All posts tagged: Discover

Scientists discover why deadly lung scarring from IPF refuses to heal

Scientists discover why deadly lung scarring from IPF refuses to heal

Published by Jenni Sidey

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis slowly turns the lungs stiff and scarred, but researchers may have found why the damage keeps building. Their work points to a survival signal inside key cells, and to a treatment approach that could help the lungs recover. Every breath depends on millions of tiny air sacs inside the lungs working smoothly. In people with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF, that delicate system slowly breaks down. Healthy lung tissue becomes stiff and scarred. Oxygen struggles to move into the bloodstream. Even simple activities can leave patients exhausted and gasping for air. Doctors have long known that scar-forming cells called fibroblasts play a major role in the disease. These cells normally help repair injured tissue. Once healing is complete, many fibroblasts die through a natural process called apoptosis, which acts like the body’s cleanup system. In pulmonary fibrosis, that process fails. A new study from researchers at National Jewish Health and collaborating institutions may finally explain why. The research, published in Nature Communications, found that a protein called BCL-2 helps harmful fibroblasts avoid …

Neuroscientists discover the brain’s memory center starts “full” and prunes itself down to optimize learning

Neuroscientists discover the brain’s memory center starts “full” and prunes itself down to optimize learning

Published by José Betancourt

A newly discovered developmental process reveals that the brain’s primary memory center starts out with an excess of tangled, random connections that get pruned away to form a highly structured, efficient network as an animal grows. These physical and functional changes optimize the brain’s capacity to store and retrieve memories over a lifetime. The study detailing this transformation was recently published in the journal Nature Communications. The hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped region deep within the brain that handles memory formation and spatial navigation. Within this region lies a specialized circuit called the CA3 network. This area acts as an autoassociative memory system, meaning it helps the brain recall a complete memory from just a tiny fragment of information. For example, the network allows a person to remember an entire childhood kitchen just from the smell of a single spice. To accomplish this feat, nerve cells in this region communicate through electrical and chemical junctions called synapses. The brain’s elasticity allows these connections to grow stronger or weaker over time as an animal learns new things. …

Archeologists discover the largest dinosaur ever to roam Southeast Asia

Archeologists discover the largest dinosaur ever to roam Southeast Asia

Published by Jenni Sidey

A front leg bone nearly as tall as a human emerged from the mud beside a pond in northeastern Thailand. It belonged to a giant dinosaur stretching about 27 meters long and weighing an estimated 27 tonnes. Scientists have now named the massive animal Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, a newly identified long-necked herbivore from the Early Cretaceous. Discovered in Thailand’s Chaiyaphum Province, it is the largest dinosaur ever identified in Southeast Asia. The fossils came from the Khok Kruat Formation, Thailand’s youngest dinosaur-bearing rock layer. Nagatitan belonged to the sauropods, the colossal plant-eaters that include giants like Diplodocus and Brontosaurus. Researchers say it was part of the Asian group Euhelopodidae, a lineage whose evolutionary history remains contested. The discovery marks Thailand’s 14th officially named dinosaur species and adds to a fossil record that has expanded steadily over the past 40 years. Schematic representation of the skeleton of Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis gen. et sp. nov. Preserved bones are highlighted. (CREDIT: Scientific Reports) A giant from the dinosaurs’ final days A local villager first spotted the bones in 2016 after …

Scientists discover new state of matter inside Uranus and Neptune

Scientists discover new state of matter inside Uranus and Neptune

Published by Jenni Sidey

Far beneath the thick blue clouds of Uranus and Neptune, matter may behave in ways never before seen. Under crushing pressures and searing heat, carbon and hydrogen could organize into a bizarre new state that blurs the line between solid and liquid. Researchers from Carnegie Science now believe they have found evidence for this hidden phase through advanced computer simulations. Their work predicts the existence of a “quasi-one-dimensional superionic” state of carbon hydride deep inside ice giant planets and possibly in massive worlds beyond our Solar System. The discovery opens a new chapter in planetary science. It also offers fresh clues about how giant planets move heat, conduct electricity and generate magnetic fields. “Our work shows that even simple combinations of elements can organize into surprisingly complex states under extreme conditions,” said Cong Liu, one of the study’s authors. Schematic illustration of thermally driven phase evolution in a binary compound. (CREDIT: Nature Communications) A Hidden World Beneath Planetary Clouds Uranus and Neptune may appear calm from afar, but their interiors are violent environments. Beneath their …

Scientists discover that dopamine receptors act as traffic signals to guide migrating brain cells

Scientists discover that dopamine receptors act as traffic signals to guide migrating brain cells

Published by José Betancourt

The assembly of a healthy brain requires new cells to travel incredibly long distances to arrive at their correct final destinations. A recent laboratory mouse study reveals that dopamine receptors located on stationary support cells act remarkably like traffic signals, slowing down migrating neurons so they settle in the correct areas. These findings, published in the European Journal of Neuroscience, suggest that early disruptions to dopamine signaling could permanently alter brain wiring and network connectivity. Lead investigator Anne-Gaëlle Toutain, a neurobiology researcher at the Fer à Moulin Institute in Paris, conducted the study alongside corresponding author Christine Métin and several other academic collaborators. The team focused their efforts on analyzing the cerebral cortex, the wrinkled outer blanket of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions. The cellular makeup of this cortical region must be perfectly balanced for the brain as a whole to function properly. Most individual cells in the cortex are excitatory neurons, which routinely send active signaling impulses to other parts of the mammalian brain. To prevent the brain from becoming hyperactive or …

What Is Allspice? People Left Stunned As They Discover What It’s Really Made From

What Is Allspice? People Left Stunned As They Discover What It’s Really Made From

Published by Sam Flores

I had always (wrongly) assumed “allspice” was called that because it contained a little bit of many spices. Its festive flavour is reminiscent of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and a little bit of pepper. But, as with paprika, the flavour isn’t made how I thought it was at all. In fact, allspice is an unripe berry from a plant known as pimenta diocia. Also known as Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, pimenta, or pimento, allspice is very much one spice, rather than a blend of them. And its processing is pretty involved, too. How does it get from the plant to our spice racks? According to the food publication Bon Appetit, the unripe berry looks a bit like a peppercorn grown fruits are about the size of olives. The tree it comes from is native to Central America, southern Mexico, and the West Indies. It can be fermented after being picked and is then dried and ground into a powder. Pastry chef and cookbook author Caroline Schiff told Bon Appetit that she sometimes uses it in place …

Astronomers discover the most chemically primitive galaxy in the universe

Astronomers discover the most chemically primitive galaxy in the universe

Published by Jenni Sidey

The light reaching JWST from LAP1-B began its trip about 13 billion years ago. By the time it arrived, it carried an unusually sparse chemical record. This points to a galaxy barely touched by earlier generations of stars. That is what makes the object so striking. An international team led by Associate Professor Kimihiko Nakajima of Kanazawa University used the James Webb Space Telescope and the magnifying effect of gravitational lensing to study the tiny system in unusual detail. Their target, known as LAP1-B, sits at a redshift of 6.625 and is so faint that it would normally be out of reach. However, a foreground galaxy cluster boosted its light by about a factor of 100. This gave astronomers a chance to inspect one of the most chemically primitive star-forming galaxies yet seen. After more than 30 hours of deep spectroscopy, the team found that LAP1-B contains oxygen at just 1/240th the level seen in the Sun. That places it far below the metallicity floor confirmed in earlier JWST surveys of galaxies at similar distances. …

Archaeologists Discover Ancient Egyptian Mummy Buried with Pages from Homer’s Iliad: When Literature Guided Souls Through the Afterlife

Archaeologists Discover Ancient Egyptian Mummy Buried with Pages from Homer’s Iliad: When Literature Guided Souls Through the Afterlife

Published by José Betancourt

Renais­sance Europe admired ancient Rome, ancient Rome admired ancient Greece, and ancient Greece admired ancient Egypt. But the admi­ra­tion could actu­al­ly go both ways in that last case, since the two civ­i­liza­tions’ peri­ods of exis­tence over­lapped. The Greeks made no secret of their regard for Egypt as a far deep­er well of knowl­edge and wis­dom (indeed, much of what we know about ancient Egypt today comes from Greek records), but archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence shows that the Egyp­tians, in turn, were hard­ly dis­mis­sive of Greek accom­plish­ment. Many Hel­lenic texts have been dis­cov­ered in Egypt­ian bur­ial sites, but only recent­ly has a Greek lit­er­ary work turned up pack­aged with a mum­my — and not just any lit­er­ary work, but pages from Home­r’s Ili­ad. Unearthed from a 1,600-year-old Roman-era tomb in the Egypt­ian town of Al Bah­nasa, the frag­ment con­tains lines from Book 2’s epic “cat­a­logue of ships,” which lists all the ves­sels the Achaean army sends off to Troy. It dates from an era in ancient Egypt, cen­turies after the reign of the Greek-descend­ed Cleopa­tra, when “Greek lit­er­ary …

Researchers discover a new dinosaur species in Thailand : NPR

Researchers discover a new dinosaur species in Thailand : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

An artistic illustration of the Nagatitan, the largest dinosaur discovered in Southeast Asia. Patchanop Boonsai hide caption toggle caption Patchanop Boonsai Researchers have identified a new species of dinosaur in Thailand, the largest found in Southeast Asia. It would have been about 90 feet long and weighed some 30 tons, according to research published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. That’s the weight of more than four large African savanna elephants, or more than three times the weight of a Tyrannosaurus rex. “One of the many features that we’re kind of excited about is the size of this dinosaur,” says Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a Ph.D. student at University College London who is the lead author on the research paper. The sauropod — an herbivore with a long neck and tail — comes from the late Early Cretaceous period, some 100 to 120 million years ago, Sethapanichsakul says, and falls somewhere in the “upper middle” range of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered. As big as this dinosaur was, sauropods were about to get a lot bigger. …

Scientists discover a new gut-brain-heart connection that regulates blood pressure

Scientists discover a new gut-brain-heart connection that regulates blood pressure

Published by José Betancourt

Recent research published in Circulation Research provides evidence that a specific molecule produced by gut bacteria can protect the heart from stiffness and dysfunction by communicating directly with the brain. The study suggests that restoring this bacterial by-product might offer a new way to approach high blood pressure and related heart conditions. Hypertension and related cardiovascular conditions involve a complex interaction among the digestive, nervous, and cardiovascular systems. High blood pressure tends to force the heart muscle to become stiff and lose its ability to relax properly between beats, a condition known as diastolic dysfunction. This stiffness represents a major physiological cause of heart failure, but the biological signals that initiate this structural change remain poorly understood. To understand this process, researchers aimed to identify the chemical messengers that link these physiological systems. “Hypertension is a systemic condition driven by complex interactions between the gut, brain, kidneys, and cardiovascular system,” said study author Suphansa Sawamiphak, a principal investigator at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association in Berlin, Germany. “While we …