Science news of the day thread.

[Brian Peacock]

That's a lot of paper.

[Brian Peacock]

rEv just reminded me that the Lyrid meteor shower is peaking tonight. Thought someone else might be interested.

I've peaked already thanks.

[Calilasseia]

That's a lot of paper.

That's only a tiny fraction of the literature available on Drosophila wing development.

[Brian Peacock]

I don't know where you find the time.

Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.

[Calilasseia]

Meanwhile, here's another paper on insects mimicking their predators in order to sow confusion in the ranks:

Predator Mimicry: Metalmark Moths Mimic Their Jumping Spider Predators by Jadranka Rota & David L. Wagner, PLoS One, 1: e45 (20th December 2006) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000045 [Full paper downloadable from here]

Abstract

Cases of mimicry provide many of the nature's most convincing examples of natural selection. Here we report evidence for a case of predator mimicry in which metalmark moths in the genus Brenthia mimic jumping spiders, one of their predators. In controlled trials, Brenthia had higher survival rates than other similarly sized moths in the presence of jumping spiders and jumping spiders responded to Brenthia with territorial displays, indicating that Brenthia were sometimes mistaken for jumping spiders, and not recognized as prey. Our experimental results and a review of wing patterns of other insects indicate that jumping spider mimicry is more widespread than heretofore appreciated, and that jumping spiders are probably an important selective pressure shaping the evolution of diurnal insects that perch on vegetation.

[FBM]

Good images of that here: http://bugs.adrianthysse.com/tag/salticidae/

Edited to correct the link.

[Calilasseia]

Your link takes me to a video clip of a two year old girl doing a pratfall on ice.

[FBM]

Derp. That was meant for elsewhere. Hang on while I edit...

[Calilasseia]

I downloaded the video clips from PLoS One. There's four in total: one showing the manner in which the moths display themselves, a comparison video showing territorial responses of male Salticid spiders, a video showing what happens when non-mimetic moths are offered up to the Salticids (invariably, they end up as lunch), and the final video shows the Brenthia mimetic moths placed alongside the same Salticids (the spiders react with a territorial display as if encountering another Salticid, as in the second video).

They're pretty impressive. You can download them from the PLoS One main page covering the paper.

[FBM]

I gave them a look. Fascinating. The spider wanted to fight the metalmark(s), but ate the others. Very cool.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

Computer passes Turing test:-
http://home.bt.com/techgadgets/technews ... 3909495174

A "super computer" has duped humans into thinking it was a 13-year-old boy to become the first machine to pass the "iconic" Turing Test, experts have said.

Five machines were tested at the Royal Society in central London to see if they could fool people into thinking they were humans during text-based conversations.

The test was devised in 1950 by computer science pioneer and Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing, who said that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human, then it was "thinking".

No computer had ever previously passed the Turing Test, which requires 30% of human interrogators to be duped during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations, organisers from the University of Reading said.

[cronus]

So they couldn't tell the difference between a 13 year old brat and a piece of computer code? Not exactly passing the Turing Test....

[Brian Peacock]

Universal flu vaccine a step closer as scientists create experimental jabs

Annual vaccinations could be a thing of the past as scientists have successfully tested vaccines on animals infected with different strains of influenza



A universal flu vaccine that protects against multiple strains of the virus is a step closer after scientists created experimental jabs that work in animals.

The vaccines prevented deaths or reduced symptoms in mice, ferrets and monkeys infected with different types of flu, raising hopes for a reliable alternative to the seasonal vaccine.

Doctors hope that a universal flu vaccine would do away with the need for people at risk to have flu jabs every year, and even protect the public from dangerous, potentially pandemic, strains that jump from birds or pigs into humans.

Conventional flu vaccines target the “head” of a molecule called haemagglutinin (HA) that sits on the surface of flu viruses. But because the head of the HA mutates so rapidly, seasonal flu vaccines must be continually re-formulated to ensure they are effective.

During the last flu season, mutations in the HA molecule on one of the most common circulating strains, H3N2, meant that the seasonal flu vaccine offered little protection. Public Health England said in February that the less effective vaccine was likely to have been behind a steep rise in flu deaths.

In two studies reported on Monday, separate research teams describe how they created novel flu vaccines that target the “stem” of the HA molecule instead of the head. The stem of the HA molecule is similar across different flu strains and mutates far less often.

One of the teams, led by Barney Graham at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, created their vaccine by attaching part of a flu virus’s HA stem to tiny balls of protein. These protein nanoparticles kept the stem intact and made it easy for the immune system to spot once it was injected.

In lab tests, one version of the vaccine completely protected mice and partially protected ferrets from injections of H5N1 bird flu virus, which was fatal in unvaccinated animals. The H5N1 flu strain has killed more than 400 people since 2003, most of whom caught the virus from infected poultry.

“This is very much a test of concept,” Graham told the Guardian. The team, whose study appears in the journal Nature Medicine, now hopes to develop another vaccine that protects against a different group of flu viruses. The first human trials are at least three years away, Graham added.

A second team, led by Antonietta Impagliazzo at the Crucell Vaccine Institute in Leiden, created their own experimental flu vaccine by removing the head of the HA molecule, and tweaking the stem to make it bind to antibodies more effectively.

Writing in the journal Science, the team describes how injections of one formulation of the vaccine protected mice from H5N1 bird flu and the H1N1 swine flu that emerged in 2009. The vaccine was less effective in macaques, but the animals had less severe flu symptoms after receiving the jabs.

“Influenza remains one of the most serious public health challenges, and new therapeutic and preventative solutions are needed,” said Hanneke Schuitemaker, head of viral vaccines discovery at Janssen Infectious Diseases and Vaccines, a company that worked on the vaccine.

“The results highlighted today shows there is potential in the development of a single universal vaccine to protect against all seasonal and pandemic influenza strains,” she added.

Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, said: “This is an exciting development, but the new vaccines now need to be tested in clinical trials to see how well they work in humans. This will be the next stage of research, which will take several years. So we are still some way from having better flu vaccines for humans.”

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015 ... ental-jabs

Good news for the old and infirm, eh Jim?

[rainbow]

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-scientists ... ldest.html

[pErvinalia]

I'm pretty sure the guy who lives next door is an older fossil than that..