Culture
By creating neatly spaced slits in a clay mineral, University of Groningen Professor of Experimental Solid State Physics Petra Rudolf was able to filter water to remove a toxic herbicide. After removing the pollutant by heating the material, the clay can be reused. Together with colleagues from Greece, Rudolf presents this proof of principle study in the journal Environmental Science Nano.
Radiation from cell phones is associated with higher rates of thyroid cancer among people with genetic variations in specific genes, a new study led by the Yale School of Public Health finds.
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Researchers working on an Army project developed nanoscale thermal switches that are key to thermal management of nanoscale devices, refrigeration, data storage, thermal computing and heat management of buildings.
The journal Nature Nanotechnology published an Army-funded study from University of Michigan researchers that showed for the first time how a nanoscale thermal switch can be built by employing nanoscale effects that arise when heat is transferred between a hot and cold nanoscale-thick membrane via thermal radiation.
One of the most controversial hypotheses for the origin of human language faculty is the evolutionary conjecture that language arose instantaneously in humans through a single gene mutation. `
Two recent publications by researchers at the University of Barcelona (UB), led by Cedric Boeckx, ICREA Research professor from the Section of General Linguistics and member of the Institute of Complex Systems of the UB (UBICS), question this hypothesis, advocated among others by linguist Noam Chomsky, and suggest that it is more likely that language evolved gradually.
In a new short paper in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, Roger A. Søraa from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and co-authors Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and Adam Poulsen from Charles Sturt University in Australia discuss what a queering of robots might entail.
"It is imperative that we construct mechanisms and policies that acknowledge the importance of inclusivity, diversity, and non-discrimination, also for the LGBTQ+ community in the development and use of robots and AI," the researchers wrote.
Scientists and engineers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the University of Leeds in the UK have created the first electrically-driven 'topological' laser, which has the ability to route light particles around corners - and to cope with defects in the manufacture of the device.
In Brazil there is a plant so strange that researchers predicted - and 27 years later, proved - that opossums are key to its pollination. The findings are published in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecology.
Brain-eating amoebae can cause particularly harmful forms of encephalitis, and more than 95% of people who develop these rare but devastating infections die. Despite the high mortality rate, there is currently no single effective drug available to fight these microbes. Now, however, researchers have designed some new compounds that show promise in the laboratory as treatments, according to a report in ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
As a result of climate change, more frequent and longer drought periods are predicted in the future. Drought risks are suggested to decrease agricultural yield. Researchers at the University of Bayreuth and the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) have now discovered a way to mitigate this problem: Amorphous silica is able to significantly increase the amount of available water for plants. This offers an opportunity to enhance global food security despite climate change. The researchers presented their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.
St. Paul, MN (February 2020)--Transmitted by insects, especially the aster leafhopper, aster yellows (AY) outbreaks can cause severe production losses in many crops, including carrots, lettuce, and canola. Canola is a billion-dollar crop for Canada but the growing season in Western Canada is very short. Depending on the environmental conditions and number of infected leafhoppers, AY can be transmitted to canola in less than 24 hours and the leafhoppers can continue spreading the disease for the rest of their lives.
New research spearheaded by McGill University has discovered that bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) found in the intestinal tracts of children may play a role in childhood stunting, a significant impediment to growth that affects 22% of children under the age of five around the world.
In many industrial processes, such as in bioreactors that produce fuels or pharmaceuticals, foam can get in the way. Frothy bubbles can take up a lot of space, limiting the volume available for making the product and sometimes gumming up pipes and valves or damaging living cells. Companies spend an estimated $3 billion a year on chemical additives called defoamers, but these can affect the purity of the product and may require extra processing steps for their removal.
Dr Katerina Johnson, who conducted her PhD in the University's Department of Experimental Psychology, was researching the science of that 'gut feeling' - the relationship between the bacteria living in the gut (the gut microbiome) and behavioural traits. In a large human study she found that both gut microbiome composition and diversity were related to differences in personality, including sociability and neuroticism.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study uses China's one-child policy to show that having fewer children leads women to achieve higher levels of education.
The research found that the one-child policy alone accounted for about half of the additional education that women in China achieved after the policy was put in place.
DALLAS, Feb. 12, 2020 -- Researchers have developed a simple risk score prediction model to help determine stroke risk in adults who experience migraine accompanied by aura, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2020 - Feb. 19-21 in Los Angeles, a world premier meeting for researchers and clinicians dedicated to the science of stroke and brain health.