Like the mythical monster Medusa, a newfound giant virus turns its host to "stone." But, luckily for us, its hosts are amoebas.

Now called Medusavirus for its seemingly mythical powers, the strange virus was pulled from the muddy waters of a hot spring in Japan, according to a new study, published Feb. 6 in the Journal of Virology. Medusavirus belongs to a group known as "giant viruses," which have exceptionally large genomes compared with most other viruses.

The virus infects single-celled organisms known as Acanthamoeba castellanii, a type of amoeba. When the researchers infected these amoebas in lab dishes, they found that the virus prompted the amoebas to develop a thick outer "shell" and enter a dormant state known as encystment. (The amoeba can naturally enter this state in response to stress in its environment.) That behavior reminded the researchers of the mythological monster Medusa, who, according to Greek mythology, could turn onlookers to stone with her gaze.

Some months ago, I participated in a two-week experiment that involved using a smartphone app to track every morsel of food I ate, every beverage I drank and every medication I took, as well as how much I slept and exercised. I wore a sensor that monitored my blood-glucose levels, and I sent in a sample of my stool for an assessment of my gut microbiome. All of my data, amassed with similar input from more than a thousand other people, was analyzed by artificial intelligence to create a personalized diet algorithm. The point was to find out what kind of food I should be eating to live a longer and healthier life.

The results? In the sweets category: Cheesecake was given an A grade, but whole-wheat fig bars were a C -. In fruits: Strawberries were an A+ for me, but grapefruit a C. In legumes: Mixed nuts were an A+, but veggie burgers a C. Needless to say, it didn't match what I thought I knew about healthy eating.


It turns out, despite decades of diet fads and government-issued food pyramids, we know surprisingly little about the science of nutrition. It is very hard to do high-quality randomized trials: They require people to adhere to a diet for years before there can be any assessment of significant health outcomes. The largest ever - which found that the "Mediterranean diet" lowered the risk for heart attacks and strokes - had to be retracted and republished with softened conclusions. Most studies are observational, relying on food diaries or the shaky memories of participants. There are many such studies, with over a hundred thousand people assessed for carbohydrate consumption, or fiber, salt or artificial sweeteners, and the best we can say is that there might be an association, not anything about cause and effect. Perhaps not surprisingly, these studies have serially contradicted one another. Meanwhile, the field has been undermined by the food industry, which tries to exert influence over the research it funds.

Think sleeping in on the weekend can repair the damage from a week of sleepless nights?

Not so, according to new CU Boulder research published today in the journal Current Biology.

In fact, on some metabolic health measures, trying to play catch-up for a few days and then returning to poor sleep habits may make things worse.

"Our findings suggest that the common behavior of burning the candle during the week and trying to make up for it on the weekend is not an effective health strategy," said senior author Kenneth Wright, an Integrative Physiology professor and director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Lab.

Previous research by Wright and others has shown that insufficient sleep can boost risk of obesity and diabetes, in part by boosting the urge to snack at night and decreasing insulin sensitivity - or the ability to regulate blood sugar. Some adverse metabolic health impacts can kick in after just one night of lost sleep, recent CU Boulder research has shown.

Sleeping in on the weekend can help the body recover mildly during those two days, studies suggest. But the effects don't last.

A global biodiversity crash 251.9 million years ago has revealed how ecosystems respond to extreme perturbation. The finding that terrestrial ecosystems were less affected than marine ones is unexpected.

Changes in Earth's biodiversity recorded in fossils over various spatial and timescales reveal the comings and goings of species as they emerge and go extinct, and offer insights into how both species and the ecosystems they inhabit respond to perturbation. These patterns of the past provide models that might help us to understand the changes that life on Earth will experience in the future. The end-Permian mass extinction, often called the mother of mass extinctions¹, is a focus of such studies. Large waves of extinctions occurred over a time interval of 60,000 to 120,000 years² at the end of the Permian period, which lasted from 298.9 million to 251.9 million years ago. Fossil studies indicate that more than 90% of marine invertebrates went extinct³ as a consequence of extreme perturbations of the conditions on Earth, including intense volcanic activity. Writing in Nature Communications, Fielding et al.⁴ and Nowak et al.⁵ reveal what happened to terrestrial plants during the end-Permian crisis. Both contributions are well supported by an array of data, and both tell a slightly different story.

A comprehensive worm survey of farms in England has shown they are rare or absent in two out of five fields, reflecting widespread historical over-cultivation.

The #60minworms project required volunteer farmers to dig 10 small pits across a field so that both the overall number and diversity of earthworms could be counted.

The project, organised by Jackie Stroud, a NERC soil security fellow at Rothamsted Research, and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), covered 1,318ha of farmland in England.

One of the project's main aims was to find the baseline of farmland earthworm populations against which farmers could test their soil health both now and in the future.

Rare or absent

Scientists love a good mystery. But it's more fun when the future of humanity isn't at stake.

This enigma involves methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Twenty years ago the level of methane in the atmosphere stopped increasing, giving humanity a bit of a break when it came to slowing climate change. But the concentration started rising again in 2007 - and it's been picking up the pace over the last four years, according to new research.

Scientists haven't figured out the cause, but they say one thing is clear: This surge could imperil the Paris climate accord. That's because many scenarios for meeting its goal of keeping global warming "well below 2 degrees Celsius" assumed that methane would be falling by now, buying time to tackle the long-term challenge of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.


"I don't want to run around and cry wolf all the time, but it is something that is very, very worrying," said Euan Nisbet, an Earth scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, and lead author of a recent study reporting that the growth of atmospheric methane is accelerating.

Attacks by cheap, yet efficient, mini-drones will be the future of warfare and lasers look like the best response to the threat, a retired colonel told RT as Germany announced a successful military laser test.

"Imagine an attack on an important facility with several hundred AI-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), equipped with warheads the size of a hand grenade and capable of flying into an open window or a cockpit of an aircraft," Mikhail Khodarenok, military analyst and retired colonel in Russian missile defense forces, told RT.

Mini-drones cost relatively little, but can do significant damage by "striking a modern airplane, priced at more than $100 million, at an airfield or destroying a very expensive long-range anti-aircraft missile system," he said.

"How do you stop those UAVs? Fire anti-aircraft guided missiles, worth $200 thousand each, at them?" Khodarenok wondered.
Effective means of combating micro- and mini-UAVs are currently nonexistent and lasers look like a very promising area of research in this regard. Firing a laser costs pennies, but the effect can be huge.

All male humpback whales in the eastern Australia population sing the same song at any one time, according to new research from the University of St Andrews and the University of Queensland.

Research into song patterns studied over 13 years found that the song gradually changed each year - but that every few years their song is completely replaced in cultural 'revolution' events. When revolution events occurred, the new song was always simpler than the one it replaced.

The study, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that gradual song changes may be embellishments by individual singers, and that songs sung after revolutions are simpler because singers may have limited ability to learn new material.

During a press conference held today and reported broadly by the Polish media, the head of the Polish MoD, Mariusz Błaszczak, placed a major emphasis on acquisition of the new fighter aircraft for the Polish Air Force. The main argument used by the Polish official, when justifying the procurement, was the number of incidents and reduced reliability of the post-soviet inventory of the Polish military aviation (MiG-29 and Su-22 aircraft types). The conference concerned the introduction of a new Technichal Modernization Plan, that would cover the period between 2017 and 2026. The document outlines the modernization effort that is to be undertaken by the MoD over the term in question.

Błaszczak suggested that, within the framework of the newly adopted technical modernization plan, Harpia program is a priority. The Polish official emphasized the role that 5th generation airframes play in the structure of the modern military - they act as a force multiplier. And this has been the role assigned to them by Błaszczak during his speech - the new jets are to complement the F-16s. Given that the only 5-generation aircraft available on the market now is the F-35, the Polish official has been probably referring to the Lockheed Martin's latest platform.

Overall, the value of the new Technical Modernization Plan issued by the MoD is contained in an amount of PLN 185 billion (49B USD), which means that the amount is 45 billion zlotys (12B USD) higher than in case of the preceding document.

Scientists have learned a lot about evolution by studying fossils, by observing nature and, more recently, by unraveling the genetic code stored in DNA.

Now, a team of Stanford computer scientists and biologists has looked at evolution through a new lens, by analyzing how proteins - the biological machines produced by DNA - evolve to sustain the network of molecular interactions upon which all life depends.


The scientists studied 1,840 species - from bacteria to primates - to understand how evolution built life forms that could survive in the face of natural adversities.


What they discovered was profound yet intuitive: Every species has evolved backup plans that allow its protein machinery to find bypasses and workarounds when nature tries to gum up the works. No previous study has ever surveyed such a broad swath of species to find a survival strategy common to all life: Develop a versatile and robust molecular machinery.

"Across our entire sample, we find that the resilience of a species is strongly correlated with having protein networks that are robust to failure and can interact in multiple ways to preserve life," said Stanford computer scientist Jure Leskovec, senior author of the paper that appears today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.