Thursday 30 May 2019

Getting zesty with citrus fruits

(HealthDay)—Want to be part of the movement to limit food waste of all kinds? One tasty way is to get the most from all your citrus fruits by using the zest, the brightly colored top layer of peel.

* This article was originally published here

High costs associated with physician burnout in U.S.

(HealthDay)—High costs are associated with physician turnover and reduced clinical hours attributed to burnout, according to a study published online May 28 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

* This article was originally published here

U.S. Postal Service mail, packages are headed to Dallas by self-driving truck

Before letters end up in your mailbox and packages land on your doorstep, many travel hundreds or thousands of miles in the back of a truck. Now, the United States Postal Service is testing what it would take to shuttle that cargo without a driver in the front seat.

* This article was originally published here

Stanford Doggo: a highly agile quadruped robot

Researchers at Stanford University have recently created an open-source quadruped robot called Stanford Doggo. Their robot, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv and set to be published by IEEE Explore, exceeds the performance of many state-of-the-art legged robots in vertical jumping agility.

* This article was originally published here

Opioid crisis hurting Canadians' life expectancy: official

An opioid crisis that has claimed thousands of lives across North America has become a drag on the average life expectancy in Canada, the government statistical agency said Thursday.

* This article was originally published here

Uncovering microgel mysteries

Researchers at Shinshu University successfully recorded previously unexplained behavior of hydrogel microspheres (microgels) using a newly customized tool: temperature-controlled high-speed atomic force microscopy (TC HS AFM). This machine, which is the only one in the world, was assembled by Dr. Takayuki Uchihashi of Nagoya University to investigate proteins. It was applied for the first time to the study of microgels by the team at Daisuke Suzuki Laboratory, Graduate School of Textile Science & Technology and RISM (Research Initiative for Supra-Materials) of Shinshu University. The study lead by first year doctoral candidate, Yuichiro Nishizawa, succeeded in observing the structure of the microgels which had been difficult due to limitations of previous equipment.

* This article was originally published here

New aqueous electrochemical energy storage battery could pave the way for grid-scale energy storage

A team of researchers with the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a new aqueous electrochemical energy storage battery that they believe could pave the way for grid-scale energy storage. In their paper published in the journal Nature Energy, the group describes how they built their new battery and how well it worked when tested. Lauren Marbella with Columbia University has published a News and Views piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.

* This article was originally published here

Pollution is a 'significant' problem at 401 national parks, report says

More than 96% of national parks assessed in a recent report are "plagued by significant air pollution problems," and some of California's most iconic parks are among the most troubled, according to one of the nation's largest nonprofit conservation associations.

* This article was originally published here