With every new variant of SARS-CoV-2 that emerges, a worrisome question arises: could the virus eventually arrive at a set of mutations that would enable it to fully evade our immune response? A new study, published in Nature, suggests that it will be hard for the virus to get there. Studying dozens of naturally occurring and laboratory-selected mutations, including those found in Delta and other concerning variants, researchers found that a future SARS-CoV-2 variant will need to pack about...
The night sky is going to get much busier thanks to thousands of new internet satellites set to launch over the next few years – and researchers say it's going to affect Canada more than most regions, reports Phys.org. Researchers from the University of Toronto, the University of Regina, and the University of British Columbia found that most light pollution is expected to happen near 50 degrees latitude north and south due to the orbits of...
According to a review article published today in the journal iScience, when it comes to getting healthy and reducing mortality risk, increasing physical activity and improving fitness appear to be superior to weight loss. The authors say that employing a weight-neutral approach to the treatment of obesity-related health conditions also reduces the health risks associated with yo-yo dieting, reports Medical Xpress. "We would like people to know that fat can be fit, and that fit...
The immune system is vitally important for resolving COVID-19 when individuals are infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Moreover, the vaccines that are being administered to millions of people across the globe are designed to "pre-warn and arm" the immune system so that if infected with SARS-CoV-2, individuals are significantly less likely to develop severe disease or die. Here, two crucial arms of the immune system, namely B cells and T cells, play a central...
By studying the topography and mineral composition of a portion of the Arabia Terra region in northern Mars, scientists recently found evidence of thousands of massive volcanic eruptions, or "super eruptions". Spewing water vapour, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide into the air, these explosions tore through the Martian surface over a 500-million-year period about 4 billion years ago, Phys.org reports. Scientists reported this estimate in a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "Each one...
Transgender people have an elevated risk for chronic conditions versus their cisgender counterparts, according to a report published in the September issue of Health Affairs. Landon Hughes, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues compared the rates of selected chronic conditions for transgender people enrolled in private insurance using claims from 2001 to 2019 and a matched cisgender cohort. The researchers found that disparities were documented between transgender and cisgender people across most conditions, with an elevated risk...
Researchers have shown that the reduced stem cell function upon aging is due to changes in their epigenome, reports Medical Xpress. They were able to reverse these changes in isolated stem cells by adding acetate. This fountain of youth for the epigenome could become important for the treatment of diseases such as osteoporosis. Aging researchers have been looking at epigenetics as a cause of aging processes for some time. Epigenetics looks at changes in genetic information and...
Children are often delighted to find that they can ask Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa to play their favourite songs or call Grandma. But does hanging out with Alexa or Siri affect the way children communicate with fellow humans? Probably not, according to a recent study led by the University of Washington that found that children are sensitive to context when it comes to these conversations. The team had a conversational agent teach 22 children...
An antioxidant drug reverses atherosclerosis and could be used to prevent heart attacks and strokes due to clots, according to research funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Atherosclerosis is the build-up of fatty deposits in the arteries. When a type of fat called LDL cholesterol becomes oxidized and builds up to form plaques in the artery walls, inflammation and damage increase which can...
A study of 61,000+ Microsoft employees found that working from home causes workers to become more siloed in how they communicate, engage in fewer real-time conversations, and spend fewer hours in meetings. The study, published Sept. 9 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour and co-authored by Berkeley Haas assistant professor David Holtz, made use of data from before and after Microsoft imposed a company-wide work-from-home mandate in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggest that a...
