117 articles from TUESDAY 23.5.2023

Muscular dystrophy gene therapy nears approval, but safety concerns linger

Five years ago, when Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) began making it hard for him to walk, 7-year-old Conner Curran received a blood infusion of trillions of viruses carrying a muscle gene to replace his mutant one. Within 2 months the Connecticut boy went from crawling up stairs to “flying up,” says his mother, Jessica Curran. The family and the researchers hoped he would never...

New U.S. lab will work with deadly animal pathogens—in the middle of farm country

Virologist Robert Cross’s lab is equipped to handle some of the world’s most dangerous viruses. At the Galveston National Laboratory he has worked with guinea pigs infected with Ebola virus and macaques carrying Lassa fever. What it can’t accommodate are pigs, which are common carriers of the deadly Nipah virus. “We’re not really geared to handle large animals,” says Cross,...

U.S. planning test reactor to run on weapons-grade uranium

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is planning a small test reactor that would burn a large amount of weapons-grade uranium, according to the project’s draft environmental assessment . The experiment, to be built in a cost-sharing arrangement, would provide data for a new type of power reactor being developed by TerraPower and Southern Company Services. But the use of...

Swift, deadly epidemic kills all the black sea urchins in Gulf of Eilat, posing threat to Eilat's coral reef

A series of new, disturbing studies from Tel Aviv University reveals a deadly epidemic causing mass mortality of black sea urchins in the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Eilat. The entire population of black sea urchins in Eilat was wiped out over a couple of months. For example, thousands of sea urchins living in a site near the northern shore of the Gulf of Eilat died out over the course of a...

Engineers create bacteria that can synthesize an unnatural amino acid

In a study recently published in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers focused on para-nitro-L-phenylalanine (pN-Phe), a non-standard amino acid that is neither one of the twenty standard amino acids nor observed in nature. pN-Phe has been used by other research groups to help the immune system mount a response to proteins that it does not ordinarily respond to.

Strategic city planning can help reduce urban heat island effect

The tendency of cities to trap heat—a phenomenon called the "urban heat island," often referred to as the UHI effect—can lead to dangerous temperatures in the summer months, but new Penn State research published in Buildings suggests that certain urban factors can reduce this effect.

How did COVID-19 lockdown impact employment of individuals with visual disabilities?

New data show that while individuals with visual disabilities were slow to recover employment because of the effects of the COVID-2019 lockdown, they have made headway, depending on their level of disability, almost meeting their pre-pandemic levels. Possible reasons for their slower recovery include major safety concerns due to the shortage of personal protective equipment, less access to...

COVID-19 vaccines may undergo major overhaul this fall

Earlier this year, U.S. regulators settled on a new strategy for COVID-19 vaccines . Like the annual flu shot, the vaccines will be updated each year based on the virus’ evolution, then rolled out in the fall. Accordingly, on 15 June, advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will weigh which strain or strains of SARS-CoV-2 should make up the next...

Evaluating the ecological impacts of mountain biking

Mountain biking is one of the most popular leisure activities today. Sport ecologists at the University of Bayreuth have now compiled and evaluated a wide range of previously published findings on the ecological consequences of this sport. Numerous direct and short-term effects on animals, plants and soils can be clearly demonstrated. However, estimates of long-term consequences remain difficult...

World's most sensitive model-independent experiment starts searching for dark matter

The world's most sensitive model-independent experiment to search for particularly light particles, of which dark matter might be composed, starts today at DESY in the form of the 'light shining through a wall' experiment ALPS II. Scientific calculations predict that this ominous form of matter should occur five times as often in the universe as normal, visible matter. Until now, however, no one...

Long-term study shows tree species diversity increases likelihood of planting success

Planting forests with diverse species can help ensure their success, according to a new study published May 18 from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and The Nature Conservancy. The discovery is the result of a decade of research from BiodiversiTREE, a large-scale reforestation project at SERC designed to run for 100 years, testing the effects of different tree planting...

A novel high-throughput method for screening protein-secreting microbial strains

A unique method to screen large-scale libraries for industrially useful bacterial strains was recently developed by Tokyo Tech researchers. The simple approach combines biosensors and microfluidics to quickly identify mutant strains that secrete large amounts of industrially useful proteins, opening the doors to more applications, like reasonably priced biopharmaceuticals.

Multifunctional interface enables manipulation of light waves in free space

Recent technological advances have given us a remarkable ability to manipulate and control light waves, opening up numerous applications in various fields, such as optical communication, sensing, imaging, energy, and quantum computing. At the heart of this progress are photonic structures that can control light waves, either at the chip level in the form of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) or...

Precipitation variations indicate the northern boundary and climate regimes of the Asian summer monsoon

Precipitation patterns and their variations over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are mainly dominated by the Asian summer monsoon (ASM), westerlies, and their interactions. The exact extent of the ASM's influence, however, remains undetermined. The northern boundary of the ASM denotes the northernmost position, with its leading edge advancing from south to north after its outbreak.

How do you recognize the atmosphere of extraterrestrial lava worlds?

In the past 30 years, more than 5,000 planets have been discovered outside our solar system. One common exoplanet is the lava world, a hot super-Earth with oceans of liquid lava. Mantas Zilinskas developed models to simulate possible atmospheres of these worlds. Those simulations provide guidance for astronomers searching for these atmospheres with the James Webb Space Telescope. Zilinskas will...

How the COVID-19 pandemic impacted social cohesion

More than any other recent event, the COVID-19 crisis has affected the lives of people around the world. In a special issue of the online journal Frontiers in Sociology, edited by sociologists from Constructor University and the Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg, a group of researchers documents the global impact of the pandemic on the social cohesion of individual population groups and...

Video: Annual global ice loss simulated over Oslo

Satellites play a vital role in monitoring the rapid changes taking place in the Arctic. Tracking ice lost from the world's glaciers, ice sheets and frozen land shows that Earth is losing ice at an accelerating rate.

New orchid species found in Tibet

Bulbophyllum is one of the largest genera in the orchid family, with about 2,200 species, and is widely distributed in the tropics and subtropics. In the course of botanical exploration in southeastern Xizang in 2020–2022, researchers collected several Bulbophyllum specimens with similar habits and floral characteristics and transplanted them to the orchid conservation center of Tibet...

How do we draw alien planets?

Astronomical websites and press releases brim with pictures of swirling gas giants, watery terrestrial worlds, and strange planetary systems with exotic suns. But just how realistic are these artist’s concepts? Do they truly show newly discovered worlds, or are they simply fanciful pictures meant to draw you into reading about the latest addition to theContinue reading "How do we draw alien...

Calcium rechargeable battery with long cycle life

With the use of electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage systems on the rise, the need to explore alternatives to lithium-ion batteries has never been greater. Researchers have recently developed a prototype calcium metal rechargeable battery capable of 500 cycles of repeated charge-discharge -- the benchmark for practical use. The breakthrough was made thanks to the development of a copper...

Flexing crystalline structures provide path to a solid energy future

Researchers have uncovered the atomic mechanisms that make a class of compounds called argyrodites attractive candidates for both solid-state battery electrolytes and thermoelectric energy converters. The discoveries -- and the machine learning approach used to make them -- could help usher in a new era of energy storage for applications such as household battery walls and fast-charging electric...