Now, a team of University of Oregon (UO) researchers has investigated yet another distinctive feature of this eight-armed marine animal: its outstanding visual capabilities. They lay out a detailed map of the octopus’s visual system in a new scientific paper. In the map, they classify different types of neurons in a part of the brain devoted to vision. This results in is a valuable resource for other neuroscientists, providing details that could guide future experiments....

To engineer their vaccine, tentatively named RegaVax, the team led by Professor Johan Neyts and Kai Dallmeier inserted the genetic code of the SARS-CoV-2 spikes into the genetic code of the yellow fever vaccine. The researchers tested the vaccine in healthy hamsters and monkeys. Another group of the animals received a placebo. The researchers first vaccinated the hamsters and then dripped the virus into their noses. Ten days after a single vaccine dose, most of the hamsters were protected against the virus....

This is the latest map of Pluto created from images taken from June 27 to July 3 by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons, combined with lower-resolution color data from the spacecraft’s Ralph instrument. The center of the map corresponds to the side of Pluto that will be seen close-up during New Horizons’ July 14 flyby. This map gives mission scientists an important tool to decipher the complex and intriguing pattern of bright and dark markings on Pluto’s surface....

This false-color image, derived from observations in infrared light by the Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument, shows where the spectral features of water ice are abundant on Pluto’s surface. It is based on two LEISA scans of Pluto obtained on July 14, 2015, from a range of about 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers). The scans, taken about 15 minutes apart, were stitched into a combined multispectral Pluto “data cube” covering the full hemisphere visible to New Horizons as it flew past Pluto....

Whether a material conducts electricity without losses is not least a question of the right temperature. In the future, it may be possible to make a more reliable prediction for high-temperature superconductors. These materials lose their resistance if they are cooled with liquid nitrogen, which is relatively easy to handle. An international team, in which physicists of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart played a crucial role, has now discovered that this form of superconductivity competes with charge density waves, i....

Human consumption of fossil fuels has resulted in rising global CO2 emissions, leading to serious problems associated with global warming and climate change. One possible way to counteract this is to capture and sequester carbon from the atmosphere, but current methods are highly energy-intensive. The low reactivity of CO2 makes it difficult to capture and convert it efficiently. “We have successfully designed a porous material which has a high affinity towards CO2 molecules and can quickly and effectively convert it into useful organic materials,” says Ken-ichi Otake, Kyoto University materials chemist from the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS)....

In an exciting breakthrough, scientists have developed a way to identify aged muscle stem cells (MuSCs) based on their chromatin signature. MuSCs play an important role in muscle repair. The research team was from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and was led by Professor Tom Cheung, an associate professor of life sciences. In contrast to their younger counterparts, aging MuSCs have decreased stemness (the ability to become new stem cells or turn into specialized cells to replace damaged tissues)....

A motif of Japanese basketweaving known as the kagome pattern has preoccupied physicists for decades. Kagome baskets are typically made from strips of bamboo woven into a highly symmetrical pattern of interlaced, corner-sharing triangles. If a metal or other conductive material could be made to resemble such a kagome pattern at the atomic scale, with individual atoms arranged in similar triangular patterns, it should in theory exhibit exotic electronic properties....

Published in Nature Communications, the study shows how identifying the source of damaging glutamate in stroke leads to the discovery of brain protection with QNZ-46, a novel form of preventative treatment with clinical potential. Existing studies show that restricted blood supply promotes the excess release of glutamate. The glutamate binds to receptors, over-stimulating them and leading to the break-down of myelin – the protective sheath around the nerve fiber (axon)....

The drug remdesivir is likely to be a highly effective antiviral against SARS-CoV-2, according to a new study by a team of UK scientists. Writing in Nature Communications, the researchers describe giving the drug to a patient with COVID-19 and a rare immune disorder, and observing a dramatic improvement in his symptoms and the disappearance of the virus. The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been hampered by the lack of effective antiviral drugs against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease....

The research team reports in the journal Science Advances that early-life molecular processes of brain development are likely a major determinant of obesity risk. Previous large human studies have shown that the genes most strongly associated with obesity are expressed in the developing brain. This most recent study in mice focused on epigenetic development. Epigenetics is a molecular bookmarking system that regulates whether genes are utilized or not in certain cell types....

The team, led by the University of Oxford in close collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, envisages that this method may soon be used widely in digital human communications, including social media and private messaging. In particular, the ability to send perfectly secure information may empower vulnerable groups, such as dissidents, investigative journalists, and humanitarian aid workers. The algorithm applies to a setting called steganography: the practice of hiding sensitive information inside of innocuous content....

First comprehensive trial in patients with impaired immunity shows that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are well tolerated. Spare a thought for patients with impaired immunity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their condition puts them at high risk of severe complications from COVID-19, but also creates uncertainty about the safety and effectiveness of the available vaccines that could protect them. A new study in Frontiers in Oncology helps to put this catch-22 situation to rest by finding that two popular mRNA-based vaccines are well tolerated by such high-risk patients....

One of three epilepsy patients experience no relief from drugs and are candidates for surgery. An advance by researchers at Yale and the Cleveland Clinic will enable surgeons to more precisely target areas of the brain causing debilitating symptoms in a subset of these patients. The technology called magnetoencephalography or MEG measures small amounts of magnetic-electrical activity on the surface of epileptic brain areas, and the researchers have developed a novel way to employ it....

New technique could help doctors determine whether patients are at risk from elevated pressure. Traumatic brain injuries, as well as infectious diseases such as meningitis, can lead to brain swelling and dangerously high pressure in the brain. If untreated, patients are at risk for brain damage, and in some cases elevated pressure can be fatal. Current techniques for measuring pressure within the brain are so invasive that the measurement is only performed in the patients at the highest risk....

Like cleaning the lenses of a foggy pair of glasses, scientists are now able to use a technique developed by UCLA researchers and their European colleagues to produce three-dimensional images of breast tissue that are two to three times sharper than those made using current CT scanners at hospitals. The technique also uses a lower dose of X-ray radiation than a mammogram. These higher-quality images could allow breast tumors to be detected earlier and with much greater accuracy....

Throughout decades of research on solar cells, one formula has been considered an absolute limit to the efficiency of such devices in converting sunlight into electricity: Called the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit, it posits that the ultimate conversion efficiency can never exceed 34 percent for a single optimized semiconductor junction. Now, researchers at MIT have shown that there is a way to blow past that limit as easily as today’s jet fighters zoom through the sound barrier — which was also once seen as an ultimate limit....

A large study of patients in the United States who contracted coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) confirms many complications of the disease, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). “Understanding the full range of associated conditions can aid in prognosis, guide treatment decisions and better inform patients as to their actual risks for the variety of COVID-19 complications reported in the literature and media,” writes Dr. William Murk, Jacobs School of Medicine & Biological Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, with coauthors from Aetion, Inc....

This dramatic landscape in the southern constellation of Ara (The Altar) is a treasure trove of celestial objects. Star clusters, emission nebulae and active star-forming regions are just some of the riches observed in this region lying some 4,000 light-years from Earth. This beautiful new image is the most detailed view of this part of the sky so far, and was taken using the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile....

Along with colleagues from UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University, Ke Cheng, the Randall B. Terry Jr. Distinguished Professor in Regenerative Medicine at North Carolina State University and a professor in the NC State/UNC-Chapel Hill Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, oversaw the development of the vaccine prototype from proof-of-concept to animal studies. “There are several challenges associated with vaccine delivery we wanted to address,” Cheng says. “First, taking the vaccine via intramuscular shot is less efficient at getting it into the pulmonary system, and so can limit its efficacy....