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An evaluation of a new tool to determine which medications are more likely to have adverse anticholinergic effects on the body and brain was conducted under the direction of the University of Exeter and the Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust. Their findings were recently published in the journal Age and Ageing. Many prescription and over-the-counter medications that affect the brain by inhibiting the neurotransmitter acetylcholine may result in adverse anticholinergic effects....

Then, a pilot study using seven patients to investigate GnRH pulsatile injection treatment was carried out. The findings were encouraging: the treatment increased cognitive function and brain connectivity. The findings were recently published in the journal Science. Down syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, affects around one in every 800 births and causes a range of clinical symptoms, including cognitive impairment. 77% of individuals who have the condition have symptoms that resemble those of Alzheimer’s disease as they become older....

“Climate scientists should take these new microbes into account in their models to more accurately understand how they will impact climate change,” said Brett Baker, assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Marine Science Institute who led the research published today (April 23, 2021) in Nature Communications. The new group, which biologists call a phylum, is named Brockarchaeota after Thomas Brock, a pioneer in the study of microbes that live in extreme environments such as the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park....

Between relativistic and classical wave regimes, newly discovered memory effect alters the Doppler wave signature. Wave scattering appears practically everywhere in everyday life—from conversations across rooms, to ocean waves breaking on a shore, from colorful sunsets, to radar waves reflecting from aircraft. Scattering phenomena also appear in realms as diverse as quantum mechanics and gravitation. According to Pavel Ginzburg, professor at Tel Aviv University’s School of Electrical Engineering, these phenomena become especially interesting when the waves in question encounter a moving object....

The fossil, which dates back to the Mesozoic Era (250-65 million years ago), is a chick from a group of prehistoric birds called, Enantiornithes. Made up of a nearly complete skeleton, the specimen is amongst the smallest known Mesozoic avian fossils ever discovered. It measures less than five centimeters – smaller than the little finger on an average human hand – and would have weighed just three ounces when it was alive....

A new study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology showed that older individuals have the most to gain and may gain the most from rehabilitation programs, but this need is often ignored. Regular exercise is highly beneficial for all patients with cardiovascular disease regardless of age, report investigators in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, published by Elsevier. Their results showed that the patients who benefited most from cardiac rehabilitation were those who started out with the greatest physical impairment....

The scientists published their findings in the journal PLoS ONE. The adaptations allow it to scrape food from the rocks and climb up waterfalls. In order to get to the upper streams where they mate, the fish have to drag their bodies up the walls of wet rocks. The fish uses its suctioning mouth and a sucker on its stomach to inch its way upwards. High-speed video revealed that the fish feed quite differently than other gobies when they scrape diatoms from the rocks, as they extend their top jaw outwards and don’t pull the lower jaw back as much as other species....

A strange stellar pair nearly 7,000 light-years from Earth has provided physicists with a unique cosmic laboratory for studying the nature of gravity. The extremely strong gravity of a massive neutron star in orbit with a companion white dwarf star puts competing theories of gravity to a test more stringent than any available before. Once again, Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, published in 1915, comes out on top. At some point, however, scientists expect Einstein’s model to be invalid under extreme conditions....

Two hundred and eighty-five university students, enrolled in a range of health-related degree courses, participated in the study. They were assessed for their use of digital technology, their study skills and motivation, anxiety, and loneliness. The study found a negative relationship between internet addiction and motivation to study. Students reporting more internet addiction also found it harder to organize their learning productively, and were more anxious about their upcoming tests....

A new, early dinosaur has been found and named by an international team of paleontologists under the direction of Virginia Tech. The skeleton was discovered by a graduate student in the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences and other paleontologists over the course of two excavations, in 2017 and 2019. Astonishingly, most of the skeleton is still complete. The findings of this new sauropodomorph – a long-necked dinosaur — named Mbiresaurus raathi were recently published in Nature....

Now, in a new geology and paleontology monograph, that reveals much more about the famous Kem Kem beds in Morocco, Dr. Nizar Ibrahim from the University of Detroit Mercy, Prof. Paul Sereno from the University of Chicago, and a team of international scholars from the United States, Europe, and Morocco, have put together a comprehensive story that is published in the open-access journal ZooKeys. The aim of the new research is to provide the international community with an in-depth review of the rocks and fossils of the region....

Marijuana use is increasing among adults and often co-occurs with other substance use; therefore, it is important to examine whether parental marijuana use is associated with an elevated risk of substance use among offspring living in the same household. According to the results of the study, the bottom line is that recent and past use of marijuana by parents was associated with an increased risk of marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol use by adolescent or young adult children living in the same household in this survey study....

One species of peacock spider — the rainbow peacock spider (Maratus robinsoni) — is particularly impressive, because it showcases an intense rainbow iridescent signal in males’ courtship displays to the females. This is the first known instance in nature of males using an entire rainbow of colors to entice females to mate. But how do males make their rainbows? Figuring out the answer was inherently interdisciplinary so Dr. Bor-Kai Hsiung — now a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego – assembled a team that included biologists, physicists, and engineers while he was a Ph....

Physical activity is thought to be our greatest ally in the fight against cardiovascular disease. But there may be significant variations in its protective effects across a range of different situations, such as regularly playing a sport, carrying heavy loads at work, or going for a walk with friends. These are the findings of a new study led by Inserm researcher Jean-Philippe Empana (U970 PARCC, Inserm/Université de Paris) in collaboration with Australian researchers....

According to general relativity, the presence of a massive object slows down the flow of time. This means that a clock placed close to a massive object will run slower as compared to an identical one that is further away. However, the rules of quantum theory allow for any object to be prepared in a superposition state. A superposition state of two locations is different from placing an object in one or the other location randomly – it is another way for an object to exist, allowed by the laws of quantum physics....

Sunset is a special time of day. Low-hanging clouds glow vivid red and orange as the background sky turns cobalt blue. The first stars pop out in the heavenly dome overhead, eliciting wishes from backyard sky watchers. The sunset of May 26th will be extra special. On that date, Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury will gather in the fading twilight to form a bright triangle only three degrees wide. ScienceCasts: Sunset Triangle....

Engineers have invented a way to spray extremely thin wires made of a plant-based material that could be used in N95 mask filters, devices that harvest energy for electricity, and potentially the creation of human organs. The method involves spraying methylcellulose, a renewable plastic material derived from plant cellulose, on 3D-printed and other objects ranging from electronics to plants, according to a Rutgers-led study in the journal Materials Horizons. “This could be the first step towards 3D manufacturing of organs with the same kinds of amazing properties as those seen in nature,” said senior author Jonathan P....

Ever-widening divisions between Democrats and Republicans are believed to reflect deeply rooted ideological differences, but a new study points to a radically different interpretation: The side taken by each party may be mostly a matter of luck. It’s a phenomenon that Michael Macy, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Arts and Sciences and director of the Social Dynamics Laboratory, calls an “opinion cascade” – in which partisans pile onto whatever emerging position they identify with their party....

A new research study headed by Aarhus University in Denmark identifies how viruses avoid the body’s immune system and cause infections and diseases. Viruses have an exceptional ability to circumvent the body’s immune system and cause diseases. The majority of people recover from a viral infection such as influenza, although the current COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how dangerous viruses are when there is no effective vaccine or treatment. Professor and virologist Søren Riis Paludan from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, Denmark, has been leading a research partnership between Aarhus University, the University of Oxford and the University of Gothenburg, which has brought us one step closer to understanding the tactics used by viruses when they attack the immune system....

In 2015, EPFL researchers led by Melanie Blokesch published a seminal paper showing that the bacterium responsible for cholera, Vibrio cholerae, uses a spring-loaded spear to literally stab neighboring bacteria and steal their DNA. They identified the spear mechanism to be the so-called “type VI secretion system” or T6SS, also used for interbacterial competition by many other bacteria. V. cholerae uses its T6SS to compete with other bacteria in its aquatic environment and acquire new genetic material, which the pathogen absorbs and exchanges against some parts of its own genome....