58354131
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
Paul Brookes of the now-defunct science fraud blog compared the retraction rate for studies when concerns were made known publicly via his blog vs. privately communicated with journal editors, funding agencies or authors' institutions. Guess which was more successful in getting results.
58294517
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
Several companies have been testing a new approach for a cholesterol-lowering drug that could give blockbusters like lipitor a run for their money (or could have benefits when used with statin drugs like lipitor). They are reporting some pretty impressive results at a cardiology meeting this week (http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/03/new-cholesterol-drugs-make-strides-in-clinical-trials.html).
The story behind the target for the drug, PCSK9, is interesting (http://www.nature.com/news/genetics-a-gene-of-rare-effect-1.12773). The gene was discovered as mutated in several people with impressively low levels of LDL (the 'bad' cholesterol) in their blood. It is considered one of the most promising drug leads to have come directly from work on the human genome project.
58265729
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
A wearable skin patch can detect motion, store and transmit information and deliver drugs. The potential uses include Parkinsons disease as a way to detect, track and try and mitigate uncontrollable shaking.
58159863
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
It would be the earliest known example of a swimming filter feeder. "Fossils unearthed in northern Greenland in 2009 and 2011 suggest that the species, Tamisiocaris borealis, used wispy, comb-like frontal appendages roughly 12 centimetres long to sweep up plankton as small as 0.5 millimetres. Like its brethren in the genus Anomalocaris — which means weird shrimp — T. borealis thrived 520 million years ago, during the Early Cambrian period."
57841195
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
Reports early this year about a strikingly simple method for deriving pluripotent stem cells were met with amazement and deep scepticism, then claims that the experiments were not reproducible, then accusations of copied and manipulated figures. Now, the first author of one of the papers is being lambasted for having copied the first 20 pages of her doctoral thesis from an NIH primer on stem cells. And an adviser on her thesis committee says he was never asked to review it. Could this get any stranger? Probably!
57797175
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
Detection of the elusive b-wave, announced today (http://www.nature.com/news/telescope-captures-view-of-gravitational-waves-1.14876), provides the firmest evidence yet of a round of exponential inflation in the universe in the first fractions of a second following the big bang. Einstein predicted the existence of these gravitational waves nearly a century ago (http://www.nature.com/news/all-you-need-to-know-about-gravitational-waves-1.14886) but they've been extremely hard to detect. Now, a telescope in Antarctica called BICEP2 (http://www.nature.com/news/how-astronomers-saw-gravitational-waves-from-the-big-bang-1.14885) was able to pick up the signal by watching the cosmic microwave background, often considered the 'afterglow' of the Big Bang. It is considered a Nobel-worthy discovery.
57626487
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
Modern ideas about quantum weirdness are not exclusively modern. Tom C. B. McLeish of Durham University and his colleagues write about a recent paper they published inspired by the writings of a 13th century scholar Robert Grosseteste.
"Four centuries before Isaac Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory, Grosseteste describes the birth of the Universe in an explosion and the crystallization of matter to form stars and planets in a set of nested spheres around Earth.
To our knowledge, De Luce is the first attempt to describe the heavens and Earth using a single set of physical laws. Implying, probably unrealized by its author, a family of ordered universes in an ocean of disordered ones, the physics resembles the modern 'multiverse' concept."
57456341
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
Theoretical physicists propose that the Sun periodically crosses into a dense layer of dark matter sandwiching the Milky Way. The gravitational push and pull that this creates disturbs debris in the Oort cloud sending deadly comets and asteroids ricocheting around the solar system. This passage happens, their admittedly speculative model suggests, every 35 million years, which jibes somewhat with evidence on impact craters. Take it with a dino-sized grain of salt.
57343281
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
The human pathogen seems to have taken residence in grapevines some 7,000 years ago. From the story: “Grape has a lot of fatty acids in it, which makes grape a perfect host for a sebum-eating bacterium such as P. acnes,” Omar Rota-Stabelli, a lead author of the study and an evolutionary biologist from the Edmund Mach Foundation in S. Michele all'Adige, Italy. What's more it may have aided in the domestication of the crop. Bonus points: They named the grape-dwelling strain Zappae after Frank Zappa.
57309295
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
It might be terrifying if we were amoebae. Instead, it's just fascinating. The virus, found in a hunk of Siberian ice, is huge, but also loosely packaged, which is strange says evolutionary biologist Jean-Michel Claverie: “We thought it was a property of viruses that they pack DNA extremely tightly into the smallest particle possible, but this guy is 150 times less compacted than any bacteriophage [viruses that infect bacteria]. We don’t understand anything anymore!”
57032939
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers.
53516887
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
Helene Hill thought she was close to retirement when, on a whim one day, she decided to check on a junior colleague's cell cultures. They were empty, she says, yet he produced data from them soon after. Blowing the whistle on what she thinks was research misconduct cost her 14 years and $200,000. See how she and other whistleblowers fared in this story from Nature.
50535731
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
When Rafe Brown started doing field research in the Philippines, he constantly found himself in the long shadow of, Edward Taylor — an irascible giant of herpetology from the mid 20th century whose legacy was tarnished by accusations of fraud, questions about his naming methods, and rumours of a double life working for the U.S. Government. Brown forged a bond with his predecssor and has begun to restore a collection of Taylor's specimens that were lost during the Second World War, and which could aid in allocating resources for conservation. He has meanwhile found out more about Taylor's extracurricular activities, which included work with the organization that would eventually become the CIA.
49521555
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
The line between consciousness and non-consciousness is thin, hard to define and, as the Terri Schiavo case taught us, often rife with ethical quandaries. A research team is developing a tool that will be able to quantify just how conscious a person is, which could prove to be quite useful for research and clinical practices.
48485405
submission
bmahersciwriter writes:
The new type of clock, called an optical lattice clock could replace the cesium fountain clocks used as the standard for time keeping. Indeed, it could redefine the second. The cesium fountain is predicted to keep time within one second over 100 million years. While other atomic clocks are better than that, researchers suspect the optical lattice is better still and could one day replace the standard.
