Radicalized and believing in conspiracies: Can the cycle be broken?

The spectacularly colorful aurora borealis -- or northern lights -- that fills the sky in high-latitude regions has fascinated people for thousands of years. Now, a team of scientists has resolved one of the final mysteries surrounding its origin. Scientists know that electrons and other energized particles that emanate from the sun as part of the "solar wind" speed down Earth's magnetic field lines and into the upper atmosphere, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen molecules, kicking them into an excited state. These molecules then relax by emitting light, producing the beautiful green and red hues of the aurora. What ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., June 8, 2021 -- Many voice actors use a variety of speech vocalizations and patterns to create unique and memorable characters. How they create those amazing voices could help speech pathologists better understand the muscles involved for creating words and sounds. During the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which will be held virtually June 8-10, Colette Feehan, from Indiana University, will talk about how voice actor performances can lead to better understanding about the speech muscles under our control. The session, "Articulatory and acoustic phonetics of voice actors," will take place Tuesday, June 8, at 2:40 p.m. Eastern U.S. Just like any professional of any field that requires some sort of physical skill, voice actors certainly put in time and ...

New research published in the journal Psychological Science reveals a pervasive but unfounded stereotype: that women (but not men) who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem. This finding was consistent across six separate experiments with nearly 1,500 total participants. "We were surprised that this stereotype was so widely held," said Jaimie Arona Krems, an assistant professor of psychology at Oklahoma State University and first author on the paper. "This stereotype was held by both women and men, liberals and conservatives, and across the spectrum in terms of people's levels of religiosity and sexism." But across the studies, Krems also observed that the stereotype was unfounded: There was virtually no relationship ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, food systems faced disruptions from staff shortages and supply chain issues. Now, a Virginia Tech researcher is assisting with efforts to help plants themselves from facing their own pandemic. Just like human diseases, plant diseases don't have arbitrary boundaries. These diseases don't stop at a border crossing or a port of entry. That's why plant disease surveillance, improved plant disease detection systems, and predictive plant disease modeling - integrated at the global scale - are necessary to mitigate future plant disease outbreaks and protect the global food supply, according to a team of researchers in a new commentary published in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." "The ...

That internal nagging feeling that drives you to seek sleep at night and wake in the morning to eat, work, and play, is, it turns out, genetic, and it's not just in people. Nearly every living organism - from animals to plants as well as several microorganisms and fungi - has an internal body clock, or a circadian rhythm. Yet, scientists have been perplexed out how these genes operate. Now, Virginia Tech scientists have taken a step closer to an answer thanks to the DNA of a mouse, a petri dish, and much patience. In a new study published in the journal Genes & Development, Shihoko Kojima, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, part of the Virginia Tech College of Science, ...

In a study of healthy volunteers, National Institutes of Health researchers have mapped out the brain activity that flows when we learn a new skill, such as playing a new song on the piano, and discovered why taking short breaks from practice is a key to learning. The researchers found that during rest the volunteers' brains rapidly and repeatedly replayed faster versions of the activity seen while they practiced typing a code. The more a volunteer replayed the activity the better they performed during subsequent practice sessions, suggesting rest ...

Last year, Anupam Mazumdar, a physicist from the University of Groningen, jointly proposed an experiment together with colleagues from the UK that could conclusively prove whether gravity is a quantum phenomenon. This experiment would focus on observing two relatively large, entangled quantum systems in free fall. In a new article, published on 4 June in Physical Review Research, the scientists describe in more detail how two types of noise could be reduced. They suggest that quantum interference could be applied in the production of a sensitive instrument that could detect movements of objects ranging from butterflies to burglars and black holes. Is gravity a quantum phenomenon? That is one of the major outstanding questions ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Since the end of the long-running conflict in Colombia, large areas of forest have been rapidly converted to agricultural uses, suggesting the peace agreement presents a threat to conservation the country's rainforest, a new study from Oregon State University shows. In 2016, Colombia officially signed a peace agreement ending the country's six-decade civil war, which mainly took place within the Andes-Amazon region, an extremely biodiverse rainforest and a critical biological corridor. Some deforestation was expected after the peace accord was reached, but an analysis of 30 years of land transfers - a term used to describe changes in control and use of a parcel of land - showed a 40% increase in conversion from ...

Mining involves moving a lot of rock, so some mess is expected. However, mining operations can continue to affect ecosystems long after activity has ended. Heavy metals and corrosive substances leach into the environment, preventing wildlife and vegetation from returning to the area. Fortunately, this damage can be reversed. A team of scientists, including UC Santa Barbara's Dave Herbst, investigated how river ecosystems respond to remediation efforts. The team combined decades of data from four watersheds polluted by abandoned mines. It took creative thinking to simplify ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have developed a novel continuous-flow microfluidic device that may help scientists and pharmaceutical companies more effectively study drug compounds and their crystalline shapes and structures, which are key components for drug stability. The device consists of a series of wells in which a drug solution - made up of an active pharmaceutical ingredient, or API, dissolved in solvent, such as water - can be mixed with an anti-solvent in a highly controlled manner. When mixed together, the two solutions allow for the API crystals to form a nucleus and grow. ...