Scientists analyzed decades of environmental data associated with Lassa virus outbreaks, revealing temperature, rainfall, and the presence of pastureland areas as key factors contributing to viral transmission. In the next several decades, areas hospitable to Lassa virus spread may extend from West Africa into Central and East Africa, according to the researchers’ projections. With this expansion combined with expected African population growth, the human population living in the areas where the virus should—in theory—be able to circulate may rise by more than 600 million....

Reference: “Wearable Circuits Sintered at Room Temperature Directly on the Skin Surface for Health Monitoring” by Ling Zhang, Hongjun Ji, Houbing Huang, Ning Yi, Xiaoming Shi, Senpei Xie, Yaoyin Li, Ziheng Ye, Pengdong Feng, Tiesong Lin, Xiangli Liu, Xuesong Leng, Mingyu Li, Jiaheng Zhang, Xing Ma, Peng He, Weiwei Zhao and Huanyu Cheng, 11 September 2020, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c11479

The scientists published their findings in the journal PLOS ONE. S. glanis accomplishes this feat by lunging out of the water, grabbing a pigeon, and then wriggling back into the water to swallow their prey. This process leaves the fish stranded on land for a few seconds. Bottlenose dolphins have been observed using a similar technique in South Carolina, as have Argentinian killer whales, which actually swim onto beaches to snag resting sea lions....

This was among the key messages relayed during “The Science Behind COVID-19 Vaccines,” a virtual Q&A-style panel discussion held April 12 with Cornell immunology experts, who answered common questions from the Cornell community and others about vaccines. The morning after the event, the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a joint statement reporting that while 6.8 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) single-dose vaccine have been administered, the federal agencies were reviewing data involving six reported U....

In response to a new Mayo Clinic study which found that lung damage from vaping resembles chemical burns, Geraldine R. Britton, director of the Binghamton University Interdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Program, offers the following. “Many have believed that the underlying problem with vaping products is the addition of oils, including glycerin,” she said. “Oils or other toxins coat the lining of the bronchioles, increasing inflammation, and blocking the exchange of essential gases such as oxygen before they can reach the alveoli....

A new study of gamma-ray light from the center of our galaxy makes the strongest case to date that some of this emission may arise from dark matter, an unknown substance making up most of the material universe. Using publicly available data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, independent scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Chicago have developed new maps showing that the galactic center produces more high-energy gamma rays than can be explained by known sources and that this excess emission is consistent with some forms of dark matter....

The human eye is crucial to astronomy. Without the ability to see, the luminous universe of stars, planets and galaxies would be closed to us, unknown forever. Nevertheless, astronomers cannot shake their fascination with the invisible. Outside the realm of human vision is an entire electromagnetic spectrum of wonders. Each type of light—from radio waves to gamma-rays— reveals something unique about the universe. Some wavelengths are best for studying black holes; others reveal newborn stars and planets; while others illuminate the earliest years of cosmic history....

More than four billion miles from home and speeding toward interstellar space, NASA’s New Horizons has traveled so far that it now has a unique view of the nearest stars. “It’s fair to say that New Horizons is looking at an alien sky, unlike what we see from Earth,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “And that has allowed us to do something that had never been accomplished before — to see the nearest stars visibly displaced on the sky from the positions we see them on Earth....

Vera Schluessel and colleagues tested whether eight zebra mbuna (Pseudotropheus zebra) and eight freshwater stingrays (Potamotrygon motoro) could be trained to recognize the color blue as a symbol for addition by a factor of one and the color yellow as a symbol for subtraction by a factor of one. Fish were shown cards with either blue or yellow shapes, and then presented with two gates containing cards with different numbers of shapes – one of which was the correct answer....

The scientists presented their findings at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma in Kauai, Hawaii. Currently, little that can be done to stanch internal bleeding before the patients reach necessary treatment facilities. The resulting blood loss often leads to death from what would otherwise be potentially survivable wounds. As DARPA’s Wound Stasis System program evolved, a better a possible solution emerged. Wound Stasis performer Arsenal Medical, Inc....

A recent report from the World Food Programme forecasts that the COVID-19 pandemic could push over 130 million additional people into chronic hunger by the end of 2020. The pandemic has caused numerous problems and uncertainties along the food supply chain such as limited labor, transport, cross-border trade and the availability of produce. It is important to understand how the pandemic is disrupting the growth and harvest of staple crops as well as the food supply chain, which can be affected by various factors such as shortages of fertilizer, a lack of labor and issues associated with national export policies....

“With COVID-19, we have a virus that’s running amok in the human population. It originated in a horseshoe bat in China. There are 25 or 30 species of horseshoe bats in China, and no one can determine which one was involved. We owe it to ourselves to learn more about them and their relatives,” says Bruce Patterson, the Field Museum’s MacArthur curator of mammals and the paper’s lead author. “None of these leaf-nosed bats carry a disease that’s problematic today, but we don’t know that that’s always going to be the case....

Research into 3D bioprinting has grown rapidly in recent years as scientists seek to re-create the structure and function of complex biological systems from human tissues to entire organs. The most popular 3D printing approach uses a solution of biological material or bioink that is loaded into a syringe pump extruder and deposited in a layer-by-layer fashion to build the 3D object. Gravity, however, can distort the soft and liquid bioinks used in this method....

Detection of subtle differences in cognitive behaviors may help delay, prevent the onset. Detecting cognitive changes early in the onset of dementia would be a game-changer for thousands impacted by the disease and would allow for interventions well before significant brain changes occur. While cognitive function is often measured using paper and pencil tests with scores calculated by the number of correct answers, this number (score) omits a lot of information about the process a person uses to answer a question that might reveal important information about their brain function....

An international team of scientists has identified a gene linking brain structure to intelligence, finding that teenagers carrying a particular gene variant had a thinner cortex in the left cerebral hemisphere and performed less well on tests for intellectual ability. For the first time, scientists at King’s College London have identified a gene linking the thickness of the grey matter in the brain to intelligence. The study is published in Molecular Psychiatry and may help scientists understand biological mechanisms behind some forms of intellectual impairment....

University of Queensland scientists studied more than 3000 rice genotypes and found diversity was inherited through two maternal genomes identified in all rice varieties. Lead researcher UQ’s Professor Robert Henry said the finding was important in understanding how rice adapted to its environment. “We think there were two separate domestications of virgin wild plants that diverged around a million years ago in the wild, and then in the last 7000 thousand years human domestication of rice has occurred,” Professor Henry said....

The current rising acidity in the ocean is supposed to have dire consequences for organisms like coral, but there are some sea urchins that have the genetic tools to adapt to inhospitable conditions. The results were presented at the Third International Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World in Monterey, California, and are among the few that suggest that some organisms are more resilient than others to changes in ocean acidity....

Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and colleagues have now shown how major sociopolitical events can have global effects on sleep that are associated with significant changes in the general population’s mood, well-being, and alcohol consumption. The findings, which were published in the journal Sleep Health of the National Sleep Foundation, demonstrate how divisive political events have a detrimental impact on a broad range of factors relating to the public mood....

Full-sized versions of the mosaic are available for download here (mosaic only) and here (mosaic with coordinate system).

The researchers decrypted the operating mechanisms of FAP (Fatty Acid Photodecarboxylase), which is naturally present in microscopic algae such as Chlorella. The enzyme had been identified in 2017 as able to use light energy to form hydrocarbons from fatty acids produced by these microalgae. To achieve this new result, research teams used a complete experimental and theoretical toolkit. Understanding how FAP works is essential because this photoenzyme opens up a new opportunity for sustainable biofuel production from fatty acids naturally produced by living organisms....