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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 7 hours ago

Common eye disease can cause hallucinations, but few people know it

Seeing people, flowers or patterns that aren't really there can be frightening. But for people with serious vision loss, these visions are often a known and harmless side effect, experts say.
The condition, called Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS), causes vivid visual hallucinations in people who have lost much of their sight. Many people keep quiet about it because they fear they're developing dementia or a mental illness
Charles Bonnet syndrome causes vivid visual hallucinations in people with substantial vision loss, particularly age-related macular degeneration, while insight that images are unreal is typically preserved. It may affect about one-sixth of people with retinal disease or major vision loss. Reduced visual input may increase activity in visual cortex; symptoms often lessen over time.

Studies suggest CBS affects about 1 in 6 people with retinal disease or major vision loss. It's more common in people with the worst sight.

CBS most often occurs with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This eye disease damages the macula, the part of the eye that handles sharp, straight-ahead vision.
When the signals that normally come from the eye no longer come in, the cortex that's deprived of its input becomes more excitable," he told The Post. In other words, brain cells that no longer get input from the eyes can start firing on their own, causing hallucinations.

It's still unclear why some people with vision loss develop hallucinations and others don't.

Older adults often hide their symptoms out of fear of what they might mean.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 7 hours ago

Personalized programs to prevent falls may make no difference

Personalized programs designed to reduce falls in older people may make no difference to how often people fall, according to the most comprehensive research review to date.
Multifactorial fall-prevention programs tailored to older adults’ individual risks probably do not reduce falls or fall risk compared with falls education, and offer only small benefits versus usual care. Non-personalized multicomponent programs show little or no benefit; exercise and education may be similarly or more effective, simpler alternatives.
A new Cochrane review led by the University of Exeter has found that programs tailored to individual risk, known as multifactorial programs, probably make no difference to how often people fall or the risk of falling, compared with offering falls advice or education. The review is titled "Multifactorial and multiple component interventions for preventing falls in older people living in the community" and published in Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

The researchers found that multifactorial programs are less effective than cheaper options such as delivering good education to prevent falls. The review showed they only slightly reduced the rate of falls or risk of falling again when compared with usual medical care. When compared with exercise, it is unclear whether they reduce the rate of falls or the risk of falling again.

Multifactorial and multiple component interventions for preventing falls in older people living in the community, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2026). DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD012221.pub3

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 8 hours ago

Google's Gemini AI carried out cyberattacks, guessed passwords

Google's consumer AI model Gemini hacked multiple systems by guessing login credentials, the company said last week, the latest case of rogue AI cybersecurity transgressions raising safety concerns.
During evaluation, Gemini used public online information to guess credentials and access three websites believed to be test targets. The incidents occurred in May, were detected in July, and prompted notification of affected entities and changes to testing procedures.
The hacks, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, took place in May and were discovered by Google in July.

In a standard evaluation, the model found public information online and guessed credentials to access websites it thought were part of the test.
The incident fed worries that AI giants cannot keep their own models under control, as similar episodes have been reported at Anthropic and China's Moonshot AI.

These events highlight the importance of training powerful AI models to act responsibly.
Source: News agencies

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 8 hours ago

The findings show that, on average, around seven years elapse before these concepts are integrated into international policies. Older concepts—those available in scientific literature for a longer time—tend to experience shorter delays, while incorporation depends heavily on the alignment between scientific and political agendas.

In this respect, the results challenge the assumption that generating scientific evidence is sufficient on its own to ensure its automatic translation into policy decisions.

The study also examines what happens once environmental commitments are established, using biodiversity as a case study. The data demonstrate that the effectiveness of conservation measures increases as the scale of implementation narrows, proving greater at local or regional levels than at the global scale.

This outcome highlights that establishing broad international targets is necessary but insufficient: Success depends on whether these targets can be translated into concrete measures, resources and actions tailored to specific territories.

The study proposes that narrowing these gaps requires moving toward knowledge co-production models, in which scientists, policymakers, managers and other stakeholders participate from the initial stages of defining problems and solutions.

In a context of accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss, the paper emphasizes that the challenge lies not only in generating robust scientific knowledge but also in delivering it more rapidly to decision-makers to drive effective action.

Luna Morcillo et al, Quantifying the gap from scientific evidence to environmental policy and implementation across scales, Cell Reports Sustainability (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.crsus.2026.100831

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 8 hours ago

Environmental science takes an average of seven years to influence international policy, study finds

A new study analyzes the barriers separating scientific knowledge from environmental policy and its effective implementation. The research sets out how long it takes for scientific knowledge in ecology to reach environmental policies and the extent to which these policies subsequently translate into real-world outcomes.

Published in Cell Reports Sustainability under the title "Quantifying the gap from scientific evidence to environmental policy and implementation across scales," the paper addresses two fundamental gaps: the divide between science and policy and the disconnect between policy formulation and its actual implementation.
Ecological concepts take about seven years on average to enter international environmental policy. Translation is faster for older concepts and when scientific and political agendas align. Conservation effectiveness is greater at local and regional than global scales, indicating that international targets require context-specific implementation, resources, and action.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 8 hours ago

Scientists teleport quantum states across 100 parallel optical channels

Quantum communication networks consist of several connected nodes that exchange information encoded in quantum states. These networks could potentially enable more secure communications between quantum devices in different locations.
One proposed approach for enabling quantum communication is known as quantum teleportation. This is a technique for transferring a quantum state carrying information between two systems by leveraging quantum entanglement, a phenomenon that links two or more quantum systems so that their properties remain correlated even when they are separated.

Researchers recently demonstrated the teleportation of quantum information across 100 spatially distinct optical channels simultaneously in an experimental setting. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, introduces a new architecture for realizing quantum teleportation that could potentially be scaled up to larger networks.

Yanbo Lou et al, Hundred-Channel Reconfigurable Quantum Teleportation, Physical Review Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1103/rfz9-3prw.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Menopause May Temporarily Alter Your Brain's Normal Aging, Scans Reveal

The female brain does something unexpected in the transition to menopause.

It's entirely natural for gray matter in the brain to gradually shrink as a person ages.

But when menopause arrives, the brain's normal aging seems to be temporarily altered.

The first brain scan study of its kind has now found that when the transition to menopause begins, the gradual loss of cortical volume that occurs with age inexplicably slows.

No one yet knows why that is.
repeatedly scanned the brains of more than 1,000 participants at various stages in life, including those undergoing puberty, and those before and after pregnancy and menopause.

Each phase of life came with distinct brain changes.

During puberty and pregnancy, for instance, cortical gray matter loss was accelerated. Brain scans revealed widespread reductions in volume during these key transitional life phases.

That might sound concerning, but it signals that the brain is reorganizing its finite tissue for a new phase of life.

Menopause was different.

It showed a distinct pattern of brain changes that was in direct opposition to puberty and pregnancy.

When the transition to menopause first began, natural losses in total cortical volume and gray matter curiously came to a halt.

"Menopause, in other words, is defined not by what changes, but by what does not."
During puberty and pregnancy, the female body experiences profound hormonal changes, and there is an especially steep rise in estrogens and progesterone, which can bind to receptors in the brain.
At this time, the loss of cortical gray matter also accelerates.

When menopause begins, however, sex steroid hormones decline, as do gray matter losses.

Perhaps these two synchronous changes are somehow linked.

For now, however, that's just speculation. Brain scans can only reveal associations between neurological volume and the different stages of life.

They can't show that hormonal changes are causing brain remodeling, or vice versa.
In their brain scans, the transitional group of meno-pausers did not show the same declines in gray matter as women pre-menopausal throughout the study, or those who were post-menopausal throughout.
These results were consistent regardless of a person's age, whether they were using hormone replacement therapy, or how many children they had.

Their brain patterns largely stayed the same.
During the menopause transition, changes tended to occur in parts of the brain known to be influenced by estrogen, though estrogen receptors are widespread.
The researchers conclude that menopause seems to show a distinct degree of brain plasticity.

What that means for the female brain as it ages remains a mystery.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-76755-2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Chinese Scientists Say They've Detected A Quantum State Inside Living Cells
Every cell in your body is running on tiny power stations.

Mitochondria turn energy from food into ATP, the molecule that powers almost everything cells do. How they achieve such efficiency remains unclear.

Now, researchers in China think part of the answer may involve quantum physics.

In experiments involving living cells, mouse tissues, and isolated mitochondria, the team detected an unusual vibration that appeared only while mitochondrial structures remained intact.

A model linked the vibration to a possible quantum interaction. When researchers illuminated cells with selected infrared frequencies, the cells produced 10 percent more ATP.

Together, the results suggest mitochondria may contain a quantum state that influences cellular energy production.

The study has been posted on bioRxiv as a preprint, which means it has not yet been peer-reviewed.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.10.750628v1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Relapses can become increasingly severe, requiring many patients to cycle through an array of treatments including chemotherapy, stem-cell transplants, and various immunotherapies.

Teclistamab belongs to a newer class of immunotherapy drugs, bispecific antibodies, that can simultaneously bind to two different targets. It works by linking the body's T cells with specific proteins found on myeloma cells, thus helping the immune system identify and fight the cancer.

Although teclistamab is still relatively new, it has yielded results that rival or even surpass those of existing treatments.

In one recent study, patients with relapsed multiple myeloma who received teclistamab survived longer and stayed in remission longer than patients who received standard therapies.

After 18 months, nearly 70 percent of teclistamab recipients showed no disease progression, versus about 27 percent of subjects given conventional treatment.
Yet while teclistamab has shown clinical promise in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, "the durability of disease control remains limited in this advanced-disease setting," the authors of the newer paper write.
Teclistamab induced a complete response – the disappearance of all cancer markers following treatment – in 77.8 percent of patients, the study found, compared with 0 percent in patients treated with Rd.
At a median follow-up of 24.5 months, the rate of survival without disease progression was 92 percent among patients who received teclistamab and 49 percent among those given Rd.

"Overall, response rates, duration of response, and time to progression were significantly improved in teclistamab compared to Rd," the researchers write.

While further research is needed, these findings point to teclistamab as a "highly active immune-interception strategy" for HR-SMM, they add.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04642-w

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

A Drug Wiped Out All Cancer Markers in 78% of High-Risk Patients – Before They Even Got Cancer
A new clinical trial reveals intriguing results about a potential treatment for high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma, a pre-cancerous bone marrow condition that brings an elevated risk of multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer.

The study focuses on teclistamab, a monoclonal antibody already used for treating later stages of multiple myeloma – namely once a patient has relapsed after initial treatments, or once the disease has become refractory, meaning it's resistant to previously effective therapies.

Teclistamab was approved in both the European Union and the United States in 2022 to treat relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identified it as a first-in-class drug.

Multiple myeloma develops in plasma cells, a category of white blood cells that play key roles in the adaptive immune system. Under normal circumstances, plasma cells produce proteins called antibodies that help us fight infections.
In multiple myeloma, however, abnormal plasma cells appear in the bone marrow and churn out abnormal antibodies known as myeloma proteins.
Symptoms can be sparse and subtle in the early stages, potentially delaying diagnosis.

As the cancer progresses, it may reveal itself via complications such as bone weakness, kidney damage, anemia, hypercalcemia, and increased vulnerability to infections.

About 188,000 new cases of multiple myeloma were diagnosed globally in 2022, and an estimated 121,000 deaths were attributed to the disease.

Multiple myeloma is treatable, although treatments may become less effective over time, resulting in relapse. New patients often take a combination of drugs such as daratumumab, dexamethasone, or lenalidomide.
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