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Repairing complex electrical appliances is time consuming and rarely cost-effective. The working group led by Prof. Dr. Karl Mandel, Professorship of Inorganic Chemistry at FAU, has now developed a smart microparticle that enables defective components in these appliances to be identified more quickly and easily by using light signals. In the long-term, this could make repairs easier and extend the operating life of devices. The results have been published in the journal 'Advanced Functional Materials'.

Shining a beam of light into potentially contaminated water samples may hold the key to real-time detection of hydrocarbons and pesticides in water. UBC Okanagan researchers are testing the use of fluorescence to monitor water quality. The results, they say, show great promise.

Adolescent girls and young women can and will use HIV prevention products with consistency, according to interim results of a study being conducted in Africa of two different methods: daily use of the antiretroviral (ARV) tablet Truvada® as oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and the monthly dapivirine vaginal ring, a new HIV prevention product currently under regulatory review in several countries. This was not been the case in previous trials of either approach.

Combined perceptions of the risk and availability of cannabis influence the risk of cannabis use more than perceived risk and perceived availability alone, according to a new Columbia study. Researchers observed that those who perceived cannabis as low-risk and available were more likely to report using the drug in the past year and almost daily compared to those individuals who perceived cannabis as high-risk and unavailable. This is the first study to consider the joint effects of perceived risk and perceived availability.

A small regulatory RNA found in many problematic bacteria, including Escherichia coli, appears to be responsible for managing the response of these bacteria to environmental stresses. Professor Charles Dozois from Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) and doctoral student Hicham Bessaiah see a promising avenue for more effective treatment of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their results have been published in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

A new study, published by the North American Menopause Society in the journal Menopause, found a plant-based diet rich in soy reduces moderate-to-severe hot flashes by 84%, from nearly five per day to fewer than one per day. During the 12-week study, nearly 60% of women became totally free of moderate-to-severe hot flashes. Overall hot flashes (including mild ones) decreased by 79%.

If you didn't have a brain, could you still navigate your surroundings? Thanks to new research on slime molds at the Wyss and Tufts University, the answer may be "yes." Scientists discovered that the brainless Physarum polycephalum uses its body to sense mechanical cues in its environment, and decides where to grow based on that information. This finding provides a model for understanding different types of cognition, including our own.

Patients who experience long COVID have reported more than 200 symptoms across 10 organ systems, in the largest international study of 'long-haulers' to date, led by UCL scientists together with a patient-led research collaborative.

Although a very promising solution for capturing solar energy, perovskite solar cells contain lead, which is toxic to the environment and a serious health hazard. EPFL scientists have now found a very elegant and efficient solution by adding a transparent phosphate salt that doesn't interfere with light-conversion efficiency while preventing lead from seeping into the soil in cases of solar panel failure.

The new scientific statement acknowledges the importance of primary care in the system of care for patients with stroke, summarizing the available literature and providing a roadmap for holistic, goal-directed and patient-centered care.

Young children with pneumonia in Bangladesh frequently do not respond to common antibiotics, often resulting in death.

The psychological toll of losing a job due to COVID-19 caused many young hotel and restaurant workers to consider changing careers, according to a new study. Laid-off and fully furloughed hospitality employees reported being financially strained, depressed, socially isolated and panic stricken over the pandemic's effects, leading to increased intention to leave the industry. The intention to leave was particularly strong among women and younger workers. Furloughed workers reported somewhat less distress than laid-off workers.

New study finds that stakeholders' sentiment toward a new CEO has a stronger effect on post succession performance than the CEO's previous experience and fit and this is more critical for new external CEOs

In 2015, massive biomass burning events occurred in Equatorial Asia which released a large amount of carbon into the atmosphere, whose signals were captured by in-situ high-precision measurements onboard commercial passenger aircraft and a cargo ship. A simulation-based analysis with those observations estimated the fire-induced carbon emissions to be 273 Tg C for September - October 2015.

Most of the heart and immunologic problems seen in children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C)--a condition linked to COVID--were gone within a few months, Columbia researchers have found.

A new study conducted in the United Arab Emirates investigates whether asking early adolescents to evaluate the food choices of peers triggers deliberative thinking that improves their own food selection, even when the peers' food choices are unhealthy. The findings suggest that incorporating evaluations of the healthiness of others' food choices can be a tool to fight unhealthy eating lifestyles.

A new study tested whether teens' secure, supportive family relationships at age 14 related to their ability to provide their friends with empathic support across adolescence and into early adulthood. Findings indicate that secure attachment (reflecting on close relationships in an emotionally balanced, coherent, and valuing way) predicts teens' ability to provide empathic support to their close friends.

Scientists have long known that while listening to a sequence of sounds, people often perceive a rhythm, even when the sounds are identical and equally spaced. One regularity that was discovered over 100 years ago is the Iambic-Trochaic Law: when every other sound is loud, we tend to hear groups of two sounds with an initial beat. When every other sound is long, we hear groups of two sounds with a final beat. But why does our rhythm perception work this way?

POSTECH-Korea University joint research team develops a radiative cooling material that is transparent under direct sunlight.

Some sea slugs take up chloroplasts from the algae that they consume into their cells. These chloroplasts retain their ability to perform photosynthetic activity within the animal cells for several months, and thus provide them with photosynthesis-derived nutrition. A team of researchers at the National Institute for Basic Biology (NIBB), in addition to collaborators from seven other Japanese institutions, have published the genome of the sea slug, Plakobranchus ocellatus type black, in eLife.