Science
press releases.

Science12 Jun 2023

Working hard for money decreases consumers’ willingness to risk their earnings, study shows

Studies show that consumers believe people who work hard for their money have higher incomes, are more financially literate and are more comfortable taking on prudent financial risk. Similarly, national survey data used by policymakers to assess the relationship between effortful earning and financial risk-taking also shows a positive correlation between the two. While, at the population level this may be true, new research from the University of Notre Dame shows that the harder an individual ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

U.S. consumers judge morality of armed self-protection on case-by-case basis, OSU research shows

CORVALLIS, Ore. – American consumers use their understanding of gun rights when judging the morality of civilians’ use of guns to protect themselves from crime, and that assessment varies depending on specific scenarios, new research from Oregon State University shows. The study’s objective was to explore Americans’ understanding of the Second Amendment, the only constitutional right that explicitly entitles individuals to a consumer product, and how that understanding guides which gun-related behaviors are deemed morally acceptable. The authors also examined how recent court rulings and legal and market ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

Evolutionary fuel: Researchers study maintenance of an ancient chromosomal inversion

LOGAN, UTAH, USA -- Genetic variation is the ultimate fuel for evolution, says Utah State University evolutionary geneticist Zachariah Gompert. But, over centuries, that fuel reservoir gets depleted in the course of natural selection and random genetic drift. Whether, or how, genetic variation can persist over the long haul remains a big question for scientists. Gompert and colleagues from the University of Montpellier in France, the United Kingdom’s John Innes Centre, the National Autonomous University of México, Querétaro; ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

Updating cars as fast as a smart phone

Cyber-physical systems, such as vehicles, trains, airplanes, smart homes, or production facilities, combine electronic and mechanical elements with software. Development of these systems is highly complex due to the large number of dependencies among the components. “When a car’s wire harness is modified, the diameter of the cable duct also has to be changed,” says Professor Ralf Reussner, Spokesman of the CRC at KIT. This must be agreed upon by electrical engineers, software engineers and mechanical engineers. ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

A step toward safe and reliable autopilots for flying

In the film “Top Gun: Maverick,” Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, is charged with training young pilots to complete a seemingly impossible mission — to fly their jets deep into a rocky canyon, staying so low to the ground they cannot be detected by radar, then rapidly climb out of the canyon at an extreme angle, avoiding the rock walls. Spoiler alert: With Maverick’s help, these human pilots accomplish their mission. A machine, on the other hand, would struggle to complete the same pulse-pounding task. To an autonomous aircraft, for instance, the most straightforward path toward the target is in conflict with what the machine needs ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

Ethics & Human Research, May-June 2023

Making an Advance Research Directive: An Interview Study with Adults Aged 55 and Older with Interests in Dementia Research Nola M. Ries, Briony Johnston Many people with dementia are interested in taking part in research, including when they no longer have capacity to provide informed consent. Advance research directives (ARD) enable people to document their wishes about research participation prior to becoming decisionally incapacitated. However, there are few available ARD resources. This Australian interview study elicited the views of people aged 55 years and older about the content of an ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

Railways could be a key 'utility player' for backup power

– By Christina Nunez The U.S. electric grid faces simultaneous, evolving pressures. Demand for power from the grid is increasing as people adopt electric cars and building energy is transitioned from gas to electricity. At the same time, climate change is driving more extreme weather. Events like the 2020 heat wave that led to rolling blackouts in California are relatively infrequent, but they are happening more often – and utilities need to be ready for them. New research points to a flexible, cost-effective option for backup power when trouble strikes: batteries aboard trains. A study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

Which came first: the reptile or the egg?

The earliest reptiles, birds and mammals may have borne live young, researchers from Nanjing University and University of Bristol have revealed. Until now, the hard-shelled egg was thought to be the key to the success of the amniotes - a group of vertebrates that undergo embryonic or foetal development within an amnion, a protective membrane inside the egg. However, a fresh study of 51 fossil species and 29 living species which could be categorised as oviparous (laying hard or soft-shelled eggs) or viviparous (giving birth to live young) suggests otherwise. The findings, published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, show that all the great evolutionary branches ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

Study brings new understanding of multiple myeloma evolution

HOUSTON – A new study by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center highlights novel insights into the evolution of multiple myeloma from precursor disease, which may help better identify patients likely to progress and develop new interventions. Published today in Cancer Cell, the study integrates paired single-cell RNA sequencing and B cell receptor sequencing from 64 patients with multiple myeloma or precursor disease. The study achieved several notable milestones in the effort to better understand ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

19-hour days for a billion years of Earth’s history: Study

It's tough accomplishing everything we want to get done in a day. But it would have been even more difficult had we lived earlier in Earth's history. Although we take the 24-hour day for granted, in Earth's deep past, days were even shorter. Day length was shorter because the Moon was closer. "Over time, the Moon has stolen Earth's rotational energy to boost it into a higher orbit farther from Earth," said Ross Mitchell, geophysicist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead author of a new study published in Nature Geoscience. "Most models of Earth's rotation predict that day length was consistently shorter ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

SwRI’s Dr. Natalie Smith receives ASME Dedicated Service Award

“It is an honor,” Smith said. “The ASME Turbo Expo community has been a valuable part of my professional development and it has been a pleasure to give back." Since joining SwRI in 2016, Smith has performed aerodynamic design and testing of turbomachinery and advanced system analysis for programs related to power generation, aviation, oil and gas, and energy storage, including next-generation supercritical carbon dioxide power cycles. Smith has also managed three long-duration energy storage projects, developing a pumped thermal energy storage (PTES) demonstration facility, conducting a techno-economic feasibility study of ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

Press registration open for hybrid ACS Fall 2023 meeting

Journalists who register for the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) will have access to about 12,000 presentations on topics including agriculture and food, energy and fuels, health and medicine, sustainability and more. ACS Fall 2023 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person in San Francisco on Aug. 13-17 with the theme “Harnessing the Power of Data.” ACS considers requests for press credentials and complimentary registration to meetings from reporters (staff and freelance) and public information officers at government, nonprofit and ...

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Science12 Jun 2023

Taking biofabrication to the next level: innovations in volumetric bioprinting

Taking biofabrication to the next level: innovations in volumetric bioprinting UMC Utrecht researchers propose solutions for bioprinting living tissue Bioprinting is the printing of living cells and tissues. It's a promising technique that hopefully, one day, can solve the organ donor shortage by growing organs from patients' own cells. However, printing living tissues and cells is extremely complicated, and many hurdles need to be overcome to be able to get there. In this article, three recent innovations ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Interdisciplinary team receives continued support to visualize the past

The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $98,500 grant to an interdisciplinary team led by Virginia Tech to create an augmented reality program prototype that brings Civil War history to park visitors’ fingertips. Experts from Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University, Pamplin Historical Park, and its National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Virginia, are involved in the project. From multimedia-guided interpretations of documents to videos of historians sharing ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Ling Li leads team to see through eyes made of stone

Ling Li, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded $1.05 million over three years to lead a team studying the visual abilities of a unique underwater creature with thousands of eyes. The project reunites Li with a former collaborator, University of South Carolina Associate Professor Daniel Speiser. They also enlisted the expertise of an internationally recognized applied mathematician who specializes in image processing, Daniel Baum of the Zuse Institute in Berlin. What stony eyes see and what it means The team’s research will focus on the stony eyes of chitons. These marine creatures have pill-shaped, hard outer ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Proof-of-Concept Program funds 12 research projects

Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties (VTIP) with LINK + LICENSE + LAUNCH’s Proof-of-Concept Program has provided the springboard for faculty to bring their research to market. Over the past four years, the program has funded 24 Virginia Tech research projects. “We are excited to be able to support a larger group of proof-of-concept projects in this award cycle,” said Mark Mondry who leads LAUNCH. “Several of the Virginia Tech faculty-led projects in this round include collaborations with students, industry partners, and other academic institutions, bringing diverse perspectives to the project ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

3D 'bio-printing' inside hydrogels

Scientists from the NIHR Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Centre (a collaboration between GOSH and UCL), London, and University of Padova, Italy, have shown for the first time how 3D printing can be achieved inside ‘mini-organs’ growing in hydrogels -- controlling their shape, activity, and even forcing tissue to grow into 'moulds.' This can help teams study cells and organs more accurately, create realistic models of organs and disease, and even better understand how cancer spreads through different tissues. A particularly promising area of research at the Zayed Centre for Research ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Researchers determine quantitative composition of ultrahigh-pressure fluid in deep subduction zones

In a study published in PNAS, Prof. XIAO Yilin’s group from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) quantitatively determined, for the first time, the chemical composition of supercritical fluids in deep subduction zones, through 3D imaging modelling of ultrahigh-pressure (UHP) multiphase fluid inclusions, and revealed the important role of supercritical fluids in the cycling of carbon and sulfur in subduction zones, which is of great importance ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Liquid metal sticks to surfaces without a binding agent

Everyday materials such as paper and plastic could be transformed into electronic “smart devices” by using a simple new method to apply liquid metal to surfaces, according to scientists in Beijing, China. The study, published June 9 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, demonstrates a technique for applying a liquid metal coating to surfaces that do not easily bond with liquid metal. The approach is designed to work at a large scale and may have applications in wearable testing platforms, flexible devices, and soft robotics. “Before, we thought that it was impossible for liquid metal ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Racial, ethnic, sex differences in methadone-involved overdose deaths before, after federal policy change expanding take-home methadone doses

About The Study: In this study of monthly methadone-involved overdose deaths, the take-home policy may have helped reduce deaths for Black and Hispanic men but had no association with deaths of Black or Hispanic women or white men or women. The urgency of the overdose crisis requires that national methadone policy debates and decisions address the heterogeneity of people in treatment; relaxing methadone restrictions may help some particularly at-risk groups. Authors: Rebecca Arden Harris, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is the corresponding author. To ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Graphene-based Carbocatalysts: Synthesis, Properties, and Applications—Beyond Boundaries

Introducing "Graphene-based Carbocatalysts: Synthesis, Properties, and Applications (Volume 2)"—a concise yet comprehensive compendium for the scientific community, professors, and students alike. This authoritative volume - published by Bentham Science - delves into the forefront of Graphene-based carbocatalysis, providing a wealth of factual knowledge and exploration. The book opens with an in-depth analysis of electrocatalysis by Graphene materials, unraveling the intricate relationship between Graphene and electrochemical reactions. It sheds light on the catalytic prowess exhibited by Graphene-based materials, offering promising avenues for advancing energy ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Advances in eco-friendly gas insulating medium for next-generation SF6-free equipment

Gas-insulated equipment (GIE) that utilizes the most potent greenhouse gas sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) as insulation and arc-quenching medium has been widely used in the power industry. Seeking eco-friendly insulating gas with advanced performance for next-generation SF6-free GIE is significant for the “net-zero” goal and sustainable development. A research team led by Xiaoxing Zhang of Hubei University of Technology in China and scientists from Wuhan University, Southeast University, North China Electric Power University, Université de ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Wiley and European Hematology Association announce partnership

HOBOKEN, NJ, USA and THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS – June 9, 2023 – Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in research and education, today announced that it will publish the open access journal HemaSphere on behalf of the European Hematology Association (EHA), the largest community of European hematologists, beginning in January 2024. “Wiley continues to prioritize open access publishing and EHA is a membership organization committed to promoting excellence in patient care through research, and education,” said Shawn Morton, ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

The first prehistoric wind instruments discovered in the Levant

Although the prehistoric site of Eynan-Mallaha in northern Israel has been thoroughly examined since 1955, it still holds some surprises for scientists. Seven prehistoric wind instruments known as flutes, recently identified by a Franco-Israeli team1, are the subject of an article published on 9 June in Nature Scientific Reports. The discovery of these 12,000 -year-old aerophones is extremely rare – in fact, they are the first to be discovered in the Near East. The “flutes”, made from the bones of a small waterfowl, produce a sound similar to certain birds of prey (Eurasian sparrowhawk and common kestrel) when air is blown ...

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Science9 Jun 2023

Study highlights why people who are sexually harassed might not come forward immediately, or at all

New research has revealed there is a gap between how people imagine they’d act if sexually harassed and how those who experience it respond. The study by the University of Exeter, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and published in Psychology of Women Quarterly, discovered that seeking justice by coming forward is just one of the needs people who experience sexual harassment consider after the event, with other needs, including those for safety, instead rated as more important. The research may explain why people who ...

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