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Massachusetts statewide study showed no significant differences in COVID-19 case rates between K-12 districts that implemented 3-feet versus 6-feet of physical distancing. As COVID-19 infection rates continue to fall, Massachusetts officials are signaling it’s almost time to end remote learning and send all school-aged children back to the classroom. While emerging data suggest young children and schools have not been primary drivers of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence to guide best practices to prevent the spread of the virus in the school setting has been limited and, as a result, national and international recommendations are inconsistent....

“This paper outlines a road map that the scientific community should take in building, developing, and applying a digital twin of the immune system,” said Tomas Helikar, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln biochemist who is one of 10 co-authors from six universities from around the world. Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health renewed a five-year $1.8 million grant for Helikar to continue his work in the area. “This is an effort that will require the collaboration of computational biologists, immunologists, clinicians, mathematicians, and computer scientists,” he said....

In a newly published study, Yale biologists and colleagues describe a key quality control mechanism that protects new cells from inheriting defective nuclear pore complexes. As befitting life’s blueprint, DNA is surrounded by an elaborate security system that assures crucial information is imparted without error. The security is provided by a double membrane perforated by protein channels that block unwanted material from entering the nucleus and promote entry of key messengers....

Eight controlled trials previously reported that zinc lozenges reduced the duration of the common cold, but several other trials did not find benefit. Variation in the types of zinc lozenges has been proposed as one explanation for the divergence in the study findings. Many studies with negative findings used lozenges that had low doses of zinc or contained ingredients such as citric acid that bind zinc ions preventing the release of free zinc in the oropharyngeal region....

Many of these optical illusions appear when a distant galaxy’s light is magnified, stretched, and brightened as it passes through a massive galaxy or galaxy cluster in front of it. This phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, produces multiple, stretched, and brightened images of the background galaxy. This phenomenon allows astronomers to study galaxies so distant they cannot be seen other than by the effects of gravitational lensing. The challenge is in trying to reconstruct the distant galaxies from the odd shapes produced by lensing....

Early detection remains paramount to successfully treating many cancers. A growing research focal point is early detection via cell-free DNA (cfDNA) circulating in the bloodstream – the so-called “liquid biopsy.” However, using this method to detect cancer at its early stages has been challenging due to the genetic diversity of cancer and low tumor concentrations in DNA blood fragments. Now, researchers report successful results from an experimental cancer-detection system that appears to have overcome these challenges in a novel, cost-effective way....

According to the study, those who stay up later have a decreased ability to burn fat for energy, which means that fats may accumulate in the body and raise the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The metabolic differences are related to how efficiently each group can utilize insulin to promote glucose uptake by cells for storage and energy consumption. Early birds, or those who like to be active in the morning, depend more on fat as a source of energy and are more active throughout the day with greater levels of aerobic fitness than “night owls....

Data from a new study of British adults suggest that adherence to a “Western-style” diet (fried and sweet food, processed and red meat, refined grains, and high-fat dairy products) reduces a person’s likelihood of achieving older ages in good health and with higher functionality. Study results appear in the May issue of The American Journal of Medicine. “The impact of diet on specific age-related diseases has been studied extensively, but few investigations have adopted a more holistic approach to determine the association of diet with overall health at older ages,” says lead investigator Tasnime Akbaraly, PhD, Inserm, Montpellier, France....

“Previous studies have shown that leisure activities were associated with various health benefits, such as a lower cancer risk, a reduction of atrial fibrillation, and a person’s perception of their own well-being,” stated study author Lin Lu, Ph.D., of Peking University Sixth Hospital in Beijing, China. “However, there is conflicting evidence of the role of leisure activities in the prevention of dementia. Our research found that leisure activities like making crafts, playing sports or volunteering were linked to a reduced risk of dementia....

During an event called the Cambrian Explosion around 550-520 million years ago, the first animals to build hard and robust skeletons appear suddenly in the fossil record in a geological blink of an eye. Many of these early fossils are simple hollow tubes ranging from a few millimeters to many centimeters in length. However, what sort of animals made these skeletons was almost completely unknown, because they lack preservation of the soft parts needed to identify them as belonging to major groups of animals that are still alive today....

Getting accurate measurements of how much stars weigh not only plays a crucial role in understanding how stars are born, evolve, and die, but it is also essential in assessing the true nature of the thousands of exoplanets now known to orbit most other stars. The method is tailor-made for the European Space Agency’s Gaia Mission, which is in the process of mapping the Milky Way galaxy in three dimensions, and NASA’s upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is scheduled for launch next year and will survey the 200,000 brightest stars in the firmament looking for alien earths....

They weren’t in the delivery room, but researchers at Yale University and the University of Toronto have discovered a new birth story for a gigantic marine lizard that once roamed the oceans. Thanks to recently identified specimens at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, paleontologists now believe that mighty mosasaurs — which could grow to 50 feet long — gave birth to their young in the open ocean, not on or near shore....

At 1:37 a.m. local time (00:37 Universal Time) on February 23, 2021, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-20 satellite captured this image of Mount Etna—a highly active volcano on the Italian island of Sicily. The nighttime image shows a volcanic plume that has been partially illuminated by the glow of the eruption spreading west across Sicily. The image was acquired by the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as molten lava, city lights, and reflected moonlight....

According to modern theories on galactic formation and evolution, the mechanism of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) feedback suggests that the gigantic black hole at a galactic center modulates its evolution by blowing ionized gas, namely the quasar outflow, preventing a potential oversized growth of black hole. The outflow, which transports matter and energy to host galaxies, serves as one of the predominant ways of AGN feedback. However, little was known about the outflow of active galaxies, for a key factor, the scale of outflows was mainly deduced from spectroscopic blueshifted adsorption lines (BAL)....

During the 181st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which will be held November 29-December 3, Kelly Benoit-Bird, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, will discuss how sonar or active acoustics can be used to interpret and indicate biological hotspots of ocean life. The talk, “A Sound Resolution to the Food Paradox in the Sea,” will take place Wednesday, December 1, at 4:05 p.m. Eastern U.S. at the Hyatt Regency Seattle....

A new computer-aided diagnostic tool developed by King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) scientists could help overcome some of the challenges of monitoring lung health following viral infection. Like other respiratory infections, COVID-19 can cause lasting harm to the lungs, but doctors have struggled to visualize this damage. Conventional chest scans do not reliably detect signs of lung scarring and other pulmonary abnormalities, making it difficult to track the health and recovery of people with persistent breathing problems and other post-COVID complications....

Now an MIT student has invented a novel algorithm that produces a portamento effect between any two audio signals in real-time. In experiments, the algorithm seamlessly merged various audio clips, such as a piano note gliding into a human voice, and one song blending into another. His paper describing the algorithm won the “best student paper” award at the recent International Conference on Digital Audio Effects. The algorithm relies on “optimal transport,” a geometry-based framework that determines the most efficient ways to move objects — or data points — between multiple origins and destination configurations....

For much of its existence, Earth has been inhabited. But if researchers remotely analyzed the atmosphere of that young Earth, they might have missed the evidence for life. “The Earth has been many different things,” says Timothy Lyons, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. “It is a remarkable story that our planet has maintained habitability for so long.” Lyons heads up the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s “Alternative Earths” team, in which researchers are characterizing the Earth during different stages in its 4....

A team of international researchers who worked on the study includes Anna Linderholm, assistant professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University, and their work is in the current issue of Science magazine. The team collected genetic information from 71 ancient dog remains from the Americas and found that early dogs arrived alongside people who eventually settled throughout North, Central, and South America. But closer study of the ancient dog genomes shows that they almost completely disappeared following the arrival of European settlers, leaving little or no trace in more modern American dogs....

Ants live closely together in their ant hills and are therefore highly exposed to the spread of infections. But they have their own medication against diseases. On the one hand, they are very hygienic and, on the other hand, they can cure themselves and treat each other with antibiotics produced by themselves. Through body glands, the ants secrete antibiotics, and bacterial colonies, which the ants cultivate on their legs and body, may also secrete antibiotics....