Brain
A team of scientists led by a Michigan State University astronomer has found that a new process of evaluating proposed scientific research projects is as effective - if not more so - than the traditional peer-review method.
Normally, when a researcher submits a proposal, the funding agency then asks a number of researchers in that particular field to evaluate and make funding recommendations. A system that can sometimes be a bit bulky and slow - not quite an exact science.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - The most elite players in college football increase revenue for their school football programs by an average of $650,000 a year, a first-of-its-kind study suggests.
This is the money brought in by the highest-rated recruits coming out of high school - those given five stars by Rivals, a recruiting news service, according to researchers at The Ohio State University.
When people think of glutamate, the first thing they remember is the flavour enhancer that is often used in Asian cuisine. Glutamate is also an important messenger substance in the nervous system of humans. There it plays a role in learning processes and memory. Some Alzheimer drugs, for example, slow down the progression of the disease by inhibiting the effect of glutamate.
Earth's atmosphere is made up of 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, a mixture that is unique in the Solar System (1). The oxygen was produced by some of the first living organisms. But where did the nitrogen come from? Did it escape from Earth's mantle through volcanic activity? To try to answer these questions, Jabrane Labidi, a CNRS researcher at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (CNRS/IPGP/IGN) (2) and his colleagues collected samples of gas from several volcanic sites on our planet.
Noble metals (e.g., platinum) are often used as catalysts in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) of fuel cell cathodes. However, the drawbacks, such as the high cost, easy to be poisoned by CO, and poor stability, obviously limit their industrialization and application. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a new type of oxygen reduction catalysts to replace platinum.
UPTON, NY - A collaboration of scientists from the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)--a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory--Yale University, and Arizona State University has designed and tested a new two-dimensional (2-D) catalyst that can be used to improve water purification using hydrogen peroxide. While water treatment with hydrogen peroxide is environmentally friendly, the two-part chemical process that drives it is not very efficient.
URBANA, Ill. - Drought and heat put stress on plants and reduce grain yield. For some farmers, irrigation is the answer. Many of us assume the practice boosts crop yields by delivering soil water, but it turns out irrigation's cooling effect on crops is important in its own right.
In a recent U.S.-based study, a research team led by University of Illinois scientists discovered 16% of the yield increase from irrigation is attributable to cooling alone.
Sound waves reveal the unique properties of an ultracold quantum gas, a model system for describing certain superconductors and forms of nuclear matter. A new Australian study examines the propagation of energy as sound waves in a quantum gas, revealing for the first time strong variations in the nature of the sound wave as a function of temperature.
At low energies, this energy travels via the collective movement of many particles moving in sync - essentially, as sound waves -quantified using quasiparticles known as phonons.
Washington, DC, April 14, 2020 - The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, reports on a study following a four year effort to change the stigma of mental illness at Indiana University, which drew the attention of students and faculty; increased awareness of discrimination and prejudice; and decreased prejudice and increased inclusion.
Some apps highlight when a person is online -- and then share that information with their followers. When a user logs in to a website or app that uses online status indicators, a little green (or orange or blue) dot pops up to alert their followers that they're currently online.
Researchers at the University of Washington wanted to know if people recognize that they are sharing this information and whether these indicators change how people behave online.
An international team of researchers, in a paper published today in Nature Astronomy, highlights a new way novae light up the sky: this is indeed shocks from an explosion that create the novae that cause most of the its brightness.
As one of the world's most densely populated regions, eastern China has been plagued by air pollution. The future projection of atmospheric diffusion conditions conducive to extreme haze events over eastern China is therefore of great importance for government emission regulations and public human health.
A common thread in many inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), is damage caused by oxidative stress. Oxidative stress occurs when cells produce toxic substances known as reactive oxygen species, which are damaging nerve cells and other cells in the body.
ANN ARBOR--Synthetic microparticles more intricate than some of the most complicated ones found in nature have been produced by a University of Michigan-led international team. They also investigated how that intricacy arises and devised a way to measure it.
The findings pave the way for more stable fluid-and-particle mixes, such as paints, and new ways to twist light--a prerequisite for holographic projectors.
The particles are composed of twisted spikes arranged into a ball a few microns, or millionths of a millimeter, across.
Ants are excellent navigators and always find their way back to the nest. But how do they react when an obstacle or a predator blocks their path? An international team including Antoine Wystrach, a CNRS researcher at the Research Centre on Animal Cognition (CNRS/Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier), has shown that ants are capable of changing their familiar route to avoid traps thanks to an aversive learning mechanism: by associating visual cues with negative experiences, they can memorise potentially dangerous routes.