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From the early days of numerical computing, quantum systems have appeared exceedingly difficult to emulate, though the precise reasons for this remain a subject of active research. Still, this apparently inherent difficulty of a classical computer to emulate a quantum system prompted several researchers to flip the narrative. Scientists such as Richard Feynman and Yuri Manin speculated in the early 1980s that the unknown ingredients which seem to make quantum computers hard to emulate using a classical computer could themselves be used as a computational resource....

“A COVID-19 vaccine is urgently needed to save lives and help society return to its pre-pandemic normal,” said David Kennedy, assistant professor of biology. “As we have seen with other diseases, such as pneumonia, the evolution of resistance can quickly render vaccines ineffective. By learning from these previous challenges and by implementing this knowledge during vaccine design, we may be able to maximize the long-term impact of COVID-19 vaccines.” The researchers specifically suggest that the standard blood and nasal-swab samples taken during clinical trials to quantify individuals’ responses to vaccination may also be used to assess the likelihood that the vaccines being tested will drive resistance evolution....

Our bodies have a remarkable arsenal of antioxidant enzymes that help in maintaining a healthy balance of reactive oxygen species, but as we age, these control mechanisms decline. A recent study published in the journal Nutrition suggests that supplementing one’s diet with the amino acid taurine could be a realistic approach to address the issue. The study reported in the study was carried out at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil....

The brain of a postmortem pig obtained from a meatpacking plant was isolated and circulated with a specially designed chemical solution. Many basic cellular functions, once thought to cease seconds or minutes after oxygen and blood flow cease, were observed, the scientists report. “The intact brain of a large mammal retains a previously underappreciated capacity for restoration of circulation and certain molecular and cellular activities multiple hours after circulatory arrest,” said senior author Nenad Sestan, professor of neuroscience, comparative medicine, genetics, and psychiatry....

In experiments with mouse and human hair follicles, Angela M. Christiano, PhD, and colleagues found that drugs that inhibit the Janus kinase (JAK) family of enzymes promote rapid and robust hair growth when applied to the skin. The study raises the possibility that JAK inhibitors could be used to restore hair growth in forms of hair loss induced by male pattern baldness, and other types of hair loss that occur when hair follicles are trapped in a resting state....

Understanding how sharks feed is vital for managing human interactions. The first-ever detailed study of the diets of great white sharks off the east Australian coast reveals this apex predator spends more time feeding close to the seabed than expected. “Within the sharks’ stomachs we found remains from a variety of fish species that typically live on the seafloor or buried in the sand. This indicates the sharks must spend a good portion of their time foraging just above the seabed,” said lead author Richard Grainger, a PhD candidate at the Charles Perkins Centre and School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney....

A black hole is a point in space where matter has been compacted so tightly that it creates intense gravity. This gravity is strong enough that even light can’t escape its pull. Black holes can be as small as a single atom or as large as billions of miles in diameter. The biggest are called “supermassive” black holes and have masses equal to that of millions — or even billions — of suns....

A team of international researchers, including experts from the University of Exeter’s Physics and Astronomy department, have observed a rare stellar outburst on a newfound star, called Gaia 17bpi. Gaia 17bpi belongs to a group of stars known as FU Ori’s, named after the original member of the group, FU Orionis found in the Orion constellation. Typically these FU Ori stars, which are less than a few million years old, are hidden behind thick clouds of dust and are therefore hard to observe....

The study was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE. The findings are in line with a number of previous clinical studies that have shown lasting improvements in anxiety and depression among cancer patients with a life-threatening diagnosis produced by a single dose of psychedelic psilocybin. The authors of this study carried out the largest of these trials (Griffiths et al., 2016) at Johns Hopkins Medicine. That study, a randomized trial involving 51 cancer patients with clinically significant anxiety or depressive symptoms, showed that receiving supportive psychotherapy along with a controlled, high dose of psilocybin significantly increased ratings of acceptance of death and decreased anxiety about death....

Specialized scanning furthers understanding of the virus’s potential effects on the brain. One of the first spectroscopic imaging-based studies of neurological injury in COVID-19 patients has been reported by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the American Journal of Neuroradiology. Looking at six patients using a specialized magnetic resonance (MR) technique, they found that COVID-19 patients with neurological symptoms show some of the same metabolic disturbances in the brain as other patients who have suffered oxygen deprivation (hypoxia) from other causes, but there are also notable differences....

Stuart Campbell, associate professor of biomedical engineering & cellular and molecular physiology, led a team of researchers to examine the effects of a diseased extracellular matrix (ECM) — the scaffolding material that organizes cells into tissue — on the behavior of healthy heart cells. They found that the ECM appears to play a major role in the progression of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a genetic condition that causes thickened heart muscle....

It’s been 3,000 Martian days, or sols, since Curiosity touched down on Mars on August 6, 2012, and the rover keeps making new discoveries during its gradual climb up Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it has been exploring since 2014. Geologists were intrigued to see a series of rock “benches” in the most recent panorama from the mission. Stitched together from 122 images taken on November 18, 2020, the mission’s 2,946th sol, the panorama was captured by the Mast Camera, or Mastcam, which serves as the rover’s main “eyes....

Not that easy, right? Unfortunately, mushrooms usually aren’t brightly colored like some other poisonous animals or plants, which means it takes some serious skill to be able to tell the difference between mushroom species. SO PLEASE DO NOT EAT RANDOM MUSHROOMS BECAUSE YOU WATCHED A YOUTUBE VIDEO. Alright. Time to test if you can tell the difference between perfectly safe and perilously poisonous. Oh, and let us know how you do in the comments....

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun. The planets orbit a single star, called KOI-961, and are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth. The smallest is about the size of Mars. All three planets are thought to be rocky like Earth, but orbit close to their star. That makes them too hot to be in the habitable zone, which is the region where liquid water could exist....

Road traffic noise is a common issue in cities, but its effects on children’s health are still not fully known. According to recent research done at 38 schools in Barcelona, road noise has a negative impact on how well working memory and attention are developed in young children. The results of this investigation, which was conducted under the direction of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a facility supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, were released in the journal PLoS Medicine....

While auto manufacturers built over 92 million motor vehicles for this world in 2019, NASA built just one for Mars. The Perseverance Mars rover is one of a kind, and the testing required to get it ready to roll on the mean (and unpaved) streets of the Red Planet is one of a kind as well. Because hardware cannot be repaired once the rover is on Mars, the team has to build a vehicle that can survive for years on a planet with punishing temperature shifts, constant radiation and ever-present dust....

The colorful visible-light image at left reveals a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust. This dust-and-gas landscape is being sculpted by powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds unleashed by a monster young star. Located at the center of the photo, the star, known as Herschel 36, is about 200,000 times brighter than our Sun. This hefty star is 32 times more massive and 40,000 times hotter than our Sun....

The image above shows the typhoon on November 11 at 1:05 p.m. Philippines Standard Time (05:05 Universal Time), a few hours before the typhoon made landfall. The image was acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite. The storm first made landfall in Patnanungan, Quezon, around 10:30 p.m. and then continued west to hit the island of Luzon, where Manila saw its worst flooding in years....

Cleveland Clinic research identifies sildenafil as candidate drug for Alzheimer’s disease. Findings published in Nature Aging show 69% reduced likelihood of developing the disease. A new Cleveland Clinic-led study has identified sildenafil – an FDA-approved therapy for erectile dysfunction (Viagra) and pulmonary hypertension (Ravatio) – as a promising drug candidate to help prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease. According to findings published in Nature Aging, the research team, led by Feixiong Cheng, Ph....

Viral infection is the most common cause of inflammation in the heart muscle, called myocarditis, in children; however, there remains a diverse array of infectious and non-infectious causes of myocarditis that should be considered in diagnosis.Myocarditis caused by a virus is more often seen in children than in adults, and children are more likely to have acute myocarditis (sudden onset) rather than chronic myocarditis, which is more typically seen in adults....