While Alaska straddles the Arctic Circle and is covered by vast expanses of frozen land, the state also has a lot of liquid water. In fact, Alaska holds about 40% of U.S. surface water resources. This includes more than 12,000 rivers, thousands more streams and creeks, and hundreds of thousands of lakes. This means that it’s only natural that Alaska will be among the first beneficiaries of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, which launched successfully on December 16, 2022, from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base....

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard have developed a novel biomimetic strategy that delivers life-saving nanotherapeutics directly to obstructed blood vessels, dissolving blood clots before they cause serious damage or even death. This new approach enables thrombus dissolution while using only a fraction of the drug dose normally required, thereby minimizing bleeding side effects that currently limit widespread use of clot-busting drugs. The research findings, which were published online today in the journal Science, have significant implications for treating major causes of death, such as heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism, that are caused by acute vascular blockage by blood thrombi....

Their research, titled, “Highly Accurate Chip-Based Resequencing of SARS-CoV-2 Clinical Samples” was published recently in the American Chemical Society’s Langmuir. As part of the research, scientists created a tiled genome array they developed for rapid and inexpensive full viral genome resequencing and applied their SARS-CoV-2-specific genome tiling array to rapidly and accurately resequenced the viral genome from eight clinical samples acquired from patients in Wyoming that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2....

Yale Cancer Center scientists have developed a new class of proteins that inhibit HIV infection in cell cultures and may open the way to new strategies for treating and preventing infection by the virus that causes AIDS. The findings appear in the online edition of the Journal of Virology. AIDS slowly weakens the immune system and allows life-threatening infections and cancers to thrive. The Yale team isolated six 43- and 44-amino acid proteins that inhibited cell-surface and total expression of an essential HIV receptor and blocked HIV infection in laboratory cell cultures....

Now, scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have created a compound that could help to reduce this overactivation without impairing the body’s entire immune response. An overactive immune system leads to many autoimmune disorders – when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissues – such as rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes. More recently, it has also been linked to severe COVID-19 infections, in which immune-system signaling proteins ramp up to dangerous levels, leading to damage to the body’s own cells....

The Alfred-Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar- and Marine Research (AWI) in Germany and the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK jointly led the development of the EcoOmics dataset, which will support bioprospecting to address the shortage of antibiotics and antiviral medications as well as reveal evidence of novel biology that may affect our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth. The group, which consists of scientists from the German Helmholtz Association, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Joint Genome Institute (JGI, USA), and the Earlham Institute (UK), among other organizations, describes the project and early results in the journal PLOS Biology....

The study, which was published in the Journal of Human Evolution, focuses on the hylobatid family of apes, which comprises 20 species of living gibbons that are found throughout tropical Asia from northeastern India to Indonesia. “Hylobatids fossil remains are very rare, and most specimens are isolated teeth and fragmentary jaw bones found in cave sites in southern China and southeast Asia dating back no more than 2 million years ago,” explains Terry Harrison, a professor of anthropology at New York University and one of the paper’s authors....

For five million years, woolly mammoths roamed the earth until they vanished for good nearly 4,000 years ago – and scientists have finally proved why. The hairy cousins of today’s elephants lived alongside early humans and were a regular staple of their diet – their skeletons were used to build shelters, harpoons were carved from their giant tusks, artwork featuring them is daubed on cave walls, and 30,000 years ago, the oldest known musical instrument, a flute, was made out of a mammoth bone....

Smooth muscle cells, the dominant type of cell found in artery walls, are known to be involved in plaque build-up, but it has not been clear how this occurs. The research team, led by senior study author Daniel Greif, used mice models and primary human cells to study smooth muscle cells and their contribution to atherosclerotic plaques. They discovered that a single smooth muscle cell gives rise, through a process of clonal expansion, to the majority of cells found in the plaque....

Although X-ALD is inherited through the X chromosome, female carriers can also experience symptoms of the disease. Approximately 30% of male children and 60% of adult men develop encephalitis, which is a fatal form of the disease that leads to death within two to three years. X-ALD affects roughly one in every 20,000 births globally. Now, for the first time, scientists from all relevant leukodystrophy centers in Europe and the US have jointly succeeded in obtaining controlled trial data for X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy....

A new study provides insight on the matter by demonstrating that a gene controlling our biological clocks also plays a vital role in regulating human-specific genes important to brain evolution. The findings from the O’Donnell Brain Institute open new paths of research into how CLOCK proteins produced by the CLOCK gene affect brain function and the processes by which neurons find their proper place in the brain. “People have been searching for genes that are important for brain evolution, within the context of our larger, folded brains,” said Dr....

Lemont, Illinois – When you squeeze something, it gets smaller. Unless you’re at Argonne National Laboratory. At the suburban Chicago laboratory, a group of scientists has seemingly defied the laws of physics and found a way to apply pressure to make a material expand instead of compress/contract. “It’s like squeezing a stone and forming a giant sponge,” said Karena Chapman, a chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy laboratory. “Materials are supposed to become denser and more compact under pressure....

In a discovery published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers has described a novel molecular device with exceptional computing prowess. Reminiscent of the plasticity of connections in the human brain, the device can be reconfigured on the fly for different computational tasks by simply changing applied voltages. Furthermore, like nerve cells can store memories, the same device can also retain information for future retrieval and processing. “The brain has the remarkable ability to change its wiring around by making and breaking connections between nerve cells....

“It’s a simpler test and more cost-effective for looking at viral infection,” said author Ellen Foxman, M.D., assistant professor of laboratory medicine at Yale School of Medicine. Upper respiratory illnesses are common, yet there is no rapid diagnostic test to confirm more than a handful of common viruses as the cause. To identify biomarkers, or indicators, of viral infection applicable to many different respiratory viruses, Foxman and co-author Marie Landry, M....

Research into topological photonic metamaterials headed by City College physicist Alexander B. Khanikaev reveals that long-range interactions in the metamaterial change the common behavior of light waves forcing them to localize in space. Further, the study shows that by controlling the degree of such interactions one can switch between trapped and extended (propagating) character of optical waves. “The new approach to trap light allows the design of new types of optical resonators, which may have a significant impact on devices used on a daily basis, said Khanikaev....

Radar data of asteroid 2006 DP14 were obtained on February 11, 2014. The asteroid is about 1,300 feet (400 meters) long, 660 feet (200 meters) wide. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR A collage of radar images of near-Earth asteroid 2006 DP14 was generated by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, on the night of February 11, 2014. Delay-Doppler radar imaging revealed that the asteroid is about 1,300 feet (400 meters) long, 660 feet (200 meters) wide, and shaped somewhat like a big peanut....

“Reactors need to run at either higher power or use fuels longer to increase their performance. But then, at these settings, the risk of wear and tear also increases,” said Dr. Karim Ahmed, assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering. “So, there is a pressing need to come up with better reactor designs, and a way to achieve this goal is by optimizing the materials used to build the nuclear reactors....

The new strategy overcomes a key limitation of these drugs, which is that they often fail against infections that feature a very high density of bacteria. These include many chronic, difficult-to-treat infections, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, often found in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). “Given that the number of new antibiotics being developed is diminishing, we face challenges in treating these infections. So efforts such as this could enable us to expand the efficacy of existing antibiotics,” says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study....

We are sociable beings. We value hearing other people’s voices, and we use our hearing to recognize and experience human speech and voices. Sound that enters the outer ear is transmitted by the eardrum to the spiral-shaped inner ear, also known as the cochlea. The cochlea is home to the outer and inner hair cells, which are the sensory cells of hearing. The inner hair cells’ “hairs” bend as a result of the sound waves, delivering a signal through the nerves to the brain, which interprets the sound we hear....

The protection offered by the Oxford-Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine declines after three months of receiving two doses, a study says. The findings – drawn from datasets in two countries – suggest that booster programs are needed to help maintain protection from severe disease in those vaccinated with Oxford-Astra Zeneca, experts say. Researchers from Scotland and Brazil analyzed data for two million people in Scotland and 42 million people in Brazil who had been vaccinated with the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine....