155 articles from WEDNESDAY 4.5.2022

Baby corals are just as susceptible as adults to deadly reef disease

Baby corals are just as susceptible as adults to a deadly disease that has been spreading across Florida's reefs since 2014, according to a new study. The findings showed that stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) infects baby corals with similar severity and mortality that we see in adult colonies. This is the first study to show the impacts of any coral disease on baby corals.

Baby corals are just as susceptible as adults to deadly reef disease, study finds

Baby corals are just as susceptible as adults to a deadly disease that has been spreading across Florida's reefs since 2014, according to a new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. The findings showed that stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) infects baby corals with similar severity and mortality that we see in adult...

Getting a better view of landslide risk with LiDAR

In the mountains of North Carolina, landslides are no joke. Triggered by heavy rains, mountainside soils can become saturated and "unstuck." As a result, what starts as a small landslide can quickly escalate into a huge debris flow that uproots trees and dislodges boulders, scouring everything in its path as it quickly flows downhill at speeds up to 30 mph. The cost—in both infrastructure and...

Uncovering warped protein interactions in cancer

Scientists at Emory have revealed widespread distortions of a cell's protein interaction machinery resulting from cancer-causing mutations. They developed a process resembling ground-penetrating radar, for its ability to map the hidden landscape of anti-cancer drug opportunities.

Scientists discover comet's hourglass-shaped dust trail

Researchers from Finland, Canada, and Russia have discovered an unusual, hourglass-shaped dust trail of the comet 17P/Holmes. The particles that formed the dust trail were released by the most powerful of the thus-far documented outbursts by a comet. It happened in October 2007. Astronomers carried out observations of the cometary dust trail using telescopes in Australia, Finland, and the U.S. The...

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna reaches a crucial milestone

LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, has reached an important milestone: it has passed the comprehensive "Mission Formulation Review" (MFR) and now enters the next phase of development. The review team, consisting of experts from ESA, NASA, the scientific community and industry, identified no showstoppers and confirmed that LISA has successfully reached a maturity sufficient to proceed to...

New black hole sonifications with a remix are now available for listening

Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster's hot gas that could be translated into a note—one that humans cannot hear, some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound...

A 'factory reset' for the brain may cure anxiety, drinking behavior, study suggests

Gene editing may be a potential treatment for anxiety and alcohol use disorder in adults who were exposed to binge drinking in their adolescence, according to the results of an animal study. The researchers used a gene-editing tool called CRISPR-dCas9 in their experiments to manipulate the histone acetylation and methylation processes at the Arc gene in models of adult rats.

California's 2020 wildfire season

A new study summarizing the 2020 California wildfire year said just over 9,900 wildfires burned 4.3 million acres in 2020. That's twice the previous record but only average compared to burn rates before Euro-American settlement. Fire severity is the far greater concern.

Jaws hold crucial knowledge on the fate of sharks

Jaws was the only word needed to give the iconic 1970's thriller about a great white with a preference for humans its eerie title. Though a strong and important player at the top of the foodchain, sharks face a range of enemies: overfishing, habitat loss, pollution, climate change and human fear resulting in the use of shark control programs in some locations. 

Researchers use silicon nanoparticles to visualize coalescence of quantized vortices that occur in superfluid helium

Scientists from the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University have shown how silicon nanoparticles can become trapped inside the vortices that form inside superfluid helium. This work opens up new possibilities in optical research for other quantum properties of superfluid helium, such as the optical manipulation of quantized vortices due to the strong interaction between light...

A new 225-million-year-old reptile from Brazil

Maehary bonapartei represents a small reptile that is considered to be the most basal of the evolutionary lineage that gave rise to pterosaurs. A study in PeerJ focuses on this latest find while also demonstrating that Faxinalipterus minimus is not a winged reptile, contrary to what was previously supposed.

The lifesaving Covid-19 treatments offering hope amid Australia’s high case numbers

With Australia’s Covid cases per capita among the highest in the world, new antivirals such as Paxlovid and Lagevrio as well as intravenous treatments like sotrovimab are offering some hope for the severely ill, elderly and immunocompromised. However Australia’s peak body for GPs says some people at greatest risk of dying from Covid are being prevented from accessing these treatments.Medical...

Sun releases moderate solar flare

The Sun emitted a moderate solar flare on May 4, 2022, peaking at 5:00 a.m. ET. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event.

Advance in understanding cell division could lead to new cancer treatments

A protein called CDC7, long thought to play an essential role early in the cell division process, is in fact replaceable by another protein called CDK1, according to a study by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The finding represents a fundamental advance in cell biology and may lead to new cancer therapies, since cancers frequently alter the molecular...

The quest for an ideal quantum bit

Scientists have developed a qubit platform formed by freezing neon gas into a solid, spraying electrons from a light bulb's filament onto it, and trapping a single electron there. This system shows great promise as an ideal building block for quantum computers.