Tech
MIT engineers and researchers in South Korea have developed a sweat-proof "electronic skin" -- a conformable, sensor-embedded sticky patch that monitors a person's health without malfunctioning or peeling away, even when a wearer is perspiring.
New Brunswick, N.J. (June 30, 2021) - A Rutgers-led team of researchers has developed a microchip that can measure stress hormones in real time from a drop of blood.
The study appears in the journal Science Advances.
Cortisol and other stress hormones regulate many aspects of our physical and mental health, including sleep quality. High levels of cortisol can result in poor sleep, which increases stress that can contribute to panic attacks, heart attacks and other ailments.
What The Study Did: Researchers investigated the association between a midlife change in wealth and the risk of cardiovascular event after age 65.
Authors: Muthiah Vaduganathan, M.D., M.P.H., of Brigham and Women's Hospital Heart & Vascular Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2021.2056)
Maunakea and Haleakala, Hawai'i - Astronomers have discovered the smallest and most massive white dwarf ever seen. The smoldering cinder, which formed when two less massive white dwarfs merged, is heavy, "packing a mass greater than that of our Sun into a body about the size of our Moon," says Ilaria Caiazzo, the Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics at Caltech and lead author of the new study appearing in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature. "It may seem counterintuitive, but smaller white dwarfs happen to be more massive.
New research shows thermal imaging techniques can predict whether a wound needs extra management, offering an early alert system to improve chronic wound care.
It is estimated that 1-2% of the population will experience a chronic wound during their lifetime in developed countries - in the US, chronic wounds affect about 6.5 million patients with more than US$25 billion each year spent by the healthcare system on treating related complications.*
A study analysing the association between a wide variety of prenatal and childhood exposures and neuropsychological development in school-age children has found that organic food intake is associated with better scores on tests of fluid intelligence (ability to solve novel reasoning problems) and working memory (ability of the brain to retain new information while it is needed in the short term).
A scientific breakthrough: Researchers from Tel Aviv University have engineered the world's tiniest technology, with a thickness of only two atoms. According to the researchers, the new technology proposes a way for storing electric information in the thinnest unit known to science, in one of the most stable and inert materials in nature. The allowed quantum-mechanical electron tunneling through the atomically thin film may boost the information reading process much beyond current technologies.
One of the many challenges for grape growers posed by climate change is the accelerated rate at which grapes ripen in warmer climates, which can result in poor colour and aroma development.
In a new study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers from the University of Adelaide found it is possible to increase the flavour potential of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes by slowing down the ripening process with strategies including crop load manipulation and irrigation management.
A study published in Science Advances reports on the unexpected observation of thermal waves in germanium, a semiconductor material, for the first time. This phenomenon may allow a significant improvement in the performance of our electronic devices in a near future. The study is led by researchers from the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB, CSIC) in collaboration with researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and the University of Cagliari.
Domestic burning of wood and dung fuels in Neolithic homes would have exceeded modern internationally-agreed standards for indoor air quality, exposing inhabitants to unsafe levels of particulates.
Working with environmental engineers, archaeologists at Newcastle University, UK, used modern air quality monitoring methods to assess the impact of domestic fuel burning inside buildings at Çatalhöyük, in Turkey, one of the world's earliest settlements.
Malaria still kills millions. Researchers are excited by a new intervention: giving people a drug which kills mosquitoes that bite them. Incredibly, this is a reality, as the drug ivermectin, widely used for the control of parasite infections such as lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis, appears to do this. With some mosquitoes now resistant to the insecticides used in treated bed nets, this is a potentially important new control measure.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have upgraded their laser frequency-comb instrument to simultaneously measure three airborne greenhouse gases -- nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and water vapor -- plus the major air pollutants ozone and carbon monoxide.
A new Finnish study shows that 180 health care workers who had received two doses of the Pfizer and Biontech vaccine have very good antibody responses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The immune response was as strong against the alpha variant (formerly the UK variant) but was somewhat decreased against the beta variant (formerly the South Africa variant).
Growing in popularity, unagi kabayaki - grilled freshwater eel in soy sauce - can be found on the menu of many Japanese restaurants, and is stocked by Asian shops and in specialist supermarkets. But new research tracing the DNA of eel fillets used for this dish has found that fraudulent food labelling is rife, with a third of the products violating EU regulations on the provision of food information. With certain species of eels now endangered, the researchers say that accurate labelling on these products is vital if the global eel trade is to be sustainable.
Oak Brook, IL - The July edition of SLAS Discovery is a Special Edition featuring the cover article, "Development of a High-Throughput Screening Assay to Identify Inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 Guanine-N7-Methyltransferase Using RapidFire Mass Spectrometry" by Lesley-Anne Pearson, Charlotte J. Green, Ph.D., De Lin, Ph.D., Alain-Pierre Petit, Ph.D., David W. Gray, Ph.D., Victoria H. Cowling, Ph.D., and Euan A. F. Fordyce, Ph.D., (Drug Discovery Unit, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK).