Even those tracking each new discovery about the coronavirus and its variants may not be aware of the virus’ sugar cravings. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of California San Diego take advantage of the virus’ sweet tooth in the design of a sugar-coated COVID-19 test strip that’s been effective at detecting all known variants of the coronavirus, including delta. In the next few weeks, researchers will determine if the self-test known as GlycoGrip can detect infections caused by the omicron variant too, said Carolina researcher Ronit Freeman....

Mahsa Shoaran, from the Integrated Neurotechnologies Laboratory in the School of Engineering, worked together with Stéphanie Lacour from the Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces to create NeuralTree, a closed-loop neuromodulation system-on-chip that is capable of detecting and alleviating symptoms of disease. The system boasts a 256-channel high-resolution sensing array and an energy-efficient machine learning processor, enabling it to effectively extract and categorize a wide range of biomarkers from real patient data and in-vivo animal models of disease....

400 Russians living with HIV participated in the study, which was conducted by researchers from the First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Petersburg, Russia, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston Medical Center, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). The study was recently published in the journal JAMA Network Open. Volunteers who self-identified as engaged in risky drinking and daily smoking were sought out by the researchers, which included HIV researchers and addiction experts....

The awards total about $1.1 million, with values between $120,000 and $180,000 based on each team’s proposed concept. The challenge is a unique collaboration between NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s (STMD) Game Changing Development (GCD) program and NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement Space Grant Project. The 2023 BIG Idea Challenge awardees are: Colorado School of MinesLunar Alloy Metal Production Plant (LAMPP)Advisors: Dr. Christopher Dreyer, Dr. George Sowers Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Honeybee RoboticsArtemis Steelworks: Advancing Reactor Technologies for Electrolytic Manufacturing of In-Situ SteelAdvisors: Dr....

The Arctic is one of the habitats undergoing the most radical transformation as a result of climate change. Nobody can predict the effects it will have on biodiversity in the Arctic Ocean. Antje Boetius from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven traveled with an international team, including scientists from Russia, close to the North Pole, where they documented the effects of ice retreat and biodiversity in the Arctic deep sea....

As we use resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas, copper, silicon and aluminum, to power massive computer farms and process digital information, our technological progress is redistributing Earth’s matter from physical atoms to digital information — the fifth state of matter, alongside liquid, solid, gas and plasma. Eventually, we will reach a point of full saturation, a period in our evolution in which digital bits will outnumber atoms on Earth, a world “mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code,” according to an article published in AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing....

Non-woody plants have no skeleton to support them. Therefore, in order to stay upright and defy environmental forces, their cells are constructed like inflated balloons. Because cytoplasm contains higher concentrations of dissolved substances than the cell’s surroundings, water on the outside flows into the cell, generating what is known as turgor pressure. Turgor pressure, which can reach 20 bar or more, presses against the cell wall. To resist this pressure the wall is made of a rigid gel reinforced with stiff cellulose fibers, which are constantly rearranged to allow the cell to grow....

These high-tech backpacks, which can communicate with each other and ground-based receivers, provided data for the popular study published on Halloween in 2019 showing that vampire bats developed social bonds in captivity that they maintained in the wild. The wireless network developed by a team of engineers, computer scientists and biologists contains functions similar to what we find in our smartphones – such as motion detection and Bluetooth-style connectivity – at a fraction of the weight and energy consumption....

Second on the list of motivations identified in the study is the perceived effectiveness of the vaccine to protect others in the community. The next two most common drivers of vaccine hesitancy were found to be “free-riding,” where individuals believe they can benefit from others taking up the vaccine without being immunized themselves, and conspiracy beliefs about vaccination, capturing the attitudes of “anti-vaxxers.” The study, conducted by researchers from the Centre for Business Intelligence & Data Analytics at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), sampled more than 4300 respondents in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and found 11 factors were enablers or barriers to COVID-19 vaccination....

Mammals, including humans, are almost incapable of rebuilding damaged tissue after a brain injury. Some species, such as fish and axolotls, on the other hand, may replenish wounded brain regions with new neurons. Brain regeneration necessitates the coordination of complex responses in a time and region-specific way. In a paper published on the cover of Science, BGI and its research partners used Stereo-seq technology to recreate the axolotl brain architecture throughout developing and regenerative processes at single-cell resolution....

The Moon formed between about 4.4 and 4.5 billion years ago when an object collided with the still-forming proto-Earth. This impact created a hot and partially vaporized disk of material that rotated around the baby planet, eventually cooling and accreting into the Moon. For years, scientists thought that in the aftermath of the collision hydrogen dissociated from water molecules and it and other elements that have low boiling temperatures, so-called “volatile elements,” escaped from the disk and were lost to space....

“This type of wearable would be very helpful for people with underlying medical conditions to monitor their own health on a regular basis,” said Lu Yin, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego and co-first author of the study published on February 15, 2021, in Nature Biomedical Engineering. “It would also serve as a great tool for remote patient monitoring, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when people are minimizing in-person visits to the clinic....

“I am particularly concerned about the populations of people, including children, who have no immunity to COVID-19 because they have not yet been vaccinated,” said Prof. Kathleen Mullane, an infectious diseases expert at UChicago Medicine. In the Q&A below, Mullane provides answers to common questions about variants—including an explanation of how viruses mutate, and why widespread vaccination remains our best defense against COVID-19. What is a variant, and where do variants come from?...

Flashing crosswalk lights are no match for flashy cars, according to a new UNLV study which found that drivers of expensive vehicles are least likely to stop for crossing pedestrians. Drivers on a whole aren’t all that great at stopping for pedestrians waiting at crosswalks: Of 461 cars that researchers examined, only 28 percent yielded. But the cost of the car was a significant predictor of driver yielding, with the odds that they’ll stop decreasing by 3 percent per $1,000 increase in the car’s value....

Update (January 28, 2021): New research indicates it was ordinary sulfur dioxide that was detected, rather than phosphine. An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, today announced the discovery of a rare molecule – phosphine – in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially, or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes – floating free of the scorching surface, but still needing to tolerate very high acidity....

Minimum concentration of ozone in the southern hemisphere for each year from 1979-2013 (there is no data from 1995). Each image is the day of the year with the lowest concentration of ozone. A graph of the lowest ozone amount for each year is shown. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/M. Radcliff Worldwide action to phase out ozone-depleting substances has resulted in remarkable success, according to a new assessment by 300 international scientists....

Northwestern Medicine experts explain why the number of breakthrough infections from the Delta variant are going up, who is at risk and why you may need to take extra precautions depending on your age. Who gets breakthrough infections? Dr. Robert Murphy: “The vaccine is about 90% effective against the Delta variant, so one person in 10 who gets vaccinated and is exposed to SARS-CoV-2 will have a breakthrough infection. Anybody is at risk for it, not just the immune-compromised....

Scientists have used powerful X-rays from the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to study and measure, in atomic detail, a key process at work in extreme plasmas like those found in stars, the rims of black holes and other massive cosmic phenomena. The results explain why observations from orbiting X-ray telescopes do not match theoretical predictions, and pave the way for future X-ray astrophysics research using free-electron lasers such as LCLS....

Two new methods allow CRISPR editing of genes in multiple cell types simultaneously. To date, CRISPR enzymes have been used to edit the genomes of one type of cell at a time: They cut, delete or add genes to a specific kind of cell within a tissue or organ, for example, or to one kind of microbe growing in a test tube. Now, the University of California, Berkeley, group that invented the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology nearly 10 years ago has found a way to add or modify genes within a community of many different species simultaneously, opening the door to what could be called “community editing....

Unlike Superglue, the new eco glue develops its full strength in a preferred direction, similar to “Peel and Stick” adhesives. When trying to separate the glued components along the principal plane of the bond, the strength is more than 70 times higher when compared to the direction perpendicular to that plane. All of this means that just a single drop of the “eco” glue has enough strength to hold up to 90kg (198lb) weight, but can still be easily removed by the touch of a finger, as needed....