A new cancer vaccine platform works by enhancing the ability of the immune system to recognize cancer by leveraging anti-viral memories it already has - due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst outbreak of the last 70 years.
People aren't the only ones who've got rhythm. Two reports published online on April 30th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal that birds – and parrots in particular – can also bob their heads, tap their feet, and sway their bodies along to a musical beat. The findings show that a very basic aspect of the human response to music is shared with other species, according to the researchers.
A disease spread simulation has emphasized that flu interventions must be imposed quickly, if they are to be effective. Researchers writing in BMC Public Health have shown that staying at home, closing schools and isolating infected people within the home should reduce infection, but only if they are used in combination, activated without delay and maintained for a relatively long period.
An extremely deep Chandra X-ray Observatory image of a region near the center of our Galaxy has resolved a long-standing mystery about an X-ray glow along the plane of the Galaxy. The glow in the region covered by the Chandra image was discovered to be caused by hundreds of point-like X- ray sources, implying that the glow along the plane of the Galaxy is due to millions of such sources.This image shows an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope of the central region of the Milky Way, with a pullout showing a Chandra image of a region located only 1.4 degrees away from the center of the Galaxy.
Ultrafast, light-sensitive video cameras are needed for observing high-speed events such as shockwaves, communication between living cells and a Usain Bolt sprint. To catch such elusive moments, a camera must be able to capture millions or billions of images continuously with a very high frame rate. Conventional cameras have not been up to the task but researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science say they have developed a novel, continuously running camera that captures images roughly a thousand times faster than any existing conventional camera.
Quantum cryptography, a completely secure means of communication, is much closer to being used practically as researchers from Toshiba and Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory have now developed high speed detectors capable of receiving information with much higher key rates, thereby able to receive more information faster. Published as part of IOP Publishing's New Journal of Physics' Focus Issue on 'Quantum Cryptography: Theory and Practice', the journal paper, 'Practical gigahertz quantum key distribution based on avalanche photodiodes', details how quantum communication can be made possible without having to use cryogenic cooling and/or complicated optical setups, making it much more likely to become commercially viable soon.
For over three decades, globes of Mercury were blank on one side. Though Mariner 10 explored the small planet in three flybys in 1974 and 1975, no more than half was ever seen. Of the four terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars - we knew the least about Mercury.On Oct. 6, 2008, the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft, better known as MESSENGER, made its second close-approach flyby of Mercury. 30 years after man's first look, MESSENGER has revealed Mercury in its entirety - well, mostly.
Do you like being stereotyped? Maybe not, though everyone does it to some extent (and some have more than stereotypes than others; being a white, male,southern, Catholic, Republican is 5 way open season for ridicule by people who otherwise claim to be loving and tolerant - editor) but it's usually okay if the stereotype makes you feel better about yourself.American regard Mexicans as more outgoing, talkative, sociable and extroverted - actual Mexicans think they are less. Turns out stereotypes are right more often that not once again - that's probably how they became stereotypes.
An ancient protein dating back 80 million years to the Cretaceous period has been preserved in bone fragments and soft tissues of a hadrosaur - a duck-billed dinosaur - according to a study in the May 1 issue of Science. The new findings support earlier results from analyses suggesting that collagen protein survived in the bones of a well preserved Tyrannosaurus rex, and offer new evidence supporting previous conclusions that birds and dinosaurs are directly related.
African, American, and European researchers working in collaboration over a 10-year period have released the largest-ever study of African genetic data—more than four million genotypes—providing a library of new information on the continent which is thought to be the source of the oldest settlements of modern humans.The study demonstrates startling diversity on the continent, shared ancestry among geographically diverse groups and traces the origins of Africans and African Americans. It is published in the April 30 issue of the journal Science Express.
A team of scientists from Canada, Spain and the United States has identified a key gene that allows plants to defend themselves against environmental stresses like drought, freezing and heat. "Plants have stress hormones that they produce naturally and that signal adverse conditions and help them adapt," says team member Peter McCourt, a professor of cell and systems biology at the University of Toronto. "If we can control these hormones we should be able to protect crops from adverse environmental conditions which is very important in this day and age of global climate change."
When a fake pandemic is being generated by media corporations having a slow news week, fake medicine is sure to pop up and take advantage of it. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) today issued a warning to the public about the risks of buying online medicines for swine influenza, such as Tamiflu or Relenza.
David Pruce, RPSGB Director of Policy said, "With the current fears about swine flu, we are concerned that unscrupulous people are exploiting the public's fears about swine flu by offering to sell the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza over the internet.
"This is a golden opportunity for counterfeiters to offer fake supplies of these drugs.
When a jet is flying faster than the speed of sound, one small mistake can tear it apart. It was so feared that the physics blended with the supernatural in the mid 1940s. Luckily, Chuck Yeager didn't believe in demons.There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. His controls would freeze up, his plane would buffet wildly, and he would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man would ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.
