Last year NASA snagged a sample from the surface of asteroid Bennu, an Empire State Building-sized body that Southwest Research Institute scientists have helped map with nearly unprecedented precision. Using orbital data from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, researchers measured centimeter- to meter-sized craters on the boulders scattered around its rugged surface to shed light on the age of the asteroid. While the collected sample will yield enormous scientific value when it is returned to Earth in 2023, a key job for scientists during the time in orbit at Bennu was to understand the geology of the entire asteroid to provide important context for the sample....

MicroRNAs play a big role in our body in controlling gene expression, and also are a front line when viruses invade, latching onto and cutting the RNA, the genetic material of the virus, says Dr. Sadanand Fulzele, aging researcher in the Department of Medicine and Center for Healthy Aging at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. But with age and some chronic medical conditions, the attacking microRNA numbers dwindle, reducing our ability to respond to viruses, says Dr....

The Higgs was the last missing particle of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, but this theory still has some major deficiencies, such as its silence on gravity and what makes up dark matter. At a conference in Kyoto last week, physicists working on the LHCb experiment, one of the four large detectors located around CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, announced results of an indirect search for new superparticles, known as sparticles....

While physical and mental health generally improved over time, the analysis suggests that COVID-19 patients still tend to have poorer health and quality of life than the general population. This is especially the case for participants with long COVID, who typically still have at least one symptom including fatigue, shortness of breath, and sleep difficulties two years after initially falling ill.[1] The long-term health impacts of COVID-19 have remained largely unknown, as the longest follow-up studies to date have spanned around one year....

The findings could also have important ramifications for research in other areas, notably cancer, where the same kinds of cells play a major role. Until now, scientists thought that epithelial cells — which line not only the lung’s airways but major cavities of the body and most organs — just sat there motionless, like tiles covering a floor or cars jammed in traffic, said Jeffrey Fredberg, professor of bioengineering and physiology at the Harvard Chan School and one of the senior authors of the study, which was published online August 3 in Nature Materials....

Dexter Ang ’05, AF ’16 had been working as a high-frequency trader before he learned his mother had ALS. Over the next year, he watched her slowly lose the ability to walk, feed herself, and even click a mouse to read an e-book, one of her favorite activities. The progression was painful to watch, but what Ang couldn’t accept was that his mother’s physical condition could so negatively affect her interactions with the digital world....

The genetic quest to understand COVID-19 will help us prevent other diseases. How the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 made the leap from animals to humans is a puzzle that scientists are trying to solve as humanity comes to grip with the deadly pandemic sweeping the globe. At the frontline of this scientific work is Professor Edward Holmes, an evolutionary virologist who holds a joint position with the School of Life and Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney....

The new study, led by CU Boulder research associate Francisco Müller-Sánchez, explores a galaxy called NGC 6240. While most galaxies in the universe hold only one supermassive black hole at their center, NGC 6240 contains two–and they’re circling each other in the last steps before crashing together. The research reveals how gases ejected by those spiraling black holes, in combination with gases ejected by stars in the galaxy, may have begun to power down NGC 6240’s production of new stars....

The switching process enabled by fullerene molecules can be significantly faster than the switches used in microchips, with a speed increase of three to six orders of magnitude, depending on the laser pulses utilized. The use of fullerene switches in a network could result in the creation of a computer with capabilities beyond what is currently achievable with electronic transistors. Additionally, they have the potential to revolutionize microscopic imaging devices by providing unprecedented levels of resolution....

“We know where bugs in the gut come from; they primarily come from our surroundings through fecal-oral transfer,” says co-senior author David Nelson, a microbiologist at Indiana University. “But where does genital microbiology come from?” To flush out the answer, the team of microbiologists, statisticians, and physicians sequenced the penile urethra swabs of 110 healthy adult men. These participants had no urethral symptoms or sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and no inflammation of the urethra....

There are no simple solutions to America’s deadly overdose epidemic, which costs 100,000 lives each year and is erasing gains in life expectancy. But a team of researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) has found one low-cost intervention can make a difference: a letter notifying providers their patient has died from an overdose. A 2018 study by the team found that notifying clinicians through an informational letter from their county’s medical examiner that a patient had suffered a fatal overdose reduced the number of opioid prescriptions they wrote over the next three months....

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly across the globe at an alarming pace, causing considerable anxiety and fear among the general public. In response to the growing number of new cases, many countries have imposed lockdown measures to slow the spread of coronavirus. However, nearly every individual, community, business, and economy has been adversely affected by lockdown measures — an impact to society that cannot be ignored....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution. Larger optic tecta in the brain of sharks are similar to the superior colliculus structure in human brains. These regions deal in behavior in relation to visible objects, and are associated with an increased reliance on vision in C. carcharias. Great white sharks have large parts of their brains associated with visual input, meaning that they could be much more receptive to repellents targeting visual markers, states Kara Yopak, a research associate and co-author....

Cleaning surfaces with hydrogen peroxide-based disinfectants has the potential to pollute the air and pose a health risk, according to research led by the University of Saskatchewan (USask). The research team found that mopping a floor with a commercially available hydrogen peroxide-based disinfectant raised the level of airborne hydrogen peroxide to more than 600 parts per billion—about 60 percent of the maximum level permitted for exposure over eight hours, and 600 times the level naturally occurring in the air....

COVID-19 is common in pet cats and dogs whose owners have the virus, according to new research being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) held online this year. Cases of owners spreading the disease to their dog or cat have been documented before but are considered to be of negligible risk to public health. However, as vaccination and other measures reduce human-to-human transmission of the virus, it is becoming imperative that we understand more about the potential risk posed by animal infections....

The crew module’s primary structure, the pressure vessel, is comprised of seven machined aluminum alloy pieces that are welded together through a weld process that produces a strong, air-tight habitable space for astronauts during the mission. The pressure vessel is designed to withstand the harsh and demanding environment of deep space, and is the core structure upon which all the other elements of Orion’s crew module are integrated. With welding complete on the crew module cone panels – one of which contains windows providing astronauts views of the Moon and Earth – work will begin joining the forward bulkhead to the tunnel to create the top of the spacecraft, followed by the barrel and aft bulkhead join to form the bottom of Orion....

Melting glaciers and sea ice The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, and this means that glaciers, which sit on land, and sea ice, which floats on the ocean surface, are melting rapidly. Two-thirds of Arctic Sea ice has disappeared since 1958 when it was first measured. Between 2000 and 2019, the world’s glaciers lost 267 billon tons of ice each year. Himalayan glaciers are on a trajectory to lose one-third of their ice by 2100, and Alpine glaciers are projected to lose half of theirs....

In The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, published by the Acoustical Society of America through AIP Publishing, scientists from the University of California, Irvine and the University of Utah describe research that explores the interactions between gender and articulatory precision to gauge vocal attractiveness. “Much received wisdom and many vocal coaches would encourage people to slow down and carefully enunciate to make a better impression on their audience,” said co-author Daniel Stehr....

What we know It came from outside the solar system — Because of its high speed (196,000 mph, or 87.3 kilometers per second) and the trajectory it followed as it whipped around the Sun, scientists are confident ‘Oumuamua originated beyond our solar system. The object flew by Earth so fast its speed couldn’t be due to the influence of the Sun’s gravity alone, so it must have approached the solar system at an already high speed and not interacted with any other planets....

With the ubiquity of masks due to the coronavirus pandemic, understanding speech has become difficult. This especially applies to speech in classroom settings, where the presence of a mask and the acoustics of the room have an impact on students’ comprehension. Pasquale Bottalico, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been studying the effects of masks on communication. He will discuss his findings on the best way to overcome hurdles in classroom auditory perception caused by facial coverings at the 179th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which will be held virtually December 7-10....