This One Exercise 3x a Week Could Keep Your Blood Pressure Down – And It Doesn't Take Long

02 Oct. 2026, By D Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-one-exercise-3x-a-week-could-keep-your-blood-pressure-down-and-it-doesnt-take-long

(Westend61/Getty Images)

We all know exercise is good for us – but we don't all have the time, motivation, or mobility to put in regular workout sessions. Researchers are trying to help by looking for activities that bring the most benefits for the least amount of time and effort.

In a new study published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, a team led by researchers from Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK has identified isometric exercise training (IET) as a way of reducing blood pressure with just a couple of sessions a week.

That's any training where one position is held for a few minutes at a time. Staying in a squat, holding a plank pose, or doing a hand grip exercise would all count.

These exercises are simple and quick to do, require no equipment, and the researchers suggest they're a worthwhile option for those who can't manage longer, more comprehensive workouts.

Over the course of the study period, IET was linked to drops in systolic blood pressure – the top number in a reading like 130/85, showing peak artery pressure as your heart pumps blood out, and the average pressure in the arteries overall.

"Lower-frequency IET can help maintain short-term blood pressure reductions, providing a pragmatic option for individuals with limited time or adherence challenges," write the researchers in their published paper.

IET has already been associated with lowering blood pressure in previous studies, but before now no one had really investigated how much of it was needed – the duration and frequency required for the biggest benefits.

Here, the researchers recruited 100 adults with an average age of 37, who weren't meeting minimum exercise guidelines and had normal to high-normal systolic blood pressure (that's in the range 120–140 mm Hg).

For four weeks, 80 of these volunteers were asked to do wall squats three times a week (four squats each session), while the other 20 acted as a control group. For the four weeks after that, the exercise participants were asked to keep up the three weekly sessions, or drop down to two, one, or none.

After the first four weeks, systolic blood pressure in the exercising group had dropped by an average of 9.45 mm Hg, compared to the control group. For those who kept up the three sessions for eight weeks, the average drop increased to 13.73 mm Hg.

For those who went down to a couple of sessions or a single session, the overall average drop after eight weeks was around 6.5–7 mm Hg. The blood pressure of those who gave up the exercises after four weeks, meanwhile, was back to its previous level after four weeks.

Three weekly sessions of wall squats significantly reduced systolic blood pressure. 

(Swift et al., BMJ Open Sport Exerc. Med., 2026)



"For optimal blood pressure reductions and the maintenance of a broader range of physiological adaptations, a frequency of three times per week may be recommended," write the researchers.

It's strong evidence for the benefit of IET when it comes to blood pressure: systolic, diastolic, and mean arterial pressure all improved significantly compared to the control group after four weeks, though how often participants did the training didn't make a meaningful difference to the results.

The researchers think that the exercises may be relaxing and widening blood vessels, and putting the nervous system into a calmer mode – but more detailed, longer-term studies will be needed to know for sure.

"While causality cannot be confirmed, the observed alignment between the mechanistic decline and the loss of blood pressure reduction suggests that training frequency plays a critical role in sustaining the cardiovascular adaptations necessary for blood pressure control following IET," write the researchers.

The team also suggests that extending the IET beyond a couple of months may lead to actual structural changes in blood pressure, meaning the benefits wouldn't disappear as soon as the exercise stopped, as happened here.

It's another reminder that when it comes to staying healthier through exercise, you don't always need a lot of activity to improve your fitness.

"[The study] may inform policy discussions around feasible, scalable exercise interventions for populations with low adherence or limited exercise tolerance," write the researchers.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Study Finds Natural Dairy Trans Fats Behave Very Differently From Industrial Fats

By U. of Reading, Oct. 5, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/study-finds-natural-dairy-trans-fats-behave-very-differently-from-industrial-fats/

Milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt contain natural trans fats that appear to behave differently from the industrial kind. 

Credit: Shutterstock

A large review of 22 studies suggests that naturally occurring trans fats in dairy may affect the body very differently from industrial trans fats.

Milk, butter, yogurt, and cheese naturally contain small amounts of trans fats, but a large review suggests these fats do not carry the same health risks as the industrial trans fats long associated with cardiovascular disease.

Researchers analyzed 22 studies involving thousands of people in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Across both controlled dietary trials and long-term population studies, naturally occurring dairy trans fats were not linked to a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, cardiovascular death, or type 2 diabetes.

The findings, published in Nutrition Research, challenge the assumption that all trans fats have comparable effects on health.

Natural and industrial trans fats are not the same

Trans fats are a type of unsaturated fat. Some form naturally in the digestive systems of ruminant animals such as cows, sheep, and goats and therefore occur in their milk and dairy products.

Industrial trans fats are produced through partial hydrogenation, a process historically used to make vegetable oils more solid and stable. These fats, once common in some processed and fried foods, are strongly associated with increased cardiovascular risk.

Professor Ian Givens, one of the lead authors and a researcher at the University of Reading, said: “People hear the words ‘trans fats’ and assume the worst, but the trans fats in your morning milk, yogurt, butter or cheese are not the same as the ones from industrial partially hydrogenated fats. This research should give people reassurance that dairy, eaten as part of a balanced diet, is not something to worry about for your heart.”

Controlled trials found no harmful change in blood lipids

The researchers first reviewed 10 controlled dietary trials. Participants consumed dairy foods containing naturally enhanced levels of trans fats and were compared with people eating regular dairy products.

The studies tested daily trans fat intakes ranging from 1.3 to 13.2 grams and measured blood lipids used to assess cardiovascular risk. Across all 10 trials, the researchers found no meaningful differences in these biomarkers between people consuming the trans fat-enhanced dairy foods and those eating regular dairy.

These experiments allowed researchers to examine short-term biological effects under controlled conditions, but they could not establish what happens after many years of exposure. For that, the team turned to long-term observational research.

Decades of follow-up showed the same pattern

The review included 12 cohort studies that followed thousands of people for years, with some tracking participants for more than two decades. Researchers measured biomarkers of dairy-derived trans fats in participants’ blood.

Higher levels of these fats were not associated with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular death. The studies also found no association between higher blood levels of dairy trans fats and type 2 diabetes.

Because cohort studies are observational, they cannot prove that dairy trans fats themselves prevent or cause disease. However, the results indicate that naturally occurring trans fats in dairy do not show the adverse effects associated with industrial trans fats.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Melting Permafrost Is Poisoning Rivers With Metal Levels 70 Times Higher Than Normal

30 Sept. 2026, By J. Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/as-permafrost-melts-toxic-metals-are-poisoning-rivers-with-levels-70-times-higher-than-normal

An aerial view of the Kutuk River in Alaska's Gates of the Arctic National Park.

  (Ken Hill/National Park Service)

Over the past decade, a network of usually pristine blue rivers and lakes that winds through Alaska's breathtaking Brooks Range mountains has been starting to look a little… rusty.

Scientists first noticed the unusual orange plumes flowing into the water back in 2018. They began to investigate, collecting water samples from various sites so remote they can only be accessed by helicopter – but at the time, they were only able to get a snapshot of what was going on.

"The more we flew around, we started noticing more and more orange rivers and streams," said ecologist Jon O'Donnell, of the US National Park Service. "There are certain sites that look almost like a milky orange juice."

Taylor Evinger holds a bottle of orange water sampled from the Igning River in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Alaska. 

(Brett Poulin/UC Davis)

Environmental toxicologist Brett Poulin (of UC Davis) was intrigued at how similar the orange staining looked to the acidic pollution he had seen draining from metal mines.

There are no mines nearby – but a new study led by environmental chemist Taylor Evinger, a member of Poulin's lab at UC Davis, confirms that the orange stuff flowing into these rivers may be an even bigger cause for concern.

The new study is published in AGU Advances.

The rust, Evinger and colleagues say, can be attributed to thawing Arctic permafrost. As water seeps through once-frozen soils, it encounters bedrock minerals that have been locked away for potentially thousands of years.

When these minerals are oxidized, they release metals – iron, aluminum, manganese, zinc, nickel, cadmium, and rare earth elements – that can then seep into waterways, hence the rivers' rusty appearances.

From 2022 to 2024, Evinger and team collected water samples from six different watersheds across the Brooks Range, to track how the river chemistry was changing over time.

Some of those samples revealed water more acidic, and loaded with more metals, than those used for drainage from metal mines.

On the Salmon River, one of these seepages bumped metal levels up to 70 times higher than usual, even 60 miles downstream from the source.

Orange, metallic water enters the Igning River. Scientists believe this color change is linked to melting permafrost, which interacts with the soil to produce highly metallic, "rusted" water — an increasing global phenomenon in regions where permafrost is present. 

(Taylor Evinger/UC Davis)



The team were able to trace a major release of metals back to Alaska's warmest summer on record, 2019, which was followed by an abnormally snowy winter.

"When you have more snow, it insulates the soil, preventing refreezing," says Evinger.

"We think water went deeper into the soil because of soil thaw, interacted with these minerals, and all of these watersheds were triggered around the same time."

In the wake of that warm summer, the rivers experienced a sudden, steep rise in sulfate and zinc concentrations, which then steadily fell in the years that followed.

Evinger holds a bright orange filter collected from a seep affected by acid rock drainage amid melting permafrost.

 (Taylor Evinger/UC Davis)



Questions remain about how this sudden influx of acidic metals impacts communities that rely on the rivers.

Since 2018, more reports have come in from across thousands of seepages in North America's permafrost zone, documenting acid rock drainage into more than 200 rivers and streams.

"This was a process that was not forecast, predicted or included in any assessment of how the Arctic will change under a warmer climate, but we're seeing it in rivers across the Arctic," says Poulin.

"'Rusting rivers' have been documented in Boreal and Arctic Canada, and other parts of the world that have permafrost."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBFhsGAFIaw&t=44s

Earth scientist Elliott Skierszkan, of Carleton University in Canada, says "this widespread outcome of global warming presents a major risk to water resources and aquatic ecosystems," in a related article also published in AGU Advances.

The toxic metals entering these waters – and the low pH affected rivers can sometimes reach – can be detrimental to ecosystems. So far, scientists have seen extensive areas of plants die back near acidified rivers, as well as a loss of important fish like salmon and whitefish, along with other aquatic creatures.

The rural Arctic communities – many of whom are Alaska Native peoples – that live in these regions would be especially affected, since they rely on the rivers and their fish to survive.

But for the Brooks Range region, those impacts are yet to be seen – at least for now.

"While we are not seeing massive fish die-offs, and we're not aware of drinking water quality issues currently harming villages, the numbers of observations are still concerning," Evinger says.

"Many watersheds – hundreds of them – have acid rock drainage inputs. These rivers are pretty much untouched, and yet this is happening here. It's a new reality of climate change."

The Life of Earth

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Scientists Find a Surprising Link Between Cats And Happiness Across 93 Countries

05 Oct, 2026, By D. Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-a-surprising-link-between-cats-and-happiness-across-93-countries

(Elena Zaretskaya/Moment RF/Getty Images)

If you're looking for a boost of household happiness, then you might want to consider getting yourself a cat.

In a new study published in PLOS One, an international team of researchers analyzed publicly available data across 93 countries to examine the relationship between happiness scores, domestic cat density, and infection rates of Toxoplasma gondii – the parasite that affects as many as 1 in 3 people and which felines are the primary host of.

The researchers wanted to see if having a cat made a difference to happiness, and whether the risk of parasite infection affected that in any way.

While T. gondii is usually harmless and symptomless for most people, it can cause problems in more vulnerable groups, and has been linked to anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia.

Data from the shaded countries were used in the study. 

(Borráz-León et al., PLOS One, 2026)



Wealth was also included as it's often one of the first factors people consider when it comes to leading a happy and comfortable life.

"What we found is that countries with more cats tended to report higher levels of happiness, while countries with higher exposure to Toxoplasma gondii tended to report lower levels of happiness," say the study authors in a press release.

Those apparently conflicting results need some picking apart. Certain countries may have had a disproportionate impact on the results, the researchers suggest.

China, for instance, had a relatively high happiness score despite a lower cat density than most nations.

One of the more surprising wrinkles in the data was that countries with more cats tended to have lower levels of T. gondii exposure.

Cats aren't the only way humans can be infected by this parasite, but you would expect the association to be in the other direction.

"Of course, these are associations at the country level, so we cannot say that having more cats makes people happier or that Toxoplasma makes people less happy, but the patterns are interesting enough to deserve further investigation," say the study authors.

Then there's the consideration that wealthier countries may make people more likely to own cats and have better access to vet care.

Felines in richer countries are more likely to be kept indoors, get regular check-ups at the vet, and eat commercial cat food.

The findings suggest that biological and ecological factors can play a role in finding that much-desired feeling of happiness, factors which aren't typically included in studies.

"This goes against the simple assumption that having more cats necessarily means greater parasite exposure and suggests that factors such as pets management, sanitation, and socioeconomic conditions may be important," says biologist Javier I. Borráz-León, from the National Institute of Psychiatry Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz in Mexico.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNm_MjrIUAI

How happy (or otherwise) populations are can have very tangible effects on public health, which is why studies like this are so important.

When people are stressed, anxious, and unhappy, they're less productive, more vulnerable, and more likely to need treatment and care from other people.

Now we know that having a cat around could lead to a boost in contentment and well-being, adding to other recent cat and pet discoveries – including research that showed animal companions may help to slow down cognitive decline.

To take the research further, future studies could track cat owners and non-cat owners on an individual basis, rather than at the country level.

That should reveal more about the relationship between cats and happiness and how it might change over time, in combination with other factors.

"Future studies of happiness at the national level should integrate both socioeconomic and biological perspectives and include longitudinal and interdisciplinary approaches to elucidate the underlying mechanisms and processes," write the researchers in their published paper.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Why Do Muscles Weaken With Age? Scientists May Have Found an Important Missing Piece

By U. of Missouri-Columbia, Oct. 4, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/why-do-muscles-weaken-with-age-scientists-may-have-found-an-important-missing-piece/

Researchers have uncovered an overlooked change in how nerves and muscles communicate during aging, offering a new explanation for why muscle strength can decline even beyond the effects of muscle loss. 

Credit: Stock

A newly identified breakdown in nerve-muscle communication may help explain age-related weakness.

Muscles do not weaken with age simply because they get smaller. New research suggests that part of the problem may lie in the electrical signals that tell them when to contract.

Scientists at the University of Missouri found that communication between nerves and muscle fibers becomes less reliable with age. The failure appears to occur at the neuromuscular junction, where nerves transmit signals that activate muscles.

The finding could help explain part of sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass, strength, and physical function that affects nearly half of adults over age 80.

Looking Beyond Muscle Loss

“While the human lifespan has increased in recent decades, our ultimate goal at Mizzou is to ensure a person’s health span remains as high as possible for as long as possible,” W. David Arnold, executive director of the NextGen Precision Health initiative and a professor in the School of Medicine, said.

Scientists have long focused on muscle loss and the decline of motor neurons as major causes of age-related weakness. Arnold and his colleagues instead examined what happens where nerve signals reach muscle.

Arnold has studied the neuromuscular junction for more than a decade. His team’s findings suggest that this connection becomes less reliable with age.

“A long-held assumption in the field was that the neuromuscular junction remains reliable during aging, and some even suggested it may get better with aging,” Arnold said. “The significance of this new study is we are showing, in both humans and in animal models, that the neuromuscular junction is failing with aging.”
The Protein Behind the Signal

The researchers linked part of the decline to lower levels of NaV1.4, a sodium channel that helps skeletal muscle generate the electrical activity needed for contraction.

Lower levels of NaV1.4 may make muscle fibers less responsive to signals arriving from nerves, giving researchers a possible explanation for why aging muscles do not activate as effectively.
Making Aging Muscle More Responsive

The team also investigated ClC-1, a chloride channel involved in regulating electrical activity in skeletal muscle.

Working with Danish biotechnology company NMD Pharma, the researchers found that partially inhibiting ClC-1 made aging muscles more responsive to nerve signals and improved strength in an animal model.

“We identified an important point of failure at the final step in communication between nerves and muscles,” Arnold said. “And what is perhaps even more exciting is that we showed this failure is potentially reversible. In collaboration with NMD Pharma, a biotechnology company in Denmark, we applied an approach they developed that targets a protein called ClC-1. By partially inhibiting ClC-1, we were able to make aging muscles more responsive to nerve signals and improve muscle strength in an animal model. That gives us a potential path toward eventually testing this approach in older adults.”
A Drug Already Being Studied

NMD Pharma has developed ignaseclant, an experimental drug that partially inhibits ClC-1. The drug has already been studied in people with neuromuscular disease, although not specifically for sarcopenia.

Arnold was an investigator in a multicenter clinical trial involving people with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, the most common inherited neuromuscular disorder. The study reported improvements across several measures of muscle strength and function. Arnold presented the topline findings at the 2026 Muscular Dystrophy Association Clinical & Scientific Conference.

Arnold believes understanding the biology behind sarcopenia is an important step toward developing treatments for it.

“I realized that in order to make a drug widely available to treat sarcopenia, the first step is better understanding what is causing sarcopenia in the first place,” Arnold said. “That curiosity sparked my interest in becoming a researcher.”

The Life of Earth

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Cancer’s “Obesity Paradox” May Have a Surprising Explanation

By McGill U., Oct. 4, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/cancers-obesity-paradox-may-have-a-surprising-explanation/

Unexpected results from a diet study are challenging assumptions about what influences cancer immunotherapy. 

Credit: Stock

A study links diet and the gut microbiome to responses to immune checkpoint therapy, offering new directions for cancer research.

Cancer treatment can be maddeningly unpredictable. A therapy that works well for one patient may do far less for another, even when doctors use the same approach. One surprisingly ordinary part of daily life may help explain some of that difference: what people eat.

Researchers studying a widely used form of cancer immunotherapy found that certain diets normally associated with weight gain actually helped the treatment work better in mice. The result was unexpected, but it offered a possible explanation for an even stranger pattern scientists have noticed in cancer patients for years.

Some people with a higher body mass index, or BMI, appear to respond better to treatments that help the immune system attack cancer, despite obesity generally being associated with higher cancer incidence and mortality. Researchers have called this contradiction the “obesity paradox.” The new findings suggest that body weight itself may not be the key. Instead, the answer could involve food, the bacteria living in the gut, and the way the two interact with the immune system.

How cancer exploits immune brakes

The treatment the researchers focused on is known as an immune checkpoint inhibitor. The immune system normally has built-in brakes that prevent immune cells from attacking too aggressively. Cancer can take advantage of those brakes to avoid being destroyed. Checkpoint inhibitors interfere with those signals, giving immune cells a better chance to recognize and attack tumor cells.

The treatment can be remarkably effective for some patients, but others receive much less benefit. That uneven response has pushed researchers to look beyond the tumor itself for factors that might influence whether the therapy succeeds.

A team co-led by McGill University researcher Daniela Quail investigated whether diet could be one of them. Other senior members of the team included McGill researcher Logan Walsh and CR-CHUM collaborators Bertrand Routy and Arielle Elkrief. Their research was published in Nature.

“There is a synergistic relationship between the bacteria that reside in our GI tract, and the food we eat,” said Quail, Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology and Principal Investigator at the Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Institute.

Twelve diets reveal an unexpected effect

The researchers tested 12 different diets in mice and found that some diets associated with obesity improved the animals’ responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors. The benefit appeared even after shorter periods on those diets, making it harder to explain the effect simply through long-term weight gain.

That pointed toward the trillions of microorganisms living in the digestive system, collectively known as the gut microbiome. These bacteria depend partly on the nutrients that reach them through food. Changing the diet can therefore change which microbial populations thrive and how they behave, with consequences that can extend beyond digestion and influence the immune system.

“Even with the right composition of bacteria in your gut, the foods you eat to nourish those populations can determine whether or not you respond to treatment,” said Quail, who co-led a team investigating how diet could affect the success of immune checkpoint inhibitors, a common form of immunotherapy.

Food may matter as much as microbes

The finding adds an important complication to the idea that having certain beneficial gut bacteria is enough to improve a treatment response. What those bacteria are being fed may matter too. Diet and microbes can act together, meaning the same collection of gut bacteria may not produce the same effects under different dietary conditions.

That interaction could help explain why higher BMI has sometimes been associated with better responses to checkpoint inhibitors. Rather than excess body weight directly helping the treatment, some of the biological changes produced by particular diets may alter gut microbes in ways that affect the immune response.

“Our findings were surprising because they highlighted a benefit of some obesogenic diets,” Quail said. “That tells us the relationship between diet and cancer treatment is more complex than a simple message to eat healthy and exercise.”

The Life of Earth

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The Homo Erectus Problem Scientists Don't Want to Discuss

Richard Uncovers Humanity, Sep 17, 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyg2FcA1PZk

Homo erectus survived for nearly two million years across three continents. 

Your species has lasted three hundred thousand. By every measure of evolutionary success — time, range, adaptability — they were better at being human than you are. And that is not the problem scientists avoid talking about.

The problem is what happens when you look at the fossils closely enough to notice that the species holding the longest record in human history might not be one species at all — that the label "Homo erectus" may be doing the same thing "Homo heidelbergensis" did: hiding a mess inside a name. 

From the first skeleton out of Java to the last survivors on an island where everything else had shrunk, this is the story of a category that held together for over a century — and what happens to the human family tree when it finally breaks apart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyg2FcA1PZk

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Discover a Genius Use For Leftover Steel Waste – And It Could Save Lives

03 Oct. 2026, By S Vartan

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discover-a-genius-use-for-leftover-steel-waste-and-it-could-save-lives

(Christophe Lehenaff/Getty Images)

We all love a win-win. Well here's one better–a potential win-win-win.

By using what would otherwise be an industrial waste in new road pavements, the future of highways and byways could reduce impacts on climate change and potentially save lives.

A new analysis suggests that replacing conventional urban pavement with roads made partly from recycled steel slag could substantially cut greenhouse gas and air-pollution emissions, while also reducing road maintenance (so fewer annoying road-repair traffic jams, too!).

If you've never heard of steel slag, you're not alone. It's actually a waste product that comes out of the process of melting iron ore or scrap metal to make steel.

This leftover stuff is a mix of silicon dioxide and metal oxides and it can be used to make steel slag epoxy asphalt mixture, or SEAM.

Steel slag is kind of ideal for pavement because its high strength and angular structure make it useful for creating a durable road material.

In this study, the researchers combined the SEAM with an epoxy-modified asphalt binder, producing a material designed to withstand wear and deformation better than conventional pavement.

A more durable road reduces the social annoyance and air pollution of road-construction-related congestion.

But also, as pavement deteriorates, vehicles actually use more fuel (costly on its own both financially and in emissions). So if a road deteriorates less often, it also saves the vehicles that ride on it gas, diesel, and wear-and-tear.

In the researchers' model, all these use-phase effects accounted for about 95 percent of emissions and 60 percent of the lifetime costs of the road in the baseline scenarios.

A) National-scale benefits of SEAM deployment in mainland China under specific scenarios. 

B) Distributions of the monetized benefits associated with reductions in CO2e emissions, PM2.5-related health damages and direct life-cycle costs across the 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% pavement replacement scenarios.

 (Zhang et al. Communications Earth & Environment, 2026.)

Even though most of the costs for any roadway happen in the use phase, the researchers do show that SEAM costs more to build, produces more emissions and generates more fine particulate pollution during its early years of use. But crucially, just when a conventional roadway surface needs replacement (generating those emissions again), the SEAM-based roadway emissions keep going.

This significant durability of the SEAM-based roadways changes the equation.

The researchers modeled three versions containing 20, 35 or 50 percent epoxy. Conventional pavement and 20 percent epoxy SEAM were assumed to last six years, while the 35-percent epoxy version lasted an estimated 15 years and the 50-percent version 20 years.

By spreading the emissions and costs of construction over a longer service life – and reducing the fuel and maintenance penalties associated with deteriorating roads – the longer-lasting pavement could eventually make up for its higher upfront footprint.

The researchers identified the 35-percent epoxy formulation as the best balance within their modeled scenarios: More epoxy extended pavement life, but beyond roughly 35 percent, the additional environmental gains leveled off while costs continued to rise.

They then scaled the model up to China's urban road network, testing scenarios in which 25, 50, 75 or 100 percent of existing urban asphalt pavement was replaced. At the highest replacement level, the model projected reductions of about 1.74 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions and 1.23 billion kilograms of PM2.5 over the assessment period.

PM2.5 is the fine particulate pollution that's linked to deaths from heart disease, kidney disease, dementia, hypertension, lung cancer, and other diseases.

Those numbers add up to create a pretty serious impact. Across the replacement scenarios, the researchers estimated 31,802 to 128,980 premature deaths could be avoided as a result of reduced PM2.5 exposure alone.

Those health figures come from a model linking modeled reductions in fine particulate pollution with established relationships between PM2.5 exposure and mortality. The authors explicitly describe the results as system-level estimates rather than precise epidemiological predictions.

Not to be overlooked, SEAM could also save some serious money: It could generate 3.48–15.01 trillion Chinese Yuan ($519.14 billion to $2.24 trillion US Dollars) according to the study.

These kinds of system-level material performance changes could have even larger implications as they're "broadly transferable to other rapidly urbanizing economies with significant steel industries," the study's researchers write.

"Countries such as India, along with several nations in Southeast Asia and Africa, generate large volumes of [steel slag] while facing accelerating transport demand and mounting environmental constraints." Those countries could also benefit from the climate, public health, and economic gains of the SEAM roadways.

There are logistical complications to account for: Steel slag isn't produced evenly across China, so the researchers modeled shipping it between provinces. That adds emissions – but in their model, the additional transport still produced a large net reduction in CO2-equivalent emissions and PM2.5.

The study also doesn't model whether today's industrial infrastructure could immediately produce and distribute enough material to meet nationwide demand. And one of the biggest drawbacks is that this new pavement requires seven days of curing before it can fully open to traffic.

It's interesting to think that a more sustainable roadway may not necessarily be the one that takes the least energy to build. It could be one that spends the longest time being boringly, gloriously roadlike – smooth, durable, and in need of fewer repairs.

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

The Aging Brain Isn't Declining – It's Adapting, Study Finds

03 Oct. 2026, By D. Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-aging-brain-isnt-declining-its-adapting-study-finds

(Hill Street Studios/Digital Vision/Getty Images)

As we get older, our episodic memory – managed by the hippocampus region – gradually gets worse. That's the memory related to specific details, like where the car's parked or what time an appointment is.

In old age, the semantic memory, controlled by the frontal cortex, tends to become more dominant. This is the big picture, general knowledge, overall gist memory, covering the rules of hockey or capital cities.

The conventional thinking amongst neuroscientists has long been that this brain shift is our way of adapting to increasing neural wear and tear: a compensatory mechanism.

But what if it's a deliberate choice that better suits older people, who've amassed much more information in their brains than younger people?

Researchers from the University of Arizona have now published a study in Perspectives on Psychological Science arguing that shifting from the hippocampus to the frontal cortex could be the brain optimizing itself rather than retreating.

"Prevailing theories of cognitive aging depict late life as a period of compensatory decline – an effort to preserve performance despite progressive neural deterioration," write the researchers in their published paper.

"We propose instead that aging represents a continuation of development: a genetically conserved, adaptive reorganization of memory systems that parallels the brain's earlier-life transitions."

The brain may have evolved to share knowledge rather than retain it in later life. 

(Isaac Quesada/Unsplash)



The researchers point to several previous studies to make their point. For example, there's plenty of evidence of these kinds of changes happening at other periods of life: In childhood, the same shift happens, just in the opposite direction.

There's also a case to be made that these age-related modifications aren't reflecting an overall loss of neural plasticity, but rather a way of redeploying resources.

We know that the hippocampus is particularly demanding in terms of energy, so the brain could be saving resources for when they're most needed.

It's also true that some brain wiring sections actually strengthen in old age, backing up the idea that the brain isn't faltering but intelligently readjusting.

The study points to parallels in the animal kingdom as well. As rats get older, they tend to rely more on what's familiar too, while female African elephants become "repositories of social knowledge" in old age – so might we be doing the same?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7iZT4zBaoc

"Taken together, findings from the animal literature suggest that memory-system reorganization in aging may not be uniquely human, but a general principle across species with extended life spans and complex social structures," write the researchers.

There might be an evolutionary purpose to all this: For those of us lucky enough to make it to old age, the priority becomes passing on information, rather than trying to remember the specifics of day-to-day life.

The case put forward by the study might not only change the way that aging is assessed in the brain, but also provide more insight into age-related conditions like Alzheimer's disease. For example, it might mean the true signs of disease can be more easily separated from brain changes that are actually natural and positive.

Given that Alzheimer's is associated with an overactive hippocampus in its early stages, it's also possible that the disease somehow derails the natural and beneficial shift in brain priorities that should happen.

It's worth pointing out that this study doesn't gather any new evidence, but rather reinterprets existing research to put forward a strong argument.

The next step for what the researchers call their adaptive-aging hypothesis will be to follow real-world subjects over time to analyze changes in the brain to see if signs of this neural reallocation can be found. If so, it could mean a new perspective on aging in the brain, and treating age-related conditions.

"If we look at normative aging as a story of just decline, we are really missing the boat," psychologist Fabian-Xosé Fernandez told Linda Wang at the Association for Psychological Science.

"The older brain is optimized for different things than the younger brain, predominantly the sharing of stored expertise and social relationships."

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No Longer Just North And South: A New Material Joins The Third Type of Magnetism

02 Oct. 2026, By I. Farkas

https://www.sciencealert.com/no-longer-just-north-and-south-a-new-material-joins-the-third-type-of-magnetism

(imagedb.com/Shutterstock.com)

Unlike what a certain donut company suggests, the world actually runs on magnetism.

It's essential for generating power, building (electric) vehicles, and powering life-saving medical technologies like cyberpunk-style titanium hearts with levitating rotors.

Magnetism comes in multiple variations, but two are instantly relatable.

In ferromagnetism, the magnetic moments (tiny fields) of a material's constituent particles align in a certain direction to create a bigger magnetic field – the classic north-and-south-pole setup of a fridge magnet. But this generates stray fields that can interfere with computer chips and other electronics.

In antiferromagnetism, the magnetic moments point in opposite directions and cancel out, so there's no overall north or south pole at all. This squashes the stray fields but also the attractive properties that (literally and figuratively) may make a material useful.

(National University of Singapore)



If one could, perhaps, combine the best of both worlds in, say, a versatile yet thin material, it could prove prominent in a world of ever-shrinking electromagnetic technologies.

Surprisingly, scientists have reported doing just that, achieving the first experimental evidence of altermagnetism – a recently confirmed type of magnetism – in a sandwich-like material with numerous future applications.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, a team of physicists created crystals of a material called Co₁/₄TaSe₂. This sounds incredibly abstruse but only comprises three elements: cobalt, tantalum, and selenium (and their ratios).

Combining them in an experimentally useful way required 'baking' them at more than 900 degrees Celsius (1,700 degrees Fahrenheit) across two weeks.

"These materials are distinguished from more conventional antiferromagnets by their ability to generate and detect spin currents without the negative effect of producing stray fields," explains Madhab Neupane, a professor of physics at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and the study's corresponding author.

"This new property makes them very well positioned for use in many different applications – including spintronics, ultrafast memory devices, terahertz networks and energy-efficient electronics."

The Co₁/₄TaSe₂ material, which is not itself new to science, is made of layers that are composed of the metal tantalum and the non-metal selenium.

Between these layers, the researchers sprinkled atoms of the magnetic metal cobalt, to structurally create a quantum jungle gym that could alter the electrons as they run through it.

The cobalt, tantalum, and selenium atoms are represented by blue, green, and gray, respectively. 

(Sprague et al., Nat. Commun., 2026)



To confirm the altermagnetism, the researchers used a quantum modeling method and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES).

The latter basically hits a material with a beam of light, causing it to eject an electron so scientists can determine its energy and its direction.

They thus revealed the material's energetic band structure, a map of where its electrons can and can't exist.

In doing so they noticed it was split, and that the split states carried opposite spin polarizations, which refer to how an elementary particle's spin is aligned to a certain direction – conveniently, particles can only spin "up" or "down."

Of course, the electrons don't actually spin, as Earth does on its axis or a seven-layered sandwich spins on Scooby-Doo's claw before being devoured. Instead, it's more of a mathematically defined angular momentum.

But it is an essential quantum property and, importantly, the researchers showed that the Co₁/₄TaSe₂ material splits the electrons by their spin.

This is vital in the context of the two previously mentioned magnetic types.

Ferromagnetism is good at splitting spins, because its magnetic moments point in the same direction, but it produces stray fields.

Antiferromagnetism produces no stray fields but is not a good spin splitter, because its magnetic moments point in opposite directions.

This combination of qualities may make this easily tunable material a magnificent medium to probe magnetic mysteries:

"Evidence for altermagnetism in a versatile materials platform opens a lot of new possibilities," notes Milo Sprague, an experimental quantum physicist at UCF and the study's lead author.

"There's currently a lot of debate in altermagnetic theory about how the spin-polarized electronic states interact with other magnetic phenomena. Now we have a material that we can easily modify to explore these new questions," Sprague adds.

For example, altermagnetism's origins are ostensible. Further research is required to see how they rise over other forms of magnetism, as electron interactions compete amongst one another.

Finally, in practical terms, while modern hardware may physically transport electrons to process data, emerging spintronics could manipulate data by transferring the electrons' spin states through a 'current' – like a soccer-stadium wave – to increase data storage while reducing the odds of espionage.

Thanks to the versatility and small scale of such recently described layered materials, our technological fate may be minuscule and sandwich-shaped.

But why not? Sandwiches have never failed us before.

As Neupane lays out, "If this approach proves viable, then layered altermagnets will be at the forefront of electronics development."

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Childhood Poverty Linked to More Than 3x Risk of Being Shut Out of Work and Education

By U. of Liverpool, Oct. 2, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/childhood-poverty-linked-to-more-than-3x-risk-of-being-shut-out-of-work-and-education/

NEET stands for “not in education, employment, or training.” It is used to describe young people who are not currently studying, working, or taking part in vocational training. 

Credit: Shutterstock

The struggle to escape poverty can begin long before a first job, with persistent childhood hardship linked to more than triple the risk of being shut out of education and work as a young adult.

Young people raised in persistent poverty were more than three times as likely to be outside education, employment, or training (NEET) at ages 17 and 23 (3.3 and 3.4 times, respectively), compared with those who never experienced childhood poverty. Researchers at the University of Liverpool and the University of Manchester analyzed the UK Millennium Cohort Study for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The study follows people from infancy into adulthood. Researchers defined poverty as household income below 60% of the national median, adjusted for household size. Persistent poverty meant experiencing it across multiple stages of childhood.

The gap also appeared when researchers looked at who returned to education or work. Among young people who were NEET at 17, more than half (56%) of those raised in persistent poverty were also NEET at 23. For those who had never experienced childhood poverty, the figure was one in three (33%).

How Childhood Poverty Disrupts Learning

Interviews accompanying the report describe how financial hardship reaches into the classroom. Missing meals, school supplies, or transportation can undermine participation, while money worries and responsibilities at home can make concentration and attendance harder.

Dr. Nicholas Adjei, senior research fellow in public health at the University of Liverpool, said, “Our findings highlight the importance of taking a life course perspective when understanding why some young people become NEET. Experiences of poverty accumulate across childhood and adolescence, shaping educational trajectories, well-being, and access to opportunities over time.”

“Persistent poverty not only increases the likelihood of becoming NEET but also makes it much harder for young people to move out of that status later on. This shows the need for early, sustained support young people throughout different stages of their lives, rather than focusing only on short-term responses once they are already struggling.”

The Cost Of Returning To Work

Interview participants described being unable to afford travel to interviews, course fees, or childcare. Temporary jobs and schedules incompatible with health or caregiving needs created further obstacles.

Iain Porter, senior policy advisor at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said, “The government is right to try and get to the bottom of why so many young people aren’t earning or learning. But there is a piece of the puzzle that often gets missed: poverty. This research shows that there is a clear link between growing up in poverty and being locked out of education and work.”

“To break this cycle, it’s essential that the government tackle the root causes of the problem. We need to ensure that young people grow up in families that can afford the essentials to live a good life so that instead of being distracted by survival, they can thrive at school, college, and the world of work.”

Support Before Young People Fall Behind

The report recommends combining adequate financial support with a trusted person who can help young people navigate education, employment, housing, and mental health services.

Professor David Taylor-Robinson, professor of public health and policy at the University of Liverpool, said, “The UK has persistently higher child poverty rates than many comparable countries, and this matters because poverty drives a wide range of interconnected problems that shape young people’s lives long before they become NEET.”

“Our evidence shows how childhood poverty and adversity contribute to poorer mental health, reduced educational attainment, and a greater risk of long-term economic insecurity and welfare dependency in adulthood. We cannot seriously address high NEET rates without concerted action on child poverty.”

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Homo erectus Was Outnumbered 10 to One by Another Human Relative

By La Trobe U., Oct. 2, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/homo-erectus-was-outnumbered-10-to-one-by-another-human-relative/

A representative hominin skull on display. The skull pictured here is not one of the fossils analyzed in the new Drimolen study. 

Credit: Shutterstock

Fossils from Drimolen Cave capture a moment when two contrasting hominin species lived side by side.

Two million years ago, two very different human relatives occupied the same landscape in what is now South Africa. One was Homo erectus, with a larger brain and smaller molar teeth. The other, Paranthropus robustus, had a brain only slightly larger than that of a chimpanzee and massive teeth powered by strong chewing muscles. At Drimolen Cave, P. robustus outnumbered Homo erectus by more than 10 to one.

Until now, however, the earliest evidence of Homo erectus at Drimolen came from DNH 134, a child who was between two and four years old. Because the specimen was so young, researchers could not be certain what adults from this early population looked like.

“Homo erectus is the first species of hominin that researchers broadly agree fits within our own genus Homo and is likely directly ancestral to us. Drimolen preserves evidence for the first appearance of this species 2 million years ago, however, the original fossil, DNH 134, belonged to a child aged between two and four, and there was uncertainty about what the adult version may have looked like,” lead researcher Dr. Jesse Martin said.

An adult Homo erectus at 2 million years

Researchers from La Trobe University, South Africa, and the United States have now identified an adult Homo erectus skull fragment, DNH 127, among 18 newly described hominin fossils from the site. Dated to about 2 million years ago, the specimen strengthens the evidence that Homo erectus was already living in southern Africa at that time. Adult fossils from other parts of the world, including Dmanisi in Georgia, date to about 1.8 million years ago.

“This paper publishes a new adult fossil attributed to Homo erectus, DNH 127, providing further confirmation that this species first appeared in southern Africa 2 million years ago.”

The fossils come from the Drimolen Main Quarry in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind, one of the world’s richest deposits of human ancestors. The site was discovered in 1992, but many fossils excavated there through 2019 had never been formally published and therefore remained unknown to science. The newly described specimens have been attributed to Homo erectus and P. robustus, with the findings published in Annals of Human Biology.

Two species took different paths

The two species followed markedly different evolutionary paths while sharing the same environment. Homo erectus was evolving a larger brain and smaller molars, changes Martin said may have been associated with meat eating. P. robustus, meanwhile, retained a brain only slightly larger than that of a chimpanzee while developing enormous molars and increasingly powerful chewing muscles for processing tough and hard foods, a combination Martin compared to a mortar and pestle.

“These two human species shared the same landscape and are both preserved in Drimolen cave. While we know that Homo erectus and the lineage leading to us was ultimately the successful one, 2 million years ago P. robustus outnumbered Homo erectus at Drimolen by more than 10 to one. During this time period, it was our ancestors that looked like the outside long-odds chance to survive,” Dr Martin said.

P. robustus teeth grew larger

Comparing the roughly 2-million-year-old P. robustus fossils from Drimolen with specimens from the 1.8-million-year-old Swartkrans Cave allowed the researchers to trace anatomical changes across approximately 200,000 years. Teeth became larger during that interval, along with the muscles used for chewing, providing evidence that the species was undergoing microevolutionary change in response to climatic pressures.

“This paper confirms that the P. robustus fossils from the 2-million-year-old Drimolen Cave are slightly but importantly different from the P. Robustus fossils at the 1.8-million-year-old Swartkrans Cave.

“During this 200,000-year period, P. Robustus teeth became even larger, and so did the muscles associated with chewing. Hominin fossils are so rare that generally the differences between them are huge, and researchers are left to make educated guesses regarding what existed in the missing parts of the fossil record.

“However, the large number of fossils from Drimolen, some of which are published in this paper, allow an unprecedented insight into the micro-evolutionary changes that shaped human ancestors.”

Researchers had previously recognized the distinctive anatomy of the Drimolen population with the subspecies name P. robustus ukusa. Martin said the additional fossils described in the new study support that formal recognition.

The birth of modern Man

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Copper Could Be a Secret Weapon Against Antibiotic-Resistant UTIs

By Texas A&M U., Oct. 1, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/copper-could-be-a-secret-weapon-against-antibiotic-resistant-utis/

Bacterial colonies grown in Dr. Subash’s lab help researchers investigate how UTI-causing bacteria respond to the body’s natural defenses. 

Credit: Nadya Pichkasova/Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

The body turns copper into a weapon against urinary tract infections, and scientists hope to strengthen that defense against bacteria that resist antibiotics.

Researchers at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) are investigating how the immune system deploys copper against urinary tract infections (UTIs) and how bacteria survive the assault. Their goal is to identify weaknesses that could help treat infections increasingly resistant to antibiotics.

The project, supported by a $1.48 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), builds on previous findings from Dr. Sarguru Subash, an associate professor in the VMBS Department of Veterinary Pathobiology. His laboratory showed that the body raises copper levels in the urinary tract during infection to help kill invading bacteria.

How Copper Becomes an Immune Weapon

Copper has two very different roles: people and animals need it in small amounts, but under the right conditions, it is toxic to bacteria. The immune system uses that toxicity as part of its early, or innate, response to infection.

Specialized immune cells can engulf bacteria and expose them to a mixture of antimicrobial substances that includes copper. During UTIs, copper levels also rise in urine, according to Subash’s earlier research.

Bacteria, however, have their own protective systems. Because copper occurs naturally in their surroundings, many have evolved ways to pump it out or limit its harmful effects. The new project will investigate the genetic mechanisms that allow bacteria causing UTIs to tolerate increased copper and continue growing.

“We know that copper plays an important role, but that also raises so many questions about how these pathogens adapt to the presence of increased copper,” Subash said. “If we better understand how the bacteria overcome the host-imposed copper resistance, then we can develop therapies that make the bacteria more susceptible to copper and, more broadly, to everything that the immune system throws at them.”

Stopping Bacteria From Gripping the Bladder

The team is also exploring preliminary evidence that copper may disrupt fimbriae, the hairlike structures bacteria use to attach to cells lining the bladder. Interfering with those structures could weaken an infection without relying solely on killing the bacteria.

Attachment is crucial because the urinary tract already has a simple physical defense: the flow of urine. Bacteria that cannot hold firmly to the bladder lining are more likely to be flushed out, Subash explained.

Dr. Sarguru Subash and Veerakit Vanitshavit study how the immune system uses copper to fight bacterial infections and how bacteria adapt to survive those defenses. 

Credit: Nadya Pichkasova/Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Copper’s effectiveness also depends on the other defenses acting alongside it. “Bacteria do have adaptations, but when it’s presented in the context of this cocktail, the bacterial defense mechanisms are not as effective,” Subash said. “Sometimes the balance tips in favor of the host, so we can control the infections. Other times, the balance tips in favor of pathogens. As a result, we get clinical disease.”

Delivering Copper Without Damaging Cells

The researchers will examine the body’s side of the interaction as well, focusing on ceruloplasmin, a protein containing copper. Subash’s previous findings suggest it may help deliver copper during a UTI.

That delivery requires careful control. At high concentrations, copper can damage the body’s own cells, so its transport and storage are tightly regulated. The team will study how ceruloplasmin mobilizes copper during infection and how that process contributes to controlling bacteria.

Examining both copper delivery and bacterial resistance should give the researchers a fuller picture of the point where immune defenses meet an invading organism. It could also help them identify ways to strengthen those defenses through treatment.

Developing Treatments That Work With Immunity

The laboratory has already identified an experimental antimicrobial compound that becomes more effective when copper is present. The next step is to modify and test related compounds, looking for candidates that could work alongside the body’s existing defenses.

This strategy could offer another route for treating infections as bacteria become increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Rather than considering a drug’s effect on bacteria in isolation, the researchers want to understand how its activity combines with the immune response.

“We are very interested in understanding the basic aspects of how the immune system controls pathogens so we can develop next-generation antimicrobials that not only are focused on directly killing bacteria but also work synergistically with the immune system,” Subash said.

A copper-dependent treatment ready for clinical use is still probably years away, Subash cautioned. The current project is an early step toward identifying potential options for difficult-to-treat UTIs.

Potential Benefits Beyond Human UTIs

Some bacteria that cause UTIs can also infect other parts of the body. Discoveries about how they withstand copper could therefore help guide research into treatments for other bacterial infections.

The findings could also matter in veterinary medicine, where recurring UTIs affect animals such as dogs. Before pursuing those applications, the team is concentrating on how the body deploys copper and how bacteria counter it.

“The main innovative aspect of this project is looking comprehensively at how the pathogen responds and how the host uses copper and then tying together both of these basic science discoveries with a translational goal,” Subash said. “It’s a full circle.”

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