ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Up close and 3-dimensional: HIV caught in the act inside the gut
• Worry on the brain: Researchers find new area linked to anxiety
• To hear without being heard: First nonreciprocal acoustic circulator created
• Trick identified that aids viral infection
• Drug trafficking leads to deforestation in Central America
• Piezoelectrics and butterflies: Now scientists know more about how the materials actually work
• Cell cycle speed is key to making aging cells young again
• World's first butterfly bacteria sequenced: Suprising events found during metamorphosis
• Antibiotic 'smart bomb' can target specific strains of bacteria
• Integration brings quantum computer a step closer
• Mysterious ocean circles off the Baltic coast explained
• Blood and lymphatic capillaries grown for the first time in the lab
• Connectedness, human use of buildings shape indoor bacterial communities
• Slow reaction time linked with early death
• Deaths attributed directly to climate change cast pall over penguins
• A simple new way to induce pluripotency: Acid
• Puzzling question in bacterial immune system answered
• Novel genes determine division of labor in insect societies
• Obesity-induced fatty liver disease reversed in mice

Up close and 3-dimensional: HIV caught in the act inside the gut Posted: 30 Jan 2014 04:04 PM PST HIV infection has many unhealthy consequences on the body, but in particular it messes up the gut. A new study reports the first three-dimensional ultra-structural study of HIV infection in vivo. Not only does it reveal details on how the virus quickly infects immune cells in the gut, using them as virus-producing factories, but it also highlights where the virus "hides out" deep within the intestinal tissue.

Worry on the brain: Researchers find new area linked to anxiety Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:13 AM PST Previous studies of anxiety in the brain have focused on the amygdala, but a team of researchers had a hunch that understanding a different brain area, the lateral septum (LS), could provide more clues into how the brain processes anxiety. Their instincts paid off -- the team has found a neural circuit that connects the LS with other brain structures in a manner that directly influences anxiety.

To hear without being heard: First nonreciprocal acoustic circulator created Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:13 AM PST Scientists have built the first-ever nonreciprocal circulator for sound that is able to break sound wave reciprocity. The device is a 'one-way road for sound' that transmits acoustic waves in one direction but blocks them in the other. With this device, you can listen without being heard.

Trick identified that aids viral infection Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:12 AM PST Scientists have identified a way some viruses protect themselves from the immune system's efforts to stop infections, a finding that may make new approaches to treating viral infections possible.

Drug trafficking leads to deforestation in Central America Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:12 AM PST Add yet another threat to the list of problems facing the rapidly disappearing rainforests of Central America: drug trafficking. In a new study, researchers who have done work in Central America point to growing evidence that drug trafficking threatens forests in remote areas of Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and nearby countries.

Piezoelectrics and butterflies: Now scientists know more about how the materials actually work Posted: 30 Jan 2014 10:31 AM PST Piezoelectrics, materials that can change mechanical stress to electricity and back again, are everywhere in modern life. Computer hard drives. Loudspeakers. Medical ultrasound. Sonar. But there are major gaps in our understanding of how they work. Now researchers believe they've learned why one of the main classes of these materials, known as relaxors, behaves in distinctly different ways from the rest. The discovery comes in the shape of a butterfly.

Cell cycle speed is key to making aging cells young again Posted: 30 Jan 2014 09:16 AM PST Researchers identified a major obstacle to converting cells back to their youthful state -- the speed of the cell cycle, or the time required for a cell to divide. When the cell cycle accelerates to a certain speed, the barriers that keep a cell's fate on one path diminish. In such a state, cells are easily persuaded to change their identity and become pluripotent, or capable of becoming multiple cell types.

World's first butterfly bacteria sequenced: Suprising events found during metamorphosis Posted: 30 Jan 2014 08:10 AM PST For the first time ever, scientists have sequenced the internal bacterial makeup of the three major life stages of a butterfly species, a project that showed some surprising events occur during metamorphosis.

Antibiotic 'smart bomb' can target specific strains of bacteria Posted: 30 Jan 2014 08:09 AM PST Researchers have developed a de facto antibiotic "smart bomb" that can identify specific strains of bacteria and sever their DNA, eliminating the infection. The technique offers a potential approach to treat infections by multi-drug resistant bacteria.

Integration brings quantum computer a step closer Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:20 AM PST Scientists have made an important advance towards a quantum computer by shrinking down key components and integrating them onto a silicon microchip.

Mysterious ocean circles off the Baltic coast explained Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:20 AM PST Are they bomb craters from World War II? Are they landing marks for aliens? Since the first images of the mysterious ocean circles off the Baltic coast of Denmark were taken in 2008, people have tried to find an explanation. Now researchers finally present a scientific explanation.

Blood and lymphatic capillaries grown for the first time in the lab Posted: 30 Jan 2014 01:07 AM PST Researchers have engineered skin cells for the very first time containing blood and lymphatic capillaries. They succeeded in isolating all the necessary types of skin cells from human skin tissue and engineering a skin graft that is similar to full-thickness skin.

Connectedness, human use of buildings shape indoor bacterial communities Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:48 PM PST Microbes drawn from the dust in a university building have provided clues that could inspire future architectural designers to encourage a healthy indoor environment.

Slow reaction time linked with early death Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:48 PM PST Having a slow reaction time in midlife increases risk of having died 15 years later, according to new research. Researchers looked at data from more than 5,000 participants, over a 15 year period. A total of 378 (7.4 percent) people in the sample died, but those with slower reaction times were 25 percent more likely to have died (from any cause) compared to those with average reaction times.

Deaths attributed directly to climate change cast pall over penguins Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:48 PM PST Climate change is killing penguin chicks from the world's largest colony of Magellanic penguins, not just indirectly -- by depriving them of food, as has been repeatedly documented for these and other seabirds -- but directly as a result of drenching rainstorms and, at other times, heat, according to new finding.

A simple new way to induce pluripotency: Acid Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:44 PM PST An unusual reprogramming phenomenon by which the fate of somatic cells can be drastically altered through changes to the external environment is described in two new articles.

Puzzling question in bacterial immune system answered Posted: 29 Jan 2014 01:54 PM PST Researchers have answered a central question about Cas9, an enzyme that plays an essential role in the bacterial immune system and is fast becoming a valuable tool for genetic engineering: How is Cas9 able to precisely discriminate between non-self DNA that must be degraded and self DNA that may be almost identical within genomes that are millions to billions of base pairs long.

Novel genes determine division of labor in insect societies Posted: 29 Jan 2014 01:49 PM PST Novel or highly modified genes play a major role in the development of the different castes within ant colonies. Evolutionary biologists came to this conclusion in a recent gene expression study by looking at the question of how the different female castes arise. An ant colony generally consists of a queen and the workers. Moreover, workers can differ depending on the task they perform, such as brood care, foraging, or nest defense.

Obesity-induced fatty liver disease reversed in mice Posted: 29 Jan 2014 12:10 PM PST Researchers have discovered that valproic acid, a widely prescribed drug for treating epilepsy, has the additional benefits of reducing fat accumulation in the liver and lowering blood sugar levels in the blood of obese mice.

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