15 Jun Mosquito saliva vaccines: a weapon against arbovirus infections? 

A soon-to-be-published study supports the development of arbovirus vaccines targeting mosquito salivary proteins rather than the viruses present in their saliva.

Arbovirus infections represent 17% of all communicable diseases in humans, causing one billion cases and one million deaths annually. An arbovirus is a virus that is transmitted by insects to a vertebrate host, mainly mammals. The most common vectors of the arbovirus are mosquitos, ticks, and sandflies.

The most prevalent mosquito-borne viruses are dengue, yellow fever, West Nile, Zika, and chikungunya. These viruses have been responsible for emerging and re-emerging outbreaks and epidemics in the last years, thus representing a huge global health burden. Among all vector-borne viruses, Dengue is the most clinically significant arbovirus, infecting 390 million people each year with nearly 100 million symptomatic infections.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.medicalnewsbulletin.com

08 Jun Curiosity finds that Mars’ methane changes with the seasons 

The Curiosity rover found seasonally changing methane in Mars’ atmosphere and more signs of organic molecules in an ancient lake bed.

To Martian methane, there is a season. NASA’s Curiosity rover has found evidence that methane in Mars’ thin atmosphere varies during the year. Higher concentrations appear in late summer and early autumn in the northern hemisphere and lower concentrations in the winter and spring, researchers report in the June 8, 2018 Science. What’s more, Curiosity also spotted organic molecules previously unseen on Mars preserved in mudstone, some of the same researchers report in another study in the same issue of Science. Although neither methane nor organics alone are signs of life, the implications for astrobiology are “potentially huge,” says planetary scientist Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who was not involved in the studies.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.sciencenews.org

08 Jun Casting a $20 Million Mirror for the World’s Largest Telescope 

Building a mirror for any giant telescope is no simple feat. The sheer size of the glass, the nanometer precision of its curves, its carefully calculated optics, and the adaptive software required to run it make this a task of herculean proportions. But the recent castings of the 15-metric ton, off-axis mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) forced engineers to push the design and manufacturing process beyond all previous limits.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: spectrum.ieee.org