Tech
Chatbots hold promise for dementia patient or caregiver support, but are still in their infancy, finds a paper published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. None of the interactive digital apps tested by medical researchers and a computer scientist performed well on all testing criteria, and all the apps contained linguistic biases and usability challenges.
Financial toxicity, the financial strain experienced by patients accessing health care, impacts a large population of cancer patients according to prior research. A new study, published in JACC: CardioOncology, finds financial toxicity is often greater among heart disease patients compared to cancer patients, and those with both conditions suffer the highest burden.
A junk food diet may increase the risk of dangerous driving among truck/lorry drivers by boosting fatigue, which is often a key factor in vehicle collisions, suggests research published online in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine.
Some 1.35 million people die in road traffic collisions every year, with professional drivers at greater risk because of the time they spend behind the wheel.
A new article analyzes Chile's transition in 1990 from dictatorship to democracy, the nature of democracy between 1990 and 2019, and the appearance of several social movements geared to expanding this democracy. The article, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), appears in The Latin Americanist, a publication of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies.
Dr. Igor Ivanishin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, has firsthand experience with the frustrations of oil production. He spent nine years as a hydraulic fracturing engineer with operating and service companies in Russia. A few years ago, he came to Texas A&M to get his doctoral degree while delving into a reoccurring recovery problem in carbonate reservoirs: why don't they produce oil as predicted?
For the first time, researchers have used precariously-balanced rocks to set the formal design earthquake motions for a major existing engineered structure--the Clyde Dam, the largest concrete dam in New Zealand.
Mark Stirling of the University of Otago and colleagues identified and assessed the ages of these gravity-defying rock formations located about 2 kilometers from the dam site, using these data to determine the peak ground accelerations that the rocks could withstand before toppling.
In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers demonstrated they could print layers of electrically conductive ink on polyester fabric to make an e-textile that could be used in the design of future wearable devices.
Despite rapid development of electric vehicles (EVs), the safety of the lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries remains a concern as they are as a fire and explosion risk. Among the various approaches to tackle this issue, Korean researchers have used semiconductor technology to improve the safety of Li-ion batteries. A research team from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) led by Dr.
Chestnut Hill, Mass. (6/16/2021) - In unconventional superconductors, electrons often exhibit a tendency towards spatial ordering within their atomic structure.
In high-temperature superconductors, this comes in the form of the electronic structure exhibiting a pronounced difference in the lattice-bound directions along which atoms are ordered.
WASHINGTON, June 8, 2021 -- Combustion engines can develop high frequency oscillations, leading to structural damage to the engines and unsafe operating conditions. A detailed understanding of the physical mechanism that causes these oscillations is required but has been lacking until now.
In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, research from the Tokyo University of Science and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency clarifies the feedback processes that give rise to these oscillations in rocket engines.
For many, the Thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) is little more than a roadside weed, but this plant has a long history with scientists trying to understand how plants grow and develop. Arabidopsis was first scientifically described as early as the 16th century and the first genetic mutant was identified in the 1800s. Since the 1940s, Arabidopsis has increased in popularity within the scientific community, which continues to use it as a model system to explore plant genetics, development and physiology to this day.
A team of scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC has created what could be a key building block for assembling a synthetic kidney. In a new study in Nature Communications, Zhongwei Li and his colleagues describe how they can generate rudimentary kidney structures, known as organoids, that resemble the collecting duct system that helps maintain the body's fluid and pH balance by concentrating and transporting urine.
What The Study Did: Researchers examined whether a sweetened beverage tax in Philadelphia was associated with sustained changes in beverage prices and purchases of sweetened beverages and high-sugar foods two years after implementation of the tax.
Authors: Christina A. Roberto, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
When young adults are more interested in socializing and casually dating, they tend to drink more alcohol, according to a new paper led by a Washington State University professor.
On the other hand, scientists found that when young adults are in serious relationships, are not interested in dating or place less importance on friendship, their alcohol use was significantly lower.
More than 50 species of tree snail in the South Pacific Society Islands were wiped out following the introduction of an alien predatory snail in the 1970s, but the white-shelled Partula hyalina survived.
Now, thanks to a collaboration between University of Michigan biologists and engineers with the world's smallest computer, scientists understand why: P. hyalina can tolerate more sunlight than its predator, so it was able to persist in sunlit forest edge habitats.