Science News
Headlines
. Teenagers in Science research!
. A new map for the brain's highways
. Eat less animal protein for longer life?
. A shake-up for geology from a 1964 quake
. Traces from the first growth spurt of the universe

Read more about some of these items below.

. A drug for flu from a teenager
A big prize for identifying new drug candidates for the treatment of influenza, or the flu virus. When something like this is announced, you would expect it is for a major scientist from a big lab. The recipient is Eric Chen, 17, of San Diego, Califorinia, USA, studying at the higher secondary level in Canyon Crest Academy school! 
Chen used supercomputers to analyze the chemical composition and shape of molecules that might interfere with an enzyme known as endonuclease (see picture of its structure). The flu virus depends on this enzyme to multiply. So if the new drugs work in people (something that has not yet been tested), they could slow or halt the infection's spread. Chen's research could lead to medicines that would counter a massive flu outbreak as new vaccines were being developed.
Eric Chen is the winner of the 2014 national Intel Science Talent Search contest in the USA. 
Kevin Lee, 17, a student at University High School, Irvine, California, was also in the news. He developed a computer program that uses moving pictures of the heart to calculate the electrical signals that this organ produces. Besides running faster than previous computer models of heart action, the new program may one day provide insights into causes and potential treatments for serious irregular heartbeats. Doctors refer to these abnormal patterns as cardiac arrhythmias.
More teenager scientists had remarkable discoveries to report on. William Kuszmaul, 17, has proved a nice theorem in an area of mathematics called modular enumeration. Natalie Ng, 18, has developed a statistical technique to help assess the spread, or metastasis, of breast cancer cells to other parts of the body. Shaun Datta, 18, used a computer program to model the interactions between subatomic particles in neutron stars. Anand Srinivasan, 17, identified gene boundaries in eukaryotes.
In India too, the Children's Science Congress and the Intel Science Fair are important events for schoolchildren to showcase scientific talent. Doing scientific research should attract more students!

. A new map for the brain's highways
Gray matter is one of the two major types of tissues making up the brain. White matter is the other type: like superhighways, its big bundles of nerve fibers connect different regions of gray matter. Like traffic, important messages travel along the white matter from one part of the brain to another. A new map of these superhighways suggests why some brain injuries are more devastating than others: it is because they create a traffic jam — or outright roadblock — in a particularly important highway.
Scientists have published a new white-matter map that explains why some terrible head injuries are still not fatal. How much an injury impacts the brain seems to depend largely on how badly it damages the communications highways.
To create the new map, scientists studied the brains of 110 healthy men. They used two kinds of scans. One type, called MRI (for magnetic resonance imaging), revealed the brain's basic anatomy. The other, called diffusion tensor imaging, showed the long tracts, or pathways, of nerve fibers that make up white matter. (These bundled fibers are sheathed in a protective layer of white insulation, which gives rise to the tissue's name.) Then they used a computer to combine the information from both types of brain scans.
The resulting map showed how white matter links different parts of the brain — almost like the wires in an electrical circuit. They also did some virtual snipping: they started severing connections to see which would hurt the flow of information most. 
The new map is not the first research to look at connections in the brain. But most other ones had focused on gray matter, not the white-matter pathways.

. Eat less animal protein for longer life?
Consuming a diet low in meat, eggs and dairy products may extend one's life, according to two new studies. While one study was conducted in mice and the other on people, both reached the same conclusion. Both appear in the same March 2014 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism.
Proteins are an essential part of all living organisms. They form the basis of living cells, muscle and other tissues. Protein is also an essential nutrient. The new studies suggest people should pay attention to how much protein they eat, as well as where it comes from. For example, both a chunk of meat and a bowl of lentil soup contain lots of protein.
In one of the new studies, the scientists found a higher risk of early death among middle-aged people who ate lots of protein. The link seemed strongest for diets rich in protein from animals, not plants. 
In that study, an international team of scientists surveyed data on the diets of more than 6,300 people, all age 50 or older. The diners had been followed for 18 years. During that time, those younger than 65 who got less than 10 percent of their calories from protein were less likely to die from cancer or diabetes than were people who ate more protein. But among people older than 65, the reverse was true. Here, people who got at least 20 percent of their calories from protein had lower risks of dying from cancer.
In a second study, scientists fed different diets to 858 mice. Those diets included various amounts of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. In general, mice that ate diets high in protein were more likely to die younger. Those that ate less protein and more carbohydrates (foods rich in sugars and starches) lived longest.
There are already some dissenting voices about the interpretation of this data. Moreover, note that all this is only for adult people. Protein is an important part of any diet, and growing children need to make sure they get enough. 

. A shake-up for geology from a 1964 quake
March 27, 1964, Alaska. At 5:36 p.m., the ground began shaking violently. Roads buckled and sank. Houses pulled apart. Railroad tracks warped. The ground beneath a harbour slumped — and nearly swallowed a ship docked there.
The Great Alaskan Earthquake was a magnitude-9.2 event, a rumble that lasted 5 full minutes. Now, a full half-century after Alaska’s gigantic quake, geologists are still feeling its effects. The reason: this quake opened a new era in geology. It has for ever changed what scientists understand about the constant remodelling of Earth's surface.
Like a jigsaw puzzle, Earth's lithosphere is divided into interlocking pieces, called plates. (The lithosphere is Earth's outer solid layer. It includes the crust and uppermost mantle.) Depending on how you count them, there are about 12 main tectonic plates, and numerous smaller ones. Their thickness ranges from 80 to 200 kilometers. Plates beneath the oceans are much thinner than those under continents. These tectonic plates move gradually, bumping and grinding against each other.
In 1964, scientists knew earthquakes develop when shifts occur along underground fractures, called faults. They still had many questions to answer. One was figuring out why some parts of Alaska had risen as much as 11.5 meters, while the ground at other sites had dropped, or subsided. They also sought to locate the quake's epicentre (that marks-the-spot site where the tremors commenced).
They found that the fault was not vertical. It was not a break cutting straight down through deep rock, as many geologists had assumed. Like a descending ramp, the fault instead sloped at an angle, deep beneath Alaska. They confirmed that the earthquake occurred in a "subduction zone". That is a type of convergent plate boundary where one plate dives beneath another. Tectonic plates constantly push against each other. They tend to subtly creep along. When a fault actually slips, the motion is both sudden and exaggerated. It is like opening a sticky window or door. You push and push. Then suddenly, it pops open.
Scientists are still working out many details of plate tectonics. By now they call it a "unifying theory", one that explains practically everything about Earth's crust. The Alaska quake of 1964 was the first major proof of this theory.

. Traces from the first growth spurt of the universe
On March 17 2014, scientists reported finding the earliest echoes of gravitational waves from nearly the time of the Big Bang.
Cosmologists are astronomers who study the early universe, from the time it began in the so-called Big Bang. The Big Bang sent waves rippling through the stuff of space. Known as “gravitational waves,” they would alternately squeeze and stretch the fabric of space. So their passage should have left a mark on the farthest reaches of the known universe. Scientists had sought those telltale marks.
For their search, the scientists used a telescope at the South Pole. It is called BICEP2 (short for the Background Imaging of Cosmological Extragalactic Polarization). For 50 years, scientists have known that energy in the form of microwave radiation lingered long after the Big Bang. BICEP2 studies this type of light. The telescope records the behaviour of photons. Those particles transport radiation, like this microwave signal. The recent papers report finding twists and turns in the patterns of the microwave photons. They conclude that gravitational waves are the only plausible explanation for that.
The long-sought evidence supports the idea that the universe inflated in a flash. A scientific theory, called inflation, held that during the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe grew outward faster than the speed of light. It soon stretched out farther than any telescope can see.
Scientists first introduced the theory of inflation more than 30 years ago. Since then, it has become an important part of the explanation for how the universe began. Inflation helps answer some questions raised by the Big Bang. One is why the universe looks the same in every direction. Another is why it isn't clumpier in some directions. (Inflation would have smoothed everything out. It's just like what happens when blowing up a party balloon.)
However, scientists could not be sure whether inflation really happened. They lacked solid evidence. The new discovery is indicating that inflation might indeed be the right answer. Confirmation will soon come from other experiments as well.
Scientists all over the world have expressed delight on hearing this news. It opens up new opportunities to test more ideas about the nature of the universe.
Compiled from several sources