antibiotic the hospital had access to.3
An estimated 2 million Americans are infected with antibiotic resistant microbes every year and, of these, about 23,000 die.4 Humans have known how to kill bacteria since before the dawn of civilization. So why is killing bacteria in patients resisting the combined efforts of modern science?
More....
http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/why- ... 3-60760513
A dispatch from the front lines of the war against antibiotic resistance.
An 86-year-old patient arrives with a grisly foot injury.1 It’s badly infected—not a surprise, given his chronic untreated Type 2 diabetes. What is surprising is that meropenem, a broad spectrum antibiotic, and vancomycin, known as the antibiotic of last resort, have absolutely no effect.
The doctors know something bad is going on. But, even expecting the worst, the test results surprise them. The man’s foot is infected with not one, but three different bacteria: Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Acinetobacter lwoffii. Each is multi-drug resistant. The hospital, located in Brazil, simply doesn’t have the resources to deal with the situation. The patient is transferred to a larger hospital, but enough damage has already been done to his foot to require amputation.
West_BRACTION HERO: Computer illustration showing antimicrobial peptides penetrating a bacteriums membrane.Nicolle R. Fuller / Science Photo Library / Shutterstock
This real story, reported in 2012, is one of many. There was also the 57-year old woman in Washington, D.C. whose heart failure was caused by a penicillin-resistant bacteria.2 Or the woman who died in quarantine after being admitted to a Nevada hospital with an infection resistant to every antibiotic the hospital had access to.3
An estimated 2 million Americans are infected with antibiotic resistant microbes every year and, of these, about 23,000 die.4 Humans have known how to kill bacteria since before the dawn of civilization. So why is killing bacteria in patients resisting the combined efforts of modern science?
More....
http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/why- ... 3-60760513
The Psychological Challenges of Just Getting to Mars
Life outside Earth has its own Hobbesian description: isolated, confined, and extreme—or I.C.E. “Space is the quintessential ICE environment,” according to a new paper, published in American Psychologist. Space includes inhospitable planets like Mars, whose arresting vistas, canyons, and mountains beckon. But only humans sealed inside cumbersome suits, trained to weather such nerve-racking circumstances, can explore them. Just getting to Mars, says Lauren Blackwell Landon, the paper’s lead author and a behavioral performance researcher at NASA, presents a major challenge. “The astronauts will be months away from home, confined to a vehicle no larger than a mid-sized RV”—the still-under-development Orion spacecraft—“for two to three years,” she says. Unlike on the International Space Station, “there will be an up to 45-minute lag on communications to and from Earth.”
Orion is NASA’s answer to the call of deep-space exploration. “It will be the safest, most advanced spacecraft ever built,” a NASA document states, “and it will be flexible and capable enough to take us to a variety of destinations,” including the moons of Mars and, by the mid or late 2030s, the red planet itself. Landon and her co-authors, Kelley J. Slack and Jamie D. Barrett, worry about how a crew of four, Orion’s max capacity, will fare on the journey. They will be “operating in extreme isolation and confinement,” the authors write. “Special considerations,” like screening for certain personality traits, for example, “must be made to enhance teamwork and team well-being…”
More...
http://nautil.us//blog/the-psychologica ... 7-60760513
Life outside Earth has its own Hobbesian description: isolated, confined, and extreme—or I.C.E. “Space is the quintessential ICE environment,” according to a new paper, published in American Psychologist. Space includes inhospitable planets like Mars, whose arresting vistas, canyons, and mountains beckon. But only humans sealed inside cumbersome suits, trained to weather such nerve-racking circumstances, can explore them. Just getting to Mars, says Lauren Blackwell Landon, the paper’s lead author and a behavioral performance researcher at NASA, presents a major challenge. “The astronauts will be months away from home, confined to a vehicle no larger than a mid-sized RV”—the still-under-development Orion spacecraft—“for two to three years,” she says. Unlike on the International Space Station, “there will be an up to 45-minute lag on communications to and from Earth.”
Orion is NASA’s answer to the call of deep-space exploration. “It will be the safest, most advanced spacecraft ever built,” a NASA document states, “and it will be flexible and capable enough to take us to a variety of destinations,” including the moons of Mars and, by the mid or late 2030s, the red planet itself. Landon and her co-authors, Kelley J. Slack and Jamie D. Barrett, worry about how a crew of four, Orion’s max capacity, will fare on the journey. They will be “operating in extreme isolation and confinement,” the authors write. “Special considerations,” like screening for certain personality traits, for example, “must be made to enhance teamwork and team well-being…”
More...
http://nautil.us//blog/the-psychologica ... 7-60760513
Dying Organs Restored to Life in Novel Experiments
An unusual transplant may revive tissues thought to be hopelessly damaged, including the heart and brain.
Excerpt:
Mitochondria are tiny organelles that fuel the operation of the cell, and they are among the first parts of the cell to die when it is deprived of oxygen-rich blood. Once they are lost, the cell itself dies.
But a series of experiments has found that fresh mitochondria can revive flagging cells and enable them to quickly recover.
In animal studies at Boston Children’s Hospital and elsewhere, mitochondrial transplants revived heart muscle that was stunned from a heart attack but not yet dead, and revived injured lungs and kidneys.
Infusions of mitochondria also prolonged the time organs could be stored before they were used for transplants, and even ameliorated brain damage that occurred soon after a stroke.
In the only human tests, mitochondrial transplants appear to revive and restore heart muscle in infants that was injured in operations to repair congenital heart defects.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/heal ... dline&te=1
An unusual transplant may revive tissues thought to be hopelessly damaged, including the heart and brain.
Excerpt:
Mitochondria are tiny organelles that fuel the operation of the cell, and they are among the first parts of the cell to die when it is deprived of oxygen-rich blood. Once they are lost, the cell itself dies.
But a series of experiments has found that fresh mitochondria can revive flagging cells and enable them to quickly recover.
In animal studies at Boston Children’s Hospital and elsewhere, mitochondrial transplants revived heart muscle that was stunned from a heart attack but not yet dead, and revived injured lungs and kidneys.
Infusions of mitochondria also prolonged the time organs could be stored before they were used for transplants, and even ameliorated brain damage that occurred soon after a stroke.
In the only human tests, mitochondrial transplants appear to revive and restore heart muscle in infants that was injured in operations to repair congenital heart defects.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/heal ... dline&te=1
There Is No Such Thing as Unconscious Thought
A behavioral scientist unravels one of our most cherished conceptions.
Excerpt:
An active unconscious, able to amplify the power of our limited conscious minds, would be a wonderful boon, working away on countless difficult problems, while we go about daily lives; and overcoming the slow step-by-step flow of conscious thought. But unconscious thought is, for all that, nothing more than a myth, however charming.
More...
http://nautil.us//issue/62/systems/ther ... 9-60760513
A behavioral scientist unravels one of our most cherished conceptions.
Excerpt:
An active unconscious, able to amplify the power of our limited conscious minds, would be a wonderful boon, working away on countless difficult problems, while we go about daily lives; and overcoming the slow step-by-step flow of conscious thought. But unconscious thought is, for all that, nothing more than a myth, however charming.
More...
http://nautil.us//issue/62/systems/ther ... 9-60760513
The Codes That Bind Us, and Set Us Apart
I try to remember that every living thing arose from essentially the same genetic foundation.
Excerpt:
DNA was first identified by Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss physician, in 1869. Over the next 140 years, the scientific community made monumental discoveries that have led to our understanding of DNA and have shaped our ability to decode life on earth. But what has always amazed me most about these genetic discoveries is the simplicity and commonality of life.
As humans we often notice the differences among us, and between us and other species, but the larger truth is that we are all made of the same fundamental building blocks. Every living being is made from some combination of four chemicals: adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine (or AGCTs), and only through a simple reworking of this combination of letters do we have the spectacular diversity of species on our planet.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/opin ... dline&te=1
I try to remember that every living thing arose from essentially the same genetic foundation.
Excerpt:
DNA was first identified by Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss physician, in 1869. Over the next 140 years, the scientific community made monumental discoveries that have led to our understanding of DNA and have shaped our ability to decode life on earth. But what has always amazed me most about these genetic discoveries is the simplicity and commonality of life.
As humans we often notice the differences among us, and between us and other species, but the larger truth is that we are all made of the same fundamental building blocks. Every living being is made from some combination of four chemicals: adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine (or AGCTs), and only through a simple reworking of this combination of letters do we have the spectacular diversity of species on our planet.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/opin ... dline&te=1
How Teeth Became Tusks, and Tusks Became Liabilities
Humans, mice, narwhals — most mammals rely on ancient genes to produce teeth and tusks. But the tuskless elephants of Africa show that nature can quickly alter the code.
Excerpt:
Elephant ivory, however, is considered the finest in the world, and elephants have long been slaughtered to supply it. Despite international efforts to ban the ivory trade, demand still drives a business worth at least a billion dollars a year.
The persistence of elephant poaching has prompted researchers to wonder whether elephants really needed their tusks, and whether they might not be better off if the tuskless trait were to spread more widely through the African population.
Shane Campbell-Staton, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues have begun systematically comparing tusked and tuskless elephants in Gorongosa, seeking not only to identify the genes involved in tusklessness but also to solve perplexing patterns of inheritance.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/scie ... 3053090911
Humans, mice, narwhals — most mammals rely on ancient genes to produce teeth and tusks. But the tuskless elephants of Africa show that nature can quickly alter the code.
Excerpt:
Elephant ivory, however, is considered the finest in the world, and elephants have long been slaughtered to supply it. Despite international efforts to ban the ivory trade, demand still drives a business worth at least a billion dollars a year.
The persistence of elephant poaching has prompted researchers to wonder whether elephants really needed their tusks, and whether they might not be better off if the tuskless trait were to spread more widely through the African population.
Shane Campbell-Staton, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues have begun systematically comparing tusked and tuskless elephants in Gorongosa, seeking not only to identify the genes involved in tusklessness but also to solve perplexing patterns of inheritance.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/scie ... 3053090911
Inspiring Quotations about Creativity in Science
https://www.creativityatwork.com/2012/0 ... n-science/
https://www.creativityatwork.com/2012/0 ... n-science/
Only a tenth of the human genome is studied
Paying more attention to the rest seems like a good idea
Excerpt:
There are roughly 20,000 genes in the human genome. Understanding genes and the proteins they encode can help to unravel the causes of diseases, and inspire new drugs to treat them. But most research focuses on only about ten percent of genes. Thomas Stoeger, Luis Amaral and their colleagues at Northwestern University in Illinois used machine learning to investigate why that might be.
More...
https://www.economist.com/science-and-t ... m=20180920
*******
Why Your DNA Is Still Uncharted Territory
Scientists are focusing on a relatively small number of human genes and neglecting thousands of others. The reasons have more to do with professional survival than genetics.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/18/scie ... 3053090925
Paying more attention to the rest seems like a good idea
Excerpt:
There are roughly 20,000 genes in the human genome. Understanding genes and the proteins they encode can help to unravel the causes of diseases, and inspire new drugs to treat them. But most research focuses on only about ten percent of genes. Thomas Stoeger, Luis Amaral and their colleagues at Northwestern University in Illinois used machine learning to investigate why that might be.
More...
https://www.economist.com/science-and-t ... m=20180920
*******
Why Your DNA Is Still Uncharted Territory
Scientists are focusing on a relatively small number of human genes and neglecting thousands of others. The reasons have more to do with professional survival than genetics.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/18/scie ... 3053090925
Looking Earthward From Space
NASA is not just about exploring the universe but also about understanding our home planet.
Of all human spaceflight, Apollo 8 may have best demonstrated NASA’s capacity to change human perspective. In reflecting upon that mission, the first circumnavigation of the moon, the astronaut Bill Anders, one of three on board, said, “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” Anders had taken the photograph that came to be known as “Earthrise,” the first image of the planet captured by a human from beyond Earth’s orbit. As his fellow crew member Jim Lovell would point out, “Suddenly, everybody could see the Earth as it truly is: a grand oasis in the vastness of space.”
It may seem counterintuitive to think that space exploration, with all its attendant risk and glory, primarily sheds light on our own home planet. But it does. This week marks the 60th anniversary of NASA’s founding. For the past two years, we have been making a documentary about NASA, and that idea was pretty much echoed by all 45 of the astronauts, scientists, administrators and historians we interviewed.
Very early on, NASA uncovered two important truths. First, that our planet was the only one in our solar system with an environment capable of supporting human life and, therefore, extraordinarily unique. And second, that earth’s environment was fundamentally fragile, protected by a thin iridescent layer of atmosphere and susceptible to damage at the hands of the planet’s inhabitants.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/opin ... dline&te=1
NASA is not just about exploring the universe but also about understanding our home planet.
Of all human spaceflight, Apollo 8 may have best demonstrated NASA’s capacity to change human perspective. In reflecting upon that mission, the first circumnavigation of the moon, the astronaut Bill Anders, one of three on board, said, “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” Anders had taken the photograph that came to be known as “Earthrise,” the first image of the planet captured by a human from beyond Earth’s orbit. As his fellow crew member Jim Lovell would point out, “Suddenly, everybody could see the Earth as it truly is: a grand oasis in the vastness of space.”
It may seem counterintuitive to think that space exploration, with all its attendant risk and glory, primarily sheds light on our own home planet. But it does. This week marks the 60th anniversary of NASA’s founding. For the past two years, we have been making a documentary about NASA, and that idea was pretty much echoed by all 45 of the astronauts, scientists, administrators and historians we interviewed.
Very early on, NASA uncovered two important truths. First, that our planet was the only one in our solar system with an environment capable of supporting human life and, therefore, extraordinarily unique. And second, that earth’s environment was fundamentally fragile, protected by a thin iridescent layer of atmosphere and susceptible to damage at the hands of the planet’s inhabitants.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/opin ... dline&te=1
Scientific method: Defend the integrity of physics
Attempts to exempt speculative theories of the Universe from experimental verification undermine science, argue George Ellis and Joe Silk.
This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree. As the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued: a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific.
Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts.
These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.
More...
https://www.nature.com/news/scientific- ... rce=Direct
Attempts to exempt speculative theories of the Universe from experimental verification undermine science, argue George Ellis and Joe Silk.
This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree. As the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued: a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific.
Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts.
These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.
More...
https://www.nature.com/news/scientific- ... rce=Direct
How Do You Find an Alien Ocean? Margaret Kivelson Figured It Out
For forty years, the physicist at U.C.L.A. has been uncovering the outer solar system’s secrets. Few scientists know more about the mysteries of Jupiter and its icy moons.
LOS ANGELES — The data was like nothing Margaret Kivelson and her team of physicists ever expected.
It was December 1996, and the spacecraft Galileo had just flown by Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. The readings beamed back to Earth suggested a magnetic field emanating from the moon. Europa should not have had a magnetic field, yet there it was — and not even pointed in the right direction.
“This is unexpected,” she recalled saying as the weird data rolled in. “And that’s wonderful.”
It would be the most significant of a series of surprises from the Jovian moons. For Dr. Kivelson’s team, the mission should not have been this exciting.
She and her colleagues had devised the magnetometer returning the anomalous data. The instrument’s job was to measure Jupiter’s massive magnetic field and any variations caused by its moons. Those findings were likely to interest space physicists, but few others. Dr. Kivelson’s instrument was never supposed to change the course of space exploration.
And then it did. Dr. Kivelson and her team would soon prove that they had discovered the first subsurface, saltwater ocean on an alien world.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/scie ... 3053091009
For forty years, the physicist at U.C.L.A. has been uncovering the outer solar system’s secrets. Few scientists know more about the mysteries of Jupiter and its icy moons.
LOS ANGELES — The data was like nothing Margaret Kivelson and her team of physicists ever expected.
It was December 1996, and the spacecraft Galileo had just flown by Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. The readings beamed back to Earth suggested a magnetic field emanating from the moon. Europa should not have had a magnetic field, yet there it was — and not even pointed in the right direction.
“This is unexpected,” she recalled saying as the weird data rolled in. “And that’s wonderful.”
It would be the most significant of a series of surprises from the Jovian moons. For Dr. Kivelson’s team, the mission should not have been this exciting.
She and her colleagues had devised the magnetometer returning the anomalous data. The instrument’s job was to measure Jupiter’s massive magnetic field and any variations caused by its moons. Those findings were likely to interest space physicists, but few others. Dr. Kivelson’s instrument was never supposed to change the course of space exploration.
And then it did. Dr. Kivelson and her team would soon prove that they had discovered the first subsurface, saltwater ocean on an alien world.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/scie ... 3053091009
So Can We Terraform Mars or Not?
Elon Musk wants to engineer Mars’ atmosphere. Can he?
It seemed inevitable that Elon Musk would eventually get into a Twitter war over whether Mars can be terraformed. When you’re on Twitter, he told Businessweek in July, you’re “in meme war land.” “And so essentially if you attack me,” he said, “it is therefore okay for me to attack back.”
Musk, the CEO and lead designer of SpaceX, wants to “make life multiplanetary,” starting with Mars. The red planet is relatively close to the Earth and once harbored surface seas and rivers, and it still has ice and a subsurface lake. Its weather is surprisingly workable, too. Mars’ surface temperature range (–285 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit) isn’t too far off from Earth’s (–126 to 138 degrees Fahrenheit). The problem is Mars’ atmosphere now has 0.006 bar of pressure, where one bar is the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth. Not only does this mean that dangerous levels of radiation reach the surfaced unchecked, but humans need at least 0.063 bar to keep our bodily liquids from boiling (this is called the Armstrong limit).
Enter terraforming—changing a planet’s climate, topography, or ecology to be more suitable for life. If we could boost the pressure of Mars’ atmosphere just above that of Mount Everest’s summit (0.337 bar), we could walk on the Martian surface using just a breathing mask—no pressurized space suit required. That might be called weak terraforming: It wouldn’t let plants grow in the soil outside of greenhouses.
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sigh ... 6-60760513
Elon Musk wants to engineer Mars’ atmosphere. Can he?
It seemed inevitable that Elon Musk would eventually get into a Twitter war over whether Mars can be terraformed. When you’re on Twitter, he told Businessweek in July, you’re “in meme war land.” “And so essentially if you attack me,” he said, “it is therefore okay for me to attack back.”
Musk, the CEO and lead designer of SpaceX, wants to “make life multiplanetary,” starting with Mars. The red planet is relatively close to the Earth and once harbored surface seas and rivers, and it still has ice and a subsurface lake. Its weather is surprisingly workable, too. Mars’ surface temperature range (–285 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit) isn’t too far off from Earth’s (–126 to 138 degrees Fahrenheit). The problem is Mars’ atmosphere now has 0.006 bar of pressure, where one bar is the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth. Not only does this mean that dangerous levels of radiation reach the surfaced unchecked, but humans need at least 0.063 bar to keep our bodily liquids from boiling (this is called the Armstrong limit).
Enter terraforming—changing a planet’s climate, topography, or ecology to be more suitable for life. If we could boost the pressure of Mars’ atmosphere just above that of Mount Everest’s summit (0.337 bar), we could walk on the Martian surface using just a breathing mask—no pressurized space suit required. That might be called weak terraforming: It wouldn’t let plants grow in the soil outside of greenhouses.
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sigh ... 6-60760513
Why Do You Keep Dreaming You Forgot Your Pants? It’s Science
Where your brain goes when you’re asleep helps you when you’re awake.
Excerpt:
By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have accepted the conventional wisdom: We shouldn’t dwell on our dreams. Even though research suggests that REM sleep — when most dreaming takes place — is crucial for mental and physical health, we think of dreams as silly little stories, the dandruff of the brain. We’re taught that talking about our dreams is juvenile, self-indulgent, and that we should shake off their traces and get on with our day.
It doesn’t have to be that way. For the past two years, a group of my friends has been gathering every month to talk about dreams; we do it for fun. Even if we resist, dreams have a way of sneaking into conscious territory and influencing our daytime mood. In three years of reporting on the science behind dreams, I’ve heard strangers describe flying, tooth loss, reunions with the dead — all the classics. I’ve seen that a dream can be a fascinating window into another person’s private life, and I’ve learned that paying attention to dreams can help us understand ourselves.
Because dreams rarely make literal sense, it can be easier to dismiss them than to try to interpret them. But a growing body of scientific work indicates that it’s likely to be worth the effort. Dreams might help us consolidate new memories and prune extraneous pieces of information. They might be a breeding ground for ideas — a time for the brain to experiment in a wider network of associations. Some argue they’re an accident of biology and mean nothing at all.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/opin ... dline&te=1
Where your brain goes when you’re asleep helps you when you’re awake.
Excerpt:
By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have accepted the conventional wisdom: We shouldn’t dwell on our dreams. Even though research suggests that REM sleep — when most dreaming takes place — is crucial for mental and physical health, we think of dreams as silly little stories, the dandruff of the brain. We’re taught that talking about our dreams is juvenile, self-indulgent, and that we should shake off their traces and get on with our day.
It doesn’t have to be that way. For the past two years, a group of my friends has been gathering every month to talk about dreams; we do it for fun. Even if we resist, dreams have a way of sneaking into conscious territory and influencing our daytime mood. In three years of reporting on the science behind dreams, I’ve heard strangers describe flying, tooth loss, reunions with the dead — all the classics. I’ve seen that a dream can be a fascinating window into another person’s private life, and I’ve learned that paying attention to dreams can help us understand ourselves.
Because dreams rarely make literal sense, it can be easier to dismiss them than to try to interpret them. But a growing body of scientific work indicates that it’s likely to be worth the effort. Dreams might help us consolidate new memories and prune extraneous pieces of information. They might be a breeding ground for ideas — a time for the brain to experiment in a wider network of associations. Some argue they’re an accident of biology and mean nothing at all.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/opin ... dline&te=1
A ‘Time Capsule’ for Scientists, Courtesy of Peter the Great
A Russian zoological museum filled with centuries-old specimens finds renewed relevance in the age of genetics.
Excerpt:
This collection, first formed from acquisitions made by Peter the Great three centuries ago, is nonetheless taking on a new, more vital role. As the animal world becomes increasingly threatened, these exhibits are helping to unlock genetic information and precious clues to aid species survival.
The museum, like other great natural history museums, is “a time capsule for organisms,” said Ross MacPhee, curator of mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
“For certain kinds of studies, such as species endangerment and the loss of genetic diversity, this is turning out to be increasingly important,” he added. “Natural history museums are literally the only places where you will find good quality remains.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/scie ... 3053091113
A Russian zoological museum filled with centuries-old specimens finds renewed relevance in the age of genetics.
Excerpt:
This collection, first formed from acquisitions made by Peter the Great three centuries ago, is nonetheless taking on a new, more vital role. As the animal world becomes increasingly threatened, these exhibits are helping to unlock genetic information and precious clues to aid species survival.
The museum, like other great natural history museums, is “a time capsule for organisms,” said Ross MacPhee, curator of mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
“For certain kinds of studies, such as species endangerment and the loss of genetic diversity, this is turning out to be increasingly important,” he added. “Natural history museums are literally the only places where you will find good quality remains.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/scie ... 3053091113
The kilogram and three other metric units are about to be revamped
They are being redefined as the values of physical constants
A kilogram will never be the same again. Previously it was defined as the mass of a cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy (known as Le Grand K) which is housed under nested bell jars and sits in a vault in Paris. At a meeting today the world’s measurement bodies confirmed that the kilo, the ampere (measuring current), the kelvin (temperature) and the mole (the amount of a chemical substance) will all be redefined in terms of the values of physical constants.
More...
https://www.economist.com/science-and-t ... m=20181116
They are being redefined as the values of physical constants
A kilogram will never be the same again. Previously it was defined as the mass of a cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy (known as Le Grand K) which is housed under nested bell jars and sits in a vault in Paris. At a meeting today the world’s measurement bodies confirmed that the kilo, the ampere (measuring current), the kelvin (temperature) and the mole (the amount of a chemical substance) will all be redefined in terms of the values of physical constants.
More...
https://www.economist.com/science-and-t ... m=20181116
Where Will Science Take Us? To the Stars
A monthlong visit to observatories in Chile, Hawaii and Los Angeles revealed spellbinding visions of the heavens.
After 30 hours of bumping along on planes and buses, at long last I stood in the darkness and gazed upon an immense night sky. My long journey seemingly had brought me to the shoreline of interstellar space rather than the high-altitude plateau that is Chile’s Atacama Desert.
It was the first night of a monthlong journey to visit astronomy observatories in Chile, Los Angeles and Hawaii. Whether designed for professional use or for the general public, observatories nurture humanity’s explorations of the cosmos. They spark wonder and discovery, but even before I set foot inside the first one, I was seeing outer space in a spellbinding new way.
That first night in the Atacama, arguably the best place in the world to see the night sky, the Milky Way proved true to its name: a milky-like smear stretching from horizon to horizon. The Southern Cross shone bright as candlelight. Both the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies glowed like stickers on a child’s bedroom ceiling, and Jupiter’s bands were easily visible with an amateur telescope, as were four of its moons.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/trav ... 3053091118
A monthlong visit to observatories in Chile, Hawaii and Los Angeles revealed spellbinding visions of the heavens.
After 30 hours of bumping along on planes and buses, at long last I stood in the darkness and gazed upon an immense night sky. My long journey seemingly had brought me to the shoreline of interstellar space rather than the high-altitude plateau that is Chile’s Atacama Desert.
It was the first night of a monthlong journey to visit astronomy observatories in Chile, Los Angeles and Hawaii. Whether designed for professional use or for the general public, observatories nurture humanity’s explorations of the cosmos. They spark wonder and discovery, but even before I set foot inside the first one, I was seeing outer space in a spellbinding new way.
That first night in the Atacama, arguably the best place in the world to see the night sky, the Milky Way proved true to its name: a milky-like smear stretching from horizon to horizon. The Southern Cross shone bright as candlelight. Both the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies glowed like stickers on a child’s bedroom ceiling, and Jupiter’s bands were easily visible with an amateur telescope, as were four of its moons.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/trav ... 3053091118
Insight: Mission to the heart of Mars
Slide show:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ampstories/m ... index.html
*****
Canada’s Grand Cannabis Experiment Has Set Scientists Free
Legalization will vastly expand our understanding of the ancient drug plant and how it can improve lives.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — When Canada fully legalized recreational cannabis on Oct. 17, the internet giddily reimagined the CN Tower in Toronto peeking out from a thick haze and swapped the flag’s red maple leaf for its jagged-edged green cousin. Outsiders might titter about an entire populace turning into potheads, but legalization means some of the country’s brightest can now turn their minds to pot.
As the first G-7 nation to slacken cannabis laws, Canada has bolted to the front lines of the plant’s methodical scrutiny and investigation. No longer at risk of censure or lacking access to specimens, researchers can transcend the narrow parameters of scientific study once considered acceptable, namely, clinical research, to explore social, biological, genetic and agricultural questions. From botanists to phytochemists, microbiologists to epidemiologists, scientists of all sorts are free to openly pursue a greater quantity and quality of cannabis science than ever before.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/opin ... 3053091121
Slide show:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ampstories/m ... index.html
*****
Canada’s Grand Cannabis Experiment Has Set Scientists Free
Legalization will vastly expand our understanding of the ancient drug plant and how it can improve lives.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — When Canada fully legalized recreational cannabis on Oct. 17, the internet giddily reimagined the CN Tower in Toronto peeking out from a thick haze and swapped the flag’s red maple leaf for its jagged-edged green cousin. Outsiders might titter about an entire populace turning into potheads, but legalization means some of the country’s brightest can now turn their minds to pot.
As the first G-7 nation to slacken cannabis laws, Canada has bolted to the front lines of the plant’s methodical scrutiny and investigation. No longer at risk of censure or lacking access to specimens, researchers can transcend the narrow parameters of scientific study once considered acceptable, namely, clinical research, to explore social, biological, genetic and agricultural questions. From botanists to phytochemists, microbiologists to epidemiologists, scientists of all sorts are free to openly pursue a greater quantity and quality of cannabis science than ever before.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/opin ... 3053091121
NASA’s InSight Mission Has Touched Down on Mars to Study the Red Planet’s Deep Secrets
In the months ahead, the spacecraft will begin its study of the Martian underworld, listening for marsquakes and seeking clues about the dusty world’s formation.
The InSight lander, NASA’s latest foray to the red planet, has landed.
Cheers erupted on Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which operates the spacecraft, when InSight sent back acknowledgment of its safe arrival on Mars. That was the end of a journey of more than six months and 300 million miles.
As InSight descended and each milestone of the landing process was called out, “the hairs on the back of my neck would start rising a little bit higher, a little bit higher,” Tom Hoffman, the project manager for the mission, said at a news conference after the landing. “And then when we finally got the confirmation of touchdown, it was completely amazing. The whole room went crazy. My inner four-year-old came out.”
In the months ahead, InSight will begin its study of the Martian underworld, listening for tremors — marsquakes — and collect data that will be pieced together in a map of the interior of the red planet and help would help scientists understand how Mars and other rocky planets formed.
Those lessons could also shed light on Earth’s origins.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/scie ... 3053091127
In the months ahead, the spacecraft will begin its study of the Martian underworld, listening for marsquakes and seeking clues about the dusty world’s formation.
The InSight lander, NASA’s latest foray to the red planet, has landed.
Cheers erupted on Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which operates the spacecraft, when InSight sent back acknowledgment of its safe arrival on Mars. That was the end of a journey of more than six months and 300 million miles.
As InSight descended and each milestone of the landing process was called out, “the hairs on the back of my neck would start rising a little bit higher, a little bit higher,” Tom Hoffman, the project manager for the mission, said at a news conference after the landing. “And then when we finally got the confirmation of touchdown, it was completely amazing. The whole room went crazy. My inner four-year-old came out.”
In the months ahead, InSight will begin its study of the Martian underworld, listening for tremors — marsquakes — and collect data that will be pieced together in a map of the interior of the red planet and help would help scientists understand how Mars and other rocky planets formed.
Those lessons could also shed light on Earth’s origins.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/scie ... 3053091127