Experts said Monday that an alleged hybrid coronavirus mutation dubbed "Deltacron" reportedly discovered in a Cyprus lab is most likely the result of a lab contamination, and not a new worrying variant, reports Medical Xpress. Cypriot media reported the discovery Saturday, describing it as having "the genetic background of the Delta variant along with some of the mutations of Omicron". While it is possible for coronaviruses to genetically combine, it is rare, and scientists analysing the discovery...
NASA's new space telescope opened its huge, gold-plated, flower-shaped mirror Saturday, the final step in the observatory's dramatic unfurling, reports Phys.org. The last portion of the 6.5-metre mirror swung into place at flight controllers' command, completing the unfolding of the James Webb Space Telescope. "I'm emotional about it," said Thomas Zurbuchen, chief of NASA's science missions. "What an amazing milestone. We see that beautiful pattern out there in the sky now." More powerful than the...
The price of Bitcoin fell to its lowest level in months following remarks from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The cryptocurrency dropped in value from $47,000 USD earlier this week to less than $42,000 per digital coin today. It follows minutes from a meeting of the Federal Reserve, which suggested it may raise interest rates, the BBC reports. Political events in Kazakhstan have also raised concerns about the network's capacity. Because of its global and decentralised nature, attributing a...
The World Health Organization said today that the spread of Omicron was down to a combination of factors including the make-up of the COVID-19 variant and increased social mixing. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, said people therefore needed to think about reducing their exposure to the virus and take control over its transmission, following a week of record numbers of new cases, reports Medical Xpress. Van Kerkhove said Omicron is transmitted...
Since the first lab-modified virus capable of replication was generated in 1974, an evidence-based consensus has emerged that many changes introduced into viral genomes are likely to prove unstable if released into the environment. On this basis, many virologists would question the release of genetically modified viruses that retain the capacity to spread between individual vertebrate hosts. Researchers from Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States now point out in a...
(HealthDay)—The Abbott BinaxNOW and Quidel QuickVue – two widely used rapid at-home COVID tests – may fail to spot evidence of the Omicron variant in the first days after infection, even when people are carrying substantial levels of the virus, preliminary research suggests. The researchers focused on 30 people infected with COVID at five workplaces that experienced what were most likely outbreaks of the Omicron variant in December. The people received both saliva-based PCR tests (the...
The world we experience is governed by classical physics. How we move, where we are, and how fast we're going are all determined by the classical assumption that we can only exist in one place at any one moment in time. But in the quantum world, the behaviour of individual atoms is governed by the eerie principle that a particle's location is a probability. An atom, for instance, has a certain chance of being in...
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, was launched in 2018 with the goal of discovering small planets around the sun's nearest neighbour stars. TESS has so far discovered 172 confirmed exoplanets and compiled a list of 4,703 candidate exoplanets. Its sensitive camera takes images that span a huge field of view, more than twice the area of the constellation of Orion, and TESS has also assembled a TESS Input Catalog (TIC) with over 1...
Researchers are one step closer to developing a blood test that provides a simple biochemical hallmark for depression and reveals the efficacy of drug therapy in individual patients. Published in a new proof of concept study, researchers led by Mark Rasenick, University of Illinois Chicago distinguished professor of physiology and biophysics and psychiatry, have identified a biomarker in human platelets that tracks the extent of depression. The research builds off of previous studies by several investigators that...
U.S. authorities have asked telecom operators AT&T and Verizon to delay for up to two weeks their already-postponed rollout of 5G networks amid uncertainty about interference with vital flight safety equipment, reports Tech Xplore. The two companies said Saturday they are reviewing the request. The U.S. rollout of the high-speed mobile broadband technology had been set for Dec. 5, but was delayed to Jan. 5 after aerospace giants Airbus and Boeing raised concerns about...
