“Research on improving the performance of virus sensors has not progressed much in recent years,” says Tohoku University materials engineer Fumio Narita. “Our review aims to help young researchers and graduate students understand the latest progress to guide their future work for improving virus sensor sensitivity.” Piezoelectric materials convert mechanical into electrical energy. Antibodies that interact with a specific virus can be placed on an electrode incorporated onto a piezoelectric material....

The first historically attested wave of what later became known as the Black Plague (caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis) spread throughout the Byzantine Empire and beyond, in 541 CE. Known as Justinianic Plague, after the emperor Justinian who contracted the disease but survived, it caused high mortality and had a range of socio-economic effects. Around the same time, an enormous volcanic eruption in late 535 or early 536 CE marked the beginning of the coldest decade in the last two thousand years (another volcano of similar proportions erupted in 539 CE)....

University of Oklahoma Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation file for FDA Emergency Use Authorization for COVID-19 detection test utilizing fluidigm technology. OU Medicine, the OU Health Sciences Center and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation collaborated to create a new test for COVID-19 using technology and reagents from Fluidigm Corporation, an innovative biotechnology tools provider. The test is intended for large-scale testing of patients across the OU Medicine healthcare system, with the capacity to test 180,000 samples over the next 90 days....

The antibacterial superhero MR1 (MHC class I-related molecule) is a protein found in every cell of the human body that functions as a molecular alarm system, alerting powerful cells of our immune system, our white blood cells, when cancer or bacterial infection is present. While prior groundbreaking research revealed the cellular machinery that MR1 depends on to activate, nothing was understood about how the MR1 alarm is “turned off” until now....

New research has discovered that the strength of the connection between our brain and internal organs is linked to how we feel about our appearance. Published in the journal Cortex, the study is the first to investigate, and first to identify, the association between body image and the brain’s processing of internal signals that occur unconsciously. Carried out by a team of psychologists and neuroscientists at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), the study found that adults whose brains are less efficient at detecting these internal messages are more likely to experience body shame and weight preoccupation....

As a graduate student under the direction of Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Professor Anne White, Pablo Rodriguez-Fernandez PhD ’19 became intrigued by a fusion research mystery that had remained unsolved for 20 years. His novel observations and subsequent modeling helped provide the answer, earning him the Del Favero Prize. The focus of his thesis is plasma turbulence, and how heat is transported from the hot core to the edge of the plasma in a tokamak....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Biology Letters. In some species of fish, smaller, less flashy males can win over females by flirting with larger males. Researchers worked with the tropical freshwater fish Poecilia mexicana. Females were shown video footage of small, drab-colored males nipping the genital openings of larger, brightly colored males, an action which precedes mating in opposite-sex fish pairs. After witnessing this behavior, the female fish indicated their newly awakened interest by spending more time swimming near the images of the less impressive males....

Previous studies have shown that adhering to the five precepts of Buddhism, which include not killing, stealing, committing sexual misconduct, telling lies, or using intoxicants, can improve the well-being and quality of life for both serious and non-serious followers. However, it was not clear until now if these precepts could also alleviate depressive symptoms for those at a higher risk. To address this question, Wongpakaran and colleagues focused on known links between neuroticism, stress, and depression....

Early interventions were effective at stamping out coronavirus infections, but subsequent, poorly monitored travel allowed the virus to ignite major outbreaks in Europe and North America, according to a new study. A new study combines evolutionary genomics from coronavirus samples with computer-simulated epidemics and detailed travel records to reconstruct the spread of coronavirus across the world in unprecedented detail. Published in the journal Science, the results suggest an extended period of missed opportunity when intensive testing and contact tracing might have prevented SARS-CoV-2 from becoming established in North America and Europe....

In the summer, before you head to the beach or pool, you might slather on sunscreen. But is it doing anything beyond preventing a sunburn? Can it really prevent wrinkles and skin cancer? Video Transcript: It’s summer. And before you head outside to go to the beach or pool, or just to exist, you slather on sunscreen. But is it doing anything besides preventing a sunburn? Is it really preventing wrinkles?...

A growing body of research shows that exercise can enhance brain function and delay, or even prevent, the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Although the underlying mechanisms still remain unclear, recent research indicates that exercise-induced activation of peripheral systems such as muscle, gut, liver, and adipose tissue may affect neural plasticity. A special issue of the journal Brain Plasticity presents new research and insights on neural plasticity and the role of peripheral factors in cognitive health....

Unlike many of Hubble’s targets, this object has not been studied in detail and its exact nature is unclear. At first glance, it appears to be a small, rather isolated region of star formation, and one might assume that the effects of fierce ultraviolet radiation from bright, young stars probably were the cause of the eye-catching shapes of the gas. However, the bright, boomerang-shaped feature may tell a more dramatic tale....

This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the globular cluster Terzan 1. Lying around 20,000 light-years from us in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion), it is one of about 150 globular clusters belonging to our galaxy, the Milky Way. Typical globular clusters are collections of around a hundred thousand stars, held together by their mutual gravitational attraction in a spherical shape a few hundred light-years across....

The extraordinary vivid glows shown in the new observations are known as auroras. They are created when high-energy particles enter a planet’s atmosphere near its magnetic poles and collide with atoms of gas. As well as producing beautiful images, this program aims to determine how various components of Jupiter’s auroras respond to different conditions in the solar wind, a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun. This observation program is perfectly timed as NASA’s Juno spacecraft is currently in the solar wind near Jupiter and will enter the orbit of the planet in early July 2016....

The further away you look, the further back in time you see. Astronomers use this fact to study the evolution of the Universe by looking at nearby and more distant galaxies and comparing their features. Hubble is particularly well suited for this type of work because of its extremely high resolution and its position above the blurring effects of the earth’s atmosphere. This has allowed it to detect many of the most distant galaxies known, as well as making detailed images of faraway objects....

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have produced new maps of Jupiter – the first in a series of annual portraits of the solar system’s outer planets. Collecting these yearly images – essentially the planetary version of annual school picture days for children – will help current and future scientists see how these giant worlds change over time. The observations are designed to capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry....

The Michoud Safety and Security team completed an initial assessment of the 829-acre facility and its 81 buildings and structures on August 31. Teams determined Michoud did not sustain any significant structural damage. Wind from the storm also caused damage to several buildings as well as to the roof deck panels and lightning protection systems. Many of the roofing systems at the facility did sustain significant damage and caused water intrusion into some buildings....

Jupiter has a mass that is two-and-a-half times that of all other planets in our solar system — combined. Because it is comparatively gigantic, it has the ability to disturb other planets’ orbits. Early in Jupiter’s formation as a planet, it moved closer to and then away from the sun due to interactions with the disc from which planets form as well as the other giant planets. This movement in turn affected Venus....

The findings were presented at the American Geophysical Union conference on December 4. Scientists suggest that a giant impact in Iapetus’ early history were the cause of the strange planetary formations. This slowed its rotation rate and deformed its crust. 1 million years later, the poles had flattened and a ridge extended most of the way around its middle. The hypothesis was suggested by Gabriel Tobie, from the University of Nantes, France....

The MIRI test image (at 7.7 microns) shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located about 160,000 light-years away, provided a dense star field to test Webb’s performance. Here, a close-up of the MIRI image is compared to a past image of the same target taken with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera (at 8.0 microns). The retired Spitzer telescope was one of NASA’s Great Observatories and the first to provide high-resolution images of the near- and mid-infrared universe....