Culture
Science now supports the saying, "happy wife, happy life." Michigan State University research found that those who are optimistic contribute to the health of their partners, staving off the risk factors leading to Alzheimer's disease, dementia and cognitive decline as they grow old together.
Human beings altered one of the highest peaks in the Himalayas hundreds of years before a person ever set foot there, new research has found.
The study, publishing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that the byproducts of burning coal in Europe in the late 18th century made their way to the Dasuopu glacier in the central Himalayas, some 6,400 miles as the crow flies from London, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.
Tokyo - For a long time the liquid state of pure substances was believed to be a continuous state in which the component atoms or molecules are all equivalent. However, it has now been widely shown that there can be multiple different phases within liquids, even those containing only one component. Understanding what causes the components of liquids to switch from one state to another is currently a subject of particular interest.
The world is waking up to the fact that human-driven carbon emissions are responsible for warming our climate, driving unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and placing us on course for the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's history.
However, new research publishing this week in leading international journal PNAS, sheds fresh light on the complicated interplay of factors affecting global climate and the carbon cycle - and on what transpired millions of years ago to spark two of the most devastating extinction events in Earth's history.
Rutgers biomedical engineers have developed a "bio-ink" for 3D printed materials that could serve as scaffolds for growing human tissues to repair or replace damaged ones in the body.
The study was published in the journal Biointerphases.
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- A material from a rare earth element, tellurium, could produce the world's smallest transistor, thanks to an Army-funded project.
Computer chips use billions of tiny switches called transistors to process information. The more transistors on a chip, the faster the computer.
Hemp is technically legal in Texas, but proving that hemp is not marijuana can be a hurdle, requiring testing in a licensed laboratory. So, when a truck carrying thousands of pounds of hemp was recently detained by law enforcement near Amarillo, the driver spent weeks in jail awaiting confirmation that the cargo was legal.
It's no coincidence that some of the worst viral disease outbreaks in recent years -- SARS, MERS, Ebola, Marburg and likely the newly arrived 2019-nCoV virus -- originated in bats.
A new University of California, Berkeley, study finds that bats' fierce immune response to viruses could drive viruses to replicate faster, so that when they jump to mammals with average immune systems, such as humans, the viruses wreak deadly havoc.
Your good deed for the day--whether lending a hand to a stranger or giving up your seat on the subway--may prompt others to see you as a good and trustworthy person, but not always. In certain circumstances, it may do just the opposite.
Having genetically higher testosterone levels increases the risk of metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes in women, while reducing the risk in men. Higher testosterone levels also increase the risks of breast and endometrial cancers in women, and prostate cancer in men.
Most memories fade in a matter of days or weeks, while some persist for months, years, or even for life. What allows certain experiences to leave such a long-lasting imprint in our neural circuits? This is an age-old question in neurobiology that has never been resolved, but new evidence is pointing to a surprising new answer.
Scientists at the University of Groningen turned a non-enzymatic protein into a new, artificial enzyme by adding two abiological catalytic components: an unnatural amino acid and a catalytic copper complex. This is the first time that an enzyme has been created using two non-biological components to create an active site. The study demonstrates that such a synergistic combination is a powerful approach to achieving catalysis that is normally outside the realm of artificial enzymes. The study was published in Nature Catalysis on 10 February.
Researchers at the Center for Nanoparticle Research, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea) in collaboration with collaborators at Zhejiang University, China, have reported a highly sensitive and specific nanosensor that can monitor dynamic changes of potassium ion in mice undergoing epileptic seizures, indicating their intensity and origin in the brain.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Like breathing or blinking, behaviors regulated by our circadian rhythms, such as digestion and sleep-wake cycles, go unnoticed by most people. But when circadian rhythms malfunction, the result can be any one of a broad range of serious, chronic disorders, from insomnia and depression to obesity, diabetes and bipolar disorder.
A key piece to the puzzle of circadian rhythms and the disorders they're involved in is the hormone melatonin, which the brain produces in the evening, to facilitate falling asleep and fine-tune circadian adjustments.
Rapid climate change is putting increasing pressure on marine organisms. Warming, acidification and oxygen deprivation of seawater are already causing massive changes in marine ecosystems and are likely to lead to massive species extinction by the end of the century. So which groups of animals are particularly at risk? To assess this, biology and paleontology go different ways. Biologists extrapolate from experimental studies and especially predict a gloomy future for those species that are particularly sensitive to warming or oxygen deprivation in the laboratory.