Researchers linked two copies of a special kind of produced by llamas to create a new antibody that binds tightly to the spike protein on the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. This spike protein allows the virus to break into host cells. Initial tests indicate that the antibody blocks viruses that display this spike protein from infecting cells in culture.

The hunt for an effective treatment for COVID-19 has led one team of researchers to find an improbable ally for their work: a llama name...

Researchers can now grow twistronic material at sizes large enough to be useful. While an exciting potential area of nanotechnology, twistronics until now has mostly been explored on samples smaller than human hairs. Now researchers can produce samples on the centimetre scale.

2D materials, which consist of a single layer of atoms, have attracted a lot of attention since the isolation of graphene in 2004...

Scientists exploring Mars and analysing Martian meteorite samples have found organic compounds essential for life: nitrogen-bearing organics in a 4-billion-year-old Martian meteorite. With a new high-spatial resolution in-situ N-chemical speciation technique, they found organic materials – either synthesized locally or delivered during the Noachian – preserved intact in carbonate minerals over a long geological period. Their presence requires abiotic or biotic N-fixation and ammonia storage, suggesting early Mars had a less oxidizing environment than today.

Because carbonate miner...

Each year thousands of patients face life-long losses in sensation and motor function from spinal cord injury and related conditions in which axons are badly damaged or severed. New research by scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine Temple University (LKSOM) shows, however, that gains in functional recovery from these injuries may be possible, thanks to a molecule known as Lin28, which regulates cell growth...