Google says it has made a significant step in identifying disease-causing genes, which could help spot rare genetic disorders. A new model named AlphaMissense is able to confidently classify 89 per cent of all possible “missense” variants in genes, identifying whether they are likely to cause diseases or benign. That compares with just 0.1 [...]
MINDWATCH study reveals cognitive peaks with everyday pleasures. Listening to music and drinking coffee are the sorts of everyday pleasures that can impact a person’s brain activity in ways that improve cognitive performance, including in tasks requiring concentration and memory. That’s a finding of a new NYU Tandon School of Engineering study involving MINDWATCH, a groundbreaking [...]
Moderna has developed a new and improved version of its COVID-19 vaccine. The unique formulation (mRNA-1283) reduces the vaccine's content from the full-length SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to a narrowly focused encoding of just two segments—the N-terminal domain (NTD) and the receptor binding domain (RBD). In a paper, "Domain-based mRNA vaccines encoding spike protein N-terminal and [...]
Breast cancer in its various forms affects more than 250,000 Americans a year. One particularly aggressive and hard-to-treat type is triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which lacks specific receptors targeted by existing treatments. The rapid growth and metastasis of this cancer also make it challenging to manage, leading to limited therapy options and an often [...]
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have created a process that can upcycle most plastics into chemical ingredients useful for energy storage, using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and a commercially available catalyst, all at room temperature. The new process is very energy-efficient and can be easily powered by renewable energy in the future, [...]
The mere scent of seafood can severely sicken those allergic to it — and therefore they are more likely to avoid it. Similarly, individuals who experience food poisoning from a specific dish tend to avoid it afterward. For a long time, researchers have understood that our immune system plays a key role in our [...]
Researchers in Germany and Japan have been able to increase the diffusion of magnetic whirls, so-called skyrmions, by a factor of ten. In today’s world, our lives are unimaginable without computers. Up until now, these devices process information using primarily electrons as charge carriers, with the components themselves heating up significantly in the process. [...]
Omicron infections have a lower risk of long COVID than earlier variants, according to a study analyzing data from 11,000 participants. The risk of developing long COVID is significantly lower following an infection with the Omicron variant than after an infection with earlier coronavirus variants. This was the finding of a study by University [...]
Researchers have discovered that insulin resistance, typically linked with type 2 diabetes, is also present in cancer patients and can accelerate the spread of the disease. In the 1920s, scientists found that the urine of cancer patients had a sweet odor. Initially, this left doctors perplexed, but they quickly realized that it was due [...]
Scientists from ETH Zurich and the University of Geneva have developed a new technique that allows them to observe chemical reactions taking place in liquids at extremely high temporal resolution. This innovation enables them to track how molecules change within in mere femtoseconds – in other words, within a few quadrillionths of a second. This breakthrough builds upon [...]
