An odor machine, so-called olfactometer, makes it possible to smell in VR environments. First up is a “wine tasting game” where the user smells wine in a virtual wine cellar and gets points if the guess on aromas in each wine is correct. The new technology that can be printed on 3D printers has been...
Science & Technology
Animals in National Parks Impacted by Even Just a Few People
People often visit U.S. national parks to catch a glimpse of wildlife. But how does our presence impact the animals we hope to see? National park traffic has grown steadily over the past decade, and popular parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone can easily see over a million visitors a year. In these heavily used areas,...
Are Women Really Better at Finding and Remembering Words Than Men? Large Study Settles Score
“Women are better. The female advantage is consistent across time and life span, but it is also relatively small”, says Marco Hirnstein, professor at The University of Bergen, Norway. Hirnstein is interested in how biological, psychological, and social factors contribute to sex/gender differences in cognitive abilities and what the underlying brain mechanisms are. Will the...
Age Vs. Genetics: Which Is More Important for Determining How We Age?
Amid much speculation and research about how our genetics affect the way we age, a University of California, Berkeley, study now shows that individual differences in our DNA matter less as we get older and become prone to diseases of aging, such as diabetes and cancer. In a study of the relative effects of genetics,...
University of New Mexico Researchers Find Bitcoin Mining Is Environmentally Unsustainable
Taken as a share of the market price, the climate change impacts of mining the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin is more comparable to the impacts of extracting and refining crude oil than mining gold, according to an analysis published in Scientific Reports by researchers at The University of New Mexico. The authors suggest that rather than being considered...
Researchers Identify How Science Can Help Cities and Companies to Operate Within Earth System Limits
What businesses and cities must do to stay within ‘safe and just’ environmental limits for carbon, water, nutrients, land and other natural resources is the subject of a new set of recommendations from Earth Commission experts. The authors, from academic institutions including the University of Exeter Business School, have published key knowledge gaps for researchers...
Extreme Temperatures Fuel Online Hate Speech
“Detecting hate tweets in more than four billion tweets from U.S. users with our AI-algorithm and combining them with weather data, we found that both the absolute number and the share of hate tweets rise outside a climate comfort zone: People tend to show a more aggressive online behaviour when it’s either too cold or...
Proof That Mendel Discovered the Laws of Inheritance Decades Ahead of His Time
Gregor Mendel, the Moravian monk, was indeed “decades ahead of his time and truly deserves the title of ‘founder of genetics.’” So concludes an international team of scientists as the 200th birthday of Mendel approaches on 20 July. The team, from KeyGene in the Netherlands and the John Innes Centre in the UK, draw on newly-discovered historical...
ClearBuds: First Wireless Earbuds That Clear Up Calls Using Deep Learning
As meetings shifted online during the COVID-19 lockdown, many people found that chattering roommates, garbage trucks and other loud sounds disrupted important conversations. This experience inspired three University of Washington researchers, who were roommates during the pandemic, to develop better earbuds. To enhance the speaker’s voice and reduce background noise, “ClearBuds” use a novel microphone...
These Red Flags Can Let You Know When You’re in an Online Echo Chamber
Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have identified specific elements of tone and style in online speech that are linked to hyperpartisan echo chambers. The findings are now published in the journal Discourse & Society. Online echo chambers are virtual spaces that gather like-minded individuals. Prior research has shown that people are more likely to believe and...