Culture
(Oslo, Saturday, 29 June, 2019) Mystical near-death experiences where people report a range of spiritual and physical symptoms, including out-of-body sensations, seeing or hearing hallucinations, racing thoughts and time distortion, affect around 10 per cent of people, according to a new study that analysed participants from 35 countries.
Academics at Edge Hill University have found that spending time on social media, specifically WhatsApp, is good for our wellbeing.
Dr Linda Kaye, a senior lecturer in Psychology found that the text-based messaging app, which offers users group chat functions, has a positive impact on psychological wellbeing.
The research found that the more time people spent on WhatsApp per day, the less lonely they were and the higher their self-esteem as a result of feeling closer to friends and family.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A joint team of scientists at the University of California, Riverside, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is getting closer to confirming the existence of an exotic quantum particle called Majorana fermion, crucial for fault-tolerant quantum computing -- the kind of quantum computing that addresses errors during its operation.
Researchers have found bullfrog tadpoles with clear signs of infection by ranavirus in Brazil. The specimens were collected from two ponds in the city of Passo Fundo, South of the country (state of Rio Grande do Sul), in November 2017. Ranavirus causes skin ulcerations, edema and internal hemorrhage. It does not affect humans but can be lethal to amphibians and fish.
By 2016, two years into the expansion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), 17.6 million previously uninsured people around the U.S. had gained health insurance coverage. But with the expansion, researchers at the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Kentucky found that ambulance dispatches for minor injuries like abrasions, minor burns and muscle sprains rose by a staggering 37% in New York City.
This is one of the conclusions of the Predimed-Plus study, Prevention with the Mediterranean Diet, which has been published in the June issue of the International Journal of Obesity. It is the first study to examine whether the quality of sleep is related to weight loss and a reduction in adipose tissue.
Organic electronics has been developing at a blistering pace over the last decade: flexible thin-film electronic circuits, sensors, displays, solar light converters and batteries, LEDs and other components have already found valuable applications in product packaging (smart packaging) clothes (wearable electronics, electronic textile), electronic skin, robotics and prosthetics, in particular, smart prosthetic limbs and exoskeletons sensitive to touch, pressure, heat, and cold.
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found a way of using gene expression conserved across species to divide patients with the inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis into two distinct groups. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications, and the researchers hope that the method can also be used to subdivide other autoimmune diseases.
A team of Penn State and University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine researchers is attempting to answer a question that has long puzzled experts: Why do some individuals suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after experiencing trauma, and others do not?
The research, led by Nanyin Zhang, professor of biomedical engineering and Lloyd & Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair in Brain Imaging at Penn State, explores whether individual vulnerability to PTSD is due to pre-existing conditions or to a response to trauma exposure.
Teenagers who can describe their negative emotions in precise and nuanced ways are better protected against depression than their peers who can't. That's the conclusion of a new study about negative emotion differentiation, or NED--the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between negative emotions and apply precise labels-- published in the journal Emotion.
Astrophysicists at Western University have found evidence for the direct formation of black holes that do not need to emerge from a star remnant. The production of black holes in the early universe, formed in this manner, may provide scientists with an explanation for the presence of extremely massive black holes at a very early stage in the history of our universe.
A surprising number of students eating in university dining halls have been helping themselves to servings of tuna well beyond the amounts recommended to avoid consuming too much mercury, a toxic heavy metal.
Social and environmental responsibility in globalized supply chains are hard to police. That task often falls to nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, that publicize abuses and call out irresponsible corporations and industries.
According to new research led by the University of California, Riverside NGOs are more likely to sway companies into ethical behavior with carefully targeted reports that take into consideration a range of factors affecting the companies and industries. The report also finds that too much pressure can actually backfire.
Smart wearable technology that changes colour, heats up, squeezes or vibrates as your emotions are heightened has the potential to help people with affective disorders better control their feelings.
Researchers from Lancaster University's School of Computing and Communications have worked with smart materials on wrist-worn prototypes that can aid people diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and bi-polar disorders in monitoring their emotions.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Despite similar rates of infertility among all socioeconomic groups, white women, women with higher education levels, and women with higher incomes are at least twice as likely to seek treatment as other groups of women, new research suggests.
Nearly 12.5 % of women - or about 1 in 8 - in a Michigan Medicine study reported experiencing infertility. While older age was linked to higher infertility rates, a woman's race and ethnicity, education and income did not appear to influence her chance of conceiving.