Tech

Video games are a favorite activity of children, yet its affect on their health is often perceived to be negative. A study by researchers at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues at Paris Descartes University assessed the association between the amount of time spent playing video games and children's mental health and cognitive and social skills, and found that playing video games may have positive effects on young children. Results are published online in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

Washington - Researchers have demonstrated, for the first time, that laser light can be used to manipulate a glass optical fiber tapered to a sharp point smaller than a speck of dust, in the middle of an optical fiber with a hollow core. Amazingly, optical forces cause the sharp point, or "nanospike," to self-align at the center of the hollow core, trapping it more and more strongly at the core center as the laser power increases.

Varnish does more than just provide a protective sheen to a violin. It influences the vibrations and impulses that the wood absorbs and therefore the quality of sound the instrument produces, says Marjan Gilani of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology (EMPA) in Switzerland. In research published in Springer's journal Applied Physics A, Gilani and her colleagues demonstrate the importance of the vibro-mechanical properties of varnish, its chemical composition, thickness and penetration into wood.

Drones are used for various applications such as aero picturing, disaster recovery, and delivering. Despite attracting attention as a new growth area, the biggest problem of drones is its small battery capacity and limited flight time of less than an hour. A fuel cell developed by Prof. Gyeong Man Choi (Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering) and his research team at POSTECH can solve this problem.

The United States lags behind 22 other highly ranked countries in terms of economic and human development when it comes to mandating employers to provide paid sick leave. In the U.S., only four states (Connecticut, California, Massachusetts and Oregon) along with a few dozen municipalities, now mandate paid sick leave as an employee benefit. That leaves 49 million U.S. workers without paid sick leave, causing an even greater divide in health care disparities as well as undesirable health care outcomes.

A group of researchers from the UK, including academics from Cardiff University, has demonstrated the first practical laser that has been grown directly on a silicon substrate.

It is believed the breakthrough could lead to ultra-fast communication between computer chips and electronic systems and therefore transform a wide variety of sectors, from communications and healthcare to energy generation.

AMHERST, Mass. - A recent study of past disturbance of the oyster beds in New York Harbor led by geoscientist Jonathan Woodruff and his doctoral student Christine Brandon of the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the first to link Europeans' overharvesting and disturbance of the ancient shellfish beds to loss of natural coastal defenses against floods and storm waves.