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625 articles from ScienceDaily

Protective parenting may help your kids avoid health problems as adults

Being a protective parent could set your kids up for a healthier life as an adult, according to new research. The study found that growing up in places where gunshots are common and heat and electricity are unreliable may lead to pain and other physical health limitations in adulthood. But being involved in your child's life, such as knowing their friends or where they're hanging out after school,...

A motion freezer for many particles

From the way that particles scatter light, it is possible to calculate a special light field that can slow these particles down. This is a new and powerful method to cool particles down to extremely low temperatures.

Your gut's microbiome, on a chip

Researchers describe how gut-on-a-chip devices can bridge lab models and human biology. Modeling the microbiome is particularly difficult because of its unique environmental conditions, but through creative design, gut-on-a-chip devices can simulate many of these properties, such as the gut's anaerobic atmosphere, fluid flow, and pulses of contraction/relaxation. Growing intestinal cells in this...

Digital twin opens way to effective treatment of inflammatory diseases

Inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis have complex disease mechanisms that can differ from patient to patient with the same diagnosis. This means that currently available drugs have little effect on many patients. Using so-called digital twins, researchers have now obtained a deeper understanding of the 'off and on' proteins that control these diseases.

Super-fast insect urination powered by the physics of superpropulsion

Tiny insects known as sharpshooters excrete by catapulting urine drops at incredible accelerations. By using computational fluid dynamics and biophysical experiments, the researchers studied the fluidic, energetic, and biomechanical principles of excretion, revealing how an insect smaller than the tip of a pinky finger performs a feat of physics and bioengineering -- superpropulsion.

Obesity in pregnant women could alter the structure and function of the placenta increasing the risk of poor health outcomes for both mother and baby

Maternal obesity alters the structure of the placenta (a vital organ that nourishes the baby during pregnancy) more than gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM; a condition is diagnosed by poor glucose control in pregnancy). The new insight enhances understanding about the mechanisms underlying poor pregnancy outcomes and the subsequent greater risk of poor neonatal and offspring health. The...

Will future computers run on human brain cells?

A 'biocomputer' powered by human brain cells could be developed within our lifetime, according to researchers who expect such technology to exponentially expand the capabilities of modern computing and create novel fields of study.

How to predict city traffic

A new machine learning model can predict traffic activity in different zones of cities. To do so, a researcher used data from a main car-sharing company in Italy as a proxy for overall city traffic. Understanding how different urban zones interact can help avoid traffic jams, for example, and enable targeted responses of policy makers -- such as local expansion of public transportation.