Glaciers in Asia’s celestial mountains in trouble

Since the early 1960s, glaciers in central Asia’s Tien Shan mountain range have lost roughly 27% of their mass as a result of hotter summer temperatures. By 2050, half of what now remains could be gone, researchers say in a new study published today in Nature Geoscience. Also known as the celestial mountains, the peaks straddle the border between China and Kyrgyzstan and provide most of the region with fresh water. The findings could have important implications for farmers and villagers that rely on snow and glacier melt for irrigation and drinking, the scientists say. And New Scientist reports that the regional study could be helpful in validating estimates from another recent study on global glacier melt. That research—published in the Journal of Glaciology—found that from 2000 to 2010, the world experienced the greatest decadal loss of glacier ice ever measured.

Source:http://bit.ly/1hnDpdX

Sniff out alien life with giant library of weird chemicals

The search for vital signs of life in the atmospheres of other planets has taken a new turn with a vast library of biosignatures that could help us detect ET

Life’s a gas on other earths (Image: Detlev Van Ravenswaay/SPL)

I’M WITNESSING the future of the search for alien life. In a dimly lit office on the 17th floor of MIT’s tallest building, with shades drawn over the Charles river below, Sara Seager and six other researchers are showing me the foundation stones of a vast library of molecules – a few of which may be the first to alert us to the presence of life on another world.

Seager and her colleagues are building a cache of biosignatures – chemicals that would suggest an alien planet is playing host to life. Seager is casting her net as wide as possible. Because we can’t predict what the biochemistry and ecology of alien planets will be like, she’s looking at all small molecules, not just the ones linked to life as we know it.

“Is there any limit to what sort of gas life can produce?” asks biochemist William Bains at the University of Cambridge. “Conceptually, the answer is no.”

Get all information here:http://bit.ly/1PgFrqE

Scientists identify that memories can be lost and found

Summary:
A team of scientists believe they have shown that memories are more robust than we thought and have identified the process in the brain, which could help rescue lost memories or bury bad memories, and pave the way for new drugs and treatment for people with memory problems.

A team of scientists believe they have shown that memories are more robust than we thought and have identified the process in the brain, which could help rescue lost memories or bury bad memories, and pave the way for new drugs and treatment for people with memory problems.

Published in the journal Nature Communications a team of scientists from Cardiff University found that reminders could reverse the amnesia caused by methods previously thought to produce total memory loss in rats.

"Previous research in this area found that when you recall a memory it is sensitive to interference to other information and in some cases is completely wiped out.

"Our research challenges this view and we believe proves this not the case," according to Dr Kerrie Thomas, who led the research.

"Our research found that despite using a technique in the brain thought to produce total amnesia we've been able to show that with strong reminders, these memories can be recovered,"

Whilst the results were found in rats, the team hope it can be translated into humans and new drugs and treatments could be developed for people suffering with memory disorders.

Dr Thomas added: "We are still a very long way off from helping people with memory problems.

"However, these animal models do accurately reflect what's happening in humans and suggest that our autobiographical memories, our self-histories, are clouded by new memories rather than actually lost. This is an exciting prospect in terms of treating psychiatric illness associated with memory disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and psychosis.

"We can now devise new drugs or behavioural strategies that can treat these memory problems in the knowledge that we won't overwrite our experiences," she added.

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Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Cardiff University.Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Source:http://bit.ly/1IJ8ZbC

Only 100 tigers left in Bangladesh after last count got it wrong

The secret of plague’s death toll is out. The high mortality rate seen during the Black Death in the 14th century may have been the result of poor general health rather than the strength of the bacterium.

The Black Death killed about 60 per cent of Europe’s population. That’s surprising as recent plague outbreaks weren’t as devastating.

“There is a huge difference in mortality rates,” says Sharon DeWitte at the University of South Carolina, even though 14th century and 20th century plagues were caused by the same bacterium, Yersinia pestis, and its genetics were similar in both outbreaks.

DeWitte believes that the high mortality rate in the 14th century may have been the result of a general decline in health. She examined skeletons in London cemeteries from the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries and found that more adults under the age of 35 were buried in the 13th century.

This suggests that people were dying younger before the Black Death arrived – probably because of famine and an increase in disease burden from other pathogens.

“Together with historical data, the picture that emerges is that the population was not doing well,” says DeWitte.

But Samuel Cohn, a historian from the University of Glasgow, UK, is not convinced.

“The wealthy were also dying in great numbers during the first outbreak of the Black Death [1347-51],” he says, noting that it is unlikely that they were in poor health.

Source:http://bit.ly/1U5ovXF

Sudden heat spikes did in Ice Age’s mammoth mammals

Rapid climate change put mega-sized Ice Age mammals on the ropes before ancient humans delivered the final blow, new research indicates.

During Earth’s last glacial period, around 12,000 to 110,000 years ago, woolly mammoths, sedan-sized armadillos and other massive mammals walked the land. Over time, these megafauna mostly died out. The instigator of these extinctions has become a topic of heated debate among scientists, with fingers pointed at both ancient humans and sustained frigid temperatures.

Learn more here:http://bit.ly/1LGD4Oz

Fish learn fear from their role models

By 

Claire Asher 

Even fish have role models. In a new study, researchers paired up inexperienced fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas, pictured) with two types of mentors: a minnow raised in an environment free of predators or a minnow raised in a dangerous one simulated by the odors of predatory pike and sturgeon. Fish from dangerous environments were fearful of the smell of both unknown and familiar predators, whereas fish that grew up in safety hid when they smelled a known predator but were curious about new smells. Both types of fish passed on their fears to their protégés: Minnows that spent time with fish raised in dangerous environments were scared of all smells they came across, but those that learned from fish raised in safety feared only specific predators and took new experiences in stride, the team reports online this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The authors say this is the first experiment to show that environment can influence the social transmission of fear and reveals how risk aversion can be learned. The researchers also suggest their study may shed light on how fear disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develop in humans, which research shows can be influenced by social environment; PTSD symptoms can be acquired from friends or family who have suffered trauma, for example. 

Source:http://bit.ly/1VcDOzi

Watch: Sharks found in underwater volcano

Using a deep-sea camera, scientists have filmed sharks swimming in the crater of an underwater volcano near the Solomon Islands, National Geographic reports. Because little is known about the geology and biology of the volcano, called Kavachi, the researchers dropped the camera and other instruments into the water for a better look. Caught in their footage were hammerheads and silky sharks, seemingly undisturbed by the water’s acidity and hot temperature. The discovery raises questions about what extreme environments the sharks can endure and how, the scientists say.

Source:http://news.sciencemag.org/sifter/2015/07/watch-sharks-found-in-underwater-volcano

How New Horizons Survived the 40-Year-Glitch and Made it to Pluto

In space exploration, there are a million ways that things can go wrong and just one way that they can go right. When the New Horizons probe skims less than 8,000 miles past the surface of Pluto on July 14, it will happen only because a large team of scientists, engineers, and mission planners managed to eliminate all the wrong and navigate their way to the right, a process that has taken more than 40 years to fully unfold.

The engineers have become so good at fixing problems that most of the time the public has no idea what they are up against—until something goes wrong, as happened to New Horizons last weekend, when a software glitch caused the probe to shut down into “safe” mode. For a moment, this was a news story. Then, once again, the engineers stepped up and solved the problem(caused by an obscure timing flaw in a command sequence sent to the probe in preparation for flyby). Within three days, all was back to normal. As New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern says, “In terms of science, it won’t change an A-plus even into an A.”

But software problems are hardly the only glitches that nearly derailed the mission to Pluto. Politics and personalities can go wrong, too, and they frequently did.

The beginnings of the tale go all the way back to the 1970s, to a shadowy time known as the Nixon Administration. At the time, space scientists realized that a rare configuration of the outer planets would make it possible to efficiently send a spacecraft on a grand tour of the outer solar system, using the gravity of each giant planet to boost it on to the next. Such an alignment happens just once every 176 years. NASA planners came up with a concept called–naturally–the Grand Tour. It would have sent 4 spacecraft to the outer solar system, with one of them destined for Pluto.

By early 1972, though, NASA’s political fortunes were sinking fast. Nixon had cancelled Apollo 18 and 19. Public and Congressional support for space exploration was plummeting; the country was in recession and mired in Viet Nam. A $1 billion-plus fleet of space probes (and remember, this was in 1972 dollars) was just not going to happen. NASA reconfigured the cancelled Grand Tour into the cheaper, two-probe Voyager project and sacrificed Pluto in the process.

After that came a long, heartbreaking series of attempts to create a new Pluto mission from scratch. Alan Stern was a prime mover behind those efforts, going all the way back to 1990. Jason Davis at the Planetary Society provides a great summary of the proposals here. They had such hopeful names: Pluto 350, Pluto Fast Flyby, Pluto Express. Finally, Stern came up with the winning concept, New Horizons. His final proposal was due one week after 9/11, while the offices of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (which operates the mission) were still shut. Stern completed the proposal and NASA approved it.

The following year, the new NASA administrator tried to kill New Horizons in favor of a high-tech fission-powered mission. He failed, and New Horizons survived. One benefit of its long, difficult competition is that Stern and the mission engineers came up with a relatively inexpensive, flyweight spacecraft. New Horizons weighs about half as much as Voyager 1, and in real dollars costs roughly one-third as much. Placing a lightweight probe atop a large Atlas V rocket yielded the fastest object ever launched when New Horizons took off in 2006 (though New Horizons has decelerated en route, allowing Voyager 1 to regain the speed record).

In that context, it would have been even more tragic to have New Horizons felled by a simple software error. But it would also have been extremely unlikely. The New Horizons team is fully prepared for glitches, to put it mildly.

Lest you think these troubles are specific to Pluto, allow me to draw your attention to a couple other recent case studies. There is the Dawn spacecraft currently orbiting dwarf planet Ceres. It uses an innovative ion engine, which both reduced costs and increased the flexibility of the probe, allowing it to visit and orbit two different objects–the first time a spacecraft has done that. The downside is that the engine needs to keep firing for a long period of time.

When a cosmic ray struck Dawn last autumn, the spacecraft had to reboot. By the time it was back on line, the original trajectory was lost, and mission planners had to design a new trajectory to Ceres. On June 30, just four days before the New Horizons software anomaly, a software error caused Dawn to shut down again, keeping it parked in its current orbit around Ceres longer than intended. The engineers are staying there for now until they are 100% sure they understand the nature of the problem and how to prevent a recurrence. We’ll have to wait just a little longer to figure out those bizarre white spots.

And then there is the Rosetta spacecraft and Philae lander on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko–the one most people just call “Comet 67P” or “Rosetta’s comet.” Like New Horizons, Rosetta and Philae are survivors of previous cancelled missions, cost cuts, and changed plans. Long ago, the plan was to pair the comet probe with the Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn as part of a joint US-European venture called CRAF/Cassini. Things didn’t quite work out that way.

Philae’s landing on the comet didn’t work out as planned, either, of course. The harpoons and ice screws that were supposed to hold the probe in place did not work correctly. The lander bounced to an unplanned and unsafe location. It ran through its baseline science mission, drained down its batteries, and fell silent. And then it came back to life, as many had hoped but few had expected, when the comet’s path around the sun exposed the little lander to more sunshine. As of today, Philae is again talking with Rosetta, potentially plotting a return to scientific exploration.

Rosetta scientists are thrilled, because now they may be able to get data from the comet’s surface while it is much closer to the sun than originally planned. In some ways, therefore, the lander’s hibernation is a bonus, says Philippe Goudon, Philae project manager at CNES. When Rosetta got the first signals from Philae that the lander was awake, the engineers immediately began plotting a new set of explorations. They were ready, as always, to recover from all the things that had gone wrong and turn the situation into another one thing gone right.

Source:http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2015/07/10/how-new-horizons-survived-the-40-year-glitch-and-made-it-to-pluto/

Sharks and Cancer: Here’s What We Know

Editor's Note: I ran a story a few days ago about the use of shark liver oil in the cosmetic industry -- specifically, how shark liver oil is rich in squalene, a compound valued for its moisturizing properties. The article sparked an impassioned conversation on social media (yes, we read your comments!) about another controversial use of shark-derived products: cancer treatment. Many people believe that sharks are immune to cancer, and that a compound found in their cartilage can be used to prevent and treat cancer in humans. In response to reader inquiries, I dug into the history of shark-based cancer treatments to settle the debate once and for all.

First and foremost: sharks do suffer from cancer. Researchers have observed sharks of various species that have developed tumors, including a great white with a foot-long mass on its mouth. The shark's malady was described in detail as part of a November 2013 study in the Journal of Fish Diseases.

"The main take-home message from the study is that it adds to the growing evidence of tumor formation in sharks, contrary to popular belief that sharks do not suffer from such anomalies," remarked study co-author Rachel Robbins.

Scientists do concede, however, that the incidence of cancer in sharks (and other marine wildlife, for that matter) is relatively low compared to humans. However, cancer rates are much higher in marine animals that have been exposed to pollution -- as pollution has penetrated every last corner of the earth in recent decades, marine animal cancer rates have risen steadily.

How did this pervasive myth about shark immunity come about? Scientific American notes a 1970's study in which Johns Hopkins researchers found that "cartilage prevented the growth of new blood vessels into tissues". Since malignant tumors are blood-hungry masses, a compound capable of preventing the flow of blood to malignant tumors should stop tumors dead in their tracks, right? Subsequent studies replicated the results of the Johns Hopkins study in other animals, including sharks.

Shark cartilage as a cancer treatment broke into the mainstream in 1992, when a best-selling book detailed a doctor's questionable clinical trial using cartilage to treat cancer. Conducted in Mexico, the trial followed cancer patients who took oral doses of powdered shark cartilage, seemingly to fantastic results. The market for shark cartilage pills in the Western hemisphere exploded, and the belief that sharks are immune to -- and can cure -- cancer has continued to pervade pop culture through past two decades.

There's only one problem: with the exception of the "shoddy" Mexican study, there is almost no scientific evidence to back up these claims.

In recent decades, more than a dozen clinical studies have been conducted in the United States in an attempt to link shark cartilage treatments to cancer. Of those dozen, only seven have stood up to the peer-review process, and none showed compelling evidence that shark cartilage treatments were successful.

Why are these products on the market with such little science to back them up? The cartilage treatments aren't classified as drugs, but rather "dietary supplements", which, according to the National Cancer Institute, precludes them from "premarket evaluation and approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [...] unless specific disease prevention or treatment claims are made".

In fact, the FDA hasn't approved cartilage as a treatment for cancer -- or any other medical ailment, for that matter.

And, get this -- Lane Labs, the company behind the wildly popular 1992 book, has been subject to decades-long litigationfrom the Federal Trade Commission for truth in advertising disputes. The agency found that, "in addition to the unsubstantiated efficacy claims, the defendants falsely represented that clinical studies have shown that BeneFin and SkinAnswer are effective in preventing, treating, and curing cancer, and falsely represented that the Food and Drug Administration has evaluated the effectiveness of BeneFin".

The company was eventually ordered to stop producing its powdered cartilage product and pay a hefty settlement to its customers.

All things considered, it seems appropriate to conclude that there is little to no scientific evidence that shark cartilage is an effective treatment for cancer in humans.

That being said, researchers are still actively investigating the possibility of using proteins found in shark immune systemsas vessels to deliver tumor-fighting drugs.

Source:http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/shark-feed/sharks-and-cancer-heres-what-we-know/

Pink salmon threatened by freshwater acidification

BY SARAH ZIELINSKI 

6:00PM, JUNE 30, 2015

As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, the world’s oceans are absorbing some of the gas and slowly becoming more acidic. That acidification impedes the chemical reaction that many marine species use to make calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. Fish were once thought to be immune to the drop in pH, but a growing amount of evidence show that these species, too, are affected. Now comes evidence that acidification might be a problem for freshwater fish as well.

Only 0.8 percent of the world’s water is freshwater, but 40 percent of the world’s fish species live in those ecosystems. Then there are fish, like salmon, that spend part of their lives in freshwater and part in the oceans — and are often a concern because they are not only key to ecosystems but also are important because we eat a lot of them.

Michelle Ou of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and colleagues looked at one of those species, pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) from the U.S. Pacific coast. This are a common species of salmon, and one that lives quickly. The fish hatch in freshwater streams, hang out there for about a month, and then swim downstream to the ocean. In less than two years, they’re back at their natal spot for spawning and death.

Ou’s team let salmon hatch in waters that had ambient or elevated levels of carbon dioxide similar to what is projected for the future. Another group was exposed to conditions of varying carbon dioxide, similar to what’s found in some streams. The researchers then tested the fish as they grew up and eventually were transferred to saltwater.

The young salmon grew more slowly, and they had difficulty detecting alarm cues and amino acids. The amino acids are a worry because scientists think these molecules play a role in how salmon identify their natal streams. The fish were also less anxious and bolder, which could make them more vulnerable to predators. And the problems continued when they were transferred to seawater; their growth and metabolism were affected.

None of these effects was enough to kill the fish outright, but together, the changes in physiology and behavior might be enough to threaten the salmon population, the researchers report June 29 in Nature Climate Change.

“Salmon have enormous cultural significance in the northern Pacific, they support commercial and recreational fisheries, and they are fundamental to the function and productivity of coastal ecosystems,” notes Philip Munday of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, in an accompanying commentary. “Consequently, any effects of elevated CO2 on the growth and survival of juvenile salmon could have far-reaching ecological, economic and social consequences.”

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