Neuroinflammatory diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury, have been linked to deposits of a tough protein known as fibrin, derived from the blood clotting factor fibrinogen. These mesh-like fibrin deposits occur outside blood vessels in the brain, contributing to the death of certain central nervous system cells (neurons) that eventually leads to impaired memory. Now for […]

Something big happened to the planet about a million years ago. There was a major shift in the response of Earth’s climate system to variations in our orbit around the Sun. The shift is called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Before the MPT, cycles between glacial (colder) and interglacial (warmer) periods happened every 41,000 years. After the MPT, […]

A genetic predisposition for depression combined with exposure to high-particulate-matter air pollution greatly elevates the risk that healthy people will experience depression, according to a first-of-its-kind study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS) from neuroscientists at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD), on the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus, and Peking […]

Researchers have developed an AI model to help computers work more efficiently with a wider variety of languages. African languages have received little attention from computer scientists, so few natural language processing capabilities have been available to large swaths of the continent. The new language model, developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo’s David R. Cheriton […]

South Korea is a country slightly larger than the U.S. state of Indiana. It has a population of 50 million. And yet its popular culture has gone global. In just the past few months, the television series Squid Game smashed online streaming records, the Oxford English Dictionary added 26 Korean words and the boyband BTS’ appearance at the United Nations 76th General […]

Honey bee colonies worldwide have suffered from a range of damaging diseases. A new study has provided clues on how changing weather patterns might be driving disease in UK colonies. COMMENTS: Let us know what you think via Twitter or Facebook In the Know

The need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels has never been more urgent. Our energy use is responsible for emitting more than 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. With decarbonising the energy sector such an important goal, researchers around the world are searching for new ways to power our […]

The two-legged dinosaur Issi saaneq lived about 214 million years ago in what is now Greenland. It was a medium-sized, long-necked herbivore and a predecessor of the sauropods, the largest land animals ever to live. It was discovered by an international team of researchers from Portugal, Denmark and Germany, including the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The […]

It’s been a minute since someone has recounted at length, in a book, the story of the solving of the double helix structure of DNA. Matthew Cobb’s Life’s Greatest Secret, which focuses on the genetic code, does a fine job. There’s Robert Olby’s Francis Crick: Hunter of Life’s Secrets (2009). Brenda Maddox’s superb Rosalind Franklin: […]

Look at the palm of your hand and spread your fingers wide. Now imagine squeezing your body through a gap narrower than the distance between the tip of your thumb and the tip your pinkie finger. Let’s make this a bit worse: the gap is in complete darkness, its walls are rough stone, and all […]