In January 2019, an international team of scientists working off the tip of southern Chile got their first live look at what might be a new species of killer whale. Called Type D, the whales were previously known only from a beach stranding more than 60 years ago, fishermen’s stories, and tourist photographs. Genetic samples…
Hydrogen is a highly attractive, but also highly explosive energy carrier, which requires safe, lightweight and cheap storage as well as transportation systems. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, have now developed a chemical storage system based on simple and abundant organic compounds. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the liquid hydrogen…
A team of researchers led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed a simple method that could turn ordinary semiconducting materials into quantum machines — superthin devices marked by extraordinary electronic behavior. Such an advancement could help to revolutionize a number of industries aiming for energy-efficient electronic systems —…
Prior antibiotic exposure and use of acid suppressing medications known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) may increase the risk for hospitalized children to contract dangerous Clostridioides difficile infections, according to a study published today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. “In pediatric patients, hospital-acquired infections…
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) reduces symptoms of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) during stimulation of either the ventral capsule (VC) or anteromedial subthalamic nucleus (amSTN), according to a study in Biological Psychiatry. DBS of the regions reduced OCD symptoms to a similar extent, but produced distinct effects on specific symptoms — VC stimulation drastically improved mood,…
The prevalence of concussions in sports is well known. So, too, is the challenge clinicians and others face when they have to decide when an athlete can return to the game after a head injury. While most athletes recover from a sports-related concussion in about seven to 10 days, some need more time. This predicament…
Rainy weather is becoming increasingly common over parts of the Greenland ice sheet, triggering sudden melting events that are eating at the ice and priming the surface for more widespread future melting, says a new study. Some parts of the ice sheet are even receiving rain in winter — a phenomenon that will spread as…
Spontaneous conversation is riddled with disfluencies such as pauses and ‘uhm’s: on average people produce 6 disfluencies every 100 words. But disfluencies do not occur randomly. Instead, ‘uh’ typically occurs before ‘hard-to-name’ low-frequency words (‘uh… automobile’). Previous experiments led by Hans Rutger Bosker from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics have shown that people can…
While walking a dog provides older Americans with a valuable outlet for regular, physical activity, a Penn Medicine study has shown that fractures related to these walks have more than doubled between 2004 and 2017 in patients 65 and older. In this population, 78 percent of the fractures occurred in women, with hip and upper…
An international group of researchers including biologists from the University of Maryland found that at least four species of marine ribbon worms independently evolved the ability to regrow a head after amputation. Regeneration of amputated body parts is uncommon but does exist throughout the animal world — from salamanders, spiders and sea stars that can…