Breakthrough in brain imaging may offer future alternative to functional MRI

BURLINGTON, VT -- Findings from a study on the feasibility of addressing anxiety, pain and stress with Olfactory Virtual Reality (OVR) -- a new form of VR that incorporates the sense of smell into its augmented reality -- paint a clearer picture for clinical psychiatrists about how it could be used to safely and effectively help mental health and mood disorders. What's more, it holds promise for improved access and inclusion of patients impacted by physical limitations or constraints, such as patient mobility, comorbidities and safety. Building on previous research proving VR's effectiveness in "distraction for pain and medical procedures, relaxation and calming, and immersion therapy for trauma, PTSD and ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (June 11, 2021) -- In recent years, community science--also known as citizen science--has become a global phenomenon, engaging millions of people through wildlife observation platforms like END ...

The internet era that we live in depends completely on the transfer of vast information over optical fibers. Optical fibers are literally everywhere. In fact, the overall length of optical fibers installed on our planet is sufficient to reach planet Uranus and back. However, the transfer of information from point A to point B is not enough. The information that we send and receive must also be processed. Light waves take up an increasing role in addressing that task as well. In addition, optical fibers can do more for us than just relay information: They constitute an exceptional sensing platform. Optical fibers support measurements from a long stand-off distance, simply installed within structures, ...

Researchers from University of Adelaide published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines how advertising can increase the informativeness of a firm's stock price by reducing its stock price synchronicity. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Tarred with the Same Brush? Advertising Share of Voice and Stock Price Synchronicity" and is authored by Chee Cheong, Arvid Hoffmann, and Ralf Zurbruegg. Firms are sometimes "tarred with the same brush" by investors instead of being traded based on firm-specific information. ...

Earth's atmosphere has a budget, and when expenses outpace savings, secondary aerosols form in areas of excessive pollution. Greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere, and free radicals bond to the molecules, rendering them inert. But when there are more pollution molecules than free radicals, they are left to recombine and form ozone and visible particulate matter -- smog and haze. The precise mechanisms underlying this atmospheric oxidation capacity are not well understood, leaving the process inadequately described or completely missed in research, according to Yuesi Wang, professor with the State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics and ...

PHILADELPHIA-- The prevalence of genetic mutations associated with breast cancer in Black and white women is the same, according to a new JAMA Oncology study of nearly 30,000 patients led by researchers in the Basser Center for BRCA at the Abramson Cancer Center. About five percent of both Black and white women have a genetic mutation that increases their risk of breast cancer. "The findings challenge past, smaller studies that found Black women face a greater genetic risk and the suggestion that race should be an independent factor when considering genetic testing," said first author Susan Domchek, MD, executive director of the Basser Center for BRCA. "We shouldn't make changes to testing guidelines based on race alone. Rather, our efforts should ...

The Multivariable Integrated Evaluation (MVIE) method can help meteorologists to quantitatively evaluate the overall performance of a climate model in simulating multiple variables like air temperature, precipitation, and vector wind, against observed ones. Recently, researchers from Nanjing University and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a simple-to-use Multivariable Integrated Evaluation Tool (MVIETool) coded with Python/NCL to facilitate climate model evaluation and models inter-comparison, improving the MVIE method. The study was published in Geoscientific Model Development. "The improved MVIE method can provide a more comprehensive and precise evaluation of climate model performance. With the support of ...

Optical solitons are nonlinear optical wave-packets that can maintain their profile during the propagation even in the presence of moderate perturbations, offering useful applications in optical communications, all-optical information processing as well as ultrafast laser techniques. The interaction between optical solitons exhibit many particle-like properties, and has been widely investigated for decades. Particularly, the bound-states of optical solitons in nonlinear dissipative systems, as a result of balanced interactions, have been found to manifest unique matter-light analogies and are epitomized by the "soliton molecules" - compact ...

Male infertility affects more than 20 million men globally and is a contributing cause to around 50% of infertility in couples. Frequently, male infertility is the result of defects in the sperm tail, the flagellum, which allows the sperm to swim toward an egg. Males with severe infertility can experience multiple sperm malformations, including flagella that are shortened, irregular, coiled or even absent, preventing them from swimming. In humans, several genetic mutations lead to malformed sperm, including those affecting the sheath that covers the sperm; the mitochondria, which power sperm as they swim; and ...

The fungus Fusarium verticillioides is one of the causes of red rot, the most serious sugarcane disease. Losses average around USD 1 billion per harvest in Brazil alone. The traditional approach to the etiology of this disease is that it is triggered by Diatraea saccharalis, a moth usually referred to as the sugarcane borer. In the caterpillar stage, this insect bores into the stem of the plant, which is later infected opportunistically by the fungus. However, a study conducted in Brazil by the University of São Paulo's Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ-USP) has turned this model upside down, showing that the trigger is not the insect but the fungus. "It's the first scientifically demonstrated case of a pathogenic ...