Hepatitis E is a waterborne virus that mostly occurs in developing countries with poor sanitation, and is prevalent in east and south Asia. Most cases cause only mild illness, but they can lead to acute liver failure. The mortality rate reaches 4% in some regions and soars to 20% in women who are in the later stages of pregnancy. There was a severe outbreak of hepatitis E in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China that caused almost 120,000 infections and more than 700 deaths between 1986 and 1988....

Study finds “thriving gap” between students who attend high school remotely vs. in person. Data from the COVID pandemic show high school students studying remotely suffered socially, emotionally, and academically. New research finds that high school students who attended school remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered socially, emotionally, and academically compared with those who attended in person. The study was published today in Educational Researcher (ER) by researchers Angela L....

Researchers at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have identified highly effective antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and are now pursuing the development of a passive vaccination. In this process, they have also discovered that some SARS-CoV-2 antibodies bind to tissue samples from various organs, which could potentially trigger undesired side effects. They report their findings in the scientific journal “Cell.” Initially, the scientists isolated almost 600 different antibodies from the blood of individuals who had overcome COVID-19, the disease triggered by SARS-CoV-2....

Channels become inverted when the sediments filling them become more resistant to erosion than the surrounding material. Here, the most likely process leading to hardening of the channel material is chemical cementation by precipitation of minerals. Once the surrounding material erodes, the channel is left standing as a ridge. The series of curvilinear lineations are ancient scroll-bars, which are features typical of river meanders (bends) in terrestrial fluvial channels. Scroll-bars are series of ridges that result from the continuous lateral migration of a meander....

Central to the field of ecology is the mantra that species do not exist in isolation: They assemble in communities — and within these communities, species interact. Predators hunt prey. Parasites exploit hosts. Pollinators find flowers. Yet these interactions are built on more than just serendipity, because species adapt over generations to environmental cues. But when conditions shift due to climate change, species might change markedly in response — creating “reassembled” communities that might show disrupted interactions among species....

Genomic data from COVID-19 cases in the first 10 weeks of Australia’s outbreak proved vital to understanding the trajectory of the disease and has an important role to play moving forward. A new study published today in the world-leading journal Nature Medicine, reveals how genomic sequencing and mathematical modeling gave important insights into the ‘parentage’ of cases and likely spread of the disease in New South Wales. The data, from a collaboration between the University of Sydney and NSW Health, were used to inform actions that effectively managed the first wave of COVID-19 infections in the state....

A study led by researchers at the University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering provides new insights for developing therapies for muscle disease, injury, and atrophy. By studying how different pluripotent stem cell lines build muscle, researchers have for the first time discovered how epigenetic mechanisms can be triggered to accelerate muscle cell growth at different stages of stem cell differentiation. The findings were published on March 17 in Science Advances....

In the case of NGC 3169, this barrier is the thick dust embedded within the galaxy’s spiral arms. Cosmic dust comprises a potpourri of particles, including water ice, hydrocarbons, silicates, and other solid material. It has many origins and sources, from the leftovers of star and planet formation to molecules modified over millions of years by interactions with starlight. NGC 3169 is located about 70 million light-years away in the constellation of Sextans (The Sextant)....

Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars, and can be found in all types of galaxy. Their dense populations of stars and mutual gravitational attraction give these clusters a roughly spherical shape, with a bright concentration of stars surrounded by an increasingly sparse sprinkling of stars. The dense, bright core of NGC 6355 was picked out in crystal-clear detail by Hubble in this image, and is the crowded area of stars towards the center of this image....

Though several other suspected runaway black holes have been seen elsewhere, none has so far been confirmed. Now astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have detected a supermassive black hole, with a mass of one billion times the Sun’s, being kicked out of its parent galaxy. “We estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovae exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole,” describes Stefano Bianchi, co-author of the study, from the Roma Tre University, Italy....

A busy patch of space has been captured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Scattered with many nearby stars, the field also has numerous galaxies in the background. Located on the border of Triangulum Australe (The Southern Triangle) and Norma (The Carpenter’s Square), this field covers part of the Norma Cluster (Abell 3627) as well as a dense area of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The Norma Cluster is the closest massive galaxy cluster to the Milky Way, and lies about 220 million light-years away....

Messier 77 is a galaxy in the constellation of Cetus, some 45 million light-years away from us. Also known as NGC 1068, it is one of the most famous and well-studied galaxies. It is a real star among galaxies, with more papers written about it than many other galaxies put together! Despite its current fame and striking swirling appearance, the galaxy has been a victim of mistaken identity a couple of times; when it was initially discovered in 1780, the distinction between gas clouds and galaxies was not known, causing finder Pierre Méchain to miss its true nature and label it as a nebula....

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a striking observation of the fledgling star’s unseen, planet-forming disc in 2018. This disc casts a huge shadow across a more distant cloud in a star-forming region — like a fly wandering into the beam of a flashlight shining on a wall. Now, astronomers have serendipitously observed the Bat Shadow’s “flapping.” This may have been caused by a planet pulling on the disc and warping it....

According to the study, a lack of knowledge and appreciation for local flora results from less time spent with plants and is not an inherent quality of being a human. Due to this, people frequently believe that plants are “less alive” than animals. Researchers claim that exposing people to biodiverse settings and changing their ideas of the perceived value of plants are the keys to breaking the cycle of plant awareness disparity....

Deep below the surface, tectonic forces conspire to fracture and fold the Earth’s crust. These rocks break and move at faults. Like geological scars, the surface of Earth is striated with faults; the largest and most lively — where rocks are actively snapping and shifting — are responsible for triggering destructive earthquakes and tsunamis. Mineral deposits like oil and gas are often found along these structures, too. However, charting Earth’s fault zones is challenging and many remain unknown, particularly those that lie on the bottom of the ocean....

First announced by the World Health Organization on November 26, 2021, the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant spread rapidly around the world, becoming the dominant variant in the U.S. and elsewhere. Now, researchers report in ACS Infectious Diseases and the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling that omicron and other variants are evolving increased infectivity and antibody escape, according to an artificial intelligence (AI) model. Therefore, new vaccines and antibody therapies are desperately needed, the researchers say....

The colors of this week’s image come from the combination of two polarizations from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission, which have been converted into a single image. As radar images provide data in a different way than a normal optical camera, the images are usually black and white when they are received. By using a technology that aligns the radar beams sent and received by the instrument in one orientation – either vertically or horizontally – the resulting data can be processed in a way that produces colored images such as the one featured here....

When a team of University of Illinois engineers set out to grow nanowires of a compound semiconductor on top of a sheet of graphene, they did not expect to discover a new paradigm of epitaxy. The self-assembled wires have a core of one composition and an outer layer of another, a desired trait for many advanced electronics applications. Led by professor Xiuling Li, in collaboration with professors Eric Pop and Joseph Lyding, all professors of electrical and computer engineering, the team published its findings in the journal Nano Letters....

A pair of thin metal electrodes resembling strands of spaghetti implanted along the neck engage intact neural circuits, allowing stroke patients to fully open and close their fist, lift their arm above their head or use a fork and knife to cut a piece of steak for the first time in years. By using electrical stimulation of the spinal cord, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University help restore arm and hand movement in patients who survived severe strokes....

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 37 million Americans have diabetes, with around 90-95% having type 2 diabetes. There are effective medications, such as metformin (which goes under numerous brand names including Glucophage, Fortamet, Glumetza, and Riomet). It is also known that a healthy diet and regular exercise are essential for diabetes control. Now, a new study reveals that an intermittent fasting diet may reverse type 2 diabetes without the need for medication....