Tech
Cooking, cleaning and other routine household activities generate significant levels of volatile and particulate chemicals inside the average home, leading to indoor air quality levels on par with a polluted major city, University of Colorado Boulder researchers say.
Viruses don't always kill their microbial hosts. In many cases, they develop a mutually beneficial relationship: the virus establishes itself inside the microbe and, in return, grants its host with immunity against attack by similar viruses.
Understanding this relationship is beneficial not only for medical research and practical applications but also in marine biology, says Alison Buchan, Carolyn W. Fite Professor of Microbiology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Australia has the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world. Resettlement of indigenous communities resulted in the spread of invasive species, the absence of human-set fires, and a general cascade in the interconnected food web that led to the largest mammalian extinction event ever recorded. In this case, the absence of direct human activity on the landscape may be the cause of the extinctions, according to a Penn State anthropologist.
In our daily lives, we can find many examples of manipulation of reflected waves such as mirrors to see our reflections or reflective surfaces for sound that improve auditorium acoustics. When a wave impinges on a reflective surface with a certain angle of incidence and the energy is sent back, the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. This classical reflection law is valid for any homogenous surface.
Software- and computer-based works of art are fragile--not unlike their canvas counterparts--as their underlying technologies such as operating systems and programming languages change rapidly, placing these works at risk.
These include Shu Lea Cheang's Brandon (1998-99), Mark Napier's net.flag (2002), and John F. Simon Jr.'s Unfolding Object (2002), three online works recently conserved at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, through a collaboration with New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
A genetic variant found only in people of African descent significantly increases a smoker's preference for cigarettes containing menthol, a flavor additive. The variant of the MRGPRX4 gene is five to eight times more frequent among smokers who use menthol cigarettes than other smokers, according to an international group of researchers supported by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. The multiethnic study is the first to look across all genes to identify genetic vulnerability to menthol cigarettes.
MADISON, Wis. -- Examinations of National Institutes of Health grants in the last 15 years have shown that white scientists are more likely to be successful in securing funding from the agency than their black peers.
A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that bias is unlikely to play out in the initial phase of the process NIH uses to review applications for the billions of federal grant dollars it apportions annually to biology and behavior research, even though the reviewers at that early stage in the process are aware of each grant applicant's identity.
Tropical cyclones can become post-tropical before they dissipate, meaning they can become sub-tropical, extra-tropical or a remnant low pressure area. As Tropical Cyclone Gelena transitioned into a subtropical storm, NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image of the storm.
Artificial Intelligence is helping to guide and support some 50 breast cancer patients in rural Georgia through a novel mobile application that gives them personalized recommendations on everything from side effects to insurance.
The app, called MyPath, adapts to each stage in a patient's cancer journey. So the information available on the app--which runs on a tablet computer--regularly changes based on each patient's progress. Are you scheduled for surgery? MyPath will tell you what you need to know the day before.
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA--The Prospects of American Strawberries
New research has revealed the fascinating adaptation of some Australian sea snakes that helps protect their vulnerable paddle-shaped tails from predators.
An international study led by the University of Adelaide shows that several species of Australian sea snakes can sense light on their tail skin, prompting them to withdraw their tails under shelter. The study has also produced new insights into the evolution and genetics of this rare light sense.
A cutting-edge technique called cellular barcoding has been used to tag, track and pinpoint cells responsible for the spread of breast cancer from the main tumour into the blood and other organs.
The technique also revealed how chemotherapy temporarily shrinks the number of harmful cells, rather than eliminating them, explaining how the cancer could eventually relapse.
Insights from the study, published today in Nature Communications, could lead to new targeted treatments for breast cancer, the most common cancer to affect women.
UCLA researchers and collaborators at eight other research institutions have created an extremely light, very durable ceramic aerogel. The material could be used for applications like insulating spacecraft because it can withstand the intense heat and severe temperature changes that space missions endure.
Like going from a pinhole camera to a Polaroid, a significant mathematical update to the formula for a popular bioinformatics data visualization method will allow researchers to develop snapshots of single-cell gene expression not only several times faster but also at much higher-resolution. Published in Nature Methods, this innovation by Yale mathematicians will reduce the rendering time of a million-point single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data set from over three hours down to just fifteen minutes.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A woman whose boyfriend or husband regularly watches pornography is more likely to report symptoms of an eating disorder, new research suggests.
The study is one of the first to look at how a romantic partner's behavior might be linked to the likelihood of a woman experiencing or engaging in such things as extreme guilt about eating, preoccupation with body fat, binging or purging.