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Researchers reveal global spread of ancient viruses as far back as 30 million years ago


Phys.org
Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
HIV retrovirus

HIV, a retrovirus, infecting an immune cell
Researchers from Boston College, US, have revealed the global spread of an ancient group of retroviruses that affected about 28 of 50 modern mammals' ancestors some 15 to 30 million years ago.

Retroviruses are abundant in nature and include human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV-1 and -2) and human T-cell leukemia viruses. The scientists' findings on a specific group of these viruses called ERV-Fc, to be published in the journal eLife, show that they affected a wide range of hosts, including species as diverse as carnivores, rodents, and primates.

The distribution of ERV-Fc among these ancient mammals suggests the viruses spread to every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and that they jumped from one species to another more than 20 times.

The study also places the origins of ERV-Fc at least as far back as the beginning of the Oligocene epoch, a period of dramatic global change marked partly by climatic cooling that led to the Ice Ages. Vast expanses of grasslands emerged around this time, along with large mammals as the world's predominate fauna.
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Moon

Mercury is covered in graphite, aka 'pencil lead'

Eric Hand
Science
Mon, 07 Mar 2016 15:01 UTC
planet Mercury
© NASA/JHU Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Mercury is darker than the moon, something that has perplexed scientists, especially because Mercury lacks iron, the darkening agent found on the moon. Now, scientists think they know the reason why: The surface of the innermost planet is enriched in carbon, in the form of graphite, aka "pencil lead."

Scientists using NASA's MESSENGER orbiter found evidence for carbon at levels of a few percent—much higher than is typically found on Earth, the moon, and Mars.

The observations came from the last days of the MESSENGER mission, just before it crashed into the surface in 2015, when the spacecraft got up close and personal to large craters (seen above) where the darkening agent is most prevalent, scientists report today in Nature Geoscience.

Scientists suspect that the graphite comes from Mercury's original crust 4.5 billion years ago, when the planet was solidifying from a ball of molten magma. Whereas most minerals crystallizing out of the magma ocean would sink, graphite would have floated to the top.
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Bug

Bacteria are waging war with each other inside your gut

Laurel Hamers
Science
Mon, 07 Mar 2016 15:13 UTC
bacteria
© CNRI/Science Source
The beneficial bacteria in our gut seem like a cooperative bunch: We give them a warm and nutrient-rich home, and they work together to keep us healthy. But with hundreds of microbial species crammed together in tight quarters, new research suggests that our intestinal innards might resemble a battlefield more than a conference room.

Researchers have found that gut bacteria continually wage war on their neighbors, perhaps as a way to stake out space.

The team injected different strains of Bacteroides fragilis, the species of gut-dwelling bacteria (pictured here), into mice that lacked their own microbes. When they analyzed the rodents' stools over time, they found evidence that the strains were attacking each other.

Different strains of B. fragilis inject different combinations of toxins into neighboring bacteria. Bacteria within the same strain fight back: They're immune to the toxins secreted by their strain-mates. But different species or strains of bacteria can succumb to the assault, giving the attacking strain more room to spread out.

The researchers estimate that a billion of these toxin transfers happen per minute per gram of stool inside any given gut, they report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The weaponry only works at close range, however: The warring bacteria have to actually make contact with each other.

The contact-based approach may be a way for microbes to stake out a space in their immediate vicinity without affecting faraway bacteria that could be helpful.
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Calculator

MIT's new quantum computer could render today's encryption useless


RT
Mon, 07 Mar 2016 03:47 UTC
MIT Building
© Wikipedia
MIT
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created the first scalable quantum computer that could make current data encryption methods obsolete with its ability to factor very large numbers. The new device uses only five atoms.

In a paper published Friday in the journal Science, researchers from MIT and Austria's University of Innsbruck said that they devised a working quantum computer that runs on just five atoms in an ion trap.
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Star

Sea-nomad children can see underwater like dolphins


sciencealert.com
Mon, 07 Mar 2016 02:16 UTC
Sea Moken
© Piti Tan/Shutterstock.
If you want proof of how adaptable the human body can be, look no further than the Moken people - a nomadic seafaring tribe that lives in the island archipelagos on the Andaman Sea, and along the west coast of Thailand.

Also known as sea-nomads, the Moken were once entirely dependent the ocean, and the children spent much of their time diving for food on the seafloor. Experiments have shown that they could see underwater with total clarity - a unique adaptation that other children can learn within weeks.
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Airplane Paper

Wishful thinking: High-powered laser beam in development to defend earth from approaching space objects

Andre Mitchell
Christian Today
Mon, 07 Mar 2016 01:45 UTC
Chelyabinsk, Russia
© Wikipedia
A meteor fireball is seen over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013. The resulting blast injured more than 1,600 people.
For the past few months, asteroids have been making close approaches to Earth, fuelling fears that these space objects may someday hit our planet and cause countless deaths and massive destruction.

We can, however, ease our fears now because American scientists are already developing a high-powered laser beam to defend Earth from these approaching asteroids.

A team of researchers at the University of California has conducted tests on a weapon called De-Star, which stands for Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploration. The researchers are becoming more and more convinced that this technology may actually work.

"Generally speaking, the technology is available today," said Qicheng Zhang of the University of California, Santa Barbara, one of the authors of the project, as quoted by The Telegraph.

The author nevertheless acknowledged that the team would have to develop a device that will be powerful enough to destroy giant asteroids.

"The main challenge with building a full De-Star is the necessary scale to be effective," Zhang said.

The research team has nevertheless succeeded in testing the De-Star's technique on Earth, by blasting a piece of basalt using laser beams. Basalt is a type of rock from frozen magma that has a similar composition as asteroids.

Comment: With all of the 'newly discovered' asteroids and considering impact records, these lasers could not do much to prevent any cataclysms. For more on the reality of our situation here on planet Earth and the potential for bombardment from space objects, read our Comets and Catastrophe series:

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Beaker

Researchers discover a new kind of stem cell


MSUToday
Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
stem cell
© ALAMY
Scientists at Michigan State University have discovered a new kind of stem cell, one that could lead to advances in regenerative medicine as well as offer new ways to study birth defects and other reproductive problems.

In the current issue of the journal Stem Cell Reports, Tony Parenti, lead author and MSU cell and molecular biology graduate student, unearthed the new cells - induced XEN cells, or iXEN - in a cellular trash pile, of sorts.
"Other scientists may have seen these cells before, but they were considered to be defective, or cancer-like," said Parenti, who works in the lab of Amy Ralston, MSU biochemist, cell and molecular biologist and co-author of the study. "Rather than ignore these cells that have been mislabeled as waste byproducts, we found gold in the garbage."
A great deal of stem cell research focuses on new ways to make and use pluripotent stem cells. Pluripotent stem cells can be created by reactivating embryonic genes to "reprogram" mature adult cells. Reprogramming mature cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, allows them to become malleable building blocks that can morph into any cell in the body.

For example, if a patient has a defective liver, healthy cells could be taken from the patient, reprogrammed into iPS cells, which could then be used to help regenerate the person's failing organ. Taking cells from the same patient may greatly reduce the chance of the body rejecting the new treatment, Parenti said.

Prior to the discovery of reprogramming, scientists developed pluripotent stem cells from embryos. However, the embryo produces not only pluripotent stem cells, but also XEN cells, a stem cell type with unique properties. While pluripotent stem cells produce cells in the body, XEN cells produce extraembryonic tissues that play an essential but indirect role in fetal development.
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Network

Apple users fall victim to first ever ransomware attack able to penetrate Mac security


RT
Mon, 07 Mar 2016 21:05 UTC
Apple iphone
© Regis Duvignau / Reuters
Apple users have fallen prey to ransomware for the first time ever. The 'KeRanger' malware appeared hidden in the popular BitTorrent application, Transmission. Users' Macs were infected upon downloading the latest copy.

A ransomware is malicious code, like any other type of malware. The way it works is usually by hiding inside a program one may hastily download, irrespective of the risks. A message then appears, telling the user all or part of their files have been encrypted, and the only way to decrypt them is by paying a ransom - usually in digital currency, which is difficult to trace.
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Deep sea recordings from Mariana Trench share eery sounds from the deep

Maddie Stone
Gizmodo
Thu, 03 Mar 2016 23:13 UTC
mariana trench
Deep rumbles, unearthly moans, high pitched screeching: these are but a few elements of the alien soundscape researchers have now recorded for the first time at Challenger Deep, the deepest known valley on the seafloor.

One might expect Challenger Deep—which sits at the bottom of the Mariana trench some 36,000 feet beneath the ocean surface—to be a quiet place. But in reality, we know very little about what life is like down there: as with most places where the sun never shines, the Mariana trench is shrouded in mystery.

"Light does not propagate underwater very far," oceanographer Bob Dziak of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Gizmodo. "But sound waves travel long distances through the Earth's oceans. Acoustics is really the best way to get a good picture of deep ocean environments."
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Einstein

Super fast computers from quantum dots?

Bec Crew
ScienceAlert
Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
quantum dot
Solid, crystalline structures of incredibly tiny particles known as quantum dots have been developed by engineers in the US, and they're so close to perfect, they could be a serious contender for a silicon alternative in the super-fast computers of the future.

Just as single-crystal silicon wafers revolutionised computing technology more than 60 years ago (your phone, laptop, PC, and iPad wouldn't exist without one), quantum dot solids could change everything about how we transmit and process information in the decades to come.

Comment: Also see:

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