One of Earth's toughest microbes could survive on Mars, lying dormant beneath the surface, for 280 million years, new research has shown. The findings increase the probability that microbial life could still exist on the Red Planet. Space.com reports: Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed "Conan the Bacterium," is one of the world's toughest microbes, capable of surviving in radiation strong enough to kill any other known life-form. Experiments have now shown that if Conan the Bacterium or a similar microbe existed on Mars, it could survive 33 feet (10 meters) beneath the surface, frozen and dried out, for 280 million years. In a study led by Michael Daly, who is a professor of pathology at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland and a member of the National Academies' Committee on Planetary Protection, scientists tested half a dozen microbes and fungi -- all "extremophiles" able to live in environments where other organisms die -- to see how long they could survive in an environment that simulated the mid-latitudes of Mars. During the experiments, organisms faced temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 63 degrees Celsius) and exposure to ultraviolet light, gamma rays and high-energy protons mimicking the constant bombardment of Mars by solar ultraviolet light and cosmic radiation sleeting down from space.

After the bacteria and fungi had been exposed to various radiation levels in the experiment, Daly's team measured how much manganese antioxidants had accumulated in the cells of the microbes. Manganese antioxidants form as a result of radiation exposure, and the more that form, the more radiation the microbes can resist. Conan the Bacterium was the clear winner. The researchers found that Conan the Bacterium could absorb as much as 28,000 times more radiation than what a human can survive. This measurement allowed Daly's team to estimate how long the microbe could survive at different depths on Mars. Previous experiments, in which Conan the Bacterium had been suspended in liquid water and subjected to radiation like that found on Mars, had indicated that the microbe could survive below the surface of Mars for 1.2 million years.

However, the new tests, in which the microbe was frozen and dried out to mimic the cold and dry conditions on Mars, suggested that Conan the Bacterium would be able to survive 280 million years on Mars if buried at a depth of 33 feet. This lifespan is reduced to 1.5 million years if buried just 4 inches (10 centimeters) below the surface, and just a few hours on the surface, which is bathed in ultraviolet light. [...] The research also determined why Conan the Bacterium is so resistant to radiation. The scientists found that chromosomes and plasmids, which carry genetic information, in the microbe's cells are linked together, which keeps these structures aligned and prevents irradiated cells from breaking down until they can be repaired. "Although Deinococcus radiodurans buried in the Martian subsurface could not survive dormant for the estimated 2 to 2.5 billion years since flowing water disappeared on Mars, such Martian environments are regularly altered and melted by meteorite impacts," he said in a statement. "We suggest that periodic melting could allow intermittent repopulation and dispersal."

The findings were detailed in the journal Astrobiology.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Live Science: Swarming bees produce so much electricity that they may affect local weather, new research suggests. The finding, which researchers made by measuring the electrical fields around honeybee (apis mellifera) hives, reveals that bees can produce as much atmospheric electricity as a thunderstorm. This can play an important role in steering dust to shape unpredictable weather patterns; and their impact may even need to be included in future climate models.

Insects' tiny bodies can pick up positive charge while they forage -- either from the friction of air molecules against their rapidly beating wings (honeybees can flap their wings more than 230 times a second) or from landing onto electrically charged surfaces. But the effects of these tiny charges were previously assumed to be on a small scale. Now, a new study, published Oct. 24 in the journal iScience, shows that insects can generate a shocking amount of electricity.

To test whether honeybees produce sizable changes in the electric field of our atmosphere, the researchers placed an electric field monitor and a camera near the site of several honeybee colonies. In the 3 minutes that the insects flooded into the air, the researchers found that the potential gradient above the hives increased to 100 volts per meter. In other swarming events, the scientists measured the effect as high as 1,000 volts per meter, making the charge density of a large honeybee swarm roughly six times greater than electrified dust storms and eight times greater than a stormcloud. The scientists also found that denser insect clouds meant bigger electrical fields -- an observation that enabled them to model other swarming insects such as locusts and butterflies.

Atmospheric levels of all three greenhouse gases have reached record highs, according to a study by the World Meteorological Organization, which scientists say means the world is "heading in the wrong direction." From a report: The WMO found there was the biggest year-on-year jump in methane concentrations in 2020 and 2021 since systematic measurements began almost 40 years ago. Methane levels have risen rapidly in recent years, puzzling scientists. Some blamed it on an increase in fracking in the US but this came into doubt as industrial emissions were not showing a similarly sharp rise.

Now the theory is that the methane rise could be caused by activities of microbes in wetlands, rice paddies and the guts of ruminants. Rising temperatures have caused the ideal conditions for microbial methane production, as they enjoy warm, damp areas. Carbon dioxide levels are also soaring, with the jump from 2020 to 2021 larger than the annual growth rate over the past decade. Measurements from WMO's global atmosphere watch network stations show these levels continue to rise. These greenhouse gases cause global heating, with the warming effect rising by 50% between 1990 and 2021. Carbon dioxide comprised about 80% of this increase. According to the WMO, carbon dioxide concentrations in 2021 were 415.7 parts per million, methane was 1908 parts per billion (ppb) and nitrous oxide was 334.5 ppb. These are respectively 149%, 262% and 124% of pre-industrial levels.

Longtime Slashdot reader Tablizer shares a report from CNN: The hunt for planets that could harbor life may have just narrowed dramatically. Scientists had long hoped and theorized that the most common type of star in our universe -- called an M dwarf -- could host nearby planets with atmospheres, potentially rich with carbon and perfect for the creation of life. But in a new study of a world orbiting an M dwarf 66 light-years from Earth, researchers found no indication such a planet could hold onto an atmosphere at all. Without a carbon-rich atmosphere, it's unlikely a planet would be hospitable to living things. Carbon molecules are, after all, considered the building blocks of life. And the findings don't bode well for other types of planets orbiting M dwarfs, said study coauthor Michelle Hill, a planetary scientist and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside.

"The pressure from the star's radiation is immense, enough to blow a planet's atmosphere away," Hill said in a post on the university's website. M dwarf stars are known to be volatile, sputtering out solar flares and raining radiation on nearby celestial bodies. But for years, the hope had been that fairly large planets orbiting near M dwarfs could be in a Goldilocks environment, close enough to their small star to keep warm and large enough to cling onto its atmosphere. The nearby M dwarf, however, could be too intense to keep the atmosphere intact, according to the new study, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A similar phenomenon happens in our solar system: Earth's atmosphere also deteriorates because of outbursts from its nearby star, the sun. The difference is that Earth has enough volcanic activity and other gas-emitting activity to replace the atmospheric loss and make it barely detectable, according to the research. However, the M dwarf planet examined in the study, GJ 1252b, "could have 700 times more carbon than Earth has, and it still wouldn't have an atmosphere. It would build up initially, but then taper off and erode away," said study coauthor and UC Riverside astrophysicist Stephen Kane, in a news release.

Health-threatening fungi are spreading in geographic range due to climate change, while some fungal diseases spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to authors of a newly released World Health Organization report. From a report: On Tuesday the WHO published its first ever list of fungal priority pathogens, cataloguing 19 organisms that experts identified as being of the greatest threat to public health. "Currently, fungal infections receive less than 1.5% of all infectious disease research funding," the report found, suggesting the true health burden of fungi is unknown, while "most treatment guidelines are informed by limited evidence and expert opinion."

The WHO's assistant director general of antimicrobial resistance, Dr Hanan Balkhy, said in a statement: "Emerging from the shadows of the bacterial antimicrobial resistance pandemic, invasive fungal diseases are growing ever more resistant to treatments, becoming an ever more pressing public health concern worldwide." Dr Justin Beardsley, of the University of Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, who led a group commissioned by the WHO, said historical research underspending was out of step with the "huge burden of disease" of fungal infections. "They're causing as many deaths as tuberculosis, and more than malaria," he said.

NASA's independent study to delve into the mysteries surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena kicked off today. CNN reports: The group will include experts across numerous disciplines -- including astrobiology, data science, oceanography, genetics, policy and planetary science -- as well as retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, a former fighter pilot and test pilot and retired US Navy captain. The space agency, which first announced it was forming the group in June, previously revealed that the team would be led by astrophysicist David Spergel, who is president of the Simons Foundation in New York City.

The new group won't necessarily seek to determine exactly what the UAPs, which have been seen moving through restricted military airspace over the past several decades, are. Rather, the team will look to hash out exactly how it's best for NASA to approach further study of the phenomenon. The space agency has already noted that the limited number of observations of UAPs has made it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events. "Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to scientifically discern the nature of UAP," according to a NASA news release.

This study, expected to last about nine months, will also be entirely unclassified and within the public domain. "Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA," Zurbuchen said in a Friday statement. "Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable." Specifically, the team will look for data on "events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena -- from a scientific perspective," the agency said. Unidentified aerial phenomena are of interest, NASA said, from a security and safety perspective. There was no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin, NASA emphasized during the initial announcement in June.

U.S. students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading, according to an authoritative national exam released on Monday, offering the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic's impact on millions of schoolchildren. The New York Times reports: In math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation's report card, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders and dates to the early 1990s. In the test's first results since the pandemic began, math scores for eighth graders fell in nearly every state. A meager 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient, down from 34 percent in 2019. Fourth graders fared only slightly better, with declines in 41 states. Just 36 percent of fourth graders were proficient in math, down from 41 percent.

Reading scores also declined in more than half the states, continuing a downward trend that had begun even before the pandemic. No state showed sizable improvement in reading. And only about one in three students met proficiency standards, a designation that means students have demonstrated competency and are on track for future success. And for the country's most vulnerable students, the pandemic has left them even further behind. The drops in their test scores were often more pronounced, and their climbs to proficiency are now that much more daunting.

A single computer chip has transmitted a record 1.84 petabits of data per second via a fibre-optic cable -- enough bandwidth to download 230 million photographs in that time, and more traffic than travels through the entire internet's backbone network per second. From a report: Asbjorn Arvad Jorgensen at the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen and his colleagues have used a photonic chip -- a technology that allows optical components to be built onto computer chips -- to divide a stream of data into thousands of separate channels and transmit them all at once over 7.9 kilometres.

First, the team split the data stream into 37 sections, each of which was sent down a separate core of the fibre-optic cable. Next, each of these channels was split into 223 data chunks that existed in individual slices of the electromagnetic spectrum. This "frequency comb" of equidistant spikes of light across the spectrum allowed data to be transmitted in different colours at the same time without interfering with each other, massively increasing the capacity of each core. Although data transfer rates of up to 10.66 petabits per second have been achieved before using bulky equipment, this research sets a record for transmission using a single computer chip as a light source. The technology could enable the creation of simple, single chips that can send vastly more data than existing models, slashing energy costs and increasing bandwidth. Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41566-022-01082-z

Kids who play video games have better memory and better control over their motor skills than kids who don't, according to a new study looking at adolescent brain function. From a report: Video games might not be responsible for those differences -- the study can't say what the causes are -- but the findings add to a bigger body of work showing gamers have better performance on some tests of brain function. That lends support to efforts to develop games that can treat cognitive problems. "This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing video games and brain development," said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a statement.

The study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which launched in 2018 and is tracking brain development in thousands of children in the United States as they grow into adulthood. Participants periodically go through a battery of assessments, including brain imaging, cognitive tasks, mental health screenings, physical health exams, and other tests. To study video games and cognition, the research team on this new study pulled from the first set of assessments in the ABCD study. It included data on 2,217 children who were nine and 10 years old. The ABCD study asked participants how many hours of video games they played on a typical weekday or weekend day. The research team divided the group into video gamers (kids who played at least 21 hours per week) and non-video gamers (kids who played no video games per week). Kids who only played occasionally weren't included in the study. Then, the research team looked at the kids' performance on tests that measure attention, impulse control, and memory.

It's the tale of a company manufacuring precision card-shuffling machines for casinos — and a gang of hustlers who used a hidden video camera to film the shuffler's insides. "The images, transmitted to an accomplice outside in the casino parking lot, were played back in slow motion to figure out the sequence of cards in the deck," remembers the BBC, "which was then communicated back to the gamblers inside. The casino lost millions of dollars before the gang were finally caught."

So the company turned for help to a mathematician/magician: The executives were determined not to be hacked again. They had developed a prototype of a sophisticated new shuffling machine, this time enclosed in an opaque box. Their engineers assured them that the machine would sufficiently randomise a deck of cards with one pass through the device, reducing the time between hands while also beating card-counters and crooked dealers. But they needed to be sure that their machine properly shuffled the deck. They needed Persi Diaconis.

Diaconis, a magician-turned-mathematician at Stanford University, is regarded as the world's foremost expert on the mathematics of card shuffling. Throughout the surprisingly large scholarly literature on the topic, his name keeps popping up like the ace of spades in a magician's sleight-of-hand trick. So, when the company executives contacted him and offered to let him see the inner workings of their machine — a literal "black box" — he couldn't believe his luck. With his collaborator Susan Holmes, a statistician at Stanford, Diaconis travelled to the company's Las Vegas showroom to examine a prototype of their new machine.

The pair soon discovered a flaw. Although the mechanical shuffling action appeared random, the mathematicians noticed that the resulting deck still had rising and falling sequences, which meant that they could make predictions about the card order. To prove this to the company executives, Diaconis and Holmes devised a simple technique for guessing which card would be turned over next. If the first card flipped was the five of hearts, say, they guessed that the next card was the six of hearts, on the assumption that the sequence was rising. If the next card was actually lower — a four of hearts, for instance — this meant they were in a falling sequence, and their next guess was the three of hearts. With this simple strategy, the mathematicians were able to correctly guess nine or 10 cards per deck — one-fifth of the total — enough to double or triple the advantage of a competent card-counter....

The executives were horrified. "We are not pleased with your conclusions," they wrote to Diaconis, "but we believe them and that's what we hired you for." The company quietly shelved the prototype and switched to a different machine.
The article also explains why seven shuffles "is just as close to random as can be" — rendering further shuffling largely ineffective.

Researchers at Cardiff University have identified a peculiar twisting motion in the orbits of two colliding black holes, an exotic phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of gravity. Phys.Org reports: Their study, which is published in Nature and led by Professor Mark Hannam, Dr. Charlie Hoy and Dr. Jonathan Thompson, reports that this is the first time this effect, known as precession, has been seen in black holes, where the twisting is 10 billion times faster than in previous observations. The binary black hole system was found through gravitational waves in early 2020 in the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors. One of the black holes, 40 times bigger than our Sun, is likely the fastest spinning black hole to be found through gravitational waves. And unlike all previous observations, the rapidly revolving black hole distorted space and time so much that the binary's entire orbit wobbled back and forth. This form of precession is specific to Einstein's theory of general relativity. These results confirm its existence in the most extreme physical event we can observe, the collision of two black holes.

In the fastest example previously measured from orbiting neutron stars called binary pulsars, it took over 75 years for the orbit to precess. The black-hole binary in this study, colloquially known as GW200129 (named after the date it was observed, January 29, 2020), precesses several times every second -- an effect 10 billion times stronger than measured previously. "So far most black holes we've found with gravitational waves have been spinning fairly slowly," said Dr. Charlie Hoy, a researcher at Cardiff University during this study, and now at the University of Portsmouth. "The larger black hole in this binary, which was about 40 times more massive than the Sun, was spinning almost as fast as physically possible. Our current models of how binaries form suggest this one was extremely rare, maybe a one in a thousand event. Or it could be a sign that our models need to change."

A new study finds that some people really are "mosquito magnets" and it probably has to do with the way they smell. From a report: The researchers found that people who are most attractive to mosquitoes produce a lot of certain chemicals on their skin that are tied to smell. And bad news for mosquito magnets: they stay loyal to their favorites over time. "If you have high levels of this stuff on your skin, you're going to be the one at the picnic getting all the bites," said study author Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University in New York. There is folklore about who gets bitten more, but many claims are not backed up with strong evidence, said Vosshall.

The researchers designed an experiment pitting people's scents against each other, explained study author Maria Elena De Obaldia. Their findings were published Tuesday in the journal Cell. They asked 64 volunteers from the university and nearby to wear nylon stockings around their forearms to pick up their skin smells. The stockings were put in separate traps at the end of a long tube, then dozens of mosquitos were released. "They would basically swarm to the most attractive subjects," De Obaldia said. "It became very obvious right away." Scientists held a round-robin tournament and ended up with a striking gap: the biggest mosquito magnet was around 100 times more attractive to the mosquitoes than the last place finisher.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape -- the iconic Pillars of Creation -- where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. From NASA: The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear -- at times -- semi-transparent in near-infrared light. Webb's new view of the Pillars of Creation, which were first made famous when imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region. Over time, they will begin to build a clearer understanding of how stars form and burst out of these dusty clouds over millions of years.

Newly formed stars are the scene-stealers in this image from Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). These are the bright red orbs that typically have diffraction spikes and lie outside one of the dusty pillars. When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars. What about those wavy lines that look like lava at the edges of some pillars? These are ejections from stars that are still forming within the gas and dust. Young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material, like these thick pillars. This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns like a boat does as it moves through water. The crimson glow comes from the energetic hydrogen molecules that result from jets and shocks. This is evident in the second and third pillars from the top -- the NIRCam image is practically pulsing with their activity. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old.

Although it may appear that near-infrared light has allowed Webb to "pierce through" the clouds to reveal great cosmic distances beyond the pillars, there are no galaxies in this view. Instead, a mix of translucent gas and dust known as the interstellar medium in the densest part of our Milky Way galaxy's disk blocks our view of the deeper universe. This scene was first imaged by Hubble in 1995 and revisited in 2014, but many other observatories have also stared deeply at this region. Each advanced instrument offers researchers new details about this region, which is practically overflowing with stars. This tightly cropped image is set within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.

The deaths of nearly 100 children in Indonesia have prompted the country to suspend sales of all syrup and liquid medication. From a report: It comes just weeks after a cough syrup in The Gambia was linked to the deaths of nearly 70 children. Indonesia said some syrup medicine was found to contain ingredients linked to acute kidney injuries (AKI), which have killed 99 young children this year. It is not clear if the medicine were imported or locally produced. On Thursday, Indonesian health officials said they had reported around 200 cases of AKI in children, most of who were aged under five. Earlier this month, the The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert over four cough syrups that were linked to the deaths of almost 70 children in The Gambia. The WHO found the syrups used there - made by an Indian pharmaceutical company - contained "unacceptable amounts" of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol. The syrups have been "potentially linked with acute kidney injuries", said the organisation. Indonesia's Health Minister on Thursday said the same chemical compounds were also found in some medicines used locally.

SpaceX continues to expand its satellite-internet constellation with its 186th overall launch. From a report: SpaceX's 100th launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station featured a set of 54 Starlink satellites, which launched to orbit on Thursday (Oct. 20) at 10:51 a.m. EDT (1451 GMT). "With the completion of today's launch, it marks SpaceX's 48th successful Falcon 9 mission of 2022," SpaceX Space Operations Engineer Siva Bharadvaj said during live commentary. This was the 10th flight overall for this particular Falcon 9. It's first stage touched down a little less than nine minutes later at sea on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas. The satellites successfully deployed into low Earth orbit a little over 15 minutes after liftoff, according to SpaceX.

Transparent wood promises to be an environmentally friendly substitute for glass or plastic used for making car windshields, see-through packaging and biomedical devices, according to a study. Phys.Org reports: Originally fabricated in 1992 by German scientist Siegfried Fink and since improved upon by other researchers, transparent wood is made by removing the lignin content in wood and replacing it with transparent, plastic materials. Lignin is a naturally occurring biopolymer which supports plant tissue; unlike plastics it can biodegrade and is non-toxic. According to the authors, production of transparent wood using sodium chlorite to remove lignin from wood and infiltrating it with epoxy infiltration had far less environmental impacts than commonly used methods that rely on the use of methacrylate polymer. The end-of-life analysis suggests that, transparent wood is less environmentally friendly than glass but is still better than producing polyethylene, indicating the need to improve the production technology, the authors said. "Transparent wood is mostly developed using thin slices of wood, and has good strength as that of regular wood but is lighter in weight. The scope for imparting multiple and advanced properties through the incorporation of specialized materials makes it a unique bio-based substrate for versatile applications," said Anish M. Chathoth, an assistant professor at Kerala Agricultural University's College of Forestry, in India.

At least five hours sleep a night may cut the over-50s' chances of multiple chronic health problems, researchers say. The BBC reports: The PLoS Medicine study tracked the health and sleep of UK civil servants. All of the about 8,000 participants were asked: How many hours of sleep do you have on an average weeknight?" Some also wore a wrist-watch sleep tracker. And they were checked for chronic conditions, including diabetes, cancer and heart disease, over two decades of follow-up:

- Those who slept five hours or less around the age of 50 had a 30% greater risk of multiple ailments than those who slept seven hours
- Shorter sleep at 50 was also associated with a higher risk of death during the study period, mainly linked to the increased risk of chronic disease

An anonymous reader quotes a report from STAT: Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen. There is no evidence the work, performed under biosecurity level 3 precautions in BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, was conducted improperly or unsafely. In fact, it was approved by an internal biosafety review committee and Boston's Public Health Commission, the university said Monday night. But it has become apparent that the research team did not clear the work with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was one of the funders of the project. The agency indicated it is going to be looking for some answers as to why it first learned of the work through media reports.

Emily Erbelding, director of NIAID's division of microbiology and infectious diseases, said the BU team's original grant applications did not specify that the scientists wanted to do this precise work. Nor did the group make clear that it was doing experiments that might involve enhancing a pathogen of pandemic potential in the progress reports it provided to NIAID. "I think we're going to have conversations over upcoming days," Erbelding told STAT in an interview. Asked if the research team should have informed NIAID of its intention to do the work, Erbelding said: "We wish that they would have, yes." The research has been posted online as a preprint (PDF), meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed. The senior author is Mohsan Saeed, from BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. STAT reached out to Saeed on Monday but had not received a response by the time this article was published.

In the paper Saeed and colleagues reported on research they conducted that involved creating a hybrid or chimeric virus -- in which the spike protein of an Omicron version of SARS-2 was fused to a virus of the Wuhan strain, the original version that emerged from China in 2020. Omicron viruses first emerged in late 2021 and have since splintered into multiple different sub variants. The goal of the research was to determine if the mutations in the Omicron spike protein were responsible for this variant's increased ability to evade the immunity to SARS-2 that humans have built up, and whether the changes led to Omicron's lower rate of severity. The testing actually showed, though, that the chimeric virus was more lethal to a type of lab mice than Omicron itself, killing 80% of the mice infected. Importantly, the original Wuhan strain killed 100% of mice it was tested in. The conclusion of the study is that mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron variant are responsible for the strain's ability to evade immunity people have built up via vaccination, infections, or both, but they are not responsible for the apparent decrease in severity of the Omicron viruses. The university disputed the claims made by some media outlets that the work had created a more dangerous virus, saying: "In fact, this research made the virus [replication] less dangerous." They noted that other research groups have conducted similar work.

"That 80% kill rate, that headline doesn't tell the whole story," Erbelding said. "Because Wuhan" -- the original strain -- "killed all the mice." The fatality rate seen in this strain of mice when they were infected with these viruses raises questions about how good a model they are for what happens when people are infected with SARS-2. The Wuhan strain killed less than 1% of people who were infected.

Playing sounds while you slumber might help to strengthen some memories while weakening others, research suggests, with experts noting the approach might one day help people living with traumatic recollections. From a report: Previous work has shown that when a sound is played as a person learns an association between two words, the memory of that word association is boosted if the same sound is played while the individual sleeps. Now researchers have found fresh evidence the approach could also be used to weaken such memories. "We can an actually induce forgetting of specific material whilst people are asleep," said Dr Aidan Horner, co-author of the study from the University of York. Writing in the journal Learning & Memory, Horner and colleagues report how 29 participants were shown pairs of words on a computer screen, one of which was an object word, such as bicycle, while the other was either a place word, such as office, or a person, such as David Beckham. The process was repeated for 60 different object words, and in the course of the process both possible pairings were shown, resulting in 120 associations. As the pairs flashed up, participants heard the object word being spoken out loud.

The team tested the participants on a subset of the associations, presenting them with one of the words and asking them to select a paired word from a list of six options. Participants then spent a night in the team's sleep laboratory. Once they had entered a particular sleep state -- as judged by electrodes placed on their heads -- they were played audio of 30 of the object words. The team tested participants on the word associations the next day. The results reveal participants' ability to recall the first word they had learned to pair with an object word was boosted if audio of the latter was played as they slept, compared with if it was not played. However, their ability to recall the second word they learned to associate with the same object decreased relative to the audio-free scenario. "Just looking at the actual raw scores, the performance goes down from about 50% to just over 40%," said Horner. However, the team found the effects were only present when the pairings had not been tested pre-sleep -- suggesting other instances of recall are also important.

For a long time it has been known that diets dominated by ultra-processed food (UPF) are more likely to lead to obesity. But recent research suggests that high UPF consumption also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and, according to a recent American study involving 50,000 health professionals, of developing colon cancer. From a report: On a more general note, last month a study in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology found that people born after 1990 are more likely to develop cancer before they're 50 than people born before 1970. It's suspected that UPF might be a contributing factor to this development.

As the UK is estimated to draw more than 50% of its calorie intake from UPF, this is no passing health scare but an issue that goes to the very heart of our culinary lifestyle. But before looking deeper into the issue there is an obvious question: what is a UPF? NOVA (not an acronym) is a widely used food classification system that separates foods into four categories based upon their level of processing. Almost all foods, aside from fresh fruit and raw vegetables, undergo some degree of process. Cooking is a process, and it usually involves added ingredients such as oil and salt. In NOVA's first category, Group 1 is unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk). Group 2 is made up of processed culinary ingredients such as sugars, oils and butter. Group 3 is processed foods (canned vegetables and fish, bread, jam). Group 4 is ultra-high processed foods, which are mostly low in protein and fibre, and high in salt, sugar and fat, and have undergone industrial interventions such as extrusion, moulding and milling.