Like venom coursing through the body: Researchers identify Mechanism driving COVID-19 Mortality

Students in white lab coats and safety gear stand around a microscope in Dr. Chilton's lab
In a photo taken prior to the pandemic, Dr. Chilton (second from left) and his lab team examine how genetic and epigenetic variations interact with human diets to drive inflammation and inflammatory disorders, as well as psychiatric and developmental disorders.Chris Richards/University of Arizona

An enzyme with an elusive role in severe inflammation may be a key mechanism driving COVID-19 severity and could provide a new therapeutic target to reduce COVID-19 mortality, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Researchers from the University of Arizona, in collaboration with Stony Brook University and Wake Forest University School of Medicine, analyzed blood samples from two COVID-19 patient cohorts and found that circulation of the enzyme – secreted p...

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Quantum Computing: Exotic Particle had an ‘Out-of-Body Experience’

Artist’s illustration of ghost particles moving through a quantum spin liquid. (Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab)

An unexpected finding could advance quantum computers and high-temperature superconductors. Scientists have taken the clearest picture yet of electronic particles that make up a mysterious magnetic state called quantum spin liquid (QSL).

The achievement could facilitate the development of superfast quantum computers and energy-efficient superconductors.

The scientists are the first to capture an image of how electrons in a QSL decompose into spin-like particles called spinons and charge-like particles called chargons.

“Other studies have seen various footprints of this phenomenon, but we have an actual picture of the state in which the spinon lives...

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Unveiling a Century-old Mystery: Where the Milky Way’s Cosmic Rays come from

Astronomers have succeeded for the first time in quantifying the proton and electron components of cosmic rays in a supernova remnant. At least 70% of the very-high-energy gamma rays emitted from cosmic rays are due to relativistic protons, according to the novel imaging analysis of radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray radiation. The acceleration site of protons, the main components of cosmic rays, has been a 100-year mystery in modern astrophysics, this is the first time that the amount of cosmic rays being produced in a supernova remnant has been quantitatively shown and is an epoch-making step in the elucidation of the origin of cosmic rays.

The origin of cosmic rays, the particles with the highest energy in the universe, has been a great mystery since their discovery in 1912...

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High Cholesterol Fuels Cancer by Fostering Resistance to a form of Cell Death

The proposed model to explain how cancer cells respond to 27HC treatment. Acute (left) treatment with 27HC disrupts lipid metabolism via interfering with SREBPs and LXR signaling, and this results in the inhibition of cell growth and migration. Cancer cells can adapt to the metabolic stress imposed by chronic treatment by 27HC (right). The cells that survive (27HC resistant cells) increase lipid uptake and accommodate the metabolic stress associated with this activity by upregulating the activity of processes that allow them to withstand lipid oxidative stress (ferroptosis); an activity which confers upon them enhanced tumor growth and metastatic capabilities. Numerical source data are reported in the Source Data File.

Chronically high cholesterol levels are known to be associated with...

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