UH lab produces building blocks to DNA and RNA in deep space

Conceptualization of the role of methanediamine in the galactic cosmic ray mediated synthesis of DNA and RNA bases in deep space.
Illustration Credit: University of Hawaiʻi

The synthetic production of a critical building block called methanediamine for the first time by researchers in University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Department of Chemistry could lead to key insights into the origins of life. The researchers have discovered a method to produce it in a lab under conditions that mimic icy interstellar nanoparticles in cold molecular clouds in space.

Nitrogen is the most abundant element in Earth’s atmosphere. It is also incorporated into nearly one-third of some 300 molecules identified in the interstellar medium, which is the material that exists in the space between the stars in a galaxy.

Most nitrogen-containing molecules in deep space carry exclusively the nitrile moiety (organic compound that has a carbon, nitrogen functional group), while amines (a member of a family of nitrogen-containing organic compounds that is derived from ammonia) and imines (compounds containing a carbon-nitrogen double bond) are relatively rare. According to experts, an understanding of the origin of these less common molecule parts in deep space is central to the hypothesis for the origin of life because all nucleobases (nitrogen-containing compounds) found in contemporary RNA and DNA contain amines and imines.

Princeton chemists create quantum dots at room temp using lab-designed protein

Nature uses 20 canonical amino acids as building blocks to make proteins, combining their sequences to create complex molecules that perform biological functions.

But what happens with the sequences not selected by nature? And what possibilities lie in constructing entirely new sequences to make novel, or de novo, proteins bearing little resemblance to anything in nature?

That’s the terrain where Michael Hecht, professor of chemistry, works with his research group. And recently, their curiosity for designing their own sequences paid off.

They discovered the first known de novo (newly created) protein that catalyzes, or drives, the synthesis of quantum dots. Quantum dots are fluorescent nanocrystals used in electronic applications from LED screens to solar panels.

Their work opens the door to making nanomaterials in a more sustainable way by demonstrating that protein sequences not derived from nature can be used to synthesize functional materials — with pronounced benefits to the environment.

True giant wombat gives Diprotodon podium a wobble

Ramsayia reconstruction (r) next to a modern wombat.
Illustration Credit: Eleanor Pease, CC BY-NC

If you thought Australia was home to only one ancient ‘giant wombat’, think again.

While the Diprotodon – the extinct megafauna species that is distantly related to wombats but was the size of a small car – is commonly (but incorrectly) thought of as Australia’s ‘giant wombat’, researchers from Griffith University have shed light on a large species that does belong in the modern-day wombat family.

The complete skull of this true fossil giant wombat, found in a Rockhampton cave in Queensland and estimated to be around 80,000 years old, has been described for the first time by a team led by Associate Professor Julien Louys from Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution.

Precise solar observations fed millions in ancient Mexico

Rising sun Mount Tlaloc in Mexico.
Photo Credit: Ben Meissner

Without clocks or modern tools, ancient Mexicans watched the sun to maintain a farming calendar that precisely tracked seasons and even adjusted for leap years.

Before the Spanish arrival in 1519, the Basin of Mexico’s agricultural system fed a population that was extraordinarily large for the time. Whereas Seville, the largest urban center in Spain, had a population of fewer than 50,000, the Basin, now known as Mexico City, was home to as many as 3 million people.

To feed so many people in a region with a dry spring and summer monsoons required advanced understanding of when seasonal variations in weather would arrive. Planting too early, or too late, could have proved disastrous. The failure of any calendar to adjust for leap-year fluctuations could also have led to crop failure.

Though colonial chroniclers documented the use of a calendar, it was not previously understood how the Mexica, or Aztecs, were able to achieve such accuracy. New UC Riverside research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates how they did it. They used the mountains of the Basin as a solar observatory, keeping track of the sunrise against the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

“We concluded they must have stood at a single spot, looking eastwards from one day to another, to tell the time of year by watching the rising sun,” said Exequiel Ezcurra, distinguished UCR professor of ecology who led the research.

SwRI Study Describes First Ultraviolet Imaging of Sun's Middle Corona

Video Credit: Courtesy of SwRI/NOAA A

A team of researchers from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), NASA and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) have discovered web-like plasma structures in the Sun’s middle corona. The researchers describe their innovative new observation method, imaging the middled corona in ultraviolet (UV) wavelength, in a new study published in Nature Astronomy. The findings could lead to a better understanding of the solar wind’s origins and its interactions with the rest of the solar system.

Since 1995, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has observed the Sun’s corona with the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) stationed aboard the NASA and European Space Agency Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft to monitor space weather that could affect the Earth. But LASCO has a gap in observations that obscures our view of the middle solar corona, where the solar wind originates.

Researcher takes aim at turning yellow into green by recycling urine

Urine recycling is the goal of WVU researcher Kevin Orner’s study of a wastewater treatment system that can attach directly to a toilet, extracting valuable nutrients used as fertilizers.
Illustration Credit: Sheree Wentz / West Virginia University

The waste flushed down toilets could be a valuable source of resources and profits — and easier on the environment, according to a West Virginia University engineer’s research.

Kevin Orner, a Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources assistant professor is developing a technology that can treat urine on site rather than at a remote, centralized wastewater treatment facility. The technology could reside underneath a toilet, enabling urine treatment to happen quickly and promoting the recovery of nitrogen, a nutrient that can be sold as a fertilizer.

Orner’s findings, published in the journal Environmental Technology, make urine recycling more feasible in terms of integration into existing infrastructure and could reduce the amount of nutrients that enter lakes and rivers. Excessive nutrient discharge can put aquatic ecosystems at risk by promoting the growth of algae that consume dissolved oxygen in the water.

The goal is to transform waste collection and treatment from an environmentally harmful service that costs money to an environmentally beneficial service that makes money.

El Niño ‘flavors’ help unravel past variability, future response to climate change

Stream in Hilo.
Photo Credit: Pascal Debrunner

As with many natural phenomena, scientists look to the climate of the past to understand what may lie ahead as Earth warms. By assessing so-called ‘flavors’ of El Niño events in historical records and model simulations, researchers have a clearer picture of El Niño patterns over the past 12,000 years and are able to more accurately project future changes and impacts of this powerful force. The study, by scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and University of Colorado Boulder, was published in Nature Communications.

The new set of climate model simulations developed and analyzed by Christina Karamperidou, lead author of the study and associate professor at UH Mānoa, and co-author Pedro DiNezio, associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, are the first to allow the study of changes in the frequency of El Niño flavors during the past 12,000 years.

This work offers new knowledge on how El Niño may respond to climate change and thus can help reduce these uncertainties in global climate models and offer more accurate predictions of El Niño impacts.

All West Coast Abalones at Risk of Extinction on the IUCN Red List

A red abalone is surrounded by a barren of purple sea urchins.
Photo Credit: Katie Sowul/California Department of Fish and Wildlife

All seven of the United States’ abalone species that live on the West Coast are now listed as Critically Endangered or Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, Red List of Threatened Species. These listings were based on a West Coast abalones assessment led by Laura-Rogers Bennett of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, or CDFW, and University of California, Davis.

Six species — red, white, black, green, pink and flat abalone — are listed by IUCN as critically endangered. The northern abalone, also known as threaded or pinto abalone, is listed as endangered.

The IUCN Red List is considered the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of species. While the listing does not carry a legal requirement to aid imperiled species, it helps guide and inform global conservation and funding priorities.

Internet treatment for anger works

Two emotion regulation strategies, mindful emotion awareness and cognitive reappraisal, can help people with problems in managing anger.
Photo Credit: Obie Fernandez

Problems with managing anger can have severe consequences for the afflicted individual and their loved ones. A new study from the Centre for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet shows that four weeks of therapy delivered over the internet can help people with anger and aggression. The results have been published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

The study, which the researchers have chosen to call the “anger study”, is the first to compare different internet-mediated emotion regulation strategies against anger. The results are expected to be important for understanding emotion regulation and for the dissemination of evidence-based methods.

Studies find Omicron related hospitalizations lower in severity than Delta and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine remains effective in preventing hospitalizations

Photo Credit: Fernando Zhiminaicela

Adult hospitalizations from Omicron-related SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) were less severe than Delta and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (also known as Comirnaty and BNT162b2*) remains effective in preventing not only hospitalization, but severe patient outcomes associated with COVID-19, two new research studies have found.

The University of Bristol-led research, funded and conducted in collaboration with Pfizer Inc., as part of AvonCAP, is published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe.

AvonCAP records adults who are admitted to Bristol’s two hospital Trusts – North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) and University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW) with possible respiratory infection.

In the first paper ‘Severity of Omicron (B.1.1.529) and Delta (B.1.617.2) SARS-CoV-2 infection among hospitalized adults: a prospective cohort study in Bristol, United Kingdom’ researchers assessed whether Delta SARS-CoV-2 infection resulted in worse patient outcomes than Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infection, in hospitalized patients

The study aimed to provide more detailed data on patient outcomes, such as the need for respiratory support.