This week in science

Awesome idea for a thread. These things are fascinating. +1
 
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Paraplegics: http://bit.ly/Oyh3qQ
Exotic hadrons: http://bit.ly/1htYh0W
Exomoon: http://bit.ly/1hwEwG2
Organs: http://bit.ly/1n4QiGO
Universe: http://bit.ly/1ituAJJ
ADD: http://bit.ly/1oUGDau
Lab grown vaginas: http://bit.ly/1gizTgE
Genome: http://bit.ly/1enatKR
 
Interesting finding about the sperm RNA, kind of confirms the comeback of sort of Lamarckism contra the claims of Coyne et al. Also puts another nail in the coffin of the idea that large parts of the genome are "junk DNA".
 
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140422100021.htm

By mimicking a viral strategy, scientists have created the first cloaked DNA nanodevice that survives the body's immune defenses. Their success opens the door to smart DNA nanorobots that use logic to spot cancerous tissue and manufacture drugs on the spot to cripple it, as well as artificial microscopic containers called protocells that detect pathogens in food or toxic chemicals in drinking water.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140424102850.htm

A new version of 'spaser' technology being investigated could mean that mobile phones become so small, efficient, and flexible they could be printed on clothing. A spaser is effectively a nanoscale laser or nanolaser. It emits a beam of light through the vibration of free electrons, rather than the space-consuming electromagnetic wave emission process of a traditional laser.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140428120652.htm

The scent of a man: Gender of experimenter has big impact on rats' stress levels, explains lack of replication of some findings

Scientists’ inability to replicate research findings using mice and rats has contributed to mounting concern over the reliability of such studies. Pain researchers have now found that the gender of experimenters has a big impact on the stress levels of rodents used in research. The presence of male experimenters produced a stress response in mice and rats equivalent to that caused by restraining the rodents for 15 minutes in a tube or forcing them to swim for three minutes. This stress-induced reaction made mice and rats of both sexes less sensitive to pain.
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http://www.popsci.com/article/science/pig-heart-transplants-humans-are-way?src=SOC&dom=tw

A baboon is still alive more than a year after receiving a heart transplanted from a pig.

To make hearts that baboons—and, in the future, humans—won't reject, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute team specially engineered its pigs to have some human genes and to lack some pig genes. The researchers also gave their baboons drugs to suppress their immune systems. (Human patients take immunosuppressant drugs when they get organ transplants, so that's not unusual.)

It seems what made the transplants work was just the right balance of genetic engineering and immune system-suppressing drugs. In an abstract the team submitted to a meeting of heart and torso surgeons, the team reports that when it tried other drug regimens, their baboons died in less than a year. Baboons who received hearts from un-genetically modified pigs rejected the hearts within a day.
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Scientists discover how to turn light into matter after 80-year quest

Physicists have discovered how to create matter from light -- a feat thought impossible when the idea was first theorized 80 years ago. In just one day over several cups of coffee in a tiny office, three physicists worked out a relatively simple way to physically prove a theory first devised by scientists Breit and Wheeler in 1934. Breit and Wheeler suggested that it should be possible to turn light into matter by smashing together only two particles of light (photons), to create an electron and a positron -- the simplest method of turning light into matter ever predicted. The calculation was found to be theoretically sound, but Breit and Wheeler said that they never expected anybody to physically demonstrate their prediction.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140518164244.htm
 
Engineers build world's smallest, fastest nanomotor: Can fit inside a single cell

Mechanical engineering assistant professor Donglei "Emma" Fan led a team of researchers in the successful design, assembly and testing of a high-performing nanomotor in a nonbiological setting. The team's three-part nanomotor can rapidly mix and pump biochemicals and move through liquids, which is important for future applications. The team's study was published in a recent issue of Nature Communications.
Fan and her team are the first to achieve the extremely difficult goal of designing a nanomotor with large driving power.
With all its dimensions under 1 micrometer in size, the nanomotor could fit inside a human cell and is capable of rotating for 15 continuous hours at a speed of 18,000 RPMs, the speed of a motor in a jet airplane engine. Comparable nanomotors run significantly more slowly, from 14 RPMs to 500 RPMs, and have only rotated for a few seconds up to a few minutes.
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To test its ability to release drugs, the researchers coated the nanomotor's surface with biochemicals and initiated spinning. They found that the faster the nanomotor rotated, the faster it released the drugs.
"We were able to establish and control the molecule release rate by mechanical rotation, which means our nanomotor is the first of its kind for controlling the release of drugs from the surface of nanoparticles," Fan said. "We believe it will help advance the study of drug delivery and cell-to-cell communications."
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140520123441.htm
 
HIV can cut and paste in human genome

For the first time researchers have succeeded in altering HIV virus particles so that they can simultaneously, as it were, 'cut and paste' in our genome via biological processes. Developed at the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, the technology makes it possible to repair genomes in a new way. It also offers good perspectives for individual treatment of both hereditary diseases and certain viral infections:


"Now we can simultaneously cut out the part of the genome that is broken in sick cells, and patch the gap that arises in the genetic information which we have removed from the genome. The new aspect here is that we can bring the scissors and the patch together in the HIV particles in a fashion that no one else has done before," says associate professor in genetics Jacob Giehm Mikkelsen from Aarhus University
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140527101231.htm
 
'Free choice' in primates altered through brain stimulation

When electrical pulses are applied to the ventral tegmental area of their brain, macaques presented with two images change their preference from one image to the other. The study is the first to confirm a causal link between activity in the ventral tegmental area and choice behavior in primates.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140529142448.htm
 
Researchers Find Association Between Porn Viewing And Less Grey Matter In The Brain

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1874574
http://www.iflscience.com/brain/res...ween-porn-viewing-and-less-grey-matter-brain\
http://time.com/135853/porn-brain/

A new study finds that men who watch a lot of pornography tend to have less gray matter volume as well as less activity in the region of the brain linked to rewards.

The German study, published in JAMA Psychiatry and which analyzed a relatively small sample, provides the first evidence which could lead to establishing a link between pornography consumption and brain size. However, it did not determine whether watching porn leads to the decreased volume and activity, or if people born with certain brain characteristics watch more porn.
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The researchers acknowledge that they are uncertain at this stage as to what the results mean, however, they have a couple of hypotheses. It could be that excessive stimulation of the reward system has resulted in alterations in neural plasticity. On the flip side, it could be that men with less gray matter in the striatum require more stimulation than others and find watching porn more rewarding, which could lead to an increase in porn consumption.
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This could probably do with it's own thread on myBB
 
Marijuana shows potential in treating autoimmune disease

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140602150914.htm

The recent findings show that THC can change critical molecules of epigenome called histones, leading to suppression of inflammation. These results suggest that one potential negative impact of marijuana smoking could be suppression of beneficial inflammation in the body. But they also suggest that, because of its epigenetic influence toward inflammation suppression, marijuana use could be efficacious in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, lupus, colitis, multiple sclerosis and the like, in which chronic inflammation plays a central role.
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