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Study: Regular Handwashing Reduces Personal Risk of Acquiring Seasonal Coronavirus Infection

Handwashing is minimally disruptive and socially acceptable in a variety of community settings and has an important role in raising awareness and slowing transmission alongside measures such as physical and social distancing. Image credit: Zukunftssicherer.
May 25, 2020 by News Staff

In a new study looking at 1,633 participants of the England-wide Flu Watch project, a team of researchers found that moderate-frequency handwashing (6-10 times per day) was associated with a reduced overall risk of seasonal coronavirus infection. Handwashing is minimally disruptive and socially acceptable in a variety of community settings and has an important role in raising awareness and slowing transmission alongside measures such as physical and...

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Bumblebee workers facing pollen scarcity use their proboscises and mandibles to cut distinctively shaped holes in plant leaves, with each damage event taking only a few seconds. Image credit: Hannier Pulido / ETH Zurich.

Bumblebees Bite Leaves of Flowerless Plants to Stimulate Earlier Flowering

May 25, 2020 by News Staff

Bumblebees rely heavily on pollen resources for essential nutrients as they build their summer colonies. Therefore, annual differences in the availability...

Botanical remains from the Khalchayan site, Uzbekistan: (1-2) Oryza sativa; (3) Hordeum vulgare; (4) Triticum aestvum; (5) Pisum sativum; (6) Lens culinaris; (7-8) Linum usitatissimum; (9) Lithospermum arvense; (10-12) Setaria italica; (13-15) Chenopodium sp.; (16-18) Polygonum sp.; (19-20) Galium aparine; (21-22) Alhagi sparsifolia. Image credit: Chen et al, doi: 10.1007/s11430-019-9585-2.

Archaeologists Find 1,750-Year-Old Cultivated Rice Grains in Uzbekistan

May 25, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

A team of archeologists from China, Uzbekistan, and Germany has found evidence that japonica-like rice was an important food in Central Asia as early as...

This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 3895. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. Barrows.

Hubble Space Telescope Observes NGC 3895

May 25, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of a barred spiral galaxy called NGC 3895. This Hubble image shows the barred spiral...

Penium margaritaceum. Image credit: Cornell University.

Scientists Sequence Single-Celled Alga Genome

May 24, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has successfully sequenced the genome of Penium margaritaceum, a single-celled alga species that belongs to Zygnematophyceae,...

A photograph showing a snow algae bloom dominated by green algae on Anchorage Island. Image credit: Gray et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16018-w.

Researchers Map Green Snow Algae Blooms in Antarctica

May 22, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission and two field campaigns, a team of UK scientists has identified 1,679 blooms of Antarctic green snow...

This image shows the Jupiter trojan asteroid 2019 LD2. Image credit: ATLAS.

Astronomers Spot First Trojan Asteroid with Comet-Like Tail: 2019 LD2

May 22, 2020 by News Staff

2019 LD2 is the first known Jupiter trojan asteroid to display cometary activity with a visible coma and tail, according to a team of astronomers from...

The 300,000-year-old wooden throwing stick at Schöningen 13 II-4, Germany. Image credit: Alexander Gonschior.

300,000-Year-Old Wooden Throwing Stick Found in Germany

May 22, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

A team of archaeologists from the University of Tübingen and the University of Liège has unearthed a well-preserved wooden throwing stick at the Middle...

Cosmic rays. Image credit: Pierre Auger Observatory.

Cosmic Rays May Have Played Key Role in Origin of Life’s Handedness

May 21, 2020 by News Staff

Living organisms comprise a system of molecules organized with specific handedness. Handedness — or chirality — is the geometric property of...

Gale crater is 155 km in diameter and now holds a layered mountain rising about 5 km above the crater floor. This illustration depicts a lake of water partially filling the crater. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / UA / Sci-News.com.

Curiosity Finds Evidence of Mars’ Ancient Ice-Covered Lakes

May 21, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on NASA’s rover Curiosity, researchers have found that certain minerals in rocks at Gale...

Facial reconstruction of Australopithecus sediba. Image credit: Cicero Moraes et al.

Australopithecus sediba Used Their Hands for Both Climbing and Human-Like Manipulation

May 21, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of paleoanthropologists has found that the hand of Australopithecus sediba, a small hominin that lived about 2 million years ago...

This image from VLT’s SPHERE instrument shows the protoplanetary disk around AB Aurigae. Image credit: ESO / Boccaletti et al.

Astronomers Witness Ongoing Planet Formation in AB Aurigae System

May 21, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed a protoplanetary...

Positive effects of aerobic exercise in Alzheimer’s disease may be mediated by redistribution of blood flow and neural activity in Alzheimer’s disease-sensitive regions of brain. Image credit: Mabel Amber.

Aerobic Exercise Improves Memory in Older Adults, New Study Finds

May 21, 2020 by News Staff

Aerobic exercise boosts blood flow into two key regions of brain associated with memory: the anterior cingulate cortex and the hippocampus, according to...

An artist’s impression of DLA0817g (Wolfe Disk), a massive, rotating disk galaxy in the early, dusty Universe. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

Massive, Rotating Disk Galaxy Spotted 12.3 Billion Light-Years Away

May 20, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found evidence for the most distant rotationally supported disk galaxy ever...

Reconstruction of the Schöningen lakeshore as the humans discovered the carcass of the straight-tusked elephant. Image credit: Benoit Clarys.

Archaeologists Find 300,000-Year-Old Elephant Skeleton in Germany

May 20, 2020 by News Staff

A team of archaeologists from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, the Lower Saxony State Office...

Reed Collection Ryl4Q22 as it looks using multispectral imaging. Image credit: University of Manchester.

Multispectral Imaging Uncovers Hidden Text in Fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls

May 20, 2020 by News Staff

Four Dead Sea scroll fragments from the Reed Collection in the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library, which were previously thought to be blank,...

Titanichthys was a suspension feeder with jaws ill-suited for biting and crushing but well suited for gaping ram feeding. Image credit: Mark Witton.

Titanichthys: Devonian-Period Armored Fish was Suspension Feeder

May 20, 2020 by News Staff

Titanichthys, a giant placoderm (armored fish) from the Devonian period, fed in a similar manner to basking sharks, according to a study published in the...

Heller et al reveal a previously unknown connection between our daily physical environments and sense of well-being. Image credit: Frank MoreLight.

Study Reveals Link between Diversity in Daily Experiences and Sense of Well-Being

May 20, 2020 by News Staff

New and diverse daily experiences are linked to enhanced happiness, according to a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Heller et al reveal...

This image shows protoplanets PDS 70b and PDS 70c (labeled with white arrows) with the circumstellar disk removed. Image credit: J. Wang, Caltech.

Astronomers Capture New Images of Two Protoplanets around PDS 70

May 19, 2020 by News Staff

Using the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRC2) on the Keck II telescope at W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii, astronomers have directly imaged two infant...

This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows a hill with a central crater. Such features have been interpreted as both mud volcanoes (really a sedimentary structure) and as actual volcanoes (the erupting lava kind). They occur on the floor of Valles Marineris below a closed topographic contour that could have held a lake, and the compaction of wet sediments may have created mud volcanoes. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona.

Martian Mud Volcanoes May Look Similar to Lava Flows Found on Earth

May 19, 2020 by News Staff

Mud flows exposed to the low atmospheric pressures found on Mars will behave similar to lava flows in Hawaii or Iceland, also known as pahoehoe flows,...

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