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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 12, 2022 at 8:53am

Lifetime of knowledge can clutter memories of older adults, researchers suggest

When a person tries to access a memory, their brain quickly sifts through everything stored in it to find the relevant information. But as we age, many of us have difficulty retrieving memories. In a review publishing in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences on February 11, researchers propose an explanation for why this might be happening: the brains of older adults allocate more space to accumulated knowledge and have more material to navigate when attempting to access memories. While this wealth of prior knowledge can make memory retrieval challenging, the researchers say it has its upsides—this life experience can aid with creativity and decision-making.

Researchers looked at several behavioral and neuroimaging studies, which show that older adults have difficulty suppressing information that is no longer relevant and that when searching for a specific memory, they often retrieve other, irrelevant memories along with it. The studies also showed that when given a cognitive task, older adults rely more heavily on previous knowledge than younger adults do.

While the researchers focus primarily on the difficulties that these cluttered memories may pose, they also highlight a few situations in which these crowded memoryscapes may be useful. "Evidence suggests that older adults show preserved, and at times enhanced, creativity as a function of enriched memories," the researchers write. They further hypothesize that older adults may be well served by their prior knowledge when it comes to decision-making, where they can pull on their accumulated wisdom.

With continued study and increased understanding of how memory works in older adults, researchers are hopeful that they may be able to find new ways to help them. It is possible that the increased binding and richer encodings of older adults can even be leveraged to improve older adults' learning and memory.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Amer: "Cluttered memory representations shape cognition in old age" www.cell.com/trends/cognitive- … 1364-6613(21)00310-7 , DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.12.002

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-lifetime-knowledge-clutter-m...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 11, 2022 at 11:17am

The chronic growing pains of communicating science online

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo0668

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 11, 2022 at 11:11am

Making installed train windows permeable to mobile-phone signals

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 11, 2022 at 10:41am

Less powerful black hole blows environment clean 

Until now, astronomers have always assumed that only blackholes with strong radiation stop star formation from within the galaxy. This is because these black holes blow away gas, which is the building block for stars. The question, however, is whether galaxies without strongly radiating black holes are also inhibited in their growth.

An international team of astronomers has discovered that even a weak jet stream from a low-active black hole can be a kind of leaf blower to clean parts of a galaxy. The observed black hole removes about 75% of the cold gas in the central regions of the galaxy in a few million years. This probably stops the formation of stars. The researchers publish their findings on Thursday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

This low-power black hole is found in the galaxy B2 0258+35 in the constellation of Perseus. It does not emit strong radiation but has radio plasma jets that are bright, as opposed to black holes that emit visible light, ultraviolet or X-rays.

The gas at B2 0258+35 is blown away steadily at a speed of about 500 kilometers per second. It is roughly five to ten solar masses per year and takes a few million years. The gas is not moving fast enough to escape from the reach of the galaxy. It eventually falls back and ends up at the edges of the galaxy. From there, it cannot properly form new stars.

Suma Murthy, Cold gas removal from the centre of a galaxy by a low-luminosity jet, Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01596-6. www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01596-6

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-powerful-black-hole-environment.html?...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 11, 2022 at 8:42am

Just 14 cases: Guinea worm disease nears eradication

A scourge that once infected millions of the world’s poorest people is close to being wiped out in humans — but infections in animals complicates the picture.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00385-z

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 11, 2022 at 8:32am

 

Happy women scientists day!

The United Nations General Assembly declared 11 February as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science in 2015.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 10, 2022 at 1:42pm

As seed-hauling animals decline, some plants can’t keep up with climate change

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 9, 2022 at 12:37pm

Mysterious Link Between Vitamin D And COVID-19 Reaffirmed in 'Striking' New Findings

Scientists found "striking" differences in the chances of getting seriously ill from COVID-19 when they compared patients who had sufficient vitamin D levels prior to contracting the disease, with those who didn't.

A study published recently  in research journal PLOS One found that about half of people who were vitamin D deficient before getting COVID-19 developed severe illness, compared to less than 10 percent of people who had sufficient levels of the vitamin in their blood.

We know vitamin D is vital for bone health, but its role in protecting against severe COVID-19 is less-well established. 

The latest research was the first to examine vitamin D levels in individuals prior to them contracting COVID-19, the study authors said.

The findings suggested vitamin D helped bolster the immune system to deal with viruses that attack the respiratory system.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0...

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 9, 2022 at 12:35pm

New implant offers promise for the paralyzed

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 9, 2022 at 11:26am

New Discovery could help finetune immunity to fight infections, disease

New Research  by scientists supports a novel theory that the innate immune system people are born with can respond differently to specific pathogens. This quality, known as immunological specificity, was previously ascribed only to the adaptive immune system, which develops over time through disease exposure.

Published in the journal Cell Reports, the study suggests that this innate immune specificity is driven by the  nervous system and identifies a neuronal protein as a critical link in the process.

Based on an animal model, these findings hold early promise for the treatment of conditions such as sepsis, arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, in which the innate immune system attacks the body and causes uncontrolled inflammation. They could also provide the basis for finetuning an experimental treatment that harnesses the nervous system to fight infection.

Clinical studies have shown that stimulating impaired neural circuits—either electrically or pharmacologically—can cure or alleviate many innate immune diseases. Knowing how the innate immune system generates a specific response to a particular pathogen enables us to manipulate neural circuits to adjust the intensity of the immune response as needed.

This would essentially help restore balance to the immune system, either by dialing back an excessive response that can cause prolonged inflammation, tissue damage and even death; or by boosting an insufficient response to keep an infection from getting worse. 

Jingru Sun, Neuronal GPCR NMUR-1 regulates distinct immune responses to different pathogens, Cell Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110321. www.cell.com/cell-reports/full … 2211-1247(22)00032-8

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-discovery-finetune-immunity-...

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