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Research Suggests Boosting a Natural Cellular Process Could Reduce Damage An unfortunate truth about the use of mechanical ventilation to save the lives of patients in respiratory distress is that the pressure used to inflate the lungs is likely to cause further lung damage. In a new study, scientists identified a molecule that is produced by immune cells during mechanical ventilation to try to decrease inflammation, but isn’t able to completely prevent ventilator-induced injury to the lungs....

The earth is shining, even if it is not at all visible to the naked eye. The reason for this is geoneutrinos, which are produced in radioactive decay processes in the interior of the Earth. Every second, about one million of these elusive particles penetrate every square centimeter of our planet’s surface. The Borexino detector, located in the world’s largest underground laboratory, the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, is one of the few detectors in the world capable of observing these ghostly particles....

For the first time, the boundary of the heliosphere has been mapped, giving scientists a better understanding of how solar and interstellar winds interact. “Physics models have theorized this boundary for years,” said Dan Reisenfeld, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author on the paper, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal on June 10, 2021. “But this is the first time we’ve actually been able to measure it and make a three-dimensional map of it....

The “lunar hay fever”, as NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt described it during the Apollo 17 mission created symptoms in all 12 people who have stepped on the Moon. From sneezing to nasal congestion, in some cases it took days for the reactions to fade. Inside the spacecraft, the dust smelt like burnt gunpowder. The Moon missions left an unanswered question of lunar exploration – one that could affect humanity’s next steps in the Solar System: can lunar dust jeopardize human health?...

Researchers found the magnitude of the moon’s very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a global ocean must be present. The finding implies the fine spray of water vapor, icy particles and simple organic molecules Cassini has observed coming from fractures near the moon’s south pole is being fed by this vast liquid water reservoir....

The research did discover that vaccination does provide protection, however. The results, which were recently published in Nature Communications, are consistent with those in adults. “I hear parents say, “Oh, my kid had COVID last year,” says Adrienne Randolph, MD, MSc, of Boston Children’s Hospital, who launched Overcoming COVID-19 in 2020. Randolph was the senior author of the current paper with Surender Khurana, Ph.D., of the Food and Drug Administration’s Division of Viral Products, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research....

A planetary nebula represents the final stage in the evolution of a star similar to our sun. The star at the center of IC 418 was a red giant a few thousand years ago, but then ejected its outer layers into space to form the nebula, which has now expanded to a diameter of about 0.1 light-year. The stellar remnant at the center is the hot core of the red giant, from which ultraviolet radiation floods out into the surrounding gas, causing it to fluoresce....

Models used by the IPCC estimate global temperature and precipitation patterns will change throughout the 21st century given current rising greenhouse gas levels. This video depicts a scenario in which carbon dioxide concentrations reach 670 parts per million by 2100, up from around 400 ppm today. Credit: NASA Center for Climate Simulation/NASA Goddard SVS New data visualizations from the NASA Center for Climate Simulation and NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md....

Four new reports examine the contaminants polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in house dust, streams, lakes, soil, and air. Coal-tar-based sealants are emitting polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) into the air at rates that may be greater than annual emissions from vehicles in the United States, according to new reports by the U.S. Geological Survey, published in the scientific journals Chemosphere and Atmospheric Environment. Children living near coal-tar-sealed pavement are exposed to twice as many PAHs from ingestion of contaminated house dust than from food, according to a separate new study by Baylor University and the USGS, published in the journal Environmental Pollution....

Radioactive period following nuclear bomb tests changed rainfall patterns thousands of miles from the detonation sites. Nuclear bomb tests during the Cold War may have changed rainfall patterns thousands of miles from the detonation sites, new research has revealed. Scientists at the University of Reading have researched how the electric charge released by radiation from the test detonations, carried out predominantly by the US and Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, affected rainclouds at the time....

FAST, world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has discovered more than 20 new pulsars so far. This first MSP discovery was made by FAST on February 27 and later confirmed by the Fermi-LAT team in reprocessing of Fermi data on April 18th. The newly discovered pulsar, now named PSR J0318+0253, is confirmed to be isolated through timing of gamma-ray pulsations....

No FDA regulations in place to alert patients when medication is derived from animals. More physicians and pharmacists are advocating for patients to be made aware of animal byproducts contained in common medications, according to new research in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine. Common medications, including widely used blood thinners and hormones, are often derived from animal byproducts and prescribed without consulting the patient about their beliefs. “Patients deserve to know what their medications are made of, yet this information is rarely shared,” said Sara Reed, student doctor at Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine and an author of the paper....

Figuring out the details of the fundamental copy operations that make one virus into thousands more could give scientists a significant leg up in discovering novel drugs that smother SARS-CoV-2 and stop infection in its tracks. In a new study published in the journal Cell, Rockefeller scientists provide a crucial piece of the puzzle: an atomic-level resolution view of SARS-CoV-2’s replication system. “We now have an additional structural template that can be really helpful for drug developers trying to find new compounds that could get into this molecular machine and make it stop,” says Elizabeth Campbell, a research associate professor at Rockefeller....

In our galaxy, nearly half of the stars are solitary like the sun. The other half comprises stars that circle other stars, in pairs and multiples, with orbits so tight that some stellar systems could fit between Earth and the moon. Astronomers at MIT and other institutions have now discovered a stellar binary, or pair of stars, with an extraordinarily short orbit. In fact, they appear to circle each other every 51 minutes....

Tropical forests that are recovering from having trees removed were thought to be carbon absorbers, as the new trees grow quickly. A new study, led by Imperial College London researchers, turns this on its head, showing that the carbon released by soil and rotting wood outpaces the carbon absorbed by new growth. The researchers say the result highlights the need for logging practices that minimize collateral damage to improve the sustainability of the industry....

The Cold Atom Lab has been up and running in the space station’s science module since July 2018 and is operated remotely from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Five groups of scientists on Earth are using the Cold Atom Lab to conduct a variety of experiments to help answer questions about how our world works at the smallest scales. The new hardware includes an instrument called an atom interferometer that will allow scientists to make subtle measurements of gravity and probe fundamental theories of gravity....

Shielding those at highest risk from COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic may not have been as effective at protecting them from infection and death as hoped, according to a new study. The research – led by the University of Glasgow and published in Scientific Reports – found that, between March and May 2020, patients advised to shield in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) experienced higher rates of infection and death than those not advised to shield....

New info on antibody levels in sicker patients and elderly could inform vaccine goals. Based on a study of serum samples collected from 32 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and from 17 asymptomatic subjects who had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, University of Vermont (UVM) immunologist Sean Diehl, Ph.D., and colleagues found that the level of antibodies correlated with disease severity. “As this was early in the pandemic, some expected that sicker patients would have less of these antibodies, but we found the opposite,” says Diehl, who believes that “higher antibody levels in sicker patients is likely reflective of the presumed higher viral load in sicker patients....

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has seen evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock. Last week, the rover’s science team announced that analysis of powder from a drilled mudstone rock on Mars indicates past environmental conditions that were favorable for microbial life. Additional findings presented today (March 18) at a news briefing at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, suggest those conditions extended beyond the site of the drilling....

Scientists may be closer to solving the mystery of how Mars changed from a world with surface water billions of years ago to the arid Red Planet of today. A new analysis of the largest known deposit of carbonate minerals on Mars suggests that the original Martian atmosphere may have already lost most of its carbon dioxide by the era of valley network formation. “The biggest carbonate deposit on Mars has, at most, twice as much carbon in it as the current Mars atmosphere,” said Bethany Ehlmann of the California Institute of Technology and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena....