Tag Archives: ScienceAlert

Researchers have suspected for some time that the link between our gut and brain plays a role in the onset of Parkinson’s disease. A recent study identified gut microbes likely to be involved and linked them with decreased riboflavin ( vitamin B2) and biotin (vitamin B7), suggesting an unexpectedly simple treatment that may help: B vitamins. “Supplementation therapy targeting riboflavin …

We may have new hope in the battle against Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers have found that lithium levels in the brain are closely linked to the condition, and that lithium supplements can reverse Alzheimer’s-like memory loss in mice. Led by a team from Harvard Medical School, the researchers wanted to investigate previous links that have been made between exposure to metals …

Over the past two centuries, vaccines have been critical for preventing infectious diseases. The World Health Organization estimates that vaccination prevents between 3 million and 5 million deaths annually from diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, influenza, measles and, more recently, COVID-19. While there has long been broad scientific consensus that vaccines prevent or mitigate the spread of infections, there is new …

A greasy takeaway may seem like an innocent Friday night indulgence. But our recent research suggests even a single high-fat meal could impair blood flow to the brain, potentially increasing the risk of stroke and dementia. Dietary fat is an important part of our diet. It provides us with a concentrated source of energy, transports vitamins and when stored in …

To find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, we need to understand how and where it gets started, and new research suggests we might be looking in the wrong place. Scientists from the US and Germany have linked genetic risk for Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases to the blood-brain barrier – the blood vessels and immune cells that surround and protect …

Earth will complete a rotation 1.33 milliseconds earlier than usual on Tuesday, August 5. That makes it one of the shortest days of 2025 at 86,399.99867 seconds long. How that happens, and how we can even measure it with such precision, might make your head spin faster too. On average, Earth physically rotates in 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds …

Black holes are some of the most mysterious objects in the Universe – a reputation not helped by the difficulty of studying them. Because these ultra-dense objects emit no light we can detect, we have to study them based on the effect they have on the space around them, from large distances across space-time. But there could be another way …

A common type of human papillomavirus (HPV) could be more dangerous than we thought. The virus, known as beta-HPV, was thought in rare cases to contribute to skin cancer by worsening UV damage, but a new study suggests it can actually hijack the body’s cells to directly drive cancer growth. These fresh conclusions came from a study of a 34-year-old …

If you ever lie awake at night wondering just how likely you are to die from an asteroid impact within your lifetime, a new paper has you covered. A team led by physicist Carrie Nugent of the Olin College of Engineering in the US has calculated not just how likely it is that an asteroid will hit Earth during an …

Microscopic grains of alien dust buried in the sediment at the bottom of the ocean could be evidence of a comet that exploded in Earth’s atmosphere 12,800 years ago. This hypothetical event, known as the Younger Dryas impact, was invoked to explain a sudden, 1,200-year period of rapid cooling to near-glacial conditions during a time when Earth’s climate was on …