Q&A with UChicago infectious disease expert Emily Landon As the very infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19 surges around the country, you need to know what kind of tests to take to protect yourself and your community. Emily Landon, infectious disease expert and executive medical director for infection prevention and control at University of Chicago Medicine, answers common questions about COVID-19 tests. These include when to get a COVID-19 test, what kind you should use, what to do if you can’t get one at all, and why it’s still important to get vaccinated and boosted....

Researchers found a higher intake of refined grain was associated with an increased risk of premature coronary artery disease in an Iranian population, while eating whole grains was associated with reduced risk. The study was one of the first to examine the relationship between different types of grain intake and premature coronary artery disease in the Middle East. It will be presented at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Middle East 2022 Together with the 13th Emirates Cardiac Society Congress, taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, during October 7-9, 2022....

Titan’s siblings must be jealous. While most of Saturn’s moons display their ancient faces pockmarked by thousands of craters, Titan – Saturn’s largest moon – may look much younger than it really is because its craters are getting erased. Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in its craters, according to new research using observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. “Most of the Saturnian satellites – Titan’s siblings – have thousands and thousands of craters on their surface....

More than one million people die annually from cerebral malaria, the most lethal form of the disease. A recent study, led by Yale investigators, explores the role of glucose metabolism in the development of the disease, and may hold a key to preventing or treating it in humans. Using mice models of cerebral malaria, the research team experimented with different ways of manipulating feeding behavior. Based on their findings in a previous study, they theorized that reduced food intake — and specifically reduced glucose utilization — after malarial infection would increase the ability of mice to tolerate the infection....

Data from first six months of pandemic shows racial and economic disparities by zip code in COVID-19 outcomes. Markers of the pandemic’s impact — testing rates, positivity ratio (cases among total tests), case rates by overall population and deaths — are clustered in neighborhoods, with low-income and predominantly minority communities experiencing worse outcomes than wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods. The findings, part of the first research to look at comprehensive neighborhood-level data from March through September 2020 from three large U....

The fungi that grow on fermented foods strongly influence their tastes, yet the evolutionary origins of those fungi aren’t well understood. Experimental findings published this week in mBio offer microbiologists a new view on how those molds evolve from wild strains into the domesticated ones used in food production. In the paper, microbiologists report that wild-type Penicillium molds can evolve quickly. After a matter of weeks, these strains closely resembled their domesticated cousin, Penicillium camemberti, the mold that gives camembert cheese its distinctive flavor....

Designed for use by both general audiences and high school science classrooms, the free materials, available at s.si.edu/supernova, include an interactive simulation, a 360° video, and a multimedia instructional package. The project was created by the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access in conjunction with the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), a collaboration that includes the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. To create the visualizations, the project uses data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s Mayall Telescope, and the MIT/Michigan/Dartmouth Observatory’s Hiltner Telescope....

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken February 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan’s book, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,” in which he wrote: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” The updated image uses modern image-processing software and techniques while respecting the intent of those who planned the image....

On January 2, 2021, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this image of a plume rising from Popocatépetl (nicknamed El Popo). On January 6, the Washington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) reported a volcanic ash plume that rose to around 6,400 meters (21,000 feet) above the volcano. Mexico’s National Center for Prevention of Disasters (CENAPRED), which continuously monitors Popo, warned people not to approach the volcano or its crater due to falling ash and rock fragments....

One of the biggest ideas in physics is the possibility that all known forces, particles, and interactions can be connected in one framework. String theory is arguably the best-known proposal for a “theory of everything” that would tie together our understanding of the physical universe. Despite having many different versions of string theory circulating throughout the physics community for decades, there have been very few experimental tests. Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, however, have now made a significant step forward in this area....

Published recently in the journal Nature Medicine, the research solves a 60-year problem of how to detect the hormone-producing nodules without a difficult catheter study that is available in only a handful of hospitals, and often fails. The research also found that, when combined with a urine test, the scan detects a group of patients who can come off all their blood pressure medicines after treatment. 128 people participated in the study of a new scan after doctors found that their Hypertension (high blood pressure) was caused by a steroid hormone, aldosterone....

Cambridge, Massachusetts – More than 12 billion years ago a star exploded, ripping itself apart and blasting its remains outward in twin jets at nearly the speed of light. At its death it glowed so brightly that it outshone its entire galaxy by a million times. This brilliant flash traveled across space for 12.7 billion years to a planet that hadn’t even existed at the time of the explosion – our Earth....

The fossilized flower, encased in amber from the Baltic forests of Northern Europe and dating back almost 40 million years, is believed to be from an ancient flowering evergreen plant referred to as Stewartia kowalewskii. Eva-Maria Sadowski and Christa-Charlotte Hofmann reanalyzed the exceptionally large fossilized flower, which was originally described and named in 1872. The flower is dated to the Late Eocene, from between 38 million to 33.9 million years ago....

The numbers are finally capturing the full magnitude of the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, recently announced a 14.7% unemployment rate for April. But other data also provide a more nuanced and sobering view: New research co-authored by Prof. Steven J. Davis of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business reveals that for every 10 layoffs induced by the economic slowdown, three new jobs are created....

AN15368, a medication with antiparasitic properties, will start human clinical trials over the next several years. “I’m very optimistic,” said Rick Tarleton, corresponding author of the study and a UGA Athletic Association Distinguished Professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “I think it has a really strong chance of being a real solution, not just a stand-in for something that works better than the drugs we currently have....

Many scientists consider the “Cambrian explosion” — which occurred about 530-540 million years ago — as the first major appearance of many of the world’s animal groups in the fossil record. Like adding pieces to a giant jigsaw puzzle, each discovery dating from this time period has added another piece to the evolutionary map of modern animals. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found a rare, 500-million-year-old “worm-like” fossil called a palaeoscolecid, which is an uncommon fossil group in North America....

Stars like the Sun can become remarkably photogenic at the end of their life. A good example is NGC 2392, which is located about 4,200 light years from Earth. NGC 2392, nicknamed the “Eskimo Nebula,” is what astronomers call a planetary nebula. This designation, however, is deceiving because planetary nebulas actually have nothing to do with planets. The term is simply a historic relic since these objects looked like planetary disks to astronomers in earlier times looking through small optical telescopes....

Smoke from the growing number of annual wildfires across the western United States and Australia has led to lengthy periods of unhealthy and hazardous air quality for millions of people living in these regions. In a Perspective, Leda Kobziar and George Thompson III highlight a little-known and poorly understood threat potentially lurking in the plumes — infectious microbes. According to Kobziar and Thompson, wildfire smoke contains living microbes — bacteria and fungi known to affect human health — aerosolized from burning materials such as soils, detritus and wild woods and transported in smoke plumes....

Recent research led by Gonçalo Bernardes, group leader at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes (iMM; Portugal) and Professor at the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK), and Gonzalo Jiménez-Osés, group leader at the Center for Cooperative Research in Biosciences (Derio, Spain), and published in the scientific journal Nature Chemistry reports the development of new chemistry on natural compounds derived from Brazilian lapacho tree bark to obtain a therapeutic agent that could be efficient to treat acute myeloid leukemia....

Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a new way to improve the removal of waste from the brain, which may potentially lead to the treatment or prevention of neurodegenerative diseases. They discovered that immune cells surrounding the brain play a role in the efficiency of waste removal and that these immune cells are impaired in old mice, as well as in humans and mice with Alzheimer’s disease....