An associate professor of marketing at The University of Texas at Arlington says digital avatars can replace a sales force and customer service employees at a fraction of the cost. In this context, avatars are typically computer-generated representations of people. UTA Associate Professor Fred Miao says they can fill the void in interactive assistance that a majority of shoppers says they want. "An Accenture survey of online shoppers shows that 62% never completed their purchases because there was no real-time customer service or support. That Accenture survey also shows that 90% of those shoppers wanted some sort of interactive assistance during the shopping process," said Miao, faculty fellow of the John Merrill Endowed Professorship ...

Sea-level rise threatens to produce more frequent and severe flooding in coastal regions and is expected to cause trillions of dollars in damages globally if no action is taken to mitigate the issue. However, communities trying to fight sea-level rise could inadvertently make flooding worse for their neighbors, according to a new study from researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington and the Stanford Natural Capital Project published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Michelle Hummel, an assistant professor of civil engineering at UTA, was lead author of the report, which shows how seawalls constructed along the San Francisco Bay shoreline ...

UW researchers reveal new aspects of gum disease and body's protective response SEATTLE - A team led by University of Washington researchers has, for the first time, identified and classified how different people respond to the accumulation of dental plaque, the sticky biofilm that gathers on teeth. Their work, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), sheds important new light on why some people may be more prone to serious conditions that lead to tooth loss and other problems. Left unchecked, plaque buildup can induce gingivitis, or gum inflammation. Gingivitis, ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State University scientists are beginning to unravel the key microorganisms that contribute to the fermentation of kombucha, research that is already aiding large-scale kombucha producers in the fast-growing industry. Kombucha is a fermented tea drink that has been homebrewed around the world for centuries, but in recent years has become widely popular with a global market size expected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2019 to $8.1 billion by 2027, according to an industry report. Several large producers, including Humm and Brew Dr., are based in Oregon. Kombucha is produced by fermenting sugared tea using a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, commonly referred to as SCOBY, and adding flavorings to enhance the taste. But ...

Vaccine skepticism among young adults may stall efforts to achieve herd immunity - a threshold in which approximately 80 percent of a population is vaccinated against the coronavirus. A study by UC San Francisco researchers found that about one in four unvaccinated people aged 18 to 25 said that they "probably will not" or "definitely will not" get the COVID-19 vaccination, despite the fact that this demographic has been found to be more likely than other age-groups to transmit coronavirus, jeopardizing the health of older unvaccinated adults and facilitating ...

Each fingertip has more than 3,000 touch receptors, which largely respond to pressure. Humans rely heavily on sensation in their fingertips when manipulating an object. The lack of this sensation presents a unique challenge for individuals with upper limb amputations. While there are several high-tech, dexterous prosthetics available today - they all lack the sensation of "touch." The absence of this sensory feedback results in objects inadvertently being dropped or crushed by a prosthetic hand. To enable a more natural feeling prosthetic hand interface, researchers from Florida Atlantic University's ...

New data on macaw movements gathered by the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences' (CVMBS) The Macaw Society has the potential to greatly improve conservation strategies for the scarlet macaw, as well as similar species of large parrots. While the overall conservation status of the scarlet macaw is listed as "least concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the species is declining across much of Central America and in other parts of its range in South America. The species also shares its habitat with numerous endangered species and influences the ecosystems in which ...

The concept of interoperability describes the ability of different systems to communicate. This is a major challenge in biomedical research, and in particular, in the field of personalised medicine, which is largely based on the compilation and analysis of numerous datasets. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that even when the technical, legal and ethical constraints are lifted, the data remain difficult to analyse because of semantic ambiguities. Under the auspices of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) and in close collaboration with representatives from all five Swiss university ...

Superconductivity is a physical phenomenon where the electrical resistance of a material drops to zero under a certain critical temperature. Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory is a well-established explanation that describes superconductivity in most materials. It states that Cooper pairs of electrons are formed in the lattice under sufficiently low temperature and that BCS superconductivity arises from their condensation. While graphene itself is an excellent conductor of electricity, it does not exhibit BCS superconductivity due to the suppression of electron-phonon interactions. This is also the reason that most 'good' conductors such as gold and copper are 'bad' ...

The corona pandemic has ensured that the term "mRNA" is now also known to a large public beyond laboratories and lecture halls. However, the molecule is much more than an important component of a successful vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. "mRNAs are a central component of all living things on our planet. Without them life as we know it would not function," says Elmar Wolf. Wolf is a professor for tumour system biology at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Würzburg. With his research team, he has now deciphered new details about the formation of mRNA which provide novel insights into how a fundamental process inside cells works: the transcription. The team ...

A team of researchers, affiliated with UNIST has succeeded in developing a new optical microscope technology, capable of deeper imaging beyond the biological tissues. This breakthrough has been led by Professor Jung-Hoon Park and his research team in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNIST. Optical imaging technology has emerged as an essential research tool for biomedical studies due to its high resolution and good tomography capability. However, the limited penetration depth of the optical microscope makes it difficult to observe biological tissues of more than 100 μm thickness. This is because strong light scattering, caused by various components ...

New York, NY--July 13, 2021--The past decade has witnessed scandal after scandal over private images maliciously or accidentally made public. A new study from computer scientists at Columbia Engineering reveals what may be the first way to encrypt personal images on popular cloud photo services, such as those from Google, Apple, Flickr and others, all without requiring any changes to -- or trust in -- those services. Smartphones now make it easy for virtually everyone to snap photos, with market research firm InfoTrends estimating that people now take more than a trillion photos each year. The limited ...

A new study reveals the strategies that stop bandits from illegally fishing in Australian waters--but warns there is a cost to the region's poorer countries. Co-author Dr Brock Bergseth, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said poachers are simply following the recurring history of human fishing: intensively fish and devastate local resources, then move further afield to--in these cases--fish illegally or poach in other countries' waters. "Millions of people rely on fish and seafood and when offered no alternative choice, will chose banditry and illegal fishing ...

A new method of DNA testing on cocoa beans could revolutionise the chocolate industry, offering consumers greater reassurance about the origins and ethics of their beloved confectionery, and giving the global cocoa industry a precision tool to help end slavery and child labour. Researchers from the University of Bath, University of the West of England, and Surrey Business School have proven a low-cost method which compares DNA in chocolate products to the cocoa when it is farmed. This means cocoa can be reliably traced back from an individual chocolate bar to the specific farms which cultivated the cocoa in it, a major advance on current fairtrading, certification and sustainability practices. "This has the potential to ...

What the fruit fly is to zoologists, the thale cress is to botanists. The widespread herb with the botanical name Arabidopsis thaliana serves them as a model organism from which knowledge can be gained for other plants. It is therefore extremely well researched - also genetically. For example, it is now known that the genetic material of Arabidopsis thaliana (its genome) comprises around 125 million base pairs. It's like having a Lego manual in front of you that is 125 million letters long and contains everything you need to know to build an Arabidopsis plant. Similar to humans, different Arabidopsis specimens are generally not genetically identical. If you were to compare the construction manual of all plants of this species, you would encounter differences in about 10 million places, ...

Dr. Iair Arcavi, a Tel Aviv University researcher at the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, participated in a study that discovered a new type of stellar explosion - an electron-capture supernova. While they have been theorized for 40 years, real-world examples have been elusive. Such supernovas arise from the explosions of stars 8-9 times the mass of the sun. The discovery also sheds new light on the thousand-year mystery of the supernova from A.D. 1054 that was seen by ancient astronomers, before eventually becoming the Crab Nebula, that we know today. A supernova is the explosion of a star following a ...

A new study co-authored by the UBC Sauder School of Business has found that when senior managers mistreat workers, middle managers often attempt to quietly smooth things over. Robin Hood was known for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor -- but while he may have lived in Sherwood Forest centuries ago, he would have fit right in as a middle manager in today's business world. Studies have shown that when employees are mistreated by senior leaders, employees can often get back at them by doing things like gossiping, stealing office supplies or calling in sick when they're well. But according to new research from UBC Sauder, middle managers also get in on the act, and attempt to address workplace injustices by secretly helping out their subordinates ...

Kamil Gareev, Associate Professor at ETU "LETI," justified the prospects of using magnetotactic bacteria to treat malignant tumors. LETI researchers identified the main properties of magnetotactic bacteria and described the possibilities of their application in medicine. The results obtained will help create theranostic agents in neurooncology and cardioprotection. The results of the joint study with colleagues from St. Petersburg State University, RAS Institute of Cytology, and RAS Institute of Biotechnology were published as an overview article in the journal Magnetochemistry. Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) are distinguished by their ability to synthesize magnetosomes, special cellular organelles in which magnetite biomineralization occurs. Thanks ...

Autistic people need extra help in going green say researchers behind a new study which argues for a more inclusive environmental agenda. Climate action movements are gathering extraordinary pace due to international campaigners like Greta Thunberg, whose autism has been well documented. Being autistic has been used to explain and celebrate, but also diminish and denigrate, her activism. Thunberg, for example, reports that being autistic is a psychological "gift" and "superpower" that underpins her environmental attitudes and behaviours. This has fuelled speculation - in the media and the general public - that autistic ...

DALLAS, July 14, 2021 -- Heart failure hospitalizations and costs related to methamphetamine use jumped sharply over a decade in California, according to new research published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal. "Our study results should bring urgent attention to this insidious yet rapidly growing form of severe heart failure - methamphetamine-related heart failure, which is taking the lives of young people, straining health care resources and threatening to spread like wildfire in California, the West and to the rest of the nation," ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- July 14, 2021 -- The results of a study by an international scientific team co-led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that -- like pouring water atop a wellhead before pumping -- the airway cells of patients with chronic lung diseases are "primed" for infection by the COVID-19 virus, resulting in more severe symptoms, poorer outcomes and a greater likelihood of death. The study -- published today in Nature Communications -- details the genetic changes caused by chronic lung disease in the molecular makeup of a variety of cells, including the epithelial cells that line the lung and airways. The ...

The extraordinary ability of animals to rapidly evolve in response to predators has been demonstrated via genetic sequencing of a waterflea population across nearly two decades. In a new study, published in Nature Communications, scientists at the Universities of Birmingham in the UK, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and the Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, were able to identify more than 300 genes that vary in the genome of the waterflea. These genes, which account for about about 3 per cent of all sequenced waterflea genes, ...

Cancer cell death is triggered within three days when X-rays are shone onto tumor tissue containing iodine-carrying nanoparticles. The iodine releases electrons that break the tumor's DNA, leading to cell death. The findings, by scientists at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and colleagues in Japan and the US, were published in the journal Scientific Reports. "Exposing a metal to light leads to the release of electrons, a phenomenon called the photoelectric effect. An explanation of this phenomenon by Albert Einstein in 1905 heralded the birth of quantum physics," says iCeMS molecular biologist Fuyuhiko Tamanoi, who led the study. "Our research provides ...

July 14, 2021 (Toronto) A new study from the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), published in the journal Lancet Oncology, has found an association between alcohol and a substantially higher risk of several forms of cancer, including breast, colon, and oral cancers. Increased risk was evident even among light to moderate drinkers (up to two drinks a day), who represented 1 in 7 of all new cancers in 2020 and more than 100,000 cases worldwide. In Canada, alcohol use was linked to 7,000 new cases of cancer in 2020, including 24 per cent of breast cancer cases, 20 per cent of colon cancers, 15 per cent of rectal cancers, and 13 per cent of oral and liver cancers. "All ...

As the Parker Solar Probe ventures closer to the sun, we are learning new things about our home star. In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report the first definitive measurements of the sun's electric field, and how the electric field interacts with the solar wind, the fast-flowing current of charged particles that can affect activities on Earth, from satellites to telecommunications. The physicists calculated the distribution of electrons within the sun's electric field, a feat made possible by the fact that the Parker Solar Probe jetted within 0.1 astronomical units (AU), or a mere 9 million miles, from the sun--closer than any spacecraft has approached. From the electrons' distribution, the physicists ...