Modelling the heart in 3D using combined imaging techniques can help predict heart rhythm abnormalities, or arrhythmias, in patients with the genetic heart disease hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

A condom designed to increase sexual pleasure has the potential to increase protected sex and decrease sexually transmitted infections, a new study suggests. The new condom, called CSD500 and not currently available in the United States, includes a gel designed to enhance erection firmness, size and duration. The randomized, controlled study led by researchers at The Ohio State University compared CSD500 to standard condoms, and both men and women in the test condom group reported greater enjoyment.

Penn State researchers found that among Black youth between the ages of 11 and 19 with high body mass indexes (BMI), those who reported a strong sense of racial identity also reported fewer weight concerns. This was true for both girls and boys.

The origin of water on our planet is a hot question: Water has immense implications for plate tectonics, climate, the origin of life on Earth, and the potential habitability of other Earth-like planets. In a recent study in Physical Review Letters, a Skoltech professor and his Chinese colleagues suggest a chemical compound that — although now extinct — could have preserved water deep underground in the violent era when massive collisions must have evaporated the Earth’s surface water. The hero is magnesium hydrosilicate, with the formula Mg2SiO5H2, which is over 11% water by weight and is stable at pressures of more than 2 million atmospheres and extremely high temperatures. Such pressures exist in the Earth’s core. The new hypothesis of water origin has implications for other celestial bodies, too. “Mars, for example, is too small to produce pressures necessary to stabilize magnesium hydrosilicate,” Oganov says. “This explains why it is so dry and means that whatever water exists on Mars, it likely came from comets.”

New laboratory research from Oregon Health & Science University reveals more than one path toward robust immunity from COVID-19. A new study finds that two forms of immunity – breakthrough infections following vaccination or natural infection followed by vaccination – provide roughly equal levels of enhanced immune protection. The research follows an OHSU study published in December that described extremely high levels of immune response following breakthrough infections – so-called “super immunity.” That study was the first to use multiple live SARS-CoV-2 variants to measure cross-neutralization of blood serum from breakthrough cases.

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) released a new clinical practice guideline that includes major recommendations for managing patients with type B aortic dissection (TBAD). The guideline was published online in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery and The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.