Tag: Research

In US, 57 percent of kids on track for obesity by 35: study

MIAMI, United States (AFP) — More than 57 percent of children in the United States will be obese by age 35 if current trends in weight gain and poor eating habits continue, researchers warned Wednesday. The risk of obesity is high even among children whose present weight is normal, said the report in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Only those children with a current healthy weight have less than a 50 percent chance of becoming obese […]

World’s first floating wind farm opens off Scotland

ABERDEENSHIRE, Scotland (Reuters) — Norway’s Statoil expects floating wind power costs to fall to 40-60 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh) by 2030, the company said on Wednesday (October 18) after launching the first floating wind farm off Scotland. The 2-billion-crown ($251.34 million) Hywind pilot project will generate power at a cost of nearly 190 pounds ($250.12) per megawatt-hour (MWh), four times the current UK market price. The 30-megawatt-(MW)-capacity project has been granted support under Britain’s Renewable […]

Wind farms in Atlantic could power the world: study

MIAMI, United States (AFP) — Wind farms in the open ocean can generate far more renewable energy than those on land, possibly enough to power the whole world, said a US study on Monday. Researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science found that higher wind speeds over the open seas could produce five times as much energy as wind turbines over land. While no commercial-scale deep water wind farms exist at present, the findings suggest […]

Well-preserved dinosaur unearthed in Canada gets name, backstory

MIAMI, United States (AFP) — An extraordinarily well-preserved 110-million-year-old dinosaur found in a mine pit in Canada now has a name and evidence of a troubled past, researchers said Thursday. With fossilized skin and scales, the dragon-like creature is actually a new kind of nodosaur, coined Borealopelta markmitchelli, after the museum technician Mark Mitchell who spent more than 7,000 hours painstakingly removing rock from around the specimen. The report in the journal Current Biology described […]

Climate change could greatly widen US inequality: study

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — If the United States fails to take decisive measures to combat climate change, it will become a poorer country facing more dramatic inequality, according to a study published Thursday. The poorest third of US counties could see income drops as great as 20 percent if current trends continue, according to the worst-case projection of the study, published in the journal Science. An interdisciplinary team of climatologists and economists based its […]

US researchers fuse technology with living dragonflies

VIRGINIA, United States (Reuters) — Technology company Draper has revealed the latest steps toward fusing technology with animals, releasing a behind-the-scenes look at its DragonflEye project which aims to influence the behavior of dragonflies. Researchers from Draper and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Janelia Research Campus have been developing a technology based on optrodes which would enable them to control the flight path of dragonflies. The optrodes, sometimes known as optical fibers, can […]

Research shows remote island has world’s highest density of plastic trash

HENDERSON ISLAND, United Kingdom (Reuters) — One of the world’s remotest islands has been polluted with the highest density of plastic garbage, scientific research finding shows. Although located more than 5,000 kilometres (3,106 miles) from the nearest major population centre, the uninhabited Henderson Island has an estimated 37.7 million pieces of plastic, according the to the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania. Dr. Jennifer Lavers, IMAS researcher and lead […]

UK survey finds 28,000 plant species for medical use

by Maureen Cofflard Agence France-Presse More than 28,000 species of plants around the world have a medical use but poor documentation means people are not making the most of the health benefits, according to a survey released on Thursday. Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London recorded 28,187 species in its latest annual survey and said it was probably a “very conservative figure.” New plants discovered over the past year include nine species of […]

Brains of ‘super-agers’ don’t shrink as fast as others

by Kerry Sheridan MIAMI, United States (AFP) — As we age, our brain shrinks, but a select group of elders known as “super-agers” lose less brain volume than regular seniors, which may help them stay sharp, researchers said Tuesday. The findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association show that super-agers, 80 and older, have a significantly thicker brain cortex than people who are aging normally. The cortex is the largest part of the […]

Scientists map Arabica coffee genome

SANTA BARBARA, California (Reuters) — It’s one of the most valuable agricultural commodities in the world and yet scientists know surprisingly little about coffee. “When we started looking at coffee we started to realize that it is kind of like an orphan crop. Very little has been done in introducing advance genetic technology to improve coffee,” said Juan Medrano, a professor of genomics at the University of California Davis. But now the secrets behind what […]

Pollution in deep Pacific devastating earth – UK study

MARIANA TRENCHES, Pacific Ocean (Reuters) — A study of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana and Kermadec trenches has found man-made pollutants in the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean. Small crustaceans called amphipods, which populate the deepest recesses of the Pacific, were found to contain disturbingly large levels of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in the organism’s fatty tissue. Voracious eaters who will eat anything that comes their way, amphipods are ideal for such research. Amphipod samples […]

Japan scientist eyes energy burst from ‘typhoon turbine’

by Harumi OZAWA Agence France-Presse JAPAN (AFP) — Most people look for a place to hide when a typhoon is on the horizon, but Atsushi Shimizu hopes that the fury of nature may one day help resource-poor Japan tackle its energy woes. As thousands of Australians seek shelter from a “monster” cyclone battering the country’s northern coast, the Tokyo-based engineer believes that his bladeless wind turbine can not only stand up to the raw force […]