At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it’s also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep. (more…)
Many are speculating the possibilities for the new Google Glass – a wearable computer that displays a screen in front of your eye that you can control by voice command – in industries, such as medicine and education.
One industry in particular that has people excited about the possibilities for using the device is the gaming industry. The Google glass can take gaming to a completely different level in all genres of gaming.
Multiplayer system, role-playing (RPGs) and first-person shooting (FPS) games could potentially be more efficient to play and participate in. The glass right in front of your eye places you in the hub of the action, allowing players to nearly be face-to-face and eye-to-eye with the opponents in their games. What’s more, there is the potential of better accuracy when shooting, with the glass serving as your pinpoint target. (more…)
Social Events Don’t Build Unity for Those Who Differ from Rest of Team
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The workers who may have the most to gain from attending company social events may be the ones who actually get the least value from them, a new study suggests. (more…)
Given the chance, women are more likely than men to opt out of a request to give a charitable donation, a group of economists have found.
The issue of which gender is more generous has been debated for years. A new field experiment conducted by scholars at the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley shows that when it’s easy to avoid making a donation, such as not responding to a door-to-door solicitor, women are less likely than men to give. (more…)
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, the world’s first hospital to introduce a remote-presence robot into its neurological intensive-care unit in 2005, now welcomes the RP-VITA, the first robot able to navigate the hospital on its own.
UCLA staff affectionately dubbed the 5’5″, 176-pound robot “EVA,” for executive virtual attending physician. Unlike earlier models that physicians steered via a computer-linked joystick, this version drives on auto-pilot, freeing doctors to devote more time to patient care. (more…)
CORVALLIS, Ore. — The first-ever estimate of how fast frogs, toads and salamanders in the United States are disappearing from their habitats reveals they are vanishing at an alarming and rapid rate. (more…)
A carnivorous, cannibalistic tadpole may play a role in understanding the evolution and development of digestive organs, according to research from North Carolina State University. These findings may also shed light on universal rules of organ development that could lead to better diagnosis and prevention of intestinal birth defects.
NC State developmental biologist Nanette Nascone-Yoder, graduate student Stephanie Bloom and postdoc Cris Ledon-Rettig looked at Xenopus laevis (African clawed frog) and Lepidobatrachus laevis (Budgett’s frog) tadpoles. These frog species differ in diet and last shared a common ancestor about 110 million years ago. Like most tadpoles, Xenopus exist primarily on a diet of algae, and their long, simple digestive tracts are not able to process insects or proteins until they become adult frogs. Budgett’s is an aggressive species of frog which is carnivorous – and cannibalistic – in the tadpole stage. (more…)
Sperm cell release can be triggered by tightening the grip around the delivery organ, according to a team of nano and microsystems engineers and plant biologists at the University of Montreal and Concordia University. Concordia’s nanobiotech team devised a microchip that enabled the University of Montreal biologists to observe what happened when pollen tubes – the sperm delivery tools used by plants – tried to negotiate a microscopic obstacle course. The pollen tubes were exposed to a series of narrow, elastic openings resulting in a variety of cellular responses. When the opening was too narrow or tight, pollen tube growth stalled. However, the elongating tubes successfully penetrated slightly larger openings. Curiously, the pollen tubes burst and released the sperm cells when passing openings of a particular size relative to the pollen tube width. (more…)
