Rachelle has been on the Camino trail in Spain all Oct.
sunrise out the office window
the ground is full of colour, I'll lawn mow the leaves to return their nutrients and biotica back to the soil.
The waterfowl are starting to collect in their favorite spots along the river.
This is one of their favorite bays. There are ducks here as well. The back right of the pic has lots of birds.
my last batch of chili finally done.
I chose photography as a retirement hobby as the properties of light have always interested me, and the subject is near infinite. Photography works to capture some of it. Water is much the same.
Despite the size, I think the darker swans are this years young.
river traffic gets busier this time of year, this guy is loaded heading east.
BY DEUTSCHES INST. FÜR ERNÄHRUNGSFORSCHUNG POTSDAM-REHBRÜCKE, OCTOBER 30, 2026
Peanuts are nutrient-rich legumes packed with protein, healthy unsaturated fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Although commonly considered nuts, they grow underground and belong to the same plant family as beans and lentils.
Credit: Shutterstock
A handful of peanuts may leave a telltale signature in your blood, and researchers have linked that pattern to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
What happens inside your body after eating a handful of peanuts? Beyond providing protein, fiber, and healthy fats, these popular legumes appear to leave a distinctive chemical fingerprint in the bloodstream. Scientists have now linked this pattern of circulating fats to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, offering new clues about the complex relationship between diet, body weight, and metabolic health.
To investigate, researchers combined a six-month dietary experiment with data from a long-term population study involving more than 27,000 people. Their findings revealed how peanut consumption reshapes certain blood lipids and suggested that body mass index plays an important role in the observed connection to diabetes risk.
Looking Beyond Cholesterol
Cholesterol tests capture only part of the fat circulating in the bloodstream. A technique called lipidomics provides a more detailed inventory, revealing differences among lipid classes that conventional measurements may miss.
The type of fat you eat helps shape how your body processes and stores it. Replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats can improve blood lipid profiles and reduce inflammation, helping address the cardiometabolic risks associated with unhealthy diets.
Even saturated fatty acids are not a uniform group. Very long chain saturated fatty acids (VLCSFA), which contain more than 20 carbon atoms, may have distinctive metabolic effects. Peanuts, which are legumes, supply these fats alongside monounsaturated fatty acids.
Tracking the Effects of Peanuts
Dr. Inés Domínguez-López and Professor Matthias Schulze at the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke worked with University of Barcelona researchers to investigate how peanuts influence this broader lipid landscape.
They began with ARISTOTLE, a randomized controlled trial involving 63 healthy adults ages 18 to 33. For six months, participants consumed either 25 grams (0.88 ounces) of skin-roasted peanuts, 32 grams (1.13 ounces) of peanut butter, or 32 grams (1.13 ounces) of a control butter containing peanut oil each day.
Using high-resolution mass spectrometry, an approach known as “deep lipidomics,” the team identified a characteristic pattern of blood fats following peanut consumption. They called it the “Peanut Lipidomic Signature” (PeLS).
A Different Mix of Blood Fats
Peanut consumption significantly increased certain very long-chain saturated fatty acids, particularly C24:0 and C22:0. These were preferentially incorporated into specific lipid classes, including ceramides, through processes involving enzymes that lengthen fatty acid chains.
“This is not merely a simple increase in fat levels but a complex ‘remodeling’ of the lipidome,” explains first author Domínguez-López.
“By characterizing this specific peanut lipid signature, we have uncovered a potential biological marker that links dietary fat quality to metabolic outcomes,” explains Schulze.
The researchers then examined samples and records from EPIC-Potsdam, a long-term population study with more than 27,000 participants. Its data included people who developed type 2 diabetes (774 cases) and cardiovascular disease (545 cases).
Where Body Weight Fits In
The peanut lipid signature was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, but not cardiovascular disease. Much of the relationship with diabetes was statistically explained by body mass index (BMI).
“This suggests that the positive metabolic effects of these specific peanut-derived lipids may be linked to their ability to support a healthier body weight or stabilize metabolic processes related to adiposity,” Domínguez-López says.
Affordable and widely available, peanuts could be a practical addition to a balanced diet that supports metabolic health, with their distinctive blood lipid signature linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
The spider Portia fimbriata in a sleeping position, hanging upside down beneath its self-spun web.
Credit: Daniela C. Rößler
Scientists have discovered that spiders experience REM-like sleep, complete with twitching muscles and moving eyes, raising the intriguing possibility that they might dream.
Spiders may have more in common with sleeping humans than scientists previously realized. Researchers at the University of Bonn have discovered that Australian jumping spiders experience two distinct stages of sleep, including a state that closely resembles REM sleep in humans. During this stage, the spiders move their eyes and twitch their muscles, behaviors that raise intriguing questions about the origins of sleep and whether spiders might experience something resembling dreams.
The findings provide the first comprehensive experimental confirmation of regulated sleep in spiders. They also suggest that complex sleep patterns may be far more widespread throughout the animal kingdom than previously understood.
In humans and other vertebrates, sleep involves multiple stages, including REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. This stage is associated with rapid eye movements, changes in muscle activity, and vivid dreaming in humans. Scientists have long wondered whether animals with very different nervous systems, including spiders, experience comparable sleep states.
To investigate, researchers from the Institute of Organismic Biology at the University of Bonn turned to an unusual subject: the Australian jumping spider Portia fimbriata.
The spider Portia fimbriata hunting an orb-web spider.
Credit: Daniela C. Rößler
A Remarkably Intelligent Spider
The spider belongs to the genus Portia, a group of predators known for their sophisticated hunting techniques. Unlike many spiders that primarily capture insects, Portia species specialize in hunting other spiders.
One of their most remarkable strategies involves manipulating the webs of their prey. By producing vibrations that imitate insects struggling in silk, these spiders can lure web-building spiders toward them. Such complex hunting behavior suggests an unusual capacity for learning and adapting to different situations.
Despite their impressive abilities, these predators are quite small. A fully grown Portia fimbriata is roughly the size of a one-euro coin.
Their sophisticated behavior made them particularly interesting subjects for investigating sleep. Scientists wanted to determine whether these spiders simply become inactive at night or enter a genuine, biologically regulated sleep state similar to those observed in vertebrates.
Scientists Discover Two Distinct Sleep Stages
The researchers found convincing behavioral evidence that Portia fimbriata does more than rest. The spiders exhibit regulated sleep with two clearly distinguishable stages.
One of these stages closely resembles REM sleep, a well-known phase of human sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and muscle twitches.
During the spiders’ REM-like periods, the researchers observed eye movements and twitching muscles, suggesting that certain features of sleep may be shared by animals whose nervous systems are dramatically different from our own.
The discovery is especially significant because most scientific knowledge about sleep has come from studies of vertebrates, including humans, other mammals, birds, and reptiles. Until now, comprehensive experimental evidence establishing true sleep behavior in spiders had been lacking.
Although the REM-like movements are intriguing, they do not demonstrate that spiders dream. Determining whether spiders experience anything comparable to human dreams would require evidence beyond the behavioral observations available in this study.
How Researchers Studied Sleeping Spiders
To examine the spiders’ nighttime behavior, the scientists monitored individual Portia fimbriata specimens over multiple days and nights.
Each spider was kept in a small plastic dish measuring 12 centimeters in diameter. The researchers exposed the animals to different lighting conditions to investigate their daily activity cycles and determine how their behavior changed between day and night.
High-resolution video recordings allowed the team to examine the spiders’ movements in detail. During nighttime observations, infrared cameras captured their sleeping positions, periods of inactivity, and episodes of REM-like behavior without requiring visible light.
But remaining motionless is not necessarily proof of sleep. Animals can become inactive for several reasons, so the researchers needed additional evidence to distinguish actual sleep from ordinary rest.
They tested the spiders’ responses to sound and measured how quickly the animals reacted. These experiments helped determine whether the spiders became less responsive to external disturbances during their resting periods, an important characteristic of sleep.
The team also investigated a phenomenon known as “sleep rebound,” which occurs when an animal compensates for interrupted or insufficient sleep by sleeping more afterward. Testing for this response helped establish whether the spiders’ rest was regulated by an underlying biological need.
Together, these observations and experiments provided evidence that the spiders experience genuine sleep rather than simply remaining inactive.
The Challenge of Identifying Sleep in Spiders
Studying sleep in spiders presents difficulties that researchers do not typically encounter when investigating humans or other mammals.
One major obstacle was identifying a stimulus that would reliably awaken the spiders during experiments. Spiders perceive their surroundings very differently from humans, making it challenging to design tests that could consistently measure their responses.
The researchers also had to be careful when interpreting the unusual movements recorded during the REM-like stage. Although eye movements and muscle twitches resemble behaviors associated with REM sleep in vertebrates, similar outward movements do not necessarily indicate identical processes inside the nervous system.
Another important limitation was the inability to directly measure the spiders’ brain activity. Instead, the researchers had to base their conclusions entirely on observable behavior.
To overcome these challenges, they collected extensive high-resolution video recordings over long observation periods. This provided the detail needed to examine subtle movements and sleep patterns, but it also generated enormous amounts of data that had to be analyzed.
By combining behavioral recordings with experiments measuring responsiveness and recovery from interrupted sleep, the researchers were able to build a much stronger case for true sleep in spiders.
What Spider Sleep Reveals About Evolution
The discovery could have important implications for understanding how sleep evolved.
REM sleep is one of the most fascinating and still incompletely understood aspects of human biology. Although it is closely associated with dreaming in humans, scientists continue to investigate its broader functions and evolutionary history.
Finding REM-like behavior in spiders raises the possibility that some features of complex sleep are shared across a much wider range of animals than previously established.
Spiders and vertebrates have very different nervous systems, yet both appear capable of entering distinct behavioral sleep states. Understanding these similarities could help researchers identify fundamental properties of sleep that have persisted through evolution or developed independently in different animal groups.
The findings also open new opportunities in behavioral biology, neuroscience, and chronobiology, the study of biological rhythms and internal clocks. They may be particularly valuable for understanding how sleep functions in animals with relatively simple nervous systems.
Rather than limiting sleep research to humans and traditional laboratory animals, the scientists recommend studying a much broader diversity of species, especially those with unusual nervous systems or highly specialized adaptations.
Such comparisons could help reveal whether sleep serves a universal biological purpose and whether some of its essential features originated very early in animal evolution.
Despite decades of research, many basic questions about why animals sleep and what happens during different sleep stages remain unanswered, even in humans.
Could Spiders Dream? Scientists Want to Find Out
The University of Bonn researchers are now extending their investigations to other spider species to better understand how sleep and REM-like states evolved across this diverse group of animals.
They also plan to compare spiders sleeping in laboratory environments with those living in the wild. These studies could reveal whether natural surroundings influence sleep patterns in ways that controlled laboratory conditions cannot fully capture.
Another major research direction involves exploring the relationship between sleep and intelligence. Because Portia spiders display sophisticated hunting and learning abilities, they provide an interesting opportunity to investigate whether sleep contributes to cognitive processes in animals with very different brains from humans.
Future studies will also examine what happens inside the nervous systems of spiders and insects during sleep. Direct measurements of neural activity could help determine whether the REM-like behaviors observed in spiders involve processes comparable to those found in vertebrates.
The researchers are additionally interested in how environmental changes influence sleep. In particular, they hope to investigate the effects of climate change and human activities, including artificial light at night (ALAN), on the sleep behavior of spiders and other small animals.
Artificial nighttime lighting can alter the natural cycle of light and darkness that many organisms use to regulate their daily rhythms. Understanding how spiders respond to these disruptions could provide new insights into the broader ecological consequences of human activity.
For now, the findings establish something remarkable: even a tiny jumping spider can experience distinct, regulated stages of sleep, including one that resembles REM sleep in humans.
Whether those sleeping spiders actually dream remains an open question, but their unusual nighttime behavior offers scientists a new way to investigate one of biology’s oldest mysteries.
Kobe University material engineer Hiroshi Sugimoto developed a structural color coating that is gloss and can be applied to large, 3D surfaces. In addition, his team showed that adding a protective coating did not significantly change the hue, making the technology useful for real-world applications.
Credit: Kobe University
A new silicon-based coating could dramatically reduce the weight and environmental impact of conventional paints.
A glossy, car-quality finish no longer has to depend on pigments. Researchers at Kobe University have developed a coating made from silicon nanoparticles that produces vivid, lasting color without the fading or angle-dependent shifts associated with many conventional coloring technologies.
Reported in the journal Small Structures, the advance combines several properties that have been difficult to achieve together: adjustable gloss, consistent color across viewing angles, compatibility with protective coatings, and application to large, three-dimensional surfaces. The technology could also dramatically reduce the weight of painted objects, including aircraft.
How Color Can Exist Without Pigments
Traditional paints rely on pigments to absorb certain wavelengths of light and reflect others. These coatings often require relatively thick layers that add weight, while some pigments gradually degrade with exposure to sunlight. Structural color works differently. It arises from interactions between light and microscopic structures, as seen in the brilliant feathers of peacocks. However, reproducing these effects in manufactured coatings has generally required precisely arranged structures that can change appearance with viewing angle.
“Color coatings are expected to provide vivid color, brightness, gloss, and long-term durability, yet no existing technology satisfies all of these requirements simultaneously,” says Kobe University materials engineer Hiroshi Sugimoto. His earlier research established that silicon nanospheres could produce structural colors without unwanted viewing-angle shifts. His team subsequently developed an inkjet printing method for the material, but the resulting surfaces scattered light too diffusely to achieve a polished, glossy appearance.
The coating technology developed by Sugimoto achieves high opacity and brightness with only a single layer of silicon nano spheres. The spheres have a diameter of around a quarter of a micrometer, that is, about a hundredth of a thin human hair. Credit: J. Song et al., Small Structures 2026
(DOI: 10.1002/sstr.70600)
The Nanoparticle Design Behind the Gloss
The researchers addressed this limitation by surrounding silicon nanospheres with thin silica shells. These shells protect the particles and control the distance between them, encouraging more orderly arrangements that reduce diffuse light scattering. The improved organization makes it possible to produce a glossy finish while controlling its intensity.
“Packing the nano spheres in silica shells not only protects the particles but also controls their spacing and should improve self-assembly into neat arrays,” Sugimoto explains.
The team demonstrated the coating on large, complex three-dimensional surfaces and showed that an additional protective layer did not significantly alter the resulting color. This overcomes a major limitation of previous structural color systems, whose optical properties can be disrupted by protective coatings.
“The most exciting aspect of this work is that it demonstrates glossy, non-iridescent and protection-coated structural color coatings for 3D objects in a single platform, making the technology useful for real-world applications,” Sugimoto says.
A Paint Layer That Could Weigh Just Ounces
The coating achieves high opacity and brightness using only a single layer of silicon nanospheres. This extremely thin structure offers a potentially enormous weight advantage over conventional paints. Coatings on wide-body passenger aircraft can add several hundred kilograms (about 660 pounds for 300 kilograms), whereas the researchers estimate that an equivalent structural color layer could theoretically weigh just several hundred grams (about 11 ounces for 300 grams). That comparison remains hypothetical rather than a demonstrated aircraft application.
The materials also offer potential environmental advantages. Silicon can be sourced from the semiconductor industry, while silica is among the most abundant materials in Earth’s crust. Because structural color does not depend on organic pigments that can break down under light exposure, the coatings could reduce fading and the need for replacement. Their actual environmental benefits at industrial scale have yet to be established.
From Industrial Coatings to New Optical Technologies
Sugimoto is helping establish a company to bring the technology toward industrial production. The fabrication process can accommodate several established manufacturing techniques, potentially allowing the coatings to be applied over much larger areas.
“The process is compatible with scalable coating methods such as spray coating, slot-die coating, and roll-to-roll processing,” Sugimoto explains.
The research group’s longer-term ambitions extend beyond decorative and protective finishes. By engineering the optical behavior of silicon nanoparticles, the scientists hope to create coatings that perform additional functions, including detecting environmental changes, driving light-activated chemical reactions, and managing energy.
“We want to expand the possibility of applications for the science behind our technology beyond coloration. Looking ahead, we aim to develop multifunctional silicon nanoparticle coatings that combine structural coloration with additional optical functions such as sensing, photocatalysis, and energy management.”
Barn owls are nocturnal birds of prey known for their distinctive heart-shaped faces, pale feathers, and nearly silent flight.
Credit: Shutterstock
DNA from more than 3,000 barn owls reveals natural selection at work, but the advantage behind their changing feathers may involve coping with stress rather than color itself.
Swiss barn owls have become more reddish-brown and more heavily spotted over the past 30 years. By tracking the DNA variants linked to their plumage, researchers have found evidence of natural selection acting over about ten generations, offering a detailed view of evolution unfolding in the wild.
The study, published in Nature Communications, was led by Dr. Tristan Cumer, a research fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Lausanne (Unil)’s Faculty of Biology and Medicine. Working in Professor Jérôme Goudet’s team, Cumer and his colleagues examined how genetic variants associated with color and spotting became more or less common over time. The challenge was to distinguish changes that could occur randomly from those shaped by natural selection.
“We compared the changes observed in the population with simulations in which evolution was entirely random. A genetic variant associated with reddish-brown plumage became far more common than chance alone could explain. Only simulations that included natural selection reproduced the changes we observed,” explains Cumer, the paper’s first author.
Redder feathers may be a byproduct
The analysis depended on both extensive genetic sequencing and records collected through decades of fieldwork.
“Drawing on the exceptional volume of data collected by Alexandre Roulin and his group, who have monitored these birds of prey in the field for decades, we were able to sequence the complete genomes of more than 3,000 owls and identify the DNA variants associated with color and spotting. This is one of the most in-depth genetic analyses ever conducted on a wild population,” says Goudet, the study’s last author, who is also affiliated with the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.
Barn owls.
Credit: Quentin Fort
The researchers identified genetic regions that play a major role in the birds’ appearance. These include MC1R, a gene already known to affect pigmentation, and a region on a sex chromosome whose contribution to both color and spotting they clarified. Identifying these links, however, does not establish which trait natural selection is favoring.
“We also do not know whether plumage color is itself the trait directly favored by natural selection,” says Goudet. “MC1R plays a role in pigmentation, but it is part of the melanocortin system, which has also been linked to other traits, including stress responses and aggression. Selection may therefore be acting on one of these traits, with the change in the owls’ appearance simply arising as a consequence.”
Food and stress could shape plumage
Barn owl plumage ranges from pure white to deep reddish-brown, with shades of golden brown in between. Some birds have only a few faint dark spots on their chests, while others carry many more prominent markings. Research at Unil has linked this variation to aspects of the birds’ lives beyond their appearance.
Plumage color is associated with fertility, hunting strategies, and diet. White barn owls, for example, use moonlight to their advantage when attacking prey, as described in an earlier Unil report in French. Spotting is associated with immunity and the ability to cope with stress. Birds with large black spots appear better able to withstand certain stressful conditions, including food shortages and parasites.
These connections offer possible explanations for the recent changes, although the ecological factors driving them remain unidentified. Roulin, a professor in Unil’s Department of Ecology and Evolution and a co-author of the study, suggests that shifts in food supplies or environmental stress could be involved.
“A change in prey availability may have favored reddish-brown barn owls, which eat more voles, whereas white owls tend to feed more on wood mice. The increase in spotting could be linked to greater environmental stress. Despite the striking differences in color between individuals, it remains extremely difficult to determine which ecological factors explain these variations.”
Evolution tracked across ten owl generations
The study’s evidence for natural selection is clearer than the explanation for what is driving it.
“Conducted in collaboration with the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach, this study is one of the rare cases in which the genetic basis of recent evolution has been traced with such precision in the wild. This kind of demonstration is much harder in animals living in their natural environment than in a laboratory,” adds Goudet.
For almost a decade, Goudet and his team have been working to decode the barn owl genome and establish the species as a model for studying evolution in the wild. Their work includes sequencing and assembling its reference genome, a DNA sequence that serves as a guide for genetic research, and reconstructing its evolutionary history across Europe and the Mediterranean. They have also investigated genetic recombination, which reshuffles DNA from one generation to the next, and studied how mutations arise and are passed on within populations.
“Research on this scale is possible because field teams, genomics specialists, and members of the Faculty of Biology and Medicine’s core facilities work together,” says Professor Goudet.
The changes documented in the owls show that detectable genetic evolution need not take millions of years. Cumer sees potential implications for how wild species respond to changing conditions, while the pressures acting on these owls remain unresolved.
“The study carries an encouraging message: it shows that species living in the wild can evolve over a short period. This capacity for rapid adaptation could help them cope with environmental change, including climate change,” says Cumer.
The team now plans to use computer analysis of photographs to measure color and spotting more precisely. Researchers also intend to reconstruct the plumage color of birds that died very young using their genetic data, allowing them to investigate whether particular plumage features are associated with better chances of survival.
A NASA cutaway visualization of the Van Allen radiation belts.
(NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory)
Looking at photographs of Earth suspended against the darkness of space, you'd be forgiven for thinking our planet is isolated and alone.
But there's more to near-Earth space than meets the eye. Our world is cozily snuggled in the Van Allen belts – two donut-shaped regions of space filled with energetic protons and electrons, confined by the planetary magnetic field.
The outer belt is populated largely by electrons energized by processes driven by the Sun, while many of the inner belt's protons originate from particles produced when cosmic rays strike Earth's atmosphere.
For more than a decade, it has been thought that this inner belt forms an impenetrable barrier to ultra-relativistic 'killer' electrons, preventing them from venturing too close to Earth.
But new evidence has emerged that, under the right set of circumstances, this region is not as secure as we thought.
During an insanely powerful solar storm that buffeted Earth in May 2024, a Japanese satellite recorded electrons in this region being accelerated to megaelectronvolt energies – in a place where scientists thought it wasn't supposed to happen.
"Here we show that this barrier can be breached under extreme space weather conditions," writes a team led by space physicist Yoshizumi Miyoshi of Nagoya University in a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.
So-called 'killer' electrons, known for decades, are a big problem in low-Earth space. These particles can be accelerated to almost the speed of light by interactions with electromagnetic waves in Earth's magnetic environment, particularly during geomagnetic storms.
They carry so much energy that they can penetrate satellite shielding, potentially damaging sensitive electronics and shortening the lifespans of spacecraft. They're not good for humans, either, posing an elevated radiation hazard to astronauts.
But in 2014, researchers discovered something peculiar. Observations from NASA's Van Allen Probes revealed a weirdly sharp boundary, about three Earth radii from the planet's center, beyond which the most energetic electrons rarely ventured.
Scientists described this as an "impenetrable barrier," proposing that electromagnetic waves within a region of cold plasma surrounding Earth help scatter the electrons out of their trapped orbits, sending them plunging into the atmosphere. Combined with the electrons' slow inward migration, this seemed to create a natural barrier that kept them at bay.
Even as early as 2018, however, cracks began to appear in the so-called 'impenetrable' barrier.
Researchers proposed that the barrier wasn't a barrier at all, but an illusion created by the limited duration of geomagnetic storms.
Energetic electrons could be pushed inward by fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field, but the storms driving that movement typically petered out before the electrons could venture much farther.
Then, in 2024, researchers analyzing observations captured between 1996 and 2006 discovered that lightning-generated electromagnetic waves could send killer electrons already trapped in the inner radiation belt tumbling toward Earth's atmosphere.
These observations provided further evidence that megaelectronvolt electrons were already present well inside the supposedly impenetrable boundary.
But next, in May 2024, came the solar superstorm.
The Sun exploded in a series of flares and coronal mass ejections that blasted billions of tons of magnetized plasma screaming across the Solar System.
Here on Earth, the result was a level G5 geomagnetic storm – the most powerful category on the geomagnetic storm scale, so intense its effects were recorded even at the bottom of the ocean.
The storm dramatically depleted the cold plasma in Earth's plasmasphere, creating an unusually sparse environment in which a different kind of electromagnetic wave, called chorus, could thrive.
"When converted into audio, it sounds like a bird song," Miyoshi says.
And, instead of scattering the electrons away, as other waves normally do, these waves appear to have accelerated them to ludicrous energies, right inside the 'impenetrable' barrier.
The evidence came from Japan's Arase satellite, which had been monitoring the radiation belts since 2017.
During the storm's recovery phase, Arase detected a dramatic increase in ultra-relativistic electrons inside the barrier. At energies around 3 megaelectronvolts, the electron flux ballooned by more than 5,000 times compared to pre-storm levels.
The timing and evolution of that increase were particularly revealing.
Lower-energy electrons emerged in number first. Around half a day later, electrons with higher energies followed. And roughly a day after the initial increase, electrons carrying more than 3 megaelectronvolts of energy had surged in number, too.
This staggered progression suggested that the electrons weren't simply being swept inward from elsewhere. They were gaining energy right there, inside the supposedly protected region.
Miyoshi and his colleagues found further clues in the distribution of the electrons, which formed a distinct peak near the barrier's boundary.
That pattern is difficult to explain through inward transport alone, but is consistent with electrons being accelerated locally before spreading farther inward and outward.
Put together, the evidence suggests that the depletion of the cold plasma created the perfect conditions for electrons to behave in a way that is normally only seen farther from Earth.
How the May 2024 solar superstorm disrupted Earth's radiation belts, allowing electrons to accelerate inside the barrier.
(Miyoshi et al., Geophysical Research Letters, 2026)
And it took months to recover. Arase continued to observe declining levels of ultra-relativistic electrons until October 2024, when another solar storm buffeted near-Earth space.
It's a finding that hints the dynamics of the space around Earth are far more complex than its apparent serenity suggests.
"This discovery highlights the need to understand and predict how energetic electrons behave under extreme space weather conditions," Miyoshi says.
"Such knowledge is important for assessing radiation risks to spacecraft and improving future space weather predictions."
Crows have cognitive abilities that sometimes rival our own.
(sandra standbridge/Moment RF/Getty Images)
Two male crows have performed better than humans and monkeys in a classic psychology task designed to test how the brain makes decisions based on what it sees.
In prior experiments, corvids (a family of birds that includes crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, and jays) have shown a range of remarkable mental abilities once thought unique to primates.
New Caledonian crows build compound tools and plan three steps ahead; western scrub jays have episodic-like memories; ravens are "smart enough to be paranoid".
Now, two neurobiologists from the University of Tübingen in Germany have tested the decision-making prowess of carrion crows (Corvus corone), and the results kind of leave our primate brains in the dust.
The research is published in Science.
The researchers Philipp Schmidbauer and Andreas Nieder are not only interested in demonstrating crows' intelligence. They want to understand how the birds manage such intellectual feats with such fundamentally different brains from ours.
"Such behavioral flexibility might seem unexpected because a layered cerebral cortex, the highest integration center in the mammalian brain, is not existant in birds," Nieder wrote in a paper almost a decade ago.
Instead of layers, he explained, bird brains rely on circuits that originate from a different part of the pallium. Their brains are smaller than ours, but so are their neurons, which means less distance for information to travel, and more processing power per square inch.
"With this independently evolved endbrain design, the corvid brain affords twice as many neurons as a primate brain of equal mass, adding up to enormous processing powers in a small and densely packed 'birdbrain'," he added.
The new experiments demonstrate just how powerful those 'birdbrains' can be.
Two male adult crows were put to the test. That's a very small sample size, which makes it impossible to know if the results can tell us much about crows in general. But it's a start.
Each crow was placed in front of a touch-sensitive screen. In each session, the screen displays lots of dots, and then some of those dots move in one direction, left or right. The crow indicates which direction the dots are moving by pecking at a target on the corresponding side of the touch screen.
A correct response is rewarded with a tasty mealworm.
The task is self-paced: the crows were given a wide window of time to choose their response, because the idea is that the animals express their decision once they are confident in their choice, not just for the sake of speed.
Both crows were trained in this test across more than 100 sessions each before the real data were collected, to make sure they had it down.
Humans and monkeys have previously demonstrated their perceptual decision-making via this random-dot motion discrimination task, but this is the first time crows have been tested.
The birds made deliberate decisions "with unprecedented speed, reporting choices in approximately 235 milliseconds on average, which is roughly twice as fast as has been observed in monkeys or humans," Schmidbauer and Nieder report.
And that speed came at no cost to accuracy.
Next, the researchers implanted electrodes into the crows' brains. They were specifically placed to monitor the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), which contains neurons involved in perceiving motion direction (like the dots on the screen).
On waking from surgery, the crows once again performed the random-dot task, this time with the activity of 248 individual neurons on record.
These neurons fired signals related to the crow's imminent decision just 70 milliseconds after the dots started moving, and about 170 milliseconds before making the decisive peck.
These results suggest the crow brain has "primate-like computational dynamics within a distinct neural architecture, with markedly higher temporal efficiency," Schmidbauer and Nieder write, adding that crows' decision-making speed may be the result of specific pressures birds have faced in evolution.
"Birds rely on their vision to carry out precise, rapid maneuvers during flight and to guide their beaks toward objects when foraging," Nieder says.
'Birdbrains' is starting to sound more like a compliment after all.
If you had an imaginary friend who walked beside you and joined your childhood games, you may have left them behind as you grew up.
Scientists have now found a connection between that childhood experience and the feeling some adults have that someone is nearby, even when they are alone.
The question reaches beyond how we dream up a companion: How do we come to feel that they are sharing our space?
To investigate, researchers turned to adults' childhood memories. They asked people who recalled imaginary friends about their experiences together, including where those companions seemed to stand.
That detail could help explain how an imagined character acquires a felt location beside us, and whether our awareness of our own bodies plays a part.
The team analyzed responses from 185 adults recruited through İzmir University of Economics in Türkiye who reported no psychiatric or neurological diagnoses. Of these, 45 remembered having an imaginary companion.
Everyone completed a questionnaire assessing how often they felt another presence without clear sensory evidence over the previous month. Those who recalled imaginary friends averaged 25.51 points, compared with 20.07 in the other group, on a scale ranging from 15 to 75.
Higher scores meant more frequent reports of these experiences. The difference suggests that adults who remembered imaginary companions were more prone to sensing a presence during that period.
The childhood memories also revealed a spatial pattern. Companions were most often recalled in front of or beside the body. Of 114 distance estimates for directions in which companions had appeared, 76 placed them within 70 centimeters (about 28 inches).
That puts about two-thirds of those estimates inside the study's chosen boundary for the space immediately surrounding the body. Researchers call this peripersonal space: the nearby area we use when reaching, moving and interacting with others.
The researchers propose that imaginary companions may be linked to the way the brain represents the body and its surroundings, giving an imagined social partner a place within that space.
Earlier robot experiments covered by ScienceAlert offer a clue to how bodily signals can contribute to sensing someone nearby.
In those experiments, participants moved their hands while a robot touched their backs. When researchers introduced a brief delay between the movement and the touch, some participants felt another person behind them.
The proposed explanation was that conflicting signals led the brain to attribute sensations arising from the participant's own actions to someone else.
The new study suggests that childhood imaginary companions and adult felt presence may both relate to how we experience our bodies and surrounding space. There is, however, an intriguing difference in where those experiences seem to unfold.
While the imaginary companions were usually recalled in front of or beside the body, earlier research commonly places adult felt presence behind or beside it.
One possibility the researchers raise is that imaginary friends occupy the space suited to face-to-face conversation and play. A presence behind us could involve ambiguous bodily sensations whose source we cannot immediately check by sight. These explanations are hypotheses; the survey didn't directly test them.
The findings also depend on adults' memories. Because the researchers didn't follow children as they grew up, they cannot establish that imaginary companions cause later presence experiences. Most participants were women, everyone was recruited through one university, and the spatial result depended on analytical choices.
Participants knew the study concerned imaginary companions, which may have inflated the association. The authors caution that the effect could be weaker if the study is repeated without revealing its topic during recruitment.
The results don't provide evidence for ghosts. But they do offer a way to investigate how the brain makes us feel like we're sharing a space with someone.
Following children over time could reveal whether a tendency underlying imaginary companionship continues into adulthood, and how that feeling changes as we grow.
When it comes to health, not all temperatures are equal.
Evidence suggests that cold temperatures are mysteriously beneficial for longevity, helping to boost metabolism and delivering positive effects at the cellular level.
On the flip side, excessive heat doesn't seem to do great things for the human body.
But what is it about coldness that's so beneficial in comparison?
In a new study in Nature, researchers identified a mechanism that contributes to the effect, driven by a metabolic substance called dihydrobiopterin (BH2).
"We are excited to show that mildly cold temperatures trigger significant production of a specific metabolite, BH2, which is synthesized, stored, and subsequently released by muscle tissue," says molecular biologist David Vilchez from the University of Cologne in Germany.
"BH2 then goes to other parts of the body, where it helps to maintain protein homeostasis and contributes to tissue health during aging."
Increased production of the enzyme CAT-4 (green) in worms exposed to colder temperatures.
(David Vilchez/University of Cologne/CECAD)
While scientists have known for more than a century that cold temperatures boost longevity in animals, including worms, flies, fish, and rodents, researchers weren't fully sure how coldness achieved this.
Originally, scientists hypothesized it could be a result of passive thermodynamic effects, but in more recent times, research suggests that cold-induced longevity is an actively regulated process inside the body, triggering specific biological pathways that help organisms survive.
A few years ago, Vilchez and fellow researchers discovered that cold temperatures led to the removal of harmful protein clumps in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, activating cellular structures called proteasomes that break down protein waste.
In the new work, the researchers investigated the systemic signals behind such responses, hypothesizing that metabolites – small molecules produced by metabolic processes – could be involved.
In experiments with C. elegans, the researchers found that exposure to moderately cold temperatures (15 °C, or 59 °F, which extends lifespan in worms) increases the production of an enzyme called CAT–4, largely in the worms' muscles, which in turn stimulates production of the metabolite BH2.
Once produced, BH2 is then transported to other tissues, where it is converted into a bioactive molecule called tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), which enables an enzyme called PAH–1 to produce the amino acid, tyrosine.
The team found that disrupting this pathway reduced the lifespan benefits seen in worms exposed to the cold, suggesting that the longevity effects of lower temperatures aren't simply a passive consequence of slower metabolism, but are driven in part by an actively regulated biological process that starts with muscle cells.
In separate experiments, the researchers found that the pathway they'd identified also boosted healthy protein homeostasis (aka proteostasis), suppressing the aggregation of harmful proteins in a worm model of Huntington's disease.
"These findings suggest that specifically targeting a single tissue, such as muscle, could provide organism-wide protection," Vilchez says.
"This opens up new avenues for therapeutic approaches."
Perhaps most excitingly of all, the researchers found evidence suggesting that cold temperatures aren't necessary for the pathway to operate.
By genetically boosting CAT–4 levels in the worms' muscles, the team was able to extend their lifespan even at normal or warmer temperatures, suggesting it's possible to reproduce some benefits of the cold without lowering body temperature.
"We were genuinely surprised to find the supplementation significantly extended lifespan, even at standard and warmer temperatures," Vilchez says.
"Further experiments on human cells encourage us to look for treatments that mimic the beneficial effects of cold without requiring changes in body temperature."
In separate experiments involving human cells engineered to develop proteins associated with Huntington's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the researchers found that supplementing the cells with BH2 reduced the accumulation of the abnormal proteins.
In addition, another experiment showed BH2 and tyrosine supplementation reduced signs of programmed cell death in human motor neurons carrying an ALS-associated mutation, suggesting the pathway could also help protect against neurodegeneration.
It's worth emphasizing that so far these results have only been shown in experiments involving nematodes and human cells, and we'll need a lot more research before we can think about how these effects could safely be transferred to living human patients.
But the findings show we're getting closer to understanding how cold delivers its longevity effects, and one day we might be able to do just that.
Adult neurogenesis produces roughly 700 new hippocampal neurons daily, many integrating into existing circuits
Physical exercise increases neurogenesis through BDNF elevation and enhanced vascular supply
Chronic stress reduces new neuron production via cortisol-mediated suppression of neural stem cells
The dentate gyrus is the brain’s primary neurogenic niche, supporting pattern separation and memory formation
Environmental enrichment can restore neurogenesis rates even after prolonged stress or aging-related decline
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Flavonoids (polyphenolic compounds found in blueberries, dark chocolate, and green tea) exert potent neurogenic effects through multiple pathways. These compounds cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate in neurogenic regions, where they enhance neural stem cell proliferation and support new neuron integration. Blueberry consumption specifically increases hippocampal BDNF levels and promotes the survival of newly generated neurons.
Social interaction represents another critical neurogenic factor. Isolation reduces neurogenesis, while rich social environments enhance stem cell activity through multiple pathways. Social engagement activates oxytocin signaling, which promotes BDNF production and supports new neuron survival. It also provides cognitive challenges that stimulate hippocampal circuits, creating demand for enhanced processing capacity.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Older adults who maintain physically active lifestyles show neurogenesis rates comparable to sedentary individuals 20-30 years younger
Scientists have developed a tiny temperature sensor that harvests energy from magnetic fields near electrical wiring.
Electrical wiring produces weak electromagnetic fields that typically go unnoticed, but researchers have found a way to turn some of that energy into a power source for tiny electronic devices. Scientists at the University of Arkansas (U of A) and the University of Michigan have developed a graphene-based energy harvester capable of powering an ultra-low-power temperature sensor without a conventional battery.
The prototype operates using energy collected from its immediate surroundings, consuming power measured in nanowatts, or billionths of a watt. It represents another advance toward the team’s goal of developing autonomous sensors that could function unattended for decades.
Turning Electrical Wiring Into a Power Source
The technology captures energy from magnetic fields generated by electrical wiring carrying alternating current. In the United States, electricity typically operates at 60 hertz, meaning the current changes direction 60 times each second. The researchers designed their sensor to harvest energy from these low-frequency fields.
A graphene inductor collects the energy and sends an alternating electrical signal to a custom circuit, which converts it into direct current. That electricity charges capacitors that store energy for the sensor to use. Unlike a battery, a capacitor stores energy in an electric field rather than through chemical reactions.
“The inductor adds charge to these capacitors at a slow rate,” explained University of Arkansas physics professor Paul Thibado, “but it’s faster than the rate the sensor uses up the charges from the capacitors.”
Because the sensor consumes energy more slowly than the system replenishes it, the capacitors can maintain an electrical reserve. Thibado estimates that this stored energy could keep the device operating for at least 24 hours during a power outage, potentially extending to a week.
Building Sensors That Can Power Themselves
The new device is the second graphene-powered temperature sensor developed by the research team. Their earlier work demonstrated that graphene-based solar cells could supply enough electricity to operate temperature sensors, establishing another possible source of energy for autonomous electronics.
Graphene, a material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms, has electrical properties that make it useful in energy-harvesting technologies. Thibado has investigated these properties for more than a decade and invented the graphene energy harvesters used in the team’s research.
The researchers ultimately want to combine several methods of collecting environmental energy, including sunlight, heat, sound, motion, and ambient electromagnetic fields. A sensor equipped with multiple harvesting systems could continue operating when one energy source becomes unavailable, reducing its dependence on any single power supply.
Applications Beyond Temperature Monitoring
Although temperature measurement provides a practical demonstration, the technology could eventually support sensors used in agriculture, environmental monitoring, medical tracking, wearable electronics, and supply chain management. These applications often require devices to operate in locations where replacing batteries is expensive, inconvenient, or impractical.
Thibado describes the long-term vision as “set it and forget it,” with sensors designed to operate for extended periods without routine battery replacement. Eliminating disposable batteries could also reduce maintenance demands and electronic waste, although decades of reliable operation have not yet been demonstrated.
The research was published in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B, with MD Rezaul Kabir, a doctoral candidate in materials science and engineering at the University of Arkansas, serving as first author. The project also involves researchers at the University of Michigan, including electrical engineering and computer science professor David Blaauw, whose work focuses on low-power wireless sensors and embedded systems.
Commercial Development and Future Possibilities
NTS Innovations, a nanotechnology company, holds the exclusive license to commercialize the graphene energy-harvesting technology. The company has supported patent development, business planning, and efforts to identify potential customers and commercial partners.
More than 60 parties have expressed interest in testing the technology and exploring ways to integrate it into products. Ongoing discussions are helping establish practical requirements, including the minimum electrical power needed for different applications.
The researchers envision networks of self-powered sensors that can collect information for years with little human intervention. Combining graphene-based energy harvesting with electronics that consume extremely small amounts of electricity could help make that goal achievable, particularly as connected devices become more common in homes, industries, and environmental monitoring systems.
.webp)
