Researchers at the University of Warwick have recovered tuberculosis (TB) genomes from the lung tissue of a 215-year old mummy using a technique known as metagenomics.

The team, led by Professor Mark Pallen, Professor of Microbial Genomics at Warwick Medical School, working with Helen Donoghue at University College London and collaborators in Birmingham and Budapest, sought to use the technique to identify TB DNA in a historical specimen.

The term 'metagenomics' is used to describe the open-ended sequencing of DNA from samples without the need for culture or target-specific amplification or enrichment. This approach avoids the complex and unreliable workflows associated with culture of bacteria or amplification of DNA and draws on the remarkable throughput and ease of use of modern sequencing approaches.

The sample came from a Hungarian woman, Terézia Hausmann, who died aged 28 on 25 December 1797. Her mummified remains were recovered from a crypt in the town of Vác, Hungary. When the crypt was opened in 1994, it was found to contain the naturally mummified bodies of 242 people. Molecular analyses of the chest sample in a previous study confirmed the diagnosis of tuberculosis and hinted that TB DNA was extremely well preserved in her body.

Scientists have found a new virus thought to be the biggest ever seen on Earth.The virus, dubbed Pandoravirus, is one micrometre big - up to ten times the size of other viruses - and only six per cent of its genes resemble anything seen on Earth before. This has led French researchers to believe the virus may have come from an ancient time or even another planet, such as Mars.

The giant virus is only found underwater and is not thought to pose a serious risk to humans. However, the researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science, believe that the virus opens up a range of questions about the history of life on Earth.

Dr Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University in France, who found the virus, told NPR: 'We believe that these new Pandoraviruses have emerged from a new ancestral cellular type that no longer exists.'Many traditional viruses range in size from around 10 nanometres (nm) to around 500nm.The Pandoravirus is around one micrometre big and there are 1,000nm in a micrometre.This means the Pandoravirus is big enough to be seen under the most basic microscopes.

Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have determined that there has been an increase in bright polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) in the last two years, an unexpected result since these clouds are generally thought to be less prevalent during conditions of high solar activity which acts to destroy the tiny ice particles. Their research suggests that the man-made effect of water released by exhaust from space traffic during recent years has overwhelmed the effect of higher solar activity. This research was published in the June 6, 2013, issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

This new understanding of weather at the edge of space serves to test high altitude weather and climate models of the upper atmosphere, including the co-located D&E-regions of the ionosphere which is critical for improving models of over-the-horizon-radar (OTHR) propagation, explains NRL's Dr. David Siskind, a scientist in NRL Space Science Division and principal investigator for the research.

Each summer, the Arctic and Antarctic atmospheres at very high altitudes (the upper mesosphere, 80 to 100 km) become extremely cold with temperatures well below -100°C, despite the presence of 24 hours of sunlight. These very low temperatures allow the atmosphere to become supersaturated, and enable thin, wispy ice clouds to condense on nuclei of meteoric dust and smoke particles. Because of the possibility that this region of the atmosphere may be changing due to man-made effects, NASA launched a dedicated satellite, the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission six years ago. Scientists used the AIM data to test atmospheric analyses provided by special high altitude prototype versions of the then-operational Navy Global Forecast System (NOGAPS). Previous studies by NRL scientists had shown this high altitude version of NOGAPS could demonstrate how variations in lower atmospheric weather conditions thousands of miles away might "teleconnect" to the Arctic and cause PMCs to vary.

Tuscaloosa, Alabama - University of Alabama researchers have discovered the fossilized remains of a large marine reptile that once ruled the open seas 80 million years ago.

The initial discovery, made June 20 by middle-school student Noah Traylor during a UA-hosted expedition, was later identified as part of a large neck vertebra of an elasmosaur, which is a subgroup of the late Cretaceous plesiosaurs.

Elasmosaurid plesiosaurs are easily recognized by their large body size - some species reach up to 45 feet in length.

"Think Loch Ness monster," said Dr. Dana Ehret, UA Museum paleontologist. "They have very large flippers for swimming and extremely long necks, consisting of up to about 70 neck vertebrae."

Plesiosaurs became extinct by the end of Cretaceous, or about 65.5 million years ago, and they are generally rare in the fossil record for Alabama. This is only the second elasmosaurid specimen containing more than one or two bones found in the state, Ehret said. The first, which consists of 22 vertebrae, was found in the late 1960s and is now part of UA Collections.

This discovery appears to be on par with the first one. To date, about 15 large vertebrae, a few paddle bones and many bone fragments have been collected, but an extensive excavation is still in progress, so Ehret is uncertain how complete this skeleton is.

ISNS -- The discovery of two new jumbo-sized viruses is blurring the lines between viral and cellular life and could point to the existence of a new type of life, scientists suggest.

The two large viruses, detailed in this week's issue of the journal Science, have been dubbed "Pandoraviruses" because of the surprises they may hold for biologists, in reference to the mythical Greek figure who opened a box and released evil into the world.

The discovery of Pandoraviruses is an indication that our knowledge of Earth's microbial biodiversity is still incomplete, explained study coauthor Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist at the French National Research Agency at Aix-Marseille University.

"Huge discoveries remain to be made at the most fundamental level that may change our present conception about the origin of life and its evolution," Claverie said.

Eugene Koonin, a computational evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, Md., who was not involved in the study, called the Pandoraviruses a "wonderful discovery," but not a complete surprise.

"In a certain sense, it's something that we saw coming, and it's wonderful that it has come," Koonin said.

It is a Japanese tradition to climb Mt. Fuji at night to be able to watch sunrise from the peak of the volcano in the morning. And so at night, climbers use flashlights to make their way to the summit. This inspired photographer Yuga Kurita to create a truly stunning image that makes the iconic Mt. Fuji appear like a galactic volcano.

"When I arrived at Fujiyoshida in Yamanashi Prefecture, I saw people climbing up Mt. Fuji with flash lights and I thought they looked like lava streams," Kurita explained on G+. "Then I came up with this composition, since nowadays, the Milky Way appears vertically in the sky so probably I could liken Mt. Fuji to an imaginary galactic volcano, that is, people climbing up with torches are lava streams and the Milky Way is the volcano smoke.

In 2011, astronomers in Germany announced the discovery of a cloud of gas - with several times the mass of the Earth - accelerating fast towards the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way. They originally said that the cloud would pass closest to the black hole in mid-2013, but a new analysis suggests the date of closest passage as early 2014. The passage of the gas cloud near the black hole is already underway, and numerous observing programs have been set up to monitor the region around the Milky Way's center during 2013.

In April 2013, data acquired at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) showed that part of the gas cloud has already passed closest to the black hole. As expected, the cloud is undergoing what astronomers sometimes call spaghettification - or the noodle effect. That is, it's being stretched or elongated as it passes the hole, due to the hole's powerful gravity.

The front part of the gas cloud is now already moving 500 km/s faster than its tail, astronomers say, confirming earlier predictions that the gas cloud is doomed. It's not expected to survive its encounter with the black hole.

The top-secret PRISM program allows the U.S. intelligence community to gain access from nine Internet companies to a wide range of digital information, including e-mails and stored data, on foreign targets operating outside the United States. The program is court-approved but does not require individual warrants. Instead, it operates under a broader authorization from federal judges who oversee the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Some documents describing the program were first released by The Washington Post on June 6. The newly released documents below give additional details about how the program operates, including the levels of review and supervisory control at the NSA and FBI. The documents also show how the program interacts with the Internet companies.

Star Tau Boo's baffling magnetic flipsThe star Tau Boo rapidly flips its magnetic field, potentially because of its interaction with a planet six times Jupiter's mass.

For the first time, astronomers have watched the complete magnetic cycle of a star other than the Sun. Tau Boötis, known as Tau Boo, is a yellowish star that is a little brighter than our Sun. It is located 51 light-years away and hosts a giant exoplanet about six times the mass of Jupiter that orbits Tau Boo every 3.3 days.

In 2007, scientists saw that the magnetic field of Tau Boo flipped. Since then, the team has observed four reversals in polarity, confirming that the star has a rapid magnetic cycle of no more than two years - compared to 22 years for the Sun. "The Sun's magnetic field is a bit like a giant bar magnet, with a north pole and south pole," said team member Rim Fares of the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. "Every 11 years, during solar maximum [the peak of sunspot activity], the Sun's poles swap over. It takes two flips to restore the magnetic field to its original orientation, so the Sun's magnetic cycle lasts 22 years. Tau Boo has the same magnetic behavior as the Sun, but its cycle is very fast compared to the solar one."

This abrupt shift changes the environment surrounding the large exoplanet, and the reasons for Tau Boo's fast cycle are still unclear.

Study has important potential for developmental learning disabilities including features of autism.

A little bit of learned fear is a good thing, keeping us from making risky, stupid decisions or falling over and over again into the same trap. But new research from neuroscientists and molecular biologists at USC shows that a missing brain protein may be the culprit in cases of severe over-worry, where the fear perseveres even when there's nothing of which to be afraid.

In a study appearing the week of July 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers examined mice without the enzymes monoamine oxidase A and B (MAO A/B), which sit next to each other in our genetic code as well as on that of mice. Prior research has found an association between deficiencies of these enzymes in humans and developmental disabilities along the autism spectrum such as clinical perseverance - the inability to change or modulate actions along with social context.

"These mice may serve as an interesting model to develop interventions to these neuropsychiatric disorders," said senior author Jean C. Shih, USC University Professor and Boyd & Elsie Welin Professor of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the USC School of Pharmacy and the Keck School of Medicine of USC. "The severity of the changes in the MAO A/B knockout mice compared to MAO A knockout mice supports the idea that the severity of autistic-like features may be correlated to the amounts of monoamine levels, particularly at early developmental stages."