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 Bat wings inspire new breed of drone By Matthew Stock The unique mechanical properties of bat wings could lead to a new breed of nature-inspired drone. A prototype built by researchers at the University of Southampton shows that membrane wings can have improved aerodynamic properties and fly over longer distances on less power. Using a paper-thin rubber membrane, the team designed wings that mimic the physiology of the muscles in a bat's wing, changing shape in response to the forces it experiences. Read More »Stinging Jellyfish Come to Jersey, But Beaches Still Safe Read More » Ancient Greek 'Computer' Came with a User Guide Read More » Where's the Exit? Python Caught in Circle of Own Molted Skin The serpent slithered around and around for about 3 hours until it eventually broke free, according to a reptile center in Australia. Stimson's pythons molt all the time, about once a month on average, but it's rare for one to get stuck in its sloughed-off skin, said David Penning, a doctoral fellow of biology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, who is not affiliated with the reptile center. "A young snake that's growing will shed more often than an older snake, because they're literally running out of space inside their skin," he said. Read More »Rare Bronze Wing from Roman Sculpture Uncovered in England Read More » Rainbow-Colored Shooting Stars May Fly Overhead Someday The Japanese company ALE plans to create and release artificial meteors into space that emit colorful trails when they burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Normally, shooting stars form when particles in space — usually much smaller than an inch (just a few millimeters long) enter the atmosphere and burn brightly, in a process known as plasma emission. The company plans to launch a satellite carrying about 500 to 1,000 "source particles," which will become the artificial meteors. Read More »The Kilogram May Be Redefined Read More » Pretty as a Princess: Disney Movies May Be Making Girls 'Girlier' New research finds that preschoolers who watch Disney's princess movies are not only more likely to don the sparkling ultrafeminine fashion but also to internalize stereotypical gender roles. Researchers surveyed almost 200 4-year-old girls and boys, as well as the children's mothers and teachers, to learn about each kid's Disney movie- and TV-watching habits, favorite princesses and playtime routines. "Girls who were into the princess culture at the first wave were more gender-stereotyped one year later," said study lead researcher Sarah Coyne, an associate professor of family life at Brigham Young University in Utah. Read More »Pretty Risky: Men Would Skip Condoms with Attractive Women Previous research has suggested that there is a link between perceived attractiveness and a person's willingness to have unprotected sex, the researchers, led by Anastasia Eleftheriou, a graduate student in computer science at the University of Southampton in England, wrote in the new study. One earlier study of women, for example, found that the more attractive they considered a man to be, the more willing they would be to have unprotected sex with that man. Fifty-one heterosexual men completed a survey in which they were asked to rate the attractiveness of 20 women in photographs on a scale from 0 to 100. Read More »5 Surprising Facts About Egg Freezing A city in Japan has announced that it will pay a large part of the cost of egg freezing for women who live there, as part of a program aimed at raising the country's low birth rate. Egg freezing is the process of extracting egg cells from a woman's ovaries and storing them for later use. Urayasu, a city near Tokyo, will provide the currency equivalent of $850,000 over a three-year period to fund a research project on egg freezing, according to the Associated Press. Read More »New 'Artificial Synapses' Could Let Supercomputers Mimic the Human Brain Large-scale brain-like machines with human-like abilities to solve problems could become a reality, now that researchers have invented microscopic gadgets that mimic the connections between neurons in the human brain better than any previous devices. The new research could lead to better robots, self-driving cars, data mining, medical diagnosis, stock-trading analysis and "other smart human-interactive systems and machines in the future," said Tae-Woo Lee, a materials scientistat the Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea and senior author of the study. Previous research suggested that the brain has approximately 100 billion neurons and roughly 1 quadrillion (1 million billion) connections wiring these cells together. Read More »Music Festival Season Is Here: How to Avoid Dangerous Health Problems Your favorite bands aren't the only things that make headlines when summer music festival season is in full swing — each year, there are also news stories of people becoming dangerously ill and even dying at these events. Indeed, summer music festivals can be a perfect storm of heat, dehydration and drug use that can lead to deadly consequences. When it comes to drugs at these events, the biggest problem is ultimately the bad decision-making that goes hand-in-hand with drug use, said Dr. Lewis Nelson, a toxicologist and emergency medicine physician at New York University Langone Medical Center. Read More »Caffeine's 'Boost' Disappears When You're Extremely Sleep-Deprived "These results are important, because caffeine is a stimulant widely used to counteract performance decline following periods of restricted sleep," the lead author of the study, Tracy Jill Doty, a behavioral biology scientist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, said in a statement. Read More »Docs Diagnose Smartphone 'Blindness' in 2 Women For two women in the United Kingdom, mysterious vision problems that happened only at night or early in the morning turned out to have a rather innocuous cause: looking at a smartphone in the dark. An eye exam showed her vision was normal, and she had no signs of a blood clot or other conditions that could cause short-term vision loss, the doctors said. This vision problem lasted about 15 minutes, and happened on and off for six months, the report said. Read More »Stomach Sucker: How Does New Weight-Loss Device Work? The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a weight-loss device that may sound like something out of a science-fiction movie: a small tube inserted into the stomach allows patients to drain a portion of their gut's contents before the body absorbs those calories. The device, called AspireAssist, was approved by the FDA after a year-long clinical trial on 171 people, 111 of whom underwent a procedure to place the device. But not all weight-loss experts think the device is a game-changer. Read More »These Plant Compounds May Reduce Menopause Symptoms Some plant-based therapies, including supplements with compounds found in soybeans, may help reduce symptoms of menopause, according to a new review of relevant research. In these studies, the women took either a planted-based therapy, such as a supplement or herbal remedy, or a placebo to treat symptoms of menopause. The plant-based therapies included a class of compounds called phytoestrogens, which are found in certain foods, like soybeans. Read More » | ||||
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Monday, June 27, 2016
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