Science News

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Building_blocks_of_DNA_and_RNA_could_have_appeared_together_before_life_began_on_Earth_999.html Building blocks of DNA and RNA could have appeared together before life began on Earth by Staff Writers La Jolla CA (SPX) Apr 03, 2019 Scientists for the first time have found strong evidence that RNA and DNA could have arisen from the same set of precursor molecules even before life evolved on Earth about four billion years ago. The discovery, published April 1 in Nature Chemistry, suggests that the first living things on Earth may have used both RNA and DNA, as all cell-based life forms do now. In contrast, the prevaili…

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-dire-future-etched-co2-million.html Dire future etched in the past: CO2 at 3-million year-old levels: Planet-warming carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere—at its highest level in three million years—is poised to lock in dramatic temperature and sea level rises over a timescale of centuries, scientists warned this week. The last time that CO2 hit 400 parts per million (ppm) Greenland was ice free and trees grew at the edge of Antactica. It was long thought that today's greenhouse gas levels were no greater than those 800,000 years ago, during a period of cyclical planetary warming and cooling that would have likely continued…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have unearthed fossils in a coastal desert of southern Peru of a four-legged whale that thrived both in the sea and on land about 43 million years ago in a discovery that illuminates a pivotal stage in early cetacean evolution. The 13-foot-long (4-meter) mammal, named Peregocetus pacificus, represents a crucial intermediate step before whales became fully adapted to a marine existence, the scientists said on Thursday. Read more: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-science-whale/ancient-four-legged-whale-from-peru-walked-on-land-swam-in-sea-idUKKCN1RG1ZF

"Scientists say they have discovered a "stunning" trove of thousands of fossils on a river bank in China. The fossils are estimated to be about 518 million years old, and are particularly unusual because the soft body tissue of many creatures, including their skin, eyes, and internal organs, have been "exquisitely" well preserved." From this BBC news item. The find is within a lagerstatte, a fine grained sediment in which fine detail, especially of soft tissue, is preserved. (Other famous examples include the Burgess Shale and the Solnhofen limestone.) We can reasonably expect signifcant understanding to emerge from further study of the find, and for more samp…

If the Chicxulub crater is the smoking gun for the impact theory on the KPg extinction event, then these findings from North Dakota by DePalma and his colleagues are one of the ricochets. Here is the abstract - " The most immediate effects of the terminal-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact, essential to understanding the global-scale environmental and biotic collapses that mark the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, are poorly resolved despite extensive previous work. Here, we help to resolve this by describing a rapidly emplaced, high-energy onshore surge deposit from the terrestrial Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Associated ejecta and a cap of iridium-rich impactite revea…

Hello everyone. I need the methods and materials of determination of trace elements in food products by ICP-OES. if you have any material about this, please inform me. thanks in advance. Best regards, lab analyst if Azerbaijan Food Safety Agency, Rana Mammadli

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-big.html What happened before the Big Bang? March 26, 2019, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: A team of scientists has proposed a powerful new test for inflation, the theory that the universe dramatically expanded in size in a fleeting fraction of a second right after the Big Bang. Their goal is to give insight into a long-standing question: what was the universe like before the Big Bang? Although cosmic inflation is well known for resolving some important mysteries about the structure and evolution of the universe, other very different theories can also explain these mysteries. In some of these theories, the st…

"Lighting bolts sizzle over Johannesburg, South Africa." Thunderstorms can reach voltages ten times greater than those previously recorded, a new measurement suggests. Sunil Gupta at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, and his colleagues used an instrument called a muon telescope to measure storms’ electric potential — the voltage between the top and bottom of a thundercloud. Muon particles are generated when cosmic rays smash into Earth’s atmosphere. As muons cross a storm’s electric potential, they lose energy, which causes some of the particles to fall below a muon telescope’s detection threshold. A storm with a higher voltage causes each …

An international research team, including a member of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, investigated the role of "big gods" in the rise of complex large-scale societies. Big gods are defined as moralizing deities who punish ethical transgressions. Contrary to prevailing theories, the team found that beliefs in big gods are a consequence, not a cause, of the evolution of complex societies. The results are published in the current issue of the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-complex-societies-gave-birth-big.html

"The technique could help boys made infertile by cancer treatment to become fathers later in life. " A one-of-a-kind rhesus macaque named Grady is growing up under intense scrutiny at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton. That’s because she has an unusual pedigree: researchers created her using sperm from tissue harvested from her father’s testicles when he was young, and then grafted onto his body as an adult. If all goes well with Grady, the technique might one day be used to restore fertility in boys who have received damaging cancer treatments.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00938-9

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-galaxies-physics-cosmic-expansion.html Active galaxies point to new physics of cosmic expansion: January 29, 2019, European Space Agency: Investigating the history of our cosmos with a large sample of distant 'active' galaxies observed by ESA's XMM-Newton, a team of astronomers found there might be more to the early expansion of the universe than predicted by the standard model of cosmology. According to the leading scenario, our universe contains only a few percent of ordinary matter. One quarter of the cosmos is made of the elusive dark matter, which we can feel gravitationally but not observe, and the rest consists of t…

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-physicists-reveal-dominates-universe.html Physicists reveal why matter dominates universe March 21, 2019, Syracuse University: Physicists in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University have confirmed that matter and antimatter decay differently for elementary particles containing charmed quarks. Distinguished Professor Sheldon Stone says the findings are a first, although matter-antimatter asymmetry has been observed before in particles with strange quarks or beauty quarks. He and members of the College's High-Energy Physics (HEP) research group have measured, for the first time and with 99.999-percent cer…

https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/quantum-tunnelling-is-instantaneous-researchers-find Quantum tunnelling is instantaneous, researchers find: Researchers have found that electrons passing through solid matter in a quantum process known as “tunnelling” do so instantaneously. The finding, led by scientists from Australia’s Griffith University, contradicts previous experiments that suggested a degree of time elapses between the start and finish of a tunnelling event. The work is detailed in a paper in the journal Nature. Quantum tunnelling is one of the more bizarre differences between our everyday, classical world and the surprising realm of quant…

https://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/ppcomm/Papers.html Tests of general relativity with the binary black hole signals from the LIGO-Virgo catalog GWTC-1 Summary: Mar 11, 2019 https://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-O2TGR/index.php SUMMARY All of the tests performed here have shown that the black hole mergers observed by Advanced LIGO and Virgo are compatible with the predictions of General Relativity. Furthermore, by combining information from the most confident black hole mergers observed to date, we have improved our previous constraints on possible deviations from General Relativity by factors up to 2.4. The future will bring many mo…

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/thunderstorm-with-eye-popping-720gj-of-energy/ Thunderstorm with eye-popping 720GJ of energy Measured muon flux indicates thunderstorm reached a potential of 1.4GV. CHRIS LEE - 3/19/2019, 9:30 PM Nothing says "I love diving headfirst into a ditch" like your hair suddenly elevating to the tingly feel of electricity. Thunderstorms are amazing from inside a building, but they're scary if you're trapped outside. And, despite a good deal of observation, an element of mystery surrounds them. For instance, we know that lightning can produce free neutrons, antimatter, and gamma rays, but we don't have much idea of…

A report on cellulose nanofibers... Someone may enjoy it. Will be available a week. ----> https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/2015181/ Edited - If does not work, try ----> https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/scienceview/?type=tvEpisode&

Japan’s government has said that it is not ready to commit to hosting the world’s next major particle accelerator — the planned International Linear Collider (ILC). The decision appears to deal another blow to a project that has been more than a decade in the making, although some physicists are hopeful that the government might finally be making progress on the proposal.“There was disappointment,” said Geoffrey Taylor, chair of the International Committee for Future Accelerators, at a press conference at the University of Tokyo on 7 March. The press conference followed a meeting with representatives of Japan’s science and technology ministry, who delivered a statement on…

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-dark.html Finding dark matter in the dark: March 7, 2019 by Dr Daryl Holland, University of Melbourne: Dark matter is the mysterious material that holds the Universe together, yet no one has seen it; or heard, smelled, tasted or touched it either. But that may soon change, and a laboratory 1000 metres below the ground in the Stawell gold mine halfway between Melbourne and Adelaide could be the epicentre of this discovery. Physicists have had a good run recently at detecting the seemingly undetectable. First there was the Higg's Boson, confirmed by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012, nearly 50 years after…

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-hubble-gaia-accurately-milky.html Hubble and Gaia accurately weigh the Milky Way: March 7, 2019, ESA/Hubble Information Centre: In a striking example of multi-mission astronomy, measurements from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the ESA Gaia mission have been combined to improve the estimate of the mass of our home galaxy the Milky Way: 1.5 trillion solar masses. The mass of the Milky Way is one of the most fundamental measurements astronomers can make about our galactic home. However, despite decades of intense effort, even the best available estimates of the Milky Way's mass disagree wildly. Now, by combining new …

A person with HIV appears to be free of the virus after receiving a stem-cell transplant that replaced their white blood cells with HIV-resistant versions. The patient is only the second person ever reported to have been cleared of the virus using this method. But researchers warn that it is too early to say that they have been cured. The patient — whose identity hasn’t been disclosed — was able to stop taking antiretroviral drugs, with no sign of the virus returning 18 months later. The stem-cell technique was first used a decade ago for Timothy Ray Brown, known as the ‘Berlin patient’, who is still free of the virus.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00798-…

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-ion-aces-quantum-scrambling.html Can entangled qubits be used to probe black holes? March 6, 2019, University of California - Berkeley Physicists have used a seven-qubit quantum computer to simulate the scrambling of information inside a black hole, heralding a future in which entangled quantum bits might be used to probe the mysterious interiors of these bizarre objects. Scrambling is what happens when matter disappears inside a black hole. The information attached to that matter—the identities of all its constituents, down to the energy and momentum of its most elementary particles—is chaotically mixed with all the other…

The yeast used by people for millennia to ferment alcoholic drinks can now produce cannabinoids – chemicals with medicinal properties as well as occasionally mind-altering characteristics in cannabis. The accomplishment, described in Nature on February 27, transforms a sugar known as galactose in brewer’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) into THC or tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive compound in Cannabis sativa or cannabis. Moreover, the modified enzyme can yield CBD or cannabidiol, another essential cannabinoid that’s been famous lately for its possible therapeutic benefits, such as pain-relief and anti-anxiety effects. The aspirations are that this…

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-02-mobile-bedside-bioprinter-wounds.html Mobile bedside bioprinter can heal wounds: Imagine a day when a bioprinter filled with a patient's own cells can be wheeled right to the bedside to treat large wounds or burns by printing skin, layer by layer, to begin the healing process. That day is not far off. more at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-02-mobile-bedside-bioprinter-wounds.html

Pesticides, pollution and climate change are all wiping out insects at an alarming rate – so much, that a new global review says they could vanish within a century, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”. The scientists are calling for an urgent overhaul of the agricultural industry, warning that “unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades”.https://www.channel4.com/news/insects-decline-threatens-catastrophic-collapse-of-natures-ecosystems The rate of insect extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles.https://www.theguardian.com/environme…

The occurrence of devastating European floods correlates with large-scale fluctuations in atmospheric pressure known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). As scientists improve their predictions for the NAO, society will be better able to prepare for future flooding. Stefano Zanardo and his colleagues at Risk Management Solutions in London, UK, analysed historical records of severe European floods going back to 1870, and compared them with the prevailing pattern of atmospheric pressure at the time of the floods. When the NAO is in its ‘positive’ state, a strong low-pressure system over Iceland funnels winds and storms across Northern Europe. Conversely, when the N…