The question about the origin of oceans on Earth is one of the most important questions with respect to the formation of our planet and the origin of life. The most popular theory is that water was brought by impacts of comets and asteroids. Data from the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft indicate that terrestrial water did not come from comets like 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko....

To date, there have been more than 40 million cases of COVID-19 and almost 1.13 million deaths worldwide. The main target tissues of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, especially in patients that develop pneumonia, appear to be alveoli — tiny air sacs in the lungs that take up the oxygen we breathe and exchange it with carbon dioxide to exhale. To better understand how SARS-CoV-2 infects the lungs and causes disease, a team of scientists from the UK and South Korea turned to organoids — ‘mini-organs’ grown in three dimensions to mimic the behavior of tissue and organs....

Intranasal vaccination is needle-free and elicits immunity at the site of infection, the respiratory tract. There are many reasons that an intranasal vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus would be helpful in the fight against COVID-19 infections, University of Alabama at Birmingham immunologists Fran Lund, Ph.D., and Troy Randall, Ph.D., write in a viewpoint article in the journal Science. That route of vaccination gives two additional layers of protection over intramuscular shots because it produces: 1) immunoglobulin A and resident memory B and T cells in the respiratory mucosa that are an effective barrier to infection at those sites, and 2) cross-reactive resident memory B and T cells that can respond earlier than other immune cells if a viral variant does start an infection....

At the nanoscale — at distances less than 1/100th the width of the thinnest human hair — controlling temperature is much more difficult. Nanoscale distances are so small that objects easily become thermally coupled: If one object heats up to a certain temperature, so does its neighbor. When scientists use a beam of light as that heat source, there is an additional challenge: Thanks to heat diffusion, materials in the beam path heat up to approximately the same temperature, making it difficult to manipulate the thermal profiles of objects within the beam....

A team of scientists from Scotland and the Czech Republic has created a real-life “tractor” beam, as featured in the Star Trek movies, which for the first time allows a beam of light to attract objects. Although light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, this is the first time a light beam has been used to draw objects toward the light source, albeit at a microscopic level. Researchers from the University of St Andrews and the Institute of Scientific Instruments (ISI) in the Czech Republic have found a way to generate a special optical field that efficiently reverses radiation pressure of light....

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can relieve pain, according to a new study by University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers. The finding may explain why nearly half of all people who get COVID-19 experience few or no symptoms, even though they are able to spread the disease, according to the study’s corresponding author Rajesh Khanna, PhD, a professor in the UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson’s Department of Pharmacology....

Vascular insulin resistance is a feature of obesity and type 2 diabetes that contributes to vascular disease. Researchers examined vascular insulin resistance in 36 young and healthy men and women by subjecting them to a 10-day period of decreased physical activity, reducing their step count from 10,000 to 5,000 per day. Additionally, the individuals raised their sugary beverage consumption to six cans of soda per day. “We know that incidence of insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease is lower in premenopausal women compared to men, but we wanted to see how men and women reacted to reduced physical activity and increased sugar in their diet over a short period of time,” said Camila Manrique-Acevedo, MD, associate professor of medicine....

New simulations by Rice materials scientist Ming Tang and graduate student Kaiqi Yang, detailed in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, show too much stress in widely used lithium iron phosphate cathodes can open cracks and quickly degrade batteries. The work extends recent Rice research that demonstrated how putting defects in particles that make up the cathode could improve battery performance by up to two orders of magnitude by helping lithium move more efficiently....

“Our results have important implications for understanding the evolution of mammals and for conservation efforts,” said Harris Lewin, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, and senior author on the paper. The researchers used high-quality genome sequences from 32 living species, spanning 23 of the 26 known mammalian orders. Humans and chimpanzees were among these species, as were wombats and rabbits, manatees, domestic cattle, rhinos, bats, and pangolins....

It can be found in a variety of everyday products, including hospital equipment such as tubing, blood bags, and masks, as well as plumbing pipes. PVC is also used in construction materials like window frames, housing trim, siding, and flooring. Additionally, it is used in coatings for electrical wiring and in various items such as shower curtains, tents, tarps, and clothing. It also has a zero percent recycling rate in the United States....

Provided by the French space agency, Center National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), the seismometer detected its first marsquake on April 6, 2019. The InSight mission’s Marsquake Service, which monitors the data from SEIS, is led by the Swiss research university ETH Zurich. Quakes look and feel different depending on the material their seismic waves pass through. In a new video, scientists at ETH demonstrate this by using data from the Apollo-era seismometers on the Moon, two of the first quakes detected on Mars by SEIS, and quakes recorded here on Earth....

The two conditions — called Hereditary Leiomyomatosis and Renal Cell Cancer (HLRCC) and Succinate Dehydrogenase-related Hereditary Paraganglioma and Pheochromocytoma (SDH PGL/PCC) — boost the risk of tumors that may be benign or cancerous. Oncologists aim to remove tumors by surgery, but treatments are largely ineffective if the tumors have become metastatic. In both inherited cancer syndromes, cells produce abnormally high amounts of metabolites, which are part of the biochemical process that the body uses to turn carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into energy....

Smallpox was one of the most devastating viral diseases ever to strike humankind, killing about three out of every 10 people who were infected. Those who survived were frequently disabled, blind or disfigured. The World Health Organization recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most successful campaign ever attempted. As researchers around the world work feverishly to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, the success of the campaign and the findings of this paper, outlined the journal Genome Biology, point to the value of vaccination, say researchers....

CfA astronomer Paul Nulsen and his colleagues used a novel method to investigate the nature of axions. Quantum mechanics constrain axions, if they exist, to interact with light in the presence of a magnetic field. As they propagate along a strong field, axions and photons should transmute from one to the other in an oscillatory manner. Because the strength of any possible effect depends in part on the energy of the photons, the astronomers used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to monitor bright X-ray emission from galaxies....

A research team from Imperial College London and the University of Barcelona has used data from astronomical surveys to measure a standard distance that is central to our understanding of the expansion of the universe. Previously the size of this ‘standard ruler’ has only been predicted from theoretical models that rely on general relativity to explain gravity at large scales. The new study is the first to measure it using observed data....

They note that the findings, published today in the journal One Earth, add urgency to the need to respond to the climate crisis and provide a roadmap for policymakers aiming to avert the most severe consequences of a warming planet. In climate science, amplifying feedback loops are situations where a climate-caused alteration can trigger a process that causes even more warming, which in turn intensifies the alteration. An example would be warming in the Arctic, leading to melting sea ice, which results in further warming because sea water absorbs rather than reflects solar radiation....

ENSO rarely maintains for long in either its cold phase (La Niña) or warm phase (El Niño). Historically, it has a strong preference to peak during boreal winter and rapidly decay in spring (known as “phase-locking”), with quasi-periodic oscillations of 2–7 years. However, since the turn of the current century, three instances of so-called “double dip” La Niña events have occurred, in 2007–09, 2010–12, and 2020–22. This succession of double-dip La Niña events is intriguing enough in itself; but now, based on updated data from several organizations issued in April 2022, it seems that the current event is likely to continue through the boreal summer and fall of 2022, suggesting a strong possibility of a third-year La Niña lasting from 2020-23....

A female specimen of the deep-sea anglerfish species Melanocetus johnsonii of about 75 mm in size with a 23.5 mm large male fused on her belly. Credit: Edith A. Widder Deep-sea anglerfishes employ an incredible reproductive strategy. Tiny dwarfed males become permanently attached to relatively gigantic females, fuse their tissues and then establish a common blood circulation. In this way, the male becomes entirely dependent on the female for nutrient supply, like a developing fetus in the womb of her mother or a donor organ in a transplant patient....

Smartphones’ proximity to people’s ears, nose, and mouth make them a good vector for transferring microbes. Bacteria and other infectious agents on smartphones can cause the flu, pinkeye, or diarrhea. Lab tests show that most phones have abnormally high levels of coliforms, a bacteria stemming from fecal contamination. For people who want to keep a clean phone, it can get confusing since there is a lot of disconnect between medical research and what device makers suggest for cleaning and sanitizing....

The research team has analyzed recent results from 40 different climate models. Using these models, the researchers considered the future evolution of Arctic sea-ice cover in a scenario with high future CO2 emissions and little climate protection. As expected, Arctic sea ice disappeared quickly in summer in these simulations. However, the new study finds that Arctic summer sea ice also disappears occasionally if CO2 emissions are rapidly reduced. “If we reduce global emissions rapidly and substantially, and thus keep global warming below 2 °C relative to preindustrial levels, Arctic sea ice will nevertheless likely disappear occasionally in summer even before 2050....