For the first study, Rachel Eguia of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, and colleagues sought to better understand SARS-CoV-2 by investigating a closely related virus that has circulated widely for a far longer period of time: the common-cold virus 229E. 229E and SARS-CoV-2 are both in the coronavirus family, which features a “spike protein” that enables infection of human cells. A person who is infected with 229E develops an immune response against the spike protein that protects them from reinfection, but only for a few years....

The revelation is based upon a tumbling flower beetle with pollen on its legs discovered preserved in amber deep inside a mine in northern Myanmar. The fossil comes from the same amber deposit as the first ammonite discovered in amber, which was reported by the same research group earlier this year. The report of the new fossil was published today (November 11, 2019) in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

The strikingly uneven structure and the clusters of stars that orbit around the galaxy suggest that ESO 381-12 may have been part of a dramatic collision sometime in its relatively recent past. Located roughly 270 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), a bright constellation in the southern sky, ESO 381-12, also known as PGC 42871, is categorized as a lenticular galaxy — a hybrid galaxy type that shares properties with both spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies....

Scientists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have created a hydrogel tablet that can rapidly purify contaminated water. One tablet can disinfect a liter of river water and make it suitable for drinking in an hour or less. “Our multifunctional hydrogel can make a big difference in mitigating global water scarcity because it is easy to use, highly efficient and potentially scalable up to mass production,” said Guihua Yu, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and Texas Materials Institute....

With this new view of a spectacular stellar nursery, ESO is celebrating 15 years of the Very Large Telescope — the world’s most advanced optical instrument. This picture reveals thick clumps of dust silhouetted against the pink glowing gas cloud known to astronomers as IC 2944. These opaque blobs resemble drops of ink floating in a strawberry cocktail, their whimsical shapes sculpted by powerful radiation coming from the nearby brilliant young stars....

Scientists have previously manipulated single atoms to make ultra-dense memory arrays for computers, which store more data in a much smaller space than conventional hard drives and consume much less power. In a technique known as hydrogen lithography, researchers use the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to remove single atoms of hydrogen bonded to a silicon surface. The pattern of silicon atoms bound to or lacking a hydrogen atom forms a binary code that stores the data....

Protein-based vaccine elicits strong immune responses in mice; approach could be used for other diseases. Currently available COVID vaccines require cold storage and sophisticated manufacturing capacity, which makes it difficult to produce and distribute them widely, especially in less developed countries. A new type of vaccine would potentially be much easier to produce and would not need refrigeration, report researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital in the November 2, 2021, issue of PNAS....

Post-COVID fatigue is independent of severity of initial infection. More than half of people with acute COVID-19 infection continue to have persistent fatigue 10 weeks after their initial illness, according to a new study published on November 9, 2020, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Liam Townsend of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and colleagues. Fatigue is one of the most common initial presenting complaints of people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19....

The ability to feel fear is critical for escaping life-threatening circumstances and learning how to avoid them in the future. However, in certain conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other disorders linked to anxiety, the fear reactions become excessive and continue even when they are no longer necessary. This causes intense anxiety even if no danger is present, resulting in disability for the individual afflicted. Researchers believe that some people are predisposed to developing pathological fears, which are caused by problems with how the brain processes fearful memories....

Three years ago, a Durham-led international team of researchers thought they had made a breakthrough in ultimately identifying what dark matter is. Observations using the Hubble Space Telescope appeared to show that a galaxy in the Abell 3827 cluster – approximately 1.3 billion light years from Earth – had become separated from the dark matter surrounding it. Such an offset is predicted during collisions if dark matter interacts with forces other than gravity, potentially providing clues about what the substance might be....

Zika researchers had established that these antiviral proteins, known as type I interferons, were required to fight Zika infection in mothers. But it was not clear what role interferons played in providing an immune defense for the fetus. To investigate, the team led by immunobiologist Akiko Iwasaki studied two different types of mouse models. One type lacked the receptor for type 1 interferon altogether, and the other had only one copy of the interferon receptor gene....

Robots can change directions, speeds, and even their colors. But what about changing their shapes? With help from a sculptor’s intuition, Yale researchers are on it. Led by Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, researchers developed a robot that can morph to accommodate changes in its path or environment. For instance, if a cylindrical robot finds a rock in its way, the robot can take on the shape of a dumbbell by cinching up its midsection and pass over the rock....

The RIT-led study represents the first step toward predicting the approaching merger of supermassive black holes using the two channels of information now available to scientists–the electromagnetic and the gravitational wave spectra–known as multimessenger astrophysics. The findings appear in the paper “Quasi-periodic Behavior of Mini-disks in Binary Black Holes Approaching Merger,” published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We’ve performed the first simulation in which an accretion disk around a binary black hole feeds individual accretion disks, or mini-disks, around each black hole in general relativity and magnetohydrodynamics,” said Dennis Bowen, lead author and postdoctoral researcher at RIT’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation....

Established NIPTs have important limitations including noninformative results. Therefore, novel methods for noninvasive definitive diagnosis of fetal genetic abnormalities are needed. Using a modified single-cell-based droplet digital PCR (sc-ddPCR) NIPT, researchers conducted a proof of concept study that successfully assessed the genetic information of extremely rare fetal cells in maternal peripheral blood. This modified sc-ddPCR system makes it possible to directly assess single-cell DNA information from live cells without cell-fixation, cell-staining, and whole genome amplification steps....

The creature is similar to the largest pterosaurs known, yet key characteristics gleaned from a cache of bones unearthed in Canada show that it is actually part of a new genus and species. The scientists call it Cryodrakon boreas, or “frozen dragon of the north.” “These are among the most popular and charismatic of all fossil animals,” said Michael Habib, assistant professor of Integrative Anatomical Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and research associate at the Dinosaur Institute of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County....

Older people who have never taken part in sustained exercise programs have the same ability to build muscle mass as highly trained master athletes of a similar age, according to new research at the University of Birmingham. The research shows that even those who are entirely unaccustomed to exercise can benefit from resistance exercises such as weight training. In the study, published in Frontiers in Physiology, researchers in the University of Birmingham’s School of Sport and Exercise Science compared muscle-building ability in two groups of older men....

Researchers detected an unexpected 50% increase in patients presenting with respiratory illnesses at UCLA Health facilities in the months before the pandemic. UCLA researchers and colleagues who analyzed electronic health records found that there was a significant increase in patients with coughs and acute respiratory failure at UCLA Health hospitals and clinics beginning in late December 2019, suggesting that COVID-19 may have been circulating in the area months before the first definitive cases in the U....

“People recovering from heart damage often face a long and tricky journey. Healing is challenging because of the constant movement tissues must withstand as the heart beats. The same is true for vocal cords. Until now there was no injectable material strong enough for the job,” says Guangyu Bao, a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University. The team, led by Professor Luc Mongeau and Assistant Professor Jianyu Li, developed a new injectable hydrogel for wound repair....

“Knowing the precise locations of chemical reactions within individual nanoparticles that are participating in those reactions helps us to identify how a battery operates and uncover how the battery might be optimized to make it work even better,” said Jordi Cabana, associate professor of chemistry at UIC and co-corresponding author on the paper. As a battery charges and discharges, its electrodes — the materials where the reactions that produce energy take place — are alternately oxidized and reduced....

Researchers developed nanoparticles that are able to penetrate the neural retina and deliver mRNA to the photoreceptor cells whose proper function makes vision possible. The study was published today (January 11, 2023) in the journal Science Advances. It was led by OSU associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences Gaurav Sahay, Oregon State doctoral student Marco Herrera-Barrera and Oregon Health & Science University assistant professor of ophthalmology Renee Ryals. The scientists overcame what had been the main limitation of using lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, to carry genetic material for the purpose of vision therapy – getting them to reach the back of the eye, where the retina is....