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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 3 minutes ago

Injured birds seeking medical help

Injured seabird desperately pecks at hospital door for help

An injured seabird sought help by pecking at the door of an emergency room at a hospital in Germany until medical staff noticed it and called firefighters to help with its rescue.

The cormorant, a shiny black waterbird, had a triple fishing hook stuck in its beak when it made its presence known at the glass door of the Klinikum Links der Weser hospital in the northern city of Bremen on Sunday.

In a joint effort, medical staff and firefighters removed the fishhook and treated the wound, the Bremen firefighter department said in a statement. The bird was later released back into nature on the grounds of the hospital park.

"When an injured cormorant does approach humans, it is usually an animal in extreme distress that has lost its natural shyness," the statement said.

A cormorant is a large bird with a long neck, wedge-shaped head and a distinctive sharp beak with a hooked tip. A fishhook in the bird's beak would be extremely dangerous for the animal. Infections, pain and even starvation are possible, the firefighter department said.

Source: News agencies

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 6 minutes ago

Deep-sea fish larvae rewrite the rules of how eyes can be built

Deep-sea fish larvae possess unique hybrid photoreceptor cells that combine structural features of rods with the molecular machinery of cones, enabling enhanced vision in the dim twilight zone. Unlike the typical vertebrate pattern where cones precede rods, these larvae use rod-like cones early in development, with some species retaining them into adulthood. This challenges established models of vertebrate retinal development.

https://theconversation.com/deep-sea-fish-larvae-rewrite-the-rules-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 15 minutes ago

Deer inhibit trees but raise plant diversity, 18-year study reveals

At high densities, white-tailed deer inhibit growth of trees but increase the overall diversity of smaller plant and weed species, according to a long-term study published recently.
High densities of white-tailed deer suppress tree regeneration and reduce tree presence in both above-ground vegetation and the soil seedbank, limiting natural forest regrowth. However, deer browsing increases the diversity and evenness of smaller plant and weed species by preventing dominance by a few species. Active management is likely required for successful reforestation in areas with abundant deer.

A. Sophie Westbrook et al, Deer impact seedbanks and plant communities over 18 years of post-agricultural succession, PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0339466

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 55 minutes ago

How one genome creates two distinct fungal bodies

Creatures that can change from one form to another ?

Yes,  Nature, too, has its shapeshifters, such as dimorphic fungi. While scientists have known for some time that they can reversibly transition between yeast and mycelium forms, a paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications explains how.

Some fungi, such as members of the Mucorales order, can live as yeasts, tiny single-celled organisms, or as mycelium, multicellular branching filaments. Triggers for the morphological switch include oxygen levels and glucose concentrations.  How can a single genome encode two different body plans and could switch between them?

To find out, scientists grew the fungus (Mucor lusitanicus) under oxygen-rich conditions to promote mycelial growth, and under low-oxygen, high-carbon-dioxide conditions to induce the yeast form. Once the fungus had changed shape, the team collected samples and examined the active genetic instructions, specifically the RNA, to see which were being used in each form.

The team found that instead of using the same genes for both forms, the fungus uses paralogs. These are closely related genes that share a common ancestor and arise when a gene is duplicated within a single genome.

In total, they found 490 dimorphic gene families. Although each twin pair has similar functions, there is a specific version for yeast and one for mycelium. For example, a gene responsible for iron absorption in the yeast form has a nearly identical counterpart that performs the same function in the mycelium form.

They are organized in a very elegant way in the genome. The scientists discovered that two related genes are positioned back to back on the DNA and share a bidirectional promoter. These regulate gene expression and so act like control switches. It means the promoters can easily turn one off and the other on without getting them mixed up.

At the heart of the operation, according to the researchers, are two master regulator genes, dkl and dfl. When the team deleted them, the fungus could no longer control its switches and lost its ability to change shape.

The findings identify an evolutionary mechanism that integrates and optimizes the genetic information required for two distinct life forms within a single organism.

One of the most exciting aspects of this research is the potential for new antifungal treatments. Knowing how a fungus switches to its invasive mycelial form gives scientists a clear target to stop the transformation and therefore the spread of fungal infections.

Ghizlane Tahiri et al, Coordinated gene family evolution shapes the genome of dimorphic Mucorales, Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-68866-7

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 2 hours ago

India plans AI 'data city' on staggering scale

India is developing a large-scale "data city" in Visakhapatnam to accelerate its AI infrastructure, supported by major investments exceeding $175 billion, including projects from Google and other global firms. The initiative aims to establish a comprehensive AI ecosystem, targeting six gigawatts of data center capacity, and leverages strategic incentives and infrastructure to attract technology companies.

https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-india-ai-city-staggering-scale....

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 2 hours ago

Some glaciers can suddenly surge forward—with dangerous consequences

A small fraction of glaciers undergo sudden surges, advancing rapidly for months or years due to meltwater accumulation beneath the ice, which reduces friction. These surges, affecting about 1% of glaciers but 16% of global glacier area, can accelerate ice loss and create hazards such as floods and infrastructure damage. Climate change is altering surge frequency and unpredictability worldwide.

https://theconversation.com/some-glaciers-can-suddenly-surge-forwar...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 2 hours ago

Researchers carried out two studies that compared the responses of human participants to two distinct LLMs, namely GPT-4 and GPT-4o, respectively.
The human participants and LLMs were tested on two different types of tasks: spatial and linguistic tasks. Spatial tasks entail the arrangement of shapes or structures in specific ways, while linguistic tasks require respondents to choose or generate specific texts following a set of instructions.
They found that both the human participants and the LLMs they examined exhibited an addition bias. However, this bias was less pronounced in humans and more pronounced in LLMs on tasks where subtracting information was clearly the more efficient strategy to tackle a problem.
Humans made fewer additive choices when subtraction was more efficient than addition (compared to when both were equally efficient), whereas GPT-4's output showed the opposite pattern.

Lydia Uhler et al, Influence of solution efficiency and valence of instruction on additive and subtractive solution strategies in humans, GPT-4, and GPT-4o, Communications Psychology (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-026-00403-0.

part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 2 hours ago

Why AI may overcomplicate answers: Humans and LLMs show 'addition bias,' often choosing extra steps over subtraction
When making decisions and judgments, humans can fall into common "traps," known as cognitive biases. A cognitive bias is essentially the tendency to process information in a specific way or follow a systematic pattern. One widely documented cognitive bias is the so-called addition bias, the tendency of people to prefer solving problems by adding elements as opposed to removing them, even if subtraction would be simpler and more efficient. One example of this is adding more paragraphs or explanations to improve an essay or report, even if removing unnecessary sections would be more effective.
Researchers recently carried out a study aimed at investigating whether artificial intelligence (AI) agents, particularly the computational models underpinning the functioning of ChatGPT, also exhibit this tendency when answering user queries. Their findings, published in Communications Psychology, suggest that these models can inherit the addition bias from human-written texts that they are trained on.
Generative artificial intelligences, particularly large language models (LLMs), increasingly influence human decision-making, making it essential to understand how cognitive biases are reproduced or amplified in these systems
Building on evidence of the human 'addition bias'—a preference for additive over subtractive problem-solving strategies—this research compared humans with GPT-4 and GPT-4o in spatial and linguistic tasks.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 2 hours ago

A common biomarker of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder revealed

For decades, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD) were treated as distinct and unrelated psychiatric disorders. Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder characterized by altered thinking and emotional patterns, hallucinations, false or irrational beliefs (i.e., delusions), cognitive deficits, and disorganized speech. BD, on the other hand, is marked by extreme mood swings, ranging between periods of high-energy (i.e., mania or hypomania) and depressive episodes.

While the symptoms of schizophrenia and BD are markedly different, many patients diagnosed with either of these conditions experience psychosis at least once in their lifetime. Psychosis is a mental state that causes people to lose touch with reality, experiencing hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, and irrational thinking patterns.

More recently, studies found that patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and BD sometimes share other overlapping symptoms, as well as common patterns in their genes and brain organization. This inspired the idea that these disorders are part of a shared psychosis spectrum, which would explain their common features and characteristics.

Researchers reviewed and analyzed the findings of previous studies to further test this hypothesis and validate the existence of a psychosis spectrum of disorders. Their paper, published in Nature Mental Health, outlines common brain features in patients with schizophrenia and BD, particularly differences in the integrity of white matter.

As part of their study,  the researchers systematically reviewed brain imaging data collected by different teams of neuroscience and mental health researchers over the past 30 years. All this data was collected using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a non-invasive imaging technique that allows scientists to obtain 3D images of the brain and infer properties of white matter connections.

The researchers collectively analyzed the results of several studies, looking at schizophrenia and BD both individually and together, all while also accounting for differences in age and sex. This allowed them to identify brain regions that appear to be similarly affected in patients with either of the two disorders.

Most notably, they observed shared white matter alterations in a region called the corpus callosum. This is a brain structure that connects the brain's left and right hemispheres.

This alteration was observed across the entire psychosis spectrum, rather than being limited to a single diagnosis.

Importantly, these findings remained significant (and in some cases became clearer) after accounting for age and sex, suggesting they are unlikely to be explained simply by illness duration or aging. This supports the idea that disruptions in brain connectivity may represent a core biological feature of psychosis.

The results of this recent meta-analysis pinpoint a candidate biomarker that appears to characterize both schizophrenia and BD. 

Giuseppe Pierpaolo Merola et al, A systematic review and meta-analysis of transdiagnostic impairments in white matter integrity across the psychosis continuum, Nature Mental Health (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s44220-025-00573-6.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

The researchers found butyrolactol A, a known-but-previously-understudied molecule produced by certain Streptomyces bacteria. The researchers found that the molecule could synergize with echinocandin drugs to kill fungi that the drugs alone could not.

Discovery could lead to new treatments for drug-resistant fungal in...

Part 2

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