Body fat, or the more technical term adipocytes (adipo means fat and cyte means cell), is found in many places around the human body and mostly underneath your skin, what we call subcutaneous fat. There is also some on top of your kidneys, inside your liver, and a small amount in your muscle tissue, which we call visceral fat. An adult male often tends to carry his body fat in his chest, abdomen, and buttocks....
Two vaccines made using messenger RNA (mRNA) have proved spectacularly successful at warding off COVID-19, but a third mRNA-based candidate has flopped in a final-stage trial, according to an initial report released this week. Researchers are now asking why — and some think that choices about the type of mRNA chemistry used might be to blame. Any insight could help to guide the future design of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 or other diseases....
The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated workplace mental health higher on the agenda of business than it ever has been before. In May 47 percent of U.S. workers reported a decline in their mental health, as compared with the onset of the pandemic. The toll is not only personal. Mental ill-health globally is projected to result in $16 trillion in lost output and productivity by 2030—a number that outpaces monetary losses driven by heart disease, cancer and diabetes....
More than four years later, scientists are concerned that it could happen again. Rainstorms and floods in parts of coastal West Africa are expected to grow more severe as the climate continues to warm. And deforestation may be making the situation even worse, according to new research. A study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that deforestation helps increase the frequency of afternoon storms in parts of coastal West Africa....
THIS PAST JUNE renowned clinical psychologist Marsha M. Linehan of the University of Washington made a striking admission. Known for her pioneering work on borderline personality disorder (BPD), a severe and intractable psychiatric condition, 68-year-old Linehan announced that as an adolescent, she had been hospitalized for BPD. Suicidal and self-destructive, the teenage Linehan had slashed her limbs repeatedly with knives and other sharp objects and banged her head violently against the hospital walls....
A series of popular science articles have recently been touting the health benefits of tattoos, specifically their ability to boost your immune system. Most are based on a studyled by Dr. Christopher Lynn at the University of Alabama. But is a little ink really the cure for the common cold? The answer is, as is often the case, not as simple as many of these headlines might suggest. The study focused on a group of 29 people visiting a tattoo parlor in Alabama for a new tattoo....
Last November, I ran an episode on the myth that the Inuit language has a surprisingly large number of words for “snow.” I talked about how this myth is one example of a widely debunked idea called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, named after the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. This hypothesis claims that the language you speak determines the way you think, or at least influences it. This hypothesis is also sometimes called linguistic relativity....
Beginning today, the Swedes are trying to get the European Union back on track toward improving its energy efficiency. At an informal meeting of energy and environmental ministers from the 27 E.U. member states that starts today in Åre, Sweden, the host country hopes to refocus the other European states on what it calls “eco-efficiency.” In addition, the Swedes, who currently hold the E.U. presidency, will stress the need for Europe to be unified in its goals ahead of U....
WORCESTER, Mass. – One afternoon last winter, Julie Ellis unfurled a long, white tarp under a stand of trees near Coes Pond where hundreds of crows roost. Her mission: to collect as much bird poop as possible. Back in the laboratory, Ellis’ colleagues combed through the feces. Testing its bacteria, they discovered something unusual – genes that make the crows resistant to antibiotics. Drug-resistant infections are a fast-growing threat to human health, due largely to overuse of antibiotics in human medicine and livestock production, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....
The data centers of the future might do more than crunch and store information. In addition to serving Web pages, streaming Netflix videos and hosting social networks, they might soon produce their own power. Data centers consume a tremendous amount of energy—they account for roughly 2 percent of total electricity use in the U.S., by one estimate. But Microsoft researchers may have found a way for tech companies to reduce their energy usage without sacrificing the dependability of their infrastructure....
The March 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake that decimated Japan and its Fukushima nuclear reactors with a monster tsunami altered the seafloor off the country’s eastern coast much more than scientists had thought. Analysis released today in the journal Science indicates the ocean bed moved as much as 50 meters laterally and 16 meters vertically. The magnitude 9.0 quake occurred close to the nearby Japan Trench that runs north to south in the Pacific Ocean (dark blue line on the map below)....
Men aren’t from Mars and women aren’t from Venus, but their brains really are wired differently, a new study suggests. The research, which involved imaging the brains of nearly 1,000 adolescents, found that male brains had more connections within hemispheres, whereas female brains were more connected between hemispheres. The results, which apply to the population as a whole and not individuals, suggest that male brains may be optimized for motor skills, and female brains may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking....
The following is excerpted from The Oracle of Oil: A Maverick Geologist’s Quest for a Sustainable Future, by Mason Inman. Copyright © April 11, 2016. W .W. Norton & Co. Adapted from Chapter 17, “A Magical Effect.” Author’s Note: In the mid-1950s, M. King Hubbert was the first to explain correctly how a new technique known as hydraulic fracturing—or, for short, “fracking”—actually worked. This excerpt covers how he solved the puzzle, and (with the help of his assistant) convinced others of his explanation....
By Mari Saito and Antoni SlodkowskiTOKYO (Reuters) - Highly radioactive water from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 tons a day, officials said on Wednesday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up.The revelation amounted to an acknowledgement that plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) has yet to come to grips with the scale of the catastrophe, 2 1/2 years after the plant was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami....
By Kentaro HamadaTOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will chip in more taxpayer money and other financial support to help Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co clean up the world’s worst nuclear disaster in a quarter century, officials said on Friday, the latest government lifeline for the embattled utility.Criticism of the utility’s handling of the massive clean-up from the March 2011 disaster had sparked calls to spin off Fukushima-related work and place it under government control or even put Tepco, as the company is known, into bankruptcy....
Have you ever stopped to consider what a brilliant mind reader you are? If someone in your field of view experiences a sudden happy thought or a wave of anger, you do not need to be told. You just seem to know. Of course, this ability is not based on psychic powers but on the reading of small clues: a distinctive curl of the lips for joy, a clenching of the jaw for pique....
Radiation radicalizes elements and compounds in the body. Unchecked, these free radicals damage cells, killing them. When enough cells die, the organism succumbs. But a new therapy infused into the cells of mice offers protection against radiation’s effects, at least for a short while. Radiation oncologist Joel Greenberger of the University of Pittsburgh and his colleagues have been experimenting with a transgene–manganese superoxide dismutase plasmid liposome (MnSOD-PL)–that has shown the ability to protect cells from radiation in vitro....
New Nexus 7 brings on HD Google has beat Apple at its own Retina-display-thumping game. Meet the Nexus 7, the eye-popping 323-pixels-per-inch wonder. It is, in a way, the (rumored) iPad Mini Retina wrapped in Android 4.3. Here’s the deal: If you can find most of the apps you need on Google’s Play Store and would like a small tablet with the highest resolution display on any tablet to date (i....
The late Steve Jobs(Credit:Apple)Whoever broke into the home of the late Steve Jobs is probably now wishing that a different house had been the target.The Palo Alto, Calif., home was robbed on July 17 of more than $60,000 in computers and other items, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. Kariem McFarlin, a 35-year-old man, was arrested and charged with the crime.And apparently it wasn’t hard for police to catch him....
A few years ago University of California, Berkeley, professor Daniel Fletcher challenged the undergraduate students in his optics and microscopy course to develop an instrument using only a cell phone and a few objective lenses. It was not until after the project began that Fletcher and the students realized they had created a powerful yet inexpensive instrument that could potentially be used to test for diseases common in developing countries, such as malaria, sickle-cell anemia and tuberculosis....
