Summary: New research reveals that serotonin in the cerebellum plays a crucial role in anxiety regulation. Scientists found that mice with lower cerebellar serotonin levels displayed increased anxiety-like behaviors, while those with higher serotonin levels were less anxious.
By artificially stimulating or inhibiting serotonin-releasing neurons in the cerebellum, researchers were able to bidirectionally control anxiety responses. This challenges previous assumptions that serotonin universally increases anxiety and highlights the cerebellum as a key player in emotional regulation.
The findings provide a potential pathway for developing more precise treatments for anxiety disorders. Future research may explore whether this mechanism operates similarly in humans and how it can be therapeutically targeted.
The Last Evolution, SF Audiobook, Science Fiction by John W. Campbell Jr.
I am the last of my type existing today in all the Solar System. I, too, am the last existing who, in memory, sees the struggle for this System, and in memory I am.
📄A group of American researchers, isolated in their scientific station in Antarctica towards the end of winter, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice, where it crashed twenty million years before. They try to thaw the inside of the spacecraft with a thermite charge but end up accidentally destroying it when the ship’s magnesium hull is ignited by the charge. They do recover an alien creature from the ancient ice, which the researchers believe was searching for heat when it was frozen. Thawing revives the alien, a being which can assume the appearance, memories, and personality of a living thing it devours, while maintaining its body mass for further reproduction. Unknown to them, the alien immediately kills and then imitates the crew’s physicist, a man named Connant; with some 90 pounds of its matter left over, it tries to become a sled dog. The crew discovers the dog-Thing and kills it midway through the transformation process. Pathologist Blair, who had lobbied for thawing the Thing, goes insane with paranoia and guilt, vowing to kill everyone at the base to save mankind; he is isolated within a locked cabin at their outpost. Connant is also isolated as a precaution, and a “rule-of-four” is initiated in which all personnel must remain under the close scrutiny of three others. The crew realizes that they must isolate their base and therefore disable their airplanes and vehicles, yet they pretend that everything is normal during radio transmissions, to prevent any rescue attempts. The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien (simply referred to as the Thing), to destroy the imitations before they can escape and take over the world. The task is found to be almost impossibly difficult when they realize that the Thing is shapeshifting and telepathic, reading minds and projecting thoughts. A sled dog is conditioned by human blood injections (from Copper and Garry) to provide a human-immunity serum test, as in rabbits. The initial test of Connant is inconclusive, as they realize that the test animal received both human and alien blood, meaning that either Doctor Copper or expedition Commander Garry is an alien. Assistant commander McReady takes over and deduces that all the other animals at the station, save the test dog, have already become imitations; all are killed by electrocution and their corpses burned. Everyone suspects each other by now but must stay together for safety, deciding who will take turns sleeping and standing watch. Tensions mount and some men begin to go mad, thinking that they are already the last human, or wondering if they could know if they were not human any longer. Ultimately, Kinner, the cook, is murdered and accidentally revealed to be a Thing. McReady realizes that even small pieces of the creature will behave as independent organisms. He then uses this fact to test which men have been “converted” by taking blood samples from everyone and dipping a heated wire in the vial of blood. Each man’s blood is tested, one at a time, and the donor is immediately killed if his blood recoils from the wire. Fourteen men, including Connant and Garry, are revealed to be Things. The remaining men go to test the isolated Blair, and on the way, see the first albatross of the Antarctic spring flying overhead; they shoot the bird to prevent a Thing from infecting it and flying to civilization. When they reach Blair’s cabin, they discover that he is a Thing. They realize that it has been left to its own devices for a week, coming and going as it pleased, as it is able to squeeze under doors by transforming itself. With the creatures inside the base destroyed, McReady and two others enter the cabin to kill the Thing that was once Blair. McReady forces it out into the snow and destroys it with a blowtorch. Afterwards, the trio discover that the Thing was dangerously close to finishing the construction of a nuclear-powered anti-gravity device that would have allowed it to escape to the outside world.
Years before tau tangles show up in brain scans of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a biomarker test developed at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine can detect small amounts of the clumping-prone tau protein and its misfolded pathological forms that litter the brain, cerebrospinal fluid and potentially blood, new research published today in Nature Medicine suggests.
The cerebrospinal fluid biomarker test correlates with the severity of cognitive decline, independent of other factors, including brain amyloid deposition, thereby opening doors for early-stage disease diagnosis and intervention.
Since amyloid-beta pathology often precedes tau abnormalities in Alzheimer’s disease, most biomarker efforts have focused on early detection of amyloid-beta changes. However, the clumping of tau protein into well-ordered structures referred to by pathologists as “neurofibrillary tangles” is a more defining event for Alzheimer’s disease as it is more strongly associated with the cognitive changes seen in affected people.
As temperatures drop, norovirus cases increase and more of its RNA ends up in sewage. This year, wastewater samples in the United States show norovirus levels have already passed the previous two seasonal peaks.
The “Ferrari of viruses” is having a banner season. Norovirus, which races through cruise ships, homes, and long-term care facilities, is experiencing a remarkable winter surge in the Northern Hemisphere, sending large numbers of people racing to the bathroom and many others to the hospital, and in rare cases, proving fatal. In the United States, for example, 91 outbreaks of the intestinal virus occurred in the first week of December 2024, far above the previous maximum, 65, for the same week between 2010 and 2024. And levels of its genes in U.S. wastewater are an order of magnitude above last year.
“The early data for the early part of the season is certainly supporting that we’re going to have a pretty intense norovirus year,” says Lisa Lindesmith, who studies the virus at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. Some of the surge may be due to a new variant of the virus, unfamiliar to many people’s immune systems, and the resumption of cruises and other gatherings that the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted. And there’s no vaccine anywhere in sight: The most advanced candidate just failed a key trial and others won’t be ready for several years.
Norovirus thrives in cold climes, causing explosive diarrhea and vomiting that typically only last for a day. But several weeks after people recover, they can still shed the virus, and it can remain infectious for long periods on surfaces. It’s notoriously resistant to many disinfectants, and studies in adult volunteers have shown just a trace of virus is enough to sicken a person. Oysters are also a source of infection, because the filter-feeding mollusks concentrate the virus from contaminated water in their tissues. U.S. health officials issued several warnings about infected oysters in December, and France has banned oyster harvesting in certain regions because of norovirus outbreaks.
When you think of a mushroom—whether psilocybin or portobello—you probably envision a stem and cap common for this type of fungi. The new Snowball mushroom is anything but typical.
This particular strain of “magic mushroom” is aptly named, as it resembles dozens of snowballs packed together. Mycologist Pope Joseph painstakingly coaxed a mutation from another mushroom species into creating the look he wanted, says Drew Collins, founder and CEO of InoculateTheWorld (ITW). His company distributes mushroom spores and introduced the Snowball mushroom to the world.
The Snowball is a significant development in growing mushrooms that have psilocybin, a compound that causes psychedelic effects, such as visual and auditory hallucinations. This form is unlike anything that’s ever been seen in mushroom cultivation before, Collins says. “I’ve been describing it as that moment you look out the window of a plane and there’s a never ending field of clouds.”
Science fiction writers have long featured terraforming, the process of creating an Earth-like or habitable environment on another planet, in their stories. Scientists themselves have proposed terraforming to enable the long-term colonization of Mars. A solution common to both groups is to release carbon dioxide gas trapped in the Martian surface to thicken the atmosphere and act as a blanket to warm the planet.
However, Mars does not retain enough carbon dioxide that could practically be put back into the atmosphere to warm Mars, according to a new NASA-sponsored study. Transforming the inhospitable Martian environment into a place astronauts could explore without life support is not possible without technology well beyond today’s capabilities.
