Welcome to the Saturday Science Edition of Overnight News Digest
Overnight News Digest is a regular daily feature which provides noteworthy news items and commentary from around the world. The editorial staff includes side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, and JML9999.
Neon Vincent is our editor-in-chief.
Special thanks go to Magnifico for starting this venerable series.
Astronomy
Pulsing Light May Indicate Supermassive Black Hole Merger
As two galaxies enter the final stages of merging, scientists have theorized that the galaxies’ supermassive black holes will form a “binary” — two black holes in such close orbit that they are gravitationally bound to one another. In a new study, astronomers at the University of Maryland present direct evidence of a pulsing quasar, which may substantiate the existence of black hole binaries. “We believe we have observed two supermassive black holes in closer proximity than ever before,” said Suvi Gezari from the University of Maryland in College Park. “This pair of black holes may be so close together that they are emitting gravitational waves, which were predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.” [...] Black holes typically gobble up matter, which accelerates and heats up, emitting electromagnetic energy and creating some of the most luminous beacons in the sky called quasars. When two black holes orbit as a binary, they absorb matter cyclically, leading theorists to predict that the binary’s quasar would respond by periodically brightening and dimming. astronomy.com
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Runaway Compact Galaxies?
In the galactic zoo of today’s universe, there’s a breed called the compact elliptical. These are not to be confused with compact cores, which I wrote about last week — compact cores exist in the early universe and can be hundreds of times more massive; they’re probably the progenitors of today’s most massive ellipticals. Compact ellipticals, conversely, are puny balls of old stars, weighing maybe a few billion solar masses. That gives them a mere tenth the mass of the Milky Way’s central bulge. (And yes, astronomy has confusing nomenclature. Don’t blame the messenger.) Astronomers have found about 30 of these little pot-bellied galaxies, include M32, one of the Andromeda Galaxy’s galactic entourage. Most lie in clusters, and observers have found debris around some, suggesting that compact ellipticals were once larger but had their outer edges ripped from them by other galaxies. But a couple sulk off by themselves, making the tidal disruption theory problematic: if there’s nothing around to strip material off these galaxies, did they really shrink? [...] These galaxies exist in clusters (56), groups (128), and in isolation (11). Given the galaxies’ motions and sizes, the authors suggest that interactions with two or more other galaxies (instead of just one) could sling these diminutive ellipticals into the cosmic outback. That would explain how galaxies created via tidal disruption are out in the sticks, where there aren’t many galaxies to interact with. The isolated compact ellipticals astronomers have found would therefore be runaway galaxies. skyandtelescope
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Evidence For A Spectroscopic Direct Detection Of Reflected Light From 51 Pegasi-b
Abstract Context. The detection of reflected light from an exoplanet is a difficult technical challenge at optical wavelengths. Even though this signal is expected to replicate the stellar signal, not only is it several orders of magnitude fainter, but it is also hidden among the stellar noise. Aims. We apply a variant of the cross-correlation technique to HARPS observations of 51 Peg to detect the reflected signal from planet 51 Peg b. Methods. Our method makes use of the cross-correlation function (CCF) of a binary mask with high-resolution spectra to amplify the minute planetary signal that is present in the spectra by a factor proportional to the number of spectral lines when performing the cross correlation. The resulting cross-correlation functions are then normalized by a stellar template to remove the stellar signal. Carefully selected sections of the resulting normalized CCFs are stacked to increase the planetary signal further. The recovered signal allows probing several of the planetary properties, including its real mass and albedo. Results. We detect evidence for the reflected signal from planet 51 Peg b at a significance of 3σnoise. The detection of the signal permits us to infer a real mass of 0.46+0.06-0.01 MJup (assuming a stellar mass of 1.04 MSun) for the planet and an orbital inclination of 80+10-19 degrees. The analysis of the data also allows us to infer a tentative value for the (radius-dependent) geometric albedo of the planet. The results suggest that 51Peg b may be an inflated hot Jupiter with a high albedo (e.g., an albedo of 0.5 yields a radius of 1.9 ± 0.3 RJup for a signal amplitude of 6.0 ± 0.4 × 10-5). Conclusions. We confirm that the method we perfected can be used to retrieve an exoplanet’s reflected signal, even with current observing facilities. The advent of next generation of instruments (e.g. VLT-ESO/ESPRESSO) and observing facilities (e.g. a new generation of ELT telescopes) will yield new opportunities for this type of technique to probe deeper into exoplanets and their atmospheres. astronomy&astrophysics.org
Biology
What Do We Really Know About Roundup Weed Killer?
Last month, an international agency declared glyphosate, the primary ingredient in the popular product Roundup, a “probable human carcinogen.” The weed killer also has made recent headlines for its widespread use on genetically modified seeds and research that links it to antibiotics resistance and hormone disruption. Several national governments are planning to restrict its use, and some school districts are talking about banning it. So what do we know about glyphosate? Five key questions and answers:
How Is Glyphosate Used? Introduced commercially by Monsanto in 1974, glyphosate kills weeds by blocking proteins essential to plant growth. It is now used in more than 160 countries, with more than 1.4 billion pounds applied per year. [...] What Happens to Glyphosate in the Environment? Despite its widespread use, USGS hydrologist Paul Capel said there is “a dearth of information” on what happens to it once it is used. Glyphosate is not included in the U.S. government’s testing of food for pesticide residues or the monitoring of chemicals in human blood and tissues. As a result, there is no information on how much people are exposed to from using it in their yards, living near farms or eating foods from treated fields. [...] What About Exposure Through Food? Before genetically engineered crops, glyphosate residues in food were considered unlikely, says Charles Benbrook, research professor at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources. But since about 2005, pre-harvest use of glyphosate “results in very high residues,” he says. Traces were found in 90 percent of 300 soybean samples. [...] What Is known About Effects on Human Health? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had determined that the science “does not provide evidence to show that glyphosate causes cancer.” But now the EPA says it will analyze new findings by the UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which declared in March that glyphosate probably raises the risk of cancer in people exposed. The UN agency based its decision on human, animal, and cell studies, says National Cancer Institute scientist emeritus, Aaron Blair who chaired the IARC review committee. The studies found glyphosate in farmworkers’ blood and urine, chromosomal damage in cells, increased risks of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in some people exposed, and tumor formation in some animal studies. [...] So Where Does This Leave Us? The EPA is reviewing its approved uses of glyphosate and expects to release a preliminary assessment of the human health risk later this year. This is expected to include new restrictions.
nationalgeographic
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Substantial Health Threat: Never-Before-Seen Tick-Borne Disease
Tick-borne diseases are a major public health problem around the world. Ticks carry and transmit a variety of microbes that cause disease. These illnesses, which include Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Tularemia, can cause a variety of symptoms, often serious and sometimes deadly. Now, just in time for spring and the explosion of ticks in forests, lawns and trails, a new study by researchers from China and the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) has uncovered a never-before-seen illness transmitted by ticks. It's possible that the disease could be a "substantial health threat" to humans and animals in areas where the carrier tick is common, the authors write in the paper. J. Stephen Dumler, MD, a professor of pathology at the school, helped identify the newly discovered bacterial species, which the researchers named Anaplasma capra. The paper was published in the latest issue of the journal Lancet Infectious Disease. "This is an entirely new species of bacteria," said Dr. Dumler, an expert on tick-borne diseases who has worked all over the world. "This had never been seen in humans before. We still have a lot to learn about this species, but it may be that this bacteria is infecting humans over a wide area." He collaborated on the paper with scientists at several Chinese institutions: the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, the Mudanjiang Forestry Central Hospital, and the Shanghai Institute of Medical Genetics at Shanghai Jiaotong University. The lead author of the study was Wu-Chun Cao, MD, PhD, of the Beijing Institute. [...] The symptoms of A capra infection include fever, headache, and tiredness, dizziness and muscle aches. The researchers successfully treated the infection with antibiotics, particularly doxycycline. sciencedaily
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Scientists 'Incredibly Excited' By Asthma Treatment Breakthrough
A breakthrough study has uncovered a potential root cause of asthma and a drug that reversed symptoms in lab tests. The finding brings hope to the 300 million asthma sufferers worldwide who are plagued by debilitating bouts of coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and tightness in the chest. The study - led by Cardiff University in the UK - reveals for the first time that the calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) plays a key role in causing the airway disease. The team used human airway tissue from asthmatic and nonasthmatic people and lab mice with asthma to reach their findings. In the journal Science Translational Medicine, they describe how manipulating CaSR with an existing class of drugs known as calcilytics reversed all symptoms. Calcilytics block the calcium-sensing receptor and were originally developed for the treatment of osteoporosis - a condition that makes bones more likely to break - also referred to as "brittle bone disease." medicalnewstoday
Chemistry
U.S. House Weighs In With Its Version Of Chemical Regulation Reform
The U.S. House of Representatives opened a new front this week in the emerging battle over overhauling the nation’s troubled system for regulating toxic chemicals, as lawmakers held their first discussion of a new proposal to revamp the system. The bipartisan House bill, which wouldn’t change the existing law as drastically as two bills introduced last month in the Senate, got mixed reviews at a 15 April hearing of a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. At issue is the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which tasks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the job of assessing and regulating thousands of industrial chemicals. The House's TSCA reform bill, which has drawn bipartisan support as well as some industry backing but measured criticism from environmental groups, aims to make it easier for the EPA to assess risks and give the agency more power to impose restrictions on unacceptably risky chemicals. The bill “does not attempt to realize the goal of a fully reformed TSCA with assurances that all chemicals in commerce are safe,” said Representative Frank Pallone (D–NJ), the top Democrat on the energy and commerce panel, at the hearing. “But it will give EPA tools to reduce risk now, in a package that I think has the potential to become law." [...] Last month, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee started debating a bipartisan TSCA reform measure, S.697, which has already drawn support from chemical industry groups and at least one major environmental group (the Environmental Defense Fund). Under the bill, EPA would no longer have to consider costs in determining a substance’s risk or use the “least burdensome” method of regulation. Chemical companies also couldn't claim as much information on their substances as confidential. EPA could also require companies to generate additional safety data; now, the agency must show there's a potential risk before seeking any new data. The agency would also have to take extra measures to protect pregnant women, infants, and the elderly. And the bill would require EPA to regularly update its chemical-review processes to reflect new scientific developments. sciencemag.org
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Science Skirmishes Continue On Capitol Hill
A proposal by Republicans in the US Congress to reauthorise landmark legislation surrounding science and technology funding is being met with fierce backlash from scientific groups, as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill. The Republican chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology (HSST) Committee, Lamar Smith, introduced a bill on 15 April to reauthorise the American Competes Act and set future spending targets for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology for fiscal years 2016-2017. [...] Specifically, the bill proposes to cut NSF’s Geosciences Directorate budget by 8% to $1.2 billion (£800 million), and to slash funding for NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate by nearly 45% to $150 million. Elsewhere, the bill would cut DOE’s energy efficiency and renewable energy R&D by almost 30%, or $496 million. Beyond these reductions, researchers and science advocates fear that the legislation would impose a level of political scrutiny on the peer review system that NSF uses to make its research grant funding decisions. The bill contains language requiring NSF staff to provide a written justification for each research grant funded, verifying that the project is worthy of federal support and contributes to positive US outcomes like increased economic competiveness or an enhanced scientific and technological workforce. One of the most prominent of the few scientists in Congress, Democrat Bill Foster, attacked the Competes bill during the mark-up. The physicist, who worked at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois for more than two decades, noted that Smith has requested the full portfolios of more than 70 NSF-funded research grants that he claims are not in the public interest. Smith’s two-year campaign to root out so-called unmeritorious research grants from NSF has ‘sent a significant chill’ across all fields of science, Foster said. chemistryworld
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Shipwreck Champagne Reveals Old Wine Secrets
What’s better than old wine in new bottles? For scientists, old wine in old bottles, preserved 150 feet down at the bottom of the sea. In 2010 divers were exploring a shipwreck in the Baltic when they discovered 168 bottles of what appeared to be wine. A quick swig from one of the long submerged bottles revealed that the liquid within was actually champagne. The labels were long gone, but the brandings on the corks revealed the producers to be storied champagne houses, including Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. The brandings, along with the age of the boat and other items on board helped researchers determine that the champagne was about 170 years old. Now scientists have analyzed the contents of the bottles—and compared them to modern champagne. They found the 19th-century bubbly had lower levels of alcohol. According to historical records, the fermentation happened later in the year than it does now, so the colder temperatures, along with the native yeast used would have led to a less efficient alcohol conversion. And the old wine had significantly higher sugar content. The research team determined that the extra sweetness likely came from grape syrup, added to the champagne before corking. scientificamerican
Earth Science
Why Nepal Is So Vulnerable To Quakes
Durbar square, a Unesco World Heritage Site, has been reduced to rubble. The famous Dharahara Tower has been toppled to leave just a stump. Nepal is used to quakes – this is one of the most seismically active regions in the world. You only have to look at the Himalayas to understand that. The mountains are being built as a consequence of the Indian tectonic plate driving under Central Asia (the Eurasian tectonic plate). These two great slabs of the Earth's crust are converging at a relative rate of about 4-5cm (two inches) a year. The upward climb of Everest and its sister mountains is accompanied by numerous tremors. David Rothery, a professor of planetary geosciences, at the Open University, UK, commented: "The Himalayan mountains are being thrust over the Indian plate; there are two or three big thrust faults, basically. And some very gently dipping fault will have been what moved, and gave us this event. Casualties are reported in Kathmandu, but we now wait to see how widespread the problems are." bbc
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Mountains Warming Faster Than Expected
High elevation environments around the world may be warming much faster than previously thought, according to members of an international research team including Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They call for more aggressive monitoring of temperature changes in mountain regions and more attention to the potential consequences of warming. “Elevation-dependent warming is a poorly observed phenomenon that requires urgent attention to ensure that potentially important changes in high mountain environments are adequately monitored by the global observational network,” say members of the Mountain Research Initiative Working Group in the current issue of Nature Climate Change. High mountains are the major water source for large numbers of people living at lower elevations, so the social and economic consequences of enhanced warming in mountain regions could be large, the researchers add. “This alone requires that close attention be paid to the issue. In addition, mountains provide habitat for many of the world’s rare and endangered species, and the presence of many different ecosystems in close proximity enhances the ecological sensitivity of mountains to environmental change.” enn.com
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As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes
No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo. But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut. Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water. [...] Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life. China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source. nyt
Physics
Heat Makes Electrons Spin In Magnetic Superconductors
Physicists have shown how heat can be exploited for controlling magnetic properties of matter. The finding helps in the development of more efficient mass memories. The result was published yesterday in Physical Review Letters. The international research group behind the breakthrough included Finnish researchers from the University of Jyväskylä and Aalto University. The ability to control the huge amount of information within the Internet is largely based on the ability to use the magnetic properties of electrons for reading memory devices. The phenomenon is based on the fact that each electron spins in a certain direction. This spin is closely connected with magnetism. Since the 1990s this property has been used for a fast reading of the information in magnetic memories. That is because it was found that the direction of magnetic poles affects the electrical resistivity of magnetic materials. Lately many research groups have aimed at finding a method for using the electric current also to modify the magnetic information, which would make the data writing process much faster than in today's magnetic memories. However, the known methods tend to produce too much heat. One of the research directions has been to exploit the heat to convert it to a spin current of the electrons, which would then be used for writing the information. In the research published yesterday the research group showed how heat is converted to spin current in magnetic superconductors. Many metals turn superconducting a few degrees away from the absolute zero of temperature. As a result, the electrical resistivity of the metal vanishes. Magnetic superconductors can be fabricated by placing a superconducting film on top of a magnetic insulator. phys.org
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Secret Of Record-Breaking Superconductor Explained
Conventional superconductivity can occur at much higher temperatures than previously expected, according to calculations made by an international team of physicists led by Matteo Calandra of the IMPMC Institute in Paris. The researchers have developed a theoretical model for the record high-temperature superconductivity reported last year in hydrogen sulphide, which the team says arises from relatively simple interactions similar to those underlying conventional low-temperature superconductors. This is different to other high-temperature materials in which the superconductivity is caused by complicated and poorly understood processes. Low-temperature superconductors are usually well described by the BCS theory of superconductivity, whereby interactions with lattice vibrations called phonons cause electrons to pair-up to form "Cooper pairs" that can travel through the material without encountering any resistance. Such materials stop superconducting above a transition temperature (TC) fairly close to absolute zero – the highest to date being just 39 K. High-temperature superconductors, in contrast, have transition temperatures up to 133 K. Despite the vast amount of research done on high-temperature superconductors since the first such material was discovered in 1986, much of the physics underlying their superconductivity remains unknown. This mystery appeared to deepen late last year when Mikhail Eremets and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, found that when hydrogen sulphide is subjected to extremely high pressure (200 GPa) it has a TC of 190 K. While the TC of high-temperature superconductors can be increased by applying pressure – the current record is 164 K – hydrogen sulphide looks set to become the new record-holder if the measurement can be confirmed. [...] The strange thing about hydrogen sulphide is that – unlike other high-temperature superconductors – it does not also exist in a magnetic state, and therefore more closely resembles a conventional superconductor. This observation led Calandra and colleagues in Canada, China, France, Spain and the UK to use BCS theory as the starting point for their calculations. Key to understanding superconductivity in hydrogen sulphide are the interactions between electrons and the vibrating hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen has a very low mass and therefore tends to vibrate at relatively high frequencies. These high-frequency modes interact very strongly with electrons and so should result in a superconductor with a very high TC. Indeed, when Calandra and colleagues used BCS theory to calculate the TC of high-pressure hydrogen sulphide, they obtained a value of about 250 K – much higher than the observed 190 K. physicsworld
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Forget 3D Printing – Australian Team Has Gone 4D!
It seems like technology becomes obsolete in the blink of an eye, and apparently, the same holds true for additive manufacturing methods as well: no sooner do scientists use 3D printing to make functioning organs and full-scale rocket engine parts, 4D printing comes along. Hailing their innovation as “next revolution in additive manufacturing,” researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) at the University of Wollongong claim to have started developing 3D printed materials that can transform into new structures after being produced by exposing them to external stimuli such as heat or water. The fourth-dimension in 4D printing is time, or more specifically, shape-shifting, they explained. Just like in 3D printing, a structure is created one layer at a time into the desired shape. However, these new materials have the ability to alter their shape from one type of object into another. [...] In their research, they 4D printed hydrogels to create a valve, which can actuate in response to the temperatures of the surrounding water. Those printed hydrogels were created out of a network of alginate and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) that interpenetrated, they explained in their study.
“The cool thing about it is, is it’s a working functioning device that you just pick up from the printer. There’s no other assembly required,” the professor explained in a statement. Actuators in the 3D-printed valve are activated by water, meaning that it is “autonomous” and that there is “no input necessary other than water; it closes itself when it detects hot water.”
redorbit