10 Science News Roundup #14

Here are 10 science news that I find interesting and important to take note.

First brain training exercise positively linked to dementia prevention identified – Aging research specialists have identified, for the first time, a form of mental exercise that can reduce the risk of dementia. Science Daily

Heavy drinking, smoking linked to visible signs of aging – Heavy drinking and smoking are linked to visible signs of physical aging, and looking older than one’s years, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. Science Daily

The brain’s helper cells have a hand in learning fear – Helper cells in the brain just got tagged with a new job — forming traumatic memories. When rats experience trauma, cells in the hippocampus — an area important for learning — produce signals for inflammation, helping to create a potent memory. But most of those signals aren’t coming from the nerve cells, researchers reported November 15 at the Society for Neuroscience meeting. Science News

Scientists Have Confirmed We Had Our First Ever Insterstellar Visitor Last Month – Astronomers have released the first results from an in-depth study on the suspected interstellar object that flew into our Solar System last month – and the findings are fascinating. IFLScience

Here’s What You Need to Know About That Mysterious Radiation Cloud Over Europe – After weeks of silence and denials, Russia has confirmed that it too has detected evidence of a mysterious radiation cloud floating above much of Europe, observing a dramatic radiation spike above Russia’s Ural Mountains. Science Alert

Deep in The Ocean, There’s a ‘Shadow Zone’ Where The Water Is 2,000 Years Old – The oldest water in the ocean didn’t reach its advanced years by accident. Science Alert

Earth Is Getting Hit by Too Much Anti-Matter, And Nobody Knows Why – Amid the high speed cosmic rays raining down on us from the depths of space are a handful of antimatter particles called positrons. Science Alert

Simple electrocardiogram can determine whether a patient has major depression or bipolar disorder, study finds – A groundbreaking Loyola Medicine study suggests that a simple 15-minute electrocardiogram could help a physician determine whether a patient has major depression or bipolar disorder. Science Daily

How Asian nomadic herders built new Bronze Age cultures – Nomadic herders living on western Asia’s hilly grasslands made a couple of big moves east and west around 5,000 years ago. These were not typical, back-and-forth treks from one seasonal grazing spot to another. These people blazed new trails. Science News

New Study Reveals Stress Can Affect Sperm – Stress is never good for anyone, especially if it is ongoing. It affects various parts of our lives and can eventually become unhealthy. Signs of stress can include symptoms such as sweating, sleepless nights, and even nervous twitching, and can prevent us to from getting on with day-to-day tasks. IFLScience

10 Science News Roundup #10

Here are 10 science news that I find interesting and important to take note.

Daydreaming is good: It means you’re smart – A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that daydreaming during meetings isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It might be a sign that you’re really smart and creative. Science Daily

Transparent solar technology represents ‘wave of the future’ – See-through solar materials that can be applied to windows represent a massive source of untapped energy and could harvest as much power as bigger, bulkier rooftop solar units, scientists report in Nature Energy. Science Daily

Arsenic can cause cancer decades after exposure ends – A new paper published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute shows that arsenic in drinking water may have one of the longest dormancy periods of any carcinogen. By tracking the mortality rates of people exposed to arsenic-contaminated drinking water in a region in Chile, the researchers provide evidence of increases in lung, bladder, and kidney cancer even 40 years after high arsenic exposures ended. Science Daily

What detecting gravitational waves means for the expansion of the universe – Ripples in spacetime travel at the speed of light. That fact, confirmed by the recent detection of a pair of colliding stellar corpses, kills a whole category of theories that mess with the laws of gravity to explain why the universe is expanding as fast as it is. Science News

Nicaragua Joins Paris Agreement Leaving America And Syria Isolated – The world reeled when President Trump announced that America would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement earlier this year. Despite all the political, environmental, societal, and economic costs of doing so, the White House declared that it would stop all efforts to combat climate change at a federal level. IFLScience

12 Global Cities Unite In Bold Declaration To Make Streets Fossil Fuel-Free By 2030 – The mayors of London, Los Angeles, Paris, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Quito, Vancouver, Mexico City, Milan, Seattle, Auckland, and Cape Town have just committed to a bold plan to clean up their cities’ air and calm the wider threat of climate change. IFLScience

Scientists Have Concluded That The Universe Shouldn’t Really Exist – Scientists just confirmed the problem at the centre of the Universe: it shouldn’t really exist at all. Science Alert

Why haven’t we had alien contact? Blame icy ocean worlds – Might ET be buried under too much ice to phone Earth? That’s what planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has concluded may be delaying our contact with alien civilizations. Most extraterrestrial creatures are likely deep inside their home planets, in subsurface oceans crusted over in frozen water ice, according to a new proposal at this year’s American Astronomy Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah. The hypothesis could explain the lack of signals from other technologically advanced civilizations, a conundrum known as the Fermi paradox. Science

Sun’s light touch explains asteroids flying in formation behind Mars – The power of sunlight appears to be simultaneously creating and destroying families of asteroids, according to a new study of Mars’s Trojans, asteroids that accompany the planet like planes flying in formation. The result, reported yesterday at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah, solves a minor mystery and could explain the creation of asteroid families in other parts of the solar system. Science

Mating with Neandertals reintroduced ‘lost’ DNA into modern humans – Interbreeding with Neandertals restored some genetic heirlooms that modern humans left behind in the ancient exodus from Africa, new research suggests. Science News

10 Science News Roundup #9

Here are 10 science news that I find interesting and important to take note.

What training exercise boosts brain power best? New research finds out – One of the two brain-training methods most scientists use in research is significantly better in improving memory and attention, Johns Hopkins University researchers found. It also results in more significant changes in brain activity. Science Daily

Brain waves reflect different types of learning – Figuring out how to pedal a bike and memorizing the rules of chess require two different types of learning, and now for the first time, researchers have been able to distinguish each type of learning by the brain-wave patterns it produces. Science Daily

A universal flu shot may be nearing reality – One of the planet’s deadliest viruses makes an annual pass through the United States with little fanfare. It rarely generates flashy headlines or news footage of health workers in hazmat suits. There’s no sudden panic when a sick person shows up coughing and feverish in an emergency room. Yet before next spring, this season’s lethal germ will probably have infected millions of Americans, killing tens of thousands. Still, it’s often referred to as just the flu. Science News

Your eyes make waste. Without it, you could go blind – One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, even at the level of the cell. That’s where—according to new research—a waste product of the retina fuels part of the eye that powers the rods and cones that help us sense light. Without this waste, that part of the eye “steals” glucose from the retina, leading to the death of retinal cells and likely vision loss. The finding could help explain why eyesight degenerates with age—and in diseases such as macular degeneration and diabetes. Science

Was this ancient person from China the offspring of modern humans and Neandertals? – When scientists excavated a 40,000-year-old skeleton in China in 2003, they thought they had discovered the offspring of a Neandertal and a modern human. But ancient DNA now reveals that the “Tianyuan Man” has only traces of Neandertal DNA and none detectable from another type of extinct human known as a Denisovan. Instead, he was a full-fledged member of our species, Homo sapiens, and a distant relative of people who today live in East Asia and South America. The work could help scientists retrace some of the earliest steps of human migration. Science

Blood Transfusions From Some Women Can Be More Dangerous For Men, Says Study – Providing a detailed medical history when donating blood could be more important than we know – and not just when it comes to screening for disease. Science Alert

An Alzheimer’s Drug Has Been Found to Help Teeth Repair Themselves in Just 6 Weeks – Dental fillings may soon be left in the ash heap of history, thanks to a recent discovery about a drug called Tideglusib. Developed for and trialled to treat Alzheimer’s disease, the drug also happens to promote the natural tooth regrowth mechanism in mice, allowing the tooth to repair cavities. Science Alert

In many places around the world, obesity in kids is on the rise – Over the last 40 years, the number of kids and teens with obesity has skyrocketed worldwide. In 1975, an estimated 5 million girls and 6 million boys were obese. By 2016, those numbers had risen to an estimated 50 million girls and 74 million boys, according to a report published online October 10 in the Lancet. While the increase in childhood obesity has slowed or leveled off in many high-income countries, it continues to grow in other parts of the world, especially in Asia. Science News

Having A High IQ Puts You More At Risk Of Mental Illness, Study Finds – If you look at television shows featuring a genius you very quickly see a pattern emerge. Hugh Laurie’s TV-doctor, House, is a medical genius but struggles with severe depression as well as a messiah complex. Sherlock Holmes can solve any case, but has many addictions and may just be a sociopath. Countless TV shows, films, and books all peddle the idea that highly intelligent people are prone to mental illness. IFLScience

Nine Year Study Finally Explains The Relationship Between Sugar And Cancer – Scientists have discovered the exact relationship between sugar and cancer by revealing that the way in which cancer cells break down sugar is linked to the stimulation of tumor growth. Cancer cells tend to produce energy differently from normal cells – they use a process that involves fermentation of glucose into lactate, rather than ordinary respiration. IFLScience