These incidents have been particularly concerning because they involved people infected with “variants” of the virus. But what exactly are these variants, and how concerned should we be? What’s a variant? Viruses can’t replicate and spread on their own. They need a host, and they need to hijack the cells of the host to replicate. When they replicate in a host, they face the challenge of duplicating their genetic material....
Unexpectedly, the scientists discovered that PDGF-B also promotes the growth of muscle fibers, leading to stronger contractions. These findings hold great potential for the development of innovative treatments for muscular atrophy and injury. Myokines are small proteins secreted by skeletal muscle cells. They have a wide range of functions and may act on cells both near and far to where they are made. A comprehensive picture of how myokines affect cellular processes is far from clear, but it is believed that they play an important role in exercise-related bodily functions, particularly the maintenance of muscle tissue....
The government’s new plan [PDF] was revealed to Nature, and it calls for a slower, more deliberate approach to achieve ignition, the point at which more energy is produced by a fusion reaction than is consumed. Many physicists agree that this would be an important proof of concept for achieving controlled fusion. The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will be set on a new course, exploring several alternative ways of achieving ignition....
Through these findings on black hole gravitational waves, which were first observed in 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories (LIGO) in Louisiana and Washington, researchers have learned exciting details about these invisible objects and developed theories and projections on everything from their sizes to their physical properties. Still, limitations in LIGO and other observation technologies have kept scientists from grasping a more complete picture of black holes, and one of the largest gaps in knowledge concerns a certain type of black hole: those of intermediate-mass, or black holes that fall somewhere between supermassive (at least a million times greater than our sun) and stellar (think: smaller, though still 5 to 50 times greater than the mass of our sun)....
Especially after more than two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people picture a virus as a nasty spiked ball – essentially a mindless killer that gets into a cell and hijacks its machinery to create a gazillion copies of itself before bursting out. For many viruses, including the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the “mindless killer” moniker is essentially true. However, there’s more to virus biology than meets the eye....
But before it could do that, the SWOT satellite needed to unfold its large mast and antenna panels (see below) after successfully deploying the solar panel arrays that power the spacecraft. The mission monitors and controls the satellite using telemetry data, but the spacecraft is also equipped with four customized commercial cameras to record the action. The solar arrays fully deployed shortly after launch, taking about 10 minutes. Two cameras aboard the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite captured the large mast and antenna panels of the spacecraft’s main science instrument deploying over four days, a process that was completed on December 22, 2022....
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope teamed up to collect data before and after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally smashed — at nearly 15,000 miles per hour — into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in the double-asteroid system of Didymos. Ground-based telescope observations will help determine how successful the test was in altering the asteroid’s orbit. Additionally, the combined capabilities of Webb and Hubble together — on the same target, at the same time — will allow researchers to analyze a wide array of data relating to the makeup and history of our solar system....
Proglacial lakes are created when meltwater from retreating glaciers is held in place by ice or a moraine that was left behind by the same or another glacier. A warmer climate contributes to the recent worldwide rise in the number and volume of these lakes, and they also contribute to glaciers melting more quickly. These lakes may, however, suddenly drain if the dams keeping them in place fail for a number of different causes....
People who feel more threatened by COVID-19 and rank highly on scales of emotionality and conscientiousness were most likely to stockpile toilet paper in March 2020, according to a new study published June 12, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lisa Garbe (University of Saint Gallen, Switzerland), Richard Rau (Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat Munster, Germany), and Theo Toppe (the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany). Following the fast spread of COVID-19 across Europe and North America in March 2020, many people began stockpiling commodities including toilet paper....
Eduardo Sampaio, an affiliate member of the Cluster of Excellence “Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour” (CASCB) at the University of Konstanz, had quite the opposite experience. He was invited on board the ship Captain Darwin by filmmaker Victor Rault to continue his octopus research. Victor Rault, 30, set sail from Plymouth on the Captain Darwin in 2021, following in the footsteps of Darwin’s HMS Beagle. He wants to explore how the ecosystem has changed since Darwin’s voyage on the HMS Beagle in 1832....
A healthy plant-based diet was linked to a lower risk of getting COVID-19, and among people with COVID-19, a lower risk of experiencing severe symptoms.There was a synergistic relationship between poor diet and increased socioeconomic deprivation with COVID-19 risk that was higher than the sum of the risk associated with each factor alone. Although metabolic conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes have been linked to an increased risk of COVID-19, as well as an increased risk of experiencing serious symptoms once infected, the impact of diet on these risks is unknown....
This new finding, from research led by Imperial scientists, improves our understanding of the conditions around Earth that contribute to ‘space weather,’ which can impact our technology from communications satellites in orbit to power lines on the ground. The Sun releases a stream of charged particles called the solar wind. On the Earth’s surface, we are protected from this barrage by the magnetosphere – a bubble created by the Earth’s magnetic field....
Fifth disease, a viral illness caused by parvovirus, is most commonly seen in school-age children and is characterized by red blotches on the cheeks that can also spread to the arms and legs. While adults can also be infected with the virus, many do not show any symptoms. In a new study, researchers can now demonstrate that the risk of contracting the disease is elevated if the person belongs to the blood group Rhesus D antigen or what is called Rh(D)....
If that weren’t odd enough, it turns out a supernova blew up in the same place in the sky more than 60 years ago. Somehow, a star that apparently died around the time Elvis Presley released his first record endured only to die again—truly a “living dead” star. Astrophysicists suspect this apparent stellar zombie was a rare, colossal type of star with 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun....
Imagine that one day you’re riding the train and decide to hop the turnstile to avoid paying the fare. It probably won’t have a big impact on the financial well-being of your local transportation system. But now ask yourself, “What if everyone did that?” The outcome is much different — the system would likely go bankrupt and no one would be able to ride the train anymore. Moral philosophers have long believed this type of reasoning, known as universalization, is the best way to make moral decisions....
A study led by researchers from the University of Edinburgh indicates that the primary driver of food insecurity in the coming decades will be the significant increase in energy and fertilizer prices. Until now, how energy and fertilizer price rises and export restrictions affects future global food prices was poorly understood. There has also been little analysis to quantify the scale of harm that hikes in the price of food could have on human nutritional health and the environment....
California coastal waters contain some of our nation’s more economically valuable fisheries, including salmon, crabs, and shellfish. Yet, these fisheries are also some of the most vulnerable to the potential harmful effects of ocean acidification on marine life. That increase in acidity is caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 100 years and 2,000 shells later In the new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists examined nearly 2,000 shells of microscopic animals called foraminifera by taking core samples from the seafloor off Santa Barbara and measuring how the shells of these animals have changed over a century....
Humans have been living in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula since at least the Late Pleistocene (126,000-11,700 years ago). Much of what we know about these earliest settlers of Mexico comes from nine well-preserved human skeletons found in the submerged caves and sinkholes near Tulum in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Here, Stinnesbeck and colleagues describe a new, 30 percent-complete skeleton, ‘Chan Hol 3’, found in the Chan Hol underwater cave within the Tulum cave system....
An international group of researchers has established a crucial connection between the interaction of neighboring galaxies and the massive quantities of gas required to sustain these colossal and ultra-dense space phenomena. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy. A black hole can be created when a star collapses, squeezing matter into a relatively tiny space. This increases the force of gravity to a point where nothing can escape, not even light – hence the name....
