Materials impossible to obtain with existing methods can be produced using a solid, nanostructured silica solvent. Scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow presented an innovative approach to the production of substances with unique physical and chemical properties. A team of physicists from Cracow (Poland) has succeeded in developing a flexible method for producing sol¬id, two-dimensional silica solvents to produce materials with unique optical, magnetic and structural properties. The term "solid solvent" here means a substance which, when immersed in a solution of the appropriate ...

Herndon, Va. (February 24, 2021) - Insurance policy premiums from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) allow policyholders to maintain a lower, grandfathered rate even when the risk escalates. But as coastal flooding increases due to rising sea level and more intense storms, new research published in the journal Risk Analysis suggests this grandfathered policy could lead to big losses for the NFIP. A team of experts led by Carolyn Kousky, executive director of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, studied the effect of sea level rise on a New York City neighborhood to illustrate how grandfathered rates could impact both policyholder premiums and program revenue for the NFIP over the next 30 years. Their results project losses ...

Woods Hole, Mass. (February 25, 2021) -- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) along with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries have released the first broad scale synthesis of available information derived from right whale health assessment techniques. The manuscript published today in the science journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, reviews available tools, and current understanding of the health status and trends of individual whales and the species. The paper concludes with recommendations for additional information needs and necessary ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Hemodialysis patients routinely experience side effects such as fatigue, lightheadedness and nausea during their treatment sessions. But patients in a study who used a virtual reality program to engage in a mindfulness/meditation exercise reported that these treatment-related symptoms were greatly reduced. Patients in the study wore a head-mounted virtual reality display to participate in a 25-minute mindfulness/meditation intervention called Joviality, a fully immersive experience that transported them to settings away from the clinic. "While virtual reality has been found to be beneficial in pain management and physical rehabilitation, its potential for helping dialysis patients contend with ...

Despite strides in family-leave offerings, and men taking a greater role in parenting, women in academia still experience about a 20% drop in productivity after having a child, while their male counterparts generally do not, according to new University of Colorado Boulder research. The study, published Feb. 24 in the journal Science Advances, suggests that persistent differences in parenting roles are the key reason that men tend to publish more research papers than women. Because publishing is closely linked to promotion, this gap could have long-term impacts on what academia looks like in the future. The researchers also found that while parental leave is critically important for women seeking faculty positions, 43% of institutions have ...

Loss of smell or olfactory dysfunction is an early indication of the neurodegenerative Alzheimer's disease (AD) and appears in approximately 90% of all patients. While loss of smell is a major symptom, patients with AD are only unable to recognize specific odors and do not completely lose their sense of smell; this suggests a possible region-specific involvement of the olfactive center in the brain. Amyloid β (Aβ), a toxic protein that accumulates in the brain is a known contributing factor in AD pathogenesis and is also present in the olfactory system that controls the sense of smell. ...

Benefits of team building exercises jeopardised if not truly voluntary Employees who like to keep their work and private lives separate may want to avoid team-building exercises Study shows why some colleagues hate compulsory team bonding Spending time with people you aren't close could be more effective than general team bonding exercises  Zoom dress up parties, tug-of-war, 'trust falls' and escape rooms - team building exercises have become the go-to tool for managers trying to increase organisational and team rapport and productivity, but unfortunately many employees resent compulsory bonding and often regard ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Feb. 25, 2021 -- When the pungent smell of rotting food sends a person running, that disgusted feeling is an evolved response that helps avoid exposure to pathogens, say University of Oregon anthropologists. In a project that blended anthropology, biology and psychology, UO researchers explored disgust behaviors among Ecuador's indigenous Shuar people. Those living in the most market-integrated households were found to have the highest levels of disgust sensitivity. The research was detailed in a paper published online Feb. 23 ahead of print ...

Climate change-driven extreme weather events, including devastating Australian bushfires, have created the urgent need for a new approach to planning and building in high fire risk areas and a shift to climate-resilient towns and cities. Published in the prestigious 'Nature Urban Sustainability', research co-author John Curtin Distinguished Professor Peter Newman from the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute said climate change had increased the threat of bushfires and other climate change issues driving an urgent need to revise the location and design of settlements. "Bushfires have become more frequent and more ...

Just as environmentally conscious scientists predicted, our excessive use of plastics is coming back to bite us. Microplastics (MPs), plastic particles smaller than a few millimeters, can now be found everywhere, but more so in seawater. As expected, MPs are harmful to both environment and health, although their exact effects are unclear. To get a better grasp of the extent of the MP problem, it is necessary to quantify how much we are exposed to them. Table salt has been shown to contain MPs, making it an ideal study target to gauge human exposure to MPs. Although many studies have measured the concentration of ...

The water cycle over the Tibetan Plateau (TP), as known as "Asian Water Tower", is vital to the regional and downstream climate and ecosystem. A new study found that the interannual variability of the summer precipitation recycle ratio over the TP is influenced by the El NIño events in preceding winters. The study was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres and conducted by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The precipitation recycle ratio is the contribution rate of the local evaporation ...

X-ray imaging is widely used in areas such as healthcare and forensic science, but existing X-ray machines are unable to capture curved three-dimensional (3D) objects at high resolution, and they are also relatively expensive. Now, an international team of researchers led by chemists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has demonstrated a potential solution to overcome these limitations by using nanocrystals that can trap X-rays. The research, which was conducted with collaborators from Fuzhou University and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, could be used not only for healthcare but also to detect defects in electronics, authenticate valuable works of art, or examine archaeological objects at microscopic scale. The findings were ...

WASHINGTON--Puberty looks different, in terms of both reproductive hormones and breast maturation, in girls with excess total body fat, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Previous studies found that girls with obesity start puberty and experience their first menstrual period earlier than girls with normal weight. It is unknown if excess body fat can alter not only the timing of puberty, but also a girl's reproductive hormone levels and development of reproductive organs such as the breasts, ovaries and uterus. "We found that in mid- to late puberty, girls with greater total body fat demonstrated higher ...

A modeling study suggests a majority of adult COVID-19 hospitalizations nationwide are attributable to at least one of four pre-existing conditions: obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure, in that order. The study, published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) and led by researchers at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, used a mathematical simulation to estimate the number and proportion of national COVID-19 hospitalizations that could have been prevented if Americans did not suffer from four major cardiometabolic conditions. Each condition has been strongly linked in other studies to increased risk of poor outcomes with COVID-19 infection. "While ...

Curtin University research has found people grieving a COVID-related death would benefit from timely support and care to reduce the high risk of experiencing problems in important areas of everyday life. Published in Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, the study is the first to focus on psychological factors that explain why people bereaved by COVID-19 might experience challenges in important areas of life, work, leisure, and relationships. Lead author, Associate Professor Lauren Breen from the Curtin School of Population Health worked with American researchers to survey people in the United States who had lost a close person due to COVID-19 and found key psychological factors such as separation ...

The hypothetical stars are among the simplest exotic compact objects proposed and constitute well founded dark matter candidates. Within this interpretation, the team is able to estimate the mass of a new particle constituent of these stars, an ultra-light boson with a mass billions of times smaller than that of the electron. Their analysis has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters on 24 February 2021. The team is co-led by Dr. Juan Calderón Bustillo, a former professor from the Department of Physics at CUHK and now "La Caixa Junior Leader - Marie Curie Fellow", at the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics, ...

A new comprehensive course incorporating an interdisciplinary approach to disaster preparedness shows promise for better equipping health professionals in responding to disasters. Medical staff and researchers from Tohoku University and Fukushima Medical University organized the program. The two universities are well equipped in disaster response and preparedness given their regions were at the epicenter of the deadly 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Their findings were published in the Journal of Disaster Research. "From the experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake, we have learned that disaster medical personnel are required to play the role of conductors in site selection dispatching and on-site activities," said Hiroyuki Sasaki at the ...

Changes to food allergy guidelines has led to a 16 per cent decrease in peanut allergy among infants, according to new study. The research, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and to be presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Virtual Annual Meeting this Sunday, also found a significant increase in parents introducing peanut into their babies' diet since the guideline changes. Introducing peanut early in a child's life has been shown to prevent peanut allergy during randomised controlled trials. But MCRI PhD candidate and study lead author Victoria Soriano said this research was the first to test the approach in homes and to analyse what impact the guideline changes have had on peanut allergies. International infant feeding ...

A pain-free, organic and biodegradable drug delivery patch may be on the horizon for home health care patients soon. Researchers from Tohoku University have developed a biobattery-powered device capable of both delivering large molecule pharmaceuticals across the skin barrier and extracting interstitial fluid for diagnostic purposes. They published their approach online on Jan. 28 in Nature Communications. The team, led by corresponding author Matsuhiko Nishizawa, professor in the Department of Finemechanics in the Graduate School of Engineering at Tohoku University, ...

Computer training applied in addition to psychotherapy can potentially help reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These are the results found by researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum and their collaborating partners in a randomised controlled clinical trial with 80 patients with PTSD. With the computerised training, the patients learned to appraise recurring and distressing trauma symptoms in a less negative light and instead to interpret them as a normal and understandable part of processing the trauma. The results are described by a team headed by Dr. Marcella Woud and Dr. Simon Blackwell from the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, together with the group led by Professor Henrik Kessler ...

Research scientists at Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital have investigated the mechanisms by which hypertension leads to arterial damage and atherosclerosis. The results may facilitate the development of new therapies. Hypertension is a prevalent condition affecting approximately one third of all adults. It is also the leading global cause of morbidity and mortality. The condition is often asymptomatic, but over time it may damage arteries causing atherosclerosis and possibly leading to stroke and heart attack. Despite the prevalence of the disease and its potentially severe consequences, how hypertension ...

Soil microorganisms play a critical role in the survival of life-sustaining ecosystems and, consequently, human well-being. Global assessments continue to provide strong evidence that humans are causing unprecedented biodiversity losses. However, existing information is strongly biased towards selected groups of vertebrates and plants, while much less is known about potential shifts in belowground communities. Soil microbial communities are largely an unseen majority, even though, according to first author Dr Carlos Guerra (iDiv, MLU), "they control a wide range of ecosystem functions that have implications for both human well-being ...

Job applications from men are disfavoured when they apply for work in female-dominated occupations. Reaching the interview stage was most difficult for men applying for jobs as cleaners. These are the results of a study by researchers from Linköping University and the University of California, Irvine, recently published in the scientific journal PLOS One. "We see that there are obstructions to men entering certain parts of the labour market. In the application process, we don't see any discrimination against women who want to get into male-dominated occupations. ...

Our deep-rooted survival instinct for disease avoidance could make us less willing to embrace strangers and take foreign travel risks. "We wanted to look beyond the current crisis and consider the future psyche of the post-COVID-19 traveller," says Associate Professor Florian Kock of Marketing and Tourism at Copenhagen Business School. The research is the first of its kind that goes beyond the surface and finds longer-term psychological consequences; discovering that the pandemic has affected tourists' attitudes and behaviours in unforeseen ways, often subconsciously. The research found post-pandemic tourism could curb our ...

A series of experiments at the ALTO particle accelerator facility in Orsay, France, has revealed that the fragments resulting from nuclear fission obtain their intrinsic angular momentum (or spin) after fission, not before, as is widely assumed. This result was made possible by the 'nu-ball' collaboration, an international group of nuclear physicists from 37 institutes and 16 countries - among them scientists from TU Darmstadt's Institute of Nuclear Physics - which studied a wide range of nuclei and their structure. The collaboration is led by the Irène-Joliot-Curie Laboratory in Orsay. Open questions since the 1930s Nuclear fission, in which a heavy nucleus splits in two and releases energy, was already discovered at the end of the 1930s by the chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz ...