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[mindblowingscience]

A University of Adelaide study of shallow-water fish communities on rocky reefs in south-eastern Australia has found climate change is helping tropical fish species invade temperate Australian waters. The work is published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. "The fish are traveling into these Australian ecosystems as larvae caught in the Eastern Australian Current, which is strengthening due to the warming climate," said the University of Adelaide's Professor Ivan Nagelkerken, Chief Investigator of the study. "These larvae would not normally survive in the cooler Australian ocean water, but the warming Eastern Australian Current keeps the baby fish warm and increases their likelihood of survival."

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[mindblowingscience]

The deadly heat wave that hit Africa's Sahel region in early April would not have occurred without human-induced climate change, according to a study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group published Thursday. The West African nations of Mali and Burkina Faso experienced an exceptional heat wave from April 1 until April 5, with soaring temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) triggering many deaths. Observations and climate models used by researchers at the WWA showed that "heat waves with the magnitude observed in March and April 2024 in the region would have been impossible to occur without the global warming of 1.2C to date", which scientists attribute to human-induced climate change.

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[mindblowingscience]

A small amount of sweat could be all that's needed to power fitness trackers of the future, new research led by Deakin University's Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM) reveals. In a paper published today in the journal Device, Deakin researchers have outlined how they have designed a wearable hydroelectric nanogenerator—powerful enough to power small electronics such as FitBits and smartwatches—that combines conductive nanomaterials and the evaporation of sweat to generate and store electrical power.

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[mindblowingscience]

By modifying a refrigerator commonly used in both research and industry, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have drastically reduced the time and energy required to cool materials to within a few degrees above absolute zero. The scientists say that their prototype device, which they are now working to commercialize with an industrial partner, could annually save an estimated 27 million watts of power, $30 million in global electricity consumption, and enough cooling water to fill 5,000 Olympic swimming pools.

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[mindblowingscience]

You do realize, that in order for clinical trials to proceed for Humans, you have to prove that the treatment works in other mammals in a research setting, right? It is not seen as ethical to subject people to untested therapies.

I'm just getting really tired of people seeing a mouse trial and implying that the science is bad, or that they're being lied to. Its all in the segment that I quoted. Nobody was being lied to or mislead.

Not all mouse studies can be reproduced in humans, but many of them do, and countless Human treatments would be impossible without first verifying that they work in a related animal before proceeding to large scale, human, clinical trials.

A succesfully mouse study is not a guarantee that it will work with people, but it is a clue that it might be possible. Research and scientific discovery works in a step-wise order. You can't climb a ladder without climbing each rung first, and sometimes you'll fall and have to start over, but each of these steps is there for a reason.

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.  Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly. The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S. This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  “What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad,” said UCR virologist and paper author Rong Hai. “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.”

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[mindblowingscience]

An epidemic of monkeypox occurred in May 2023 that led to a disease named mpox displaying symptoms such as fever, enlarged lymph nodes, and rash. This ailment is usually mild and self-limited, but severe cases can be harrowing and may cause lifetime scarring. In response to the outbreak, researchers from Mount Sinai and the Carlos III Health Institute (ICI) in Madrid, Spain, worked together to investigate the genetic makeup of the monkeypox virus (MPXV). They mainly studied subclade IIb strains of the virus, helping them to understand the convolutions in viral genes that influence virus behavior, thereby offering strategies for intervention.

The concept of “genomic accordion” refers to periodic expansions and contractions within the genome of monkeypox virus (MPXV), especially in low-complexity regions (LCRs). Adaptive evolution for this virus depends on these variants, which are drivers of gene expression changes or modifications, including short tandem repeats.  

Contrarily, researchers believe that differences in LCRs rather than single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) may explain the distinct epidemiology of subclade IIb MPXV strains. MPXV’s genetic pathways that underlie its unique transmission dynamics and pathogenicity have been illuminated through precise LCR resolution and repeat length analysis.

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[mindblowingscience]

Imagine a teeming city where proteins are the movers and shakers. Each protein intertwines with others in partnerships that are vital to every cellular process. Nevertheless, unraveling these interactions, which are called protein-protein interactions (PPIs), forms the basis for both biology and drug development. Detecting PPIs has been akin to overhearing hushed conversations in a crowded room.

A recent study by Harvard Medical School researchers makes significant strides toward understanding the landscape of protein interaction. In this research, SPOC, a powerful classifier, was introduced, which improves the highly accurate identification of true PPIs compared to predictions made by AlphaFold-Multimer (AF-M), an innovative protein structure prediction tool. Predictions generated by the SPOC can be accessed and evaluated on the Predictomes database (predictomes.org). It serves as a repository for protein-protein interaction predictions, allowing users to explore and score their own predictions using SPOC.

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[mindblowingscience]

It's the most fundamental of processes—the evaporation of water from the surfaces of oceans and lakes, the burning off of fog in the morning sun, and the drying of briny ponds that leaves solid salt behind. Evaporation is all around us, and humans have been observing it and making use of it for as long as we have existed. And yet, it turns out, we've been missing a major part of the picture all along. In a series of painstakingly precise experiments, a team of researchers at MIT has demonstrated that heat isn't alone in causing water to evaporate. Light, striking the water's surface where air and water meet, can break water molecules away and float them into the air, causing evaporation in the absence of any source of heat. The astonishing new discovery could have a wide range of significant implications. It could help explain mysterious measurements over the years of how sunlight affects clouds, and therefore affect calculations of the effects of climate change on cloud cover and precipitation. It could also lead to new ways of designing industrial processes such as solar-powered desalination or drying of materials.

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[mindblowingscience]

Holy shit, they got Voyager 1 working again!

15 billion miles away and NASA was able to tweak code packages on one of the onboard computers and it worked and Voyager 1 is sending signals back to earth for the first time since November.

Incredible!

[mindblowingscience]

Humans have modified their bodies in various ways throughout history, tattooing, piercing, scarring, implanting, or even deforming parts of their anatomy. In spite of its ubiquity, it's not always clear why. Cultural traditions are a strong factor, as are beauty standards, which vary across time and place. A new analysis of remains of individuals who lived in Viking Age Gotland around a thousand years ago suggests that their own body modifications reinforced social identities.

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What if there was plastic-like material that could absorb excess nutrients from water and be used as a fertilizer when it decomposes? That product—a "bioplastic" material—has been created by University of Saskatchewan (USask) chemistry professor Dr. Lee Wilson and his research team, as detailed in a paper recently published in RSC Sustainability. The research team includes Ph.D. candidate Bernd G. K. Steiger, BSc student Nam Bui and postdoctoral fellow trainee Bolanle M. Babalola. "We've made a bioplastic material that functions as an absorbent and it takes phosphate out of water, where elevated levels of phosphate in surface water is a huge global water security issue," he said. "You can harvest those pellets and distribute them as an agricultural fertilizer."

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[mindblowingscience]

Planetary atmospheres are typically leaky things. Think about it – with no impenetrable barrier to hold it back against the void, some of it is bound to seep away and dissipate into the very tenuous medium in the between parts of space. Earth loses about 90 tonnes of atmospheric material every day. That's not enough to make a dent, but it does give us a few clues about why some of the other planets are the way they are. Venus, for example, is thought to have once been a temperate world like Earth, with liquid water on its surface. Now, it's a scorching hell-planet choked in clouds of carbon dioxide that rain sulfuric acid.

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NASA's delayed Dragonfly drone mission to Saturn's largest moon Titan is on track to launch in July 2028, the space agency confirmed late Tuesday (April 16). The highly anticipated decision greenlights the mission team to proceed to final mission design and testing in preparation for the revised launch date. The car-sized Dragonfly, which is being built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, will reach Titan in 2034. For the next 2.5 years, the nuclear-powered drone is expected to perform one hop every Titan day — 16 days to us Earthlings — hunting for prebiotic chemical processes at various pre-selected locations on the frigid moon, which is known to contain organic materials. 

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[mindblowingscience]

Bumblebees can surprisingly withstand days underwater, according to a study published Wednesday, suggesting they could withstand increased floods brought on by climate change that threaten their winter hibernation burrows. The survival of these pollinators that are crucial to ecosystems is "encouraging" amid worrying global trends of their declining populations, the study's lead author Sabrina Rondeau told AFP. With global warming prompting more frequent and extreme floods in regions around the world, it poses "an unpredictable challenge for soil-dwelling species, particularly bees nesting or overwintering underground", co-author Nigel Raine of the University of Guelph said in a statement. Rondeau said she first discovered queen bumblebees could withstand drowning by accident. She had been studying the effect of pesticide residues in soil on queen bumblebees that burrow underground for the winter when water accidentally entered the tubes housing a few of the bees. "I freaked out," said Rondeau, who had been conducting the experiment for her doctoral studies. "It was only a small proportion… so it was not that big of a deal, but I didn't want to lose those bees." To her "shock", she said, they survived. "I've been studying bumblebees for a very long time. I've talked about it to a lot of people and no one knew that this was a possibility," she said.

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[mindblowingscience]

The scientific paper is linked in the article:

The potential of quantum computing is immense, but the distances over which entangled particles can reliably carry information remains a massive hurdle. The tiniest of disturbances can make a scrambled mess of their relationship. To circumvent the problem, quantum computing researchers have found ways to stabilize long lengths of optical fibers or used satellites to preserve signals through the near-vacuum of space.

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[mindblowingscience]

The potential of quantum computing is immense, but the distances over which entangled particles can reliably carry information remains a massive hurdle. The tiniest of disturbances can make a scrambled mess of their relationship. To circumvent the problem, quantum computing researchers have found ways to stabilize long lengths of optical fibers or used satellites to preserve signals through the near-vacuum of space.

Continue Reading.