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Accurate and widespread testing is crucial to managing the coronavirus pandemic, but many people in the U.S. still can’t get tested for COVID-19 without visiting designated sites. A new research project could lead to a solution: an affordable, at-home test that offers rapid detection. University of Chicago researchers were awarded a Big Ideas Generator grant to develop a handheld COVID-19 testing device that provides results in five minutes. They hope to be able to detect both current infections as well as previous ones, all for about $10 per test....

Spintronic technology, in which data is processed on the basis of electron “spin” rather than charge, promises to revolutionize the computing industry with smaller, faster and more energy-efficient data storage and processing. Materials drawing a lot of attention for spintronic applications are dilute magnetic semiconductors – normal semiconductors to which a small amount of magnetic atoms is added to make them ferromagnetic. Understanding the source of ferromagnetism in dilute magnetic semiconductors has been a major roadblock impeding their further development and use in spintronics....

Led by Associate Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology Terence D. Capellini, a team of researchers discovered hundreds of genetic “switches” that influence height, and then performed functional tests that demonstrated precisely how one switch altered the function of a key gene involved in height differences. The study is described in a December 5 paper in eLife. “Large genome-wide association studies on upwards of 250,000 people found about 700 genetic regions associated with height,” Capellini said....

Although Herbig–Haro (HH) objects come in a wide array of shapes, the basic configuration is usually the same. Twin jets of heated gas, ejected in opposite directions from a forming star, stream through interstellar space. These outflows are fueled by gas falling onto the young star, which is surrounded by a disc of dust and gas. If the disc is the fuel tank, the star is the gravitational engine, and the jets are the exhaust....

Herpes simplex virus’s VP1-2 protein can deactivate the early immune response. Herpes simplex virus (HSV1) infections are initiated at mucosal surfaces where the virus infects epithelial cells. When HSV1 spreads from the peripheral nerves and into the central nervous system, it can infect the brain and cause herpes simplex encephalitis, a rare disease with high mortality if left untreated. In most cases, the innate immune system prevents HSV1 brain infection, but HSV1 is sometimes able to evade the brain’s defenses....

Until now, researchers believed the packed sea ice of the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean) blocked all light from reaching the sea beneath. This prevented phytoplankton — tiny algae which are the base of aquatic food webs — from growing there. The less light that is available, the less the phytoplankton can photosynthesize and therefore the less phytoplankton there will be. This means that a lack of sunlight heavily restricts life beneath the ice....

In the midst of the pandemic, the hunger for data and desire to provide swift information may have lowered the quality of research, investigators report in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. A systematic evaluation of research on the risk and outcomes of COVID-19 in patients with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis treated with biological therapies has found high risk of bias in all of the studies, among other quality issues. Therefore, investigators reporting in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, published by Elsevier, conclude that neither a definite statement on risk nor management recommendations can be made based on currently published data....

A new image produced by HiRISE, a high-resolution camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), shows a small object on the slopes of the Red Planet’s Perseverance Valley. That object is Opportunity, which was descending into the Martian valley when a dust storm swept over the region a little more than 100 days ago. The storm was one of several that stirred up enough dust to enshroud most of the Red Planet and block sunlight from reaching the surface....

Researchers found that tobacco smoke from a hookah caused blood clots to form within an average of about 11 seconds, compared to an average of 5 minutes for clotting without exposure to hookah smoke. Exposure to the hookah smoke also caused other abnormalities related to the way the blood flows. “Hookah smoking, which is becoming more popular in Western countries, is perceived as less harmful than cigarettes, yet hookahs carry a toxic profile that is thought to be comparable or to even exceed that of traditional cigarettes....

Dissecting invisible aerosols At ALS beamline 5.3.3.2, the researchers performed scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) to determine the near-edge x-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) of particles collected during the wet season in the remote, pristine forest northeast of Manaus, Brazil. “Through absorption of soft x-rays by an atom’s core electrons, and subsequent emission of photons, the identity and exact location of the elements in the aerosol samples can be identified,” says Kilcoyne....

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering to identify key information to improve the effectiveness of drug inhibitors designed to block the virus’s replication mechanism. The research was recently published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, expresses long chains of proteins composed of approximately 1,900 amino acid residues. For the virus to reproduce, those chains have to be broken down and cut into smaller strands by an enzyme called the main protease....

We seem to be wired to calculate not the shortest path but the “pointiest” one, facing us toward our destination as much as possible. Everyone knows the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. However, when you’re walking along city streets, a straight line may not be possible. How do you decide which way to go? A new MIT study suggests that our brains are actually not optimized to calculate the so-called “shortest path” when navigating on foot....

Sure, we all know the unique whorls, loops, and arches in a print can identify a person. But now researchers are studying how the natural and environmental compounds within them can also offer clues about a person’s lifestyle, gender, and ethnicity. But even as researchers discover new information in fingerprints, they still hadn’t found a way to determine a basic fact about a print: How old is it? That’s information that could potentially tie a suspect to a crime scene....

On December 16, NASA successfully launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite into Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The mission is a collaborative effort between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) – with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency – that will survey water on more than 90% of the planet’s surface....

Research published today (March 13, 2020) in Science Advances sheds new light on the molecular machinery that enables the shape, growth, and movement of neurons. It is the first time scientists have revealed how the brain shuttles genetic code within its cells, a process believed to be crucial for the formation and storage of long-term memories. Brain cells, also known as neurons, are complex, specialized cells with long branches. To grow, neurons build proteins at specific locations of a branch so that they can form new protrusions, control the direction they move in and establish connections with other neurons....

The rapid spread of COVID-19 overwhelmed hospitals that were unable to contend with the increasing number of patients, many requiring ventilators and other critical care. Such conditions can put medical workers at risk. Now researchers are studying methods to increase hospital safety and efficacy during the pandemic. A shortage of life-saving ventilators, which typically cost around $30,000 each, hit hospitals particularly hard. “By building a simple and cheap ventilator, we can help alleviate this burden for the medical staff,” said Mohamed Amine Abassi, a PhD student in fluid mechanics....

Academics from the University of Leeds and specialists from Procter & Gamble, makers of Ariel, Daz, Bold, Fairy, and Lenor, have wrung out new insight into how laundering clothing affects fading, color runs, and microfiber release. Every load of washing releases hundreds of thousands of microfibers — tiny strands that are flushed down the drain. Many reach beaches and oceans where they can remain for many years and be swallowed by sea creatures....

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has observed water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter’s moon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon’s surface. Previous scientific findings from other sources already point to the existence of an ocean located under Europa’s icy crust. Researchers are not yet fully certain whether the detected water vapor is generated by erupting water plumes on the surface, but they are confident this is the most likely explanation....

A recent study published in Communications Biology and led by researchers from Columbia University has uncovered that human cells with impaired mitochondria respond by going into overdrive and using more energy. This process, known as hypermetabolism, allows the cells to temporarily survive, but it also accelerates their aging rate significantly. “The findings were made in cells from patients with rare mitochondrial diseases, yet they may also have relevance for other conditions that affect mitochondria, including neurodegenerative diseases, inflammatory conditions, and infections,” says principal investigator Martin Picard, Ph....

Now, a multi-institution study led by the Yale School of Medicine and University of Alabama-Birmingham has attempted to tease out the relative impact of two variables most often linked to life expectancy — race and education — by combing through data about 5,114 black and white individuals in four U.S. cities. The lives and deaths among this group of people — who were recruited for a longevity study approximately 30 years ago, when they were in their early 20s, and are now in their mid-50s — shows that the level of education, and not race, is the best predictor of who will live the longest, researchers report today (February 20, 2020) in the American Journal of Public Health....