Acrotaphus wasps are fascinating because they are very sizeable parasitoids. The largest species can grow multiple centimeters in length and are also very colorful. Previously, only 11 species of the genus were known, so this new research gives significant new information on the diversity of insects in rain forests, tells postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the new study Diego Pádua, who has worked both for the INPA and the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku....

The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign is now performing its new rapid, saliva-based COVID-19 test under the umbrella of an approved FDA Emergency Use Authorization. The CLIA-certified lab at the U. of I. performed a bridging study to a recently approved FDA EUA, showing that the Illinois test performs at least as well as the recently approved saliva-testing protocol.“Direct saliva testing can address bottlenecks of time, cost, and supplies. Our test also has unique features that enable fast and frequent testing on a large scale, and we are now working together with many partners to make our testing method broadly available as soon as possible,” said Dr....

The spiders in question are those from the families Atracinae and Actinopodidae and include Australian funnel-web spiders and eastern Australian mouse spiders, respectively. One member of Atracinae, Atrax robustus, is considered by many to be the most venomous spider in the world. “A reasonable number of people get bitten every year, but basically nobody dies from it anymore because of the wide availability of antivenom,” Hedin said. Historically, the spiders were thought to have diverged from a common ancestor more than 200 million years ago and therefore were only distantly related....

The database includes recommendations and guidance from PAHO and the World Health Organization as well as other technical guidelines from Member States, scientific publications, and ongoing research protocols from the region of the Americas. It is intended for use by decision- and policy-makers, researchers, health professionals, and individuals. The “COVID-19 Guidance and the Latest Research in the Americas” database currently comprises nearly 500 items organized into three main categories: “Save Lives,” “Protect Health Care Workers,” and “Slow the Spread....

The study highlights the widespread nature of LAN exposure as a risk factor, as the intensity of urban light pollution has increased to the point that it affects not only those living in large cities but also those in suburban and rural areas that may be far from the light source. The authors note: “Despite over 80% of the world’s population being exposed to light pollution at night, this problem has gained limited attention from scientists until recent years....

The Rutgers University researchers employed specially bred mice to distinguish the roles of two types of immune cells known as tissue-resident memory T cells (Trm cells), which protect against infection and cancer. Their work may help improve vaccine efficacy and combat a variety of autoimmune diseases. “Understanding what each Trm cell type does allows us to formulate vaccines that generate the most effective type of Trm cell to combat a given infection, and our previous work suggests we can modify vaccines to shift the balance of these two cell types,” said Tessa Bergsbaken, an assistant professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the senior author of the study....

The new technology allows the world’s existing gravitational wave detectors to achieve a sensitivity that was previously thought only to be achievable by building much bigger detectors. The paper, published in Communications Physics, was led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at UWA, in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena....

One of the circuits the researchers identified is involved in filtering noise, while the other exerts top-down control by allowing the brain to switch its attention between different sensory inputs. The scientists showed that restoring the function of both circuits worked much better than treating either circuit alone. This demonstrates the benefits of mapping and targeting multiple circuits involved in neurological disorders, says Michael Halassa, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences and a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research....

New data on obesity and overweight The report, which will be launched at a press event on May 3 and presented at this week’s European Congress on Obesity in Maastricht, Netherlands, reveals that in the European Region, 59% of adults and almost 1 in 3 children (29% of boys and 27% of girls) are overweight or living with obesity. Except for the Americas, obesity prevalence for adults in the European Region is higher than in any other WHO region....

Developed by researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, the highly versatile catalysts are cost-effective to make and simple to scale. The team’s lab demonstrations show the 3D printed catalysts could potentially be used to power hypersonic flight while simultaneously cooling the system. The research is published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Chemical Communications. Lead researcher Dr. Selvakannan Periasamy said their work tackled one of the biggest challenges in the development of hypersonic aircraft: controlling the incredible heat that builds up when planes fly at more than five times the speed of sound....

The study, published in Global Change Biology, used data from the community science program Program FeederWatch. The research team analyzed more than 3.4 million observations of 140 different bird species across the continental U.S. “Broadly speaking, we are just starting to dive into the consequences of light and noise for animals,” said Ashley Wilson, a graduate student at California Polytechnic State University who led the study. “Most studies focus on a single species’ responses to noise or light pollution....

Noninfluenza respiratory viral infections (NIRV) are associated with illness and death rates similar to influenza in hospitalized adults, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). In a study of 2119 adults admitted to two hospitals over three seasons (2015-2018) in Edmonton, Alberta, and Toronto, Ontario, with confirmed viral acute respiratory infections, more than half (54.6%) were NIRV infections compared with influenza viruses (45.4%). Among patients with NIRV infections, 21....

The new genus and species of extinct baleen whale is based on a skull and associated bones unearthed from the Kokoamu Greensand, a noted fossil-bearing rock unit in the South Canterbury and Waitaki district from the Oligocene period, which extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years ago. At this time, New Zealand was an archipelago surrounded by shallow, richly productive seas. Former Ph.D. student in the University of Otago’s Department of Geology, Cheng-Hsiu Tsai, and his supervisor, Professor Ewan Fordyce, have named the new genus Toipahautea waitaki, which translates in Māori as a baleen-origin whale from the Waitaki region....

When an image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of PSR B1509-58 – a spinning neutron star surrounded by a cloud of energetic particles about 17,000 light-years from Earth – was released in 2009, it quickly gained attention because many saw a hand-like structure in the X-ray emission. In this image of the system, X-rays from Chandra in gold are seen along with infrared data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope in red, green and blue....

Levels of antibodies in the blood of vaccinated people that are able to recognize and fight the new SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant first discovered in India (B.1.617.2) are on average lower than those against previously circulating variants in the UK, according to new laboratory data from the Francis Crick Institute and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) UCLH Biomedical Research Centre, published on June 3, 2021, as a Research Letter in The Lancet....

Nuclear physicists have confirmed that the current description of proton structure isn’t perfect. A bump in the data in probes of the proton’s structure has been revealed by a new precision measurement of the proton’s electric polarizability performed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. When this was seen in earlier measurements, it was widely thought to be a fluke. However, this new, more precise measurement has confirmed the presence of the anomaly and raises important questions about its origin....

Mice treated with apigenin had better memory and developmental milestone scores. The plant compound apigenin improved the cognitive and memory deficits usually seen in a mouse model of Down syndrome, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. Apigenin is found in chamomile flowers, parsley, celery, peppermint, and citrus fruits. The researchers fed the compound to pregnant mice carrying fetuses with Down syndrome characteristics and then to the animals after they were born and as they matured....

Presumptive president-elect Joe Biden has signaled that fighting the COVID-19 pandemic will be an immediate priority for his administration. He recently announced a coronavirus advisory board of infectious disease researchers and former public health advisers along with an updated strategy that will include increases in testing and contact tracing, as well as transparent communication. But Inauguration Day is still two months away. The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases are likely to increase to 20 million by the end of January, nearly doubling the current level of 11....

Significant decreases in CT imaging for cancer persisted even after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, delaying diagnosis and treatment and raising the possibility of more advanced cancers and poorer outcomes for patients in the future, according to a study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Numerous studies have shown COVID-19’s severe impact on U.S. health care, as the pandemic filled hospitals and reduced imaging capacity during its peak of March to early May 2020....

Reaching room-temperature superconductivity is one of the biggest dreams in physics. Its discovery would bring a technological revolution by providing electrical transport with no loss, ultra efficient electrical engines or generators, as well as the possibility of creating huge magnetic fields without cooling. The recent discoveries of superconductivity first at 200 kelvin in hydrogen sulfide and later at 250 kelvin in LaH10 have spurred attention to these materials, bringing hopes for reaching room temperatures soon....