Here are today’s top science and technology stories from “ScienceBlog.com.”
Views expressed in this post are those of the reporters and correspondents.
Content supplied by “ScienceBlog.com.”
Accessed on 25 June 2020, 1415 UTC.
Source:
Please click link or scroll down to read your selections.
ScienceBlog.com: 10 Stories to Start Your Day |
 |
- Has confinement turned us all into hikikomori?
- Income, race are associated with disparities in access to green spaces
- Decline in green energy spending might offset COVID-era emissions benefits
- Introducing a New Isotope: Mendelevium-244
- Existing drugs may limit damage caused by HIV
- Slow-growing rotavirus mutant reveals early steps of viral assembly
- Like a treasure map, brain region emphasizes reward location
- Black hole or neutron star?
- Device turns wasted heat into clean electricity
- Simple device monitors health using sweat
| Has confinement turned us all into hikikomori?
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:53 AM PDT  After two months of lockdown, have we become like the hikikomori – the Japanese youngsters who choose to live in isolation, shunning the outside world? Natacha Vellut, a psychosociologist at the CERMES3 laboratory and co-author of a book on the subject, offers her analysis. Who are the hikikomori? Natacha Vellut: The hikikomori are young Japanese men […] |
| Income, race are associated with disparities in access to green spaces
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:53 AM PDT  Access to green spaces in metro areas—parks, trails, even the tree cover in a neighborhood – is largely associated with income and race, new research indicates. Researchers combined census-block-group demographic and socio-economic data with satellite imagery to analyze access to green spaces and vegetation in two metropolitan areas: Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta, Georgia. Their study […] |
| Decline in green energy spending might offset COVID-era emissions benefits
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:52 AM PDT  The short-term environmental benefits of the COVID-19 crisis, including declines in carbon emissions and local air pollution, have been documented since the early days of the crisis. This silver lining to the global crisis, however, could be far outweighed by the impacts on clean energy innovation, a new Yale-led study finds. The economic downturn triggered […] |
| Introducing a New Isotope: Mendelevium-244
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:50 AM PDT  A team of scientists working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has discovered a new form of the human-made element mendelevium. The newly created isotope, mendelevium-244, is the 17th and lightest form of mendelevium, which is element 101 on the periodic table. Mendelevium was first created by Berkeley Lab scientists in 1955 (see a […] |
| Existing drugs may limit damage caused by HIV
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:49 AM PDT  Yale researchers have identified four drugs that may help minimize the long-term health effects of HIV infection, they report June 23 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Antiretroviral therapy has proved to be a life-saving treatment for those infected with HIV. Yet even after treatment, most patients still harbor latent HIV in some immune system cells. […] |
| Slow-growing rotavirus mutant reveals early steps of viral assembly
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:48 AM PDT  Rotavirus is responsible for more than 130,000 deaths annually in infants and children younger than five years. The virus causes severe, dehydrating diarrhea as it replicates in viral factories called viroplasms that form inside infected cells. Viroplasms have been difficult to study because they normally form very quickly, but a serendipitous observation led researchers at Baylor […] |
| Like a treasure map, brain region emphasizes reward location
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:47 AM PDT  We are free to wander, but usually when we go somewhere it’s for a reason. In a new study, researchers at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT show that as we pursue life’s prizes, a region of the brain tracks our location with an especially strong predilection for the location of the […] |
| Black hole or neutron star?
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:46 AM PDT  When the most massive stars die, they collapse under their own gravity and leave behind black holes; when stars that are a bit less massive than this die, they explode and leave behind dense, dead remnants of stars called neutron stars. For decades, astronomers have been puzzled by a gap in mass that lies between […] |
| Device turns wasted heat into clean electricity
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 08:45 AM PDT  New matchbook-sized devices could convert wasted heat in our homes, offices and vehicles into an environmentally friendly source of electricity, according to a team of scientists. “We can take advantage of sources of wasted heat all around us, for example the hot water lines in our homes,” said Shashank Priya, associate vice president for research […] |
| Simple device monitors health using sweat
Posted: 24 Jun 2020 07:57 AM PDT  A device that monitors health conditions in the body using a person’s sweat has been developed by Penn State and Xiangtan University researchers, according to Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State. “We want to be able to analyze the sweat from daily exercise or from the heat of the […] |
For the latest trends in science, technology, medicine, health, the environment, and artificial intelligence, please check the blog sidebars and links. These news feeds are updated daily. Thanks for joining us today.
Until next time,
Russ Roberts