Tech
Every year earthquakes worldwide claim hundreds or even thousands of lives. Forewarning allows people to head for safety and a matter of seconds could spell the difference between life and death. UTokyo researchers demonstrate a new earthquake detection method -- their technique exploits subtle telltale gravitational signals traveling ahead of the tremors. Future research could boost early warning systems.
Two surveys taken 11 years apart show a 13-per-cent decrease in the amount of fruit and vegetables being consumed by Canadians, new University of British Columbia research has found.
And while consumption of milk and dairy products also declined during the study period between 2004 and 2015, Canadians were eating more meat and alternatives in 2015 than they were a decade earlier.
Surface wear describes the process of material loss when two surfaces come into contact with each other. It has significant economic, social and health consequences - just think of the fine particles emitted by moving vehicles. What's more, it can be observed at all levels, from the nanoscale up to the scale of tectonic faults, with the formation of gouge. There are several wear mechanisms, yet the adhesive type is most common. It takes place when two surfaces - such as two pieces of the same metal - rub against one another and adhere.
Although most victims survive the 735,000 heart attacks that occur annually in the U.S., their heart tissue is often irreparably damaged -- unlike many other cells in the body, once injured, heart cells cannot regenerate.
The West African chimpanzee population has declined by nearly 80 percent in recent decades. Habitat loss is threatening their livelihoods across the continent, and especially in Senegal, where corporate mining has started eating up land in recent years.
The geographical distribution of West African chimps overlaps almost perfectly with gold and iron ore deposits, and unfortunately for the chimps, mining is a key piece of the country's development strategy, said Stacy Lindshield, a biological anthropologist at Purdue University.
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology have fabricated a multiplexer/demultiplexer module based on a property of light that was not being exploited in communications systems: the optical vortex. Such devices will be crucial for improving optical networks, which are the backbone of today's Internet, so that they can meet the traffic demands of tomorrow.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 7 March 2019: Waterpipe and cigarette smoking are associated with heart attacks at a younger age in Saudi Arabians, reports a study presented at the 30th Annual Conference of the Saudi Heart Association (SHA 30). Smokers have more complications and worse outcomes.
SHA 30 takes place from 7 to 9 March in Riyadh. Joint scientific sessions are being held by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and SHA as part of the ESC Global Activities programme.1
Translocation is an important management tool that has been used for more than 50 years to increase bighorn sheep population numbers in Arizona and to restore herds to suitable habitat throughout their historical range. Yet, translocation also can alter the underlying genetic diversity and spatial structure of managed wildlife species in both beneficial and detrimental ways.
Ecological farmlands help protecting bird populations and reducing the effects of global change on the environment, according to a study published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment by the experts Joan Real, Àlex Rollan and Antonio Hernández-Matías, from the Conservation Biology Group of the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona (IRBio).
Tropical Cyclone Haleh continued to move in a southerly direction in the Southern Indian Ocean when NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed overhead.
Suomi NPP passed over Haleh on March 6 and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument provided a visible image of the storm. The VIIRS image showed a large area of thunderstorms wrapping into the center and the storm appeared to be elongating toward the southeast. The elongation of the storm is a result of outside winds, or moderate to strong vertical wind shear, and is indicative of weakening.
Physicists have used a seven-qubit quantum computer to simulate the scrambling of information inside a black hole, heralding a future in which entangled quantum bits might be used to probe the mysterious interiors of these bizarre objects.
Scrambling is what happens when matter disappears inside a black hole. The information attached to that matter -- the identities of all its constituents, down to the energy and momentum of its most elementary particles -- is chaotically mixed with all the other matter and information inside, seemingly making it impossible to retrieve.
Some wetlands perform better under pressure. A new study revealed that when faced with sea-level rise, coastal wetlands respond by burying even more carbon in their soils.
Coastal wetlands, which include marshes, mangroves and seagrasses, already store carbon more efficiently than any other natural ecosystem, including forests. The latest study, published March 7 in the journal Nature, looked at how coastal wetlands worldwide react to rising seas and discovered they can rise to the occasion, offering additional protection against climate change.
Physicists from the University of Sheffield have discovered that when two atomically thin graphene-like materials are placed on top of each other their properties change, and a material with novel hybrid properties emerges, paving the way for design of new materials and nano-devices.
This happens without physically mixing the two atomic layers, nor through a chemical reaction, but by attaching the layers to each other via a weak so called van der Waals interaction - similar to how a sticky tape attaches to a flat surface.
It's one thing for humans to lose track of time, but what happens when our clocks do In an increasingly networked world, devices need to be more punctual than ever. To keep them running as we expect, they depend on an army of tiny, vibrating components.
In the 1970s and 80s it was normal for children to 'play out' on the street in British towns and cities. However nowadays young people are far more likely to spend their time indoors, inactive and isolated.
As a result, children's physical activity levels are at an all-time low, with only one in five children getting the minimum recommended 1 hour a day of moderate to vigorous physical exercise.
However, for the last 10 years a grassroots organisation called 'Playing Out' has been working hard to change this, allowing children across the UK to take back their streets.