Tag Archives: ScienceAlert

Ultra-processed foods already have a lousy reputation – and now a new study suggests that even ‘healthy’ versions of them can significantly undermine your weight-loss efforts. Researchers from the UK and US analyzed data from 50 overweight people who completed two diet programs on separate occasions. Both diets matched in terms of nutrition – with the same amounts of fat …

Irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea (IBS-D) is an unpleasant condition to live with, affecting millions of people worldwide. Now a new study has identified what could be a key trigger for the condition – a trigger which could be targeted by future treatments. An investigation on 108 people with and without IBS-D and related conditions has revealed a hormone called …

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have observed 3I/ATLAS, only the third known object from outside our Solar System to visit our neighborhood. This interstellar interloper is putting on quite a show as it approaches the Sun, revealing secrets about visitors from the depths of space. 3I/ATLAS is clearly active at 3.8 astronomical units as it approaches the Sun, showing …

Cancerous vocal fold lesions could exert a subtle influence over the sound of a person’s voice, which could help catch laryngeal cancer earlier than current methods. While the distinction is impossible to detect with the human ear, scientists have found that machine learning algorithms can tell them apart. Across the world, around 1.1 million cases of laryngeal or ‘voice box’ …

Recent generations of AI have proven handy for restaurant recommendations and writing emails, but as a source of medical advice they’ve had some clear drawbacks. Case in point: a man who followed a chatbot’s health plan ended up in hospital after giving himself a rare form of toxicity. The story began when the patient decided to improve his health by …

Scientists may have identified a way to naturally regulate blood sugar levels and sugar cravings in a similar fashion to drugs like Ozempic. In mice and humans, the key to unlocking this natural process was found to be a gut microbe and its metabolites – the compounds it produces during digestion. By increasing the abundance of this one gut microbe …

A tiny blob of gelatinous tissue sitting in a dish represents a giant leap forward in human brain research. Known as an organoid, it’s a living 3D model of a human organ; one of the first to constitute multiple different regions of the brain. Moreover, those regions connect up with each other and light up with neuronal activity, comparable to …

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) last around a millisecond and in doing so encode otherwise unattainable information on the plasma which permeates our Universe, providing insights into magnetic fields and gas distributions. In a paper authored by Manisha Caleb from the University of Sydney, the team report upon the discovery of FRB 20240304B which lies at a redshift of 2.148 +/- …

Drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro (known as semaglutide and tirzepatide) have changed the way clinicians manage diabetes and obesity around the world. Collectively known as GLP-1 agonists, these drugs mimic the hormone GLP-1. This limits both hunger and interest in food, helping users lose weight, and helps control blood sugar levels. But two new studies published today show …

With just a splash of color, the red planet’s horizons can look remarkably like our own – blue skies and all. A 360-degree panorama, taken by the Perseverance Rover on Mars, could just as easily have been snapped in a rocky desert somewhere here on Earth. The difference lies in a subtle tweak to the color contrast. Related: Sold: Largest …