ScienceAlert

A newly discovered communication pathway linking far-flung nerve centers within the brain and skull, and the body beyond, could provide a new target to stop migraine pain in its tracks. Researchers have long tried to pinpoint where migraines begin in the brain, and how these one-sided, nauseating headaches induce pain...

A New Pathway Found in The Brain Could Help Spell The End of Migraines


We spend a third of our lives asleep. And a quarter of our time asleep is spent dreaming. So, for the average person alive in 2022, with a life expectancy of around 73, that clocks in at just over six years of dreaming.



					
			

Yet, given the central role that dreaming plays in our lives, we still know so little about why we dream, how the brain creates dreams, and importantly, what the significance of our dreams might be for our health – especially the health of our brains.
My 2022 study, published in The Lancet's eClinicalMedicine journal, showed that our dreams can...

An Early Warning Sign of Dementia Risk May Be Keeping You Up at Night, Says Study

Sleep appears in the brain as slow waves surging across the surface at a rate of around one every tenth of a second – or so we thought. A new study in mice suggests there are patterns of brain activity related to sleep that we've overlooked – and that reflect the state of individual brain cells rather than the collective activity of millions or billions of neurons.

Surprising Sleep Discovery Suggests We've Been Missing The Brain's Micro-Naps

Twisted and tangled proteins are found in the brains of many of those who die with Alzheimer's disease. Some scientists suspect these neural knots can harm and even kill brain cells, but so far in clinical trials, drugs that have tried to target the tangles have shown limited success. A...

New Alzheimer's Nasal Spray Clears Toxic Tangles in Human Neurons And Mice


One of the scariest parts of a diagnosis of  Alzheimer's disease can be not knowing what's going to happen next, both for patients and carers – but a new study has offered hope for demystifying the prognosis.



					
			

A team of experts has developed a tool that can forecast the next five years of cognitive decline for patients with early signs of Alzheimer's.
The course of dementia can vary between people, but the researchers were able to sketch out a predictive model based on a careful study of actual patients.
"People are very interested in what to expect from the disease in themselves...

New Test Predicts Future Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer's Disease


As extreme storms, floods, fires, droughts, cold snaps, and heat waves hit us harder and more often than ever, more than half of our planet is predicted to shift into new climate zones by the end of the century.



					
			

A new interactive map, The Future Urban Climates, allows you to explore how your home's climate will be impacted.
Using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on  Climate Change (IPCC), University of Maryland spatial ecologist Matthew Fitzpatrick matches 40,581 places around the globe to nearby locations currently experiencing their future predicted climate in 2080.
For example, a trip to northern Mississippi today would allow...

This New Map Reveals The Predicted Future Climate Where You Live

New evidence from the US has backed up previous findings that as of early 2023, an estimated 6.9 percent of American adults – or some 17.8 million US citizens – have ever had long COVID. The data reveal some clear demographic differences among US adults, showing which groups...

Almost 18 Million Adult Americans Have Had Long COVID


It's long been thought that a monumental surge in oxygen fuelled the Cambrian explosion some 540 million years ago, breathing life into Earth's biosphere to generate a rich array of stunningly complex animal species.



					
			

Whether oxygen truly played such a critical role is hotly debated though, with other factors potentially igniting Earth's greatest evolutionary burst – from the near-collapse of Earth's magnetic field to the erosion of Gondwanian 'supermountains', asteroid dust and even marine worms.
Now, new research scouring the globe for geological data suggests oxygen didn't flood the atmosphere and oceans a little over half a billion years ago, so much...

Life Only Needed A Small Amount of Oxygen to Explode, Scientists Find


A quick scan of your face could one day reveal how well you are aging and whether you are at risk of developing certain diseases.
Scientists in China have found that a comparison of the heat coming off a person's nose, cheeks, and eye area could be an "ideal monitoring and screening tool for healthy aging".



					
			

Trained using facial temperature data from 2,811 Chinese participants between the ages of 21 and 88, their  artificial intelligence program identified several facial thermal patterns that could hint at a person's 'biological clock'.
For instance, the temperature of an individual's nose was found to decrease with...

Your Face's Heat Patterns Could Reveal Vital Clues About Your Health


In the guts of an ancient mummified crocodile, researchers have discovered a telltale bronze hook.
Up to 3,000 years ago, the 2.2-meter (7.2-foot) long crocodile died before it had even begun to digest a fish found intact around the hook in its stomach.



					
			

The human-made object and state of the carefully preserved animal suggest it was deliberately caught in the wild and processed as an offering to the Egyptian crocodile god, Sobek.
Luckily, the ancient Egyptians who prepared the croc's body for mummification didn't remove its guts, as was common practice for human mummies. This allowed a UK team of researchers to reveal...

Scan of Mummified Croc's Stomach Reveals Details of Ancient Egyptian Ritual


Last year an ant species was caught using antibiotics – now, another has been observed performing amputations.
Researchers have just confirmed with experiments that this surgery and the other treatments ants provide each other do indeed save ant lives.



					
			

While we have known for a few years now that ants treat each other's wounds, we're only just learning how astonishingly complex and precise ant medical care can be.
"Ants are able to diagnose a wound, see if it's infected or sterile, and treat it accordingly over long periods of time by other individuals," explains behavioral ecologist Erik Frank from the University of Würzburg...

These Ants Perform Life-Saving Operations on Injured Nestmates, Similar to Humans

We finally know what brought light to the dark and formless void of the early Universe. According to data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, the origins of the free-flying photons in the early cosmic dawn were small dwarf galaxies that flared to life, clearing the fog of murky hydrogen that filled intergalactic space. A new paper about the research was published in February.

We Finally Know What Turned on The Lights at The Dawn of Time

A loss of controlled inhibition of overly excited brain cells might explain how a common knock-out anesthesia drug works. A new animal study led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that propofol, a sedative used to safely lull people into unconsciousness for medical procedures, disrupts the brain's normal ability to regain control of highly excitable neurons.

Common Sedative Could Break Consciousness by Tipping Your Brain Into Chaos

San Francisco, CA

White could be the new beige when it comes to fat cells, following the discovery of a switch that maintains the functions of adipose tissue in mice, transforming it from a lipid-locker into a calorie-burner. Physician scientist Brian Feldman and molecular biologist Liang Li from the University of California, San...

Scientists May Have Figured Out How to Make Fat Cells Burn Calories


Daedalus could have learned a thing or two from a team of physicists in the UK and Switzerland.
Taking principles from fractal geometry and the strategic game of chess, they have created what they say is the most fiendishly difficult maze ever devised.



					
			

Led by physicist Felix Flicker of the University of Bristol in the UK, the group has generated routes called Hamiltonian cycles in patterns known as Ammann-Beenker tilings, producing complex fractal mazes that, they say, describe an exotic form of matter known as quasicrystals.
And it was all inspired by the movement of a Knight around a chess board.
"When we looked...

Physicists Have Created The World's Most Fiendishly Difficult Maze

Philadelphia, PA

Of all the places you can get stung by a bee, the eyeball has to be one of the most unfortunate spots. A rare case study from Wills Eye Hospital in the US state of Philadelphia details the horrifying story of a 55-year-old man who got a barbed bee stinger stuck in his right eye.

Horrific Bee Sting Leaves Barbed Stinger Hiding in a Man's Eyeball

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Total Apex Sports & Entertainment

I don’t know about you but summer is definitely my favorite season and I am definitely a sun worshipper. Living in the Pacific Northwest, we do not see enough of it so when it is here, that is where you will find me. Everything I do I do outside when the sun is out and the weather is warm. I wonder who else feels this way. I wonder what Zodiac Signs love the Sunshine. Want to find out? Let’s do a little research.

3 Zodiac Signs Who Love Sunshine

Last week, Earth was treated to a rare event: not one, but two large asteroids, passing by within hailing distance. Neither 2024 MK nor 2011 UL21, as the asteroids are named, came close enough to pose a hazard, but both were within range of radar imaging systems. So NASA got a few happy snaps to mark the occasion.

NASA Reveals Images of Large Asteroids That Just Sailed Past Earth


Time: It bends and warps, or seems to speed up or slow down, depending on your position or perception. So measuring its passing accurately is one of the most fundamental tasks in physics – which could help land us on  Mars or even observe dark matter.



					
			

Now, physicists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Delaware have developed the most accurate and precise atomic clock yet, using a 'web' of light to trap and excite a diffuse cloud of cold strontium atoms.
"This clock is so precise that it can detect tiny effects predicted...

Ultra-Precise Atomic Clock Doubles Previous Accuracy, Could Detect Dark Matter


Like a nightmarish, post-apocalyptic plot, rising temperatures are causing fungi to mutate in ways that not only make them hyper-infectious but drug-resistant, too.
This is deeply concerning as our world warms, Nanjing Medical University researcher Jingjing Huang and colleagues warn.



					
			

"The danger and importance of new fungal pathogens is believed to be seriously underestimated," they write in their new paper.
"Temperature-dependent mutagenesis can enable the development of pan-drug resistance and hypervirulence in fungi, and support the idea that global warming can promote the evolution of new fungal pathogens."
Fungal infections already cause around 3.75 million deaths annually, despite most species preferring much lower temperatures...

Fungal Pathogens Are Mutating Dangerously as The World Gets Hotter

NewsBreak

New Test Detects Parkinson's 7 Years Before Most Symptoms Show


Researchers have identified a series of blood markers that betray the presence of Parkinson's disease up to seven years before most symptoms present. If findings from...

New Test Detects Parkinson's 7 Years Before Most Symptoms Show

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