Intellectually, we all know that sea level rise is real—but it’s hard to imagine exactly how it’ll effect us in the long term. A new study does just that by calculating which UNESCO Heritage Sites are most at-risk for being submerged by the rising tides. The results are devastating.
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Human bones are amazing—seriously, they’re incredibly cool—but up until recently, it’s been hard to engineer a synthetic material that replicates the super-strong structure of the real thing. Now, scientists in Germany are using a 3D printer to do just that—and it could mean a breakthrough for how we build everything from architecture to spacecraft.
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We design buildings to make human lives better—but should we also design them to make bacteria healthier? A new study posits just that, suggesting that the microbial communities that live amongst us are deeply influenced by the design of our buildings. Wait—but aren’t microbes bad? Not exactly.
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We’re more than half a century past 1960, when the Doomsday Clock ticked down to two minutes before midnight. Yet, despite the steady outpouring of movies and TV shows featuring rogue nukes and dirty bombs, fewer and fewer people actively worry about a nuclear bomb going off. That being said: Do you know where and when to take shelter if it does?
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We basically all knew this, but science just confirmed that novice drivers are easily distracted by cellphones on the road which leads, almost inevitably, to accidents. The study, conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development, watched drivers as they texted, tweeted, and got into accidents. They found that as young drivers spent a few more months behind the wheel their initial skittishness turns into confidence, multi-tasking, and crashes.
According to the study, “drivers from 15 years to 20 years of age represent 6.4 percent of all motorists on the road, but account for 11.4 percent of fatalities and 14 percent of police-reported crashes resulting in injuries.”
“The true risk is probably higher than indicated,” said Feng Guo, co-author of the study.
Essentially what happens is that novice drivers begin with an excess of caution and then become distracted. By watching multiple drivers with hidden video cameras they’ve seen novices slowly become as distracted as their experienced counterparts. The co-authors, Charlie Klauer and Guo, compared a 100-car study of drivers between 18 and 72 with an 18-month study of 42 teens with little road experience. The setup included four video cameras and driving performance sensors. Data coders noted when the drivers were distracted by phone calls and texts and noted when the participants were in “crash/near-crash events.”
“In previous studies we found that crash or near-crash rates among the novice drivers were nearly four times higher than for experienced drivers,” said Klauer. “Therefore, it should not be surprising that secondary task engagement contributes to this heightened risk among novice drivers.”
Why does this matter to us technonerds? If someone could perfect the non-distracting notification/lock system, the world, I suspect, would beat a path to their door. As it stands, however, keep your eyes on the road and off your phone.
When a study gets published and its results enter our collective body of scientific knowledge it feels like it’s there to stay. But without the raw data behind the study, it’s hard to revisit the research and use it to take new ideas to the next level. Which is why it’s such a problem that old data is disappearing.
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The CAPTCHA is a wonderful thing, but it’s not without its failings. And as hackers get better and better at cracking them, a team of CMU engineers are proposing an alternative: Inkblot tests.
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On the heels of the recent discovery that accelerometers could be used as indicators for Alzheimer’s disease
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It’s a well-known thing amongst doctors that heavy drinkers have a mysterious propensity for breaking their bones—and not just because they may trip over their own feet in an inebriated stupor. Medical researchers from Loyola University in Chicago wanted to get to the bottom of the issue, and they addressed the question the only way they saw fit: by getting mice drunk and breaking some bones.
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What’s your favorite meal? Logically, your answer depends on the foods you’re familiar with. Now here’s another question: Who’s your favorite painter? Turns out the same logic doesn’t apply. A new study that pits Thomas Kinkade against 19th century painter John Everett Millais has proven that some art actually is objectively good or bad—contradicting what scientists previously assumed about aesthetics.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
