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The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine has been theorized to provide protection against COVID-19. In a new study published today (November 20, 2020) in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers provide further proof of this by showing that mumps IgG titers, or levels of IgG antibody, are inversely correlated with severity in recovered COVID-19 patients previously vaccinated with the MMR II vaccine produced by Merck. MMR II contains the Edmonston strain of measles, the Jeryl Lynn (B-level) strain of mumps, and the Wistar RA 27/3 strain of rubella....

The study, published in the journal Genetics in Medicine, is led by a team of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB), the Rare Diseases Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBERER) and the Research Institute Sant Joan de Déu (IRSJD), in collaboration with experts from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). In this research, the experts identified forty-five patients — who were not diagnosed before — with whom they could gain knowledge on this new syndrome, so far defined with an only previous article based on the study of seven people....

19.8 million out of a potential 31.4 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented worldwide in the first year of the vaccination program according to estimates based on excess deaths from 185 countries and territories. The researchers estimate that a further 599,300 lives could have been saved if the World Health Organisation’s target of vaccinating 40% of the population in each country with two or more doses by the end of 2021 had been met....

Study questions popular COVID test, proposes new marker of disease severity. Researchers from Skoltech, U.S. companies VirIntel and Argentys Informatics, and two Russian Academy of Sciences institutes have studied the immune response to COVID-19 in patients with different levels of disease severity. The team found that half of the patients without symptoms did not actually produce significant amounts of IgG antibodies of a kind targeted by many popular test kits. That said, nearly all patients produced another kind of antibodies, whose count was sometimes even higher in asymptomatic cases, leading the researchers to suggest the ratio between the two counts as an indicator of disease severity....

To better understand the mechanism and pathways of SARS-CoV-2 infection and susceptibility to specific cell and tissue types as well as organ systems, the research team analyzed 85 human tissues for the presence of ACE2 receptors. ACE2 is a protein that is found on the surface of many immune and nonimmune cell types. An enzyme, it is part of the system that regulates blood pressure and fluid and electrolyte balance....

As cannabis becomes legal in an increasing number of U.S. states, this study is among the largest and most comprehensive to date to examine the potential long-term cardiovascular implications of using the drug. CAD is the most common form of heart disease and occurs when the arteries that supply blood to the heart become narrowed due to a buildup of cholesterol. CAD commonly causes chest pain, shortness of breath and fatigue, and can lead to a heart attack....

On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun. Such an event is expected to be dark, but the Fermi Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst just a fraction of a second after LIGO’s signal. “It’s the cosmic equivalent of a pregnant woman carrying twins inside her belly,” says Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)....

Researchers from Tulane University and University of Maryland published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the dynamic interplay between free and paid versions of an app over its lifetime and suggests a possible remedy for the failure of apps. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Managing the Versioning Decision over an App’s Lifetime” and is authored by Seoungwoo Lee, Jie Zhang, and Michel Wedel....

Certain microorganisms, such as fungi, are a rich source of secondary metabolites, which have great potential in medicinal applications. Of particular interest among these secondary metabolites are the dithiodiketopiperazines (DTPs), as they possess a variety of interesting biological activities that could be used in the development of new drugs for malaria or cancer. However, despite extensive efforts over the past decade, relatively few total syntheses of these molecules have been completed, and obtaining the necessary quantities for further investigation remains a challenging target....

Today, the “internet of things” concept is fairly well-known: Billions of interconnected sensors around the world — embedded in everyday objects, equipment, and vehicles, or worn by humans or animals — collect and share data for a range of applications. An emerging concept, the “localization of things,” enables those devices to sense and communicate their position. This capability could be helpful in supply chain monitoring, autonomous navigation, highly connected smart cities, and even forming a real-time “living map” of the world....

“Today about one million people suffer heart attacks every year, and there is currently no cure for the resulting cardiac tissue scarring,” said Kirill V. Larin of University of Houston, Texas who co-led the research with James F. Martin from the Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Heart Institute. “We are working to develop ways to regenerate heart tissue and our research works to measure the mechanical properties to determine if the heart is healing in response to therapies....

MIT researchers have now devised a way to identify T cells that share a particular target, as part of a process called high-throughput single-cell RNA sequencing. This kind of profiling can reveal the unique functions of those T cells by determining which genes they turn on at a given time. In a new study, the researchers used this technique to identify T cells that produce the inflammation seen in patients with peanut allergies....

A new theory of quantum mechanics presumes not only that parallel worlds exist, but also that their mutual interaction is what gives rise to all quantum effects observed in nature. The theory, first published by Professor Bill Poirier four years ago, has recently attracted attention from the foundational physics community, leading to an invited Commentary in a top-ranking physics journal, Physical Review X. According to Poirier’s theory, quantum reality is not wave-like at all, but is comprised of multiple, classical-like worlds....

This exoplanet, 390 light years away towards the constellation Pisces, has days when its surface temperatures exceed 2,400 Celsius, sufficiently hot to evaporate metals. Its nights, with strong winds, cool down the iron vapor so that it condenses into drops of iron. This is the first result with the high resolution spectrograph ESPRESSO, an instrument co-directed by the IAC and installed on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of ESO, in Chile....

According to archaeologists, the world’s oldest peace treaty disproves the widespread notion that in antiquity, peace was not brought about by negotiations, but always by humiliating those who had lost. “More than 3,200 years ago, Egyptians and Hittites ensured each other mutual support in the treaty; neither of them triumphed. This must have been preceded by much negotiating, as is evidenced by extensive correspondence between the rulers,” say Director Prof....

The findings, published today in the journal Biology Letters, show that the rare left-spiraling shell of some garden snails is usually a development accident, rather than an inherited condition. In October 2016, evolutionary geneticist Dr. Angus Davison in the University of Nottingham’s School of Life Sciences appealed to the public for their help in match-making for Jeremy, a garden snail with a rare left-coiling shell. Dr. Davison hoped to use the offspring from Jeremy to study the genetics of this condition, because his previous work on snails had given insight into understanding body asymmetry in other animals, including humans....

The activity of common pipistrelle bats was monitored at 23 British wind farms and similar “control” locations close by without turbines. Activity was around a third higher at turbines than at control locations, and two thirds of occasions with high activity were recorded at turbines rather than the controls. The reasons for this are not clear. Possibilities include attraction to the turbines themselves, or the presence of more of the bats’ insect prey around turbines....

In a study published today in Nature Astronomy, researchers from the United States and Japan unveil the possible origins of our cosmic neighborhood’s “Great Divide.” This well-known schism may have separated the solar system just after the sun first formed. The phenomenon is a bit like how the Rocky Mountains divide North America into east and west. On the one side are “terrestrial” planets like Earth and Mars. They are made up of fundamentally different types of materials than the more distant “Jovians,” such as Jupiter and Saturn....

A project spanning countries, years, and institutions has attempted to reconstruct what the southern end of this world looked like during this period, known as the Triassic (252 to 199 million years ago). Led by paleontologists and geologists at the University of Washington, the team has uncovered new fossils in Zambia and Tanzania, examined previously collected fossils, and analyzed specimens in museums around the world in an attempt to understand life in the Triassic across different geographic areas....

In a lab experiment, scientists from Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences discovered that soybean thrips, which are tiny insects that are between 0.03 to 0.20 inches long, had a tendency to live longer and reproduce more effectively than uninfected thrips. Senior scientist of entomology at Ayub Agricultural Research Institute in Multan, Pakistan, Asifa Hameed, who conducted the research while earning her doctorate in entomology at Penn State University, said the results provide important insight into how the virus spreads in plants and impacts its insect hosts....