Epigenome prefixes: How big are they? Updated prefix systems for ronna, ronto, and quecto
The cells of people who were conceived during the Great Depression show signs of ageing faster than they should. The changes were measured in the cells’ epigenome, the chemical tags attached to DNA that determine how and when genes are expressed. According to researchers, the patterns they have uncovered may be related to higher disease and death rates.
It would take a thousand years for the world to generate around a yottabyte of data per year. The data boom has prompted the governors of the metric system to agree on new prefixes to describe the outrageously big and small. The prefixes ronna and quetta represent 1027 and 1030, and ronto and quecto signify 10−27 and 10−30. Earth weighs around one ronnagram, and an electron’s mass is about one quectogram. Ronna and quetta might sound strange now, but so did giga and tera once, says metrologist Olivier Pellegrino. This is the first update to the prefix system since 1991, when zetta (1021), zepto (10−21), yotta (1024) and yocto (10−24) were added.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03829-8
The Futility of Brain Research, a Synthesis of “Gamma & Gold” by Gina Rippon, and a Contribution to Climate Change
Elizabeth was sentenced to 11 years and 1 month in prison after being found guilty of fraud against investors in her blood-testing company. Theranos claimed it could run more than 200 health tests on just a few drops of blood taken from a finger prick — but the claims were exaggerated. Anat Alon-Beck said she pushed the envelope a little too far. “You fake it ’til you make it, but it was too much ‘fake’.”
It requires mentorship and a professional network to give women fair access to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The non-profit organization Girls Who Code says that the community is important to girls and non-binary people. “When they’re feeling as though they can’t persist in the field, they have that community to lean on, coupled with their computer-science expertise.” Four leaders of groups dedicated to women in technology share their stories and tips for better allyship.
Climate change is rooted in human behaviour, and behavioural change will be key to achieving solutions. A joint special by Nature Climate Change and Nature Human Behaviour suggests ways to incorporate behavioural science into better climate policy. The editorial states that we are at the beginning of a new era of climate research.
The misuse of brain research is called “neurotrash” by Gina Rippon. One example is the way brain images are “hijacked by self-help gurus, relationship counsellors and even those espousing single-sex education”, she says. She argues in her book that our brains are highly plastic, changing constantly and being influenced by the gendered world that we live in. Rippon shares what it was like to write and promote her first popular-science book and how she dealt with the backlash.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03829-8
What Happens When a Little Turtle Gets Trapped on Samanda Beach in Turkey, During the 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference
There is a plan to create a local vaccine industry in countries in the global south who found themselves at the end of the queue. If successful, they could end dependency on wealthy countries and stop the spread of diseases before they start.
Remarkable images highlight what’s at stake in the United Nations Biodiversity Conference opening today. Plus, severe COVID could cause markers of old age in the brain and what happens when your neural implant’s maker goes bust
This baby green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) has become tangled in plastic during its journey across Samandağ Beach, Turkey. Luckily, volunteers patrol this beach to usher hatchlings to the ocean. Turtles have gone up in populations because of the measures taken by the animal welfare industry, such as bans on hunting adults. Conservators are worried about turtles overhydrating the valuable seagrass habitat, a reminder that complex relationships make it difficult to preserve. The 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, COP15, opens in Montreal, Canada, tomorrow, and Nature has chosen 10 stunning images that illustrate what’s at stake.
Effects of severe COVID-19 on the air quality in the Western United States compared with the standard air quality index in the western United States
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention found two different versions of the coronaviruses inside the market. A study led by experts at the University of California, San Diego suggests the two genes didn’t evolve in people because there wasn’t a connection between the two. The two variant probably evolved inside animals according to the new studies.
The effects of severe COVID-19 have been linked to changes in the brain. Scientists studied brain samples from 21 people who had severe SARS-CoV-2 infections when they died. Inflammation and stress genes in the frontal cortex — a brain region essential for cognition — were more active in infected people than in uninfected people, and genes linked to forming connections between brain cells were less active. Proteomics researcher Daniel Martins-de-Souza says the work is preliminary but could ultimately help people who have lingering cognitive difficulties after COVID-19.
Air quality and people’s health are being threatened by fires that are being combined with industrial sources in the western United States. During the wildfires of September 2020, the air quality in part of Oregon was so bad that it exceeded the ability of the standard air quality index (AQI) to measure it. It would have reached an unheard-of 642 if the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality had their way. Wildfires are increasing across the world, but the trends in the western United States stand out because they mark a sharp change in air-pollution levels in a place with some of the strongest environmental regulations in the world.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04374-0
Breaking the cycle of low productivity due to employee exhaustion: Planning, forecasting, assigning tasks – a way to break that vicious cycle
When a company goes under it can leave people with non functional implants that can’t be replaced, and that can be an obstacle to future implants. It can also force people to face levels of pain or disability that they thought were behind them. “Patients are suffering terribly,” says neurosurgeon Robert Levy. Making them the victims of bad business practices or bankruptcies is terrible for patients, horrible for the field and grossly unethical.
The Nature Outlook: Robotics and artificial intelligence, an editorially independent Nature supplement, was produced with financial support of the FII Institute.
PhD student Maya Gosztyla explains how time-management strategies can help to break the vicious cycle of low productivity due to overwork and exhaustion. She suggests tracking goals on three timescales, which include: big-picture planning, forecasting and prioritization for each academic term, and assigning weekly tasks. She says that this makes it easier to decline commitments that don’t fit into the schedule or contribute to goals.
Nuclear power plants have spent fuel that can power space missions. Plus, the first gene therapy for haemophilia is the world’s most expensive drug.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Hemgenix, the first gene therapy for the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia B. Its price tag of US$3.5 million makes it the world’s most expensive drug, but it could save the US health-care system millions for every person treated by eliminating the need for regular injections of factor IX, a protein involved in blood clotting. Edward Tuddenham, one of the co-designers of the viralvector in Hemgenix, said that 85% of people with haemophilia who would benefit from the project can forget about it.
Why did the dinosaurs disappear in February 2014? A paleontologist at a solar power plant hasn’t found a radioactive element
Nuclear waste could power space missions to the far reaches of the Solar System — places that are too dark for solar panels. Scientists are looking for ways to extract a radioactive element from power plant spent fuel. The project is funded by the European Space Agency, which hopes to wean itself off plutonium-powered equipment sourced from international partners.
A scientist who published evidence that the dinosaurs were wiped out in springtime has accused a colleague of fabricating data to support his own paper saying the same thing. Melanie is a paleontologist. During published her work in Nature in February. She says that fellow fossil-hunter Robert DePalma, who published a study a couple of months earlier in Scientific Reports that scientists called “nearly identical”, wanted to scoop her. “We absolutely would not, and have not ever, fabricated data and/or samples to fit this or another team’s results,” says DePalma.
It’s the latest debate to arise from work at Tanis, a remarkable site in North Dakota, which some scientists think captured the first hours following the crash of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. When the tanis fossils were reported in The New Yorker rather than in a peer-review paper, it was a bit of a controversy. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that DePalma holds the lease to the Tanis site, which sits on private land, and relatively few scientists have visited it.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04394-w
The United Nations Biodiversity Conference ’15: A critical review’ of the Paris climate agreement and calls for a rethink of resources production and use
“The scientific community can’t improve a situation that it refuses to measure,” says neuroscientist Jon Freeman about the fact that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) still isn’t collecting statistics on sexual orientation and gender identity. The first thing to do to correct documented biases is to collect official statistics. Diversity fellowships and funding can be given to groups based on such data.
As part of a programme at Princeton University in New Jersey, astrophysics PhD student Erin Flowers teaches science to incarcerated people. Developing one of the United States’ first physics laboratory courses inside a prison proved particularly tricky because magnets, computers and sticky tape are all prohibited. She says that pencils and graph paper are used for calculations and that swimmers use glue in their ears. Students have told Flowers that taking the course has changed their lives by giving them opportunities that come with a degree.
It takes a lot of materials to make a laptop computer that is a few grams in weight. A Nature editorial calls for a complete rethink of how we incentivize the production and use of resources. (5 min read)
The 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference starts today in Canada. The Nature editorial points to the Paris climate agreement, which set a crucial goal to limit warming to 1.5–2 C above pre-industrial levels. At the time, the opening ceremony of the Paris conference held the record for the largest number of world leaders ever to attend a United Nations event in a single day — more than 150. The editorial calls for world leaders to make a similar show of support in Montreal that empowers national negotiators to reach a strong deal.
The wormhole/holographic dual of the Orion Spacecraft in the Challenge of Getting Humans to the Moon (and Back)
A quantum computer has been used to generate an entity known as an emergent wormhole. Quantum systems can be linked by entanglement, even when separated by extremely long distances. The authors generated a highly entangled quantum state between the two halves of a quantum computer, creating an alternative description, known as a holographic dual, in the form of an emergent wormhole stretched between two exterior regions. They then simulated a message traversing this wormhole. Efforts are being made to reconcile the theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity. (Nature | 5 min read)
Researchers worry that easing COVID Restrictions could overwhelm China’s health-care system. The genetic connections to canine quirks were uncovered, as were the ways world leaders can save a million species from extinction.
Over the past three weeks, NASA’s Orion spacecraft has flown to the Moon and most of the way back, in a near-flawless test of a new spaceship. It is now facing its biggest challenge since launching, surviving a fiery re-entry through the atmosphere and splashing down in the sea on 11 December. In the process, it will test a re-entry manoeuvre that has never been used by a spacecraft that is intended to carry passengers. NASA wants to bring humans back to the Moon in the future as part of its Artemis programme.
A study that combined behavioural data from 46,000 dogs with 4,000 dogs’genomes was able to identify genetic variations linked to nervousness and predatory behavior. The researchers scrapped the conventional breed categories — which had been found to be a poor predictor for behaviour — and sorted dogs into ten genetic lineages. Herding sheepdogs, for example, had genes that, in mice, had been associated with mothers’ instinct to protect their pups.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04413-w
An Artificial Intelligence Tool to Prevent the Use of Robots in Computer Programming Competitions, and the Human-Trained Police in the United States
An artificial-intelligence (AI) tool called AlphaCode can beat some people at competitive programming. The system, created by Google company DeepMind, was trained on human answers from software-writing competitions. AlphaCode can not replace software engineers, because there isn’t a simple way to specify what people who will use the product want.
Many respondents said that the idea would be more palatable if there was strict oversight to prevent the use of robots leading to an unwarranted increase in deadly force. Several readers in the United States linked its terrible history of mass shootings to the debate over the need for such extreme police weaponry. In the reply, a lot of people recoiled from the idea that an artificial intelligence could choose to kill someone rather than a trained police officer.
Readers suggested other options for using robots that are less severe. “They could be used to monitor, assess, and evaluate in real time the parameters of a situation. It could be used for non-lethal purposes.
New regulations for tattoo inks in the European Union ban the use of some 4,200 chemicals known to be harmful to human health. Scientists are studying the chemistry in inks and how they interact with the skin. New ink, ways of delivery and even tattooable biosensors are being developed by others.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04413-w
Evolution of DNA and positrons in the Greenland desert revisited: The surprising case of a strange particle decaying into muon pairs
Andrew Robinson picks the top five science books to read this week and he gives a detailed portrayal of the cell as well as why doubt is the most important aspect of knowing.
Two-million-year-old DNA recovered from permafrost has revealed that the Arctic desert of northern Greenland was once a lush forest ecosystem inhabited by surprisingly large animals. Mastodons ran around, reindeers, geese, hares, and marine animals like the horseshoe crab, which suggested a much warmer environment, according to geneticist Eske Willerslev. He thinks that, eventually, scientists will be able to look back further in time by sequencing even older DNA.
The crew that will embark on a moon mission by online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa includes Steve Aoki, Tim Dodd, and snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington. 4 min read.
Data that raised hopes of a new elementary particle has turned out to be a fluke. How do we change science when plastic hurts sea urchins and it’s in turmoil?
An intriguing anomaly that raised hopes for a new elementary particle has turned out to be a random occurrence. Researchers at the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, discovered that some particles decay intopositron pairs more frequently than muon pairs. The standard model of physics says both pairs will occur with roughly the same frequencies. The latest measurements and an investigation of confounding factors revealed that the discrepancy was partly the result of misidentifying other particles as electrons.
Should scientists stay or go? The science mission team on Twitter is facing a hard decision: should scientists step in when they are too weak to step in?
The plastic is used as a raw material in many modern economies and can cause fatal fetal anomalies in sea urchins. Scientists say high concentrations of zinc are likely to be the reason for the problem. Plastic can also kill animals by the chemicals in it or on it even if you don’t eat it.
The US energy secretary has reversed the decision of the US government to strip Robert Oppenheimer of his security clearance. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) decision ended Oppenheimer’s government career. There is evidence that shows the decision to review Dr. Oppenheimer’s clearance was part of a larger effort by the political leadership of the AEC to get rid of him in the public debate over nuke policy.
Scientists on Twitter are facing a difficult decision: should they stay or go? Many people are concerned that the management of the site could see abuse and misinformation. It is estimated that half a million researchers utilize the platform to communicate and discuss their work. Some researchers have left for open-source alternative Mastodon. Others feel duty-bound to keep providing their expertise to Twitter users.
Thomas Zurbuchen says he has enjoyed the job of leading NASA’s science mission team. Now, he has made the decision to step down after more than six years. Knowing when to leave is anunderappreciated skill, he says. There are weaknesses in every leader. It is time for someone with fresh ideas to step in when their weaknesses are too much for an organization.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04563-x
Vaccination for Children’s Anxiety: Why the U.S. Department of Energy is Covering a Pandemic with “Low Confidence”
Global vaccination rates are at their lowest since 2008. As the pandemic disrupted health services and cancelled vaccination campaigns, many children missed out on the shots meant to protect them from serious diseases such as measles and polio. Vaccination rates were stagnant before 2020. There are issues of vaccinations that have worsened due to mistrust and politicized misperceptions. And a preliminary assessment finds another important factor: many people simply don’t see the importance of vaccinations for diseases that they’re not worried about.
Nature’s October 2020 editorial was an appeal to readers in the United States to consider the dangers that four more years of Trump would pose — not only for science, but also for the health and well-being of US society and the wider world. Trump had laid waste to science and scientific institutions at home on issues from COVID-19 to climate change, and had gutted environmental regulations even in the face of increasing climate risk. At a time when the world needed to unite to deal with these and other global threats, he took an axe to international relationships, pulling the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the United Nations science agency, UNESCO. He walked away from a deal that Europe, China, and Russia had negotiated with the United States to prevent Iran from enriching weapons-grade nuclear materials, after defunding the World Health Organization. It is hard not to think of a worst-case scenario for public health, climate change or nuclear security had Trump remained in office today.
The clinicians and researchers who say that kids need to have more control over their lives are among the ones who treat children for anxiety. (KQED | 9 min read)
The Wall Street Journal added to that debate this week when they reported that the U.S. Department of Energy has shifted its stance on the origin of COVID. It now concludes, with “low confidence,” that the pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China.
The agency based their conclusion on classified evidence that isn’t available to the public. According to the federal government, “low confidence” means “the information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the information.”
The Origin of SARS-CoV-2: A Report from a Customer at a China Market in December 2019, according to Photographic and Genetic Data
Michael Worobey, an Evolutionary Biologist, has been at the forefront of the search for the origins of the Pandemic. He has worked on the origin of many diseases, including HIV and the 1918 flu.
Yes. I can’t understand how anyone could not be moved because of that data. We’ve found many things in these studies, so it’s really important that animal origin is seriously considered.
There is more evidence for the idea that the first case of SARS-CoV-2 was in humans at a market in China. The public posted genetic data from COVID-positive samples taken from stalls and the ground at the market in early 2020. Six samples contained DNA from racoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides), which can catch SARS-CoV-2 and spread it to others of their species, even if they don’t have symptoms. “The most logical hypothesis is that raccoon dogs were infected by SARS-CoV-2 and shed the virus,” says virologist Leo Poon. The study doesn’t confirm whether or not the animals were actually infections, or if the virus came from other sources.
The early days of the Pandemic are depicted by the data in the studies. Photographic and genetic data pinpoint a specific stall at the market where the coronavirus likely was transmitted from an animal into people. And a genetic analysis estimates the time, within weeks, when not just one but two spillovers occurred. It says that the coronavirus jumped into people in late November or early December and then again few weeks later.
For example, our new genetic analysis tells us that this virus was not around for very long when the cases occurred at the market. For example, the earliest known patient at the market had an onset of symptoms on Dec. 10, 2019. At that time there were probably less than 70 people in the world who have been affected by the virus.
There were live animals in the market. We have photographic evidence from December 2019. These photos and videos of the market were taken by a customer and posted on Weibo because it was illegal to sell live animals. The photos were promptly scrubbed. But a CNN reporter had communicated directly with the person who took the photos. I was able to speak to the reporter who gave me the photos from the source. We don’t always verify the photos.
We analyzed a leaked report from the Chinese CDC detailing the results of this environmental sampling. Virtually all of the findings in the report matched what was in the World Health Organization’s report. But there was some extra information in the leaked report. There was more information on how many samples in a given stall yielded positive test results than on the number of stalls with virus in them.
And at the end of our sleuth work, we checked the GPS coordinates on his camera, and we find that he took the photo at the same stall, where five samples tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
With a virus, such as the one that causes no symptoms or mild symptoms, you have no chance of linking early cases to the site where the outbreak started. Because the virus is going to quickly spread to people outside of wherever it started.
And yet, from the clinical observations in Wuhan, around half of the earliest known COVID cases were people directly linked to the seafood market. And the other cases, which aren’t linked through epidemiological data, have an even closer geographical association to the market. We show it in our paper.
The city of Wuhan is 11 million people. And the Huanan market is only 1 of 4 places in Wuhan that sold live animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, such as raccoon dogs.
Step back and think, “Where is the first cluster of a new respiratory infection going to appear in this city?” It could appear at a market. It can also appear at a meatpacking plant or a school.
I would put the odds at 1 in 10,000. It’s interesting. We do have one analysis where we show essentially that the chance of having this pattern of cases [clustered around the market] is 1 in 10 million If the market isn’t the source of the virus, then so be it. We consider that strong evidence in science.
And the data zeroing in on the Huanan market, to me, is as compelling as the data that indicated to John Snow that the water pump was poisoning people who used it. The field of outbreak investigations was begun by a doctor named John Snow in London who was able to solve the source of the outbreak of cholera in the city in the 19th century.
Sometimes you have these rare moments where you’re maybe the only person on Earth who has access to this kind of crucial information. I felt that there were more cases in the market than I expected when I began to look at it. And no exaggeration, that moment — those kinds of moments — bring a tear to your eye.
How do scientists lose trust in science and in Nature during the COVID-19 pandemic? — A new study published in the Library of Congress
A study published this week suggests that support for former president Donald Trump came from losing trust in science and in Nature as sources of evidence-based knowledge. Behav can be found in the Library of Congress, it is titled “S41562-023-01537-5.” The findings come from a randomized experiment involving 4,270 US adults carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is literature that shows trust in research among people with differing political loyalties. This includes the idea of confirmation bias, whereby people on different sides tend to favour evidence that supports the views they already have, while avoiding evidence that does not, and the backfire (or rebound) effect, whereby evidence that challenges a view can have the opposite effect to that intended.
New evidence supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 first spilled over from animals to humans. Plus, researchers hunt for toxics after the Ohio train accident, and how to support scientists with social anxiety.
The air quality in East Palestine was found to be high with elevated levels of irritant acrolein and similar compounds. Some residents have had headaches and breathing difficulties, leading them to question government reports that chemical levels are low and safe. Many of the team’s other measurements agree with official figures — but if the elevated acrolein levels persist, they could affect residents’ health.
The impact of the UN climate time bomb on the genomics of the South and Central America: A tale of two people talking about how they feel about science and careers in academia
The UN’s secretary-general called it a “how-to guide to disarm the climate time bomb” after reading a new report that said global temperatures will get close to 2 C above pre-industrial levels in the early decades of the 21st century. In order for industrialized nations to stop warming, they will must cut greenhouse-gas emissions in half by the year 2030. Cost-effective ways of doing this, such as solar and wind energy, already exist. There is a report suggesting that large-scale carbon dioxide removal will be needed, giving some scientists doubts because the technology barely exists.
Scientists in Mexico and Brazil led the region in the early 2000s. They funded their work and were able to decode the genomes of both the Rhizobium etli and the Xylella fastidiosa. Now, the genomics community in South and Central America is at risk of floundering: investment in science has stagnated or is being cut, and researchers are leaving their countries to find more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.
Lydia Wong says those who fail in conversation, avoid socializing and look at the ceiling tend to not give good first impressions. To help people with the condition, look at ways to have informal meetings during a walk or in a quiet room instead of a cafe, as well as non- verbal ways to submit questions during conferences. At times I feel inadequate, misunderstood, isolated and uncertain about pursuing a career in academia because of my anxiety. On the basis of conversations with other students, I don’t think my experiences are uncommon.”