SMU Office of Research and Tech Transfer - One of the motivations for the recently published Journal of Accounting Research paper "Politically Connected Governments" was the daily experience with the subway system in New York City. The author of the paper, SMU Assistant Professor of Accounting Kim Jungbae, told the Office of Research & Tech Transferthe research question for the paper which examines the consequences of powerful political connections for local governments, was inspired by the New York Times article "The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth" (January 24, 2018). "The article suggests that the NYC subway system is ...

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, charts and graphs have helped communicate information about infection rates, deaths, and vaccinations. In some cases, such visualizations can encourage behaviors that reduce virus transmission, like wearing a mask. Indeed, the pandemic has been hailed as the breakthrough moment for data visualization. But new findings suggest a more complex picture. A study from MIT shows how coronavirus skeptics have marshalled data visualizations online to argue against public health orthodoxy about the benefits of mask mandates. Such "counter-visualizations" are often quite sophisticated, using datasets from official sources and state-of-the-art visualization ...

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer - Even before countries began rolling out their vaccination campaigns, Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca's announcements had already proved fortifying shots. Stocks rallied and healthcare workers celebrated in the wake of the vaccine news late last year. But months on, that early euphoria has somewhat evaporated, replaced by uncertainty and debate over vaccine safety, possible side effects and varying degrees of citizen reluctance. Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers and health experts modelling COVID-19's spread ...

Tsukuba, Japan and Warsaw, Poland - Scientists from the University of Tsukuba and a scientist from the Institute of High Pressure Physics detected and mapped the electronic spins moving in a working transistor made of molybdenum disulfide. This research may lead to much faster computers that take advantage of the natural magnetism of electrons, as opposed to just their charge. Spintronics is a new area of condensed matter physics that attempts to use the intrinsic magnetic moment of electrons, called "spins," to perform calculations. This would be a major advance ...

Kanazawa, Japan - Non-rigid point set registration is the process of finding a spatial transformation that aligns two shapes represented as a set of data points. It has extensive applications in areas such as autonomous driving, medical imaging, and robotic manipulation. Now, a method has been developed to speed up this procedure. In a study published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, a researcher from Kanazawa University has demonstrated a technique that reduces the computing time for non-rigid point set registration relative to other approaches. Previous ...

Kanazawa, Japan - As the global population ages, the rate of dementia is increasing worldwide. Given that early detection is critical for treatment, effective ways to screen for dementia are a high research priority. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a new screening tool that can be administered in a matter of minutes. In a study published in PLOS ONE, researchers from Kanazawa University have revealed a new computerized cognitive test, termed the computerized assessment battery for cognition (C-ABC), which they found to be effective in screening for both dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in just 5 minutes. Computerized cognitive tests are frequently chosen over paper-and-pencil ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Heavy snowfall slows things down and makes it harder to get from point A to point B. But snow clouds have a silver lining--heavy snow may prevent serious road injuries and even save lives. How? By getting people off bicycles and switching to safer modes of transport. Japanese researchers examined 10 years of police data on road injuries among commuting junior high school students. They found that areas with monthly snowfall of at least 100 cm had almost no bicycling-related injuries. Total injuries among cyclists and pedestrians also fell by 68%. The findings were published in the Journal of Epidemiology. The logic is quite simple. ...

A new data-driven study from Texas A&M University casts serious doubt on the stereotype that male students perform better than female students in science -- specifically, physics. A team of researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy analyzed both the midterm exam scores and final grades of more than 10,000 Texas A&M students enrolled in four introductory physics courses across more than a decade, finding no evidence that male students consistently outperform female students in these courses. The work was led by Texas A&M physicist ...

Teachers who participated in a meditation-based teacher development program utilizing the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique for four months, had significant improvements in emotional exhaustion (the leading factor in burnout), resilience, perceived stress, fatigue, and depression according to a new randomized controlled trial published today in Frontiers in Education. "Teachers are under high levels of stress as they are asked every day to support their students' learning amidst numerous challenges," said Laurent Valosek, lead author of the study and executive director of the Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education. "This study demonstrates the benefits ...

Exercise has long-been recommended as a cognitive-behavioral therapy for patients of depression, yet new evidence from the University of California of San Diego suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic changed the nature of the relationship between physical activity and mental health. In a study of college students conducted before and during the pandemic, findings revealed the average steps of subjects declined from 10,000 to 4,600 steps per day and rates of depression increased from 32% to 61%. The research, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also revealed short-term restoration of exercise does not meaningfully ...

During the first half of 2020, the U.S. Intermountain West region of the United States experienced four significant earthquake sequences, spanning multiple states. In the new issue of SRL, 15 papers characterize these major earthquakes and discuss how they are helping seismologists gain new insights into the tectonics of the region. The Intermountain West is bounded by the eastern margin of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east. While its earthquake risk is often overlooked in comparison to those in California and the Pacific Northwest, the region ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect across society, but it has been especially devastating for people with substance use disorder. A new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, sheds light on the experience of patients with substance use disorder who were hospitalized during the initial surge of COVID-19 cases in Oregon last spring. Researchers with Oregon Health & Science University conclude that health systems nationwide could benefit from a better understanding of people who struggle with the basics. "We need the system to be designed and implemented for patients who may lack phone access, who may not have access to WiFi or may be living on the streets," said lead ...

A combined treatment of irradiation and essential oil vapors could effectively destroy insects, bacteria and mold in stored grains. A team from the END ...

Being able to make blind people see again sounds like the stuff of miracles or even science fiction. And it has always been one of the biggest challenges for scientists. Diego Ghezzi, who holds the Medtronic Chair in Neuroengineering (LNE) at EPFL's School of Engineering, has made this issue a research focus. Since 2015, he and his team have been developing a retinal implant that works with camera-equipped smart glasses and a microcomputer. "Our system is designed to give blind people a form of artificial vision by using electrodes to stimulate their retinal cells," says Ghezzi. Read more: https://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-retinal-implant-that-is-more-effective-against-b/ Star-spangled sky The camera embedded in the smart glasses captures images in the wearer's field of vision, and ...

In order to stay alive, the cell must provide its various organelles with all the energy elements they need, which are formed in the Golgi apparatus, its centre of maturation and redistribution of lipids and proteins. But how do the proteins that carry these cargoes - the kinesins - find their way and direction within the cell's "road network" to deliver them at the right place? Chemists and biochemists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered a fluorescent chemical dye, making it possible for the first time to track the transport ...

More Antarctic meltwater is surfacing than was previously known, modifying the climate, preventing sea ice from forming and boosting marine productivity- according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). For the first time, researchers have been able to obtain full-depth glacial meltwater observations in winter, using instruments attached to the heads of seals living near the Pine Island Glacier, in the remote Amundsen Sea in the west of Antarctica. The harsh environmental conditions in the Antarctic limit the use of most traditional observation systems, such as ships and airplanes, especially ...

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego examining 14 years of hospital admissions data conclude that the fine particles in wildfire smoke can be several times more harmful to human respiratory health than particulate matter from other sources such as car exhaust. While this distinction has been previously identified in laboratory experiments, the new study confirms it at the population level. This new research work, focused on Southern California, reveals the risks of tiny airborne particles with diameters of up to 2.5 microns, about one-twentieth that of a human hair. These particles - termed PM2.5 - are the ...

Satellite imagery shows that the area covered by kelp forests off the coast of Northern California has dropped by more than 95 percent, with just a few small, isolated patches of bull kelp remaining. Species-rich kelp forests have been replaced by "urchin barrens," where purple sea urchins cover a seafloor devoid of kelp and other algae. A new study led by researchers at UC Santa Cruz documents this dramatic shift in the coastal ecosystem and analyzes the events that caused it. This was not a gradual decline, but an abrupt collapse of the kelp forest ecosystem in the aftermath of unusual ocean warming along the West Coast starting in 2014, part of a series of events that combined to decimate the kelp forests. Published March 5 in Communications Biology, ...

Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is the most widely used diagnostic method to detect RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2. However, it requires expensive laboratory equipment and global shortages of reagents for RNA purification has increased the need to find simple but reliable alternatives. One alternative to the qPCR technology is RT-LAMP (reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification). This test amplifies the desired target sequences of the virus at a constant temperature, using minimal equipment compared to qPCR. In 2020, it was adapted to the detection of SARS-CoV-2. It was also shown that instead of a swab, which many people find unpleasant, it can be performed on gargle lavage samples. First author Lukas Bokelmann and colleagues have now ...

Researchers from the Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee (PanAf) at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) and a team of international researchers, collected over 5000 fecal samples from 55 sites in 18 countries across the chimpanzee range over 8 years. This is by far the most complete sampling of the species to date, with a known location of origin for every sample, thus addressing the sampling limitations of previous studies. "Collecting these samples was often a daunting task for our amazing field teams. The chimpanzees were almost all unhabituated to human presence, so it took a lot of patience, skill and luck to find chimpanzee dung at each of the sites," explains ...

Researchers have developed a new quantum version of a 150-year-old thermodynamical thought experiment that could pave the way for the development of quantum heat engines. Mathematicians from the University of Nottingham have applied new quantum theory to the Gibbs paradox and demonstrated a fundamental difference in the roles of information and control between classical and quantum thermodynamics. Their research has been published today in Nature Communications. The classical Gibbs paradox led to crucial insights for the development of early thermodynamics and emphasises the need to consider an experimenter's ...

DUBLIN, Friday, 5 March 2021: RCSI researchers have discovered a new way to 'put the brakes' on excessive inflammation by regulating a type of white blood cell that is critical for our immune system. The discovery has the potential to protect the body from unchecked damage caused by inflammatory diseases. The paper, led by researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, is published in Nature Communications. When immune cells (white blood cells) in our body called macrophages are exposed to potent infectious agents, powerful inflammatory proteins ...

New York, NY (March 5, 2021) - Overweight children who were exposed to lead in utero and during their first weeks of life have the potential for poorer kidney function in adulthood, according to an Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai study published in Environment International in March. The study found that children with high body mass indexes who had been exposed to lead had lower estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), a measure of how well the kidneys are filtering or cleaning the blood. The researchers measured blood levels during mothers' pregnancy and later measured eGFR levels in the children when they were between 8 and 12 years old. Decreased ...

Researchers have succeeded in making an AI understand our subjective notions of what makes faces attractive. The device demonstrated this knowledge by its ability to create new portraits on its own that were tailored to be found personally attractive to individuals. The results can be utilised, for example, in modelling preferences and decision-making as well as potentially identifying unconscious attitudes. Researchers at the University of Helsinki and University of Copenhagen investigated whether a computer would be able to identify the facial features we consider attractive and, based on this, create new images matching our criteria. The researchers used artificial intelligence to interpret brain signals and combined the resulting brain-computer interface with a ...

Researchers from University of Houston and University of Bochum published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines how variable compensation plans for salespeople can lead to lower health. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Variable Compensation and Salesperson Health" and is authored by Johannes Habel, Sascha Alavi, and Kim Linsenmayer. Sales compensation plans typically comprise a variable component. Variable compensation is issued on top of a base salary and the amount is contingent on performance. For example, a salesperson with an annual target salary ...