Virtual reality and the metaverse are being discussed more and more, but for many people, these concepts still seem foreign, technical and difficult to grasp. At the same time, there is increasing experimentation with storytelling possibilities in which the viewer does not observe the story from a distance but experiences it as if they were right in the middle of the action.
The moon has been bathed in solar wind for billions of years, but the two hemispheres are struck by solar wind of different speeds and energies.
The inevitable leakage of energy and information from a quantum system into its surrounding environment is the enemy of quantum technology. Now, researchers have demonstrated that it can be exploited to generate entanglement—the "resource" that quantum technologies use to perform tasks inaccessible to standard classical technologies.
Advances in medical technology have improved health in part by bringing key aspects of care, once difficult to access, into the home. Tracking symptoms and even screening for certain types of illness outside of a laboratory or clinical setting puts more control into the hands of patients.
When schools closed and child care disappeared during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of working parents faced the same difficult question: Whose job would have to change?
A new Murdoch University study has uncovered alarming levels of pesticide contamination in the food sources of endangered Carnaby's cockatoos in the Wheatbelt—including concentrations well above regulatory limits found in seed spills near grain silos.
For more than a century, astronomers have puzzled over a strange discrepancy in the historical record. Theta Eridani, a modest star in the constellation Eridanus, is the third-brightest star in its constellation, with a magnitude of 2.9. But ancient astronomers described it very differently. A new study, posted to the arXiv preprint server on June 29, has proposed a plausible explanation for this mystery.
Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have developed two processes—hydrodynamic cavitation and cold atmospheric plasma combined with gas dispersion—to break down per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), industrial chemicals that are extremely resistant to chemical degradation. The work has been published in Chemical Engineering Journal Advances and Scientific Reports, respectively.
A follow-up national survey developed by Western researchers shows workplace harassment and violence continue to be widespread in Canada, with some signs of improvement. The second national survey on harassment and violence at work in Canada was conducted by Western's Center for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children (CREVAWC), in partnership with the Canadian Labor Congress.
Hybrid work has brought many real benefits. Greater flexibility can make it easier to manage work alongside family responsibilities, personal commitments and other demands. But it has also created new challenges, particularly for professional couples trying to build two careers alongside a shared life.
