This week in science

This week in science!

Speed of light: http://buff.ly/1x0hJXD
Exoplanet: http://buff.ly/1x0hJXG
Titan: http://buff.ly/1x0hJXJ
Diamond: http://buff.ly/1x0hMmi
Poop: http://buff.ly/1x0hJXM

Anti-vaxxers: http://buff.ly/1x0hKe1

Black holes: http://buff.ly/1x0hKe3
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schrodingers algae

NOTE:this does not involve puttin algae into boxes with bombs/poisonous gas.
No algea were hurt during the making of this article.

Did you know that some species of algae use quantum mechanical behavior to maximize the light they collect? Well, a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that certain species have the ability to switch this capacity off, prompting questions of both why and how that could ultimately lead to improved energy harvesting technologies.

Quantum coherence has been defined by the great mathematician Sir Roger Penrose as, “Circumstances when large numbers of particles can collectively cooperate in a single quantum state”. Moreover, these particles can exist in multiple quantum states simultaneously, known as superposition, most famous from the thought experiment known as Schrodinger's Cat. Perhaps the most familiar coherence application is the laser, but is is also responsible for superconductivity and superfluidity.

Certain algae, and green sulfur bacteria, were found in 2010 to be able to transfer energy internally in a coherent manner. “The assumption is that this could increase the efficiency of photosynthesis, allowing the algae and bacteria to exist on almost no light,” says Professor Paul Curmi of the University of New South Wales. “Once a light-harvesting protein has captured sunlight, it needs to get that trapped energy to the reaction centre in the cell as quickly as possible, where the energy is converted into chemical energy for the organism. It was assumed the energy gets to the reaction centre in a random fashion, like a drunk staggering home. But quantum coherence would allow the energy to test every possible pathway simultaneously before travelling via the quickest route.”

The single-celled algal species found capable of this are cryptophytes, and live in places where little light penetrates, such as under ice or at the bottom of deep ponds, making every scrap of energy vital.

However, Curmi has now found two species of cryptophytes with an extra amino acid in their energy sharing proteins compared to the coherence inducing ones. X-ray crystallography of the light harvesting structure showed the alteration disrupted the coherence. “This shows cryptophytes have evolved an elegant but powerful genetic switch to control coherence and change the mechanisms used for light harvesting,” Curmi says.

It's not clear what the advantage of doing without the additional efficiency coherence supplies might be. Curmi plans to investigate differences in the habitats and ecological niches between the species with and without coherence. Coherence is much easier to achieve at lower temperatures, so it would not be surprising if species that operate in warmer conditions couldn't make it work, but that does not explain what appears to be an adaptation to disrupt it.

The discovery of biological coherence sparked interest in the possibility of incorporating the phenomenon into organic solar cells. Knowing how, and maybe even why, some species block it could help in this application.

HIV vaccine closer

Since HIV first emerged in the Congo, over 75 million people have been infected worldwide. Of those, almost 36 million have died from complications. Those who are currently infected with the virus can receive treatment and live a long, healthy life; a sharp contrast to the imminent death sentence an HIV/AIDS diagnosis was at the beginning of the epidemic. However, treatments are still incredibly expensive and must be strictly maintained over the course of a lifetime. Immunologists continue to work toward a vaccine that would prevent anyone from acquiring the virus in the first place.

Though HIV frequently mutates, the researchers found that a binding site, named V1V2, has remained fairly conserved and is susceptible to antibodies created by the immune system. Antibodies that are able to neutralize certain strains of the virus occur in about one-fifth of all HIV-infected individuals. The ability to replicate certain forms of those antibodies are believed to be the key to creating an HIV vaccine.

The team was able to identify twelve somatically-related antibodies (VRC26) that had been created by the immune system in blood samples from an HIV+ volunteer only known CAP256. The breakthrough came when they discovered that even after the virus mutated and changed a few times, the antibodies were still able to neutralize a wide range of strains. 

Studies like this have been attempted before, but scientists did not have access to the earliest forms of the virus that caused the immune system to begin antibody production. With that factor as an unknown, vaccine discovery could not occur. For patient CAP256, blood samples had been taken weekly for over 3 years, beginning just four weeks after the infection. This allowed scientists to monitor the progression of the virus and the antibodies and study their co-evolution. 

It took over two and a half years for the antibodies to mature enough to be able to neutralize isolates of the virus. The researchers believe they now have a solid timeline to work from and can begin to develop artificial copies of the antibodies from different milestones during its progression. 

Though the antibodies do not neutralize all strains of HIV, it does affect many of them. The researchers are currently trying to use those antibodies to develop a vaccine. After the vaccine has been tested for safety and efficacy with animal models, they will seek trials using uninfected humans.

This week in science

Godzilla planet: http://bit.ly/RZCW46
Autism: http://bit.ly/1oTnkOb
Cancer: http://bit.ly/1i9qaqZ
Theia: http://bit.ly/1xfn7HB
Hybrid star: http://bit.ly/SbvliX
Hubble deep field: http://bit.ly/1pRBFbi
Gamma ray burst: http://bit.ly/1kD36oV
Plastic rocks: http://bit.ly/SdukXM

This week in technology

This week in technology!

Insoles: http://bit.ly/1nU0Rkr
Shatter proof screens: http://bit.ly/1ovL5u7
Lasers: http://bit.ly/Tnyxcx
Sauron's eye: http://bit.ly/1tLbdAF
Solar plant: http://bit.ly/1jWNJTn
New material: http://bit.ly/S5U20d
Flying saucer: http://bit.ly/1h6fnCP
Solar flare: http://bit.ly/TasCrn

Though the insoles were kinda invented already

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'Quadrapeutics' works in preclinical study of hard-to-treat tumors

Two years ago, scientists at Rice University came up with the new treatment, which involves extremely small particles of gold entering cancer cells and then being heated by a laser until tiny bubbles surround them and explode, ripping apart the cancer cell.

Even better, if the bubbles don’t manage to kill the cancer cells immediately, they leave them weakened for traditional chemotherapy drugs.

Now, the results of the technique’s pre-clinical trials in mice have been reported in Nature Medicine, and they’re extremely encouraging.

The researchers tested the technique on head and neck squaomous cell carcinomas that had grown immune to chemotherapy in mice. Within one week, the cancerous tumours were destroyed, even though the scientists only used 3 percent of the typical drug dose, and 6 percent of the typical radiation.

The researchers believe the effectiveness of the treatment should not be limited to these types of cancers, and it’s likely to work on various solid tumours, especially those in the brain, lung and prostate, Dexter Johnson reports for IEEE Spectrum.

The treatment is called a quadrapeutic therapy, because the gold nanoparticles are only one part of the four-pronged attack (as shown in the illustration above).

This chemotherapy drug is the first step in the attack. Next, gold nanoparticles are introduced into the body, tagged with antibodies that target and attach to the surface of specific cancer cells. 

The cancer cells ingest these nanoparticles, where they're blasted with near-infrared laser pulses - a wavelength of light that can’t be absorbed by the gold. Instead, the light excites the free electrons on the gold nanoparticles and causes them to heat up and generate energy, eventually making the cancer cells to explode.

“What kills the most-resistant cancer cells is the intracellular synergy of these components and the events we trigger in cells,” study leader Dmitri Lapotko said in a press release. “This synergy showed a 100-fold amplification of the therapeutic strength of standard chemoradiation in experiments on cancer cell cultures.”

This Rice University video describes the technique in more detail.

einstein proved wrong!!

First off, sorry for the click bait heading.

The heading is technically correct but does not imply what you think it means.

Einsteins theory of relativity still is true, e is always equal to mc squared and nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.But his views on quantum physics are highly controversial.His most famous argument was the EPR paper.The EPR paradox says If we have 2 quantum objects that can be described by a single wave function, then we can measure the velocity of one without affecting the other, and then know both the position and velocity of the other particle which contradicts the uncertainty principle.PR paradox says If we have 2 quantum objects that can be described by a single wave function, then we can measure the velocity of one without affecting the other, and then know both the position and velocity of the other particle which contradicts the uncertainty principle. Bohr tried to explain it by using quantum entanglement.but at that time, Einstein who thought everything could be explained by classical physics without the need of probabilities was skeptical and called it "spooky action at a distance".This spooky action at a distance has been achieved by scientists.The achievement is still a very, very long way from the movements familiar from science fiction, but strengthens our confidence in the theory of quantum entanglement, one of the most controversial aspects of modern physics. It may, moreover, assist the much closer goal of quantum computing.

Certain subatomic particles always exist in paired states. For example, two electrons may have opposite spins. This is fine initially, but creates a famous paradox if one particle is interfered with in such a way that its spin is changed. According to entanglement theory the other particle will instantly respond to the changes wrought on its pair so that the two remain opposite. 

However, the distance between the two this means that the information of what has happened to the one particle must be transmitted infinitely fast – faster than the speed of light.

n 1964 physicist John Stewart Bell came up with an idea for an experiment to test whether entanglement is real. At the time the test was impractical, but with publication in Science a team from the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands have got close to conducting Bell's test.

The Delft team trapped electrons in very low temperature diamonds, which team leader Ronald Hanson describes as “miniprisons”. This allowed them to measure the spin for each electron very reliably. Alterations to this spin were reflected in the spin of an entangled electron trapped in a similar diamond prison on the next bench.

The small distance between the two diamonds makes it hard to demonstrate that the transfer of information is occurring instantly, rather than at light speed. Consequently, the next step will be to entangle caged electrons and expand their separation across town or around the world. Entanglement between islands more than 100km apart has already been demonstrated, but only statistically, rather than with 100% success. 

Besides finally settling one of 20th Century physics greatest debates, reliable quantum teleportation could make possible the ultimate in secure communication channels, which would also be infinitely fast as well. Although this is starting to sound awfully close to Ursula Le Guin's ansible, most physicists dispute the possibility of such a device.

As usual, the result does not come out of nowhere. Other teams have also been able to teleport quantum information, but only in a minority of cases. Last year Hanson's team announced they had achieved quantum teleportation using diamond entrapment, but without the 100% reliability of the most recent work.

mass extinction caused by volcanoes?

A new study, published in the journal Geology, presents evidence that suggests the first known mass extinction on Earth was triggered by dramatic volcanic eruptions in Australia. This extinction-- the Early-Middle Cambrian extinction-- occurred some 511 million years ago and caused a dramatic reduction in complex multicellular life on Earth, yet the precise reasons behind this event remained shrouded in mystery.

The investigation, which was led by Curtin University’s Fred Jourdan, involved using high precision Uranium-Lead and Argon-Argon dating to determine the age of lava flows from the eruptions of the Kalkarindji volcanic province, which smothered an area of greater than 2 million square kilometers in Northern and Western Australia. They found that the eruptions occurred at the same time as the extinction, around 511 million years ago.

According to Jourdan, this famous extinction wiped out 50% of all species on Earth and although previous studies indicated that this was due to climatic changes and depletion of oceanic oxygen, no one knew the mechanism behind these events.

“Not only were we able to demonstrate that the Kalkarindji volcanic province was emplaced at the exact same time as the Cambrian extinction, but were also able to measure a depletion of sulfur dioxide from the province’s volcanic rocks- which indicates sulfur was released into the atmosphere during the eruptions,” he added.

Jourdan detailed how a much smaller eruption in 1991 by volcano Pinatubo decreased average global temperatures by a few tenths of a degree for several years due to the sulfur dioxide released. “If relatively small eruptions like Pinatubo can affect the climate just imagine what a volcanic province with an area equivalent to the size of the state of Western Australia can do,” he added.

Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/environment/first-known-mass-extinction-may-have-been-caused-huge-volcanic-eruptions-australia#2rdtyZLCUowSgY0B.99