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Whistle blows in Germany for world's first hydrogen train fleet
Agence France-Presse - raw story
August 24, 2022
Germany on Wednesday will inaugurate a railway line powered entirely by hydrogen, a "world first" and a major step forward for green train transport despite nagging supply challenges.
A fleet of 14 trains provided by French industrial giant Alstom to the German state Lower Saxony will replace the diesel locomotives on the 100 kilometres (60 miles) of track connecting the cities of Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervoerde and Buxtehude near Hamburg.
"Whatever the time of day, passengers will travel on this route thanks to hydrogen", Stefan Schrank, project manager at Alstom, told AFP, hailing a "world first".
Hydrogen trains have become a promising way to decarbonize the rail sector and replace diesel, which still powers 20 percent of journeys in Germany.
Billed as a "zero emission" mode of transport, the trains mix hydrogen on board with oxygen present in the ambient air, thanks to a fuel cell installed in the roof. This produces the electricity needed to pull the train.
Run for its money
Designed in the southern French town of Tarbes and assembled in Salzgitter in central Germany, Alstom's trains -- called Coradia iLint -- are trailblazers in the sector.
The project drew investment of "several tens of millions of euros" and created jobs for up to 80 employees in the two countries, according to Alstom.
Commercial trials have been carried out since 2018 on the line with two hydrogen trains but now the entire fleet is adopting the ground-breaking technology.
The French group has inked four contracts for several dozen trains between Germany, France and Italy, with no sign of demand waning.
In Germany alone "between 2,500 and 3,000 diesel trains could be replaced by hydrogen models", Schrank estimates.
"By 2035, around 15 to 20 percent of the regional European market could run on hydrogen," Alexandre Charpentier, rail expert at consultancy Roland Berger, told AFP.
Hydrogen trains are particularly attractive on short regional lines where the cost of a transition to electric outstrips the profitability of the route.
Currently, around one out of two regional trains in Europe runs on diesel.
But Alstom's competitors are ready to give it a run for its money. German behemoth Siemens unveiled a prototype hydrogen train with national rail company Deutsche Bahn in May, with a view to a roll-out in 2024.
But, despite the attractive prospects, "there are real barriers" to a big expansion with hydrogen, Charpentier said.
For starters, trains are not the only means of transport hungry for the fuel.
The entire sector, whether it be road vehicles or aircraft, not to mention heavy industry such as steel and chemicals, are eyeing hydrogen to slash CO2 emissions.
Colossal investment
Although Germany announced in 2020 an ambitious seven-billion-euro (-dollar) plan to become a leader in hydrogen technologies within a decade, the infrastructure is still lacking in Europe's top economy.
It is a problem seen across the continent, where colossal investment would be needed for a real shift to hydrogen.
"For this reason, we do not foresee a 100-percent replacement of diesel trains with hydrogen," Charpentier said.
Furthermore, hydrogen is not necessarily carbon-free: only "green hydrogen", produced using renewable energy, is considered sustainable by experts.
Other, more common manufacturing methods exist, but they emit greenhouse gases because they are made from fossil fuels.
The Lower Saxony line will in the beginning have to use a hydrogen by-product of certain industries such as the chemical sector.
The French research institute IFP specializing in energy issues says that hydrogen is currently "95 percent derived from the transformation of fossil fuels, almost half of which come from natural gas".
Europe's enduring reliance on gas from Russia amid massive tensions over the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine poses major challenges for the development of hydrogen in rail transport.
"Political leaders will have to decide which sector to prioritize when determining what the production of hydrogen will or won't go to," Charpentier said.
Germany will also have to import massively to meet its needs.
Partnerships have recently been signed with India and Morocco, and an agreement to import hydrogen from Canada was on the agenda this week during a visit by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
A fleet of 14 trains provided by French industrial giant Alstom to the German state Lower Saxony will replace the diesel locomotives on the 100 kilometres (60 miles) of track connecting the cities of Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervoerde and Buxtehude near Hamburg.
"Whatever the time of day, passengers will travel on this route thanks to hydrogen", Stefan Schrank, project manager at Alstom, told AFP, hailing a "world first".
Hydrogen trains have become a promising way to decarbonize the rail sector and replace diesel, which still powers 20 percent of journeys in Germany.
Billed as a "zero emission" mode of transport, the trains mix hydrogen on board with oxygen present in the ambient air, thanks to a fuel cell installed in the roof. This produces the electricity needed to pull the train.
Run for its money
Designed in the southern French town of Tarbes and assembled in Salzgitter in central Germany, Alstom's trains -- called Coradia iLint -- are trailblazers in the sector.
The project drew investment of "several tens of millions of euros" and created jobs for up to 80 employees in the two countries, according to Alstom.
Commercial trials have been carried out since 2018 on the line with two hydrogen trains but now the entire fleet is adopting the ground-breaking technology.
The French group has inked four contracts for several dozen trains between Germany, France and Italy, with no sign of demand waning.
In Germany alone "between 2,500 and 3,000 diesel trains could be replaced by hydrogen models", Schrank estimates.
"By 2035, around 15 to 20 percent of the regional European market could run on hydrogen," Alexandre Charpentier, rail expert at consultancy Roland Berger, told AFP.
Hydrogen trains are particularly attractive on short regional lines where the cost of a transition to electric outstrips the profitability of the route.
Currently, around one out of two regional trains in Europe runs on diesel.
But Alstom's competitors are ready to give it a run for its money. German behemoth Siemens unveiled a prototype hydrogen train with national rail company Deutsche Bahn in May, with a view to a roll-out in 2024.
But, despite the attractive prospects, "there are real barriers" to a big expansion with hydrogen, Charpentier said.
For starters, trains are not the only means of transport hungry for the fuel.
The entire sector, whether it be road vehicles or aircraft, not to mention heavy industry such as steel and chemicals, are eyeing hydrogen to slash CO2 emissions.
Colossal investment
Although Germany announced in 2020 an ambitious seven-billion-euro (-dollar) plan to become a leader in hydrogen technologies within a decade, the infrastructure is still lacking in Europe's top economy.
It is a problem seen across the continent, where colossal investment would be needed for a real shift to hydrogen.
"For this reason, we do not foresee a 100-percent replacement of diesel trains with hydrogen," Charpentier said.
Furthermore, hydrogen is not necessarily carbon-free: only "green hydrogen", produced using renewable energy, is considered sustainable by experts.
Other, more common manufacturing methods exist, but they emit greenhouse gases because they are made from fossil fuels.
The Lower Saxony line will in the beginning have to use a hydrogen by-product of certain industries such as the chemical sector.
The French research institute IFP specializing in energy issues says that hydrogen is currently "95 percent derived from the transformation of fossil fuels, almost half of which come from natural gas".
Europe's enduring reliance on gas from Russia amid massive tensions over the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine poses major challenges for the development of hydrogen in rail transport.
"Political leaders will have to decide which sector to prioritize when determining what the production of hydrogen will or won't go to," Charpentier said.
Germany will also have to import massively to meet its needs.
Partnerships have recently been signed with India and Morocco, and an agreement to import hydrogen from Canada was on the agenda this week during a visit by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Scientists unveil bionic robo-fish to remove microplastics from seas
Sofia Quaglia - the guardian
Wed 22 Jun 2022 07.47 EDT
Scientists have designed a tiny robot-fish that is programmed to remove microplastics from seas and oceans by swimming around and adsorbing them on its soft, flexible, self-healing body.
Microplastics are the billions of tiny plastic particles which fragment from the bigger plastic things used every day such as water bottles, car tyres and synthetic T-shirts. They are one of the 21st century’s biggest environmental problems because once they are dispersed into the environment through the breakdown of larger plastics they are very hard to get rid of, making their way into drinking water, produce, and food, harming the environment and animal and human health.
“It is of great significance to develop a robot to accurately collect and sample detrimental microplastic pollutants from the aquatic environment,” said Yuyan Wang, a researcher at the Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University and one of the lead authors on the study. Her team’s novel invention is described in a research paper in the journal Nano Letters. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of such soft robots.”
Researchers at Sichuan University have revealed an innovative solution to track down these pollutants when it comes to water contamination: designing a tiny self-propelled robo-fish that can swim around, latch on to free-floating microplastics, and fix itself if it gets cut or damaged while on its expedition.
The robo-fish is just 13mm long, and thanks to a light laser system in its tail, swims and flaps around at almost 30mm a second, similar to the speed at which plankton drift around in moving water.
The researchers created the robot from materials inspired by elements that thrive in the sea: mother-of-pearl, also known as nacre, which is the interior covering of clam shells. The team created a material similar to nacre by layering various microscopic sheets of molecules according to nacre’s specific chemical gradient.
This made them a robo-fish that is stretchy, flexible to twist, and even able to pull up to 5kg in weight, according to the study. Most importantly, the bionic fish can adsorb nearby free-floating bits of microplastics because the organic dyes, antibiotics, and heavy metals in the microplastics have strong chemical bonds and electrostatic interactions with the fish’s materials. That makes them cling on to its surface, so the fish can collect and remove microplastics from the water. “After the robot collects the microplastics in the water, the researchers can further analyse the composition and physiological toxicity of the microplastics,” said Wang.
Plus, the newly created material also seems to have regenerative abilities, said Wang, who specialises in the development of self-healing materials. So the robot fish can heal itself to 89% of its ability and continue adsorbing even in the case it experiences some damage or cutting – which could happen often if it goes hunting for pollutants in rough waters.
This is just a proof of concept, Wang notes, and much more research is needed – especially into how this could be deployed in the real world. For example, the soft robot currently only works on water surfaces, so Wang’s team will soon be working on more functionally complex robo-fish that can go deeper under the water. Still, this bionic design could offer a launchpad for other similar projects, Wang said. “I think nanotechnology holds great promise for trace adsorption, collection, and detection of pollutants, improving intervention efficiency while reducing operating costs.”
Indeed, nanotechnology will be one of the most important players in the fight against microplastics, according to Philip Demokritou, the director of the Nanoscience and Advanced Materials Research Center at Rutgers University, who was not involved in this study.
Demokritou’s lab also focuses on using nanotechnology to get rid of microplastics from the planet – but instead of cleaning them up, they are working on substituting them. This week, in the journal Nature Food, he announced the invention of a new plant-based spray coating which can serve as an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic food wraps. Their case study showed that this starch-based fibre spray can fend off pathogens and guard against transportation damage just as well, if not better, than current plastic packaging options.
“The motto for the last 40 to 50 years for the chemical industry is: let’s make chemicals, let’s make materials, put them out there and then clean the mess 20, or 30 years later,” said Demokritou. “That’s not a sustainable model. So can we synthesise safer design materials? Can we derive materials from food waste as part of the circular economy and turn them into useful materials that we can use to address this problem?”
This is low-hanging fruit for the field of nanotechnology, Demokritou said, and as research into materials gets better so will the multi-pronged approach of substituting plastic in our daily lives and filtering out its microplastic residue from the environment.
“But there’s a big distinction between an invention and an innovation,” Demokritou said. “Invention is something that nobody has thought about yet. Right? But innovation is something that will change people’s lives, because it makes it to commercialisation, and it can be scaled.”
Microplastics are the billions of tiny plastic particles which fragment from the bigger plastic things used every day such as water bottles, car tyres and synthetic T-shirts. They are one of the 21st century’s biggest environmental problems because once they are dispersed into the environment through the breakdown of larger plastics they are very hard to get rid of, making their way into drinking water, produce, and food, harming the environment and animal and human health.
“It is of great significance to develop a robot to accurately collect and sample detrimental microplastic pollutants from the aquatic environment,” said Yuyan Wang, a researcher at the Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University and one of the lead authors on the study. Her team’s novel invention is described in a research paper in the journal Nano Letters. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of such soft robots.”
Researchers at Sichuan University have revealed an innovative solution to track down these pollutants when it comes to water contamination: designing a tiny self-propelled robo-fish that can swim around, latch on to free-floating microplastics, and fix itself if it gets cut or damaged while on its expedition.
The robo-fish is just 13mm long, and thanks to a light laser system in its tail, swims and flaps around at almost 30mm a second, similar to the speed at which plankton drift around in moving water.
The researchers created the robot from materials inspired by elements that thrive in the sea: mother-of-pearl, also known as nacre, which is the interior covering of clam shells. The team created a material similar to nacre by layering various microscopic sheets of molecules according to nacre’s specific chemical gradient.
This made them a robo-fish that is stretchy, flexible to twist, and even able to pull up to 5kg in weight, according to the study. Most importantly, the bionic fish can adsorb nearby free-floating bits of microplastics because the organic dyes, antibiotics, and heavy metals in the microplastics have strong chemical bonds and electrostatic interactions with the fish’s materials. That makes them cling on to its surface, so the fish can collect and remove microplastics from the water. “After the robot collects the microplastics in the water, the researchers can further analyse the composition and physiological toxicity of the microplastics,” said Wang.
Plus, the newly created material also seems to have regenerative abilities, said Wang, who specialises in the development of self-healing materials. So the robot fish can heal itself to 89% of its ability and continue adsorbing even in the case it experiences some damage or cutting – which could happen often if it goes hunting for pollutants in rough waters.
This is just a proof of concept, Wang notes, and much more research is needed – especially into how this could be deployed in the real world. For example, the soft robot currently only works on water surfaces, so Wang’s team will soon be working on more functionally complex robo-fish that can go deeper under the water. Still, this bionic design could offer a launchpad for other similar projects, Wang said. “I think nanotechnology holds great promise for trace adsorption, collection, and detection of pollutants, improving intervention efficiency while reducing operating costs.”
Indeed, nanotechnology will be one of the most important players in the fight against microplastics, according to Philip Demokritou, the director of the Nanoscience and Advanced Materials Research Center at Rutgers University, who was not involved in this study.
Demokritou’s lab also focuses on using nanotechnology to get rid of microplastics from the planet – but instead of cleaning them up, they are working on substituting them. This week, in the journal Nature Food, he announced the invention of a new plant-based spray coating which can serve as an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic food wraps. Their case study showed that this starch-based fibre spray can fend off pathogens and guard against transportation damage just as well, if not better, than current plastic packaging options.
“The motto for the last 40 to 50 years for the chemical industry is: let’s make chemicals, let’s make materials, put them out there and then clean the mess 20, or 30 years later,” said Demokritou. “That’s not a sustainable model. So can we synthesise safer design materials? Can we derive materials from food waste as part of the circular economy and turn them into useful materials that we can use to address this problem?”
This is low-hanging fruit for the field of nanotechnology, Demokritou said, and as research into materials gets better so will the multi-pronged approach of substituting plastic in our daily lives and filtering out its microplastic residue from the environment.
“But there’s a big distinction between an invention and an innovation,” Demokritou said. “Invention is something that nobody has thought about yet. Right? But innovation is something that will change people’s lives, because it makes it to commercialisation, and it can be scaled.”
Gel that repairs heart attack damage could improve health of millions
Injectable, biodegradable technology developed by UK team works as a scaffold to help new tissue grow
Andrew Gregory Health editor
the guardian
Tue 7 Jun 2022 19.01 EDT
British researchers have developed a biodegradable gel to repair damage caused by a heart attack in a breakthrough that could improve the health of millions of survivors worldwide.
There are more than 100,000 hospital admissions every year due to heart attacks in the UK alone – one every five minutes. Medical advances mean more people than ever before survive, with 1.4 million Britons alive today after experiencing a heart attack. But hearts have a very limited ability to regenerate, meaning survivors are left at risk of heart failure and other health problems.
Now after years of efforts searching for solutions to help the heart repair itself, researchers at the University of Manchester have created a gel that can be injected directly into the beating heart – effectively working as a scaffold to help injected cells grow new tissue.
Until now, when cells have been injected into the heart to reduce the risk of heart failure, only 1% have stayed in place and survived. But the gel can hold them in place as they graft on to the heart.
“While it’s still early days, the potential this new technology has in helping to repair failing hearts after a heart attack is huge,” said Katharine King, who led the research backed by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). “We’re confident that this gel will be an effective option for future cell-based therapies to help the damaged heart to regenerate.
To prove the technology could work, researchers showed the gel can support growth of normal heart muscle tissue. When they added human cells reprogrammed to become heart muscle cells into the gel, they were able to grow in a dish for three weeks and the cells started to spontaneously beat.
Echocardiograms (ultrasounds of the heart) and electrocardiograms (ECGs, which measure the electrical activity of the heart) on mice confirmed the safety of the gel. To gain more knowledge, researchers will test the gel after mice have a heart attack to show they develop new muscle tissue.
The study is being presented at the British Cardiovascular Society conference in Manchester.
Prof James Leiper, an associate medical director at the BHF, said: “We’ve come so far in our ability to treat heart attacks and today more people than ever survive. However, this also means that more people are surviving with damaged hearts and are at risk of developing heart failure.
“This new injectable technology harnesses the natural properties of peptides to potentially solve one of the problems that has hindered this type of therapy for years. If the benefits are replicated in further research and then in patients, these gels could become a significant component of future treatments to repair the damage caused by heart attacks.”
Separate research being presented at the same conference found that obesity can drive hearts to fail and weaken their structure.
The largest study of its kind on 490,000 people found that those with a higher body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio had about a 30% increased risk of heart failure. This risk occurred regardless of other risks for heart failure such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Dr Zahra Raisi-Estabragh, from Queen Mary University of London, who supervised the study, said: “We already know that obesity increases the risk of heart and circulatory diseases that can go on to cause heart failure. But now we have revealed that obesity itself could be a driver of hearts starting to fail.”
There are more than 100,000 hospital admissions every year due to heart attacks in the UK alone – one every five minutes. Medical advances mean more people than ever before survive, with 1.4 million Britons alive today after experiencing a heart attack. But hearts have a very limited ability to regenerate, meaning survivors are left at risk of heart failure and other health problems.
Now after years of efforts searching for solutions to help the heart repair itself, researchers at the University of Manchester have created a gel that can be injected directly into the beating heart – effectively working as a scaffold to help injected cells grow new tissue.
Until now, when cells have been injected into the heart to reduce the risk of heart failure, only 1% have stayed in place and survived. But the gel can hold them in place as they graft on to the heart.
“While it’s still early days, the potential this new technology has in helping to repair failing hearts after a heart attack is huge,” said Katharine King, who led the research backed by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). “We’re confident that this gel will be an effective option for future cell-based therapies to help the damaged heart to regenerate.
To prove the technology could work, researchers showed the gel can support growth of normal heart muscle tissue. When they added human cells reprogrammed to become heart muscle cells into the gel, they were able to grow in a dish for three weeks and the cells started to spontaneously beat.
Echocardiograms (ultrasounds of the heart) and electrocardiograms (ECGs, which measure the electrical activity of the heart) on mice confirmed the safety of the gel. To gain more knowledge, researchers will test the gel after mice have a heart attack to show they develop new muscle tissue.
The study is being presented at the British Cardiovascular Society conference in Manchester.
Prof James Leiper, an associate medical director at the BHF, said: “We’ve come so far in our ability to treat heart attacks and today more people than ever survive. However, this also means that more people are surviving with damaged hearts and are at risk of developing heart failure.
“This new injectable technology harnesses the natural properties of peptides to potentially solve one of the problems that has hindered this type of therapy for years. If the benefits are replicated in further research and then in patients, these gels could become a significant component of future treatments to repair the damage caused by heart attacks.”
Separate research being presented at the same conference found that obesity can drive hearts to fail and weaken their structure.
The largest study of its kind on 490,000 people found that those with a higher body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio had about a 30% increased risk of heart failure. This risk occurred regardless of other risks for heart failure such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Dr Zahra Raisi-Estabragh, from Queen Mary University of London, who supervised the study, said: “We already know that obesity increases the risk of heart and circulatory diseases that can go on to cause heart failure. But now we have revealed that obesity itself could be a driver of hearts starting to fail.”
Study suggests bacteria in cow’s stomach can break down plastic
Scientists find micro-organisms from the bovine stomach have ability to degrade polyesters in lab setting
Natalie Grover
the guardian
Fri 2 Jul 2021 05.14 EDT
Bacteria found in one of the compartments of a cow’s stomach can break down plastic, research suggests.
Since the 1950s, more than 8bn tonnes of plastic have been produced – equivalent in weight to 1 billion elephants – driven predominantly by packaging, single-use containers, wrapping and bottles. As a result, plastic pollution is all-pervasive, in the water and in the air, with people unwittingly consuming and breathing microplastic particles. In recent years, researchers have been working on harnessing the ability of tiny microscopic bugs to break down the stubborn material.
There are existing microbes that are able to degrade natural polyester, found for example in the peels of tomatoes or apples. Given that cow diets contain these natural polyesters, scientists suspected the bovine stomach would contain a cornucopia of microbes to degrade all the plant material.
To test that theory, Dr Doris Ribitsch, of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, and her colleagues procured liquid from the rumen, a compartment of a cow’s stomach, from a slaughterhouse in Austria. One cow typically produces a rumen volume of about 100 litres, noted Ribitsch. “You can imagine the huge amount of rumen liquid accumulating in slaughterhouses every day – and it’s only waste.”
That liquid was incubated with the three types of polyesters – PET (a synthetic polymer commonly used in textiles and packaging); PBAT (biodegradable plastic often used in compostable plastic bags); and PEF (a biobased material made from renewable resources). Each plastic was tested in both film and powder form.
The results showed all three plastics could be broken down by the micro-organisms from cow stomachs in the lab setting, with the plastic powders breaking down quicker than plastic film. The next steps, she said, were to identify those microbes crucial to plastic degradation from the thousands present in the rumen, and then the enzymes produced by them. Once the enzymes have been identified, they can be produced and applied in recycling plants.
For now, plastic waste is mostly burned. To a lesser extent, it is melted for use in other products, but beyond a point it becomes damaged and can no longer be used again. Another method is chemical recycling – turning plastic waste back into base chemicals – but that is not an environmentally friendly process. Using enzymes is billed as a form of green chemical recycling.
Other researchers are further along in their quest to developing and scaling such enzymes. In September a super-enzyme was engineered by linking two separate enzymes, both of which were found in the plastic-eating bug discovered at a Japanese waste site in 2016.
The researchers revealed an engineered version of the first enzyme in 2018, which started breaking down the plastic in a few days. But the super-enzyme gets to work six times faster. Earlier in April, the French company Carbios revealed a different enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, that degrades 90% of plastic bottles within 10 hours.
In the rumen liquid, it appears there is not just one type of enzyme present, but rather different enzymes working together to achieve degradation, the authors suggested in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
Carbios was working on scaling up its technology, noted Ribitsch. “But of course, it’s always good to have even better enzymes that are maybe recycling other polymers, not only PET, for example … so it can be seen as a general recycling material.”
Since the 1950s, more than 8bn tonnes of plastic have been produced – equivalent in weight to 1 billion elephants – driven predominantly by packaging, single-use containers, wrapping and bottles. As a result, plastic pollution is all-pervasive, in the water and in the air, with people unwittingly consuming and breathing microplastic particles. In recent years, researchers have been working on harnessing the ability of tiny microscopic bugs to break down the stubborn material.
There are existing microbes that are able to degrade natural polyester, found for example in the peels of tomatoes or apples. Given that cow diets contain these natural polyesters, scientists suspected the bovine stomach would contain a cornucopia of microbes to degrade all the plant material.
To test that theory, Dr Doris Ribitsch, of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, and her colleagues procured liquid from the rumen, a compartment of a cow’s stomach, from a slaughterhouse in Austria. One cow typically produces a rumen volume of about 100 litres, noted Ribitsch. “You can imagine the huge amount of rumen liquid accumulating in slaughterhouses every day – and it’s only waste.”
That liquid was incubated with the three types of polyesters – PET (a synthetic polymer commonly used in textiles and packaging); PBAT (biodegradable plastic often used in compostable plastic bags); and PEF (a biobased material made from renewable resources). Each plastic was tested in both film and powder form.
The results showed all three plastics could be broken down by the micro-organisms from cow stomachs in the lab setting, with the plastic powders breaking down quicker than plastic film. The next steps, she said, were to identify those microbes crucial to plastic degradation from the thousands present in the rumen, and then the enzymes produced by them. Once the enzymes have been identified, they can be produced and applied in recycling plants.
For now, plastic waste is mostly burned. To a lesser extent, it is melted for use in other products, but beyond a point it becomes damaged and can no longer be used again. Another method is chemical recycling – turning plastic waste back into base chemicals – but that is not an environmentally friendly process. Using enzymes is billed as a form of green chemical recycling.
Other researchers are further along in their quest to developing and scaling such enzymes. In September a super-enzyme was engineered by linking two separate enzymes, both of which were found in the plastic-eating bug discovered at a Japanese waste site in 2016.
The researchers revealed an engineered version of the first enzyme in 2018, which started breaking down the plastic in a few days. But the super-enzyme gets to work six times faster. Earlier in April, the French company Carbios revealed a different enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, that degrades 90% of plastic bottles within 10 hours.
In the rumen liquid, it appears there is not just one type of enzyme present, but rather different enzymes working together to achieve degradation, the authors suggested in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
Carbios was working on scaling up its technology, noted Ribitsch. “But of course, it’s always good to have even better enzymes that are maybe recycling other polymers, not only PET, for example … so it can be seen as a general recycling material.”
MIT Engineers Have Discovered a Completely New Way of Generating Electricity
By ANNE TRAFTON, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
scitechdaily.com
JUNE 7, 2021
Tiny Particles Power Chemical Reactions
A new material made from carbon nanotubes can generate electricity by scavenging energy from its environment.
MIT engineers have discovered a new way of generating electricity using tiny carbon particles that can create a current simply by interacting with liquid surrounding them.
The liquid, an organic solvent, draws electrons out of the particles, generating a current that could be used to drive chemical reactions or to power micro- or nanoscale robots, the researchers say.
“This mechanism is new, and this way of generating energy is completely new,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “This technology is intriguing because all you have to do is flow a solvent through a bed of these particles. This allows you to do electrochemistry, but with no wires.”
In a new study describing this phenomenon, the researchers showed that they could use this electric current to drive a reaction known as alcohol oxidation — an organic chemical reaction that is important in the chemical industry.
Strano is the senior author of the paper, which appears today (June 7, 2021) in Nature Communications. The lead authors of the study are MIT graduate student Albert Tianxiang Liu and former MIT researcher Yuichiro Kunai. Other authors include former graduate student Anton Cottrill, postdocs Amir Kaplan and Hyunah Kim, graduate student Ge Zhang, and recent MIT graduates Rafid Mollah and Yannick Eatmon.
Unique properties
The new discovery grew out of Strano’s research on carbon nanotubes — hollow tubes made of a lattice of carbon atoms, which have unique electrical properties. In 2010, Strano demonstrated, for the first time, that carbon nanotubes can generate “thermopower waves.” When a carbon nanotube is coated with layer of fuel, moving pulses of heat, or thermopower waves, travel along the tube, creating an electrical current.
That work led Strano and his students to uncover a related feature of carbon nanotubes. They found that when part of a nanotube is coated with a Teflon-like polymer, it creates an asymmetry that makes it possible for electrons to flow from the coated to the uncoated part of the tube, generating an electrical current. Those electrons can be drawn out by submerging the particles in a solvent that is hungry for electrons.
To harness this special capability, the researchers created electricity-generating particles by grinding up carbon nanotubes and forming them into a sheet of paper-like material. One side of each sheet was coated with a Teflon-like polymer, and the researchers then cut out small particles, which can be any shape or size. For this study, they made particles that were 250 microns by 250 microns.
When these particles are submerged in an organic solvent such as acetonitrile, the solvent adheres to the uncoated surface of the particles and begins pulling electrons out of them.
“The solvent takes electrons away, and the system tries to equilibrate by moving electrons,” Strano says. “There’s no sophisticated battery chemistry inside. It’s just a particle and you put it into solvent and it starts generating an electric field.”
“This research cleverly shows how to extract the ubiquitous (and often unnoticed) electric energy stored in an electronic material for on-site electrochemical synthesis,” says Jun Yao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who was not involved in the study. “The beauty is that it points to a generic methodology that can be readily expanded to the use of different materials and applications in different synthetic systems.”
Particle power
The current version of the particles can generate about 0.7 volts of electricity per particle. In this study, the researchers also showed that they can form arrays of hundreds of particles in a small test tube. This “packed bed” reactor generates enough energy to power a chemical reaction called an alcohol oxidation, in which an alcohol is converted to an aldehyde or a ketone. Usually, this reaction is not performed using electrochemistry because it would require too much external current.
“Because the packed bed reactor is compact, it has more flexibility in terms of applications than a large electrochemical reactor,” Zhang says. “The particles can be made very small, and they don’t require any external wires in order to drive the electrochemical reaction.”
In future work, Strano hopes to use this kind of energy generation to build polymers using only carbon dioxide as a starting material. In a related project, he has already created polymers that can regenerate themselves using carbon dioxide as a building material, in a process powered by solar energy. This work is inspired by carbon fixation, the set of chemical reactions that plants use to build sugars from carbon dioxide, using energy from the sun.
In the longer term, this approach could also be used to power micro- or nanoscale robots. Strano’s lab has already begun building robots at that scale, which could one day be used as diagnostic or environmental sensors. The idea of being able to scavenge energy from the environment to power these kinds of robots is appealing, he says.
“It means you don’t have to put the energy storage on board,” he says. “What we like about this mechanism is that you can take the energy, at least in part, from the environment.”
A new material made from carbon nanotubes can generate electricity by scavenging energy from its environment.
MIT engineers have discovered a new way of generating electricity using tiny carbon particles that can create a current simply by interacting with liquid surrounding them.
The liquid, an organic solvent, draws electrons out of the particles, generating a current that could be used to drive chemical reactions or to power micro- or nanoscale robots, the researchers say.
“This mechanism is new, and this way of generating energy is completely new,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “This technology is intriguing because all you have to do is flow a solvent through a bed of these particles. This allows you to do electrochemistry, but with no wires.”
In a new study describing this phenomenon, the researchers showed that they could use this electric current to drive a reaction known as alcohol oxidation — an organic chemical reaction that is important in the chemical industry.
Strano is the senior author of the paper, which appears today (June 7, 2021) in Nature Communications. The lead authors of the study are MIT graduate student Albert Tianxiang Liu and former MIT researcher Yuichiro Kunai. Other authors include former graduate student Anton Cottrill, postdocs Amir Kaplan and Hyunah Kim, graduate student Ge Zhang, and recent MIT graduates Rafid Mollah and Yannick Eatmon.
Unique properties
The new discovery grew out of Strano’s research on carbon nanotubes — hollow tubes made of a lattice of carbon atoms, which have unique electrical properties. In 2010, Strano demonstrated, for the first time, that carbon nanotubes can generate “thermopower waves.” When a carbon nanotube is coated with layer of fuel, moving pulses of heat, or thermopower waves, travel along the tube, creating an electrical current.
That work led Strano and his students to uncover a related feature of carbon nanotubes. They found that when part of a nanotube is coated with a Teflon-like polymer, it creates an asymmetry that makes it possible for electrons to flow from the coated to the uncoated part of the tube, generating an electrical current. Those electrons can be drawn out by submerging the particles in a solvent that is hungry for electrons.
To harness this special capability, the researchers created electricity-generating particles by grinding up carbon nanotubes and forming them into a sheet of paper-like material. One side of each sheet was coated with a Teflon-like polymer, and the researchers then cut out small particles, which can be any shape or size. For this study, they made particles that were 250 microns by 250 microns.
When these particles are submerged in an organic solvent such as acetonitrile, the solvent adheres to the uncoated surface of the particles and begins pulling electrons out of them.
“The solvent takes electrons away, and the system tries to equilibrate by moving electrons,” Strano says. “There’s no sophisticated battery chemistry inside. It’s just a particle and you put it into solvent and it starts generating an electric field.”
“This research cleverly shows how to extract the ubiquitous (and often unnoticed) electric energy stored in an electronic material for on-site electrochemical synthesis,” says Jun Yao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who was not involved in the study. “The beauty is that it points to a generic methodology that can be readily expanded to the use of different materials and applications in different synthetic systems.”
Particle power
The current version of the particles can generate about 0.7 volts of electricity per particle. In this study, the researchers also showed that they can form arrays of hundreds of particles in a small test tube. This “packed bed” reactor generates enough energy to power a chemical reaction called an alcohol oxidation, in which an alcohol is converted to an aldehyde or a ketone. Usually, this reaction is not performed using electrochemistry because it would require too much external current.
“Because the packed bed reactor is compact, it has more flexibility in terms of applications than a large electrochemical reactor,” Zhang says. “The particles can be made very small, and they don’t require any external wires in order to drive the electrochemical reaction.”
In future work, Strano hopes to use this kind of energy generation to build polymers using only carbon dioxide as a starting material. In a related project, he has already created polymers that can regenerate themselves using carbon dioxide as a building material, in a process powered by solar energy. This work is inspired by carbon fixation, the set of chemical reactions that plants use to build sugars from carbon dioxide, using energy from the sun.
In the longer term, this approach could also be used to power micro- or nanoscale robots. Strano’s lab has already begun building robots at that scale, which could one day be used as diagnostic or environmental sensors. The idea of being able to scavenge energy from the environment to power these kinds of robots is appealing, he says.
“It means you don’t have to put the energy storage on board,” he says. “What we like about this mechanism is that you can take the energy, at least in part, from the environment.”
Astronomy
Scientists may have solved ancient mystery of 'first computer'
Researchers claim breakthrough in study of 2,000-year-old Antikythera mechanism, an astronomical calculator found in sea
Ian Sample Science editor
the guardian
Fri 12 Mar 2021 05.00 EST
Computer model of how the Antikythera mechanism may have worked. Photograph: UCL
From the moment it was discovered more than a century ago, scholars have puzzled over the Antikythera mechanism, a remarkable and baffling astronomical calculator that survives from the ancient world.
The hand-powered, 2,000-year-old device displayed the motion of the universe, predicting the movement of the five known planets, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses. But quite how it achieved such impressive feats has proved fiendishly hard to untangle.
Now researchers at UCL believe they have solved the mystery – at least in part – and have set about reconstructing the device, gearwheels and all, to test whether their proposal works. If they can build a replica with modern machinery, they aim to do the same with techniques from antiquity.
“We believe that our reconstruction fits all the evidence that scientists have gleaned from the extant remains to date,” said Adam Wojcik, a materials scientist at UCL. While other scholars have made reconstructions in the past, the fact that two-thirds of the mechanism are missing has made it hard to know for sure how it worked.
The mechanism, often described as the world’s first analogue computer, was found by sponge divers in 1901 amid a haul of treasures salvaged from a merchant ship that met with disaster off the Greek island of Antikythera. The ship is believed to have foundered in a storm in the first century BC as it passed between Crete and the Peloponnese en route to Rome from Asia Minor.
The battered fragments of corroded brass were barely noticed at first, but decades of scholarly work have revealed the object to be a masterpiece of mechanical engineering. Originally encased in a wooden box one foot tall, the mechanism was covered in inscriptions – a built-in user’s manual – and contained more than 30 bronze gearwheels connected to dials and pointers. Turn the handle and the heavens, as known to the Greeks, swung into motion.
Michael Wright, a former curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum in London, pieced together much of how the mechanism operated and built a working replica, but researchers have never had a complete understanding of how the device functioned. Their efforts have not been helped by the remnants surviving in 82 separate fragments, making the task of rebuilding it equivalent to solving a battered 3D puzzle that has most of its pieces missing.
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the UCL team describe how they drew on the work of Wright and others, and used inscriptions on the mechanism and a mathematical method described by the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, to work out new gear arrangements that would move the planets and other bodies in the correct way. The solution allows nearly all of the mechanism’s gearwheels to fit within a space only 25mm deep.
According to the team, the mechanism may have displayed the movement of the sun, moon and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on concentric rings. Because the device assumed that the sun and planets revolved around Earth, their paths were far more difficult to reproduce with gearwheels than if the sun was placed at the centre. Another change the scientists propose is a double-ended pointer they call a “Dragon Hand” that indicates when eclipses are due to happen.
The researchers believe the work brings them closer to a true understanding of how the Antikythera device displayed the heavens, but it is not clear whether the design is correct or could have been built with ancient manufacturing techniques. The concentric rings that make up the display would need to rotate on a set of nested, hollow axles, but without a lathe to shape the metal, it is unclear how the ancient Greeks would have manufactured such components.
“The concentric tubes at the core of the planetarium are where my faith in Greek tech falters, and where the model might also falter,” said Wojcik. “Lathes would be the way today, but we can’t assume they had those for metal.”
Whether or not the model works, more mysteries remain. It is unclear whether the Antikythera mechanism was a toy, a teaching tool or had some other purpose. And if the ancient Greeks were capable of such mechanical devices, what else did they do with the knowledge?
“Although metal is precious, and so would have been recycled, it is odd that nothing remotely similar has been found or dug up,” Wojcik said. “If they had the tech to make the Antikythera mechanism, why did they not extend this tech to devising other machines, such as clocks?”
The hand-powered, 2,000-year-old device displayed the motion of the universe, predicting the movement of the five known planets, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses. But quite how it achieved such impressive feats has proved fiendishly hard to untangle.
Now researchers at UCL believe they have solved the mystery – at least in part – and have set about reconstructing the device, gearwheels and all, to test whether their proposal works. If they can build a replica with modern machinery, they aim to do the same with techniques from antiquity.
“We believe that our reconstruction fits all the evidence that scientists have gleaned from the extant remains to date,” said Adam Wojcik, a materials scientist at UCL. While other scholars have made reconstructions in the past, the fact that two-thirds of the mechanism are missing has made it hard to know for sure how it worked.
The mechanism, often described as the world’s first analogue computer, was found by sponge divers in 1901 amid a haul of treasures salvaged from a merchant ship that met with disaster off the Greek island of Antikythera. The ship is believed to have foundered in a storm in the first century BC as it passed between Crete and the Peloponnese en route to Rome from Asia Minor.
The battered fragments of corroded brass were barely noticed at first, but decades of scholarly work have revealed the object to be a masterpiece of mechanical engineering. Originally encased in a wooden box one foot tall, the mechanism was covered in inscriptions – a built-in user’s manual – and contained more than 30 bronze gearwheels connected to dials and pointers. Turn the handle and the heavens, as known to the Greeks, swung into motion.
Michael Wright, a former curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum in London, pieced together much of how the mechanism operated and built a working replica, but researchers have never had a complete understanding of how the device functioned. Their efforts have not been helped by the remnants surviving in 82 separate fragments, making the task of rebuilding it equivalent to solving a battered 3D puzzle that has most of its pieces missing.
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the UCL team describe how they drew on the work of Wright and others, and used inscriptions on the mechanism and a mathematical method described by the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, to work out new gear arrangements that would move the planets and other bodies in the correct way. The solution allows nearly all of the mechanism’s gearwheels to fit within a space only 25mm deep.
According to the team, the mechanism may have displayed the movement of the sun, moon and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on concentric rings. Because the device assumed that the sun and planets revolved around Earth, their paths were far more difficult to reproduce with gearwheels than if the sun was placed at the centre. Another change the scientists propose is a double-ended pointer they call a “Dragon Hand” that indicates when eclipses are due to happen.
The researchers believe the work brings them closer to a true understanding of how the Antikythera device displayed the heavens, but it is not clear whether the design is correct or could have been built with ancient manufacturing techniques. The concentric rings that make up the display would need to rotate on a set of nested, hollow axles, but without a lathe to shape the metal, it is unclear how the ancient Greeks would have manufactured such components.
“The concentric tubes at the core of the planetarium are where my faith in Greek tech falters, and where the model might also falter,” said Wojcik. “Lathes would be the way today, but we can’t assume they had those for metal.”
Whether or not the model works, more mysteries remain. It is unclear whether the Antikythera mechanism was a toy, a teaching tool or had some other purpose. And if the ancient Greeks were capable of such mechanical devices, what else did they do with the knowledge?
“Although metal is precious, and so would have been recycled, it is odd that nothing remotely similar has been found or dug up,” Wojcik said. “If they had the tech to make the Antikythera mechanism, why did they not extend this tech to devising other machines, such as clocks?”
The search for dark matter gets a speed boost from quantum technology
the conservation
February 10, 2021 11.10am EST
The HAYSTAC detector is searching for the axion, one of the hypothetical particles that could make up dark matter. Kelly Backes, CC BY-ND
Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what it’s made of.
Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named HAYSTAC. But despite decades of experimental effort, scientists have yet to identify the dark matter particle.
Now, the search for dark matter has received an unlikely assist from technology used in quantum computing research. In a new paper published in the journal Nature, my colleagues on the HAYSTAC team and I describe how we used a bit of quantum trickery to double the rate at which our detector can search for dark matter. Our result adds a much-needed speed boost to the hunt for this mysterious particle.
Scanning for a dark matter signal
There is compelling evidence from astrophysics and cosmology that an unknown substance called dark matter constitutes more than 80% of the matter in the universe. Theoretical physicists have proposed dozens of new fundamental particles that could explain dark matter. But to determine which – if any – of these theories is correct, researchers need to build different detectors to test each one.
One prominent theory proposes that dark matter is made of as-yet hypothetical particles called axions that collectively behave like an invisible wave oscillating at a very specific frequency through the cosmos. Axion detectors – including HAYSTAC – work something like radio receivers, but instead of converting radio waves to sound waves, they aim to convert axion waves into electromagnetic waves. Specifically, axion detectors measure two quantities called electromagnetic field quadratures. These quadratures are two distinct kinds of oscillation in the electromagnetic wave that would be produced if axions exist.
The main challenge in the search for axions is that nobody knows the frequency of the hypothetical axion wave. Imagine you’re in an unfamiliar city searching for a particular radio station by working your way through the FM band one frequency at a time. Axion hunters do much the same thing: They tune their detectors over a wide range of frequencies in discrete steps. Each step can cover only a very small range of possible axion frequencies. This small range is the bandwidth of the detector.
Tuning a radio typically involves pausing for a few seconds at each step to see if you’ve found the station you’re looking for. That’s harder if the signal is weak and there’s a lot of static. An axion signal – in even the most sensitive detectors – would be extraordinarily faint compared with static from random electromagnetic fluctuations, which physicists call noise. The more noise there is, the longer the detector must sit at each tuning step to listen for an axion signal.
Unfortunately, researchers can’t count on picking up the axion broadcast after a few dozen turns of the radio dial. An FM radio tunes from only 88 to 108 megahertz (one megahertz is one million hertz). The axion frequency, by contrast, may be anywhere between 300 hertz and 300 billion hertz. At the rate today’s detectors are going, finding the axion or proving that it doesn’t exist could take more than 10,000 years.
Squeezing the quantum noise
On the HAYSTAC team, we don’t have that kind of patience. So in 2012 we set out to speed up the axion search by doing everything possible to reduce noise. But by 2017 we found ourselves running up against a fundamental minimum noise limit because of a law of quantum physics known as the uncertainty principle.
The uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know the exact values of certain physical quantities simultaneously – for instance, you can’t know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. Recall that axion detectors search for the axion by measuring two quadratures – those specific kinds of electromagnetic field oscillations. The uncertainty principle prohibits precise knowledge of both quadratures by adding a minimum amount of noise to the quadrature oscillations.
In conventional axion detectors, the quantum noise from the uncertainty principle obscures both quadratures equally. This noise can’t be eliminated, but with the right tools it can be controlled. Our team worked out a way to shuffle around the quantum noise in the HAYSTAC detector, reducing its effect on one quadrature while increasing its effect on the other. This noise manipulation technique is called quantum squeezing.
In an effort led by graduate students Kelly Backes and Dan Palken, the HAYSTAC team took on the challenge of implementing squeezing in our detector, using superconducting circuit technology borrowed from quantum computing research. General-purpose quantum computers remain a long way off, but our new paper shows that this squeezing technology can immediately speed up the search for dark matter.
Bigger bandwidth, faster search
Our team succeeded in squeezing the noise in the HAYSTAC detector. But how did we use this to speed up the axion search?
Quantum squeezing doesn’t reduce the noise uniformly across the axion detector bandwidth. Instead, it has the largest effect at the edges. Imagine you tune your radio to 88.3 megahertz, but the station you want is actually at 88.1. With quantum squeezing, you would be able to hear your favorite song playing one station away.
In the world of radio broadcasting this would be a recipe for disaster, because different stations would interfere with one another. But with only one dark matter signal to look for, a wider bandwidth allows physicists to search faster by covering more frequencies at once. In our latest result we used squeezing to double the bandwidth of HAYSTAC, allowing us to search for axions twice as fast as we could before.
Quantum squeezing alone isn’t enough to scan through every possible axion frequency in a reasonable time. But doubling the scan rate is a big step in the right direction, and we believe further improvements to our quantum squeezing system may enable us to scan 10 times faster.
Nobody knows whether axions exist or whether they will resolve the mystery of dark matter; but thanks to this unexpected application of quantum technology, we’re one step closer to answering these questions.
Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named HAYSTAC. But despite decades of experimental effort, scientists have yet to identify the dark matter particle.
Now, the search for dark matter has received an unlikely assist from technology used in quantum computing research. In a new paper published in the journal Nature, my colleagues on the HAYSTAC team and I describe how we used a bit of quantum trickery to double the rate at which our detector can search for dark matter. Our result adds a much-needed speed boost to the hunt for this mysterious particle.
Scanning for a dark matter signal
There is compelling evidence from astrophysics and cosmology that an unknown substance called dark matter constitutes more than 80% of the matter in the universe. Theoretical physicists have proposed dozens of new fundamental particles that could explain dark matter. But to determine which – if any – of these theories is correct, researchers need to build different detectors to test each one.
One prominent theory proposes that dark matter is made of as-yet hypothetical particles called axions that collectively behave like an invisible wave oscillating at a very specific frequency through the cosmos. Axion detectors – including HAYSTAC – work something like radio receivers, but instead of converting radio waves to sound waves, they aim to convert axion waves into electromagnetic waves. Specifically, axion detectors measure two quantities called electromagnetic field quadratures. These quadratures are two distinct kinds of oscillation in the electromagnetic wave that would be produced if axions exist.
The main challenge in the search for axions is that nobody knows the frequency of the hypothetical axion wave. Imagine you’re in an unfamiliar city searching for a particular radio station by working your way through the FM band one frequency at a time. Axion hunters do much the same thing: They tune their detectors over a wide range of frequencies in discrete steps. Each step can cover only a very small range of possible axion frequencies. This small range is the bandwidth of the detector.
Tuning a radio typically involves pausing for a few seconds at each step to see if you’ve found the station you’re looking for. That’s harder if the signal is weak and there’s a lot of static. An axion signal – in even the most sensitive detectors – would be extraordinarily faint compared with static from random electromagnetic fluctuations, which physicists call noise. The more noise there is, the longer the detector must sit at each tuning step to listen for an axion signal.
Unfortunately, researchers can’t count on picking up the axion broadcast after a few dozen turns of the radio dial. An FM radio tunes from only 88 to 108 megahertz (one megahertz is one million hertz). The axion frequency, by contrast, may be anywhere between 300 hertz and 300 billion hertz. At the rate today’s detectors are going, finding the axion or proving that it doesn’t exist could take more than 10,000 years.
Squeezing the quantum noise
On the HAYSTAC team, we don’t have that kind of patience. So in 2012 we set out to speed up the axion search by doing everything possible to reduce noise. But by 2017 we found ourselves running up against a fundamental minimum noise limit because of a law of quantum physics known as the uncertainty principle.
The uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know the exact values of certain physical quantities simultaneously – for instance, you can’t know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. Recall that axion detectors search for the axion by measuring two quadratures – those specific kinds of electromagnetic field oscillations. The uncertainty principle prohibits precise knowledge of both quadratures by adding a minimum amount of noise to the quadrature oscillations.
In conventional axion detectors, the quantum noise from the uncertainty principle obscures both quadratures equally. This noise can’t be eliminated, but with the right tools it can be controlled. Our team worked out a way to shuffle around the quantum noise in the HAYSTAC detector, reducing its effect on one quadrature while increasing its effect on the other. This noise manipulation technique is called quantum squeezing.
In an effort led by graduate students Kelly Backes and Dan Palken, the HAYSTAC team took on the challenge of implementing squeezing in our detector, using superconducting circuit technology borrowed from quantum computing research. General-purpose quantum computers remain a long way off, but our new paper shows that this squeezing technology can immediately speed up the search for dark matter.
Bigger bandwidth, faster search
Our team succeeded in squeezing the noise in the HAYSTAC detector. But how did we use this to speed up the axion search?
Quantum squeezing doesn’t reduce the noise uniformly across the axion detector bandwidth. Instead, it has the largest effect at the edges. Imagine you tune your radio to 88.3 megahertz, but the station you want is actually at 88.1. With quantum squeezing, you would be able to hear your favorite song playing one station away.
In the world of radio broadcasting this would be a recipe for disaster, because different stations would interfere with one another. But with only one dark matter signal to look for, a wider bandwidth allows physicists to search faster by covering more frequencies at once. In our latest result we used squeezing to double the bandwidth of HAYSTAC, allowing us to search for axions twice as fast as we could before.
Quantum squeezing alone isn’t enough to scan through every possible axion frequency in a reasonable time. But doubling the scan rate is a big step in the right direction, and we believe further improvements to our quantum squeezing system may enable us to scan 10 times faster.
Nobody knows whether axions exist or whether they will resolve the mystery of dark matter; but thanks to this unexpected application of quantum technology, we’re one step closer to answering these questions.
DeepMind AI cracks 50-year-old problem of protein folding
Program solves scientific problem in ‘stunning advance’ for understanding machinery of life
Ian Sample Science editor
the guardian
Mon 30 Nov 2020 10.58 EST
Having risen to fame on its superhuman performance at playing games, the artificial intelligence group DeepMind has cracked a serious scientific problem that has stumped researchers for half a century.
With its latest AI program, AlphaFold, the company and research laboratory showed it can predict how proteins fold into 3D shapes, a fiendishly complex process that is fundamental to understanding the biological machinery of life.
Independent scientists said the breakthrough would help researchers tease apart the mechanisms that drive some diseases and pave the way for designer medicines, more nutritious crops and “green enzymes” that can break down plastic pollution.
DeepMind said it had started work with a handful of scientific groups and would focus initially on malaria, sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease.
“It marks an exciting moment for the field,” said Demis Hassabis, DeepMind’s founder and chief executive. “These algorithms are now becoming mature enough and powerful enough to be applicable to really challenging scientific problems.”
Venki Ramakrishnan, the president of the Royal Society, called the work “a stunning advance” that had occurred “decades before many people in the field would have predicted”.
DeepMind is best known for its run of human-trouncing programs that achieved supremacy in chess, Go, Starcraft II and old-school Atari classics. But superhuman gameplay was never the primary aim. Instead, games provided a training ground for programs that, once powerful enough, would be unleashed on real-world problems.
Protein folding has been a grand challenge in biology for 50 years. An arcane form of molecular origami, its importance is hard to overstate. Most biological processes revolve around proteins and a protein’s shape determines its function. When researchers know how a protein folds up, they can start to uncover what it does. How insulin controls sugar levels in the blood and how antibodies fight coronavirus are both determined by protein structure.
Scientists have identified more than 200m proteins but structures are known for only a fraction of them. Traditionally, the shapes are discovered through meticulous lab work that can take years. And while computer scientists have made headway on the problem, inferring the structure from a protein’s makeup is no easy task. Proteins are chains of amino acids that can twist and bend into a mind-boggling variety of shapes: a googol cubed, or 1 followed by 300 zeroes.
To learn how proteins fold, researchers at DeepMind trained their algorithm on a public database containing about 170,000 protein sequences and their shapes. Running on the equivalent of 100 to 200 graphics processing units – by modern standards, a modest amount of computing power – the training took a few weeks.
DeepMind put AlphaFold through its paces by entering it for a biennial “protein olympics” known as Casp, the Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction. Entrants to the international competition are given the amino acid sequences for about 100 proteins and challenged to work them out. The results from teams that use computers are compared with those based on lab work.
AlphaFold not only outperformed other computer programs but reached an accuracy comparable to the laborious and time-consuming lab-based methods. When ranked across all proteins analysed, AlphaFold had a median score of 92.5 out of 100, with 90 being the equivalent to experimental methods. For the hardest proteins, the median score fell, but only marginally to 87.
Hassabis said DeepMind had started work on how to give researchers access to AlphaFold to help with scientific research. Andrei Lupas, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, said he had already used the program to solve a protein structure that scientists had been stuck on for a decade.
Janet Thornton, a director emeritus of EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge, who was not involved in the work, said she was excited to hear the results. “This is a problem that I was beginning to think would not get solved in my lifetime,” she said. “Knowing these structures will really help us to understand how human beings operate and function, how we work.”
John Jumper, a researcher on the team at DeepMind, said: “We really didn’t know until we saw the Casp results how far we had pushed the field.” It is not the end of the work, however. Future research will focus on how proteins combine to form larger “complexes” and how they interact with other molecules in living organisms.
With its latest AI program, AlphaFold, the company and research laboratory showed it can predict how proteins fold into 3D shapes, a fiendishly complex process that is fundamental to understanding the biological machinery of life.
Independent scientists said the breakthrough would help researchers tease apart the mechanisms that drive some diseases and pave the way for designer medicines, more nutritious crops and “green enzymes” that can break down plastic pollution.
DeepMind said it had started work with a handful of scientific groups and would focus initially on malaria, sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease.
“It marks an exciting moment for the field,” said Demis Hassabis, DeepMind’s founder and chief executive. “These algorithms are now becoming mature enough and powerful enough to be applicable to really challenging scientific problems.”
Venki Ramakrishnan, the president of the Royal Society, called the work “a stunning advance” that had occurred “decades before many people in the field would have predicted”.
DeepMind is best known for its run of human-trouncing programs that achieved supremacy in chess, Go, Starcraft II and old-school Atari classics. But superhuman gameplay was never the primary aim. Instead, games provided a training ground for programs that, once powerful enough, would be unleashed on real-world problems.
Protein folding has been a grand challenge in biology for 50 years. An arcane form of molecular origami, its importance is hard to overstate. Most biological processes revolve around proteins and a protein’s shape determines its function. When researchers know how a protein folds up, they can start to uncover what it does. How insulin controls sugar levels in the blood and how antibodies fight coronavirus are both determined by protein structure.
Scientists have identified more than 200m proteins but structures are known for only a fraction of them. Traditionally, the shapes are discovered through meticulous lab work that can take years. And while computer scientists have made headway on the problem, inferring the structure from a protein’s makeup is no easy task. Proteins are chains of amino acids that can twist and bend into a mind-boggling variety of shapes: a googol cubed, or 1 followed by 300 zeroes.
To learn how proteins fold, researchers at DeepMind trained their algorithm on a public database containing about 170,000 protein sequences and their shapes. Running on the equivalent of 100 to 200 graphics processing units – by modern standards, a modest amount of computing power – the training took a few weeks.
DeepMind put AlphaFold through its paces by entering it for a biennial “protein olympics” known as Casp, the Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction. Entrants to the international competition are given the amino acid sequences for about 100 proteins and challenged to work them out. The results from teams that use computers are compared with those based on lab work.
AlphaFold not only outperformed other computer programs but reached an accuracy comparable to the laborious and time-consuming lab-based methods. When ranked across all proteins analysed, AlphaFold had a median score of 92.5 out of 100, with 90 being the equivalent to experimental methods. For the hardest proteins, the median score fell, but only marginally to 87.
Hassabis said DeepMind had started work on how to give researchers access to AlphaFold to help with scientific research. Andrei Lupas, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, said he had already used the program to solve a protein structure that scientists had been stuck on for a decade.
Janet Thornton, a director emeritus of EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge, who was not involved in the work, said she was excited to hear the results. “This is a problem that I was beginning to think would not get solved in my lifetime,” she said. “Knowing these structures will really help us to understand how human beings operate and function, how we work.”
John Jumper, a researcher on the team at DeepMind, said: “We really didn’t know until we saw the Casp results how far we had pushed the field.” It is not the end of the work, however. Future research will focus on how proteins combine to form larger “complexes” and how they interact with other molecules in living organisms.
Plastics
New super-enzyme eats plastic bottles six times faster
Breakthrough that builds on plastic-eating bugs first discovered by Japan in 2016 promises to enable full recycling
Damian Carrington Environment editor
THE GUARDIAN
Mon 28 Sep 2020 15.38 EDT
A super-enzyme that degrades plastic bottles six times faster than before has been created by scientists and could be used for recycling within a year or two.
The super-enzyme, derived from bacteria that naturally evolved the ability to eat plastic, enables the full recycling of the bottles. Scientists believe combining it with enzymes that break down cotton could also allow mixed-fabric clothing to be recycled. Today, millions of tonnes of such clothing is either dumped in landfill or incinerated.
Plastic pollution has contaminated the whole planet, from the Arctic to the deepest oceans, and people are now known to consume and breathe microplastic particles. It is currently very difficult to break down plastic bottles into their chemical constituents in order to make new ones from old, meaning more new plastic is being created from oil each year.
The super-enzyme was engineered by linking two separate enzymes, both of which were found in the plastic-eating bug discovered at a Japanese waste site in 2016. The researchers revealed an engineered version of the first enzyme in 2018, which started breaking down the plastic in a few days. But the super-enzyme gets to work six times faster.
“When we linked the enzymes, rather unexpectedly, we got a dramatic increase in activity,“ said Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK. “This is a trajectory towards trying to make faster enzymes that are more industrially relevant. But it’s also one of those stories about learning from nature, and then bringing it into the lab.”
French company Carbios revealed a different enzyme in April, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, that degrades 90% of plastic bottles within 10 hours, but requires heating above 70C.
The new super-enzyme works at room temperature, and McGeehan said combining different approaches could speed progress towards commercial use: “If we can make better, faster enzymes by linking them together and provide them to companies like Carbios, and work in partnership, we could start doing this within the next year or two.”
The 2018 work had determined that the structure of one enzyme, called PETase, can attack the hard, crystalline surface of plastic bottles. They found, by accident, that one mutant version worked 20% faster. The new study analysed a second enzyme also found in the Japanese bacteria that doubles the speed of the breakdown of the chemical groups liberated by the first enzyme.
Bacteria that break down natural polymers like cellulose have evolved this twin approach over millions of years. The scientists thought by connecting the two enzymes together, it might increase the speed of degradation, and enable them to work more closely together.
The linked super-enzyme would be impossible for a bacterium to create, as the molecule would be too large. So the scientists connected the two enzymes in the laboratory and saw a further tripling of the speed. The new research by scientists at the University of Portsmouth and four US institutions is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team is now examining how the enzymes can be tweaked to make them work even faster still. “There’s huge potential,” said McGeehan. “We’ve got several hundred in the lab that we’re currently sticking together.” A £1m testing centre is now being built in Portsmouth and Carbios is currently building a plant in Lyon.
Combining the plastic-eating enzymes with existing ones that break down natural fibres could allow mixed materials to be fully recycled, McGeehan said. “Mixed fabrics [of polyester and cotton] are really tricky to recycle. We’ve been speaking to some of the big fashion companies that produce these textiles, because they’re really struggling at the moment.”
Campaigners say reducing the use of plastic is key. Those working on recycling say that strong, lightweight materials like plastic are very useful and that true recycling is part of the solution to the pollution problem.
Researchers have also been successful in finding bugs that eat other plastics such as polyurethane, which is widely used but rarely recycled. When polyurethane breaks down it can release toxic chemicals that would kill most bacteria, but the bug identified actually uses the material as food to power the process.
The super-enzyme, derived from bacteria that naturally evolved the ability to eat plastic, enables the full recycling of the bottles. Scientists believe combining it with enzymes that break down cotton could also allow mixed-fabric clothing to be recycled. Today, millions of tonnes of such clothing is either dumped in landfill or incinerated.
Plastic pollution has contaminated the whole planet, from the Arctic to the deepest oceans, and people are now known to consume and breathe microplastic particles. It is currently very difficult to break down plastic bottles into their chemical constituents in order to make new ones from old, meaning more new plastic is being created from oil each year.
The super-enzyme was engineered by linking two separate enzymes, both of which were found in the plastic-eating bug discovered at a Japanese waste site in 2016. The researchers revealed an engineered version of the first enzyme in 2018, which started breaking down the plastic in a few days. But the super-enzyme gets to work six times faster.
“When we linked the enzymes, rather unexpectedly, we got a dramatic increase in activity,“ said Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK. “This is a trajectory towards trying to make faster enzymes that are more industrially relevant. But it’s also one of those stories about learning from nature, and then bringing it into the lab.”
French company Carbios revealed a different enzyme in April, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, that degrades 90% of plastic bottles within 10 hours, but requires heating above 70C.
The new super-enzyme works at room temperature, and McGeehan said combining different approaches could speed progress towards commercial use: “If we can make better, faster enzymes by linking them together and provide them to companies like Carbios, and work in partnership, we could start doing this within the next year or two.”
The 2018 work had determined that the structure of one enzyme, called PETase, can attack the hard, crystalline surface of plastic bottles. They found, by accident, that one mutant version worked 20% faster. The new study analysed a second enzyme also found in the Japanese bacteria that doubles the speed of the breakdown of the chemical groups liberated by the first enzyme.
Bacteria that break down natural polymers like cellulose have evolved this twin approach over millions of years. The scientists thought by connecting the two enzymes together, it might increase the speed of degradation, and enable them to work more closely together.
The linked super-enzyme would be impossible for a bacterium to create, as the molecule would be too large. So the scientists connected the two enzymes in the laboratory and saw a further tripling of the speed. The new research by scientists at the University of Portsmouth and four US institutions is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team is now examining how the enzymes can be tweaked to make them work even faster still. “There’s huge potential,” said McGeehan. “We’ve got several hundred in the lab that we’re currently sticking together.” A £1m testing centre is now being built in Portsmouth and Carbios is currently building a plant in Lyon.
Combining the plastic-eating enzymes with existing ones that break down natural fibres could allow mixed materials to be fully recycled, McGeehan said. “Mixed fabrics [of polyester and cotton] are really tricky to recycle. We’ve been speaking to some of the big fashion companies that produce these textiles, because they’re really struggling at the moment.”
Campaigners say reducing the use of plastic is key. Those working on recycling say that strong, lightweight materials like plastic are very useful and that true recycling is part of the solution to the pollution problem.
Researchers have also been successful in finding bugs that eat other plastics such as polyurethane, which is widely used but rarely recycled. When polyurethane breaks down it can release toxic chemicals that would kill most bacteria, but the bug identified actually uses the material as food to power the process.
Swedish scientists are working on a radical COVID-19 blocker involving alpacas
September 18, 2020
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
Tyson the alpaca could hold the key to developing a process to block the coronavirus. FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris-Trent and James André report from the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Leading scientists in Stockholm are working on a pioneering treatment involving llamas and alpacas such as Tyson in the fight against Covid-19.
“Tyson has the antibodies against SARS-Covid-2 virus,” explains Dr Gerald McInerney, Associate Professor of Virology at the Karolinska Institute. “Camels, and alpacas and llamas and other animals from that family have special, small single-chain antibodies.Tiny antibodies they’ve proved can block Covid-19.”
The institute is studying how to put these tiny antibodies on cells, blocking the virus from getting in and to stop patients from developing the disease.
From alpaca blood samples the researchers can clone antibodies en masse in the laboratory. They hope to produce a short term treatment, most likely as a mouth spray, or inhaler.
“We are very excited that we have something that’s very functional,” says Dr McInerney.
Leading scientists in Stockholm are working on a pioneering treatment involving llamas and alpacas such as Tyson in the fight against Covid-19.
“Tyson has the antibodies against SARS-Covid-2 virus,” explains Dr Gerald McInerney, Associate Professor of Virology at the Karolinska Institute. “Camels, and alpacas and llamas and other animals from that family have special, small single-chain antibodies.Tiny antibodies they’ve proved can block Covid-19.”
The institute is studying how to put these tiny antibodies on cells, blocking the virus from getting in and to stop patients from developing the disease.
From alpaca blood samples the researchers can clone antibodies en masse in the laboratory. They hope to produce a short term treatment, most likely as a mouth spray, or inhaler.
“We are very excited that we have something that’s very functional,” says Dr McInerney.
Key cannabis chemical may help prevent colon cancer, researchers say
THE STATE
9/17
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A chemical in marijuana may be able to help prevent colon cancer, according to a new study from top University of South Carolina researchers.
The study, published in iScience, found that mice injected with THC and a cancer-causing chemical did not develop cancer. Mice in a control group were injected with the carcinogen but no THC, causing them to develop cancer.
“We were really excited to see those results, which were so dramatic,” said co-author Prakash Nagarkatti, who is the University of South Carolina’s vice president of research.
THC — the chemical in cannabis that causes a “high” — prevented cancer from emerging in mice by reducing inflammation in the colon, said Nagarkatti, who is one of America’s leading marijuana researchers. This could be useful for people who have illnesses such as Crohn’s disease and colitis, where long-term inflammation increases risk of cancer, Nagarkatti said.
“We clearly need to do clinical trials and additional research needs to be done,” Nagarkatti said.
Chronic inflammation is also thought to increase risk for other types of cancer, such as breast cancer, pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer, Nagarkatti said.
“There are quite a few of these cancers that are triggered by chronic inflammation,” Nagarkatti said.
Nagarkatti’s conclusion corroborates anecdotal evidence THC may be effective in helping humans with illnesses like Crohn’s that cause chronic inflammation, he said.
In states where medical marijuana is legal, many people with inflammatory bowel disease who have tried using marijuana have reported to their doctors it lessened symptoms and improved quality of life, Nagarkatti said.
While colonoscopies have reduced the amount of colon cancer in older Americans, more Americans in their 40s are getting colon cancer, Nagarkatti said. Perhaps the most public example of this recently was Chadwick Bozeman, the South Carolina native and star of “Black Panther,” who died late last month at age 43 from colon cancer.
Mitzi Nagarkatti, the chair of the university’s department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology who is married to Prakash, is listed as a co-author on the study. The duo have recently published multiple studies on chemicals found in marijuana. Recently, they published a study that found THC may be able to treat a deadly complication of COVID-19 by tamping down a harmful immune system response to the coronavirus.
The study, published in iScience, found that mice injected with THC and a cancer-causing chemical did not develop cancer. Mice in a control group were injected with the carcinogen but no THC, causing them to develop cancer.
“We were really excited to see those results, which were so dramatic,” said co-author Prakash Nagarkatti, who is the University of South Carolina’s vice president of research.
THC — the chemical in cannabis that causes a “high” — prevented cancer from emerging in mice by reducing inflammation in the colon, said Nagarkatti, who is one of America’s leading marijuana researchers. This could be useful for people who have illnesses such as Crohn’s disease and colitis, where long-term inflammation increases risk of cancer, Nagarkatti said.
“We clearly need to do clinical trials and additional research needs to be done,” Nagarkatti said.
Chronic inflammation is also thought to increase risk for other types of cancer, such as breast cancer, pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer, Nagarkatti said.
“There are quite a few of these cancers that are triggered by chronic inflammation,” Nagarkatti said.
Nagarkatti’s conclusion corroborates anecdotal evidence THC may be effective in helping humans with illnesses like Crohn’s that cause chronic inflammation, he said.
In states where medical marijuana is legal, many people with inflammatory bowel disease who have tried using marijuana have reported to their doctors it lessened symptoms and improved quality of life, Nagarkatti said.
While colonoscopies have reduced the amount of colon cancer in older Americans, more Americans in their 40s are getting colon cancer, Nagarkatti said. Perhaps the most public example of this recently was Chadwick Bozeman, the South Carolina native and star of “Black Panther,” who died late last month at age 43 from colon cancer.
Mitzi Nagarkatti, the chair of the university’s department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology who is married to Prakash, is listed as a co-author on the study. The duo have recently published multiple studies on chemicals found in marijuana. Recently, they published a study that found THC may be able to treat a deadly complication of COVID-19 by tamping down a harmful immune system response to the coronavirus.
Bacteria on the outside of the International Space Station survived for years in the vacuum of space
The discovery prompts new speculation as to whether microbial could spread between planets
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
AUGUST 30, 2020 2:00PM (UTC)
A new study reveals that clumps of bacteria managed to survive on the outside of the International Space Station — completely exposed to the harsh conditions of outer space — by hiding and then thriving under the remains of dead bacteria
Japanese scientists learned this while performing an experiment meant to test the panspermia hypothesis, the idea that spores and other forms of microscopic life may be able to spread organisms from one planet to another by somehow finding a way to survive the extreme temperatures, high radiation levels and airless, nutrient-free conditions of outer space. In their recent article published in Frontiers in Microbiology, scientists describe how they placed dried cell pellets of the bacteria Deinococcus spp., which has a high level of resistance to ionizing radiation, in aluminum plate wells that were then attached to exposure panels on the International Space Station's exterior.
We exposed the microbial cell pellet with different thickness to space environments," the authors write. "The results indicated the importance of the aggregated form of cells for surviving in harsh space environment. We also analyzed the samples exposed to space from 1 to 3 years. The experimental design enabled us to get and to extrapolate the survival time course and to predict the survival time of D. radiodurans. The results supported the concept of the massapanspermia if other requirements are met, such as ejection from the donor planet, transfer, and landing." Massapanspermia refers to the specific idea of microbial transfer between planets.
Specifically, the scientists found that the Deinococcus bacteria were able to form tiny balls, sometimes only as thick as five sheets of paper, and that the organisms in the center of the ball managed to survive even as the ones on the outside perished. Although all of the bacteria in the pellets that were only 100 micrometers thick died, roughly 4 percent of the microbes from the pellets that were 500 and 1,000 micrometers thick managed to survive by protecting themselves with the remains of their deceased companions.
The most immediate implications of the study involve possible travel from Earth to Mars or vice versa.
"Accordingly, Deinococcal cell pellets in the sub-millimeter range would be sufficient to allow survival during an interplanetary journey from Earth to Mars or Mars to Earth," the authors write. "Cell pellets of 1,000 micrometer diameter would be able to survive the shortest travel time in space."
This is not the first time that scientists have taken an interest in microbial survival in space. Last year scientists published an article in the journal Microbiome which analyzed the composition of the various microbes and fungi that lived on the International Space Station. It found that the most prominent bacteria were Staphylococcus, Pantoea and Bacillus. This research was important in terms of assessing human health during lengthy travel through space.
"Specific microbes in indoor spaces on Earth have been shown to impact human health," Kasthuri Venkateswaran, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who helped co-author the paper cataloguing the microbes, said in a statement at the time. "This is even more important for astronauts during spaceflight, as they have altered immunity and do not have access to the sophisticated medical interventions available on Earth."
Japanese scientists learned this while performing an experiment meant to test the panspermia hypothesis, the idea that spores and other forms of microscopic life may be able to spread organisms from one planet to another by somehow finding a way to survive the extreme temperatures, high radiation levels and airless, nutrient-free conditions of outer space. In their recent article published in Frontiers in Microbiology, scientists describe how they placed dried cell pellets of the bacteria Deinococcus spp., which has a high level of resistance to ionizing radiation, in aluminum plate wells that were then attached to exposure panels on the International Space Station's exterior.
We exposed the microbial cell pellet with different thickness to space environments," the authors write. "The results indicated the importance of the aggregated form of cells for surviving in harsh space environment. We also analyzed the samples exposed to space from 1 to 3 years. The experimental design enabled us to get and to extrapolate the survival time course and to predict the survival time of D. radiodurans. The results supported the concept of the massapanspermia if other requirements are met, such as ejection from the donor planet, transfer, and landing." Massapanspermia refers to the specific idea of microbial transfer between planets.
Specifically, the scientists found that the Deinococcus bacteria were able to form tiny balls, sometimes only as thick as five sheets of paper, and that the organisms in the center of the ball managed to survive even as the ones on the outside perished. Although all of the bacteria in the pellets that were only 100 micrometers thick died, roughly 4 percent of the microbes from the pellets that were 500 and 1,000 micrometers thick managed to survive by protecting themselves with the remains of their deceased companions.
The most immediate implications of the study involve possible travel from Earth to Mars or vice versa.
"Accordingly, Deinococcal cell pellets in the sub-millimeter range would be sufficient to allow survival during an interplanetary journey from Earth to Mars or Mars to Earth," the authors write. "Cell pellets of 1,000 micrometer diameter would be able to survive the shortest travel time in space."
This is not the first time that scientists have taken an interest in microbial survival in space. Last year scientists published an article in the journal Microbiome which analyzed the composition of the various microbes and fungi that lived on the International Space Station. It found that the most prominent bacteria were Staphylococcus, Pantoea and Bacillus. This research was important in terms of assessing human health during lengthy travel through space.
"Specific microbes in indoor spaces on Earth have been shown to impact human health," Kasthuri Venkateswaran, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who helped co-author the paper cataloguing the microbes, said in a statement at the time. "This is even more important for astronauts during spaceflight, as they have altered immunity and do not have access to the sophisticated medical interventions available on Earth."
Marijuana test for stressed-out Warsaw Zoo elephants
August 26, 2020
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
The Warsaw zoo said Wednesday it will start giving its elephants medical marijuana as part of a ground-breaking pilot project to test how it reduces their stress levels.
Medical cannabis has been used worldwide to treat dogs and horses but “this is probably the first initiative of its kind for elephants,” Agnieszka Czujkowska, the veterinarian in charge of the project, told AFP.
The zoo’s three African elephants will be given liquid doses of a high concentration of the relaxing cannabinoid CBD through their trunks.
The veterinarian said the CBD neither causes euphoria nor harmful side effects on the liver and kidneys.
“It’s an attempt to find a new natural alternative to the existing methods of combating stress, especially pharmaceutical drugs,” Czujkowska told AFP.
The project, she said, comes at an opportune time as the zoo’s herd has recently had to cope with the death of its alpha female.
The zoo monitors the elephants’ stress by checking their hormone levels and through behavioural observation.
Czujkowska said it will take around two years before her team has any conclusive results.
If successful, the initiative could then be tried with other animals living in captivity.
“Contrary to what some would imagine, the elephants won’t be using cannabis pipes nor will they be getting huge barrels of it” to match their size, Czujkowska said with a laugh.
The initial doses will be comparable to those given to horses: a vial’s worth of a dozen drops of CBD oil, two or three times a day.
“The female Fryderyka has already had a chance to try it and she didn’t say no,” Czujkowska said.
Poaching has decimated the world elephant population, which slumped in Africa from several million at the turn of the 19th century to around 400,000 today.
Medical cannabis has been used worldwide to treat dogs and horses but “this is probably the first initiative of its kind for elephants,” Agnieszka Czujkowska, the veterinarian in charge of the project, told AFP.
The zoo’s three African elephants will be given liquid doses of a high concentration of the relaxing cannabinoid CBD through their trunks.
The veterinarian said the CBD neither causes euphoria nor harmful side effects on the liver and kidneys.
“It’s an attempt to find a new natural alternative to the existing methods of combating stress, especially pharmaceutical drugs,” Czujkowska told AFP.
The project, she said, comes at an opportune time as the zoo’s herd has recently had to cope with the death of its alpha female.
The zoo monitors the elephants’ stress by checking their hormone levels and through behavioural observation.
Czujkowska said it will take around two years before her team has any conclusive results.
If successful, the initiative could then be tried with other animals living in captivity.
“Contrary to what some would imagine, the elephants won’t be using cannabis pipes nor will they be getting huge barrels of it” to match their size, Czujkowska said with a laugh.
The initial doses will be comparable to those given to horses: a vial’s worth of a dozen drops of CBD oil, two or three times a day.
“The female Fryderyka has already had a chance to try it and she didn’t say no,” Czujkowska said.
Poaching has decimated the world elephant population, which slumped in Africa from several million at the turn of the 19th century to around 400,000 today.
Scientists revived microbes that were more than 100 million years old
Geomicrobiologist Steven D'Hondt tells Salon that the new study challenges our understanding of the "rules of life"
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
JULY 30, 2020 1:44AM (UTC)
Anew study reveals that microbes which lay dormant for millions of years may be capable of being revived, raising intriguing new questions about the nature of life itself.
A research team led by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology experimented on sediment samples from the South Pacific deposited more than 100 million years ago, according to an article published in Nature. Because there are few nutrients in the sediments, the area in theory would not be hospitable to life forms. Yet the scientists were able to revive nearly all of the microorganisms in the samples through an incubation process, indicating that they may have been able to survive in a dormant state for millions of years due to traces of oxygen within the sediment.
A key factor in understanding the significance of the study? The seabed microbes were able to survive while expending far less energy than microbes at the surface. This could help explain how they were able to live within the uniquely hostile conditions of the deep sea sediment, though it adds to the mystery of how the same microbes were also able to accommodate to life on the surface.
"The main relevance of this study is that it challenges understanding of the 'rules of life,'" Steven D'Hondt, a geomicrobiologist who contributed to the study, told Salon by email. "It's not yet understood how any community of any kinds of organisms can survive so long on so little energy and then return to normal activities when brought back to surface-world conditions."
He added, "The most important contribution to our understanding of ancient life is the demonstration that ancient life is still present in the world. I say this because these subseafloor populations probably haven't reproduced at very fast rates or accumulated many new mutations since they were buried."
A particularly notable detail of the study, as the authors wrote in their paper, is that "the sampled communities have likely been trapped in the sediment since shortly after its deposition. The physiological status and growth potential of these buried communities, and more generally, the fractions of these energy-starved subseafloor microbes that are alive, dormant or dead have been essentially unknown."
Virginia Edgcomb, a microbial ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who did not participate in the study, told Science Magazine that the study indicates that "microbial life is very persistent and often finds a way to survive."
Another scientist who was not involved in the study, microbiologist Andreas Teske of the University of North Carolina, told the magazine that "if the surface of a particular planet does not look promising for life, it may be holding out in the subsurface."
Salon asked D'Hondt if the microbes discovered in the sediment meet all of the qualifications for being "alive." This is not always a cut-and-dried question, as there is vigorous debate among scientists about whether microscopic entities like viruses can technically be considered forms of "life." However, D'Hondt was confident these microbes made the cut.
"Something is generally considered alive if it can grow, reproduce and harvest energy on its own," D'Hondt told Salon. "As shown in our paper, Yuki Morono's experiments showed directly that 99% of the microbes in our buried communities do these things (grow, reproduce and harvest energy)."
When asked if the experiments could bring about real-world manifestations of science fiction scenarios — such as the premise of "Jurassic Park," in which dinosaurs were brought back from extinction — he was deeply skeptical.
"I guess it's conceivable that someone might revive something like yeast in this way," he responded. "But something like a 'Jurassic Park' scenario (e.g., living dinosaurs) would require recreation of dinosaurs rather than revival of still-living organisms (like our bacteria)."
A research team led by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology experimented on sediment samples from the South Pacific deposited more than 100 million years ago, according to an article published in Nature. Because there are few nutrients in the sediments, the area in theory would not be hospitable to life forms. Yet the scientists were able to revive nearly all of the microorganisms in the samples through an incubation process, indicating that they may have been able to survive in a dormant state for millions of years due to traces of oxygen within the sediment.
A key factor in understanding the significance of the study? The seabed microbes were able to survive while expending far less energy than microbes at the surface. This could help explain how they were able to live within the uniquely hostile conditions of the deep sea sediment, though it adds to the mystery of how the same microbes were also able to accommodate to life on the surface.
"The main relevance of this study is that it challenges understanding of the 'rules of life,'" Steven D'Hondt, a geomicrobiologist who contributed to the study, told Salon by email. "It's not yet understood how any community of any kinds of organisms can survive so long on so little energy and then return to normal activities when brought back to surface-world conditions."
He added, "The most important contribution to our understanding of ancient life is the demonstration that ancient life is still present in the world. I say this because these subseafloor populations probably haven't reproduced at very fast rates or accumulated many new mutations since they were buried."
A particularly notable detail of the study, as the authors wrote in their paper, is that "the sampled communities have likely been trapped in the sediment since shortly after its deposition. The physiological status and growth potential of these buried communities, and more generally, the fractions of these energy-starved subseafloor microbes that are alive, dormant or dead have been essentially unknown."
Virginia Edgcomb, a microbial ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who did not participate in the study, told Science Magazine that the study indicates that "microbial life is very persistent and often finds a way to survive."
Another scientist who was not involved in the study, microbiologist Andreas Teske of the University of North Carolina, told the magazine that "if the surface of a particular planet does not look promising for life, it may be holding out in the subsurface."
Salon asked D'Hondt if the microbes discovered in the sediment meet all of the qualifications for being "alive." This is not always a cut-and-dried question, as there is vigorous debate among scientists about whether microscopic entities like viruses can technically be considered forms of "life." However, D'Hondt was confident these microbes made the cut.
"Something is generally considered alive if it can grow, reproduce and harvest energy on its own," D'Hondt told Salon. "As shown in our paper, Yuki Morono's experiments showed directly that 99% of the microbes in our buried communities do these things (grow, reproduce and harvest energy)."
When asked if the experiments could bring about real-world manifestations of science fiction scenarios — such as the premise of "Jurassic Park," in which dinosaurs were brought back from extinction — he was deeply skeptical.
"I guess it's conceivable that someone might revive something like yeast in this way," he responded. "But something like a 'Jurassic Park' scenario (e.g., living dinosaurs) would require recreation of dinosaurs rather than revival of still-living organisms (like our bacteria)."
A study that links solar activity to earthquakes is sending shockwaves through the science world
Is solar weather correlated with earthquakes on Earth? A seismic brawl is brewing over a peer-reviewed paper
MATTHEW ROZSA - SALON
JULY 21, 2020 11:00PM (UTC)
A peer-reviewed paper that found a correlation between solar activity and earthquakes is sending tremors through the scientific community. Salon reached out to scientists to inquire after the research paper's seismic conclusions, and discovered a surprising amount of rancor among skeptical geophysicists and seismologists.
The paper, published in Nature's Scientific Reports, theorizes that clusters of protons from the sun may correlate to large earthquakes on Earth. The sun, like all active stars, constantly vents matter in the form of solar wind, which includes particles like electrons, protons, and ionized helium atoms. The distribution and density of these particles vary, as the sun has variable "weather" just as the Earth does.
Researchers Vito Marchitelli, Paolo Harabaglia, Claudia Troise and Giuseppe De Natale looked at data on earthquakes and solar activity to ascertain if there was a correlation. Their data consisted of worldwide earthquake data as well as measurements of solar protons from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint satellite of NASA and the European Space Agency that was launched in 1995 and is still active.
Understanding the researchers' thesis requires a brief foray into statistics. If earthquakes happened at completely random times of day, one could map them on a chart depicting time, and the dots would be randomly distributed, with no apparent pattern. Moreover, the rate at which they occur would be statistically constant, albeit random — meaning they would favor no one time over any other one.
But evidently, earthquakes don't fit this pattern.
"Large earthquakes occurring worldwide have long been recognized to be non Poisson distributed," the researchers write. The Poisson distribution is a statistics term that formally describes a situation described above, wherein events occur at a constant rate and independently of previous events. Radioactive decay is a good example of something else that observes the Poisson distribution: individual events of atomic decay are randomly distributed, but over time they average out to something predictably constant, which is why physicists are able to predict precise half-lives for any isotope.
Because earthquake timing seems to fit some unseen pattern, they posit that big earthquakes must then "involv[e] some large scale correlation mechanism, which could be internal or external to the Earth." They continue:
"Till now, no statistically significant correlation of the global seismicity with one of the possible mechanisms has been demonstrated yet. In this paper, we analyze 20 years of proton density and velocity data, as recorded by the SOHO satellite, and the worldwide seismicity in the corresponding period, as reported by the ISC-GEM catalogue."
They conclude, "We found clear correlation between proton density and the occurrence of large earthquakes [of magnitute greater than 5.6], with a time shift of one day. The significance of such correlation is very high, with probability to be wrong lower than 10^-5" [meaning one in 10000].
In statistical terms, that would imply a very confident correlation between the two events, meaning proton density and the occurrence of these large quakes. Indeed, one in 10,000 is close to the gold standard of statistical certainty.
Despite this, multiple geophysicists and seismologists were very skeptical of the paper's conclusion for other reasons. Salon spoke with several who were critical of the findings.
"My first thought is that what keeps the global time distribution of earthquakes from being Poissonian is the occurrence of aftershocks," Tom Parsons, a research geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey, told Salon by email. "Once a catalog is declustered and aftershocks are removed, then it is difficult to show non-random inter-event times. As aftershocks are primarily a local phenomenon, it strikes me as unlikely that they are caused by global-scale solar activity."
In other words, Parsons notes that earthquakes aren't randomly distributed, and thus wouldn't adhere to the Poisson distribution, because often earthquakes aren't independent events: one earthquake can trigger a follow-up quake, or vice-versa. "Declustering" refers to separating related "clusters" of earthquake events, such as a quake and its accompanying aftershocks.
Co-author Giuseppe De Natale, when approached about this criticism, contended to Salon by email that "the large scale correlation among worldwide earthquakes is not only due to simple 'clustering,' meant as main shock-aftershocks sequences."
De Natale clarified that the researchers "absolutely don't say that the aftershocks are caused by solar activity." (Indeed, correlation does not equate to causation, as high school math teachers everywhere are fond of reminding us.) "In fact in this case we would not get a so high statistical significance for the inferred correlation," he continued.
De Natale also shook off the criticism about "clustering" of earthquakes and aftershocks undermining his thesis. He told Salon that the correlation they found pertains to "a very peculiar behavior of worldwide seismicity, which we are presently noting and studying, evidencing a tendency of global seismicity [. . .] to occur clustered in times, but at mutual distances of several thousands of [kilometers]; so, they cannot be 'aftershocks' in the common sense." He argued that this "seems to be strictly related to the triggering effect of proton density (and hence of solar activity)."
De Natale pointed to other earthquake incidents, including ones that were very deep underground, as "isolated events" that prove that the aftershock criticism is unwarranted. Even large, shallow earthquakes, De Natale says, did not exhibit Poisson distributions even after isolating them from aftershocks, meaning that they appeared to be correlated to something.
The paper, published in Nature's Scientific Reports, theorizes that clusters of protons from the sun may correlate to large earthquakes on Earth. The sun, like all active stars, constantly vents matter in the form of solar wind, which includes particles like electrons, protons, and ionized helium atoms. The distribution and density of these particles vary, as the sun has variable "weather" just as the Earth does.
Researchers Vito Marchitelli, Paolo Harabaglia, Claudia Troise and Giuseppe De Natale looked at data on earthquakes and solar activity to ascertain if there was a correlation. Their data consisted of worldwide earthquake data as well as measurements of solar protons from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint satellite of NASA and the European Space Agency that was launched in 1995 and is still active.
Understanding the researchers' thesis requires a brief foray into statistics. If earthquakes happened at completely random times of day, one could map them on a chart depicting time, and the dots would be randomly distributed, with no apparent pattern. Moreover, the rate at which they occur would be statistically constant, albeit random — meaning they would favor no one time over any other one.
But evidently, earthquakes don't fit this pattern.
"Large earthquakes occurring worldwide have long been recognized to be non Poisson distributed," the researchers write. The Poisson distribution is a statistics term that formally describes a situation described above, wherein events occur at a constant rate and independently of previous events. Radioactive decay is a good example of something else that observes the Poisson distribution: individual events of atomic decay are randomly distributed, but over time they average out to something predictably constant, which is why physicists are able to predict precise half-lives for any isotope.
Because earthquake timing seems to fit some unseen pattern, they posit that big earthquakes must then "involv[e] some large scale correlation mechanism, which could be internal or external to the Earth." They continue:
"Till now, no statistically significant correlation of the global seismicity with one of the possible mechanisms has been demonstrated yet. In this paper, we analyze 20 years of proton density and velocity data, as recorded by the SOHO satellite, and the worldwide seismicity in the corresponding period, as reported by the ISC-GEM catalogue."
They conclude, "We found clear correlation between proton density and the occurrence of large earthquakes [of magnitute greater than 5.6], with a time shift of one day. The significance of such correlation is very high, with probability to be wrong lower than 10^-5" [meaning one in 10000].
In statistical terms, that would imply a very confident correlation between the two events, meaning proton density and the occurrence of these large quakes. Indeed, one in 10,000 is close to the gold standard of statistical certainty.
Despite this, multiple geophysicists and seismologists were very skeptical of the paper's conclusion for other reasons. Salon spoke with several who were critical of the findings.
"My first thought is that what keeps the global time distribution of earthquakes from being Poissonian is the occurrence of aftershocks," Tom Parsons, a research geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey, told Salon by email. "Once a catalog is declustered and aftershocks are removed, then it is difficult to show non-random inter-event times. As aftershocks are primarily a local phenomenon, it strikes me as unlikely that they are caused by global-scale solar activity."
In other words, Parsons notes that earthquakes aren't randomly distributed, and thus wouldn't adhere to the Poisson distribution, because often earthquakes aren't independent events: one earthquake can trigger a follow-up quake, or vice-versa. "Declustering" refers to separating related "clusters" of earthquake events, such as a quake and its accompanying aftershocks.
Co-author Giuseppe De Natale, when approached about this criticism, contended to Salon by email that "the large scale correlation among worldwide earthquakes is not only due to simple 'clustering,' meant as main shock-aftershocks sequences."
De Natale clarified that the researchers "absolutely don't say that the aftershocks are caused by solar activity." (Indeed, correlation does not equate to causation, as high school math teachers everywhere are fond of reminding us.) "In fact in this case we would not get a so high statistical significance for the inferred correlation," he continued.
De Natale also shook off the criticism about "clustering" of earthquakes and aftershocks undermining his thesis. He told Salon that the correlation they found pertains to "a very peculiar behavior of worldwide seismicity, which we are presently noting and studying, evidencing a tendency of global seismicity [. . .] to occur clustered in times, but at mutual distances of several thousands of [kilometers]; so, they cannot be 'aftershocks' in the common sense." He argued that this "seems to be strictly related to the triggering effect of proton density (and hence of solar activity)."
De Natale pointed to other earthquake incidents, including ones that were very deep underground, as "isolated events" that prove that the aftershock criticism is unwarranted. Even large, shallow earthquakes, De Natale says, did not exhibit Poisson distributions even after isolating them from aftershocks, meaning that they appeared to be correlated to something.
CERN: Physicists report the discovery of unique new particle
July 12, 2020
By The Conversation
The LHCb collaboration at CERN has announced the discovery of a new exotic particle: a so-called “tetraquark”. The paper by more than 800 authors is yet to be evaluated by other scientists in a process called “peer review”, but has been presented at a seminar. It also meets the usual statistical threshold for claiming the discovery of a new particle.
The finding marks a major breakthrough in a search of almost 20 years, carried out in particle physics labs all over the world.
To understand what a tetraquark is and why the discovery is important, we need to step back in time to 1964, when particle physics was in the midst of a revolution. Beatlemania had just exploded, the Vietnam war was raging and two young radio astronomers in New Jersey had just discovered the strongest evidence ever for the Big Bang theory.
On the other side of the US, at the California Institute of Technology, and on the other side of the Atlantic, at CERN in Switzerland, two particle physicists were publishing two independent papers on the same subject. Both were about how to make sense of the enormous number of new particles that had been discovered over the past two decades.
Many physicists struggled to accept that so many elementary particles could exist in the universe, in what had become known as the “particle zoo”. George Zweig from Caltech and Murray Gell-Mann from CERN had struck upon the same solution. What if all these different particles were really made of smaller, unknown building blocks, in the same way that the hundred-odd elements in the periodic table are made of protons, neutrons and electrons? Zweig called these building blocks “aces”, while Gell-Mann chose the term that we still use today: “quarks”.
We now know that there are six different kinds of quarks – up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom. These particles also have respective antimatter companions with opposite charge, which can bind together according to simple rules based on symmetries. A particle made of a quark and an antiquark is called a “meson”; while three quarks bound together form “baryons”. The familiar protons and neutrons that make up the atomic nucleus are examples of baryons.
This classification scheme beautifully described the particle zoo of the 1960s. However, even in his original paper, Gell-Mann realised that other combinations of quarks might be possible. For example, two quarks and two antiquarks might stick together to form a “tetraquark”, while four quarks and an antiquark would make a “pentaquark”.
Exotic particles
Fast-forward to 2003, when the Belle experiment at the KEK laboratory in Japan reported the observation of a new meson, called X(3872), which showed “exotic” properties quite different from ordinary mesons.
In the following years, several new exotic particles were discovered, and physicists started to realise that most of these particles could only be explained successfully if they were tetraquarks made of four quarks instead of two. Then, in 2015, the LHCb experiment at CERN discovered the first pentaquark particles made of five quarks.
All tetraquarks and pentaquarks that have been discovered so far contain two charm quarks, which are relatively heavy, and two or three light quarks – up, down or strange. This particular configuration is indeed the easiest to discover in experiments.
But the latest tetraquark discovered by LHCb, which has been dubbed X(6900), is composed of four charm quarks. Produced in high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, the new tetraquark was observed via its decay into pairs of well-known particles called J/psi mesons, each made of a charm quark and a charm antiquark. This makes it particularly interesting as it is not only composed entirely of heavy quarks, but also four quarks of the same kind – making it a unique specimen to test our understanding on how quarks bind together.
For now, there are two different models that could explain how quarks bind together: it could be that they are strongly bound, creating what we refer to as a compact tetraquark. Or it could be that the quarks are arranged to form two mesons, which are stuck together loosely in a “molecule”.
Ordinary molecules are made from atoms bound together by the electromagnetic force, which acts between positively charged nuclei and negatively charged electrons. But the quarks in a meson or baryon are connected via a different force, the “strong force”. It is really fascinating that atoms and quarks, following very different rules, can both form very similar complex objects.
The new particle appears to be most consistent with being a compact tetraquark rather than a two-meson molecule, which was the best explanation for previous discoveries. This makes it unusual, as it will allow physicists to study this new binding mechanism in detail. It also implies the existence of other heavy compact tetraquarks.
Window into micro-cosmos
The strong force operating between quarks obeys very complicated rules – so complicated, in fact, that usually the only way to calculate its effects is to use approximations and supercomputers.
The unique nature of the X(6900) will help understand how to improve the accuracy of these approximations, so that in the future we will be able to describe other, more complex mechanisms in physics that are not within our reach today.
Since the discovery of the X(3872), the study of exotic particles has thrived, with hundreds of theoretical and experimental physicists working together to shed some light on this exciting new field. The discovery of the new tetraquark is a huge leap forward, and is an indication that there are still many new exotic particles out there, waiting for someone to unveil them.
The finding marks a major breakthrough in a search of almost 20 years, carried out in particle physics labs all over the world.
To understand what a tetraquark is and why the discovery is important, we need to step back in time to 1964, when particle physics was in the midst of a revolution. Beatlemania had just exploded, the Vietnam war was raging and two young radio astronomers in New Jersey had just discovered the strongest evidence ever for the Big Bang theory.
On the other side of the US, at the California Institute of Technology, and on the other side of the Atlantic, at CERN in Switzerland, two particle physicists were publishing two independent papers on the same subject. Both were about how to make sense of the enormous number of new particles that had been discovered over the past two decades.
Many physicists struggled to accept that so many elementary particles could exist in the universe, in what had become known as the “particle zoo”. George Zweig from Caltech and Murray Gell-Mann from CERN had struck upon the same solution. What if all these different particles were really made of smaller, unknown building blocks, in the same way that the hundred-odd elements in the periodic table are made of protons, neutrons and electrons? Zweig called these building blocks “aces”, while Gell-Mann chose the term that we still use today: “quarks”.
We now know that there are six different kinds of quarks – up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom. These particles also have respective antimatter companions with opposite charge, which can bind together according to simple rules based on symmetries. A particle made of a quark and an antiquark is called a “meson”; while three quarks bound together form “baryons”. The familiar protons and neutrons that make up the atomic nucleus are examples of baryons.
This classification scheme beautifully described the particle zoo of the 1960s. However, even in his original paper, Gell-Mann realised that other combinations of quarks might be possible. For example, two quarks and two antiquarks might stick together to form a “tetraquark”, while four quarks and an antiquark would make a “pentaquark”.
Exotic particles
Fast-forward to 2003, when the Belle experiment at the KEK laboratory in Japan reported the observation of a new meson, called X(3872), which showed “exotic” properties quite different from ordinary mesons.
In the following years, several new exotic particles were discovered, and physicists started to realise that most of these particles could only be explained successfully if they were tetraquarks made of four quarks instead of two. Then, in 2015, the LHCb experiment at CERN discovered the first pentaquark particles made of five quarks.
All tetraquarks and pentaquarks that have been discovered so far contain two charm quarks, which are relatively heavy, and two or three light quarks – up, down or strange. This particular configuration is indeed the easiest to discover in experiments.
But the latest tetraquark discovered by LHCb, which has been dubbed X(6900), is composed of four charm quarks. Produced in high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, the new tetraquark was observed via its decay into pairs of well-known particles called J/psi mesons, each made of a charm quark and a charm antiquark. This makes it particularly interesting as it is not only composed entirely of heavy quarks, but also four quarks of the same kind – making it a unique specimen to test our understanding on how quarks bind together.
For now, there are two different models that could explain how quarks bind together: it could be that they are strongly bound, creating what we refer to as a compact tetraquark. Or it could be that the quarks are arranged to form two mesons, which are stuck together loosely in a “molecule”.
Ordinary molecules are made from atoms bound together by the electromagnetic force, which acts between positively charged nuclei and negatively charged electrons. But the quarks in a meson or baryon are connected via a different force, the “strong force”. It is really fascinating that atoms and quarks, following very different rules, can both form very similar complex objects.
The new particle appears to be most consistent with being a compact tetraquark rather than a two-meson molecule, which was the best explanation for previous discoveries. This makes it unusual, as it will allow physicists to study this new binding mechanism in detail. It also implies the existence of other heavy compact tetraquarks.
Window into micro-cosmos
The strong force operating between quarks obeys very complicated rules – so complicated, in fact, that usually the only way to calculate its effects is to use approximations and supercomputers.
The unique nature of the X(6900) will help understand how to improve the accuracy of these approximations, so that in the future we will be able to describe other, more complex mechanisms in physics that are not within our reach today.
Since the discovery of the X(3872), the study of exotic particles has thrived, with hundreds of theoretical and experimental physicists working together to shed some light on this exciting new field. The discovery of the new tetraquark is a huge leap forward, and is an indication that there are still many new exotic particles out there, waiting for someone to unveil them.
Military
Magic mushrooms could help ex-soldiers to overcome trauma
As more troops self-medicate with psychedelic drugs to help with PTSD, a group of experts lobby for proper clinical trials
Jamie Doward
THE GUARDIAN
Sat 4 Jul 2020 08.07 EDT
A growing number of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are turning to “magic mushrooms” and LSD to treat their condition. But drug laws make it almost impossible to establish whether they work.
Now a new body, the Medical Psychedelics Working Group, a consortium of experts, academics, researchers, policy specialists and industry partners, is to begin lobbying for a change in the law so that scientists can conduct clinical trials.
“This is something that’s been developed by veterans,” said Professor David Nutt from Drug Science, an independent scientific body which calls for an evidence-based approach to the legislation and is part of the group.
“Three years ago if I was asked the question would psilocybin [the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms] work for veterans, I would have said it would be quite dangerous to relive the trauma when tripping. But so many vets are doing it now that I’m convinced it can work.”
It is estimated that 17% of people who have seen active military service report symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, grief and anger.
Earlier this year a team at the Medical University of South Carolina reported on clinical trials which found that PTSD sufferers who used magic mushrooms as part of their therapy showed greater levels of improvement compared with patients who did not receive the drug.
But such clinical trials are difficult in the UK because LSD and magic mushrooms, which were legal until 2005, are classed as Schedule 1 drugs.
The classification means it costs around £3,500 for a licence from the Home Office to conduct tests using the drugs, and the application process can take a year. Scientists face prison sentences if the drugs fall into the wrong hands.
“But when ex-servicemen and women in the UK are reporting how their own use of psychedelics is having a marked effect on PTSD symptoms, we need to restart our studies,” Nutt said. “It could be that these substances can improve the lives of countless people who are suffering with debilitating and life-diminishing mental health conditions.”
Guy Murray, an infantryman with the 4th Battalion The Rifles, served on a long tour of Helmand Province, Afghanistan where his best friend and many other colleagues were killed by the Taliban. He was diagnosed with PTSD in 2017, after suffering from suicidal thoughts, anxiety and severe depression for several years.
After watching a Ted Talk about psilocybin and depression, he began experimenting with magic mushrooms, and then, under specialist supervision, was given LSD.
“It allowed me to address things which I was not open to addressing and it has honestly changed my life,” Murray said. “I believe I left my PTSD behind in those sessions. I am no longer destructive or closed off. I have my life back.”
Crispin Blunt, Conservative MP for Reigate, who served with the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, said that Murray’s experiences were common among the armed forces.
“About a third of veterans with PTSD from recent conflicts, estimated by some to be 2,400 individuals, have the condition so seriously as to be beyond recovery from current treatment practice,” Blunt said.
“We need to provide a safe, professional and lawful route of access to novel treatments such as psilocybin, collecting evidence and calling for our drug laws to be evidence based so our servicemen and women are not forced to travel to other countries, go underground or break the law to obtain treatment that works.”
Now a new body, the Medical Psychedelics Working Group, a consortium of experts, academics, researchers, policy specialists and industry partners, is to begin lobbying for a change in the law so that scientists can conduct clinical trials.
“This is something that’s been developed by veterans,” said Professor David Nutt from Drug Science, an independent scientific body which calls for an evidence-based approach to the legislation and is part of the group.
“Three years ago if I was asked the question would psilocybin [the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms] work for veterans, I would have said it would be quite dangerous to relive the trauma when tripping. But so many vets are doing it now that I’m convinced it can work.”
It is estimated that 17% of people who have seen active military service report symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, grief and anger.
Earlier this year a team at the Medical University of South Carolina reported on clinical trials which found that PTSD sufferers who used magic mushrooms as part of their therapy showed greater levels of improvement compared with patients who did not receive the drug.
But such clinical trials are difficult in the UK because LSD and magic mushrooms, which were legal until 2005, are classed as Schedule 1 drugs.
The classification means it costs around £3,500 for a licence from the Home Office to conduct tests using the drugs, and the application process can take a year. Scientists face prison sentences if the drugs fall into the wrong hands.
“But when ex-servicemen and women in the UK are reporting how their own use of psychedelics is having a marked effect on PTSD symptoms, we need to restart our studies,” Nutt said. “It could be that these substances can improve the lives of countless people who are suffering with debilitating and life-diminishing mental health conditions.”
Guy Murray, an infantryman with the 4th Battalion The Rifles, served on a long tour of Helmand Province, Afghanistan where his best friend and many other colleagues were killed by the Taliban. He was diagnosed with PTSD in 2017, after suffering from suicidal thoughts, anxiety and severe depression for several years.
After watching a Ted Talk about psilocybin and depression, he began experimenting with magic mushrooms, and then, under specialist supervision, was given LSD.
“It allowed me to address things which I was not open to addressing and it has honestly changed my life,” Murray said. “I believe I left my PTSD behind in those sessions. I am no longer destructive or closed off. I have my life back.”
Crispin Blunt, Conservative MP for Reigate, who served with the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, said that Murray’s experiences were common among the armed forces.
“About a third of veterans with PTSD from recent conflicts, estimated by some to be 2,400 individuals, have the condition so seriously as to be beyond recovery from current treatment practice,” Blunt said.
“We need to provide a safe, professional and lawful route of access to novel treatments such as psilocybin, collecting evidence and calling for our drug laws to be evidence based so our servicemen and women are not forced to travel to other countries, go underground or break the law to obtain treatment that works.”
Sled dogs are closely related to "ancient dogs" from more than 9,000 years ago
Scientists believe many modern sled dogs are closely related to a 9,500-year-old dog from the island of Zhokhov
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
JUNE 29, 2020 9:00PM (UTC)
A new study suggests that sled dogs like Alaskan Malamutes, Siberian Huskies and Greenland sledge dogs adapted to the Arctic much earlier than was previously thought and are genetically similar to a cold-weather canine from more than 9,500 years ago.
The study, which is being published in the journalScience, was conducted by researchers from the health and medicine faculty at the University of Copenhagen, with collaboration from the University of Greenland and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Barcelona. As the abstract put it, "This analysis indicates that sled dogs represent an ancient lineage going back at least 9500 years and that wolves bred with the ancestors of sled dogs and pre-contact American dogs. However, gene flow between sled dogs and wolves likely stopped before ∼9500 years ago."
One of the two initial authors of the study, PhD student Mikkel Sinding from the GLOBE Institute at Copenhagen, explained to Science Daily that "we have extracted DNA from a 9,500-year-old dog from the Siberian island of Zhokhov, which the dog is named after. Based on that DNA we have sequenced the oldest complete dog genome to date, and the results show an extremely early diversification of dogs into types of sledge dogs."
The other initial author, associate professor Shyam Gopalakrishnan, added that "this means that modern sledge dogs and Zhokhov had the same common origin in Siberia more than 9,500 years ago. Until now, we have thought that sledge dogs were only 2-3,000 years old."
The study is relevant because scientists have previously believed that Zhokhov was a type of ancient dog very different from the breeds that exist today, a belief undercut by the fact that the dog in question shares a major part of its genome with the three species of sledge dogs researched in the study. In addition, the study significantly lengthens the timeline for our understanding of when sledge dogs were domesticated.
The study also found that sledge dogs display certain distinct evolutionary differences from the domesticated dogs most of us know and love today. Foremost among them is that they are not genetically adapted to eat lots of sugars and starches like other domesticated dogs. They instead evolved to eat high-fat diets, similar to polar bears and peoples who are indigenous to the Arctic region.
"Together, these findings indicate substantial long-distance travel and transportation of resources, in which dog sledding would have been highly advantageous — if not necessary," the authors write in their study. "Putative sled remains and our genomic analyses of a 9500-year-old dog from the Zhokhov site indicate that the traditions and key genomic variations that define modern sled dogs were established in the northeast Asian Arctic >9500 years ago. Our results imply that the combination of these dogs with the innovation of sled technology facilitated human subsistence since the earliest Holocene in the Arctic."
This is not the first recent study to offer new insights into phenomena pertaining to canine domestication. A study released earlier this month revealed that London foxes are developing early signs of domestication including shorter snouts, wider snout tips and smaller brain cases.
"What's really fascinating here is that the foxes are doing this to themselves. This is the result of foxes that have decided to live near people, showing these traits that make them look more like domesticated animals," Kevin Parsons, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Glasgow, told the BBC in a video. There has been considerable controversy around the study of domestication, with a famous 1950s study by Soviet geneticist named Dmitri Belyaev that argued for the existence of "domestication syndrome" being rigorously challenged by subsequent scientists.
The study, which is being published in the journalScience, was conducted by researchers from the health and medicine faculty at the University of Copenhagen, with collaboration from the University of Greenland and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Barcelona. As the abstract put it, "This analysis indicates that sled dogs represent an ancient lineage going back at least 9500 years and that wolves bred with the ancestors of sled dogs and pre-contact American dogs. However, gene flow between sled dogs and wolves likely stopped before ∼9500 years ago."
One of the two initial authors of the study, PhD student Mikkel Sinding from the GLOBE Institute at Copenhagen, explained to Science Daily that "we have extracted DNA from a 9,500-year-old dog from the Siberian island of Zhokhov, which the dog is named after. Based on that DNA we have sequenced the oldest complete dog genome to date, and the results show an extremely early diversification of dogs into types of sledge dogs."
The other initial author, associate professor Shyam Gopalakrishnan, added that "this means that modern sledge dogs and Zhokhov had the same common origin in Siberia more than 9,500 years ago. Until now, we have thought that sledge dogs were only 2-3,000 years old."
The study is relevant because scientists have previously believed that Zhokhov was a type of ancient dog very different from the breeds that exist today, a belief undercut by the fact that the dog in question shares a major part of its genome with the three species of sledge dogs researched in the study. In addition, the study significantly lengthens the timeline for our understanding of when sledge dogs were domesticated.
The study also found that sledge dogs display certain distinct evolutionary differences from the domesticated dogs most of us know and love today. Foremost among them is that they are not genetically adapted to eat lots of sugars and starches like other domesticated dogs. They instead evolved to eat high-fat diets, similar to polar bears and peoples who are indigenous to the Arctic region.
"Together, these findings indicate substantial long-distance travel and transportation of resources, in which dog sledding would have been highly advantageous — if not necessary," the authors write in their study. "Putative sled remains and our genomic analyses of a 9500-year-old dog from the Zhokhov site indicate that the traditions and key genomic variations that define modern sled dogs were established in the northeast Asian Arctic >9500 years ago. Our results imply that the combination of these dogs with the innovation of sled technology facilitated human subsistence since the earliest Holocene in the Arctic."
This is not the first recent study to offer new insights into phenomena pertaining to canine domestication. A study released earlier this month revealed that London foxes are developing early signs of domestication including shorter snouts, wider snout tips and smaller brain cases.
"What's really fascinating here is that the foxes are doing this to themselves. This is the result of foxes that have decided to live near people, showing these traits that make them look more like domesticated animals," Kevin Parsons, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Glasgow, told the BBC in a video. There has been considerable controversy around the study of domestication, with a famous 1950s study by Soviet geneticist named Dmitri Belyaev that argued for the existence of "domestication syndrome" being rigorously challenged by subsequent scientists.
Need for speed: Japan supercomputer is world’s fastest
June 22, 2020
By Agence France-Presse
Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer, built with government backing and used in the fight against coronavirus, is now ranked as the world’s fastest, its developers announced Monday.
It snatched the top spot on the Top500, a site that has tracked the evolution of computer processing power for more than two decades, said the Riken scientific research centre.
The list is produced twice a year and rates supercomputers based on speed in a benchmark test set by experts from Germany and the US.
Fugaku was jointly developed by Riken and the firm Fujitsu and has a speed of roughly 415.53 petaflops — 2.8 times faster than the second-ranked US Summit supercomputer’s 148.6 petaflops.
A supercomputer is more than 1,000 times faster than a regular computer, according to Riken.
Summit had topped the last four rankings over the previous two years.
Fugaku, meaning Mount Fuji in Japanese, has been under development for six years and is expected to start full-time operation from April 2021.
But it is already being put to work on the coronavirus crisis, running simulations on how droplets would spread on office spaces with partitions installed or packed trains with windows open.
“I hope that the leading-edge IT developed for it will contribute to major advances on difficult social challenges such as COVID-19,” Satoshi Matsuoka, the head of Riken’s Center for Computational Science, said in a statement.
Fugaku has also topped several other supercomputer performance rankings, becoming the first to simultaneously sit atop the Graph500, HPCG, and HPL-AI lists.
Supercomputers are vital tools for advanced scientific work because of their ability to perform rapid calculations for everything from weather forecasts to missile development.
A Riken-developed forerunner to the Fugaku has held the title of world’s fastest supercomputer, but in recent years the race to develop the powerful machines has been dominated by the US and China.
It snatched the top spot on the Top500, a site that has tracked the evolution of computer processing power for more than two decades, said the Riken scientific research centre.
The list is produced twice a year and rates supercomputers based on speed in a benchmark test set by experts from Germany and the US.
Fugaku was jointly developed by Riken and the firm Fujitsu and has a speed of roughly 415.53 petaflops — 2.8 times faster than the second-ranked US Summit supercomputer’s 148.6 petaflops.
A supercomputer is more than 1,000 times faster than a regular computer, according to Riken.
Summit had topped the last four rankings over the previous two years.
Fugaku, meaning Mount Fuji in Japanese, has been under development for six years and is expected to start full-time operation from April 2021.
But it is already being put to work on the coronavirus crisis, running simulations on how droplets would spread on office spaces with partitions installed or packed trains with windows open.
“I hope that the leading-edge IT developed for it will contribute to major advances on difficult social challenges such as COVID-19,” Satoshi Matsuoka, the head of Riken’s Center for Computational Science, said in a statement.
Fugaku has also topped several other supercomputer performance rankings, becoming the first to simultaneously sit atop the Graph500, HPCG, and HPL-AI lists.
Supercomputers are vital tools for advanced scientific work because of their ability to perform rapid calculations for everything from weather forecasts to missile development.
A Riken-developed forerunner to the Fugaku has held the title of world’s fastest supercomputer, but in recent years the race to develop the powerful machines has been dominated by the US and China.
Israeli scientists produce energy from plants
June 11, 2020
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
Israeli scientists say they have produced hydrogen from plants in a development that they hope could eventually lead to using vegetation to produce electricity.
The discovery was made by using microscopic algae, an aquatic plant, in research carried out at a Tel Aviv University laboratory.
“To link a device to electricity, you just have to connect to a power point. In the case of a plant, we didn’t know where to connect,” said Iftach Yacoby, who heads the university’s renewable energy laboratory.
Researchers planted an enzyme into samples of the algae and observed it producing hydrogen, a source of energy already used to fuel vehicles.
“We didn’t know if this would work but we believed that it had potential,” said Yacoby during a laboratory visit.
Findings of the study, a collaborative project with Kevin Redding at the University of Arizona, were published in April in the Energy & Environmental Science journal.
“From the moment we found how to use plants to produce a source of energy, the options were open,” said Yacoby.
The nascent research shows that plants have the potential to produce electricity, he said, while cautioning it will take up to 20 years for the world to benefit from the findings.
“There are lots of things that we can consider doing thanks to the results of our research. The future will tell us what will come of it,” he said.
The discovery was made by using microscopic algae, an aquatic plant, in research carried out at a Tel Aviv University laboratory.
“To link a device to electricity, you just have to connect to a power point. In the case of a plant, we didn’t know where to connect,” said Iftach Yacoby, who heads the university’s renewable energy laboratory.
Researchers planted an enzyme into samples of the algae and observed it producing hydrogen, a source of energy already used to fuel vehicles.
“We didn’t know if this would work but we believed that it had potential,” said Yacoby during a laboratory visit.
Findings of the study, a collaborative project with Kevin Redding at the University of Arizona, were published in April in the Energy & Environmental Science journal.
“From the moment we found how to use plants to produce a source of energy, the options were open,” said Yacoby.
The nascent research shows that plants have the potential to produce electricity, he said, while cautioning it will take up to 20 years for the world to benefit from the findings.
“There are lots of things that we can consider doing thanks to the results of our research. The future will tell us what will come of it,” he said.
Plastics
The end of plastic? New plant-based bottles will degrade in a year
Carlsberg and Coca-Cola back pioneering project to make ‘all-plant’ drinks bottles
Jillian Ambrose
the guardian
Sat 16 May 2020 11.50 EDT
Beer and soft drinks could soon be sipped from “all-plant” bottles under new plans to turn sustainably grown crops into plastic in partnership with major beverage makers.
A biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels.
The plans, devised by renewable chemicals company Avantium, have already won the support of beer-maker Carlsberg, which hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic.
Avantium’s chief executive, Tom van Aken, says he hopes to greenlight a major investment in the world-leading bioplastics plant in the Netherlands by the end of the year. The project, which remains on track despite the coronavirus lockdown, is set to reveal partnerships with other food and drink companies later in the summer.
The project has the backing of Coca-Cola and Danone, which hope to secure the future of their bottled products by tackling the environmental damage caused by plastic pollution and a reliance on fossil fuels.
Globally around 300 million tonnes of plastic is made from fossil fuels every year, which is a major contributor to the climate crisis. Most of this is not recycled and contributes to the scourge of microplastics in the world’s oceans. Microplastics can take hundreds of years to decompose completely.
“This plastic has very attractive sustainability credentials because it uses no fossil fuels, and can be recycled – but would also degrade in nature much faster than normal plastics do,” says Van Aken.
Avantium’s plant plastic is designed to be resilient enough to contain carbonate drinks Trials have shown that the plant plastic would decompose in one year using a composter, and a few years longer if left in normal outdoor conditions. But ideally, it should be recycled, said Van Aken.
The bio-refinery plans to break down sustainable plant sugars into simple chemical structures that can then be rearranged to form a new plant-based plastic – which could appear on supermarket shelves by 2023.
The path-finder project will initially make a modest 5,000 tonnes of plastic every year using sugars from corn, wheat or beets. However, Avantium expects its production to grow as demand for renewable plastics climbs.
In time, Avantium plans to use plant sugars from sustainable sourced biowaste so that the rise of plant plastic does not affect the global food supply chain.
A biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels.
The plans, devised by renewable chemicals company Avantium, have already won the support of beer-maker Carlsberg, which hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic.
Avantium’s chief executive, Tom van Aken, says he hopes to greenlight a major investment in the world-leading bioplastics plant in the Netherlands by the end of the year. The project, which remains on track despite the coronavirus lockdown, is set to reveal partnerships with other food and drink companies later in the summer.
The project has the backing of Coca-Cola and Danone, which hope to secure the future of their bottled products by tackling the environmental damage caused by plastic pollution and a reliance on fossil fuels.
Globally around 300 million tonnes of plastic is made from fossil fuels every year, which is a major contributor to the climate crisis. Most of this is not recycled and contributes to the scourge of microplastics in the world’s oceans. Microplastics can take hundreds of years to decompose completely.
“This plastic has very attractive sustainability credentials because it uses no fossil fuels, and can be recycled – but would also degrade in nature much faster than normal plastics do,” says Van Aken.
Avantium’s plant plastic is designed to be resilient enough to contain carbonate drinks Trials have shown that the plant plastic would decompose in one year using a composter, and a few years longer if left in normal outdoor conditions. But ideally, it should be recycled, said Van Aken.
The bio-refinery plans to break down sustainable plant sugars into simple chemical structures that can then be rearranged to form a new plant-based plastic – which could appear on supermarket shelves by 2023.
The path-finder project will initially make a modest 5,000 tonnes of plastic every year using sugars from corn, wheat or beets. However, Avantium expects its production to grow as demand for renewable plastics climbs.
In time, Avantium plans to use plant sugars from sustainable sourced biowaste so that the rise of plant plastic does not affect the global food supply chain.
Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that appears to be more contagious
Ralph Vartabedian, LA Times - yahoo news
May 5, 2020
Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that has become dominant worldwide and appears to be more contagious than the versions that spread in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The new strain appeared in February in Europe, migrated quickly to the East Coast of the United States and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March, the scientists wrote.
In addition to spreading faster, it may make people vulnerable to a second infection after a first bout with the disease, the report warned.
The 33-page report was posted Thursday on BioRxiv, a website that researchers use to share their work before it is peer reviewed, an effort to speed up collaborations with scientists working on COVID-19 vaccines or treatments. That research has been largely based on the genetic sequence of earlier strains and might not be effective against the new one.
The mutation identified in the new report affects the now infamous spikes on the exterior of the coronavirus, which allow it to enter human respiratory cells. The report's authors said they felt an "urgent need for an early warning" so that vaccines and drugs under development around the world will be effective against the mutated strain.
Wherever the new strain appeared, it quickly infected far more people than the earlier strains that came out of Wuhan, China, and within weeks it was the only strain that was prevalent in some nations, according to the report.
The new strain's dominance over its predecessors demonstrates that it is more infectious, according to the report, though exactly why is not yet known.
The coronavirus, known to scientists as SARS-CoV-2, has infected more than 3.5 million people around the world and caused more than 250,000 COVID-19 deaths since its discovery late last year.
The report was based on a computational analysis of more than 6,000 coronavirus sequences from around the world, collected by the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data, a public-private organization in Germany. Time and again, the analysis found the new version was transitioning to become dominant.
---
The report contains regional breakdowns of when the new strain of virus first emerged and how long it took to become dominant.
Italy was one of the first countries to see the new virus in the last week of February, almost at the same time that the original strain appeared. Washington was among the first states to get hit with the original strain in late February, but by March 15 the mutated strain dominated. New York was hit by the original virus around March 15, but within days the mutant strain took over. The team did not report results for California.
Scientists at major organizations working on a vaccine or drugs have told The Times that they are pinning their hopes on initial evidence that the virus is stable and not likely to mutate the way influenza virus does, requiring a new vaccine every year. The Los Alamos report could upend that assumption.
If the pandemic fails to wane seasonally as the weather warms, the study warns, the virus could undergo further mutations even as research organizations prepare the first medical treatments and vaccines. Without getting on top of the risk now, the effectiveness of vaccines could be limited. Some of the compounds in development are supposed to latch onto the spike or interrupt its action. If they were designed based on the original version of the spike, they might not be effective against the new coronavirus strain, the study's authors warned.
---
"D614G is increasing in frequency at an alarming rate, indicating a fitness advantage relative to the original Wuhan strain that enables more rapid spread," the study said.
Still unknown is whether this mutant virus could account for regional variations in how hard COVID-19 is hitting different parts of the world.
In the United States, doctors had begun to independently question whether new strains of the virus could account for the differences in how it has infected, sickened and killed people, said Alan Wu, a UC San Francisco professor who runs the clinical chemistry and toxicology laboratories at San Francisco General Hospital.
Medical experts have speculated in recent weeks that they were seeing at least two strains of the virus in the U.S., one prevalent on the East Coast and another on the West Coast, according to Wu.
“We are looking to identify the mutation,” he said, noting that his hospital has had only a few deaths out of the hundreds of cases it has treated, which is “quite a different story than we are hearing from New York."
The Los Alamos study does not indicate that the new version of the virus is more lethal than the original. People infected with the mutated strain appear to have higher viral loads. But the study's authors from the University of Sheffield found that among a local sample of 447 patients, hospitalization rates were about the same for people infected with either virus version.
Even if the new strain is no more dangerous than the others, it could still complicate efforts to bring the pandemic under control. That would be an issueif the mutation makes the virus so different from earlier strains that people who have immunity to them would not be immune to the new version.
If that is indeed the case, it could make "individuals susceptible to a second infection," the study authors wrote.
It’s possible that the mutation changes the spike in some way that helps the virus evade the immune system, said Montefiori, who has worked on an HIV vaccine for 30 years. “It is hypothetical. We are looking at it very hard.”
RELATED: Countries pledge $8 billion for coronavirus vaccine, but U.S. absent
A Trump administration official said the U.S. is already a leader in the fight against the virus with over $2.4 billion committed to global health, aid. An international campaign to find a vaccine for the coronavirus raised $8 billion from governments and organizations on Monday, but the United States was notably absent from the effort.
The new strain appeared in February in Europe, migrated quickly to the East Coast of the United States and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March, the scientists wrote.
In addition to spreading faster, it may make people vulnerable to a second infection after a first bout with the disease, the report warned.
The 33-page report was posted Thursday on BioRxiv, a website that researchers use to share their work before it is peer reviewed, an effort to speed up collaborations with scientists working on COVID-19 vaccines or treatments. That research has been largely based on the genetic sequence of earlier strains and might not be effective against the new one.
The mutation identified in the new report affects the now infamous spikes on the exterior of the coronavirus, which allow it to enter human respiratory cells. The report's authors said they felt an "urgent need for an early warning" so that vaccines and drugs under development around the world will be effective against the mutated strain.
Wherever the new strain appeared, it quickly infected far more people than the earlier strains that came out of Wuhan, China, and within weeks it was the only strain that was prevalent in some nations, according to the report.
The new strain's dominance over its predecessors demonstrates that it is more infectious, according to the report, though exactly why is not yet known.
The coronavirus, known to scientists as SARS-CoV-2, has infected more than 3.5 million people around the world and caused more than 250,000 COVID-19 deaths since its discovery late last year.
The report was based on a computational analysis of more than 6,000 coronavirus sequences from around the world, collected by the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data, a public-private organization in Germany. Time and again, the analysis found the new version was transitioning to become dominant.
---
The report contains regional breakdowns of when the new strain of virus first emerged and how long it took to become dominant.
Italy was one of the first countries to see the new virus in the last week of February, almost at the same time that the original strain appeared. Washington was among the first states to get hit with the original strain in late February, but by March 15 the mutated strain dominated. New York was hit by the original virus around March 15, but within days the mutant strain took over. The team did not report results for California.
Scientists at major organizations working on a vaccine or drugs have told The Times that they are pinning their hopes on initial evidence that the virus is stable and not likely to mutate the way influenza virus does, requiring a new vaccine every year. The Los Alamos report could upend that assumption.
If the pandemic fails to wane seasonally as the weather warms, the study warns, the virus could undergo further mutations even as research organizations prepare the first medical treatments and vaccines. Without getting on top of the risk now, the effectiveness of vaccines could be limited. Some of the compounds in development are supposed to latch onto the spike or interrupt its action. If they were designed based on the original version of the spike, they might not be effective against the new coronavirus strain, the study's authors warned.
---
"D614G is increasing in frequency at an alarming rate, indicating a fitness advantage relative to the original Wuhan strain that enables more rapid spread," the study said.
Still unknown is whether this mutant virus could account for regional variations in how hard COVID-19 is hitting different parts of the world.
In the United States, doctors had begun to independently question whether new strains of the virus could account for the differences in how it has infected, sickened and killed people, said Alan Wu, a UC San Francisco professor who runs the clinical chemistry and toxicology laboratories at San Francisco General Hospital.
Medical experts have speculated in recent weeks that they were seeing at least two strains of the virus in the U.S., one prevalent on the East Coast and another on the West Coast, according to Wu.
“We are looking to identify the mutation,” he said, noting that his hospital has had only a few deaths out of the hundreds of cases it has treated, which is “quite a different story than we are hearing from New York."
The Los Alamos study does not indicate that the new version of the virus is more lethal than the original. People infected with the mutated strain appear to have higher viral loads. But the study's authors from the University of Sheffield found that among a local sample of 447 patients, hospitalization rates were about the same for people infected with either virus version.
Even if the new strain is no more dangerous than the others, it could still complicate efforts to bring the pandemic under control. That would be an issueif the mutation makes the virus so different from earlier strains that people who have immunity to them would not be immune to the new version.
If that is indeed the case, it could make "individuals susceptible to a second infection," the study authors wrote.
It’s possible that the mutation changes the spike in some way that helps the virus evade the immune system, said Montefiori, who has worked on an HIV vaccine for 30 years. “It is hypothetical. We are looking at it very hard.”
RELATED: Countries pledge $8 billion for coronavirus vaccine, but U.S. absent
A Trump administration official said the U.S. is already a leader in the fight against the virus with over $2.4 billion committed to global health, aid. An international campaign to find a vaccine for the coronavirus raised $8 billion from governments and organizations on Monday, but the United States was notably absent from the effort.
Hyperloop
Amsterdam to Paris in 90 minutes? Dutch tout hyperloop as future of travel
North Holland thinks unproven 600mph magnetic hovertrain could help replace air travel
Daniel Boffey in Brussels
the guardian
Fri 10 Apr 2020 11.51 EDT
From hours to minutes … how the Hardt Hyperloop might look. Photograph: Hardt/Plompmozes/Hardt
Swifter than trains, safer than cars and far less damaging to the environment than planes, the Dutch province of North Holland believes the hyperloop might be the future.
Plans are being drawn up for Amsterdam to be connected to other European cities by the futuristic high-speed mode of transportation comprising a magnetic hovertrain in an air-free tube able to travel at speeds of over 600mph due to the lack of friction and drag.
A study carried out by a Dutch technology startup, Hardt Hyperloop, in collaboration with the province, has found the hyperloop could reduce commuting times from Amsterdam to Paris, Brussels, Düsseldorf or Frankfurt from “hours to minutes”, boasting that “borders would, quite literally, become blurred”.
Commuters stepping into a hyperloop pod in Amsterdam could arrive in Brussels in under 30 minutes or in Paris in 90 minutes rather than the current three and half hours, the study suggests.
It is yet to be seen how the coronavirus pandemic will affect the transnational project at a time when borders are being shut and an economic recession is widely predicted.
In addition, the practicality of the hyperloop has been questioned ever since the entrepreneur Elon Musk suggested back in 2013 that the aerodynamic pods could be the future of high-speed travel for passengers and freight, given its relatively low energy use.
Questions have been raised about its value for money, with critics adamant that incremental changes to current transport are a better bet than inventing a fifth mode to join cars, trains, boats and planes. Australia is the latest to reject it in favour of tried and trusted high-speed rail.
But Jeroen Olthof, the deputy responsible for mobility in North Holland, said he had been impressed by the possibility of creating a “compact region” of five European cities in which commuters could travel door-to-door within an hour.
Economic modelling published this week suggests such time-saving would deliver an additional €275bn (£241bn) in GDP for the province, equating to growth of 121%.
Not only would Amsterdam be served by a larger workforce but the drop in demand for short-haul flights from Schiphol airport could lead to a reduction of about 20,000 to 24,000 aircraft movements in 2040, it is claimed.
Olthof said: “We know that people are willing to travel from door to door for up to one hour for their work. With such a super-fast hyperloop, it suddenly becomes possible to travel much longer commuting distances. That sounds promising.
“That is why we are going to consult with other authorities and parties to continue this research.”
Hardt Hyperloop, which was founded after winning the international hyperloop competition organised by Musk in 2017, is partnering with companies including Tata Steel on the project.
A first high-speed test facility is being built in the Dutch province of Groningen with a three kilometre test track, making it the first in Europe of its kind. A 30 metre low-speed test tunnel has already been built in Delft.
Hardt Hyperloop has been looking at how its passenger-carrying pods – which will be propelled through a tube – might also be able to change routes by switching lanes without reducing speed.
Plans are being drawn up for Amsterdam to be connected to other European cities by the futuristic high-speed mode of transportation comprising a magnetic hovertrain in an air-free tube able to travel at speeds of over 600mph due to the lack of friction and drag.
A study carried out by a Dutch technology startup, Hardt Hyperloop, in collaboration with the province, has found the hyperloop could reduce commuting times from Amsterdam to Paris, Brussels, Düsseldorf or Frankfurt from “hours to minutes”, boasting that “borders would, quite literally, become blurred”.
Commuters stepping into a hyperloop pod in Amsterdam could arrive in Brussels in under 30 minutes or in Paris in 90 minutes rather than the current three and half hours, the study suggests.
It is yet to be seen how the coronavirus pandemic will affect the transnational project at a time when borders are being shut and an economic recession is widely predicted.
In addition, the practicality of the hyperloop has been questioned ever since the entrepreneur Elon Musk suggested back in 2013 that the aerodynamic pods could be the future of high-speed travel for passengers and freight, given its relatively low energy use.
Questions have been raised about its value for money, with critics adamant that incremental changes to current transport are a better bet than inventing a fifth mode to join cars, trains, boats and planes. Australia is the latest to reject it in favour of tried and trusted high-speed rail.
But Jeroen Olthof, the deputy responsible for mobility in North Holland, said he had been impressed by the possibility of creating a “compact region” of five European cities in which commuters could travel door-to-door within an hour.
Economic modelling published this week suggests such time-saving would deliver an additional €275bn (£241bn) in GDP for the province, equating to growth of 121%.
Not only would Amsterdam be served by a larger workforce but the drop in demand for short-haul flights from Schiphol airport could lead to a reduction of about 20,000 to 24,000 aircraft movements in 2040, it is claimed.
Olthof said: “We know that people are willing to travel from door to door for up to one hour for their work. With such a super-fast hyperloop, it suddenly becomes possible to travel much longer commuting distances. That sounds promising.
“That is why we are going to consult with other authorities and parties to continue this research.”
Hardt Hyperloop, which was founded after winning the international hyperloop competition organised by Musk in 2017, is partnering with companies including Tata Steel on the project.
A first high-speed test facility is being built in the Dutch province of Groningen with a three kilometre test track, making it the first in Europe of its kind. A 30 metre low-speed test tunnel has already been built in Delft.
Hardt Hyperloop has been looking at how its passenger-carrying pods – which will be propelled through a tube – might also be able to change routes by switching lanes without reducing speed.
Plastics
Scientists create mutant enzyme that recycles plastic bottles in hours
Bacterial enzyme originally found in compost can be used to make high-quality new bottles
Damian Carrington Environment editor
the guardian
Wed 8 Apr 2020 11.00 EDT
A mutant bacterial enzyme that breaks down plastic bottles for recycling in hours has been created by scientists.
The enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, reduced the bottles to chemical building blocks that were then used to make high-quality new bottles. Existing recycling technologies usually produce plastic only good enough for clothing and carpets.
The company behind the breakthrough, Carbios, said it was aiming for industrial-scale recycling within five years. It has partnered with major companies including Pepsi and L’Oréal to accelerate development. Independent experts called the new enzyme a major advance.
Billions of tonnes of plastic waste have polluted the planet, from the Arctic to the deepest ocean trench, and pose a particular risk to sea life. Campaigners say reducing the use of plastic is key, but the company said the strong, lightweight material was very useful and that true recycling was part of the solution.
The new enzyme was revealed in research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The work began with the screening of 100,000 micro-organisms for promising candidates, including the leaf compost bug, which was first discovered in 2012.
“It had been completely forgotten, but it turned out to be the best,” said Prof Alain Marty at the Université de Toulouse, France, the chief science officer at Carbios.
The scientists analysed the enzyme and introduced mutations to improve its ability to break down the PET plastic from which drinks bottles are made. They also made it stable at 72C, close to the perfect temperature for fast degradation.
The team used the optimised enzyme to break down a tonne of waste plastic bottles, which were 90% degraded within 10 hours. The scientists then used the material to create new food-grade plastic bottles.
Carbios has a deal with the biotechnology company Novozymes to produce the new enzyme at scale using fungi. It said the cost of the enzyme was just 4% of the cost of virgin plastic made from oil.
Waste bottles also have to be ground up and heated before the enzyme is added, so the recycled PET will be more expensive than virgin plastic. But Martin Stephan, the deputy chief executive at Carbios, said existing lower-quality recycled plastic sells at a premium due to a shortage of supply.
“We are the first company to bring this technology on the market,” said Stephan. “Our goal is to be up and running by 2024, 2025, at large industrial scale.”
He said a reduction in plastic use was one part of solving the waste problem. “But we all know that plastic brings a lot of value to society, in food, medical care, transportation. The problem is plastic waste.” Increasing the collection of plastic waste was key, Stephan said, with about half of all plastic ending up in the environment or in landfill.
Another team of scientists revealed in 2018 that they had accidentally created an enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles. One of the team behind this advance, Prof John McGeehan, the director of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, said Carbios was the leading company engineering enzymes to break down PET at large scale and that the new work was a major advance.
“It makes the possibility of true industrial-scale biological recycling of PET a possibility. This is a very large advance in terms of speed, efficiency and heat tolerance,” McGeehan said. “It represents a significant step forward for true circular recycling of PET and has the potential to reduce our reliance on oil, cut carbon emissions and energy use, and incentivise the collection and recycling of waste plastic.”
Scientists are also making progress in finding biological ways to break down other major types of plastic. In March, German researchers revealed a bug that feasts on toxic polyurethane, while earlier work has shown that wax moth larvae – usually bred as fish bait – can eat up polythene bags.
The enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, reduced the bottles to chemical building blocks that were then used to make high-quality new bottles. Existing recycling technologies usually produce plastic only good enough for clothing and carpets.
The company behind the breakthrough, Carbios, said it was aiming for industrial-scale recycling within five years. It has partnered with major companies including Pepsi and L’Oréal to accelerate development. Independent experts called the new enzyme a major advance.
Billions of tonnes of plastic waste have polluted the planet, from the Arctic to the deepest ocean trench, and pose a particular risk to sea life. Campaigners say reducing the use of plastic is key, but the company said the strong, lightweight material was very useful and that true recycling was part of the solution.
The new enzyme was revealed in research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The work began with the screening of 100,000 micro-organisms for promising candidates, including the leaf compost bug, which was first discovered in 2012.
“It had been completely forgotten, but it turned out to be the best,” said Prof Alain Marty at the Université de Toulouse, France, the chief science officer at Carbios.
The scientists analysed the enzyme and introduced mutations to improve its ability to break down the PET plastic from which drinks bottles are made. They also made it stable at 72C, close to the perfect temperature for fast degradation.
The team used the optimised enzyme to break down a tonne of waste plastic bottles, which were 90% degraded within 10 hours. The scientists then used the material to create new food-grade plastic bottles.
Carbios has a deal with the biotechnology company Novozymes to produce the new enzyme at scale using fungi. It said the cost of the enzyme was just 4% of the cost of virgin plastic made from oil.
Waste bottles also have to be ground up and heated before the enzyme is added, so the recycled PET will be more expensive than virgin plastic. But Martin Stephan, the deputy chief executive at Carbios, said existing lower-quality recycled plastic sells at a premium due to a shortage of supply.
“We are the first company to bring this technology on the market,” said Stephan. “Our goal is to be up and running by 2024, 2025, at large industrial scale.”
He said a reduction in plastic use was one part of solving the waste problem. “But we all know that plastic brings a lot of value to society, in food, medical care, transportation. The problem is plastic waste.” Increasing the collection of plastic waste was key, Stephan said, with about half of all plastic ending up in the environment or in landfill.
Another team of scientists revealed in 2018 that they had accidentally created an enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles. One of the team behind this advance, Prof John McGeehan, the director of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, said Carbios was the leading company engineering enzymes to break down PET at large scale and that the new work was a major advance.
“It makes the possibility of true industrial-scale biological recycling of PET a possibility. This is a very large advance in terms of speed, efficiency and heat tolerance,” McGeehan said. “It represents a significant step forward for true circular recycling of PET and has the potential to reduce our reliance on oil, cut carbon emissions and energy use, and incentivise the collection and recycling of waste plastic.”
Scientists are also making progress in finding biological ways to break down other major types of plastic. In March, German researchers revealed a bug that feasts on toxic polyurethane, while earlier work has shown that wax moth larvae – usually bred as fish bait – can eat up polythene bags.
Coronavirus: Potential vaccine generates enough antibodies to fight off virus, first peer-reviewed study suggests
Vaccine developed by US researchers is injected by 400 ‘microneedles’ stuck onto the skin like a plaster
Chris Baynes - the independent(uk)
4/2/2020
A potential coronavirus vaccine developed by US scientists has been found to produce antibodies capable of fighting off Covid-19 in the first peer-reviewed study of its kind.
The vaccine, which was tested on mice by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, generated the antibodies in quantities thought to be enough to “neutralise” the virus within two week of injection.
The study’s authors are now to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration for investigational new drug approval ahead of phase one human clinical trials planned to start in the next few months.
Scientists across the globe are racing to develop a vaccine to protect against coronavirus, which has infected more than a confirmed 950,000 people worldwide and claimed nearly 50,000 lives.
The first human trial of a vaccine began at a lab in Seattle last month after a team of US researchers skipped animal testing, which is used to establish effectiveness and safety.
Dozens of other teams around the world have potential vaccines in development.
But the Pittsburgh research is the first study on a Covid-19 vaccine candidate to be published after critique from fellow scientists at outside institutions.
The scientists were able to act quickly because they had already laid the groundwork during earlier epidemics of coronaviruses: Sars in 2003 and Mers in 2014.
“These two viruses, which are closely related to [Covid-19], teach us that a particular protein, called a spike protein, is important for inducing immunity against the virus. We knew exactly where to fight this new virus,” said Andrea Gambotto, associate professor of surgery at the Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
The vaccine candidate, which the authors are calling PittCoVacc, uses lab-made pieces of viral protein to build immunity in the same way as a flu jab.
To increase potency, the researchers also used a new drug delivery approach involving of a fingertip-sized patch of 400 tiny microneedles that inject the spike protein pieces into the skin, where the immune reaction is strongest. The patch is stuck on like a plaster and the needles – which are made entirely of sugar and the protein pieces – simply dissolve into the skin.
“We developed this to build on the original scratch method used to deliver the smallpox vaccine to the skin, but as a high-tech version that is more efficient and reproducible patient to patient,” said study co-author Louis Falo, professor and chair of dermatology. “And it’s actually pretty painless – it feels kind of like Velcro.”[...]
The vaccine, which was tested on mice by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, generated the antibodies in quantities thought to be enough to “neutralise” the virus within two week of injection.
The study’s authors are now to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration for investigational new drug approval ahead of phase one human clinical trials planned to start in the next few months.
Scientists across the globe are racing to develop a vaccine to protect against coronavirus, which has infected more than a confirmed 950,000 people worldwide and claimed nearly 50,000 lives.
The first human trial of a vaccine began at a lab in Seattle last month after a team of US researchers skipped animal testing, which is used to establish effectiveness and safety.
Dozens of other teams around the world have potential vaccines in development.
But the Pittsburgh research is the first study on a Covid-19 vaccine candidate to be published after critique from fellow scientists at outside institutions.
The scientists were able to act quickly because they had already laid the groundwork during earlier epidemics of coronaviruses: Sars in 2003 and Mers in 2014.
“These two viruses, which are closely related to [Covid-19], teach us that a particular protein, called a spike protein, is important for inducing immunity against the virus. We knew exactly where to fight this new virus,” said Andrea Gambotto, associate professor of surgery at the Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
The vaccine candidate, which the authors are calling PittCoVacc, uses lab-made pieces of viral protein to build immunity in the same way as a flu jab.
To increase potency, the researchers also used a new drug delivery approach involving of a fingertip-sized patch of 400 tiny microneedles that inject the spike protein pieces into the skin, where the immune reaction is strongest. The patch is stuck on like a plaster and the needles – which are made entirely of sugar and the protein pieces – simply dissolve into the skin.
“We developed this to build on the original scratch method used to deliver the smallpox vaccine to the skin, but as a high-tech version that is more efficient and reproducible patient to patient,” said study co-author Louis Falo, professor and chair of dermatology. “And it’s actually pretty painless – it feels kind of like Velcro.”[...]
‘The Martin Shkreli of the pandemic’: Company threatens to sue after Italians find way to 3D print key $11,000 Ventilator piece for $1
Eoin Higgins / Common Dreams - alternet
March 18, 2020
After two Italian volunteers used a 3-D printer to manufacture a desperately needed ventilator component for those stricken by the coronavirus, the medical company with the patent for the device threatened to sue—even as the printed valves saved at least 10 people’s lives in a hospital in the northern Italian city of Brescia.
“There were people whose lives were in danger, and we acted,” Cristian Fracassi, who along with fellow volunteer Alessandro Ramaioli made the valves, said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “Period.”
Fracassi and Ramaioli, who work at 3-D printing startup Isinnova, were asked by physicist Massimo Temporelli to assist with producing the valves for only $1 after supplies from the source medical company were not forthcoming. The company, which charges $11,000 a piece for the devices, did not share the technical specifications for producing the valve—leading the volunteers to measure the valves and print from those numbers—and has threatened to sue for patent infringement.
TechDirt‘s Glyn Moody noted on Tuesday that the greed at the heart of the threat to sue was staggering and indicative of the deeper problems in the world economic system laid bare by the coronavirus outbreak:
This is a perfect example of how granting an intellectual monopoly in the form of a patent allows almost arbitrarily high prices to be charged, and quite legally. That would be bad enough in any situation, but when lives are at stake, and Italian hospitals struggle to buy even basic equipment like face masks, demanding such a sum is even worse. And when a pandemic is raging out of control, for a company to threaten those selflessly trying to save lives in this way is completely beyond the pale.
As Metro UK reported, Fracassi and Ramaioli are still hard at work manufacturing as many devices as they can:
The valves he produced worked on 10 patients at the overstretched hospital, and the engineer is in the process of creating 100 more. But Fracassi says he is not sure how long the they will last or whether they are reusable, as it is possible sterilisation may damage them.
His team are testing out three different designs after failing to secure the original blueprints. The country is grappling with a medical equipment shortage as the number of coronavirus cases continue to surge and 3D printing could off a solution to broken supply chains.
Observers were unimpressed with the medical company’s threats in the face of the pandemic, which has already killed 2,503 people in Italy.
“On the face of it, this seems a pretty clear cut case of pure evil,” tweeted Australian political cartoonist Jon Kudelka.
“There were people whose lives were in danger, and we acted,” Cristian Fracassi, who along with fellow volunteer Alessandro Ramaioli made the valves, said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “Period.”
Fracassi and Ramaioli, who work at 3-D printing startup Isinnova, were asked by physicist Massimo Temporelli to assist with producing the valves for only $1 after supplies from the source medical company were not forthcoming. The company, which charges $11,000 a piece for the devices, did not share the technical specifications for producing the valve—leading the volunteers to measure the valves and print from those numbers—and has threatened to sue for patent infringement.
TechDirt‘s Glyn Moody noted on Tuesday that the greed at the heart of the threat to sue was staggering and indicative of the deeper problems in the world economic system laid bare by the coronavirus outbreak:
This is a perfect example of how granting an intellectual monopoly in the form of a patent allows almost arbitrarily high prices to be charged, and quite legally. That would be bad enough in any situation, but when lives are at stake, and Italian hospitals struggle to buy even basic equipment like face masks, demanding such a sum is even worse. And when a pandemic is raging out of control, for a company to threaten those selflessly trying to save lives in this way is completely beyond the pale.
As Metro UK reported, Fracassi and Ramaioli are still hard at work manufacturing as many devices as they can:
The valves he produced worked on 10 patients at the overstretched hospital, and the engineer is in the process of creating 100 more. But Fracassi says he is not sure how long the they will last or whether they are reusable, as it is possible sterilisation may damage them.
His team are testing out three different designs after failing to secure the original blueprints. The country is grappling with a medical equipment shortage as the number of coronavirus cases continue to surge and 3D printing could off a solution to broken supply chains.
Observers were unimpressed with the medical company’s threats in the face of the pandemic, which has already killed 2,503 people in Italy.
“On the face of it, this seems a pretty clear cut case of pure evil,” tweeted Australian political cartoonist Jon Kudelka.
Coronavirus: The race to find the source in wildlife
By Helen Briggs - BBC News
25 February 2020
The race is on to find out how the deadly coronavirus jumped from animals to humans. Helen Briggs looks at how scientists are trying to trace the source of the outbreak.
Somewhere in China, a bat flits across the sky, leaving a trace of coronavirus in its droppings, which fall to the forest floor. A wild animal, possibly a pangolin snuffling for insects among the leaves, picks up the infection from the excrement.
The novel virus circulates in wildlife. Eventually an infected animal is captured, and a person somehow catches the disease, then passes it on to workers at a wildlife market. A global outbreak is born.
Scientists are attempting to prove the truth of this scenario as they work to find wild animals harbouring the virus. Finding the sequence of events is "a bit of a detective story", says Prof Andrew Cunningham of Zoological Society London (ZSL). A range of wild animal species could be the host, he says, in particular bats, which harbour a large number of different coronaviruses.
So how much do we know about the "spillover event", as it's known in the trade? When scientists cracked the code of the new virus, taken from the body of a patient, bats in China were implicated.
The mammals gather in large colonies, fly long distances and are present on every continent. They rarely get sick themselves, but have the opportunity to spread pathogens far and wide. According to Prof Kate Jones of University College London, there is some evidence bats have adapted to the energetic demands of flight and are better at repairing DNA damage. "This might enable them to cope with a higher burden of viruses before getting sick - but this is just an idea at present."
There's no doubt that the behaviour of bats allows viruses to thrive. "When you consider the very way that they live, then they are going to have a large array of viruses," says Prof Jonathan Ball from the University of Nottingham. "And because they're mammals there's a possibility that some of them can infect humans either directly or through an intermediate host species."
The second part of the puzzle, then, is the identity of the mystery animal that incubated the virus in its body and possibly ended up in the market at Wuhan. One suspect for the smoking gun is the pangolin.
The ant-devouring scaly mammal, said to be the most widely trafficked mammal in the world, is threatened with extinction. The animal's scales are in high demand in Asia for use in traditional Chinese medicine, while pangolin meat is considered a delicacy by some.
Coronaviruses have been found in pangolins, some claimed to be a close match to the novel human virus. Could the bat virus and pangolin virus have traded genetics before spreading to humans? Experts are cautious about drawing any conclusions. Full data on the pangolin study has not been released, making the information impossible to verify.
Prof Cunningham says the provenance and number of pangolins examined for the research is especially important. "For example, were there multiple animals sampled directly in the wild (in which case the results would be more meaningful), or was a single animal from a captive environment or wet market sampled (in which case conclusions about the true host of the virus could not be robustly made)?"
Pangolins and other wild species, including a variety of species of bat, are often sold in wet markets, he says, providing opportunities for viruses to move from one species to another. "Wet markets, therefore, create ideal conditions for the spillover of pathogens from one species to another, including to people."
The market in Wuhan, which was closed down after the outbreak, had a wild animal section, where live and slaughtered species were on sale, including body parts of camels, koalas and birds. The Guardian reports that an inventory at one shop listed live wolf pups, golden cicadas, scorpions, bamboo rats, squirrels, foxes, civets, hedgehogs (probably porcupines), salamanders, turtles and crocodiles.
As far as we know, bats and pangolins weren't listed, but authorities in China will have intelligence on what animals were being sold, says Prof Ball. "If the spillover's happened once, you want to know whether or not this sort of thing can happen again, because it's important from a public health standpoint," he says. "And so you need to know exactly what species of animal it's in and also what were the risks that gave rise to that spillover event."
Many of the viruses we have become familiar with in recent years have crossed over from wild animals. This is the story of Ebola, HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) and now coronavirus. Prof Jones says the rise in infectious disease events from wildlife might be because of our increasing ability to detect them, growing connectivity to each other, or more encroachment into wild habitats, thereby "changing landscapes and coming into contact with new viruses the human population hasn't seen before".
If we understand the risk factors, we can take steps to prevent it happening in the first place without adversely affecting wild animals, says Prof Cunningham. Conservationists are at pains to point out that although bats are thought to carry many viruses, they are also essential for ecosystems to function. "Insectivorous bats eat huge volumes of insects such as mosquitoes and agricultural pests, while fruit bats pollinate trees and spread their seeds," he says. "It is imperative that these species are not culled through misguided 'disease control' measures."
After Sars in 2002-3, caused by a very similar coronavirus to the one now emerging in China and beyond, there was a temporary ban on wild animal markets. But the markets quickly sprang up again across China, Vietnam and other parts of south-east Asia.
China has again suspended the buying and selling of wild-animal products, which are commonly used for food, fur and in traditional medicines. Reports suggest this may be made permanent.
While we may never know exactly how or where the disease responsible for many deaths made the leap into humans, Prof Diana Bell of the University of East Anglia says we can prevent another "perfect storm". "We are bringing together animals from different countries, different habitats, different lifestyles - in terms of aquatic animals, arboreal animals and so on - and mixing them together and it's a kind of melting pot - and we've got to stop doing it."
Somewhere in China, a bat flits across the sky, leaving a trace of coronavirus in its droppings, which fall to the forest floor. A wild animal, possibly a pangolin snuffling for insects among the leaves, picks up the infection from the excrement.
The novel virus circulates in wildlife. Eventually an infected animal is captured, and a person somehow catches the disease, then passes it on to workers at a wildlife market. A global outbreak is born.
Scientists are attempting to prove the truth of this scenario as they work to find wild animals harbouring the virus. Finding the sequence of events is "a bit of a detective story", says Prof Andrew Cunningham of Zoological Society London (ZSL). A range of wild animal species could be the host, he says, in particular bats, which harbour a large number of different coronaviruses.
So how much do we know about the "spillover event", as it's known in the trade? When scientists cracked the code of the new virus, taken from the body of a patient, bats in China were implicated.
The mammals gather in large colonies, fly long distances and are present on every continent. They rarely get sick themselves, but have the opportunity to spread pathogens far and wide. According to Prof Kate Jones of University College London, there is some evidence bats have adapted to the energetic demands of flight and are better at repairing DNA damage. "This might enable them to cope with a higher burden of viruses before getting sick - but this is just an idea at present."
There's no doubt that the behaviour of bats allows viruses to thrive. "When you consider the very way that they live, then they are going to have a large array of viruses," says Prof Jonathan Ball from the University of Nottingham. "And because they're mammals there's a possibility that some of them can infect humans either directly or through an intermediate host species."
The second part of the puzzle, then, is the identity of the mystery animal that incubated the virus in its body and possibly ended up in the market at Wuhan. One suspect for the smoking gun is the pangolin.
The ant-devouring scaly mammal, said to be the most widely trafficked mammal in the world, is threatened with extinction. The animal's scales are in high demand in Asia for use in traditional Chinese medicine, while pangolin meat is considered a delicacy by some.
Coronaviruses have been found in pangolins, some claimed to be a close match to the novel human virus. Could the bat virus and pangolin virus have traded genetics before spreading to humans? Experts are cautious about drawing any conclusions. Full data on the pangolin study has not been released, making the information impossible to verify.
Prof Cunningham says the provenance and number of pangolins examined for the research is especially important. "For example, were there multiple animals sampled directly in the wild (in which case the results would be more meaningful), or was a single animal from a captive environment or wet market sampled (in which case conclusions about the true host of the virus could not be robustly made)?"
Pangolins and other wild species, including a variety of species of bat, are often sold in wet markets, he says, providing opportunities for viruses to move from one species to another. "Wet markets, therefore, create ideal conditions for the spillover of pathogens from one species to another, including to people."
The market in Wuhan, which was closed down after the outbreak, had a wild animal section, where live and slaughtered species were on sale, including body parts of camels, koalas and birds. The Guardian reports that an inventory at one shop listed live wolf pups, golden cicadas, scorpions, bamboo rats, squirrels, foxes, civets, hedgehogs (probably porcupines), salamanders, turtles and crocodiles.
As far as we know, bats and pangolins weren't listed, but authorities in China will have intelligence on what animals were being sold, says Prof Ball. "If the spillover's happened once, you want to know whether or not this sort of thing can happen again, because it's important from a public health standpoint," he says. "And so you need to know exactly what species of animal it's in and also what were the risks that gave rise to that spillover event."
Many of the viruses we have become familiar with in recent years have crossed over from wild animals. This is the story of Ebola, HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) and now coronavirus. Prof Jones says the rise in infectious disease events from wildlife might be because of our increasing ability to detect them, growing connectivity to each other, or more encroachment into wild habitats, thereby "changing landscapes and coming into contact with new viruses the human population hasn't seen before".
If we understand the risk factors, we can take steps to prevent it happening in the first place without adversely affecting wild animals, says Prof Cunningham. Conservationists are at pains to point out that although bats are thought to carry many viruses, they are also essential for ecosystems to function. "Insectivorous bats eat huge volumes of insects such as mosquitoes and agricultural pests, while fruit bats pollinate trees and spread their seeds," he says. "It is imperative that these species are not culled through misguided 'disease control' measures."
After Sars in 2002-3, caused by a very similar coronavirus to the one now emerging in China and beyond, there was a temporary ban on wild animal markets. But the markets quickly sprang up again across China, Vietnam and other parts of south-east Asia.
China has again suspended the buying and selling of wild-animal products, which are commonly used for food, fur and in traditional medicines. Reports suggest this may be made permanent.
While we may never know exactly how or where the disease responsible for many deaths made the leap into humans, Prof Diana Bell of the University of East Anglia says we can prevent another "perfect storm". "We are bringing together animals from different countries, different habitats, different lifestyles - in terms of aquatic animals, arboreal animals and so on - and mixing them together and it's a kind of melting pot - and we've got to stop doing it."
MACHINE LEARNING USED TO DISCOVER POWERFUL NEW ANTIBIOTIC THAT CAN KILL SOME OF WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS BACTERIA
BY ARISTOS GEORGIOU - newsweek
ON 2/21/20 AT 11:02 AM EST
Researchers have identified a powerful new antibiotic compound using artificial intelligence (AI) which can kill some of the world's most dangerous bacteria. According to a study published in the journal Cell, the compound successfully removed strains of bacteria in mice which are resistant to all known antibiotics.
A team of scientists—led by Regina Barzilay and James Collins from MIT—identified the antibiotic using an advanced "machine learning" computer algorithm which scanned a database of chemical compounds in order to find ones that may be effective at killing bacteria via different mechanisms to drugs that are already available.
According to the researchers, this is the first time that machine learning artificial intelligence—essentially, algorithms which which can improve their own ability to complete specific tasks—has been used to find new antibiotics in this way.
"We wanted to develop a platform that would allow us to harness the power of artificial intelligence to usher in a new age of antibiotic drug discovery," Collins, from MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering, said in a statement. "Our approach revealed this amazing molecule which is arguably one of the more powerful antibiotics that has been discovered."
Antibiotic resistance—where bacteria develop the ability to survive the drugs designed to kill them—is an increasingly serious threat to health around the planet, one which "requires action across all government sectors and society," according to the World Health Organization.
In fact, approximately 2.8 million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant pathogens in the United States annually—resulting in more than 35,000 deaths—data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests.
If measures are not taken to combat the problem, the United Nations estimates that superbugs—pathogens resistant to multiple drugs—could kill 10 million people around the world every year by 2050.
This makes finding new antibiotics very important. However, in recent decades very few have been developed. And those that have tend to be very similar to drugs which are currently available. The search for new antibiotics is not helped by the fact that identifying potentially effective compounds is a costly business, as well as being a lengthy process. These searches also tend to only focus on a relatively narrow spectrum of chemical compounds.
This is where the new machine learning technique comes in, enabling the researchers to efficiently identify a powerful novel compound in a relatively short amount of time.
"We use AI to virtual screen molecules to predict their antibacterial properties," Barzilay told Newsweek. "Typically, such screening is done in the lab, which is both costly and slow. Machine [learning] on the other hand can screen hundreds of millions of compounds to identify a few interesting candidates that require experimental testing.
"The low cost of this approach enables us to explore huge chemical space, while only testing compounds which are likely to be potent. This is the first time AI was used to find a new potent antibiotic molecule," she said.
Firstly, the researchers trained their machine learning algorithm to identify characteristics in a database of chemicals which make compounds effective at wiping out the E. coli bacteria. After the algorithm was "trained," the team then used it comb through another database containing around 6,000 pharmaceutical compounds.
During this search, the algorithm identified an intriguing drug known as "halicin"—named after the infamous artificial intelligence system in Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey—which has previously been explored by scientists as a potential treatment for diabetes.
Based on its chemical properties, the machine learning system predicted that this compound would function as an effective antibiotic, and crucially, would work via different mechanisms than currently available anti-bacterial drugs. Further analysis revealed that the drug would also likely not be toxic to human cells.
The researchers then decided to assess the drug's efficacy in treating antibiotic infections in the lab. First, they cultured bacteria in petri dishes—including types that are resistant to multiple drugs—finding that the compound was effective against all strains tested with the exception of one particularly hard-to-treat pathogen.
Subsequently, the scientists used halicin to treat mice which had been infected with a potent strain of the bacteria A. baumannii which is resistant to all known antibiotics. Intriguingly, the compound was able to completely wipe out the infection within 24 hours.
According to the team, halicin is particularly promising because it works via biological mechanisms which may be hard for bacteria to develop resistance against. In fact, the researchers found that E. coli did not develop resistance to halicin over the course of a 30-day treatment period.
The next step, the team say, is to investigate halicin further and seek partnerships with organizations which could help to potentially develop a drug for use in humans. Futhermore, halicin wasn't the only promising antibiotic candidate to be identified in the study.
The researchers also used their algorithm to scan around 100 million chemical compounds in a vast online database known as ZINC15, which contains around 1.5 billion substances in total. This scan revealed 23 further promising candidates over the course of three days. Subsequent lab tests revealed that eight of these compounds could function as antibiotics.
Now the scientists plan to conduct more research into these other compounds as well, while also carrying out further scans of the ZINC15 database. In addition, they also hope that the latest research could enable scientists to design new antibiotics from scratch or improve existing compounds.
"This groundbreaking work signifies a paradigm shift in antibiotic discovery and indeed in drug discovery more generally," Roy Kishony, a professor of biology and computer science at the Israel Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. "This approach will allow using deep learning at all stages of antibiotic development, from discovery to improved efficacy and toxicity through drug modifications and medicinal chemistry."
A team of scientists—led by Regina Barzilay and James Collins from MIT—identified the antibiotic using an advanced "machine learning" computer algorithm which scanned a database of chemical compounds in order to find ones that may be effective at killing bacteria via different mechanisms to drugs that are already available.
According to the researchers, this is the first time that machine learning artificial intelligence—essentially, algorithms which which can improve their own ability to complete specific tasks—has been used to find new antibiotics in this way.
"We wanted to develop a platform that would allow us to harness the power of artificial intelligence to usher in a new age of antibiotic drug discovery," Collins, from MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering, said in a statement. "Our approach revealed this amazing molecule which is arguably one of the more powerful antibiotics that has been discovered."
Antibiotic resistance—where bacteria develop the ability to survive the drugs designed to kill them—is an increasingly serious threat to health around the planet, one which "requires action across all government sectors and society," according to the World Health Organization.
In fact, approximately 2.8 million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant pathogens in the United States annually—resulting in more than 35,000 deaths—data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests.
If measures are not taken to combat the problem, the United Nations estimates that superbugs—pathogens resistant to multiple drugs—could kill 10 million people around the world every year by 2050.
This makes finding new antibiotics very important. However, in recent decades very few have been developed. And those that have tend to be very similar to drugs which are currently available. The search for new antibiotics is not helped by the fact that identifying potentially effective compounds is a costly business, as well as being a lengthy process. These searches also tend to only focus on a relatively narrow spectrum of chemical compounds.
This is where the new machine learning technique comes in, enabling the researchers to efficiently identify a powerful novel compound in a relatively short amount of time.
"We use AI to virtual screen molecules to predict their antibacterial properties," Barzilay told Newsweek. "Typically, such screening is done in the lab, which is both costly and slow. Machine [learning] on the other hand can screen hundreds of millions of compounds to identify a few interesting candidates that require experimental testing.
"The low cost of this approach enables us to explore huge chemical space, while only testing compounds which are likely to be potent. This is the first time AI was used to find a new potent antibiotic molecule," she said.
Firstly, the researchers trained their machine learning algorithm to identify characteristics in a database of chemicals which make compounds effective at wiping out the E. coli bacteria. After the algorithm was "trained," the team then used it comb through another database containing around 6,000 pharmaceutical compounds.
During this search, the algorithm identified an intriguing drug known as "halicin"—named after the infamous artificial intelligence system in Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey—which has previously been explored by scientists as a potential treatment for diabetes.
Based on its chemical properties, the machine learning system predicted that this compound would function as an effective antibiotic, and crucially, would work via different mechanisms than currently available anti-bacterial drugs. Further analysis revealed that the drug would also likely not be toxic to human cells.
The researchers then decided to assess the drug's efficacy in treating antibiotic infections in the lab. First, they cultured bacteria in petri dishes—including types that are resistant to multiple drugs—finding that the compound was effective against all strains tested with the exception of one particularly hard-to-treat pathogen.
Subsequently, the scientists used halicin to treat mice which had been infected with a potent strain of the bacteria A. baumannii which is resistant to all known antibiotics. Intriguingly, the compound was able to completely wipe out the infection within 24 hours.
According to the team, halicin is particularly promising because it works via biological mechanisms which may be hard for bacteria to develop resistance against. In fact, the researchers found that E. coli did not develop resistance to halicin over the course of a 30-day treatment period.
The next step, the team say, is to investigate halicin further and seek partnerships with organizations which could help to potentially develop a drug for use in humans. Futhermore, halicin wasn't the only promising antibiotic candidate to be identified in the study.
The researchers also used their algorithm to scan around 100 million chemical compounds in a vast online database known as ZINC15, which contains around 1.5 billion substances in total. This scan revealed 23 further promising candidates over the course of three days. Subsequent lab tests revealed that eight of these compounds could function as antibiotics.
Now the scientists plan to conduct more research into these other compounds as well, while also carrying out further scans of the ZINC15 database. In addition, they also hope that the latest research could enable scientists to design new antibiotics from scratch or improve existing compounds.
"This groundbreaking work signifies a paradigm shift in antibiotic discovery and indeed in drug discovery more generally," Roy Kishony, a professor of biology and computer science at the Israel Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. "This approach will allow using deep learning at all stages of antibiotic development, from discovery to improved efficacy and toxicity through drug modifications and medicinal chemistry."
Researchers find a western-style diet can impair brain function
After a week on a high fat, high added sugar diet, volunteers scored worse on memory tests
Ian Sample Science editor
the guardian
Tue 18 Feb 2020 19.01 EST
Consuming a western diet for as little as one week can subtly impair brain function and encourage slim and otherwise healthy young people to overeat, scientists claim.
Researchers found that after seven days on a high fat, high added sugar diet, volunteers in their 20s scored worse on memory tests and found junk food more desirable immediately after they had finished a meal.
The finding suggests that a western diet makes it harder for people to regulate their appetite, and points to disruption in a brain region called the hippocampus as the possible cause.
“After a week on a western-style diet, palatable food such as snacks and chocolate becomes more desirable when you are full,” said Richard Stevenson, a professor of psychology at Macquarie University in Sydney. “This will make it harder to resist, leading you to eat more, which in turn generates more damage to the hippocampus and a vicious cycle of overeating.”
Previous work in animals has shown that junk food impairs the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory and appetite control. It is unclear why, but one idea is that the hippocampus normally blocks or weakens memories about food when we are full, so looking at a cake does not flood the mind with memories of how nice cake can be. “When the hippocampus functions less efficiently, you do get this flood of memories, and so food is more appealing,” Stevenson said.
To investigate how the western diet affects humans, the scientists recruited 110 lean and healthy students, aged 20 to 23, who generally ate a good diet. Half were randomly assigned to a control group who ate their normal diet for a week. The other half were put on a high energy western-style diet, which featured a generous intake of Belgian waffles and fast food.
At the start and end of the week, the volunteers ate breakfast in the lab. Before and after the meal, they completed word memory tests and scored a range of high-sugar foods, such as Coco Pops, Frosties and Froot Loops, according to how much they wanted and then liked the foods on eating them.
“The more desirable people find the palatable food when full, following the western-style diet, the more impaired they were on the test of hippocampal function,” Stevenson said. The finding suggests that disruption of the hippocampus may underpin both, he added.
Stevenson believes that in time governments will come under pressure to impose restrictions on processed food, much as they did to deter smoking. “Demonstrating that processed foods can lead to subtle cognitive impairments that affect appetite and serve to promote overeating in otherwise healthy young people should be a worrying finding for everyone,” he said. The work is published in Royal Society Open Science.
In the longer term, eating a western-style diet contributes to obesity and diabetes, both of which have been linked to declines in brain performance and the risk of developing dementia. “The new thinking here is the realisation that a western-style diet may be generating initial and fairly subtle cognitive impairments, that undermine the control of appetite which gradually opens the way for all of these other effects down the track,” Stevenson said.
Rachel Batterham, professor of obesity, diabetes and endocrinology at University College London, who was not involved in the study, said it was one of the first to investigate whether the western diet impairs memory and appetite control in humans.
“Understanding the impact of a western diet on brain function is a matter of urgency given the current food climate,” she said. “This research has provided data to support detrimental effects on both memory and appetite control after just one week of an energy-dense diet and may suggest a link between poor diet and impairment of the hippocampus, a key memory and appetite-associated brain region. The mechanisms at work remain to be elucidated and will require further research with the application of more sophisticated neuroimaging methods.”
Researchers found that after seven days on a high fat, high added sugar diet, volunteers in their 20s scored worse on memory tests and found junk food more desirable immediately after they had finished a meal.
The finding suggests that a western diet makes it harder for people to regulate their appetite, and points to disruption in a brain region called the hippocampus as the possible cause.
“After a week on a western-style diet, palatable food such as snacks and chocolate becomes more desirable when you are full,” said Richard Stevenson, a professor of psychology at Macquarie University in Sydney. “This will make it harder to resist, leading you to eat more, which in turn generates more damage to the hippocampus and a vicious cycle of overeating.”
Previous work in animals has shown that junk food impairs the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory and appetite control. It is unclear why, but one idea is that the hippocampus normally blocks or weakens memories about food when we are full, so looking at a cake does not flood the mind with memories of how nice cake can be. “When the hippocampus functions less efficiently, you do get this flood of memories, and so food is more appealing,” Stevenson said.
To investigate how the western diet affects humans, the scientists recruited 110 lean and healthy students, aged 20 to 23, who generally ate a good diet. Half were randomly assigned to a control group who ate their normal diet for a week. The other half were put on a high energy western-style diet, which featured a generous intake of Belgian waffles and fast food.
At the start and end of the week, the volunteers ate breakfast in the lab. Before and after the meal, they completed word memory tests and scored a range of high-sugar foods, such as Coco Pops, Frosties and Froot Loops, according to how much they wanted and then liked the foods on eating them.
“The more desirable people find the palatable food when full, following the western-style diet, the more impaired they were on the test of hippocampal function,” Stevenson said. The finding suggests that disruption of the hippocampus may underpin both, he added.
Stevenson believes that in time governments will come under pressure to impose restrictions on processed food, much as they did to deter smoking. “Demonstrating that processed foods can lead to subtle cognitive impairments that affect appetite and serve to promote overeating in otherwise healthy young people should be a worrying finding for everyone,” he said. The work is published in Royal Society Open Science.
In the longer term, eating a western-style diet contributes to obesity and diabetes, both of which have been linked to declines in brain performance and the risk of developing dementia. “The new thinking here is the realisation that a western-style diet may be generating initial and fairly subtle cognitive impairments, that undermine the control of appetite which gradually opens the way for all of these other effects down the track,” Stevenson said.
Rachel Batterham, professor of obesity, diabetes and endocrinology at University College London, who was not involved in the study, said it was one of the first to investigate whether the western diet impairs memory and appetite control in humans.
“Understanding the impact of a western diet on brain function is a matter of urgency given the current food climate,” she said. “This research has provided data to support detrimental effects on both memory and appetite control after just one week of an energy-dense diet and may suggest a link between poor diet and impairment of the hippocampus, a key memory and appetite-associated brain region. The mechanisms at work remain to be elucidated and will require further research with the application of more sophisticated neuroimaging methods.”
Bizarre neutrinos detected in Antarctica could open the door to new physics discoveries
Most neutrinos are created inside stars. Why are these coming from inside Earth?
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
FEBRUARY 3, 2020 12:30AM (UTC)
A new research paper published this month shines a light on a mystery in Antarctica that is perplexing physicists: high-energy neutrinos with an unknown origin. The odd properties of these outlier neutrinos could hint at their origin in a yet-unseen unknown particle. Equally exciting, their detection could also mean that the standard model of particle physics, which has reigned supreme for decades, may need revising.
There are multiple detection projects in Antarctica currently studying neutrinos, a type of fast-moving particle that is created prolifically within stars, yet which only rarely interact with quotidian matter as we know it. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a telescope that studies neutrinos that pass through its 5,160 optical detectors buried deep in Antarctic ice. In addition to the IceCube experiment, there is also ANITA (the ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna), a balloon that flies over the continent and points radio antennae toward the ground. Both IceCube and ANITA are designed to search for radio waves that originate in high-energy neutrinos colliding with the solid matter that comprises the ice.
After investigating an ANITA claim that it detected two events that appear to be signals of extremely high-energy neutrinos, researchers outline their investigation in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal. Defying our understanding of neutrinos, the researchers could not determine a source of origin. The researchers said in the paper that different possible explanations for the signals must be considered.
Avi Loeb, chair of Harvard's astronomy department, explained to Salon via email that the results are certainly an anomaly.
"The events detected by ANITA certainly appear anomalous because they cannot be explained as neutrinos from astrophysical sources," Loeb said. "The new paper shows that such neutrinos would have generated showers of lower-energy neutrinos that were not detected by IceCube. If so, what is the trigger of these events? We do not know."
Loeb added: "It could be some type of particles that interact more weakly than neutrinos with ordinary matter. We suspect that such particles exist in the form of dark matter. But what would make the ANITA events so energetic?"
Indeed, astronomers are still in the dark. Loeb said more information is needed before deciding where the solution lies.
According to the paper, when ANITA reported signals, they looked like they had arrived at an angle, suggesting they had just traveled through most of the planet. That is odd behavior for neutrinos.
"It's commonly said that neutrinos are 'elusive' or 'ghostly' particles because of their remarkable ability to pass through material without smashing into something," Alex Pizzuto of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, one of the leads on this paper, said in a press release. "But at these incredible energies, neutrinos are like bulls in a china shop — they become much more likely to interact with particles in Earth."
This is not the first time high-energy particles have perplexed researchers. In 2010, scientists discovered two spherical plumes of high-energy particles spewing from the Milky Way's galactic center, known as "Fermi Bubbles." These strange bubbles were on the core of the Milky Way galaxy, but extended above and below the Milky Way galaxy for 25,000 light-years. Interestingly, they emitted high amounts of high-energy radiation. In a separate paper published in The Astrophysical Journal last year, researchers at The IceCube Neutrino Observatory (IceCube) said that after years of intense data examinations and collection, they weren't sure what first caused these bubbles.
Loeb said that these kinds of anomalies can lead to new discoveries in physics.
"Breakthroughs in physics often occur through the discovery of anomalies," Loeb said. "Since science is a learning experience, it would be most prudent to propose new experiments beyond ANITA and IceCube that that would provide us with this missing information.
As far as even speculating the source of the origin, Loeb said he "would not dare guess," because Mother Nature "is often more imaginative than we are."
There are multiple detection projects in Antarctica currently studying neutrinos, a type of fast-moving particle that is created prolifically within stars, yet which only rarely interact with quotidian matter as we know it. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a telescope that studies neutrinos that pass through its 5,160 optical detectors buried deep in Antarctic ice. In addition to the IceCube experiment, there is also ANITA (the ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna), a balloon that flies over the continent and points radio antennae toward the ground. Both IceCube and ANITA are designed to search for radio waves that originate in high-energy neutrinos colliding with the solid matter that comprises the ice.
After investigating an ANITA claim that it detected two events that appear to be signals of extremely high-energy neutrinos, researchers outline their investigation in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal. Defying our understanding of neutrinos, the researchers could not determine a source of origin. The researchers said in the paper that different possible explanations for the signals must be considered.
Avi Loeb, chair of Harvard's astronomy department, explained to Salon via email that the results are certainly an anomaly.
"The events detected by ANITA certainly appear anomalous because they cannot be explained as neutrinos from astrophysical sources," Loeb said. "The new paper shows that such neutrinos would have generated showers of lower-energy neutrinos that were not detected by IceCube. If so, what is the trigger of these events? We do not know."
Loeb added: "It could be some type of particles that interact more weakly than neutrinos with ordinary matter. We suspect that such particles exist in the form of dark matter. But what would make the ANITA events so energetic?"
Indeed, astronomers are still in the dark. Loeb said more information is needed before deciding where the solution lies.
According to the paper, when ANITA reported signals, they looked like they had arrived at an angle, suggesting they had just traveled through most of the planet. That is odd behavior for neutrinos.
"It's commonly said that neutrinos are 'elusive' or 'ghostly' particles because of their remarkable ability to pass through material without smashing into something," Alex Pizzuto of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, one of the leads on this paper, said in a press release. "But at these incredible energies, neutrinos are like bulls in a china shop — they become much more likely to interact with particles in Earth."
This is not the first time high-energy particles have perplexed researchers. In 2010, scientists discovered two spherical plumes of high-energy particles spewing from the Milky Way's galactic center, known as "Fermi Bubbles." These strange bubbles were on the core of the Milky Way galaxy, but extended above and below the Milky Way galaxy for 25,000 light-years. Interestingly, they emitted high amounts of high-energy radiation. In a separate paper published in The Astrophysical Journal last year, researchers at The IceCube Neutrino Observatory (IceCube) said that after years of intense data examinations and collection, they weren't sure what first caused these bubbles.
Loeb said that these kinds of anomalies can lead to new discoveries in physics.
"Breakthroughs in physics often occur through the discovery of anomalies," Loeb said. "Since science is a learning experience, it would be most prudent to propose new experiments beyond ANITA and IceCube that that would provide us with this missing information.
As far as even speculating the source of the origin, Loeb said he "would not dare guess," because Mother Nature "is often more imaginative than we are."
Smoking
Lungs damaged by smoking can heal – study
Healthy cells can emerge to replace damaged areas, according to research published in Nature
Agence France-Presse
the guardian
Wed 29 Jan 2020 19.57 EST
Smokers can turn back time in their lungs by kicking the habit, with healthy cells emerging to replace some of their tobacco-damaged and cancer-prone ones, a study shows.
Smokers have long been told their risk of developing diseases like lung cancer will fall if they can quit, and stopping smoking prevents new damage to the body.
A study published on Thursday in the journal Nature found that the benefits may go further, with the body appearing to draw on a reservoir of healthy cells to replace smoke-damaged ones in the lungs of smokers when they quit.
The study’s joint senior author, Peter Campbell of the UK-based Wellcome Sanger Institute, said the results should give new hope to smokers who want to quit.
“People who have smoked heavily for 30, 40 or more years often say to me that it’s too late to stop smoking – the damage is already done,” he said in a statement issued by the institute.
“What is so exciting about our study is that it shows that it’s never too late to quit.”
Some of the people in the study had smoked more than 15,000 packs of cigarettes in their life, he said.
“But within a few years of quitting, many of the cells lining their airways showed no evidence of damage from tobacco.”
The study analysed lung biopsies from 16 people, including current smokers, ex-smokers, adults who had never smoked and children, looking for the mutations that can lead to cancer.
Genetic changes that appear in the body’s cells are a normal part of ageing, and many of these mutations are harmless so-called “passenger mutations”.
But a mutation in the wrong gene in the wrong cell can “dramatically change the behaviour of the cells and instruct them to behave more like a cancer”, Campbell told AFP.
“If enough of these ‘driver mutations’ accumulate, then the cell will become a full-blown cancer.”
The study found nine out of every 10 lung cells in current smokers had mutations, including those that can cause cancer.
But in ex-smokers, many of those damaged cells had been replaced by healthy ones akin to those seen in people who had never smoked.
Up to 40% of the total lung cells in ex-smokers were healthy, four times more than in their still-smoking counterparts.
Campbell said the damaged cells had not been able to “magically repair themselves”.
“Rather they are replaced by healthy cells that have escaped the damage from cigarette smoke.”
The precise mechanism by which that replacement occurs is not yet clear, but the study’s authors believe there may be a sort of reservoir of cells, waiting for a chance to emerge.
“Once the person quits smoking, the cells gradually proliferate from this safe harbour to replace the damaged cells,” Campbell said.
Gerd Pfeifer, professor at the Van Andel Institute’s Center for Epigenetics, praised the study in a review published by Nature.
“It has shed light on how the protective effect of smoking cessation plays out at the molecular level in human lung tissue,” wrote Pfeifer, who was not involved in the study.
Obtaining lung biopsies raises ethical concerns, meaning the researchers could only study 16 samples obtained from patients who had to undergo biopsies for separate medical reasons.
The small sample size could provide a caveat to the study’s findings, Pfeifer wrote.
But it “raises many interesting questions worthy of further investigation”.
Campbell said the key now would be to locate the reservoir of healthy cells and work out how they are able to replace damaged ones.
“If we can work out where they normally live and what makes them expand when someone stops smoking, perhaps we have opportunities to make them even more effective at repair.”
Smokers have long been told their risk of developing diseases like lung cancer will fall if they can quit, and stopping smoking prevents new damage to the body.
A study published on Thursday in the journal Nature found that the benefits may go further, with the body appearing to draw on a reservoir of healthy cells to replace smoke-damaged ones in the lungs of smokers when they quit.
The study’s joint senior author, Peter Campbell of the UK-based Wellcome Sanger Institute, said the results should give new hope to smokers who want to quit.
“People who have smoked heavily for 30, 40 or more years often say to me that it’s too late to stop smoking – the damage is already done,” he said in a statement issued by the institute.
“What is so exciting about our study is that it shows that it’s never too late to quit.”
Some of the people in the study had smoked more than 15,000 packs of cigarettes in their life, he said.
“But within a few years of quitting, many of the cells lining their airways showed no evidence of damage from tobacco.”
The study analysed lung biopsies from 16 people, including current smokers, ex-smokers, adults who had never smoked and children, looking for the mutations that can lead to cancer.
Genetic changes that appear in the body’s cells are a normal part of ageing, and many of these mutations are harmless so-called “passenger mutations”.
But a mutation in the wrong gene in the wrong cell can “dramatically change the behaviour of the cells and instruct them to behave more like a cancer”, Campbell told AFP.
“If enough of these ‘driver mutations’ accumulate, then the cell will become a full-blown cancer.”
The study found nine out of every 10 lung cells in current smokers had mutations, including those that can cause cancer.
But in ex-smokers, many of those damaged cells had been replaced by healthy ones akin to those seen in people who had never smoked.
Up to 40% of the total lung cells in ex-smokers were healthy, four times more than in their still-smoking counterparts.
Campbell said the damaged cells had not been able to “magically repair themselves”.
“Rather they are replaced by healthy cells that have escaped the damage from cigarette smoke.”
The precise mechanism by which that replacement occurs is not yet clear, but the study’s authors believe there may be a sort of reservoir of cells, waiting for a chance to emerge.
“Once the person quits smoking, the cells gradually proliferate from this safe harbour to replace the damaged cells,” Campbell said.
Gerd Pfeifer, professor at the Van Andel Institute’s Center for Epigenetics, praised the study in a review published by Nature.
“It has shed light on how the protective effect of smoking cessation plays out at the molecular level in human lung tissue,” wrote Pfeifer, who was not involved in the study.
Obtaining lung biopsies raises ethical concerns, meaning the researchers could only study 16 samples obtained from patients who had to undergo biopsies for separate medical reasons.
The small sample size could provide a caveat to the study’s findings, Pfeifer wrote.
But it “raises many interesting questions worthy of further investigation”.
Campbell said the key now would be to locate the reservoir of healthy cells and work out how they are able to replace damaged ones.
“If we can work out where they normally live and what makes them expand when someone stops smoking, perhaps we have opportunities to make them even more effective at repair.”
british scientist strike again for commonsense solutions!!!
DIAMOND BATTERIES CREATED WITH NUCLEAR WASTE MAY SOON PROVIDE SOURCE OF 'NEAR INFINITE' POWER
BY JASON MURDOCK - newsweek
ON 1/22/20 AT 9:38 AM EST
Radioactive material from a nuclear power plant being decommissioned in the U.K. could soon be used to create "ultra-long-lasting" power sources, researchers say.
Scientists from the University of Bristol, U.K., suggest carbon-14, a radioactive isotope should be extracted from waste at the Berkeley power station in Gloucestershire and recycled to generate energy as part of a project revealed back in 2016 which produced a "nuclear-powered battery."
Previously, researchers created a type of diamond that could generate an electrical current when placed in close proximity to radioactive material.
Experts now say their unique use of carbon-14 could potentially provide power on a "near-infinite basis" while helping to boost clean electricity generation.
The Bristol University work is being done as part of a project dubbed Advanced Self-Powered sensor units in Intense Radiation Environments, or ASPIRE.
Professor Tom Scott, who is leading the ongoing research, said the nuclear-based batteries could be extremely helpful as they operate in extreme environments, where traditional forms of power would be lacking. In the future they could even power satellites, he suggested.
"Over the past few years we have been developing ultra-low powered sensors that harvest energy from radioactive decay," Scott said in a statement. "This project is at quite an advanced stage now and we have tested the batteries in sensors in places as extreme as the top of a volcano."
The Berkeley station, the U.K.'s first commercial nuclear site of its kind to be decommissioned, was closed in 1989. Work to remove the dormant nuclear waste started this month, but it will not be safe for humans to set foot in the reactor cores until 2074, the BBC reported.
A second nuclear plant in the region, Oldbury station, which is located on the south bank of the River Severn, closed in 2012 and is also in the process of decommissioning.
The team's initial research into "diamond batteries" used Nickel-63 as the source of radiation, however attention turned to carbon-14 as it was deemed to be more efficient.
The university researchers found carbon-14 was concentrated at the surface of graphite blocks that are used to sustain reactions in nuclear power plants. After being extracted, carbon-14 can be put into diamond, which offers protection to humans by containing the radiation.
"Carbon-14 was chosen as a source because it emits a short-range radiation, which is quickly absorbed by any solid material," Neil Fox, of the University of Bristol's School of Chemistry, said at the time.
"This would make it dangerous to ingest or touch with your naked skin, but safely held within diamond, no short-range radiation can escape. In fact, diamond is the hardest substance known to man, there is literally nothing we could use that could offer more protection."
Scott added: "By encapsulating radioactive material inside diamonds, we turn a long-term problem of nuclear waste into a nuclear-powered battery and a long-term supply of clean energy."
This week, Scott suggested benefits would not be limited to the researchers, noting it would also make the process of decommissioning easier.
He said: "The aim is to have a factory based at one of the former power stations in the South West that takes carbon-14 isotopes directly from the graphite blocks for use in diamond batteries.
"This would...reduce the radioactivity of the remaining material, making it easier and safer to manage. With the majority of the U.K.'s nuclear power plants set to go offline in the next 10 to 15 years, this presents a huge opportunity to recycle a large amount of material to generate power for so many great uses." The U.K. has up to 95,000 tonnes of graphite blocks, the team said.
Scientists from the University of Bristol, U.K., suggest carbon-14, a radioactive isotope should be extracted from waste at the Berkeley power station in Gloucestershire and recycled to generate energy as part of a project revealed back in 2016 which produced a "nuclear-powered battery."
Previously, researchers created a type of diamond that could generate an electrical current when placed in close proximity to radioactive material.
Experts now say their unique use of carbon-14 could potentially provide power on a "near-infinite basis" while helping to boost clean electricity generation.
The Bristol University work is being done as part of a project dubbed Advanced Self-Powered sensor units in Intense Radiation Environments, or ASPIRE.
Professor Tom Scott, who is leading the ongoing research, said the nuclear-based batteries could be extremely helpful as they operate in extreme environments, where traditional forms of power would be lacking. In the future they could even power satellites, he suggested.
"Over the past few years we have been developing ultra-low powered sensors that harvest energy from radioactive decay," Scott said in a statement. "This project is at quite an advanced stage now and we have tested the batteries in sensors in places as extreme as the top of a volcano."
The Berkeley station, the U.K.'s first commercial nuclear site of its kind to be decommissioned, was closed in 1989. Work to remove the dormant nuclear waste started this month, but it will not be safe for humans to set foot in the reactor cores until 2074, the BBC reported.
A second nuclear plant in the region, Oldbury station, which is located on the south bank of the River Severn, closed in 2012 and is also in the process of decommissioning.
The team's initial research into "diamond batteries" used Nickel-63 as the source of radiation, however attention turned to carbon-14 as it was deemed to be more efficient.
The university researchers found carbon-14 was concentrated at the surface of graphite blocks that are used to sustain reactions in nuclear power plants. After being extracted, carbon-14 can be put into diamond, which offers protection to humans by containing the radiation.
"Carbon-14 was chosen as a source because it emits a short-range radiation, which is quickly absorbed by any solid material," Neil Fox, of the University of Bristol's School of Chemistry, said at the time.
"This would make it dangerous to ingest or touch with your naked skin, but safely held within diamond, no short-range radiation can escape. In fact, diamond is the hardest substance known to man, there is literally nothing we could use that could offer more protection."
Scott added: "By encapsulating radioactive material inside diamonds, we turn a long-term problem of nuclear waste into a nuclear-powered battery and a long-term supply of clean energy."
This week, Scott suggested benefits would not be limited to the researchers, noting it would also make the process of decommissioning easier.
He said: "The aim is to have a factory based at one of the former power stations in the South West that takes carbon-14 isotopes directly from the graphite blocks for use in diamond batteries.
"This would...reduce the radioactivity of the remaining material, making it easier and safer to manage. With the majority of the U.K.'s nuclear power plants set to go offline in the next 10 to 15 years, this presents a huge opportunity to recycle a large amount of material to generate power for so many great uses." The U.K. has up to 95,000 tonnes of graphite blocks, the team said.
Neuroscience
Schizophrenia study finds evidence of reduced links between brain cells
Pioneering research on living patients could pave way for new and better treatment
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
the guardian
Tue 14 Jan 2020 08.42 EST
A groundbreaking brain-scanning technique has uncovered evidence that suggests schizophrenia is linked to a loss of connections between brain cells.
Scientists had previously suspected a breakdown in the connections between neurons played a role in the condition, based on postmortem studies. The latest research, the first to find evidence for this in the brains of living people, could pave the way for new and better treatment.
Prof Oliver Howes from the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, Imperial College London and King’s College London, who led the study, said: “Our current treatments for schizophrenia target only one aspect of the disease: the psychotic symptoms.
“But the debilitating cognitive symptoms, such as loss of abilities to plan and remember, often cause much more long-term disability and there’s no treatment for them at the moment.”
Howes believes the loss of connections, known as synapses, between brain cells, could be responsible for this broader array of symptoms.
The study, published in Nature Communications, focused on measuring a protein found in synapses called SV2A, which has been shown to be a good marker of the overall density of connections in the brain.
They used a tracer that binds to the protein and which emits a signal that can be picked up by a PET brain scan, which provided an indirect measure of the density of connections. The team scanned 18 adults with schizophrenia and compared them with 18 people without the condition.
They found that levels of SV2A were significantly lower in the front of the brain – the region involved in planning – in people with schizophrenia.
“The real advance is we have something that we can see in living patients and begin to track it and see whether it’s happening early in the illness,” Howes said.
The researchers have also found preliminary evidence that the level of the protein is linked to cognitive performance in people with schizophrenia.
Howes and colleagues are also running a clinical trial, which is expected to be completed next year, that aims to prevent the loss of brain connections in patients.
Scientists had previously suspected a breakdown in the connections between neurons played a role in the condition, based on postmortem studies. The latest research, the first to find evidence for this in the brains of living people, could pave the way for new and better treatment.
Prof Oliver Howes from the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, Imperial College London and King’s College London, who led the study, said: “Our current treatments for schizophrenia target only one aspect of the disease: the psychotic symptoms.
“But the debilitating cognitive symptoms, such as loss of abilities to plan and remember, often cause much more long-term disability and there’s no treatment for them at the moment.”
Howes believes the loss of connections, known as synapses, between brain cells, could be responsible for this broader array of symptoms.
The study, published in Nature Communications, focused on measuring a protein found in synapses called SV2A, which has been shown to be a good marker of the overall density of connections in the brain.
They used a tracer that binds to the protein and which emits a signal that can be picked up by a PET brain scan, which provided an indirect measure of the density of connections. The team scanned 18 adults with schizophrenia and compared them with 18 people without the condition.
They found that levels of SV2A were significantly lower in the front of the brain – the region involved in planning – in people with schizophrenia.
“The real advance is we have something that we can see in living patients and begin to track it and see whether it’s happening early in the illness,” Howes said.
The researchers have also found preliminary evidence that the level of the protein is linked to cognitive performance in people with schizophrenia.
Howes and colleagues are also running a clinical trial, which is expected to be completed next year, that aims to prevent the loss of brain connections in patients.
Apple pushes recycling of iPhone with 'Daisy' robot
reuters
JANUARY 10, 2020
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Apple Inc APPL.O is trying to change the way electronics are recycled with a robot that disassembles its iPhone so that minerals can be recovered and reused, while acknowledging rising global demand for electronics means new mines will still be needed.
The Cupertino, California-based company says the robot is part of its plan to become a “closed-loop” manufacturer that does not rely on the mining industry, an aggressive goal that some industry analysts have said is impossible.
Many mining executives note that with the rising popularity of electric vehicles, newly mined minerals will be needed on an even larger scale, a reality that Apple acknowledges.
“We’re not necessarily competing with the folks who mine,” said Lisa Jackson, the company’s head of environment, policy and social. “There’s nothing for miners to fear in this development.”
Inside a nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, Apple’s Daisy robot breaks apart iPhones so that 14 minerals, including lithium, can be extracted and recycled.
Apple is already using recycled tin, cobalt and rare earths in some of its products, with plans to add to that list. The company last month bought the first commercial batch of carbon-free aluminum from a joint venture between Rio Tinto (RIO.AX) and Alcoa (AA.N).
Daisy, less than 20 yards in length, uses a four-step process to remove an iPhone battery with a blast of -80 Celsius (-176 Fahrenheit) degree air, and then pop out screws and modules, including the haptic module that makes a phone vibrate.
The components are then sent off to recyclers for the minerals to be extracted and refined. Daisy can tear apart 200 iPhones per hour. Apple chose the iPhone to be the first of its products that Daisy would disassemble because of its mass popularity, said Jackson.
Apple is considering sharing the Daisy technology with others, including electric automakers. Daisy does have its skeptics, including some in the tech world who want the company to focus more on building products that can be repaired, not just recycled.
“There’s this ego that believes they can get all their minerals back, and it’s not possible,” said Kyle Wiens, chief executive of iFixit, a firm advocating for electronics repair, rather than replacement.
That may partially explain why the mining industry isn’t worried.
“Apple is in an enviable position, because they can do this,” said Tom Butler, president of the International Council on Mining and Metals, an industry trade group. “Not everyone else will be able to follow suit.”
The Cupertino, California-based company says the robot is part of its plan to become a “closed-loop” manufacturer that does not rely on the mining industry, an aggressive goal that some industry analysts have said is impossible.
Many mining executives note that with the rising popularity of electric vehicles, newly mined minerals will be needed on an even larger scale, a reality that Apple acknowledges.
“We’re not necessarily competing with the folks who mine,” said Lisa Jackson, the company’s head of environment, policy and social. “There’s nothing for miners to fear in this development.”
Inside a nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, Apple’s Daisy robot breaks apart iPhones so that 14 minerals, including lithium, can be extracted and recycled.
Apple is already using recycled tin, cobalt and rare earths in some of its products, with plans to add to that list. The company last month bought the first commercial batch of carbon-free aluminum from a joint venture between Rio Tinto (RIO.AX) and Alcoa (AA.N).
Daisy, less than 20 yards in length, uses a four-step process to remove an iPhone battery with a blast of -80 Celsius (-176 Fahrenheit) degree air, and then pop out screws and modules, including the haptic module that makes a phone vibrate.
The components are then sent off to recyclers for the minerals to be extracted and refined. Daisy can tear apart 200 iPhones per hour. Apple chose the iPhone to be the first of its products that Daisy would disassemble because of its mass popularity, said Jackson.
Apple is considering sharing the Daisy technology with others, including electric automakers. Daisy does have its skeptics, including some in the tech world who want the company to focus more on building products that can be repaired, not just recycled.
“There’s this ego that believes they can get all their minerals back, and it’s not possible,” said Kyle Wiens, chief executive of iFixit, a firm advocating for electronics repair, rather than replacement.
That may partially explain why the mining industry isn’t worried.
“Apple is in an enviable position, because they can do this,” said Tom Butler, president of the International Council on Mining and Metals, an industry trade group. “Not everyone else will be able to follow suit.”
Rail travel
World’s fastest driverless bullet train launches in China
New service launches ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, with trains making the 108-mile trip from the capital to ski slopes in only 45 minutes
Antonia Wilson
the guardian
Thu 9 Jan 2020 10.39 EST
A new driverless bullet train connecting the Chinese cities of Beijing and Zhangjiakou is capable of reaching a top speed of up to 217mph (350km/h), making it the world’s fastest autonomous train in operation.
The new service, launched in the build-up to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic games, will reduce travel time between the capital and Zhangjiakou, which will stage most of the skiing events, from three hours to less than one. Some trains will complete the 108-mile route in 45 minutes. The original Beijing-Zhangjiakou line opened in 1909, when the same journey took around eight hours.
The trains will start and stop at stations automatically to a precise timetable, and change speed depending on limits between stations. However, a monitoring attendant will still be on board in case of emergencies.
The line, also known as the Jingzhang intercity railway, took four years to complete and has 10 stations, including Badaling Changcheng, for access to the Great Wall of China. The first train began operating on 30 December, running from Beijing to Taizicheng, which will also hold some Olympic skiing events and is the closet station to the Olympic village.
Cabins on the “smart” autonomous trains have large storage areas for winter sports equipment, seats with 5G touchscreen control panels, intelligent lighting, thousands of real-time safety sensors and removable seats for passengers in wheelchairs. Facial-recognition technology and robots will be used in stations to assist with directions, luggage and paperless check-in.
Zhangjiakou, in the northern Hebei province, will host snowboarding, freestyle skiing, cross-country skiing, and ski jumping at the Games. Another major Olympic host on the new line is Yanqing, where alpine skiing, bobsleigh, skeleton and luge events will take place. Skating, curling, ice-hockey and freestyle skiing will be held in the capital.
China’s vast high-speed rail network spans almost 22,000 miles and includes the fastest train in commercial operation, the Shanghai Maglev, capable of reaching a speed of 268mph.
“While we argue about HS2, China has created a nationwide high-speed network,” says rail expert Mark Smith of website the Man in Seat 61 website. “China’s high-speed lines are ruthlessly efficient – once booked, a swipe of your ID card or passport at the ticket gates is all you need to travel,”
As the official high-speed train booking site (12306 China Railway) can be used only by Chinese nationals, Smith recommends using china-diy-travel.com to book: it is due to list the new route shortly. In the meantime, he suggests trip.com as an alternative, which currently lists prices from around £9 one way.
Smith also recommends a slower scenic train as an option one-way: “You may prefer to return on one of the classic ‘S2’ trains on the Imperial Peking-Kalgan Railway, built in 1905-1909 and engineered by the father of Chinese Railways, Zhan Tianyou. The new high-speed line goes underground in the vicinity of the Great Wall, while the classic route goes overground along the Guan valley, with great views of the Wall on the way.”
The new service, launched in the build-up to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic games, will reduce travel time between the capital and Zhangjiakou, which will stage most of the skiing events, from three hours to less than one. Some trains will complete the 108-mile route in 45 minutes. The original Beijing-Zhangjiakou line opened in 1909, when the same journey took around eight hours.
The trains will start and stop at stations automatically to a precise timetable, and change speed depending on limits between stations. However, a monitoring attendant will still be on board in case of emergencies.
The line, also known as the Jingzhang intercity railway, took four years to complete and has 10 stations, including Badaling Changcheng, for access to the Great Wall of China. The first train began operating on 30 December, running from Beijing to Taizicheng, which will also hold some Olympic skiing events and is the closet station to the Olympic village.
Cabins on the “smart” autonomous trains have large storage areas for winter sports equipment, seats with 5G touchscreen control panels, intelligent lighting, thousands of real-time safety sensors and removable seats for passengers in wheelchairs. Facial-recognition technology and robots will be used in stations to assist with directions, luggage and paperless check-in.
Zhangjiakou, in the northern Hebei province, will host snowboarding, freestyle skiing, cross-country skiing, and ski jumping at the Games. Another major Olympic host on the new line is Yanqing, where alpine skiing, bobsleigh, skeleton and luge events will take place. Skating, curling, ice-hockey and freestyle skiing will be held in the capital.
China’s vast high-speed rail network spans almost 22,000 miles and includes the fastest train in commercial operation, the Shanghai Maglev, capable of reaching a speed of 268mph.
“While we argue about HS2, China has created a nationwide high-speed network,” says rail expert Mark Smith of website the Man in Seat 61 website. “China’s high-speed lines are ruthlessly efficient – once booked, a swipe of your ID card or passport at the ticket gates is all you need to travel,”
As the official high-speed train booking site (12306 China Railway) can be used only by Chinese nationals, Smith recommends using china-diy-travel.com to book: it is due to list the new route shortly. In the meantime, he suggests trip.com as an alternative, which currently lists prices from around £9 one way.
Smith also recommends a slower scenic train as an option one-way: “You may prefer to return on one of the classic ‘S2’ trains on the Imperial Peking-Kalgan Railway, built in 1905-1909 and engineered by the father of Chinese Railways, Zhan Tianyou. The new high-speed line goes underground in the vicinity of the Great Wall, while the classic route goes overground along the Guan valley, with great views of the Wall on the way.”
SCIENTISTS FIND WAY TO EXTRACT METHANE FROM PERMAFROST IN 'DOUBLE DIVIDEND' IN ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY
BY ROSIE MCCALL - newsweek
ON 1/2/20 AT 9:20 AM EST
Scientists have devised a new way of extracting methane gas from permafrost gas-hydrates. They say the discovery could increase the amount of methane recovered from these sites, while reducing the amount of greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere from other fuel combustion processes—in effect, making the process "more environmentally friendly."
Gas hydrates are ice-like substances formed from water and gas, frequently methane. One of the problems facing energy companies expanding into the Arctic is the formation of gas hydrates in frozen rock mass, which can trigger spontaneous methane emissions.
An international team of researchers from Skoltech University in Russia and Heriot-Watt University in Scotland found that replacing the methane in these hydrates with flue gas generated during fuel combustion was more efficient than current methods of recovering methane. The results were published in Scientific Reports.
The process has an added benefit in that flue gas contains greenhouse gas, so by locking it in permafrost, scientists may be able to reduce the amount released into the atmosphere while preventing the spontaneous release of methane. This makes gas hydrates a potential carbon sink, they say.
"Our approach not only helps extract methane and prevent its free release into the atmosphere but also reduces carbon dioxide emissions," Evgeny Chuvilin, a leading research scientist at the Skoltech Center for Hydrocarbon Recovery (CHR), said in a statement. "I would say our method offers a double dividend in terms of environmental safety."
Flue gas consists of multiple gases produced in coal-powered plants, metal refineries and other furnaces and generated by fuel combustion. On top of carbon dioxide, it contains a mixture of carbon monoxide, nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and water vapour.
By maintaining certain thermodynamic conditions (including pressure and temperature), the team found they were able to use a hydrate formed by the carbon dioxide in the flue gas to replace the naturally-occurring methane hydrate. In total, the method allowed them to capture close to 82 percent of the carbon dioxide contained in the flue gas.
"In comparison with potential methods such as thermal stimulation, depressurization, chemical inhibitor injection, CO2, or CO2-mixed gases (e.g., flue gas) injection is more environmentally friendly because of the potential to capture CO2 simultaneously with methane recovery," the paper's authors say.
Russia is seeking to rapidly expand oil and gas development in its Arctic regions, reportedly offering hefty tax cuts to energy companies willing to extract fossil fuels from its recently discovered reserves—ironically thanks to new routes opened up due to melting sea ice.
Gas hydrates are ice-like substances formed from water and gas, frequently methane. One of the problems facing energy companies expanding into the Arctic is the formation of gas hydrates in frozen rock mass, which can trigger spontaneous methane emissions.
An international team of researchers from Skoltech University in Russia and Heriot-Watt University in Scotland found that replacing the methane in these hydrates with flue gas generated during fuel combustion was more efficient than current methods of recovering methane. The results were published in Scientific Reports.
The process has an added benefit in that flue gas contains greenhouse gas, so by locking it in permafrost, scientists may be able to reduce the amount released into the atmosphere while preventing the spontaneous release of methane. This makes gas hydrates a potential carbon sink, they say.
"Our approach not only helps extract methane and prevent its free release into the atmosphere but also reduces carbon dioxide emissions," Evgeny Chuvilin, a leading research scientist at the Skoltech Center for Hydrocarbon Recovery (CHR), said in a statement. "I would say our method offers a double dividend in terms of environmental safety."
Flue gas consists of multiple gases produced in coal-powered plants, metal refineries and other furnaces and generated by fuel combustion. On top of carbon dioxide, it contains a mixture of carbon monoxide, nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and water vapour.
By maintaining certain thermodynamic conditions (including pressure and temperature), the team found they were able to use a hydrate formed by the carbon dioxide in the flue gas to replace the naturally-occurring methane hydrate. In total, the method allowed them to capture close to 82 percent of the carbon dioxide contained in the flue gas.
"In comparison with potential methods such as thermal stimulation, depressurization, chemical inhibitor injection, CO2, or CO2-mixed gases (e.g., flue gas) injection is more environmentally friendly because of the potential to capture CO2 simultaneously with methane recovery," the paper's authors say.
Russia is seeking to rapidly expand oil and gas development in its Arctic regions, reportedly offering hefty tax cuts to energy companies willing to extract fossil fuels from its recently discovered reserves—ironically thanks to new routes opened up due to melting sea ice.
TIKTOK BANNED FROM GOVERNMENT-ISSUED CELL PHONES BY THE U.S. NAVY—IS IT A REAL CYBERSECURITY THREAT?
BY JASON MURDOCK - newsweek
ON 12/21/19 AT 5:23 AM EST
TikTok has reportedly been deemed a "cybersecurity threat" by the United States Navy and will now have to be scrubbed from all government-issued mobile devices.
The Chinese owned app, viewed with suspicion by some politicians, has been deemed unsafe by top military officials, who released a bulletin on Tuesday warning anyone who doesn't remove the software that they will be blocked from the Navy's intranet, Reuters reported.
A Pentagon spokesperson told Reuters the move was part of an effort to "address existing and emerging threats". TikTok has been contacted for comment.
It remains unknown what those threats may be, but Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) in October requested an assessment of the national security risks of the application, which is typically used to create short video content and lip syncing clips.
The application, owned by a Beijing-based company called ByteDance, has attracted more than 110 million downloads in the United States alone. The politicians warned the parent firm has to adhere to Chinese law, warning that could put the data of American users at risk of compromise.
They said TikTok is a "potential target of foreign influence campaigns like those carried out during the 2016 election on U.S.-based social media platforms" and said it may censor material.
In a letter last month to the Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, Sen. Schumer asked if the office had conducted a review of TikTok's potential dangers. He said he was writing to "express concern" about personnel using it "in both their personal and official capacities."
Schumer noted: "While I recognize that the Army must adapt its recruiting techniques in order to attract young Americans to serve, I urge you to assess the potential national security risks posed by China-owned technology companies before choosing to utilize certain platforms."
It is not currently clear if the new anti-TikTok policy is a direct reaction to the senator's warning. Reuters reported after the letter army cadets were told to avoid the application.
A Navy spokesperson told Reuters its personnel are generally allowed to use commercial apps but specific pieces of mobile software may be banned if they are found to have potential security threats. The U.S. Navy Office of Information has been contacted for comment.
The Navy's social media handbook warns of some potential dangers.
"One of the best features of social media sites is the ability to connect people from across the world in spontaneous and interactive ways," the 2019 editon reads.
"However, this also opens users and their systems to security weaknesses. Information you share on the internet can provide terrorists, spies and criminals information they may use to harm you or disrupt your command's mission. Remember, hacking, configuration errors, social engineering and the sale/sharing of user data mean your information could become public any time."
Last month, TikTok said U.S. user data is stored in the United States, with a backup in Singapore. It said moderation for the American audience is controlled domestically. That came after a teen was banned after posting content about China's human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims.
U.S. politicians recently launched a national security review into the company over its $1 billion purchase of the popular video platform Musical.ly in 2017.
"We will continue to work with the US government on all of the issues," TikTok said.
The Chinese owned app, viewed with suspicion by some politicians, has been deemed unsafe by top military officials, who released a bulletin on Tuesday warning anyone who doesn't remove the software that they will be blocked from the Navy's intranet, Reuters reported.
A Pentagon spokesperson told Reuters the move was part of an effort to "address existing and emerging threats". TikTok has been contacted for comment.
It remains unknown what those threats may be, but Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) in October requested an assessment of the national security risks of the application, which is typically used to create short video content and lip syncing clips.
The application, owned by a Beijing-based company called ByteDance, has attracted more than 110 million downloads in the United States alone. The politicians warned the parent firm has to adhere to Chinese law, warning that could put the data of American users at risk of compromise.
They said TikTok is a "potential target of foreign influence campaigns like those carried out during the 2016 election on U.S.-based social media platforms" and said it may censor material.
In a letter last month to the Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, Sen. Schumer asked if the office had conducted a review of TikTok's potential dangers. He said he was writing to "express concern" about personnel using it "in both their personal and official capacities."
Schumer noted: "While I recognize that the Army must adapt its recruiting techniques in order to attract young Americans to serve, I urge you to assess the potential national security risks posed by China-owned technology companies before choosing to utilize certain platforms."
It is not currently clear if the new anti-TikTok policy is a direct reaction to the senator's warning. Reuters reported after the letter army cadets were told to avoid the application.
A Navy spokesperson told Reuters its personnel are generally allowed to use commercial apps but specific pieces of mobile software may be banned if they are found to have potential security threats. The U.S. Navy Office of Information has been contacted for comment.
The Navy's social media handbook warns of some potential dangers.
"One of the best features of social media sites is the ability to connect people from across the world in spontaneous and interactive ways," the 2019 editon reads.
"However, this also opens users and their systems to security weaknesses. Information you share on the internet can provide terrorists, spies and criminals information they may use to harm you or disrupt your command's mission. Remember, hacking, configuration errors, social engineering and the sale/sharing of user data mean your information could become public any time."
Last month, TikTok said U.S. user data is stored in the United States, with a backup in Singapore. It said moderation for the American audience is controlled domestically. That came after a teen was banned after posting content about China's human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims.
U.S. politicians recently launched a national security review into the company over its $1 billion purchase of the popular video platform Musical.ly in 2017.
"We will continue to work with the US government on all of the issues," TikTok said.
Ageing
Scientists harness AI to reverse ageing in billion-dollar industry
Race on to find proven ways to help people live longer, healthier lives
Amelia Hill
the guardian
Sat 21 Dec 2019 01.00 EST
Who wants to live forever? Until recently, the quest to slow ageing or even reverse it was the stuff of legends – or scams. But, today, an evidence-based race to delay or prevent ageing is energising scientists worldwide.
Backed by governments, business, academics and investors in an industry worth $110bn (£82.5bn) – and estimated to be worth $610bn by 2025 – scientists are harnessing the power of genomics and artificial intelligence to extend both life spans and health spans.
Scientists say there are already a number of things we can do to extend life and health, while promising that current and ongoing large-scale trials of drugs and other interventions mean the once-mythical goal of healthy, longer-lived lives is not far away.
“Death is inevitable but ageing is not,” said Dr Nir Barzilai, founding director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.
Barzilai has almost raised the necessary $50m to launch a five-year clinical trial into metformin, a cheap drug already commonly prescribed for pre-diabetics and diabetics, to prove that it slows cell ageing so dramatically that those who take it can expect to live decades longer, in near-perfect health.
Metformin has already been shown in a number of separate clinical trials to slow the development of most age-related diseases, including all cancers, Alzheimer’s and heart disease. To put it another way, said Barzilai, the drug slows the ageing process. It makes cells and tissues “younger”.
It does have side effects: according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) guidelines users are likely to suffer stomach upsets and nausea. But, said Barzilai – who has taken metformin for five years for pre-diabetes – “the only long-term side effect is living for longer than your pension lasts”.
The search for extended life and health is particularly active in the UK, where 260 companies, 250 investors, 10 non-profits, and 10 research labs are using the most advanced technologies to hunt for the holy grail. The UK government has even prioritised the separate sectors of AI and longevity by including both of them in the 4 Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges, which aims to put Britain at the forefront of the industries of the future.
Oxford professor Lynne Cox is an expert in the biological mechanisms of ageing and one of the world leaders in developing new ways of stopping cell ageing, otherwise known as cellular senescence.
“As organisms – and people – age, changes build up in their cells that eventually trigger cellular senescence,” she said. “Senescent cells can no longer renew themselves, meaning the ageing body cannot replenish tissue or heal wounds.
“Just over eight years ago, experiments discovered that removing senescent cells from mice led to marked rejuvenation, while transplanting senescent cells into young animals led to premature ageing,” said Cox.
There are now cutting-edge clinical trials in senolytics: the use of molecules to selectively destroy senescent cells in people. Some senolytic compounds are already available online. But, warned Cox, while the research is still in its infancy, a more effective and safer approach is to do what we already know works: exercise, eat better, eat less and sleep well.
Psychologist, neuroscientist and bestselling author of 100 Days to a Younger Brain Dr Sabina Brennan agreed. She isn’t looking to the far horizon for the secret for immortality. Instead, she believes the secret to a healthy old age is to focus on brain health.
“Almost half of adults in the UK cannot name a single risk factor for dementia and despite that 24.6 million people in the UK have a relative or friend living with dementia, one in five people incorrectly believe that dementia is an inevitable part of ageing,” she said.
“But decline in cognitive function is not inevitable in later life,” said Brennan. “A healthy brain can function well in later life, disease is the cause of most decline.
“Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, affects 62% of people diagnosed with dementia,” said Brennan. “But the good news is that 30% of all cases of Alzheimer’s disease are attributable to seven modifiable risk factors.”
These risk factors are low levels of educational attainment or mental stimulation, low levels of physical activity, mid-life high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, mid-life obesity, depression and smoking.
“Avoiding these risk factors won’t just help you defy dementia,” she said. “It will rejuvenate and optimise your brain performance and protect your cognitive functions against injury, stroke and even diseases like multiple sclerosis. You can change your brain at any age and ensure you will live a happier, more independent life for very much longer.”
Backed by governments, business, academics and investors in an industry worth $110bn (£82.5bn) – and estimated to be worth $610bn by 2025 – scientists are harnessing the power of genomics and artificial intelligence to extend both life spans and health spans.
Scientists say there are already a number of things we can do to extend life and health, while promising that current and ongoing large-scale trials of drugs and other interventions mean the once-mythical goal of healthy, longer-lived lives is not far away.
“Death is inevitable but ageing is not,” said Dr Nir Barzilai, founding director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.
Barzilai has almost raised the necessary $50m to launch a five-year clinical trial into metformin, a cheap drug already commonly prescribed for pre-diabetics and diabetics, to prove that it slows cell ageing so dramatically that those who take it can expect to live decades longer, in near-perfect health.
Metformin has already been shown in a number of separate clinical trials to slow the development of most age-related diseases, including all cancers, Alzheimer’s and heart disease. To put it another way, said Barzilai, the drug slows the ageing process. It makes cells and tissues “younger”.
It does have side effects: according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) guidelines users are likely to suffer stomach upsets and nausea. But, said Barzilai – who has taken metformin for five years for pre-diabetes – “the only long-term side effect is living for longer than your pension lasts”.
The search for extended life and health is particularly active in the UK, where 260 companies, 250 investors, 10 non-profits, and 10 research labs are using the most advanced technologies to hunt for the holy grail. The UK government has even prioritised the separate sectors of AI and longevity by including both of them in the 4 Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges, which aims to put Britain at the forefront of the industries of the future.
Oxford professor Lynne Cox is an expert in the biological mechanisms of ageing and one of the world leaders in developing new ways of stopping cell ageing, otherwise known as cellular senescence.
“As organisms – and people – age, changes build up in their cells that eventually trigger cellular senescence,” she said. “Senescent cells can no longer renew themselves, meaning the ageing body cannot replenish tissue or heal wounds.
“Just over eight years ago, experiments discovered that removing senescent cells from mice led to marked rejuvenation, while transplanting senescent cells into young animals led to premature ageing,” said Cox.
There are now cutting-edge clinical trials in senolytics: the use of molecules to selectively destroy senescent cells in people. Some senolytic compounds are already available online. But, warned Cox, while the research is still in its infancy, a more effective and safer approach is to do what we already know works: exercise, eat better, eat less and sleep well.
Psychologist, neuroscientist and bestselling author of 100 Days to a Younger Brain Dr Sabina Brennan agreed. She isn’t looking to the far horizon for the secret for immortality. Instead, she believes the secret to a healthy old age is to focus on brain health.
“Almost half of adults in the UK cannot name a single risk factor for dementia and despite that 24.6 million people in the UK have a relative or friend living with dementia, one in five people incorrectly believe that dementia is an inevitable part of ageing,” she said.
“But decline in cognitive function is not inevitable in later life,” said Brennan. “A healthy brain can function well in later life, disease is the cause of most decline.
“Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, affects 62% of people diagnosed with dementia,” said Brennan. “But the good news is that 30% of all cases of Alzheimer’s disease are attributable to seven modifiable risk factors.”
These risk factors are low levels of educational attainment or mental stimulation, low levels of physical activity, mid-life high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, mid-life obesity, depression and smoking.
“Avoiding these risk factors won’t just help you defy dementia,” she said. “It will rejuvenate and optimise your brain performance and protect your cognitive functions against injury, stroke and even diseases like multiple sclerosis. You can change your brain at any age and ensure you will live a happier, more independent life for very much longer.”
WHO moves step closer to cheaper breast cancer treatment
December 18, 2019
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday that it had for the first time approved a “biosimilar” medicine — one derived from living sources rather than chemicals — to make breast cancer treatment affordable to women globally.
The Trastuzumab drug has shown “high efficacy” in curing early stage breast cancer and in some cases more advanced forms of the disease, the WHO said in a statement.
But the annual cost of the original drug is an average (of) $20,000, “a price that puts it out of reach of many women and healthcare systems in most countries,” the statement added.
However the biosimilar version of trastuzumab is generally 65 percent cheaper than the original.
“With this WHO listing, and more products expected in the prequalification pipeline, prices should decrease even further,” the WHO said.
The cheaper but equally effective biotherapeutic medicines are produced from biological sources such as cells rather than synthesised chemicals.
They are usually manufactured by companies after the patent on the original product has expired.
“WHO prequalification of biosimilar trastuzumab is good news for women everywhere,” said WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Women in many cultures suffer from gender disparity when it comes to accessing health services. In poor countries, there is the added burden of a lack of access to treatment for many, and the high cost of medicines.
“Effective, affordable breast cancer treatment should be a right for all women, not the privilege of a few, ” he added.
A few biosimilars of trastuzumab have come on the market in recent years, but none had previously been prequalified by WHO.
WHO prequalification gives countries the assurance that they are purchasing “quality health products”.
“We need to act now and try to avoid more preventable deaths,” said Dr Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director general for Medicines and Health Products.
“The availability of biosimilars has decreased prices, making even innovative treatments more affordable and hopefully available to more people.”
The Trastuzumab drug has shown “high efficacy” in curing early stage breast cancer and in some cases more advanced forms of the disease, the WHO said in a statement.
But the annual cost of the original drug is an average (of) $20,000, “a price that puts it out of reach of many women and healthcare systems in most countries,” the statement added.
However the biosimilar version of trastuzumab is generally 65 percent cheaper than the original.
“With this WHO listing, and more products expected in the prequalification pipeline, prices should decrease even further,” the WHO said.
The cheaper but equally effective biotherapeutic medicines are produced from biological sources such as cells rather than synthesised chemicals.
They are usually manufactured by companies after the patent on the original product has expired.
“WHO prequalification of biosimilar trastuzumab is good news for women everywhere,” said WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Women in many cultures suffer from gender disparity when it comes to accessing health services. In poor countries, there is the added burden of a lack of access to treatment for many, and the high cost of medicines.
“Effective, affordable breast cancer treatment should be a right for all women, not the privilege of a few, ” he added.
A few biosimilars of trastuzumab have come on the market in recent years, but none had previously been prequalified by WHO.
WHO prequalification gives countries the assurance that they are purchasing “quality health products”.
“We need to act now and try to avoid more preventable deaths,” said Dr Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director general for Medicines and Health Products.
“The availability of biosimilars has decreased prices, making even innovative treatments more affordable and hopefully available to more people.”
Plants
Superglue plant and ‘miracle berry’ among 2019’s new finds
Other species identified by Kew experts include a snowdrop and cancer-fighting fungus
Damian Carrington Environment editor
the guardian
Tue 17 Dec 2019 01.01 EST
Gladiolus mariae, found in the Kounounkan Massif in Guinea, is one of the species newly identified in 2019. Photograph: Xander van der Burgt/RBG Kew
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Leaves of Mischogyne iddii, or the zonozono plant, of which only seven trees are known to exist. Photograph: Andrew R Marshall./RBG Kew
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A snowdrop discovered on Facebook, a miracle berry that tricks your tastebuds and a rubbery shrub that oozes its own superglue are among new plant species that were discovered in 2019.
Others identified by experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, include a ylang-ylang tree of which just seven individuals are known to exist, a new candy-striped violet and a fungus with pink fruiting bodies that can fight cancer and viruses.
Discovering and giving scientific names to new species is the crucial first step to protecting them, the scientists said. Kew scientists officially named 102 plants and eight fungi in 2019, but many are already in danger of extinction. The major threats are the destruction of natural habitat for farmland, timber, dams and mining, as well as the impacts of the climate crisis.
Plants account for 82% of all life on Earth by weight – humans are just 0.01% – and they underpin all life, producing oxygen and food and providing shelter and medicines. There are almost 400,000 known species of plant, and about 2,000 new species are named every year.
“We all depend on plants,” said Martin Cheek, a senior botanist at Kew and who names about 10 new species a year. “It is shocking that we are still discovering so many. It is easy to think we know everything on this planet, but we don’t. The local people might know the plants, but they are unknown to science.”
“It is important to name the plants now because natural habitat is disappearing rapidly,” he said. “Only when they have a name can they have an official assessment under the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and only then do we have a chance of getting national authorities to protect those areas.”
The new snowdrop species was discovered in north-west Turkey when a paediatrician uploaded her holiday photos to Facebook, where they were spotted by a Ukrainian snowdrop specialist. The pair returned to the site and collected a sample, which was confirmed as a new species by Kew’s snowdrop expert Aaron Davis. The snowdrop has already been assessed as critically endangered.
The new miracle berry species was discovered the rainforests of the Chimanimani Mountains, on the Mozambique-Zimbabwe border. The fruits of these species contain a compound called miraculin that blocks tastebuds so that sour foods, such as limes, taste sweet. The new species is classed as endangered, due to the continuing destruction of the forest.
The rubbery shrub species was found on a single waterfall on the Bafing River in Guinea, west Africa. “They have some kind of biological superglue with which they can stick themselves to rocks to avoid being swept away, but this interesting compound hasn’t been investigated yet,” said Cheek.
Kew scientists expect the shrub to become globally extinct when construction of a hydroelectric dam begins next year. “We have examples of species from that family that have been wiped out by other hydroelectric dams,” Cheek said. Plant extinctions in general are occurring at a “frightening” rate, according to scientists, and one in five of all plants are at risk.
The rarest find in 2019 was the zonozono, a 20m-tall tree from the ylang-ylang family discovered in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. Just seven trees are known. The spectacular new violet family species was found in New Guinea.
The bamboo fungus from Yunnan in south-west China was only given a formal scientific name in 2019, but has been used in the region as a traditional treatment for arthritis for more than 400 years. Scientific interest is increasing due to the discovery of compounds called hypercrellins in the fungus. When exposed to light, these compounds combat tumours, viruses and other fungi.
Most new species are named after local places, but one Kew scientist took a more romantic approach. A new orange gladiolus found on top of a remote table mountain in Guinea is now called Gladiolus mariae, after Xander van der Burgt christened the plant after his wife Maria.
“It is perfectly OK if other people name a species after you,” said Cheek. “But it would be considered very bad form to name a species after yourself.”
Others identified by experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, include a ylang-ylang tree of which just seven individuals are known to exist, a new candy-striped violet and a fungus with pink fruiting bodies that can fight cancer and viruses.
Discovering and giving scientific names to new species is the crucial first step to protecting them, the scientists said. Kew scientists officially named 102 plants and eight fungi in 2019, but many are already in danger of extinction. The major threats are the destruction of natural habitat for farmland, timber, dams and mining, as well as the impacts of the climate crisis.
Plants account for 82% of all life on Earth by weight – humans are just 0.01% – and they underpin all life, producing oxygen and food and providing shelter and medicines. There are almost 400,000 known species of plant, and about 2,000 new species are named every year.
“We all depend on plants,” said Martin Cheek, a senior botanist at Kew and who names about 10 new species a year. “It is shocking that we are still discovering so many. It is easy to think we know everything on this planet, but we don’t. The local people might know the plants, but they are unknown to science.”
“It is important to name the plants now because natural habitat is disappearing rapidly,” he said. “Only when they have a name can they have an official assessment under the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and only then do we have a chance of getting national authorities to protect those areas.”
The new snowdrop species was discovered in north-west Turkey when a paediatrician uploaded her holiday photos to Facebook, where they were spotted by a Ukrainian snowdrop specialist. The pair returned to the site and collected a sample, which was confirmed as a new species by Kew’s snowdrop expert Aaron Davis. The snowdrop has already been assessed as critically endangered.
The new miracle berry species was discovered the rainforests of the Chimanimani Mountains, on the Mozambique-Zimbabwe border. The fruits of these species contain a compound called miraculin that blocks tastebuds so that sour foods, such as limes, taste sweet. The new species is classed as endangered, due to the continuing destruction of the forest.
The rubbery shrub species was found on a single waterfall on the Bafing River in Guinea, west Africa. “They have some kind of biological superglue with which they can stick themselves to rocks to avoid being swept away, but this interesting compound hasn’t been investigated yet,” said Cheek.
Kew scientists expect the shrub to become globally extinct when construction of a hydroelectric dam begins next year. “We have examples of species from that family that have been wiped out by other hydroelectric dams,” Cheek said. Plant extinctions in general are occurring at a “frightening” rate, according to scientists, and one in five of all plants are at risk.
The rarest find in 2019 was the zonozono, a 20m-tall tree from the ylang-ylang family discovered in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. Just seven trees are known. The spectacular new violet family species was found in New Guinea.
The bamboo fungus from Yunnan in south-west China was only given a formal scientific name in 2019, but has been used in the region as a traditional treatment for arthritis for more than 400 years. Scientific interest is increasing due to the discovery of compounds called hypercrellins in the fungus. When exposed to light, these compounds combat tumours, viruses and other fungi.
Most new species are named after local places, but one Kew scientist took a more romantic approach. A new orange gladiolus found on top of a remote table mountain in Guinea is now called Gladiolus mariae, after Xander van der Burgt christened the plant after his wife Maria.
“It is perfectly OK if other people name a species after you,” said Cheek. “But it would be considered very bad form to name a species after yourself.”
Weed vapes may not be safe from vaping-linked health problems
Pass the joint: Old-fashioned bongs and pipes appear to be much safer than their electronic counterparts
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
DECEMBER 10, 2019 11:59PM (UTC)
The victim tally continues to rise for the vaping-linked now known as EVALI , an acronym that stands for "e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury," and which appeared to appeared to be linked mainly to nicotine-delivering vape products that simulated cigarettes. Unfortunately, weed vapers who thought they were safe from vaping-related health issues may not be safe either, as a new study found that marijuana vapes may harbor different harmful chemicals.
As reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week, a total of 2,291 cases of EVALI from around the country were reported to the federal health agency as of December 3. Forty-eight deaths were confirmed in 25 states and the District of Columbia. In the beginning of September, numbers hovered around 450 people being hospitalized, and five deaths. As scientists continue to investigate the outbreak and illness, they are faced with a lot of unknowns, including a specific product and cause. The CDC states “it appears that vitamin E acetate is associated with EVALI,” however, “evidence is not yet sufficient to rule out contribution of other chemicals of concern.”
A recent study published in the September issue of academic journal ACS Omega, titled “Aerosol Gas-Phase Components from Cannabis E-Cigarettes and Dabbing: Mechanistic Insight and Quantitative Risk Analysis,” is raising questions about what happens when additives are put into cannabis vaping products. The study seeks to bring a greater understanding about product safety when cannabis is inhaled using nontraditional methods like vaping.
“What’s inhaled is actually different than what’s listed in the ingredients,” Portland State University Chemistry Professor Rob Strongin, who led the research team for the study, said in a media statement.
The group of researchers studied the chemical reaction that takes place when cannabis is consumed using a vape pen or dab rig. Dabs are another term for concentrates of hash oil, which have extremely high concentrations of THC, the active psychoactive in cannabis, and which can be smoked or vaped to produce highs greater than traditional pipe or water pipe smoking. Dabs require higher temperatures to smoke, which requires a dab rig, a special high-temperature tool for vaporizing the concentrate.
Researchers found that in these chemical reactions, more toxins emerged from terpenes than from THC. Specifically, they found a nearly fivefold increase in the chemical isoprene, which was released from THC with 10 percent more terpenes compared to THC alone. Inhaling isoprene caused tumors in mice and rats.
“Several identified components are International Agency for Research on Cancer-classified carcinogens, and exposure to these may place a burden on the health of people that use dabbing or vaping to consume cannabis,” the researchers stated.
Terpenes are the naturally occurring combination of carbon and hydrogen and can be found in various plants. However, the researchers' findings suggest that terpenes are added into pure THC extractions to dilute the product, and give it a specific aroma and taste. Strongin said they found some vendors adding up to 30 percent additional terpenes to their products.
“There are fewer toxins formed from THC as compared to terpenes,” Strongin said. “This is consistent with some of the vaping-related injuries we’re seeing. It’s not the active ingredients, like THC or nicotine, that appear to be causing the hospitalizations and deaths, but what they are combined with.”
Vape pens are made up of an atomizer, a cartridge or tank, a sensor and a mouthpiece. When a personal inhales and sucks on the mouthpiece, the battery of the atomizer sends a signal to the sensor which causes the temperature in the atomizer to rise. Researchers relied on a Quantitative risk assessment (QRA) to calculate the risk and approximate the probability of the incidence to figure out a defined outcome.
Their findings suggest the less additives the better, but there are still a lot of unknowns.
“There's a reason that no one studied the inhalation toxicity of a lot of the ingredients in e-cigarettes because nobody thought we'd be crazy enough to be inhaling them,” he said. “But the problem now is that there’s a huge gap in our knowledge.”
As Salon reported in 2018, some of the chemicals in flavors used to add flavor to e-cigs are billed by manufacturers as safe because the FDA has approved them for ingestion. Yet no one knows for sure if you can atomize and inhale the same chemicals safely, and many chemicals approved for ingestion become toxic after combustion.
In September, Jake Plattenberger, an attorney who defends victims who have been exposed to diacetyl, said there were a lot of chemicals in e-cigarettes consumers and health officials don’t know about.
“These formulas are treated as trade secrets, and the vaping companies aren’t required to disclose what their formulas are or what their ingredients are, but we know quite a bit from the food flavoring industry because the same ones were migrated over to the vaping industry,” Plattenberger told Salon.
Many vape makers, both of nicotine and THC e-cigarettes, advertised their products as a safer, healthier alternative to old-fashioned smoking. As more research emerges in this under-regulated industry, it turns out those claims may be very untrue.
As reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week, a total of 2,291 cases of EVALI from around the country were reported to the federal health agency as of December 3. Forty-eight deaths were confirmed in 25 states and the District of Columbia. In the beginning of September, numbers hovered around 450 people being hospitalized, and five deaths. As scientists continue to investigate the outbreak and illness, they are faced with a lot of unknowns, including a specific product and cause. The CDC states “it appears that vitamin E acetate is associated with EVALI,” however, “evidence is not yet sufficient to rule out contribution of other chemicals of concern.”
A recent study published in the September issue of academic journal ACS Omega, titled “Aerosol Gas-Phase Components from Cannabis E-Cigarettes and Dabbing: Mechanistic Insight and Quantitative Risk Analysis,” is raising questions about what happens when additives are put into cannabis vaping products. The study seeks to bring a greater understanding about product safety when cannabis is inhaled using nontraditional methods like vaping.
“What’s inhaled is actually different than what’s listed in the ingredients,” Portland State University Chemistry Professor Rob Strongin, who led the research team for the study, said in a media statement.
The group of researchers studied the chemical reaction that takes place when cannabis is consumed using a vape pen or dab rig. Dabs are another term for concentrates of hash oil, which have extremely high concentrations of THC, the active psychoactive in cannabis, and which can be smoked or vaped to produce highs greater than traditional pipe or water pipe smoking. Dabs require higher temperatures to smoke, which requires a dab rig, a special high-temperature tool for vaporizing the concentrate.
Researchers found that in these chemical reactions, more toxins emerged from terpenes than from THC. Specifically, they found a nearly fivefold increase in the chemical isoprene, which was released from THC with 10 percent more terpenes compared to THC alone. Inhaling isoprene caused tumors in mice and rats.
“Several identified components are International Agency for Research on Cancer-classified carcinogens, and exposure to these may place a burden on the health of people that use dabbing or vaping to consume cannabis,” the researchers stated.
Terpenes are the naturally occurring combination of carbon and hydrogen and can be found in various plants. However, the researchers' findings suggest that terpenes are added into pure THC extractions to dilute the product, and give it a specific aroma and taste. Strongin said they found some vendors adding up to 30 percent additional terpenes to their products.
“There are fewer toxins formed from THC as compared to terpenes,” Strongin said. “This is consistent with some of the vaping-related injuries we’re seeing. It’s not the active ingredients, like THC or nicotine, that appear to be causing the hospitalizations and deaths, but what they are combined with.”
Vape pens are made up of an atomizer, a cartridge or tank, a sensor and a mouthpiece. When a personal inhales and sucks on the mouthpiece, the battery of the atomizer sends a signal to the sensor which causes the temperature in the atomizer to rise. Researchers relied on a Quantitative risk assessment (QRA) to calculate the risk and approximate the probability of the incidence to figure out a defined outcome.
Their findings suggest the less additives the better, but there are still a lot of unknowns.
“There's a reason that no one studied the inhalation toxicity of a lot of the ingredients in e-cigarettes because nobody thought we'd be crazy enough to be inhaling them,” he said. “But the problem now is that there’s a huge gap in our knowledge.”
As Salon reported in 2018, some of the chemicals in flavors used to add flavor to e-cigs are billed by manufacturers as safe because the FDA has approved them for ingestion. Yet no one knows for sure if you can atomize and inhale the same chemicals safely, and many chemicals approved for ingestion become toxic after combustion.
In September, Jake Plattenberger, an attorney who defends victims who have been exposed to diacetyl, said there were a lot of chemicals in e-cigarettes consumers and health officials don’t know about.
“These formulas are treated as trade secrets, and the vaping companies aren’t required to disclose what their formulas are or what their ingredients are, but we know quite a bit from the food flavoring industry because the same ones were migrated over to the vaping industry,” Plattenberger told Salon.
Many vape makers, both of nicotine and THC e-cigarettes, advertised their products as a safer, healthier alternative to old-fashioned smoking. As more research emerges in this under-regulated industry, it turns out those claims may be very untrue.
BREAST CANCER LINKED TO PERMANENT HAIR DYE AND CHEMICAL HAIR STRAIGHTENERS IN STUDY OF ALMOST 50,000 WOMEN
BY ROSIE MCCALL - newsweek
ON 12/3/19 AT 7:00 PM EST
Women who regularly use permanent hair dye could be increasing their risk of breast cancer up to 60 percent, according to scientists writing in the International Journal of Cancer.
A study based on the medical records of more than 45,000 women found a positive correlation between permanent hair dye and breast cancer—particularly among those who are black.
While the paper is based on patterns and trends and, as such, doesn't confirm a direct cause, it adds to research suggesting there may be carcinogens lurking in commonly-used beauty products.
"The results do not surprise me," Otis W. Brawley, medical oncologist and epidemiologist at the Hopkins-Kimmel Cancer Center, told Newsweek. "Many of us have worried that the chemicals in especially the permanent hair dyes and hair straighteners have the potential to cause cancer."
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Taken as a group women who regularly dyed their hair appeared to be increasing their risk of developing breast cancer by 9 percent. However, for black women, the risk of developing breast cancer was significantly higher—at 45 percent.
This increased even further, to 60 percent, among black women who heavily used hair dye, defined in this case as once (or more) every five to eight weeks. The associated risk for white women, in contrast, was 7 percent for regular use and 8 percent for heavy use.
There also appeared to be differences depending on the type of hair dye used. Dark hair dye was associated with a 51 percent increase in risk for black women and an 8 percent in risk for white women. When it came to light hair dye, there appeared to be a 46 percent increase in risk for black women and a 12 percent increase risk for white women.
Why there are racial variations is unclear, but the researchers suggest it may be linked to differences in the way it is used or differences in the way products marketed for black and white audiences are made. The study's authors reference previous research that suggests those made for black women could have higher levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
"Black women are already at an increased risk of breast cancer, and drawing a clear line to hair products is difficult," Stephanie Bernik, MD, Chief of Breast Surgery at Mount Sinai West in New York told Newsweek.
"Having said that, I do believe the study gives us enough evidence to call for a prospective trial designed to specifically look at this one factor to see if the increased risk of cancer persists. In the meantime, I would caution patients that there is a possible link between hair dyes and cancer, although more research is needed."
They also found a significant correlation between breast cancer risk and chemical hair straighteners, with the researchers emphasizing this needs to be backed up by other research. (Other studies have confirmed no breast cancer risk associated with hair relaxers)
However, in this case, the risk was consistent, increasing across all races by 30 percent for women who use chemical hair straighteners every five to eight weeks or more. Though, as the study authors point out, this is likely to affect black women more as chemical straighteners are used by black women more than they are by white women.
As far as their advice for women who dye or chemically straighten their hair goes, Dale Sandler, Ph.D., chief of the NIEHS Epidemiology Branch who was involved in the research, points to the numerous other carcinogenic chemicals people are regularly exposed to.
Brawley advises women use hair dye and chemical hair straighteners very carefully but says there are other things that will have more of an impact on whether someone will develop cancer or not.
"I would also point out that the combination of obesity, consuming too many calories and lack of physical activity has a much higher relative risk for breast cancer in both black and white women," said Brawley, a former Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the American Cancer Society.
Michael Jones, Senior Staff Scientist in Epidemiology at The Institute of Cancer Research, said: "It is too early to make a firm recommendation on the basis of one study, and further research is needed. The whole literature needs to be evaluated by expert groups, bringing together the evidence to make recommendations" he told Newsweek. He adds there are limitations to the study.
"The Sisters Study is a good prospective cohort study—but women were recruited to the study because they had a sister with breast cancer, so the conclusions wouldn't necessarily hold true for women in the wider population, hence the need for further confirmation."
There were no observable differences in cancer risk between women who did not die their hair period and those who used temporary or semi-permanent dye.
The research was based on the medical records of more than 46,000 women aged 35 to 74 from the Sister Study, meaning all women involved had a close relative who had died of breast cancer. The results include information from a follow-up period of roughly 8 years, when 2,794 breast cancers were identified.
A study based on the medical records of more than 45,000 women found a positive correlation between permanent hair dye and breast cancer—particularly among those who are black.
While the paper is based on patterns and trends and, as such, doesn't confirm a direct cause, it adds to research suggesting there may be carcinogens lurking in commonly-used beauty products.
"The results do not surprise me," Otis W. Brawley, medical oncologist and epidemiologist at the Hopkins-Kimmel Cancer Center, told Newsweek. "Many of us have worried that the chemicals in especially the permanent hair dyes and hair straighteners have the potential to cause cancer."
Ads by scrollerads.com
Taken as a group women who regularly dyed their hair appeared to be increasing their risk of developing breast cancer by 9 percent. However, for black women, the risk of developing breast cancer was significantly higher—at 45 percent.
This increased even further, to 60 percent, among black women who heavily used hair dye, defined in this case as once (or more) every five to eight weeks. The associated risk for white women, in contrast, was 7 percent for regular use and 8 percent for heavy use.
There also appeared to be differences depending on the type of hair dye used. Dark hair dye was associated with a 51 percent increase in risk for black women and an 8 percent in risk for white women. When it came to light hair dye, there appeared to be a 46 percent increase in risk for black women and a 12 percent increase risk for white women.
Why there are racial variations is unclear, but the researchers suggest it may be linked to differences in the way it is used or differences in the way products marketed for black and white audiences are made. The study's authors reference previous research that suggests those made for black women could have higher levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
"Black women are already at an increased risk of breast cancer, and drawing a clear line to hair products is difficult," Stephanie Bernik, MD, Chief of Breast Surgery at Mount Sinai West in New York told Newsweek.
"Having said that, I do believe the study gives us enough evidence to call for a prospective trial designed to specifically look at this one factor to see if the increased risk of cancer persists. In the meantime, I would caution patients that there is a possible link between hair dyes and cancer, although more research is needed."
They also found a significant correlation between breast cancer risk and chemical hair straighteners, with the researchers emphasizing this needs to be backed up by other research. (Other studies have confirmed no breast cancer risk associated with hair relaxers)
However, in this case, the risk was consistent, increasing across all races by 30 percent for women who use chemical hair straighteners every five to eight weeks or more. Though, as the study authors point out, this is likely to affect black women more as chemical straighteners are used by black women more than they are by white women.
As far as their advice for women who dye or chemically straighten their hair goes, Dale Sandler, Ph.D., chief of the NIEHS Epidemiology Branch who was involved in the research, points to the numerous other carcinogenic chemicals people are regularly exposed to.
Brawley advises women use hair dye and chemical hair straighteners very carefully but says there are other things that will have more of an impact on whether someone will develop cancer or not.
"I would also point out that the combination of obesity, consuming too many calories and lack of physical activity has a much higher relative risk for breast cancer in both black and white women," said Brawley, a former Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the American Cancer Society.
Michael Jones, Senior Staff Scientist in Epidemiology at The Institute of Cancer Research, said: "It is too early to make a firm recommendation on the basis of one study, and further research is needed. The whole literature needs to be evaluated by expert groups, bringing together the evidence to make recommendations" he told Newsweek. He adds there are limitations to the study.
"The Sisters Study is a good prospective cohort study—but women were recruited to the study because they had a sister with breast cancer, so the conclusions wouldn't necessarily hold true for women in the wider population, hence the need for further confirmation."
There were no observable differences in cancer risk between women who did not die their hair period and those who used temporary or semi-permanent dye.
The research was based on the medical records of more than 46,000 women aged 35 to 74 from the Sister Study, meaning all women involved had a close relative who had died of breast cancer. The results include information from a follow-up period of roughly 8 years, when 2,794 breast cancers were identified.
Neuroscience
Bionic neurons could enable implants to restore failing brain circuits
Scientists say creation could be used to circumvent nerve damage and help paralysed people regain movement
Ian Sample Science editor
the guardian
Tue 3 Dec 2019 11.10 EST
Scientists have created artificial neurons that could potentially be implanted into patients to overcome paralysis, restore failing brain circuits, and even connect their minds to machines.
The bionic neurons can receive electrical signals from healthy nerve cells, and process them in a natural way, before sending fresh signals on to other neurons, or to muscles and organs elsewhere in the body.
One of the first applications may be a treatment for a form of heart failure that develops when a particular neural circuit at the base of the brain deteriorates through age or disease and fails to send the right signals to make the heart pump properly.
Rather than implanting directly into the brain, the artificial neurons are built into ultra-low power microchips a few millimetres wide. The chips form the basis for devices that would plug straight into the nervous system, for example by intercepting signals that pass between the brain and leg muscles.
“Any area where you have some degenerative disease, such as Alzheimer’s, or where the neurons stop firing properly because of age, disease, or injury, then in theory you could replace the faulty biocircuit with a synthetic circuit,” said Alain Nogaret, a physicist who led the project at the University of Bath.
The breakthrough came when researchers found they could model live neurons in a computer program and then recreate their firing patterns in silicon chips with more than 94% accuracy. The program allows the scientists to mimic the full variety of neurons found in the nervous system.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers describe how they fed the program with data recorded from two types of rat neuron, which were stimulated in a dish. The neurons were either from the hippocampus, a region that is crucial for memory and learning, or were involved in the subconscious control of breathing.
Armed with the program, the researchers claim they can now build bionic neurons based on any of the real nerve cells found in the brain, spinal cord, or the more distant reaches of the peripheral nervous system, such as the sensory neurons in the skin.
Because the artificial neurons both receive and send signals, they can be used to make implants that respond to neural feedback signals that are constantly coursing around the body.
“The potential is endless in terms of understanding how the brain works, because we now have the fundamental understanding and insight into the functional unit of the brain, and indeed applications, which might be to improve memory, to overcome paralysis and ameliorate disease,” said Julian Paton, a co-author on the study who holds posts at the Universities of Bristol and Auckland.
“They can be used in isolation or connected together to form neuronal networks to perform brain functions,” he added.
With development, trials and regulations to satisfy, it could be many years before the artificial neurons are helping patients. But if they prove safe and effective, they could ultimately be used to circumvent nerve damage in broken spines and help paralysed people regain movement, or to connect people’s brains to robotic limbs that can send touch sensations back through the implant to the brain.
Despite the vast possibilities the artificial neurons open up, Nogaret said the team was nowhere near building a whole brain, an organ which in a human consists of 86bn neurons and at least as many supporting cells. “We are not claiming that we are building a brain, there’s absolutely no way,” he said.
The scientists’ approach differs from that taken by many other peers who hope to recreate brain activity in computers. Rather than focusing on individual neurons, they typically model brain regions or even whole brains, but with far less precision. For example, the million-processor SpiNNaker machine at the University of Manchester can model an entire mouse brain, but not to the level of individual brain cells.
“If you wanted to model a whole mouse brain using the approach in this paper you might end up designing 100 million individual, but very precise, neurons on silicon, which is clearly unfeasible within a reasonable time and budget,” said Stephen Furber, professor of computer engineering at the University of Manchester.
“Because the approach is detailed and laboriously painstaking, it can really only be applied in practice to smallish neural units, such as the respiratory neurons described above, but there are quite a few critical small neural control circuits that are vital to keeping us alive,” he added.
The bionic neurons can receive electrical signals from healthy nerve cells, and process them in a natural way, before sending fresh signals on to other neurons, or to muscles and organs elsewhere in the body.
One of the first applications may be a treatment for a form of heart failure that develops when a particular neural circuit at the base of the brain deteriorates through age or disease and fails to send the right signals to make the heart pump properly.
Rather than implanting directly into the brain, the artificial neurons are built into ultra-low power microchips a few millimetres wide. The chips form the basis for devices that would plug straight into the nervous system, for example by intercepting signals that pass between the brain and leg muscles.
“Any area where you have some degenerative disease, such as Alzheimer’s, or where the neurons stop firing properly because of age, disease, or injury, then in theory you could replace the faulty biocircuit with a synthetic circuit,” said Alain Nogaret, a physicist who led the project at the University of Bath.
The breakthrough came when researchers found they could model live neurons in a computer program and then recreate their firing patterns in silicon chips with more than 94% accuracy. The program allows the scientists to mimic the full variety of neurons found in the nervous system.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers describe how they fed the program with data recorded from two types of rat neuron, which were stimulated in a dish. The neurons were either from the hippocampus, a region that is crucial for memory and learning, or were involved in the subconscious control of breathing.
Armed with the program, the researchers claim they can now build bionic neurons based on any of the real nerve cells found in the brain, spinal cord, or the more distant reaches of the peripheral nervous system, such as the sensory neurons in the skin.
Because the artificial neurons both receive and send signals, they can be used to make implants that respond to neural feedback signals that are constantly coursing around the body.
“The potential is endless in terms of understanding how the brain works, because we now have the fundamental understanding and insight into the functional unit of the brain, and indeed applications, which might be to improve memory, to overcome paralysis and ameliorate disease,” said Julian Paton, a co-author on the study who holds posts at the Universities of Bristol and Auckland.
“They can be used in isolation or connected together to form neuronal networks to perform brain functions,” he added.
With development, trials and regulations to satisfy, it could be many years before the artificial neurons are helping patients. But if they prove safe and effective, they could ultimately be used to circumvent nerve damage in broken spines and help paralysed people regain movement, or to connect people’s brains to robotic limbs that can send touch sensations back through the implant to the brain.
Despite the vast possibilities the artificial neurons open up, Nogaret said the team was nowhere near building a whole brain, an organ which in a human consists of 86bn neurons and at least as many supporting cells. “We are not claiming that we are building a brain, there’s absolutely no way,” he said.
The scientists’ approach differs from that taken by many other peers who hope to recreate brain activity in computers. Rather than focusing on individual neurons, they typically model brain regions or even whole brains, but with far less precision. For example, the million-processor SpiNNaker machine at the University of Manchester can model an entire mouse brain, but not to the level of individual brain cells.
“If you wanted to model a whole mouse brain using the approach in this paper you might end up designing 100 million individual, but very precise, neurons on silicon, which is clearly unfeasible within a reasonable time and budget,” said Stephen Furber, professor of computer engineering at the University of Manchester.
“Because the approach is detailed and laboriously painstaking, it can really only be applied in practice to smallish neural units, such as the respiratory neurons described above, but there are quite a few critical small neural control circuits that are vital to keeping us alive,” he added.
A quantum computing future is unlikely, due to random hardware errors
the conversation
December 3, 2019 7.58am EST
Google announced this fall to much fanfare that it had demonstrated “quantum supremacy” – that is, it performed a specific quantum computation far faster than the best classical computers could achieve. IBM promptly critiqued the claim, saying that its own classical supercomputer could perform the computation at nearly the same speed with far greater fidelity and, therefore, the Google announcement should be taken “with a large dose of skepticism.”
This wasn’t the first time someone cast doubt on quantum computing. Last year, Michel Dyakonov, a theoretical physicist at the University of Montpellier in France, offered a slew of technical reasons why practical quantum supercomputers will never be built in an article in IEEE Spectrum, the flagship journal of electrical and computer engineering.
So how can you make sense of what is going on?
As someone who has worked on quantum computing for many years, I believe that due to the inevitability of random errors in the hardware, useful quantum computers are unlikely to ever be built.
What’s a quantum computer?
To understand why, you need to understand how quantum computers work since they’re fundamentally different from classical computers.
A classical computer uses 0s and 1s to store data. These numbers could be voltages on different points in a circuit. But a quantum computer works on quantum bits, also known as qubits. You can picture them as waves that are associated with amplitude and phase.
Qubits have special properties: They can exist in superposition, where they are both 0 and 1 at the same time, and they may be entangled so they share physical properties even though they may be separated by large distances. It’s a behavior that does not exist in the world of classical physics. The superposition vanishes when the experimenter interacts with the quantum state.
Due to superposition, a quantum computer with 100 qubits can represent 2100 solutions simultaneously. For certain problems, this exponential parallelism can be harnessed to create a tremendous speed advantage. Some code-breaking problems could be solved exponentially faster on a quantum machine, for example.
There is another, narrower approach to quantum computing called quantum annealing, where qubits are used to speed up optimization problems. D-Wave Systems, based in Canada, has built optimization systems that use qubits for this purpose, but critics also claim that these systems are no better than classical computers.
Regardless, companies and countries are investing massive amounts of money in quantum computing. China has developed a new quantum research facility worth US$10 billion, while the European Union has developed a €1 billion ($1.1 billion) quantum master plan. The United States’ National Quantum Initiative Act provides $1.2 billion to promote quantum information science over a five-year period.
Breaking encryption algorithms is a powerful motivating factor for many countries – if they could do it successfully, it would give them an enormous intelligence advantage. But these investments are also promoting fundamental research in physics.
Many companies are pushing to build quantum computers, including Intel and Microsoft in addition to Google and IBM. These companies are trying to build hardware that replicates the circuit model of classical computers.
However, current experimental systems have less than 100 qubits. To achieve useful computational performance, you probably need machines with hundreds of thousands of qubits.
Noise and error correction
The mathematics that underpin quantum algorithms is well established, but there are daunting engineering challenges that remain.
For computers to function properly, they must correct all small random errors. In a quantum computer, such errors arise from the non-ideal circuit elements and the interaction of the qubits with the environment around them. For these reasons the qubits can lose coherency in a fraction of a second and, therefore, the computation must be completed in even less time. If random errors – which are inevitable in any physical system – are not corrected, the computer’s results will be worthless.
In classical computers, small noise is corrected by taking advantage of a concept known as thresholding. It works like the rounding of numbers. Thus, in the transmission of integers where it is known that the error is less than 0.5, if what is received is 3.45, the received value can be corrected to 3.
Further errors can be corrected by introducing redundancy. Thus if 0 and 1 are transmitted as 000 and 111, then at most one bit-error during transmission can be corrected easily: A received 001 would be a interpreted as 0, and a received 101 would be interpreted as 1.
Quantum error correction codes are a generalization of the classical ones, but there are crucial differences. For one, the unknown qubits cannot be copied to incorporate redundancy as an error correction technique. Furthermore, errors present within the incoming data before the error-correction coding is introduced cannot be corrected.
Quantum cryptography
While the problem of noise is a serious challenge in the implementation of quantum computers, it isn’t so in quantum cryptography, where people are dealing with single qubits, for single qubits can remain isolated from the environment for significant amount of time. Using quantum cryptography, two users can exchange the very large numbers known as keys, which secure data, without anyone able to break the key exchange system. Such key exchange could help secure communications between satellites and naval ships. But the actual encryption algorithm used after the key is exchanged remains classical, and therefore the encryption is theoretically no stronger than classical methods.
Quantum cryptography is being commercially used in a limited sense for high-value banking transactions. But because the two parties must be authenticated using classical protocols, and since a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it’s not that different from existing systems. Banks are still using a classical-based authentication process, which itself could be used to exchange keys without loss of overall security.
Quantum cryptography technology must shift its focus to quantum transmission of information if it’s going to become significantly more secure than existing cryptography techniques.
Commercial-scale quantum computing challenges
While quantum cryptography holds some promise if the problems of quantum transmission can be solved, I doubt the same holds true for generalized quantum computing. Error-correction, which is fundamental to a multi-purpose computer, is such a significant challenge in quantum computers that I don’t believe they’ll ever be built at a commercial scale.
This wasn’t the first time someone cast doubt on quantum computing. Last year, Michel Dyakonov, a theoretical physicist at the University of Montpellier in France, offered a slew of technical reasons why practical quantum supercomputers will never be built in an article in IEEE Spectrum, the flagship journal of electrical and computer engineering.
So how can you make sense of what is going on?
As someone who has worked on quantum computing for many years, I believe that due to the inevitability of random errors in the hardware, useful quantum computers are unlikely to ever be built.
What’s a quantum computer?
To understand why, you need to understand how quantum computers work since they’re fundamentally different from classical computers.
A classical computer uses 0s and 1s to store data. These numbers could be voltages on different points in a circuit. But a quantum computer works on quantum bits, also known as qubits. You can picture them as waves that are associated with amplitude and phase.
Qubits have special properties: They can exist in superposition, where they are both 0 and 1 at the same time, and they may be entangled so they share physical properties even though they may be separated by large distances. It’s a behavior that does not exist in the world of classical physics. The superposition vanishes when the experimenter interacts with the quantum state.
Due to superposition, a quantum computer with 100 qubits can represent 2100 solutions simultaneously. For certain problems, this exponential parallelism can be harnessed to create a tremendous speed advantage. Some code-breaking problems could be solved exponentially faster on a quantum machine, for example.
There is another, narrower approach to quantum computing called quantum annealing, where qubits are used to speed up optimization problems. D-Wave Systems, based in Canada, has built optimization systems that use qubits for this purpose, but critics also claim that these systems are no better than classical computers.
Regardless, companies and countries are investing massive amounts of money in quantum computing. China has developed a new quantum research facility worth US$10 billion, while the European Union has developed a €1 billion ($1.1 billion) quantum master plan. The United States’ National Quantum Initiative Act provides $1.2 billion to promote quantum information science over a five-year period.
Breaking encryption algorithms is a powerful motivating factor for many countries – if they could do it successfully, it would give them an enormous intelligence advantage. But these investments are also promoting fundamental research in physics.
Many companies are pushing to build quantum computers, including Intel and Microsoft in addition to Google and IBM. These companies are trying to build hardware that replicates the circuit model of classical computers.
However, current experimental systems have less than 100 qubits. To achieve useful computational performance, you probably need machines with hundreds of thousands of qubits.
Noise and error correction
The mathematics that underpin quantum algorithms is well established, but there are daunting engineering challenges that remain.
For computers to function properly, they must correct all small random errors. In a quantum computer, such errors arise from the non-ideal circuit elements and the interaction of the qubits with the environment around them. For these reasons the qubits can lose coherency in a fraction of a second and, therefore, the computation must be completed in even less time. If random errors – which are inevitable in any physical system – are not corrected, the computer’s results will be worthless.
In classical computers, small noise is corrected by taking advantage of a concept known as thresholding. It works like the rounding of numbers. Thus, in the transmission of integers where it is known that the error is less than 0.5, if what is received is 3.45, the received value can be corrected to 3.
Further errors can be corrected by introducing redundancy. Thus if 0 and 1 are transmitted as 000 and 111, then at most one bit-error during transmission can be corrected easily: A received 001 would be a interpreted as 0, and a received 101 would be interpreted as 1.
Quantum error correction codes are a generalization of the classical ones, but there are crucial differences. For one, the unknown qubits cannot be copied to incorporate redundancy as an error correction technique. Furthermore, errors present within the incoming data before the error-correction coding is introduced cannot be corrected.
Quantum cryptography
While the problem of noise is a serious challenge in the implementation of quantum computers, it isn’t so in quantum cryptography, where people are dealing with single qubits, for single qubits can remain isolated from the environment for significant amount of time. Using quantum cryptography, two users can exchange the very large numbers known as keys, which secure data, without anyone able to break the key exchange system. Such key exchange could help secure communications between satellites and naval ships. But the actual encryption algorithm used after the key is exchanged remains classical, and therefore the encryption is theoretically no stronger than classical methods.
Quantum cryptography is being commercially used in a limited sense for high-value banking transactions. But because the two parties must be authenticated using classical protocols, and since a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it’s not that different from existing systems. Banks are still using a classical-based authentication process, which itself could be used to exchange keys without loss of overall security.
Quantum cryptography technology must shift its focus to quantum transmission of information if it’s going to become significantly more secure than existing cryptography techniques.
Commercial-scale quantum computing challenges
While quantum cryptography holds some promise if the problems of quantum transmission can be solved, I doubt the same holds true for generalized quantum computing. Error-correction, which is fundamental to a multi-purpose computer, is such a significant challenge in quantum computers that I don’t believe they’ll ever be built at a commercial scale.
