Fish are constantly surrounded by water, but do they get thirsty? And how would they even drink? To answer these question, it’s crucial to understand how water — a solvent — interacts with other substances like salt, which is a solute, across a cell membrane. Through a process called osmosis, water flows across a membrane … Read more
Two children who experienced intense, insatiable hunger that drove them to overeat have rare, never-before-seen genetic mutations that interfere with leptin, a key hormone that helps tell the body when it is full, a new case report says. After white fat cells make leptin, it plugs into the brainstem and hypothalamus, brain regions that help … Read more
Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink has been given clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to carry out its first trials in humans, according to news reports. Neuralink aims to use its brain-computer interface (BCI) technology to restore movement in people with quadriplegia, meaning complete or partial paralysis of the arms, legs and … Read more
The sun is an ordinary star, but it’s not the only kind of star out there. Most stars in our galaxy are M dwarfs (sometimes called red dwarfs), which are significantly smaller and redder than the sun — and many of them may have the potential to host life, new research shows. A new reanalysis … Read more
Locked away in frigid Arctic soils and riverbeds is a world teeming with ancient microbes. Bacteria and viruses that existed thousands of years ago are frozen in time inside prehistoric layers of permafrost. Warming temperatures could cause much of the ice to melt and unleash these microbes from their frosty prisons. Once free, unknown pathogens … Read more
You’re walking somewhere you’ve never been before and suddenly feel as though you’ve strolled down the same road already. You’re experiencing the well-known phenomenon déjà vu — but what is déjà vu, really, and why does the strange feeling happen? Déjà vu is a French expression meaning “already seen,” which was first used in 1876 … Read more
A man in his 80s gradually started feeling that he was witnessing the same events again and again. This disturbing symptom, somewhat reminiscent of the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,” likely emerged as a rare complication of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new report of the case. According to the report, published May 16 in the … Read more
After decades of debate, scientists believe they have identified the most recent ancestor of the sister to all animals via the novel use of an analytical technique. The finding settles a central question about the evolution of the entire tree of animal life. All animal life is descended from a single common ancestor — a … Read more
Sure, not everyone has pipes like Adele. But we all know people who truly struggle to match and comprehend musical pitch, and they’re usually labeled “tone deaf.” But is tone deafness a real condition? And if so, why are some people tone deaf? In short, yes, tone deafness is a genuine neurological disorder. It’s called … Read more
Our “biological age,” which reflects signs of age-related decline in our cells and tissues, doesn’t steadily increase along with our chronological age. Instead, new research suggests that biological aging can accelerate during stressful events and then reverse after those events. In other words, there are measurable biological markers linked to age-related changes in cell function, … Read more
