In one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers provide answers to whether COVID-19 vaccinations reduce sickness and mortality following infection with SARS-CoV-2.

The study published in The Lancet Microbe found among individuals recently infected with SARS-CoV-2, those who were fully vaccinated had lower concentrations of almost all inflammation markers (cytokines and chemokines) than those who were unvaccinated in the short-term and long-term after symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.

While vaccinations don’t entirely prevent infection, this study demonstrates that vaccination significantly reduces mor...

Earth is rapidly warming and scientists are developing a variety of approaches to reduce the effects of climate change. István Szapudi, an astronomer at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy, has proposed a novel approach—a solar shield to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting Earth, combined with a tethered, captured asteroid as a counterweight. Engineering studies using this approach could start now to create a workable design that could mitigate climate change within decades.

The paper, “Solar radiation management with a tethered sun shield,” is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One of the simplest approaches to reducing the global temperature is to shade the Earth from a fracti...

Neurons produce rhythmic patterns of electrical activity in the brain. One of the unsettled questions in the field of neuroscience is what primarily drives these rhythmic signals, called oscillations. University of Arizona researchers have found that simply remembering events can trigger them, even more so than when people are experiencing the actual event.

The researchers, whose findings are published in the journal Neuron, specifically focused on what are known as theta oscillations, which emerge in the brain’s hippocampus region during activities like exploration, navigation and sleep. The hippocampus plays a crucial role in the brain’s ability to remember the past.

Prior to this study, it was believed that the external environment played a mo...

Everyday life involves the three dimensions or 3D — along an X, Y and Z axis, or up and down, left and right, and forward and back. But, in recent years scientists like Guoliang Huang, the Huber and Helen Croft Chair in Engineering at the University of Missouri, have explored a “fourth dimension” (4D), or synthetic dimension, as an extension of our current physical reality.

Now, Huang and a team of scientists in the Structured Materials and Dynamics Lab at the MU College of Engineering have successfully created a new synthetic metamaterial with 4D capabilities, including the abilit...