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A recent survey found that even if the cost was 10X as much (though still a small amount), users would pay more if they liked the feel of a smartphone cover. This means designers might benefit more factoring that into product design.The caveat; this was a small number of students and Hiroshima University staff so not representative even of Japan. Still, it showed willingness to pay more when the reference smartphone cover price was 100 yen and 1000 yen. The covers were differentiated by surface smoothness, height, slipperiness, dampness, granularity, stickiness, and dryness.

What correlation giveth, correlation can taketh away. Statins, taken by some 40 million Americans, may not be helping a lot of them.Statins are used to lower cholesterol levels and reduce their risk of heart disease and stroke. They are endorsed by medical groups and the American Heart Association, but many won't benefit from these drugs based on new research. Basically, healthy people with high cholesterol aren't gaining anything.

Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, from school closures to lockdowns, were important for health officials and implemented even after factoring in concerns about long-term psychological effects.If results from 2015-2020 surveys are an indication, depression cases may go up sharply in future data. In 2020, past 12‒month depression was prevalent among nearly 20 percent of adolescents and young adults, and almost 10 percent of Americans.  

'Keeping time' is easy for humans, but not all can keep time equally. Some great drummers, and even more guitarists, use a device like a metronome to keep them on a precise beat, while others seem to do it effortlessly.A new study finds human capacity to move in synchrony with a musical beat may be partially coded in the human genome.

Scientists have confirmed the existence of lonsdaleite, a rare hexagonal form of diamond named after British crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale, in ureilite meteorites from the mantle of a planet in our solar system.According to the new findings, a large asteroid probably collided with the planet collided about 4.5 billion years ago, and the hexagonal structure of lonsdaleite’s atoms, making it harder than the cubic structure of terrestrial diamonds.

In 460 BC, Hippocrates described the earliest documented premenstrual syndrome, but it wasn't until 1931 that Dr. Robert Frank gave it a modern look with his paper on "premenstrual tension." In 1953 it was re-branded "premenstrual syndrome" because it covered so many symptoms. About 150.By the early 1990s, women, and then men, were ridiculing the idea because no two women described the same thing. When a syndrome covers everything, it covers nothing, the clinical guidance notes.

Sleep apnea is a condition where people experience partial or complete obstruction of their airways during sleep and stop breathing several times a night. It can can manifest as loud snoring, gasping, choking and daytime sleepiness and is believed to affect at least 7 percent of the population.There is correlation between that and obesity, diabetes, cigarettes, and alcohol. There is no plausible biological mechanism for why those would cause sleep apnea, it is just correlation - epidemiologists look at rows of inputs and columns of effects - and that is the problem with a new paper claiming a link to cancer. 

Quantum magnetism exploration is getting a boost from atoms about 3 billion times colder than interstellar space.Space is cold, of course, but is warmed by the afterglow from the Big Bang. A Kyoto team instead used lasers to cool its fermions, atoms of ytterbium, within about one-billionth of a degree of absolute zero, the unattainable temperature where all motion stops, far colder than interstellar space.

The teen years are a challenging time for people transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, especially if they have mental health issues.The online posting, sending or sharing of hurtful content is like being trapped in a small town, except possibly the whole world sees it. So why would someone do it to themselves?That's the puzzle of digital self-harm. Like older forms of self-harm (cutting, burning, hitting oneself), there is worry it will lead suicidal ideation and attempts, but since peers assume a third-party is the culprit, the dysphoric or abnormal reasons to post cruel, embarrassing or threatening content about themselves is compounded.

It is common today to have food, or even a feast, to memorialize the dead. It is a legacy from ancient times.Across the Roman Empire, funerary rituals were conducted to ensure the protection of deities and the memory of the deceased.  They were required by law.

Whole Foods and other high-priced alternatives like Farmer's Markets sell imagery of pretty, thin people carrying bountiful produce, but the icky reality is that, unless it is canned or frozen, most food purchased rots quickly.It is nature at work. Rot caused by microorganisms spoils half of all food harvested. The strange good news is that because plants also volatile organic compounds into the environment, science can detect those and tackle plant disease faster, which will prevent food loss. 

Once upon a time, terms like 'primate' and 'Neanderthal' were used as joke insults, but they are both entirely true, and the latter even more so now.Unlike databases of where people live such as companies like Ancestry uses to claim 'you are 12 percent Irish', biology is not a marketing gimmick. Once the science is settled, social fields like anthropology and other exploratory studies can fill in some gaps.A new exploratory paper assessed the facial structure of prehistoric skulls, hoping to support the hypothesis that a lot of Neanderthal-Modern interbreeding took place in the Near East – the region ranging from North Africa to Iraq.