New Prefixes for the Yottabyte Epigenome, with a link to Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and Leukemia
People conceived during the Great Depression are showing signs of aging more quickly than they should. The changes were measured in the Epigenome, which is the part of the cell that has chemical tags on it. Researchers say that the patterns they’ve found could be linked to higher rates of disease and death.
By the 2030s, the world will generate around a yottabyte of data per year — that’s 1024 bytes, or the amount that would fit on DVDs stacked all the way to Mars. The governors of the metric system agreed upon new prefixes to describe the big and small because of the data boom. The prefixes ronna and quetta represent 1027 and 1030, and ronto and quecto signify 10−27 and 10−30. The Earth is around one ronnaogram, and an electron’s mass is about one. Metrologist Olivier Pellegrino says that giga and tera were also strange at one point. This is the last update to the prefixes system since 1991, when yocto (1024) was added.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03829-8
How to incorporate behavioural science into climate policy: a story from Elizabeth Alon-Beck, a lawyer, and Gina Rippon, co-founder of Girls Who Code
Elizabeth was sentenced to eleven years and one month in prison after being found guilty of fraud against her investors. The allegations that the company could run more than 200 health tests on just a few drops of blood were overstated. Legal scholar Anat Alon-Beck says that she pushed the envelope a little too far. “You fake it ’til you make it, but it was too much ‘fake’.”
Giving women fair access to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) requires mentorship and a professional network — so-called social capital. The chief executive of Girls Who Code says that the community is important for 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. Nature Climate Change and Nature Human Behaviour collaborated to write a special about how to incorporate behavioural science into climate policy. “We are at the beginning of a new era of behavioural climate research,” says the accompanying editorial.
Gina Rippon, a neuroscience researcher, calls shoddy science reporting and the misuse of brain research “neurotrash”. She says that the way brain images are hijacked is one example. Her book argues that our brains are not fixed as male or female at birth but are instead highly plastic, and that they are influenced by the gendered world in which we live. She shared how she dealt with the backlash and what it was like to write and promote her first book.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03829-8
The Glass Frog, Vaccines, and the Legacy of a Black Lives Matter Monument to Henrietta Lacks
Countries in the global south who found themselves at the end of the queue for COVID-19 vaccines have banded together to create a radical plan to produce mRNA vaccines locally. If successful, they could end a dangerous dependency on wealthy nations and help to stop pandemics before they start.
The glass frog (Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni) can turn two or three times more transparent when it sleeps, by hiding almost all of its red blood cells in its liver. The organ conceals the blood with a coating of reflective crystals, making the frog almost invisible to predators. It remains a mystery how the frog survives the feat: during this time, it has almost no circulating oxygen and concentrates so much blood in its liver that it should end up with fatal clotting.
The six children with rare disorders caused by deletions in their genomes have been successfully treated with donor mitochondria from their mothers. The children’s haematopoietic stem cells are where the body’s blood cells come from. After the treatment, some of the children became stronger, and the caregivers said they spent more time awake and in play. It is difficult to report these measures, but we did see improvements to the quality of life in almost all of the children in the study. A trial ofMitochondrial Augmentation therapy is expected to start next year.
The site of a monument to Robert E. Lee that was destroyed during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 will be the location of a bronze statue of Henrietta Lacks. In 1951, Lack’s cancer cells were taken by doctors and used to create a human cell line called HeLa. The development of the polio vaccine is one of the things that have been done with the cell line. A statue of Lacks was dedicated to black women who have contributed to humanity in the UK last year.
Five Science Books of the Week: Celebrating the Birth and Death of an 850-Year-Old Supernova Revisited
US scientists are split about a proposal to vaccinate people against COVID-19 annually, similar to the protocol for flu jabs. The country has a complicated vaccine schedule and simplification might boost take up. COVID-19 Surges are not as seasonal as Flu and the new variants of CoV that have emerged in recent months are at a faster rate. It’s also unclear whether future jabs should be targeted to a single variant or contain a ‘bivalent’ formulation against more than one strain.
The correspondence between James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, the creators of the Gaia hypothesis in which organisms on Earth and their non living surroundings are viewed as a complex interacting system, is one of Andrew Robinson’s top five science books to read this week.
The team highlights some of the people who have helped shape science this year, including JWST astronomer Jane Rigby and Dimie Ogoina. Plus, play along with a round of ‘what’s behind the headline?’ and enjoy our annual silly science-themed carols.
Astronomers recorded this supernova nearly 850 years ago and its remains are stunning. Plus, the five best science books of the week, and should COVID-19 vaccines be given yearly?
“I have worked on supernova remnants for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” says astronomer Robert Fesen about the cosmic fireworks display that his team has imaged. The remnant contains hundreds of filaments radiating outwards, looking unlike the chaotic web of gas and dust left over from a standard supernova. It was probably produced by two white-dwarf stars slamming together, creating an explosion that was documented by Chinese and Japanese astronomers nearly 850 years ago.
A woman with motor neuropathy can communicate better by implanting a nerve implant into her mouth, tongue and vocal cord using a brain implant
The woman with motor neuron disease who could not speak due to the disease was able to communicate at a rapid rate thanks to a brain implant. The device, implanted into her motor cortex, detected how the woman was trying to move her mouth, tongue and vocal cords, and conveyed that information to a computer that displayed the words she was trying to say. Philip Sabes was not involved in the study but says the performance of the paper is at a level people who cannot speak would want. People are going to want this.
The amino acid serine slows diabetes-induced nerve damage in mice. There is no good way to treat nerve damage from diabetes. According to the researchers, an serine metabolism abnormality in mice causes compounds to be toxic to neurons. “If we fed a serine-enriched diet to the diabetic mice as they were getting older, we could mitigate the onset of sensory neuropathy,” bioengineer Christian Metallo tells the Nature Podcast.
The rumours of the demise of red hair in the human gene pool have been greatly exaggerated, says geneticist Katerina Zorina-Lichtenwalter. (National Geographic | 6 min read)