Tech
According to general relativity, the presence of a massive object slows down the flow of time. This means that a clock placed close to a massive object will run slower as compared to an identical one that is further away.
However, the rules of quantum theory allow for any object to be prepared in a superposition state. A superposition state of two locations is different to placing an object in one or the other location randomly - it is another way for an object to exist, allowed by the laws of quantum physics.
Trainee doctors who have dyslexia, and who declare this prior to taking the clinical skills component of the licensing exam for general practice, are less likely to pass than their counterparts, new research has shown.
Only at extremely low temperatures does order prevail. At the Vienna University of Technology, materials are cooled to almost absolute zero, so that electrons, which otherwise occupy different states quite randomly, show certain regularities. But even the behaviour of such extremely cold electrons is difficult to understand, on the one hand because the electrons strongly influence each other and cannot be described separately, and on the other hand because different electron characteristics play a role at the same time.
Exposure to toxic air pollutants is linked to increased cardiovascular and respiratory death rates, according to a new international study by researchers from Monash University (Australia) and abroad.
The study, led by Dr Haidong Kan from Fudan University in China, analysed data on air pollution and mortality in 652 cities across 24 countries and regions, and found increases in total deaths are linked to exposure to inhalable particles (PM10) and fine particles (PM2.5) emitted from fires or formed through atmospheric chemical transformation.
Scientific papers go through a peer-review process before they are accepted for publication in a journal. They are sent to two or more independent researchers for comment. Those researchers are asked to assess the robustness of the methods used and the conclusions drawn, as well as the novelty of the study. The reviewers' comments play an important role in determining which papers get accepted and published.
The introduction of China's universal two-child policy, that permits all couples to have two children, has led to an extra 5.4 million births, finds a study in The BMJ today.
It is the first study to use national data to estimate the impacts of the policy change and shows that births increased in response to the policy, but not as much as some policymakers had hoped.
China's two-child policy, announced in October 2015, was enacted to reverse the nation's stagnant population growth, ageing population, and shrinking workforce.
Scientists have combined analyses from honey and salmon to show how lead from natural and industrial sources gets distributed throughout the environment. By analysing the relative presence of differing lead isotopes in honey and Pacific salmon, Vancouver-based scientists have been able to trace the sources of lead (and other metals) throughout the region. Scientists in France, Belgium and Italy are now looking to apply the same approach to measure pollutants in honey in major European cities. The research* is being presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Barcelona.
Many forms of vision loss stem from a common source: impaired communication between the eye and the brain. And at the root of all eye-to-brain communication are the hundreds of proteins generated by the retina's nerve cells.
Stellarators, twisty machines that house fusion reactions, rely on complex magnetic coils that are challenging to design and build. Now, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has developed a mathematical technique to help simplify the design of the coils, making stellarators a potentially more cost-effective facility for producing fusion energy.
WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- When sparks fly to innovate new technologies for imaging life at the microscopic scale, often diverse researchers are nudging each other with a kind of collegial one-upmanship.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The interior of a human cell consists, in part, of a complex soup of millions of molecules.
One way these biological compounds stay organized is through membrane-less organelles (MLOs) -- wall-less liquid droplets made from proteins and RNA that clump together and stay separate from the rest of the cellular stew.
Fiddler crabs see the polarisation of light and this gives them the edge when it comes to spotting potentials threats, such as a rival crab or a predator. Now researchers at the University of Bristol have begun to unravel how this information is processed within the crab's brain. The study, published in Science Advances today [Wednesday 21 August], has discovered that when detecting approaching objects, fiddler crabs separate polarisation and brightness information.
It has long been thought that the brain size of anthropoid primates--a diverse group of modern and extinct monkeys, humans, and their nearest kin--progressively increased over time. New research on one of the oldest and most complete fossil primate skulls from South America shows instead that the pattern of brain evolution in this group was far more checkered.
New research, published in the journal Science Advances, has found that unusual ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic can drastically increase April tornado occurrences over the Great Plains region of the United States.
2019 has seen the second highest number of January to May tornadoes in the United States since 2000, with several deadly outbreaks claiming more than 38 fatalities. Why some years are very active, whereas others are relatively calm, has remained an unresolved mystery for scientists and weather forecasters.
Wine lovers may appreciate a dry white, but a lack of steady rainfall brought on by a changing climate is threatening a centuries old winemaking tradition in Italy, according to an international team of scientists.
Researchers found a shift from steady, gentle rains to more intense storms over the past several decades has led to earlier grape harvests, even when seasonal rainfall totals are similar. Early harvests can prevent grapes from fully developing the complex flavors found in wines.