Culture
Automatic image recognition is widely used today: There are computer programs that can reliably diagnose skin cancer, navigate self-driving cars, or control robots. Up to now, all this has been based on the evaluation of image data as delivered by normal cameras - and that is time-consuming. Especially when the number of images recorded per second is high, a large volume of data is generated that can hardly be handled.
Employees over 50 can feel excluded and demotivated in the workplace for various reasons. They feel particularly excluded when they believe that their cognitive abilities decrease with age, as psychologists from the University of Basel report in the journal "Work, Aging, and Retirement".
Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University jointly with the University of Lille (France) have developed a new material capable of purifying water effectively from oil products. It is based on an ordinary household polyurethane sponge. The research team made it superhydrophobic - it repels water, while effectively sorbing oil product molecules. The results were published in Separation and Purification Technology (IF: 5,107; Q1).
Local communities in the Congo rainforest have been working with researchers from the University of York in a bid to balance the bushmeat trade with conservation.
Bushmeat is the most important source of protein, iron and fat in some parts of Africa, especially in areas where the tsetse flies limits cattle rearing. This includes places like the rainforests of the Congo Basin.
Do rivers play a significant role in the ocean circulation and dynamics? Do we need a fine representation of river release into regional ocean models?
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Cyanobacteria - colloquially also called blue-green algae - can produce oil from water and carbon dioxide with the help of light. This is shown by a recent study by the University of Bonn. The result is unexpected: Until now, it was believed that this ability was reserved for plants. It is possible that blue-green algae will now also become interesting as suppliers of feed or fuel, especially since they do not require arable land. The results have now been published in the journal PNAS.
Additional certification and training courses can not only affect an employee's pay grade and career, but their sense of control over their life. Employees who have 'upgraded' their professional knowledge and skills find it easier to manage problems both in their personal lives and in the workplace. However, the trend does not hold equally for men and women. A study by researchers from the HSE University shows that men reap more benefits than women.
Drone pilots may become superfluous in the future. New research from Aarhus University has allowed artificial intelligence to take over control of drones scanning and measuring terrain.
A research project at Aarhus University (AU) in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) aims to make measuring and documenting gravel and limestone quarries much faster, cheaper and easier in the future.
The project has allowed artificial intelligence to take over the human-controlled drones currently being used for the task.
Tularemia is a rare but often lethal disease. It is caused by one of the most aggressive pathogens on earth, the bacterium Francisella tularensis. The microbe, transported by a variety of animals and insects, is able to enter and attack the body through a range of pathways, resulting in different constellations of symptoms and degrees of severity.
Together with scientists from Paris and Munich, a team of researchers working under Prof. Dr. Johannes Hegemann and Dr. Katja Moelleken has published these findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
Several coronaviruses circulate worldwide and constantly infect humans, which normally caused only mild respiratory disease. Currently, however, we are witnessing a worldwide spread of a new coronavirus with more than 90,000 confirmed cases and over 3,000 deaths. The new virus has been named SARS coronavirus-2 and has been transmitted from animals to humans. It causes a respiratory disease called COVID-19 that may take a severe course. The SARS coronavirus-2 has been spreading since December 2019 and is closely related to the SARS coronavirus that caused the SARS pandemic in 2002/2003.
Schistosomiasis is a severe infectious disease caused by parasitic worms. As an intermediate host, freshwater snails play a central role in the life cycle of the parasite. In a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in cooperation with the Kenya-based International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) succeeded in proving that snail populations in waterbodies contaminated with pesticides were significantly larger than in uncontaminated waterbodies.
Most humans feel bad about hurting others. This so called 'harm aversion' is key to normal moral development and is reduced in violent antisocial individuals. Unfortunately, little is known about what makes us harm averse and we lack effective pharmacological treatments for violence in psychopathic criminals characterized by a lack of harm aversion. In a new paper published in the leading journal Current Biology, a team of neuroscientists of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) shows that male and female rats show harm aversion.
Anxieties and behaviour problems may be common across dog breeds, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The findings suggest that noise sensitivity is the most common anxiety trait, followed by fear.