Culture
One way to change the properties of a material is to stretch it just a wee bit, so its atoms are farther apart but the bonds between them don't break. This extra distance affects the behavior of electrons, which determine whether the material is an insulator or a conductor of electricity, for instance.
But for an important class of complex oxide materials, stretching doesn't work so well; they're as brittle as ceramic coffee cups and would break.
Researchers know that people are motivated to be vegetarian for different reasons -- the most common in western cultures being health, the environment and animal rights. But how compelling are these different factors for nonvegetarians?
University of California, Davis, researchers in the Department of Psychology surveyed 8,000 people of various ages and ethnicities, in two languages, in both the United States and Holland, to help determine why nonvegetarians decide to become vegetarian.
A paradox for advocacy efforts
An international team, including Arizona State University researcher Gary Schwartz, have unearthed the earliest known skull of Homo erectus, the first of our ancestors to be nearly human-like in their anatomy and aspects of their behavior.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has already resulted in mass layoffs in several industries, other essential industries will instead face critical workforce shortages, according to a new report. Social distancing, school and daycare closures, and measures to protect those people who are most at-risk limit the pool of workers firms can draw upon. How important will these constraints turn out to be, especially in essential industries?
LA JOLLA, CA -- A prevalent heart protein known as cardiac myosin, which is released into the body when a person suffers a heart attack, can cause blood to thicken or clot--worsening damage to heart tissue, a new study shows.
A team led by John H. Griffin, PhD, a professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research, made the unexpected finding after a series of experiments spanning three years and involving researchers from multiple collaborating institutions.
The oldest known animals and plants preserved in amber from Southern Gondwana are reported in Scientific Reports this week. Gondwana, the supercontinent made up of South America, Africa, Madagascar, India, Antarctica and Australia, broke away from the Pangea supercontinent around 200 million years ago. The findings further our understanding of ecology in Australia and New Zealand during the Late Triassic to mid-Paleogene periods (230-40 million years ago).
Nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, can inhibit aggressive cell transformations during wound healing and may be key to the development of therapies to treat fibrotic eye diseases that impair vision, according to a new Mount Sinai study published on Thursday, April 2, in Stem Cell Reports.
Published in Communications Biology, the study explored the molecular interactions that occur in our response to varying levels of nutrients, otherwise known as nutrient-sensing pathways, as we grow older.
TORONTO, April 2, 2020 - Women academics are less likely than men to comment on published research, limiting scholarly debate, a new study co-authored by York University sociologist Professor Cary Wu, shows. According to the study, women are also relatively less likely to comment on their male counterparts, published research.
As part of their efforts to slow the outbreak of coronavirus, governments, research institutions and industry are developing contact tracing apps to record interactions between people. The apps warn users if one of the people they have been recorded as being in contact with is later diagnosed with COVID-19 so they can take appropriate steps like self-isolation.
Such apps could prove useful in avoiding long-term confinement measures. However they collect sensitive information like location data, Bluetooth-enabled proximity information, and whether individuals are infected.
WASHINGTON, April 2, 2020 -- Cold brew may be the hottest trend in coffee-making, but not a lot is known about how this process alters the drink's chemical characteristics. Scientists now report that the content of potentially health-promoting antioxidants in coffee brewed without heat can significantly differ from a cup of joe prepared with the same beans in the traditional way, particularly for dark roasts.
In the final few minutes of a spacecraft landing it is moving at hypersonic speeds through many layers of atmosphere. Knowing the air density outside of the vehicle can have a substantial effect on its angle of descent and ability to hit a specific landing spot. But air density sensors that can withstand the harsh hypersonic conditions are uncommon.
A new study in Nature Communications proposes a method to extend polygenic scores, the estimate of genetic risk factors and a cornerstone of the personalized medicine revolution, to individuals with multiple ancestral origins. The study was led by Dr. Davide Marnetto from the Institute of Genomics of the University of Tartu, Estonia and coordinated by Dr. Luca Pagani from the same institution and from the University of Padova, Italy.
A newly developed wireless biologging network (WBN) enables high-resolution tracking of small animals, according to a study published April 2 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Simon Ripperger of the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, and colleagues. As noted by the authors, WBNs could close an important gap in biologging: the fully automated tracking and proximity-sensing of small animals, even in closed habitats, at high spatial and temporal resolution.
Researchers have found strong evidence that the risk for armed conflict is higher after a climate-related disaster, but only in vulnerable countries.
Lead author Tobias Ide from the University of Melbourne said the disasters include storms, floods and droughts - the frequency and intensity of which will increase in the future, due to climate change.