Last week, a new study about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) went viral after news headlines and social media posts proclaimed that scientists had discovered the root cause of the condition. And a press release describing the research asserted that, thanks to the “breakthrough” finding, SIDS “may soon be a thing of the past.” However, … Read more
Scientists have found a biological mechanism that has never been described before, which may help explain the disturbed blood coagulation that has often been observed in n patients with serious and long-term COVID-19. In patients with serious and long-term[{” attribute=””>COVID-19, disrupted blood coagulation has often been observed. Now, researchers at Linköping University (LiU), Sweden, have … Read more
The images show the impressions of a collapsed cell-wall covering (a coccosphere) on the surface of a fragment of ancient organic matter (left) with the individual plates (coccoliths) enlarged to show the exquisite preservation of sub-micron-scale structures ( right). The blue image is inverted to give a virtual fossil cast, ie, to show the original … Read more
The US defense and intelligence communities are taking unidentified flying objects, officially known as unidentified aerial phenomena, seriously. And some researchers think the scientific community should too. On May 17, the US Congress held its first public hearing about these objects in decades (SN: 6/26/71). Two Pentagon officials described efforts to catalog and analyze sightings, … Read more
A kidney is removed from a donor, in a standard transplant procedure.Credit: BSIP / Universal Images Group / Getty Kidneys from pigs that had been genetically modified to have human-like immune systems worked successfully when transplanted into two patients who had recently died, the team that performed the experiments has reported1. Although the organs seemed … Read more
A hospital or medical clinic might be the last place you’d expect to pick up a nasty infection, but approximately 1.7 million Americans do each year, resulting in nearly 100,000 deaths from infection-related complications and roughly $ 30 billion in direct medical costs. The biggest culprits, experts say – accounting for two-thirds of these infections … Read more
At first, it seems like any other unboxing video on YouTube: A young man presents the viewer with a sealed box, expresses his excitement at what might be inside and peels away the packing tape. But instead of pulling out a collectible toy or signature sneaker, he carefully unpacks seven live tarantulas, zooming in close … Read more
Closeup of a sample plate filled with yeast cell cultures used in these studies. These plates allow scientists to run experiments on many duplicate samples simultaneously to increase confidence in results. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory Most people do not think much about zinc. But all living things need zinc for survival. This trace element helps … Read more
Scientists are turning scientific date, like DNA sequences, into sound. Emily Landiewicz Mark Temple, a medical molecular biologist, used to spend a lot of his time in his lab at Western Sydney University in Australia researching new drugs for cancer treatments. He would extract DNA from cells, put it into small tubes, and then add … Read more
An underwater volcano erupted in January near the Pacific nation of Tonga and sent massive pressure waves racing through Earth’s atmosphere, where they lapped the planet several times. The last volcano to generate such large ripples in the atmosphere was Krakatau in 1883, during one of the most destructive volcanic eruptions in recorded history, a … Read more