A new paper claims that exposure to secondhand smoke at home or in the car increases the odds of children being readmitted to the hospital within a year of being admitted for asthma.

A new estimate has said that tidal power generated by turbines placed in the Pentland Firth, between mainland Scotland and Orkney, could power about half of Scotland - they estimate 1.9 gigawatts could be available.

Results using data from the Gaia-ESO project has provided some evidence backing up theoretical divisions in the chemical composition of the stars that make up the Milky Way's disc – the vast collection of giant gas clouds and billions of stars that give our Galaxy its 'flying saucer' shape -  and suggesting that stars in the inner regions of the Galactic disc were the first to form.

Measuring a 27-dimensional quantum state is a time-consuming, multistage process using a technique called quantum tomography, which is similar to creating a 3D image from many 2D ones.

Researchers have instead been able to apply direct measurement to do this in a single experiment with no post-processing. In a new paper they demonstrate direct measurements of the quantum state associated with the orbital-angular momentum.

Want a more accurate estimate of waiting time to get through security at airports? 

Obviously monitoring Bluetooth and Wi-Fi is one way to go, but often people shut those off in the airport to conserve energy. Monitoring cell phones and tablets doesn't work if only 30% of people have them on. 

As many of us know, queues at airports are arranged in mazes using retractable ribbon barriers. Security personnel adjust the barriers according to the size of the queue, and analysis also 'learns' how the flow of people moves over time. This is then used to give an estimate of how long it takes for the queue to pass through security.

Researchers recently got 54 volunteers to try on free shoes. But this wasn't for fun, it was for a biomechanical study of the shoes manufactured by the Majorcan Camper brand.

The six designs of men's and women's footwear were then analyzed using optical motion capture systems, force plates, in-shoe pressure measurement devices and electromyography (EMG) sensors. The aim was to determine the parameters that affect how comfortable the shoes are.