Neuroscie
How the Brain Overcomes Instinctive Fear and Adapts to New Threats
Summary: Researchers have identified brain mechanisms that help animals suppress instinctive fear responses when threats prove harmless over time. Using a visual threat model in mice, they found that specific…
Ancient Ear Muscles Reactivate When We Struggle to Listen
Summary: Humans have vestigial ear muscles that once helped our ancestors focus on sounds. New research shows these muscles still activate when we strain to hear in noisy environments. Scientists…
Imaging Reveals Gut-Brain Connection in Alzheimer’s Disease
Summary: Scientists have used advanced X-ray phase-contrast tomography (XPCT) to uncover how gut health may influence Alzheimer’s disease. The study found structural changes in the gut of Alzheimer’s-affected mice, revealing…
Genetics, Not Maternal Sickness, Drives Autism Risk
Summary: A large study analyzing over 1.1 million pregnancies found no strong evidence that maternal health conditions during pregnancy cause autism. Instead, nearly all previously reported associations between maternal diagnoses…
Life
Nature
Newfound bat skeletons are the oldest on record
Two fossilized bat skeletons unearthed in western Wyoming represent a new species and are the oldest set of bat bones yet discovered, researchers say. The incredibly complete fossils of Icaronycteris…
Astronomy
NASA CubeSat finds new radiation belts after May 2024 solar storm
The May 2024 solar storm created two extra radiation belts, sandwiched between the two permanent Van Allen Belts. One of the new belts, shown in purple, included a population of…
En route to Jupiter, Europa Clipper captures images of stars
An artist’s concept of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Three months after its launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency’s Europa Clipper has another 1.6 billion…
Is there life out there? The existence of other technological species is highly likely
Credit: CC0 Public Domain We live in a golden age for space exploration. Scientists are gathering massive amounts of new information and scientific evidence at a record pace. Yet the…