Those with the largest waists and hips combined are twice as likely to be affected as those with measurements in the normal range, the findings indicate.
Sudden cardiac death, or SCD for short, occurs without warning, and is caused by a sudden unexpected loss of heart function, which rapidly reduces blood flow around the body, including to the brain. It is distinct from a heart attack, and kills around 300,000 people in the USA every year.
San Diego, Calif., Dec. 10, 2014 -- Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated a new and more efficient way to trap light, using a phenomenon called bound states in the continuum (BIC) that was first proposed in the early days of quantum wave mechanics.
Recent research from the University of Alberta reveals that contrary to current scientific knowledge, there's no atmospheric lead pollution in the province's oil sands region.
William Shotyk, a soil and water scientist who specializes in heavy metal pollution, examined sphagnum moss from 21 separate peat bogs in three locations around the oil sands area, near open pit mines and processing facilities.
Windows allow brilliant natural light to stream into homes and buildings. Along with light comes heat that, in warm weather, we often counter with energy-consuming air conditioning. Now scientists are developing a new kind of "smart window" that can block out heat when the outside temperatures rise. The advance, reported in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, could one day help consumers better conserve energy on hot days and reduce electric bills.
The Taj Mahal's iconic marble dome and soaring minarets require regular cleaning to maintain their dazzling appearance, and scientists now know why. Researchers from the United States and India are pointing the finger at airborne carbon particles and dust for giving the gleaming white landmark a brownish cast.
Knowing the culprits in the discoloration is just the first step in cleaning up the Taj Mahal. Scientists now must determine where the particles are coming from to develop strategies for controlling them.
New York, NY, December 9, 2014 - Fourteen years after the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC), a case study in the current issue of Annals of Global Health identifies several elements that have had a critical impact on the evolution of the WTC response and, directly or indirectly, on the health of the WTC-exposed population.
Children of the Information Age are inundated with written words streaming across smartphone, tablet, and laptop screens. A new Tel Aviv University study says that preschoolers should be encouraged to write at a young age -- even before they make their first step into a classroom.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A laboratory at Purdue University provided a critical part of the world's first transistor in 1947 - the purified germanium semiconductor - and now researchers here are on the forefront of a new germanium milestone.
The team has created the first modern germanium circuit - a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) device - using germanium as the semiconductor instead of silicon.
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 9, 2014 - Researchers from the London Centre for Nanotechnology have made new compact, high-value resistors for nanoscale quantum circuits. The resistors could speed the development of quantum devices for computing and fundamental physics research. The researchers describe the thin-film resistors in an article in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing.
Dinosaurs did it. Human beings and monkey do it. And even birds do it. They walk on two legs. And although humans occupy a special position amongst mammals as they have two legs, the upright gait is not reserved only for man. In the course of evolution many animals have developed the bipedal gait - the ability to walk on two legs.
As solar panels become less expensive and capable of generating more power, solar energy is becoming a more commercially viable alternative source of electricity. However, the photovoltaic cells now used to turn sunlight into electricity can only absorb and use a small fraction of that light, and that means a significant amount of solar energy goes untapped.
A new technology created by researchers from Caltech, and described in a paper published online in the October 30 issue of Science Express, represents a first step toward harnessing that lost energy.
LIVERMORE, Calif. -- Large-scale storage of low-pressure, gaseous hydrogen in salt caverns and other underground sites for transportation fuel and grid-scale energy applications offers several advantages over above-ground storage, says a recent Sandia National Laboratories study sponsored by the Department of Energy's Fuel Cell Technologies Office.
Geologic storage of hydrogen gas could make it possible to produce and distribute large quantities of hydrogen fuel for the growing fuel cell electric vehicle market, the researchers concluded.
There is no need to spray insecticide on walls for malaria control when people sleep under treated bed nets, according to new research.
Use of insecticide sprayed on internal walls, when combined with insecticide-treated bed nets in homes, does not protect children from malaria any more effectively than using just insecticide-treated bed nets, the research led by Durham University and the Medical Research Council's Unit in The Gambia found.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were more than twice as likely to have been exposed in utero to preeclampsia, and the likelihood of an autism diagnosis was even greater if the mother experienced more severe disease, a large study by researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute has found.
Two-dimensional (2D) layered materials are now attracting a lot of interest due to their unique optoelectronic properties at atomic thicknesses. Among them, graphene has been mostly investigated, but the zero-gap nature of graphene limits its practical applications. Therefore, 2D layered materials with intrinsic band gaps such as MoS2, MoSe2, and MoTe2 are of interest as promising candidates for ultrathin and high-performance optoelectronic devices.