Top Story: Lab made virus mimics COVID-19 virus.
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Accessed on 22 July 2020, 0034 UTC.
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ScienceBlog.com: 10 Stories to Start Your Day |
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- Lab-made virus mimics COVID-19 virus
- The hair-raising reason for goosebumps is revealed
- Battery Breakthrough Gives Boost to Electric Flight and Long-Range Electric Cars
- New Model Connects Respiratory Droplet Physics with Spread of Covid-19
- Neural vulnerability in Huntington’s disease tied to release of mitochondrial RNA
- A new rover to land on Mars
- Front-Line Physicians Stressed and Anxious at Work and Home
- Study shows highly reproducible sex differences in aspects of human brain anatomy
- Wherever the sun shines: bringing solar to low- and middle-income homes
- ‘Trojan horse’ anticancer drug disguises itself as fat
| Lab-made virus mimics COVID-19 virus
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 01:54 PM PDT  Airborne and potentially deadly, the virus that causes COVID-19 can only be studied safely under high-level biosafety conditions. Scientists handling the infectious virus must wear full-body biohazard suits with pressurized respirators, and work inside laboratories with multiple containment levels and specialized ventilation systems. While necessary to protect laboratory workers, these safety precautions slow down efforts […] |
| The hair-raising reason for goosebumps is revealed
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 10:59 AM PDT  If you’ve ever wondered why we get goosebumps, you’re in good company — so did Charles Darwin, who mused about them in his writings on evolution. Goosebumps might protect animals with thick fur from the cold, but we humans don’t seem to benefit from the reaction much — so why has it been preserved during […] |
| Battery Breakthrough Gives Boost to Electric Flight and Long-Range Electric Cars
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 10:55 AM PDT  In the pursuit of a rechargeable battery that can power electric vehicles (EVs) for hundreds of miles on a single charge, scientists have endeavored to replace the graphite anodes currently used in EV batteries with lithium metal anodes. But while lithium metal extends an EV’s driving range by 30–50%, it also shortens the battery’s useful life […] |
| New Model Connects Respiratory Droplet Physics with Spread of Covid-19
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 10:52 AM PDT  Respiratory droplets from a cough or sneeze travel farther and last longer in humid, cold climates than in hot, dry ones, according to a study on droplet physics by an international team of engineers. The researchers incorporated this understanding of the impact of environmental factors on droplet spread into a new mathematical model that can […] |
| Neural vulnerability in Huntington’s disease tied to release of mitochondrial RNA
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 10:37 AM PDT  In the first study to comprehensively track how different types of brain cells respond to the mutation that causes Huntington’s disease (HD), MIT neuroscientists found that a significant cause of death for an especially afflicted kind of neuron might be an immune response to genetic material errantly released by mitochondria, the cellular components that provide […] |
| A new rover to land on Mars
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 10:00 AM PDT  The Mars 2020 mission is scheduled to launch at the end of July. Its goal is to land the Perseverance rover on the Red Planet and collect samples in the hope of finding signs of past life. While Mars remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Hollywood films, it equally fascinates NASA, which has made […] |
| Front-Line Physicians Stressed and Anxious at Work and Home
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 09:59 AM PDT  Amid the COVID-19 chaos in many hospitals, emergency medicine physicians in seven cities around the country experienced rising levels of anxiety and emotional exhaustion, regardless of the intensity of the local surge, according to a new analysis led by UC San Francisco. In the first known study to assess stress levels of U.S. physicians during […] |
| Study shows highly reproducible sex differences in aspects of human brain anatomy
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 09:57 AM PDT  A scientific analysis of more than 2,000 brain scans found evidence for highly reproducible sex differences in the volume of certain regions in the human brain. This pattern of sex-based differences in brain volume corresponds with patterns of sex-chromosome gene expression observed in postmortem samples from the brain’s cortex, suggesting that sex chromosomes may play […] |
| Wherever the sun shines: bringing solar to low- and middle-income homes
Posted: 21 Jul 2020 09:56 AM PDT  Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), this resource offers a roadmap for installing rooftop solar panels in communities that are often overlooked when it comes to promoting renewable energy solutions. The guidebook includes insights derived from field studies conducted during a series of Yale-led “Solarize” campaigns run by the […] |
| ‘Trojan horse’ anticancer drug disguises itself as fat
Posted: 20 Jul 2020 01:55 PM PDT  A stealthy new drug-delivery system disguises chemotherapeutics as fat in order to outsmart, penetrate and destroy tumors. Thinking the drugs are tasty fats, tumors invite the drug inside. Once there, the targeted drug activates, immediately suppressing tumor growth. The drug also is lower in toxicity than current chemotherapy drugs, leading to fewer side effects. Nathan […] |
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Until next time,
Russ Roberts