Exercise makes cigarettes less attractive, says a new study from the University of Exeter.
Exercise can lessen the power of cigarettes and smoking-related images to grab the attention of smokers, the authors write in the journal Addiction. They did a study involving 20 moderately heavy smokers who had abstained from cigarettes for 15 hours before the trial. During two visits to the laboratory participants began by being shown smoking-related and neutral images, and then spent either 15 minutes sitting or exercising on a stationary bike at a moderate intensity. Afterwards, they were again shown the images.
A marine crustacean could inspire the next generation of DVD and CD players, says a new study in Nature Photonics.
Mantis shrimps found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia have the most complex vision systems known to science. They can see in twelve colors (humans see in only three) and can distinguish between different forms of polarized light.
Special light-sensitive cells in mantis shrimp eyes act as quarter-wave plates; they can rotate the plane of the oscillations (the polarization) of a light wave as it travels through it. This capability makes it possible for mantis shrimps to convert linearly polarized light to circularly polarized light and vice versa.
The great diversity of male sexual traits, ranging from peacock's elaborate train to formidable genitalia of male seed beetles, is the result of female choice, say researchers from Uppsala University, but why do females choose among males? In a new Current Biology study they found no support for the theory that the female choice is connected to "good genes".
There is no consensus among biologists over the key question why females choose among males but the heart of this debate has two preferred possibilities - that female choosiness is beneficial to the females themselves or that female choice traits are favored because of 'good genes' that males contribute to female's offspring.
A report examining the impact of biofuels on greenhouse gas emissions during the 21st century has found that carbon loss stemming from the displacement of food crops and pastures for biofuels crops may be twice as much as the CO2 emissions from land dedicated to biofuels production.
The Science Express study also predicts that increased fertilizer use for biofuels production will cause nitrous oxide emissions (N2O) to become more important than carbon losses, in terms of warming potential, by the end of the century.
One small step for mankind, one giant leap for ... averting natural and man-made disasters?
A new Tel Aviv University technology combines sensors in orbit with sensors on the ground and in the air to create what they call a "Hyperspectral Remote Sensor" (HRS) which will provide advance warnings about water contamination after a forest fire, alert authorities of a pollution spill long before a red flag is raised on earth - or even tell people in China where a monsoon will strike.
The HRS simultaneously acquires hundreds of optical images, each from a different frequency, that enable a "spectral assessment" from distances high in the air via airplanes and in orbit using satellites. This raw data is then processed to yield sophisticated thematic maps.
I have known Marco Cardin for a couple of years because besides being an accomplished amateur astro-imager he is also an avid visual observer. His encyclopedic knowledge of the night sky wonders is a great help on the field during the monthly night-long observations in dark, moonless nights we spend on the eastern Alps, trying to squeeze the most out of the 16" Dobson telescopes we carry with us. These instruments have no fancy "go-to" features, but with Marco's help and organization we can frame close to 100 rarely seen objects per night.
There is nothing to stop biodiesel making an immediate impact in reducing the world's dependence on fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. Using biodiesel requires no major changes to either existing diesel engines or to the current distribution infrastructure of storage tanks and petrol stations that delivers diesel fuel to consumers.
Petroleum diesel produces high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming. But burning biodiesel produces only a marginal increase in CO2 emissions, because the crops from which it is produced capture CO2 as they grow.
If the question were asked, what is the primary purpose of business, the most likely response would be "to make money". However, this is an unsatisfactory answer since it clearly doesn't provide sufficient justification for businesses to exist. There is no question that we all need and use money in our daily lives, but similarly this would be an unsatisfactory answer to justify why we work.
If we considered economics from the barter perspective, the answer of "making money" would seem peculiar because we could only loosely translate it as "wanting stuff". Clearly if we were bartering for goods and services there would be more specific items that we want and need, but also what is our personal motivation in such a scenario?
Antidepressants are ineffective in fully 50% of the people who take them. It is clearly early 20th century medicine, where you keep trying things and hope something happens while pharmaceutical companies who impress doctors the most make the most money.
With so much research and money spent on depression studies, how is it possible that it is only as effective as doing nothing at all?
1) The cause of depression has been oversimplified. A study from the laboratory of depression researcher Eva Redei presented at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week addresses some strongly held beliefs about depression.
Prenatal sex-based biological differences extend to genetic expression in cerebral cortices and the differences in question are probably associated with later divergences in how our brains develop, according to a new study by Uppsala University researchers Elena Jazin and Björn Reinius in Molecular Psychiatry.
Professor Elena Jazin and doctoral student Björn Reinius at the Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology previously say they have demonstrated that genetic expression in the cerebral cortices of human beings and other primates exhibits certain sex-based differences. It is presumed that these differences are very old and have survived the evolutionary process.
