Listeners can hear a difference between standard audio and better than CD quality, known as high resolution audio, according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

The study compared data from over 12,000 different trials from 18 studies where participants were asked to discriminate between samples of music in different formats.

Dr Joshua Reiss from QMUL's Centre for Digital Music in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science said: "Audio purists and industry should welcome these findings -- our study finds high resolution audio has a small but important advantage in its quality of reproduction over standard audio content."

As my blogging here has been erratic in the last couple of weeks, I feel I need to explain to my 23 readers (what citation is this BTW?) what I have been up to. So this post does not contain any physics, and is rather about how a physicist fights for some space and time for himself and his family, decoupled from his daily occupations, and hopefully lowers his stress level. 
I left my home in Venice on June 15th at four in the morning with my fiancee and my two kids (Filippo, 17 and Ilaria, 13 years old), headed  to Elafonisos, a tiny island in southern Greece. Our Volotea flight was due to leave the Marco Polo airport at 6.30AM -an early and cheap flight I had picked to ensure we would get to destination at a reasonable time. 

MIAMI--As Louisiana's wetlands continue to disappear at an alarming rate, a new study has pinpointed the man-made structures that disrupt the natural water flow and threaten these important ecosystems. The findings have important implications for New Orleans and other coastal cities that rely on coastal wetlands to serve as buffer from destructive extreme weather events.

Scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science found that man-made canals limit the natural tidal inundation process in roughly 45 percent of the state's coastline, and disruptions from levees accounted for 15 percent.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found a new way of using mid-infrared lasers to turn regions of molecules in the open air into glowing filaments of electrically charged gas, or plasma. The new method could make it possible to carry out remote environmental monitoring to detect a wide range of chemicals with high sensitivity.

The new system makes use of a mid-infrared ultra-fast pulsed laser system to generate the filaments, whose colors can reveal the chemical fingerprints of different molecules. The finding is being reported this week in the journal Optica, in a paper by principal investigator Kyung-Han Hong of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics, and seven other researchers at MIT; in Binghamton, New York; and in Hamburg, Germany.

URBANA, Ill. - Binge eating is the most prevalent type of eating disorder across races, ethnic groups, ages, and genders. Surprisingly, binge eating has even been reported in children as young as 5 years old.

In order to put childhood binge eating into context, a new systematic review from the University of Illinois identifies two potential risk factors for binge eating in children under the age of 12. With family being the most proximal and influential setting affecting behaviors and attitudes in children, the study reports that parental non-involvement or emotional unresponsiveness and weight-related teasing in the family are behaviors consistently associated with childhood binge eating.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, ILL (June 29, 2016) - If you have a child with newly-diagnosed eczema, you may be wondering how often you should bathe him. You are not alone. For more than 100 years, doctors have been asked about the risks and benefits of frequent bathing for those with atopic dermatitis (eczema). And parents haven't gotten consistent responses.

A new article in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) looks at the research and answers the question. According to the authors, daily bathing is fine, as long as it's followed by lots of moisturizer. In other words, "soak and smear."

Crucial peatlands carbon-sink vulnerable to rising sea levels, research shows

Rising sea-levels linked to global warming could pose a significant threat to the effectiveness of the world's peatland areas as carbon sinks, a new study has shown.

The pioneering new study, carried out by Geographers at the University of Exeter, examined the impact that salt found in sea water has on how successfully peatland ecosystems accumulate carbon from the atmosphere.

Bottom Line: Women with a history of severe cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, a precancerous condition of the cervix that arises from infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV), had a long-term increased risk of developing anal, vulvar, and vaginal cancer.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Author: Susanne Krüger Kjær, a professor of gynecological cancer epidemiology at The Danish Cancer Society Research Center and Department of Gynecology at the Juliane Marie Centre, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark.

WASHINGTON -- Contrary to the opinions of some courts, it is easier to determine the truthfulness of a woman wearing a headscarf or even a veil that leaves only her eyes exposed than a woman wearing no head covering at all, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"The presence of a veil may compel observers to pay attention to more 'diagnostic' cues, such as listening for verbal indicators of deception," said Amy-May Leach, PhD, of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. The study was published in the APA journal Law and Human Behavior.