Science
press releases.

Science22 Oct 2024

Get a grip: The best thumb position for disc launch speed and spin rate

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2024 – Disc golf is a sport growing in popularity, but there hasn’t been much research into the best techniques – until now. Researcher Zachary Lindsey and his team studied professional and amateur disc golf players in Georgia to analyze the effect of thumb grip on disc-throwing. “Participants were eager and excited to engage in the study, as there is clearly a thirst for scientific evidence and data to drive progress in the sport so that disc golf enthusiasts can improve their game in recreational and competitive contexts,” ...

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Science22 Oct 2024

Researchers succeed in taking 3D x-ray images of a skyrmion

A difficult-to-describe nanoscale object called the magnetic skyrmion might one day yield new microelectronic devices that can do much more — for example, massive data storage — all while consuming much less power. But researchers need a more detailed understanding of skyrmions if they are ever to be used reliably in computational devices, including quantum computers. Peter Fischer, a senior researcher at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley ...

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Science22 Oct 2024

Dangers of the metaverse and VR for US youth revealed in new research

The metaverse, a space where the lines between physical and digital realities blur, is rising among younger populations. As of March, 33% of teens own a virtual reality (VR) device and 13% use it weekly. With the metaverse offering richer emotional experiences, youth may be particularly vulnerable to significant harm in these immersive spaces, underscoring the need to explore potential risks. Unfortunately, research of online victimization in the metaverse is sorely lacking. A new study by Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, is one of the first to examine the ...

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Science22 Oct 2024

A model for the decline of trends, fads, and information sharing

A model of human behavior finds that people will share information if enough—but not too many—of their contacts do so. Humans are social creatures, and many behaviors and beliefs can spread from person to person. Understanding the dynamics of behavioral diffusion can help encourage healthy or sustainable behaviors or stop the spread of misinformation. Linear threshold models assume that people will adopt a behavior when the number of their social contacts that have done so passes a threshold. Pouria Ramazi and colleagues propose an addition to the model, ...

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Science22 Oct 2024

Virginia Tech researcher works to preserve the white shark in the Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a paradise. Pristine waters and an incredible coastline spanning multiple continents that are renowned the world over. Below those picturesque, and sometimes crowded, waters swim a legendary creature facing a treacherous and uncertain future: the white shark. Francesco Ferretti, an assistant professor in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, is working to save one of the most endangered white shark populations on the planet. The research team located signs of the remaining white sharks ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

A blueprint for mapping melting ice sheets

Researchers in the Stanford Radio Glaciology lab use radio waves to understand rapidly changing ice sheets and their contributions to global sea-level rise. This technique has revealed groundwater beneath Greenland, the long-term impacts of extreme melt, a process that could accelerate ice sheet mass loss in Antarctica, the potential instability of an ice sheet that could raise sea levels by 10 feet, and more. Now, PhD students within the group have created an open-source tool that others can use to make ice-penetrating radar systems, core instruments ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

AI-assisted colonoscopy increases polyp and adenoma detection in routine screening

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 21 October 2024 @Annalsofim Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Sweetened beverage taxes decrease consumption in lower-income households by nearly 50%, UW study finds

Eight cities in the United States have implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, which contribute to health issues including obesity and Type 2 diabetes. New research from the University of Washington investigated responses to sweetened beverage taxes using the purchasing behavior of approximately 400 households in Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Philadelphia – all of which recently introduced beverage taxes. The study was published online Sept. 30 in Health Economics. Researchers found that after the tax was introduced, lower-income households decreased their purchases of sweetened beverages by nearly 50%, while higher-income households reduced purchases by 18%. Since ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

The transformative power of film

A new study has found that after watching a docudrama about the efforts to free a wrongly convicted prisoner on death row, people were more empathetic toward formerly incarcerated people and supportive of criminal justice reform. The research, led by a team of Stanford psychologists, published Oct. 21 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “One of the hardest things for groups of people who face stigma, including previously incarcerated people, is that other Americans don’t perceive ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

What happened when a meteorite the size of four Mount Everests hit Earth?

Billions of years ago, long before anything resembling life as we know it existed, meteorites frequently pummeled the planet. One such space rock crashed down about 3.26 billion years ago, and even today, it’s revealing secrets about Earth’s past. Nadja Drabon, an early-Earth geologist and assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is insatiably curious about what our planet was like during ancient eons rife with meteoritic bombardment, when only single-celled bacteria and archaea reigned – and when it all started to change. When ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Weather-changing El Niño oscillation is at least 250 million years old

DURHAM, N.C. – The El Niño event, a huge blob of warm ocean water in the tropical Pacific Ocean that can change rainfall patterns around the globe, isn't just a modern phenomenon. A new modeling study from a pair of Duke University researchers and their colleagues shows that the oscillation between El Niño and its cold counterpart, La Niña, was present at least 250 million years in the past, and was often of greater magnitude than the oscillations we see today. These temperature swings were more intense in the past, and the oscillation occurred even when the continents were in different places than they are now, according to the study, which appears the week ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Evolution in action: How ethnic Tibetan women thrive in thin oxygen at high altitudes

Breathing thin air at extreme altitudes presents a significant challenge—there’s simply less oxygen with every lungful. Yet, for more than 10,000 years, Tibetan women living on the high Tibetan Plateau have not only survived but thrived in that environment. A new study led by Cynthia Beall, Distinguished University Professor Emerita at Case Western Reserve University, answers some of those questions. The new research, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), reveals how the Tibetan women’s physiological ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Berry studying nitrogen vacancy diamond metrology for temperature and pressure sensing

Tyrus Berry, Assistant Professor, Mathematics, College of Science, received funding for the project: “Nitrogen Vacancy Diamond Metrology for Temperature and Pressure Sensing: Data Assimilation.” Berry aims to provide the mathematical tools for a robust sensor that can simultaneously measure temperature, pressure, and force over a long range of values in harsh environments. The sensor readings will be tied to fundamental physics laws, and the mathematical framework will automatically track any drift in the ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Amsterdam UMC-led researchers develop way to predict epilepsy after rare stroke

Researchers from 15 countries, led by Amsterdam UMC, have developed a way to predict which patients are at risk of epilepsy after a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVT). CVT is a type of stroke that typically affects women between the ages of 20 and 50. The prediction model is now available worldwide free of charge and research it is based on is published today in JAMA Neurology. "We hope that as many physicians as possible will use this score to better treat and educate CVT patients across the world," says lead researcher and neurologist at Amsterdam UMC, Jonathan Coutinho. CVT occurs when a clot blocks the veins ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

National trends in infant mortality in the US after Dobbs

About The Study: Infant mortality was higher than expected, overall and among those with congenital anomalies, for several months after the Dobbs decision in the U.S. No post-Dobbs months (i.e., no months after June 2022) showed lower than expected infant mortality. These findings are consistent with the increase in infant mortality found in Texas following the state’s abortion ban. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Parvati Singh, PhD, email singh.1704@osu.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.4276) Editor’s ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Tube spinning process: Recent advances and challenges

Amidst the sustainable evolution of the economy and society, the issues of energy scarcity and environmental degradation have gained increasing prominence, making energy conservation and emission reduction the focal point of societal concern. Within this context, metal tubes fittings, as essential components, wield significant and extensive influence in domains such as aviation, aerospace, and new energy vehicles. Notably, the burgeoning prominence of advanced plastic forming methods, epitomized by the flexible medium forming process of tubes, has garnered ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Novel electrothermal model enables co-estimation of SOC and SOT

For the main energy storage system for EVs, Li-ion batteries are extensively applied owing to their excellent overall performance The safe and efficient operation of the electric vehicle significantly depends on the accurate state-of-charge (SOC) and state-of-temperature (SOT) of Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. A recent breakthrough study presented by researchers from the Tongji University and Chongqing University introduces a co-estimation of state-of-charge and state-of-temperature for large-format lithium-ion batteries based on ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

First ever Hispanic thrifty food plan published

A new study1 has unveiled the Hispanic Thrifty Food Plan (H-TFP), a culturally adapted and affordable diet specifically designed to align with the eating habits of U.S. Hispanic households. The research, led by Adam Drewnowski, PhD, from the University of Washington, used advanced dietary modeling to create a version of the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) that respects the distinctive food patterns of Hispanic communities. The USDA's Thrifty Food Plan is the foundation for setting benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but it has not traditionally accounted for the ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Study reveals how fear memories transform over time, offering new insights into PTSD

An innovative study, to be published in Nature Communications on October 21, 2024, reveals the mechanism behind two seemingly contradictory effects of fear memories: the inability to forget yet the difficulty to recall. Led by researchers from Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, and the University of Tokyo, the study shows how fear experiences are initially remembered as broad, associative memories, but over time become integrated into episodic memories with a more specific timeline. The researchers conducted experiments using functional ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

New guideline: Preventing a first stroke may be possible with screening, lifestyle changes

Guideline Highlights: Each year in the U.S., over half a million people have a first stroke; however, up to 80% of strokes may be preventable. The new primary prevention of stroke guideline from the American Stroke Association urges health care professionals to screen people for stroke risk factors, including high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, high blood sugar and obesity. Increasing public awareness and knowledge about healthy lifestyle changes, such as smoking cessation, increased physical activity, improved dietary habits and better sleep, may also help people reduce their stroke risk. The new guideline highlights the American Heart ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Creating a simplified form of life

It is one of the most fundamental questions in science: how can lifeless molecules come together to form a living cell? Bert Poolman, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Groningen, has been working on this problem for over twenty years. He aims to understand life by trying to reconstruct it; he is building simplified artificial versions of biological systems that can be used as components for a synthetic cell. Poolman recently published two papers in Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Communications. In the first paper, he describes a system for energy conversion ...

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Science21 Oct 2024

Male flies with shorter eyestalks make up for being less attractive by fighting more fiercely

In stalk-eyed flies, longer eyestalks attract the ladies. Females prefer males with longer eyestalks, and other males are less likely to fight them for access to females. But some males have a copy of the X chromosome which always causes short eyestalks. Scientists investigating why this mutation hasn’t died out, despite sexual selection, have discovered that the flies could be compensating for their shorter eyestalks with increased aggression. “It's the first time I'm aware of that there's ...

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Science20 Oct 2024

Ibuprofen and other NSAIDs may reduce the risk of postoperative delirium

PHILADELPHIA — Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, may help reduce patients’ risk of postoperative delirium, according to a study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2024 annual meeting. “Postoperative delirium is a serious complication associated with a risk for health problems and even death after surgery,” said Steven M. Frank, M.D., co-author of the study and a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. ...

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Science19 Oct 2024

American Society of Anesthesiologists honors Mary Dale Peterson, M.D., MSHCA, FACHE, FASA, with its Distinguished Service Award

PHILADELPHIA — The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) today presented Mary Dale Peterson, M.D., MSHCA, FACHE, FASA, with its 2023 Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her enduring contributions to advancing patient-centered, physician-led health care. Her dedicated service to the specialty and ASA includes her leadership as ASA president during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The award is the highest honor ASA bestows and is presented annually to a member who has transformed the specialty of anesthesiology. Nationally recognized for her role in guiding health plans and hospitals, Dr. Peterson currently serves ...

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Science18 Oct 2024

Innovation south facility opens in UT Research Park at Cherokee farm

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Fibers and Composites Manufacturing Facility has a new home and IACMI – The Composites Institute has new headquarters with the dedication of Innovation South. Innovation South is an 85,000-square-foot multiuse facility in UT’s Research Park at Cherokee Farm, located just off Alcoa Highway across the Tennessee River from the flagship university’s main campus. Developed and owned by Partners Development, the building includes a 40,000-square-foot ...

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