SciPak

Welcome to SciPak's Tumblr, curated by Natasha Pinol and colleagues on the Science Press Package team at AAAS, the science society. Enjoy!

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New Microscope Peers at Subcellular Gears in Action Thanks to a new microscope that captures 3-D images of subcellular activity in real time, scientists can trace the pathways of nerve cells that form synapses in the brain or follow progress of proteins that clump together to cause disease, among other imaging feats once thought impossible. The new microscope was designed by a team that includes one of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, Eric Betzig. Read more about this research from the 24 October issue of Science here. [Video © Betzig Lab, HHMI. Please click here for more information.] This is our final post! Thanks for following the Science Press Package Tumblr site since its launch in 2011, Natasha Pinol © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Prize-Winning Essay: How Neural Circuits Control Skilled Behaviors Eiman Azim is the 2014 Grand Prize winner in the annual international competition for The Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology. To understand how the nervous system enables our arms to reach out and grab an object with speed and precision, Azim and his colleagues conducted studies in mice to disentangle neural pathways and pinpoint individual spinal circuits that are involved in skilled motor control. His essay, “Shortcuts and Checkpoints on the Road to Skilled Movement,” appears in the 31 October 2014 issue of Science. Azim's research "gives us specific details into long-standing theories about fine movement coordination in the brain," said Melissa McCartney, Science associate editor and member of the Prize jury committee. See coverage of the 2014 prizewinner and finalists here. Listen to a related podcast interview here (click here for further details). [Image © Arthur Cohen Photography. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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When Herbivore Numbers Drop, Plants Ditch Thorny Defenses Plants can persist in landscapes full of hungry herbivores either by shielding themselves with special defenses, or by putting down roots in risky regions where carnivores – who hunt the herbivores – roam. To better understand if or how these factors interact, Adam Ford and colleagues focused on a plant that African antelopes like to eat: the Acacia tree. Ford and colleagues monitored GPS-collared antelope and their main predators, leopards and wild dogs, in the East African savanna. A GPS analysis showed that Acacia trees maintained their thorns in open, non-woody areas where antelope roamed freely. By contrast, the less thorny Acacia species was more numerous in areas that antelope avoided. The work reveals how herbivores’ risk avoidance behavior and plants’ anti-herbivore defenses interact to shape plant communities. Read more about this research from the 17 October issue of Science here. [Image courtesy of AT Ford. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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First Results from Telescope Eyeing Sun’s Most Elusive Region The first observations from a telescope designed to examine a perplexing layer of the Sun's atmosphere are in, and they’re helping scientists determine how energy is transferred throughout that layer and then outward to the extremely hot corona. Now, in a series of five reports in Science, researchers discuss the first results from the newest tool designed to catch a glimpse of the complex chromosphere and transition region: NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS. Read more about this research from the 17 October issue of Science here. [Image courtesy of IRIS: LMSAL, NASA. Bart De Pontieu, Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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A Serpentine Template for an All-Terrain Robot A study revealing how side-winding snakes scale sandy slopes -- a difficult feat -- is helping scientists improve terrestrial robots. It may even help them build a bot capable of navigating terrain that rolling robots cannot, like the hills inside a collapsed mine. Read more about this research from the 10 October issue of Science here. [Image courtesy of Nico Zevallos and Chaohui Gong. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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“Locked-In” Brainstem Stroke Patient Spells Words With Visual Cues Scientists have shown for the first time that brainstem stroke patients, who have lost all neuromuscular control and are “locked-in”, can communicate using brain-computer interface, or BCI, technology. In this study, Eric Sellers and colleagues focused on an adult male who had a stroke. Six months after the stroke left him unable to communicate, BCI allowed him to independently spell out words and write messages to family members using only minor eye movements. Read more about this research from the 8 October issue of Science Translational Medicine here. [Image courtesy of Eric W. Sellers. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Prosthetic Hands & Arms that “Belong” Dustin Tyler and colleagues provide the first long-term evidence that the under-the-skin wires and nerve electrodes for a neuroprosthetic hand can last after being subjected to real-world use by two adult male amputees. Both men had surgeries in which three electrodes were implanted around their remaining nerves and connected to a prosthetic hand. Following surgery, the recipients were able to perform everyday tasks for over a year (including strenuous outdoor activities such as chopping wood) without problems, demonstrating the long-term durability of the prosthetic interface. In addition, the researchers also developed a way to improve sensory perception in the prosthetic hands. After stimulation, the patients reported feeling like they were grasping objects with their own hand, rather than feeling like they were using an external tool. Read more about this research from the 8 October issue of Science Translational Medicine here. [Image courtesy of Russell Lee. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Prosthetic Hands & Arms that “Belong” In the field of neuroprosthetics, scientists are getting closer to mimicking the intuitive control and freedom of movement that people with natural limbs often take for granted. Max Ortiz-Catalan and colleagues show that an artificial arm directly connected to the bone, nerves and muscles of one adult male whose arm was amputated above the elbow functions and feels just a like real arm. The implanted electrodes are woven under the skin for constant sensory feedback to help stimulate nerves and better control the prosthesis. The results of this study offer evidence that implanted electrodes are a more precise, reliable way to control prosthetic limbs, and that these can finally be used clinically in bone-anchored implants. Read more about this research from the 8 October issue of Science Translational Medicine here. [Image courtesy of Ortiz Catalan et al., Science Translational Medicine, 2014]. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Boosting Yeast's Ethanol Yields Yeast drenched in alcohol and simmering in hot temperatures can still produce plenty of ethanol, two studies report. Ethanol has the potential to become a widely used source of liquid transportation fuel. However, it’s toxic to the very yeast organisms often used to produce it, killing them once it reaches high levels. Yeast is also very sensitive to the high temperatures ideal for boosting ethanol production, further challenging the ethanol production process. Identifying a route that renders high concentrations of ethanol and high temperatures less toxic to yeast will be critical to the biofuel industry. Read more about the research from the 3 October issue of Science here and here. [Image courtesy of Felix Lam. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Uncovering the Hidden History of AIDS’ Spread To help shed light on AIDS’ early history, Nuno Faria and colleagues analyzed HIV-1 group M sequences from a major HIV sequence database. By combining these analyses with spatial and epidemiological data, they were able to show that the HIV-1 group M pandemic originated in Kinshasa, now the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the early 1920s. The virus spread rapidly, the researchers’ data suggest, because Kinshasa was a hub for transportation networks used in commercial activity that connected both rural and urban regions. Between 1920 and 1960, the number of infections from HIV groups M and O were similar, but after 1960, infections from the O group remained confined to west-central Africa while those from group M viruses tripled and expanded geographically. Understanding under what conditions these viruses disseminated may help prevent outbreaks of other diseases carried by blood-borne pathogens, such as hepatitis C. Read more about this research from the 3 October issue of Science here and here. [Photo © Carl Gierstorfer. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Satellite Data Reveal Wealth of Hidden Tectonic Structures Using the latest data from satellites in space, scientists have uncovered uncharted features in the seafloor, 80% of which remains unmapped. The rifts, ridges and trenches of the ocean floor are shaped by the slipping and sliding of massive tectonic plates. In many parts of the ocean, however, including the region of the Indian Ocean where the Malaysian aircraft was lost this year, scientists don't know much about seafloor tectonics. Read more about this research from the 3 October issue of Science here. [Image courtesy of David Sandwell, Scripps Institution of Ocean ography. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Cheetahs and Pumas Strike a Balance to Hunt Cheetahs and pumas have their hunts down to a science. Two new studies suggest that mid-size predators, or mesopredators, may not be as energetically constrained by resources and competition as researchers had imagined. However, they also imply that human activity could offset the delicate balance these mesopredators have struck over thousands of years of evolution. Read more about this research from the 3 October issue of Science here and here. [Image courtesy of Michael G.L. Mills. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Unique Organic Molecule Found in Space Researchers have detected a branched organic molecule in the interstellar medium (ISM) of space. Arnaud Belloche and colleagues used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to get a good look at Sgr B2, the most massive star-forming region of the Milky Way galaxy, and identified a branched configuration of propyl cyanide, i-PrCN, which may be more abundant than its well-known, straight-chained counterpart, n-PrCN. Read more about this research from the 26 September issue of Science here. [Image courtesy of Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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GPS: A New Way to Monitor Drought Satellite image from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission showing California's devastating loss of fresh water (in red) since 2002. In each of the past 3 years, epic drought has drained the region of more than 15 cubic kilometers of fresh water. Borsa et al. report the crustal response to much of this water loss. See the related Editorial. [Photo © Jay Famiglietti/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; and University of California, Irvine. This image is an update from what originally appeared in J. S. Famiglietti, M. Rodell, Water in the balance. Science 340, 1300–1301 (2013)] Anyone wishing to use the cover of Science must contact AAAS to request permission to do so. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Water in the Solar System Predates the Sun, Study Suggests A new study suggests that a significant portion of the solar system’s water formed before the sun did, and that all planetary systems -- not just ours -- may have had access to that same water as they formed. Read more about this research from the 26 September issue of Science here. [Image courtesy of Bill Saxton, NSF/AUI/NRAO. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Bouncing Back from Surgery: Blood Test May Predict Recovery Time A technique that allows scientists to detect immune responses at the single-cell level could form the basis for a blood test that predicts how quickly a patient will recover from surgery. Brice Gaudillière and colleagues analyzed blood samples from 32 patients undergoing hip replacement surgery using a cell mapping technique called mass cytometry. Using this information, the authors identified a so-called “immune signature” of recovery, a set of markers that can be measured in a patient’s blood sample within 24 hours after surgery to predict how fast or slow healing will occur. The results may lead to the development of a pre-surgical diagnostic test that will help doctors not only determine recovery time from surgery, but identify patients for whom the risks of surgery outweigh the benefits. Read more about this research from the 24 September issue of Science Translational Medicine here. [Image courtesy of Dr. Quentin Baca and Erika Saving | Stanford University School of Medicine. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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Stone Tool-Making Method Evolved Simultaneously In Different Groups A stone tool-making technology thought to have originated in Africa before spreading to Eurasia may have evolved independently in the latter region, a new study reports. The study, reporting the earliest recorded use of this technology in Eurasia, challenges the hypothesis that the appearance of “Levallois” technology there was the result of the exodus of early humans from Africa. D.S. Adler and a team working in the Nor Geghi 1 sedimentary bed in Armenia’s Southern Caucasus region -- an important dispersal corridor for hominins moving out of Africa -- provides the earliest evidence outside Africa for a location at which hominins pursued both bifacial and Levallois technology at once. Thousands of tools unearthed there, dated between 325-335 thousand years old, vary greatly in style. Read more about this research from the 26 September issue of Science here. [Image courtesy of Daniel S. Adler. Please click here for more information.] © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.