A view of a sunspot on the solar surface, visible here as a dark collection of plasma with magnetic field strengths similar to those found in modern hospital MRI machines. However, it is the size of the sunspot, which is comparable to that of our own Earth (see the scale Earth depicted in the lower-right corner), that gives these structures immense power and energy. The recent work published in Nature Physics reveals first-time evidence for how a rare breed of magnetic waves, which originate within the centre of sunspots, can form shockwaves that heat the surrounding plasma by thousands of degrees. Credit: Image courtesy of Queen’s University, Belfast

Scientists at Queen’s University Belfast have led an international team to the ground-breaking discovery that magnetic waves crashing throug...

Ultrastructural details exhibited by a single, spherical-shaped, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) virion. Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

Researchers have long known that RNA viruses called coronaviruses cause the common cold and pneumonia. In the last two decades or so, though, researchers have found that these viruses can jump between animal and human hosts. In recent years, coronaviruses have caused lethal outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) that span multiple continents. To date, no retroviral drug has been approved to treat these infections. “These viruses are poised to cause outbreaks,” says molecular virologist Ralph C...

Compared with a normal mouse cochlea (top), cisplatin exposure reduces the number of outer hair cells (middle). But the loss of these cells is prevented by treatment with the CDK2 inhibitor kenpaullone (bottom). Credit: Teitz et al., 2018

Researchers from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered that inhibiting an enzyme called cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) protects mice and rats from noise- or drug-induced hearing loss. The study, which will be published March 7 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests that CDK2 inhibitors prevent the death of inner ear cells, which has the potential to save the hearing of millions of people around the world.

According to the World Health Organization, 360 million people worldwide, including 32 million children, suffer from hearin...

Illustration of the non-line-of-sight imaging system. Credit: Stanford Computational Imaging Lab

Someday your self-driving car could react to hazards before you even see them, thanks to a laser-based imaging technology that can peek around corners. It sounds like magic but the idea of non-line-of-sight imaging is actually feasible,” said Gordon Wetzstein, assistant professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the paper describing this work, published March 5 in Nature.

The Stanford group isn’t alone in developing methods for bouncing lasers around corners to capture images of objects. Where this research advances the field is in the extremely efficient and effective algorithm the researchers developed to process the final image...