182 articles from TUESDAY 14.3.2023

Caffeine may reduce body fat and risk of type 2 diabetes, study suggests

Findings could lead to use of calorie-free caffeinated drinks to cut obesity and type 2 diabetes – but more research neededHaving high levels of caffeine in your blood may lower the amount of body fat you carry and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, research suggests.The findings could lead to calorie-free caffeinated drinks being used to reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes, though further...

Geneticists should rethink how they use race and ethnicity, panel urges

The once widely held notion that humans fall into discrete races has led to geneticists drawing erroneous conclusions about the role of genes in shaping health and traits, and in some cases, to harmful discrimination against some groups. An expert committee is now urging an overhaul of this practice. Most notably, the committee’s report calls for researchers to scrap the term “race”...

GPT-4 is bigger and better than ChatGPT—but OpenAI won’t say why

OpenAI has finally unveiled GPT-4, the San Francisco-based company’s next-generation large language model. Its last surprise hit, ChatGPT, was always going to be a hard act to follow, but the company has made GPT-4 even bigger and better. Yet how much bigger and why it’s better, OpenAI won’t say. GPT-4 is the most secretive release the company has ever put out, marking its full...

New model provides improved air-quality predictions in fire-prone areas

Globally, wildfires are becoming more frequent and destructive, generating a significant amount of smoke that can be transported thousands of miles, driving the need for more accurate air pollution forecasts. A team of Penn State researchers has developed a deep learning model that provides improved predictions of air quality in wildfire-prone areas and can differentiate between wildfires and...

Do COVID-19 vaccine mandates still make sense?

Visitors to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, D.C., receive a clear reminder that, 3 years after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 10 March 2020, it’s far from over. Before entering, they must show a guard proof that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Such demands were common around the world a year ago, with wide support...

Researchers discover way to reverse infertility by reducing HDL cholesterol

Houston Methodist scientists reversed infertility in sterile mice by reducing high-circulating cholesterol with a bacterial protein, showing further evidence that links high cholesterol to female infertility. This is a promising development, with one in every five women of childbearing age in the U.S. unable to get pregnant after trying for a year.

Physicists track sequential 'melting' of upsilons

Scientists using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to study some of the hottest matter ever created in a laboratory have published their first data showing how three distinct variations of particles called upsilons sequentially "melt," or dissociate, in the hot goo. The results, just published in Physical Review Letters, come from RHIC's STAR detector, one of two large particle tracking...

NASA Selects 7 Fundamental Physics Proposals

Artist's concept of a magneto-optical trap and atom chip to be used by NASA's Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Fundamental Physics Program has selected seven proposals submitted in response to the Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences - 2022 (ROSES-2022) E.6 Fundamental Physics call for proposal....

Webb captures rarely seen prelude to a supernova

A Wolf-Rayet star is a rare prelude to the famous final act of a massive star: the supernova. As one of its first observations in 2022, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope captured the Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 in unprecedented detail. A distinctive halo of gas and dust frames the star and glows in the infrared light detected by Webb, displaying knotty structure and a history of episodic...

Innovative approach opens the door to COVID nanobody therapies

COVID is not yet under control. Despite a bevy of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and antivirals, the virus continues to mutate and elude us. One solution that scientists have been exploring since the early days of the pandemic may come in the form of tiny antibodies derived from llamas, which target various parts of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

New test quickly identifies patients whose postoperative pain can be effectively treated by hypnosis

Hypnosis is an effective treatment for pain for many individuals but determining which patients will benefit most can be challenging. Hypnotizability testing requires special training and in-person evaluation rarely available in the clinical setting. Now, investigators have developed a fast, point-of-care molecular diagnostic test that identifies a subset of individuals who are most likely to...

Air pollution impairs successful mating of flies

A research team demonstrates that increased levels of ozone resulting from anthropogenic air pollution can degrade insect sex pheromones, which are crucial mating signals, and thus prevent successful reproduction. The oxidizing effect of ozone causes the carbon-carbon double bonds found in the molecules of many insect pheromones to break down. Therefore, the specific chemical mating signal is...