Tech
Many of us have seen informational posters at parks or aquariums specifying how long plastics bags, bottles, and other products last in the environment. They're a good reminder to not litter, but where does the information on the lifetime expectancy of plastic goods come from, and how reliable is it?
Our brains use various reference frames--also known as coordinate systems--to represent the motion of objects in a scene.
An animation of four days of imagery from NASA's Terra satellite showed the progression and landfall of Tropical Storm Nuri.
At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. an animation of Nuri from June 11 to 15 was created using NASA Terra satellite images. It showed Nuri's path through the South China Sea, its landfall and dissipation over southern China. The Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured the visible images.
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have demonstrated a potentially new way to make switches inside a computer's processing chips, enabling them to use less energy and radiate less heat.
The team has developed a practical technique for controlling magnons, which are essentially waves that travel through magnetic materials and can carry information. To use magnons for information processing requires a switching mechanism that can control the transmission of a magnon signal through the device.
Inflation has reduced American alcohol tax rates by 70% since 1933, according to a new study from Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
With the alcohol industry seeing increased revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic, is it time for an update?
A framework that uses graph theory, which considers how networks are coded, could help make digital communication networks more efficient.
For modeling social networks, no branch of mathematics is more integral than graph theory. The standard representation of a social network, in fact, is a graph. It comprises a set of points with lines joining some of the points. The points represent the network's members, while the lines represent the connections between them.
Researchers at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have successfully measured the current-voltage curve of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) that were suspended between two electrodes. Measurements were performed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation. Results revealed that, in contrast to the findings of previous reports, the electrical conductance of GNRs with a zigzag edge structure (zigzag GNRs) abruptly increased above the critical bias voltage.
Sideswiping tropical cyclones (STCs) are tropical cyclones (TCs) that cause precipitation over land without making landfall. STC precipitation (STP) can be a severe meteorological disaster leading to devastating impacts on our living environment and society. It makes an important contribution to the total inland precipitation associated with TCs, and therefore could produce extreme rainfall events not only in coastal regions but also in inland areas far away from the coastline.
Wrinkles, furrows, spots: a person's aging process is accompanied by tell-tale signs on their face. Researchers from the Institute for Neural Computation at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have developed an algorithm that interprets these features very reliably. It makes it possible to estimate the age and ethnicity of people so accurately that it catapulted RUB researchers to the top of the league table worldwide for a while. The RUB team published its report in the journal Machine Learning from May 2020.
The system has learned to estimate
Exposure to air particulate matter impairs the metabolism of olfactory mucosal cells, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. The results can contribute to a better understanding of how air pollutants may harm brain health, as the olfactory mucosa can act as a key pathway to the brain.
For the first time, a complete time-calibrated phylogeny for a large group of invertebrates is published for an entire continent.
FAIRFAX, Va. (June 15, 2020) -- Data from one of the first clinical uses of augmented reality guidance with electromagnetically tracked tools shows that the technology may help doctors quickly, safely, and accurately deliver targeted liver cancer treatments, according to a research abstract presented during a virtual session of the Society of Interventional Radiology's 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting on June 14.
FAIRFAX, Va. (June 15, 2020) -- A new nonsurgical treatment decreases errant blood flow in the shoulder to quickly reduce pain and improve function in patients with adhesive capsulitis, also known as "frozen shoulder," according to a research abstract presented during a virtual session of the Society of Interventional Radiology's 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting on June 13. Frozen shoulder gradually causes significant pain and stiffness of the shoulder joint in an estimated 200,000 people in the U.S. each year.
Results from the first ever randomised clinical trial in advanced anal cancer patients, led and supported by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Cancer Research UK, in collaboration with colleagues in the US, Norway and Australia, has led to a practice changing milestone with a new approach to treatment which is safer and more effective than previously recommended treatments for this group of patients.
WASHINGTON (June 12, 2020) - Brain function depends on inhibitory cells that balance or 'brake' excitation. These neurons allow the brain to process information and also prevent runaway seizures. A new study from the George Washington University (GW), however, reports that in some critical structures of the developing brain, the inhibitory neurons cause excitation rather than suppression of brain activity. The findings, published in Science Advances, could have implications for the treatment of neonatal seizures.