A deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, has renewed outrage about the availability of guns and led to more calls for action on gun reform. We're being told mass shootings, especially at schools, are an epidemic. But that's not true, notes James Alan Fox, Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University.
Culture
Researchers at Harvard University have built soft robots inspired by nature that can crawl, swim, grasp delicate objects and even assist a beating heart, but none of these devices has been able to sense and respond to the world around them.
That's about to change.
Meat and milk production from cattle could one day be boosted, thanks to analysis of microbes in cows' stomachs.
The study paves the way for research to understand which types of microbe - such as bacteria - are best at helping cattle to extract energy from their food, experts say.
It also identifies enzymes that are specialised for breaking down plant material, which could help in the quest to develop new biofuels.
Children present with unique needs, particularly in a disaster. One challenge is that children may be completely dependent on adults for their care. With this in mind, and considering the physical, psychological and legal needs of children during and after a disaster, a group of stakeholders devised the outline for an educational pre-disaster video for child daycare providers in Los Angeles County using the Delphi technique. The ultimate goal of the Delphi technique is to achieve an unbiased consensus among experts.
Regular monitoring ("active surveillance") rather than immediate treatment is justified for moderate cervical lesions - abnormal cells on the surface of the cervix, often called cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia grade 2 or CIN2 - suggests a review of the evidence published by The BMJ today.
The findings should help women make more informed choices with their doctor, but study limitations mean that the results should be interpreted with caution.
A new microfluidic device developed by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) may help realize the potential of tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) - tiny lipid particles that carry molecules through the bloodstream - as biomarkers that could monitor a tumor's response to therapy and provide detailed information to guide treatment choice.
Athletes who suffer life-threatening heat stroke should be cooled on site before they are taken to the hospital, according to an expert panel's report published in the journal Prehospital Emergency Care.
The principle of "cool first, transport second" differs from the usual practice of calling 911 and getting to the hospital as soon as possible.
The article was published online Jan. 16, 2018.
Screening for food insecurity at the pediatrician's office can be quite effective, but fear of Child Protective Services and a complicated referral process could be barriers to food insecure families getting the help they need, a new study shows.
BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA and CARDIFF, UK - In an article published in SPIE's Journal of Biomedical Optics, researchers announce new advances in measuring blood flow velocity in deep tissue. Blood flow speed is a critical element in assessing tissue functionality as well as diagnosing diseases, and photoacoustic flowmetry (PAF) is already acknowledged as a promising technique for deep tissue measurement of blood flow velocity.
Researchers find that a substance indicating oxidative damage increases in urine as people get older. The study, published today in open-access journal in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, also describes a way to easily measure levels of this marker in human urine samples. The new marker potentially provides a method to measure how much our body has aged -- our biological rather than chronological age.
States with robust tobacco control policies and regulations, such as smoke free air laws and taxes on cigarettes, not only have fewer cigarette users but also fewer e-cigarette users, according to research from NYU School of Medicine and the NYU College of Global Public Health.
The findings, published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, suggest that existing state-level tobacco control measures likely influence e-cigarette use, despite their focus on traditional cigarettes.
Scientists used a technology designed for the purposes of human forensics, to provide the first genetically documented case of infanticide in brown bears, following the murder of a female and her two cubs in Trentino, the Italian Alps, where a small re-introduced population has been genetically monitored for already 20 years.
A treatment that improves the lives of nearly 1.3 million people with rheumatoid arthritis might one day originate from scorpion venom. A group of researchers led by Dr. Christine Beeton at Baylor College of Medicine has found that one of the hundreds of components in scorpion venom can reduce the severity of the disease in animal models, without inducing side effects associated with similar treatments. The study appears in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
Maunakea, Hawaii - An international team of astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has made a surprising discovery about the birthplace of groups of stars located in the halo of our Milky Way galaxy.
These halo stars are grouped together in giant structures that orbit the center of our galaxy, above and below the flat disk of the Milky Way. Researchers thought they may have formed from debris left behind by smaller galaxies that invaded the Milky Way in the past.
A little-studied, underground layer of rock may provide a vital reservoir for trees, especially in times of drought, report scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated with The University of Texas (UT) at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley.
The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), looked at the water stored inside the layer of weathered bedrock that lies under soils in mountain forest ecosystems.