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Previously unrecognized hub in the brain’s lymphatic drainage system may assist with clearing waste

How does the brain take out its trash? That is the job of the brain’s lymphatic drainage system, and efforts to understand how it works have pushed the boundaries of brain-imaging technologies.

A new study in iScience by researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina reveals—for the first time in humans—evidence of a previously unrecognized hub in the brain’s lymphatic drainage system—the middle meningeal artery (MMA).

Taking advantage of a NASA partnership that provided access to real-time MRI technologies originally developed to study how spaceflight affects in the human brain, the MUSC research team, led by Onder Albayram, Ph.D., tracked cerebrospinal and interstitial fluid flow along the MMA in five healthy participants over a six-hour period. They found that the drainage flow of the cerebrospinal fluid was passive, suggesting lymphatic rather than blood flow. Blood would have had a faster, more dynamic flow.

How a chorus of synchronized frequencies helps you digest your food

Synchronization abounds in nature: from the flashing lights of fireflies to the movement of fish wriggling through the ocean, biological systems are often in rhythmic movement with each other. The mechanics of how this synchronization happens are complex.

For instance, in the vasculature of the brain, blood vessels oscillate, expanding and contracting as needed. When there is , the arterioles expand to increase blood flow, oxygen and nutrients. These oscillations are self-sustained, but the arterioles also work in concert with each other. How this happens is not well understood.

To uncover the answer, researchers at the University of California San Diego looked to another part of the body: the gut. Here they found that oscillators operating at similar frequencies lock onto each other in succession, creating a staircase effect. Their work appears in Physical Review Letters.

RRAM-based analog computing system rapidly solves matrix equations with high precision

Analog computers are systems that perform computations by manipulating physical quantities such as electrical current, that map math variables, instead of representing information using abstraction with discrete binary values (i.e., 0 or 1), like digital computers.

While computing systems can perform well on general-purpose tasks, they are known to be susceptible to noise (i.e., background or external interferences) and less precise than .

Researchers at Peking University and the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Integrated Circuits have developed a scalable analog computing device that can solve so-called matrix equations with remarkable precision. This new system, introduced in a paper published in Nature Electronics, was built using tiny non-volatile memory devices known as resistive random-access memory (RRAM) chips.

Tool reveals how your dinner affects risk of 30,875 species land-dwelling animals going extinct

University of Cambridge researchers have developed a new way to measure the impact of our food production on other species’ survival around the world.

It reveals that between 700 and 1,100 species of vertebrate are likely to go extinct in the next 100 years, if global land-use for agriculture does not change. This figure does not account for future population growth, and is probably a huge underestimate.

By considering the productivity of any piece of land, the team can figure out the “per kilogram impact” of each commodity per year on biodiversity.

New electrical signature of Parkinson’s disease identified

What happens in the brain when a person experiences the characteristic movement symptoms of Parkinson’s disease? Researchers around the world are seeking answers through various approaches. One of these builds on a treatment already established in clinical care: deep brain stimulation. In this therapy, stimulating electrodes are implanted in patients’ brains to alleviate symptoms using electrical impulses. The same electrodes also enable unique electrical measurements from areas otherwise inaccessible in humans. These data can help uncover the neural mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease and inspire new therapeutic strategies.

In close collaboration with leading European centers—including Charité Berlin, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, University College London, and the University of Oxford—the Max Planck team has now taken an important step forward. For their study, now published in eBioMedicine, the researchers focused on so-called “beta waves,” which oscillate ca. 20 times per second and whose strength is thought to correlate with the severity of movement symptoms.

However, when reviewing the literature, the team encountered considerable heterogeneity in the results. “We wondered why earlier studies from different centers had produced such mixed results,” says Vadim Nikulin of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. “Did the patient groups differ, the recording equipment, or the analysis methods?”

Psychology study suggests chimpanzees might be rational thinkers

Chimpanzees may have more in common with human thinkers than previously thought. A new study published in Science by an international team of researchers provides evidence that chimpanzees can rationally revise their beliefs when presented with new information.

The study, titled “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs,” was conducted by a large research team that included UC Berkeley Psychology Postdoctoral Researcher Emily Sanford, UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Jan Engelmann and Utrecht University Psychology Professor Hanna Schleihauf. Their findings showed that chimpanzees—like humans—can change their minds based on the strength of available evidence, a key feature of rational thought.

Working at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, the researchers presented with two boxes, one containing food. Initially, the animals received a clue suggesting which box held the reward. Later, they were given stronger evidence pointing to the other box. The chimps frequently switched their choices in response to the new clues.

Computationally accelerated organic synthesis: Optimal ligand prediction for generating reactive alkyl ketone radicals

Because ketones are widespread in organic molecules, chemists are eager to develop new reactions that use them to form chemical bonds. One challenging reaction is the one-electron reduction of ketones to generate ketyl radicals.

Ketyl radicals are reactive intermediates used in natural product synthesis and pharmaceutical chemistry; however, most methodologies are optimized for aryl while simple alkyl ketones remain challenging for chemists. Alkyl ketones are considerably more abundant but intrinsically more difficult to reduce than aryl ketones.

To this end, a team of specialized organic chemists and computational chemists from WPI-ICReDD at Hokkaido University has developed a new catalytic method for generating alkyl ketyl radicals.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy caused by more than just head trauma, study finds

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—most often found in athletes playing contact sports—is known to share similarities with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), namely the buildup of a protein called tau in the brain.

New research published in Science finds even more commonalities between the two at the genetic level, showing CTE (like AD) is linked to damage to the genome and not just caused by repeated head impact (RHI).

The research team, a collaboration between Boston Children’s Hospital, Mass General Brigham, and Boston University, used single-cell genomic sequencing to identify somatic genetic mutations (changes in DNA that occur after conception and are not hereditary).

Scientists create new type of semiconductor that holds superconducting promise

Scientists have long sought to make semiconductors—vital components in computer chips and solar cells—that are also superconducting, thereby enhancing their speed and energy efficiency and enabling new quantum technologies. However, achieving superconductivity in semiconductor materials such as silicon and germanium has proved challenging due to difficulty in maintaining an optimal atomic structure with the desired conduction behavior.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, an international team of scientists reports producing a form of that is superconducting—able to conduct electricity with , which allows currents to flow indefinitely without , resulting in greater operational speed that requires less energy.

“Establishing superconductivity in germanium, which is already widely used in computer chips and , can potentially revolutionize scores of consumer products and industrial technologies,” says New York University physicist Javad Shabani, director of NYU’s Center of Quantum Information Physics and the university’s newly established Quantum Institute, one of the paper’s authors.

‘Singing’ electrons synchronize in Kagome crystals, revealing geometry-driven quantum coherence

Physicists at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg have discovered a striking new form of quantum behavior. In star-shaped Kagome crystals—named after a traditional Japanese bamboo-basket woven pattern—electrons that usually act like a noisy crowd suddenly synchronize, forming a collective “song” that evolves with the crystal’s shape. The study, published in Nature, reveals that geometry itself can tune quantum coherence, opening new possibilities to develop materials where form defines function.

Quantum coherence—the ability of particles to move in synchrony like overlapping waves—is usually limited to exotic states such as superconductivity, where pair up and flow coherently. In ordinary metals, collisions quickly destroy such coherence.

But in the Kagome metal CsV₃Sb₅, after sculpting tiny crystalline pillars just a few micrometers across and applying magnetic fields, the MPSD team observed Aharonov–Bohm-like oscillations in electrical resistance. Thus showing that electrons were interfering collectively, remaining coherent far beyond what single-particle physics would allow.

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