Tech

Why Omicron quickly became a variant of concern

Enlarge / That’s a lot of mutations. (credit: Stanford ) On Friday, the World Health Organization officially named a new version of the particular SARS-CoV-2 virus a variant associated with concern, and attached the Greek letter omicron to the designation. The Omicron variant is notable for the sheer number regarding mutations in the spike protein […]

COVID 19 Tech

To help people with long COVID, scientists need to define it

Enlarge (credit: Morsa Images | Getty Images ) Almost from the beginning of the COVID pandemic , reports have accumulated of persistent, weird, disabling symptoms in survivors, a syndrome that’s come to be known as long COVID . The complex of fatigue, confusion, heart arrhythmias, gut disorders, and other problems—which may persist months after an […]

Tech

It’s time to fear the fungi

Enlarge / Computer illustration of Candida fungi (yeast). The most common representatives of Candida fungus are C. albicans and C. auris with similar morphology. C. albicans is found on the skin and mucous membranes of the mouth, genitals, respiratory tract, and digestive tract. The most typical disease caused by C. albicans is vaginal candidiasis (thrush). […]

Tech

Humans have broken a fundamental law of the ocean

Enlarge / Microphotograph of thalassiothrix frauenfeldii, Thalassionemataceae, phytoplankton. (credit: De Agostini Picture Library | Getty Images) On November 19, 1969, the CCS Hudson slipped through the frigid waters of Halifax Harbour in Nova Scotia and out into the open ocean. The research vessel was embarking on what many of the particular marine scientists on board […]

Tech

Will glow-in-the-dark materials someday light our cities?

Enlarge / Daan Roosegaarde is the artist behind the glow-in-the-dark Van Gogh fietspad (bike path). (credit: Daan Roosegaarde, CC BY-SA 3.0) Around the year 1603, Italian shoemaker and amateur alchemist Vincenzo Casciarolo tried smelting some especially dense stone he had found on the slopes of Mount Paderno, near Bologna. No gold, silver, or other precious […]

Tech

Scientists use seismic noise to image first hundred meters of Mars

Enlarge / InSight places a wind shield over its seismometer. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA’s InSight lander installed a seismograph on Mars, and the marsquakes it detected have helped us map the planet’s interior. This data provides the big picture of Mars’ internals—how big the core is, whether anything is molten, and so on. But it doesn’t […]

Tech

Microbiologists have cracked the case of Shedd Aquarium’s missing medicines

Enlarge / The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago partnered with microbiologists at Northwestern University to find out why chloroquine kept disappearing from the water in the quarantine habitat. (credit: lan Schein Photography / Getty Images) Founded in 1930, Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is not just a popular tourist attraction. Its staff also aids in worldwide conservation efforts […]

COVID 19 Germany Tech

Pandemic skyrockets in Europe; COVID is the No. 1 cause of death

Enlarge / North Rhine-Westphalia, Herten: The crew of a Dutch ambulance brings a COVID-19 patient from Rotterdam to St. Elisabeth Hospital in Herten. (credit: Getty | Picture alliance ) Health officials in Europe are pleading for people to adopt more health precautions as the region grapples with its most dramatic surge of COVID-19 cases yet […]

Tech

“Vulture bees” evolved a taste for flesh—and their microbiomes reflect that

Enlarge / University of California, Riverside scientists suspended fresh pieces of raw chicken from branches to attract carrion-feeding “vulture bees” in Costa Rica. (credit: Quinn McFrederick/UCR) Ask a random person to picture a bee, and they’ll likely conjure up the familiar black-and-yellow striped creature buzzing from flower to flower collecting pollen to bring back to the […]

Tech

Math may have caught up with Google’s quantum-supremacy claims

Enlarge / Google’s Sycamore processor. (credit: Google) In 2019, word filtered out that a quantum computer built by Google had performed calculations that the company claimed would be effectively impossible to replicate on supercomputing hardware. That turned out to not be entirely correct, since Google had neglected to consider the storage available to supercomputers; if […]