Welcome to the “Phys.org” update from Hawaii Science Digest. Views expressed in this science and technology news summary are those of the reporters and correspondents. Content supplied by “Phys.org”, an official publication of the ScienceX Network.
Accessed on 22 April 2019, 1455 UTC.
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Repelling charges prevent Cooper pairs from ‘island hopping’ in insulating state
Superconductors are able to conduct electricity with zero resistance thanks to Cooper pairs, electron duos that team up and skate through a material unimpeded. In 2007, Brown University researchers made the surprising discovery …
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
16 MINUTES AGO
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5
To save life on Earth, here’s the $100 billion-a-year solution
There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth. But in the 21st century, scientists now estimate that society must urgently come to grips this coming decade to stop the very first human-made biodiversity …
ENVIRONMENT
5 HOURS AGO
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568
‘Longevity gene’ responsible for more efficient DNA repair
Explorers have dreamt for centuries of a Fountain of Youth, with healing waters that rejuvenate the old and extend life indefinitely.
BIOTECHNOLOGY
2 HOURS AGO
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160
Best of Last Week –Travel through wormholes, electricity from snow and health risk of dining late, skipping breakfast
It was a big week for physics as a team at the University of Zurich reported on some thermodynamic magic that enables cooling without energy consumption—they built a device that allowed heat to flow from a cold source to …
OTHER
New device paves the way to 3-D-printed organs, food
More than 113,000 people are currently on the national transplant list. And with a shortage of donors, this means that about 20 people will die every day while waiting for an organ, according to the U.S. Department of Health.
ENGINEERING
32 MINUTES AGO
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Innovative drug delivery improves effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy
Even after decades of research, cancer remains difficult to treat, in part because of its ability to evade the body’s natural defenses found in the immune system.
CANCER
24 MINUTES AGO
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0
Study highlights global burden of emergency diseases and conditions
In 2015, about half of the world’s 28 million human deaths were the result of medical emergencies, with the bulk of the burden borne by poorer nations, according to a statistical analysis of information from nearly 200 countries …
HEALTH
10 MINUTES AGO
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0
Lithium boosts muscle strength in mice with rare muscular dystrophy
Standing up from a chair, climbing stairs, brushing one’s hair – all can be a struggle for people with a rare form of muscular dystrophy that causes progressive weakness in the shoulders and hips. Over time, many such people …
MEDICAL RESEARCH
2 HOURS AGO
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30
Free eBook: Multiphysics Simulation User Stories
Read about how engineers in a variety of industries build accurate digital prototypes to push the limits of technology in this free online resource.
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Sign-up and get free, monthly access to articles that cover exciting, cutting edge discoveries in Energy, Environmental Science and Agriculture.
Medical Xpress
Study suggests overdiagnosis of schizophrenia
Liver illness strikes Latino children like a ‘silent tsunami’
Many African Americans are wary of the medical system and don’t give blood. One doctor is trying to change that
Q&A: Cold sore virus can ‘wake up’ after remaining dormant for years
Researchers are testing ultrasound to treat neuropathic pain
Here’s what you need to know about Candida auris, a superbug that’s spreading in the US
Virus identified as a cause of paralyzing condition in children
Measles: What you need to know about vaccines, outbreaks and staying safe
Malawi to pilot groundbreaking malaria vaccine
Lithium boosts muscle strength in mice with rare muscular dystrophy
Artificial intelligence can diagnose PTSD by analyzing voices
Health Check: what causes constipation?
Flaw in many home pregnancy tests can return false negative results
Tech Xplore
ExAG: An image-guessing game to evaluate the helpfulness of machine explanations
A neural network can read scientific papers and render a plain-English summary
Researchers use 3-D printer to print glass
Apple may sweeten macOS 10.15 with iPad external display support
Adding human touch to unchatty chatbots may lead to bigger letdown
Explainer: What is quantum machine learning and how can it help us?
Why language technology can’t handle Game of Thrones (yet)
Vehicle-to-vehicle Volvo style to swing big in Europe
Here’s why electric cars have plenty of grunt, oomph and torque
Artificial intelligence can diagnose PTSD by analyzing voices
A specially designed computer program can help diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans by analyzing their voices, a new study finds.
PSYCHOLOGY & PSYCHIATRY
4 HOURS AGO
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EpiWear: Students work up wearable to halt allergic reactions
What if, in an emergency, you reach for your epinephrine shot and it’s not there? It would be if you were wearing it.
ENGINEERING
5 HOURS AGO
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15
Talos reports on new, sophisticated hacking group manipulating DNS systems
A hacking group has gone after government domains—they targeted 40 government and intelligence agencies, telecoms and internet giants in 13 countries for more than two years, said reports. This is a new, sophisticated …
Mystery arthritis-linked knee bone three times more common than 100 years ago
The fabella, a small bone in the knee once lost to human evolution, has made a surprising resurgence over the last century.
MEDICAL RESEARCH
6 HOURS AGO
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68
Group decisions: When more information isn’t necessarily better
In nature, group decisions are often a matter of life or death. At first glance, the way certain groups of animals like minnows branch off into smaller sub-groups might seem counterproductive to their survival. After all, …
PLANTS & ANIMALS
7 HOURS AGO
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71
New insight into how obesity, insulin resistance can impair cognition
Obesity can break down our protective blood brain barrier resulting in problems with learning and memory, scientists report.
NEUROSCIENCE
7 HOURS AGO
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112
Biologists design new molecules to help stall lung cancer
University of Texas at Dallas scientists have demonstrated that the growth rate of the majority of lung cancer cells relates directly to the availability of a crucial oxygen-metabolizing molecule.
CANCER
2 HOURS AGO
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56
Tesla gears up for fully self-driving cars amid skepticism
Tesla CEO Elon Musk appears poised to transform the company’s electric cars into driverless vehicles in a risky bid to realize a bold vision that he has been floating for years.
AUTOMOTIVE
6 HOURS AGO
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10
Blankets, bed-sharing common in accidental baby suffocations
Accidental suffocation is a leading cause of injury deaths in U.S. infants and common scenarios involve blankets, bed-sharing with parents and other unsafe sleep practices, an analysis of government data found.
PEDIATRICS
7 HOURS AGO
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18
Incident on SpaceX pad could delay its first manned flight
A mysterious but apparently serious incident occurred Saturday in Cape Canaveral, Florida involving the SpaceX capsule intended to carry American astronauts into space late this year, the private company and NASA announced.
SPACE EXPLORATION
17 HOURS AGO
5
366
The stone faces and human problems on Easter Island
In 1981, UCLA archaeology graduate student Jo Anne Van Tilburg first set foot on the island of Rapa Nui, which is commonly called Easter Island, eager to explore her interest in rock art by studying the iconic stone heads …
Five dead as buildings collapse in Philippine quake: Official
Five people were killed when at least two buildings collapsed near Manila after a powerful earthquake set skyscrapers swaying and drove terrified locals into the street.
Will Netflix eventually monetize its user data?
Even in the wake of a recent mixed earning report and volatile stock prices, Netflix remains the media success story of the decade. The company, whose user base has grown rapidly, now boasts almost 150 million global subscribers.
Toshiba’s breakthrough algorithm realizes world’s fastest, largest-scale combinatorial optimization
Toshiba Corporation has realized a major breakthrough in combinatorial optimization—the selection of the best solutions from among an enormous number of combinatorial patterns—with the development of an algorithm that …
Thousands protest China-backed mega-dam in Myanmar
Thousands of people in northern Myanmar took to the streets on Monday to protest against the proposed reinstatement of a Chinese-backed mega-dam they say will cause huge environmental damage and bring little benefit to the …
‘You’re unallocated!’ and other BS companies use to obscure reality
Corporate America has invented many ways to avoid letting the public know it’s laying people off – or telling employees themselves “You’re fired.”
Slime mold absorbs substances to memorize them
In 2016, CNRS scientists demonstrated that the slime mold Physarum polycephalum, a single-cell organism without a nervous system, could learn to no longer fear a harmless but aversive substance and could transmit this knowledge …
Modified ‘white graphene’ for eco-friendly energy
Scientists from Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU), together with colleagues from the United States and Germany, have found a way to obtain inexpensive catalysts from hexagonal boron nitride or “white graphene.” The technology …
Artificial receptor distinguishes between male and female hormones
Chemists at Tokyo Tech’s Laboratory for Chemistry and Life Science have designed and developed a capsule-shaped synthetic receptor that can distinguish between male and female steroid hormones. Namely, the receptor displays …
Five things to consider before you hire a tutor for your child
Private tutoring is a growing business, with people spending hundreds of billions of dollars. But is it worth it? And how does a person pick among all the options?
From 2-D to 1-D: atomically quasi ‘1-D’ wires using a carbon nanotube template
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used carbon nanotube templates to produce nanowires of transition metal monochalcogenide (TMM), which are only 3 atoms wide in diameter. These are 50 times longer than previous …
Scientists identify a novel target for corn straw utilization
Plant cell walls, as repositories of fixed carbon, are an important source of biomass, which is mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. However, the complex lignin structure makes it a rather inefficient …
Marine Skin dives deeper for better monitoring
A new and greatly improved version of an electronic tag, called Marine Skin, used for monitoring marine animals could revolutionize our ability to study sea life and its natural environment, say KAUST researchers.
What happens when a big business tries to take over and rename a neighborhood
What if Google tried to rename your neighborhood?
How ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ inspired the cathedral’s 19th-century revival
On April 15, people around the world watched in horror as a voracious fire consumed the medieval wooden roof of Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral and felled its spire.
Anxiety ‘epidemic’ brewing on college campuses, researchers find
The number of 18- to 26-year-old students who report suffering from anxiety disorder has doubled since 2008, perhaps as a result of rising financial stress and increased time spent on digital devices, according to preliminary …
PSYCHOLOGY & PSYCHIATRY
APR 19, 2019
56
1287
Thermodynamic magic enables cooling without energy consumption
Physicists at the University of Zurich have developed an amazingly simple device that allows heat to flow temporarily from a cold to a warm object without an external power supply. Intriguingly, the process initially appears …
GENERAL PHYSICS
APR 19, 2019
44
3026
Things are stacking up for NASA’s Mars 2020 spacecraft
For the past few months, the clean room floor in High Bay 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been covered in parts, components and test equipment for the Mars 2020 spacecraft, scheduled for …
SPACE EXPLORATION
APR 19, 2019
9
374
India could meet air quality standards by cutting household fuel use
India could make a major dent in air pollution by curbing emissions from dirty household fuels such as wood, dung, coal and kerosene, shows a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the …
ENVIRONMENT
APR 19, 2019
8
458
Through thick and thin: Neutrons track lithium ions in battery electrodes
Lithium-ion batteries are expected to have a global market value of $47 billion by 2023. They are used in numerous applications, because they offer relatively high energy density (storage capacity), high operating voltage, …
MATERIALS SCIENCE
APR 19, 2019
6
117
Researchers report high performance solid-state sodium-ion battery
Solid-state sodium-ion batteries are far safer than conventional lithium-ion batteries, which pose a risk of fire and explosions, but their performance has been too weak to offset the safety advantages. Researchers Friday …
MATERIALS SCIENCE
APR 19, 2019
5
619
Discovery may help explain why women get autoimmune diseases far more often than men
It’s one of the great mysteries of medicine, and one that affects the lives of millions of people: Why do women’s immune systems gang up on them far more than men’s do, causing nine times more women to develop autoimmune …
IMMUNOLOGY
APR 19, 2019
3
504
Scientists uncover a link between RNA editing and chloroplast-to-nucleus communication
What will a three-degree-warmer world look like? How will plants fare in more extreme weather conditions? When experiencing stress or damage from various sources, plants use chloroplast-to-nucleus communication to regulate …
BIOTECHNOLOGY
APR 19, 2019
3
190
Fuel cells in bacteria
The exchange of nitrogen between the atmosphere and organic matter is crucial for life on Earth because nitrogen is a major component of essential molecules such as proteins and DNA. One major route for this exchange, discovered …
CELL & MICROBIOLOGY
APR 19, 2019
3
232
Inequalities in the UK can be detected using deep learning image analysis
Social, economic, environmental and health inequalities within cities can be detected using street imagery. The findings, from scientists at Imperial College London, are published in Scientific Reports this week.
SOFTWARE
APR 19, 2019
3
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