In this Review, Suhre, McCarthy and Schwenk describe how combining genetics with plasma proteomics is providing notable insights into human disease. As changes in the circulating proteome are often an intermediate molecular readout between a genetic variant and its organismal effect, proteomics can enable a deeper understanding of disease mechanisms, clinical biomarkers and therapeutic opportunities.
In a landmark study, scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have mapped the immense envelope of gas, called a halo, surrounding the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor. Scientists were surprised to find that this tenuous, nearly invisible halo of diffuse plasma extends 1.3 million light-years from the galaxy—about halfway to our Milky Way—and as far as 2 million light-years in some directions. This means that Andromeda’s halo is already bumping into the halo of our own galaxy.
They also found that the halo has a layered structure, with two main nested and distinct shells of gas. This is the most comprehensive study of a halo surrounding a galaxy.
“Understanding the huge halos of gas surrounding galaxies is immensely important,” explained co-investigator Samantha Berek of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “This reservoir of gas contains fuel for future star formation within the galaxy, as well as outflows from events such as supernovae. It’s full of clues regarding the past and future evolution of the galaxy, and we’re finally able to study it in great detail in our closest galactic neighbor.”
Both shocking and intriguing for the possibilities of gynogenesis reproduction in which sperm is used from one creature to fertilize an egg, but its DNA is ignored.
A team of researchers working at Hungary’s National Agricultural Research and Innovation Centre, Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture, has accidentally bred a new kind of fish—dubbed the sturddlefish by some observers, it is a cross between an American Paddlefish and a Russian Sturgeon. In their paper published in the journal Genes, the group describes accidentally breeding the fish and what they learned by doing so.
In the past, scientists and others have bred animals from different species for various reasons, from research to utility—mules (crossed between donkeys and horses) are considered to have beneficial traits from both animals, and ligers (a cross between lions and tigers) have helped researchers understand their respective genetic backgrounds. In this new effort, the researchers claim that they were not trying to create a new type of fish, they were instead attempting to apply gynogenesis (a type of reproduction in which sperm is used from one creature to fertilize an egg, but its DNA is ignored) using American paddlefish and Russian sturgeon. To their surprise, the eggs produced fish that grew to adults.
In studying the hundreds of offspring produced, which some on the internet have named sturddlefish, the researchers found that they fell into one of three main categories: those that looked mostly like their mothers, those that looked mostly like their fathers and those that inherited features of both parents.
One of, if not the oldest visible form of life, to which we owe much of our original Oxygen rich environment, these Stromatolites are under threat.
Agriculture has threatened an area holding an exceptional array of microbes.
The more you rely on unaccountable, opaque, and closed source epistemic vaccines, the more you will end up with a supercult. I’m personally guaranteeing it.
Final warning. This is military-grade techniques being applied to American citizens and if you don’t see a problem with it, you will when we start going after your academics, journalists, intellectuals, scientists, and peers with the same techniques. And you can fucking bet we will.
Coinbase-led Rosetta, an open-source set of tools to help developers integrate other blockchains into their services, just got a new signup: Neo, a blockchain platform that is itself focused on interoperability.
Rosetta, which launched on June 17, is a standardization tool to make it easier for blockchains to speak to each other. Each blockchain is different, making it difficult and time-consuming for crypto project developers to integrate other blockchains.
“The process requires careful analysis of the unique aspects of each blockchain and extensive communication with its developers to understand the best strategies to deploy nodes, recognize deposits, and broadcast transactions,” wrote Neo in a blog post today. “Project developers spend countless hours answering similar support questions for each team integrating their blockchain, rather than spending time working on their blockchain.”
Russia is holding its largest naval drills in the Pacific in recent memory as the U.S. Navy’s big RIMPAC wargames are underway.
Big initiatives to understand the workings of the brain
Neuroscience has a data problem. In our efforts to understand the brain researchers are generating ever greater amounts of data. The problem is, how can they gain meaning from it?
A recent study, that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to produce the most detailed map to date of the human cortex, looked at data from 210 peoples’ brains. The researchers estimated that equated to 30 gigabytes of data per participant. Meaning over 6 terabytes of data were analyzed to form the map, and this was a study of a large section of cortex, not the whole brain.
