With the help of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab, and other ground-based telescopes, astronomers have confirmed that a faint object discovered in 2018 and nicknamed "Farfarout" is indeed the most distant object yet found in our Solar System. The object has just received its designation from the International Astronomical Union. Farfarout was first spotted in January 2018 by the Subaru Telescope, located on Maunakea in Hawai'i. Its discoverers could tell it was very far away, but they weren't sure exactly how far. They needed more observations. "At that time we did not know the object's orbit as we only had the Subaru discovery observations over 24 hours, but it takes years of ...

A report summary released today by a team at Lehigh University led by Thomas McAndrew , a computational scientist and assistant professor in Lehigh's College of Health, shares the consensus results of experts in the modeling of infectious disease when asked to rank the top 5 most effective interventions to mitigate the spread and impact of COVID-19 in the U.S. The report is part of an ongoing meta forecasting project aimed at translating forecasting and real world experience into actions. McAndrew and his colleagues wanted to answer "Here is where ...

Wilmington, DE, Feb. 11, 2020 -Scientists have developed an affordable, downloadable app that scans for potential unintended mistakes when CRISPR is used to repair mutations that cause disease. The app reveals potentially risky DNA alterations that could impede efforts to safely use CRISPR to correct mutations in conditions like sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis. The development of the new tool, called DECODR (which stands for Deconvolution of Complex DNA Repair), was reported today in The CRISPR Journal by researchers from ChristianaCare's Gene Editing Institute.  "Our research has shown that when CRISPR is used to repair a gene, it also can introduce a variety of subtle changes to DNA near the site of the repair," said Eric ...

Amsterdam, February 11, 2021 - Recent genetic data from patients with Huntington's disease (HD) show that DNA repair is an important factor that determines how early or late the disease occurs in individuals who carry the expanded CAG repeat in the HTT gene that causes HD. The processes of DNA repair further expand the CAG repeats in HTT in the brain implicated in pathogenesis and disease progression. This special issue of the Journal of Huntington's Disease (JHD) is a compendium of new reviews on topics ranging from the discovery of somatic CAG repeat expansion in HD, to our current understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved ...

In the last 25 years, scientists have discovered over 4000 planets beyond the borders of our solar system. From relatively small rock and water worlds to blisteringly hot gas giants, the planets display a remarkable variety. This variety is not unexpected. The sophisticated computer models, with which scientists study the formation of planets, also spawn very different planets. What the models have more difficulty to explain is the observed mass distribution of the planets discovered around other stars. The majority have fallen into the intermediate mass category - planets with masses of several Earth masses to around that of Neptune. Even in ...

LAWRENCE -- Nearly every fall, as football teams return to the field, tragic stories of players falling ill and even dying of heat trauma make the headlines. What many don't consider is that marching band members -- who don heavy uniforms and perform in the same sweltering temperatures -- may also be at risk. A study led by the University of Kansas has measured core temperatures, hydration and sweat levels of marching band members and found that they are very much at risk and deserve access to athletic trainers for their safety -- just as players do. The study used high tech methods to gauge band members' body core ...

A study led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine reveals a novel role of the steroid receptor coactivator 3 (SRC-3/NCOA3), a protein crucial for steroid hormone function and a prognostic marker for aggressive human breast and other cancers. The team discovered that SRC-3 also regulates human immune T regulatory cells (Tregs), which contribute to the regulation of the body's immunological activity by suppressing the function of other immune cells, including those involved in fighting cancer. The study, which appears in the journal Scientific Reports, shows that Tregs whose SRC-3 function was eliminated failed to suppress the activity of other immune cells in the lab. The authors anticipate that their findings ...

The golden-mantled ground squirrel (Callospermophilus lateralis) is a popular sight among tourists in the Rocky Mountains--the small rodent is a photogenic creature with a striped back and pudgy cheeks that store seeds and other food. But there's a reality that Instagram photos don't capture, said Christy McCain, an ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. In a new study spanning nearly 13 years, she and her colleagues discovered that the ground squirrel has joined many other small mammals in Colorado's Rocky Mountains that are making an ominous trek: They're climbing uphill to avoid warming temperatures in the state brought on by climate change. "It's frightening," ...

Globular clusters are extremely dense stellar systems, in which stars are packed closely together. They are also typically very old -- the globular cluster that is the focus of this study, NGC 6397, is almost as old as the Universe itself. It resides 7800 light-years away, making it one of the closest globular clusters to Earth. Because of its very dense nucleus, it is known as a core-collapsed cluster. When Eduardo Vitral and Gary A. Mamon of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris set out to study the core of NGC 6397, they expected to find evidence for an "intermediate-mass" black hole (IMBH). These are smaller than the supermassive black holes that lie at the cores of large galaxies, but larger than stellar-mass black holes ...

Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) develops as a long term complication of childhood streptococcal angina. Latent RHD can be detected with echocardiography years before it becomes symptomatic. RHD is curable when treated early with medication. RHD is responsible for over 300 000 deaths worldwide each year, accounting for just over two-thirds of all deaths from valvular heart diseases. RHD is disproportionally prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Pacific Islands and largely a phenomenon of marginalized communities in developing and emerging countries whereas ...

Millions of tonnes of plastic waste find their way into the ocean every year. A team of researchers from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam has investigated the role of regional ocean governance in the fight against marine plastic pollution, highlighting why regional marine governance should be further strengthened as negotiations for a new global agreement continue. In recent years, images of whales and sea turtles starving to death after ingesting plastic waste or becoming entangled in so-called ghost nets have led to a growing ...

Domestic cats are a major threat to wild species, including birds and small mammals. But researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on February 11 now have evidence that some simple strategies can help to reduce cats' environmental impact without restricting their freedom. Their studies show that domestic cats hunt less when owners feed them a diet including plenty of meat proteins. Equally, it helps to play with them each day in ways that allow cats to mimic hunting. "While keeping cats indoors is the only sure-fire way to prevent hunting, some owners ...

Domestic cats hunt wildlife less if owners play with them daily and feed them a meat-rich food, new research shows. Hunting by cats is a conservation and welfare concern, but methods to reduce this are controversial and often rely on restricting cat behaviour in ways many owners find unacceptable. The new study - by the University of Exeter - found that introducing a premium commercial food where proteins came from meat reduced the number of prey animals cats brought home by 36%, and also that five to ten minutes of daily play with an owner resulted ...

Cambridge, MA - February 11, 2020 - Dyno Therapeutics, a biotech company applying artificial intelligence (AI) to gene therapy, today announced a publication in Nature Biotechnology that demonstrates the use of artificial intelligence to generate an unprecedented diversity of adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids towards identifying functional variants capable of evading the immune system, a factor that is critical to enabling all patients to benefit from gene therapies. The research was conducted in collaboration with Google Research, Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Harvard Medical School laboratory of George M. Church, Ph.D., a Dyno scientific co-founder. The publication is entitled "Deep diversification ...

Natural compounds found in apples and other fruits may help stimulate the production of new brain cells, which may have implications for learning and memory, according to a END ...

(Boston) -- Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) have become promising vehicles for delivering gene therapies to defective tissues in the human body because they are non-pathogenic and can transfer therapeutic DNA into target cells. However, while the first gene therapy products approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) use AAV vectors and others are likely to follow, AAV vectors still have not reached their full potential to meet gene therapeutic challenges. First, currently used AAV capsids - the spherical protein structures enveloping the virus' single-stranded DNA genome which can be modified to encode therapeutic genes - are limited in their ability to specifically hone in on the tissue affected by a disease and their wider distribution throughout ...

Glioblastoma is among the most aggressive and devastating of cancers. While rare compared with other cancers, it's the most common type of brain cancer. Even with intensive therapy, relatively few patients survive longer than two years after diagnosis, and fewer than 10% of patients survive beyond five years. Despite extensive studies focused on genomic features of glioblastoma, relatively little progress has been made in improving treatment for patients with this deadly disease. Now, a new study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Case Western Reserve University and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has revealed a detailed map of the genes, ...

What The Study Did: This observational study assessed CRISPR-based methods for screening to detect SARS-CoV-2 among asymptomatic college students. Authors: Carolina Arias, Ph.D., of the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study:  Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.37129) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: ...

What The Study Did: Changes in otolaryngology surgical volumes in the United States early on in the COVID-19 pandemic are described in this study. Authors: Anirudh Saraswathula, M.D., M.S., of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2020.5472) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest ...

What The Viewpoint Says: How pandemic-related disruptions may adversely impact progress toward a gender-balanced workforce in academic oncology is described in this article, which also offers possible solutions to mitigate the problem in this specialty. Authors: Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.7681) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media ...

Your brain is constantly evaluating which aspects of your experiences to either remember for later, ignore, or forget. Dartmouth researchers have developed a new approach for studying these aspects of memory, by creating a computer program that turns sequences of events from a video into unique geometric shapes. These shapes can then be compared to the shapes of how people recounted the events. The study provides new insight into how experiences are committed to memory and recounted to others. The results are published in Nature Human Behavior and were based on how people remembered the experience of watching an episode of Sherlock, a BBC television show. "When we represent experiences and memories as shapes, we can use the tools ...

Considered the most lethal form of DNA damage, double-strand breaks must be repaired to prevent cell death. In developing therapies for hard-to-treat breast and ovarian cancers in patients with BRCA gene mutations, scientists aim to identify ways to keep cancer cells from using DNA break repair pathways. New findings demonstrate a previously-unknown capability for polymerase theta (pol theta) - a key enzyme in this repair function - that shows promise as a new avenue for treatment development. The study results are published in Molecular Cell. Researchers at the University of Vermont (UVM), The University of Texas MD Anderson ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A survey of more than 18,000 land parcels spanning 2 million square miles across 63 countries shows that a "protected area" designation reduces the rate of deforestation but does not prevent it. Published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, the findings are important because most terrestrial species live in forests and because the study suggests that just 6.5% of the Earth's woodlands are truly protected, well below the 2020 target of 17% set by the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity. The findings are also timely given President Biden's recent executive order on climate change, which calls for protecting 30% of the United States' ...

Observations of lithium and potassium around white dwarf stars point to remains of rocky planet crusts Analysis by astronomers led by University of Warwick shows chemical composition of crusts is very similar to Earth's continental crust The outer layers of the white dwarfs contain up to 300,000 gigatonnes of rocky debris, which includes up to 60 gigatonnes of lithium and 3,000 gigatonnes of potassium These white dwarfs are among the oldest stars in our galaxy, and could host one of the oldest planetary systems discovered so far Remnants of planets with Earth-like crusts have been discovered in the atmospheres of four nearby white dwarf stars by University of Warwick astronomers, offering a glimpse of the planets that may have once orbited ...

BOSTON -- Sleep and health are inextricably connected. New research from investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital explores the connection between sleep disturbances and deficiencies among older adults and risk of dementia and death, finding that risk of dementia was double among participants who reported getting less than five hours of sleep compared to those who reported 7-8 hours of sleep per night. The team also found associations between sleep disturbance and sleep deficiency with overall risk of death. Results are published in Aging. "Our findings illuminate a connection between sleep deficiency and risk of dementia and confirm the importance of efforts to help older individuals obtain ...