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Shots trigger exceptional antibody response by activating key helper immune cells. The first two vaccines created with mRNA vaccine technology — the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines — are arguably two of the most effective COVID vaccines developed to date. In clinical trials, both were more than 90% effective at preventing symptomatic infection, easily surpassing the 50% threshold the Food and Drug Administration had set for COVID-19 vaccines to be considered for emergency use authorization....

A study analyzing the reports was published today (December 2) in the journal PLOS ONE. The study findings indicate that understanding and being aware of each threat is critical for managing and conserving killer whale populations. It also presents a baseline understanding of orca health. The study was conducted by a team of marine mammal specialists led by a veterinary pathologist with the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and coordinated through SeaDoc Society, a Washington-based program of the University of California, Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine....

Natural selection has shaped the evolution of all living things on our planet, including viruses. While mutations emerge in viruses, some mutations have little impact while others outcompete other variants and persist, such as the SARS-CoV-2 variant, Delta – classified a variant of concern (VOC) by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Last week, Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, the regional director of the WHO, South-East Asia said, “The Delta variant has spread to over a hundred countries and is likely to soon become the most dominant COVID-19 strain globally....

The drug baricitinib (a type of drug known as a Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor, also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis) is strongly recommended for patients with severe or critical COVID-19 in combination with corticosteroids, says a WHO Guideline Development Group of international experts in The BMJ today, January 13. Their strong recommendation is based on moderate certainty evidence that it improves survival and reduces the need for ventilation, with no observed increase in adverse effects....

Human behavior is impacted by temperature across the board, including eating and activity levels as well as sleep-wake cycles. In the summer, we may have trouble falling asleep, and in the winter, we might take longer to get out of bed. However, the relationship between sensory neurons and the neurons that control this cycle is not well known. Neurobiologists at Northwestern University have uncovered a few hints as to what is going on....

It was reported in previous studies that some stringed instruments built by Stradivari have a hidden coating underneath the shiny varnish. By filling in and smoothing out the wood, this coating would influence the wood’s resonance and the sound that’s produced. Knowing the components of this film could be key to replicating the historic instruments in modern times. So, Lisa Vaccari, Marco Malagodi, and colleagues wanted to find a technique that would determine the composition of the layer between the wood and varnish of two precious violins — the San Lorenzo 1718 and the Toscano 1690....

Protein region on COVID’s viral spike senses temperature, drives seasonal mutation patterns. Not to pile on, but winter is coming and the COVID-19 pandemic is about to get worse. Not necessarily because of omicron – scientists are still working that one out – but because there’s more evidence than ever that COVID-19 is a seasonal disease. We know this intuitively. It’s no surprise that moving indoors and closing windows bumps up transmission....

The findings, published in two separate papers in Nature, show that Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017 – pushing global sea levels up by 17.8 millimeters. Of the total sea level rise coming from melting polar ice sheets, around 60% (10.6 millimeters) was due to Greenland ice losses and 40% was due to Antarctica (7.2 millimeters). The combined rate of ice loss has risen by a factor of six in just three decades, up from 81 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 475 billion tonnes per year in the 2010s....

The theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was triggered by the Sars-CoV-2 virus being leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China was recently given new life following an explosive article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in which the authors claimed “the most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science.” But does the science really support the claim that the virus was engineered in a laboratory?...

“You might know everything about the molecule, but still not know there are waves on the ocean, much less how to surf them,” he says. “That’s because when you put a bunch of molecules together, they behave in a way you probably cannot anticipate.” Thywissen is discussing the principle of emergence in physics, which examines the connection between the properties and behavior of individual particles and a large group of those particles....

Herbivore Transylvanosaurus platycephalus, translating as ‘flat-headed reptile from Transylvania’, lived around 70 million years ago and, at only two meters long, it reached only a small body size — much like other dinosaurs in the region, who are therefore recognized as “dwarf dinosaurs.” Reporting their findings in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, experts from the University of Tübingen, the University of Bucharest, and the University of Zurich state its discovery disproves the widespread assumption that there was a low diversity of such animals in Europe during the Late Cretaceous period, shortly before the extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago....

Can you recognize a digitally manipulated video when you see one? It’s harder than most people realize. As the technology to produce realistic “deepfakes” becomes more easily available, distinguishing fact from fiction will only get more challenging. A new digital storytelling project from MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality aims to educate the public about the world of deepfakes with “In Event of Moon Disaster.” This provocative website showcases a “complete” deepfake (manipulated audio and video) of U....

The hunting tortoise was seen in July 2020 on Frégate Island, a privately owned island in the Seychelles group managed for ecotourism, where around 3,000 tortoises live. Other tortoises in the same area have been seen making similar attacks. “This is completely unexpected behavior and has never been seen before in wild tortoises,” said Dr. Justin Gerlach, Director of Studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge and Affiliated Researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology, who led the study....

Launched on December 25 last year and fully operational since July, the telescope offers glimpses of the universe that were inaccessible to us before. Like the Hubble Space Telescope, the JWST is in space, so it can take pictures with stunning detail free from the distortions of Earth’s atmosphere. However, while Hubble is in orbit around Earth at an altitude of 335 miles (540 km), the JWST is 1 million miles (1....

On October 2, 2015, the ozone hole expanded to its peak of 28.2 million square kilometers (10.9 million square miles), an area larger than the continent of North America. Throughout October, the hole remained large and set many area daily records. Unusually cold temperature and weak dynamics in the Antarctic stratosphere this year resulted in this larger ozone hole. In comparison, last year the ozone hole peaked at 24.1 million square kilometers (9....

The art of croissant making has inspired researchers from Queen Mary University of London to find a solution to a sustainable energy problem. Croissants are made by pressing and folding the dough to create a layered pastry. The researchers applied this technique to a dielectric capacitor, which is a device that stores energy like a battery. By pressing and folding a polymer film capacitor — a capacitor with an insulating plastic film — they were able to store 30 times more energy than the best-performing commercially available dielectric capacitor, biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP)....

Disabling a single, apparently noncritical protein in cells may foil replication of the viruses that cause half of all common colds, polio and other diseases, according to researchers at Stanford and UCSF. Temporarily disabling a single protein inside our cells might be able to protect us from the common cold and other viral diseases, according to a study led by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California-San Francisco. The findings were made in human cell cultures and in mice....

In 2015, the journal Science published a paper claiming that this elongate lizard was a snake with four legs. The discovery of such a specimen could tell us a great deal about the pattern and process of snake evolution — if it was indeed a snake. Lizard, not snake Extraordinary claims attract extraordinary attention, and this means such claims require reanalysis — and possibly refutation or corroboration. In scientific research, the data must fit the hypothesis, and if it does not, then the hypothesis is rejected....

The US response to Sputnik was two-fold. The first was to accelerate the Vanguard program, a joint National Academy of Sciences/US Naval Research Laboratory project, which unfortunately resulted in the spectacular and embarrassing launch failure of Vanguard TV3 on December 6. By that time, the Soviets had already achieved their second success with Sputnik 2, carrying a dog named Layka, the first live animal in space. The second response was to resurrect the Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s (ABMA) Jupiter-C rocket program, which had involved Wernher Von Braun’s team and the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) testing reentry vehicles in sub-orbital launches....

The mineral pyrite was historically nicknamed fool’s gold because of its deceptive resemblance to the precious metal. The term was often used during the California gold rush in the 1840s because inexperienced prospectors would claim discoveries of gold, but in reality it would be pyrite, composed of worthless iron disulfide (FeS₂). Ironically, pyrite crystals can contain small amounts of real gold, although it is notoriously hard to extract. Gold hiding within pyrite is sometimes referred to as “invisible gold,” because it is not observable with standard microscopes, but instead requires sophisticated scientific instruments....