news 2022

A new study is the first to show brain stimulation improves reading in patients with macular degeneration. Drug treatments only slow down the progression of the disease, but Waterloo scientists discovered they could train the brain to use the information it receives more efficiently. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive, painless brain stimulation treatment that uses direct electrical currents to stimulate specific parts of the brain.

Human bipedalism - walking upright on two legs - may have evolved in trees, and not on the ground as previously thought, according to a new study involving UCL researchers. In the study, published today in the journal Science Advances, researchers from UCL, the University of Kent, and Duke University, USA, explored the behaviours of wild chimpanzees - our closest living relative - living in the Issa Valley of western Tanzania , within the region of the East African Rift Valley.

A new pilot study by Carnegie Mellon researchers investigates the mechanisms that underlie a treatment for patients with amblyopia, also known as "lazy eye." Amblyopia is a condition where the brain cannot recognize sight from one eye and favors the other eye. One therapy that shows promise for addressing the condition in adult patients is transient dark exposure, in which a patient has an occlusion that caused their amblyopia removed and lives in darkness for a few days.

Creators at Johns Hopkins envision 'gelbots' crawling through human bodies to deliver medicine A new gelatinous robot that crawls, powered by nothing more than temperature change and clever design, brings "a kind of intelligence" to the field of soft robotics. The inchworm-inspired work is detailed today in Science Robotics .

A recent study by Western neuroscientists suggests that, unlike true reality, perception in virtual reality is more strongly influenced by our expectations than the visual information before our eyes. The researchers point to the challenge of online shopping, where customers sometimes mis-estimate the size of a product based on their expectations, discovering for example that a sweater purchased online is indeed lovely but sized for a doll not an adult.

A team of UT researchers from the Faculties of ITC, BMS and ET has recently published a new study published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation that found using digital twins can improve planning and coordination in cities. Digital twins are digital representations of physical objects or systems, and have been widely used in manufacturing, construction, and maintenance to improve planning and coordination.

TU Delft Dream Team Epoch has achieved ninth place in their first competition of the year, the CityLearn Challenge. Engaged in a battle with 110 other teams from around the world, including Microsoft, the TU Delft students developed a new AI algorithm that contributes to better and smarter energy systems.

A new research project from Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam (UvA) launches a 4-year project entitled 'A Safe Bet: design and evaluation of a player-tailored online responsible gambling promotion framework'. The researchers will develop and evaluate new tools for online Responsible Gambling (RG).

Complete abstinence from alcohol is considered a cornerstone in the treatment of patients with alcohol-related liver disease. It has not yet been sufficiently researched whether this measure can still improve the prognosis even in the case of advanced liver cirrhosis. Scientists at the Department of Internal Medicine III at MedUni Vienna and AKH Vienna have now provided evidence of the positive effects of alcohol abstinence even at very advanced stages of the disease.

Researchers of the University of Amsterdam, together with colleagues at the University of Queensland and the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, have developed a strategy for assessing the toxicity of chemicals using machine learning. They present their approach in an article in Environmental Science & Technology for the special issue "Data Science for Advancing Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology".

When tectonic plates collide and thrust over each other and cause an earthquake, a tsunami can occur. That should not happen in an earthquake where the plates slide past each other. And yet that was exactly what happened on 28 September 2018 near Palu Bay (Sulawesi, Indonesia), mere minutes after an earthquake of that second category.

Using smart algorithms, PhD researcher Lars Moormann has made the design of tunnel control systems much more efficient. It is hard to imagine modern traffic networks without tunnels. They help us bypass rivers and mountains, and make sure traffic doesn't interfere too much with our daily lives in urban areas.

Researchers of the Faculty of Psychology, the Institute of Neurosciences ( UBNeuro ) and the Institute of Complex Systems ( UBICS ) of the University of Barcelona have identified, using functional magnetic resonance techniques, differences in the spontaneous activity of the brain in a resting state in people with Down syndrome (DS) compared to the general population.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laborator

The U.S. states with the highest growth rates of Latinas of childbearing age in recent years are also states that have abortion restrictions. In each of the 29 states with abortion restrictions, Latinas are far more likely to be of childbearing age than non-Hispanic white women. The potentially harmful impacts of the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling are likely to disproportionately affect the Latina population.

A study carried out by the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio, UV-CSIC) reveals that enveloped viruses with a lipid envelope can better infect different species of animals, including humans. The flu, HIV or coronaviruses are enveloped viruses. This work makes it possible to refine surveillance tools to control zoonoses, the passage of these viruses from animals to people.

New findings lay the foundation for the search for dark matter How are galaxies born, and what holds them together? Astronomers assume that dark matter plays an essential role. However, as yet it has not been possible to prove directly that dark matter exists. A research team including Technical University of Munich (TUM) scientists has now measured for the first time the survival rate of antihelium nuclei from the depths of the galaxy - a necessary prerequisite for the indirect search for Dark Matter.

The introduction of the general right to vote for women in Switzerland contributed significantly to their emancipation. Researchers at the University of Basel have now retrospectively statistically evaluated and quantified the effects on employment, education and the family model. The anonymous petition by women in Zurich demanding women's suffrage in 1868 as part of the constitutional reform had no chance of success, as did many other initiatives to this end.

These stories have shaped the year. They challenged us, entertained us, educated us, and even changed people's thinking. Discover the vast array of research that dominated the news in 2022. From diets to music, COVID-19 to cancer; here are just a few of the research projects, commentary and stories that captured public attention during the year.

Cities are responsible for almost 1/5 of the global methane emissions caused by human activities. But most cities don't capture information about the full range of sources of this powerful greenhouse gas. In 2020, a team led by McGill University, measured methane emissions from various sources across the city of Montreal.