Credit: María Corte (via Nature)
Stadiile incipiente ale menopauzei afectează sănătatea cerebrală. Iată care sunt efectele și ce se poate face. Un articol recent publicat în Nature de Heidi Ledford vorbește de stadiul cercetărilor în ce privește menopauza, care sunt simptomele, riscurile și posibile soluții pentru combaterea acestora.
Iată ce spune, în esență, articolul menționat:
- Detalii
- Autor: Iosif A.
The chances that a newborn survives childhood have increased from 50% to 96% globally. This article asks how we know about the mortality of children in the past and what we can learn from it for our future.
A child dying is one of the most dreadful tragedies one can imagine. We all know that child deaths were more common in the past. But how common? How do we know? And what can we learn from our history?
Archeologists and historians have brought together data from many places and time periods across the world which lets us piece together a picture of our past.
- Detalii
- Autor: Max Roser
Like most people I check my emails in the morning, wading through a combination of work requests, spam and news alerts peppering my inbox.
But yesterday brought something different and deeply disturbing. I noticed an alert from the American Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) about some very devious malware that had infected a network of computers.
The malware in question is Snake, a cyber espionage tool deployed by Russia’s Federal Security Service that has been around for about 20 years.
According to CISA, the Snake implant is the “most sophisticated cyber espionage tool designed and used by Center 16 of Russia’s Federal Security Service for long-term intelligence collection on sensitive targets”.
- Detalii
- Autor: Greg Skulmoski, Bond University
If you know anything about the experiences of animals reared in captivity for food, fur or human amusement, you might imagine that the lives of wild animals are idyllic. If nature is conceived as a sort of Garden of Eden then animals which live in it, free of human interference, are presumably living their best possible lives.
Others see life in the wild as far harsher. Nature is “red in tooth and claw” as poet Alfred Tennyson once put it. According to this view, the average life of a wild animal can be best understood as a desperate search for food and shelter, enduring pain and sickness and burdened with the ever-present prospect of a savage death.
This latter view is arguably dominant among those who ponder questions of wild animal ethics and welfare. Scholars like Yew-Kwang Ng and Oscar Horta have aimed in part to debunk the view that wild animals have it pretty good by evoking the prevalence of vicious predators and other sources of harm. Yet this picture may be just as inaccurate.
In our recent paper, we argued that the real experience of wild animal life most likely sits somewhere between these two extremes – though it’s probably a lot better than many researchers think.
The popular view of wild animals being consumed by suffering has been influenced by a preoccupation with their experiences at the time of their deaths. Too little attention has been paid to the range of positive experiences available to wild animals throughout their lives.
- Detalii
- Autor: Heather Browning, University of Southampton and Walter Veit, University of Bristol
Creierul este responsabil pentru controlul majorității activităților corpului. Capacitățile sale de procesare a informațiilor sunt cele care ne permit să învățăm și este depozitul central al amintirilor. Dar cum se formează amintirile și unde sunt localizate în creier?
Deși neurologii au identificat diferite regiuni ale creierului în care sunt stocate amintirile, cum ar fi hipocampul, situat în mijlocul creierului, neocortexul din stratul superior al creierului și cerebelul de la baza craniului, încă nu au fost identificate structuri moleculare specifice din acele zone, implicate în formarea amintirilor și învățare.
- Detalii
- Autor: John Katsaras, Charles Patrick Collier și Dima Bolmatov
Celulele stem melanocitare, spre deosebire de alte tipuri de celule stem, au o evoluţie ciclică: se transformă în melanocite mature, care apoi parcurg în sens opus procesul de diferenţiere şi devin din nou celule stem. Odată cu înaintarea în vârstă, acumularea celulelor stem melanocitare într-un compartiment al foliculului pilos diferit de cel germinativ determină „blocarea” lor la acest nivel, unde lipsesc semnale necesare pentru a relua intrarea în ciclul de diferențiere / dediferenţiere. Astfel, nu mai sunt suficiente celule stem care au capacitatea să se diferenţieze în melanocite şi să producă pigment, rezultând albirea părului.
- Detalii
- Autor: Dr. Monica Dugăeșescu
Cercetători de la Universitatea Texas au publicat recent un articol în Nature Neuroscience, în care arată cum, folosind inteligența artificială (IA), au putut translata gândurile subiecților umani în text, analizând date colectate prin scanare de tip fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), care măsoară fluxul de sânge în diverse regiuni ale creierului.
Experimentul a implicat colectarea datelor de la trei participanți la studiu, care au însumat 16 ore de ascultare a unor narațiuni de către fiecare din cei trei, date care au fost utilizate pentru a „antrena” softul pe bază de IA.
- Detalii
- Autor: Iosif A.
On Nov. 27, 2022, Mauna Loa – the world’s largest active volcano – erupted on the island of Hawaii. For days, fountains of lava, boiling at more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius), spewed upward and flowed down the mountain’s sides.
For tens of millions of people around the world, the videos were a mesmerizing sight. Then, a few weeks later, the eruption ended. Fortunately, there were no known deaths, and no major property damage.
- Detalii
- Autor: Rachel Beane
Un nou studiu de asociere la nivelul întregului genom (genome-wide association study, GWAS), realizat de Universitatea McGill, a identificat diferențe între profilul genetic al femeilor și cel al bărbaților în ce privește riscul de tulburare depresivă majoră.
Există diferențe marcante între femei și bărbați legate de prevalența, manifestările clinice și răspunsul la tratament pentru tulburarea depresivă majoră. Afecțiunea psihică este mai frecventă la femei, fiind de două ori mai probabil ca acestea să primească un diagnostic de depresie comparativ cu bărbații.
- Detalii
- Autor: Dr. Denisa Petrescu
Rachael Medhurst, University of South Wales
You can tell a lot about someone from the car they drive. The data that many vehicles now collect can reveal the patterns of our daily lives and provide insights into our behaviour, actions and even our state of mind.
Vehicle forensics is a type of digital forensic science that focuses on the identification, acquisition and analysis of data which has been stored by cars, vans and lorries.
Originally, vehicle forensics mainly related to the external identification of stolen cars or tax and MOT violations by the use of the ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) system in the UK. The system was invented during the 1970s but did not become widely used by the police until the late 1990s. ANPR works by scanning number plates and checking them against a database of vehicles of interest.
- Detalii
- Autor: Rachael Medhurst
Empowered by artificial intelligence technologies, computers today can engage in convincing conversations with people, compose songs, paint paintings, play chess and go, and diagnose diseases, to name just a few examples of their technological prowess.
These successes could be taken to indicate that computation has no limits. To see if that’s the case, it’s important to understand what makes a computer powerful.
There are two aspects to a computer’s power: the number of operations its hardware can execute per second and the efficiency of the algorithms it runs. The hardware speed is limited by the laws of physics. Algorithms – basically sets of instructions – are written by humans and translated into a sequence of operations that computer hardware can execute. Even if a computer’s speed could reach the physical limit, computational hurdles remain due to the limits of algorithms.
- Detalii
- Autor: Jie Wang
Brad Reisfeld, Colorado State University
People are exposed to numerous chemicals throughout their lifetimes. These chemicals can be from the air, foods, personal care items, household products and medications. Unfortunately, exposure to certain chemicals can cause harmful health effects, including cancer. Substances that cause cancer are called carcinogens. Familiar examples include tobacco smoke, radon, asbestos and diesel engine exhaust.
To protect the health of the public, national and international health agencies evaluate many new and existing chemicals to determine if they are likely to be carcinogens in a process called cancer hazard identification. If agencies judge the chemicals to be carcinogenic, they conduct further assessments to determine the level of risk, and legislators may put regulations in place to limit, or completely halt, the production and use of these chemicals.
- Detalii
- Autor: Brad Reisfeld
Emma Beckett, University of Newcastle
Many of us want (or should I say need?) our morning coffee to give us our “get up and go”. Altogether, the people of the world drink more than two billion cups of coffee each day.
You might think coffee gives you the energy to get through the morning or the day, but coffee might not be giving you as much as you think.
The main stimulant in coffee is the caffeine. And the main way caffeine works is by changing the way the cells in our brain interact with a compound called adenosine.
- Detalii
- Autor: Emma Beckett
E greu să fi ratat știrile despre progresele inteligenței artificiale din ultimele luni, în special cele din domeniul instrumentelor de IA conversaționale, precum ChatGPT. Pe de altă parte, e greu să nu fi observat lipsa de progres a motorului de căutare Google, care a modificat atât de mult algoritmii secreți, că răspunsurile pe subiecte tehnice sunt de prea multe ori de pe site-uri rusești care au motoare de traducere automată în toate limbile. Dacă ar elimina Wikipedia din rezultatele căutărilor, Google în limba română ar deveni aproape inutil.
- Detalii
- Autor: Iosif A.
Hazel Flight, Edge Hill University
There’s been a lot of chat on social media over the past few months about the importance of magnesium supplements. Many suggest that symptoms such as trouble sleeping, tense muscles and low energy are all signs you’re deficient and should be taking a magnesium supplement.
As it turns out, many of us probably are somewhat deficient in magnesium. According to research, most aren’t consuming the recommended amount of magnesium to support our body’s needs. It’s also estimated that in developed countries, between 10-30% of the population has a slight magnesium deficiency.
Magnesium is one of the many micronutirents the body requires to remain healthy. It’s essential for helping more than 300 enzymes carry out numerous chemical processes in the body, including those that produce proteins, support strong bones, control blood sugar and blood pressure and maintain healthy muscles and nerves. Magnesium also acts as an electrical conductor that helps the heart beat and contracts muscles.
- Detalii
- Autor: Hazel Flight
