212 articles from FRIDAY 21.8.2020

Birth of panda cub brings 'joyous news' to the National Zoo

Giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth Friday to a wiggling cub and immediately began cuddling her offspring, Washington's National Zoo said. The cub was born at 6:35 p.m. Eastern Time, the zoo said in an Instagram post that announced the “joyous news.” “Mei Xiang picked the cub up immediately and began cradling and caring for it,” the zoo said in a...

Limited transmission of COVID-19 found in U.S. childcare study, CDC says

CDC Director Robert Redfield told reporters on a call that the findings indicated that there is a path "to get these childcare programs to reopen, which are very important for our country." Many childcare facilities were shut due to fear of infection in such group settings during the coronavirus pandemic, one more complication for getting people back to work in the battered U.S. economy. Such...

Limited transmission of COVID-19 found in U.S. childcare study, CDC says

CDC Director Robert Redfield told reporters on a call that the findings indicated that there is a path "to get these childcare programs to reopen, which are very important for our country." Many childcare facilities were shut due to fear of infection in such group settings during the coronavirus pandemic, one more complication for getting people back to work in the battered U.S. economy. Such...

Nutrients make coral bleaching worse

Nutrients can aggravate the already negative effects of climate change on corals to trigger mass coral bleaching. A study suggests ecosystem managers can reduce the impacts of coral bleaching by implementing strategies to reduce nutrient stress in areas subject to thermal stress.

Nasal vaccine against COVID-19 prevents infection in mice

Scientists have developed a vaccine that targets the SARS-CoV-2 virus, can be given in one dose via the nose and is effective in preventing infection in mice susceptible to the novel coronavirus. The investigators next plan to test the vaccine in nonhuman primates and humans to see if it is safe and effective in preventing COVID-19 infection.

The age of Earth's inner core revised

By creating conditions akin to the center of Earth inside a laboratory chamber, researchers have improved the estimate of the age of our planet's solid inner core, putting it at 1 billion to 1.3 billion years old.

Early NK cell-mediated immune response may contribute to severe COVID-19

Researchers may have come one step closer toward understanding how the immune system contributes to severe COVID-19. In a new study, researchers show that so-called natural killer (NK) cells were strongly activated early after SARS-CoV-2 infection but that the type of activation differed in patients with moderate and severe COVID-19. The discovery contributes to our understanding of development of...

Exclusive: Nearly a fifth of enrollees in Pfizer, BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine study are Black or Latino

Nearly a fifth of 11,000 people enrolled so far in a 30,000-volunteer U.S. trial testing a COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and German partner BioNTech are Black or Latino, groups among the hardest hit by the coronavirus virus pandemic, a top Pfizer executive said. "Between Latinx and Black or African American populations, we're running at about 19 percent or so," Dr. Bill Gruber, Pfizer’s senior...

Exclusive: Nearly a fifth of enrollees in Pfizer, BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine study are Black or Latino

Nearly a fifth of 11,000 people enrolled so far in a 30,000-volunteer U.S. trial testing a COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and German partner BioNTech <22UAy.F> are Black or Latino, groups among the hardest hit by the coronavirus virus pandemic, a top Pfizer executive said. "Between Latinx and Black or African American populations, we're running at about 19 percent or so," Dr. Bill Gruber,...

Tiny engineered therapeutic delivery system safely solves genetic problems in mice

Inserting genetic material into the body to treat diseases caused by gene mutations can work, scientists say - but getting those materials to the right place safely is tricky. Scientists now report that the lipid-based nanoparticles they engineered, carrying two sets of protein-making instructions, showed in animal studies that they have the potential to function as therapies for two genetic...

Ozone across northern hemisphere increased over past 20 years

In a first-ever study using ozone data from commercial aircraft, researchers found that levels of the pollutant in the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere have increased across the Northern Hemisphere over the past 20 years. That's even as tighter controls on emissions of ozone precursors have lowered ground-level ozone in some places, including North America and Europe.

Hubble snaps close-up of comet NEOWISE

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the closest images yet of the sky's latest visitor to make the headlines, comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, after it passed by the Sun. The new images of the comet were taken on 8 August and feature the visitor's coma, the fine shell that surrounds its nucleus, and its dusty output.

Researchers create bioluminescent tag to detect DNA break repair

A new bioluminescent reporter that tracks DNA double stranded break (DSB) repair in cells has been developed by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. The international team's novel bioluminescent repair reporter (BLRR)-based system can be used to monitor DNA repair pathways directly in animals as well as cell lines. No such system previously...

NASA's Suomi NPP satellite highlights California wildfires at night

Striking images of the California wildfires are seen in these nighttime satellite images taken by the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite on Aug. 20, 2020. At approximately 3:01 am PDT, NOAA-NASA's Suomi NPP was almost directly overhead and imaged the regionusing different bands on its VIIRS (Visible infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument. Large fires are easily visible in this image. Suomi NPP's...

Ozone across northern hemisphere increased over past 20 years

In a first-ever study using ozone data collected by commercial aircraft, researchers from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder found that levels of the pollutant in the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere have increased across the Northern Hemisphere over the past 20 years. That's even as tighter controls on emissions of ozone...

The age of the Earth's inner core revised

By creating conditions akin to the center of the Earth inside a laboratory chamber, researchers have improved the estimate of the age of our planet's solid inner core, putting it at 1 billion to 1.3 billion years old.

A 70 degree shift on Jupiter's icy moon Europa was the last event to fracture its surface

Europa's outer icy shell has completely reoriented itself in one of the last geologic events recorded on its young surface. Europa's poles are not where they used to be. Cracks in the surface of Jupiter's icy moon indicate its shell of ice rotated by 70 degrees sometime in the last several million years. In addition to supporting prior evidence for the existence of a subsurface ocean, it also...

Apertif images yield first scientific results

Using Apertif (APERture Tile In Focus), searching at a radio frequency of 1.4 GHz, researchers have found an intra-hour variable (IHV) source, described in the paper "Extreme intra-hour variability of the radio source J1402+5347 discovered with Apertif." IHVs are very compact radio sources that twinkle on timescales of minutes and are among the rarest objects in the sky. For the past 30 to 40...

Hubble snaps close-up of celebrity comet NEOWISE

The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped the closest images yet of the sky's latest visitor to make headlines, comet NEOWISE, after it passed by the Sun. This is the first time Hubble has photographed a comet of this brightness at such resolution after this close of a pass by the Sun.

Long-acting, injectable drug could strengthen efforts to prevent, treat HIV

Scientists have developed an injectable drug that blocks HIV from entering cells. They say the new drug potentially offers long-lasting protection from the infection with fewer side effects. The drug, which was tested in non-human primates, could eventually replace or supplement components of combination drug 'cocktail' therapies currently used to prevent or treat the virus.