Tech
Sex and height appear to influence how people flex their neck when viewing handheld devices, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Arkansas.
The study looked at neck and jaw postures when using handheld electronic devices, the results suggesting that women and shorter individuals bend their necks differently than men and taller individuals; this could be related to the higher incidence of neck and jaw pain experienced by women.
In order to provide information on climate features, meteorological disasters and climate impacts to the public for the previous year, the National Climate Center (NCC) of China has just completed a report to give an accessible and authoritative assessment of the climate in China based on the NCC operational system. It gives a summary of China's climate as well as major weather and climate events during 2018, and has been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters. The majority of the report is based on temperature and precipitation observations.
Drinking more coffee may help reduce the risk of developing gallstones, according to a new study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
A recent analysis of published studies examined the clinical consequences of medication adherence. The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology analysis found that medication adherence is linked with lower risks of needing to be hospitalised and of dying early.
Use of hearing aids was linked with lower risks of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, depression, anxiety, and injurious falls in an analysis of medical information on 114,862 older adults with hearing loss. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
when they feel safe to communicate the absence of danger or share their location. This "chatter" from multiple bird species could therefore be a useful cue to other creatures that there is no imminent threat.
A recent study investigated around 100,000 localized seismic events to search for patterns in the data. University of Tokyo Professor Satoshi Ide discovered that earthquakes of differing magnitudes have more in common than was previously thought. This suggests development of early warning systems may be more difficult than hoped. But conversely, similarities between some events indicate that predictable characteristics may aid researchers attempting to forecast seismic events.
A new vaccine developed by Griffith University Institute for Glycomics researchers has the potential to treat and prevent toxic shock caused by invasive streptococcal disease, which kills more than 160,000 people every year.
"Streptococcal toxic shock syndrome is an acute condition like meningococcus - if you get exposed to the organism you can be dead within a matter of days or less. So we're hopeful that what we've discovered can help save lives," program leader and laboratory head Professor Michael Good said.
Urban heat islands are a phenomenon where the temperature in a city is noticeably higher than in the surrounding rural area. When combined with the sort of heatwave that hit many parts of Europe at the beginning of July, urban heat can pose a real threat to the elderly, sick or other vulnerable people. Scientists at ETH Zurich have researched urban heat islands across the globe and have found that the effectiveness of heat-reduction strategies in cities varies depending on the regional climate.
In summer heat, cities may swelter more than nearby suburbs and rural areas. And while the size of this urban heat island effect varies widely among the world's cities, heat island intensity can largely be explained by a city's population and precipitation level, researchers reported in a paper published Sept. 4 in the journal Nature.
The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite provided information about the rate in which rain was falling within the Eastern Atlantic Ocean's latest tropical storm, Gabrielle.
Tropical Depression 8 formed around 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Sept. 3. Twelve hours later at 5 a.m. EDT on Sept. 4, the storm intensified into a tropical storm and was renamed Gabrielle.
Researchers have developed a new model to optimize radiation therapy and significantly increase the number of tumour cells killed during treatment.
The new mathematical model, outlined in a recent study led by a University of Waterloo student, can use information about where the majority of the cells in a tumour are located allowing for radiation treatment to be administered to the densest area.
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 4, 2019 -- Light-emitting diodes made of indium gallium nitride provide better luminescence efficiency than many of the other materials used to create blue and green LEDs. But a big challenge of working with InGaN is its known dislocation density defects that make it difficult to understand its emission properties.
The evolutionary pressure to pass on DNA can produce behavior that otherwise makes no sense in a struggle to survive. Rams bash heads in fights over females; peacocks grow elaborate tail feathers that attract mates and predators alike. Sexual selection can sometimes explain phenomena that natural selection alone cannot. But could bacteria exhibit sexual selection? In an Opinion article published September 4 in the journal Trends in Microbiology, researchers at the University of Exeter argue that some bacteria might.
Sonia Guil, leader of the Regulatory and Chromatin RNA group of Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute, and Lourdes Farré of ProCURE (Idibell) have discovered an intermediate molecule expressed from a region of the non-coding genome that is key to the development and differentiation of cells, and for the expansion of tumor cells.
The work, published today in Nature Communications, reveals how the RPSAP52 RNA molecule triggers the proliferation of cells and cancels their differentiation, making it easier for tumor cells to multiply and spread.