Culture
Boston, MA -- In the largest study of skin cancer rates among gay, lesbian or bisexual individuals, investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital report important differences in skin cancer prevalence among sexual minorities. Rates of skin cancer were higher among gay and bisexual men compared to heterosexual men but lower among bisexual women than heterosexual women.
Scientists have discovered hundreds of unusually large, bacteria-killing viruses with capabilities normally associated with living organisms, blurring the line between living microbes and viral machines.
These phages -- short for bacteriophages, so-called because they "eat" bacteria -- are of a size and complexity considered typical of life, carry numerous genes normally found in bacteria and use these genes against their bacterial hosts.
HOUSTON -- Loss of an important tumor-suppressing gene allows head and neck cancer to spin off signals to nearby nerves, changing their function and recruiting them to the tumor, where they fuel growth and cancer progression, researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report in the journal Nature today.
A large proportion of highly active men watch more television than their low-active peers do. In contrast, highly active women watch less television than low-active women do.
revious studies have found prolonged television time to be more harmful to health than other domains of sedentariness. A recent longitudinal study with a ten-year follow-up examined how the television viewing time of Finnish adults was associated with their physical activity level during leisure-time.
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for shielding electronics in military and space exploration technology from ionizing radiation. The new approach is more cost effective than existing techniques, and the secret ingredient is...rust.
By creating neatly spaced slits in a clay mineral, University of Groningen Professor of Experimental Solid State Physics Petra Rudolf was able to filter water to remove a toxic herbicide. After removing the pollutant by heating the material, the clay can be reused. Together with colleagues from Greece, Rudolf presents this proof of principle study in the journal Environmental Science Nano.
Radiation from cell phones is associated with higher rates of thyroid cancer among people with genetic variations in specific genes, a new study led by the Yale School of Public Health finds.
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Researchers working on an Army project developed nanoscale thermal switches that are key to thermal management of nanoscale devices, refrigeration, data storage, thermal computing and heat management of buildings.
The journal Nature Nanotechnology published an Army-funded study from University of Michigan researchers that showed for the first time how a nanoscale thermal switch can be built by employing nanoscale effects that arise when heat is transferred between a hot and cold nanoscale-thick membrane via thermal radiation.
One of the most controversial hypotheses for the origin of human language faculty is the evolutionary conjecture that language arose instantaneously in humans through a single gene mutation. `
Two recent publications by researchers at the University of Barcelona (UB), led by Cedric Boeckx, ICREA Research professor from the Section of General Linguistics and member of the Institute of Complex Systems of the UB (UBICS), question this hypothesis, advocated among others by linguist Noam Chomsky, and suggest that it is more likely that language evolved gradually.
In a new short paper in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, Roger A. Søraa from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and co-authors Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and Adam Poulsen from Charles Sturt University in Australia discuss what a queering of robots might entail.
"It is imperative that we construct mechanisms and policies that acknowledge the importance of inclusivity, diversity, and non-discrimination, also for the LGBTQ+ community in the development and use of robots and AI," the researchers wrote.
Scientists and engineers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the University of Leeds in the UK have created the first electrically-driven 'topological' laser, which has the ability to route light particles around corners - and to cope with defects in the manufacture of the device.
In Brazil there is a plant so strange that researchers predicted - and 27 years later, proved - that opossums are key to its pollination. The findings are published in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecology.
Brain-eating amoebae can cause particularly harmful forms of encephalitis, and more than 95% of people who develop these rare but devastating infections die. Despite the high mortality rate, there is currently no single effective drug available to fight these microbes. Now, however, researchers have designed some new compounds that show promise in the laboratory as treatments, according to a report in ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
As a result of climate change, more frequent and longer drought periods are predicted in the future. Drought risks are suggested to decrease agricultural yield. Researchers at the University of Bayreuth and the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) have now discovered a way to mitigate this problem: Amorphous silica is able to significantly increase the amount of available water for plants. This offers an opportunity to enhance global food security despite climate change. The researchers presented their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.
St. Paul, MN (February 2020)--Transmitted by insects, especially the aster leafhopper, aster yellows (AY) outbreaks can cause severe production losses in many crops, including carrots, lettuce, and canola. Canola is a billion-dollar crop for Canada but the growing season in Western Canada is very short. Depending on the environmental conditions and number of infected leafhoppers, AY can be transmitted to canola in less than 24 hours and the leafhoppers can continue spreading the disease for the rest of their lives.