As any surfer will tell you, waves pack a powerful punch. Now, we are one step closer to capturing the energy behind the ocean’s constant ebb and flow with an improved “blue energy” harvesting device. Researchers report in ACS Energy Letters that simply repositioning the electrode — from the center of a see-sawing liquid-filled tube to the end where the water crashes with the most force — dramatically increased the amount of wave energy that could be harvested. The tube-shaped wave-energy harvesting device improved upon ...

Choosing paint for your home brings a lot of options: What kind of paint, what type of finish and what color? Water-based paints have emerged as “greener” and less smelly than solvent-based options. And they are often advertised as containing little-to-no volatile organic compounds (VOCs). But, according to research published in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters, some of these paints do contain compounds that are considered VOCs, along with other chemicals of emerging concern. Paint consists of four ingredients: pigments, binders, additives ...

A fungus devastating frogs and toads on nearly every continent may have an Achilles heel. Scientists have discovered a virus that infects the fungus, and that could be engineered to save the amphibians. The fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or Bd, ravages the skin of frogs and toads, and eventually causes heart failure. To date it has contributed to the decline of over 500 amphibian species, and 90 possible extinctions including yellow-legged mountain frogs in the Sierras and the Panamanian golden frog.  A ...

When we communicate with other people face-to-face, we do so by maintaining a certain physical distance from each other. This space surrounding our body while interacting is called the interpersonal space (IPS), and maintaining adequate IPS is crucial for better communication. Many studies have investigated the psychological and physiological changes that occur based on the presence of another person in the IPS during face-to-face interactions. These studies are based on the avoidance behaviour that we experience when a stranger invades our IPS, which manifests in the form of increased heart rate and discomfort. However, ...

California, a state known for its aggressive greenhouse gas reduction policies, is ironically the nation’s greatest emitter of one: sulfuryl fluoride.  As much as 17% of global emissions of this gas, a common pesticide for treating termites and other wood-infesting insects, stem from the United States. The majority of those emissions trace back to just a few counties in California, finds a new study led by Johns Hopkins University. “When we finally mapped it out, the results were puzzling because the emissions were all coming from one place,” said co-author Scot ...

Menlo Park, Calif. — After two decades of work, scientists and engineers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and their collaborators are celebrating the completion of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera. As the heart of the DOE- and National Science Foundation-funded Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the 3,200-megapixel camera will help researchers observe our universe in unprecedented detail. Over ten years, it will generate an enormous trove of data on the southern night sky that researchers will ...

Scientists at the Institute of Pathophysiology of the University Medical Center Mainz made the first comprehensive analysis on how adults use tickling in connection with sexual activity. As part of their study, they surveyed 719 people with a so-called tickling fetish. The results of the study show that human sexuality encompasses a variety of forms of expression that need to be studied and understood in greater depth. Most people laugh when they are tickled. But there are also individuals for whom tickling or being tickled triggers sexual arousal. This sexual preference is referred to as a tickle ...

Research Highlights: Asian American adults with more unfavorable factors related to income level, education, housing, access to health care and other social variables had a greater likelihood of having risk factors for cardiovascular disease in this study. The relationship between social determinants of health and cardiovascular disease risk factors varied widely among some Asian American subgroups, based on the study’s findings. Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT/5 a.m. ET Wed., April 3, 2024 DALLAS, April 3, 2024 — Having more unfavorable social determinants of health, such as being unemployed, uninsured or not having education beyond high school, ...

Artificial Intelligence can be used to detect invasive Asian hornets and raise the alarm, new research shows. University of Exeter researchers have developed VespAI, an automated system that attracts hornets to a monitoring station and captures standardised images using an overhead camera. When an Asian hornet visits, VespAI can identify the species with almost perfect accuracy – allowing authorities to mount a rapid response. Asian hornets (also known as yellow-legged hornets) have already invaded much of mainland Europe and parts of east Asia, and have recently been reported in the US states of Georgia and South Carolina. The ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — A collaboration between research groups at the University of California, TU Dresden in Germany and Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s in Los Angeles has identified a mechanism by which embryonic cells organize themselves to send signals to surrounding cells, telling them where to go and what to do. While these signaling centers have been known to science for a while, how individual cells turn into organizers has been something of a mystery. Until now. In a paper published in the journal Nature ...

Tallinn, 3rd April 2024 - 10 AM CET – NAOS, the French founding company behind pioneering ecobiological skincare brands BIODERMA, Etat Pur, and Institut Esthederm, introduces its innovative new digital tool Skin Observer in collaboration with Haut.AI, a leader in AI applications for skincare and skin aging. The partnership merges cutting-edge AI technology with deep expertise in skin ecobiology.  Developed in collaboration with dermatologists, NAOS Skin Observer offers quick and precise skin analysis, recommending customized rituals adapted to individual skin types. The system adjusts routines based on user preferences, dynamic skin ...

A breakthrough perspective article in Frontiers in Public Health, "Peace through Health: Traditional Medicine Meditation in the Prevention of Collective Stress Violence and War," sheds light on the profound impact of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program on fostering global peace. The article reviews and analyzes the demand for public health and medicine to help prevent collective violence and “intractable” wars in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa and elsewhere and ...

If you imagine an industrial wind turbine, you likely picture the windmill design, technically known as a horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT). But the very first wind turbines, which were developed in the Middle East around the 8th century for grinding grain, were vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWT), meaning they spun perpendicular to the wind, rather than parallel. Due to their slower rotation speed, VAWTs are less noisy than HAWTs and achieve greater wind energy density, meaning they need less space for ...

A new paper in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press, finds that smokers who switch to electronic cigarettes are now more likely to stop smoking regular cigarettes. In the past, smokers who began using electronic cigarettes mostly continued smoking. Electronic nicotine delivery systems first emerged on the U.S. market in 2007. The first e-cigarettes resembled conventional cigarettes (in appearance) and used fixed low-voltage batteries. Beginning in 2016, manufacturers introduced e-liquids containing nicotine salt formulations. These new e-cigarettes became widely available. These nicotine salts are lower in pH than freebase formulations, which allow manufacturers ...

Most women leaving prison face profound disadvantages and rarely have access to the resources needed to settle back into the community. Seemingly simple tasks such as obtaining replacement identification documents or opening a bank account become tangled in complexities. Now researchers at the University of South Australia are co-designing a chatbot to help formerly incarcerated women re-establish their lives on the outside, and reduce the risk of them returning to prison. Led by a team of UniSA researchers in collaboration with advocacy group Seeds of Affinity, the tech-based solution aims to help women access trusted ...

Doctors are feeling unable to tackle growing problem of childhood obesity due to a lack of training and capacity according to new research. In a paper published in the British Journal of General Practice, researchers from the University of Birmingham conducted in-depth interviews with healthcare professionals (HCPs) to understand their experiences of supporting families to tackle childhood obesity. One participant in the study said: “I had one mum and her child was overweight, but she was a young parent and she actually didn’t know how to cook the dinners and, yeah… we spent a lot of time with her giving her ...

Galaxies start life with their stars rotating in an orderly pattern but in some the motion of stars in more random. Until now, scientists have been uncertain about what causes this – possibly the surrounding environment or the mass of the galaxy itself. A new study, published in a paper today in MNRAS (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society), has found that the most important factor is neither of these things. It shows the tendency of the stars to have random motion is driven mostly by the age of the galaxy – things just get messy over time. “When we did the analysis, we found that age, consistently, whichever way we slice or dice it, is always the most ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — To say that the technology and products Sandia National Laboratories researchers have helped imagine, innovate and industrialize have had a massive impact on the country would be an understatement. Two studies commissioned by Sandia and the National Nuclear Security Administration show Sandia’s work has had an overall economic impact of $140 billion since the year 2000. That’s a significant figure, especially considering it spans just 20 years, less than a third of Sandia’s 75-year existence. “I am very proud of how Sandia excels in fulfilling its technology transfer mission to deliver economic impact to the U.S.,” ...

University of New Mexico researchers have found that even low to moderate alcohol use by pregnant patients may contribute to subtle changes in their babies’ prenatal development, including lower birth length and a shorter duration of gestation. In a new paper published in the journal Alcohol Clinical & Experimental Research, a team led by Ludmila Bakhireva, MD, PhD, MPH, professor and assistant dean for Clinical and Translational Research in the UNM College of Pharmacy, also reported some sex-related differences in the effects of drinking during pregnancy on the developing ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL APRIL 4, 2024, at 6:30 pm EDT) – Annual prostate cancer cases worldwide are projected to double by the year 2040, and annual deaths are projected to increase by 85% to almost 700,000 over the same timeframe – mainly among men in low- and middle-income countries. A commissioned report published online in The Lancet on April 4 highlights the future landscape of prostate cancer and seeks to guide cancer experts worldwide on how to manage the massive influx of prostate cancer patients projected over the next two decades. Brandon Mahal, M.D., radiation oncologist and ...

A new data crowdsourcing platform aims to preserve the sound of Romeyka, an endangered millennia-old variety of Greek. Experts consider the language to be a linguistic goldmine and a living bridge to the ancient world.   The initiative, led by Professor Ioanna Sitaridou from the University of Cambridge, contributes to the UN’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-32), which aims ‘to draw global attention on the critical situation of many indigenous languages and to mobilise stakeholders and resources for their preservation, revitalization and promotion.’ Romeyka is thought to have only a couple of thousand ...

Newly hatched chicks raised in darkness and allowed to touch either a smooth or bumpy cube for 24 hours instantly recognised the object with their vision upon first exposure to light.   This suggests chicks can link touch and vision without any prior experience combining these senses, challenging the long-held belief that such integration requires learning.   The discovery implies a pre-wired ability in the brain for cross-modal perception, potentially redefining our understanding of animal cognition and sensory processing.  In a study published in Biology Letters, researchers at Queen Mary University of London have cracked ...

Scientists use tiny minerals called zircons as geologic timekeepers. Often no bigger than a grain of sand, these crystals record chemical signatures of the geological environment where they formed. In a new study led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, researchers used them to describe what could be an overlooked step in a fundamental tectonic process that raises seafloors into mountains.   In a study published in the journal Geology, the researchers describe zircons from the Andes mountains of Patagonia. Although the zircons formed when tectonic plates were colliding, they have a chemical signature associated ...

Novel approach finds gut microbiota that are highly predictive of BMI, waist circumference, and fat mass are different in men and women And might change the chemical makeup (metabolome) of the gut in ways that affect the metabolism of different bioactive molecules that influence metabolic disease development Interventions to help prevent obesity-favourable microbiome may need to be different in men and women *This is an early press release from the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2024) Venice 12-15 May. Please credit the Congress if using this material* New research being presented at this year’s European ...

It turns out that money isn’t the only thing sports gamblers are risking. According to a new study, bettors who wager on sporting events, esports, and daily fantasy sports are much more likely than other individuals to binge drink. The findings, compiled by a research team from UNLV and the University of New Mexico, were published this week in the journal JAMA Network Open. Over the course of three weeks in spring 2022, researchers surveyed more than 4,300 adults across the U.S. Nearly 3,300 self-reported past year alcohol use, while about 1,800 identified themselves as gamblers who had bet on sports in the past year. Researchers ...