Culture
Beep beep beep or Beach Boys? The sounds you wake up to could be affecting how groggy and clumsy you are in the morning, according to new research.
A study by RMIT University suggests melodic alarms could improve alertness levels, with harsh alarm tones linked to increased levels of morning grogginess.
The surprising finding, published in PLoS One, could have important implications for anyone who needs to perform at their peak soon after waking, such as shift workers and emergency first responders.
A UTSA researcher has discovered that, whether in a pair or in groups, success in primate social systems may also provide insight into organization of human social life.
Assistant professor Luca Pozzi in UTSA's Department of Anthropology in collaboration with Peter Kappeler, a colleague at the German Primate Center-Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, investigated how different primate societies evolved and which factors may be responsible for transitions among them.
Patient-specific or personalised 3D printed models created from cardiac imaging data can be applied to research areas beyond the current domains of 3D printing in cardiovascular disease, which mainly focuses on pre-surgical planning and simulation, medical education and training, as well as doctor-patient communication. These areas represent the most commonly used applications of 3D printed models, in particular, use of 3D printing models on congenital heart disease is a very promising field with sufficient evidence provided by randomised controlled trials.
Houston Methodist neurosurgeons and neuroscientists are looking at a new way to classify pituitary tumors that could lead to more precise and accurate diagnosing for patients in the future.
Found in up to 10% of the population, pituitary tumors, also called adenomas, are noncancerous growths on the pituitary gland and very common. Although these pituitary tumors are benign in nature, they pose a major health challenge in patients.
It was long believed that physical characteristics acquired by organisms during their lifetime could not be passed on to their offspring. However, in recent years, the theory of inheritance of acquired traits has gained support, with studies showing how offspring of rats and tiny worms inherit behaviours that were acquired by their parents in response to particular environmental stimuli, even when the stimulus is no longer present in the offspring's generation.
Recently discovered ripples of spacetime called gravitational waves could contain evidence to prove the theory that life survived the Big Bang because of a phase transition that allowed neutrino particles to reshuffle matter and anti-matter, explains a new study by an international team of researchers.
In her Social and Cultural Neuroscience Lab at the University of Miami, assistant professor of Psychology Elizabeth Losin investigates the mechanisms underlying racial and ethnic disparities related to pain and pain treatment.
Climate change is affecting the health of agricultural soils. Increased heat and drought make life easy for the pathogenic fungus Pythium ultimum. As an international team of researchers led by the Universities of Kassel and Bonn has shown, the fungus causes almost total crop failure in peas after a hot and dry stress event. Short-term soil recovery seems to be possible only in exceptional cases. The study has now been published in the journal Applied Soil Ecology.
Sixty-six million years ago, in the emerged lands of Laurasia -now the northern hemisphere- a primitive land tortoise, measuring about 60 cm, managed to survive the event that killed the dinosaurs. It was the only one to do so in this area of the world, according to a Spanish palaeontologist who has analysed its peculiar fossils, found in France.
Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University develop a novel gas imaging system to simultaneously visualize and measure gases that are released through the skin in real-time
Tokyo, Japan - Gases emitted from the human body have been used since ancient Greek times to diagnose the sick; the same principle with a modern, technological makeover could now become a simple tool to identify metabolic disorders, genetic diseases and cancer.
Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München, Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) have developed a novel therapeutic approach to cure chronic hepatitis B. The scientists found that the large amount of hepatitis B virus proteins expressed in the liver prevents the body's immune system to defeat the virus, consequently preventing an effective therapy. The researchers were able to show that knocking down the expression of the virus' proteins enables successful vaccination with TherVacB, a novel therapeutic vaccine.
A recent study by the University of Kent has called for an increase in scientific surveys and collection of specimens to confirm the extinction of ultra-rare species.
Dr David Roberts, a conservation scientist at Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, concluded from research that there is currently insufficient scientific surveys to determine whether many of the Earth's rarest species, those known only from a single specimen, still exist.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg have described a previously unrecognized mechanism of bacterial transcriptional regulation that is obviously widespread in bacteria. In the future, their findings could also help fight antibiotic resistance.
With the start of the new year, gyms are at their busiest and many people are trying to establish a workout routine to improve their health. Getting an edge by making exercise easier and more effective could be the difference between success and guiltily returning to the warm embrace of the couch. What if doing something as simple as listening to a particular type of music could give you that edge?
Baton Rouge, La.-- In a new study published in Science, an AAAS publication, LSU chemistry professor emeritus George Stanley and fellow LSU researchers from the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biological Sciences discovered a new cationic cobalt bisphosphine hydroformylation catalyst system that is highly active and extremely robust.