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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 1 hour ago

How do flocking birds and schools of fish move? New research offers crystal-clear answer
Flocking birds and schools of fish are a familiar sight. While previous research has uncovered the broad dynamics driving these movements, their underlying intricacies remain a mystery. Now a study by a team of  mathematicians offers new insights into these phenomena. It reveals that flocks and schools behave in ways similar to a soft crystalline material, with individual birds and fish serving as "atoms" that are evenly spaced in a lattice-like formation.
The findings, reported in the journal Physical Review Fluids, offer detailed insights into the hydrodynamic and aerodynamic interactions crucial in aerospace and automotive engineering, robotics and energy harvesting.
Lines of birds or fish behave like an elastic material with regularly spaced individuals held together by flexible, or spring-like, bonds—akin to soft crystalline substances in which atoms are arranged in an orderly, repeating pattern.
The research team proposed a mathematical model to explain these movements—one akin to those of soft crystalline materials, or soft crystals. These ordered solid materials can change their properties in response to stimuli, such as temperature or physical force, which makes their atomic organization fragile. The researchers subsequently saw a connection between crystalline organization and how birds or fish move together while adjusting their movements and formation in response to air or water flows, predators or objects such as rocks or buildings.

Crystalline organization is inherently fragile, as positions are susceptible to deformations and instabilities. In similar ways, birds and fish must sense and respond quickly to other forces in order to maintain long columnar formations. So while soft crystals, flocks of birds, and schools of fish are fragile in their makeup, such fragility may also be advantageous as it can be responsive to its surroundings.

Christiana Mavroyiakoumou et al, Modeling flying formations as flow-mediated matter, Physical Review Fluids (2026). DOI: 10.1103/tp8s-76vr

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 2 hours ago

World's highest-consuming 10% cause up to $5.7 trillion a year in environmental damage, study finds
The environmental damage caused by the world's highest-consuming 10% of people is worth $1.7 trillion to $5.7 trillion a year. At the central and upper estimates, this is several times more than the international community has committed to spend on climate action and biodiversity conservation combined, and is on the scale of the funding estimated to be needed globally to address these crises.
This finding, published in Communications Sustainability, puts a price on the harm this group inflicts across four planetary boundaries: climate change, biodiversity loss, nutrient pollution and freshwater use.

The average annual damage bill for a person in the global top 10% is $2,300 to $7,500. In the United States, where per-person impacts are highest, the figure rises to $19,000 to $63,000—equivalent to 6% to 20% of their income or 0.8% to 3% of their wealth. More than 60% of the global top 10% live in the U.S. and EU. In the EU, 40% to 45% of the population falls within this highest-consuming group, and in the U.S. it is more than half the population.

Biodiversity loss is the single largest contributor to the global damage bill, accounting for 47% to 56% of the total. Climate change accounts for 36% to 45%. The finding underlines recent calls to tackle biodiversity and climate crises together rather than treating them as separate policy challenges.
The figures are likely conservative. They cover only four of nine planetary boundaries and reflect direct consumption alone. For the highest-income individuals, roughly half of emissions come from investments rather than personal consumption—impacts not captured in this analysis.

The scale of the damage bill illustrates the potential revenue if polluter-pays principles were applied to high-consuming groups. The researchers note that environmental taxation focused on luxury consumption rather than basic goods tends to be more progressive and more effective at reducing emissions, though they stress that pricing is one tool among several and does not justify or compensate for the damage itself.

Inge Schrijver, Environmental damages of the top ten percent consumers exceed global climate and biodiversity funding gaps, Communications Sustainability (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s44458-026-00079-x. www.nature.com/articles/s44458-026-00079-x

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 2 hours ago

The authors also describe illusions related to the window of revision, where later perceptual inputs change the perceptual representations of something that occurred earlier. This is also called postdiction. These illusions are not limited to visual processes but also occur in auditory and tactile processes and have been observed in several animals.

"A key feature of these illusions is their time sensitivity, usually occurring only within a range of 100–450 ms in humans. A classic example is apparent motion. When two frames containing the same perceptual object but having a spatial offset are presented close together in time, it looks as though the object has moved from position A to B.

"Even though this motion percept is contingent on the second frame showing the object in position B, the object appears to be moving even in the first frame. This happens in humans when the two frames are separated by no more than 150 ms. This illusion is ubiquitous across both vertebrate and invertebrate animal species. Macaques, mice, pigeons, Drosophila, and fish perceive apparent motion. However, the temporal range over which apparent motion is best perceived may vary," the study authors write.
Ultimately, the authors say these windows could form the foundation for investigating principles of temporal phenomenology in animals by providing more informed speculations about phenomenological principles across species. Future work may develop theoretical models that predict how different windows should relate to each other and explore whether there are temporal dimensions of experience in other species that humans don't have at all.
The study authors conclude, "While this research program is of obvious interest to empirical, theoretical and philosophical inquiries in consciousness science, it can also contribute ecological insights. Understanding the dynamic constraints on perception and attention can further allow us to capture species-specific behavior (as in our example of the peacock courtship display) and coordination with the environment, conspecifics and/or predators (e.g., understanding motion dazzle as a predator-escape strategy).

"Similarly, the pace and rhythms of experience can inform real-world infrastructure designs. For instance, better understanding the temporal experience of birds may help reduce collisions with wind turbines, as motion blur may reduce the visibility of rapidly rotating blade edges for some species."

Ishan Singhal et al, Timescapes of non-human experience, Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2026.05.002

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 2 hours ago

'Timescapes' may explain why animal species perceive events so differently

There is evidence that nonhuman animals perceive the world, and how it unfolds in time, differently from humans and from each other. For example, certain beetles can see flickering in lights up to around 500 Hz, while in humans that flickering appears as a steady light after 60 Hz. Humans see flashed objects as lagging behind moving objects when they actually aren't. While other animals also seem to experience this illusion, the flash appears in a different location. Apparent motion—where stationary objects appear to be moving—also has been shown to differ in humans and mice.

In a new paper, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, a group of researchers propose a strategy for understanding the temporal aspects of animal experiences through the characteristic way their perceptions are organized and updated over time, which they refer to as the animal's "timescape."

Most attempts to compare animal time perception have relied on a single metric and are too crude to capture real experiential differences. Thus far, most attempts have focused on the critical flicker fusion threshold (CFFT), which is the rate at which a flickering light is perceived as steady. While the CFFT may provide an interesting look at one aspect of the temporal discrimination of visual content, the authors of the new study say it falls short of providing an in-depth understanding of how animals perceive time and may even be misleading.
After noting the wide range of 4–500 Hz in CFFTs in different animals, they write: "Based on these vast differences in CFFTs, one might be tempted to conclude that streams of experience flow extremely slowly or extremely fast when compared with a human benchmark. However, this conclusion would be hasty. Even in humans, CFFTs are uninformative about the temporal regularities over which our perceptual mechanisms anticipate, organize, revise or attend to perceptual inputs. Moreover, CFFTs are fundamentally a measure of retinal sensitivity. As such, they offer little information about the timescapes of perceptual experiences in general."

The researchers propose that an animal's timescape can better be described using five experimentally testable temporal "windows," which give a richer, more biologically grounded picture of animal experience. These include synchronization of the binding of contents in a single perceptual moment (synchronization), how perceptual content is updated with subsequent input (revision), how long attention is sustained on something (attention), how long perceptual content is present after a stimulus offset (persistence), and how long it takes to perceive something before switching (stability).

Experiments across various studies have shown that different species show strikingly different durations for each window, suggesting genuinely different temporal organizations of experience. The researchers say temporal illusions are also powerful tools for probing these windows across species. They give multiple examples of how illusions provide insights into each window.
For example, one illusion, referred to as "motion dazzle," consists of a camouflage strategy using contrasting patterns that disrupt the accurate perception of motion and speed to confuse predators. This illusion can help researchers learn more about the synchronization window. They say the luminance contrasts of an image are scanned and then processed at different latencies. Dark-to-light transitions are processed before light-to-dark transitions and are then perceived as parts of the same image with different latencies. The effect differs across species.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 23 hours ago

The kombucha paradox: Measurable effects, uncertain well-being benefits

Kombucha has become part of the wider boom in gut-friendly foods and drinks. But a major heart health charity is urging consumers to look more carefully at what these products actually contain.
The British Heart Foundation has warned that some popular gut-friendly products can come with drawbacks. Commercial kombucha may be a healthier alternative to some sugary fizzy drinks, but store-bought versions can contain added sugar. Other fermented foods, such as kimchi and sauerkraut, can be high in salt.

The warning points to a wider problem. Foods and drinks sold with a health halo are not always straightforwardly healthy. The fact that a product contains potentially active compounds does not prove it will produce a meaningful benefit.

Kombucha is often sold as more than a fizzy drink. Because it is fermented, it is commonly linked with gut health, well-being and even stress resilience.

But in a controlled human study, the results were more complicated. Drinking kombucha each day changed some metabolic markers in the body, but did not clearly change how healthy adults responded to acute laboratory stress.
But it tells us something important: Biological activity does not automatically mean a meaningful health benefit.
Daily consumption of a controlled kombucha drink for eight weeks altered metabolic biomarkers but did not meaningfully change acute stress responses, including cortisol, autonomic measures, or self-reported stress, compared with placebo in healthy adults. Kombucha’s measurable biological activity therefore does not translate into demonstrated well-being or stress-resilience benefits, and health claims remain unsupported.

original article.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 23 hours ago

How early life experiences shape schizophrenia risk

Researchers have found that childhood trauma, poverty, social isolation and other adverse life experiences are associated with brain changes linked to schizophrenia-spectrum disorders—findings that could help researchers identify people at risk earlier and develop interventions before severe symptoms emerge.
Early-life adversity, including trauma, poverty, social isolation, discrimination, and food insecurity, is associated with alterations in brain structure, function, and neurochemistry linked to schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. These factors do not singly cause schizophrenia but increase risk in vulnerable individuals. Understanding these neurobiological pathways may enable earlier, more targeted, and potentially preventive interventions.
Overall, the researchers found evidence that greater exposure to adverse conditions early in life is associated with differences in brain structure, brain function and neurochemistry—all of which have been previously linked to schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.

Social Determinants of Health and Neurobiology Across the Schizophrenia Course: A Systematic Review, JAMA Psychiatry (2026). DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2026.1312

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 23 hours ago

Pakistani genomes reveal 34,000 knockouts that could explain why mouse-based drugs fail in humans

A comprehensive analysis of 173,303 genomes from Pakistan, published today in Nature, is upending how scientists understand human genetics and drug development. By identifying 34,000 people who are "human knockouts," with complete loss of function of at least one gene, the study reveals variation in the human genome needed to shape new treatments for human diseases while also illuminating why drugs developed in mice often fail in humans.
Analysis of 173,303 Pakistani genomes identified ~34,000 individuals with complete loss-of-function in ≥1 gene, yielding knockouts in ~6,500 protein-coding genes. Many genes deemed essential from mouse models are variable in humans, clarifying failures of mouse-based drug targets (e.g., RXFP1) and highlighting protective knockouts (e.g., CIDEB) as therapeutic candidates. The resource improves prediction of drug efficacy and safety, including ancestry-translatable insights, and demonstrates the value of consanguineous South Asian populations for human genetics and drug development.
Crucially, the study reveals that genes considered "essential" to life and intolerant to changes, based on mouse models, are actually variable in humans—a finding with profound implications for pharmaceutical development.

The genomes also contain information needed to uncover the functions of two-thirds of human genes that remain a mystery even 25 years after the completion of the Human Genome Project.

Allan Gurtan, Analysis of 173,303 exomes and genomes in the Pakistan Genome Resource, Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10667-5. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10667-5

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 23 hours ago

Scientists uncover how physical activity may help protect older adults against cancer
Scientists have discovered that aging muscle may contribute to cancer growth by releasing fewer extracellular vesicles, tiny particles that cells use to communicate with one another. Their study also found that the composition of these particles changes with age, weakening protective signals that help suppress tumor development.
Encouragingly, exercise appears to restore this protective function. Published in Nature Communications, the findings offer fresh insights into healthy aging and cancer prevention, as well as potential biomarkers and therapies tailored to older adults.

Aging and sarcopenic muscle secrete fewer extracellular vesicles and show reduced levels of the tumor-suppressive microRNA miR-7a-5p, weakening muscle-to-tumor inhibitory signaling and favoring cancer growth. Exercise reactivates the declining pathway controlling vesicle release, restoring protective signaling. Extracellular vesicle miR-7a-5p is proposed as a potential biomarker of cancer risk in older adults.

Kah Yong Goh et al, Sarcopenia promotes tumorigenesis by disrupting NOTCH-SDC2-regulated biogenesis of muscle-derived extracellular vesicles, Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-72410-y

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 23 hours ago

Antisocial behaviour in young people linked to changes throughout the brain

Conduct problems—including persistent rule-breaking, aggression, irritability and difficulty following school rules—are associated with small but widespread differences in brain structure, according to a major international study of more than 14,000 children and adolescents.
Conduct problems in 14,000 youths aged 5–21 were associated with small but widespread reductions in cortical thickness, cortical surface area, and subcortical volumes, scaling with symptom severity and present across the full spectrum, not only in diagnosed conduct disorder. Effects were modest, influenced by environmental factors, and support dimensional rather than categorical views of behavioural disorders.
Importantly, these brain changes were found not to be limited to young people with a formal diagnosis of conduct disorder—a mental health condition in children and adolescents characterized by persistent patterns of antisocial behavior. Instead, they were present across the full range of severity, including in youngsters with mild behavioral difficulties.

The study's authors say this research marks an important step forward in understanding the biological and developmental roots of conduct problems, with the potential to inform more effective, tailored interventions for young people worldwide.
According to the team's findings, the more serious a young person's conduct problems, the more pronounced the differences in brain structure. The researchers found this to be true for the thickness of the cortex (the outer layer of the brain), the surface area of the cortex, and the size of key subcortical regions—areas found deeper in the brain.

Marlene Staginnus et al, Dimensional Associations Between Conduct Problems and Brain Structure Across 18 International Cohorts in ENIGMA, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2026.03.002

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Everyday chemical exposures linked to preterm birth and lower birthweight
In one of the largest studies of chemical exposures during pregnancy to date, new research has found that pregnant women are exposed to dozens of everyday chemicals, many of which can affect how early a child is born or a child's weight at birth. These outcomes influence a child's health throughout life.

A cohort of >5,000 mother–child pairs showed maternal exposure to a mean of 45 everyday chemicals, including phthalates, replacement plasticizers, PAHs and halogenated phenols. Higher levels of several phthalates, alternative plasticizers and PAHs were associated with shorter gestation and lower birthweight, and newer replacement plasticizers exhibited similar adverse associations.
The research, published in JAMA Network Open, found that pregnant women in the study were exposed to an average of 45 different chemicals, including phthalates, replacement plasticizers, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and halogenated phenols. These chemicals are found in food, water, air pollution, personal care products, fragrances and other household objects.

These chemicals are difficult to avoid because they're found in a wide range of products we use every day. It can be difficult to know whether products contain them, and even when we do know, we have limited control over exposures.
Although there are some practical steps people can take, reducing harmful chemicals at the source is the most effective way to protect children and families.

Phthalates and replacement plasticizers, in particular, are found in many baby care products, such as toys, diaper creams and shampoos. The new study found several additional phthalates, including those that replaced banned phthalates, and plasticizer chemicals in women's samples.
The study included more than 5,000 pairs of mothers and children born between 2000 and 2021 and collected data on chemicals found in maternal urine samples, pregnancy duration and birth weight. Researchers tested for 113 different chemicals commonly found in homes and in air, food and water and found that, on average, 45 were present in each sample (the maximum they observed in a sample was 64). The team then examined how differences in gestational age and birth weight were linked to these chemical exposures.

Several phthalates and alternative plasticizers showed a consistent association with earlier delivery. Phthalates, replacement plasticizers and PAHs were also linked to lower birth weight. Some less-studied chemicals that the researchers identified, including halogenated phenols, were also associated with lower birth weight. The researchers also identified plasticizers recently introduced to replace toxic chemicals like phthalates. However, these newer substances had similar health effects to the chemicals they replaced.

Gestational exposure to ten classes of priority chemicals and birth outcomes in the ECHO Cohort, JAMA Network Open (2026). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.18883

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