Tech
Sustainable means of mobility are becoming ever more popular. In Switzerland, around 15,000 people have registered with the online platform carvelo2go, which hires out electric cargo bikes. The use of this sharing service in the Basel area is now the subject of scientific investigation. Despite strong growth in member numbers, there are still fundamental barriers. The study by the University of Basel indicates ways that sharing providers and public authorities can promote the use of environmentally friendly cargo bikes.
A new study from researchers at the Universities of Bath and Bristol suggests that doctors should rethink which drugs they prescribe to help smokers with mental health conditions kick the habit.
Their results highlight that the most effective drug at helping individuals to stop smoking is less likely to be prescribed to people with mental health conditions.
The study is a continuation of a hypothesis that Unto K. Laine, Professor Emeritus, published three years ago on the origin of the sounds heard during the displays of the Northern Lights. His theory postulated that the sounds are generated when a magnetic storm causes charges in the temperature inversion layer of the lower atmosphere, to be discharged at an altitude of 70 to 80 metres.
An unexplored cosmos of potential materials
The number of potential new materials that can be assembled from elements in the periodic table is immense - even if researchers were to limit themselves to the 40 to 50 elements that are non-toxic, eco-friendly, and available on Earth in sufficient quantities. These possibilities remain as yet for the most part unexplored.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A plastic bottle becomes a jacket, an aluminum can a bicycle. When consumers are reminded of the products that their recyclables can be turned into they are more likely to recycle, according to researchers at Penn State and Boston College.
Organic light-emitting diodes are components that no longer consist of compounds containing the semiconducting material gallium, but of so-called organic compounds in which carbon is a main component. Compared to conventional light-emitting diodes, however, the luminosity and lifetime of OLEDs are currently lower, which is why they represent a current field of research.
Prozac®, the trade name for the drug fluoxetine, was introduced to the U.S. market for the treatment of depression in 1988. Thirty years later, scientists still don't know exactly how the medication exerts its mood-lifting effects. Now, researchers report that, in addition to the drug's known action on serotonin receptors, fluoxetine could rearrange nerve fibers in the hippocampus of mouse brains. They report their results in ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
Making minor changes to how food is produced, supplied and consumed around the world could free up around a fifth of agricultural land, research suggests.
Scientists have applied the British cycling team's strategy of marginal gains - the idea that making multiple small changes can lead to significant effects overall - to the global food system.
They found that small steps - such as reducing food waste, tweaking diets and improving the efficiency of food production - could together reduce the amount of land required to feed the planet by at least 21 per cent.
Robots are good at making identical repetitive movements, such as a simple task on an assembly line. (Pick up a cup. Turn it over. Put it down.) But they lack the ability to perceive objects as they move through an environment.
A German-Swiss team around Professor Oliver Daumke from the MDC has investigated how a protein of the dynamin family deforms the inner mitochondrial membrane. The results, which also shed light on a hereditary disease of the optic nerve, have been published in Nature.
A new model based on daily oceanographic data and the movements of tagged whales has opened the potential for stakeholders to see where in the ocean endangered blue whales are most likely to be so that ships can avoid hitting them.
Cars built in the last decade have been shown to be safer than older models, including in the most common types of crashes - frontal collisions. However, a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Virginia's Center for Applied Biomechanics shows that women wearing seat belts are significantly more likely to suffer injury than their male counterparts.
CLEMSON, South Carolina -- A team of Clemson University scientists has achieved a breakthrough in the genetics of senescence in cereal crops with the potential to dramatically impact the future of food security in the era of climate change.
Ice on the Greenland Ice Sheet doesn't just melt. The ice actually slides rapidly across its bed toward the ice sheet's edges. As a result, because ice motion is from sliding as opposed to ice deformation, ice is being moved to the high-melt marginal zones more rapidly than previously thought.
As technology has gained ground in medicine and critics have called into question the diagnostic accuracy of physical examinations, what place does the practice of the physical exam have in today's clinic? In depth, qualitative interviews with 16 family physicians in Canada revealed a common view that physical examinations help promote a healthy patient-physician relationship and constitute an integral part of being a good doctor.