Swatting at mosquitoes is a great start, but if we really want to cut down on the hundreds of millions of malaria cases they cause every year, we're going to need some more effective weapons. Now, researchers from Johns Hopkins have used the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tool to engineer mosquitoes that are highly resistant to the malaria parasite, by deleting one specific gene.
      According to the latest report from the World Health Organization, there were 216 million cases of malaria in 2016, resulting in 445,000 deaths. Female Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes are the primary culprit, and over the last few years scientists have engaged in all kinds of genetic warfare against the parasites and the insects that spread them.
      In 2011, a UC Irvine team modified mosquitoes so that females of the species couldn't fly. They would die where they hatched, while the males would fly off, mature and mate with wild females which would unknowingly pass the deadly mutation down to their offspring. Other genetic tweaking turned the insects' immune systems against the malaria parasite, made mosquitoes unable to sniff out humans, or crippled larvaeby silencing crucial development genes.
      The new study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, targeted a gene called FREP1. This gene encodes for a specific immune protein that, for reasons not fully understood, helps the malaria parasite survive in the mosquito's gut. By snipping out FREP1 using the genetic scissors of CRISPR/Cas9, the team was able to reduce the likelihood of the malaria parasite surviving long enough to mature to the stage where it can harm humans.
      "Our study shows that we can use this new CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to render mosquitoes malaria-resistant by removing a so-called host factor gene," says George Dimopoulos, senior author of the study. "The resistance to malaria parasites that's achieved by deleting FREP1 is remarkably potent."
      The technique was able to reduce the number of mosquitoes infected with malaria, and the researchers also found no trace in the bugs' saliva glands of sporozoites – the stage of the parasite that is transferred to humans through the bite.
      The genetic edit wasn't perfectly neat though. The team found that the engineered mosquitoes developed more slowly than their natural counterparts, were less likely to feed on blood and laid fewer eggs that were less viable. If the modified mozzies were released into the wild in this state, natural selection could wipe them out before they got the job done.
      "We're now making mosquitoes in which FREP1 will be inactivated only in the adult gut," says Dimopoulos. "We predict that when we do that, the mosquito won't suffer the same fitness costs."
      Once those kinks are ironed out, the genetically-modified mosquitoes could be released into the wild to spread their malaria resistance through the natural population. The researchers think that this could be a viable strategy, since the gene edits they've performed don't impact the insects' ability to survive and breed.
      "If you could successfully replace ordinary, wild-type mosquitoes with these modified mosquitoes, it's likely that there would be a significant impact on malaria transmission," says Dimopoulos.

Autonomous vehicles are getting much better at sensing their surroundings, but even they still need to be able to directly see a hazard to react to it. Now, a Stanford team is developing a laser-based system that may allow driverless cars to see around blind corners, and come to a stop before a child runs out or another car speeds by.
In order to image objects beyond direct line-of-sight, the technique involves bouncing laser pulses around a corner, off the desired object and back. A highly sensitive sensor captures the returning photons of light, an algorithm analyzes them and the end result is a fuzzy snapshot of something lurking just out of sight.
As high-tech as it sounds, this isn't the first time scientists have successfully pulled off this kind of light show. A team from MIT was experimenting with a similar system in 2012, and in 2014 European and Canadian researchers were able to recreate "light echoes" of hidden objects.
The Stanford scientists say their new contribution is mostly on the mathematical side. Since light is scattered by the objects it hits, they can bounce back to the sensor from almost anywhere, resulting in a lot of "noise" that can wash out the desired target. To help cut through, the team developed an advanced algorithm that can calculate the path taken by the captured photons, and use that to reconstruct the object.
"A substantial challenge in non-line-of-sight imaging is figuring out an efficient way to recover the 3D structure of the hidden object from the noisy measurements," says David Lindell, co-author of a paper describing the technique. "I think the big impact of this method is how computationally efficient it is."
The researchers say their algorithm can analyze the photon data in less than a second, and is efficient enough to run on a regular laptop. The problem in the way of practicality at the moment is the initial scans – in order to generate enough data about a hidden object, the system needs to fire off many pulses of laser light in a process that can take up to an hour. As it stands, that's not going to be much use for providing forewarning of a child about to run around a corner in front of a car.
The other major issue is ambient light. Under carefully-controlled lab conditions the system works fine, but take it outside into the bright light of day and the sensors get a little overwhelmed. That said, in outdoor tests the researchers found that the technology was able to clearly pick up highly reflective objects, such as high-visibility clothing and road signs and markers.
In future, the researchers plan to work on speeding up the scans, improving the system's ability to work in daylight and detect moving objects.
The research was published in the journal Nature. The team describes the project in the video below.

Every fundamental particle in the universe has an antiparticle, which has the same mass but the opposite charge. If a particle should ever meet its antiparticle, the two would annihilate each other in a flash of energy. But it's long been theorized that there's an exception to the rule, with certain particles that are actually their own antiparticles. Now, scientists from Stanford and the University of California have found the first strong evidence for this type of particle, which they dub the "angel particle."
The theory dates back to 1937, when physicist Ettore Majorana highlighted a gap in the fermion family of particles. Protons, electrons, neutrons, neutrinos and quarks are all fermions, and all have corresponding antiparticles, but according to Majorana's calculations, there should be particles that are their own antiparticles.
Since they have no charge, neutrons and neutrinos were the best candidates to be these Majorana fermions, but antineutrons have since been discovered. There's still a big question mark hanging over neutrinos though, and experiments are currently underway to determine if they are in fact their own antiparticle. However, the difficulty of the experiments means an answer is still more than a decade away.
In the meantime, the most likely way to find Majorana fermions is by looking for "quasiparticles." As the name suggests, these aren't quite natural particles, but they arise out of the collective behavior of electrons and have certain properties of particles. If that's hard to visualize, the Encyclopaedia Britannica explains the concept like bubbles in a drink: bubbles also arise out of the "collective behavior" of the chemicals in the drink, and although they aren't really independent objects, bubbles do have measurable properties like objects, including size, shape, etc.
In the same way, quasiparticles might not occur outside of very specific conditions, but they can be considered to be Majorana fermions if they exhibit all the right properties. Now Stanford and UC researchers say they've found a "smoking gun" signature that points to the presence of these hypothetical fermions.
"Our team predicted exactly where to find the Majorana fermion and what to look for as its 'smoking gun' experimental signature," says Shoucheng Zhang, one of the senior authors of the research paper. "This discovery concludes one of the most intensive searches in fundamental physics, which spanned exactly 80 years."
To make these quirky quasiparticles show themselves, the team carefully constructed their very specific "drink," made up of thin films of two quantum materials stacked on top of one another. The end result is a superconducting topological insulator, which allows electrons to move quickly along the edges of the material's surface but not through the middle. Adding a pinch of magnetic material to the mix made the electrons flow in one direction along one edge, and the opposite direction along the other.
The researchers then swept a magnet over the material, which caused all the electrons to slow down, stop and switch direction. The reversal happened in a jerky, staggered motion that the team likens to stairs in a staircase. Quasiparticles began to emerge from the material in pairs, traveling along the same path as the electrons, but there was a key difference: when they stopped and turned around, they did so in "steps" exactly half as high as the electrons. That's because each is essentially only half of a particle, since one out of each quasiparticle pair is lost along the way. And that phenomenon was exactly the evidence the team had been looking for.
Zhang proposes that the team's discovery be named the "angel particle" after the Dan Brown novel Angels and Demons, which features a bomb powered by the meeting of matter and antimatter. In the long run, Majoranas could find practical application in making quantum computers more secure.

    If you've recently stopped smoking, then you ought to start eating more tomatoes and other fruits. According to a new study from Johns Hopkins University, doing so could help slow the decline of your lung function, by reversing some of the damage caused by smoking.
    The researchers started by assessing the diet and lung function of over 650 adults in 2002, and then checked back on them 10 year later. Located in Germany, Norway and the UK, the people completed questionnaires regarding their diets and overall nutritional intake, plus they underwent a procedure that measured the capacity of their lungs to take in oxygen.
    Factors such as age, height, sex, body mass index, socio-economic status, physical activity and total energy intake were all accounted for.
According to the university, it was found that ex-smokers who on average ate more than two tomatoes or more than three portions of fresh fruit per day experienced a slower decline in lung function than those who ate less than one tomato or less than one portion of fruit per day.
    It should be noted that the effect was observed only with fresh fruits and tomatoes, and not with foods such as tomato sauce in which they're an ingredient. Also, as far as fruits other than tomatoes go, apples were found to be particularly beneficial.
    "This study shows that diet might help repair lung damage in people who have stopped smoking. It also suggests that a diet rich in fruits can slow down the lung's natural aging process even if you have never smoked," says Vanessa Garcia-Larsen, the study's lead author. "The findings support the need for dietary recommendations, especially for people at risk of developing respiratory diseases such as COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]."

    A disturbing new study led by scientists at the University of Bonn suggests that the immune system responds to a fast food-style Western diet in much the same way as it would react to a bacterial infection. As well as stimulating widespread inflammatory activity, the study claims that switching to a healthy diet may not fully reverse the long-term damage once initially triggered.
    The study began by feeding mice a "Western diet" for one month. This diet is roughly defined as high in saturated fats, sugar and salt, while mostly devoid of fresh fruit, vegetables and fiber.
    "The unhealthy diet led to an unexpected increase in the number of certain immune cells in the blood of the mice, especially granulocytes and monocytes," says Anette Christ, one of the authors on the study.     "This was an indication for an involvement of immune cell progenitors in the bone marrow."
    What this suggested to the researchers was that the diet had not only stimulated an acute inflammatory response in the animals, but it also activated certain genes in progenitor cells. These progenitor cells are responsible for the proliferation of immune cells in the body and they have been found to have a sort of memory.
    "It has only recently been discovered that the innate immune system has a form of memory", explains Eicke Latz, Director of the Institute for Innate Immunity of the University of Bonn. "After an infection, the body's defenses remain in a kind of alarm state, so that they can respond more quickly to a new attack."
    In this instance, that innate immune system programming process was instigated by a fast food-dominated diet and not by a virus or bacterium. Examining the animal's blood cells closely revealed the key presence of inflammasomes, the multiprotein oligomers that are responsible for recognizing infections and activating immune inflammatory processes.
    "The inflammasome triggers such epigenetic changes", explains Latz. "The immune system consequently reacts even to small stimuli with stronger inflammatory responses."
    These kinds of inflammatory responses have been linked to diabetes, heart disease and a variety of autoimmune disorders. This isn't the first study to associate the unhealthy Western diet with autoimmune and inflammatory disease, and it did only concentrate on animal models, but the potential long-term implications of these results are undeniably disturbing. With increasing rates of obesity and diabetes in Western countries, the growing body of evidence is making it clear that processed and fast foods can be incredibly damaging to our bodies.