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Rare seasonal brain shrinkage in shrews is driven by water loss

Water cure: The study found that common shrews shrink their brains in winter not by losing cells, but by losing water.

Brain scans: The team used MRI scanning, the same technology used in hospitals, to peer inside the brains of live shrews across seasons.

What humans can learn: Brain shrinkage in humans is typically a sign of disease, like Alzheimer’s. But shrews can shrink their brain without compromising function or causing damage. Shrews could become a model system for exploring potential pathways for medica treatment of human brain disease.

Knowing how shrews loose brain volume over winter is the first step to understanding how they reverse this loss and regrow healthy brains in summer.

Brain.

Your Mother’s Germs May Have Influenced Your Brain’s Development

Our bodies are colonized by a teeming, ever-changing mass of microbes that help power countless biological processes. Now, a new study has identified how these microorganisms get to work shaping the brain before birth.

Researchers at Georgia State University studied newborn mice specifically bred in a germ-free environment to prevent any microbe colonization. Some of these mice were immediately placed with mothers with normal microbiota, which leads to microbes being transferred rapidly.

That gave the study authors a way to pinpoint just how early microbes begin influencing the developing brain. Their focus was on the paraventricular nucleus (PVN), a region of the hypothalamus tied to stress and social behavior, already known to be partly influenced by microbe activity in mice later in life.

Nutrition at the Intersection between Gut Microbiota Eubiosis and Effective Management of Type 2 Diabetes

Nutrition is one of the most influential environmental factors in both taxonomical shifts in gut microbiota as well as in the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Emerging evidence has shown that the effects of nutrition on both these parameters is not mutually exclusive and that changes in gut microbiota and related metabolites such as short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) may influence systemic inflammation and signaling pathways that contribute to pathophysiological processes associated with T2DM. With this background, our review highlights the effects of macronutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids, as well as micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals, on T2DM, specifically through their alterations in gut microbiota and the metabolites they produce.

Amazon disrupts Russian APT29 hackers targeting Microsoft 365

Researchers have disrupted an operation attributed to the Russian state-sponsored threat group Midnight Blizzard, which sought access to Microsoft 365 accounts and data.

Also known as APT29, the hacker group compromised websites in a watering hole campaign to redirect selected targets “to malicious infrastructure designed to trick users into authorizing attacker-controlled devices through Microsoft’s device code authentication flow.”

The Midnight Blizzard threat actor has been linked to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and is well-known for its clever phishing methods that recently impacted European embassies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and TeamViewer.

The unthinkable confirmed—James Webb and Hubble prove that the universe is expanding at two different speeds, throwing cosmology into crisis

Does it sound familiar to you the name James Webb? Maybe you’ve heard about it because it’s a very important telescope scientists use on its missions. Recently, this telescope and the Hubble have confirmed the universe is expanding in two different directions. I know it is difficult to believe, even scientists doubt it at first, but telescopes have proved it. So, let’s find out more about what the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble telescope have found.

To make this scientific explanation more visual, imagine you draw small dots on the surface of a deflated balloon and then you blow it up. What do you think will happen to the dots? Exactly! They will be far from each other because the balloon stretches.

So, this is what happens with the universe. Galaxies separate because space itself is expanding, and the speed this is occurring is called: the Hubble constant. You may not know this, but this is so important that it helps us know the age and destiny of the universe.

‘Greetings from 51 Pegasi b’: How NASA made exoplanets into tourist destinations

Looking for the perfect vacation? Do you crave late-night fun? PSO J318.5−22, the planet with no star where nightlife never ends, is perfect for you! Prefer some peace and a chance to catch some rays? Kepler-16b, the land of two suns—where your shadow always has company—is waiting.

In 2015, NASA launched an unusual and brilliant exoplanet outreach campaign, offering retro-style posters, virtual guided tours, and even coloring books. The project quickly went viral worldwide. What explains the success of a campaign about a relatively young field of science that—unlike other areas of space research—lacks spectacular imagery?

Ceridwen Dovey, science communicator, writer, filmmaker, and researcher, has just published in the Journal of Science Communication a Practice Insight paper that presents a focusing on the Exoplanet Travel Bureau’s poster campaign. Dovey describes the productive working relationships between scientists and artists that produced this standout work and shows how, in contexts like this, artists are not merely in service to science but can also inspire research itself and help scientists clarify their own thinking.

Snap-through effect helps engineers solve soft material motion trade-off

Everyday occurrences like snapping hair clips or clicking retractable pens feature a mechanical phenomenon known as “snap-through.” Small insects and plants like the Venus flytrap cleverly use this snap-through effect to amplify their limited physical force, rapidly releasing stored elastic energy for swift, powerful movements.

Inspired by this , researchers from Hanyang University have developed a polymer-based jumper capable of both vertical and directional leaps, triggered simply by uniform ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation.

Published in Science Advances, this study tackles a classic engineering dilemma: how to make produce strong, rapid motions.

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