Culture
Osaka, Japan - Silicon has been the workhorse of electronics for decades because it is a common element, is easy to process, and has useful electronic properties. A limitation of silicon is that high temperatures damage it, which limits the operating speed of silicon-based electronics. Single-crystal diamond is a possible alternative to silicon. Researchers recently fabricated a single-crystal diamond wafer, but common methods of polishing the surface—a requirement for use in electronics—are a combination of slow and damaging.
Some of the world's most valuable ecosystems are facing a "triple threat" to their long-term durability and survival, new research shows.
The study found that mangrove forests, their large biodiversity and the coastal protection they provide are under pressure from three distinct threats - sea-level rise, lack of mud and squeezed habitats.
Understanding what other people want, how they feel, and how they see the world is becoming increasingly important in our complex, globalised society. Social skills enable us to make friends and create a network of people who support us. But not everyone finds it easy to interact with other people. One of the main reasons is that two of the most important social skills - empathy, i.e. being able to empathise with the other person's emotions, and the ability to take a perspective, i.e.
'Diseases of despair', such as substance abuse, alcohol dependency, and suicidal thoughts and behaviours, have soared in the US over the past decade, reveals an analysis of health insurance claims data published in the online journal BMJ Open.
And they now affect all ages, with suicidal thoughts and behaviours among the under 18s rocketing by 287% between 2009 and 2018, and by 210% among 18-34 year olds, the analysis shows.
Severe COVID-19 infection appears rare in newborn babies, suggests a new study.
The UK-wide analysis, led by researchers from Imperial College London and the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, is the first study analysing COVID-19 infections in newborns across the whole UK.
The study, published in the journal The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, traced all babies less than 29 days old with COVID-19 across the UK, who needed to be admitted into hospital.
Loneliness is responsible for 18% of depression among people over 50 in England, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.
The findings, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, suggest that almost one in five depression cases among older adults could be prevented if loneliness were eliminated.
The researchers found that people's subjective experiences of loneliness contributed to depression up to 12 years later, independent of more objective measures of social isolation.
Integrating family caregivers into a patient's health care team can help improve care quality and the quality of life for both patients and their families, yet family caregivers face significant barriers coordinating their efforts with the formal health care team, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
New policies and approaches may be needed to overcome those hurdles, such as rules to identify and record information on family caregivers, and incentives to encourage providers to engage with family caregivers.
Researchers from Rutgers University and New York University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that explores the phenomenon of user-generated content during experiences.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Generating Content Increases Enjoyment by Immersing Consumers and Accelerating Perceived Time" and is authored by Gabriela Tonietto and Alixandra Barasch.
Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have achieved unprecedented success in modifying a microbe to efficiently produce a compound of interest using a computational model and CRISPR-based gene editing.
Their approach could dramatically speed up the research and development phase for new biomanufacturing processes, and get cutting-edge bio-based products such as sustainable fuels and plastic alternatives on the shelves faster.
India's transition to clean cooking fuels may be hampered by users' belief that using firewood is better for their families' wellbeing than switching to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), a new study reveals.
Women are considered primary family cooks in rural India and those featured in the study feel that both fuels support wellbeing. Understanding these viewpoints helps to explain why India's switch from traditional solid fuels is slower than expected.
In Japan, the proportion of the population who are single has increased dramatically in the past three decades. In 2015, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 3 men in their 30s were single, and half of the singles say they are not interested in heterosexual relationships. Public health experts at the University of Tokyo found that those who are disinterested in relationships are more likely to have lower incomes and less education than their romantically minded peers, potentially pointing towards socioeconomic factors behind the stagnation of the Japanese dating market.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Similar to bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics, viruses can evolve resistance to vaccines, and the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 could undermine the effectiveness of vaccines that are currently under development, according to a paper published November 9 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by David Kennedy and Andrew Read from Pennsylvania State University, USA. The authors also offer recommendations to vaccine developers for minimizing the likelihood of this outcome.
What The Study Did: This randomized trial compares the effects of hydroxychloroquine versus placebo on patients' clinical status at 14 days (home, requiring noninvasive or invasive ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, hospitalized, died) among adults hospitalized with COVID-19.
Authors: Wesley H. Self, M.D., M.P.H., of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, is the corresponding author.
A pre-emptive memory management system developed by KAUST researchers can speed up data-intensive simulations by 2.5 times by eliminating delays due to slow data delivery. The development elegantly and transparently addresses one of the most stubborn bottlenecks in modern supercomputing--delivering data from memory fast enough to keep up with computations.
Nature has inspired engineers at UNSW Sydney to develop a soft fabric robotic gripper which behaves like an elephant's trunk to grasp, pick up and release objects without breaking them.
The researchers say the versatile technology could be widely applied in sectors where fragile objects are handled, such as agriculture, food and the scientific and resource exploration industries - even for human rescue operations or personal assistive devices.