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Degeneration of neurons in rat brains stopped with pre- and probiotic treatment

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  • Rat-based study of whether modifying gut microbiota could help neurons in the brain live longer.
  • After being a treatment of pro- and prebiotics, the rat brains showed some improvement.
  • It shows that loss of memory and cognition can indeed be slowed down by modifying the gut microbiota (at least in rats).
  • Further studies will attempt to apply these findings in order to derive treatments against neurodegeneration and inflammation caused by aging and strokes.
Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on November 29, 2019

Complex organ models grown in the lab

uni-wuerzburg.de
  • For the first time, scientists have grown organoids which have functional blood vessels, connective tissue, and even organ-specific immune cells.
  • This could lead to a reduction of animal and human experiments, where these organoids could be used to study diseases and treatments.
  • It could also become a new standard for growing tissue for transplants.
Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on November 20, 2019

AI Copernicus ‘discovers’ that Earth orbits the Sun

nature.com
  • Neural network inspired by brain structure, developed to help solve contradictions in quantum mechanics, comes up with Copernicus-style formulas for Mars’s trajectory.
  • While it created the formulas by itself, it doesn’t understand them — a human still needs to interpret the results.
  • The network consists of two sub-networks, one of them learns from data, and the other uses those learnings to make new predictions and test them.
  • In the future, it’s possible that it could discover new laws of physics, but most importantly it could remove contradictions from current quantum mechanics laws.
Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on November 8, 2019

Brain Takes Just 100 To 300 Milliseconds To Recognize Familiar Music

sciencebeta.com
  • Study on 5 men and 5 women provides new clues to how we recognize familiar music.
  • Researchers played a familiar and unfamiliar song to study participants to measure the speed with which our brains respond to music that we know.
  • Recognition took between 100ms and 300ms on average, and started with rapid pupil dilation, followed by cortical activation related to memory retrieval.
  • The process of how the brain recognizes familiar music is a fascinating phenomenon, understanding it might lead to new music-based
Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on November 1, 2019

Study: Ants are “immune” to traffic jams

arstechnica.com
  • Because ants self-regulate, and adapt when their pathways get crowded, they are able to avoid traffic jams.
  • Humans are worse at this because we all have different goals, whereas all ants work towards the survival of their colonies.
  • This was uncovered in a study consisting of 170 experiments with colonies of different sizes, connected to food sources with bridges.
  • Since a colony is a system of interacting particles, these findings will be of interest to researchers in molecular biology, statistical physics, and telecommunications.
Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on October 25, 2019
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  • Science Science (55) Degeneration of neurons in rat brains stopped with pre- and probiotic treatment
  • Psychology Psychology (58) Kids with depressed parents have different brains
  • Cosmos Cosmos (28) Huge black hole found, shouldn’t even exist
  • History History (14) Humans survived off rodents in the mountains during the last ice age, study says
  • Society Society (59) Majority of anti-vaxx ads on Facebook are funded by just two organizations
  • Medicine Medicine (56) Young children have lower grades due to increased salt intake
  • Technology Technology (62) Magnetic Quantum Computing Circuit doesn’t need any electricity
  • Nature Nature (43) Single-cell organisms might be able to process information and make decisions