The discovery comes from a study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, where researchers developed a computer model to observe what happens after a comet or asteroid strikes the ice shell, which is estimated to be tens of kilometers thick. The model shows that if an impact can make it at least halfway through the moon’s ice shell, the heated meltwater it generates will sink through the rest of the ice, bringing oxidants — a class of chemicals required for life — from the surface to the ocean, where they could help sustain any potential life in the sheltered waters....

Osteoarthritis is a widespread condition that affects 32.5 million adults in the United States and is characterized by the degeneration and breakdown of cartilage in the joints. Knee osteoarthritis, which affects approximately 800,000 people each year, is a chronic and progressive condition that can cause pain and difficulty moving. Approximately 10% of individuals with knee osteoarthritis seek noninvasive treatments and turn to corticosteroid or hyaluronic acid injections to alleviate their pain....

Viruses rely on their host to survive, a crucial step of lifecycle is the synthesis of the virus particles within the host cell, therefore understanding this process is key to finding ways to prevent the virus from surviving. Using a computer model of a human lung cell metabolism, scientists from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick have captured the stoichiometric amino and nucleic acid requirements of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19....

A new study published in Nature Communications reconstructs regional incidence profiles of COVID-19, highlighting the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) and different testing strategies. Daily counts of new COVID-19 cases remain a basis for evaluating the state of the pandemic and are vital for making informed decisions on public interventions. These case counts, however, are based on positive diagnostic test results and are thus highly dependent on the underlying testing strategy....

Some people become seriously ill when infected with SARS-CoV-2 while others have only mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. In addition to risk factors such as advanced age and chronic diseases, like diabetes, our genetic heritage also contributes to our individual COVID-19 severity risk. In the autumn of 2020, Hugo Zeberg at Karolinska Institutet and MPI-EVA and Svante Pääbo at MPI-EVA showed that we inherited the major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 from Neanderthals....

The exotic animal’s genome could point to possible treatment options for COVID-19 in humans. Similar to how a smoke detector sounds off an alarm, certain genes sense when a virus enters the body, alerting of an intruder and triggering an immune response in most mammals. But, according to a recent study published in Frontiers in Immunology, pangolins — mammals that resemble an anteater with scales, lack two of those virus-sensing genes....

That’s the conclusion of a new study by Rice University geologists that appears this week in Nature Publishing’s online journal Scientific Reports. “One of the things about these shale deposits is they occur in certain periods in Earth’s history, and one of those is the Cretaceous time, which is around the time of the dinosaurs,” said study lead author Cin-Ty Lee, professor and chair of Rice’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences....

In collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced that it is testing state-of-the-art technology adapted from NASA’s Mars rover program. Originally designed to find methane on the Red Planet, this laser-based technology is lightweight and has superior sensitivity to methane, a major component of natural gas. The technology applied back on Earth helps guide PG&E crews using a tablet interface to identify possible leak locations, fast-tracking their ability to repair gas leaks....

Researchers in Japan developed a desktop air curtain system (DACS) that blocks all incoming aerosol particles, as described in a new article in AIP Advances, published by AIP Publishing. “We envisage this system will be effective as an indirect barrier for use in blood-testing labs, hospital wards, and other situations where sufficient physical distance cannot be maintained, such as at a reception counter,” co-author Kotaro Takamure said. An air curtain, sometimes known as an air door, is a fan-powered ventilation system that creates an air seal over an entryway....

Fluid on the lungs, or pulmonary edema as it’s formally known, is a relatively little-known hazard associated with open water swimming, warn doctors in the journal BMJ Case Reports after treating a woman with the condition. Older age, swimming long distances, cold water, and female sex are among the risk factors, as are high blood pressure and pre-existing heart disease. But it frequently occurs in those who are otherwise fit and healthy, highlight the authors....

The global economy could lose up to $US21.8 trillion dollars in 2020 alone due to COVID-19, according to new analysis from The Australian National University (ANU). The research, led by Professor Warwick McKibbin and Roshen Fernando, has modeled six new scenarios of the impact of the coronavirus on the world economy. The scenarios range from containing COVID-19 in mid-2020 to ongoing waves of the virus over several years. The researchers have also created an online dashboard to display their results....

Blazars are the brightest of active galactic nuclei, and many emit very high-energy gamma rays. New observations of the blazar known as PKS 1424+240 show that it is the most distant known source of very high-energy gamma rays, but its emission spectrum now appears highly unusual in light of the new data. A team led by physicists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, used data from the Hubble Space Telescope to set a lower limit for the blazar’s redshift (z ≥ 0....

The team’s results are the first demonstration of an industrial, scalable method for manufacturing high-quality graphene that is tailored for use in membranes that filter a variety of molecules, including salts, larger ions, proteins, or nanoparticles. Such membranes should be useful for desalination, biological separation, and other applications. “For several years, researchers have thought of graphene as a potential route to ultrathin membranes,” says John Hart, associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity at MIT....

The Kasei Valles channel system extends around 3000 km from its source region in Echus Chasma – which lies east of the bulging volcanic region Tharsis and just north of the Valles Marineris canyon system – to its sink in the vast plains of Chryse Planitia. A combination of volcanism, tectonics, collapse and subsidence in the Tharsis region led to several massive groundwater releases from Echus Chasma, which subsequently flooded the Kasei Valles region around 3....

This image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows the bright star cluster NGC 6520 and its neighbor, the strange gecko-shaped dark cloud Barnard 86. This cosmic pair is set against millions of glowing stars from the brightest part of the Milky Way — a region so dense with stars that barely any dark sky is seen across the picture....

The Violent Star Eta Carinae Model Is Based On Multiwavelength Observations It was once one of the brightest stars in the heavens, easily visible to mariners navigating by the southern sky in the mid-1840s. But the star Eta Carinae quickly faded into obscurity after its brief outburst. Now, over a century and a half later, NASA space observatories (probing from infrared light through X-rays) have enabled astronomers and artists to assemble a three-dimensional model of the Homunculus Nebula and accompanying clouds of dust and gas enshrouding the petulant star....

Scientists in the US and UK publish first in-depth look at how CD4+ T cells fight SARS-CoV-2. As scientists around the world develop life-saving COVID-19 vaccines and therapies, many are still wondering exactly why the disease proves deadly in some people and mild in others. To solve this puzzle, scientists need an in-depth understanding of how the body’s many types of immune cells respond to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19....

Scientists have been looking for an intermediate animal host between bats, which are known to harbor many coronaviruses, and the first introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into humans. Many animals, beginning with snakes and most recently, pangolins, have all been put forth as the likely intermediate, but the viruses isolated from them are too divergent from SARS-CoV-2, suggesting a common ancestor too far back in time — living in the 1960s[1]. Now, University of Ottawa biology professor Xuhua Xia, tracing coronavirus signatures across different species, has proposed that stray dogs — specifically dog intestines — may have been the origin of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic....

This is the second spaceflight for Vande Hei, the third for Novitskiy, and the first for Dubrov. They will dock the Soyuz to the station’s Rassvet module at 7:07 a.m. Coverage of the docking will begin on NASA TV and the agency’s website, and the NASA app at 6:15 a.m. Three Expedition 65 crewmates reached space after launching at 3:42 a.m. EDT aboard the Soyuz MS-18 rocket. They will dock to the station today at 7:07 a....

Transmitter density means greater population exposure to high levels of radio frequency electromagnetic fields. We should err on the side of caution and stop the global roll out of 5G (fifth generation) telecoms networks until we are certain this technology is completely safe, urges an expert in an opinion piece published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. There are no health concerns about 5G and COVID-19, despite what conspiracy theorists have suggested....