Researchers create standardized measurement for pediatric facial palsy

An international team of researchers, including a psychologist at Oregon State University, has developed a standardized measurement for pediatric facial palsy that will improve the care for current and future patients with the condition.

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Color vision found in fish that live in near darkness

An international team of researchers discovered a previously unknown visual system that may allow color vision in deep, dark waters where animals were presumed to be colorblind. The research appears on the cover of the May 10, 2019, issue of the journal Science.

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Assessing battery performance: Compared to what?

Scientists must often ask themselves, compared to what? How do the results we generate in the laboratory compare with those obtained by others? How do our theoretical calculations compare with experimental data?

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Scientists introduce novel perspective in robotic capability

University of Illinois researcher Amy LaViers has introduced a new point of view from which to observe robotic capabilities in her paper, "Counts of Mechanical, External Configurations Compared to Computational, Internal Configurations in Natural and Artificial Systems," published today in PLOS ONE, a leading interdisciplinary research journal.

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Study finds high levels of abnormally fast brain waves in mild brain injury

A new study funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Navy finds that veterans and service members with a history of combat-related mild traumatic brain injury—compared with those in a control group—have much higher levels of abnormally fast brain waves in a region that plays a key role in consciousness.

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Athletes with sickle cell traits are at more risk to collapse: here's why

A recent study published in Southern Medical Journal, led by researchers from the University of South Florida identifies a genetic variation known to affect sickle cell disease symptomology. This finding may explain why some collegiate football players with sickle cell trait (SCT) experience adverse clinical outcomes during periods of extreme physical exertion and others do not.

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Fooling nerve cells into acting normal

Nerve cells, or neurons—specifically the "workhorse cells" involved in walking, breathing and chewing—can adjust to changes in the body, but they never stop working unless there is an fatal injury. What exactly signals neurons to keep acting and operating normally has not been known until now. In a new study, scientists at the University of Missouri have discovered that a neuron's own electrical signal, or voltage, can indicate whether the neuron is functioning normally. If that voltage is absent, scientists say everything is "out of whack."

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Gravitational forces in protoplanetary disks may push super-Earths close to their stars

The galaxy is littered with planetary systems vastly different from ours. In the solar system, the planet closest to the Sun—Mercury, with an orbit of 88 days—is also the smallest. But NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered thousands of systems full of very large planets—called super-Earths—in very small orbits that zip around their host star several times every 10 days.

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Researchers discover 'daywake,' a siesta-suppressing gene

Rutgers researchers have identified a siesta-suppressing gene in fruit flies, which sheds light on the biology that helps many creatures, including humans, balance the benefits of a good nap against those of getting important activities done during the day.

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An approach for securing audio classification against adversarial attacks

Adversarial audio attacks are small perturbations that are not perceivable by humans and are intentionally added to audio signals to impair the performance of machine learning (ML) models. These attacks raise serious concerns about the security of ML models, as they can cause them to make mistakes and ultimately generate wrong predictions.

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VisiBlends, a new approach to disrupt visual messaging

Visual blends, which join two objects in an unusual, eye-catching way, are an advanced graphic design technique used in advertising, marketing, and the media to draw attention to a specific message. These visual marriages are designed to precipitate an "aha!" moment in the viewer who grasps one idea from the union of two images. For instance, blending an image of an orange with an image of the sun could convey a beverage with Vitamin C.

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Making a case for robotic objects as anger outlets

Coochi coo. Robots have undergone impressive designs and engineering for social use, manifested in puppy-like robots with expressive, blinking eyes, to little space robots. These little pals and helpers appeal to the home-confined elderly and children. These are social robots designed to understand and respond to cues.

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Notre Dame's melted roof leaves astronomical lead levels

Notre Dame Cathedral's melted roof has left astronomically high lead levels in the plaza outside and adjacent roads.

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Statins linked to lower risk of early death in patients with colorectal cancer

Use of statins before or after a diagnosis of colorectal cancer was linked with a lower risk of premature death, both from cancer and from other causes, in a Cancer Medicine analysis of published studies.

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A multi-scale body-part mask guided attention network for person re-identification

Person re-identification entails the automated identification of the same person in multiple images from different cameras and with different backgrounds, angles or positions. Despite recent advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), person re-identification remains a highly challenging task, particularly due to the many variations in a person's pose, as well as other differences associated with lighting, occlusion, misalignment and background clutter.

* This article was originally published here