Culture
Researchers have used AI to control beams for the next generation of smaller, cheaper accelerators for research, medical and industrial applications.
Experiments led by Imperial College London researchers, using the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Central Laser Facility (CLF), showed that an algorithm was able to tune the complex parameters involved in controlling the next generation of plasma-based particle accelerators.
Conventional wisdom has long recognized the power of home court advantage in basketball.
The specific reasons home teams perform better are less clear: Is it the adrenalin fueled by the roar of the crowd? Referees favoring the home team?
What about disruptions of the internal body clock from quickly crossing time zones and poor sleep for the traveling teams?
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and University College London have rebuilt a human thymus, an essential organ in the immune system, using human stem cells and a bioengineered scaffold. Their work is an important step towards being able to build artificial thymi which could be used as transplants.
TAMPA, Fla (Dec. 11, 2020) -- The appealing array of fruit and candy flavors that entice millions of young people take up vaping can harm their hearts, a preclinical study by University of South Florida Health (USF Health) researchers found.
The strong foundation of global health research and development (R&D) that greatly accelerated the development of COVID-19 innovations is now being weakened by pandemic pressures that are diverting funding and expertise away from other dangerous diseases and putting clinical trials and scientific endeavors around the world on indefinite hold.
Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland and other institutions in Paris, Hamburg and Basel, have succeeded in setting a new record in X-ray microscopy. With improved diffractive lenses and more precise sample positioning, they were able to achieve spatial resolution in the single-digit nanometre scale. This new dimension in direct imaging could provide significant impulses for research into nanostructures and further advance the development of solar cells and new types of magnetic data storage.
New research has shown robots can encourage people to take greater risks in a simulated gambling scenario than they would if there was nothing to influence their behaviours. Increasing our understanding of whether robots can affect risk-taking could have clear ethical, practiCal and policy implications, which this study set out to explore.
All plant cells can be made to react by touch or injury. The carnivorous Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) has highly sensitive organs for this purpose: sensory hairs that register even the weakest mechanical stimuli, amplify them and convert them into electrical signals that then spread quickly through the plant tissue.
The majority of pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19 on arrival to the delivery room were asymptomatic, according to a paper by Mount Sinai researchers published in PLOS One on Thursday, December 10. The pregnant patients who tested positive for the coronavirus were also more likely than those who tested negative to identify as Hispanic and report their primary language as Spanish.
The two used methods for detecting amyloid pathology in Alzheimer's disease do not give unambiguous results, with the risk of incorrect or delayed care interventions. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found genetic explanations for the differences. The study is published in Molecular Psychiatry and may be important for more individual diagnostics and the development of future drugs.
UTICA, NY -- Brown fat, also known as brown adipose tissue, is a special type of fat that "turns on" (becomes activated) when you get cold, to help maintain body temperature. Importantly, brown fat is a biological fuel that can increase the metabolic rate, decrease fat storage, and thereby, lower one's propensity for developing obesity. Interestingly, it was previously thought that individuals were born with only a finite number of brown fat cells.
Researchers from the University of Bristol and quantum start-up, Phasecraft, have advanced quantum computing research, bringing practical hybrid quantum-classical computing one step closer.
The team, led by Bristol researcher and Phasecraft co-founder, Dr. Ashley Montanaro, has discovered algorithms and analysis which significantly lessen the quantum hardware capability needed to solve problems which go beyond the realm of classical computing, even supercomputers.
In assessing an employee's performance, employers often listen to his immediate supervisor or colleagues, and these opinions can be highly subjective. Sergey Stepanov, an economist from HSE University, has shown that biased evaluations can actually benefit employers. An article substantiating this finding was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
Although robotics has reshaped and even redefined many industrial sectors, there still exists a gap between machines and humans in fields such as health and elderly care. For robots to safely manipulate or interact with fragile objects and living organisms, new strategies to enhance their perception while making their parts softer are needed. In fact, building a safe and dexterous robotic gripper with human-like capabilities is currently one of the most important goals in robotics.
Photosynthesis in nature uses the CaMn4O5 cluster as the oxygen-evolving center to catalyze the water oxidation efficiently in photosystem II (PS II). Synergistic effect among the multi-metal centers of PSII plays a key role for the high catalytic activity. Mimicking the natural photosynthesis, light-driven overall water splitting to produce H2 and O2 including both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), is a promising pathway for artificial conversion and storage of solar energy.