Science

On Saturday, The Washington Post published a lengthy exposé of how missteps by President Donald Trump's Centers for Disease Control director, Robert Redfield, and other officials at the agency, led to a several-week delay in development of adequate coronavirus testing.

"The Washington Post reviewed internal documents and interviewed more than 30 government scientists and others with knowledge of the events to understand more fully the missteps in those early weeks as the coronavirus began to spread unchecked across the nation," reported David Willman. "Most spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to do so publicly."

Fred Piccolo, a communications director for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), found himself at the center of controversy for his gross disregard of the lives lost to COVID-19.

In a late-night Twitter post on Wednesday evening, Piccolo shared a tweet that appeared to belittle the fact that people have died from the pandemic. He tweeted, "I'm wondering since 99% [of] Covid patients survive shouldn't you have 99 photos of survivors for every one fatality? Otherwise, you're just trying to create a narrative that is not reality."

The emergence of a new variant of coronavirus has sparked renewed interest in the part of the virus known as the spike protein.

The new variant carries several peculiar changes to the spike protein when compared to other closely related variants – and that's one of the reasons why it's more concerning than other, harmless changes to the virus we have observed before. The new mutations may alter the biochemistry of the spike and could affect how transmissible the virus is.

When the first coronavirus vaccines were rolled out last week, healthcare workers across the country took to social media to express their joy. Now those posts are being targeted by anti-vaxxers.

As the Press Herald points out, the effort to distribute the vaccine to the population faces the headwinds of the anti-vaxxer movement, along with those who aren't necessarily anti-vaccine, but who are wary of the coronavirus vaccine's rushed production.

A new study published in the latest edition of "Personality and Individual Differences" highlights the relationship between psychopathic tendencies, pathological personality traits and prejudicial views. Research suggests people with "calloused, deceitful, and manipulative interpersonal styles" are more prone to align with the beliefs of right-wing authoritarianism, according to PsyPost.

Sandeep Roy, a doctoral candidate with a major-applied focus on clinical psychology at the University of North Texas, explained the correlation between the two.

One tray of COVID-19 vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer contains 975 doses — way too many for a rural hospital in Arkansas.

But with the logistical gymnastics required to safely get the Pfizer vaccine to rural health care workers, splitting the trays into smaller shipments has its own dangers. Once out of the freezer that keeps it at 94 degrees below zero, the vaccine lasts only five days and must be refrigerated in transit.

Matter is what makes up the universe, but what makes up matter? This question has long been tricky for those who think about it – especially for the physicists. Reflecting recent trends in physics, my colleague Jeffrey Eischen and I have described an updated way to think about matter. We propose that matter is not made of particles or waves, as was long thought, but – more fundamentally – that matter is made of fragments of energy.

Hungarian-American scientist Katalin Kariko's obsession with researching a substance called mRNA to fight disease once cost her a faculty position at a prestigious university, which dismissed the idea as a dead end.

An Asian water dragon hatched from an egg at the Smithsonian National Zoo, and her keepers were shocked. Why? Her mother had never been with a male water dragon. Through genetic testing, zoo scientists discovered the newly hatched female, born on Aug. 24, 2016, had been produced through a reproductive mode called parthenogenesis.

Scientists in Japan said Tuesday they were left "speechless" when they saw how much asteroid dust was inside a capsule delivered by the Hayabusa-2 space probe in an unprecedented mission.