Unlocking New Data for Earth Observation
Reliable data is one of the most valuable tools in scientific research. The more data sources scientists can access, the more accurate their findings become. Until recently, researchers in navigation and satellite geodesy saw a major missed opportunity — while thousands of satellites in mega-constellations orbited Earth for communication purposes, their signals couldn’t be used for positioning or Earth observation.
Posted in biotech/medical, health, neuroscience | Leave a Comment on Scientists Have Discovered Shocking Amounts of Microplastics in the Brain — And It Could Be Increasing Our Risk of Dementia
The brain has higher concentrations of plastic particles compared to other organs, with increased levels found in dementia patients.
In a comprehensive commentary published in Brain Medicine, researchers highlight alarming new evidence of microplastic accumulation in human brain tissue, offering critical insights into potential health implications and prevention strategies. This commentary examines findings from a groundbreaking Nature Medicine article by Nihart et al. (2025) on the bioaccumulation of microplastics in the brains of deceased individuals.
The research reveals that human brains contain approximately a spoonful of microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs), with levels three to five times higher in individuals with documented dementia diagnoses. Even more concerning, brain tissue exhibited MNP concentrations seven to thirty times higher than those found in other organs, such as the liver or kidneys.
A new mass malware campaign is infecting users with a cryptocurrency miner named SilentCryptoMiner by masquerading it as a tool designed to circumvent internet blocks and restrictions around online services.
Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said the activity is part of a larger trend where cybercriminals are increasingly leveraging Windows Packet Divert (WPD) tools to distribute malware under the guise of restriction bypass programs.
“Such software is often distributed in the form of archives with text installation instructions, in which the developers recommend disabling security solutions, citing false positives,” researchers Leonid Bezvershenko, Dmitry Pikush, and Oleg Kupreev said. “This plays into the hands of attackers by allowing them to persist in an unprotected system without the risk of detection.”
Ragnar Loader malware enables ransomware groups to maintain stealthy access, evade detection, and execute remote control operations.
Microsoft exposes a malvertising campaign impacting 1M+ devices, using GitHub, PowerShell, and RATs for data theft.
The brain’s ability to process information is known to be supported by intricate connections between different neuron populations. A key objective of neuroscience research has been to delineate the processes via which these connections influence information processing.
Researchers at the University of Padova, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the contribution of excitatory and inhibitory neuron populations to the brain’s encoding of information. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, show that information processing is maximized when the activity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons is balanced.
“Our research was inspired by a fundamental question in neuroscience: how does the structure of the brain shape its ability to process information?” Giacomo Barzon, co-author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “The brain continuously receives and integrates sensory inputs, and neurons do not act in isolation—they are part of complex, recurrent networks. One particularly intriguing feature of these networks is the balance between the activity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons, which has been observed across different brain regions.”
China is investing heavily in a new form of electronic warfare called cognitive EW but is the U.S. and rest of the world falling behind?
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a new technique to better understand how electrons interact within materials. By using a moiré material — created by twisting ultra-thin atomic layers — they generated an artificial crystal lattice in a nearby semiconductor, allowing for more precise studies of electron behavior.
Regular use of math and reading skills could prevent cognitive decline with age, according to a new Science Advances study.
Cognitive skills of the population such as literacy and numeracy are important not only for individual incomes but also for the economic growth of nations (2–6). As a result, the aging of world populations presents an economic concern if the commonly assumed declines of these skills with age hold.
We use longitudinal variation in individual literacy and numeracy skills for a representative adult sample to create age-skill profiles that credibly separate age from cohort effects. The pure age component that we derive provides a different perspective on the impacts of aging populations. Overall, our results are not consistent with a view that a natural law dictates an inevitable decline in these skills with age. Potential cognitive declines only occur at later ages and are not inevitable with usage of skills.
This is consolation for countries with aging populations, but avoidance of skill losses is not automatic and appears related to stimulation from skill usage. These results thus suggest that age-skill relationships of adults deserve policy attention, consistent with concerns about the necessity of lifelong learning.
