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Scientists from Yale and UCL have identified a new mechanism that regulates VEGFR2 transport in vascular cells, opening new therapeutic opportunities for developing drugs to stimulate or inhibit blood vessel formation. Scientific collaborators from Yale School of Medicine and University College London (UCL) have uncovered the molecular pathway by which new arteries may form after heart attacks, strokes, and other acute illnesses — bypassing arteries that are blocked. Their study appears in the April 29 issue of Developmental Cell....

They are reminiscent of the “tractor beam” in Star Trek: special light beams can be used to manipulate molecules or small biological particles. Even viruses or cells can be captured or moved. However, these optical tweezers only work with objects in empty space or in transparent liquids. Any disturbing environment would deflect the light waves and destroy the effect. This is a problem, in particular with biological samples because they are usually embedded in a very complex environment....

Even though the first COVID-19 shots authorized in the U.S. apply cutting-edge mRNA genetic technology, the tried-and-true strategy of using proteins from the pathogen can produce vaccines that are less expensive to make and easier to store. So far, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized only one protein-based vaccine, made by Novavax, against SARS-CoV-2. However, many currently available inoculations against other diseases depend on proteins or pieces of them, and these shots contain adjuvants to boost their effectiveness....

In research described March 14 in Nature, scientists at Rockefeller University and their colleagues have delineated the architecture of the nuclear pore complex in yeast cells. The biological blueprint they uncovered shares principles sometimes seen on a much larger scale in concrete, steel, and wire. “It reminds us of a suspension bridge, in which a combination of sturdy and flexible parts produce a stress-resilient structure,” says Michael P. Rout, who led the work together with Brian T....

In 1848, in the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, Edmond Becquerel managed to produce a color photograph of the solar spectrum. These photographs, which he called “photochromatic images,” are considered to be the world’s first color photographs. Few of these have survived1 because they are light-sensitive and because very few were produced in the first place. It took the introduction of other processes2 for color photography to become popular in society....

Currently, recreational marijuana use is legal in 21 states as well as the District of Columbia and Guam. Medicinal use is legal in 37 states and the District of Columbia. “When talking through health histories, more patients tell me they use marijuana regularly because it is now legal,” says ADA spokesperson Dr. Tricia Quartey, a dentist in New York. “Unfortunately, sometimes having marijuana in your system results in needing an additional visit....

The research was recently published in the journal Nature Food. The researchers discovered that pelagic fish, such as herring, sardines, and anchovies, which live in the upper layers of open bodies of water, were the most affordable and nutritious fish in 72% of the countries studied. They also found targeting small pelagic fish could help close nutrient gaps in sub-Saharan Africa, where nutrient deficiencies are rising and children under 5 years consume just 38% of recommended seafood intake....

Now, a new University of Delaware study recently published in Nature Communications shows for the first time that the old carbon found on the seafloor can be directly linked to submicron graphite particles emanating from hydrothermal vents. Identifying the sources, transport pathways and the fate of this seafloor carbon is key to understanding the dynamics of the marine carbon cycle. The ocean acts as a reservoir for substantial amounts of both organic carbon and carbon dioxide, which can lead to ocean acidification or be converted to form organic carbon via photosynthesis....

A type of neutron star — the remnant of a supernova explosion — magnetars are so highly magnetized that even modest disturbances in the magnetic field can cause bursts of X-rays that last sporadically for weeks or months. These exotic, compact stars are also thought to be the source of some types of short gamma ray bursts (GRBs): bright flashes of highly energetic radiation that have puzzled astronomers since they were first detected in the 1970s....

Drones with cameras might be a nuisance to privacy in the suburbs, but in Southern Africa they are helping a UNSW Sydney research team to save a threatened species: the humble hippo. Wild numbers of the vulnerable Hippopotamus amphibius are declining because of habitat loss and hunting for meat and ivory, so monitoring their population is crucial for conservation management. “Even though hippos are a charismatic megafauna, they are surprisingly understudied, because of how difficult it is to work with nocturnal, amphibious, and aggressive animals,” said lead author Victoria Inman, a Ph....

Lasers are an unseen backbone of modern society. They’re integral to technologies ranging from high-speed Internet services to Blu-ray players. The physics powering lasers, however, has remained relatively unchanged through 50 years of use. Now, an international research team led by Stanford’s Yoshihisa Yamamoto, a professor of electrical engineering and of applied physics, has demonstrated a revolutionary electrically driven polariton laser that could significantly improve the efficiency of lasers. The system makes use of the unique physical properties of bosons, subatomic particles that scientists have attempted to incorporate into lasers for decades....

In the current issue of the journal Cell Reports, Ke Xu and his colleagues at UC Berkeley use the technique to provide a sharp view of the geodesic mesh that supports the outer membrane of a red blood cell, revealing why such cells are sturdy yet flexible enough to squeeze through narrow capillaries as they carry oxygen to our tissues. The discovery could eventually help uncover how the malaria parasite hijacks this mesh, called the sub-membrane cytoskeleton, when it invades and eventually destroys red blood cells....

Results confirm that protection wanes with time and suggest a third (booster) dose might be warranted A study published by The BMJ finds a gradual increase in the risk of COVID-19 infection from 90 days after receiving a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The study was carried out by the Research Institute of Leumit Health Services in Israel. Israel was one of the first countries to roll out a large scale COVID-19 vaccination campaign in December 2020, but which has seen a resurgence of infections since June 2021....

Researchers at Rice University in Houston have found a direct correlation between out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and levels of air pollution and ozone. Their work has prompted more CPR training in at-risk communities. Rice statisticians Katherine Ensor and Loren Raun announced their findings today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Boston. Their research, based on a massive data set unique to Houston, was published this month in the American Heart Association journal Circulation....

Contrary to popular belief, a new study from researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) suggests that the relationship between work demands and sleep quality is more complex. It was previously thought that those with the most demanding jobs would have the most difficulty sleeping, but the study found that moderate job demands and a sense of control over working conditions are important factors in predicting optimal sleep health....

If more of the world’s climate becomes like that in tropical zones, it could potentially affect crops, insects, malaria transmission, and even confuse migration patterns of birds and mammals worldwide. George Wang, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, is part of a research tandem that has found that the daily and nightly differences in temperatures worldwide are fast approaching yearly differences between summer and winter temperatures....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Science¹. The finding discounts the idea that long-term variations in the Earth’s orbit influence the climate. El Niños are marked with substantially warmer than normal sea surface temperature, which is seen along the equatorial Pacific. These events, coupled with La Niñas, which are defined by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the same region, steer weather patterns across large parts of the globe....

The report is co-authored by more than 20 organizations, including the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and is led by the Department of Zoology of the University of Brasilia. The research demonstrates that the disappearances represent seven- to twelve-year troughs when peccaries disappear across 20–30–year population cycles. These may happen simultaneously at regional and perhaps continental spatial scales of 10,000-5 million square kilometers (3,861-1.9 million square miles). The study suggests that the mysterious disappearances may be triggered by populations growing too big, and crashes are likely facilitated by different causes, including disease outbreaks, and underscores the need for more long-term studies to better understand the causes....

Why is it that people find songs such as James Taylor’s “Country Roads,” UB40’s “Red, Red Wine,” or The Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” so irresistibly enjoyable? In a recently published study researchers analyze 80,000 chords in 745 classic U.S. Billboard pop songs—including those three—and find that musical pleasure comes from the right combination of uncertainty and surprise. When we hear a song for the first time, our brain automatically makes predictions about what sound will come next based on the music we’ve heard in the past....

We’ve been living in a COVID world for more than 18 months now. At the outset of the pandemic, government agencies and health authorities scrambled to inform people on how to identify symptoms of the virus. But as the virus has evolved, it seems the most common symptoms have changed too. Emerging data suggest people infected with the Delta variant — the variant behind most of Australia’s current cases and highly prevalent around the world — are experiencing symptoms different to those we commonly associated with COVID earlier in the pandemic....