Culture

A nationwide smoking ban would save more than $90 million and significantly reduce hospitalizations for heart attack, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study.

After analyzing data from the 13 states that don't have a law banning smoking in public places, researchers concluded that more than 18,596 fewer hospitalizations for heart attack could be realized from a smoking ban in all 50 states after the first year of implementation, resulting in more than $92 million in savings in hospitals costs for caring for those patients.

(Garrison NY) A Hastings Center workshop examining moral issues in synthetic biology completed its third meeting as the J. Craig Venter Group announced that it had created the first viable cell with a synthetic genome.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Researchers at Mayo Clinic's campus in Florida have discovered a key gene that, when turned off, promotes the development of common kidney cancer. Their findings suggest that a combination of agents now being tested in other cancers may turn the gene back on, providing a much-needed therapy for the difficult-to-treat cancer.

Ever since ancient times, scholars have puzzled over the reasons that some musical note combinations sound so sweet while others are just downright dreadful. The Greeks believed that simple ratios in the string lengths of musical instruments were the key, maintaining that the precise mathematical relationships endowed certain chords with a special, even divine, quality. Twentieth-century composers, on the other hand, have leaned toward the notion that musical tastes are really all in what you are used to hearing.

A new study released today by Rice University and the U.S. Department of State's (DOS) Office of eDiplomacy looks at the five-year history of creating and implementing Diplopedia, DOS' use of the Wikipedia-style diplomacy Web 2.0 tool.

Diplopedia is the U.S. State Department's internal knowledge-sharing platform – an unclassified, open-source wiki platform of "how-to" knowledge for America's diplomatic corps.

So close and yet so wrong – you might love heavy metal like Metallica but your music platform suggests you should also like the Sixties sound of The Doors, simply because both bands are classified as rock.

New research published today, Thursday, 20 May, in New Journal of Physics says that searching for the temporal aspects of songs – their rhythm – might be better to find music you like than using current automatic genre classifications.