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“It regenerates almost anything after almost any injury that doesn’t kill it,” said Parker Flowers, postdoctoral associate in the lab of Craig Crews, the John C. Malone Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and professor of chemistry and pharmacology. If scientists can find the genetic basis for the axolotl’s ability to regenerate, they might be able to find ways to restore damaged tissue in humans. But they have been thwarted in the attempt by another peculiarity of the axolotl — it has the largest genome of any animal yet sequenced, 10 times larger than that of humans....

Mention the word “crystals” and few people think of nuclear fuel. Unless you are Eric Burgett. The Idaho State University professor is on a quest to create pure, single crystals of uranium and uranium oxide so researchers at Idaho National Laboratory and elsewhere can better understand the material and design higher performance fuels to power nuclear reactors. Burgett and his team of graduate students have successfully manufactured cerium oxide crystals as a practice run (cerium can be a nonradioactive surrogate for uranium or plutonium)....

Why is avian influenza so deadly for domesticated birds but not for wild birds that carry it? Avian influenza (AI) is a contagious virus that affects all birds. There are two groups of AI viruses that cause disease in chickens: highly pathogenic AI and low pathogenic AI. HPAI viruses cause high mortality in poultry, and occasionally in some wild birds. LPAI can cause mild to moderate disease in poultry, and usually little to no clinical signs of illness in wild birds....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature Methods. The technique doesn’t involve embryonic stem cells, which come with drawbacks when transplanted, such as the risk of developing tumors. This new method uses ordinary cells present in urine and transforms them into neural progenitor cells, which are the precursors of brain cells. These cells could help produce tailored cells for individuals more quickly than other current methods. Scientists often reprogram cultured skin and blood cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which can form any cell in the body....

Parents who take paid family leave after the birth of a newborn are more likely to have their child vaccinated on time compared to those who do not, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York. The effect is stronger on families living below the poverty line. “Currently, many people do not vaccinate their child within the recommended schedule and are late,” said Solomon Polachek, professor of economics at Binghamton University....

A well-ordered lattice of silver atoms makes it possible to speed the growth of pristine borophene, the atom-thick allotrope of boron that so far can only form via synthesis by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). By using a silver substrate and through careful manipulation of temperature and deposition rate, scientists have discovered they can grow elongated hexagon-shaped flakes of borophene. They suggested the use of a proper metal substrate could facilitate the growth of ultrathin, narrow borophene ribbons....

In science fiction novels, evil overlords and hostile aliens often threaten to vaporize the Earth. At the beginning of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the officiously bureaucratic aliens called Vogons, authors of the third-worst poetry in the universe, actually follow through on the threat, destroying the Earth to make way for a hyperspatial express route. “We scientists are not content just to talk about vaporizing the Earth,” says Bruce Fegley, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St....

Measurements taken using the VERITAS telescopes revealed the diameter of a giant star located 2,674 light years from Earth. Taken on February 22, 2018, at the Whipple Observatory, data revealed the star to be 11 times the diameter of Earth’s Sun. Using the four 12-m gamma-ray telescopes of VERITAS, the team collected 300 images per second to detect the diffraction pattern in the shadow sweeping past the telescopes as the star TYC 5517-227-1 was occulted by the 60-km (37-mile) asteroid Imprinetta....

Astronomers led by a group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany have captured a spectacular snapshot of planetary formation around the young dwarf star PDS 70. By using the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) — one of the most powerful planet-hunting instruments in existence — the international team has made the first robust detection of a young planet, named PDS 70b, cleaving a path through the planet-forming material surrounding the young star....

For the first time ever astronomers have studied an asteroid that has entered the Solar System from interstellar space. Observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other observatories around the world show that this unique object was traveling through space for millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. It appears to be a dark, reddish, highly-elongated rocky or high-metal-content object. The new results appear in the journal Nature on 20 November 2017....

The height also helps these islands disturb passing air masses and clouds in a way that Theodore von Kárm—an accomplished mathematician, aerospace engineer, and one of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s founders—likely would have appreciated. The trails are called von Kármán vortex streets, a distinctive pattern that can occur when a fluid passes a tall, isolated, stationary object. In 1912, von Kármán was the first to describe the oscillating flow features in mathematical terms while he was working as a graduate assistant for the pioneering German fluid dynamicist Ludwig Prandtl....

Scientists have shown for the first time that 800,000 brain cells living in a dish can perform goal-directed tasks. In this case, they played the simple tennis-like computer game, Pong. The results of the Melbourne-led study are published today (October 12) in the journal Neuron. Now the researchers are going to investigate what happens when their DishBrain is affected by medicines and alcohol. “We have shown we can interact with living biological neurons in such a way that compels them to modify their activity, leading to something that resembles intelligence,” says lead author Dr....

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel has recommended that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine be given to children who are 5 to 11 years old. Once a panel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives an official go-ahead, doses will be widely available to young children across the Chicago area, including at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital. Assoc. Prof. Allison Bartlett, a pediatrician at UChicago Medicine, answers common questions and tells you what you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine for children—including when pharmaceutical manufacturers expect the vaccine to be available for those younger than 5, and how to help your child get ready....

Disease spillover risk was poorly communicated and oversimplified during COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has been the first pandemic that has taken place alongside the interconnectivity of the Internet and pervasive social media. As a consequence, the spread of ideas and information about the disease has been unprecedented—but not always accurate. Among the widely circulated headlines was one about the relationship between land change and the spillover of diseases from wildlife to humans....

According to research published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, scientists have now discovered that chronic stress leads to hyperactivity in a group of neurons located in a bow-shaped region of the brain. When these POMC neurons become excessively active, it results in these behavioral problems. However, reducing their activity has been shown to alleviate these issues. Scientists at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University looked in the hypothalamus, key to functions like releasing hormones and regulating hunger, thirst, mood, sex drive, and sleep, at a population of neurons called the proopiomelanocortin, or POMC, neurons, in response to 10 days of chronic, unpredictable stress....

Scientists have discovered a previously unidentified immune response inside the nose that fights off viruses responsible for upper respiratory infections. Further testing revealed this protective response becomes inhibited in colder temperatures, making an infection more likely to occur. The new study offers the first biological mechanism to explain why viruses like the common cold, flu, and COVID-19 are more likely to spike in colder seasons, according to the authors. The study, by researchers at Mass Eye and Ear and Northeastern University, was published on December 6 in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology....

Are the British smarter and more knowledgeable than Americans? A recent study by Rutgers researchers indicates that Americans seem to believe so. A new study published in Journal of Pragmatics analyzes how American and British English speakers use “right” to respond in conversation. They found Americans use the word “right” to indicate they are already knowledgeable or informed about a given subject or situation. By contrast, British English speakers use “right” to indicate that what they hear is informative, and relevant to the ongoing interaction....

Nowadays researchers often assume, that massive galaxies have a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in their nuclei. In recent years observers are looking for galaxies that might have an SMBH which is displaced from its equilibrium position. Among the scenarios which might cause such a displacement are the merger of two SMBHs or the existence of a binary pair of SMBH, and finding an example would give us information about the evolution of galaxies, and about the frequency of the formation and of mergers of this type of objects....

Depression is distinct from common mood swings and brief emotional reactions to problems in daily life. Depression may develop into a serious medical condition, particularly if it is recurring and of moderate to severe intensity. The afflicted individual may experience severe suffering and perform badly at work, in school, and with family. In the worst cases, depression might result in suicide. Since its introduction in the late 1980s to prevent heart attack and stroke, statins have been hailed as a wonder drug and prescribed to tens of millions of individuals....

Yale University scientists have found a way to observe quantum information while preserving its integrity, an achievement that offers researchers greater control in the volatile realm of quantum mechanics and greatly improves the prospects of quantum computing. Quantum computers would be exponentially faster than the most powerful computers of today. “Our experiment is a dress rehearsal for a type of process essential for quantum computing,” said Michel Devoret, the Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics & Physics at Yale and principal investigator of research published January 11 in the journal Science....