Curated News: Staff Picks

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Eliot Borenstein, author of "Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy After Socialism" (Cornell University Press, 2019), has traced how conspiracy theories, and their attendant sentiment and paranoia, are ingrained in Russian political and cultural life today.

• share
• favorite_border

The decades-old puzzle game Tetris and the people who play it competitively have become a testbed for cognitive scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who want to know how humans learn and gain expertise.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study finds that shoreline recreational fishing will likely suffer significantly due to climate change. The study finds some regions of the U.S. may benefit from increasing temperatures, but those benefits will be more than offset by declines in fishing elsewhere.

• share
• favorite_border

High student loan debt has a lingering psychological effect and changes price sensitivity — and spending habits — those with much debt become numb to the prodigious numbers they face on the balance sheet and tend to spend even more.

• share
• favorite_border

World of Warcraft became the centerpiece of research by scientists from Washington University in St. Louis and INSEAD, who found that when a firm changes its game’s rewards schedule and also limits how long gamers can play in a sitting, the firm can actually make more money — and people devote a smaller share of their time on gaming.

• share
• favorite_border

Just by breathing or wearing deodorant, you have more influence over your office space than you might think, a growing body of evidence shows.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Chemists at Saint Louis University, in collaboration with scientists at the College of Charleston and the NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution, found that deliquescent minerals, which dissolve in water they absorb from humid air, can assist the construction of proteins from simpler building blocks during cycles timed to mimic day and night on the early Earth.

• share
• favorite_border

The disability community is underrepresented in American politics with three exceptions. People with disabilities ages 18-34, Native Americans with disabilities, and disabled veterans of recent wars, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, are well-represented in the halls of power.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Being a teenager is hard enough, but Dr. Yishan Shen, an assistant professor in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at Texas State University, has uncovered additional challenges for youths between 10 and 19 who are targets of bullying during contentious political campaigns.

• share
• favorite_border

Research shows how transgender people who are also racial and ethnic minorities have a difficult time finding a health care setting where all aspects of their identity are welcome, understood and addressed

• share
• favorite_border

A new songbird study that shows memories can be implanted in the brain to teach vocalizations – without any lessons from the parent.

• share
• favorite_border

Eating well isn't always easy, and the reality is simply telling people which foods to avoid doesn't do much to get them to eat better.

• share
• favorite_border

We spend our days looking at them, talking to them, and touching them.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study is the first to report evidence that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin may lessen the adverse effects of air pollution exposure on lung function.

• share
• favorite_border

Nadine Tung, MD, head of breast medical oncology and cancer genetics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, shares 5 things women under 40 should know about breast cancer

• share
• favorite_border

Family businesses are unique and complex; they have aspects and layers to them that are unlike any other organizations. Professor June West and Alana Wall provide 10 recommendations for the resilient family business.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists are investigating how extreme winter weather events are influenced by climate change. Edmund KM Chang, PhD, of Stony Brook University, has received a two-year $200,000 grant from NOAA/MAPP to study these storms using, for the first time, multi-model ensemble projections.

• share
• favorite_border

As research involving the transplantation of human “mini-brains”—known as brain organoids—into animals to study disease continues to expand, so do the ethical debates around the practice. A new paper published in Cell Stem Cell by researchers from Penn Medicine and the Department of Veterans Affairs sought to clarify the abilities of brain organoids and suggests an ethical framework that better defines and contextualizes these organoids and establishes thresholds for their use.

• share
• favorite_border

While high-energy physics and cosmology seem worlds apart in terms of sheer scale, physicists and cosmologists at Argonne are using similar machine learning methods to address classification problems for both subatomic particles and galaxies.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team of astronomers with participation by researchers from DAWN, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen has discovered a protocluster of galaxies 13.0 billion light years away using the Subaru, Keck, and Gemini Telescopes in Hawaii.

• share
• favorite_border

Astronomers have uncovered two historic events in which the Andromeda Galaxy underwent major changes to its structure. The findings shed light not only on the evolution and formation of the Andromeda Galaxy, but to our own Milky Way Galaxy as well. Two of the facilities in NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, Kitt Peak National Observatory and the International Gemini Observatory, played critical roles in the research, now published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have discovered that bleach fumes, in combination with light and a citrus compound found in many household products, can form airborne particles that might be harmful when inhaled by pets or people.

• share
• favorite_border

What did Vincent van Gogh actually paint and draw? Paintings and drawings fade, so researchers from TU Delft are using deep learning to digitally reconstruct works of art and discover what they really looked like. ‘What we see today is not the painting or drawing as it originally was,’ says researcher Jan van der Lubbe.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers in the lab of UC Santa Barbara professor Yasamin Mostofi have enabled, for the first time, determining whether the person behind a wall is the same individual who appears in given video footage, using only a pair of WiFi transceivers outside.

• share
• favorite_border

A University at Albany professor finds that in the United States, only half of people with eating disorders seek help, that certain demographics are less likely than others to seek help, and that persons with eating disorders have a five- to six-fold higher risk of suicide attempts.

• share
• favorite_border

Striking a power pose before an important meeting or interview is not going to boost your confidence or make you feel more powerful, says an Iowa State University researcher. A review of nearly 40 studies on the topic found not a single one supports the claims that power posing works.

• share
• favorite_border

The Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964 and the tsunamis it spawned may have washed a tropical fungus ashore, leading to a subsequent outbreak of often-fatal infections among people in coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest, according to a paper co-authored by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the nonprofit Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope.

• share
• favorite_border

Most people over 50 aren’t ready to embrace virtual health visits with their medical providers, a new poll on telehealth finds. Only 4% have had a video-based visit with a provider in the past year, and their reactions were mixed. Meanwhile, more than half of poll respondents didn’t know if their providers offer telehealth visits, and more than 80% expressed at least one concern about seeing a doctor or other provider virtually.

• share
• favorite_border

Nearly one in three low-income people who enrolled in Michigan’s expanded Medicaid program discovered they had a chronic illness that had never been diagnosed before, according to a new study. And whether it was a newly found condition or one they’d known about before, half of Medicaid expansion enrollees with chronic conditions said their overall health improved after one year of coverage or more.

• share
• favorite_border

Research published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences claiming to identify the notorious 19th century murderer through DNA analysis grabbed headlines around the world in the spring of 2019.

• share
• favorite_border

The iconic extinct megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon, is an impressive gigantic shark, but new research by DePaul University’s Kenshu Shimada shows scientifically justifiable maximum size for the fossil species to be no more than about 15 meters (nearly 50 feet).

• share
• favorite_border

A new blood test in development has shown ability to screen for numerous types of cancer with a high degree of accuracy, a trial of the test shows.

• share
• favorite_border

The red dwarf GJ 3512 is located 30 light-years from us. Although the star is only about a tenth of the mass of the Sun, it possesses a giant planet - an unexpected observation.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have gained a new understanding of how tiny, ultra-resilient tardigrades, or “water bears,” are protected in extreme conditions. The researchers discovered that a protein named Dsup binds to chromatin—DNA inside cells—and forms a protective cloud against extreme survival threats such as radiation damage.

• share
• favorite_border

An experiment shows that one of the basic units of life -- nucleobases -- could have originated within giant gas clouds interspersed between the stars.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Anxious mice and humans with panic attacks undergo changes to the mitochondria

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have found exceptionally preserved microbial remains in some of Earth's oldest rocks in Western Australia

• share
• favorite_border

Patches of standing water that are close together are more likely to be used by mosquitoes to lay eggs in than patches that are farther apart, according to a new study from the University of Georgia.

• share
• favorite_border

A NASA satellite searching space for new planets gave astronomers an unexpected glimpse at a black hole ripping a star to shreds. The milestone was reached with the help of a worldwide network of robotic telescopes headquartered at The Ohio State University called ASAS-SN (All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae). Astronomers from the Carnegie Observatories, Ohio State and others published their findings today in The Astrophysical Journal.

• share
• favorite_border

Does having close friends boost your self-esteem, or does having high self-esteem influence the quality of your friendships? Both, according to a meta-analysis of more than two decades of research, published by the American Psychological Association.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are the first to show that lithium-carbon dioxide batteries can be designed to operate in a fully rechargeable manner, and they have successfully tested a lithium-carbon dioxide battery prototype running up to 500 consecutive cycles of charge/recharge processes.

• share
• favorite_border

Three researchers from Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis and one from Said Business School at Oxford University have completed a study of workplace theft among restaurant workers that details, for the first time, how such stealing is contagious — and new restaurant workers are particularly susceptible. This may represent a workplace pattern where employees steal or cause their company greater unseen losses.

• share
• favorite_border

Secret-shopper-style study of nine Web-based and digital-app vendors of contraception scripts shows their services are overall safe and efficient Analysis also reveals reliable screening by vendors for contraindicated health conditions and medications in line with CDC prescription guidelines Such services may help reduce barriers to contraception and expand access for underserved populations Further improvements needed, particularly in counseling about alternative birth control methods and ensuring patient ability to adhere to prescribed medication

• share
• favorite_border

With the United States withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, questions arise about the future global success of mitigating the effects of climate change. A new study addresses these questions in a recently published paper in the Journal of Theoretical Politics.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Systematic variation in rhetoric and style suggest underlying communication strategies