25 examples of popular science articles

In recent centuries, science has advanced by leaps and bounds.. New discoveries do not stop happening even today, and this occurs in many different fields and disciplines. However, these discoveries do not magically spread to the rest of the population.

For this, it is necessary that someone make the information about the results of scientific research reach the public as a whole, something that can be achieved by publishing articles informative. These articles have the function of bringing science closer to the majority of the population, with a language understandable to laymen in the matters on which they deal. They can be of multiple subjects and reach the whole population in different ways.

In order to recognize them more easily, throughout this article we are going to see several examples of popular science articles, with all its typical characteristics.

• Related article: "Didactic transposition: characteristics of this teaching process"

What is an example of a popular science article?

Before entering to visualize different examples of popular articles, it is relevant to comment on what we refer to with this type of article. We understand by popular science article that written or written that part of the knowledge obtained by one or various research teams to generate a document in which the concepts and results obtained by these are explained in a pleasant and understandable way for the general population.

In this way, the popularization articles aim to bring the scientific discoveries made by specialists in different fields closer to the public as a whole. These are texts that claim to be objective and in which the authors do not state their opinion (although they may If there is any comment that reflects it, the text is based on objective data belonging to a investigation).

It is necessary to take into account that the informative article It is not an investigation per se nor is it intended to discover new data or information. rather, it only elaborates and explains in a clear and comprehensible way the data obtained by other authors, with the possibility of complementing them with those from other investigations. It is a way of disseminating information obtained through scientific methods, making it pass from social circles linked to research to popular culture.

So, the main characteristics of popular science articles (and that we will see later in the examples) are the following:

• The most relevant and striking information is always presented in the first lines of the article (this does not always happen in scientific articles).
• The focus is more on offering a narrative than on presenting specific data found in an investigation.
• The explanations are shorter than in scientific journal articles.
• The training of those who write popular science articles does not have to belong to the domain of study of what is being talked about.
• The use of scientific jargon is avoided unless the meaning of these technical terms can be explained in the article itself.

Examples of popular science articles

There are many informative articles that we can find. Without going any further, most of the articles visible on this same portal are. But in order to be able to visualize to a greater extent what a popular science article is, below we leave you with a sample of a total of 20 examples of popular science articles.

1. Being too hard on yourself can lead to OCD and general anxiety

New research has found that people with intense feelings of responsibility were susceptible to developing a Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). People with OCD feel tortured by recurring negative thoughts and develop some strategy to prevent it.

GAD is a very generalized type of anxiety that makes you worry about everything," he describes in the International Journal of Cognitive Therapy Associate Professor Yoshinori Sugiura of the University of hiroshima. Anxiety and OCD-like behaviors, such as checking to see if the door is lockedThey are common in the general population. However, it is the frequency and intensity of these behaviors or feelings that make the difference between a character trait and a character disorder.

"For example, using two audio recorders instead of one just in case one fails," explains Sugiura. Having two recorders will improve your work, but preparing many recorders will interfere with your work."

Three Types of "Inflated Liability"

The goal of this research team, consisting of Sugiura and University of Central Florida Associate Professor Brian Fisak, was to find a common cause for these disorders and simplify the theories behind them since they consider that in psychology each disorder that patients experience has several competing theories about its Causes.

Sugiura and Fisak first defined and explored "inflated liability." The team identified 3 types of inflated responsibility: 1) Responsibility to prevent or avoid danger and/or harm, 2) Sense of personal responsibility and guilt for negative results and 3) Responsibility to continue thinking about a problem.

The research group combined the tests used to study OCD and GAD, as there was no previous work comparing these tests in the same study. To establish whether inflated liability was a predictor of OCD or GAD, Sugiura and Fisak sent an online questionnaire to American college students.

Through this survey, they found that respondents who scored higher on questions about responsibility were more likely to exhibit behaviors resembling those of OCD patients or TAG. Personal responsibility and guilt and the responsibility to keep thinking had the strongest link to disorders.

Although the researchers clarify that this preliminary study is not representative of the general population due to the small scale and population bias (in mostly college women), the promising findings suggest that this format can be applied to a larger population and yield results Similar. Sugiura is studying how to reduce liability, and preliminary results are positive.

When asked for advice to reduce anxiety or obsessive behaviors, said: "A very quick or easy way is to realize that responsibility is behind your concern. I ask patients why they are so worried and they answer 'because I can't help but worry' but they don't spontaneously think 'because I feel responsibility'. Simply realizing it will dissociate thought from responsibility and behavior."

2. growing old with success

Aging is a process that accompanies living matter. Longevity is closely related to the control of the quality of cellular proteins. Slow cell growth could favor longevity by maintaining low translational levels, that allow a better quality control of the proteome.

According to the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, "aging" is defined as follows way: "Said of a material, a device or a machine: Losing its properties over time time". Already in the territory of life, with the passage of time living beings age. This aging can be studied at the cellular level, since individual cells also age by losing some of their properties. But what properties are lost with age? How does this loss occur? What is its cause?

From an evolutionary point of view, aging is considered a cumulative process of cell damage over time. This accumulation of damage can affect the number of divisions that a cell can carry out (replicative aging). and/or in the time that a cell can remain metabolically active while maintaining its ability to divide (aging chronological).

Aging is affected by two large groups of variables: cell genetics/biochemistry and the environmental conditions to which the cell is subjected. From the pioneering work on the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, numerous genes have been discovered that influence longevity in all organisms studied, from yeast to man. On the other hand, the environmental conditions surrounding the cell itself within each organism, in particular the amount of nutrients available, affects longevity. Already in 1935 McCay, Crowell and Maynard described that caloric restriction (without malnutrition) in rats increased their longevity.

Uniting these two variables that influence aging, nine distinctive hallmarks of the itself (“Hallmarks of aging”), ranging from shortening of telomeres to dysfunction mitochondrial. These nine hallmarks of aging meet the following criteria:

1. They manifest during normal aging
2. Its experimental aggravation accelerates aging
3. Its experimental improvement increases longevity

One of these hallmarks is the loss of the integrity of an organism's proteome (set of proteins). This loss of protein homeostasis or proteostasis meets the three criteria mentioned above: during aging there is a decline in protein quality cells, and a direct relationship between the worsening/improvement of this quality and the lesser/greater longevity of the organism, respectively. In addition, the presence of protein aggregates or misfolded proteins contributes to the appearance and development of age-associated diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The reduction in the amount of defective proteins favors proteostasis. There are numerous quality control mechanisms of the proteome, which mainly consist of guaranteeing the correct folding of proteins and, on the other hand, the removal of proteins incorrectly folded Involved in these mechanisms are heat shock proteins/chaperones that stabilize and fold proteins, and the mechanisms of protein degradation mediated by the proteasome and autophagy. There is evidence of how the improvement of these mechanisms of maintenance of proteostasis through genetic manipulation can delay aging in mammals.

In addition to these mechanisms, there is a fundamental cellular process that contributes to cellular proteostasis and therefore aging: protein translation or synthesis. The balance between functional, well-folded proteins and aggregated, misfolded proteins, etc., depends on a finely regulated balance between their production and their elimination. Therefore, it is logical to think that, if the defects in the elimination of defective proteins contribute to premature aging, an excess production of proteins would have an effect similar.

Conversely, a limitation in the production of proteins would avoid an overload of their degradation systems and, therefore, would contribute to an increase in longevity. This hypothesis has been confirmed in numerous examples in different organisms, in which the mutation or deletion of Translation factors or ribosomal proteins, due to their effects on translation, can extend cell longevity.

This translational reduction could be the cause of the increase in longevity due to caloric restriction. The lower contribution of nutrients would lead to a lower cellular energy level. The reduction in translational activity, which consumes large amounts of energy, would have two effects. beneficial: energy savings and stress reduction for the quality control systems of proteins. In summary, a greater translational activity would lead to a lower longevity and, conversely, a lower protein synthesis activity would favor a greater longevity. It seems paradoxical that what is one of the basic mechanisms of cell growth, in its most activated state, would have the negative effect of less longevity.

Much remains to be known about the role played by the components of the translational apparatus in aging. Although they are possibly only a part of the complex biochemical network that regulates this process, it is easy to venture that Investigation of translation and its components will give us more information about the way in which cells they get old

3. Imminent launch of the Parker Solar Probe, the space probe that will approach the Sun

On Saturday, August 11, 2018, starting at 9:33 a.m. (Spanish peninsular time), NASA will carry out the launch of the Parker Solar Probe space probe, which will come within 6.2 million kilometers of the Sun; no spacecraft has ever been so close to our star. The space probe will be launched on a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in the state of Florida (United States).

The Parker Solar Probe mission, named after solar astrophysicist Eugene Newman Parker (91 years old), "will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun," NASA explains in a press kit, mainly because it will investigate how energy and heat move through the Sun's atmosphere and what accelerates the solar wind and solar particles energetic. The space probe will fly directly through the solar corona (the plasma aura we see around the Sun during an eclipse). total solar), facing brutal heat and radiation and offering close and privileged observations of our star. The spacecraft and its instruments will be protected from the heat of the Sun by a shield made of carbon that will withstand extreme temperatures close to 1,371ºC.

The Sun, incredible as it may seem, represents about 99.8% of the mass of our Solar System. Despite the gravitational pull it exerts on planets, asteroids or comets, "it is surprisingly difficult reach the Sun," according to a statement released this week by NASA, it takes 55 times more energy to reach the Sun than to reach the Sun. Mars.

Our planet travels very fast around the Sun, at approximately 107,000 kilometers per hour, and the only way to reach our star is by canceling that lateral velocity with respect to the Sun. Apart from using a powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, the Parker Solar Probe space probe will use the gravity assist of Venus seven times and over almost seven years; these gravitational assists will place the ship in a record orbit with respect to the Sun, 6.2 million kilometers away, well established in the orbit of Mercury. The Parker Solar Probe will complete 24 orbits around the Sun and will encounter Venus seven times.

Observations you make directly inside the solar corona will be of great help to scientists. scientists: to understand why the sun's atmosphere is a few hundred times hotter than the surface solar. The mission will also provide unprecedented close-up observations of the solar wind, the constant leakage of solar material thrown from the Sun at millions of kilometers per hour.

The study of the fundamental processes that occur near the Sun will serve to better understand the space weather that "It can change the orbits of the satellites, shorten their lives or interfere with the on-board electronic system", highlights the POT. "Better understanding space weather also helps protect astronauts from dangerous exposure to radiation during potential manned space missions to the Moon and Mars," adds the space agency in the dossier press.

4. The relationship between stress and eating: "compulsive eaters"

Food has acquired multiple symbolic connotations, generally associating it with moments of celebration, pleasure, pleasure, satisfaction and well-being. Those people who do not have control over what they eat, do not make a choice about what they eat, or feel full satisfaction, are often identified as "compulsive eaters."

Although these are individuals who generally channel their anxiety and stress towards food, they also there is the other side of the coin, because there are people who when they are under pressure, anxious or depressed stop eating because the food disgusts them, which can cause them to lose weight in a few days.

"Either of the two extremes brings negative consequences for health, even more so if the person suffers from diabetes mellitus. On the one hand, overfeeding significantly raises blood glucose and, on the other, lack of food reduces (a condition known as hypoglycemia)”, says nutritionist and psychotherapist Luisa Maya Funes in an interview.

The specialist adds that the problem can lead equally to a lack of nutrients or obesity, the latter being important risk factor for developing serious cardiovascular conditions, joint discomfort, difficulty breathing and low The self steem.

However, The fact that stress influences the way you eat is a behavior learned throughout your life. "The human being, from his birth, is linked to his mother through food. Later, during the preschool stage, the boy begins to be rewarded with sweets if he behaves well, does his homework and puts away the toys, actions that cause the child to develop the idea that any need, support or reward has to be covered through food", explains Dr. Maya Funes.

Thus, food has acquired multiple symbolic connotations, generally associating it with moments of celebration, pleasure, pleasure, satisfaction and well-being. In this context, many people feel that they are not only nourishing their body, but are doing the same with their soul because this idea was instilled in them from an early age.

It is because of that when they face situations that cause them stress, anxiety or anguish, they compensate for such dissatisfaction by eating; Otherwise, someone who has not been taught to value food so much will obviously not resort to it as a source of satisfaction in times of stress.

"In these cases it is essential that the patient detect those factors that cause him stress and analyze his eating behavior, which is intended to manage to control both elements. If it is not possible for him to do it on his own, he should resort to psychological therapy that provides support, guide to manage this type of behavior, increase their self-esteem and raise awareness about their way of eat.

Subsequently, it will be necessary to channel your anxiety towards the practice of some activity that is pleasant and relaxing, such as exercising or attending painting or photography classes," said Dr. Maya Funes.

Finally, those affected who have managed to manage stress are not exempt from suffering relapses, but it is essential to understand that this is part of of the adaptation process that, in addition, will allow them to easily recognize moments of crisis in order to control them as soon as possible.

5. They propose using molecular "cages" to destroy cancer cells selectively

A study led by scientists from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) has proposed the use of Molecular 'cages' (made up of pseudopeptides) to selectively kill cancer cells in microenvironments acids. The work, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, focuses on the pH of the tumor environment, which could be used as a selective parameter between healthy cells and malignant cells. The results could help in the design of cancer treatments.

One of the characteristics of many tumors is that, due to the metabolism of cancer cells, the environment around solid tumors has an acidic pH. This gives these cells special characteristics and makes them more resistant and capable of migrating to other areas of the body (a process known as metastasis).

“In this study we have prepared a family of molecules derived from amino acids with a three-dimensional structure in cage-shaped and that, when they are in acidic media, encapsulate a chloride inside them in a very efficient. In addition, they are capable of transporting chloride through lipid bilayers, this transport also being more efficient when there is a pH gradient with an acidic environment", explains CSIC researcher Ignacio Alfonso, from the Institute of Advanced Chemistry in Catalonia.

The researchers have obtained these results from, first, the use of different spectroscopic techniques (electrochemistry, nuclear magnetic resonance and fluorescence) in simple artificial experimental models, such as micelles and vesicles. They then showed that this concept could be applied to living systems, since transport across the membrane cell hydrochloric acid produces adverse effects on cells, even causing their death through different mechanisms.

Lastly, they verified in human lung adenocarcinoma cells that one of the molecular 'cages' was toxic to cells depending on the surrounding pH. “The cage was five times more toxic if it was found with an acidic pH, similar to that found in the environment of solid tumors, than with a normal pH of normal cells. That is, there is a range of concentrations in which the cage would be innocuous for cells at pH 7.5, healthy cells, but toxic for those cells that are in a slightly acidic pH, such as the microenvironment of a solid tumor”, adds Alfonso.

“This opens the possibility of expanding the use of anionophores (negatively charged ion transporters) similar to those used in cancer chemotherapy, using pH as a selectivity parameter between cancerous and healthy cells", concludes the investigator.

6. Discovered by chance a new species of dinosaur in South Africa

A new species of dinosaur has been discovered by chance by a PhD student at the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa, after being misidentified for more than 30 years.

The team from this institution led by Kimberley Chapelle has recognized that the fossil not only belonged to a new species of sauropodomorph, long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs, but to a genus entirely new.

The specimen has been renamed Ngwevu Intlokowhich means "grey skull" in the Xhosa language, chosen to honor South African heritage. It has been described in the academic journal PeerJ.

30 years of deception

Professor Paul Barrett, Chapelle's Supervisor at the UK Natural History Museum has explained the origin of the discovery: "This is a new dinosaur that has been hiding in full view. The specimen has been in the collections in Johannesburg for about 30 years, and many other scientists have already examined it. But everyone thought it was just a rare example of Massospondylus."

The Massospondylus was one of the first predominant dinosaurs at the beginning of the Jurassic period. Regularly found throughout southern Africa, these reptiles belonged to a group called sauropodomorphs and finally they gave rise to the sauropods, a characteristic group for their long necks and enormous legs, like the famous Diplodocus. In the wake of the find, researchers have begun to take a closer look at many of the putative Massospondylus specimens, believing that there is much more variation than previously thought.

New family member

Chapelle has also pointed out why the team was able to confirm that this specimen was a new species: "To make sure that a fossil belongs to a new species, it is crucial to rule out the possibility that it is a younger or older version of an already existing species. existing. This is a difficult task to achieve with fossils because it is rare to have a complete set of fossils for a single species. Fortunately, the Massospondylus is the most common South African dinosaur, so we have found specimens ranging from embryos to adults. Based on this, we were able to rule out age as a possible explanation for the differences we observed in the specimen now named Ngwevu intloko."

the new dinosaur has been described from a single fairly complete specimen with a remarkably well-preserved skull. The new dinosaur was bipedal with a fairly thick body, a long, thin neck, and a small, square head. It would have measured three meters from the tip of its snout to the end of its tail and was probably omnivorous, feeding on both plants and small animals.

The findings will help scientists better understand the transition between the Triassic and Jurassic periods, some 200 million years ago. Known as a time of mass extinction, the latest research seems to indicate that more complex ecosystems flourished in the Jurassic earlier than previously thought.

7. They discover a new dwarf 'firefly shark' that glows in the dark

A team of US scientists have identified a new species of dwarf shark, which has been called the 'American dwarf shark' ('Molisquama Mississippiensis'). This new creature is thus added to the already 465 identified sharks. This animal measures only five and a half inches (about 14 centimeters) and was found in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. "In the history of fisheries science, only two types of dwarf shark have ever been caught," said Mark Grace, one of the researchers involved in the finding, in statements collected by Tulane University itself, to emphasize the importance of the finding.

The only recorded similar antecedent was a small mako captured in the Eastern Pacific Ocean in 1979 and found in the Zoological Museum of Saint Petersburg (Russia). “These are two different species, each from different oceans. And both extremely rare”, have pointed out those responsible for the study.

Henri Bart, a researcher and director of the Biodiversity Institute at Tulane University, has said the discovery highlights that there is much to know about the Gulf of Mexico, "especially from the deepest aquatic zone" as well as "the new species that remain to be discovered".

How is?

The scientists of the study, as we say, have found notable differences with the previous 'firefly shark', since It has fewer vertebrae and numerous photophores (light-emitting organs that are seen as luminous dots on the skin of animals). animals). Both specimens have small bags on each side and near the gills that are responsible for producing the fluid that allows them to glow in the dark.

Bioluminescence is not unique to this species, since it fulfills a large number of functions: fireflies, for example, use it to find a mate, but many fish use it to attract their prey and fish for it. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which works jointly with the aforementioned university, estimates that around 90% of animals that live in open water are bioluminescent, although research on deep-sea creatures is very scarce, as reported by CNN.

The discovery

This new small shark was collected in 2010 when the ship 'Pisces', dependent on NOAA, studied the feeding of the sperm whale. However, they did not notice the finding until three years later, while the collected samples were being examined. The scientist asked Tulane University to archive the specimen in their fish collection, and soon after, they undertook a new study to find out what kind of organism it was.

Shark identification involved examining and photographing the external features of the captured animal with a dissecting microscope, as well as studying radiographic images (X-rays) and high-resolution computed tomography resolution. The most sophisticated images of the shark's internal features were taken at the European Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, which uses the most intense source of light generated by synchrotrons (a type of particle accelerator) in the world, to produce X-rays 100 billion times brighter than the X-rays used in hospitals.

8. They discover a new sensory organ for pain

Pain is a common cause of suffering that results in a substantial cost to society. One in five people in the world experience constant pain for one reason or another, driving the ongoing need to find new pain relievers. Despite this, pain sensitivity is also necessary for survival and it has a protective function: its function is to provoke the reflex reactions that prevent us from harming ourselves, such as instinctively and automatically moving our hand away when we approach it to a flame or cut ourselves with an object sharp.

Until now it was known that the perception of a pain signal was associated with the existence of neurons specialized in receiving pain called nociceptors. Now, a group of researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have discovered a new sensory organ that can detect painful mechanical damage. The results of the research are collected in the article entitled "Specialized cutaneous Schwann cells initiate pain sensation" published this week in the journal Science.

The body in question would be made up of a group of glial cells with multiple long bumps that collectively form a mesh-like organ within the skin. The so-called glial cells are part of the nervous tissue and by complementing the neurons, while giving them support, they are capable of perceiving environmental changes.

The study describes this newly discovered organ, how it is organized along with the pain-sensitive nerves in the skin; and how activation of the organ produces electrical impulses in the nervous system that motivate reflex reactions and the experience of pain. The cells that make up the organ are very sensitive to mechanical stimuli, which explains how they can participate in pinprick and pressure detection. Furthermore, in their experiments, the researchers also blocked the organ and saw a decreased ability to feel pain.

"Our study shows that pain sensitivity occurs not only in nerve fibers in the skin, but also in this newly discovered pain-sensitive organ. The discovery changes our understanding of the cellular mechanisms of physical sensation and may be important in understanding pain. chronic," explains Patrik Ernfors, professor at the Karolinska Institutet's Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics and lead author of the study.

Until now it had been thought that pain was initiated exclusively by the activation of free nerve endings. on the skin. In contrast to this paradigm, the discovery of this organ could open the door to a completely different way of understanding how human beings perceive external stimuli. in general, and pain in particular, which could also have a great impact on the development of new pain relievers that could substantially improve the lives of millions of people in the world. world.

9. The WHO issued the list of the most dangerous bacteria in the world

The World Health Organization said Monday that new drugs must be urgently developed to combat 12 families of bacteria, which he considered "priority pathogens" and one of the greatest threats to human health. The United Nations health agency said many microbes have already turned into deadly superbugs that are resistant to many antibiotics.

Bacteria "have abilities to find new ways to resist treatment," the WHO said, and also can pass on genetic material that prevents other bacteria from responding to drugs. Governments need to invest in research and development to find new drugs at time, because market forces cannot be relied on to combat microbes, she added.

"Antibiotic resistance is growing and we are running out of treatment options," said Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director general for health systems and innovation. "If we leave market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be there on time," she added.

In recent decades, drug-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or Clostridium difficile, have become a global health threat, while superbug strains of infections like tuberculosis and gonorrhea are now untreatable.

Priority pathogens

The list of "priority pathogens" published by the WHO has three categories - critical, high and medium - according to the urgency with which the new antibiotics are needed. The critical group includes bacteria that pose a particular threat in hospitals, nursing homes, and other care settings. Next the complete list:

Priority 1: CRITICAL

• Acinetobacter baumannii, resistant to carbapenems
• Pseudomonas aeruginosa, resistant to carbapenems
• Enterobacteriaceae, resistant to carbapenems, ESBL producers

Priority 2: HIGH

• Enterococcus faecium, resistant to vancomycin
• Staphylococcus aureus, resistant to methicillin, with intermediate susceptibility and resistance to vancomycin
• Helicobacter pylori, resistant to clarithromycin
• Campylobacter spp., resistant to fluoroquinolones
• Salmonellae, resistant to fluoroquinolones
• Neisseria gonorrhoeae, cephalosporin resistant, fluoroquinolone resistant

Priority 3: MEDIUM

• Streptococcus pneumoniae, penicillin insensitive
• Haemophilus influenzae, resistant to ampicillin
• Shigella spp., resistant to fluoroquinolones

10. Neanderthal genes have influenced brain development

The shape of the skull and brain is one of the characteristics of the modern human being Homo sapiens sapiens compared to other human species. An international team of scientists, led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany) has carried out a study on the morphology human cranial image focused on our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals, to better understand the biological basis of the endocranial form of humans modern.

According to Amanda Tilot, from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and co-author of the work published in Current Biology, they set out to "try to identify possible genes and biological characteristics related to the spherical shape of the brain” and discovered small variations in the endocranial shape that surely respond to changes in the volume and connectivity of certain brain areas, according to Philipp Gunz, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and another of the authors of the study.

The expert researchers started from the idea that modern humans with European ancestry possess rare fragments of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes as a result of crossbreeding between the two species. After analyzing the cranial shape, they identified stretches of Neanderthal DNA in a large sample of humans. modern technologies, which they combined with magnetic resonance imaging and the genetic information of some 4,500 people. With all these data, the scientists were able to detect differences in endocranial shape between Neanderthal fossils and modern human skulls. This contrast allowed them to assess head shape in thousands of brain MRIs of living people.

Furthermore, sequenced genomes of ancient Neanderthal DNA also allowed them to identify Neanderthal DNA fragments in modern humans on chromosomes 1 and 18, related to a cranial shape less round.

These fragments contained two genes already linked to brain development: UBR4, involved in the generation of neurons; and PHLPP1, related to the development of myelin insulation – a substance that protects the axons of certain nerve cells and that accelerates the transmission of the nerve impulse. “We know from other studies that complete disruption of UBR4 or PHLPP1 can have important consequences. for brain development," explains Simon Fisher, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

In his work, the experts found that, in carriers of the relevant Neanderthal fragment, the UBR4 gene is slightly reduced in the putamen, the structure located in the center of the brain that, together with the caudate nucleus, forms the striatum nucleus, and which is part of a network of brain structures called the basal ganglia.

In the case of carriers of the Neanderthal PHLPP1 fragment, "gene expression is slightly higher in the cerebellum, which will likely have a damping effect on cerebellar myelination," according to Fisher. Both regions of the brain – the putamen and the cerebellum – are, according to scientists, key to movement. "These regions receive direct information from the motor cortex and participate in the preparation, learning, and sensorimotor coordination of movements," says Gunz, who adds that the basal ganglia also contribute to various cognitive functions in memory, attention, planning, skill learning, and speech and language development.

All of these Neanderthal variants result in small changes in gene activity and cause the brain shape of certain people to be less spherical. The researchers conclude that the consequences of transporting these rare Neanderthal fragments are subtle and only detectable in a very large sample.

11. flies learn too

When experimental psychologists propose experiments with animals, they must be understood as an exercise in analogy, intended to to obtain knowledge that can be generalized to the human being (otherwise it would be difficult to justify the practical utility of the themselves).

For this reason, the animals chosen in this type of research must provide, in addition to easy handling and certain aptitudes to facilitate the process. experimental, an adequate psychic and physiological constitution that allows this transfer of information, from the animal subjects to the human being, the object of study real. Those chosen are usually mammals and birds, those considered "superior" among vertebrates (Although, from the point of view of a keen evolutionist like myself, this qualification couldn't be more unfortunate.) However, other species with very different characteristics could help us investigate the ins and outs of behavior. The undisputed star in genetics and biology laboratories, for example, is the famous "fly of the fruit", Drosophila Melanogaster, whose imposing name will probably be familiar to the reader.

The characteristics of this insect make it the best friend of the biologist researcher: its life cycle is very short. (they do not live more than a week in the wild), with which we can breed in a short time dozens of generations with hundreds of individuals; its genome is small (only 4 pairs of chromosomes, compared to the 23 of the human species) and for this reason it has been well studied (it was completely sequenced in the year 2000).

These properties make Drosophila the dream of every "Dr. Frankenstein" who wants to study how genetic mutations influence certain areas of life and behavior (we can isolate mutant strains, for example), and allow us to address phenomena such as learning from a genetic or biochemical approach with great freedom of action, something practically unthinkable today with other creatures more complex. There are currently many scientific teams working on this line with Drosophila flies. (In Spain, Antonio Prado Moreno and his collaborators from the University of Seville seem to be in the world vanguard).

The obvious counterpart is the pronounced evolutionary leap that separates the fly Drosophila from Homo sapiens. After all, the phylum of arthropods (to which insects belong) and our own, that of chordates, have evolved in independent ways. since the "explosion of life" in the Cambrian period, more than 550 million years ago, so any extrapolation from these studies must be taken with caution. caution. However, at the chemical and genetic level, the similarities are not negligible. It seems that by then the basic functioning of DNA and chromosome coding processes were already well established. established, because most Drosophila genes have their homologues in the mammalian genome and function in a very similar.

Now comes the big question: How are we going to investigate learning in creatures so strange to us? It is relatively easy to teach a laboratory rat to press a lever to obtain a little food, but this time the size scale and phylogenetic distance play into our against. It is certainly difficult for us to put ourselves in the place of a thing that lives under a chitinous exoskeleton and dies a few days after birth... It is precisely in these special situations where scientists show their ingenuity, and the truth it is that they have not lacked when it comes to proposing experimental learning situations for flies. Let's see a couple of examples, collected in an article by Hitier, Petit, and Prèat (2002):

To check the visual memory of flies, Dr. Martin Heisenberg devised an original system that we could call "flight simulator", and which I think is a fantastic example of how complicated situations can be resolved with great imagination. The fly in question is held by a fine copper wire connected to a sensor that can detect its twisting.

In this way, when the suspended fly flies in a certain direction, the twisting of the thread will give it away. Also, to give our little friend a sense of real movement, a panoramic screen around her will rotate to compensate for her changes in direction. Of course, who would have thought that such sophisticated devices would be needed to study an innocent fruit fly! Once the mosquito was placed in the "simulator", Heisenberg arranged two visual stimuli in positions in front of the subject, which consisted of the figure of a T, either upright or inverted (mouth below). In the training phase, every time the fly flew in the direction of one of the figures in particular, a lamp heated her abdomen producing an unpleasant sensation (it is a conditioning aversive).

After a series of trials in which the orientation towards the chosen figure was punished in this way, they passed to a test phase, exactly the same but without aversive stimuli, to check if the flies had learned their lesson. Thus it was found that the insects preferentially chose the direction that had not been associated with the discharge. Indeed, it seems that our buzzing companions are capable of associating a certain geometric figure with a danger, although after 24 hours without receiving new training they end up forgetting this association and fly indistinctly anywhere. address.

Another procedure, much more frequent in laboratories, is the so-called "fly school", and it helps us to discover the olfactory memory of these animals. Fruit flies, like other insects, base their entire social world and most of their communication on smell. Female moths spend the whole night spreading certain substances through the air. called pheromones that, when they reach the chemical receptors of the male, act as a nuptial call Irresistible. Other pheromones can be used to recognize members of their own species, mark the territory or point to food sources, so they act like the words of an unusual language chemical, capable of working wonders of social organization like the bee hives that intrigued Charles Darwin.

Therefore, it is to be expected that the performance of an insect in tasks that test its ability to work with smell will be more than efficient. Precisely to demonstrate this, the first "fly schools" were devised in the 1970s.

A "school of flies" is a much simpler construction than the previous example, and also it provides more robust conclusions by allowing the study of entire populations of insects at one time. It is only necessary to lock up a group of flies in a receptacle through which we circulate a current of air loaded with different odors, and whose walls are electrifiable at will of the experimenter (it seems that most students working with flies prefer aversive stimuli, for something will be). And now it's about matching a specific smell with the painful sensation of electric shock.

Once the conditioning trials have been completed, in the test phase the flies are allowed to fly freely between two rooms, each impregnated with one of the two odors. Most of them eventually settle in the odor chamber not associated with the discharge, demonstrating that learning has taken place.

But there is still more. Since we can work with populations of dozens of individuals at a time with this system, the "school of flies" procedure for olfactory conditioning is useful for putting tests the memory capacity of different mutant strains in which a certain gene has been inactivated, For example.

In this way, we can see if genetic and biochemical alterations influence in some way the learning and memorization process, by compare the proportion of mutant flies that stay in the wrong compartment of the "school" with that of those that do the same in the regular variety. With this procedure, "amnesic" varieties of Drosophila have been discovered, such as the dunce strain, described by Seymour Benzer in the seventy (Salomone, 2000) and that revealed important information about certain molecules necessary to learn and retain any association.

If the future of psychological and neurological research on learning inevitably lies in the study of genes and biomolecules (as many romantics fear), then these humble dipterans may represent a good opportunity to start the job. And for that they deserve our thanks. As minimum.

12. Bacteria on Mars: "Curiosity" brought stowaways to the red planet

If life is ever discovered on Mars, scientists are going to have a harder time knowing if it is Martian. Curiosity, the NASA rover that has been exploring the red planet for almost two years, was carrying stowaways. Samples of the vehicle taken before its launch have revealed the existence of dozens of bacteria on board. What there is no way to know is if they are still alive.

The risk of exporting terrestrial organisms on space missions has always concerned scientists and engineers. The construction of the different buildings is carried out under strict biological safety conditions and all the material is subjected to a harsh sterilization process.

Still, life is stubborn. In 2013 a new bacterium was discovered, the Tersicoccus phoenicis. And they identified it in only two places on the planet separated by thousands of kilometers. Where? Well, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and at the space base that the Europeans of ESA have in Kourou, in French Guiana. But the most relevant thing is that the microorganism appeared in their respective clean rooms, areas designed to avoid biological contamination.

Now, during the annual meeting of the American Association for Microbiology (ASM2014), a group of researchers has given know the results of the analyzes they carried out on some samples taken from the flight system and the thermal shield of the Curiosity. They found 65 different species of bacteria, most from the Bacillus genus.

The researchers subjected the 377 strains they found on the rover to every dogfight imaginable. They desiccated them, subjected them to extreme hot and cold temperatures, very high pH levels and, most deadly, high levels of ultraviolet radiation. 11% of the strains survived.

"When we embarked on these studies, nothing was known about the organisms in these samples," he told Nature News lead author of the research, University of Idaho microbiologist Stephanie Smith. She also acknowledges that there is no way to know if the bacteria have survived a space flight of more than eight months, the landing and the severe weather conditions on Mars.

But there are data that make it impossible to rule out the possibility that terrestrial bacteria or other microorganisms have reached Mars before humans. In addition to all the tests passed by those found on Curiosity, another team of researchers has verified that other terrestrial microorganisms can live in the adverse conditions of the planet red.

Also at the ASM2014 conference, microbiologists from the University of Arkansas (United States) have presented the results of their experiments with two species of methanogens, a microorganism of the Archaea domain, which does not need oxygen, organic nutrients or photosynthesis to live. It develops well in environments rich in carbon dioxide (the main component of the Martian atmosphere) that metabolize generating methane.

The researchers, collaborating with NASA, subjected the methanogenous archaea to the enormous thermal oscillation of Mars, whose temperature at its equator can go from 20º to -80º in the the same day. They verified that although they stopped their growth during the coldest hours, they reactivated their metabolism by softening them.

For scientists, it would be a disaster if terrestrial bacteria had reached Mars and pulled through. If the Curiosity or its successor that NASA sent in 2020 to take samples of the Martian surface found bacteria, it is no longer could announce in big headlines that there is life on Mars without taking into account the possibility of terrestrial contamination of the samples.

From an ecological point of view, exporting terrestrial life into space carries more risks than benefits. It is not known how terrestrial microorganisms could evolve in other environments or the impact they will have wherever they arrive. As Smith tells Nature: "We don't yet know if there really is a threat, but until we do, it's important to be careful."

13. Cells "reprogrammed" against diabetes

One of the goals of diabetes researchers is to get patients' pancreas back to working properly and producing the insulin they need to live. This is not an easy task, since all the strategies that have been tried to date in this regard, such as pancreatic islet transplantation, have not been successful. But this week, an investigation published in the journal 'Nature' and led by the Spanish Pedro L. Herrera from the University of Geneva (Switzerland), opens a path that, in the future, could contribute to solving the problem.

This group of scientists has managed to 'reprogram' cells of the human pancreas different from those that are normally responsible for the production of insulin so that they secrete the hormone. And she has tested the functionality of the strategy in diabetic mouse models.

"So far, what we have achieved is a proof of concept that it is possible to achieve cell identity changes in human pancreatic islets," explains Herrera, who has spent more than 20 years studying the developmental biology of the pancreas. "The goal is to be able to design a regenerative therapy that is capable of getting cells other than those that normally produce insulin to take over this task. But, if it is achieved, this will be in the very long term," warns the researcher.

Normally, the only cells capable of 'manufacturing' insulin are the beta cells, which are found inside the so-called pancreatic islets. Almost 10 years ago, however, Herrera's team verified, in non-diabetic mouse models, that if all the beta cells of In these animals, a phenomenon of cellular plasticity occurs and other cells present in the pancreatic islets, such as the alpha cells, assume their function.

The scientists then wanted to verify, on the one hand, What are the molecular mechanisms involved in this plasticity? and, secondly, to find out if this capacity for cell regeneration can also be reproduced in the human pancreas. To study the latter, they isolated two cell types that also exist in pancreatic islets -alpha and gamma- obtained from diabetic and healthy donors, and subjected them to a reprogramming procedure cell phone.

Using an adenovirus as a vector, they were able to overexpress in these cells two transcription factors that are typical of beta cells -called Pdx1 and MafA-. This manipulation caused the cells to start producing insulin. "They didn't become beta cells. They were alpha cells that had activated a fairly small number of beta cell genes, just over 200, and that they had the ability to produce insulin in response to an increase in glucose levels," says Herrera.

To test whether these cells were functional, the scientists transplanted them into mouse models that lacked insulin-producing cells. "And the result was that the mice were cured," stresses the researcher. After 6 months after the transplant, cells continue to secrete insulin.

On the other hand, Herrera's team also wanted to find out how the reprogrammed cells behaved against the body's defenses, Since type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder in which lymphocytes attack and destroy insulin-producing cells, the beta.

The experiment showed that reconverted cells had a less immunogenic profile, that is, "they may not be the target of the defenses of an organism with an autoimmune disorder."

"Our work is a conceptual proof of the plasticity of human pancreatic cells", remarks Herrera. "If we have a good understanding of how it is produced and are able to stimulate it, we will be able to develop an innovative cell regeneration therapy. But we are talking about a very long way, "she concludes.

14. Spanish scientists may have eliminated HIV from patients with stem cell transplants

Scientists from the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute in Barcelona and the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid have managed to six HIV-infected patients have cleared the virus from their blood and tissues after undergoing cell transplants mother. The investigation, published on Tuesday in the journal 'Annals of Internal Medicine', has confirmed that the six patients who received a stem cell transplantation have the virus undetectable in blood and tissues and even one of them does not even have antibodies, which indicates that HIV could have been eliminated from your body.

The patients maintain antiretroviral treatment, but the researchers believe that the origin of the stem cells - from the umbilical cord and bone marrow - as well as the time elapsed to achieve the complete replacement of the recipient cells by those of the donor - eighteen months in one of cases - could have contributed to a potential disappearance of HIV, which opens the door to designing new treatments to cure AIDS.

The IrsiCaixa researcher Maria Salgado, co-first author of the article, together with Mi Kwon, a hematologist at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital, explained that the reason that currently the drugs do not cure HIV infection is the viral reservoir, made up of cells infected by the virus that remain in a latent state and cannot be detected or destroyed by the system immune. This study has pointed to certain factors associated with stem cell transplantation that could contribute to the removal of this reservoir from the body. Until now, stem cell transplantation is exclusively recommended to treat severe hematological diseases.

The 'Berlin Patient'

The study has been based on the case of 'The Berlin Patient': Timothy Brown, a person with HIV who in 2008 underwent a stem cell transplant to treat leukaemia. The donor had a mutation called CCR5 Delta 32 that made his blood cells immune to HIV by preventing the virus from entering them. Brown stopped taking antiretroviral medication and today, 11 years later, the virus still does not appear in his blood, making him the only person in the world cured of HIV.

Since then, scientists investigate potential HIV eradication mechanisms associated with stem cell transplantation. To do this, the IciStem consortium created a unique cohort in the world of HIV-infected people who underwent a transplant to cure a hematological disease, with the ultimate goal of designing new cure strategies. "Our hypothesis was that, in addition to the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation, other mechanisms associated with transplantation influenced the eradication of HIV in Timothy Brown," Salgado said.

Two years from transplant

The study included six participants who had survived at least two years after receiving the transplant, and all donors lacked the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation in their cells. "We selected these cases because we wanted to focus on the other possible causes that could contribute to eliminating the virus," Mi Kwon detailed.

After transplantation, all participants maintained antiretroviral treatment and achieved remission of their haematological disease after withdrawal of immunosuppressive drugs. After various analyses, the researchers found that 5 of them had an undetectable reservoir in blood and tissues and that in the sixth viral antibodies had completely disappeared 7 years after transplantation.

According to Salgado, "this fact could be proof that HIV is no longer in her blood, but this can only be confirmed by stopping the treatment and checking whether the virus reappears or not."

The only participant with a detectable HIV reservoir received a cord blood transplant umbilical - the rest was from bone marrow - and it took 18 months to replace all its cells with cells from the donor. The next step will be to conduct a clinical trial., controlled by clinicians and researchers, to discontinue antiretroviral medication in some of these patients and give them new immunotherapies to check for viral rebound and confirm if the virus has been eradicated from the organism.

15. Scientists Investigate Nitric Oxide Bandages to Quickly Heal Diabetic Foot Ulcers

To heal the ulcers that develop on the feet of the diabetic patient, the body builds layers of new tissue pumped out by rust. nitric, for this reason, researchers from Michigan Technological University (United States) intend to create bandages loaded with nitric oxide that adjust their chemical release according to the conditions of the skin cells to decrease the healing time of these wounds.

In patients with diabetes, there is a decrease in the production of nitric oxide, which in turn lowers the healing power of skin cells. The study reveals that simply pumping nitric oxide is not necessarily better, so these new instruments should be personalized both for each patient and for each moment, according to the state in which the cells of the fur. Diabetic foot ulcers can take up to 150 days to heal, the biomedical engineering team wants to reduce the process to 21 days.

In order to do so, one first has to find out what happens to nitric oxide in skin cells, therefore, the evaluation of this substance in diabetic and normal conditions in human dermal fibroblast cells is the focus of the team, whose article has been published in 'Medical Sciences'. "Nitric oxide is a powerful healing chemical, but it's not heavy handed," according to the acting chair of the Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology, Megan Frost. At the moment, the team is analyzing the profiles of healthy and diabetic cells to "find a gentler way to restore wound function," he reports.

As the wound heals, three types of skin cells are involved. Macrophages are the first to respond, arriving within 24 hours of damage. Next come the fibroblasts, which help establish the extracellular matrix, which makes it possible for the next cells, the keratinocytes, to come in and do the rebuilding. "Wound healing is a complex, cell-mediated symphony of events that proceeds through a series of predictable and overlapping stages", Frost describes in his article in the magazine published by the study. "When any part of that orchestra is out of tune, the whole process falls apart," he argues, continuing with the metaphor.

Fibroblasts, which are not as well studied as macrophages in the healing process, are a key instrument and previous studies have shown that its late response in patients with diabetes can be a major factor in healing time.

The problem of nitric oxide and nitrite

This is the moment when nitric oxide intervenes, a kind of chemical metronome that makes the process have the correct rhythm. But flooding a wound with nitric oxide isn't a one-size-fits-all cure. "The old approach is to add nitric oxide and sit back and see if it works," Frost says, which is being discovering is that "it is not enough to apply and go, you have to be aware of the amount of nitric oxide that you are actually needs".

A big problem that Frost and his team are tackling is how nitric oxide is measured.. Current practice replaces the measurement of nitrite with nitric oxide, a "misleading instrument" for the doctor because nitrite is "a by-product without a time stamp." While stable nitrite is easier to measure, it alone cannot cure in real time like nitric oxide can. To resolve this controversy, Frost's lab built a nitric oxide measuring device.

Next Step: Collect Local Patient Samples

To build a custom healing nitric oxide bandage, the team plans to work together with Portage Health System, Michigan (United States) to collect cell samples from patients local.

By expanding their samples and applying the technology to real patients, the team You will continue to expand your database while deepening your knowledge of nitric oxide mechanisms.. As the team has reported, in a few years they plan to have a working prototype bandage. Instead, "patients with diabetes and foot ulcers will see a light at the end of the tunnel well before half a year," say the researchers, "the nitric oxide-releasing bandage could help heal these wounds in less than a month".

Diabetes in figures

Diabetes statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), International Diabetes Federation, article 'Foot Ulcers disease and its recurrence' from the 'New England Journal of Medicine' and 'Advanced biologic therapies for diabetic foot ulcers' in 'Archives of Dermatology' reveal the challenge facing researchers in this field, as it accounted for 1.5 million deaths worldwide in 2012.

Currently, 425 million people worldwide are living with diabetes., of which, 15 percent have foot ulcers and it takes between 90 and 150 days for these wounds to heal. Finally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 15 percent of Americans living with type II diabetes battle foot ulcers.

16. Video game addiction will be a disease from 2018

Video game addiction will officially be a disease starting this year. This has been recognized by the World Health Organization, which will include the disorder in its new Classification International Diseases (ICD-11), a compendium that has not been updated since 1992 and whose draft has come out these days in the light

The definitive guide will not be published for a few months, but some of its novelties have emerged, such as this addition, which has not been without controversy. According to their data, it is considered that there is an addiction to video games when there is "a behavior persistent or recurring game" -whether 'online' or 'offline'- that manifests itself through three signs.

The "lack of control over the frequency, duration, intensity, start, end and context of the activity" is the first of the conditions, which also include giving "increasing priority" to gambling over other vital activities and interests diaries. A marker of the disorder is also considered "continuation or increase in behavior despite the appearance of negative consequences".

The document expressly states that, for behavior to be considered pathological, there must be a severe pattern, which produces a "significant impairment in the personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other areas of functioning".

In addition, he adds the text, to make the diagnosis, generally the behavior and these indicated traits must occur for a period of at least 12 months, although the pathology can be considered earlier if all the established considerations are met and the symptoms are severe. "We must make it very clear that addiction is one thing and excessive use is quite another," says Celso Arango, Head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry service at the Gregorio Marañón University Hospital in Madrid.

Undoubtedly today Many adolescents spend a large part of their time playing video games., they spend more hours than are recommended in front of a screen, but if that does not affect their day to day, it does not interfere in his family and social life and does not affect his performance, it cannot be considered pathological behavior, Explain. "When a person has an addiction, he loses control, his whole life revolves around what he is addicted to," adds Arango. "The affected person becomes a slave who stops doing his usual activities and suffers deeply because, although he would like to stop that behavior, the reality is that he cannot do it," he stresses.

Against consideration as a disorder

The classification of video game addiction as a disorder has been surrounded by controversy. For years, specialists in Psychiatry and Psychology have debated the need to include this category in diagnostic manuals, although, in general and to date, opinions contrary to measure. In fact, the DSM-V, considered the Bible of Psychiatry and published in the US, did not include the disorder in its latest update.

"Field studies that had been carried out to assess the incorporation of this disorder had shown unsatisfactory results," comments Julio Bobes, president of the Spanish Society of Psychiatry, who does not know why the final decision to introduce the concept in the classification.

Celso Arango believes that the inclusion of pathology in the diagnostic manual it has more to do with the increase in the number of cases of this addiction than with the need for a new classification. In the unit that she directs, she points out, addiction to video games is already the second most frequent addiction among those they treat, behind that of cannabis.

a new addiction

"70 years ago there were no addicts to video games because they did not exist, but there were addicts and their behavior is the same. People who suffer from an addiction are hooked, they end up making their lives revolve around something, be it video games, cocaine, alcohol or slot machines," explains the specialist. In fact, he adds, "in general there are no specific therapies for each addiction," but rather they are all based on similar cognitive-behavioral treatments.

Just a year ago now, when it came to light that the WHO was looking at the possibility of adding addiction to video games to its catalog of diseases, a group of experts published an article harshly criticizing its inclusion. Among other things, they doubted the need to establish a new category and warned that this inclusion could favor overdiagnosis and stigmatization of video games.

17. They discover a world of life hidden in the depths of the Earth

Our planet is an awesome place. Full of life. Much more than we thought. Far below the scant surface spaces we inhabit, the planet is filled with an incredibly vast and deep "dark biosphere" of subterranean life forms. The identification of this hidden world has been thanks to the scientists of the Deep Carbon Observatory.

Hidden in this underground kingdom, some of the world's oldest organisms thrive in places where life shouldn't even exist, and thanks to this new work, an international team of experts has quantified this deep biosphere of the microbial world like never before. "Now, thanks to ultra-deep sampling, we know we can find them almost everywhere, although sampling has obviously reached only an infinitesimally small part of the deep biosphere," explains microbiologist Karen Lloyd of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

There's a good reason sampling remains in its early stages. In a preview of the results of an epic 10-year collaboration by more than 1,000 scientists, Lloyd and other Deep Carbon Observatory researchers estimate that the this hidden world of life under the surface of the Earth, occupies a volume of between 2-2,300 million cubic kilometers. This is almost twice the volume of all the world's oceans.

And like the oceans, the deep biosphere is a bountiful source of myriad life forms: a population numbering between 15 and 23,000. million tons of mass of carbon (which would represent about 245-385 times more than the equivalent mass of all humans on the surface of the earth). Land). The findings, which represent numerous studies conducted at hundreds of sites around the world, are based on analyzes of microbes taken from sediment samples from 2.5 kilometers below the seabed, and drilled from mines and surface wells more than 5 kilometers from depth.

Hidden at these depths, two forms of microbes (bacteria and archaea) dominate the deep biosphere and are estimated to account for 70% of all bacteria and archaea on Earth. As for how many types of organisms we are talking about... it is difficult to quantify. Scientists say that, for sure, there are millions of different types of organisms waiting to be discovered.

It's like finding a new reservoir of life on Earth

"Exploring deep underground is similar to exploring the Amazon rainforest," says microbiologist Mitch Sogin, of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. "There is life everywhere, and everywhere there is an amazing abundance of unexpected and unusual organisms."

These life forms are unusual not only in their appearance and habitat, but in the actual way they are found, with incredibly slow and long life cycles on almost geological time scales and, in the absence of light solar, subsist on low amounts of chemical energy.

This discovery not only furthers the idea that deep life could exist in other parts of the universe, but also challenges our definition of what life really is. In a sense, the deeper we go, the further back we go in time and evolutionary history. "Perhaps we are approaching a nexus where the oldest possible branching patterns could be accessible through deep investigation of life," Sogin concludes.

18. Spanish researchers discover a method to predict heart attacks 10 years before they occur

CIBERCV researchers at the Sant Pau Biomedical Research Institute and the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) have discovered a new biomarker, the sLRP1 receptor, which predicts well in advance the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in people who currently do not have any symptoms. This biomarker provides novel and complementary information to what is already known today. The study has recently been published in the journal «Atherosclerosis»,

sLRP1 is a biomarker that plays an important role in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis, which is the mechanism that explains the most serious heart diseases. Previous studies by the IIB-Sant Pau Lipids and Cardiovascular Pathology research group had already indicated that sLRP1 it was associated with an acceleration of the atherosclerosis process, with a greater accumulation of cholesterol and inflammation in the wall of the arteries, but this is the first evidence indicating that it also predicts the occurrence of clinical events such as myocardial infarction. "The question we wanted to answer was whether the determination of a new biomarker in blood (sLRP1) could predict cardiovascular risk at 10 years," explains Dr. de Gonzalo.

As Dr. Llorente Cortés points out, "this discovery confirms the relevance and applicability of sLRP1 in clinical practice for predict well in advance the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in people who currently do not have any symptoms. "For every one unit increase in sLRP1, the risk of heart disease increases by 40%," says Dr. Elosua. "This increase is independent of other risk factors such as cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes. Therefore, this biomarker provides novel and complementary information to what we already know today", adds Dr. Marrugat.

The study was carried out within the framework of the REGICOR study (Gerona Heart Registry) which has been following more than 11,000 people from the province of Gerona for more than 15 years.

19. They discover the head of a giant wolf from 40,000 years ago with the brain intact

Last summer, a man walking near the Tirekhtyakh River in the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia (a territory bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean) came across something surprising: the perfectly preserved head of a giant wolf, about 40 centimeters long, dated about 40,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene.

It is not the first time that permafrost (the permanently frozen layer of soil found in glacial regions such as the Siberian tundra) has thawed. awaits discoveries of this type, such as woolly mammoths, prehistoric worms or the recent discovery of a foal with liquid blood in its veins from 42,000 years ago years. But the wolf's head discovered in 2018 has a very particular characteristic: it seems to keep its brain intact.

The preliminary study of the head has been carried out by a Japanese team and a group of experts from the Academy of Sciences of the Sakha Republic. His DNA will later be analyzed at the Swedish Natural History Museum in Stockholm. The find has been revealed in the context of a scientific exhibition entitled The Mammoth (the mammoth), organized in Tokyo about frozen creatures from the Ice Age.

A head separated from the body

Albert Protopopov, from the Sakha Republic Academy of Sciences, has stated that it is a unique discovery since despite the fact that it is quite common to discover remains of wolves frozen in the permafrost - several pups were recently discovered - it is the first time that the remains of a wolf with such a large head and with all its tissues preserved (fur, fangs, skin and brain). In this way, its DNA can be compared with that of modern wolves to understand the evolution of the species and also to reconstruct its appearance. What the first studies have already revealed is that it is an adult wolf, which died when it was between two and four years old. But what is unknown is why only the head has appeared and how it was separated from the rest of the body.

Another of the research projects that are being developed is the analysis of a cave lion cub, which is believed to be a female that could have died shortly after birth. The animal, nicknamed Spartak, is about 40 centimeters long and weighs 800 grams. Its magnificent state of conservation also offers a unique opportunity to study and learn more about this species that inhabited Europe during the Ice Age.

20. They discover the lower threshold of the brain protein associated with Alzheimer's

Researchers from the Barcelonaßeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, have identified the lowest threshold at which amyloid beta begins to accumulate pathologically in the brain, one of the proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease.

The results of the study, led by doctors José Luis Molinuevo and Juan Domingo Gispert, have been published in the Alzheimer's Research and Therapy magazine and have been possible thanks to the data from the Alpha Study, promoted by La Caixa. 'The new value that we have established will make it possible to detect people who are in very early stages of accumulation abnormal amyloid protein, and offer them the opportunity to participate in prevention research programs to reduce your risk of developing dementia in the future', explained Gispert, head of the BBRC Neuroimaging group.

Up to 20 years before the onset of symptoms

The accumulation in the brain of amyloid beta protein plaques is one of the most characteristic neurodegenerative lesions of the Alzheimer's. these plates they can begin to accumulate up to 20 years before the onset of clinical symptoms of the disease, due to different risk factors such as age, genetics, diet, exercise, cardiovascular health and cognitive activity, among others. Having these plaques in the brain does not necessarily imply developing dementia, but it does exponentially increase the risk of entering the clinical phase of Alzheimer's disease.

To measure the levels of beta amyloid protein in the brain, two techniques are used: Amyloid Positron Emission Tomography (PET), which is a technique neuroimaging that can use up to three types of tracers to detect protein accumulation, and analysis of cerebrospinal fluid obtained by puncture lumbar.

In this pioneering study in the world, BBRC researchers have compared the results obtained in PET tests with other indicators of the cerebrospinal fluid to be able to establish thresholds that give the maximum concordance between both measurements. "And the results have been unexpected: we have seen in a quantitative, objective and precise way that it is possible to detect subtle pathology of amyloid by PET at values ​​much lower than what was established", he pointed out Gispert.

much lower values

Specifically, they have determined that a value around 12 on the centyloid scale indicates early amyloid pathology, while until now, the determination was made by a specialist in Nuclear Medicine from a visual reading of the PET which, translated to the centiloid scale, used to give as a positive result of pathological concentration a value around 30. The scientific director of the BBRC Alzheimer's Prevention Program, José Luis Molinuevo, highlighted that "the great added value of this study is that we have done it, for the first worldwide, evaluating the concentration of amyloid protein in people without cognitive alterations but with risk factors for developing Alzheimer's, and in people with dementia".

The study involved 205 people without cognitive alterations from the Alpha Study, aged between 45 and 75, and 311 participants from the Alzheimer's Disease study. Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) which also includes cognitively healthy people, but also in different stages of Alzheimer's disease, aged between 55 and 90 years.

21. Dogs judge us if we are good or bad with other people

Dogs are so sensitive to our behavior that, according to a new study, they even change their way of relating to us depending on whether we behave well or badly with others people.

In this study from Kyoto University led by psychologist James Anderson, he also points out that this trait is not only possessed by dogs, but also by capuchin monkeys.

Emotions and animal empathy

We already knew that babies, before receiving an education from their parents, already judge morally to others, which reveals that we are all born with innate moral patterns that adapt to the around. What has been tried to suggest with this study published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews is that these patterns are also found in other species.

The evaluations began with the capuchin monkeys, in order to see if they showed a preference for people who help other people. To do this, they showed the monkeys how an actor struggled to open a container with a toy inside. A second actor could then collaborate with the first or refuse to do so.

Finally, both actors offered food to the monkeys. When the actor had been a collaborator, the monkey showed no preference between accepting food from the first or second actor. But when the latter had refused to help, the monkey accepted the first actor's food more often.

This mechanism would also be used by monkeys even in their own communities., according to primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University, Georgia: "Most likely, if these Animals can detect cooperative tendencies in humans, they can also do so in their peers. primates".

Also in dogs

These and other tests were also carried out on dogs, obtaining the same results. James Anderson has pointed out that these actions reveal much more complex brain functions in dogs.

22. Neurowires designed to repair nervous system injuries

In a discovery that challenges the dogma of biology, researchers have proven that mammalian cells can convert RNA sequences into DNA, a feat more common in viruses than in eukaryotic cells, as published in the journal “Science Advances”. Cells contain machinery that duplicates the DNA into a new set that ends up in a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes. copied from the central repository of DNA recipes, so that they can be read more efficiently in the proteins.

But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction, from DNA to RNA. This prevents the RNA messages from being written back to the genomic DNA master cookbook. Now, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University in the United States provide the first evidence that RNA segments can be re-formed. be written into DNA, potentially challenging the central dogma of biology and could have wide-ranging implications affecting many fields of science. biology.

But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction, from DNA to RNA. This prevents the RNA messages from being written back to the genomic DNA master cookbook. Now, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University in the United States provide the first evidence that RNA segments can be re-formed. be written into DNA, potentially challenging the central dogma of biology and could have wide-ranging implications affecting many fields of science. biology.

“This work opens the door to many other studies that will help us understand the importance of having a mechanism to convert RNA messages into DNA in our own cells,” says Dr. Richard Pomerantz, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Thomas Jefferson University. "The fact that a human polymerase can do this with high efficiency raises a lot of questions," he adds. For example, this finding suggests that RNA messages can be used as templates to repair or rewrite genomic DNA.

Together with first author Gurushankar Chandramouly and other collaborators, Dr. Pomerantz's team began by investigating a very unusual polymerase, called theta polymerase. Of the 14 DNA polymerases found in mammalian cells, only three do most of the work of duplicating the entire genome to prepare for cell division.

The remaining 11 are mainly responsible for detecting and repairing breaks or errors in DNA strands. Theta polymerase repairs DNA, but it is very prone to errors or mutations. Thus, the researchers noted that some of the “bad” qualities of polymerase theta were those that it shared with another cellular machine, although more common in viruses: reverse transcriptase. Like Pol theta, HIV reverse transcriptase acts like a DNA polymerase, but it can also splice RNA and read the RNA back into a DNA strand.

In a series of experiments, the researchers tested polymerase theta against HIV reverse transcriptase, which is one of the best-studied of its kind. They showed that polymerase theta was capable of converting RNA messages into DNA, which it did so well like HIV reverse transcriptase, and actually did a better job of duplicating DNA at DNA.

Theta polymerase was more efficient and introduced fewer errors when using an RNA template to write new ones. messages from DNA, which when it duplicated DNA into DNA, suggesting that this function could be its main purpose in the cell.

The group collaborated with the laboratory of Dr. Xiaojiang S. Chen at USC and used X-ray crystallography to define the structure and found that this molecule was capable of shape-shifting to accommodate the largest RNA molecule, a unique feat among polymerases.

"Our research suggests that the primary function of polymerase theta is to act as a reverse transcriptase," says Pomerantz. In healthy cells, the target of this molecule may be RNA-mediated DNA repair. In unhealthy cells, such as cancer cells, polymerase theta is highly expressed and promotes cancer cell growth and drug resistance."

“It will be exciting to further understand how RNA polymerase theta activity contributes to DNA repair and cancer cell proliferation,” he concludes.

23. Even worms have emotions

Emotions are not only expressions of complex brains, but are also present in worms, tiny fish, flies, and mice.

New technologies are allowing us to penetrate the most remote secrets of the brain, discovering things as surprising as psychic neurons in simple organisms or that the simplest animals even have emotional behaviors, reports Nature.

Zebrafish larvae have been decisive in these discoveries: they are transparent, which allows their interior to be observed under a microscope.

In addition, its brain barely has 80,000 neurons and it regulates a very simple life: hunting prey that is not far away and looking for food. In them it is easy to analyze how he makes those decisions.

In an article published in Nature last December, a team of researchers explained that had identified a circuit of serotonin-producing neurons in the zebrafish brain, a neurotransmitter closely related to the control of emotions and mood.

He also identified a mechanism in the brain of zebrafish larvae that alternates between two levels of motivation: On one level, the fish focuses on hunting prey with slow movements. In the other case, it explores its environment with agile movements.

primitive emotions

That means that zebrafish larvae, which are less than two inches in size, have at least two patterns of firing neurons that alter their behavior.

These neural patterns have also been observed in worms, fruit flies, and mice: the Scientists have interpreted that these brain states could constitute primitive emotions in the animals.

They are based on a surprising fact: the reactions derived from this activation of neurons in these animals are prolonged over time, even though the signal that produced it has disappeared.

It is common for us to react to past stimuli because our brain has 100,000 million neurons: after frightened by seeing a snake in the field, anything similar that we may see at a later time will arouse the same reaction.

We also know that dogs, which have brains with more than 500 million neurons, are even capable of recognizing human emotions. Something we thought only we could do.

However, discovering that memory associated with emotions in such small neural circuits confirms that the neurons of these simple organisms are also psychic.

Advanced techniques

These discoveries are the result of advanced techniques that allow scientists to trace the brain's electrical activity in unprecedented detail and analyze the data obtained with the help of artificial intelligence and new mathematical tools.

“Some neuroscientists dare to use technologies to test a powerful group of internal brain states: emotions. Others are applying them to states such as motivation or existential impulses, such as thirst. Researchers are even finding signatures of brain states in their data for the wordless," explains Nature.

The main conclusion of these discoveries is that animal behavior is not automatic, as previously thought: a stimulus always triggers the same reaction.

They are not really automata: animal behavior, even at the simplest organic levels, has other components that include brain states as complex as emotions.

many secrets

The general conclusion is that many things happen in the brains of animals as simple as fish, of which we hardly know anything. It also occurs in mice.

In the case of mice, it has been discovered that when they perform a task, neurons are activated throughout the brain and not just in the region specialized for that activity. What's more, most of the neurons involved in behavior have nothing to do with the task performed.

Scientists believe that this discovery is related to brain states, which adjust at each moment.

For example, in the case of the fruit fly, it has been proven that males change their seductive behavior depending on how the female reacts: three different brain states determine the choice of the male song dedicated to the couple. A hint of primitive emotion.

even in worms

Even in worms with brains of just 302 neurons, two brain states drive two sets of neurons to determine whether the animal is moving or staying still. A primitive emotion determines your behavior.

The most important thing about these works is that they help us to better understand human emotions and their repercussions on our behavior, as well as on certain mental illnesses.

At bottom, mental illnesses are nothing more than disturbances in our complex brain states, the researchers conclude. The simplest organisms tell us that complexity begins early in life, but that it is also governed by neural patterns that we can learn about and perhaps correct.

24. Can physical activity regenerate neurons?

There is some controversy on this matter. Classically, and due to animal studies, which is mainly where this hypothesis has been tested, it was believed that in the young brain, from 0 to 2 years, there was a possibility of neuronal regeneration, that is to say, that what is known as neurogenesis would take place, the appearance of neurons new. But in much more recent subsequent studies, some of them in humans and especially in older adults, it has been seen that exercise does not produce neurogenesis. Although it is very important that I make one thing clear to you, whether or not neurogenesis occurs, exercise can improve the brain. Whats the matter, then?

Neurogenesis is not the only process by which cognitive function can be increased. There are other processes that are very important and in which exercise could produce changes. One of them is what we call synaptogenesis, which is the creation of synapses, that is, new connections between neurons and another is that of angiogenesis, the increase in capillary density and blood flow of the brain.

For this reason, to the question of whether exercise can generate neurons, there is no single answer, it depends on which scientific school you follow, they give you one or the other. Very recently, Spanish researchers from the Severo Ochoa Center for Molecular Biology published a study in Nature Medicine highlighting that neurogenesis in the hippocampus adult is abundant when the subjects are healthy but it is drastically reduced with diseases such as Alzheimer's and for this reason exercise cannot have the same function in both cases.

At the University of Granada, where I do research, we have worked with overweight or obese children within the ActiveBrains project led by Francisco B. Ortega. We do not know if neurogenesis has occurred in the brain of these children, but what we have seen is that those with greater aerobic and motor capacity, modifiable factors at Through physical exercise, they also have more gray matter in the brain, and in specific regions that are key to working memory and learning, such as the hippocampus.

I would like you to be clear that there are times when it seems that if we don't talk about neurogenesis we don't talk about anything, but there are many other aspects that can improve brain function. The increase in gray matter does not have to be preceded by a greater number of neurons, but of a greater mass than we already have.

In other words, we could simplify by saying that, regardless of whether or not it helps new neurons to be created, physical exercise makes existing ones work better.

We also believe that doing more physical exercise not only generates this increase in gray matter but, at a functional level, there is an increase in connectivity between the different regions of the brain. What we saw in our study is that in children with greater aerobic capacity, connectivity increased of the hippocampus with frontal regions of the brain and this in turn seems to generate better performance academic.

As for what type of exercise is the most appropriate, there are also news here. Classically, most studies have investigated how moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, ie walking, running, etc., has effects on the gray matter of the brain. But now other types of exercise are beginning to be examined, not only aerobic but also muscular strength or motor exercises.

In addition, other recent studies are examining the effect of high-intensity exercise, classically known as HIIT, on the brain. In fact, the latest American recommendations on physical activity include, for the first time, a specific section on improvements at the brain level, but they detail the need for further studies examining how other modes of exercise (muscular exercise, yoga, tai chi) and at high intensity could have benefits at the level cerebral.

To summarize, the answer to your question is that the debate about whether there is neurogenesis beyond two years of age, and therefore whether or not exercise might have an effect there is still up for grabs. debate. But exercise can make the brain work better through processes other than neurogenesis. What we need is to know the exact formula of physical exercise, in terms of mode, duration, frequency and intensity, to generate those benefits at the brain level.

25. The reliefs of the Hittite sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, solved an archaeological mystery of 3,200 years ago

For nearly two hundred years, archaeologists have searched for a plausible explanation for the ancient Yazılıkaya rock sanctuary in central Turkey. More than 3,200 years ago, stonemasons carved more than 90 reliefs of deities, animals, and chimeras into the limestone bed.. An international team of researchers now presents an interpretation that suggests for the first time a consistent context for all the figures.

Thus, the reliefs carved in stone in two rocky chambers symbolize the cosmos: the underworld, the earth and sky, as well as the recurring cycles of the seasons, the phases of the moon and the day and the evening.

The Yazılıkaya Rock Sanctuary is a UNESCO cultural heritage site, yet it is also one of the great puzzles of archaeology. The sanctuary is located in central Turkey, about 150 kilometers east of Ankara, near the ancient Hittite capital Hattuša. In the 13th century B.C. C., more than ninety figures, mostly divinities, were carved in the stone of two natural rock chambers, and in front of them a temple was erected. Scientists agree today that the sanctuary was an important place of worship at the time of the Hittite kingdom (c. 1650-1190 BCE c.).

The reliefs of the Hittite gods follow a strict hierarchical order and are faced with an image of the great king Tudhalija IV. However, the meaning of the procession has been a mystery since scholars first saw it nearly two hundred years ago. The prehistorian Juergen Seeher, who led the excavations at Hattuša from 1994 to 2005, wrote in 2011 in the latest monograph on Yazılıkaya: Still today it is not at all clear what function the shrine actually served cave.

Now, for the first time, a team of Swiss, American and Turkish archaeologists and astronomers presents a explanation that covers all the figures of the installation and assigns a function to each of them plausible. The scientific paper has been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Skyscape Archeology and is freely accessible. According to scientists, the sanctuary is essentially a symbolic representation of the cosmic order as imagined by the Hittites. The artistic reliefs represent, on the one hand, the static levels of the cosmos - the underworld, the earth, the sky and the most important deities. from on high - and, on the other hand, also the cyclical processes of renewal and rebirth: day and night, the phases of the moon and the seasons. Each of the more than ninety figures adheres to this system.

This explanation, which is evident in retrospect, was the result of several years of intensive research. In the course of this research, geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger, president of the Luwite Studies Foundation of Zurich, and Rita Gautschy, an archaeologist and astronomer at the Institute of Archeology at the University of Basel, realized about what many of the Yazılıkaya figures indicate the lunar phases and the time of the solar year. The researchers published this interpretation in 2019 in a scientific article. Subsequent research focused on the symbolic meaning of the sanctuary as a whole; in it participated -in addition to Zangger and Gautschy- E. c. Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and Serkan Demirel, historian of antiquity at the Karadeniz Technical University (Turkey).

The new interpretation integrates many components that scientists have recognized before. This applies to the function of a lunisolar calendar, but also to the significance of Chamber B as a symbol of the underworld, which is indicated, among other things, by a relief of the god Nergal.

However, the idea of ​​associating the most important gods of the Hittite pantheon with the circumpolar region of the northern sky is entirely new. Constellations close to the celestial axis, visible throughout the year, play a special role in the cosmology and religion of many primitive cultures. In Yazılıkaya it is, among other things, his position in the procession - to the north and above the other gods - that suggests such an interpretation.

The researchers write: It therefore seems more likely that it was a place where astronomical information was displayed so that the sanctuary as a whole cosmologically conformed to the full expression of the cosmic order. The two main chambers of the sanctuary were, above all, ritual spaces that were used as a stage for an important ceremonial activity in which a specific audience participated. The gods were elaborately illustrated on a large scale. It is a staging, not a mere computation.