Race was already known to matter when it came to health outcomes for infants with congenital heart disease (CHD), the most common birth defect, affecting 1 in 100 live births. In the first year of life, African Americans are 1.4 times more likely and Hispanics are 1.7 times more likely to die due to CHD than white people. However, no one knew why race affected those outcomes, writes Allison Trouten of the Medical University of South Carolina.
"We've known for...
Two U.S. warships are passing through the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. Navy has announced.
It is the first such operation to take place since tensions between Taiwan and China increased following a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan earlier this month.
The U.S. and other western navies have routinely sailed through the strait in recent years.
China reacted to Pelosi's visit by holding military drills in the area.
On Sunday, Taiwan's defence ministry said it detected...
Moderna said it is suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for patent infringement linked to the development of the first COVID-19 vaccines.
The U.S. biotech company is alleging that mRNA technology it developed before the pandemic was copied, the BBC reports.
The lawsuit, which is seeking unspecified financial damages, was filed in the U.S. and Germany.
Pfizer said it was "surprised" by the action and would "vigorously defend" itself against the allegations.
In a statement, Moderna said...
(Foundational Questions Institute) — As the size of modern technology shrinks to the nanoscale, weird quantum effects — such as quantum tunneling, superposition, and entanglement — become prominent.
This opens the door to a new era of quantum technologies, where quantum effects can be exploited. Many everyday technologies make use of feedback control routinely; an important example is the pacemaker, which must monitor the user's heartbeat and apply electrical signals to control it, only when...
South Korea has again recorded the world's lowest fertility rate with the number sinking to a new low.
The rate in the country first dropped lower than one child per woman in 2018.
On Wednesday, figures released by the government showed the figure had dropped to 0.81 — down three points from the previous year, and a sixth consecutive decline, reports the BBC.
In comparison, the average rate across the world's most advanced economies is 1.6 children.
Countries...
U.S. President Joe Biden is cancelling billions of dollars of federal student loans. But what difference will it make?
On Wednesday, Biden announced he will cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loans for millions of Americans who earn less than $125,000 each year, the BBC reports.
Biden will also forgive $20,000 of debt for students on Pell Grants, which applies to those in greatest financial need.
The news, political analysts have suggested, was announced to drum...
An experimental discovery of a fundamental physical phenomenon is not something that happens often. Yet this is what Skoltech researchers and their European colleagues recently managed to do.
In their paper in Nature, they report the experimental demonstration of the so-called AC coherent quantum phase-slip effect. It holds promise comparable to that of the Josephson effect, which underlies the present-day standard of voltage and ultrasensitive magnetic field sensors.
The AC coherent quantum phase-slip effect manifests itself as a...
Italian sports car maker Lamborghini has already pre-sold the entire production run to early 2024, its boss told AFP today, with luxury goods seemingly unaffected by global economic uncertainty.
The Volkswagen subsidiary is enjoying "high demand" and has an order book covering the next 18 months, CEO Stephan Winkelmann said.
Wealthy customers are flocking to the brand despite the global financial fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"We have more and more stepping into Lamborghini. Because they...
The initial tsunami wave created by the eruption of the underwater Hunga Tonga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga in January 2022 reached 90 metres in height, around nine times taller than that from the highly destructive 2011 Japan tsunami, new research has found.
An international research team says the eruption should serve as a wake-up call for international groups looking to protect people from similar events, claiming that detection and monitoring systems for volcano-based tsunamis are...
Chemists have identified how to destroy "forever chemicals" in a low-cost way for the first time, new research says.
Scientists have linked exposure to the substances, known as PFAS, at certain levels to serious health risks, including cancer and birth defects.
Their resistance to water, oil, and stains make them highly useful. PFAS are used in hundreds of everyday objects from frying pans to make-up.
But it is these properties that make them so difficult to destroy.
PFAS stands...
