Using a bright orange electrocardiogram machine attached with suction cups to the body of a blue whale, scientists for the first time have measured the heart rate of the world's largest creature and came away with insight about the renowned behemoth's physiology. From a report: The blue whale, which can reach up to 100 feet (30 meters) long and weigh 200 tons, lowers its heart rate to as little as two beats per minute as it lunges under the ocean surface for food, researchers said. The maximum heart rate they recorded was 37 beats per minute after the air-breathing marine mammal returned to the surface from a foraging dive. "The blue whale is the largest animal of all-time and has long fascinated biologists," said Stanford University marine biologist Jeremy Goldbogen, who led the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In particular, new measures of vital rates and physiological rates help us understand how animals work at the upper extreme of body mass," Goldbogen added. "What is life like and what is the pace of life at such a large scale?" Generally speaking, the larger the animal, the lower the heart rate, minimizing the amount of work the heart does while distributing blood around the body. The normal human resting heart rate ranges from about 60 to 100 beats per minute and tops out at about 200 during athletic exertion. The smallest mammals, shrews, have heart rates upwards of a thousand beats per minute.

Monitoring seismic activity all over the world is an important task, but one that requires equipment to be at the site it's measuring -- difficult in the middle of the ocean. But new research from Berkeley could turn existing undersea fiber optic cables into a network of seismographs, creating an unprecedented global view of the Earth's tectonic movements. A reader shares a report: Seismologists get almost all their data from instruments on land, which means most of our knowledge about seismic activity is limited to a third of the planet's surface. We don't even know where all the faults are since there's been no exhaustive study or long-term monitoring of the ocean floor. "There is a huge need for seafloor seismology," explained lead study author Nathaniel Lindsey in a Berkeley news release. "Any instrumentation you get out into the ocean, even if it is only for the first 50 kilometers from shore, will be very useful." Of course, the reason we haven't done so is because it's very hard to place, maintain, and access the precision instruments required for long-term seismic work underwater. But what if there were instruments already out there just waiting for us to take advantage of them? That's the idea Lindsey and his colleagues are pursuing with regard to undersea fiber optic cables. These cables carry data over long distances, sometimes as part of the internet's backbones, and sometimes as part of private networks. But one thing they all have in common is that they use light to do so -- light that gets scattered and distorted if the cable shifts or changes orientation. By carefully monitoring this "backscatter" phenomenon it can be seen exactly where the cable bends and to what extent -- sometimes to within a few nanometers. That means that researchers can observe a cable to find out the source of seismic activity with an extraordinary level of precision.

Mysterious rumbles that herald tornadoes could one day be used to predict when and where they will strike, according to researchers. From a report: Storms emit sounds before tornadoes form, but the signals at less than 20Hz are below the limit for human hearing. What causes these rumbles has also been a conundrum. Now researchers said they have narrowed down the reasons for the sounds -- an important factor in harnessing the knowledge to improve warnings. "The three possibilities are core oscillations [in the tornado], pressure relaxation, and latent heat effects," said Dr Brian Elbing, of Oklahoma State University, who is part of the team behind the research. "They are all possibilities because what we have seen is that the signal occurs before the tornado touches the ground, continues after it touches the ground, and then disappears some time after the tornado leaves the ground."

The latest work was presented at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics in Seattle. The low-frequency sound produced by tornadoes has been known about for several decades, but Elbing said a big problem has been a lack of understanding of what causes the sounds, and difficulties in unpicking them from a tornado and other aspects of the weather. The subject has seen renewed interest in recent years, with Elbing saying it could prove particularly useful for hilly areas such as Dixie Alley, which stretches from Texas to North Carolina. "Infrasound doesn't need line of sight like radar, so there is hope that this could significantly improve warnings in Dixie Alley where most deaths [from tornadoes] occur," he said.

We finally know how big a set of numbers can get before it has to contain a pattern known as a "polynomial progression." From a report: A new proof by Sarah Peluse of the University of Oxford establishes that one particularly important type of numerical sequence is, ultimately, unavoidable: It's guaranteed to show up in every single sufficiently large collection of numbers, regardless of how the numbers are chosen. "There's a sort of indestructibility to these patterns," said Terence Tao of the University of California, Los Angeles. Peluse's proof concerns sequences of numbers called "polynomial progressions." They are easy to generate -- you could create one yourself in short order -- and they touch on the interplay between addition and multiplication among the numbers. For several decades, mathematicians have known that when a collection, or set, of numbers is small (meaning it contains relatively few numbers), the set might not contain any polynomial progressions. They also knew that as a set grows it eventually crosses a threshold, after which it has so many numbers that one of these patterns has to be there, somewhere. It's like a bowl of alphabet soup -- the more letters you have, the more likely it is that the bowl will contain words. But prior to Peluse's work, mathematicians didn't know what that critical threshold was. Her proof provides an answer -- a precise formula for determining how big a set needs to be in order to guarantee that it contains certain polynomial progressions. Previously, mathematicians had only a vague understanding that polynomial progressions are embedded among the whole numbers (1, 2, 3 and so on). Now they know exactly how to find them.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Astronomers think our home galaxy -- the Milky Way -- is practically bursting with black holes, with estimates of up to 100 million of the invisible beasts hiding across the galactic neighborhood. It was generally assumed these black holes could reach a mass of up to 20 times that of the sun, but the discovery of a "monster" black hole, with about 70 times the mass of the sun, has surprised Chinese astronomers. In a new study, published in the journal Nature on Nov. 27, a research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences peered across the galaxy with the Large sky Area Multi-Object fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (Lamost), based at Xinglong Observatory in China. Black holes don't emit light, so astronomers have to get crafty when they go hunting for them.

Usually, this involves looking for signs a black hole is feasting on a nearby star or the gas and dust that swirls around them. If the black hole isn't feasting and if it isn't surrounded by bright gas and dust, it becomes a little trickier to locate. But, using Lamost, the team examined the movement of stars across the sky, searching for those that seemed to be orbiting an invisible object. Follow-up observations with telescopes in Spain and the US helped the researchers discover a star about eight times bigger than the sun. Intriguingly, it was orbiting a "dark companion": The monster black hole, dubbed LB-1. "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Liu Jifeng, astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of China and first author of the study, in a press release. "LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."

Toshiba has developed technology to detect 13 types of cancer from a single drop of blood with 99 percent accuracy, the company claimed this week. From a report: Toshiba developed the diagnosis method together with the National Cancer Center Research Institute and Tokyo Medical University, and hopes to commercialize it in "several years" after starting a trial next year. The method could be used to treat cancer in its early stage, it said. The method is designed to examine the types and concentration of microRNA molecules secreted in blood from cancer cells. Toray Industries and other companies have also developed technologies to diagnose cancer using microRNA molecules from a blood sample. "Compared to other companies' methods, we have an edge in the degree of accuracy in cancer detection, the time required for detection and the cost," Koji Hashimoto, chief research scientist at Toshiba's Frontier Research Laboratory, told a press briefing. The test will be used to detect gastric, esophageal, lung, liver, biliary tract, pancreatic, bowel, ovarian, prostate, bladder and breast cancers as well as sarcoma and glioma. Toshiba has developed a chip and a small device that can conduct the diagnosis in less than two hours. A blood test using it is expected to cost $182 or less, it said.

The world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists. This risk is "an existential threat to civilization," they say, meaning "we are in a state of planetary emergency." From a report: Tipping points are reached when particular impacts of global heating become unstoppable, such as the runaway loss of ice sheets or forests. In the past, extreme heating of 5C was thought necessary to pass tipping points, but the latest evidence suggests this could happen between 1C and 2C. The planet has already heated by 1C and the temperature is certain to rise further, due to past emissions and because greenhouse gas levels are still rising. The scientists further warn that one tipping point, such as the release of methane from thawing permafrost, may fuel others, leading to a cascade. The researchers acknowledge that the complex science of tipping points means great uncertainty remains. But they say the potential damage from the tipping points is so big and the time to act so short, that "to err on the side of danger is not a responsible option." They call for urgent international action. "A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping could still be under our control to some extent," they write. "The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action -- not just words -- must reflect this."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Greenhouse gas emissions have risen steadily for the past decade despite the current and future threat posed by climate change, according to a new United Nations report. The annual report compares how clean the world's economies are to how clean they need to be to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change -- a disparity known as the "emissions gap." However, this year's report describes more of a chasm than a gap. Global emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases have continued to steadily increase over the past decade. In 2018, the report notes that global fossil fuel CO2 emissions from electricity generation and industry grew by 2%.

"There is no sign of [greenhouse gas] emissions peaking in the next few years," the authors write. Every year that emissions continue to increase "means that deeper and faster cuts will be required" to keep Earth from warming more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. [...] The United States is currently not on track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement, which the United States ratified and is technically still part of until its withdrawal takes effect in November 2020. According to the new report, six other major economies are also lagging behind their commitments, including Canada, Japan, Australia, Brazil, the Republic of Korea and South Africa. What's interesting is that China's per capita emissions are now "in the same range" as the European Union, thanks to the country's large investments in renewable energy such as solar and wind.

Some of the recommendations for how the world's top economies could cut emissions include: banning new coal-fired power plants, requiring all new vehicles to be CO2-free by 2030, expanding mass transit and/or requiring all new buildings to be entirely electric.

NPR reports: Back in September, India's hopes for a historic first ended -- inconclusively. High hopes had been riding on its Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. The spacecraft was sending a landing vehicle down to the moon -- an operation that, if successful, would be the first robotic mission at the moon's unexplored south pole and that would make India only the fourth country in history to make a moon landing. Unfortunately, it was not to be. At the time, the Indian Space Research Organisation didn't offer much explanation for the operation's failure besides an ill-timed loss of contact, adding little more than a terse, "Data is being analyzed." Now, the Indian government has offered its first conclusive statement on the incident, in a brief report responding to a lawmaker's question last Wednesday: Put simply, the Vikram lander's braking thrusters malfunctioned, and it crashed.

"During the second phase of descent, the reduction in velocity was more than the designed value. Due to this deviation, the initial conditions at the start of the fine braking phase were beyond the designed parameters," said Jitendra Singh, minister of state for the Department of Space, the ISRO's parent department. "As a result, Vikram hard landed within 500 m of the designated landing site." Singh did not clarify what caused the malfunction in the lander's landing system. The statement is believed to be the first formal acknowledgment by India's government that the craft crashed. In the ISRO's previous public updates on Vikram -- the latest on its website was released back on Sept. 10, several days after the intended landing date -- the agency noted only that it had located the lander but had made "no communication with it yet."

Researchers at Australia's Deakin University say they've managed to use common industrial polymers to create solid electrolytes, opening the door to double-density solid state lithium batteries that won't explode or catch fire if they overheat. Tangential writes: Dr. Fangfang Chen and Dr. Xiaoen Wang from Deakin's Institute for Frontier Materials claim to have made a breakthrough with "the first clear and useful example of liquid-free and efficient transportation of lithium-ion in the scientific community." The new technology uses a solid polymer material, weakly bonded to the lithium-ion, to replace the volatile liquid solvents typically used as electrolytes in current battery cells. The liquid electrolyte is the part of the system that becomes flammable during the kinds of infamous battery fires Samsung would rather forget. "If industry implements our findings I see a future where battery reliant devices can be safely packed in airplane baggage, for example, or where electric cars don't pose a fire risk for occupants or emergency services like they currently do," Dr Chen said in a press release. In addition to making batteries safer, the team believes this solid polymer electrolyte will finally allow batteries to work with a lithium metal anode. That would be big news in the battery world, where the lithium anode has been recently described in Trends in Chemistry as "critical to break the energy-density bottleneck of current Li-ion chemistry" -- the bottleneck that's stopping electric vehicles, aircraft and portable electronics from developing at the pace they should be.

sciencehabit writes: Like vinyl records, the strange concept of a time crystal is spinning back into fashion. In 2012, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist proposed that the properties of a system of quantum particles might cycle in time much as a crystal's pattern of atoms repeats in space, even without the addition of energy, making it a bit like perpetual motion machine. But others soon proved a "no-go theorem" that said such a thing was impossible -- and replaced it with a less fantastical definition of a time crystal that researchers soon demonstrated in the lab. But now, two physicists have shown that the original notion of a time crystal is possible after all -- at least in theory. "I think it's right," says Frank Wilczek, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who dreamed up time crystals but who was not involved with the new work. The new scheme is "one way of getting around the 'no-go.'" But realizing the system experimentally may be exceedingly difficult, other physicists say. In physics, patterns can arise seemingly out of nowhere. For example, in a crystalline solid, the forces between atoms do not explicitly specify the position of the atoms or the distances between them. Cool the atoms into their ground state, however, and they nestle into a repeating pattern like the squares on a checkerboard.

Residents near renovation sites claim noxious emissions from pipe inserts are making them sick. Scientific American reports: Earlier this year Nicole Davis arrived at one of the San Antonio, Tex., offices of the audiology practice she co-owns ready to see the day's patients. But upon entering her office, Davis says she quickly noticed a noxious odor that smelled like paint thinner. Her eyes started burning. By noon, she felt nauseated and dizzy, with the burning sensation spreading to her nose and throat. Her mouth went numb. Co-workers in the building told Davis that they felt ill, too. By the evening, she says, she was vomiting. Two days later, Davis received an e-mail from an employee for a construction firm that was doing work that week on municipal pipes below street-level near the building. The employee apologized in the e-mail for Davis's "recent experience," and attached a technical document describing the hazards and health risks associated with materials used to make plastic in the pipe project. The e-mail and attachment do not state that the work caused the odor or Davis's reaction.

The company was renovating an underground sewer pipe with a widely and increasingly used technique called cured-in-place pipes. A felt or composite sleeve is saturated, typically with a polyester or vinyl ester resin. Workers thread the sleeve through an underground pipe and then inflate and heat it, often with steam or hot water. The sleeve hardens to form a continuous plastic liner along the old pipe's inner walls. The technique is less expensive and takes less time than fully replacing old sewer-system pipes and stormwater culverts. [...] Davis's experience reflects, in part, the scarcity of reliable, industry-independent research and public health advice about potential risks associated with the cured-in-place pipe, or CIPP, method. The practice has grown steadily in the past two decades, with more than 35,000 miles of the liners installed worldwide, according to a 2017 market report by BCC Research. CIPP is the most popular method among a group of pipe-renovation techniques that require minimal digging as compared with excavating an old pipe and replacing it. With billions of dollars spent and loaned annually in the U.S. alone to restore deteriorating pipes, the market for lower-cost renovation approaches is forecast to remain strong for several years. The report goes on to say that there have been more than 100 incidents spanning 29 U.S. states in the past 15 years from CIPP. "Children have been mentioned in news stories and other reports in more than a dozen of those 100 cases, including a September incident in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in which middle school students reportedly felt sick from a CIPP job several hundred feet from their classroom," reports Scientific American.

"Studies by [Purdue University]'s group have revealed that jobs at study sites, where installers used steam to harden the resin, release a mixture of vaporized and liquid droplets of organic compounds and water, as well as particles of partially hardened resin, into the air. The compounds include hazardous air pollutants such as styrene and methylene chloride, as well as dibutyl phthalate, which some studies have identified as an endocrine disruptor. But other emitted compounds vary, possibly depending on the type of resin used and other operational differences."

Some of the first findings to look into the health implications of exposures to CIPP emissions "found alterations in gene expression and protein production in exposed cells, inflammation and injuries or with abnormal function in organs," the report says. "The findings show the potential for adverse health effects in humans," although the findings "differed from site to site, by the type of cells exposed, and by the genes and proteins examined."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted psilocybin therapy a Breakthrough Therapy designation for the second time in a year, this time with a view on accelerating trials testing its efficacy treating major depressive disorder (MDD). This new FDA Breakthrough Therapy approval focuses on a seven-site, Phase 2 trial currently underway in the United States. Coordinated by a non-profit research organization called the Usona Institute, the trial is exploring the antidepressant properties of a single psilocybin dose in treating patients with major depressive disorder.

Last year's Breakthrough Therapy designation was targeted at the drug's efficacy for treatment-resistant depression (TRD). That particular clinical classification categorizes patients suffering from MDD who have not responded effectively to at least two different pharmacological antidepressant treatments during a current depressive episode. It is estimated between 10 and 30 percent of MDD patients fall into the category of TRD. The new FDA approval focuses on Usona's research into the broader condition of MDD, characterized by episodes of severe depression that last more than two weeks. Hundreds of millions of people around the world suffer from these kinds of acute major depressive episodes every year. "The Usona Phase 2 trial plans to enrol 80 subjects, randomized to receive either a single active dose of psilocybin or an active placebo containing niacin," the report adds. "The methodology being trialed is similar to other psilocybin therapy studies, with a number of preparatory psychotherapy sessions preceding the active psychedelic dose, and a number of integrative psychotherapy sessions afterwards." It's estimated that the current Phase 2 trial will be completed by early 2021, where it should be able to move into larger Phase 3 trials if the results are positive.

The FDA also gave psilocybin therapy a Breakthrough Therapy status late last year. These trials should be completed sometime in 2020, "suggesting the next 12 to 24 months will offer some compelling and solid data into how effective this new psychedelic therapy actually is in treating several different forms of depression," reports New Atlas.

Emily Mullin, writing for OneZero: Around this time last November, Chinese scientist He Jiankui stunned the world when he revealed the birth of the first known gene-edited babies. Working in relative secrecy, he had used CRISPR to modify human embryos in the lab and then established pregnancies with those embryos. Twin girls with edited genomes were born as a result. The scientific community's condemnation of He was harsh and swift. He had edited the germline, making a heritable genetic change. There were safety questions about the effects on the twins, and he had not meant to fix a genetic defect or prevent disease. Instead, he tweaked a gene in an attempt to bestow an uncommon, protective genetic trait: resistance to HIV. In the aftermath, leading scientists and ethicists published an open letter in the journal Nature calling for a temporary moratorium on human germline gene editing -- that is, editing eggs, sperm, or embryos to make genetically modified children. But it's been a year, and there is still no unified set of rules to dictate whether or how scientists should conduct this research.

Some scientists have rejected a blanket moratorium in favor of self-regulating, believing that they can chart a path toward responsible germline editing to prevent a number of inherited diseases. But how to do so remains a point of contention. Meanwhile, at least one scientist is already planning more gene-edited children. In June, Russian molecular biologist Denis Rebrikov said he wanted to use CRISPR to create more HIV-resistant babies, but in a more ethical way than He's experiment. His plans have since shifted to editing embryos of couples with inherited deafness in an attempt to make hearing babies. "The horse has already left the barn," Jennifer Doudna, one of CRISPR's inventors, tells OneZero.

Texas Instruments' $100 calculators have been required in classrooms for more than twenty years, as students and teachers still struggle to afford them. From a report: Texas Instruments released its first graphing calculator, the TI-81, to the public in 1990. Designed for use in pre-algebra and algebra courses, it was superseded by other Texas Instruments models with varying shades of complexity but these calculators remained virtually untouched aesthetically. Today, Texas Instruments still sells a dozen or so different calculator models intended for different kinds of students, ranging from the TI-73 and TI-73 Explorer for middle school classes to the TI-Nspire CX and TI-Nspire CX CAS ($149), an almost smartphone-like calculator with more processing power. But the most popular calculators, teachers tell me, include the TI-83 Plus ($94), launched in 1999; the TI-84 Plus ($118), launched in 2004; the very similar TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, also launched in 2004; and the TI-89 Titanium ($128).

Thompson (anecdote in the story), like many teachers, works in a district where it's a financial impossibility to ask students and their parents to shell out $100 for a new calculator. (Graphing calculators of any brand are recommended at Thompson's school, and they are essential for the curriculum.) So the onus falls on him and other teachers, who rely on their teacher salaries -- Thompson makes $62,000 a year -- to fill in the gaps. At first, Thompson bought cheaper calculators: four-function, $3 calculators. This, he quickly realized, would be insufficient. "A lot of students were angry and actually left the class and went to the classroom of the more experienced teacher next to me and asked to borrow her calculators," he told me. The bulky, rectangular Texas Instruments calculators act more like mini-handheld computers than basic calculators, plotting graphs and solving complex functions. Seeing expressions, formulas, and graphs on-screen is integral for students in geometry, calculus, physics, statistics, business, and finance classes. They provide students access to more advanced features, letting them do all the calculations of a scientific calculator, as well as graph equations and make function tables. Giving a child a four-function calculator -- allowing for only addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division -- would leave them woefully underprepared for the requirements of more advanced math and science classes. Further reading: This is the Story of the 1970s Great Calculator Race.

Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. From a report: In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past. A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night -- for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5C to 2.5C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536-539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says. Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice -- a spike in airborne lead -- marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.

The world's richest man made some interesting remarks Saturday when he became one of eight inductees into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame for founding the spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000.

The Times of San Diego reports: He described the origins of his space infatuation. Bezos said he told his high school paper he wanted to start a space company to save the environment and "eventually turn Earth into a national park." Saturday, he said: "I believe that, one day, Earth will be zoned residential and light industry. We'll move all heavy industry into space. That's the only way, really, to save this planet."

The 55-year-old Washington Post owner (and would-be NFL team buyer) invoked the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. "You can't start an interesting space company in your dorm room," he said. "It's just too hard. It's too expensive. We want to change that." Reducing "the price of admission" to space is this generation's mission and his own, he said, "and the next generation will see a dynamic explosion of entrepreneurial talent the same way you have on the Internet."

His goal is "real operational usability" -- having rockets fly to space and return to earth (landing vertically as his Blue Shepards have done 10 times straight successfully) with regularity. Instead of disassembling and inspecting rockets after each flight, he said, the aim is making space trips "close to aircraft flight operations... You land, refuel and fly again." He said our grandkids' grandkids shouldn't have to face a planet that's "finite." "You want a dynamic civilization that continues to use more and more energy and more and more resources and build amazing things," he said.

"And to do that, you have to move out into the solar system."

Last year nearly 400 million people experienced Dengue fever, according to All Things Considered. (Just Brazil alone had more than 2 million cases.) But The World Mosquito Project is trying an interesting solution: Scientists are cultivating and releasing mosquitoes, except these mosquitoes are special: They've been infected with a bacterium called Wolbachia. Wolbachia occurs naturally in many insects, but not normally in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spread dengue. It has to be introduced into the mosquitoes in the lab. But then the bacterium is passed down to future generations. The bacterium appears to block Aedes aegypti from transmitting arboviruses, which include dengue as well as chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika...

"In Indonesia, we've [released Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in] a community of 50,000 people and compared it to a community that was left without Wolbachia," says Cameron Simmons, director of the impact assessment team for the World Mosquito Program. "We've seen a 75% reduction [of dengue cases] over the last 2 1/2 years in the Wolbachia-treated community...." The problem in the real world is that other people and other mosquitoes keep migrating into the areas being treated, messing up the experiments. But from a theoretical perspective Simmons sees Wolbachia as potentially a way to wipe out dengue entirely.

"If you had a big island," he proposes, "[and] you stop people from moving in and out of that island, and you put Wolbachia across all the mosquitoes on that island, the science suggests that you'll eliminate dengue in that location."

Some countries are trying to do just that. Australia started using Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes nearly a decade ago to control outbreaks of imported dengue in the state of Queensland. This year the government of Malaysia launched a campaign called "Wolbachia Malaysia" to attack dengue.

Thelasko shared this article from the Atlantic about a surprising medical observation on the International Space Station: An astronaut was carrying out an ultrasound on their own body as part of a new study, guided in real time by a specialist on the ground. A similar test before the astronaut launched to space had come back normal. But now the scan showed a clump of blood...

Before the astronauts launched, researchers measured blood flow in their jugular vein in seated, supine, and tilted positions. The readings looked normal. The researchers had the astronauts repeat the ultrasounds during their missions on the ISS. Scans showed that blood flow in the vein stalled in five of the 11 astronauts. "Sometimes it was sloshing back and forth a bit, but there was no net-forward movement," Marshall-Goebel says. Seeing stagnant blood flow in this kind of vein is rare, she says; the condition usually occurs in the legs, such as when people sit still for hours on a plane...

All the astronauts were considered to be in good health before they launched. And when they came home, the conditions vanished in nearly all of them. When the researchers analyzed the data, they found that a second astronaut may have developed a blood clot no one had seen while they were in orbit. But no one experienced any health troubles. "None of the crew members actually had any negative clinical outcomes," Marshall-Goebel says.
An associate professor of space medicine at the International Space University in France tells the Atlantic that the findings were compelling. "I think we need to understand this before we embark on long-duration missions where the astronaut would be so far away that we wouldn't be able to help them in the case of a medical emergency."

PolygamousRanchKid brings this news from CNN: Physics centers essentially on four forces that control our known, visible universe, governing everything from the production of heat in the sun to the way your laptop works. They are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong force.

New research may be leading us closer to one more.

Scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Atomki) have posted findings showing what could be an example of that fifth force at work. The scientists were closely watching how an excited helium atom emitted light as it decayed. The particles split at an unusual angle -- 115 degrees -- which couldn't be explained by known physics. The study's lead scientist, Attila Krasznahorkay, told CNN that this was the second time his team had detected a new particle, which they call X17, because they calculated its mass at 17 megaelectronvolts. "X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter," he said in an email.

Jonathan Feng, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California at Irvine told CNN he's been following the Hungarian team's work for years, and believes its research is shaping up to be a game changer. If these results can be replicated, "this would be a no-brainer Nobel Prize," he said... They're leading us closer to what's considered the Holy Grail in physics, which Albert Einstein had pursued but never achieved. Physicists hope to create a "unified field theory," which would coherently explain all cosmic forces from the formation of galaxies down to the quirks of quarks.