As the speed and scale of COVID-19 vaccinations against the SARS-CoV-2 virus ramps up globally, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) are calling for greater awareness and communication around a delayed injection-site reaction that can occur in some patients who have received the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine. In a letter to the editor published online in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the authors note Phase 3 clinical data from the Moderna vaccine trial did show delayed skin hypersensitivity in a small number of the more than 30,000 trial participants....

Carbon materials, including traditional graphite and activated carbons (ACs), novel carbons such as nanotubes (CNTs), graphene (G), and their derivatives have been demonstrated to be promising candidates for improved energy storage performance, due to their regulable structural features and diverse properties, including — but not limited to — excellent electric conductivity, high intrinsic capacity, and chemical stability. Although big advances have been achieved based on novel carbons for electrochemical energy storage, the eventual performance is limited by the ion configuration and ion kinetics (e....

Slated to dock with the International Space Station in a little less than 24 hours from now, Dragon will deliver more than 6,500 pounds of science and research experiments, crew supplies, and vehicle hardware to the orbiting laboratory. Coming up in about a minute, the rocket will pass through Max Q – the moment of peak mechanical stress on the rocket. Then, the Falcon 9’s first and second stage will separate....

It is based on a gradual or paced increase in a patient’s physical activity. Before the start of the program, the people taking part in the program were reporting on average three “crashes” a week where they were left physically, emotionally or cognitively exhausted after mild physical or mental exertion. Six weeks later, at the end of the program, that was reduced to an average of one crash a week....

For patients dealing with lingering respiratory symptoms from COVID-19, a traditional chest X-ray can reveal only so much. The two-dimensional (2D) scans simply can’t distinguish compromised lung function resulting from the novel coronavirus. For that diagnosis, a more expensive, three-dimensional (3D) technique called a computerized tomography (CT) scan is necessary. However, many medical clinics in the United States don’t have CT scanning equipment, leaving so-called long-COVID patients with little information about their lung function....

People on a low-fat, plant-based diet ate fewer daily calories but had higher insulin and blood glucose levels, compared to when they ate a low-carbohydrate, animal-based diet, according to a small but highly controlled study at the National Institutes of Health. Led by researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the study compared the effects of the two diets on calorie intake, hormone levels, body weight, and more....

Researchers at Rice University and Lockheed Martin reported this month that they’ve found a way to make multiple high-performance anodes from a single silicon wafer. The process uses simple silicon to replace graphite as an element in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, laying the groundwork for longer-lasting, more powerful batteries for such applications as commercial electronics and electric vehicles. The work led by Sibani Lisa Biswal, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, and lead author Madhuri Thakur, a Rice research scientist, details the process by which Swiss cheese-like silicon “sponges” that store more than four times their weight in lithium can be electrochemically lifted off of wafers....

Understanding how water droplets spread and coalesce is essential for scenarios in everyday life, such as raindrops falling off cars, planes, and roofs, and for applications in energy generation, aerospace engineering, and microscale cell adhesion. However, these phenomena are difficult to model and challenging to observe experimentally. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Cornell University and Clemson University designed and analyzed droplet experiments that were done on the International Space Station (ISS)....

In the first map of the ‘galactic underworld’, a study from the University of Sydney has revealed a vast graveyard that stretches three times the height of the Milky Way. It has also indicated where the dead stars lie. A graveyard that stretches three times the height of the Milky Way has been revealed in the first map of the ‘galactic underworld’ – a chart of the corpses of once massive suns that have since collapsed into black holes and neutron stars....

Invisible dark matter and dark energy account for about 95% of the universe’s total mass and energy, and the majority of the 5% that is considered ordinary matter is also largely unseen, such as the gases at the outskirts of galaxies that comprise their so-called halos. Most of this ordinary matter is made up of neutrons and protons – particles called baryons that exist in the nuclei of atoms like hydrogen and helium....

The new membrane-based system was developed by MIT postdoc Xiao-Yu Wu and Ahmed Ghoniem, the Ronald C. Crane Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and is described in a paper in the journal ChemSusChem. The membrane, made of a compound of lanthanum, calcium, and iron oxide, allows oxygen from a stream of carbon dioxide to migrate through to the other side, leaving carbon monoxide behind. Other compounds, known as mixed ionic electronic conductors, are also under consideration in their lab for use in multiple applications including oxygen and hydrogen production....

Water – in liquid form – is the elixir of life. It made life possible on Earth and is indispensable for the continuing existence of living systems on the planet. This explains why scientists are constantly on the lookout for evidence of water on other solid bodies in the Universe. Up to now, however, the existence of liquid water on planets other than Earth has not been directly proven. However, there are indications that several moons in the outer reaches of our own solar system – more specifically, Saturn’s Enceladus and three of Jupiter’s moons (Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa) may possess subterranean oceans....

After studying both Anopheles gambiae and Anopheles coluzzii, two major malaria vectors in West Africa, they found that a particular family of binding proteins situated in the insect’s legs were highly expressed in resistant populations. First author on a paper published today (December 25, 2019) in the journal Nature, Dr. Victoria Ingham, explains: “We have found a completely new insecticide resistance mechanism that we think is contributing to the lower than expected efficacy of bed nets....

Symptoms resembling Parkinson’s disease are a cautionary finding in CAR-T cell treatment for multiple myeloma. Mount Sinai scientists have become the first to report a potentially serious side effect related to a new form of immunotherapy known as CAR-T cell therapy, which was recently approved for the treatment of multiple myeloma. Their findings were published as a case study in Nature Medicine in December. Multiple myeloma is a complex and incurable type of blood plasma cancer that often requires multiple treatments as the disease progresses and becomes resistant to previous therapies, often resulting in chronic disease with periods of acute illness....

Chalmers researchers present a breakthrough in the calculation of the atomic nucleus of the heavy and stable element lead in a recently published article in the scientific journal Nature Physics. The strong force plays the main role Despite the immense size difference between a microscopic atomic nucleus and a neutron star several kilometers in size, it is essentially the same physics that governs their properties. The common denominator is the strong force that holds the particles – the protons and neutrons – together in an atomic nucleus....

The rock belt runs through Idaho, Montana, Nevada, southeast California, and Arizona. “Geoscientists usually associate long belts of igneous rocks with chains of volcanoes at subduction zones, like Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainer,” says Jay Chapman, an assistant professor in UW’s Department of Geology and Geophysics. “What makes this finding so interesting and mysterious is that this belt of igneous rocks is located much farther inland, away from the edge of the continent, and doesn’t contain any evidence for producing volcanoes....

As circuit boards are packed with ever smaller components, however, robotic grippers’ ability to manipulate these objects is approaching a limit. “Electronics manufacturing requires handling and assembling small components in a size similar to or smaller than grains of flour,” says Sanha Kim, a former MIT postdoc and research scientist who worked in the lab of mechanical engineering associate professor John Hart. “So a special pick-and-place solution is needed, rather than simply miniaturizing [existing] robotic grippers and vacuum systems....

Using nanoscale diamond-like particles called nanodiamonds, researchers have developed a potentially more effective treatment for “triple-negative” breast cancer, notably decreasing tumor growth and eliminating the devastating side effects of cancer treatment during testing with mice. Recently, doctors have begun to categorize breast cancers into four main groups according to the genetic makeup of the cancer cells. Which category a cancer falls into generally determines the best method of treatment. But cancers in one of the four groups — called “basal-like” or “triple-negative” breast cancer (TNBC) — have been particularly tricky to treat because they usually don’t respond to the “receptor-targeted” treatments that are often effective in treating other types of breast cancer....

Gamma-ray observations are not sensitive enough to clearly see the shape of the Moon’s disk or any surface features. Instead, Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) detects a prominent glow centered on the Moon’s position in the sky. Mario Nicola Mazziotta and Francesco Loparco, both at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Bari, have been analyzing the Moon’s gamma-ray glow as a way of better understanding another type of radiation from space: fast-moving particles called cosmic rays....

ASTERIA belongs to a category of satellites called CubeSats, which vary in size but are typically smaller than a suitcase. Deployed into Earth orbit from the space station on November 20, 2017, the technology demonstration mission showed that many technologies necessary for studying and potentially finding exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than our Sun) can be shrunk to fit on small satellites. Long-term, the mission aimed to show that small satellites could one day be used to assist larger exoplanet missions, such as NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey (TESS)....