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Several FDA-approved drugs — including for type 2 diabetes, hepatitis C and HIV — significantly reduce the ability of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 to replicate in human cells, according to new research led by scientists at Penn State. Specifically, the team found that these drugs inhibit certain viral enzymes, called proteases, that are essential for SARS-CoV-2 replication in infected human cells. “The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines target the spike protein, but this protein is under strong selection pressure and, as we have seen with Omicron, can undergo significant mutations,” said Joyce Jose, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, Penn State....

Dr. Fauci and his co-authors, Hilary D. Marston, M.D., M.P.H., of NIAID, and Catharine I. Paules, M.D., of Penn State University College of Medicine, note that human CoVs historically have been regarded as relatively benign causes of the common cold. In 2002, however, a novel, highly pathogenic CoV emerged in China that caused 8,098 recorded cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), including 774 deaths, and cost the global economy billions of dollars....

The new dinosaurs are based on two fossils collected by a joint research team led by XU Xing from the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Xiynykus was discovered in 2005 in Zhunggar Basin, northwestern China, and Bannykus was discovered a few years later in 2009 in western Inner Mongolia, north-central China. The new Alvarezsaurian dinosaurs are among the most bizarre groups of theropods, with extremely short, robust forelimbs with a single functional claw and gracile, bird-like skulls and hindlimbs....

Using existing data on the RNA found in different types of cells, the researchers were able to search for cells that express the two proteins that help the SARS-CoV-19 virus enter human cells. They found subsets of cells in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestine that express RNA for both of these proteins much more than other cells. The researchers hope that their findings will help guide scientists who are working on developing new drug treatments or testing existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating COVID-19....

A new drug to prevent the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease could enter clinical trials in a few years’ time according to scientists. Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia, which currently affects 820,000 people in the UK, with numbers expected to more than double by 2050. One in three people over 65 will die with dementia. The disease begins when a protein called amyloid-β (Aβ) starts to clump together in senile plaques in the brain, damaging nerve cells and leading to memory loss and confusion....

In a study published in Advanced Materials Technologies, the team, led by Caterina Lamuta, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Iowa, as well as Sameh Tawfick and Nancy Sottos, professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that using twisted and coiled polymer fibers to create artificial muscles could produce lightweight smart skins that are capable of fine motion and shape modulation. The skin of the cephalopod is a 3D display, where the papillae muscles control the protrusion of each voxel by several millimeters out of the skin plane, create hierarchical textures, and collectively change the overall skin pattern in a fraction of a second....

Since the start of the pandemic, scientists have learned that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is quite cunning. When the virus enters the body, it’s capable of turning off an entire branch of the immune system, allowing it to spread for days before the immune system can sound the alarm on the intruder. However, researchers still don’t know the full scope of tissues and cell types that are most vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2....

The findings were published in the journal Nature Medicine. Based on their analyses, the researchers are calling for prioritizing clinical trials of drugs targeting the proteins IFNAR2 and ACE2. The goal is to identify existing drugs, either FDA-approved or in clinical development for other conditions, that can be repurposed for the early management of COVID-19. Doing so, they say, will help keep people with the virus from being hospitalized. IFNAR2 is the target for approved drugs often used by patients with relapsing forms of the central nervous system disorder multiple sclerosis....

A research review led by Oxford Brookes University has found a large proportion of COVID-19 survivors will be affected by neuropsychiatric and cognitive complications. Psychologists at Oxford Brookes University and a psychiatrist from Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, evaluated published research papers in order to understand more about the possible effects of the SARS-COV-2 infection on the brain, and the extent people can expect to experience short and long-term mental health issues....

Marine microplastics aren’t floating solo, either — they quickly pick up a thin coating of bacteria and other microbes, a biofilm known as “The Plastisphere.” These biofilms can influence the microplastics’ fate — causing them to sink or float, or breaking them down into even tinier bits, for example. They can even make the plastic smell or taste like food to some marine organisms. But very little is known about what kinds of microbes are in the Plastisphere, and how they interact with one another and the plastic....

In newly published research, a team led by Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, assistant professor in the School of Materials Sciences and Engineering at Georgia Tech, shows that halide perovskite solar cells are less stable than previously thought. Their work reveals the thermal instability that happens within the cells’ interface layers, but also offers a path forward toward reliability and efficiency for halide perovskite solar technology. Their research, published as the cover story for the journal Advanced Materials in December 2022, has immediate implications for both academics and industry professionals working with perovskites in photovoltaics, a field concerned with electric currents generated by sunlight....

During the current coronavirus pandemic, one of the riskiest parts of a health care worker’s job is assessing people who have symptoms of COVID-19. Researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital hope to reduce that risk by using robots to remotely measure patients’ vital signs. The robots, which are controlled by a handheld device, can also carry a tablet that allows doctors to ask patients about their symptoms without being in the same room....

Magnetically controlled device could deliver clot-reducing therapies in response to stroke or other brain blockages. MIT engineers have developed a magnetically steerable, thread-like robot that can actively glide through narrow, winding pathways, such as the labyrinthine vasculature of the brain. In the future, this robotic thread may be paired with existing endovascular technologies, enabling doctors to remotely guide the robot through a patient’s brain vessels to quickly treat blockages and lesions, such as those that occur in aneurysms and strokes....

Lakshman explained hydrogenation as the addition of hydrogen atoms. For instance, a very common application is for the production of fats from vegetable oils. In industry, the production of paraffin is an example. “Hydrogenation is an old and well-established method that relies on the use of a finely divided metal such as palladium, often supported on charcoal,” said Lakshman, a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry and a former vice chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry....

In July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew through Pluto’s system, providing the first-ever close-up images of this distant dwarf planet and its moons. The images showed Pluto’s unexpected topography, including a white-colored ellipsoidal basin named Sputnik Planitia, located near the equator and roughly the size of Texas. Because of its location and topography, scientists believe a subsurface ocean exists beneath the ice shell which is thinned at Sputnik Planitia....

Scientists have re-investigated a sixty-year-old idea by the American physicist P.W. Anderson and provided new insights into the quantum world. Quantum physics explains how the world’s building blocks such as atoms or electrons are put together. Everything we see around us is made up of atoms and electrons which are so small one billion atoms placed side by side could fit within a centimeter. Because of the way atoms and electrons behave, scientists describe this behavior as waves....

Over the last three years, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s John DeLong has been busy discovering a potential tide-turning secret: Those virus particles are a source not just of infection, but nutrition. In a turnabout worthy of Pac-Man, DeLong and his colleagues have found that a species of Halteria —microscopic ciliates that populate freshwater worldwide — can eat huge numbers of infectious chloroviruses that share their aquatic habitat. For the first time, the team’s lab experiments have also shown that a virus-only diet, which the team calls “virovory,” is enough to fuel the physiological growth and even population growth of an organism....

Researchers categorized teenage alcohol abuse based on replies concerning the frequency of intoxication, frequency of alcohol use, and frequency of alcohol issues at ages 16, 17, and 18.8. Their findings were recently published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. They assessed life satisfaction, physical symptoms, and self-rated health at age 34 as the early midlife outcomes. Even after adjusting for genetic and environmental characteristics that twin siblings share, the results using data from questionnaires of 2,733 pairs of twins born in Finland in the late 1970s remained consistent....

In Germany alone, at least 30,000 people suffer from Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy, which belongs to the class of rare diseases. Due to a genetic defect that causes a duplication of the PMP22 gene, patients develop a slowly progressive impairment of their peripheral nerves. Early symptoms, like walking difficulties or deformed feet, can already occur during childhood. Later, muscle weakness in the legs and arms occurs, but also numbness, prickling, or pain....

“Though we know that some type of particle is responsible for this microwave light, its precise source has been a puzzle since it was first detected nearly 20 years ago,” said Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University in Wales and lead author on a paper announcing this result in Nature Astronomy. Until now, the most likely culprit for this microwave emission was thought to be a class of organic molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) – carbon-based molecules found throughout interstellar space and recognized by the distinct, yet faint infrared (IR) light they emit....