Cataracts affect most older adults at risk for dementia, and now researchers are finding strong evidence that cataract surgery is associated with a lower risk of developing dementia. The Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study is a long-standing, Seattle-based observational study at Kaiser Permanente Washington of more than 5,000 participants older than 65. Based on the longitudinal data of over 3,000 ACT study participants, researchers have now found that subjects who underwent cataract surgery had nearly 30% lower risk of developing dementia from any cause compared with those who did not....

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson. Both experimental teams are working down to the wire to finish analyzing their data, and to determine exactly what can be said about what they’ve found....

A school-based human papillomavirus (HPV) immunization program in British Columbia, Canada, is dramatically reducing rates of cervical pre-cancer in B.C. women, according to a new study. The evaluation of the HPV vaccination program in B.C. was conducted jointly by researchers at BC Cancer, the BC Center for Disease Control, BC Women’s Hospital + Health Center, and the University of British Columbia and highlights the success of the program in reducing pre-cancers....

Launched on February 25 and March 27, respectively, Mariner 6 and 7 arrived at Mars just five days apart despite being launched a month apart. After a flight of 156 days from Earth, Mariner 6 flew within 2,132 miles of Mars on July 31, roughly twice as close as Mariner 4’s flyby in 1965. Controllers lost contact with Mariner 7 for seven hours just five days before its planned flyby, but by August 2, after quick replanning, they restored the spacecraft to full capability as it began its encounter with Mars....

New research has demonstrated that a magnetic uranium compound can have strong thermoelectric properties, generating four times the transverse voltage from heat than the previous record in a cobalt-manganese-gallium compound. The result unlocks a new potential for the actinide elements at the bottom of the periodic table and point to a fresh direction in research on topological quantum materials. “We found that the large spin-orbit coupling and strong electronic correlations in a system of uranium-cobalt-aluminum doped with ruthenium resulted in a colossal anomalous Nernst conductivity,” said Filip Ronning, lead investigator on the paper published on March 26, 2021, in Science Advances....

According to the NHS, more than 8.3 million patients in England received an antidepressant drug in 2021/22. A widely-used class of antidepressants, particularly for persistent or severe cases, is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). These drugs target serotonin, a chemical that carries messages between nerve cells in the brain and has been dubbed the ‘pleasure chemical’. Common SSRIs include Citalopram (Celexa), Escitalopram (Lexapro), Paroxetine (Paxil, Pexeva), Fluoxetine (Prozac) and Sertraline (Zoloft)....

Scientists have found that metformin, a commonly prescribed diabetes medication, lowers the odds of emergency department visits, hospitalizations, or death due to COVID-19 by over 40 percent; and over 50 percent if prescribed early in onset of symptoms. The study, which was published on August 18 in the New England Journal of Medicine, also found no positive effect from treatment with either ivermectin or low-dose fluvoxamine. The research was led by the University of Minnesota Medical School and School of Public Health....

Choline is a safe and easy-to-administer nutrient that is naturally present in some foods and can be used as a dietary supplement. Lead author Ramon Velazquez and his colleagues at the ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center (NDRC) looked into whether this nutrient could alleviate the effects of Alzheimer’s. Earlier this year, Velazquez and colleagues found transgenerational benefits of AD-like symptoms in mice whose mothers were supplemented with choline. The latest work expands this line of research by exploring the effects of choline administered in adulthood rather than in fetal mice....

Bees are the world’s most important pollinators, and without them, the planet would quickly go hungry. All over the world, their populations are quickly decreasing, and scientists are trying to find out why. With the widely reported Colony Collapse Disorder, which was due to a disease, finally ebbing down, new research indicates that pesticides are also to blame. The scientists published their findings in the journals Science and Nature. The two studies in Science, which were published earlier this year, showed that colonies were severely affected when bees were exposed to neonicotinoid pesticides, commonly sprayed on crops....

Computer simulations of galaxies growing over billions of years have revealed a likely scenario for how they feed: a cosmic version of swirly straws. The results show that cold gas — fuel for stars — spirals into the cores of galaxies along filaments, rapidly making its way to their “guts.” Once there, the gas is converted into new stars, and the galaxies bulk up in mass. “Galaxy formation is really chaotic,” said Kyle Stewart, lead author of the new study appearing in the May 20th issue of the Astrophysical Journal....

But in the world of disease modeling, many projections take a high-level approach to a geographic area, like a county or state, and forecast based on a general idea that a virus will take root and spread at an equal rate until it reaches its peak of infection. A research team led by UC Irvine and the University of Washington (UW) has created a new model of coronavirus diffusion through a community....

The Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s Dr. Kylie Wagstaff, who led the study, said the scientists showed that the drug, Ivermectin, stopped the SARS-CoV-2 virus growing in cell culture within 48 hours. “We found that even a single dose could essentially remove all viral RNA by 48 hours and that even at 24 hours there was a really significant reduction in it,” Dr. Wagstaff said. Ivermectin is an FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug that has also been shown to be effective in vitro against a broad range of viruses including HIV, Dengue, Influenza and Zika virus....

The immune system is a complex network of cells and proteins that is designed to fight off infection and disease, especially those like the coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, that can cause numerous issues in the human body. But many individuals are still at risk of being infected with the coronavirus, letting it replicate in the body and further transmitting to other individuals. The underlying mechanism of how SARS-CoV-2 escapes from the immune system has been poorly understood....

Finding new semiconductor materials that emit light is essential for developing a wide range of electronic devices. But making artificial structures that emit light tailored to our specific needs is an even more attractive proposition. However, light emission in a semiconductor only occurs when certain conditions are met. Today, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, in collaboration with the University of Manchester, have discovered an entire class of two-dimensional materials that are the thickness of one or a few atoms....

In this image, the focus is on the dark, dusty heart of the nebula, where a star cluster resides, mostly hidden from view. Nearby (but not visible in this image) is the bright star Alnitak, the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion. Radiation from Alnitak ionizes the Flame Nebula’s hydrogen gas. As the gas begins to cool from its higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, it emits energy in the form of light, causing the visible glow behind the swirled wisps of dust....

They are called low-surface-brightness galaxies and it is thanks to them that important confirmations and new information have been obtained on one of the largest mysteries of the cosmos: dark matter. “We have found that disc galaxies can be represented by a universal relationship. In particular, in this study we analyzed the so-called Low-Surface-Brightness (LSB) galaxies, a particular type of galaxy with a rotating disc called this way because they have a low-density brightness “says Chiara di Paolo, astrophysicist at SISSA and lead author of a study recently published in MNRAS together with Paolo Salucci (astrophysicist at SISSA) and Erkurt Adnan (Istanbul University)....

In this detailed view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the so-called Cat’s Eye Nebula looks like the penetrating eye of the disembodied sorcerer Sauron from the film adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings.” The nebula, formally cataloged NGC 6543, is every bit as inscrutable as the J.R.R. Tolkien phantom character. Though the Cat’s Eye Nebula was one of the first planetary nebulae to be discovered, it is one of the most complex such nebulae seen in space....

The Big Bang started the universe as a hot, murky soup of extremely energetic particles that was rapidly expanding. As this material spread out, it cooled, and the particles coalesced into neutral hydrogen gas. The universe stayed dark, without any luminous sources, until gravity condensed matter into the first stars and galaxies. All stars, including this first generation, act as chemical factories, synthesizing almost all of the elements that make up the world around us....

The risk of infection of COVID-19 is high for medical specialists who come in contact with symptomatic or asymptomatic patients. Dentists and otolaryngologists are at particular risk, since they need direct access to the mouth, nose, and throat of patients. The current solutions, which include wearing N95 masks and face shields, clinic room evacuation, negative pressure rooms, and special air filtration systems, are expensive, not highly effective, and not very accessible....

The scientists presented their findings at the annual meeting for the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, Louisiana this week. In healthy people, daytime naps usually last about 20 minutes; but in patients with Alzheimer’s, they can last up to 3 hours. Neurophysiologist Roxanne Sterniczuk and her team from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, wanted to determine how early these changes happen and if these could predict the risk of a person developing the disease in the future....