Due to the difficult accessibility and the high risk of collapse or explosion, the imaging of active volcanoes has so far been a great challenge in volcanology. Researchers around Edgar Zorn from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in Potsdam are now presenting the results of a series of repeated survey flights with optical and thermal imaging cameras at the Santa Maria volcano in Guatemala. Drones were used to observe the lava dome, a viscous plug of lava....

A research team at The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo (IMSUT) aimed to characterize the viral factor(s) determining immune activation upon SARS-CoV-2 infection and found that ORF3b, a gene encoded by SARS-CoV-2, is a potent IFN antagonist. “The poor IFN responses in COVID-19 patients may be explained by the action of this viral product, ORF3b”, said the lead scientist, Kei Sato, Associate Professor (Principal Investigator) at Division of Systems Virology, Department of Infectious Disease Control, IMSUT....

A blood test on hospital admission showing the presence or absence of SARS-CoV-2 can identify patients at a high risk of severe COVID-19. Admitted patients without virus in their blood have a good chance of rapid recovery. This according to researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital in a new study published in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Blood samples were taken from patients with a confirmed COVID-19 infection within three days of admission to the Department of Infectious Diseases, Danderyd Hospital, Sweden....

U.S. President Joe Biden criticized Putin’s overt nuclear threats against Europe. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg downplayed the threat, saying Putin “knows very well that a nuclear war should never be fought and cannot be won.” This is not the first time Putin has invoked nuclear weapons in an attempt to deter NATO. I am an international security scholar who has worked on and researched nuclear restraint, nonproliferation, and costly signaling theory applied to international relations for two decades....

A new video of the helicopter’s third flight gives viewers the sensation of standing on the Red Planet and seeing the action firsthand. When NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took to the Martian skies on its third flight on April 25, the agency’s Perseverance rover was there to capture the historic moment. Now NASA engineers have rendered the flight in 3D, lending dramatic depth to the flight as the helicopter ascends, hovers, then zooms laterally off-screen before returning for a pinpoint landing....

The study shows that for preteens, the risk of developing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) over a two-year period increases by 15% for every hour spent playing video games and by 11% for every hour spent watching videos. This raises concerns for parents who may be worried about the impact of increased screen time during the holiday season on their child’s mental well-being. “Children who spend excessive time playing video games report feeling the need to play more and more and being unable to stop despite trying,” said Jason Nagata, MD, lead author of the study and assistant professor of pediatrics at UCSF....

Well, they actually can come from a lot of different places. Our Moon, for example, we believe formed in a cataclysmic impact between the early Earth and a Mars-sized planet. In just a few moments, this impact would have melted the entire Earth into a lava world, sending thousands of tons of rocks and material into space. Some of these rocks would combine together and form small moonlets. And over time, thousands of years, the moonlets would come together and form our Moon that we see today....

Astronomers looking into the early universe using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have made a surprising discovery: a cluster of massive galaxies in the process of forming around an extremely red quasar. Our understanding of how galaxy clusters in the early universe came together and formed the cosmic web we see today will expand as a result of this research. A quasar, a special type of active galactic nucleus (AGN), is a compact region with a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy....

Successful weight-loss intervention before infection associated with 60% lower risk of severe disease in patients with obesity. A Cleveland Clinic study shows that among patients with obesity, prior weight loss achieved with bariatric surgery was associated with a 60% lower risk of developing severe complications from COVID-19 infection. The research was published in the journal JAMA Surgery. Numerous studies have established obesity as a major risk factor for developing serious illness from an infection of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19....

New research conducted by Dr. Geva Shenkman Lachberg and colleagues investigates the determinants of parents’ desire for more children, as well as whether heterosexual parents want more children than same-sex parents. The study also looked at if there are any differences in the desire for additional children between lesbian mothers and homosexual fathers. Dr. Shenkman Lachberg and his colleagues polled 72 lesbian mothers through donor insemination (36 couples), 78 homosexual dads through surrogacy (39 couples), and 72 heterosexual parents (36 couples) on their desire to parent more children and their preferred number of children....

Cancer therapies have made significant progress, and as a result, many forms of breast cancer have a high chance of being treated successfully, particularly when detected early. However, the most challenging cases, those that cannot be treated with hormone or targeted therapies and do not respond to chemotherapy, are still the most deadly and difficult to treat. Tulane University researchers have, for the first time, uncovered how these cancers persist after chemotherapy and why they do not respond well to immunotherapies, which aim to eliminate remaining tumor cells by activating the immune system....

“The COVID-19 situation is definitely putting us at risk for increasing resistance to antibiotics, so it’s more important now than ever that we come up with alternative treatments,” said Corrie Detweiler, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology who has spent her career seeking those alternatives. In a paper published on December 18, 2020, in the journal PLOS Pathogens, Detweiler and her research team unveil their latest discovery—a chemical compound that works with a host’s innate immune response to push past cellular barriers that help bacteria resist antibiotics....

The idea that forest trees can “talk” to each other, share resources with their seedlings — and even protect them — through a connective underground web of delicate fungal filaments tickles the imagination. The concept is so intriguing, it’s taken root in popular media — even being raised in the popular Apple TV show Ted Lasso — and been dubbed the “wood-wide web,” but the science behind those ideas is unproven, cautions University of Alberta expert Justine Karst....

Panicked purchasing, empty store shelves, long lines at the gas station—given supply chain woes, is that America for the foreseeable future? Yes and no, said one supply chain expert—and also maybe. The global supply chain is a complicated mechanism that can be upset by a few isolated breakdowns, but it also is predictable and resilient enough that knowing what to look for can help countries, communities and individuals reduce negative effects....

Data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft suggests that Jupiter was shaken to its core by a colossal, head-on collision 4.5 billion years ago with a planet about 10 times more massive than Earth. According to a new study this week in the journal Nature, the planetary impact scenario can explain surprising readings about Jupiter’s gravitational field that Juno has made since arriving at the solar system’s largest planet in 2016. Researchers ran thousands of computer simulations for the study and found the head-on impact scenario best explained Juno’s gravitational readings....

New drug target found for future and current coronaviruses. Scientists are already preparing for a possible next coronavirus pandemic to strike, keeping with the seven-year pattern since 2004. In future-looking research, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine scientists have identified a novel target for a drug to treat SARS-CoV-2 that also could impact a new emerging coronavirus. “God forbid we need this, but we will be ready,” said Karla Satchell, professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg, who leads an international team of scientists to analyze the important structures of the virus....

Professor Corina Sas of Lancaster University, Dr. Tom Gayler, and Vaiva Kalnikaité of Dovetailed Ltd. conducted the research, which was recently published in the journal Human Computer Interaction. Their research investigated the viability of using 3D printed flavor-based cues to help the elderly recall memories. Working with 12 older adults, they collected 72 memories, half of which included food and half of which did not, each of which was remembered twice....

According to a paper published in Science by the team of scientists, nearly 1.76 billion tons of CO2, equivalent to nearly half a gigaton of carbon, was released into the atmosphere from burning boreal forests in North America and Eurasia in 2021. This amount is 150% higher than the average annual CO2 emissions observed between 2000 and 2020. “According to our measurements, boreal fires in 2021 shattered previous records,” said senior co-author Steven Davis, UCI professor of Earth system science....

Overall risk of admission low, but those in patient-facing roles are at particular risk, say researchers. Healthcare workers and their families account for a sixth (17%) of hospital admissions for COVID-19 in the working-age population (18-65 years), finds a study from Scotland published by The BMJ today. Although hospital admission with COVID-19 in this age group was very low overall, the risk for healthcare workers and their families was higher compared with other working-age adults, especially for those in “front door” patient-facing roles such as paramedics and A&E department staff, say the researchers....

Typical clusters of galaxies have several thousand-member galaxies, which can be very different from our own Milky Way and vary in size and shape. These systems are embedded in very hot gas known as the intracluster medium (ICM), all of which live in an unseen halo of so-called ‘dark matter’. A large number of galaxies have supermassive black holes in their centers, and these often have high-speed jets of material stretching over thousands of light-years that can inflate very hot lobes in the ICM....