LA JOLLA, CA—Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) are investigating how the immune system's T cells react to a wide variety of coronaviruses, ranging from SARS to common cold coronaviruses. Their goal is to guide the development of vaccines that could halt future pandemic by combatting many types of coronaviruses at once.   "While it was recognized that coronaviruses were potentially dangerous viruses, because of SARSCoV and MERS viruses causing very severe disease in humans, nobody knew that the next pandemic was going to be caused by SARS-CoV-2," says LJI Professor Alessandro Sette, Dr.Biol.Sci. ...

Traffic-related air pollution is a pervasive problem across the United States. Vehicle emissions are highest near major roadways with around 19% of the U.S. population living in the vicinity of a major roadway. In more densely populated states, like California, up to 40% live near a major roadway. Exposure to these pollutants, such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5 ) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a byproduct of burning fossil fuel, can lead to a host of health effects including premature death. Minority communities often live along these corridors and experience disproportionate exposures. A ...

The endangered Antillean manatee faces a growing threat from boat strikes in Belize, according to a new study that raises concerns about the survival of what had been considered a relatively healthy population. Belize hosts a population of around 1,000 manatees. With the growth of tourism in recent decades, however, Belize has seen a substantial increase in boat traffic, making boat strikes an increasingly important cause of manatee deaths and injuries. The new study, published June 1 in Endangered Species Research, used 25 years of data on manatee strandings (dead or injured ...

Driven by a lifelong curiosity about the natural world and the diversity of life, Elizabeth King, associate professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri, found inspiration to spend her formative years studying science — and along the way she discovered her passion for biology. That foundation has led her to pursue an ongoing career working to develop a better understanding of genetic traits from a biological perspective. Recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded King a five-year, $1.9 million grant to expand her lab’s research ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- In the United States, low-income immigrant and minority children often live in environments that have highly polluted air. A study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, demonstrates this among the Latinx and Purépecha immigrant children and caregivers living along Inland Southern California’s Salton Sea, a highly saline drying lakebed surrounded by agricultural fields. The Purépecha community is an Indigenous group from the Mexican state of Michoacán. “Children of Latinx ...

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) has received renewed grant support to welcome a new class of reporters for the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. The 2023 funders to date include Silver Century Foundation, The John A. Hartford Foundation, Archstone Foundation, and NIHCM Foundation. Since its founding in 2010, this program has been responsible for more than 800 news stories produced by 217 alumni. It has two goals: to educate journalists about issues in aging, better allowing them to spread a new awareness to general-audience, ethnic, and other minority populations; ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – The U.S. Department of Energy has given the greenlight for the MOLLER experiment to begin procurement of key components with its granting of Critical Decision-3A (CD-3A): Approve Long Lead Procurements. The determination allows the MOLLER project at DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to begin spending $9.14 million for long-lead procurements of critical items for which designs are complete. After imagining what it would look like for 17 years, Krishna Kumar felt chills the first time he saw fully engineered drawings of the MOLLER experiment.  “Seeing the designs on paper gave me pins and needles,” said Kumar, professor of ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A team at Sandia National Laboratories is developing materials to tackle what has become one of the biggest problems in the world: human exposure to a group of chemicals known as PFAS through contaminated water and other products. Sandia is now investing more money to take their research to the next level. “It’s in the news constantly. It seems every day we hear of another product that is contaminated. We saw sparkling water with PFAS, toilet paper with PFAS, so it’s ...

So far, it has not been possible to explain the causes of around half of all rare hereditary diseases. A Munich research team has developed an algorithm that predicts the effects of genetic mutations on RNA formation six times more precisely than previous models. As a result, the genetic causes of rare hereditary diseases and cancer can be identified more precisely. Variations of genetic sequence occur relatively frequently – on average, one in a thousand nucleotide of a person’s genome is affected. In rare cases, these changes can lead to defective RNAs and hence non-functional proteins. This can lead to dysfunction in individual organs. If a rare disease is suspected, computer-assisted ...

Body-based units of measure have cognitive and behavioral advantages over standardized measurement systems, according to a new cross-cultural analysis of the use of body-based measurement in more than 180 cultures worldwide, particularly in the design of ergonomic technologies. The findings reveal new insights into body-based measurement as a cultural phenomenon and may help explain the long-term persistence of their use for centuries after the emergence of standardized measurement systems were invented. The ability to measure things plays a central role in how humans understand and interact with the surrounding world and are important drivers in cultural complexity ...

By combining two dynamic polymers, researchers present a new method for achieving autonomous realignment and self-healing in multilayered soft electronic devices and robots, according to a new study. Like human skin, self-healing polymers allow soft electronic and robotic devices to recover autonomously from various forms of damage. Such devices are often multilayered and embedded with conductive or dielectric materials to achieve functional properties while also maintaining the soft mechanical properties of the self-healing ...

A hybrid organic-inorganic polymer resin enables the three-dimensional (3D) printing of nanoscale optical-grade glass at temperatures roughly half of what other approaches require, researchers report. According to the authors, the approach may help redefine the paradigm for the free-form manufacturing of silica glass and enable its use across a wide variety of new technological applications. Silica glasses possess a unique combination of properties, making them one of the most important materials for ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Asian colobines, also known as leaf-eating monkeys, have been on the planet for about 10 million years. Their ancestors crossed land bridges, dispersed across continents, survived the expansion and contraction of ice sheets and learned to live in tropical, temperate and colder climes. A new study reported in the journal Science finds parallels between Asian colobines’ social, environmental and genetic evolution, revealing for the first time that colobines living in colder regions experienced genetic changes and alterations to their ancient social structure that likely enhanced their ability ...

Embargoed until 1-Jun-2023 14:00 ET (1-Jun-2023 18:00 GMT/UTC) The use of short flashes of X-ray light brings scientists one big step closer toward developing better catalysts to transform the greenhouse gas methane into a less harmful chemical. The result, published in the journal Science, reveals for the first time how carbon-hydrogen bonds of alkanes break and how the catalyst works in this reaction. Methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, is being released into the atmosphere at an increasing rate by livestock farming as well as the continuing unfreezing of permafrost. Transforming methane and longer-chain alkanes into less harmful and in fact useful chemicals ...

For the first time ever, scientists have uncovered evidence that a species’ long-term adaptation to living in an extremely cold climate has led to the evolution of social behaviours including extended care by mothers, increased infant survival and the ability to live in large complex multilevel societies. The new study, published today in the journal Science, was led by researchers from Northwest University in China and a team including the University of Bristol (UK) and the University of Western Australia, ...

Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011087 Article Title: Humans decompose tasks by trading off utility and computational cost Author Countries: USA Funding: This research was supported by John Templeton Foundation grant 61454 awarded to TLG and NDD (https://www.templeton.org/), U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant FA 9550-18-1-0077 awarded to TLG (https://www.afrl.af.mil/AFOSR/), and U.S. Army Research Office grant ARO W911NF-16-1-0474 awarded to NDD (https://www.arl.army.mil/who-we-are/directorates/aro/). ...

Baboons (Papio) are found across the continent of Africa, from the west to the east and all the way south. They have doglike noses, impressive teeth and thick fur that ranges widely in color between the six species, which are olive, yellow, chacma, Kinda, Guinea and hamadryas. Their habitats vary from savannas and bushlands to tropical forests and mountains. Chacma baboons, the largest at up to 100 pounds, are even found in the Kalahari Desert, while the neighboring Kinda baboons, the smallest at around 30 pounds, stay near water. Most live in large troops with dozens or hundreds of members. While most baboons ...

Co-led by Guojie Zhang from Centre for Evolutionary & Organismal Biology at Zhejiang University, Dong-Dong Wu at Kunming Institute of Zoology, Xiao-Guang Qi at Northwest University, Li Yu at Yunnan University, Mikkel Heide Schierup at Aarhus University, and Yang Zhou at BGI-Research, the Primate Genome Consortium reported a series of publications from its first phase program which includes high quality reference genomes from 50 primate species of which 27 were sequenced for the first time. These studies provide new insights on the speciation process, genomic diversity, social evolution, ...

HOUSTON – (June 1, 2023) – A new investigation led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine’s Human Genome Sequencing Center, the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, and Illumina, Inc. analyzed the genomes of 233 nonhuman primate species and revealed key features of primate evolution, human disease and biodiversity conservation. The findings are published in a series of studies in a special issue of the journal Science. The Primate Genome Project generated the most complete ...

Within superconductors little tornadoes of electrons, known as quantum vortices, can occur which have important implications in superconducting applications such as quantum sensors. Now a new kind of superconducting vortex has been found, an international team of researchers reports. Egor Babaev, professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, says the study revises the prevailing understanding of how electronic flow can occur in superconductors, based on work about quantum vortices that was recognized in the 2003 Nobel Prize award. The ...

The University of Miami has been chosen as one of the newest members of the esteemed Association of American Universities (AAU), a distinguished national organization of leading research universities founded in 1900. The invitation to join the prestigious organization—considered the gold standard in American higher education—comes as the University’s research and sponsored program expenditures totaled more than $413 million in fiscal year 2022, demonstrating a critical focus to address the world’s most complex issues. “There are special moments in the life of a university that not only reward our hard work but, more importantly, ...

Dr. Robert A. Harrington, a cardiologist and the Arthur L. Bloomfield Professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford University, has been named the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine and provost for medical affairs of Cornell University. The appointment was approved by the Cornell Board of Trustees and the Weill Cornell Medicine Board of Fellows. Harrington - also a member of the National Academy of Medicine - will begin his new position on Sept. 12. A past president of the American Heart Association (AHA), ...

Laszlo Horvath, an early career physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) stationed at General Atomics in San Diego, is the winner of the 2022 Károly Simonyi Memorial Plaque from the Hungarian Nuclear Society. Established in 2007, the plaque “recognizes Hungarian researchers and engineers with outstanding achievements in the field of fusion plasma physics and technology.” Horvath learned he had won the Simonyi Memorial Plaque not long ...

There’s one question that Hollings Cancer Center researcher Jennifer Dahne, Ph.D., co-director of the remote and virtual trials program at the South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute, hears more than any other as she consults with clinical researchers about how to set up remote trials, also known as decentralized trials. Will these trials overcome the barriers that make it difficult for minority and underserved populations to participate in clinical trials? It’s also a question she often discusses ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Tropical forest birds, which tend to have wings that are short and round relative to their body length and shape, are more sensitive to habitat fragmentation than the long-, slender-winged species common in temperate forests, according to an international collaboration that included scientists from Oregon State University. OSU’s Matt Betts and Christopher Wolf teamed with 14 other authors to analyze the wings of more than 1,000 species worldwide in a study led by Thomas Weeks of Imperial College London and ...