Curiosity June 2024

E56

The monthly roundup of the latest science stories.

June from Roman Goddess Juno, the goddess of love and marriage

Month of Roses and summer solstice, 21st June- the midsummer day. The pride month of LGBTQ+. Month of monsoon season here in India.

Last month’s science news

1. Season of wild forest fires in Uttarakhand, TN, and KA
2. With the onset of summer rains and monsoon, dengue cases are surging in Bengaluru and Ernakulam
3. Fish kill in Periyar linked with toxic pollutants H2S and Ammonium
4. Weakening magnetism (30 times lesser) linked with the Ediacaran and Cambrian explosions. Feldspar studies in Brazil. Also linked to solidification of inner core
5. Microplastics were found in every human testicle examined in a recent study and is linked with decades of decline in sperm count. Also in dogs.
6. Microplastics are found in 80% of blood clots leading to heart attacks and strokes.
7. Copper coating kills 99.99% of bacteria in public touch screens (like check-in kiosks in airports, biometric fingerprint scanners etc)
8. Loss of visual sensitivity can predict dementia risk 12 years before the onset. Seeing triangle forming in the sea of dots.
9. New needles modelled after leeches to draw blood from patients developed.
10. Just 10 super spreaders responsible for more than one-third of fake news in twitter
11. Vegetarian and vagan diets linked to lower risk of heart disease, cancer, and death.
12. Sumatran Orangutan is seen treating his wound with a medicinal plant liana
13. New trend in US, people prefer avoiding localities with gun owners. Owning gun leads to decreased real estate value in the residential area.
14. Copayment is inefficient and wasteful, argues a new paper. The concept of penalty co-pays for ER visits that don’t result in hospitalization spits in the face of every patient who cannot possibly self-diagnose chest pains, breathing problems, sprain vs bad tear, etc
15. Rape cases are on the rise in Sweden and it coincides with criminalizing prostitution.
16. People who are good at learning and pattern recognition perform poorly in tasks that need active thinking and decision-making. Perhaps linked to autism.
17. Nasal oxytocin spray helps to alleviate symptoms associated with loneliness (n=78)
18. Liberals hate conservatives three times more strongly than vice versa, in terms of facebook post like vs dislikes.
19. Study of 15,000 adults with depression: Night owls (evening types) report that SSRIs don’t work as well for them, compared to morning types
20. Cats suffer H5N1 infection in brain, blindness and death after consuming raw milk. 1 in 5 retail milk samples test positive for H5N1 avian flu fragments in the US due to faulty pasteurization.
21. 60g of dry fruit mix (walnuts, pistatios, hazelnuts and cashews) daily for 16 weeks improve insulin sensitivity in obese adults
22. AI headphones enable wearer to listen only to a single person in the crowd simply by looking at the person via connected specs.
23. Gardening leads to lower insomnia, as per new study
24. Glans penis volume is associated with increased risk of premature ejaculation
25. New cryopreservation method MEDY to freeze brain tissues. Scientists freeze brain tissues from a 9 year old girl with epilepsy and after thawing, successfully reimplanted!
26. Jim Simons dies aged 86. Stellar scientist at MIT but shifted to Quant finance, his Medallion fund in wall street had 66% XIRR for last several decades!
27. Summer of 2023 was the hottest in last 2000 years
28. 85% of Indians believe Climate Change is affecting us, but climate change remains elusive in poll manifestos of parties.
29. Massive study including 8000 cats confirms Burmese live longest while Siamese shortest
30. Deaf baby can hear after gene therapy involving OTOF gene coding for Otoferlin protein. Dr Manohar from University of Cambridge.
31. New regenerative ‘leader cells’ discovered in human liver, giving hope for cirrhosis.
32. New evolutionary tree for flowers indicates the sudden burst of lineages happened 150 million years ago. in late Jurassic | Arabica originated 1 million years ago in Ethiopia after random crossing between two other coffee varieties | Baobab trees originated in Madagascar 21 mya and spread to Africa and Australia via long voyage

Via Nature. Over 80% of today’s flowers originated in late Jurassic, 150 million years ago

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Observances

• 3 Moon-Mars Conjunction, Cycle
• 5 Environment
• 7 Food Safety
• 8 Oceans
• 14 Blood donor
• 21 June Solstice
• 22 The Strawberry Moon (6a)
• 27 Moon-Saturn Conj, June Bootid Meteor shower
• 29 Tropics

Opportunities

• Fulbright Nehru PhD Fellowships, 15th July
• MCSA Global PostDoc in EU, 11th Sep
• Call for applications for an early-career scientist to Join the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research’s Executive Committee (deadline: 28 June)
• Apply for The World Academy of Sciences’ (TWAS) Postdoctoral Fellowships (deadline: 1 July)
• Apply for The World Academy of Sciences’ (TWAS) PhD Fellowships (deadline: 1 July)
• Apply for the 2024 Visiting Scholar Scheme of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (deadline: 31 August)
• Several JRF/Project position calls shared in Facebook group

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