Loneliness not only feels bad, experts have characterised it as a disease that increases the risk of a range of physical and psychological disorders. Some national prevalence estimates for loneliness are alarming. Although they can be as low as 4.4 per cent (in Azerbaijan), in other countries (such as Denmark) as many as 20 per cent of adults report being either moderately or severely lonely.
However, there’s no established way of identifying loneliness. Most diagnostic methods treat it as a one-dimensional construct: though it can vary in degrees, someone is either “lonely”, or they’re not. A new approach, outlined in a paper published recently in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, suggests that loneliness should in fact be divided into three sub-types, two of which are associated with poor mental health.
Philip Hyland at Trinity College Dublin and colleagues studied a nationally representative sample of 1,839 US adults aged between 18 and 70, all of whom had experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. (This allowed the team to also look for associations between childhood or adult trauma and loneliness.) Most were married or living with a partner.
Participants completed a six-item scale that measured feelings of “social loneliness”...
Dan Peate, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur in Southern California, was thinking of buying a Tesla Model X a few years ago—until he called his insurance company and found out how much his premiums would rise.
“They quoted me $10,000 a year,” Peate recalled.
For all the concern over accidents involving driverless cars, including Tesla’s troubles with its limited self-driving Autopilot mode, it’s easy to forget one of the supposed virtues of autonomous vehicles: They will make the roads safer. A sophisticated array of lidar, radar and cameras is expected to be more adept at detecting trouble than our mortal eyes and ears. And computers never get drunk, check Tinder or fall asleep at the wheel.
Peate, 40, previously started a company called Hixme, a provider of group health insurance. Now, he wanted to launch a firm specializing in insurance for vehicles with automated-driving modes (and eventually, fully autonomous cars). His experience with the insurer of his old-fashioned, non-driverless car only confirmed the need.
When underwriters and actuaries price insurance on a new type of risk, Peate said, they charge more because they don’t have enough data. With so few Model Xs on the road, its safety record was, at best, opaque. But Tesla Inc. and other carmakers collect reams of data on their vehicles’ operation to improve automation. Peate said he realized “we can get large amounts...
For years, the internet has hemmed and hawed over a mysterious yet universal truth: a grape, sliced nearly in half and placed in the microwave, will suddenly begin to spit plasma.
The fiery sight had us mystified for years, garnering millions of views online and a variety of expert opinions, none of which were based on formal research. Now, at long last, a team of three physicists thinks they have it figured out.
The newly published paper is the first peer-reviewed study on the topic, and the findings suggest that the most popular explanation put forward by armchair experts is probably incorrect.
Over the years, several sources online have proposed that grapes create plasma because energy in the microwave charges up electrolytes in their water-heavy interiors.
This, in turn, is thought to cause a flow of energy between the two slices of grape, a force that travels across the skin like an electrical wire. When enough energy is gathered, the whole thing produces a spark of plasma - an ionised gas that emits light - at the bridge of skin connecting the two.
The authors of the new study have poked a hole in this explanation. It turns out that the bridge, one of the theory's key components, isn't necessary at all. As long as two whole grapes were no more than three millimetres apart, the researchers recorded a...
FORT LAUDERDALE/DAVIE, Fla. – The great white shark is one of the most recognized marine creatures on Earth, generating widespread public fascination and media attention, including spawning one of the most successful movies in Hollywood history. This shark possesses notable characteristics, including its massive size (up to 20 feet and 7,000 pounds) and diving to nearly 4,000 foot depths. Great whites are also a big conservation concern given their relatively low numbers in the world’s oceans.
In a major scientific step to understand the biology of this iconic apex predator and sharks in general, the entire genome of the white shark has now been decoded in detail.
Fuyumi Iimura has a message for whoever broke into her family’s expansive garden outside Tokyo and made off with a small fortune’s worth of some of the planet’s most beautiful bonsai trees: please water them.
Over a period of several nights, a team of bonsai bandits stole the cream of Iimura’s collection, regarded as some of the most exquisite in existence, CNN reported.
It was like losing a child, Iimura said in a Facebook post. The only thing worse would be if the trees weren’t properly cared for and centuries’ worth of work withered away because of neglect.
“I want whoever took the bonsai to make sure they are watered. The shimpaku lived for 400 years. It needs care and can’t survive a week without water,” Iimura said in the grief-stricken post on her Facebook page, referring to a particularly rare juniper that was stolen, a celebrity in the bonsai world. “They can live forever – even after we’re gone, if they receive the proper care.”
There’s nothing quite as uncomfortable as a clammy, sweat-soaked shirt. For decades exercise-wear manufacturers have attempted to make this sensation obsolete; to regulate wearers’ body temperatures, they have developed synthetic fibers with coatings that wick away perspiration and experimented with loose, breathable weaves. Now scientists have developed what they claim is the first textile that automatically changes its structure in response to outside conditions, releasing more heat as temperature and humidity rise.
Researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park, led by YuHuang Wang and Ouyang Min, constructed this self-regulating fabric from infrared-sensitive yarn that reacts to temperature and humidity. When the microenvironment between a person’s skin and the garment changes, the strands constrict to vent more heat—or expand to hold that warmth closer to the body. The fabric is described in a study published this month in Science.
Our bodies absorb and lose heat primarily via infrared radiation. Traditionally we pile on textiles in winter months to capture this energy, then switch to more breathable material in warmer, more humid conditions so we can release it. But in the modern world one might routinely transition from a rushed, sweaty commute to a frigid, air-conditioned...
A revolutionary ‘Trojan horse’ drug has successfully treated British patients with six different forms of cancer, scientists have revealed.
It is hoped the jab may help cure, or at least prolong the lives, of people with some of the most common and lethal tumours – within five years.
It hides a toxic chemical inside an antibody in order to sneak it inside a tumour and attack it from within.
More than a quarter of cervical and bladder cancer patients responded even though their illness was well advanced and considered untreatable.
The new therapy, administered intravenously, also worked against ovarian, lung, gullet and womb tumours, reports the team.
A bigger trial involving hundreds of patients with other types of cancer is already underway owing to the “early promise”.
Study leader Professor Johann de Bono, of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said this includes tumours of the bowel, pancreas, head and neck.
He said: “What is so exciting about this treatment is its mechanism of action is completely novel – it acts like a Trojan horse to sneak into cancer cells and kill them from the inside.
“Our early study shows it has the potential to treat a large number of different types of cancer, and particularly some of those with very poor survival rates.”
Asked if there was a time frame for when this could be a viable option for cancer patients in general, Prof de Bono replied: “Five years or less.”...
In numerous Mozilla bug tickets that were recently updated, Mozilla is getting closer to adding cryptomining and fingerprinting blocking to their Firefox browser.
In May 2018 it was revealed that Mozilla was planning on blocking cryptominers and fingerprinters starting in Firefox 63. Firefox 63 has come and gone and now Firefox 65 is here, but unfortunately those features were never fully added to the browser.
A series of Mozilla bug updates, though, tells us that these features will soon be landing as part of Firefox's Content Blocking feature in the near future. In one of the bug posts, Mozilla has uploaded a mockup of how cryptomining and fingerprinting detection and blocking will be added to Firefox's Content Blocking privacy feature.
With the initial release, Mozilla will add the ability to block cryptomining and fingerprinting to the Custom settings of the Content Blocking feature as shown below....
Controversial new research shows that a tiny, unsuspecting species of fish can pass a test that’s widely considered the gold standard of intelligence. As far as we can tell, only a few of the most intelligent non-human animals pass this mirror self-recognition test: great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans), bottlenose dolphins, and Asian elephants, and a handful of others. In light of the unexpected new findings, some researchers are arguing it’s time for scientists to rethink how they test animal intelligence.
In a paper published Thursday in the journal PLOS Biology, an international team of researchers led by Masanori Kohda, Ph.D., a professor specializing in fish behavior at Osaka City University, outlines how the cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) shows signs of self-recognition while looking in a mirror. In doing so, the fish, known for...
