Tech
Bottom Line: A randomized clinical trial involving patients, family members and clinicians from 36 adult intensive care units in Brazil looked at whether flexible family visitation (up to 12 hours per day) plus family education on ICUs and delirium would reduce the occurrence of delirium compared to standard visitation of up to 4½ hours per day. The study included 1,685 patients. The authors report no significant difference in reducing the occurrence of delirium between flexible and standard visitation. Limitations of the study include that it was restricted to a single country.
Virginia Tech scientists have found that in regions where oilfield wastewater disposal is widespread -- and where injected water has a higher density than deep naturally occurring fluids -- earthquakes are getting deeper at the same rate as the wastewater sinks.
Perhaps more critically, the research team of geoscientists found that the percentage of high-magnitude earthquakes increases with depth, and may create -- although fewer in number -- greater magnitude earthquakes years after injection rates decline or stop altogether.
Researchers from RMIT University drew inspiration from an emerging tool in biotechnology - optogenetics - to develop a device that replicates the way the brain stores and loses information.
Optogenetics allows scientists to delve into the body's electrical system with incredible precision, using light to manipulate neurons so that they can be turned on or off.
Osaka - Magnetite (Fe3O4) is best known as a magnetic iron ore, and is the source of lodestone. It also has potential as a high-temperature resistor in electronics. In new research led by Osaka University, published in Nano Letters, ultra-thin nanowires made from Fe3O4 reveal insights into an intriguing property of this mineral.
Researchers studied ants in the Simpson Desert for 22 years and found that local changes in climate, such as long-term increases in rainfall, combined with human efforts to restore ecosystems, may have led to increased numbers of species - rather than the declines which might be expected in such unpredictable conditions.
Lead researcher, Associate Professor Heloise Gibb, said annual rainfall in the north Australian desert varied from 79 to 570 millimetres.
Research from Swansea University has found how plastics commonly found in food packaging can be recycled to create new materials like wires for electricity - and could help to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the future.
While a small proportion of the hundreds of types of plastics can be recycled by conventional technology, researchers found that there are other things that can be done to reuse plastics after they've served their original purpose.
The vast datasets generated by modern plant-science technologies require clever data-mining methods to extract useful information. Now, KAUST researchers have developed MVApp--an open-source, online statistics platform for conducting multivariate analyses of these intricate data.
Why did you choose your job? Or where you live? Scientists at the University of Warwick have discovered that it was probably to keep your options as open as possible - and the more we co-operate together, the more opportunities are available to us.
Using flocks of birds as a model, they have shown that birds of a feather will indeed flock together to maximise the information they have access to and to give them the most future options when flocking.
The experts assume that one reason for this preference is that emotions are primarily processed in the right hemisphere of the brain, which is linked to the left side of the body. The team led by lead author Julian Packheiser reports in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews on 26 June 2019.
First study from 1960
Scientists at Linkoping University working with colleagues from China have shown how to achieve efficient perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In an article published in Nature Communications, they provide guidelines on fabricating high-quality perovskite light emitters, and consequently high-efficiency perovskite LEDs.
LAWRENCE -- Imagine printing electronic devices using a simple inkjet printer -- or even painting a solar panel onto the wall of a building.
Such technology would slash the cost of manufacturing electronic devices and enable new ways to integrate them into our everyday lives. Over the last two decades, a type of material called organic semiconductors, made out of molecules or polymers, has been developed for such purposes. But some properties of these materials pose a major hurdle that limits their widespread use.
The Eastern Pacific Ocean generated the fourth tropical cyclone of the hurricane season on July 13 and by the next day, it had already weakened into a remnant low pressure area.
Tropical Depression 4E formed around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Saturday, July 13. At that time the center of Tropical Depression Four-E was located near latitude 17.3 degrees and longitude 111.0 degrees west. That's about 395 miles (635 km) south of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico. Maximum sustained winds were near 35 mph (55 kph).
Even before Tropical Storm Barry made landfall in Louisiana on Saturday, July 13, it had already dropped a lot of rain on the state. Using satellite data, NASA created a map that shows areas that are likely flooded.
ITHACA, N.Y. - When cabbage looper moth larvae infest a field, sustainable growers will often try to control the pests by releasing large numbers of predators, such as ladybugs. That way they can avoid spraying expensive and environmentally harmful insecticides.
Still, farmers have mixed results when they supplement their fields with beetles or other predators.
For many women of reproductive age, the most common way of assessing their menstrual health and fertility means regular visits to a gynecologist or another clinician. When it comes to evaluating changes in fertility, menstrual health, and quality of life, these visits typically rely on remembering, which can lead to significant inaccuracies in evaluation.