It’s the end of an era. No, not the 80s, those will never die. Instead today we say goodbye to the venerable 80beats news blog.

Over the last five years 80beats has brought you more than 4,000 news stories. We’ve written about dead fish flying in wind tunnels, why ancient Romans are partially to blame for climate change, and how dogs can smell cancer on people’s breath.

But just like the 80s never really went out, DISCOVER’s daily news blog is only really getting a new haircut. One that’s less mullet-shaped.

From now on D-brief will be our new home for the best science and tech stories every day. Our name change reflects what we do—give you punchy briefings on the most important news of the day, and have a little fun while we’re at it. That’s DISCOVER’s style.

We’ve got the latest news there right now, so go check it out. Update your bookmarks and subscribe to the new D-brief news feed while you’re at it. We’ll see you on the flip side—and we’ll let MJ take us out.

Clanger or clear wing cicada (Psaltoda claripennis). Image courtesy of Arthur Chapman/Flickr

Cicadas don’t use antibacterial wing sanitizer, so how do these insects keep their wings free of bacteria? Hint: it’s structural.

The wings of the Clanger cicada kill certain bacteria by ripping their cell membranes. A pattern of pillar-like nanostructures on the wings’ surface put pressure on the bacterial cell membrane, causing it to stretch and eventually tear. In a study published in Biophysical Journal in February, researchers modeled this process for the first time. They say this is the first example of a species being able to kill bacteria with a physical structure alone.

Replicating this physical structure in bio-inspired synthetic design could eventually lead to the production of antibacterial surfaces that kill bacteria on contact. Watch the video to see a magnified rendering of how the nano-pillars lead to a bacterial cell’s demise.

Video footage courtesy of Sergey Pogodin et al/Biophysical Journal

“Triple Sun [Nonimx]” music courtesy of Coil/FreeMusicArchive.com

Optimal September navigation routes for ice-strengthened (red) and common open-water (blue) ships traveling between Rotterdam, The Netherlands and St. John’s, Newfoundland in present years (left) and in future (right).  Image courtesy Laurence C. Smith and Scott R. Stephenson/PNAS

The extent of Arctic sea ice has been diminishing since the late 1970s due to climate change, and this decline is predicted to continue in the coming decades. The prospect of open water in these previously icy areas has sparked a lot of speculation about ships being able to navigate between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through the Northwest Passage or over the North Pole.

Now scientists have analyzed sea ice projections from seven different climate models to come up with an idea of what our shipping routes might look like by midcentury, which they published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today. The picture is very different than the one we have now—a boon for commerce with yet-to-be-determined environmental ramifications.

Reconstruction of the vortex core and flow field from raw 3D data. The rendered data correspond to a three-fold distorted loop (a), a trefoil knot (b) and a pair of linked rings (slightly after the first reconnection event (c). Image courtesy of Dustin Kleckner and William T. M. Irvine/Nature Physics

When air flows around the wing of an airplane, it creates vortices of swirling air. When that wing accelerates suddenly, two vortices form and circle in opposite directions. Sometimes these circles link with one another to create knots. Knots occur in nature and physicists have theorized for the last hundred years that they could be created in liquid, too. Physicists have now figured out a way to create them and have 3-D footage of the results, which were published in Nature Physics on Sunday.

The researchers used a 3-D printer to make cross-sections of tiny airplane wings. Then they put the wings in a tank of water that was electrically charged to have lots of tiny bubbles. The bubbles show movement in the tank. When the wing was pulled through the water, it created knots in its wake which were recorded in 3-D with a high-speed laser scanner.

Video courtesy Dustin Kleckner and William T. M. Irvine/Nature Physics

Music “Biology Slides” by Bleak House

Image courtesy of NASA

This morning’s launch of SpaceX’s third Dragon capsule has the twittersphere all a-flutter. Falcon 9′s blastoff from Cape Canaveral initially appeared to be a success.

Just after the Falcon 9 rocket launched around 10:10 AM EST, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was tweeting its praises.

Falcon 9 delivered Dragon to its target orbit. All good on the rocket.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 1, 2013

But about half an hour later, things started to get a little messy.

“It appears that although it achieved Earth orbit, Dragon is experiencing some kind problem right now,” said John Insprucker, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 product manager on the Spaceflight Now live coverage at Mission Status Center. There was a glitch in the Dragon capsule’s thruster pods, according to an article in the Guardian, and three of the four thruster pods, which guide the spacecraft into orbit, failed to activate.

Issue with Dragon thruster pods. System inhibiting three of four from initializing. About to command inhibit override.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 1, 2013

This stalled deployment of the Dragon’s solar arrays, used to generate power for the capsule, until SpaceX could override the computer, according to a report on NBC.

Holding on solar array deployment until at least two thruster pods are active

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 1, 2013

Within the hour things settled down: The capsule was orbiting Earth with two of its four thruster pods working, en route to dock and drop off over a ton of supplies and science equipment at the ISS.

Solar array deployment successful

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 1, 2013

But two thruster pods are, unfortunately, only two-thirds of the power needed to dock with the ISS. Four hours after take-off, mission control announced that the capsule will not be arriving at the ISS tomorrow as planned.

“They are making progress recovering their prop system, but it’s not going to be in time to support the rendezvous and capture for tomorrow,” NASA’s spacecraft communicator told the crew. They are still hoping to attempt a second rendezvous sometime in the next few days.

Space station commander Kevin Ford said, as reported Spaceflight Now: “That’s space exploration for you. We sometimes have problems and work through them, and that’s how you learn.”

“If not tomorrow, maybe a couple of days down the road we’ll get it licked,” Ford said.

Normal shot of a candle (left) versus motion magnified version (right).

Forget 3-D and HD. This new kind of video isn’t almost as good as real life; it’s even better. The technique amplifies colors and movements that are invisible to the naked eye. The resulting view is not only enhanced but dynamic.

“What we’re doing here is a particular project at the intersection of vision and graphics that we call motion magnification,” said Michael T. Freeman, one of the project’s researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.

Measuring imperceptible changes in color and motion has been around for some time, but this algorithm is the first to capture and visualize these subtle variations on video. The intended applications were medical—visually monitoring the pulse of newborn babies without having to touch them. When tested against conventional methods of taking the pulse (or an EKG in this case) the numbers matched up, according to a NYT blog.

Freeman says there may be other diagnostic uses for visualizing the speed and distribution of blood flow, as well as a whole host of non-medical uses.

“Once we amplify it and show what’s there, there’s like a whole new world—all sorts of things you can look at,” Freeman said.

Have other ideas for how to use it? You’re in luck! The researchers have posted the source code online for those who are software savvy. Otherwise, a more user-friendly version allows you to upload a video and simply apply the motion magnification.

Screenshot and video courtesy of William T. Freeman et al./MIT via Erik Olsen/NYT

To accomplish this, researchers in North Carolina implanted tiny electrodes into the brain of a rat to record its activity, and then trained the rat to distinguish between a wide chute and a narrow one by whisker feel. The rat had to correctly match the sensation (wide or narrow) with a corresponding hole (left or right) by poking it with its nose. When the rat correctly matched the width and hole, which it did 96 percent of the time, the rat was rewarded with a drink of water. Researchers called this rat the encoder.

Image courtesy of Miguel Pais-Vieira et al.

Then the researchers fitted a second rat with brain-stimulating electrodes. This rat was called the decoder. Researchers put it in a set-up similar to that of the encoder. They fed the encoders’ brain activity through the electrodes to stimulate the decoder rats’ brains.

The decoder rat was still expected to stick its nose in the right hole, but it had no physical stimulation to guide it. Instead, it was entirely dependent on the signals sent to its brain from the encoder rat. When the decoder rat picked the right hole, which it managed about 62 percent of the time, both it and the encoder rat received a reward. That success rate was far higher than it would have been by chance alone.

Image courtesy of Miguel Pais-Vieira et al.

Then the researchers upped the ante. They recorded the brain activity of an encoder rat in North Carolina, sent it over the internet, and input it into a decoder rat in Brazil. The results were the same: 62 percent success, as reported in Scientific Reports today.

The researchers say this is the first time a direct channel has exchanged behavioral information between the brains of two rats while completely bypassing their normal modes of communication. Being able to understand, control and eventually expand such communication networks could lead to organic computers in the future, capable of solving experience-based problems that go beyond the capability of normal computers.

Zit happens.

Acne is an unwelcome reality for 80 percent of us at some point in our lives, but researchers have discovered the secret to clear skin may be the kind of bacteria that’s taken up residence there.

According to findings published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology today, certain strains of Propionibacterium acnes, a bacteria typically found in our pores, may actually protect skin from other strains of P. acnes that cause inflammation in the form of pimples.

A team from UCLA, Washington University in St. Louis and the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute collected samples of P. acnes from the noses of 101 people, about half of whom had acne. Researchers than sequenced the genomes of 66 of the more than 1,000 P. acnes strains identified, focusing their attention on genes unique to each strain.

The team discovered one strain of P. acnes that was common on healthy skin but rarely found on skin with acne. Two other strains of the bacteria, on the other hand, were typically found on the pimpled people but rarely on those with clear skin.

Researchers suspect the strain associated with clear skin may have a natural defense mechanism that destroys other, less desirable strains before they can cause inflammation and pre-prom panic over how to hide that ugly red bump.

“This P. acnes strain may protect the skin, much like yogurt’s live bacteria help defend the gut from harmful bugs,” said Huiying Li, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffin School of Medicine at UCLA.

Therefore, Li theorized, stopping spots before they start may be as simple as applying a probiotic cream or lotion loaded with the “good” P. acnes. His team plans to investigate this possibility in the next stage of their research.

Image courtesy of Cheryl Casey / Shutterstock

Most skin cancer is the result of exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which suppresses the skin’s immune system making people less able to fight off skin diseases such as cancer. But researchers in England have shown that a daily dose of omega-3 can partially counteract this effect, reducing an individual’s likelihood of developing skin cancer. The fatty acids have been shown to prevent cancer in mice, but this was the first time it was demonstrated in humans.

The researchers recruited volunteers with a nickel allergy, whose skin produced a red rash on contact with the metal. Over the course of twelve weeks, researchers gave the participants a daily supplement that contained 4 grams of omega-3—about the same amount found in 1.5 portions of oily fish. Participants were then exposed to the equivalent of 8, 15 or 30 minutes of midday sun in northern England.

To determine how much their immune systems were suppressed by the UV rays, researchers put a nickel-based ointment on participants’ skin and compared the resulting rash with a known index of immune response. Nickel allergies are a common affliction and so have become a pretty typical way of measuring immune response.

For the two shortest exposure times, people taking fish oil only had half as much immune suppression as people who weren’t taking supplements. Very little improvement was seen in members of the 30-minute exposure group, according to the report published in the March issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Researchers concluded that omega-3 appears to protect people against short-term exposure to UV rays, and that the mechanism, although still unclear, occurs at the cellular level. The fatty acid’s role is chemopreventative, meaning it prevents or slows the development of cancer. Over the course of a lifetime, the researchers say, such continuous, low level protection could have a substantial benefit for individuals and the population at large. For the sake of heart and skin health, then, eat your fish.

Image courtesy of aodaodaodaod/Shutterstock

Various studies in recent years have shown that some organic fruits and vegetables have nutritional advantages over conventionally-grown produce. For instance, organic tomatoes contain more vitamins, and organic tomato juice has more phenolics, a class of molecules that promote the body’s own antioxidant response.

But it’s been unclear exactly how organic farming brings about these changes in fruit. Now a new study indicates that the secret is stress: While conventional fruits are coddled by synthetic fertilizers, organic plants have fewer minerals available to them—and they therefore produce fruit that’s higher in human-healthy compounds.

Researchers came to this conclusion by analyzing organic and conventional tomatoes from farms in Brazil. Comparing the fruits at points throughout the growing cycle, researchers found that the conventional tomatoes were about 40 percent bigger than organics. Previous research indicates that smaller fruit is a sign that plants are under more stress. Further proof of organics’ stress came in the tomatoes’ chemistry. Organic tomatoes had higher levels of antioxidants, hinting that they were battling damaging oxidizing molecules.

These tiny organic tomatoes packed a punch: 55 percent more vitamin C and 57 percent more “soluble solids,” including sugars, which probably made them taste better too. As the researchers report in PLoS One, this is the first time organic plants’ stress has been linked to the nutritional benefits of their fruit.

The findings make sense in light of a basic principle of living things—there’s a tradeoff between growth and defense. Pampered conventional plants can direct all their energies toward growth, producing bigger fruit. But the defense activities in organic plants, which detract from growth, produce chemicals that are healthy for the human diet.

All this comes with a caveat, however. It’s not guaranteed that higher antioxidant levels in fruit translate to higher antioxidant levels in the bloodstream of those who eat it. For apples and tomato juice, at least, it appears that organics’ antioxidant benefit is lost in translation.

Top image courtesy Mau Horng / Shutterstock