136 articles from WEDNESDAY 1.2.2023

Could a popular COVID-19 antiviral supercharge the pandemic?

A widely used COVID-19 drug may be driving the appearance of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, sparking concerns it could prolong and even reinvigorate the pandemic. The drug, molnupiravir, produced by Merck & Co., is designed to kill the virus by inducing mutations in the viral genome. A survey of viral genomes reported in a new preprint, however, suggests some people treated with the drug...

Pit find in Germany reveals how Neanderthals hunted huge elephants

125,000-year-old bones of 70 animals – each about three times the size of today’s Asian elephants – discovered near HalleNeanderthals may have lived in larger groups than previously believed, hunting massive elephants that were up to three times bigger than those of today, according to a new study.The researchers reached their conclusions, published in the journal Science Advances on...

Getting ready for the next 'big' quake in Missouri's New Madrid Seismic Zone

There are hundreds of minor earthquakes each year in Missouri's New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), but most of them are too small for people living in the area to feel. While several major earthquakes—magnitude 7.0 or greater—occurred between 1811-1812 in the NMSZ, none have happened since then, creating a knowledge gap in earthquake preparedness among people now residing in that area of...

Drilling campaign reaches a depth of 808 meters in the Antarctic ice sheet

In Antarctica, the second drilling campaign of the Beyond EPICA—Oldest Ice project, at the remote field site Little Dome C, has been successfully completed. This project is an unprecedented challenge for paleoclimatology studies and its goal is to go back 1.5 million years in time to reconstruct past temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations through the analysis of an ice core extracted...

Quails could be the unknown reservoir of Tuscany and Sicilian viruses

Quails could be the unknown reservoir of the Toscana virus (TOSV) and the Sandfly Fever Sicilian virus (SFSV), mosquito-borne pathogens that can infect domestic animals and also cause disease in humans. This conclusion is drawn from a study published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, and led by Jordi Serra-Cobo, professor at the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute...

Wildfires are increasingly burning California's snowy landscapes, colliding with winter droughts to shrink snowpack

The early pandemic years overlapped with some of California's worst wildfires on record, creating haunting, orange-tinted skies and wide swaths of burned landscape. Some of the impacts of these fires are well known, including drastic declines in air quality, and now a new study shows how these wildfires combined with midwinter drought conditions to accelerate snowmelt.