Tech
During the summer of 2020, especially June and July, periods of extreme heavy rainfall occurred in China's Yangtze River Valley (YRV). These rain events caused the severest floods for the region since the summer of 1998. Despite this, the 2020 western North Pacific (WNP) typhoon season started slowly, but eventually produced 23 named tropical cyclones, still slightly below 27, the WNP seasonal average.
The research by RMIT University looked at the ramifications on the stock market following Google's withdrawal from mainland China in 2010.
It found access to unbiased information about companies' performance - aided by unrestricted internet search results - led to investors making more informed decisions.
On the flip side, search results manipulated to show overly positive information led to stocks for those companies being overvalued temporarily, increasing the stock market crash risk by 19%.
Ishikawa, Japan - Human beings have the ability to recognize emotions in others, but the same cannot be said for robots. Although perfectly capable of communicating with humans through speech, robots and virtual agents are only good at processing logical instructions, which greatly restricts human-robot interaction (HRI). Consequently, a great deal of research in HRI is about emotion recognition from speech. But first, how do we describe emotions?
New Curtin research has found urgent action is needed to ensure man-made underwater noise in Australian waters does not escalate to levels which could be harmful to marine animals, such as whales, and negatively impact our pristine oceans.
UCLA materials scientists have developed a class of optical material that controls how heat radiation is directed from an object. Similar to the way overlapping blinds direct the angle of visible light coming through a window, the breakthrough involves utilizing a special class of materials that manipulates how thermal radiation travels through such materials.
By translating the pattern of interconnections between nature's food chains to industrial networks, researchers at Texas A&M University have delineated guidelines for setting up successful industrial communities. The researchers said this guidance can facilitate economic growth, lower emissions and reduce waste while simultaneously ensure that partnering industries can recover from unexpected disturbances.
All brains shrink with age, and the dominant view has been that more education slows the rate of shrinking.
However, the evidence has been inconclusive because studies have not been able to track the rate of change over time. Until now.
Brains shrink at the same rate
Through the pooling of several European brain data sets from the Lifebrain consortium, the current study has been able to track brain changes in individuals over many years.
Rockville, Md. (April 27, 2021)--A new study reveals that renin-angiotensin system (RAS) genes within the amygdala--the brain region important for traumatic memory processing--express differently when the brain develops fearful memories, such as when people undergo traumatic stress. Researchers have found that medication may potentially be used as a pharmacological blockade of the angiotensin type 1 receptor, thereby improving components of fear memory as assessed by freezing behavior.
The antidepression drug duloxetine could be beneficial to patients with both depression and cardiovascular disease, according to new studies performed in human blood and in mice. Globally, more than 300 million people have depression, which comes with an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
Researchers are developing a new sensor that can detect Ebola in a single drop of blood and provides results in just an hour. With further development, the technology might also enable fast and inexpensive detection of other viruses, including the virus that causes COVID-19.
The building of new homes continues in flood-prone parts of England and Wales, and losses from flooding remain high. A new study, which looked at a recent decade of house building, concluded that a disproportionate number of homes built in struggling or declining neighbourhoods will end up in high flood-risk areas due to climate change.
The now-familiar sight of traditional propeller wind turbines could be replaced in the future with wind farms containing more compact and efficient vertical turbines. New research from Oxford Brookes University has found that the vertical turbine design is far more efficient than traditional turbines in large scale wind farms, and when set in pairs the vertical turbines increase each other's performance by up to 15%.
A new coating solution discovered by researchers at Simon Fraser University can transform regular materials into waterproof surfaces. The product will be cheaper to produce, free of harmful fluorinated compounds, and effective on a variety of materials. Their research findings have been published in Nature Communications.
University of South Australia researchers have drawn inspiration from a 300-million-year-old superior flying machine - the dragonfly - to show why future flapping wing drones will probably resemble the insect in shape, wings and gearing.
A team of PhD students led by UniSA Professor of Sensor Systems, Javaan Chahl, spent part of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown designing and testing key parts of a dragonfly-inspired drone that might match the insect's extraordinary skills in hovering, cruising and aerobatics.
An international team with researchers from the University of Bayreuth has succeeded for the first time in discovering a previously unknown two-dimensional material by using modern high-pressure technology. The new material, beryllonitrene, consists of regularly arranged nitrogen and beryllium atoms. It has an unusual electronic lattice structure that shows great potential for applications in quantum technology. Its synthesis required a compression pressure that is about one million times higher than the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere.