Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women around the world and in the United States. According to the WHO, an estimated 17.9 million people die each year due to cardiovascular disease. According to the CDC, about 697,000 people in the United States died from heart disease in 2020, making it the cause of 1 in every 5 deaths. Risk factors for cardiovascular disease include diabetes, obesity, excessive alcohol use, unhealthy diet, and lack of physical activity....

The human genome contains over 4.5 million sequences of DNA called “transposable elements,” these virus-like entities that “jump” around and help regulate gene expression. They do this by binding transcription factors, which are proteins that regulate the rate of transcription of DNA to RNA, influencing gene expression in a broad range of biological events. Now, an international team of scientists led by Didier Trono at EPFL has discovered that transposable elements play a significant role in influencing the development of the human brain....

Thirty-five years ago today, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, the first Voyager spacecraft to launch, departed on a journey that would make it the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune and the longest-operating NASA spacecraft ever. Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, that launched 16 days later on September 5, 1977, are still going strong, hurtling away from our sun. Mission managers are eagerly anticipating the day when they break on through to the other side – the space between stars....

It is well known that rates of transmission of some respiratory viruses, including influenza, tend to fall during the summer months. As COVID-19 has spread across the globe, questions have been raised about whether warming temperatures, humidity, and UV index might slow, or even halt, the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. These effects on virus transmission will be important to understand as warmer months ease in and states across the country consider and implement reopening plans....

In our solar system, only one planet is blessed with an ocean: Earth. Our home world is a rare, blue jewel compared to the deserts of Mercury, Venus and Mars. But what if our Sun had not one but two habitable ocean worlds? Astronomers have found such a planetary system orbiting the star Kepler-62. This five-planet system has two worlds in the habitable zone – the distance from their star at which they receive enough light and warmth for liquid water to theoretically exist on their surfaces....

A study led by biological anthropologist Kara C. Hoover from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and biochemist Claire de March from Universite Paris-Saclay suggests that the Denisovan, with its heightened sensitivity to sweet odors, may have quickly honed in on the scent and beat the human to a high-energy feast. “This research has allowed us to draw some larger conclusions about the sense of smell in our closest genetic relatives and understand the role that smell played in adapting to new environments and foods during our migrations out of Africa,” said Hoover, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at UAF....

But what exactly makes one knot more stable than another has not been well-understood, until now. MIT mathematicians and engineers have developed a mathematical model that predicts how stable a knot is, based on several key properties, including the number of crossings involved and the direction in which the rope segments twist as the knot is pulled tight. “These subtle differences between knots critically determine whether a knot is strong or not,” says Jörn Dunkel, associate professor of mathematics at MIT....

I am a toxicologist interested in chemicals that could be used as weapons and I do research to develop therapies for some of these chemicals. What is tear gas? The term tear gas refers to a group of chemical irritants that can be used to control or disperse crowds. The chemicals that are used for this purpose cause irritation of mucous membranes and of the eyes including tearing (hence the name “tear gas”), twitching around the eyes, cough, difficulty breathing and irritation to the skin....

Using methods from conservation science, a new analysis suggests that the first case of COVID-19 arose between early October and mid-November, 2019 in China, with the most likely date of origin being November 17. David Roberts of the University of Kent, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens. The origins of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic remain unclear. The first officially identified case occurred in early December 2019....

For most wild chimpanzees, tool use is an important part of life — but learning these skills is no simple feat. Wild chimpanzees transfer tools to each other, and this behavior has previously been shown to serve as a form of teaching. A new study led by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Miami and Franklin & Marshall College finds that chimpanzees that use a multi-step process and complex tools to gather termites are more likely to share tools with novices....

Some dying stars suffer from ‘irregular heartbeats’, research led by astronomers at the University of Warwick has discovered. The research confirms rapid brightening events in otherwise normal pulsating white dwarfs, which are stars in the final stage of their life cycles. In addition to the regular rhythm from pulsations they expected on the white dwarf PG1149+057, which cause the star to get a few percent brighter and fainter every few minutes, the researchers also observed something completely unexpected every few days: arrhythmic, massive outbursts, which broke the star’s regular pulse and significantly heated up its surface for many hours....

Using DNA from museum specimens collected in the early 20th century, researchers from ZSL (Zoological Society of London) and London’s Natural History Museum identified two new species of giant salamander — one of which they suspect is the world’s biggest amphibian. Chinese giant salamanders, now classified as Critically Endangered, were once widespread throughout central, southern, and eastern China. They have previously been considered a single species (Andrias davidianus). However, a new analysis of 17 historical museum specimens and tissue samples from wild salamanders challenges this assumption....

Led by Yale physicist Steve Lamoreaux, a team of scientists announced the first results of the project, called Haloscope At Yale Sensitive To Axion Cold Dark Matter (HAYSTAC). The findings appear in the journal Physical Review Letters. “The existence of dark matter has been established with a high degree of confidence. However at present nobody knows what it is, and it remains among the outstanding questions of modern science,” said Lamoreaux....

Using both genomic and epidemiological data from the current outbreak in Sierra Leone, researchers from Yale University discovered that the Ebola virus spreads in social clusters – a finding that has ramifications for case reporting and public health. Prior studies of Ebola transmission were based on models that assumed the spread of infection occurred between random pairs of individuals. However, because transmission of the virus happens most often in hospitals, households, and funeral settings, Yale researchers, and an international team of co-authors, investigated the possibility of clustered transmission, or spread between individuals in small social groups....

NASA-funded researchers analyzing a small meteorite that may be the first discovered from the Martian surface or crust have found it contains 10 times more water than other Martian meteorites from unknown origins. “The age of NWA 7034 is important because it is significantly older than most other Martian meteorites,” said Mitch Schulte, program scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We now have insight into a piece of Mars’ history at a critical time in its evolution....

Extending the symptoms that trigger a PCR test for COVID-19 could help detect around a third more cases of the disease. New research led by researchers at King’s and published in the Journal of Infection suggests that restricting testing to the ‘classic triad’ of cough, fever, and loss of smell which is required for eligibility for a PCR test through the NHS may have missed cases. Extending the list to include fatigue, sore throat, headache, and diarrhea would have detected 96% of symptomatic cases....

“COVID rebound,” in which evidence of the illness disappears and then returns days or weeks later, is surprisingly common—whether or not patients are given the antiviral Paxlovid. The results, reported recently in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases by scientists at Scripps Research and the digital health company eMed, are a preliminary readout from an ongoing observational study of people who order SARS-CoV-2 antigen test kits online. The researchers found that in an initial group of 170 eMed Test-to-Treat™ kit users, the disappearance and then return of evidence of the virus on antigen tests and in self-reported COVID-19 symptoms occurred in 9....

However, a surprising new study published in Nature is introducing a new, early chapter to the evolutionary history of gills. “Our work suggests that the early, simplified gills of our worm-like ancestors played an important role in ion regulation. And that role might have originated as early as the very inception of gills, well before they played any role in breathing,” says Dr. Michael Sackville, a zoologist who led the study while with the University of British Columbia (UBC)....

A gas giant exoplanet with the density of a marshmallow has been detected in orbit around a cool red dwarf star. A suite of astronomical instruments was used to make the observations, including the NASA-funded NEID radial-velocity instrument on the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. Named TOI-3757 b, the exoplanet is the fluffiest gas giant planet ever discovered around this type of star....

That’s when NASA will send the first robotic lander dedicated to exploring the planet’s subsurface. InSight, which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, will study marsquakes to learn about the Martian crust, mantle, and core. Doing so could help answer a big question: how are planets born? Seismology, the study of quakes, has already revealed some of the answers here on Earth, said Bruce Banerdt, Insight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California....