This aging is characterized by the gradual loss of nuclear architecture and an underlying tissue-specific genetic program, but the causes are unclear. Scientists have discovered a potential new target for treating these syndromes by preventing nuclear architecture loss. The target is known as long interspersed nuclear element-1 (L1) RNA, a family of repeat sequences that accounts for about 17-20% of the mammalian genome and whose functions are largely unknown. The closely packed DNA architecture known as heterochromatin renders these sequences inactive....

The warning, published in a Journal of General Internal Medicine viewpoint, contends that discussions of a new normal fail to incorporate key lessons from the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the significant role of noncommunicable chronic diseases in exacerbating COVID-19 and the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on underserved populations and communities of color. Noncommunicable chronic diseases are those that are not spread from person to person and persist for at least one year, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer....

New Cornell-led research suggests that starfish, victims of sea star wasting disease (SSWD), may actually be in respiratory distress – literally “drowning” in their own environment – as elevated microbial activity derived from nearby organic matter and warm ocean temperatures rob the creatures of their ability to breathe. “As humans, we breathe, we ventilate, we bring air into our lungs and we exhale,” said Ian Hewson, professor of microbiology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences....

Genetic variability in the human immune system may affect susceptibility to, and severity of infection by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus responsible for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The research is published on April 17, 2020, in the Journal of Virology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. Individual genetic variation may explain differences in the strength of immune responses. Certain immune system genes, called human leukocyte antigen genes that are involved in recognizing pathogens, vary from person to person....

As people adhered to stay-at-home orders or self-isolated during the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak, daily commutes turned into shuffles between the bedroom and the living room. Clicking Zoom links erased time spent walking to meeting rooms, and Netflix spilled into time otherwise dedicated to the gym. In short, a lot of people suddenly became more sedentary during the onset of the pandemic. Recently published research found people who continued to spend a higher amount of time sitting between April and June 2020 were likely to have higher symptoms of depression....

Unlike the popular belief that sleeping more on the weekends can help sleep-deprived people catch up on sleep, a new sleep study has shown that sleeping in on the weekends will make you sleepier come Monday morning. The scientists announced their findings through UT Southwestern. A great myth of sleep deprivation is that if we miss sleep over the course of the week, we need to catch up on an hour-by-hour basis on the weekend, states Gregory Carter, a sleep medicine specialist at the UT Southwestern Medical Center....

NASA is building SLS as the world’s most powerful rocket to serve as the backbone of the Artemis program and the nation’s future deep space exploration missions. The SLS core stage, measuring 212 feet tall and 27.6 feet in diameter, is the tallest flight component ever built by NASA. It is equipped with four RS-25 engines to help power the SLS rocket at launch. Built by prime contractor Boeing at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, the stage was delivered to Stennis aboard the agency’s Pegasus barge in January 2020....

The Pre-determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver, or PDAM, was coordinated between NASA flight controllers, Russian ballistics officials, and the station’s other international partners. The station’s orbit has been lowered by 3/10 of a mile at apogee and 4/10 of a mile at perigee. The current orbit is 262.6 x 258.8 statute miles. Object 39915 was a piece of debris generated during the breakup of object 23106 (Pegasus R/B). The launch occurred on May 19, 1994, and the breakup of the rocket’s upper stage occurred on June 3, 1996....

The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor, also known as the Space Storm Hunter, is completing its initial tests a month after it was installed outside Europe’s Columbus laboratory. The first images and data captured the strong signature of lightning with unprecedented accuracy 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth. “We collected 100,000 measurements per second of this amazing force of nature,” explains Torsten Neubert, science team coordinator at the Technical University of Denmark, “this is a fantastic example of how powerful our photometers are....

It’s a story as old as the universe itself: A galaxy is born, brimming with new stars, its spiral arms stretching and curving. But then it runs into trouble, veering too close to the center of a nearby galaxy cluster. The surrounding cluster begins to siphon off the galaxy’s star-making gas until it loses its spiral arms and becomes a dead relic. That’s what happened to a galaxy called D100 in the massive, Coma galaxy cluster, starting roughly 300 million years ago....

The team based its investigations on a tiny disc of the magnetic material iron nickel, with a diameter just a few micrometers wide. A gold ring is placed around this disc: When an alternating current in the gigahertz range flows through it, it emits microwaves that excite so-called spin waves in the disc. “The electrons in the iron nickel exhibit a spin, a sort of whirling on the spot rather like a spinning top,” Helmut Schultheiß, head of the Emmy Noether Group “Magnonics” at HZDR, explains....

Researchers need to better understand how misinformation like this spreads in order to hone their intervention efforts and prevent misinformed perspectives from taking root. In society’s virtual world, preventing technological misinformation, in particular, is important now more than ever. A research team led by Elaine Nsoesie, a Hariri Institute Faculty Fellow, investigated how COVID-19 misinformation proliferated using the same epidemiological techniques for modeling disease transmission. Nsoesie, along with Nina Cesare, a postdoctoral associate at the BU School of Public Health, and other scientists from Harvard Medical School and École Polytechnique Fédérale recently published their findings in the Journal of Medical Internet Research....

A study investigating SARS-CoV-2 infections across 16 mink farms in the Netherlands, presented at the ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Disease (ECCVID, held online from September 23-25, 2020) shows that the virus likely jumped between people and mink and back, providing strong evidence that animal to human (zoonotic) transmission is possible. SARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in people. The study is by a group of Dutch veterinary science experts including Dr Bas Oude Munnink (ErasmusMC), Professor Wim van der Poel (Wageningen University and Research Centre), Professor Arjan Stegeman (Utrecht University) Prof Marion Koopmans (ErasmusMC) and Reina Sikkema (ErasmusMC)....

In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois and the Missouri University of Science and Technology modeled a method to manipulate nanoparticles as an alternative mode of propulsion for tiny spacecraft that require very small levels of thrust. The team simulated a system that uses light to generate an electromagnetic field. Neutral nanoparticles made from glass or some other material that insulates rather than conducts electric charges are used....

The unexpected finding underscores the value of ensuring diversity in genetic databases and was recently published in the journal Human Genetics and Genomics Advances. “If we had only been looking in populations with European ancestry, we might have missed this finding entirely,” said lead author Jenna Carlson, Ph.D., assistant professor of human genetics and biostatistics at Pitt Public Health. “It was through the generosity of thousands of Polynesian people that we were able to find this variant, which is a smoking gun that will spark new research into the biology underlying cholesterol....

A Southwest Research Institute scientist modeled the atmosphere of Mars to help determine that salty pockets of water present on the Red Planet are likely not habitable by life as we know it on Earth. A team that also included scientists from Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the University of Arkansas helped allay planetary protection concerns about contaminating potential Martian ecosystems. These results were published this month in Nature Astronomy....

Computers may be getting faster every year, but those advances in computer speed could be dwarfed if their 1’s and 0’s were represented by bursts of light, instead of electricity. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made an important advance in this frontier of photonics, fashioning the first all-optical photonic switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires. Moreover, they combined these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information....

The scientists published their findings in the British Medical Journal. There are many examples of stars dying young and it’s hard to pin down exactly by how many years a star’s life is cut down when he or she becomes famous. However, scientists can show how much higher or lower the chance of dying is compared to a similar person in the average population. A North American pop star 40 years after fame has a chance of survival of 87% of what’s expected in the general population....

Not a week goes by when I don’t see someone in my clinic complaining of a strange and constant phantom sound in one of their ears, or in both ears. The noise is loud, distracting and scary – and it doesn’t go away. The kind of sound varies from patient to patient: buzzing, blowing, hissing, ringing, roaring, rumbling, whooshing, or a combination thereof. But whatever the sound, the condition is called tinnitus....

In topological materials, electrons experience a twisted world. Instead of simply moving straight ahead when feeling a force, they may be pushed sideways. In such a material current actually flows orthogonally to an applied voltage. The basic model describing the effect was developed by Duncan Haldane in the late 1980s, but even its inventor was skeptical that it could ever be implemented in a real material. Nevertheless, elaborate chemical synthesis eventually allowed for very similar effects to be observed, sparking a technological revolution — and eventually earning Haldane the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics....