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According to the researchers, obtaining sufficient amounts of restorative sleep during youth may assist in preventing the onset of the condition. MS is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, including smoking, teenage weight (BMI), Epstein-Barr virus infection, sun exposure, and vitamin D, note the researchers. Shift work has also been linked to a heightened risk of the condition, particularly at a young age, but whether sleep patterns—duration, body clock disruption, and sleep quality—might affect this risk hasn’t been fully assessed, they add....

Using data from India’s SARAS3 radio telescope, the team led by the University of Cambridge was able to look at the very early Universe, just 200 million years after the Big Bang, and place limits on the mass and energy output of the first stars and galaxies. Counterintuitively, the researchers were able to place these limits on the earliest galaxies by not finding the signal they had been looking for, known as the 21-centimeter hydrogen line....

Now, a recent study published in Nature Astronomy, led by University of Toronto undergraduate student Peter Ma and researchers from the SETI Institute, Breakthrough Listen, and other scientific institutions, utilized deep learning to analyze a previously studied dataset of nearby stars. This new approach uncovered eight previously undiscovered signals of interest. “In total, we had searched through 150 TB of data of 820 nearby stars, on a dataset that had previously been searched through in 2017 by classical techniques but labeled as devoid of interesting signals,” said Peter Ma, lead author....

Besides being a major threat to biodiversity, the wildlife trade can be a cause of global public health issues and hundreds of billions of dollars of economic damage around the world from disease outbreaks, as might be the case for COVID-19. Despite its major ecological and socio-economic importance, no comprehensive analysis has been made of the global patterns of the wildlife trade. “The illegal wildlife trade often has connections with organized crime....

A TU/e research group has developed a new near-infrared sensor that is easy to make, comparable in size to sensors in smartphones, and ready for immediate use in industrial process monitoring and agriculture. This breakthrough has just been published in Nature Communications. The human eye is a marvelous sensor. Using three different types of photoreceptor cone cells that convert visible light into signals for different colors, the eye gives essential information about the world around us....

The study, published today (February 6, 2020) in Cell, employed two complementary techniques to map the structure of tau and decipher the effects of additional molecules, called post-translational modifications (PTMs), on its surface. These new structural insights could accelerate the fight against neurodegenerative diseases, by helping researchers identify new biomarkers that detect these disorders before symptoms arise and design new drugs that target specific PTMs, preventing the onset of disease before it wreaks havoc on the brain....

This seasonal variation in behavior is likely caused by environmental conditions: sharks could be exploring different areas of the ocean to deal with changes in food abundance. Basking sharks also perform “yo-yo” dives towards late winter and early spring. “Yo-yo” dives are rapid and repeated movements between deep and surface waters. Whilst performing these dives, several of the studied sharks reached depths of over 1,000 m (3,000 feet) , and two were tracked as far as 1,500 m (5,000 feet) below the surface....

Plastics are one of the world’s largest polluters, taking hundreds of years to degrade in nature. A research team, led by YSE professor Yuan Yao and Liangbing Hu from the University of Maryland, has created a high-quality bioplastic from wood byproducts that they hope can solve one of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. Efforts to shift from petrochemical plastics to renewable and biodegradable plastics have proven tricky — the production process can require toxic chemicals and is expensive, and the mechanical strength and water stability is often insufficient....

Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) have found many uses in electronics and new touchscreen devices. Carbon nanotubes are sheets of one atom-thick layer of graphene rolled up seamlessly into different sizes and shapes. To be able to use them in commercial products like transparent transistors for phone screens, researchers need to be able to easily test nanotubes for their materials properties, and the new method helps with this. Professor Esko I....

A magnon travels through a magnetic material by disturbing its magnetic order, similar to how a sound wave travels through the air. That order can be imagined as a collection of spinning tops sharing a particular rotation axis. The effect of the wave is to slightly tip the axes around which the tops are spinning. A topological magnon phase is associated with channels that can carry a current of magnons along the edges of the sample....

Molecules belonging to an almost unknown bioluminescent system found in larvae of the fungus gnat Orfelia fultoni (subfamily Keroplatinae) have been isolated for the first time by researchers at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The small fly is one of the few terrestrial organisms that produce blue light. It inhabits riverbanks in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. A key part of its bioluminescent system is a molecule also present in two recently discovered Brazilian flies....

Misinformation in public debates about scientific issues such as vaccinations and climate change can be found all over the internet, especially on social media. In a new study, Sara K. Yeo, associate professor of communication at the University of Utah, examines why it’s so difficult to detect science misinformation and suggests that using humor may help combat the issue. In the article, published in Proceedings of National Academics of Sciences, Yeo and her colleague Meaghan McKasy, assistant professor of communication at Utah Valley University, argue that limited science and media literacy combined with structural constraints such as fewer science journalists and a decreasing number of local newspapers, curtail the ability to discern fact from falsehood....

How often do vaccine trials hit paydirt? Study: Vaccines find more success in development than any other kind of drug, but have been relatively neglected in recent decades. Vaccines are more likely to get through clinical trials than any other type of drug — but have been given relatively little pharmaceutical industry support during the last two decades, according to a new study by MIT scholars. Over a two-decade span from January 2000 to January 2020, private-sector vaccine-development efforts succeeded in bringing a drug to market 39....

According to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, vaccinated people with mild breakthrough COVID-19 infections can experience debilitating, lingering symptoms affecting the heart, brain, lungs, and other parts of the body. A new study of more than 13 million veterans, however, discovered that immunization against the virus that causes COVID-19 lowered the chance of mortality by 34% and the likelihood of developing long COVID-19 by 15% when compared to unvaccinated individuals infected with the virus....

Masks do a decent job at keeping the virus from spreading into the environment, but if an infected person is inside a building, inevitably some virus will escape into the air. I am a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Much of my work has focused on how to control the transmission of airborne infectious diseases indoors, and I’ve been asked by my own university, my kids’ schools and even the Alaska State Legislature for advice on how to make indoor spaces safe during this pandemic....

Published recently in Cell Reports, the research marks a major step toward successfully developing a universal vaccine for not only COVID-19, but also potentially for influenza, HIV and other deadly global viruses. “We’ve developed a predictive tool that can tell you ahead of time which antibodies are going to be effective against circulating strains of virus,” said lead author Timothy Whitehead, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering. “But the implications for this technology are more profound: If you can predict what the variants will be in a given season, you could get vaccinated to match the sequence that will occur and short-circuit this seasonal variation....

Autoimmune diseases (AD) such as rheumatoid arthritis, polymyalgia rheumatica, autoimmune thyroid disease and psoriasis, are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality as people age. Few effective treatments are available for AD, but some preclinical studies have hinted that supplements, including vitamin D and omega-3 (or n-3) fatty acids, may have beneficial effects. In a new study published in BMJ, investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital evaluated whether taking vitamin D and/or omega fatty acid supplements could affect rates of AD....

Rice University researchers have created an efficient, low-cost device that splits water to produce hydrogen fuel. The platform developed by the Brown School of Engineering lab of Rice materials scientist Jun Lou integrates catalytic electrodes and perovskite solar cells that, when triggered by sunlight, produce electricity. The current flows to the catalysts that turn water into hydrogen and oxygen, with a sunlight-to-hydrogen efficiency as high as 6.7%. This sort of catalysis isn’t new, but the lab packaged a perovskite layer and the electrodes into a single module that, when dropped into water and placed in sunlight, produces hydrogen with no further input....

When was the last time an asteroid hit Earth? Today! But it was almost definitely very small. Small asteroids and other tiny dust and particles bombard our planet daily. It’s the big ones we need to worry about. Scientists like Marina Brozovic are keeping their eyes to the sky. Well, the answer depends on whether you’re asking about small or large impacts. Because Earth gets hit all the time. But luckily for us, the vast majority of these impactors are small and they just burn in the atmosphere....

In recent weeks, we shared a technique for theoretically modeling the early universe. Today, we will discuss an observational program to help us answer some of those questions. Massimo Stiavelli, the Webb Mission Office head at the Space Telescope Science Institute, tells us about his planned investigations of the first stars and galaxies: Written by: “The earliest stars formed out of material with this primordial composition. Finding these stars, commonly dubbed as the ‘First Stars’ or ‘Population III stars,’ is an important verification of our cosmological model, and it is within reach of the James Webb Space Telescope....