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Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne have finally answered a question that has puzzled diabetes researchers for a century: can a molecule other than insulin have the same effect? The team’s findings provide crucial insight into the development of an oral insulin pill. They have successfully demonstrated how a non-insulin molecule can imitate insulin, which is essential for maintaining blood sugar levels. The WEHI-led study opens new avenues for the development of drugs that could replace daily insulin injections for people with type 1 diabetes....

A central component in designing serological tests and vaccines to protect against COVID-19 is the manufacture of protein “spikes.” These recombinant spikes closely mimic those sticking out of surface of the infectious virus and trigger the body’s immune system into action. Laboratory manufactured spikes are also used for serological testing (also referred to as antibody testing) and as research reagents. The findings show how that viral spike manufactured through different methods in laboratories across the globe are highly similar and provide reassurance that the spike can be robustly manufactured with minimal variations between laboratories....

In 2014, astronomers finally got their chance to see the phenomena, using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Their key finding was it appeared that most of the material ejected by the explosion was moving towards us and developed a 3-D computer model of the explosion that explained the observations. In this model they included a large disk of cool gas around the equator of the binary caused by the white dwarf pulling on a wind of gas streaming away from the red giant....

Global sea levels have risen about seven inches in the past hundred years, and that pace is steadily accelerating thanks to climate change. This rise in sea levels threatens most coastal areas, and makes storm surges much worse, as in the case of hurricanes as well as smaller storms. Scientists published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. The oceans are likely to keep rising. Scientists project that if the planet keeps warming at the current pace, sea levels will rise between two and seven feet by 2100....

Two worlds orbiting a distant star are about to become a snack of cosmic proportions. Astronomers announced today that the planets Kepler-56b and Kepler-56c will be swallowed by their star in a short time by astronomical standards. Their ends will come in 130 million and 155 million years, respectively. “As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted ‘time of death,’” says lead author Gongjie Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)....

Starspots are interesting to stellar astronomers because they are informed by the star’s rotation and circulation, details that are otherwise difficult to discern. Although starspots are too small to be imaged directly by current telescopes, they can be inferred from variations in a star’s light. CfA astronomer Raphaelle Haywood and two colleagues have analyzed archival data from the Kepler satellite to uncover some of the general properties of starspots. Kepler’s primary goal was the detection of exoplanets from periodic variations in starlight due to transits, but its steady monitoring of starlight revealed many other temporal phenomena, including starspots....

Scraped-up knees and elbows are tricky places to securely apply a bandage. More often than not, the adhesive will peel away from the skin with just a few bends of the affected joint. Now MIT engineers have come up with a stickier solution, in the form of a thin, lightweight, rubber-like film. The adhesive film can stick to highly deformable regions of the body, such as the knee and elbow, and maintain its hold even after 100 bending cycles....

The average hypoxic zone over the past five years is 5,380 square miles, which is 2.8 times larger than the 2035 target set by the Hypoxia Task Force. Since records began in 1985, the largest hypoxic zone measured was 8,776 square miles in 2017. Scientists at Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium led the annual dead zone survey during a research cruise from July 25 to August 1 aboard the R/V Pelican....

Human beings have the ability to convert complex phenomena into a one-dimensional sequence of letters and put it down in writing. In this process, keywords serve to convey the content of the text. How letters and words correlate with the subject of a text is something Eduardo Altmann and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems have studied with the help of statistical methods....

“Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease so in the end you can see a lot of neuron loss,” said Wen-Chin “Brian” Huang, co-lead author of the study and a postdoc in the lab of co-senior author Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience and director of the Picower Institute. “At that point, it would be hard to cure the symptoms. It’s really critical to understand what circuits and regions show neuronal dysfunction early in the disease....

Two separate studies have documented the persistence of antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2 in hundreds of patients with COVID-19 at least 3 months after symptom onset. Both studies point to the IgG class of antibodies as the longest-lasting antibodies detectable in the blood and saliva of patients during this timeframe, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG antibodies may serve as promising targets to detect and evaluate immune responses against the virus. That these antibodies could be detected at similar levels in both blood and saliva suggests that saliva could be used as an alternative biofluid for antibody testing....

The cells of humans and all other higher organisms employ a sophisticated system of checkpoints and licensing proteins to guarantee accurate replication of their genomes prior to division. In preparation for cell division, licensing proteins bind to specific locations in the DNA, marking them as replication origins. The DNA synthesis phase of the cell cycle only initiates replication at these designated sites and it only “fires,” or initiates, once, as per the current understanding....

It’s a scene many parents have experienced – just as they’re trying to cook dinner, take a phone call or run an errand, their child has a meltdown. And sometimes, handing a fussy preschooler a digital device seems to offer a quick fix. But this calming strategy could be linked to worse behavior challenges down the road, new findings suggest. Frequent use of devices like smartphones and tablets to calm upset children ages 3-5 was associated with increased emotional dysregulation in kids, particularly in boys, according to a Michigan Medicine study in JAMA Pediatrics....

For months, the agency has been studying an orbital outpost concept in the vicinity of the Moon with U.S. industry and the International Space Station partners. As part of the fiscal year 2019 budget proposal, NASA is planning to build the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway in the 2020s. The platform will consist of at least a power and propulsion element and habitation, logistics, and airlock capabilities. While specific technical and mission capabilities as well as partnership opportunities are under consideration, NASA plans to launch elements of the gateway on the agency’s Space Launch System or commercial rockets for assembly in space....

The findings were based on data from a tectonic plate boundary in the Eastern Caribbean region. The results help us understand what drives the type and rate of volcanic eruptions, as well as the make-up of erupted magma. They could also help us understand why some volcanoes are more active than others, and why volcanic activity changes over time. When two huge tectonic plates collide, one plate can sink, or subduct, beneath the other, plunging into Earth’s mantle to release water and melt....

Recurring slope lineae are seasonal flows on warm slopes, and are especially common in central and eastern Valles Marineris, as seen in this observation by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This image covers a large area full of interesting features, but the enhanced color closeup highlight some of the recurring slope lineae. Here, the recurring slope lineae are active on east-facing slopes, extending from bouldery terrain and terminating on fans. Perhaps the fans themselves built up over time from the seasonal flows....

This close-up view of a target rock called “Last Chance” was acquired by the microscopic imager on the arm of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on March 3, 2004, during the 39th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity’s work on Mars. The area covered in the view is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) across. The embedded spherules evident in this image reminded researchers of berries in a muffin, so they were nicknamed “blueberries....

A recent animation (see above) using 57 radar images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission shows just how quickly the emerging cracks from the glacier grew – leading to this historic calving event. Thanks to the combination of both optical and radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel satellite missions, growing cracks were spotted in the Pine Island Glacier last year, and since then, scientists have been keeping a close eye on how quickly the cracks were growing....

It is well known how small, young stars are created. They accrete matter from a disk of gas and dust in a relatively orderly fashion. Astronomers have already seen many of these disks of dust around young, low-mass stars but never around young, high-mass stars. This raised the question of whether large stars come into existence in the same way as small ones. Large stars are formed in a different way “Our findings now provide convincing evidence to show that the answer is ‘No,’” according to Ciriaco Goddi, affiliated with the ALMA expertise center Allegro at Leiden University and with Radboud University in Nijmegen....

Reprogrammed cells are able to regain pluripotency, the potential to differentiate into many mature cell types. Researchers hope that these cells will eventually be used in regenerative medicine, providing replacement tissue for damaged or diseased organs. Gurdon is based at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, UK, and was the first person to demonstrate that cells could be reprogrammed 50 years ago. At that time, researchers thought that cellular specialization was a one-way process and that it couldn’t be reversed....