Fwd: Science X Newsletter Friday, Jan 1

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Newsletter for January 1, 2016:

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From: Newsletter Phys.org <not-for-reply@physorg.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 3:29 AM
Subject: Science X Newsletter Friday, Jan 1
To: Pascal Alter <pascal.alter@gmail.com>

Dear Pascal Alter,
Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for January 1, 2016:

Spotlight Stories Headlines

- Team reprograms social behavior in carpenter ants using epigenetic drugs
- CRISPR treats genetic disorder in adult mammal
- Astronomers find new way to measure the pull of gravity at the surface of distant stars
- Sugar in western diets increases risk for breast cancer tumors and metastasis
- Google moves to open source version of Oracle's JDK
- Transition metal catalyst prompts 'conjunctive' cross-coupling reaction
- Microsoft to warn users about 'nation-state' intrusion
- Preparing for large-scale solar deployment
- Germs for the holidays—house guests leave trail of tiny, immunity-improving bacteria
- Image: Hubble views two galaxies merging
- Japan team to name element 113 in Asian first (Update)
- Creating safer polio vaccine strains for the post-eradication era
- Human-machine superintelligence can solve the world's most dire problems
- Gene-editing technique successfully stops progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy
- New genes born by accident lead to evolutionary innovation

Physics news

	Japan team to name element 113 in Asian first (Update) A Japanese research team has been granted the right to name new element 113, the first on the periodic table to be named by Asian scientists, the team's institute said Thursday.
	Looking for new states of matter By studying how materials transform at ultra-low temperatures, a Missouri S&T theoretical physicist hopes to discover new states of matter.

Earth news

	Freak heatwave pushes temperatures at North Pole above freezing Temperatures at the North Pole rose above freezing point Wednesday, 20 degrees Celsius above the mid-winter norm and the latest abnormality in a season of extreme weather events.
	Indian capital starts limiting cars for two weeks to clear air The Indian capital on Friday kicked off a sweeping plan to reduce its record-high air pollution by limiting the numbers of cars on the streets for two weeks.
	Hundreds of flights grounded as snow blankets Istanbul Hundreds of flights were cancelled on Thursday from Istanbul's two main airports after the city was hit by a picturesque but troublesome snowfall on the last day of the year.
	Europe's winter warmth puts nature in tailspin The daffodils are out in London, plum trees are blossoming in Milan and asparagus tips are pushing through the soil in eastern France.
	Indonesia to appeal rejection of $565 mn haze lawsuit The Indonesian government will appeal a court's rejection of a $565 million lawsuit against a pulp and paper company accused of failing to prevent fires that blanketed Southeast Asia in toxic haze, an official said Thursday.
	NASA image: Reading the alphabet from space NASA's Earth Observatory has tracked down images resembling all 26 letters of the English alphabet using only NASA satellite imagery and astronaut photography. In this image, the letter 'Y' is for yardangs, elongated landforms sculpted by erosion and similar to sand dunes, but instead comprised of sandstone or siltstone.
	Late-season Central Pacific tropical depression forms Tropical Depression 9C formed in the Central Pacific, 30 days after the official end to the Central Pacific Hurricane Season. An image from NOAA's GOES-West satellite revealed the late-season tropical depression was still struggling to organize.
	NASA sees Tropical Cyclone Ula's eye and rainfall Tropical Cyclone Ula formed on Dec. 30 and continued tracking south of Pago Pago as NASA observed rainfall rates and saw an eye form the next day. Warnings were in effect in Fiji as Ula approaches.

Astronomy & Space news

	Astronomers find new way to measure the pull of gravity at the surface of distant stars Researchers have found a new way to measure the pull of gravity at the surface of a star. For distant stars with planets orbiting them, this information is key in determining whether any of those planets can harbour life.
	Image: Hubble views two galaxies merging This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the galaxy NGC 6052, located around 230 million light-years away in the constellation of Hercules.
	How strong is gravity on other planets? Gravity is a fundamental force of physics, one which we Earthlings tend to take for granted. You can't really blame us. Having evolved over the course of billions of years in Earth's environment, we are used to living with the pull of a steady 1 g (or 9.8 m/s2). However, for those who have gone into space or set foot on the Moon, gravity is a very tenuous and precious thing.
	How many moons does Mercury have? Virtually every planet in the has moons. Earth has the moon, Mars has Phobos and Deimos, and Jupiter and Saturn have 67 and 62 officially named moons, respectively. Heck, even the recently-demoted dwarf planet Pluto has five confirmed moons – Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx. And even asteroids like 243 Ida may have satellites orbiting them (in this case, Dactyl). But what about Mercury?
	NASA image: The Alps in winter European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and Expedition 46 Flight Engineer Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) photographed the Alps from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station on Dec. 27, 2015.

Technology news

	Malware seen turning systems into proxies without consent A cybersecurity company has spotted malware which sets up anonymous proxies on infected personal computers. Lee Mathews in Geek.com said the strain turns infected machines into anonymous proxy hosts.
	Human-machine superintelligence can solve the world's most dire problems The combination of human and computer intelligence might be just what we need to solve the "wicked" problems of the world, such as climate change and geopolitical conflict, say researchers from the Human Computation Institute (HCI) and Cornell University.
	Preparing for large-scale solar deployment Deploying solar power at the scale needed to alleviate climate change will pose serious challenges for today's electric power system, finds a study performed by researchers at MIT and the Institute for Research and Technology (ITT) at Comillas University in Spain. For example, local power networks will need to handle both incoming and outgoing flows of electricity. Rapid changes in photovoltaic (PV) output as the sun comes and goes will require running expensive power plants that can respond quickly to changes in demand. Costs will rise, yet market prices paid to owners of PV systems will decline as more PV systems come online, rendering more PV investment unprofitable at market prices. The study concludes that ensuring an economic, reliable, and climate-friendly power system in the future will require strengthening existing equipment, modifying regulations and pricing, and developing critical technologies, including low-cost, lar! ge-scale energy storage devices that can smooth out delivery of PV-generated electricity.
	Google moves to open source version of Oracle's JDK Google is moving away from its implementation of Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in Android N, the next version, and to OpenJDK, the open source version of Oracle's Java Development Kit (JDK). ReadWrite is one of numerous tech-watching sites that reported the Google development.
	Microsoft to warn users about 'nation-state' intrusion Microsoft has joined other online companies with a new policy alerting users if their accounts are being targeted by governments.
Can you download me now? NY payphones become Wi-Fi hot spots Operator, won't you help me replace this call? A 9-foot-tall, narrow structure installed this past week on a Manhattan sidewalk is signaling a plan to turn payphones into what's billed as the world's biggest and fastest municipal Wi-Fi network.
China says it is building its second aircraft carrier China is building its second aircraft carrier, this time entirely with domestic technology, its Defense Ministry said Thursday.
	Scientists create variable vectoring technique for propeller-powered unmanned aerial vehicles The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) designed for plateau missions are usually installed with high span chord ratio wings, which provide more lifting force at a relatively low airspeed. Such UAVs, however, tend to lose their maneuverability. Hence, they usually need a larger turning radius and are unable to maintain altitude during sharp slope turning, as the lifting force produced by the wings decreases dramatically when the bank angle is large. This may pose a risk to flight safety in plateau mountain regions. Variable thrust direction (VTD) technology is a type of thrust vectoring control (TVC) that allows a UAV to manipulate the directions of thrust to the fuselage of the aircraft.
	Cameras allow New Year's views all over world If you aren't looking for a rockin' New Year's Eve or forced small talk between television hosts, an online service is offering a way to experience the beginning of 2016 as it happens all over the world.
	How an end to phone discounts will help customers AT&T will no longer offer discounted phones with two-year contracts starting Jan. 8. Before you rush out to beat the deadline, consider that you might be better off paying full price for the phone.
	India hits one billion mobile phone subscribers India notched up its billionth mobile phone subscriber in October, the country's telecoms regulator said, underscoring the importance of its fast-growing mobile market, the world's second largest after China.
	Twitter restores access to politicians' deleted tweets Twitter said Thursday it was restoring access to deleted tweets from politicians, saying it would help "bring more transparency to public dialogue."
	Amazon donates profits from far-right anthem to refugees Online retail giant Amazon said on Thursday it will donate the profits from the online purchase of a tune released by the far-right anti-migrant PEGIDA movement to refugees in Germany.
	State: Hundreds of old Clinton emails newly classified The State Department said Thursday that portions of 275 emails released on New Year's Eve from Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state have been newly classified, bringing 2015 to a close for the Democratic presidential front-runner.
	Nigeria demands MTN pay $3.9 bn telecoms fine as deadline expires Nigeria said it was expecting telecoms giant MTN to meet a deadline for paying a record $3.9 billion fine which expires Thursday, despite the South African operator challenging the penalty in court.

Chemistry news

Transition metal catalyst prompts 'conjunctive' cross-coupling reaction By employing a third reactant, researchers at Boston College have developed a new type of 'cross coupling' chemical reaction, building on a Nobel Prize-winning technique that is one of the most sophisticated tools available to research chemists, the team reports in the journal Science.
	Physicists come up with a way to make cleaner fuel cells An international group of scientists from Russia, France, and Germany have developed ion-exchange synthetic membranes based on amphiphilic compounds that are able to convert the energy of chemical reactions into electrical current. The new development, described in the journal Physical Chemistry, Chemical Physics could potentially be used in fuel cells, and in separation and purification processes. The study was conducted by MIPT's Laboratory of Functional Organic and Hybrid Materials, which was opened in 2014.
Melting, coating, and all-solid-state lithium batteries The joint research team of Prof. Yoon Seok Jung (UNIST, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering) and Prof. Seng M. Oh (Seoul National University) discovered a new way to develop all-solid-state lithium batteries without a risk of conflagration or explosion. It is the method of melting the solid electrolyte and coating that melted electrolyte around the electrodes. This research outcome was introduced on Advanced Materials on December 22, 2015.

Biology news

	Team reprograms social behavior in carpenter ants using epigenetic drugs In Florida carpenter ant colonies, distinct worker castes called minors and majors exhibit pronounced differences in social behavior throughout their lives. In a new study published today in Science, a multi-institution team anchored at University of Pennsylvania found that these caste-specific behaviors are not set in stone. Rather, this pioneering study shows that social behavior can be reprogrammed, indicating that an individual's epigenetic, not genetic, makeup determines behavior in ant colonies.
	Seeing DROSHA for the first time: Lab team gets the first glimpse of elusive protein structure Our bodies are made up of many different types of cells, with each of their identities determined by different gene expression. Cancer and genetic diseases occur when this gene expression goes wrong. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an important regulator in gene expression, and they play crucial roles in almost all biological contexts including development, differentiation, inflammation, aging, and cancer. In the nucleus, miRNA start their process as a tiny, folded over hairpin structure called primary microRNA (pri-miRNA) and is recognized and processed by the Microprocessor complex, an enzyme arrangement made up of one DROSHA and two DGCR8 proteins. The Microprocessor complex does two things: it measures the pri-miRNA then snips off its basal parts, resulting in precursor-microRNA (pre-miRNA). After some further processing, mature miRNA and RNA-Induced Silencing Complex (RISC) interact with messenger RNA (mRNA) in the cytoplasm to repress translation which stops the ribosome from making protein.
	New genes born by accident lead to evolutionary innovation Novel genes are continuously emerging during evolution, but what drives this process? A new study, published in PLOS Genetics, has found that the fortuitous appearance of certain combinations of elements in the genome can lead to the generation of new genes. This work was led by Jorge Ruiz-Orera and Mar Albà from Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute in Barcelona (IMIM-ICREA).
	Germs for the holidays—house guests leave trail of tiny, immunity-improving bacteria The holiday season brings in all the usual guests to visit, but for every one there's a host of unexpected visitors. That's because each family member, friend and neighbor entering our homes emits 38 million bacterial cells an hour.
The billion dollar game of strategy: The effect of farmers' decisions on pest control Researchers say that the actions of individual farmers should be considered when studying and modelling strategies of pest control.
	Brazil defends treasures of its 'Blue Amazon' Hundreds of years ago, Brazil's southern Atlantic waters were sailed by pirates in search of plunder. Now these remote depths, dubbed the "Blue Amazon", hold richer treasures for scientists.
	Japan zoo recovers missing red panda after frantic search A Japanese zoo scrambled all of its staff Thursday to track down a missing red panda, a zoo spokesman said, finally recovering her in a nearby area.
	The real-life origins of the legendary Kraken The Kraken is perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind. In Nordic folklore, it was said to haunt the seas from Norway through Iceland and all the way to Greenland. The Kraken had a knack for harassing ships and many pseudoscientific reports (including official naval ones) said it would attack vessels with its strong arms. If this strategy failed, the beast would start swimming in circles around the ship, creating a fierce maelstrom to drag the vessel down.
	How human-puma interaction may change the food web My phone buzzed in distress the evening of Nov. 10. UC Santa Cruz had just sent a text alert warning me and other students that someone had seen a mountain lion on campus. Stay indoors, it said. Luckily, I'd managed to pry myself from work at a computer lab an hour earlier, and like a normal person, go home for dinner that night. Like a small woodland creature, I thought, I'm so glad to be in my burrow right now.
	How curiosity can save species from extinction If I had been given one wish as a child I, it would have been that the Tasmanian tiger wasn't extinct. To me extinction was a tragedy. I expect that many people feel the same way.
	A better understanding of rangeland health They are grazed by livestock, serve as habitat and food for wildlife and pollinators, and filter runoff to help keep waterways clean.

Medicine & Health news

	CRISPR treats genetic disorder in adult mammal Researchers have used CRISPR to treat an adult mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. This marks the first time that CRISPR has successfully treated a genetic disease inside a fully developed living mammal with a strategy that has the potential to be translated to human therapy.
	Gene-editing technique successfully stops progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy Using a new gene-editing technique, a team of scientists from UT Southwestern Medical Center stopped progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in young mice.
	Creating safer polio vaccine strains for the post-eradication era While the goal of polio virus eradication is in sight, there are concerns about post-eradication manufacturing and stockpiling vaccine stores containing live virus that could escape and repopulate the environment. A study published on December 31st in PLOS Pathogens reports the generation of new vaccine strains that appear both effective and unable to cause disease after accidental or intended release.
	Sugar in western diets increases risk for breast cancer tumors and metastasis The high amounts of dietary sugar in the typical Western diet may increase the risk of breast cancer and metastasis to the lungs, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
	Areas of increased poverty associated with higher rates of Ebola transmission Since October 2014 the Ebola epidemic in West Africa has been diminishing and efforts have shifted from emergency response to prevention and mitigation of future outbreaks. Researchers from the Liberian Ministry of Health and the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modelling and Analysis evaluated 3532 Ebola cases reported in 2014 in order to quantify the impact of poverty on the transmission and spread of Ebola. They found that areas stricken by extreme poverty were more likely to be associated with high rates of Ebola transmission and spread.
	World's first soft-robotic surgery on a human body A team of roboticists, engineers and surgeons at King's College London have for the first time operated on a human body using a soft surgical robot as part of keyhole surgery, with the aim of dramatically improving future surgical practice. Under the guidance of expert surgeons, the team used the robot to operate on human cadavers as well as medical manikins.
	New memory drug moves into Phase 1 clinical study An experimental drug that may improve memory is now being tested in a Phase 1 safety trial. The compound, BPN14770, was developed by Tetra Discovery Partners, with support from the NIH Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network, a program designed to facilitate the discovery and development of novel neurological treatments. It is the first compound funded by the program to reach a Phase 1 clinical trial.
What a difference a year makes as Ebola zone brings in 2016 Banned from gathering in public as the death toll crept towards five figures, the people of west Africa's Ebola-hit nations could hardly have had a worse New Year's Eve 2014.
	Three hits to fight lung cancer Although the most common type of lung cancer - non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) - has recently seen major treatment advances in some genetic subtypes, other subtypes continue to evade effective treatment. (New therapies exist for NCCLC patients whose cancers harbor mutations in the ALK or EGFR genes, for example.) Now, a new study in mice has shown that cancers with KRAS-related gene mutations might benefit from a triple therapy with two experimental drugs plus radiation therapy. The results were published [TKTK date] in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
Researchers describe role of STING protein in development of colorectal cancer A new study published today by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine (Sylvester) reports on a key finding about the immune system's response to tumor development following studies on colorectal cancer. This is the first detailed examination of how the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) signaling pathway, discovered by Glen N. Barber, Ph.D., Leader of the Viral Oncology Program at Sylvester, may play an important role in alerting the immune system to cellular transformation.
	Saffron-based crocin prevents liver cancer Liver cancer remains among the leading causes of cancer-related death worldwide.

Other Sciences news

Archaeologists unearth military arsenal from the era of Ivan the Terrible An archaeological expedition from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, while conducting a rescue excavation dig near Zvenigorod (Moscow Region) involving the new Central Circular Highway, has unearthed the private arsenal of a military commander from the era of Ivan the Terrible.

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