(Image Caption: Antidepressants Move G Proteins Out Of Lipid Rafts In The Cell Membrane. Credit: Molly

Scientists are pretty sure that deep inside the moon, there’s water

While Earth’s surface cracks and spouts fire, the moon’s surface, for as long as we’ve known it, has been quiet. 

The youngest sign of volcanic activity scientists have found on the moon’s surface is 18 million years old.

But the traces of that long-ago volcanic activity could help scientists crack an enduring mystery: How much water is on the moon?

A study published Monday in Nature Geoscience suggests it may be more than we thought. Read more (7/24/17)

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My new favorite: Solvatofluorescence of Nile Red

Solvatochromism is the ability of a chemical substance to change color due to a change in solvent polarity, so it has different color in different solvents.

Also in some cases, the emission and excitation wavelength both shift depending on solvent polarity, so it fluoresces with different color depending on the solvent what it’s dissolved in. This effect is solvatofluorescence.

On the video the highly solvatochromic organic dye, Nile Red was added to different organic solvents and was diluted with another, different polarity organic solvent. As the polarity of the solution changed, the emitted color from the fluorescent dye also varied as seen on the gifs above and as seen on the video:

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Next week I’ll give a presentation on the Researchers Night at Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary with the title: “Chemistry of light and the light of chemistry”.

During this presentation one of my favorite dyes will be also presented: Nile Red. However, just as usual, the 1000 USD/gram price was a bit over our budget, so I had to make it.

The raw product was contaminated with a few impurities, but a fast purification, by simple filtering the mixture through a short column helped a lot and ended up with a +95% pure product.

At first I concentrated the product from a dilute solution on the column as seen on the first pics. It’s interesting to see, that it has a different fluorescence in solution (faint orange fluorescent)  and while it’s absorbed on the solid phase (pink, highly fluorescent).

After all the product was on the solid phase, I added another solvent and washed down the pure, HIGHLY FLUORESCENT product. Everything else, what was mainly products of side reactions, stuck at the top of the column as seen on the second pics and the gifs.

Also here is a video from the whole process in HD: https://youtu.be/W0Lk5jkd_B0

Are colour-changing octopuses really colourblind? 

Cephalopods, including octopuses and squid, have some of the most incredible colour-changing abilities in nature. 

They can almost instantly blend in with their surroundings to evade predators or lay in wait, and put on colourful displays to attract mates or dazzle potential prey.

This is impressive enough on its own, but becomes even more amazing when you discover these creatures are in fact colourblind – they only have one type of light receptor in their eyes, meaning they can only see in black and white.

So how do they know what colours to change to at all?

This has puzzled biologists for decades but a father/son team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University think the unusual shape of their pupils holds the key, and they can see colour after all.

Cephalopods have wide U-shaped or dumbbell-shaped pupils, which allow light into the lens from many directions.

When light enters the pupils in human eyes it gets focused on one spot, cutting down on blur from the light being split into its constituent colours.

The scientists believe cephalopod eyes work the opposite way – the wide pupils split the light up and then individual colours can be focused on the retina by changing the depth of the eyeball and moving the pupil around.  

The price for this is blurry vision, but it does mean they could make out colours in a unique way to any other animals.

Processing colour this way is more computationally intensive than other types of colour vision and likely requires a lot of brainpower, which might explain in part why cephalopods are the most intelligent invertebrates on Earth.

Read the paper

Images:  Roy Caldwell, Klaus Stiefel, Alexander Stubbs

Popcorn’s explosive pop looks pretty cool in high-speed video, but just watching it with a regular camera doesn’t show everything that’s going on. If we take a look at it through schlieren optics, the kernel’s pop looks even more extraordinary:

The schlieren technique reveals density differences in the gases around the corn–effectively allowing us to see what is invisible to the naked eye. The popcorn kernel acts like a pressure vessel until the expansion of steam inside causes its shell to rupture. The first hints of escaping steam send droplets of oil shooting upward. The kernel may hop as steam pours out the rupture point, causing the turbulent billowing seen in the animation above. As the heat causes legs of starch to expand out of the kernel, they can push off the ground and propel the popcorn higher. As for the eponymous popping sound, that is the result of escaping water vapor, not the actual rupture or rebound of the kernel! See more of the invisible world surrounding a popping kernel in the video below. (Image credits: Warped Perception, source; Bell Labs Ireland, source; WP video via Gizmodo; BLI video submitted by Kevin)

Breaking News:

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2018 has been awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics”.

Donna Strickland is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 55 years.

Nobel Laureate Arthur Ashkin has been awarded the #NobelPrize in Physics “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.”

Nobel Laureates Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland have been awarded the #NobelPrize in Physics “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.”

Article here with more information about their work:

Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland win Nobel physics prize

TOP TEN MOST DEADLY INFECTIOUS DISEASES

This list is based off of the assumption that the infected individual does not receive medical treatment.

1. Prions (mad cow disease, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, kuru, fatal familial insomnia): 100%

2. Rabies: ~100%

3. African trypanosomiasis (’African sleeping sickness’): ~100%

4. Primary amoebic encephalitis caused by Naegleri fowlerii (’the brain-eating amoeba’): ~100%

5. Yersinia pestis, specifically the pneumonic or septicemic subtype (’the black plague’): ~100%

6. Visceral leishmaniasis: ~100%

7. Smallpox, specifically the malignant (flat) or hemorragic subtype: 95%

8. Ebola virus, specifically the Zaire strain: 83-90%

9. HIV: 80-90%

10. Anthrax, specifically the pulmonary subtype: >85%

Toxic Alzheimer’s Protein Spreads Through Brain Via Extracellular Space

A toxic Alzheimer’s protein can spread through the brain—jumping from one neuron to another—via the extracellular space that surrounds the brain’s neurons, suggests new research from Karen Duff, PhD, and colleagues at Columbia University Medical Center.

(Image caption: Orange indicates where tau protein has traveled from one neuron to another. Credit: Laboratory of Karen Duff, PhD)

The spread of the protein, called tau, may explain why only one area of the brain is affected in the early stages of Alzheimer’s but multiple areas are affected in later stages of the disease.

“By learning how tau spreads, we may be able to stop it from jumping from neuron to neuron,” says Dr. Duff. “This would prevent the disease from spreading to other regions of the brain, which is associated with more severe dementia.”

The idea the Alzheimer’s can spread through the brain first gained support a few years ago when Duff and other Columbia researchers discovered that tau spread from neuron to neuron through the brains of mice.

In the new study, lead scientist Jessica Wu, PhD, of the Taub Institute discovered how tau travels by tracking the movement of tau from one neuron to another. Tau, she found, can be released by neurons into extracellular space, where it can be picked up by other neurons. Because tau can travel long distances within the neuron before its release, it can seed other regions of the brain.

“This finding has important clinical implications,” explains Dr. Duff. “When tau is released into the extracellular space, it would be much easier to target the protein with therapeutic agents, such as antibodies, than if it had remained in the neuron.”

A second interesting feature of the study is the observation that the spread of tau accelerates when the neurons are more active. Two team members, Abid Hussaini, PhD, and Gustavo Rodriguez, PhD, showed that stimulating the activity of neurons accelerated the spread of tau through the brain of mice and led to more neurodegeneration.

Although more work is needed to examine whether those findings are relevant for people, “they suggest that clinical trials testing treatments that increase brain activity, such as deep brain stimulation, should be monitored carefully in people with neurodegenerative diseases,” Dr. Duff says.