Light therapy may accelerate the healing of burns, according to a University at Buffalo-led study. The research, published in Scientific Reports, found that photobiomodulation therapy – a form of low-dose light therapy capable of relieving pain and promoting healing and tissue regeneration – sped up recovery from burns and reduced inflammation in mice by activating endogenous TGF-beta 1, a protein that controls cell growth and division.

The findings may impact therapeutic treatments for burn injuries, which affect more than 6 million people worldwide each year, says lead investigator Praveen Arany, DDS,...

Scientists in Australia and in the USA have solved a long-standing mystery about the Sun that could help astronomers predict space weather and help us prepare for potentially devastating geomagnetic storms if they were to hit Earth.

The Sun’s internal magnetic field is directly responsible for space weather — streams of high-energy particles from the Sun that can be triggered by solar flares, sunspots or coronal mass ejections that produce geomagnetic storms...

The tabletop diagnostic yields results in an hour and can be programmed to detect variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Researchers report that the diagnostic is just as accurate as PCR tests.

Engineers at MIT and Harvard University showed that the device can also be used to detect specific viral mutations linked to some of the SARS-CoV-2 variants that are now circulating. This result can also be obtained within an hour, potentially making it much easier to track different variants of the virus, especially in regions that don’t have access to genetic sequencing facilities.

“We demonstrated that our platform can be ...

A team of astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile to shed new light on planets around a nearby star, L98-59, that resemble those in the inner Solar System. Amongst the findings are a planet with half the mass of Venus — the lightest exoplanet ever to be measured using the radial velocity technique — an ocean world, and a possible planet in the habitable zone.

“The planet in the habitable zone may have an atmosphere that could protect and support life,” says María Rosa Zapatero Osorio, an astronomer at the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, and one of the authors of the study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The results are an important step in the quest to find life on Earth-sized planets outside the...