A study led by academics at the University of Bristol's Intelligent Systems Laboratory and the School of Journalism at Cardiff University have used Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to analyse 2.5 million articles from 498 different English-language online news outlets over ten months. The researchers found that: • As expected, readability measures show that online tabloid newspapers are more readable than broadsheets and use more sentimental language. Among 15 US and UK newspapers, the Sun is the easiest to read, comparable to the BBC's children's news programme, ...

Among the most important techniques developed in atomic physics over the past few years are methods that enable the storage and cooling of atoms and ions at temperatures just above absolute zero. Scientists from Bangalore and Mainz have now demonstrated in an experiment that captured ions can also be cooled through contact with cold atoms and may thus be stored in so-called ion traps in a stable condition for longer periods of time. This finding runs counter to predictions that ions would actually be heated through collisions with atoms. The results obtained by the joint ...

The possible kinematics and their corresponding geometries were once regarded as an already-solved problem. The de Sitter relativity research group formed by researchers from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, and Beijing Normal University, restudied the problem and showed that additional, previously unknown realizations exist of possible kinematical algebras, each of which has so(3) isotropy and a ten-generators symmetry group. They presented these geometries corresponding to all these realizations and provided a classification in an article, entitled "Geometries ...

Soil respiration is a critical hydrological process that plays an important role in the terrestrial carbon cycle. Associate Professor CHEN ShuTao and his colleagues from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology set out to estimate annual soil respiration from terrestrial ecosystems in China. They have tabulated published estimates of annual soil respiration and developed an empirically based, semi-mechanistic model that includes climate and soil properties. They found that the highest and lowest annual ...

About 250 million years ago, four major floral provinces existed on the Earth's surface, the Gondwana Floral Province in temperate Southern Hemisphere, the Angara Floral Province in temperate Northern Hemisphere, and the Euroamerican and the Cathaysian floral provinces in tropical equatorial regions. These floras evolved as the continents drifted. The Cathaysian Flora is mainly distributed in most areas of today's China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. North China lies at the center of the origin of the Cathaysian Flora. During the Permian, the southern part of the North China ...

Archean cartons are commonly underlain by a cold, thick (>200 km), isotopically enriched, and compositionally refractory lithospheric keel, and represent some of the most stable regions on our planet. However, the North China Craton (NCC), an old continental geological structure dating back 4.0 Ga, is underlain by a thin lithosphere ( END ...

This press release is available in French. Ottawa — An Ottawa scientist has discovered a critical reason why women experience fertility problems as they get older. The breakthrough by Dr. Johné Liu, a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and professor at the University of Ottawa, also points to a simple solution that could increase the viability of egg cells for women in their late 30s and older — putrescine water. In an online editorial published by Aging based on his recently published findings, Liu outlines how a simple program of drinking water ...

Bonn/Magdeburg/Halle, 26/11/2012. A new substance class for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases now promises increased efficacy paired with fewer side effects. To achieve this, a team of scientists under the leadership of Prof. Gunter Fischer (Max Planck Research Unit for Enzymology of Protein Folding, Halle/Saale, Germany) and Dr. Frank Striggow (German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)) have combined two already approved pharmaceutical substances with each other using a chemical linker structure. The objectives of this combination ...

Streaming data, social networks, online games and services, databases – the number of interactions we have with the Internet is continually increasing. Every time we click on a link, we trigger an avalanche of computer operations that are then carried out in huge server farms. It's estimated that these massive installations are responsible for 2% of total world electricity consumption. EPFL Scientists are proposing a novel solution to help rein in this runaway consumption. By integrating the same kind of processor cores that are used in smartphones, the amount of energy ...

Alexandria, VA – Considered individually, 2012's record high temperatures, droughts, wildfires, storms and diminished snowpack are not necessarily alarming. But combined, the fact that the first seven months of 2012 were hotter than the hottest on record, more than half of the U.S. counties were declared disaster areas due to drought, and the snowpacks were at all-time lows, these indicators are much more significant from a climate standpoint. Two questions then remain: Will we see the same thing in 2013? And how do we increase our ability to weather the storms and other ...

A low intake of folate and vitamin B12 increases the risk of melancholic depressive symptoms, according to a study among nearly 3,000 middle-aged and elderly Finnish subjects. On the other hand, non-melancholic depressive symptoms are associated with an increased risk for the metabolic syndrome. Based on these new observations, melancholic and non-melancholic depression may be separate depressive subtypes with different etiologies in terms of proinflammation and diet. The study was the first to look at these depressive sub-types separately. "The findings have practical ...

A large number of friends on Facebook may appear impressive but, according to a new report, the more social circles a person is linked to online the more likely social media will be a source of stress. A report from the University of Edinburgh Business School has found that the more groups of people in someone's Facebook friends, the greater potential to cause offence. In particular, adding employers or parents resulted in the greatest increase in anxiety. Stress arises when a user presents a version of themself on Facebook that is unacceptable to some of their online ...

Diagnosing an injury in a swan is a far from easy undertaking. Not only are swans large, frequently weighing over 10 kg, but they are generally not happy at being handled and thus many of them can only be examined after sedation, which naturally represents a risk. The hip joints of many species of bird are known to be vulnerable to injury but swans are believed to suffer broken hips only rarely. The traditional way of examining the birds' hips relies on radiography but Gumpenberger and Scope now show that computerized tomography (CT) gives more reliable findings. The ...

The latest correspondence is posted online today as part of the BMJ's open data campaign, aimed at persuading Roche to honour the promise it made almost three years ago to make key Tamiflu trial data available for independent scrutiny. Last week, Donald MacLean, Life Cycle Leader for Tamiflu, wrote to Professor Chris Del Mar in his capacity as coordinating editor of the Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group, concerning "our debate on Tamiflu data." The Cochrane researchers say they object to Roche's suggestion that there is a debate on Tamiflu data. "There is ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new University at Buffalo study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters examines maar craters, which resemble the bowl-like cavities formed by meteorites but are in some ways more mysterious. Scientists often can discern pertinent details about meteorites -- when they struck, how large they were, the angle they approached Earth and other information -- by measuring the diameter and volume of the impact crater. Maar craters, which form when fissures of magma beneath Earth's surface meet groundwater, causing volcanic explosions, are not as telling, ...

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have developed a new strategy for finding novel antibiotic compounds, using a diagnostic panel of bacterial strains for screening chemical extracts from natural sources. Public health officials warn of a looming antibiotic crisis due to the steady increase in antibiotic resistance and a dramatic decline in the development of new antibiotics. Most currently available antibiotics are derived from natural compounds produced by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. New antibiotics developed by drug companies are ...

Cambridge, Mass. - November 26, 2012 - Now you see it, now you don't. A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) can absorb 99.75% of infrared light that shines on it. When activated, it appears black to infrared cameras. Composed of just a 180-nanometer-thick layer of vanadium dioxide (VO2) on top of a sheet of sapphire, the device reacts to temperature changes by reflecting dramatically more or less infrared light. Announced today in the journal Applied Physics Letters, and featured on its cover, this perfect absorber ...

Two drugs commonly given during cardiac surgery can lead to convulsive seizures, but anesthetics can help cut the risk, according to new research from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Patients undergoing complex heart operations or trauma surgery are often given tranexamic acid (TXA) and aminocaproic acid (EACA) to reduce blood loss. But Faculty of Medicine researchers found these drugs are associated with a four-to-six-fold increase in post-operative seizures. The risk is highest for cardiac surgery patients – between three and seven and a half per ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Nov. 26, 2012 — A team of researchers, including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has demonstrated a new concept for a reliable nuclear reactor that could be used on space flights. The research team recently demonstrated the first use of a heat pipe to cool a small nuclear reactor and power a Stirling engine at the Nevada National Security Site's Device Assembly Facility near Las Vegas. The Demonstration Using Flattop Fissions (DUFF) experiment produced 24 watts of electricity. A team of engineers from Los Alamos, the NASA Glenn Research ...

Cyber Monday is here and it brings one last chance for electronic cigarette fans to save big on all of their favorite e-cig starter kits and accessories. CocktailNerd.com is offering readers big savings on Cyber Monday with exclusive deals that will expire at midnight. This is the year's biggest sale on all of the best electronic cigarettes brands and with exclusive coupon codes from Cocktail Nerd, e-cig shoppers can save up to 65% on all of their favorite products. Cocktail Nerd is the Internet's most cutting edge website for e-cig news, reviews, and savings. The site ...

Alzheimer's disease is one of the most common causes of dementia. In Germany and Switzerland alone, around 1.5 million people are affected, and forecasts predict a doubling of the number of patients worldwide within the next 20 years. The accumulation of particular abnormal proteins, including amyloid-ß (Aβ) among others, in patients' brains plays a central role in this disease. Prof. Frank Heppner from the Department of Neuropathology at Charité and his colleague Prof. Burkhard Becher from the Institute for Experimental Immunology at the University of Zurich were ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Doctors now use cancer-killing viruses to treat some patients with lethal, fast-growing brain tumors. Clinical trials show that these therapeutic viruses are safe but less effective than expected. A new study led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) shows that the reason for this is in part due to the patient's own immune system, which quickly works to eliminate the anticancer virus. The findings, published in the journal Nature ...

(Philadelphia, PA) – A team of scientists from Temple University School of Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania has moved another step closer to solving a decades-long mystery of how the all-important flow of calcium into the cell's power source, the mitochondria, is controlled. By painstakingly shutting down the activity of 50 genes, one at a time, they have identified a protein, MCUR1, which hugs the inside of the mitochondrial membrane and is part of an elaborate mitochondrial channel pore system. MCUR1 acts as an accelerator to help regulate calcium coming ...

CHICAGO – People with Parkinson's disease benefit from exercise programs on stationary bicycles, with the greatest effect for those who pedal faster, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (fcMRI) data showed that faster pedaling led to greater connectivity in brain areas associated with motor ability. Parkinson's disease is a chronic, progressive disorder of the central nervous system. Early-stage symptoms like shaking and difficulty with walking ...

CHICAGO – Both very high and very low levels of physical activity can accelerate the degeneration of knee cartilage in middle-aged adults, according to a new study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Nearly one in every two people in the U.S. may develop knee osteoarthritis by age 85, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2030, an estimated 67 million Americans over the age of 18 are projected to have physician-diagnosed arthritis. Researchers at the University of California in San Francisco ...