Pregnant women are not confused about the spaces around them

Main Point:

Scientists have found that pregnant women can equally judge the space around them as other people such passing through the doorways.

Published in:

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics

Study Further:

In the present study, researchers worked with 11 women during their course of pregnancies and found that the changing body shapes don’t affect the spatial judgments. This good judgment is attributed to a process called as perceptual-motor recalibration that helps people to adjust themselves according to the changing body shapes and sizes.

The possibilities to perform certain actions are shown by the balance between the body and environment, and are known as “affordances”. Affordances usually occur in the person’s life and change, when the body changes relative to the environment.

“Pregnant women accurately perceived the space needed to accommodate their growing bodies,” wrote Franchak, who stated that changes to the body must be considered with respect to a task and an environment, and what is possible to perform or not.

“The experience of weight gain or weight loss likely operates similarly to pregnancy— experience might be necessary to facilitate recalibration to changes in body size and compression, in other words, how much the body can be 'squeezed' to fit through a specific opening,” added Adolph.

“These findings indicate that experience facilitates perceptual–motor recalibration for certain types of actions,” Researchers wrote.

Related Article on SayPeople.com - Minimum time of Pregnancy (http://goo.gl/ESekJW)

Sources:

Life’s not a squeeze for pregnant women - AlphaGalileo (http://goo.gl/6DKWSH)

Gut estimates: Pregnant women adapt to changing possibilities for squeezing through doorways - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics (http://goo.gl/43Ti06)

New method is relatively easy and efficient to produce hydrogen from water / Related Research Suggestions

Main Point:

Scientists have found a quick method of generating hydrogen from water using a catalyst in the presence of sunlight.

Published in:

Nature Nanotechnology

Study Further:

In the present study, scientists used cobalt oxide nanoparticles to break water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

According to Jiming Bao, lead author of the paper and an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UH, this is the first experiment to use cobalt oxide and the first to use neutral water under visible light at high energy conversion efficiency.

Nanoparticles for the present study were prepared in two ways, i.e. femtosecond laser ablation and through mechanical ball milling, and nanoparticles prepared through both ways worked well. Moreover, different sources of light were used including laser, white light simulating solar spectrum and natural sunlight.

The experiment worked equally well in the presence of sunlight and nanoparticles, hydrogen and oxygen were separated almost immediately from water. However, one of the problems in this process is the reduced lifespan of cobalt oxide nanoparticles that became deactivated after about an hour of reaction.

Research Suggestions:

Although the results were commendable in this study but the conversion rate is still too low with a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency rate of about 5% that it cannot be used commercially at this time. According to Bao, better efficiency rate would be nearly 10%, i.e. 10% of solar energy would result in hydrogen chemical energy. You can work to improve the efficiency of this process.

Among the other research suggestions are reducing the cost of the process and increased the lifespan of cobalt oxide nanoparticles.

Sources:

Researchers split water into hydrogen, oxygen using light, nanoparticles - EurekAlert (http://goo.gl/2Wg8hw)

Efficient solar water-splitting using a nanocrystalline CoO photocatalyst - Nature Nanotechnology (http://goo.gl/OmtVBu)

María Gabriela Isler from Venezuela became Miss Universe, 2013

On Saturday night November 9,2013,  in Moscow(Russia) the occasion held in which  María Gabriela Isler from Venezuela was crowned by Olivia Culpo from the United States . Venezuela took the crown of Miss Universe for the 7th time in the history of Miss Universe.

87 contestants were looking for this auspicious title but Miss Venezuela won the title.The contestants from Spain, Philippines, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil, the United States, Ukraine, Ecuador, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic were in top 10. Miss Spain has been announced as1st runner-up, Miss Ecuador as 2nd runner-up, Philippines’ Ariella Arida as 3rd runner-up and Miss Brazil as 4th runner-up.

Miss Venezuela. Isler, who was born in Maracay, is an accomplished flamenco dancer who also works on Venezuelan television.

 Winning answer from 25 years old Miss Venezuela's to judge Steven Tyler's question "What is your biggest fear and how do you plan to overcome it?" is "For me while one may have a lot of fears but nonetheless this is nothing negative. I believe we should overcome all of our fears and this in turn would make us much stronger and mostly we can become stronger persons. As soon as we overcome our fears and we are sure of ourselves then we can face any challenge.'

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5

One of the best selling medical books on Amazon...

An Imaginary yet True Love (Science Fiction Story)

An Imaginary yet True Love (Science Fiction Story)

Tragic death of a Chinese women using iPhone 5 while charging

An Apple employee looks over a new iPhone 5 at a Verizon Communications Inc. store in Orem, Utah, Sept. 20, 2012. (George Frey/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

A 23-years old woman, namely Ma Ailun, was electrocuted to death by iPhone 5 while attending the call during its charging last Thursday as reported by Chinese news outlet Xinhaunet.

According to the reports, Ma Ailun, bought iPhone in December last year and was charging the phone with the original charger. She was planning her wedding on August 8.

According to experts, mobile phones have a low voltage output of only 3 to 5 volts, which is not enough to harm the human body. Therefore, several other factors could also be involved in the electrocution.

"I want to warn everyone else not to make phone calls when your mobile phone is recharging," Ma's sister tweeted.

Apple is looking into the report. "We are deeply saddened to learn of this tragic incident and offer our condolences to the Ma family. We will fully investigate and cooperate with authorities in this matter," Apple's Beijing-based spokesperson Carolyn Wu said.

S/2004 N 1 - the smallest and newly discovered moon of Neptune

(This article has been cross-posted from SayPeople.com)

Main Point:

Astronomers discovered a tiny new moon, dubbed S/2004 N 1, around Neptune with the help of Hubble Space Telescope on July 1 and announced it on July 15.

Study Further:

Astronomers have reported that the new moon is the Neptune’s smallest moon of 14 of the known moons. It is just 12 miles (19 kilometers) wide. This moon is so small that it is about 100 million times fainter than the dimmest star.

"The moons and arcs [segments of rings around the planet] orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system," SETI Institute scientist Mark Showalter, the moon's discoverer, said in a statement. "It's the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete — the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs."

Scientists studied the photos taken by Hubble from the year 2004 to 2009 and found the moon in about 150 of those photos. They determined that the tiny moon orbits the Neptune about every 23 hours.

Source:

Space