Author: Todd Livingston

Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine tend to limit their research after claiming the prestigious honor, according to a new study – showing that bagging the prize is not necessary for those who want to remain productive and relevant.By analyzing data on Nobel Prize winners from 1950 to 2009, researchers from Stanford University in California and the University of Waterloo in Canada looked at three criteria: the number of papers published, the novelty of these papers (how innovative their ideas were), and the number of words mentioned in other articles.Researchers compared this against people of the same age who…

The antihypertensive drug rilmenidine has been shown to slow the aging process in worms, an effect that in humans can help us live longer and be healthier in our later years.Rilmenidine was chosen for the current study because previous studies have shown that it mimics caloric restriction at the cellular level. Decreasing available energy while conserving nutrients has been shown to increase lifespan in several animal species.Whether this translates to human biology, or may pose a threat to our health, is a matter of ongoing debate. Finding ways to achieve the same benefits without the high caloric cost may lead…

There is a window of time in our lives that we have all passed through and yet know little about: early pregnancy. Now researchers have found that two types of genetic deletions associated with schizophrenia may occur during development.The discovery comes from a team of researchers led by Harvard Medical School physician-scientist Eduardo Maury, who analyzed the blood samples of about 25,000 people with and without schizophrenia.Although genetic changes require further confirmation, these findings strengthen the emerging hypothesis that the seeds of schizophrenia are not always innate, but can be found long before a person meets the world.If so, it…

An object lurking at the dawn of the Universe has baffled astronomers.Data collected via the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a supermassive black hole 9 million times the size of the Sun – expanding rapidly as it ejects material from its orbit.About 570 million years after the Big Bang, this is the fastest growing black hole yet known, although scientists believe it won’t last long. The black hole was discovered inside one of the oldest galaxies ever discovered, previously known as EGSY8p7 and renamed CEERS 1019. Its discovery could help with one of the biggest mysteries of the early…

For most of us, hiccups are frustrating but thankfully temporary. In extreme cases, it can last several days, which sounds like a LOT.But the next time you’re plagued by his inadvertent singing, spare a thought for a man named Charles Osborne, who suffered from an unpleasant condition for 68 years.On June 13, 1922, when the young Osborne was working on a farm in Nebraska, he started sleeping when he met a pig, and he didn’t stop until 1990.More on this soon. But why do we have hiccups, and does anything prevent them?Hiccups are thought to be caused by a neural…

When you turn on a lamp to illuminate a room, you have light energy that is transmitted as photons, which are tiny packets of energy.These images must obey the sometimes strange laws of quantum mechanics, which, for example, say that photons are indivisible, but at the same time, allow a photon to be in two places at the same time.Just like photons make up light waves, quantum particles called phonons make up sound waves. These small particles produce a large number of atoms, just like the “waves” in a stadium caused by the movement of thousands of fans. When you…

There are many ways that we humans have wreaked havoc on each other – nuclear weapons, pollution, the spread of pathogens, to name just a few.Although it is difficult to say for sure, in most cases the deadliest day in human history was the result of natural disasters. On the morning of January 23, 1556, a powerful earthquake shook the Shaanxi province of China, which at that time was called “China’s civilization”.The earthquake lasted only a few seconds but it is estimated that 100,000 people died directly, and the earthquake killed an estimated 830,000 people through landslides, floods, fires, displacement,…

Working out your muscles can help slow the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms, researchers have revealed.Researchers from the Federal University of São Paulo and the University of São Paulo in Brazil have found strong evidence that resistance training – where muscles work against weight or force – can have a significant effect on the brain of people with mental illness.Before you rush to renew your gym membership or use home exercise equipment, it’s important to remember that this was a mouse model study. However, the same moral principles apply to humans. “This proves that physical activity can alter the changes in…

Tuesday was the hottest day on record as global temperatures rose for the second day in a row, according to data from the US Meteorological Department on Wednesday.Almost every day the temperature of the air in the world reached 17.18 degrees Celsius (62.92 Fahrenheit), according to the data of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).This exceeded even the previous days, which is a new sign of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.The global average temperature reached 17 degrees Celsius for the first time on Monday, according to data from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental…

Superconducting quantum technology has long held the promise of bridging the divide between existing electronic devices and the optical continuum. Unfortunately, progress in making the necessary procedures sustainable has been stagnant over the past decade.Now a major breakthrough has been achieved, researchers at the University of Maryland are creating superconducting qubits that last 10 times longer than before.What makes qubits so useful in computing is that their quantities are connected in ways that are mathematically useful for creating some complex algorithms, taking time to solve problems that would take other technologies years or more.Unfortunately, these complex objects don’t just interact…