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Nanofibers make good face mask filters because their mechanical interactions with aerosol particles give them a greater ability to capture more than 90% of harmful particles such as fine dust and virus-containing droplets. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated the growing demand in recent years for a better kind of face mask. A polymer nanofiber-based mask filter that can more effectively block harmful particles has also been in higher demand as the pandemic continues....

Over-stimulated immune system may be impetus to cognitive symptoms, UCSF-led study shows. Some patients who develop new cognitive symptoms after a mild bout of COVID have abnormalities in their cerebrospinal fluid similar to those found in people with other infectious diseases. The finding may provide insights into how SARS-CoV-2 impacts the brain. In a small study with 32 adults, comprising 22 with cognitive symptoms and 10 control participants without, researchers from UC San Francisco and Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, analyzed the cerebrospinal fluid of 17 of the participants who consented to lumbar puncture....

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as NASA’s NuSTAR and CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), a team of astronomers reveals evidence for a star that whips around a black hole about twice an hour. This may be the tightest orbital dance ever witnessed for a likely black hole and a companion star. This graphic features an artist’s impression of a star found in the closest orbit known around a black hole, as reported in our latest press release....

CVs are found in many galactic environments, but their presence in globular clusters, whose distances and populations are well characterized, allows a more precise comparative study of their properties. CVs can affect the evolution of the cluster while themselves being influenced by the dense stellar environment in a cluster. Evolutionary models of globular cluster evolution imply that after about ten billion years, a cluster with a million stars should have about two hundred CVs – many more than have been seen so far in any cluster....

The researchers published their findings in The Journal of Experimental Biology. These reptiles don’t have any gills, but they have structures inside their mouths that work like gills. This means that P. sinensis has the option of breathing underwater, though most of the time they just reach up and breathe air. But what researchers found perplexing was that when the turtles were on dry land, they would stick their heads in puddles and swish water around in their mouths....

Comet ISON, which will round the sun on November 28, 2013, at a distance of just 730,000 miles from the sun, is what’s known as a sungrazing comet, due to its close approach. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center A comet’s journey through the solar system is perilous and violent. A giant ejection of solar material from the sun could rip its tail off. Before it reaches Mars — at some 230 million miles away from the sun — the radiation of the sun begins to boil its water, the first step toward breaking apart....

As the flu season approaches, a strained public health system may have a surprising ally — the common cold virus. Rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of common colds, can prevent the flu virus from infecting airways by jumpstarting the body’s antiviral defenses, Yale researchers report today (September 4, 2020) in the journal The Lancet Microbe. The findings help answer a mystery surrounding the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic: An expected surge in swine flu cases never materialized in Europe during the fall, a period when the common cold becomes widespread....

Researchers have discovered a potent antibody in panda blood, which could help fight increasingly prevalent drug-resistant strains of infections. Cathelicin-AM was discovered when researchers analyzed the DNA of pandas. It can kill fungi and bacteria. Scientists think that the antibiotic is released to protect the animals from infections in the wild. In studies, it was able to kill standard and drug-resistant strains of microbes and fungi. The efficacy is also very quick, killing off strains of bacteria in just an hour, while conventional antibiotics needed six hours....

Because it would be difficult to completely eliminate the novel coronavirus, mathematical modeling suggests countries should focus on keeping the rate of infection low by collaborating in multiple areas. In some circumstances, however, a clear division of labor may be called for. The findings by Adam Lampert, an assistant professor with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU, will be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

The research discovered that numerous individuals receiving the new treatment showed clinically significant increases in C-peptide, a substance produced in the pancreas alongside insulin. Measuring C-peptide can reveal how much insulin the body is producing since they are both released from the pancreas at the same time and in similar quantities. “This research represents the first instance in multiple patients of clinically relevant increases in C-peptide, indicative of insulin production, with a stem cell-based therapy delivered in a device,” according to Manasi Sinha Jaiman, M....

A new paper in Brain, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that a COVID-19 infection may prompt Guillain-Barré syndrome. Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the entire world, either by direct infection or through its social and economic consequences. Besides the well-known severe respiratory signs, and the risk of long-term complications, researchers and public health officials have also reported both central and peripheral neurological complications. Guillain-Barré syndrome is an autoimmune disorder in which a person’s immune system attacks the nerves, causing muscle weakness and occasionally paralysis....

A mutation in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2—one of several genetic mutations in the concerning variants that have emerged in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil—makes the virus up to eight times more infectious in human cells than the initial virus that originated in China, according to research published in the journal eLife. The study, led by researchers at New York University, the New York Genome Center, and Mount Sinai, corroborates findings that the D614G mutation makes SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 more transmissible....

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most severe global health crisis of the 21st century. While media reports and policy directives tend to focus on the health and economic aspects of the pandemic, new research suggests that the pandemic is also destabilizing the fundamental relationship between citizens and the state. “The pandemic has disrupted our normal way of living, generating frustrations, unprecedented social exclusion, and a range of other concerns,” said Henrikas Bartusevičius, a researcher with the Peace Research Institute Oslo and coauthor on a paper published in the journal Psychological Science....

Photos from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the parachute that helped NASA’s Curiosity rover land on Mars last summer has subsequently changed its shape on the ground. The images were obtained by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Seven images taken by HiRISE between August 12, 2012, and January 13, 2013, show the used parachute shifting its shape at least twice in response to wind....

A team of scientists has predicted the science return from one of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s groundbreaking planned surveys, which will analyze millions of galaxies strewn across space and time. The mission’s enormous, deep panoramas will provide the best opportunity yet to discern between the leading theories about what’s speeding up the universe’s expansion. Roman will explore this mystery using multiple methods, including spectroscopy – the study of the color information in light....

Researchers report the development of cell membrane nanovesicles that carry receptors for SARS-CoV-2 and various inflammatory cytokines on their surfaces, thereby acting as decoys for both SARS-CoV-2 and inflammatory cytokines; the decoy nanoparticles inhibited infection by SARS-CoV-2 and neutralized inflammatory cytokines in vitro, and reduced lung injury in a mouse model of acute lung inflammation, suggesting that they could be a potential therapeutic strategy for COVID-19, according to the authors....

This was announced by the US Department of Justice today. Transocean will pay $1 billion for violations of the Clean Water Act, 80% of which will be dedicated to economic and ecological restoration projects along the Gulf Coast, under legislation approved last year by the US Congress. The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will get $150 million to help fund an independent, 30-year Gulf Coast research program created under a similar settlement with BP last November....

The fossilized tail of a young dinosaur that lived on a prairie in southern Alberta, Canada, is home to the remains of a 60-million-year-old tumor. Researchers at Tel Aviv University, led by Dr. Hila May of the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, have identified this benign tumor as part of the pathology of LCH (Langerhans cell histiocytosis), a rare and sometimes painful disease that still afflicts humans, particularly children under the age of 10....

Waning immunity may heighten risk, but milder reinfection may follow severe infection. It may be possible to have two completely separate bouts of COVID-19, doctors have warned in the journal BMJ Case Reports after treating a man whose infections were separated by 4 months of no symptoms and serial negative tests for the virus. Waning immunity might heighten the risk of reinfection, but severe infection first time around may be followed by milder symptoms second time around, they suggest....

Many long for a return to a post-pandemic “normal,” which, for some, may entail concerts, travel, and large gatherings. But how to keep safe amid these potential public health risks? One possibility, according to a new study, is dogs. A proof-of-concept investigation published recently in the journal PLOS ONE suggests that specially trained detection dogs can sniff out COVID-19-positive samples with 96% accuracy. “This is not a simple thing we’re asking the dogs to do,” says Cynthia Otto, senior author on the work and director of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine Working Dog Center....