Tech
A James Cook University researcher says a lack of suitable roads is a big reason why cycling participation rates in Australia and Queensland are so low.
JCU lecturer Jemma King said recent estimates suggest that only 34% of Australian adults have cycled in the previous year and 16% in the previous week.
Ms King said a survey of more than 1200 people in Queensland found two thirds of respondents did not cycle at all.
The lives of thousands of people with mobility issues could be transformed thanks to ground-breaking research by scientists at the University of Bristol.
The FREEHAB project will develop soft, wearable rehabilitative devices with a view to helping elderly and disabled people walk and move from sitting to a standing position in comfort and safety.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY - A recent study published in the April 8 issue of Nature Chemical Biology improves on the "Cellular Reprogramming" method developed by Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology Prof. Shinya Yamanaka, making it possible to produce cells in a considerably shorter time and with greater success. Yamanaka's method, which is referred to as "Cellular Reprogramming", obtains pluripotent cells, similar to the ones we know exist in the very early stages of the embryo.
Wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have made remote connectivity easier, and as electronics become smaller and faster, the adoption of "wearables" has increased. From smart watches to implantables, these devices interact with the human body in ways that are very different from those of a computer. However, they both use the same protocols to transfer information, making them vulnerable to the same security risks. What if we could use the human body itself to transfer and collect information? This area of research is known as human body communication (HBC).
A team of scientists from DESY and the University of Hamburg has achieved an important milestone in the quest for a new type of compact particle accelerator. Using ultra-powerful pulses of laser light, they were able to produce particularly high-energy flashes of radiation in the terahertz range having a sharply defined wavelength (colour). Terahertz radiation is to open the way for a new generation of compact particle accelerators that will find room on a lab bench.
Aphids and the plant viruses they transmit cause billions of dollars in crop damage around the world every year. Researchers in Michelle Heck's lab at the USDA Agricultural Research Service and Boyce Thompson Institute are examining the relationship at the molecular level, which could lead to new methods for controlling the pests.
Extreme weather events, such as thunderstorms or heavy rainfall and the resulting floods, influence Earth and environmental systems in the long term. To holistically study the impacts of hydrological extremes - from precipitation to water entering the ground to discharge to flow into the ocean -, a measurement campaign at Müglitztal/Saxony is about to start under the MOSES Helmholtz Initiative. The measurement campaign is coordinated by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
That gold on your ring finger is stellar - and not just in a complimentary way.
In a finding that may overthrow our understanding of where Earth's heavy elements such as gold and platinum come from, new research by a University of Guelph physicist suggests that most of them were spewed from a largely overlooked kind of star explosion far away in space and time from our planet.
An international collaboration between researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, and South Korea has uncovered a new way how the electron spins in layered materials can interact. In their publication in the journal Nature Materials, the scientists report a hitherto unknown chiral coupling that is active over relatively long distances. As a consequence, spins in two different magnetic layers that are separated by non-magnetic materials can influence each other even though they are not adjacent.
For 10 years, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has scanned the sky for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the universe's most luminous explosions. A new catalog of the highest-energy blasts provides scientists with fresh insights into how they work.
"Each burst is in some way unique," said Magnus Axelsson, an astrophysicist at Stockholm University in Sweden. "It's only when we can study large samples, as in this catalog, that we begin to understand the common features of GRBs. These in turn give us clues to the physical mechanisms at work."
Squid will survive and may even flourish under even the worst-case ocean acidification scenarios, according to a new study published this week.
Dr Blake Spady, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University (JCU), led the study. He said squid live on the edge of their environmental oxygen limitations due to their energy-taxing swimming technique. They were expected to fare badly with more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the water, which makes it more acidic.
BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA and CARDIFF, UK - In an article published in the peer-reviewed SPIE publication Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO), "Frequency-domain differential photoacoustic radar: theory and validation for ultra-sensitive atherosclerotic plaque imaging," researchers demonstrate a new imaging modality
UTokyo researchers have created an electronic component that demonstrates functions and abilities important to future generations of computational logic and memory devices. It is between one and two orders of magnitude more power efficient than previous attempts to create a component with the same kind of behavior. This fact could help it realize developments in the emerging field of spintronics.
Swedish scientists say that eating disorders should be considered just that - eating disorders, rather than mental disorders. The proof, they say, is in the eating.
CLEVELAND--The increased use of medical helicopters over the last half-century has saved countless lives by quickly getting patients from trauma to the emergency room (ER) within the so-called "golden hour."
But a growing number of medical experts contend emergency helicopters may be overused in some transfer situations. Their concern: Patients stuck with an exorbitant cost for a service that may not have been necessary and isn't fully covered by their insurance.