https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from Yale-NUS College High demand for eel combined with a decline in stock have resulted in soaring prices for this food item, which, in many cultures, is considered a delicacy. This has fueled concern globally as the prized food item is now being illegally traded from Europe to Asia. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-consumption-american-eel-critically-endangered.html Plants & Animals Mon, 10 Mar 2025 09:19:03 EDT news660817141 College students are often urged to "find" their passion, but such advice could discourage them from exploring other disciplines or developing new skills if they feel their passion or interests have already been "found." A new study by Yale-NUS College and Stanford University found that cultivating a growth mindset about interest in undergraduates who initially professed that they were not a "math or science person," led to increased interest and better final grades in their mandatory math and science courses. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-growth-mindset-intervention-boosts-math-science.html Education Wed, 07 Jun 2023 04:55:41 EDT news605332527 Computer vision technology is increasingly used in areas such as automatic surveillance systems, self-driving cars, facial recognition, healthcare and social distancing tools. Users require accurate and reliable visual information to fully harness the benefits of video analytics applications but the quality of the video data is often affected by environmental factors such as rain, night-time conditions or crowds (where there are multiple images of people overlapping with each other in a scene). Using computer vision and deep learning, a team of researchers led by Yale-NUS College Associate Professor of Science (Computer Science) Robby Tan, who is also from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Faculty of Engineering, has developed novel approaches that resolve the problem of low-level vision in videos caused by rain and night-time conditions, as well as improve the accuracy of 3D human pose estimation in videos. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-techniques-accurate-images-degraded-environmental.html Computer Sciences Mon, 19 Jul 2021 11:12:38 EDT news545911952 A recent study by a team of researchers led by Dr. Vinod Kumar Saranathan from the Division of Science at Yale-NUS College has discovered a complex, three-dimensional crystal called the single gyroid within feathers of the blue-winged leafbird. Dr. Saranathan and his team's breakthrough came from their investigation of the feather colors of leafbirds, an enigmatic group of perching birds endemic to South and Southeast Asia (including Singapore), one species of which has evolved the unique crystals in its plumage. https://phys.org/news/2021-06-scientist-leafbirds-complex-color-producing-crystals.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 03 Jun 2021 12:50:15 EDT news541943410 Mental health issues such as burnout and psychological distress are matters for concern among young adults, and are even more pertinent in today's uncertain global climate. A recent paper by Yale-NUS College alumna Ms Joanna Chue (Class of 2019) and Assistant Professor of Social Sciences (Psychology) Cheung Hoi Shan identified five components of resilience that are applicable in Singapore's cultural context, and demonstrated that college students possessing a higher degree of resilience were less susceptible to burnout and psychological distress. By identifying learnable components of resilience, the paper points to concrete, actionable ways that young adults can learn this vital characteristic, resulting in better mental health outcomes. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-resilience-factors-mitigate-burnout-college.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 08 Mar 2021 10:40:02 EST news534421739 From climate change to the ongoing pandemic and beyond, the issues facing today's world are increasingly complex and dynamic. Yet solving problems like these—which interweave social, environmental, physical, and political factors—requires new approaches that extend beyond traditional ways of thinking. It requires people to draw upon and integrate seemingly disparate areas of knowledge, such as the arts and the sciences. This kind of integrative thinking, or the ability to combine knowledge from diverse fields, is critical for generating effective, innovative solutions to tackle local and global problems. A study led by Yale-NUS College Assistant Professor of Psychology, Paul A. O'Keefe, found that having a "growth mindset of interest" may spark this type of innovation. https://phys.org/news/2020-11-growth-mindset.html Economics & Business Wed, 25 Nov 2020 12:46:44 EST news525530799 Why are some tarantulas so vividly colored? Scientists have puzzled over why these large, hairy spiders, active primarily during the evening and at night-time, would sport such vibrant blue and green colouration—especially as they were long thought to be unable to differentiate between colors, let alone possess true color vision. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-tarantulas-vivid-blues-greens.html Plants & Animals Thu, 24 Sep 2020 11:00:53 EDT news520163212 A research team led by Yale-NUS College Assistant Professor of Social Sciences (Psychology) Christopher Asplund and Singapore University of Technology and Design's Assistant Professor Simon Perrault has found that haptic feedback (such as vibration feedback) causes distraction, but this loss of focus lasts only for about one second. The findings can help designers improve the usability of notification features in devices. https://techxplore.com/news/2020-06-smart-devices-space-vibrations-maximize.html Consumer & Gadgets Wed, 03 Jun 2020 08:51:16 EDT news510393065 A team of researchers from Yale-NUS College, in collaboration with scientists in Sweden, has found that bisulphate species in the exhaust stream are strongly connected to decreasing the effectiveness of exhaust remediation catalysts in diesel engines. Their findings pave the way for synthesising more sulphur-tolerant catalysts and developing regeneration strategies for catalyst systems on diesel-powered freight vehicles. This could lead to lower emission of highly toxic nitrogen oxides from diesel engines, hence reducing pollution. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-scientists-bisulphates-curb-efficacy-diesel.html Materials Science Tue, 21 Apr 2020 20:00:02 EDT news506691436 Researchers from Yale-NUS College in Singapore and University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland have analysed preserved scales from wing cases of two fossil weevils from the Late Pleistocene era (approx. 13,000 years ago) to better understand the origin of light-scattering nanostructures present in present-day insects. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-fossil-analysis-hints-evolutionary-insects.html Archaeology Tue, 14 Apr 2020 19:00:01 EDT news506092829 A team of researchers led by Yale-NUS College Professor of Science (Environmental Studies) Stephen Pointing has discovered a link between two different ecosystems, continental Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, due to airborne microbes that travel from the former to the latter. The finding showed that the health of these two ecosystems are more interconnected than previously believed, hence holistic conservation efforts need to span different ecosystems. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-airborne-microbes-link-great-barrier.html Ecology Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:32:36 EST news499523553 A team of researchers led by Yale-NUS College has found evidence that metabolic dysfunction is a primary cause of Alzheimer's disease. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-10-treatment-metabolic-dysfunction-potential-therapy.html Alzheimer's disease & dementia Thu, 17 Oct 2019 10:47:09 EDT news490528016 A team of researchers led by Principal Investigator Dr. Jan Gruber from Yale-NUS College has discovered a combination of pharmaceutical drugs that not only increases healthy lifespan in the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), but also delays the rate of ageing in them, a finding that could someday mean longer, healthier lives for humans. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-10-drug-cocktail-lifespan.html Medical research Mon, 22 Oct 2018 10:40:12 EDT news459423562 Researchers from Yale-NUS College and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland have discovered a novel colour-generation mechanism in nature, which if harnessed, has the potential to create cosmetics and paints with purer and more vivid hues, screen displays that project the same true image when viewed from any angle, and even reduce the signal loss in optical fibres. https://phys.org/news/2018-09-colour-generation-mechanism-rainbow-weevil.html Nanophysics Tue, 11 Sep 2018 10:18:14 EDT news455879814 Yale-NUS Associate Professor of Science (Physics) Shaffique Adam is the lead author of a recent work that describes a model for electron interaction in Dirac materials, a class of materials that includes graphene and topological insulators, solving a 65-year-old open theoretical problem in the process. The discovery will help scientists better understand electron interaction in new materials, paving the way for developing advanced electronics such as faster processors. The work was published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Science on 10 August 2018. https://phys.org/news/2018-08-scientists-theoretical-problem-electron-interactions.html General Physics Thu, 09 Aug 2018 14:00:07 EDT news453023938 As the world becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, having diverse interests can help people make important connections across fields, such as between the Arts and Sciences. A new study by Yale-NUS College Assistant Professor of Psychology Paul A O'Keefe and colleagues suggests that one's belief about the nature of interests might prevent those insights from happening. Those who endorse a "fixed theory" about interest tend to think of it as something already there that simply needs to be found. Therefore, they are unlikely to stray beyond the interests they already have. By contrast, those with a "growth theory" tend to believe that interests can be developed and cultivated. The common advice to "find your passion" supports a fixed theory and may eventually be limiting. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-07-passion-advice.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 03 Jul 2018 10:35:26 EDT news449832898 Researchers from Yale-NUS College and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences have discovered five new species of Southeast Asian frogs from a group of museum specimens that had long been considered to only contain two species. This research by lead author Yale-NUS College Assistant Professor of Science (Environmental Studies) Jennifer Sheridan and her co-author Dr Bryan Stuart, Research Curator of Herpetology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, was recently published in the peer-reviewed open access journal PLOS ONE. To distinguish the five new species of frogs from the original two, they examined close to 400 frogs housed in 11 natural history museum collections around the world and sequenced five genes from close to 350 individuals. https://phys.org/news/2018-03-species-frogs-museum.html Plants & Animals Tue, 20 Mar 2018 09:42:52 EDT news440757764 Two Yale-NUS College undergraduates are part of a research team that concluded that two different mathematical models, which describe the same physical phenomenon, are essentially equivalent. The discovery could have implications for future research into magnetoresistance and its practical applications in a wide range of electronic devices. After implementing the two different models of magnetoresistance as computer simulations, Lai Ying Tong, 21, and Silvia Lara, 22, found that the two simulations produced similar results under identical conditions. Magnetoresistance is a physical phenomenon where the electric resistivity of a material changes when subjected to a magnetic field. The research was published in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review B in December 2017. https://phys.org/news/2018-01-team-theoretical-physics-equivalent.html General Physics Mon, 29 Jan 2018 09:56:57 EST news436442202 Yale-NUS College Postdoctoral Fellow Eunice Tan has discovered that the bright colour patterns of beetles are not a warning signal to predators as previously believed, but actually a form of camouflage, turning an old assumption on its head. Dr Tan, along with four collaborators from Australia and Spain, examined 51 species of Australian leaf beetles in their natural habitats, and discovered that each beetle's colour pattern is similar to the host plants that the beetle lives on, suggesting that those conspicuous colours help the beetle blend in with the plants it inhabits. The study was recently published as an open-access article in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. https://phys.org/news/2017-12-beetles-bright-camouflage-predators.html Ecology Mon, 04 Dec 2017 10:48:18 EST news431606890 A new study by Yale-NUS College Assistant Professor of Social Sciences (Psychology) Cheung Hoi Shan has discovered that shy children with low English vocabulary skills, can still be popular among their peers if they have high-functioning social communication skills that enable them to engage and interact well with their peers in social settings. Dr Cheung conducted the study involving 164 preschoolers between 52 and 79 months old in Singapore. She co-authored the paper with Associate Professor John Elliott from the Department of Psychology under the National University of Singapore's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The paper was recently published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-09-social-skills-shy-children-peer.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 20 Sep 2017 09:44:13 EDT news425119440 Yale-NUS Assistant Professor of Science Dr Ajay Mathuru has discovered that the medaka fish has an 'alarm response' to a type of semiochemical (message-bearing chemicals that carry information from one animal to another) released due to physical injuries sustained by another member of its kind. Since the 1970s, many scientists had considered this type of alarm behaviour to be unique to fishes of the superorder Ostariophysi. The medaka fish, a member of the Beloniformes order, is one of the few laboratory-friendly fish outside of the Ostariophysi superorder to similarly have a response to this type of semiochemical. With this discovery, it is now possible to perform non-invasive, comparative neural circuit analysis against the zebrafish, the species of the Ostariophysi superorder most commonly used in laboratories. https://phys.org/news/2016-11-discovery-alarm-response-medaka-fish.html Plants & Animals Tue, 29 Nov 2016 09:57:31 EST news399635843