An international team of scientists has conducted the first comprehensive assessment of the ocean and its ecosystems, called the Ocean Health Index, to provide a snapshot of the current state of the world’s oceans. Overall, the global average was 60 out of 100, with countries ranging from 36 to 86. If thought of as a school report card, 60 out of 100 looks like a failing grade, but that’s not quite how the assessment should be read....

Unique experiments involved ‘mini-organs’, animal research, donated human organs, volunteers, and patients. Cambridge scientists have shown that a widely-used drug to treat liver disease can prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection or reduce COVID-19 severityThe drug has minimal side effects, is cheap, and should protect against future variants of SARS-CoV-2Their unique study involved ‘mini-organs’, animal research, donated human organs, volunteers, and patients Cambridge scientists have identified an off-patent drug that can be repurposed to prevent COVID-19 – and may be capable of protecting against future variants of the virus – in research involving a unique mix of ‘mini-organs’, donor organs, animal studies, and patients....

Organs in the human body have complex networks of fluid-filled tubes and loops. They come in different shapes and their three-dimensional structures are differently connected to each other, depending on the organ. During the development of an embryo, organs develop their shape and tissue architecture out of a simple group of cells. Due to a lack of concepts and tools, it is challenging to understand how shape and the complex tissue network arise during organ development....

This is a composite image taken by Hubble on June 6, 2018 showing a fully-illuminated Saturn and its rings, along with six of its 62 known moons. The visible moons are (from left to right) Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus, and Mimas (click here for an annotated version). Dione is the largest moon in the picture, with a diameter of 1123 km (698 m), compared to the smallest, oddly-shaped Epimetheus with a diameter of around 116 km (72 m)....

Pegomastax africanus is a new species of plant-eating dinosaur with tiny, 1-inch long jaws, which was discovered in South Africa. It thrived during the Lower Jurassic, Hettangian to Sinemurian, about 200 to 190 million years ago. The researchers published their findings in the journal ZooKeys. This herbivore is part of the family heterodontosaurs, which were among the first dinosaurs to spread across Earth. This specimen was unearthed in the 1960s and recently discovered in a collection of fossils at Harvard University by Paul Sereno, paleontologist, University of Chicago....

There are several papers in the medical literature hypothesizing that omega-3 fatty acids should have beneficial effects in patients with COVID-19 infection, but up until now, there have been no published peer-reviewed studies supporting that hypothesis. This study included 100 patients admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 for whom admission blood samples had been stored. Clinical outcomes for these patients were obtained and blood was analyzed for the Omega-3 Index (O3I, red blood cell membrane EPA+DHA levels) at OmegaQuant Analytics (Sioux Falls, SD)....

Although for five decades, the Big Bang theory has been the best known and most accepted explanation for the beginning and evolution of the Universe, it is hardly a consensus among scientists, according to Neves, part of a group of researchers who dare to imagine a different origin. In a study recently published in the journal General Relativity and Gravitation, Neves suggests the elimination of a key aspect of the standard cosmological model: the need for a spacetime singularity known as the Big Bang....

The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies and their surface features, recently approved a dozen names proposed by NASA’s New Horizons team, which led the first reconnaissance of Pluto and its moons in 2015 with the New Horizons spacecraft. The New Horizons team had been using many of the chosen names informally to describe the many valleys, crevices, and craters discovered during the first close-up look at the surface Charon....

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic has taken the lives of millions of people around the world but has also left hundreds with lingering symptoms or completely new symptoms weeks after recovery. Much is unknown about what causes these symptoms and how long they last. But with nearly 740,000 cases of COVID reported in New York City since last March — and 28 million in the United States — physicians are increasingly seeing these “long-haulers” in their practices....

An antibody recovered from a survivor of the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s has revealed a potential vulnerability of the new coronavirus at the root of COVID-19, according to a study from scientists at Scripps Research. The study, published today in Science, is the first to map a human antibody’s interaction with the new coronavirus at near-atomic-scale resolution. Although the antibody was produced in response to an infection of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which is caused by the SARS-CoV virus, it cross-reacts with the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2....

How come today’s conservatives are more liberal than yesterday’s liberals? Why has the public opinion in large parts of the world shifted so rapidly in favor of gay and lesbian rights, but been virtually unchanged on other contested issues such as abortion rights? A study from a Swedish team of researchers recently published in the social science journal Nature Human Behaviour answers several critical questions on how public opinion changes on moral issues....

“We found that outdoor PM2.5 may be responsible for as many as 1.5 million additional deaths around the globe each year because of effects at very low concentrations that were not previously appreciated,” said Scott Weichenthal, an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health at McGill University and the lead author on the recent paper in Science Advances. Canadian data leads to advances in global understanding of the effects of outdoor pollution The researchers arrived at this conclusion by combining health and mortality data for seven million Canadians gathered over a twenty-five-year period with information about the levels of outdoor PM2....

This opens up the multitude of highly charged ions for novel atomic clocks and further avenues in the search for new physics. Highly charged ions are — although seemingly exotic — a very natural form of visible matter. All the matter in our sun and in all other stars is highly ionized, for example. In many ways, however, highly charged ions are more extreme than neutral atoms or singly charged ions....

Previously Unknown Letter Reveals Einstein’s Thinking on Bees, Birds and Physics The 1949 letter by the physicist and Nobel laureate discusses bees, birds, and whether new physics principles could come from studying animal senses. It’s a position still being realized within physics to this day, with a growing body of research and understanding of how animals such as birds and bees find their way around. Now a study led by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, discusses how recent discoveries in migratory birds back up Einstein’s thinking 72 years ago....

Using machine learning, a team of Western computer scientists and biologists have identified an underlying genomic signature for 29 different COVID-19 DNA sequences. This new data discovery tool will allow researchers to quickly and easily classify a deadly virus like COVID-19 in just minutes – a process and pace of high importance for strategic planning and mobilizing medical needs during a pandemic. The study also supports the scientific hypothesis that COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) has its origin in bats as Sarbecovirus, a subgroup of Betacoronavirus....

According to their report in the journal mSystems, the researchers uncovered surprising mechanisms that enable the bacteria to adjust to fluctuating environmental conditions. These results are crucial for the study of ecosystems, where the Aromatoleum strain, as a representative of a significant group of environmental bacteria, can act as a model organism. The findings could also have implications for the cleanup of contaminated sites and biotechnological applications. The studied bacterial strain specializes in the utilization of organic substances that are difficult to break down and is generally found in soil and in aquatic sediments....

Endolithic organisms are those that live inside a substrate, be it mineral, wood, bone, or some other material. Some microbes move into pre-existing cavities while others dig their own way in, but this behavior is unexpected in highly resistant minerals like garnet. In this study, Ivarsson and colleagues examined the structure and content of intricately branching tunnels inside garnet crystals from river sediments and soils in Thailand to determine whether they were formed by abiotic or biotic processes....

A team of astronomers, including Quinn Konopacky of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, has made the most detailed examination yet of the atmosphere of a Jupiter like planet beyond our Solar System. According to Konopacky, “We have been able to observe this planet in unprecedented detail because of the advanced instrumentation we are using on the Keck II telescope, our ground-breaking observing and data processing techniques, and because of the nature of the planetary system....

Hydroxychloroquine Reduces In-Hospital COVID-19 Mortality An observational multi-center study, coordinated by the I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed, with the participation of 33 Italian hospitals, shows that the risk of death is 30% lower for coronavirus patients treated with hydroxychloroquine. An Italian observational study contributes to the ongoing debate regarding the use of hydroxychloroquine in the current pandemic. The research, conducted on 3,451 patients treated in 33 hospitals throughout the Italian territory (list of participating centers attached), shows that the use of this drug reduces by 30% the risk of death in hospitalized patients affected by Covid-19....

The frontal lobes are the largest part of the human brain and are thought to be the part that expanded most during human evolution. Damage to the frontal lobes—which are located just behind and above the eyes—can result in profound impairments in higher-level reasoning and decision-making. To find out more about what different parts of the frontal lobes do, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) recently teamed up with researchers at the world’s largest registry of brain-lesion patients....