Tag Archives: research

Business

AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Effective Against U.K. Variant in Trial

Leave a comment

LONDON—A Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and

AstraZeneca

PLC is effective against a variant of coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the U.S. and around the world, according to a new study, a reassuring sign for governments banking on mass vaccination to bring the pandemic to an end.

The preliminary findings, published in a study online Friday that hasn’t yet been formally reviewed by other scientists, follow similarly positive results from other manufacturers.

Preliminary studies from

Pfizer Inc.

and

Moderna Inc.

found their Covid-19 shots continued to offer protection against new virus variants that have contributed to a fresh surge in cases in the U.K., Europe, South Africa and elsewhere.

Vaccine makers are nevertheless readying new shots that zero in on the new variants more precisely, underlining how mutations in the virus risk morphing the year-old pandemic into a long-running cat-and-mouse game between scientists and a shifting enemy. The virus behind Covid-19 has so far been linked to almost 2.3 million deaths worldwide and more than 100 million cases.

The study published Friday looked at the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness against a new variant of coronavirus first identified in the U.K. last year.

As new coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand how dangerous they could be. WSJ explains. Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ

The variant has now displaced older strains to become the dominant version of the coronavirus in Britain and is spreading in many other countries, including the U.S., where public-health officials have said it could become the dominant version of the virus.

Preliminary estimates suggest the variant from the U.K. is 50%–70% more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus. U.K. scientists said recently that early data suggested it could also be deadlier.

Researchers examined blood samples from around 256 participants in an ongoing clinical trial of the vaccine in the U.K. who tested positive for Covid-19.

Genetic sequencing allowed them to identify which participants were infected with the new variant and which had an older version. A little under a third had the new variant.

By testing antibody levels and other markers of immune system activity against the virus, the researchers found the vaccine triggered an effective immune response against the new variant in 75% of cases that showed symptoms of infection, and in around two-thirds of cases if those that didn’t show symptoms were also included.

The U.K. Coronavirus Variant

The small-scale study showed the vaccine works slightly better against older, more established versions of the virus. For those with the older strain, the vaccine was effective in 84% of symptomatic cases and 81% of all cases.

The researchers reported sharply differing antibody responses among the two groups, saying certain types of antibodies induced by the vaccine were up to nine times less effective at neutralizing the new variant than the old. Overall protection was similar, however, suggesting other parts of the immune system are playing a key role.

Andrew Pollard,

director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, said it isn’t entirely clear which biological mechanisms are most important. It might be infection-fighting T-cells or other types of antibodies, he said.

“We don’t know the answer,” he said.

Almost 120 million doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide, according to figures compiled by the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project. Roll-outs have been patchy, with some countries such as Israel and the U.K. moving rapidly to inoculate their most at-risk citizens and others, including in Europe, lagging behind due to supply and other issues. The U.S. has so far given at least one dose of vaccine to 35 million people, around 10% of its population.

Vaccine makers say the technology behind Covid-19 vaccines should allow them to swiftly retool their production lines to produce shots targeted more precisely at new and emerging variants.

Some studies have suggested a variant first identified in South Africa might be less susceptible to existing vaccines than the U.K. variant. Companies including Moderna, Pfizer and its partner

BioNTech

SE,

Johnson & Johnson

and

Novavax Inc.

are designing new vaccines to specifically target the South African variant.

Babak Javid,

associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, said small differences in how vaccines perform against new variants compared with established versions isn’t a major concern provided those vaccinated are protected against severe illness and hospitalization. That will be critical to determining when countries relax lockdowns and other public health restrictions, he said.

Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

World

Russian Covid-19 Vaccine Was Highly Effective in Trial, Study Finds, Boosting Moscow’s Rollout Ambitions

Leave a comment

MOSCOW—Russia’s homegrown Sputnik V vaccine showed high levels of efficacy and safety in a peer-reviewed study released Tuesday, a potential boost for the Kremlin’s aim to promote the Covid-19 shot abroad and curb the pandemic at home.

The findings, from a preliminary analysis of a large-scale clinical trial published in the British medical journal the Lancet, demonstrated that the two-shot vaccine was 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 and offered complete protection against severe cases. There were no serious side effects, the paper said. The vaccine was also found to be similarly safe and effective in elderly people.

The study could be a significant milestone for Moscow in the global vaccination race, potentially offering President

Vladimir Putin’s

government geopolitical clout in the developing world and the chance to tap into the lucrative global vaccine market. Russia—the world’s fourth worst-hit country with nearly four million cases—has also banked on Sputnik V to avoid new costly lockdowns as authorities plan to vaccinate 60% of the domestic population by the end of the year.

The shot, which was approved by Russian authorities in August before undergoing large-scale clinical trials, has stirred questions in light of its fast-tracked development and lack of published trial data. So far, Sputnik V has been administered to more than two million people world-wide, including in Argentina, Serbia and Algeria, according to Russian authorities.

The Sputnik V Vaccine

Type: Two-dose viral vector vaccine

Efficacy: 91.6% (91.8% among people older than 60 years)

Price: Less than $10 a shot

Storage and transportation temperature: 36º-46ºF

Approved for use in: Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Argentina, Bolivia, Algeria, Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Turkmenistan, Hungary, UAE, Iran, Guinea, Tunisia and Armenia

Administered in: Russia, Argentina, Bolivia, Belarus, Serbia, Algeria, Kazakhstan

Sources: The Lancet, Russian Direct Investment Fund

Tuesday’s results could help clear doubts surrounding the Russian shot.

“The development of the Sputnik V vaccine has been criticized for unseemly haste, corner cutting, and an absence of transparency,” virology professors Ian Jones at the U.K.’s University of Reading and Polly Roy at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine wrote in the Lancet. “But the outcome reported here is clear and the scientific principle of vaccination demonstrated, which means another vaccine can now join the fight to reduce the incidence of Covid-19.”

Alexander Gintsburg,

the head of the vaccine’s developer, the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute, said that the data demonstrates Sputnik V’s safety and high efficacy against the virus.

This “is a great success in the global battle against the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.

Sputnik V’s efficacy rate compares to vaccines developed by

Moderna Inc.

and

Pfizer Inc.

and its German partner

BioNTech SE,

which are around 95% effective.

The Lancet study didn’t address the shot’s usefulness against new variants of the virus, amid some early evidence suggesting strains may prove resistant to current vaccines. Russian officials said on Tuesday that they are continuously testing Sputnik V against new variants and they expect the shot to achieve the same level of efficacy. They also expect it to provide long-term immunity of as long as two years, based on early experimental evidence.

The results published on Tuesday were based on an interim analysis of a Phase 3 trial of nearly 20,000 participants, three-quarters of whom received the vaccine while the rest received a placebo. The analysis was based on a total of 78 confirmed Covid-19 cases, 62 of which were identified in the placebo group and 16 in the vaccine group. The clinical trial, totaling 40,000 volunteers, is ongoing.

Researchers found that the Covid-19 vaccine didn’t produce serious adverse reactions, the Lancet paper said. Most side effects included flulike symptoms, pain at the injection site and headaches.

Among the elderly, the vaccine was well tolerated and demonstrated an efficacy of 91.8%, based on a group of 2,144 volunteers older than 60, the paper said.

Like other Covid-19 vaccines, including ones developed by

Johnson & Johnson

and

AstraZeneca

PLC and Oxford University, Sputnik V uses a so-called viral vector approach. It introduces a genetically altered form of a harmless virus, known as the adenovirus, to serve as a vehicle—or vector—for a fragment of genetic material from the coronavirus.

As wealthier countries buy up supplies of Western drugmakers’ Covid-19 vaccines that are still in development, China and Russia are offering their fast-tracked shots to poorer nations. Here’s what they’re hoping to get in return. Illustration: Ksenia Shaikhutdinova

Each of the vaccine’s two shots is based on a different adenovirus vector, which Russian scientists say achieves a stronger immune response. Sputnik V has simpler logistics requirements compared with some of its peers, with a storage and transportation temperature of between 36 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit. The Pfizer vaccine must be kept at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit before thawing.

With Sputnik V—a reference to the satellite the Soviet Union launched into orbit ahead of the U.S. in the Cold War space race—Russia could gain clout with some countries, analysts say, as well as participate in a global coronavirus vaccine market estimated by Russian officials at $100 billion annually.

Competing on price, Russia is selling the vaccine at less than $10 a dose, lower than Pfizer and Moderna, and is targeting up to 30% market share among Covid-19 shots in the countries buying Sputnik, according to Russian officials.

AstraZeneca has said that it would test whether a combination of its Covid-19 vaccine, which has shown to be between 62% and 90% effective depending on dosage, and Sputnik V can boost efficacy. Clinical trials for a combined shot are expected to start soon in Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and other countries.

Some 15 countries outside Russia have already authorized Sputnik V, and Moscow has received orders or expressions of interest for 2.4 billion doses, including from Brazil, Mexico and India. In a bid to accelerate the global rollout, Russia will also offer a one-dose vaccine, dubbed Sputnik Light, which Russian authorities say would be between 73% and 85% effective.

To produce its vaccine, Russia relies on a global supply chain, including manufacturing hubs in Brazil, South Korea, India and China. Russia has also mounted an aggressive public-relations campaign abroad, including posting weekly video updates in English and maintaining a Twitter account for Sputnik V.

Sputnik V hasn’t been approved by Western health authorities or received authorization from the World Health Organization, which many developing countries rely on for vetting vaccines. Russia is in talks with the European Medicines Agency about approving the shot in the European Union and has applied for WHO authorization.

In Iran, health-care professionals and lawmakers criticized the government’s announcement that it would import Sputnik V, saying that the vaccine had not been approved by international bodies and that the purchase was politically motivated. Government officials said on Tuesday that Tehran would buy up to 1.5 million doses, with the first batch arriving as early as Saturday.

The domestic rollout has also faced challenges, including production delays and a skeptical populace.

Authorities have recently said that manufacturing is now being ramped up following initial equipment problems. They now expect to produce 11 million doses this month, up from seven million in January.

Around 46% of Russians said they would get a vaccine in a January survey by British polling firm Ipsos MORI, up 5 percentage points compared with December. Still, Russians were among the most reluctant to get inoculated globally, compared with 55% in France, 63% in the U.S. and 86% in the U.K.

Russia doesn’t publish daily vaccination rates, but regional data shows that at least 1.3 million Russians have received a dose so far.

Irina Levashova, a kindergarten teacher in Romodanovo, a small town some 400 miles southeast of Moscow, received her second shot last month along with her husband.

“I have many acquaintances who have been ill or even died from this disease, so I wanted to protect myself and my family,” Ms. Levashova, 58, said, adding that she didn’t experience any major side effects. “As soon as they started talking about vaccinations, I immediately told myself that me and my family would do it.”

—Valentina Ochirova contributed to this article

Write to Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

Science

Billionaire raffling off SpaceX flight to fund cancer research | Space News

Leave a comment

A United States billionaire who made a fortune in tech and fighter jets is buying an entire SpaceX flight and plans to take three people with him to circle the globe this year.

Besides fulfilling his dream of flying in space, Jared Isaacman announced Monday that he aimed to use the private trip to raise $200m for St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, half coming from his own pockets.

A healthcare worker for St Jude already has been selected for the mission. Anyone donating to St Jude in February will be entered into a random drawing for seat number three. The fourth seat will go to a business owner who uses Shift4 Payments, Isaacman’s credit card processing company in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

“I truly want us to live in a world 50 or 100 years from now where people are jumping in their rockets like the Jetsons and there are families bouncing around on the moon with their kid in a spacesuit,” Isaacman, who turns 38 next week, told The Associated Press.

“I also think if we are going to live in that world, we better conquer childhood cancer along the way.”

He’s bought a Super Bowl advertisement to publicise the mission, dubbed Inspiration4 and targeted for October. Details of the ride in a SpaceX Dragon capsule are still being worked out, including the number of days the four will be in orbit after blasting off from Florida. The other passengers will be announced next month.

Isaacman’s trip is the latest private space travel announcement. Three businessmen are paying $55m apiece to fly to the International Space Station next January on board a SpaceX Dragon. And a Japanese businessman has a deal with SpaceX to fly to the moon in a few years.

Isaacman would not divulge how much he is paying SpaceX, except to say that the anticipated donation to St Jude “vastly exceeds the cost of the mission”.

While a former NASA astronaut will accompany the three businessmen, Isaacman will serve as his own spacecraft commander. The appeal, he said, is learning all about SpaceX’s Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket. While the capsules are designed to fly autonomously, a pilot can override the system in an emergency.

A “space geek” since kindergarten, Isaacman dropped out of high school when he was 16, got a GED certificate and started a business in his parents’ basement that became the genesis for Shift4. He set a speed record flying around the world in 2009 while raising money for the Make-A-Wish programme, and later established Draken International, the world’s largest private fleet of fighter jets.

Isaacman’s $100m commitment to St Jude in Memphis, Tennessee is the largest ever by a single individual and one of the largest overall.

“We’re pinching ourselves every single day,” said Rick Shadyac, president of St Jude’s fundraising organisation.

Besides SpaceX training, Isaacman intends to take his crew on a mountain expedition to mimic his most uncomfortable experience so far — tenting on the side of a mountain in bitter winter conditions.

“We’re all going to get to know each other … really well before launch,” he said.

He is acutely aware of the need for things to go well.

“If something does go wrong, it will set back every other person’s ambition to go and become a commercial astronaut,” he said from his home in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Isaacman said he signed with Elon Musk’s company because it is the clear leader in commercial spaceflight, with two astronaut flights already completed. Boeing has yet to fly astronauts to the space station for NASA. While Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin expect to start flying customers later this year, their craft will just briefly skim the surface of space.

Isaacman had put out spaceflight feelers for years. He travelled to Kazakhstan in 2008 to see a Russian Soyuz blast off with a tourist on board, then a few years later attended one of NASA’s last space shuttle launches. SpaceX invited him to the company’s second astronaut launch for NASA in November.

While Isaacman and wife, Monica, managed to keep his space trip hush-hush for the months, their daughters could not. The girls, ages seven and four, overheard their parents discussing the flight last year and told their teachers, who called to ask if it was true dad was an astronaut.

“My wife said, ‘No, of course not, you know how these kids make things up.’ But I mean the reality is my kids weren’t that far off with that one,” Isaacman said.



Read original article here

Science

New Research Suggests Full Moon Can Affect Sleep

Leave a comment

You may have noticed brighter night skies recently as we experienced a full moon. NASA reports the event, called the Wolf Moon, began Thursday afternoon and ended Saturday morning. But did you notice any changes in your personal sleep patterns in the days leading up to the full moon?

As the latest full moon was beginning, a new study was released suggesting that a full moon can affect human sleep cycles. Researchers confirmed that the nights leading up to a full moon have more natural light available after the sun goes down.

The new research found that in the days before a full moon, people go to sleep later in the evening and sleep for shorter periods of time.

The results were reported in a study appearing in the publication Science Advances. The research was led by biology professor Horacio de la Iglesia of the University of Washington.

The full moon sets behind trees in the Taunus region near Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, May 7, 2020.

“When we looked at the data it was right there – we didn’t expect that pattern at all,” de la Iglesia said in a video about the findings. He said the study provided clear evidence that a person’s sleep-wake cycle is “synchronized” with changes the moon goes through.

The moon takes 27.3 days to orbit Earth, but it takes 29.5 days to complete a full cycle from New Moon to New Moon. The new study measured the sleep patterns of test subjects as the moon progressed through at least one whole 29.5-day cycle. Some subjects were tested through two moon cycles.

On average, people involved in the study slept about 52 minutes less on nights before a full moon. They also went to bed about 30 minutes later. The research showed that people had the latest bedtimes and the shortest amount of sleep during the nights that were three to five days before a full moon.

“I became one of the subjects of the study and when I looked back on my own data I could not believe how much my sleep changed,” de la Iglesia said.

Effect on sleep in different areas

Past studies by de la Iglesia’s team and other research groups have shown that access to electricity has a clear effect on sleep. So the team included this element in their research.

The study involved 98 individuals living in three different communities of Toba indigenous people in Argentina. Each community had different access to electricity. One rural community had no electricity access, while a second had only limited access. A third community was in a more populated area and had full access to electricity.

Sleep data was collected electronically from the individuals through wrist monitors. The research team said it believes this method resulted in more effective data than some past studies that depended only on user-reported sleep data.

In this file photo, the full moon shines surrounded by clouds in the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany, Sept. 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

In addition to the indigenous communities, the researchers also examined sleep data on 464 college students in the Seattle, Washington area. That data had been collected for a separate study. The researchers said they discovered the same moon cycle patterns in the sleep data from the students.

“Although the effect is more robust in communities without access to electricity, the effect is present in communities with electricity,” de la Iglesia said.

The scientists say further research is needed to help explain other possible causes for the changes in sleep patterns in the test subjects. Such causes could involve biological differences in individuals or social patterns within communities.

I’m Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from the University of Washington, Science Advances and NASA. Hai Do was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

Quiz – New Research Suggests Full Moon Can Affect Sleep


Start the Quiz to find out

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

pattern – n. a particular way that something is often done or repeated

cycle – n. a series of events that happen in a particular order and are often repeated

synchronize – v. make something happen at the same time as something else

access – n. the ability to use or take part in something

indigenous – adj. produced in or existing naturally in an area

monitor – n. a device used to measure something, such as heart rate

robust – adj. strong and healthy

Read original article here

Health

Cancer researchers predict 10,000 more deaths in 10 years

Leave a comment

There is a new warning Thursday night about the impact of COVID-19 on cancer. Researchers predict there could be at least 10,000 more deaths in the next decade all because of delays in screenings and treatment.Dr. Richard Bold, Physician-in-Charge at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center explained the number could possibly be an underestimate because new data only focuses on two forms of cancer. “It doesn’t include all of the other patients who didn’t seek medical care who are going to see their doctor with advanced staged cancer, which their chance of cure is much less,” he said. Dr. Bold explained that many people haven’t received routine screenings like mammograms, colonoscopies and pap smears. “Particularly at the beginning of last year, we didn’t think we were going to be in COVID for this long or even longer, so a delay of three months might have been reasonable. We’re now a year into it and that’s an unreasonable delay in screening,” he said. Doctors believe there are a number of reasons for the delayed screenings. Stay-at-home orders restricted patients from going to the doctor and many people have fear of contracting COVID-19 at the doctor’s office.“The medical centers are really safe. They’re probably safer than just any other place than your home for the possible contraction of COVID. The health care providers for the most part are vaccinated so COVID is not going to be transferred from a healthcare provider to a patient,” Dr. Bold said. “If you put off your mammogram, go get it. If you put off the colonoscopy, it’s time for that,” he said. UC Davis recently took part in a study that showed patients with cancer have a higher chance of dying from COVID-19. So UC Davis has put cancer patients in the next tier to get the vaccine. They hope to begin vaccinations for cancer patients some time in February.

DAVIS, Calif. —

There is a new warning Thursday night about the impact of COVID-19 on cancer. Researchers predict there could be at least 10,000 more deaths in the next decade all because of delays in screenings and treatment.

Dr. Richard Bold, Physician-in-Charge at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center explained the number could possibly be an underestimate because new data only focuses on two forms of cancer.

“It doesn’t include all of the other patients who didn’t seek medical care who are going to see their doctor with advanced staged cancer, which their chance of cure is much less,” he said.

Dr. Bold explained that many people haven’t received routine screenings like mammograms, colonoscopies and pap smears.

“Particularly at the beginning of last year, we didn’t think we were going to be in COVID for this long or even longer, so a delay of three months might have been reasonable. We’re now a year into it and that’s an unreasonable delay in screening,” he said.

Doctors believe there are a number of reasons for the delayed screenings. Stay-at-home orders restricted patients from going to the doctor and many people have fear of contracting COVID-19 at the doctor’s office.

“The medical centers are really safe. They’re probably safer than just any other place than your home for the possible contraction of COVID. The health care providers for the most part are vaccinated so COVID is not going to be transferred from a healthcare provider to a patient,” Dr. Bold said.

“If you put off your mammogram, go get it. If you put off the colonoscopy, it’s time for that,” he said.

UC Davis recently took part in a study that showed patients with cancer have a higher chance of dying from COVID-19.

So UC Davis has put cancer patients in the next tier to get the vaccine. They hope to begin vaccinations for cancer patients some time in February.

Read original article here

Science

Intriguing ‘Life’ Signal on Venus Was Plain Old Sulphur Dioxide, New Research Suggests

Leave a comment

The night side of Venus as seen in thermal infrared.
Image: JAXA/ISAS/DARTS/Damia Bouic

Scientists stunned the world last year by claiming to have discovered traces of phosphine in the Venusian clouds. New research suggests this gas—which, excitingly, is produced by microbes—was not actually responsible for the signal they detected. Instead, it was likely sulfur dioxide, a not-so-thrilling chemical.

Extraordinary research published in Nature last September is being challenged by a paper set to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, a preprint of which is currently available at the arXiv. This is not the first paper to critique the apparent discovery of phosphine on Venus, and it’s probably not going to be the last.

That phosphine might be present on Venus was a revelation that blew our minds, and that’s because living organisms are one of the only known sources of the stinky gas. The team responsible for the apparent discovery, led by astronomer Jane Greaves from Cardiff University, found the evidence in spectral signals collected by two radio dishes: the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Spectral lines at certain wavelengths indicate the presence of specific chemicals, and in this case they implied the presence of phosphine in the Venusian cloud layer.

The authors of the Nature study were not claiming that life exists on Venus. Rather, they were asking the scientific community to explain their rather bizarre observation. Indeed, it was an exceptional claim, as it implied that Venus—one of the most inhospitable planets in the solar system—might actually be habitable, with microscopic organisms floating through the clouds.

Alas, this doesn’t appear to be the case.

“Instead of phosphine in the clouds of Venus, the data are consistent with an alternative hypothesis: They were detecting sulfur dioxide,” Victoria Meadows, a co-author of the new study and an astronomy professor at the University of Washington, explained in a statement. “Sulfur dioxide is the third-most-common chemical compound in Venus’ atmosphere, and it is not considered a sign of life.”

G/O Media may get a commission

Meadows, along with researchers from NASA, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Riverside, reached this conclusion by modeling conditions inside the Venusian atmosphere, which they did to re-interpret the radio data gathered by the original team.

“This is what’s known as a radiative transfer model, and it incorporates data from several decades’ worth of observations of Venus from multiple sources, including observatories here on Earth and spacecraft missions like Venus Express,” explained Andrew Lincowski, a researcher with the UW Department of Astronomy and the lead author of the paper, in the statement.

Equipped with the model, the researchers simulated spectral lines produced by phosphine and sulphur at multiple atmospheric altitudes on Venus, as well as how those signatures were received by ALMA and JCMT. Results showed that the shape of the signal, detected at 266.94 gigahertz, likely came from the Venusian mesosphere—an extreme height where sulphur dioxide can exist but phosphine cannot owing to the harsh conditions there, according to research. In fact, so extreme is this environment that phosphine wouldn’t last for more than a few seconds.

As the authors argue, the original researchers understated the amount of sulphur dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere and instead attributed the 266.94 gigahertz signal to phosphine (both phosphine and sulphur dioxide absorb radio waves around this frequency). This happened, according to the researchers, due to an “undesirable side-effect” known as spectral line dilution, study co-author and NASA JPL scientist Alex Akins explained in the statement.

“They inferred a low detection of sulfur dioxide because of [an] artificially weak signal from ALMA,” added Lincowski. “But our modeling suggests that the line-diluted ALMA data would have still been consistent with typical or even large amounts of Venus sulfur dioxide, which could fully explain the observed JCMT signal.”

This new result could prove devastating for the Nature paper, and it’ll be interesting to hear how the authors respond to this latest critique. That said, some scientists believe the writing is already on the wall, or more accurately, the trash bin.

“Already quickly after publication of the original work, we and others have put strong doubts on their analysis,” wrote Ignas Snellen, a professor at Leiden University, in an email. “Now, I personally think that this is the final nail in the coffin of the phosphine hypothesis. Of course, one can never prove that Venus is completely phosphine-free, but at least there is now no remaining evidence to suggest otherwise. I am sure that others will keep on looking though.”

Back in December, Snellen and his colleagues challenged the Nature study, arguing that the method used by the Greaves team resulted in a “spurious” high signal-to-noise ratio and that “no statistical evidence” exists for phosphine on Venus.

The apparent absence of phosphine on Venus, and thus the absence of any hints of microbial life, is far less interesting than the opposite, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Science makes no claims or promises about the interestingness of all things, and we, as defenders of the scientific method, must come to accept our unfolding universe as we find it.

Read original article here

Science

In a World First, Physicists Narrow Down The Possible Mass of Dark Matter

Leave a comment

We may not know what dark matter is, but scientists now have a better idea of what to look for.

Based on quantum gravity, physicists have worked out new, much more stringent upper and lower mass limits of dark matter particles. And they have found that the mass range is way tighter than previously thought.

 

This means that the dark matter candidates that are either extremely light or heavy are unlikely to be the answer, based on our current understanding of the Universe.

“This is the first time that anyone has thought to use what we know about quantum gravity as a way to calculate the mass range for dark matter. We were surprised when we realised no-one had done it before – as were the fellow scientists reviewing our paper,” said physicist and astronomer Xavier Calmet of the University of Sussex in the UK.

“What we’ve done shows that dark matter cannot be either ‘ultra-light’ or ‘super-heavy’ as some theorise – unless there is an as-yet unknown additional force acting on it. This piece of research helps physicists in two ways: it focuses the search area for dark matter, and it will potentially also help reveal whether or not there is a mysterious unknown additional force in the Universe.”

Dark matter is undeniably one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe as we know it. It’s the name we give to a mysterious mass responsible for gravitational effects that can’t be explained by the stuff we can detect by other means – the normal matter such as stars, dust, and galaxies.

 

For example, galaxies rotate much faster than they should if they were just being gravitationally influenced by the normal matter in them; gravitational lensing – the bending of spacetime around massive objects – is far stronger than it should be. Whatever is creating this additional gravity is beyond our ability to detect directly.

We know it only by the gravitational effect it has on other objects. Based on this effect, we know there is a lot of it out there. Roughly 80 percent of all matter in the Universe is dark matter. It’s called dark matter because, well, it’s dark. And also mysterious.

However, we do know that dark matter interacts with gravity, so Calmet and his colleague, physicist and astronomer Folkert Kuipers of the University of Sussex, turned to the qualities of quantum gravity to try and estimate the mass range of a hypothetical dark matter particle (whatever it may be).

Quantum gravity, they explain, places a number of bounds on whether dark matter particles of various masses can exist. While we don’t have a decent working theory that unites general relativity’s space-bending description of gravity with the discrete chunkiness of quantum physics, we know any melding of the two would reflect certain fundamentals of both. As such, dark matter particles would have to obey quantum gravitational rules on how particles break down or interact.

 

By carefully accounting for all these bounds, they were able to rule out mass ranges unlikely to exist under our current understanding of physics.

Based on the assumption that only gravity can interact with dark matter, they determined that the mass of the particle should fall between 10-3 electronvolts and 107 electronvolts, depending on the spins of the particles, and the nature of dark matter interactions.

That’s insanely smaller than the 10-24 electronvolt to 1019 gigaelectronvolt range traditionally ascribed, the researchers said. And that’s important, because it largely excludes some candidates, such as WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles).

If such candidates do later turn out to be the culprit behind the dark matter mystery, according to Calmet and Kuipers, it would mean they are being influenced by some force we don’t yet know about.

That would be really cool, because it would point to new physics – a new tool for analysing and understanding our Universe.

Above all, the team’s constraints provide a new frame to consider in the search for dark matter, helping narrow down where and how to look.

“As a PhD student, it’s great to be able to work on research as exciting and impactful as this,” Kuipers said. “Our findings are very good news for experimentalists as it will help them to get closer to discovering the true nature of dark matter.”

The research has been published in Physics Letters B.

 

Read original article here

Science

New MIT brain research shows how AI could help us understand consciousness

Leave a comment

A team of researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital recently published a study linking social awareness to individual neuronal activity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time evidence for the ‘theory of mind‘ has been identified at this scale.

Measuring large groups of neurons is the bread-and-butter of neurology. Even a simple MRI can highlight specific regions of the brain and give scientists an indication of what they’re used for and, in many cases, what kind of thoughts are happening. But figuring out what’s going on at the single-neuron level is an entirely different feat.

According to the paper:

Here, using recordings from single cells in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, we identify neurons that reliably encode information about others’ beliefs across richly varying scenarios and that distinguish self- from other-belief-related representations … these findings reveal a detailed cellular process in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for representing another’s beliefs and identify candidate neurons that could support theory of mind.

In other words: the researchers believe they’ve observed individual brain neurons forming the patterns that cause us to consider what other people might be feeling and thinking. They’re identifying empathy in action.

This could have a huge impact on brain research, especially in the area of mental illness and social anxiety disorders or in the development of individualized treatments for people with autism spectrum disorder.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about it, however, is what we could potentially learn about consciousness from the team’s work.

[Read: How this company leveraged AI to become the Netflix of Finland]

The researchers asked 15 patients who were slated to undergo a specific kind of brain surgery (not related to the study) to answer a few questions and undergo an simple behavioral test. Per a press release from Massachusetts General Hospital:

Micro-electrodes inserted in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex recorded the behavior of individual neurons as patients listened to short narratives and answered questions about them. For example, participants were presented with this scenario to evaluate how they considered another’s beliefs of reality: “You and Tom see a jar on the table. After Tom leaves, you move the jar to a cabinet. Where does Tom believe the jar to be?”

The participants had to make inferences about another’s beliefs after hearing each story. The experiment did not change the planned surgical approach or alter clinical care.

The experiment basically took a grand concept (brain activity) and dialed it in as much as possible. By adding this layer of knowledge to our collective understanding of how individual neurons communicate and work together to emerge what’s ultimately a theory of other minds within our own consciousness, it may become possible to identify and quantify other neuronal systems in action using similar experimental techniques.

It would, of course, be impossible for human scientists to come up with ways to stimulate, observe, and label 100 billion neurons – if for no other reason than the fact it would take thousands of years just to count them much less watch them respond to provocation.

Luckily, we’ve entered the artificial intelligence age and if there’s one thing AI is good at it’s doing really monotonous things, such as labeling 80 billion individual neurons, really quickly.

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine the Massachusetts team’s methodology being automated. While it appears the current iteration requires the use of invasive sensors – hence the use of volunteers who were already slated to undergo brain surgery – it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that such fine readings could be achieved with an external device one day. 

The ultimate goal of such a system would be to identify and map every neuron in the human brain as it operates in real time. It’d be like seeing a hedge maze from a hot air balloon after an eternity lost in its twists.

This would give us a god’s eye view of consciousness in action and, potentially, allow us to replicate it more accurately in machines. 

Published January 27, 2021 — 20:34 UTC



Read original article here

Science

A Physicist Has Worked Out The Math That Makes ‘Paradox-Free’ Time Travel Plausible

Leave a comment

No one has yet managed to travel through time – at least to our knowledge – but the question of whether or not such a feat would be theoretically possible continues to fascinate scientists.

 

As movies such as The Terminator, Donnie Darko, Back to the Future and many others show, moving around in time creates a lot of problems for the fundamental rules of the Universe: if you go back in time and stop your parents from meeting, for instance, how can you possibly exist in order to go back in time in the first place?

It’s a monumental head-scratcher known as the ‘grandfather paradox’, but in September last year a physics student Germain Tobar, from the University of Queensland in Australia, said he has worked out how to “square the numbers” to make time travel viable without the paradoxes.

“Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system,” said Tobar back in September 2020.

“However, Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts the existence of time loops or time travel – where an event can be both in the past and future of itself – theoretically turning the study of dynamics on its head.”

What the calculations show is that space-time can potentially adapt itself to avoid paradoxes.

 

To use a topical example, imagine a time traveller journeying into the past to stop a disease from spreading – if the mission was successful, the time traveller would have no disease to go back in time to defeat.

Tobar’s work suggests that the disease would still escape some other way, through a different route or by a different method, removing the paradox. Whatever the time traveller did, the disease wouldn’t be stopped.

Tobar’s work isn’t easy for non-mathematicians to dig into, but it looks at the influence of deterministic processes (without any randomness) on an arbitrary number of regions in the space-time continuum, and demonstrates how both closed timelike curves (as predicted by Einstein) can fit in with the rules of free will and classical physics.

“The maths checks out – and the results are the stuff of science fiction,” said physicist Fabio Costa from the University of Queensland, who supervised the research.

Fabio Costa (left) and Germain Tobar (right). (Ho Vu)

The new research smooths out the problem with another hypothesis, that time travel is possible but that time travellers would be restricted in what they did, to stop them creating a paradox. In this model, time travellers have the freedom to do whatever they want, but paradoxes are not possible.

While the numbers might work out, actually bending space and time to get into the past remains elusive – the time machines that scientists have devised so far are so high-concept that for they currently only exist as calculations on a page.

 

We might get there one day – Stephen Hawking certainly thought it was possible – and if we do then this new research suggests we would be free to do whatever we wanted to the world in the past: it would readjust itself accordingly.

“Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency,” says Costa. “The range of mathematical processes we discovered show that time travel with free will is logically possible in our universe without any paradox.”

The research has been published in Classical and Quantum Gravity.

A version of this article was first published in September 2020.

 

Read original article here

Health

New Research Has Solved A 100-Year-Old Mystery About Cancer

Leave a comment

It was the great German doctor and Nobel laureate Otto Warburg who, back in 1921, discovered that cancer cells don’t use sugar as fuel the way we thought they would. Rather than “burning” sugar using oxygen like most cells in our body prefer, cancer cells adopt a tactic known to be used by yeast cells: fermentation.

This specialized fermentation process (known as the Warburg effect) is rapid and preferred by cancer cells to produce ATP (used by cells for energy) even in conditions where oxygen is available. However, it is not the most effective way to tap into all of the energy stored within sugar molecules and therefore left scientists intrigued for many years as to why cancer cells do this. 

Many proposed ideas have surfaced over the years since Warburg coined the term. One hypothesis was that cancer cells have faulty mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell), the organelle within cells where sugar is “burned” and turned into energy very effectively. However, the hypothesis has not stood the test of time, as it was found that the mitochondria within cancer cells work as they should, and hence it could not have been the reason why cancer cells prefer the fermentation route to acquire energy from sugar. 

Now, researchers at the Sloan Kettering Institute led by Dr Ming Li have published a potential explanation in the journal Science. Using biochemical and genetic experiments, the researchers showed that it all comes down to an important growth factor signaling molecule called PI3 kinase, an enzyme involved in a wide range of cellular activities such as cellular division, proliferation, growth, and survival.

“PI3 kinase is a key signaling molecule that functions almost like a commander-in-chief of cell metabolism,” Dr Li said in a statement. “Most of the energy-costly cellular events in cells, including cell division, occur only when PI3 kinase gives the cue.”

PI3 kinase has been extensively studied as part of a key signaling pathway involved in proliferation and cancer metabolism. As cancer cells start to shift and use the Warburg effect, the levels of PI3 kinase increases within the cells. This in turn, via a cascade of downstream events, leads to the cells becoming more committed to dividing. This is of course a hallmark of cancer: rapid division and proliferation. 

“PI3 kinase is a very, very critical kinase in the context of cancer,” Dr Li says. “It’s what sends the growth signal for cancer cells to divide, and is one of the most overly active signaling pathways in cancer.”

To study this, researchers turned to another cell type in our bodies that has the ability to use the “ineffective” Warburg effect to investigate this phenomenon: immune cells. When certain types of T-cells are alerted of a nearby infection and need to rapidly divide to increase in number, they too are capable of turning off the sugar “burning” method of energy production, and turn on the Warburg effect to produce ATP and aid their proliferation. 

As the authors explain in the press release, this “switch” from using oxygen to starting to use the fermentation process is controlled by an enzyme called lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHA). In turn, LDHA is regulated by the amount of PI3 kinase activity within the cell. By using mice that lack the LDHA enzyme, the researchers found that animals could not maintain their normal levels of PI3 kinase within their T-cells, and were unable to fight off infections, because the T-cells didn’t divide properly as the PI3 kinase levels were not what it should be. 

This cemented the idea that the metabolic LDHA enzyme was somehow regulating the cells’ PI3 kinase signaling molecule. 

“The field has worked under the assumption that metabolism is secondary to growth factor signaling,” Dr Li says. “In other words, growth factor signaling drives metabolism, and metabolism supports cell growth and proliferation. So the observation that a metabolic enzyme like LDHA could impact growth factor signaling through PI3 kinase really caught our attention.”

The researchers go on to explain that like most enzymes, PI3 kinase uses ATP as an activating source of energy to perform its functions, like enforcing cellular division. As the Warburg effect ultimately results in ATP production, a positive feedback loop is established between the two molecules where ATP drives the activity of PI3 kinase, and with more PI3 kinase available, it results in rapid cell division and growth.

The findings challenge the accepted textbook view that cell signaling drives metabolism in cancer, as the researchers demonstrate in immune cells that use the Warburg effect, metabolic enzymes could be driving signaling molecules which in turn drives cellular division and growth, explaining a long-standing mystery as to why cancer cells might preferentially use the fermentation process to their advantage.

Although more research needs to be done using cancer cells instead of immune cells to test this, the current findings open up an exciting therapeutic avenue in the future where one might be able to target cancer growth and proliferation by targeting LDHA, instead of the more commonly focused on PI3 kinase signaling enzyme. 



Read original article here