Human decision-making depends on the flexible processing of complex information, but how the brain may adapt processing to momentary task demands has remained unclear. In a new article published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have now outlined several crucial neural processes revealing that our brain networks may rapidly and flexibly shift from a rhythmic to a "noisy" state when the need to process information increases. Driving a car, deliberating over different financial options, or even pondering different life paths requires us to process an overwhelming amount of information. But not all decisions pose equal demands. In some situations, decisions are easier because we already know which ...

People with diabetes are at increased risk of developing a severe course of COVID-19 compared to people without diabetes. The question to be answered is whether all people with diabetes have an increased risk of severe COVID-19, or whether specific risk factors can also be identified within this group. A new study by DZD researchers has now focused precisely on this question and gained relevant insights. The COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges to science and the health sector. While in some people with a SARS-CoV-2 infection the disease is hardly noticeable, in others ...

Exposure before birth to persistent organic pollutants (POPs)-- organochlorine pesticides, industrial chemicals, etc.--may increase the risk in adolescence of metabolic disorders, such as obesity and high blood pressure. This was the main conclusion of a study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a research centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation. The study was based on data from nearly 400 children living in Menorca, who were followed from before birth until they reached 18 years of age. POPs are toxic, degradation-resistant ...

A top-level international research team including researchers from the University of Eastern Finland has developed a new algorithm for the diagnostics of dementia. The algorithm is based on blood and cerebrospinal fluid biomarker measurements. These biomarkers can be used to aid setting of an exact diagnosis already in the early phases of dementia. Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Oulu in collaboration with an international team have created a new diagnostic biomarker-based algorithm for the diagnostics of dementia. The team is led by Professor Barbara Borroni from the University of Brescia, Italy. The article was published in the Diagnostics journal. The accurate diagnosis ...

The proliferation of electric cars, smartphones, and portable devices is leading to an estimated 25 percent increase globally in the manufacturing of rechargeable batteries each year. Many raw materials used in the batteries, such as cobalt, may soon be in short supply. The European Commission is preparing a new battery decree, which would require the recycling of 95 percent of the cobalt in batteries. Yet existing battery recycling methods are far from perfect. Researchers at Aalto University have now discovered that electrodes in lithium batteries containing cobalt can be reused as is after being newly saturated with lithium. In comparison to traditional recycling, which typically ...

Glaciers are a sensitive indicator of climate change - and one that can be easily observed. Regardless of altitude or latitude, glaciers have been melting at a high rate since the mid-?20th century. Until now, however, the full extent of ice loss has only been partially measured and understood. Now an international research team led by ETH Zurich and the University of Toulouse has authored a comprehensive study on global glacier retreat, which was published online in Nature on 28 April. This is the first study to include all the world's glaciers - around 220,000 in total - excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The study's spatial and temporal resolution is unprecedented - and shows how rapidly glaciers have lost thickness and mass over the past two decades. Rising sea levels ...

Spreading of the seafloor in the Red Sea basin is found to have begun along its entire length around 13 million years ago, making its underlying oceanic crust twice as old as previously believed. The formation history and age of the Red Sea basin has long been contested, largely because the crust under the sea is widely overlain by thick layers of salt and sediment, making it difficult to observe directly. "Existing geological models of the Red Sea often contradict each other, largely due to limited high-resolution data and the influence of overlaying salt layers," says Froukje van der Zwan from KAUST, who worked on the project. "For example, ...

Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG, or LGG, is the most studied probiotic bacterium in the world. However, its features are not perfect, as it is unable to utilise the milk carbohydrate lactose or break down the milk protein casein. This is why the bacterium grows poorly in milk and why it has to be separately added to probiotic dairy products. In fact, attempts have been made to make L. rhamnosus GG better adjust to milk through genetic engineering. However, strict restrictions have prevented the use of such modified bacteria in human food. Thanks to a recent breakthrough made at the University of Helsinki, Finland, with researchers from the National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic ...

When heavy ions, accelerated to the speed of light, collide with each other in the depths of European or American accelerators, quark-gluon plasma is formed for fractions of a second, or even its "cocktail" seasoned with other particles. According to scientists from the IFJ PAN, experimental data show that there are underestimated actors on the scene: photons. Their collisions lead to the emission of seemingly excess particles, the presence of which could not be explained. Quark-gluon plasma is undoubtedly the most exotic state of matter thus far known to us. In the LHC at CERN near Geneva, it is formed during central collisions of two lead ions ...

Older people with vision loss are significantly more likely to suffer mild cognitive impairment, which can be a precursor to dementia, according to a new study published in the journal Ageing Clinical and Experimental Research. The research by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) examined World Health Organisation data on more than 32,000 people and found that people with loss in both near and far vision were 1.7 times more likely to suffer from mild cognitive impairment. People with impairment of their near vision were 1.3 times more likely to suffer from mild cognitive impairment than someone with no vision impairment. However, people who reported ...

CLEVELAND--Using ultra-high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to map the brains of people with Down syndrome (DS), researchers from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and other institutions detected subtle differences in the structure and function of the hippocampus--a region of the brain tied to memory and learning. Such detailed mapping, made possible by the high-powered MRI, is significant because it allowed the research team to better understand how each subregion of the hippocampus in people with DS is functionally connected to other parts of the brain. ...

A collaboration between experts and a Danish-based, global reaching patient organization has resulted in a groundbreaking medical publication, where guidelines are being presented on how to manage patients with unexplained low blood sugar. Danielle Drachmann, founder of Ketotic Hypoglycemia International (KHI), spent years being dismissed by doctors due to the outdated perception that her children's dangerous low blood glucose (sugar) and high ketone levels were a normal variation. Professor Henrik Christesen, Head of the Complex Hypoglycemia Center, Odense University Hospital, Denmark, could not identify the cause of the condition ...

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is still causing a dramatic loss of human lives worldwide, constituting an unprecedented challenge for society, public health, and economy, to overcome. Currently, SARS-CoV-2 can be diagnosed in two different ways: i) antigen tests (point-of-care, POC) and ii) molecular tests (nucleic acid, RNA, or PCR-polymerase chain reaction). Antigen tests can detect parts of SARS-CoV-2 proteins, known as antigens, via a nasopharyngeal or nasal swab sampling method. The main advantages of POC-test include the high specificity, quick response (less than an hour), and portability, with no need of fixed laboratory facilities. On the other hand, in a molecular diagnostic test, a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is evolved, also known as nucleic ...

A research group working at Uppsala University has succeeded in studying 'translation factors' - important components of a cell's protein synthesis machinery - that are several billion years old. By studying these ancient 'resurrected' factors, the researchers were able to establish that they had much broader specificities than their present-day, more specialised counterparts. In order to survive and grow, all cells contain an in-house protein synthesis factory. This consists of ribosomes and associated translation factors that work together to ensure that the complex protein production process runs smoothly. While almost all components of the modern translational machinery are well known, until now scientists did not know how the ...

Toxic pollution hits poorer populations hardest as firms experience more pollutant releases and spend less money on waste management in areas with lower average incomes. Research from Lancaster University Management School and Texas Tech University, published in European Economic Review looked into the relationship between the location choices of potentially polluting firms and levels of local income to discover if firms made strategic decisions on site locations based on population demographics. The team studied potentially polluting firms across Texas, and found a correlation between lower income locations and the probability of potentially polluting firms choosing to locate there. Their data, from the US Environment Agency's Toxic Release Inventory also ...

Ice ages are not that easy to define. It may sound intuitive that an ice age represents a frozen planet, but the truth is often more nuanced than that. An ice age has constant glaciations and deglaciations, with ice sheets pulsating with the rhythm of changing climate. These giants have been consistently waxing and waning, exerting, and lifting pressure from the ocean floor. Several studies also show that the most recent deglaciation, Holocene (approximately 21ka-15ka ago) of the Barents Sea has had a huge impact on the release of methane into the water. A most recent study in Geology looks even further into the past, some 125 000 years ago, and contributes to the conclusion: Melting of the Arctic ice sheets drives the release of the potent greenhouse ...

New Haven, Conn. -- The choice between two non-invasive diagnostic tests is a common dilemma in patients who present with chest pain. Yale cardiologist Rohan Khera, MD, MS, and colleagues have developed ASSIST©, a new digital decision-aiding tool. By applying machine learning techniques to data from two large clinical trials, this new tool identifies which imaging test to pursue in patients who may have coronary artery disease or CAD, a condition caused by plaque buildup in the arterial wall. The new tool, described in a study published April 21 in the European Heart Journal, focuses on the long-term outcome for a given patient. "There are strengths and limitations ...

Individuals who self-identify as Republicans became more skeptical of a potential COVID-19 vaccine and other inoculations, such as the flu shot, over the course of the pandemic, reveals a new study by the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management. The paper, published in PLOS ONE, measured general attitudes toward vaccines and assessed whether study participants would get a potential COVID-19 vaccine as well as the seasonal flu shot. It also gauged trust in media. “We found Republicans became increasingly vaccine hesitant and less trusting of media from March to August of 2020, while Democrats’ views on ...

LONDON, ON - In a published study, a team from Lawson Health Research Institute has found that a simple device can reduce swelling after kidney transplantation. The geko™ device, manufactured by Sky Medical Technology Ltd and distributed in Canada by Trudell Healthcare Solutions Inc., is a muscle pump activator which significantly improves blood flow by stimulating the body's 'muscle pumps.' Patients using the device following kidney transplantation experienced shorter hospital stays and reduced surgical site infections by nearly 60 per cent. Kidney and simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantations ...

Scientists have recreated the reaction by which carbon isotopes made their way into different organic compounds, challenging the notion that organic compounds, such as amino acids, were formed by isotopically enriched substrates. Their discovery suggests that the building blocks of life in meteorites were derived from widely available substrates in the early solar system. Their findings were published online in Science Advances on April 28, 2021. Carbonaceous meteorites contain the building blocks of life, including amino acids, sugars, and nucleobases. These ...

Scientists from Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior have pieced together a timeline of how brain and body size evolved in mammals over the last 150 million years. The international team of 22 scientists, including biologists, evolutionary statisticians, and anthropologists, compared the brain mass of 1400 living and extinct mammals. For the 107 fossils examined--among them ancient whales and the oldest Old World monkey skull ever found--they used endocranial volume data from skulls instead of brain mass data. The brain measurements were then analyzed along with body size ...

Within the past decade, next-generation sequencing technologies have revolutionized the way in which genetic data are generated and analyzed. In the field of phylogenetics, this has meant that researchers are rapidly reconstructing the tree of life, a goal that biologists have been working toward since Darwin sketched the first phylogeny in his notebook in 1837. Yet despite the relative ease with which DNA can now be sequenced in large quantities, scientists must first extract that DNA from an organism, often relying on vast numbers of curated specimens ...

DALLAS, April 29, 2021 -- Health care professionals should consider prescribing medication for patients with slightly elevated blood pressure if levels do not decrease after six months of healthy lifestyle changes, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association. The statement, published today in the Association's journal Hypertension, fills a gap in guideline recommendations by addressing how to manage untreated, stage 1 high blood pressure - levels of 130-139/80-89 mm Hg - that was not fully addressed in the 2017 treatment guidelines. The 2017 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Blood Pressure Management ...

Eye contact plays a fundamental role in human communication and relationships. When we look into each other's eyes, we show that we are paying attention to each other. However, we do not only look at each other but also at our four-legged companions. According to new research by Hungarian ethologists, at least four independent traits affect dogs' ability to establish eye contact with humans. Short-headed, cooperative, young, and playful dogs are the most likely to look into the human eye. Dogs adapted uniquely well to live with humans, and communication plays a vital ...

Less than one percent of people in the United States use kratom, a plant-based substance commonly used to manage pain and opioid withdrawal, according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. However, the use of kratom--which is legal but carries the risk of addiction and harmful side effects--is more prevalent among people who use other drugs, particularly those with opioid use disorder. Derived from a tree native to Southeast Asia, kratom can be taken as a pill, capsule, or extract, or brewed as a tea. It acts on the brain's opioid receptors; at low doses, kratom is a stimulant, while at higher doses, it can relieve pain. Some people report using kratom as a substitute for opioids in an effort ...