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Worldwide, many strains of the bacterium Staphylococus aureus are already resistant to all antibiotics except vancomycin. But as bacteria are becoming resistant to this once powerful antidote, S. aureus has moved one step closer to becoming an unstoppable killer. Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have not only identified the mechanism by which vancomycin resistance spreads from one bacterium to the next, but also have suggested ways to potentially stop the transfer....

A new pilot study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai suggests that COVID-19 is causing significant dilation of the blood vessels of the lung, specifically the capillaries. This vasodilation is contributing to the very low oxygen levels seen in COVID-19 respiratory failure and also helps explain why the disease behaves differently than classic acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The study was published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine....

Plants are under permanent attack by a multitude of pathogens. To win the battle against fungi, bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, they have developed a complex and effective immune system. And just as in humans, this can also overshoot its target when some of the plant’s own proteins are mistakenly identified as foreign. Such autoimmune reactions can lead to tissue defects and growth arrest, and is particularly apparent in hybrids, where two divergent immune systems meet....

One percent of adults and five percent of children are unable to achieve what most of us take for granted—speaking fluently. Instead, they struggle with words, often repeating the beginning of a word, for example, “G-g-g-g-g-ood morning” or get stuck with single sounds, such as “Ja” for “January” although they know exactly what they want to say. What processes in the brain cause people to stutter? Previous studies showed imbalanced activity of the two brain hemispheres in people who stutter compared to fluent speakers: A region in the left frontal brain is hypoactive, whereas the corresponding region in the right hemisphere is hyperactive....

An international research team led by scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has recently discovered that high-entropy alloys (HEAs) exhibit exceptional mechanical properties at ultra-low temperatures due to the coexistence of multiple deformation mechanisms. Their discovery may hold the key to design new structural materials for applications at low temperatures. Professor Wang Xunli, a newly elected Fellow of the Neutron Scattering Society of America, Chair Professor and Head of Department of Physics at CityU, joined hands with scientists from Japan and mainland China in conducting this challenging study on HEAs’ deformation behaviors at ultra-low temperatures....

In a historic achievement, University of Rochester researchers have created a superconducting material at both a temperature and pressure low enough for practical applications. “With this material, the dawn of ambient superconductivity and applied technologies has arrived,” according to a team led by Ranga Dias, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of physics. In a paper published on March 8 in the journal Nature, the researchers describe a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride (NDLH) that exhibits superconductivity at 69 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 kilobars (145,000 pounds per square inch, or psi) of pressure....

Scent has always been an integral component of the human experience, but up until now, the past has remained largely odorless. Most scents come from organic substances that decay quickly, leaving little for archaeologists to investigate thousands of years later. Now a team of researchers from the MPI for the Science of Human History is looking for new ways to bring the smellscapes of the past back to life and using smell to study past experience, behavior, and society....

Then, in 2015, the hazy orb that was Ceres came into view. For scientists like King, the sight was breathtaking. The NASA Dawn mission’s data and images provided a better view of the surface, including its composition and structures, revealing unanticipated geologic activity. In prior observations, scientists had seen the overall size of Ceres. It was thought to be inactive since it was so tiny. Instead, Dawn observed a massive plateau on one side of Ceres that encompassed a portion of the dwarf planet, comparable to what a continent might take up on Earth....

When life first evolved more than 3.5 billion years ago, Earth’s surface environment looked very different. The sun was much weaker, but Earth remained warm enough to keep liquid water at the surface. The researchers said this suggests that much higher carbon dioxide levels would have been needed to keep early Earth warm enough. But how did CO2 levels get so high in the early atmosphere? Researchers Terry Isson and Noah Planavsky, in a study published in the journal Nature on August 8, provide a new framework for global climate regulation that explains this....

Future spacecraft, much farther from Earth, likely will not have the regular cadence of visiting commercial ships that can remove the trash, so NASA is turning to the U.S. industry to advance concepts for trash compaction and processing systems. The agency has issued a call for prototypes, and eventually, flight demonstrations to fly on the space station. The solicitation was issued through Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Broad Agency Announcement, Appendix F: Logistics Reduction in Space by Trash Compaction and Processing System....

Using a bone fragment that dates back nearly 13,000 years, scientists teased out and reconstructed DNA fragments to obtain a high-quality mitochondrial genome and nuclear genomic information. The analysis, they say, proves for the first time that the giant ground sloth–which went extinct approximately 10,000 years ago–is a close relative of the modern two-fingered sloth, believed to be one of the world’s slowest mammals. The research, published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests the two species diverged from one another approximately 22 million years ago....

Scientists have created the first global topographic map of Saturn’s moon Titan, giving researchers a valuable tool for learning more about one of the most Earth-like and interesting worlds in the solar system. The map was just published as part of a paper in the journal Icarus. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon — with a radius of about 1,600 miles (2,574 kilometers), it’s bigger than planet Mercury — and is the second-largest moon in the solar system....

On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, Orion made a close flyby of the Moon, passing about 81 miles (130 km) above the surface. During the close flyby, Orion’s optical navigation camera captured black-and-white images of craters on the Moon below. Orion uses the optical navigation camera to capture imagery of the Earth and the Moon at different phases and distances, providing an enhanced body of data to certify its effectiveness under different lighting conditions as a way to help orient the spacecraft on future missions with crew....

In a new study published today (March 4, 2020) in Nature Communications, led by Professor Alvaro Mata at the University of Nottingham and Queen Mary University London, researchers have developed a way to 3D print graphene oxide with a protein which can organize into tubular structures that replicate some properties of vascular tissue. Professor Mata said: “This work offers opportunities in biofabrication by enabling simultaneous top-down 3D bioprinting and bottom-up self-assembly of synthetic and biological components in an orderly manner from the nanoscale....

8 minutes after liftoff of Vega mission VV17, following the first ignition of the engine of the Avum upper stage, a deviation of trajectory was identified, entailing the loss of the mission. Telemetry data analyses are in progress to determine the cause of this failure. Teams at ESA’s mission control center are getting ready to ensure a new Earth observation mission safely begins its life in space. The SEOSAT-Ingenio mission will provide high-resolution images of Earth’s surface, providing crucial data to better understand our environment and for land, water and risk management and security....

A new study from MIT reveals that the Siberian Traps erupted at the right time, and for the right duration, to have been a likely trigger for the end-Permian extinction. Around 252 million years ago, life on Earth collapsed in spectacular and unprecedented fashion, as more than 96 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land species disappeared in a geological instant. The so-called end-Permian mass extinction ­— or more commonly, the “Great Dying” — remains the most severe extinction event in Earth’s history....

Scientists have discovered the key to synthesizing a molecular tool that could greatly expand the variety of catalytic reactions possible with transition metals. The research team has taken a well-established set of compounds that can be used to make transition metal catalysts and developed a simple, radical-based reaction for creating unsymmetric variants of these molecules using mild conditions. A realm of new possibilities for designing transition metal catalysts is opened through easier access to a wider variety of these unsymmetric compounds....

How small can computers be in the future? Can you imagine how molecular machines works? At present, traditional electronic devices based on semiconductor materials will face severe challenges. These challenges are not only technical and technological limitations, but also, more importantly, theoretical limitations. With the rapid development of nanotechnology and in-depth research, great progress has been made in the theory and practice of molecular electronic devices in recent years Molecular electronic devices use molecules (including biomolecules) with certain structures and functions to build an ordered system in the molecular scale or supramolecular scale....

Sneezes, rain clouds, and ink jet printers: They all produce or contain liquid droplets so tiny it would take several billion of them to fill a liter bottle. Measuring the volume, motion and contents of microscopic droplets is important for studying how airborne viruses spread (including those that cause COVID-19), how clouds reflect sunlight to cool the Earth, how ink jet printers create finely detailed patterns, and even how a soda bottle fragments into nanoscale plastic particles that pollute the oceans....

The moon appears to be a tranquil place, but modeling done by University of New Hampshire (UNH) and NASA scientists suggests that, over the eons, periodic storms of solar energetic particles may have significantly altered the properties of the soil in the moon’s coldest craters through the process of sparking — a finding that could change our understanding of the evolution of planetary surfaces in the solar system. The study, published August 8 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, proposes that high-energy particles from uncommon, large solar storms penetrate the moon’s frigid, polar regions and electrically charge the soil....