No matter how close parks are to home, perceptions of park-centered crime may keep New Yorkers from using them. Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine found that New Yorkers are more likely to exercise in a park if they believe they live very close to it. In turn, they feel less anxious and less...
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Science Fiction Becomes Fact — Teleportation Helps to Create Live Musical Performance
Teleportation is most commonly the stuff of science fiction and, for many, would conjure up the immortal phrase “Beam me up Scotty”. However, a new study has described how its status in science fact could actually be employed as another, and perhaps unlikely, form of entertainment – live music. Dr. Alexis Kirke, Senior Research Fellow...
Growth of Online Sports Betting Poses Significant Public Health Challenge
A surge in use of online sports betting platforms, and promotional tactics such as free bets to hook users in, pose a significant and growing public health challenge which needs urgent attention from policymakers, according to the author of a new academic study. Writing in the Journal of Public Health, Dr. Darragh McGee from the University...
New Evidence Helps Form Digital Reconstruction of Most Important Medieval Shrine
The shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, the most important pilgrimage destination in medieval England – visited for hundreds of years by pilgrims seeking miraculous healing – has been digitally reconstructed for the public, according to how experts believe it appeared before its destruction. In the 1530s, the Reformation in England saw the ornaments and riches...
Researchers Foresee Linguistic Issues During Space Travel
It lacks the drama of a shape-shifting alien creature, but another threat looms over the prospect of generations-long, interstellar space travel: Explorers arriving on Xanadu could face problems communicating with previous and subsequent arrivals, their spoken language having changed in isolation along the way. Therefore, a new paper co-authored by a University of Kansas professor of linguistics...
What Ethical Models for Autonomous Vehicles Don’t Address – and How They Could Be Better
There’s a fairly large flaw in the way that programmers are currently addressing ethical concerns related to artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles (AVs). Namely, existing approaches don’t account for the fact that people might try to use the AVs to do something bad. For example, let’s say that there is an autonomous vehicle with...
Obese BME People at ‘Higher-Risk’ of Contracting Covid-19
Obese people among black and minority ethnic communities (BME) are at around two times higher the risk of contracting COVID-19 than white Europeans, a study conducted by a team of Leicester researchers has found. Previous research has shown that ethnicity can alter the association between the body mass index (BMI) and cardiometabolic health so the...
Lack of Lockdown Increased COVID-19 Deaths in Sweden
Sweden’s controversial decision not to lock down during COVID-19 produced more deaths and greater healthcare demand than seen in countries with earlier, more stringent interventions, a new analysis finds. But Sweden fared better than would be expected from its public-health mandates alone, roughly similar to France, Italy and Spain – countries that had more stringent...
How Prison and Police Discrimination Affect Black Sexual Minority Men’s Health
Incarceration and police discrimination may worsen psychological and physical health, Rutgers led study finds Incarceration and police discrimination may contribute to HIV, depression and anxiety among Black gay, bisexual and other sexual minority men, according to a Rutgers led study. The study, funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and published in the journal Social...
Asthma Does Not Seem to Increase the Severity of COVID-19
Asthma does not appear to increase the risk for a person contracting COVID-19 or influence its severity, according to a team of Rutgers researchers. “Older age and conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and obesity are reported risk factors for the development and progression of COVID-19,” said Reynold...