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The study, co-authored by Yale assistant professor of medicine Brinda Emu, M.D., was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. For some individuals with HIV, existing drug therapies fail to suppress the virus, leading to drug resistance and worsening disease. While several HIV drugs target the virus effectively, there has not been a new class of HIV drugs approved to combat the disease in a decade. In March 2018, the FDA approved ibalizumab, a drug that targets the primary receptor for HIV entry into immune cells known as CD4 T cells....

“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado. The haze particles themselves are likely gray or red, but the way they scatter blue light has gotten the attention of the New Horizons science team. “That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles,” said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI....

As the power available to NASA’s InSight Mars lander diminishes by the day, the spacecraft’s team has revised the mission’s timeline in order to maximize the science they can conduct. The lander was projected to automatically shut down the seismometer – InSight’s last operational science instrument – by the end of June in order to conserve energy, surviving on what power its dust-laden solar panels can generate until around December....

The new data indicate that LSD triggers a reduction of functional connections between regions of the brain governing cognitive processes and increases connectivity in brain networks associated with sensory functions. It does so by stimulating a particular receptor for the neurotransmitter serotonin (serotonin-2A or 5HT2A receptor). The 5HT2A receptor has been implicated in the regulation of mood and cognition. Using gene expression maps and data-driven tools to measure brain-wide communication, the team was able to infer the patterns of brain signals in subjects who had taken LSD and identify the 5HT2A receptor as a crucial mechanism leading to changes in perception and thought....

“Microbes have been here since life began, almost 4 billion years. They created the system that we live in, and they sustain it,” said Dan Buckley, professor of microbial ecology in the Section of Soil and Crop Sciences in the School of Integrative Plant Science. “We may not see them, but they’re running the show.” Buckley and five other Cornell researchers, along with colleagues from Lycoming College, described the new bacterium in a paper, “Paraburkholderia madseniana sp....

A new species of large prehistoric croc that roamed south-east Queensland’s waterways millions of years ago has been documented by University of Queensland researchers. PhD candidate Jorgo Ristevski, from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, led the team that named the species Gunggamarandu maunala after analyzing a partial skull unearthed in the Darling Downs in the nineteenth century. “This is one of the largest crocs to have ever inhabited Australia,” Mr....

Currently, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are injected deep into the muscles, which is called intramuscular injection. An alternative type of shot is called subcutaneous injection, where a short needle can inject medication (in this case a COVID vaccine) in the tissue between the skin and the muscle. In experiments done on mice, researchers found that subcutaneous injection of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines may reduce the adverse post-vaccination effects, such as fatigue, while still providing similar immune-system responses....

During training, however, a neural net continually adjusts its internal settings in ways that even its creators can’t interpret. Much recent work in computer science has focused on clever techniques for determining just how neural nets do what they do. In several recent papers, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Qatar Computing Research Institute have used a recently developed interpretive technique, which had been applied in other areas, to analyze neural networks trained to do machine translation and speech recognition....

And as our space telescopes and other instruments grow ever more sensitive, we’re beginning to zero in. The discoveries so far inspire excitement and curiosity among scientists and the public. We’ve found rocky planets in Earth’s size range, at the right distance from their parent stars to harbor liquid water. While these characteristics don’t guarantee a habitable world – we can’t quite tell yet if these planets really do possess atmospheres or oceans – they can help point us in the right direction....

Most people have 46 chromosomes in each cell, divided into 23 pairs: people with Down syndrome (DS) have an extra copy of chromosome 21, which carries over 200 genes. In this study, published today (January 28, 2020) in Cell Reports, researchers at University College London (UCL), supported by Cardiff University and the Francis Crick Institute, used mouse models to try and find out how having these extra genes causes learning disability....

UNC-Chapel Hill study raises concern that COVID-19 vaccine will be less effective for those with obesity. A review of COVID-19 studies reveals a troubling connection between two health crises: coronavirus and obesity. From COVID-19 risk to recovery, the odds are stacked against those with obesity, and a new study led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill raises concerns about the impact of obesity on the effectiveness of a future COVID-19 vaccine....

The Hustle and Bustle of Our Solar System This diagram illustrates the differences between orbits of a typical near-Earth asteroid (blue) and a potentially hazardous asteroid, or PHA (orange). PHAs are a subset of the near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and have the closest orbits to Earth’s orbit, coming within 5 million miles (about 8 million kilometers). They also are large enough to survive passage through Earth’s atmosphere and cause damage on a regional, or greater, scale....

A world-first – or solar system-first – archaeological project has this week begun on the International Space Station. Led by archaeologists Associate Professor Alice Gorman from Flinders University and Associate Professor Justin Walsh of Chapman University in California, the International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP) is the first archaeological study of a space habitat. “We’re the first to try to understand how humans relate to the items they live with in space,” says Associate Professor Walsh....

China’s largest freshwater lake drained by prolonged heat and drought. Between the winter and summer seasons, Poyang Lake, in China’s Jiangxi Province, routinely fluctuates in size. In winter, water levels on the lake are usually low. Then, summer rains cause the country’s largest freshwater lake to swell as water flows in from the Yangtze River. However, the lake has not swelled in the summer of 2022. In fact, a prolonged heat wave and drought across much of the Yangtze River Basin has dried the lake out early and pushed water levels to lows not seen in decades....

Gravity is the unseen force that dominates our entire lives. It’s what makes walking uphill so difficult and what makes parts of our body eventually point downhill. It is unyielding, everywhere, and a force that we battle with every time we make a move. But exactly how do people account for this invisible influence while moving through the world? A new study published today (January 24, 2020) in Frontiers in Neuroscience used virtual reality to determine how people plan their movements by “seeing” gravity using visual cues in the landscape around them, rather than “feeling it” through changes in weight and balance....

Two new studies published in Blood suggest that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine may have reduced efficacy in individuals with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma, two types of blood cancer. According to researchers, these studies could help inform the ideal time for vaccination of these populations. Study suggests two-dose COVID-19 vaccine is less effective for people with CLL as compared to healthy controls. The first study reports that people with CLL had markedly lower immune response rates to the two-dose mRNA COVID-19 vaccine than healthy individuals of the same age....

Large-scale quantum computers are still years away, but it is well known that they will need error correction. All of the components in a quantum computer are connected in a fragile, entangled state that allows a quantum computer to solve problems that would be impossible on a classical computer. Because of this entanglement, an error in just one bit of quantum information, called a qubit — or even the act of measuring a qubit — can collapse the entire enterprise....

Saad Bhamla was in his backyard when he noticed something he had never seen before: an insect urinating. Although nearly impossible to see, the insect formed an almost perfectly round droplet on its tail and then launched it away so quickly that it seemed to disappear. The tiny insect relieved itself repeatedly for hours. It’s generally taken for granted that what goes in must come out, so when it comes to fluid dynamics in animals, the research is largely focused on feeding rather than excretion....

The swift development of vaccines has provided a vital tool to combat the spread of the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus, but challenges to reaching herd immunity posed by the rise of new mutations and the inability of immunosuppressed people to develop an effective immune response following vaccination point to a need for additional solutions to maximize protection. A new USC study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry reveals how therapies targeting a molecular chaperone called GRP78 might offer additional protection against COVID-19 and other coronaviruses that emerge in the future....

The technology in all three cases – an unassuming duct tape-and-cardboard construction known as a Corsi-Rosenthal box – is playing an important part in the fight against COVID-19. The story of how it came to be also reveals a lot about communities as sources of innovation and resilience in the face of disasters. A simple technology with a big effect As it became clear that COVID-19 was spread through airborne transmission, people started wearing masks and building managers rushed to upgrade their ventilation systems....