Science In Action

The latest IPCC assessment raised alarm about the rate at which manmade emissions are contributing to climate change. Much of the focus for action is on reducing levels of carbon dioxide, however there is a more potent greenhouse gas, methane, produced by natural and industrial processes which, says Drew Shindell of Duke University and lead author on the Global Methane Assessment, is relatively easy to target for reduction.Neuroscientist John Cryan of University College, Cork in Ireland is interested in the effects our gut microbes can have on our behaviour. It’s an unusual connection and one which he’s been experimenting on in mice. By feeding the faeces of younger mice to older ones he has found that the older ones’ took on some of the younger ones’ behaviour.Ball lightning is the stuff of legend and the supernatural. And yet there are many reported sightings of this phenomenon. Texas State University's Karl Stephan is keen to uncover the science behind these observations. He’s running a crowd sourcing proj

July 2021 saw temperatures in the western US and Canada smash previous records by 5 degrees. And that’s what we should expect, according to a study prepared much earlier but published, coincidentally, just a few days later. A hallmark of rapid climate change, says author Erich Fischer of ETH Zurich, will be an accelerating number of record-shattering, and socially disruptive, events. A large new study on communications and hierarchy across a large range of our ape and monkey relatives has just been published. Lead author Katie Slocombe of the University of York explains the findings: like us, the primates live socially in groups, and there are leaders, but the more tolerant ones are also the more communicative ones. In species with ‘despotic’ leaders, order seems to be maintained with more menacing silence. The double helix of all DNA on earth twists in one direction. But researchers at Tsinghua University in China have made some important steps towards making mirror life, in which the DNA twists in the oppos

Do rocks found in Canada show animal life 350 million years older than any found before? And, delving to the core of Mars, the guts of cats, and into the life of Steven Weinberg.Prof Elizabeth Turner of Canada's Laurentian University reports in the journal Nature structures in some of the oldest sedimentary rocks that resemble the residue left by sponges such as the sort you might find in a bath. 350 million years older than the oldest such fossils yet identified, if they are left by such animals, they represent a complex life that existed some 90 million years before - it has been supposed - there was even enough oxygen to support such development. As she tells us, rather like previous geologists investigating the deep history of life, Elizabeth has been sitting on this idea since she was a young researcher. Since 2019 NASA's InSight probe has been on the surface of Mars listening for seismic waves from below to try to form a picture of the planet's internal structure. Last week in the journal Science, thr

Back in November it was announced that an AI company called DeepMind had essentially cracked the problem of protein folding – that is they had managed to successfully predict the 3D structures of complex biochemical molecules by only knowing the 2D sequence of amino acids from which they are made.They are not the only team to use machine learning to approach the vast amounts of data involved. But last week, they released the source code and methodology behind their so called AlphaFold2 tool. Today, they are publishing via a paper in the journal Nature, a simply huge database of predicted structures including most of the human proteome and 20 other model species such as yes, mice. The possibilities for any biochemists are very exciting. As DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tells Roland Pease, they partnered with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory to make over 350,000 protein predictions available to researchers around the world free of charge and open sourced. Dr Benjamin Perry of the Drugs for Neglected Dise

This week the UK parliament voted to accept the Government’s continued cap on Official Development Aid. This disappointed many researchers around the world, funded directly and indirectly through various scientific funding structures enabling international collaboration on some of the global challenges facing all of us. These funding mechanisms make for a small fraction of the overall amount, but they have been hit hard, with many projects closing altogether.There had been hope amongst the scientific community that the cap – from 0.7% down to 0.5% of the UK’s Gross Domestic Income – might have been in place just for a year. But it seems like the criteria set to judge when the level of aid might rise again imply that it is unlikely to happen for several years at the earliest. What, asks Science in Action, does that mean to the world of scientific collaboration on such topics as climate change, contagious disease, and emergency planning?Researchers Chris Trisos and Jenni Barclay, with journalist Robin Bisson of

Scientists say the record-breaking Pacific North-West heatwave of recent weeks must have been caused by human induced climate change, but as Geert Jan van Oldenborgh explains to Roland Pease, despite a herculean effort to analyse the event in just a week, the precise mechanism to cause such an extreme and sudden event is so far bewildering climate modellers, exceeding even worst expectations. Looking to the skies, Rosita Kokotanekova of the European Southern Observatory and colleagues have been getting excited about the discovery of a comet maybe twice as large as any observed before. Being so big, it has been spotted much further out from the sun and – if the best telescopes can be convinced to join the fun – will provide astronomers a chance to observe the core of the comet before the solar heat induces a gaseous coma to form as it nears the point in its orbit closest to the sun. It will be around for the next decade before continuing its several million year journey around our mutual star.But it won’t get

The Natural History Museum in London holds a massive collection of insects. It asked researchers at the Diamond light source, a facility near Oxford, to develop a high throughput X-ray microscope to take 3D scans of them all. Roland Pease has been to see the new technology in action.Many people seeking compensation for the impacts of climate change are turning to the law courts. Successes so far have been few. Oxford University’s Friederike Otto, who specialises in connecting weather extremes to the greenhouse effect, has just published a paper looking at the challenge in bringing successful climate lawsuits. Spacecraft will be returning to Venus in the next decade with the recent approval of two NASA missions to the planet, and one from the European Space Agency, ESA. Philippa Mason of Imperial College is a planetary geologist on that mission, Envision. She plans to use radar to peer through that dense and interesting atmosphere to follow up evidence of volcanic activity and tectonics on the surface beneath.

This week Jesse Bloom of Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research has published an account of some DNA sequence data he located in an internet archive, despite it having been removed from the US NIH’s Sequence Read Archive. He tells Roland Pease of its significance to our understanding of the beginning of the Covid pandemic, but also, of more general interest, to what it might tell scientists about the full availability of relevant virological evidence.Elsewhere, Elena Zavala of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has been using new techniques for sequencing tiny fragments of mitochondrial DNA found in layers of mud to trace a long narrative of different evolutionary species of human and animal and their changing fortunes. As she describes in a paper published in Nature, sediments from different depths of the floor of the famous Denisova cave tell a long story of different humans (Denisovan and Neanderthal), bears, hyenas and other animals living there over different periods in

Nasa scientists have observed that the Earth’s energy imbalance has doubled in just 15 years. As greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations have risen, so too has the difference between the total amount of energy being absorbed from the sun, and the total amount being reradiated back into space. Meanwhile, as we all heat up, scientists at the LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory have managed to do something very cool with their mirrors. Such is the precision with which the detectors have been engineered, they have managed to effectively reduce the temperature of one of the big 10kg reflectors to such an extent that it betrays its quantum state, as if it were simply one big subatomic particle. So what? Roland Pease finds out. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield(Photo: Giant sun in the horizon. Credit: Getty Images)

Dr. Clare Jolly and colleagues have been looking at how the first of the major covid variants – alpha - evolved to be more transmissible. Whilst a lot of attention has been on the spike binding areas of the virus and the effectiveness of antibodies from either vaccine or prior infection, their preprint paper this week reports how the virus evolved an ability to inhibit our bodies innate virus response once it has infected a cell.Prof Dan Shugar and colleagues have been studying the conditions that led to the tragic rock and ice avalanche in February in Chamoli, Uttarakhand. 27 million cubic meters of rock and ice broke off the steep mountainside and plummeted almost 2km down into the valleys below. Using satellite, seismic and video data the scientists have investigated the sequence of events that led to the tragic deaths of 204 people in the floods that followed. It was a thankfully rare combination of geography and geology and events, but highlights the care that should be taken when building the growing n

Researchers map where the riskiest areas are for viruses to jump from bats into humans. Also, synthetic bacteria with unnatural DNA, and the origin of the humble watermelon.David Hayman of Massey University in NZ and colleagues have published in the journal Nature Food a study highlighting areas of the world where zoonotic transmission of coronaviruses are most likely to occur between humans and bats of the type most suspected of being the origin of the current SARS CoV2 virus. There are a lot of hotspots combining fragmented forest, livestock farming, human habitation, and populations of horseshoe bats. It is, as he says, just part of the evidence suggesting a natural origin in the areas of northern south-east Asia and southern China.Jason Chin, Wes Robertson and team at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology have been tinkering with their work on synthetic organisms. By rewriting the dictionary of DNA itself, their new molecular alphabet is able to encode far more elaborate and innovative functions than even n

The latest Nyiragongo eruption was not entirely unexpected, the volcano’s lava lake inside the crater had been building up for years. Local volcanologists say it was only a matter of time before an eruption occurred. The big concern was where the flank of the volcano would be breached as the city of Goma rests under the volcano and there are potential fissures even within the town. However there are still questions over the effectiveness of seismic monitoring in the area, North Kivu. The Goma observatory has been unable to carry out this work due to a lack of funding. And monitoring is further complicated by the region’s long running civil war, with rebel groups often camped around the volcano. We hear from Dario Tadesco and Cindy Ebinger. Who have both been monitoring developments. Cyclone Yass was the second Cyclone to hit India within a week. Are these events becoming more common and are they related to rises in global temperatures? Climatologist Roxy Koll has been monitoring the situation. Greenland’s

A brain-computer interface allows a severely paralysed patient not only to move and use a robotic arm, but also to feel the sensations as the mechanical hand clasps objects . We hear from Jennifer Collinger at Pittsburgh University’s Rehab Neural Engineering Labs. And Nathan Copeland, who has been controlling the robotic arm with his thoughts via a series of brain implants. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina tells us about the development of a multi-component vaccine that would be effective not just against the current coronavirus outbreak and its variants, but also future outbreaks from SARS-like coronaviruses that we don’t even know about yet. Blood clots, thromboses, have been a problem for a small number of people following Covid vaccination Paul Knöbl, and a team of medics in Vienna have worked out the link between vaccination and clot development. They now have a method to treat such clots – so they should not be fatal. And how did fungi and plants come to live together? Symbiotic rela

We wouldn’t drink dirty water so why do we put up with polluted air? Researchers are calling for a major rethink on our attitude to air quality. Professor Lidia Morawska, from the Queensland University of Technology, says attention to air quality during the Covid pandemic has shown how levels of airborne disease can be reduced. Sam Wilson from the UK Medical Research Council, University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research has been investigating genetic mechanisms associated with susceptibility to Covid infection. His team has identified a molecule that detects SARS-COV-2 when it starts to replicate in our cells. However, not all humans have this protective mechanism, which may help explain why some people become very ill with Covid and others have little if any symptoms.Many Europeans lack this protective molecule, whereas the vast majority of Africans have it. The difference can be seen in cell cultures. However, the lack of diversity in the cells used in experiments worldwide can be a serious problem wh

Analysis of the 78,0000-year-old fossil of a Kenyan boy reveals he was likely buried with care and attention, the body wrapped and laid to rest supported on a pillow. Maria Martinon-Torres, of the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, and a team from Kenya and Germany used techniques from paleontology and forensic science to reveal his story from the fragile remains.A promising malaria vaccine is to enter trials which could lead to it being used globally to vaccinate children. Merheen Datoo, Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, explains malaria vaccines have been in development for 100 years. Research from these helped covid vaccine development and the success of covid vaccines may now help to speed up the rollout of malaria vaccines.Covid vaccines may also help to treat those who have symptoms of long covid – a range of immune system issues that develop sometimes months after the initial infection. Yale University immunologist Akiko Kawasaki is embarking on a research project to ass

When Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins – who passed away this week – looked down on the earth from lunar orbit during those days in 1969, he saw more ice and a smaller liquid ocean than you would see today. Of the 200,000 glaciers outside of the polar and Greenland ice sheets, their melting in the last two decades accounts for about a fifth of the sea level rise we are also seeing. Thus according to a paper published this week in the journal nature by, amongst others Bob McNabb of Ulster University who describes to Roland how and why these numbers are more certain than others before. As fellow earth observation expert Anna Hogg adds, the work synthesises years of data from almost half a million images of glaciers taken from space, and provides our best handle yet on our accelerating loss of this finite and dwindling natural feature.Researchers at Kew in the UK and in Sierra Leone have rediscovered a species of coffee plant once thought lost. As Marnie Chesterton reports, climate change threatens many coffee

As Covid cases surge almost beyond belief in India, how much is to do with social distancing, and how much to do with the mutations to the original virus?Ramanan Laxminarayan talks to Roland from Delhi about ways in which the huge second wave could and could not have been predicted and avoided. Suggestions of the latest variant to make the headlines, B1.617, have got virologists such as Ravindra Gupta working hard to identify the clinical significance of the latest combinations of mutations.In the journal Science, Stephen Chanock of the US Cancer program reports work with colleagues in Ukraine looking at the long footprint of radiation dosing from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 35 years ago this week. In the first of two papers, they find a definite footprint of radiation damage accounting for the many sad cases of thyroid cancer in people alive in the region at the time. But in another study, they looked at whether any higher level of mutations could be detected in the germlines of children conceived subseq

Two weeks ago several G7 leaders called for an international treaty on Pandemic Preparedness for the future. This week 175 prominent leaders called for lifting the IP on vaccine design. And former UK PM Gordon Brown called on the G7 to finance vaccines for the world in the next two months. But are there technical difficulties that limit the pace of manufacture? Anthony McDonnell is an economist at think tank Centre for Global Development who has been looking at the problem since last year. He suggests, amongst other things, one limit is the human expertise in manufacturing these brand-new technologies, with another being a level of vaccine nationalism that is seeing a lack of exports of components involved in manufacture.Professor Trudie Lang heads the University of Oxford’s Global Health Network, and looks at health research across the world. She says in most countries there is no lack of public health or infrastructure potential for rolling out the vaccines, if only the supply existed. The volcano that er

On Wednesday the EU’s EMA and UK’s JCVI announced a suspected correlation between vaccination and an extremely rare type of blood clot. Prof Sabine Eichinger is a co-author of a new paper suggesting a link with vaccination or the immune response to Covid vaccination and suggests the name VIPIT for the condition. One of her patients died at the end of February having presented with a rare combination of symptoms – blood clots and a low blood platelet count. Sabine tells Roland the dots they have managed to join in the story so far.Scientists at Fermilab in the USA posted four papers and announced an exciting development in particle physics that might lift the curtain on science beyond the Standard Model. Their measurement of something known as g-2 (“gee minus two”, just fyi), by measuring with phenomenal accuracy the magnetic properties of muons flying round in circles confirms a 20-year old attempt at a similar value by colleagues at Brookhaven. At the time, it was breathtaking but suspicious. Muons, rather l

After last year’s first wave of covid-19 in the UK, individuals who had been discharged after hospitalisation suffered higher rates of coronary and respiratory disorders, and even diabetes subsequently over 140 days. As Dr Ami Banerjee of University College London explains, out of 48,000 cases, patients who had had acute covid-19 were four times more likely to be readmitted and 8 times more likely to die. Ami’s team suggests in their paper published in the British Medical Journal that diagnosis, treatment and prevention of post-covid syndrome needs an integrated approach.In France, researcher Xavier Montagutelli describes how his team has observed that unlike the original virus, some of the newer Variants of Concern can infect mice in laboratories. They do not show serious illness, but nevertheless host the virus in their lungs. Whilst infection is unlikely in natural environments and not yet observed in the wild, it does show how the viral variants can extend the host range, perhaps leading to more opportuni