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Physicists Michael te Vrugt, Jens Bickmann and Prof. Raphael Wittkowski from the Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Center for Soft Nanoscience at the University of Münster have developed a new model showing the spread of infectious diseases. The working group led by Raphael Wittkowski is studying Statistical Physics, i.e. the description of systems consisting of a large number of particles. In their work, the physicists also use dynamical density functional theory (DDFT), a method developed in the 1990s which enables interacting particles to be described....

Earth is doomed — but not for 5 billion years. Our planet will be roasted as our sun expands and becomes a red giant, but the exoplanet WASP-12b, located 600 light-years away in the constellation Auriga, has less than a thousandth of that time left: a comparatively paltry 3 million years. A Princeton-led team of astrophysicists has shown that WASP-12b is spiraling in toward its host star, heading toward certain destruction....

NSAIDs are the most common form of anti-inflammatory medication. The most popular NSAIDs include aspirin, ibuprofen (often known as Advil), and naproxen (known by the brand name Aleve and Naprosyn). However, despite their widespread use, these drugs can have side effects. “In our study, approximately one in six patients with type 2 diabetes claimed at least one NSAID prescription within one year,” said first author Dr. Anders Holt of Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark....

The study, which surveyed nearly 1,000 Canadians aged 16 to 30, found that most consumers could not identify whether a cannabis edible contained ‘low’ or ‘high’ levels of THC based on the label. The researchers also found that descriptive information, such as symbols and words, are more effective in helping consumers understand THC potency and approximate serving sizes for cannabis products. “Using THC numbers to express potency of cannabis products has little or no meaning to most young Canadians,” said David Hammond of Waterloo’s School of Public Health and Health Systems....

“The overall question for me is how to decarbonize society in the most affordable way,” says Nestor Sepulveda SM ’16, PhD ’20. As a postdoc at MIT and a researcher with the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), he worked with a team over several years to investigate what mix of energy sources might best accomplish this goal. The group’s initial studies suggested the “need to develop energy storage technologies that can be cost-effectively deployed for much longer durations than lithium-ion batteries,” says Dharik Mallapragada, a research scientist with MITEI....

According to new research, the closest bat virus relatives of the human Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus efficiently bind to bat ACE2 receptors as an entry point into these cells. These receptors have some similarities to the ACE2 receptors in human cells. However, at present this coronavirus, called NeoCoV and a similar virus, PDF-2180, only weakly bind to human ACE2 cell receptors as an entry point into cells. They also are not known to cause disease outbreaks in people....

Though previous infrared spectroscopic observations have suggested the existence of silica in young and newly formed T Tauri stars as well as in asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in their last phase of life, no evidence of gas-solid condensation of silica had actually been found in primitive meteorites from the early stages of our solar system. In this study, the scientists studied the primitive meteorite Yamato-793261 (Y-793261), a carbonaceous chondrite collected from an ice field near the Yamato Mountains during the 20th Japan Antarctic Research Expedition in 1979....

A Nature study authored by scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and the University of Hong Kong shows that the leprosy drug clofazimine, which is FDA approved and on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, exhibits potent antiviral activities against SARS-CoV-2 and prevents the exaggerated inflammatory response associated with severe COVID-19. Based on these findings, a Phase 2 study evaluating clofazimine as an at-home treatment for COVID-19 could begin immediately....

One research group comprising Brazilian and Japanese scientists have discovered how luciferase produced by the railroad worm Phrixothrix hirtus emits red light. Luciferase is an enzyme that catalyzes the oxidation of luciferin in fireflies, producing oxyluciferin, and enabling fireflies to emit light. Differences in the molecular structures explain the different colors of this bioluminescence in different species. This discovery has the potential for new biotechnological applications, such as the imaging of muscles, blood, and hemoglobin-rich tissue....

The resulting flux of charged particles travels millions of miles from the sun to the Earth. When they arrive here, the particles wreak havoc on the Earth’s magnetic field. The result can be beautiful but also destructive: auroras and geomagnetic storms. The storms are serious and interfere with a number of important technologies, including GPS signaling and satellite communications. They can also cause damage to surface electrical grids. Solar activity appears random, making it difficult for us to predict these storms....

Like a cold front that moves in, setting the stage for severe weather, coronavirus infection triggers showers of infection-fighting immune molecules — showers that sometimes escalate into a chaotic immune response known as a cytokine storm. About 20 to 30 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 develop severe immune manifestations, in some instances leading to cytokine storm, with life-threatening organ damage and high risk of death. Predicting which COVID-19 patients will develop cytokine storm is challenging, owing to the many variables that influence immune function....

The rod-shaped bacterium C. metallidurans primarily lives in soils that are enriched with numerous heavy metals. Over time some minerals break down in the soil and release toxic heavy metals and hydrogen into their environment. “Apart from the toxic heavy metals, living conditions in these soils are not bad. There is enough hydrogen to conserve energy and nearly no competition. If an organism chooses to survive here, it has to find a way to protect itself from these toxic substances,” explains Professor Dietrich H....

The CEPMAS collaboration utilized DNA sequencing technology to piece together the genomic sequence of the skullcap plant (Scutellaria barbata), commonly known as banzhilian in China. This gave researchers the genetic information – a microevolutionary history – required to identify how the plant produces the compound scutebarbatine A, which acts against a range of cancer cells. Professor Cathie Martin, Group Leader at the John Innes Centre, and one of the authors of the study said, “We have found that the primary metabolite has activity against cancer cells but not non-cancer cells which are especially important for an anti-cancer metabolite....

Russian scientists from the Institute of Gene Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Virology and Biotechnology Research Center “Vector” and Belgorod University are already working on the development of SARS-CoV-2-sensitive mice to be used as a murine model in tests of potential COVID-19 vaccines and drugs, reports the Office of the Chief State Sanitary Inspector. To create such a line of mice, researchers have formulated a two-step concept, recently described in the open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal Research Results and Pharmacology....

On Monday, Novosibirsk scientists of the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences announced that there is a huge deposit of diamonds buried under an impact crater in Siberia. These diamonds are twice as hard as normal because of their origin. The trillions of carats are located underneath the Popigai crater in Siberia and they represent 10 times as much as the entire world’s supply of diamond reserves all put together....

Purdue University innovators have created technology aimed at replacing Morse code with colored “digital characters” to modernize optical storage. They are confident the advancement will help with the explosion of remote data storage during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Morse code has been around since the 1830s. The familiar dots and dashes system may seem antiquated given the amount of information needed to be acquired, digitally archived and rapidly accessed every day....

Water vapor from ambient air will spontaneously condense inside porous materials or between touching surfaces. But with the liquid layer being only a few molecules thick this ubiquitous and important phenomenon has lacked understanding, until now. Researchers at The University of Manchester led by Nobel Laureate Andre Geim — who, with Kostya Novoselov, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics 10 years ago this month — have made artificial capillaries small enough for water vapor to condense inside them under normal, ambient conditions....

A new study finds that there is not enough information to support the claim that violent video games lead to acts of violence. The Contemporary Economic Policy study (published today, November 5, 2019) examined data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States between April and December 1995. Over 15,000 participants were followed into young adulthood with four waves of in-home interviews, with the last interview conducted in 2008, when participants were 24-32 years old....

ESA’s GOCE gravity-mapper flew as low as 250 km (155 mi) for more than four years thanks to an electric thruster that continuously compensated for air drag. However, its working life was limited by the 40 kg (88 lb) of xenon it carried as propellant – once that was exhausted, the mission was over. Replacing onboard propellant with atmospheric molecules would create a new class of satellites able to operate in very low orbits for long periods....

Researchers in Canada, the United States, and Europe have developed a new way to remotely measure Earth’s magnetic field—by zapping a layer of sodium atoms floating 100 kilometers above the planet with lasers on the ground. The technique, documented in Nature Communications, fills a gap between measurements made at the Earth’s surface and at much higher altitude by orbiting satellites. “The magnetic field at this altitude in the atmosphere is strongly affected by physical processes such as solar storms and electric currents in the ionosphere,” says Paul Hickson an astrophysicist at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and author on the paper....