Discovery & Inventions

Wed, 24 Feb 2021
A machine-learning approach to finding treatment options for Covid-19

Researchers develop a system to identify drugs that might be repurposed to fight the coronavirus

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, doctors and researchers rushed to find effective treatments. There was little time to spare. "Making new drugs takes forever," says Caroline Uhler, a computational biologist at the …

Wed, 24 Feb 2021
Standard water treatment eliminates 'enveloped' viruses

Water treatment has the potential to remove nearly all viruses from drinking water

Among the many avenues that viruses, such as the novel coronavirus, can use to infect humans, drinking water may pose only a tiny risk. However, in cases where there is unauthorized wastewater disposal or inadvertent mixing of wastewater with treated water sources, the …

Thu, 25 Feb 2021
World's oldest DNA reveals how ice age mammoths evolved

Discovery of new lineage, insights into when and how fast mammoths adapted to cold climate

An international research team has sequenced DNA recovered from mammoth remains that are up to 1.2 million years old.  The results are published in the …

Thu, 25 Feb 2021
Sea ice kept oxygen from reaching deep ocean during last ice age, study finds

Sea ice is like a closed window for the ocean

Extensive sea ice covered the world's oceans during the last ice age, preventing oxygen from penetrating into deep ocean waters and complicating the relationship between oxygen and carbon, a new study has found.

"Sea ice is effectively a closed window for the ocean," …