Approximately 90 percent of cancers start within tissues that form the inner linings of various organs. Decades of accumulated genetic mutations can, on occasion, induce cells specialized for growth in one-cell deep sheets to form disordered clumps that eventually become tumors. New work from the lab of Stephen Elledge, Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has found a genetic switch that changes these cells into cells with distinct cancerous properties....

In order to avoid getting a cold, people can try to meditate or exercise. A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that adults who practiced mindful meditation or moderately intense exercise for eight weeks suffered less from season ailments during the following winter than those who didn’t do either. The scientists published their findings in the journal Annals of Family Medicine. Researchers used 150 participants, 80% of them were women, all were older than 50, and randomly assigned them to three groups....

This suggests that pre-Neanderthals lived in the Doñana area during this time. The research, led by Professor of Paleontology Eduardo Mayoral at the University of Huelva, was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. The technique Optically-stimulated luminescence is a method used to find the absolute age of sediments that have been fully exposed to sunlight. Scientific milestone The discovery in June 2020 of hominin footprints more than 106,000 years old next to El Asperillo (Matalascañas, Huelva) was a revolution for the scientific world, so much so that it was considered one of the most important discoveries of that year....

The paper appeared today in EBioMedicine, which is published by The Lancet, and is the first study to be published after critique from fellow scientists at outside institutions that describes a candidate vaccine for COVID-19. The researchers were able to act quickly because they had already laid the groundwork during earlier coronavirus epidemics. The researchers made sure upfront that their process was scalable, since hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses will need to be produced worldwide....

“This is exciting because it shows that proton therapy offers a way for us to reduce the serious side effects of chemo-radiation and improve patient health and wellbeing without sacrificing the effectiveness of the therapy,” said the study’s lead author Brian Baumann, MD, an adjunct assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at Penn and an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Proton therapy has a few key differences from traditional photon radiation....

Surveys done among a representative group of Americans in May and October of 2020 show about a 10% decline in trust of the CDC over that period. In contrast, the same research found that public trust in the U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency increased significantly over the period, despite those agencies facing their own challenges. “The Biden administration will have an uphill battle in rehabilitating trust in the CDC at this critical junction in the coronavirus pandemic,” said Michael Pollard, lead author of the study and a senior social scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization....

The new finding helps understand how the whole chiton tooth — not just the ultrahard, durable cusp — is designed to endure chewing on rocks to feed. Based on minerals found in chiton teeth, the researchers developed a bio-inspired ink for 3D printing ultrahard, stiff and durable materials. “This mineral has only been observed in geological specimens in very tiny amounts and has never before been seen in a biological context,” said Northwestern’s Derk Joester, the study’s senior author....

For the first time in more than 30 years, on September 27 you’ll be able to witness a supermoon in combination with a lunar eclipse. Late on September 27, 2015, in the U.S. and much of the world, a total lunar eclipse will mask the moon’s larger-than-life face for more than an hour. But what is this behemoth of the night sky? Not a bird, not a plane, it’s a supermoon!...

If confirmed, it would be the most distant supermassive black hole with a jet detected in X-rays, coming from a galaxy about 12.7 billion light years from Earth. It may help explain how the biggest black holes formed at a very early time in the Universe’s history. The source of the jet is a quasar — a rapidly growing supermassive black hole — named PSO J352.4034-15.3373 (PJ352-15 for short), which sits at the center of a young galaxy....

A newly published study from scientists at Rice University found patterns in the way that surface plasmons influence each other in chains of gold nanoparticles. New research at Rice University that seeks to establish points of reference between plasmonic particles and polymers might lead to smaller computer chips, better antennae and improvements in optical computing. Materials scientists take advantage of strong interactions between chemicals to form polymers that self-assemble into patterns and are the basis of things people use every day....

Your immune system’s “memory” T cells keep track of the viruses they have seen before. This immune cell memory gives the cells a headstart in recognizing and fighting off repeat invaders. Now, a new study led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) shows that memory helper T cells that recognize common cold coronaviruses also recognize matching sites on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The research, published on August 4, 2020, in Science, may explain why some people have milder COVID-19 cases than others — though the researchers emphasize that this is speculation and much more data is needed....

The study examined data from genome-wide association studies of human height, which have identified numerous height-associated regions in the human genome, and assessed the expression of these genetic regions in different layers of the growth plate, or areas of new bone growth during childhood. “Our results point to genes expressed in earlier stages of chondrocyte differentiation as most influencing human height,” Nora Renthal, MD, PhD, of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School....

Formerly a postdoc in the ETH lab headed by Raffaele Mezzenga, Professor of Food and Soft Materials, Leonie van ’t Hag set to create a new form of gold that weighs about five to ten times less than traditional 18-carat gold. The conventional mixture is usually three-quarters gold and one-quarter copper, with a density of about 15 g/cm3. That’s not true for this new lightweight gold: its density is just 1....

OHSU laboratory research compares routes to immunity involving vaccination. New laboratory research from Oregon Health & Science University reveals more than one path toward robust immunity from COVID-19. A new study finds that two forms of immunity – breakthrough infections following vaccination or natural infection followed by vaccination – provide roughly equal levels of enhanced immune protection. The new study will be published online today (January 25, 2022) in the journal Science Immunology....

A new study shows that moist heat treatment of N95 masks eliminates severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and bacteria, which would allow reuse of these scarce resources. The study is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). The researchers found that moist heat treatment (60 min, 70°C, 50% relative humidity) did not damage the mask’s structure or affect function. “This low-cost reprocessing strategy can be applied 10 times without affecting the mask’s filtration, breathing resistance, fit and comfort, and thus may help to alleviate the global shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Dr....

Due to the rapid spread of COVID-19, there is an increasing shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) crucial to protecting health care workers from infection. N95 respirators are recommended by the CDC as the ideal protection method from COVID-19 and, although traditionally single-use, PPE shortages have necessitated the need for reuse. New research published recently in mBio an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, describes an effective, standardized method of decontamination for hospitals and health care centers facing N95 respirator shortages....

The findings are from computer simulations by Rice scientists who set out to see how carbon nanomaterials can be improved for fuel-cell cathodes. Their study reveals the atom-level mechanisms by which doped nanomaterials catalyze oxygen reduction reactions (ORR). The research appears in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Nanoscale. Theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his Rice colleagues are among many looking for a way to speed up ORR for fuel cells, which were discovered in the 19th century but not widely used until the latter part of the 20th....

“We can’t see the early universe directly, but maybe we can see it indirectly if we look at how gravitational waves from that time have affected matter and radiation that we can observe today,” said Deepen Garg, lead author of a paper reporting the results in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. Garg is a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics, which is based at the U....

While NASA’s Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter are hard at work exploring Mars hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, their “twin” models will be visiting museums as part of the “Roving With Perseverance” roadshow. As big as a car, with its camera “head” rising high, Perseverance’s six-wheeled lookalike towers over most visitors, while Ingenuity’s double highlights just how small the history-making rotorcraft is. The tour begins in October at venues on the East and West Coasts, then works its way inland....

Discovery of shape of the SARS-CoV-2 genome after infection could inform new COVID-19 treatments. Scientists at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Justus-Liebig University, Germany, have uncovered how the genome of SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 — uses genome origami to infect and replicate successfully inside host cells. This could inform the development of effective drugs that target specific parts of the virus genome, in the fight against COVID-19....