Newsworthy Science

[The_J]

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6558/978.7

Mirror image DNA

In a world barely nascent, scientists can create mirror images of the building blocks of life, including DNA, RNA, and protein, and use them to build a mirror image of life itself. This fantastic endeavor is not an easy task. A major challenge is to create versions of enzymes, the workhorses for biosynthesis in cells, as mirror images. Fan et al. created a high-fidelity mirror image Pfu DNA polymerase. They used this enzyme to assemble a stretch of mirror image DNA containing 1500 mirror image nucleotides. The idea is that this DNA can be used as secure information storage to evade the threat of degradation by enzymes in natural organisms and the environment. Mirror image DNA survives much longer in environmental water samples than its natural counterpart. The next step is to find out how mirror biotechnology can be used to bring real-life benefits.

I find this very impressive.

 

[Samson]

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6558/978.7


I find this very impressive.

That is cool, and so geeky:

We use the polymerase to encode in l-DNA an 1860 paragraph by Louis Pasteur that first proposed a mirror-image world of biology.

We show that a trace amount of an l-DNA barcode preserved in water from a local pond [The Lotus pond, Beijing] remains amplifiable and sequenceable for 1 year, whereas a d-DNA barcode under the same conditions could not be amplified after 1 day.
​

 

[Samson]

More work showing sports concussions are a serious problem, especially for women

Head impact study says players' cognitive function can decline after one season

A single season of professional rugby union increases systemic oxidative–nitrosative stress (OXNOS) confirmed by a free radical-mediated suppression in nitric oxide bioavailability. Forwards encountered a higher frequency of contact events compared to backs, exhibiting elevated OXNOS and lower cerebrovascular function and cognition.
​

Paper (paywalled) Beeb review

Why sports concussions are worse for women

Studies from US collegiate sports have shown that female athletes are 1.9 times more likely to develop a sports-related concussion than are their male contemporaries in comparable sports.

It’s not just the number of head injuries that differs between women and men, but also their nature. A review of 25 studies of sport-related concussion suggests that female athletes are not only more susceptible to concussion than are males, but also sustain more-severe concussions:

Female athletes appear to sustain more severe concussions than male athletes, due in part to a lower biomechanical threshold tolerance for head impacts. Additionally, concussions may alter the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis, resulting in worse symptoms and amenorrhea. Although females are more likely to report concussions than males, underreporting still exists and may result in concussions going untreated.
​

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Loads more in the Nature review.

 

[Birdjaguar]

^^ Another good reason to end contact sports for those under 18,

 

[GinandTonic]

^^ Another good reason to end contact sports for those under 18,

They've tried to ban football many, many times over the centuries. In the absence of a ball kids stamp a can flat and play with that.

In my school there was a concrete playground, so the figures were probably way worse than Sampson's. The kids response to a lack of sufficient footballs was to invent killer can. Stamp can flat. Kick can at each other. Anyone hit by the can gets a dead arm from all players. Anyone deemed to be giving dead arms but just loitering around the edges - everyone gives them a dead arm. Anyone hit three times gets the tunnel of death where everyone puts their hands against the wall and can kick and knee as the thrice looser runs the tunnel. If you played with the tough boys it was one hand against the wall and use the free hand as you will.

There is no way the game kids invent in the absence of soccer will be less problematic.

 

[Samson]

They've tried to ban football many, many times over the centuries. In the absence of a ball kids stamp a can flat and play with that.

In my school there was a concrete playground, so the figures were probably way worse than Sampson's. The kids response to a lack of sufficient footballs was to invent killer can. Stamp can flat. Kick can at each other. Anyone hit by the can gets a dead arm from all players. Anyone deemed to be giving dead arms but just loitering around the edges - everyone gives them a dead arm. Anyone hit three times gets the tunnel of death where everyone puts their hands against the wall and can kick and knee as the thrice looser runs the tunnel. If you played with the tough boys it was one hand against the wall and use the free hand as you will.

There is no way the game kids invent in the absence of soccer will be less problematic.

Stopping kids playing football at break is a whole different thing from not making them play rugby every week of the winter, frozen ground or not.

 

[Berzerker]

https://www.malaymail.com/news/life...ion-pod-invention-earns-spot-at-james/2000616

the waterpod for sea nomads

your personal desalinization plant

 

[warpus]

^^ Another good reason to end contact sports for those under 18,

Ban soccer (which is a contact sport) for anybody under 18? That would essentially mean that any country enacting such a ban would no longer be producing world class soccer players. Those who get involved in the sport at 19 CAN become world class superstars, but it's rare.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Ban soccer (which is a contact sport) for anybody under 18? That would essentially mean that any country enacting such a ban would no longer be producing world class soccer players. Those who get involved in the sport at 19 CAN become world class superstars, but it's rare.

As a person who has little interest in professional sports of any sort, I find it easy to suggest that overly demanding physical sports routines for those under 18 should be curtailed to something more casual and less risky to health.

EDIT: Soccer is fine, just no heading.

 

[GinandTonic]

As a person who has little interest in professional sports of any sort, I find it easy to suggest that overly demanding physical sports routines for those under 18 should be curtailed to something more casual and less risky to health.

Killer can?

 

[Farm Boy]

You'll never stop them.

Spoiler :

They might be dumb enough at that age to still think they're going to live forever, but they're smart enough to have not forgotten, yet, that the only possible time to live is right now.

 

[Samson]

US achieves laser-fusion record

Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s flagship laser facility shattered their own record earlier this month by generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for a fraction of a second — roughly 700 times the generating capacity of the entire US electrical grid.

Housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the US$3.5-billion facility wasn’t designed to serve as a power-plant prototype, however, but rather to probe fusion reactions at the heart of thermonuclear weapons.

Some critics have questioned whether scientists need the facility to maintain the United States’ nuclear weapons. They say the stewardship programme has already bolstered confidence in the stockpile within the NNSA, and point out that the agency is now proposing to build what are effectively new nuclear weapons, rather than simply maintaining the current cache with minimal changes.
​

The NIF focuses 192 laser beams onto a target, creating temperatures and pressures like those inside thermonuclear bombs.

 

[The_J]

https://www.science.org/content/article/wild-cockatoos-make-their-own-cutlery-sets

Wild cockatoos make their own cutlery sets

[...]

Then one day in June 2019, while watching wild cockatoos in the forest, O’Hara noticed fruit on the ground with cockatoo bitemarks. Local team members identified the egg-shaped fruit as that of the sea mango tree, wawai in Tanimbarese. The fruits had recently come into season, and O’Hara gave a handful to the cockatoos in the aviary to see how they would respond. About the size of a small avocado and toxic to humans, the fruits contain a reddish pulp surrounding a hard pit that encases small, nutritious seeds. Getting to those seeds isn’t easy, even for a bird with a knifelike beak.

O’Hara watched in amazement as a male cockatoo bit away the fruit’s skin, then quickly severed a small branch from a tree inside the aviary, and with a series of quick bites whittled its thick stump into a wedge-shaped tool. Holding the fruit with his left foot while perching on his right, he used his tongue to fit the wedge into the pit’s fissure, prying the pit open. Next, he shaped a splinter into a sharp, narrow tool and used this to pierce the parchmentlike interior skin protecting the seeds. Finally, the cockatoo fabricated a third tool from another bit of wood, biting it into a flattened strip that he used to spoon out the seeds (as seen in the video, above), the team reports today in Current Biology.

Just amazing .

 

[Berzerker]

Alzheimer’s disease could be delayed or even reversed by giving oxygen therapy to patients in pressurised chambers, a new study suggests.

In a world first, Israeli researchers found that elderly patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment – a forerunner to dementia – had improved memory and brain functioning following regular 90-minute sessions in a hyperbaric chamber.

The pressure change allows more oxygen to be dissolved into the tissues and mimics a state of "hypoxia", or oxygen shortage, which is known to have regenerating effects.

In separate animal studies, the researchers also showed that the therapy can help clear away sticky amyloid plaques in the brain which stop cells from communicating, and are a major sign of Alzheimer’s disease.

The team believes that the treatment works by changing the structure of vessels in the brain so that more blood can get through.

 

[Berzerker]

The fatty acids found in fish have been long proven to protect our brains as we age. New findings published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease supports this theory further; the study found that omega-3 fatty acids can ultimately help preserve and stabilize our memories, even after they have been partially compromised. The team reached this conclusion by administering daily omega-3 supplements to Alzheimer's patients, whose memory tests stayed consistent over a period of time compared to those who did not take these pills.

 

[Berzerker]

competing theory about the Sphinx, it was built by Khufu. The capital back then was to the south at Memphis so people approaching the great pyramid would see the Sphinx in profile with the pyramid in the background.

Also, the Sphinx's tail is on the right side which is the side facing south and Egyptians were certainly fond of depicting things in profile. And the causeway to the 2nd pyramid is angled because the Sphinx was already in the way.

 

[Samson]

The Ig Nobels were awarded yesterday:

My Fav:
ECONOMICS PRIZE [FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, UK]:
Pavlo Blavatskyy, for discovering that the obesity of a country’s politicians may be a good indicator of that country’s corruption.
See below for graphs.

BIOLOGY PRIZE [SWEDEN]:
Susanne Schötz for analyzing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other modes of cat–human communication.

ECOLOGY PRIZE [SPAIN. IRAN]:
Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela Vidal-Verdú, and Manuel Porcar, for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE [GERMANY, UK, NEW ZEALAND, GREECE, CYPRUS, AUSTRIA]:
Jörg Wicker, Nicolas Krauter, Bettina Derstroff, Christof Stönner, Efstratios Bourtsoukidis, Achim Edtbauer, Jochen Wulf, Thomas Klüpfel, Stefan Kramer, and Jonathan Williams, for chemically analyzing the air inside movie theaters, to test whether the odors produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behavior, drug use, and bad language in the movie the audience is watching. (Answer: Yes)

MEDICINE PRIZE [GERMANY, TURKEY, UK]:
Olcay Cem Bulut, Dare Oladokun, Burkard Lippert, and Ralph Hohenberger, for demonstrating that sexual orgasms can be as effective as decongestant medicines at improving nasal breathing.

PEACE PRIZE [USA]:
Ethan Beseris, Steven Naleway, and David Carrier, for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to the face.

PHYSICS PRIZE [THE NETHERLANDS, ITALY, TAIWAN, USA]:
Alessandro Corbetta, Jasper Meeusen, Chung-min Lee, Roberto Benzi, and Federico Toschi, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not constantly collide with other pedestrians.

KINETICS PRIZE [JAPAN, SWITZERLAND, ITALY]:
Hisashi Murakami, Claudio Feliciani, Yuta Nishiyama, and Katsuhiro Nishinari, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians.

ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE [USA]:
John Mulrennan, Jr., Roger Grothaus, Charles Hammond, and Jay Lamdin, for their research study “A New Method of Cockroach Control on Submarines”.

TRANSPORTATION PRIZE [NAMIBIA, SOUTH AFRICA, TANZANIA, ZIMBABWE, BRAZIL, UK, USA]:
Robin Radcliffe, Mark Jago, Peter Morkel, Estelle Morkel, Pierre du Preez, Piet Beytell, Birgit Kotting, Bakker Manuel, Jan Hendrik du Preez, Michele Miller, Julia Felippe, Stephen Parry, and Robin Gleed, for determining by experiment whether it is safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside-down.

Spoiler Corruption by obesity :

 

[The_J]

Some of that stuff is actually quite interesting.

For the airborne rhinoceros, apparently that is regularly done upside down, hanging below a helicopter, when the animal is sedated.

For the corruption index, I think this might not hold if expanded to other countries...

 

[Samson]

For the corruption index, I think this might not hold if expanded to other countries...

Biden/Trump, BoJo/Starmer both spring to mind.

 

[Sarin]

Does that mean North Korea is the least corrupt country in the world?