Category archives: Technology

BMI may not be accurate predictor of fitness, study suggests Metabolism and body mass index do not go hand-in-hand, according to a study published in the journal Science. According to the study, it is possible to have a normal-range BMI while also having an abnormal metabolism, indicating that it’s not prudent to rely on BMI […]

Classic rail vehicles have rigid wheelsets: both wheels are interlocked and have the same degrees of freedom (DoF), so they share all their displacements. They also have positive conicity, this is, the wheel surface on the contact patch is conical and, if we extend these ideal cones, their base would meet at the centre of […]

Current safe sugar levels may not be so safe Female mice fed a diet with 25% added sugars died at twice the normal rate, while males were less likely to reproduce. That amount of sugar is considered a safe level for human consumption. “Added sugar consumed at concentrations currently considered safe exerts dramatic impacts on […]

Herbal remedy has cancerous side effect Aristolochia plants, which have been used in China for herbal remedies, have been found to cause cancer, according to two studies published in Science Translational Medicine. The plants contain a naturally carcinogenic compound called aristolochic acid, which causes more cell mutations than those caused by tobacco smoke and UV […]

The locomotion of every moving system, alive or manufactured, is produced by the interaction between some movable components or appendages and the surrounding environment. This applies for every kind of surroundings: land, water or air. For water and air, Navier-Stokes equations allow predicting the interaction with the fluid with very high precision. In the case […]

Varied smelling ability linked to genes Scientists at the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research sequenced test subjects’ genomes to see if they could predict an individual’s smelling ability, and found clusters of genes that reliably predicted the person’s ability to smell four of 10 chemicals. “All of these genes are on different […]

Methane released from Arctic permafrost could cost trillions worldwide Scientists warn that large amounts of methane that could be released from the melting Arctic permafrost could have a huge global economic impact. The release of 50-gigatonnes of methane over 10 years could cost $60 trillion worldwide, according to a study published in the journal Nature […]

New study of foragers undermines claim that war has deep evolutionary roots One of the most insidious modern memes holds that war is innate, an adaptation bred into our ancestors by natural selection. This hypothesis—let’s call it the “Deep Roots Theory of War”–has been promoted by some intellectual heavyweights. A study published today in Science […]

Dog breeds in Americas trace ancestry to Asian dogs A study found that modern breeds of Chihuahuas, Arctic sled dogs and Peruvian hairless dogs trace their ancestry to dogs that humans brought across the ancient land bridge that connected North America to Northeast Asia. The study compared DNA from Asian and European dogs with archaeological […]

Clouds protect habitable planets from star’s heat According to a recent study that developed a 3D model to explore how clouds affect temperatures on exoplanets, the number of habitable worlds could be double the amount previously thought. The study found that as many as 60 billion exoplanets fall within a habitable zone around their star […]