Tag Archives: variation

Transcriptome variation in human tissues revealed by long-read sequencing

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    New Research Shows the Earth’s Inner Core Oscillates – Causes Variation in the Length of a Day

    Scientists have discovered evidence that the Earth’s inner core oscillates, contradicting previously held beliefs that it consistently rotates at a faster rate than the planet’s surface.

    Scientists identify a six-year cycle of super- and sub-rotation that affected the length of a day based on their analysis of seismic data.

    Earth’s structure is divided into layers, with the inner core at the center followed by the outer core, lower mantle, upper mantle, crust, and atmosphere. The inner core is the hottest part of the planet at about 10,000 °F (5400 °C), which is similar to the temperature of the surface of the sun!

    Believed to consist mostly of an iron-nickel

    “From our findings, we can see the Earth’s surface shifts compared to its inner core, as people have asserted for 20 years,” said John E. Vidale, co-author of the study and Dean’s Professor of Earth Sciences at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “However, our latest observations show that the inner core spun slightly slower from 1969-71 and then moved the other direction from 1971-74. We also note that the length of a day grew and shrank as would be predicted.

    “The coincidence of those two observations makes oscillation the likely interpretation.”

    USC researchers identified a six-year cycle of super- and sub-rotation in the Earth’s inner core, contradicting previously accepted models that suggested it consistently rotates at a faster rate than the planet’s surface. Credit: Edward Sotelo/USC

    Analysis of atomic tests pinpoints rotation rate and direction

    Our understanding of the inner core has expanded dramatically in the past 30 years. The inner core — a hot, dense ball of solid iron the size of

    Research published in 1996 was the first to propose that the inner core rotates faster than the rest of the planet — also known as super-rotation — at roughly 1 degree per year. Subsequent findings from Vidale reinforced the idea that the inner core super-rotates, albeit at a slower rate.

    Earth’s layers and structure.

    Utilizing data from the Large Aperture Seismic Array (LASA), a U.S. Air Force facility in Montana, researcher Wei Wang and Vidale found the inner core rotated slower than previously predicted, approximately 0.1 degrees per year. The study analyzed waves generated from Soviet underground nuclear bomb tests from 1971-74 in the Arctic archipelago Novaya Zemlya using a novel beamforming technique developed by Vidale.

    The new findings emerged when Wang and Vidale applied the same methodology to a pair of earlier atomic tests beneath Amchitka Island at the tip of the Alaskan archipelago — Milrow in 1969 and Cannikin in 1971. Measuring the compressional waves resulting from the nuclear explosions, they discovered the inner core had reversed direction, sub-rotating at least a tenth of a degree per year.

    This latest study marked the first time the well-known six-year oscillation had been indicated through direct seismological observation.

    “The idea the inner core oscillates was a model that was out there, but the community has been split on whether it was viable,” Vidale says. “We went into this expecting to see the same rotation direction and rate in the earlier pair of atomic tests, but instead we saw the opposite. We were quite surprised to find that it was moving in the other direction.”

    Future research to dig deeper into why inner core formed

    Vidale and Wang both noted future research would depend on finding sufficiently precise observations to compare against these results. By using seismological data from atomic tests in previous studies, they have been able to pinpoint the exact location and time of the very simple seismic event, says Wang. However, the Montana LASA closed in 1978 and the era of U.S. underground atomic testing is over, meaning that the researchers would need to rely on comparatively imprecise earthquake data, even with recent advances in instrumentation.

    The study does support the speculation that the inner core oscillates based on variations in the length of day — plus or minus 0.2 seconds over six years — and geomagnetic fields, both of which match the theory in both amplitude and phase. Vidale says the findings provide a compelling theory for many questions posed by the research community.

    “The inner core is not fixed — it’s moving under our feet, and it seems to going back and forth a couple of kilometers every six years,” Vidale said. “One of the questions we tried to answer is, does the inner core progressively move or is it mostly locked compared to everything else in the long term? We’re trying to understand how the inner core formed and how it moves over time — this is an important step in better understanding this process.”

    Reference: “Seismological observation of Earth’s oscillating inner core” by Wei Wang and John E. Vidale, 10 June 2022, Science Advances.
    DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm9916



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    This One Tiny Animal Has Found a Way to Give Up Sex Completely, And Still Do Fine

    Let’s face it. Sex isn’t always worth the effort. For many animals, the whole mating game is so inconvenient, going it alone and reproducing asexually is the best option.

    As appealing as it might sound, however, evolution puts a heavy price on a population that gives up sex for too long. Sooner or later, a eukaryotic species will either need to swap chromosomes in a DNA shake-up that increases genetic variation, or risk fading into extinction.

     

    That’s the rule, at least – but the beetle mite (Oppiella nova) is having none of it.

    By comparing its genome with that of its sexually active cousin, O. subpectinata, a team of researchers from across Europe has found that this micrometer-sized arthropod has been doing quite all right living a chaste lifestyle for… millions of years.

    Like us, these tiny mites have a copy for every chromosome making up their genome, which makes them a diploid organism.

    Swapping chromosomes and subjecting them to a bit of mix-and-match every now and then helps give a population a diverse choice in genetic combinations, meaning when catastrophe strikes – be it a plague, a temperature change, or introduction of a new predator – there’s bound to be at least a few individuals that will cope.

    Strip away all the bells and whistles, and that’s sex all summed up. Unfortunately, those bells and whistles (searching out mates, competing with them, producing all that sperm, the whole pregnancy thing) impose a toll on maximizing genetic diversity.

    There are other ways to maintain a degree of variation that don’t rely on sexual reproduction. These processes cause mutations to build up differently in types of the same gene (or allele), creating a unique signature among the genes of asexual organisms.

     

    Known as the Meselson effect, named after Harvard geneticist Matthew Meselson, this mutation pattern could in theory be used to identify a diploid organism as a bona fide, long-term asexual species.

    The only problem is none of the evidence for this effect has been clear-cut, leaving too much room for doubt. Some ancient lineages of species thought to be asexual have since been found to have only recent converts, or – scandalous as it is to suggest – have peppered their genes with the occasional licentious tryst over the eons.  

    What researchers needed was a strong, unambiguous signal of variation in genes in an animal suspected of having given up sex long, long ago, and never looked back.

    Which brings us back to O. nova – a little mite with sublineages that went their separate ways between 6 and 16 million years ago, suggesting it’s a species that’s been around for quite a while.

    More importantly, it’s a species known to be asexual, in contrast with others on its branch of the family tree, making it a prime specimen to study for evidence of the Meselson effect.

     

    As one might imagine of an animal that could form a conga-line inside a single millimeter, the task of collecting them and analyzing their DNA wasn’t exactly easy.

    “These mites are only one-fifth of a millimeter in size and difficult to identify,” says reproductive biologist Jens Bast from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

    The team even required specialized computer programs to decipher the genomes, but it was all worth it in the end.

    “Our results clearly show that O. nova reproduces exclusively asexually,” says Bast.

    “When it comes to understanding how evolution works without sex, these beetle mites could still provide a surprise or two.”

    This isn’t to say asexual reproduction isn’t without its problems. The beetle mite appears to be an exception to an otherwise fairly consistent rule in biology.

    But the discovery of an animal that’s managed to leave sex millions of years in the past does demonstrate it’s possible to thrive without it.

    This research was published in PNAS.

     

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    Experts Identify New COVID Variation in South Africa – What’s Known So Far

    As a team of South African researchers we have identified a new lineage of

    Disclosure statement

    Prof. Wolfgang Preiser receives funding from South African Medical Research Council and other scientific funders. He serves on the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee for COVID-19 Vaccines (VMAC).

    Jinal Bhiman receives funding from the South African National Department of Health as part of the emergency COVID-19 response; a cooperative agreement between the National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the African Society of Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through a sub-award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Wellcome; the South African Medical Research Council and the South African Department of Science and Innovation; the UK Department of Health and Social Care, managed by the Fleming Fund and performed under the auspices of the SEQAFRICA project. She is affiliated with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and the University of the Witwatersrand; and serves as a member of the World Health Organization Technical Advisory Group on Viral Evolution.

    Marietjie Venter receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa;The European Union (LEAP-Agri) program; The BMBF (the German Federal ministry for education and Research); and National Health Laboratory Services research foundation for unrelated research. She is currently employed by the University of Pretoria. She has acted as temporary advisor for the WHO. The views expressed here is that of the author and do not reflect those of the funders or employer.

    Penny Moore receives funding from the National Research Foundation, the South African Medical Research Council and the US National Institutes of Health.

    Tulio de Oliveira does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. It is supported by funding from the South African Medical Research Council and the Department of Science and Innovation.

    Cathrine Scheepers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    This article was first published in The Conversation.



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    Password of three random words better than complex variation, experts say | Data and computer security

    It is much better to concoct passwords for online accounts that are made up of three random words as opposed to creating complex variations of letters, numbers and symbols, government experts have said.

    In a blogpost, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – which is part of Government Communications Headquarters – said a three-word system creates passwords that are easy to remember. In addition, it creates unusual combinations of letters, which means the system is strong enough to keep online accounts secure from cybercriminals. By contrast, more complex passwords can be ineffective as their makeup can often be guessed by criminals using specialist software.

    The agency said cybercriminals targeted predictable strategies meant to make passwords more complex. Examples include substituting the letter O with a zero, or the number one with an exclamation mark.

    Criminals allow for such patterns in their hacking software, negating any added security from such passwords. “Counterintuitively, the enforcement of these complexity requirements results in the creation of more predictable passwords,” the agency said.

    By contrast, passwords constructed from three random words tended to be longer and harder to predict, and used letter combinations that were more difficult for hacking algorithms to detect, it said.

    The blogpost conceded that using three random words was not 100% safe, since people might use predictable word combinations, but said a major advantage of the system was its usability “because security that’s not usable doesn’t work”.

    Cybercrime has soared during the pandemic, with online fraud rising 70% over the past year, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

    “Traditional password advice telling us to remember multiple complex passwords is simply daft,” the NCSC’s technical director, Dr Ian Levy, said on the centre’s website.

    “There are several good reasons why we decided on the three random words approach – not least because they create passwords which are both strong and easier to remember.

    “By following this advice, people will be much less vulnerable to cybercriminals and I’d encourage people to think about the passwords they use on their important accounts, and consider a password manager.”

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