167 articles from FRIDAY 23.9.2022

Asexual relationships need same ingredients as any other relationship

Many asexual individuals, those with little to no sexual attraction, are in long-term satisfying romantic relationships, but there has been little study on how and why they last and thrive. New research found that, despite asexuals' lack of or dislike for sexual attraction, the ingredients that make for a successful relationship among asexual individuals are virtually the same as those in any...

Disarming the immune system's lethal lung response

Neutrophils are the body's first line of defense against infection. But if too many attack for too long, they can damage the tissues they're meant to protect. In the lungs, this damage can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome, the leading cause of death due to COVID-19. Researchers have found that using a drug to inhibit a protein called PTP1B can prevent lethal lung inflammation in mice....

China Unveils Plans to Send Spacecraft to Jupiter and Uranus

It was 2,300 years ago that the ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan wrote the poem “Tianwen,” or “Heavenly Questions.” It is only now that China’s Tianwen spacecraft have begun flying missions designed to come up with some heavenly answers. And as Space.com reports, those missions are becoming increasingly ambitious. In 2020, the Tianwen 1 spacecraft was launched to Mars,...

A NASA Spacecraft Is About To Collide With an Asteroid in an Effort to Keep Earth Safe

Dimorphos is easily one of the least interesting objects in the solar system. It’s a rock—a moonlet, really—measuring just 160 m (525 ft.) across, orbiting the asteroid Didymos, which itself measures only 780 m (2,560 ft). Located 11 million km (6.8 million mi.) from Earth, the Didymos-Dimorphos system is just one tiny part of the river of rubble that circles the sun in the...

Simple process extracts valuable magnesium salt from seawater

Since ancient times, humans have extracted salts, like table salt, from the ocean. While table salt is the easiest to obtain, seawater is a rich source of different minerals, and researchers are exploring which ones they can pull from the ocean. One such mineral, magnesium, is abundant in the sea and increasingly useful on the land.

New research finds that viruses may have 'eyes and ears' on us

New UMBC-led research in Frontiers in Microbiology suggests that viruses are using information from their environment to "decide" when to sit tight inside their hosts and when to multiply and burst out, killing the host cell. The work has implications for antiviral drug development.

DNA nets capture COVID-19 virus in low-cost rapid-testing platform

Tiny nets woven from DNA strands can ensnare the spike protein of the virus that causes COVID-19, lighting up the virus for a fast-yet-sensitive diagnostic test—and also impeding the virus from infecting cells, opening a new possible route to antiviral treatment, according to a new study.

New research finds that viruses may have 'eyes and ears' on us

New research suggests that viruses are using information from their environment to 'decide' when to sit tight inside their hosts and when to multiply and burst out, killing the host cell. Right now, viruses are exploiting the ability to monitor their environment to their benefit. But in the future, 'we could exploit it to their detriment,' said one of the authors.

An AI message decoder based on bacterial growth patterns

A new encryption method uses simulated bacterial growth based on specific initial conditions to form patterns corresponding to letters. Depending on the initial conditions used, such as nutrient levels and space constraints, bacteria tend to grow in specific ways. Researchers have created a new type of encryption scheme based on how a virtual bacterial colony grows with specific initial...

An AI message decoder based on bacterial growth patterns

From a box of Cracker Jack to The Da Vinci Code, everybody enjoys deciphering secret messages. But biomedical engineers at Duke University have taken the decoder ring to place it's never been before—the patterns created by bacterial colonies.

Coral genome reveals cysteine surprise

Model animals, such as mice and fruit flies, have provided scientists with powerful insights into how cellular biology works. However, model animals are really just a guide, and it can be risky to generalize findings across animals from studying a selection of model organisms.

First single-crystal organometallic perovskite optical fibers

Due to their very high efficiency in transporting electric charges from light, perovskites are known as the next generation material for solar panels and LED displays. A team led by Dr. Lei Su at Queen Mary University of London now have invented a brand-new application of perovskites as optical fibers. The results are published in Science Advances.

Neoliberals are most receptive to political tricks, study finds

Do we fall for political tricks—when politicians tell us things that seem completely meaningless? Social psychologists of the University of Amsterdam tested how people respond to vague and meaningless statements like "To politically lead the people means to always fight for them" and "For better and stronger Gonfel!" (a fictitious country). They find that right-wing people, and especially...

Project counts down Ariel exoplanet targets

Details of the orbits of 450 candidate exoplanet targets of the European Space Agency's Ariel space mission have been presented this week at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022, and submitted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. The study, coordinated by the ExoClock project, has been co-authored by 217 professional and amateur astronomers, as well as university...

Mutation in key molecules could stop gonorrhea infection

Creating a mutation that inhibits how the bacterial pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae causes gonorrhea, a common sexually transmitted infection, could offer a new way to prevent and treat the disease, according to researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.

Tracking the origin of southern California's latest invasive pest

In 2012, a crop of California's most prized ornamental trees was overrun by an invisible invader. The growing shoots of coral beans—the official city tree of Los Angeles—began wilting and falling away, revealing stems that had been hollowed out from the inside by the caterpillars of Erythrina stem borer moths.

The carp virus that taught researchers about immunology

One of the fascinating aspects of scientific research is certainly the serendipity that comes with it, which is something the team of Prof. Alain Vanderplasschen, virologist and immunologist at the FARAH (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine) of the University of Liège can only agree with. His team has just published in Nucleic Acids Research the results of ten years of research on the study of an...

Scientists use modified silk proteins to create new nonstick surfaces

Researchers at Tufts University have developed a method to make silk-based materials that refuse to stick to water, or almost anything else containing water for that matter. In fact, the modified silk, which can be molded into forms like plastic, or coated onto surfaces as a film, has non-stick properties that surpass those of nonstick surfaces typically used on cookware, and it could see...

Higher temperatures make it difficult for fig tree pollinators

Researchers from Uppsala University and elsewhere have been studying the effect of rising temperatures on the lifespan of pollinating fig wasps. The findings show that the wasps lived much shorter lives at high temperatures, which would make it difficult for them to travel the long distances between the trees they pollinate.

An AI message decoder based on bacterial growth patterns

Depending on the initial conditions used, such as nutrient levels and space constraints, bacteria tend to grow in specific ways. Researchers have created a new type of encryption scheme based on how a virtual bacterial colony grows with specific initial conditions.

Intestinal fortitude: Gut coils hold secrets of organ formation

A new study finds that gut rotation during development is orchestrated by two waves of expression of a transcription factor called Pitx2. The second wave, it turns out, is triggered by mechanical cues within an elastic tissue that anchors the gut tube, and later becomes a conduit for blood and lymphatic vessels that supply the gut tube.

Developing conductive and electrocatalytic mediators in Li-S batteries

Lithium sulfide (Li-S) batteries are considered a promising and efficient energy storage system because of their high energy density (2600 Wh kg-1) and low sulfur material cost. However, numerous obstacles to the practical implementation of Li–S batteries remain, including low sulfur conductivity, the shuttle effect, and the requirement for an adequate volume change (80%) of sulfur during...