Blood tests to detect antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are an important tool for diagnosing the disease, developing potential treatments, and checking vaccine efficacy. Although such tests are available, we have very little understanding on how different antibodies interact with virus antigens. Scientists from Fujita Health University set out to assess various antigen-specific antibodies and determined which of them had the strongest neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2. The COVID-19 pandemic has now claimed over 2 million deaths worldwide, and this number is only increasing....

SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind today’s global coronavirus pandemic, spreads primarily by inhalation of virus-laden aerosols at both short and long ranges — and a comprehensive new assessment of respiratory viruses finds that many others probably do as well. SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, influenza, measles, and the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold can all spread via aerosols that can build up in indoor air and linger for hours, an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers has reported in a review published in Science on August 27, 2021....

The study, published in Frontiers in Allergy, found that by 2050, climate change is expected to significantly increase pollen levels in the air, with some of the largest increases occurring in areas where pollen is normally less common. The team was led by Panos Georgopoulos, a professor of Environmental and Occupational Health and Justice at the Rutgers School of Public Health. “Pollen is an excellent sentinel for the impacts of climate change because shifts in variables like carbon dioxide and temperature affect the way plants behave,” said Georgopoulos, who also is director of the Computational Chemodynamics Laboratory at Rutgers and faculty at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School....

Looking for answers about how the brain works amid age-related hearing loss, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers discovered that old mice were less capable than young mice of “turning off” certain actively firing brain cells in the midst of ambient noise. The result, they say, creates a “fuzzy” sound stage that makes it difficult for the brain to focus on one type of sound — such as spoken words — and filter out surrounding “noise....

Yet both missions went seriously wrong only moments after taking flight. Both spacecraft recovered and went on to make astounding and unexpected discoveries. Voyager 1 has the distinction of being the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space – the space between the stars. The Voyagers were the creations of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where a brash young scientist had just been put in charge. His ambition was to take the next steps in exploring the solar system....

“The new Io hotspot JIRAM picked up is about 200 miles (300 kilometers) from the nearest previously mapped hotspot,” said Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. “We are not ruling out movement or modification of a previously discovered hot spot, but it is difficult to imagine one could travel such a distance and still be considered the same feature.” The Juno team will continue to evaluate data collected on the December 16 flyby and JIRAM data that will be collected during future (and even closer) flybys of Io....

An international team of astronomers has reported the first scientific results from the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7) in South Africa, the pathfinder radio telescope for the $3 billion global Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project. The results will appear in the prestigious international astronomical journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). Using the seven-dish KAT-7 telescope and the 26 m radio telescope at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), astronomers have observed a neutron star system known as Circinus X-1 as it fires energetic matter from its core into the surrounding system in extensive, compact `jets’ that flare brightly, details of which are visible only in radio waves....

The facts in relation to suicide are stark: 800,000 people die globally by suicide every year, the equivalent of one every 40 seconds. Suicide is the second leading cause of death globally among 15-29 year olds. More adolescents die by suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined. As many as one in three adolescents think about ending their lives and one in three of these will attempt suicide....

A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with researchers from the Martin Luther University (MLU) of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany, and the recently inaugurated Dubochet Center for Imaging (UNIGE-UNIL-EPFL), has identified the structure of the SEA complex, an interdependent set of proteins responsible for controlling mTOR. The finding of this structure provides a better understanding of how cells perceive nutrient levels in order to control their growth. The study was recently published in the journal Nature....

In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report the first definitive measurements of the sun’s electric field, and how the electric field interacts with the solar wind, the fast-flowing current of charged particles that can affect activities on Earth, from satellites to telecommunications. The physicists calculated the distribution of electrons within the sun’s electric field, a feat made possible by the fact that the Parker Solar Probe jetted within 0....

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have identified a biological marker in the immune system that — beginning at about age 22 — predicts our ability to fight off the common cold. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and led by Carnegie Mellon’s Sheldon Cohen, the study found that the length of telomeres — protective cap-like protein complexes at the ends of chromosomes — predicts resistance to upper respiratory infections in young and midlife adults....

NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is well into its second science campaign, is collecting rock-core samples from features within an area that scientists have long considered to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. Since July 7 the rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12....

In this video, Berkeley Lab astrophysicists and Nobel laureates, George Smoot and Saul Perlmutter — joined by Berkeley Lab physicist Eric Linder and UC anthropologist Gerardo Aldana — explore the cultural and scientific connections between Mayan astronomers and modern cosmologists as they look to the skies for answers to how the universe evolved, how it might end, and our place in it. The fundamental human curiosity about our origins and fate, a quest that persists across time and cultures, has been enriched by recent discoveries about dark energy, the Big Bang, and the accelerating universe....

They fall short of minimum criteria set by WHO and US and UK device regulators Findings cast doubt on effectiveness of their use for widespread testing in schools. The performance of lateral flow (antigen) tests commonly used to detect COVID-19 infection in children falls short of the minimum criteria set by the World Health Organization (WHO) and US and UK device regulators, finds a pooled data analysis of the available evidence on 8 different tests, published in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine....

The Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission is scheduled to launch into space on March 12, 2015. The mission consists of four spacecraft to observe a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection – which doesn’t happen naturally on Earth all that often, but is a regular occurrence in space. At the heart of magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physics process in which magnetic field lines come together and explosively realign, often sending the particles in the area flying off near the speed of light....

The poles of Mars are covered in stacked layers of ice that subtly shift in extent and composition throughout the year. During summer, the pole is permanently covered by thick layers of mostly water ice; during winter, temperatures plummet below -125 degrees Celsius and carbon dioxide begins to precipitate and build up as ice, creating a thinner additional layer a couple of meters thick. Winter also brings carbon dioxide clouds, which can obscure the polar features below and make it difficult to see clearly from orbit....

The gradual disappearance of water (H2O) occurs in the upper atmosphere of Mars: sunlight and chemistry disassociate water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms that the weak gravity of Mars cannot prevent from escaping into space. An international research team, led partly by CNRS researcher Franck Montmessin, has just revealed that water vapor is accumulating in large quantities and unexpected proportions at an altitude of over 80 km (50 mi) in the Martian atmosphere....

The findings were published in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on December 16, 2019, and the study reveals the importance of using satellite data to detect and quantify pollutants such as methane. Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P’s Tropomi instrument revealed that 120 tons of methane were emitted per hour due to the blowout. The location of the explosion is marked by a black dot in the image, and shows the methane emissions before and after the blowout....

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa—the world’s largest active volcano—has been quiet for the past four decades. But in November 2022, the volcano began to stir. In early October 2022, the first signs of unrest emerged, when U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data showed a tenfold increase in small earthquakes beneath the volcano’s summit caldera. This was a result of the underground movement of magma. Swarms of earthquakes continued sporadically through November 27, 2022, when new fissures began to spill lava across the caldera floor at 11:30 p....

A new study indicates that the benefits of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) persist years after the first treatment of the drug. The scientists published their findings in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. This could help patients with PTSD who do not respond to traditional treatments. However, the results come from a small-scale pilot study, and larger studies are needed before this outcome becomes convincing. In this trial, 20 patients with PTSD, who hadn’t responded to psychotherapy or to conventional psychopharmacological drugs were given MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) or a placebo during two eight-hour psychotherapy sessions....