Science & Technology

Scientists identify gene responsible for aging of human cells

Sci-News
Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:01 UTC

A gene called GATA6 (GATA binding protein 6) regulates aging of human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs), according to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Cellular reprogramming can reverse the aging that leads to a decline in the activities and functions of MSC cells. This is something that researchers have known for a while.

But what they had not figured out is which molecular mechanisms are responsible for this reversal.

Comment: See also:

Unknown space object just skimmed past Earth and scientists still don't know what it is

RT
Tue, 01 Dec 2020 09:44 UTC

A slow-moving object of unknown origin just completed an extremely close flyby of our planet, before heading back out into the solar system. And the mysterious space material is expected to return in March.

The strange 'minimoon' - which is officially dubbed 2020 SO - has been the subject of speculation ever since it was discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey on September 17. It has been classed as an asteroid but scientists still don't have a complete understanding of what the object is. Some have speculated that it is part of an old rocket.

Frozen bird found in Siberia is 46,000 years old

Geology In
Tue, 01 Dec 2020 21:43 UTC

© Valeri Plotnikov /Kennedy News
This 46,000-year-old 'ice bird' was so well preserved that fossil hunters mistook it for an unfortunate creature that 'died yesterday' - only to realise they had found the first ever Ice Age bird specimen

Fossil hunters find 'ice bird' from 46,000 years ago that looks like it died 'yesterday'

Scientists have recovered DNA from a well-preserved horned lark found in Siberian permafrost. The results can contribute to explaining the evolution of sub species, as well as how the mammoth steppe transformed into tundra, forest and steppe biomes at the end of the last Ice Age.

In 2018, a well-preserved frozen bird was found in the ground in the Belaya Gora area of north-eastern Siberia. Researchers at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a new research center at Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, haves studied the bird and the results are now published in the scientific journal Communications Biology. The analyses reveals that the bird is a 46,000-year-old female horned lark.

Comment: The change in climate may have come faster than researchers realize:

Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes

Sun ejects biggest solar flare in years - comes ahead of next active cycle

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Tue, 01 Dec 2020 18:20 UTC

On Sunday, SpaceWeather said the sun's solar explosion was measured as an M4.4-category eruption, which produced a shortwave radio blackout over some parts of Earth and a bright coronal mass ejection (CME).

"Remarkably, the flare was even bigger than it seemed. The blast site is located just behind the sun's southeastern limb, so the explosion was partially eclipsed by the body of the sun.

"X-rays and UV radiation from the flare ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere, producing a shortwave radio blackout over the South Atlantic... Ham radio operators and mariners may have noticed strange propagation effects at frequencies below 20 MHz, with some transmissions below 10 MHz completely extinguished," SpaceWeather said on its website.

Hope for Mars Missions: New Technology Can Extract Water and Fuel from Salty Water

RT
Tue, 01 Dec 2020 12:56 UTC

Illustration: Getty Images/Steven Hobbs/Stocktrek Images

Researchers have developed a new system to separate salty water into both breathable air and fuel simultaneously in a major breakthrough for life here on Earth and even future colonies on Mars. Engineers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis developed a patented brine electrolysis system that not only works without the need for purified water but actually performs better thanks to the saltiness of the input water.

The PCR False Positive Pseudo-Epidemic

Dr. Mike Yeadon
Lockdown Sceptics
Mon, 30 Nov 2020 18:30 UTC

© Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street
Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance give a Coronavirus Data Briefing in 10 Downing Street on September 21st.

How a novel virus met a partly-immune population

In Spring 2020 a novel coronavirus swept across the world: novel, but related to other viruses. In the UK, unknown at the time, around 50% of the population were already immune. The evidence for this is unequivocal and arose due to prior infection by common cold-causing coronaviruses (of which four are endemic). This prior immunity has been confirmed around the world by top cellular immunologists. There is even a very recent paper from Public Health England on the topic of prior immunity and a wealth of other evidence from studies on memory T-cells, studies on household transmission and on antibodies.

Because of the extent of the prior immunity, and as a result of heterogeneity of contacts, once only a low percentage of the population, perhaps as low as 10-20% had been infected, "herd immunity" was established. This is why daily deaths, which were rising exponentially, turned abruptly and began to fall, uninterrupted by street protests, the return to work, the reopening of pubs and crowded beaches during the summer. (See this explainer by the data scientist Joel Smalley.)

Immunity to ordinary respiratory viruses occurs mainly through T-cells which 'take a picture of the invader' at a molecular level, 'reproduce' it on certain immune cells and essentially 'never forget a face'. This T-cell immunity is robust and durable. Those exposed to the highly related SARS virus in 2003 still have this immunity 17 years later. In relation to SARS-CoV-2, the pattern of immunity to date is identical and after around 800 million infections across the world, there is no convincing evidence for significant levels of re-infection. Not only are those who've been infected and have now recovered immune (they cannot get ill again with the same virus), but importantly they do not participate in transmission. (See my article on what SAGE got wrong for Lockdown Sceptics.) Furthermore, because the immune response is diverse, a proportion of them will also be immune to novel but similar viruses in the future.

AI program capable of predicting protein shapes, could 'revolutionize' medical research

Eureka Alert
Mon, 30 Nov 2020 17:54 UTC

Inside every cell, thousands of different proteins form the machinery that keeps all living things - from humans and plants to microscopic bacteria - alive and well. Almost all diseases, including cancer, dementia and even infectious diseases such as COVID-19, are related to the way these proteins function. Because each protein's function is directly related to its three-dimensional shape, scientists around the world have strived for half a century to find an accurate and fast method to enable them to discover the shape of any protein.

Today (Monday) researchers at the 14th Community Wide Experiment on the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP14) will announce that an artificial intelligence (AI) solution to the challenge has been found.

Building on the work of hundreds of researchers across the globe, an AI program called AlphaFold, created by London-based AI lab DeepMind, has proved capable of determining the shape of many proteins. It has done so to a level of accuracy comparable to that achieved with expensive and time-consuming lab experiments.

Comment: See also: Chromosomes revealed to look different than expected in never seen before 3D image

Chernobyl fungus could shield astronauts from cosmic radiation

Stephen Johnson
Big Think
Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC

A recent study tested how well the fungi species Cladosporium sphaerospermum blocked cosmic radiation aboard the International Space Station.

When astronauts return to the moon or travel to Mars, how will they shield themselves against high levels of cosmic radiation? A recent experiment aboard the International Space Station suggests a surprising solution: a radiation-eating fungus, which could be used as a self-replicating shield against gamma radiation in space.

The fungus is called Cladosporium sphaerospermum, an extremophile species that thrives in high-radiation areas like the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. For C. sphaerospermum, radiation isn't a threat — it's food. That's because the fungus is able to convert gamma radiation into chemical energy through a process called radiosynthesis. (Think of it like photosynthesis, but swap out sunlight for radiation.)

The radiotrophic fungus performs radiosynthesis by using melanin — the same pigment that gives color to our skin, hair and eyes — to convert X- and gamma rays into chemical energy. Scientists don't fully understand this process yet. But the study notes that it's "believed that large amounts of melanin in the cell walls of these fungi mediate electron-transfer and thus allow for a net energy gain."

CNO energy-production mechanism detected in our Sun

Andrea Pocar
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Wed, 25 Nov 2020 18:32 UTC

AMHERST, Mass. - An international team of about 100 scientists of the Borexino Collaboration, including particle physicist Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, report in Nature this week detection of neutrinos from the sun, directly revealing for the first time that the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) fusion-cycle is at work in our sun.

The CNO cycle is the dominant energy source powering stars heavier than the sun, but it had so far never been directly detected in any star, Pocar explains.

For much of their life, stars get energy by fusing hydrogen into helium, he adds. In stars like our sun or lighter, this mostly happens through the 'proton-proton' chains. However, many stars are heavier and hotter than our sun, and include elements heavier than helium in their composition, a quality known as metallicity. The prediction since the 1930's is that the CNO-cycle will be dominant in heavy stars.

Neutrinos emitted as part of these processes provide a spectral signature allowing scientists to distinguish those from the 'proton-proton chain' from those from the 'CNO-cycle.' Pocar points out, "Confirmation of CNO burning in our sun, where it operates at only one percent, reinforces our confidence that we understand how stars work."

'Superbolts' detected above atmosphere are over 1,000 times brighter than normal lightning

Clare Watson
Science Alert
Tue, 24 Nov 2020 12:00 UTC

Every now and then, Earth reminds us it's capable of releasing some furious energy.

Case in point: scientists have just detected a new extreme in hotspots of lightning activity called 'superbolts': intense lightning strikes that shine up to 1,000 times brighter than typical lightning strikes.

The observations come from researchers at the US Los Alamos National Laboratory, who used satellites to measure the extreme lightning events. The results force a rethink on what constitutes a superbolt, and shed new light on how and where superbolts originate.

"We want[ed] to see what the boundaries [of superbolts] really are," atmospheric scientist Michael Peterson told The Washington Post. "It's about how big and how bright they can get."

Comment: Scientists have yet to factor in the electrical aspect of our universe into their considerations and one would imagine that when they do the drivers behind superbolt lightning might become a little clearer:

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Science & Technology

Scientists identify gene responsible for aging of human cells

Unknown space object just skimmed past Earth and scientists still don't know what it is

Frozen bird found in Siberia is 46,000 years old

Sun ejects biggest solar flare in years - comes ahead of next active cycle

Hope for Mars Missions: New Technology Can Extract Water and Fuel from Salty Water

The PCR False Positive Pseudo-Epidemic

AI program capable of predicting protein shapes, could 'revolutionize' medical research

Chernobyl fungus could shield astronauts from cosmic radiation

CNO energy-production mechanism detected in our Sun

'Superbolts' detected above atmosphere are over 1,000 times brighter than normal lightning

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