People with Type 2 diabetes who were given a smartphone app that delivers personalized cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) saw significantly greater reductions in their blood sugar and less need for higher doses of diabetes medications at six months compared with those who only received standard diabetes care and a control app. This is according to a study to be presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology....

COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus SARS-Cov-2, has infected over 4 million people in 212 countries, of whom at least 272,000 have died. The ongoing economic and social impact of the pandemic is staggering, but despite a daily flood of news on the disease, few laypeople know that paradoxically, COVID-19 mostly kills through an overreaction of the immune system, whose function is precisely to fight infections. In a new review article — explicitly targeted to non-specialists as well — in Frontiers in Public Health, a team of experts from Zunyi Medical University review the epidemiology, disease pathway, symptoms, diagnosis, and current treatment of severe COVID-19....

The recycling of most of the carbon in nature depends on the breakdown of two polymers in woody matter, notably cellulose and lignin. In a paper just published in the journal Biochemistry, Richard Wolfenden, Ph.D., and colleague Charles Lewis, Ph.D., both in the UNC Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, show the extent to which enzymes from woodland fungi accelerate the breakdown of lignin, a complex polymer held together entirely by ether linkages....

Why is it that animal and plant species throughout the world have different genetic variants within their particular species, even though it is supposed to be the “fittest” gene pool that survives? According to a common theory in evolutionary biology, it is to enable the species to respond more effectively to changes in the environment, such as the occurrence of disease. However, experimental evidence to support this theory is very difficult to obtain: After all, it is virtually impossible to observe how evolutionary trends develop in most animal and plant species – their generation times are simply too long....

A new study, published in PLoS Genetics on December 7, 2022, reveals how a selfish gene in yeast uses a poison-antidote strategy that enables its function and likely has facilitated its long-term evolutionary success. This strategy is an important addition for scientists studying similar systems including teams that are designing synthetic drive systems for pathogenic pest control. Collective and collaborative advancement in understanding drive may one day lead to the eradication of pest populations that harm crops or even humans in the case of vector-borne diseases....

Influence Across the Fleet TIMED’s contributions over the last 20 years have influenced missions across NASA, especially in the field of heliophysics, the science of the Sun-Earth system. “TIMED plays an important role in our heliophysics fleet,” said Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The upper atmosphere is a critical part of our Sun-Earth system and TIMED’s long-term data set has been an important part of deepening our understanding of this dynamic....

This huge ball of stars — around 100 billion in total — is an elliptical galaxy located some 55 million light-years away from us. Known as Messier 89, this galaxy appears to be perfectly spherical; this is unusual for elliptical galaxies, which tend to be elongated ellipsoids. The apparently spherical nature of Messier 89 could, however, be a trick of perspective, and be caused by its orientation relative to the Earth....

This striking new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a glittering bauble named Messier 92. Located in the northern constellation of Hercules, this globular cluster — a ball of stars that orbits a galactic core like a satellite — was first discovered by astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1777. Messier 92 is one of the brightest globular clusters in the Milky Way, and is visible to the naked eye under good observing conditions....

Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory’s launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery more than a century ago. The nebula is a favorite target for amateur and professional astronomers....

Contrary to the skin and liver, damaged hearts rarely heal themselves but there is new research that might raise hope for cell therapies. It’s been recently shown that heart muscle cells differentiated from human embryonic stem cells could be reintegrated into an existing heart muscle. These new cells beat in sync with the rest of the heart, states Chuck Murry, a cardiovascular biologist at the University of Washington, who co-led the paper, which was published in the journal Nature....

Scientists at Harvard University have developed a way to vastly accelerate single-cell sequencing, an advance that promises to give a major lift to biomedical genomics research. The new approach combines microfluidics and novel software to accelerate single-cell ATAC-seq, which identifies parts of the genome that are open and accessible to regulatory proteins. Detailed in a June 24 article in Nature Biotechnology, the innovation was the product of a collaboration between Harvard’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (HSCRB) and researchers at Bio-Rad Laboratories....

“The entire system was fully operational in 70 minutes on Day One and 50 minutes on Day Two,” said Matt Gilligan, vice president at Raytheon’s Intelligence, Information and Services business. “Raytheon is offering the U.S. and its allies fast and accurate precision landing systems that support operations from bare-base locations.” During the demonstration, military officials from all four services, as well as representatives from Japan, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Italy, watched multiple F-35Cs land on the same designated runway landing point every time over the course of six different approaches....

As of June 10, 2022, the CDC is reporting 1472 confirmed monkeypox cases in 33 non-endemic countries. The list includes (in order of most cases to least cases): United Kingdom, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Canada, France, Netherlands, United States, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Australia, Czechia, Slovenia, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, Finland, Argentina, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, Austria, Brazil, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, and Poland. This new monkeypox outbreak is making headlines about this rare, transmissible virus that’s related to smallpox....

Stanford professor Marc Feldman and Stanford postdoc Oren Kolodny collaborated with Creanza on the special issue. “Within the blink of an eye on a geological timescale, humans advanced from using basic stone tools to examining the rocks on Mars. However, our exact evolutionary path and the relative importance of genetic and cultural evolution remain a mystery,” said Creanza, who specializes in the application of computational and theoretical approaches to human and cultural evolution, particularly language development....

Auroral displays continue to intrigue scientists, whether the bright lights shine over Earth or over another planet. The lights hold clues to the makeup of a planet’s magnetic field and how that field operates. New research about Jupiter proves that point — and adds to the intrigue. Peter Delamere, a professor of space physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, is among an international team of 13 researchers who have made a key discovery related to the aurora of our solar system’s largest planet....

The search for signatures of quantum gravity forges ahead. From a distance, sand dunes seem flat and wrinkle-free, like silk sheets covering the desert. However, a closer look shows a lot more. You might see sand ripples as you get closer to the dunes. You can feel individual grains if you touched the surface. The same is true with digital photos; if you zoom in close enough to a seemingly beautiful portrait, you can make out the individual pixels that make it up....

Demand has surged for ivermectin, a drug widely given to horses and cows to treat worms and other parasitic infections, as a possible treatment or preventative for COVID-19. Some seekers have turned to over-the-counter animal formulations, despite Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warnings against their use, resulting in a spike in calls to poison control centers. Dr. Jim Lowe, a professor of veterinary clinical medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an expert on infectious diseases and agricultural animals, spoke with UIUC News Bureau biomedical sciences editor Liz Ahlberg Touchstone about ivermectin, the differences between forms intended for animals and the approved human prescription, and the risks of accidental overdose....

I’ve been an infectious disease pharmacist for over 25 years. I’ve also managed patients who delayed proper treatment for their severe COVID-19 infections because they thought ivermectin could cure them. Although ivermectin has been a game-changer for people with certain infectious diseases, it isn’t going to save patients from COVID-19 infection. In fact, it could cost them their lives. Let me tell you a short story about the history of ivermectin....

Prior to JWST, images from the Hubble Space Telescope had never detected bars at such young epochs. In a Hubble image, one galaxy, EGS-23205, is little more than a disk-shaped smudge, but in the corresponding JWST image taken this past summer, it’s a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear stellar bar. “I took one look at these data, and I said, ‘We are dropping everything else!’” said Shardha Jogee, professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin....