Association of Trends in Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Seroprevalence and State-Issued Nonpharmaceutical Interventions: United States, 1 August 2020 to 30 March 2021.

Background: We assess if state-issued nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are associated with reduced rates of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection as measured through anti-nucleocapsid (anti-N) seroprevalence, a proxy for cumulative prior infection that distinguishes seropositivity from vaccination.

Methods: Monthly anti-N seroprevalence during 1 August 2020 to 30 March 2021 was estimated using a nationwide blood donor serosurvey. Using multivariable logistic regression models, we measured the association of seropositivity and state-issued, county-specific NPIs for mask mandates, gathering bans, and bar closures.

Velocity-tunable beam of continuously decelerated polar molecules for cold ion-molecule reaction studies.

Producing high densities of molecules is a fundamental challenge for low-temperature, ion-molecule reaction studies. Traveling-wave Stark decelerators promise to deliver high density beams of cold, polar molecules but require non-trivial control of high-voltage potentials. We have overcome this experimental challenge and demonstrate continuous deceleration of ND from 385 to 10 m/s, while driving the decelerator electrodes with a 10 kV amplitude sinewave.

Plausible Emergence and Self Assembly of a Primitive Phospholipid from Reduced Phosphorus on the Primordial Earth.

How life arose on the primitive Earth is one of the biggest questions in science. Biomolecular emergence scenarios have proliferated in the literature but accounting for the ubiquity of oxidized (+ 5) phosphate (PO) in extant biochemistries has been challenging due to the dearth of phosphate and molecular oxygen on the primordial Earth. A compelling body of work suggests that exogenous schreibersite ((Fe,Ni)P) was delivered to Earth via meteorite impacts during the Heavy Bombardment (ca.

Collisions between Ultracold Molecules and Atoms in a Magnetic Trap.

We prepare mixtures of ultracold CaF molecules and Rb atoms in a magnetic trap and study their inelastic collisions. When the atoms are prepared in the spin-stretched state and the molecules in the spin-stretched component of the first rotationally excited state, they collide inelastically with a rate coefficient k_{2}=(6.6±1.