RefBan

Referral Banners

Saturday, June 28, 2014

ScienceDaily: Top Science News

ScienceDaily: Top Science News


One in 10 deaths among working-age adults in U.S. due to excessive drinking, report finds

Posted: 27 Jun 2014 11:00 AM PDT

Excessive alcohol use accounts for one in 10 deaths among working-age adults ages 20-64 years in the United States, according to a new report. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths per year from 2006 to 2010, and shortened the lives of those who died by about 30 years. These deaths were due to health effects from drinking too much over time, such as breast cancer, liver disease, and heart disease; and health effects from drinking too much in a short period of time, such as violence, alcohol poisoning, and motor vehicle crashes.

Early life stress can leave lasting impacts on the brain

Posted: 27 Jun 2014 10:31 AM PDT

For children, stress can go a long way. A little bit provides a platform for learning, adapting and coping. But a lot of it — chronic, toxic stress like poverty, neglect and physical abuse — can have lasting negative impacts. A team of researchers recently showed these kinds of stressors, experienced in early life, might be changing the parts of developing children's brains responsible for learning, memory and the processing of stress and emotion.

Monkeys also believe in winning streaks, study shows

Posted: 27 Jun 2014 10:31 AM PDT

Humans have a well-documented tendency to see winning and losing streaks in situations that, in fact, are random. But scientists disagree about whether the "hot-hand bias" is a cultural artifact picked up in childhood or a predisposition deeply ingrained in the structure of our cognitive architecture.

Astronomers closer to proving gravitational waves with precise measurements of rapidly rotating neutron star

Posted: 27 Jun 2014 08:27 AM PDT

When Albert Einstein proposed the existence of gravitational waves as part of his theory of relativity, he set in train a pursuit for knowledge that continues nearly a century later. These ripples in the space-time continuum exert a powerful appeal because it is believed they carry information that will allow us to look back into the very beginnings of the universe. But although the weight of evidence continues to build, undisputed confirmation of their existence still eludes scientists. Researchers have now provided another piece of the puzzle with their precise measurements of a rapidly rotating neutron star: one of the smallest, densest stars in the universe.

New theory on cause of ice age 2.6 million years ago

Posted: 27 Jun 2014 06:44 AM PDT

New research has provided a major new theory on the cause of the ice age that covered large parts of the Northern Hemisphere 2.6 million years ago.

New superconductor world record set

Posted: 26 Jun 2014 06:33 PM PDT

A new record for a trapped field in a superconductor, beating a record that has stood for more than a decade, could herald the arrival of materials in a broad range of fields. Researchers managed to 'trap' a magnetic field with a strength of 17.6 Tesla -- roughly 100 times stronger than the field generated by a typical fridge magnet -- in a high temperature gadolinium barium copper oxide (GdBaCuO) superconductor, beating the previous record by 0.4 Tesla.

No comments: