Long Covid trials aim to clear lingering virus —and help patients in need
One Monday morning last September, Shelley Hayden pulled into a parking spot in an underground garage at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). She switched off the ignition, pushed the red record button on her cellphone, and gazed into the camera. “The time has come,” said Hayden, long dark-blond hair framing her blue eyes. “Here we are, I’m actually getting to do something.”
More than 3 years earlier, in the summer of 2020, Hayden had come down with COVID-19 while visiting family in Colorado. Since then she’s been plagued by the disease’s cruel sequel, Long Covid, whose symptoms include ov...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 11, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Bacteria is the new black: Scientists create microbes that make self-dyeing textiles
For sustainability-minded fashionistas, materials made by fast-growing, eco-friendly bacteria offer an appealing alternative to leather or faux plastic replacements such as “pleather.” Yet coloring or adding patterns to these bacterial textiles can still mean working with environmentally harmful dyes. A study published last week in
Nature Biotechnology
may offer a solution:
genetically engineering bacteria to produce melanin pigment
so the material can
dye
itself
.
“This is an example of how biology can provide products that not only have remarkable properties, but can also...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 9, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Embattled Harvard honesty professor accused of plagiarism
Harvard University honesty researcher Francesca Gino, whose work has come under fire for suspected data falsification, may also have plagiarized passages in some of her high-profile publications.
A book chapter co-authored by Gino, who was found by a 2023 Harvard Business School (HBS) investigation to have
committed research misconduct
, contains numerous passages of text with striking similarities to 10 earlier sources. The sources include published papers and student theses, according to an analysis shared with
Science
by University of Montreal psychologist Erinn Acland.
Science
ha...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 9, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Efforts to support Palestinian scientists struggle with the realities of war
Mou’yed Issa Talab Ismail was thrilled when, last month, he received an offer to begin a doctoral program in medical physics at the University of Sherbrooke. “Canada is considered one of the best countries in the world in my field of scientific research,” he says. “This will open the way for me to complete my studies.”
One of several recently launched efforts to support scientists and technical students in war-torn Gaza helped match Ismail with the Canadian program. But throwing a lifeline to Palestinian scholars is proving difficult, and it’s unclear when Ismail will make it to Canada. He is currently sh...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 8, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
New green technology harvests energy from raindrops and humidity
Sunlight and wind are the fastest growing energy sources on the planet. Now imagine drawing power from a third, even more plentiful green source: moisture in the air. That’s the vision of Jun Yao, an applied physicist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has devised a porous film that converts the charges naturally present in water vapor into power. To be clear, Yao’s films are the size of a postage stamp and only generate a tiny current. But Yao is just getting started. And he’s not alone. Teams around the globe are creating a bevy of novel “hydrovoltaic” devices able to convert the energy inherent in ...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 4, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Modern Blackfoot people descend from an ancient ice age lineage
Nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy have long fought to maintain control over their land and water. Oral traditions and archaeological evidence indicate the Blackfoot Indigenous peoples and their ancestors have inhabited a broad swatch of North America for more than 10,000 years.
A study published today in
Science Advances
reinforces that connection. Genetic data confirm
modern Blackfoot people are closely related to those who lived on the land hundreds of years ago
.
The findings also suggest Blackfoot people descend from a previously unknown genetic lineage extending back roughly 18,00...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 3, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Muscle cramp compound may drive deadly wasting in cancer patients
“The flesh is consumed and becomes water … the abdomen fills with water, the feet and legs swell, the shoulders, clavicles, chest, and thighs melt away. … The illness is fatal.”
This spine-chilling description, written by Greek physician and philosopher Hippocrates, is believed to be the first account of a deadly muscle wasting disease called cachexia (pronounced kuh-KEK-sia). Scientists estimate that up to 80% of cancer patients suffer from the condition, where the body relentlessly eats away at itself until organs such as the heart and diaphragm stop working. Even if cachexia doesn’t directly kill a patie...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 3, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Global push to put natural history collections online gets major U.K. boost
Tucked away in drawers and cabinets in hundreds of institutions around the world may be answers to how our planet formed, how life evolved and interacts, and how resilient it may be in the future. But those collections—millions of ancient rocks and fossils, pressed plants, pinned insects, and other specimens—can only yield insights if researchers around the world can access them.
Now, efforts to digitize collections, making them accessible to all, have received a major boost. Last week, the U.K. government announced that, beginning in 2026, it will provide £155 million (almost $200 million) over the following 10...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 2, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
U.S. dairy farm worker infected as bird flu spreads to cows in five states
Texas officials today issued a
“health alert”
about the first confirmed case of a human infection with a bird influenza virus that has found its ways into dairy cows. The worker developed conjunctivitis, a mild eye infection that frequently occurs when avian influenza viruses jump into humans.
The case is the latest surprise in the global march of the flu strain, a subtype of H5N1 known as clade 2.3.4.4b that has devastated wild birds and poultry around the world for more than two years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says it has confirmed that the virus has infected cattle at farms in...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 2, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
News at a glance: Domestic U.S. postdocs, edited pig organs, and the Milky Way ’s central black hole
FUNDING
South Korea joins Horizon Europe
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (center) and EU leaders announced a research funding deal.
KYODO VIA AP IMAGES
South Korea will participate in the €95.5 billion ($104 billion) Horizon Europe R&D program, the first East Asian country to do so, the European Commission announced last week. South Korean scientists will compete for grants on an equal footing with their European counterparts; in return, South Korea will contribute an as-yet-undisclosed amount to the 7-year program, which expires in 20...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 28, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
A muon collider could revolutionize particle physics —if it can be built
Young people supposedly enjoy the luxury of time, but perhaps not if they’re particle physicists. For decades, physicists have peered into the universe’s inner workings by smashing subatomic particles together at ever higher energies. But the next highest energy collider may not be built for 50 years. And Tova Holmes, 34 and a particle physicist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, worries her career could slip away before she ever sees such a machine. “I will be definitely not still working, possibly not alive,” Holmes says.
That’s one reason she and dozens of her contemporaries are pushing to develo...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 28, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Early-career researchers lament potential loss of Europe ’s largest transdisciplinary science conference
EuroScience Open Forum gave early-career researchers an opportunity to interact with policymakers and scientists from across Europe.
EuroScience
Over the past 2 decades, the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) has brought together scientists, policymakers, businesspeople, journalists, and citizens to discuss European science and its broader policy and societal implications. For early-career researchers, it has offered a unique platform to network beyond their own field, access career development resources, raise awareness of the issues they face, and build up momentum to tackle them.
But as the pre...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 28, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
‘I need your urine!’ Unusual experiment tests whether human pee can help save forests
In the mountains of southeastern Spain, a tiny wood mouse (
Apodemus sylvaticus
) sniffs out its dinner. The shrubs and pine trees of the Sierra Nevada give off several intriguing smells, including the nutty aroma of acorns from the Holm oak (
Quercus ilex
). But these particular acorns have another, more pungent odor—as though they just emerged from an ammonia bath.
As it turns out, they have—thanks to a peculiar experiment in forestry management. The project, led by University of Granada ecologist Jorge Castro, is part of a larger effort to repel mice, birds, and other forest creatures that ...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 27, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Bird flu discovered in U.S. dairy cows is ‘disturbing’
The bird flu virus that has wreaked havoc around the world appears to have surfaced in U.S. dairy cows, the first time this viral subtype has been documented in any cattle. Three U.S. states—Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico—on 25 March reported cows sickened with what scientists are presuming is the same H5N1 strain of influenza that has killed hundreds of millions of poultry and wild birds.
The cattle infections are spoiling milk and causing limited disease in mostly older animals. Dead birds have also been found on some of the farms, which may explain the source of the virus. Public health officials have stressed ...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 26, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Startups aim to curb climate change by pulling carbon dioxide from the ocean —not the air
Every year, hundreds of container ships slide into the Port of Los Angeles, the busiest in the Western Hemisphere. Belching carbon dioxide (CO
2
), they deliver some $300 billion in goods to trucks and railcars that add their own pollution to our warming planet.
But one long gray barge docked at the port is doing its part to combat climate change. On the barge, which belongs to Captura, a Los Angeles–based startup, is a system of pipes, pumps, and containers that ingests seawater and sucks out CO
2
, which can be used to make plastics and fuels or buried. The decarbonated seawater ...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 26, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
