A team of experts from the St Petersburg Zoology Institute excavated the mammoth in five days, extracting it from the frozen mud. They sent it to Moscow for further study. The team estimates that the mammoth was 16 years old when it died, and it stood about 2m in height. It weighed 500kg. The specimen has been named Zhenya, after the boy who discovered the carcass while walking his dogs in the same area....

Inventor Nikola Tesla patented a type of pipe that he called a “valvular conduit” in 1920. It was built to draw fluid in one direction without any moving parts or added energy and has applications ranging from soft robotics to medical implants. In 2021, scientists discovered that sharks’ spiral-shaped intestines work much the same way, favoring fluid flow in one direction—from head to pelvis. Ido Levin, a physicist in the lab of Sarah Keller at the University of Washington, became interested in the physics flow of fluid through these shark spirals....

Orbital dynamics experts are calling it a “dance of avoidance” performed by the tiny moons Naiad and Thalassa. The two are true partners, orbiting only about 1,150 miles (1,850 kilometers) apart. But they never get that close to each other; Naiad’s orbit is tilted and perfectly timed. Every time it passes the slower-moving Thalassa, the two are about 2,200 miles (3,540 kilometers) apart. An observer sitting on Thalassa would see Naiad in an orbit that varies wildly in a zigzag pattern, passing by twice from above and then twice from below....

Few space science missions have been as eagerly anticipated as the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). As the next great space science observatory following Hubble, Webb is designed to resolve unanswered questions about the Universe and see farther into our origins: from the formation of stars and planets to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe. Every launch requires meticulous planning and preparation. For Webb, this process began about 15 years ago....

The breakthrough is another major step forward on the journey to develop a commercially viable drug version based on teixobactin — a natural antibiotic discovered by US scientists in soil samples in 2015 which has been heralded as a “gamechanger” in the battle against antibiotic-resistant pathogens such as MRSA and VRE. Scientists from the University of Lincoln, UK, have now successfully created a simplified, synthesized form of teixobactin which has been used to treat a bacterial infection in mice, demonstrating the first proof that such simplified versions of its real form could be used to treat real bacterial infection as the basis of a new drug....

The findings demonstrate “an impressive show of memory and navigation.” The sharks maneuver through thousands of miles of the Pacific but return to where they have found food in years past, said Heidi Dewar, a research fisheries biologist at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. Researchers tagged 105 mako sharks over 12 years—from 2002 to 2014. The tags record the sharks’ movements, as well as the environments the sharks pass through....

In elections, every vote counts. Or should count. But a new study by an MIT professor indicates that in the 2016 U.S. general election, 4 percent of all mail-in ballots were not counted — about 1.4 million votes, or 1 percent of all votes cast, signaling a significant problem that could grow in 2020. The study quantifies the range of reasons for this, including late-arriving ballots, problems with ballot signatures and envelopes, and improperly marked ballots, among other things....

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been inspired by the human brain. This approach proved highly successful: AI boasts impressive achievements – from diagnosing medical conditions to composing poetry. Still, the original model continues to outperform machines in many ways. This is why, for example, we can ‘prove our humanity’ with trivial image tests online. What if instead of trying to make AI more brain-like, we went straight to the source?...

We are researchers with expertise in vaccination policy and mathematical modeling of infectious disease. Our group, the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, has been modeling influenza for over a decade. One of us has been a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the CDC’s Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Network. Our recent modeling work suggests that last year’s tamped-down influenza season could lead to a surge in flu cases this coming season....

University of Portsmouth Ph.D. student Emily Roberts, made the discovery while examining fossilized leaves of the Welwitschiophyllum plant, found in the Crato Formation in Brazil. Emily noticed thin amber-colored bands locked inside some of the fossilized leaves she was studying. What makes this new ‘gem’ unique is that unlike amber, which is made from fossilized plant resin, this substance is made from fossilized plant gum. Until now, it has been assumed that plant gums cannot survive the fossilization processes....

1. How common are these hornets in Asia, and how much alarm do they cause? The Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) is fairly common in many parts of Asia, where it is called the “Giant hornet.” Growing up in Japan, I saw them relatively frequently in the mountains outside of Tokyo. These insects are large and distinctive, with a characteristic orange head and black-banded orange body. Like any other social wasp, they will defend their nest if the colony is disrupted....

Half of the children who developed the serious condition associated with COVID-19 called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) had neurologic symptoms or signs when they entered the hospital, according to preliminary research released today, April 13, 2021, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 73rd Annual Meeting being held virtually April 17 to 22, 2021. Those symptoms included headaches, encephalopathy, and hallucinations. “With this new inflammatory syndrome that develops after children are infected with the coronavirus, we are still learning how the syndrome affects children and what we need to watch out for,” said study author Omar Abdel-Mannan, MD, of University College London in the United Kingdom and a member of the American Academy of Neurology....

For those who exercise regularly, eating almonds each day might be the ideal new year’s resolution. A randomized controlled trial in Frontiers in Nutrition showed that female and male participants who ate 2 ounces (57 grams) of almonds daily for one month had more of the beneficial fat 12,13-dihydroxy-9Z-octadecenoic acid (12,13-DiHOME) in their blood immediately after a session of intense exercise than control participants. This molecule, a so-called oxylipin (oxidized fat) is synthesized from linoleic acid by brown fat tissue, and has a beneficial effect on metabolic health and energy regulation....

After exhausting the nuclear fuel in their cores, stars with a mass of around 0.8 to 8 times the mass of our Sun collapse to form dense and hot white dwarf stars. As this process occurs, the dying star will throw off its outer layers of material, forming an elaborate cloud of gas and dust known as a planetary nebula. This phenomenon is not uncommon, and planetary nebulae are a popular focus for astrophotographers because of their often beautiful and complex shapes....

Furthermore, approximately 40% of patients treated with this antibody experienced serious side effects such as cerebral edemas (ARIA-E) and hemorrhages (ARIA-H), which are likely related to inflammatory responses in the brain caused by the Aβ antibody binding Fc receptors (FCR) of immune cells such as microglia and macrophages. These inflammatory side effects have the potential to worsen cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease patients by causing neuronal cell death and synapse elimination by activated microglia....

The remnants of an ancient inland sea, trapped for centuries, have finally been uncovered. The unexpected discovery of 390 million-year-old seawater sealed in modern-day North America offers new insight into how oceans evolve and adapt to changing climates. The research also has potential applications in the safe underground storage and transportation of hydrogen as a carbon-free energy source. “We discovered we can actually dig out information from these mineral features that could help inform geologic studies, such as the seawater chemistry from ancient times,” said Sandra Taylor, first author of the study and a scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory....

During the current COVID pandemic, N95 masks have been indispensable for keeping health care workers and first responders safe. The name comes from the fact that these masks can filter more than 95% of airborne particles, even though they have pore sizes ten times larger than the small aerosol particles that can carry the virus. The trick is that the N95 masks are made of electrospun polypropylene fibers, which retain a static electric charge that can attract and trap the charged aerosols....

“Proteins in the blood are under constant and changing pressure because of the different ways blood flows throughout the body,” says Marassi. “For example, blood flows more slowly through small blood vessels in the eyes compared to larger arteries around the heart. Blood proteins need to be able to respond to these changes, and this study gives us fundamental truths about how they adapt to their environment, which is critical to targeting those proteins for future treatments....

Since Charles Darwin’s day, the abundance of life on coral reefs has been puzzling, given that most oceanic surface waters in the tropics are low in nutrients and unproductive. But now research, led by Newcastle University and published in the journal Science Advances, has confirmed that the food web of a coral reef in the Maldives relies heavily on what comes in from the open ocean. The team found that these offshore resources contribute to more than 70% of reef predator diets, the rest being derived from reef-associated sources....

The BYU scientists who conducted the study suspected that the CDC’s preference for alcohol sanitizer stemmed from as-yet limited research on what really works to disinfect SARS-CoV-2. To explore other options, they treated samples of the novel coronavirus with benzalkonium chloride, which is commonly used in alcohol-free hand sanitizers, and several other quaternary ammonium compounds regularly found in disinfectants. In most of the test cases, the compounds wiped out at least 99....