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    New E-Tattoo Enables Accurate, Uninterrupted Heart Monitoring for Days

    June 23, 2019, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

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    A Chest‐Laminated Ultrathin and Stretchable E‐Tattoo for the Measurement of Electrocardiogram, Seismocardiogram, and Cardiac Time Intervals. Advanced Science, 2019; 1900290 DOI: 10.1002/advs.201900290

    The leading cause of death in Texas is heart disease, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, accounting for more than 45,000 deaths statewide in 2017. A new wearable technology made from stretchy, lightweight material could make heart health monitoring easier and more accurate than existing electrocardiograph machines – a technology that has changed little in almost a century.

    Developed by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin and led by Nanshu Lu in the Cockrell School of Engineering, this is the latest incarnation of Lu’s electronic tattoo technology...

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    Astronomers make 1st Detection of Polarized Radio Waves in Gamma Ray Burst jets

    June 22, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Black hole illustration (stock image).
    Credit: © cosmicvue / Adobe Stock

    Good fortune and cutting-edge scientific equipment have allowed scientists to observe a Gamma Ray Burst jet with a radio telescope and detect the polarisation of radio waves within it for the first time – moving us closer to an understanding of what causes the universe’s most powerful explosions.

    Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions in the universe, beaming out mighty jets which travel through space at over 99.9% the speed of light, as a star much more massive than our sun collapses at the end of its life to produce a black hole.

    Studying the light from Gamma Ray Burst jets as we detect it travelling across space is our best hope of understanding how these powerful jets are formed, but...

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    ‘Goldilocks’ Neurons promote REM Sleep

    June 20, 2019, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Using a technique called optogenetics, a laser light was used to turn off or on MCH neurons time locked with the temperature warming phases. It demonstrated the necessity of the MCH neurons to increase REM sleep during warming toward “just right” room temperature. Picture: Pascal Gugler for Insel Gruppe AG

    It has been a mystery why REM sleep, or dream sleep, increases when the room temperature is ‘just right’. Neuroscientists show that melanin-concentrating hormone neurons within the hypothalamus increase REM sleep when the need for body temperature defense is minimized, such as when sleeping in a warm and comfortable room temperature. These data have important implications for the function of REM sleep.

    Every night while sleeping, we cycle between two very different states of sleep...

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    Researchers find Quantum Gravity has No Symmetry

    June 20, 2019, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    A diagram used to prove that quantum gravity cannot have any global symmetry. Symmetry, if existed, could act only on the shaded regions in the diagram and causes no change around the black spot in the middle. The shaded regions can be made as small as we like by dividing the boundary circle more and more. Thus, the alleged symmetry would not act anywhere inside of the circle. Contradiction. (Credit: Harlow and Ooguri)

    Using holography, researchers have found when gravity is combined with quantum mechanics, symmetry is not possible. A new study by a pair of researchers in the US and Japan has found that, when gravity is combined with quantum mechanics, symmetry is not possible.

    “Many physicists believe that there must a beautiful set of laws in Nature and that one way to quantify ...

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