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‘Jelly in the skull’: Ancient brains are preserved more often than you think
In 1982, construction workers uncovered dozens of 8000-year-old human skeletons in a pond on the edge of Titusville, Florida. Archaeologists excavating the waterlogged site—now known as Windover Archeological Site—were shocked to discover intact brain tissue inside 91 of the skulls, with some brains intact enough to identify contours and extract ancient DNA. University of Oxford forensic anthropologist Alexandra Morton-Hayward was also surprised when, as a Ph.D. student, she read about Windover as she set out to study the decomposition of what she assumed was the body’s most ephemeral organ. As a former underta...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 20, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Have U.S. deaths from pregnancy complications tripled?
Experts agree that the U.S. maternal mortality rate is unacceptably high. And year after year of data show that disadvantaged groups, particularly Black and Native American women, die at even higher rates than women in the United States overall during pregnancy and childbirth. But controversy broke out last week over just how bad the situation is, when a paper by academic epidemiologists published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology ( AJOG ) provoked unusual pushback from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The paper suggested a widely reported tripling in t...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 19, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Scientists in Antarctica track ‘baffling’ virus that could decimate penguins and other polar animals
A 23-meter-long sailboat set off last week from Argentina for Antarctica’s Weddell Sea with eight scientists, lots of cloacal swabs, and a genetic fingerprinting machine aboard. The Australis is headed for the southern continent’s teeming colonies of Adélie penguins, other seabirds, and marine mammals. The goal : to search for signs of a deadly virus that has nearly circled the world over the past 4 years, leaving behind a trail of devastated wildlife. Last month, Spanish researchers confirmed that H5N1, the highly pathogenic form of avian influenza, had finally turned up—as long ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 18, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

NASA ’s x-ray telescope faces a long goodbye
The end is nigh for NASA’s nearly 25-year-old Chandra X-ray Observatory. Funding for the space telescope was slashed last week in President Joe Biden’s budget request, which calls for winding the mission down over several years. Astronomers are up in arms over the announcement. They argue that the telescope is as productive as ever and remains a cornerstone of U.S. high-energy astrophysics. Its loss would be an “extinction-level event” for x-ray astronomy in the United States, according to a “ SaveChandra ” website set up to lobby for the mission. “I’m horrified by the prospect of Chan...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 18, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Mystery illness among U.S. diplomats did not cause permanent brain damage
For several years, dozens of U.S. diplomats and intelligence agents have fallen ill with a perplexing array of symptoms that some politicians, intelligence analysts, and physicians have speculated may have been triggered by a so-called directed-energy weapon. Whatever caused these anomalous health incidents (AHIs), as the cases have been labeled by the U.S. government, it did not leave lasting brain damage, two new studies suggest. “We hope these results will alleviate concerns about AHIs being associated with severe neurodegenerative changes in the brain,” says Carlo Pierpaoli, chief of the Laboratory on Quantit...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 18, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Honesty researcher committed research misconduct, according to newly unsealed Harvard report
Honesty researcher Francesca Gino “committed research misconduct intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly,” according to an investigation completed last year by the Harvard Business School(HBS) that was publicly released this week as part of Gino’s ongoing lawsuit against the university. On Tuesday, despite objections from Gino, a judge granted Harvard’s motion to unseal the report the university had submitted in its defense, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported . Gino, who was publicly alleged by three data sleuths to have falsified data in four publications, is pursuing a $25 mi...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 15, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Canine peer review, stolen toxins, and more stories you might have missed this week
How did a single-celled yeast evolve to be as tough as wood? Could your next paper be reviewed by a dog? And is “biological sex” really a useful category for scientific research? Check out the answers below in some of our favorite selections from Science ’s daily newsletter, Science Adviser . Autonomous swimming microbots make a tiny splash Tiny robots that swim through our blood to deliver drugs or hunt down pathogens have been a staple of science fiction for decades. Although still distant, that vision came a step closer to reality last week, when electrical engi...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 15, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Are your earliest childhood memories still lurking in your mind —or gone forever?
Related podcast Why babies forget, and how fear lingers in the brain BY Sarah Crespi , Sara Reardon Podcast 14 Mar 2024 You might think you remember taking a trip to Disneyland when you were 18 months old, or that time you had chickenpox when you were 2—but you almost certainly don’t. However real they may seem, your earliest treasured memories were probably implanted by seeing photos or hearing your parents’...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 14, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Some of our key gut microbes likely came from cows —and we’re losing them
This study revealed that the specific cellulose-degrading bacterial strains have declined over the centuries and even disappeared in many people in industrialized societies, most likely because diets there tend to contain less cellulose, which these microbes need to thrive. More than 40% of ancient human samples had these bacteria, as did one in five modern hunter-gatherers and rural dwellers. But fewer than one in 20 of people from places such as Denmark, Sweden, the United States, and China have them, the team reports. Those who do have these microbes tend to have just a single species, and relatively low numbers of it. ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 14, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

News at a glance: ALS drug setback, controls on AI protein design, and rebuilding Ukrainian labs
DRUG DEVELOPMENT ALS drug comes up short in trial In a major setback for people suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a drug approved in the United States and Canada in 2022 for the debilitating condition has failed in a 664-patient clinical trial, its maker, Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, said last week. Regulators approved the therapy, a combination of two compounds, despite their concerns that the evidence it provided a clinical benefit in a smaller study was weak. But treatment options for ALS are few. Amylyx says it will now spend 8 weeks consulting regulators and those affected by ALS...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 14, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

We ‘baby talk’ our dogs. So why don’t we ‘baby face’ them?
“Who’s so cute? Yes you are. You are so cute!” Baby talk sounds pretty similar, whether we’re cooing to our infants or our dogs. We pitch our voices high and use many of the same phrases. But a new study has spotted a crucial difference: When baby talking our tots, our faces tend to be overly expressive—wide-open eyes, high eyebrows, and exaggerated smiles. With dogs, we’re far more stoic , researchers report in a new study in Applied Animal Behaviour Science . The tempering may be for our own protection, says Evan MacLean, a comparative psychologist at the University of Arizona ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 14, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

On its third try, Starship rocket flies through space but fails during re-entry
An hour after sunrise this morning, a roaring steel titan more than 120 meters tall ascended from South Texas over the Gulf of Mexico: SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. This launch, the rocket’s third full test flight, wasn’t perfect and ended with Starship’s upper stage breaking apart during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. However, it far exceeded the milestones set by the vehicle’s last flight in November 2023. In a post on the social media platform X , NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called the launch a “successful test flight” and declared tha...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 14, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Sensor protein explains how mice —and maybe people—know it’s cold
People wear gloves when making a snowman for a reason: Handling cold stuff can hurt. A new mouse study reveals what may be a key player in this response: a protein already known to enable sensory neurons in worms to detect cold . New evidence published this week in Nature Neuroscience confirms that this protein has the same function in mammals . “The paper is exciting,” says Theanne Griffith, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis who was not involved in the research. She notes that the protein, called GluK2, is found in the brain and has “...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 13, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

NASA ’s Mars rover probes ancient shorelines for signs of life
THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS— After a few years of hard labor on Mars, you could excuse the Perseverance rover for taking a trip to the beach. For the past few months, NASA’s rover, which is collecting rock samples to eventually send to Earth, has explored a ring of rocks just inside the rim of Jezero crater, which is thought to have been filled with water billions of years ago. An initial analysis suggests the rocks are composed of rounded grains of carbonate, a mineral that precipitates out of water. It’s a promising sign that the rocks were once beachfront property, says Briony Horgan, a planetary scientist ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 13, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Some toothed whales —like humans—go through menopause. And it may help them live longer
Ninety million years of evolution may separate toothed whales from humans, but we may share with them a rare reproductive strategy that allows relatively long life spans. Toothed whales—including belugas, killer whales, and narwhals—can live into their 90s. Humans can live to 100 and beyond. Menopause may be part of the reason for that longevity, the researchers behind a study published today in Nature say. The work, which is the first to comparatively examine menopause across multiple whale species, argues it’s an adaptation that allows females to look out for their offspring for longer while ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 13, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research