What is true: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, poses a risk for both disorders. Until now, little research has been done on how the virus or the vaccines affect the male reproductive system. But recent investigations by physicians and researchers here at the University of Miami have shed new light on these questions. The team, which includes me, has discovered potentially far-reaching implications for men of all ages – including younger and middle-aged men who want to have children....

Venus rarely moves between the Earth and the Sun. People who are curious to see the planet’s rare transit better do so on June 5, because it won’t happen again for more than 100 years. “The transit of Venus is especially interesting because more than 200 years ago the people of Providence observed the transit of 1769 as part of a coordinated international effort to determine the size and scale of the solar system,” said David Targan, associate dean of the College, who directs the University’s Science Center and Ladd Observatory....

Scientists in South Africa have discovered a new viral variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It’s not a single virus but a clustering of genetically similar viruses, known as C.1.2. The researchers, in a pre-print study released last week but yet to be peer reviewed, found this cluster has picked up a lot of mutations in a short period of time. Indeed, this is what viruses do. They continually evolve and mutate due to selective pressures but also because of opportunity, luck and chance....

There has been renewed activity at Fuego in Guatemala. The eruption is becoming more intense, although news reports coming out of the region are unclear about what is exactly happening. Currently, 33,000 people have been evacuated. Volcán de Fuego is an active stratovolcano in Guatemala, close to Antigua. It has frequently erupted over the last few centuries and it’s famous for being almost constantly active at a low level. A video taken of the activity showcases impressive ash plumes as well as pyroclastic flows from the volcano....

The study, published in Scientific Reports, compared the effects of different diets on two groups of mice. One group was fed normal chow, while the other was given a high-fat diet that did not cause obesity or high blood sugar, both of which can lead to diabetic neuropathy and other types of pain. The researchers found that the high-fat diet induced hyperalgesic priming — a neurological change that represents the transition from acute to chronic pain — and allodynia, which is pain resulting from stimuli that do not normally provoke pain....

According to new research from scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of Maryland, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, current climate pledges are insufficient to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and it is likely that global warming will surpass the 1.5 degree Celsius limit. The research suggests that the only way to minimize the extent of this overshoot is for countries to adopt more ambitious climate pledges and decarbonize their economies at a faster pace....

To mark the occasion, the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP) captured images of James Webb to give people a sense of what it looks like in orbit. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to see there, other than a bright dot in the night sky. But like Carl Sagan’s famous “Pale Blue Dot” picture of Earth (taken by Voyager 1 on its way out of the Solar System), or Cassini’s “The Day Earth Smiled” image, there’s a tremendous amount of significance in that small point of light....

Several proposals have emerged on how to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine, but they fall short in ensuring that the vaccine is distributed fairly. A team including Binghamton University professor Nicole Hassoun suggests three ways to more fairly and effectively distribute the vaccine so that people in poor countries get the vaccine as soon as possible. “Although many people in rich countries will receive a vaccine for COVID-19 this year, many people in poor countries will likely have to wait years to get one,” said Hassoun....

The birthplaces of planets are disks made out of gas and dust. Astronomers study these so-called protoplanetary disks to understand the processes of planet formation. Beautiful images of disks made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) show distinct gaps and ring features in dust, which may be caused by infant planets. To get more certainty that these gaps are actually caused by planets, and to get a more complete view of planet formation, scientists study the gas in the disks in addition to dust....

“Live fast, die young” could be the motto of six early, massive, “dead” galaxies that ran out of the cold hydrogen gas needed to make stars early in the life of the universe. These galaxies lived fast and furious lives, creating their stars in a remarkably short time. But then they literally ran out of gas and shut down star formation. Without more fuel to create stars, these galaxies were running on empty....

“This study confirms that petroleum seeps are a conduit for transporting life from the deep biosphere to the seafloor,” says co-author Emil Ruff, a scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole. The study, led by Anirban Chakraborty and Casey Hubert of the University of Calgary, is published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team analyzed 172 seafloor sediment samples from the eastern Gulf of Mexico that had been collected as part of a 2011 survey for the oil industry....

Professor David Martill, lead author of the research, from the University of Portsmouth’s School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences, said: “The nearly complete skeleton was found in a very finely layered limestone that preserves fossils beautifully. “The jaws of this pterosaur are really long and lined with small fine, hooked teeth, with tiny spaces between them like a nit comb. The long jaw is curved upwards like an avocet and at the end it flares out like a spoonbill....

“The puzzling and counterintuitive part is: why is there such a heavy element in the upper layers of the atmosphere of these planets?” says Tomás Azevedo Silva, a PhD student at the University of Porto and the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) in Portugal. Silva led the study, which was published on October 13 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. WASP-76 b and WASP-121 b are no ordinary exoplanets....

The full pathogenic pathway leading to Parkinson’s disease (PD) is unknown, but one clear contributor is mitochondrial dysfunction and the inability to dispose of defective mitochondria, a process called mitophagy. At least five genes implicated in PD are linked to impaired mitophagy, either directly or indirectly, and so the authors sought compounds that could enhance the mitophagy process. Several such compounds have been identified, but most of them also cause harm to cells, ruling them out as drug candidates....

Drug can be delivered as nasal sprayActs as decoy to capture virus before it enters cell‘It’s urgent to identify novel therapeutics’EvACE2 arises naturally in COVID-19 patients as part of the anti-viral response Scientists at Northwestern Medicine and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have identified natural nano-bubbles containing the ACE2 protein (evACE2) in the blood of COVID-19 patients and discovered these nano-sized particles can block infection from broad strains of SARS-CoV-2 virus in preclinical studies....

The antibody has rare characteristics that make it a valuable addition to the limited set of broadly reactive antibody therapeutic candidates, researchers reported in the journal Cell Reports. The technology, called LIBRA-seq, has helped speed up the discovery of antibodies that can neutralize SARS-CoV-2. It also enables researchers to screen antibodies against other viruses that have not yet caused human disease but which have a high potential of doing so....

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and Yale University found that, from March 1 to April 25, the U.S. saw 87,001 excess deaths — or deaths above the number that would be expected based on averages from the previous five years. The study, “Excess Deaths from COVID-19 and Other Causes, March-April 2020,” showed that only 65% of the excess deaths that occurred in March and April were attributed to COVID-19, meaning more than one-third were linked to other causes....

The Parabon Essemblix Drug Development Platform allows for the rapid, and precise, specific placement of every atom in a compound it designs. The scientists used the inSequio software to design molecular pieces with specific, functional components. The designs were then optimized using a cloud supercomputing platform called the Parabon Computation Grid, which searches for sets of DNA sequences that can self-assemble new components. In order to design the components, the researchers used knowledge about the cell receptors they were targeting or the biological pathways they were trying to affect....

It is believed that a binary system of stars at the center of the bipolar nebula is capable of creating hourglass or butterfly-like shapes like the one in this image. This is because the material from the shedding star is funneled towards its poles, with the help of the companion, creating the distinctive double-lobed structure seen in nebulae such as M1-63.

A newly published study in the journal Science describes a new technique for growing materials from nanorods, which was developed by scientists at the University of Florida. A team of researchers from the University of Florida department of chemistry has developed a new technique for growing new materials from nanorods. Materials with enhanced properties engineered from nanostructures have the potential to revolutionize the marketplace in everything from data processing to human medicine....