(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- While the overall death rate from firearm violence has remained unchanged for more than a decade, the patterns for suicide and homicide have changed dramatically, a UC Davis study on the epidemiology of gun violence from 2003 to 2012 has found. The study posted online in the Annual Review of Public Health on Dec. 12 and will appear in the print edition in January.
Tech
Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) scientists have developed a smart window which can darken or brighten without the need for an external power source.
This unique self-tinting window requires zero electricity to operate and is also a rechargeable battery. The window's stored energy can be used for other purposes, such as to light up low-powered electronics like a light emitting diode (LED).
The deep sea is becoming a collecting ground for plastic waste, according to research led by scientists from Plymouth University and Natural History Museum.
The new study, published today in Royal Society Open Science, reveals around four billion microscopic plastic fibres could be littering each square kilometre of deep sea sediment around the world.
Humpback whales have a trick or two, when it comes to finding a quick snack at the bottom of the ocean. But how they pinpoint that meal at night, with little or no available light, remains a mystery.
Susan Parks, assistant professor of Biology in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with a consortium of other researchers, has been studying these unique feeding behaviors. Her research emphasizes the importance of specific auditory cues that these mammoth creatures emit, as they search the deep ocean for their prey.
Antimicrobial peptides are a distinctive class of potent, broad-spectrum antibiotics produced by the body's innate immune system--the first line of defense against disease-causing microbes.
In a new study, Yixin Shi, Ph.D., and Wei Kong, Ph.D., researchers in the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, explore the clever techniques used by bacteria to survive destruction from antimicrobial peptides--potent defense factors produced by all living forms, including humans.
When parents use material goods in these ways, their children, when grown, are on average more likely to believe that success in life is defined by the quality and number of material goods an individual owns or that acquiring certain products will make them more attractive. According to Richins, previous research has shown that adults who define themselves or others by their possessions are at a much higher risk for marital problems, gambling, financial debt and decreased well-being. Materialism also contributes to environmental degradation due to overconsumption and waste of goods.
New Year's resolution-makers should beware of skewed perceptions. People tend to believe good behaviors are more beneficial in reaching goals than bad behaviors are in obstructing goals, according to a University of Colorado Boulder-led study.
A dieter, for instance, might think refraining from eating ice cream helps his weight-management goal more than eating ice cream hurts it, overestimating movement toward versus away from his target.
A research team at Bielefeld University has succeeded in teaching the only robot of its kind in the world how to walk. Its first steps have been recorded in a video. You can watch them in Bielefeld University's latest posting on 'research_tv'. The robot is called Hector, and its construction is modelled on a stick insect. Inspired by the insect, Hector has passive elastic joints and an ultralight exoskeleton.
DURHAM, N.C. - Duke University scientists have developed new forensic tracers to identify coal ash contamination in water and distinguish it from contamination coming from other sources.
Although currently available diagnostic screening systems for breast cancer like X-ray computed tomography (CT) and mammography are effective at detecting early signs of tumors, they are far from perfect, subjecting patients to ionizing radiation and sometimes inflicting discomfort on women who are undergoing screening because of the compression of the breast that is required to produce diagnostically useful images.
What do you get when you wrap a thin sheet of the "wonder material" graphene around a novel multifunctional sulfur electrode that combines an energy storage unit and electron/ion transfer networks? An extremely promising electrode structure design for rechargeable lithium-sulfur batteries.
Lithium-sulfur batteries are of great commercial interest because they boast theoretical specific energy densities considerably greater than those of their already-well-established cousin, lithium ion batteries.
Researchers generate tunable photon-pair spectrum using room-temperature quantum optics silicon chip
A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated a way to emit and control quantum light generated using a chip made from silicon--one of the most widely used materials for modern electronics.
The UC San Diego researchers recently described their new device's performance online in the journal Nature Communications, available via Open Access .
No visit to Rome is complete without a visit to the Pantheon, Trajan's Markets, the Colosseum, or the other spectacular examples of ancient Roman concrete monuments that have stood the test of time and the elements for nearly two thousand years. A key discovery to understanding the longevity and endurance of Roman architectural concrete has been made by an international and interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers using beams of X-rays at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. This finding comes from a new life cycle analysis of conventional and alternative vehicles and their air pollution-related public health impacts, published Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
ORANGE, Calif. - Researchers in Chapman University's Food Science Program and their collaborators at University of Washington have just published a study on the presence of Salmonella and E. coli on certain herbs sold at farmers' markets. The study focused on farmers' markets in Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, as well as in the Seattle, Washington, area. Specifically tested were samples of the herbs cilantro, basil and parsley. Of the 133 samples tested from 13 farmers' markets, 24.1 percent tested positive for E.