Tracking the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic is currently conducted by testing nasal swabs or saliva samples. Tools and techniques to track the spread of the pandemic by other means would be very beneficial; wastewater monitoring is a method that would allow us to monitor the spread of the pandemic at a much larger scale. This is not a new technique, and has been used for detecting non-enveloped viruses, but a conventional method for enveloped viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 had not been developed....

It’s an understandable question, given the pioneering work Duckworth has done in the area of grit, a characteristic often described as putting passion and perseverance toward important long-term personal goals. But new research from Duckworth and colleagues at Duke University and the United States Military Academy reveals that the answer may not be so straightforward. In a prospective, longitudinal study of more than 11,000 West Point cadets, the research team discovered that both cognitive and noncognitive factors can predict long-term achievement, with characteristics like intelligence, grit, and physical capacity each influencing a person’s ability to succeed in different ways....

Quinoa is a pseudocereal that originates from the Andes that has a very high nutritional value. It is exceptionally rich in minerals such as calcium, iron, and magnesium as well as in vitamins B, E, and C. It has a high concentration of proteins with all the essential amino acids, which are those we need to include in our diet, as well as complex carbohydrates and fiber. It was believed that a quinoa-based diet would benefit some cardiovascular diseases and other metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, because of its nutritional qualities....

Oregon State University research into the design of catalysts has shown that hydrogen can be cleanly produced with much greater efficiency and at a lower cost than is possible with current commercially available catalysts. A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change. The findings are significant because the production of hydrogen is important for “many aspects of our life, such as fuel cells for cars and the manufacture of many useful chemicals such as ammonia,” said the OSU College of Engineering’s Zhenxing Feng, a chemical engineering professor who led the research....

Wear a mask. Stay six feet apart. Avoid large gatherings. As the world awaits a safe and effective vaccine, controlling the COVID-19 pandemic hinges on widespread compliance with these public health guidelines. But as colder weather forces people to spend more time indoors, blocking disease transmission will become more challenging than ever. At the 73rd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics, researchers presented a range of studies investigating the aerodynamics of infectious disease....

It is not unusual for babies to be born with congenital heart defects. This is because the development of the heart in the embryo is a process which is not only extremely complex, but also error-prone. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim have now identified a key molecule that plays a central role in regulating the function of stem cells in the heart....

An international team of scientists writing in the journal Global Change Biology say the number of active fires in August was actually three times higher than in 2018 and the highest number since 2010. They have used evidence collected from the Brazilian Government’s DETER-b deforestation detection system — which calculates deforestation by interpreting images taken by NASA satellites. This shows that deforestation in July this year was almost four times the average from the same period in the previous three years....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Historical Biology. This event occurred in the Early Cretaceous period, about 97 to 110 million years ago, in the Hukawng Valley, in Myanmar. Undoubtedly, dinosaurs were around this area as well. The spider is a social orb-weaver spider (Geratonephila burmanica) and the wasp is of the species Cascoscelio incassus, both of which are extinct today. Wasp species are known to parasitize spider eggs....

Their findings were published in eLife on December 4, 2019. MicroRNAs, short strands of genetic material, are tiny but powerful molecules that regulate many different genes simultaneously. The scientists sought to identify particular microRNAs that are important for regulating protein aggregates and homed in on miR-1, which is found in low levels in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. “The sequence of miR-1 is 100 percent conserved; it’s the same sequence in the Caenorhabditis elegans worm as in humans even though they are separated by 600 million years of evolution,” Associate Professor Pocock said....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Lake Vida is the largest body of water in the McMurdo Dry Valleys Antarctic desert and researchers drilling into the lake have found plenty of bacteria. The researchers drilled into the lake twice, once in 2005 and again in 2010. Samples from both trips yielded around one-tenth of the abundance of cells found in freshwater lakes in moderate climate zones....

Restrict antimalarial usage to healthy people at highest risk and those testing positive but still symptomless, suggest doctors. Limited global supplies may scupper proposals to use the antimalarial drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, to lessen the symptoms of COVID-19 infection or ward it off altogether, say Italian doctors in a letter published online today in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. The results of preliminary lab tests have prompted scientists to propose that these drugs be used to treat patients with pneumonia caused by COVID-19 infection....

Before the investigation of the ruins began in May 2015, intellectuals involved had thought that inscriptions and ruins of Turkic royalties were only on the steppes in the western part of Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia (Figure 2). However, this excavation team led by Professor Takashi OSAWA at Osaka University discovered 12 new inscriptions at the site, obtaining clues for clarifying power relationships in eastern Mongolia in the Middle Ages from the contents of the inscriptions and the stone configuration at the monument....

In a new study published in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, researchers at the Israel Antiquities Authority detail finding over 100 coins beneath the paving stones that date the street to approximately 31 CE. The finding provides strong evidence that the street was commissioned by Pontius Pilate. After six years of extensive archaeological excavations, researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University have uncovered a 220-meter-long (720-foot-long) section of an ancient street first discovered by British archaeologists in 1894....

Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and their colleagues at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) have invented a new computational approach that can accurately follow the birth and evolution of thousands of galaxies over billions of years. For the first time, it’s now possible to build a universe from scratch that brims with galaxies like those we observe around us. “We’ve created the full variety of galaxies we see in the local universe,” said CfA’s Mark Vogelsberger, a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard College Observatory....

Five years ago, a pair of researchers used a clever update on a technique called in vitro evolution – evolution in a test tube – to turn an ordinary protein into an artificial enzyme, a biological catalyst capable of joining two segments of RNA. It was the first time this had ever been done. Now, a study partially conducted at SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource has revealed the true extent of their success: not only was the artificial enzyme the first one known to carry out this particular reaction, but it had taken on a new, essentially “primordial” structure never seen in proteins before....

Optoacoustics (see box) is similar in some respects to ultrasound imaging. In the latter, a probe sends ultrasonic waves into the body, which are reflected by the tissue. Sensors in the probe detect the returning sound waves and a picture of the inside of the body is subsequently generated. In optoacoustic imaging, very short laser pulses are instead sent into the tissue, where they are absorbed and converted into ultrasonic waves....

Hospitalized patients who were taking daily aspirin had lower risk of ICU admission, ventilation, and dying from SARS-CoV-2 virus. Hospitalized COVID-19 patients who were taking a daily low-dose aspirin to protect against cardiovascular disease had a significantly lower risk of complications and death compared to those who were not taking aspirin, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). Aspirin takers were less likely to be placed in the intensive care unit (ICU) or hooked up to a mechanical ventilator, and they were more likely to survive the infection compared to hospitalized patients who were not taking aspirin, The study, published on October 21, 2020, in the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia, provides “cautious optimism,” the researchers say, for an inexpensive, accessible medication with a well-known safety profile that could help prevent severe complications....

The protoplanet Vesta has been witness to an eventful past: images taken by the framing camera onboard NASA’s space probe Dawn show two enormous craters in the southern hemisphere. The images were obtained during Dawn’s year-long visit to Vesta that ended in September 2012. These huge impacts not only altered Vesta’s shape, but also its surface composition. Scientists under the lead of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau in Germany have shown that impacting small asteroids delivered dark, carbonaceous material to the protoplanet....

On May 31, 2013, asteroid 1998 QE2 will sail serenely past Earth, getting no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon. And while QE2 is not of much interest to those astronomers and scientists on the lookout for hazardous asteroids, it is of interest to those who dabble in radar astronomy and have a 230-foot (70-meter) — or larger — radar telescope at their disposal....

Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the drug, called montelukast, has been around for more than 20 years and is typically prescribed to reduce inflammation caused by conditions like asthma, hives, and hay fever. In the United States, montelukast is sold under the brand name Singulair. In the study published recently in the journal eLife, the researchers show that the drug binds strongly to one end (‘C-terminal’) of a SARS-CoV-2 protein called Nsp1, which is one of the first viral proteins unleashed inside the human cells....