Hidden Structures in Clouds May Solve a Longstanding Mystery About Rainfall

22 Aug. 2026, ByI. Farkas

https://www.sciencealert.com/hidden-structures-in-clouds-may-solve-a-longstanding-mystery-about-rainfall

(Andreas Felske/Unsplash)

It's well known that where there's smoke there's fire, but did you know that where there's rain there's ice?

Or so the conventional thinking goes, as atmospheric ice crystals allow raindrops to grow large and heavy enough to fall from cold clouds.

There are also 'warm clouds', which generate much of Earth's rain, especially in the tropics, and influence our global energy balance.

Yet how raindrops form inside these sky-borne marshmallows made of water is one of the biggest puzzles in atmospheric science – and a barrier to precise climate forecasts.

Fortunately, scientists have just taken a significant step toward solving this mystery, revealing the previously invisible structures that breed raindrops in warm clouds.

As reported in a recent study in PNAS, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) used their unique, in-house CloudKite – a helium-filled balloon-kite – to probe low-flying cumulus clouds near Barbados.

A CloudKite test flight. This unique device is designed to explore the relationships between cloud microphysics and turbulence.

  (MPI-DS)



"We assessed the structure of a warm cloud at high spatial resolution," says Mohsen Bagheri, a cloud microphysics and atmospheric turbulence researcher and the study's senior author.

Unlike using planes, which zoom by and gather fewer measurements that may be separated by miles, or drones, which have limited flight times and may cause turbulence, CloudKite is "like a 3D-microscope in the clouds investigating particle size and distribution", Bagheri explains.

It sports two bespoke optical imaging systems that combine the cloud-scanning benefits of lasers and high-speed cameras.

As a result, CloudKite can create 3D representations of the position and size of droplets in clouds, capturing data at a rate of 75 times per second to map cloud dynamics on scales from micrometers to kilometers.

Yet our understanding of cloud microphysics is still incomplete, "exemplified by our inability to fully explain how rain initiates in warm clouds" the researchers say, "which is an unsolved mystery that has puzzled scientists for many decades".

An illustration of cloud types by height.

(Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)



So the researchers sought to demystify its major mystery: the bottleneck that would-be raindrops must overcome.

For a tiny droplet, at the limit of human vision, to become a full-fledged falling raindrop, it must collide and combine with its fellows, growing heavy enough to fall from the sky (and, annoyingly, onto our freshly cleaned cars).

Now, researchers have uncovered this invisible process, demonstrating that cloud droplet clustering occurs in highly intermittent, ultra-localized hotspots, rather than uniformly or randomly throughout clouds.

In reality, most of a sampled cloud may not harbor significant clustering. Instead, it appears to occur in small patches spanning a meter (3.3 feet) or less, in which individual droplets are packed shoulder-to-shoulder at separations of only around one millimeter (0.04 of an inch).

"Because droplets cluster there, collisions become much more likely," says Birte Thiede, a cloud microphysics researcher and the study's first author.

"These localized hotspots may therefore represent the places where rain starts in shallow cumulus clouds."

In contrast, previous research suggested that clustering is weaker and more spread out in shallow (low) stratocumulus clouds. This may be because other observatories could not match CloudKite's ability to resolve localized clusters, and instead averaged out their signals across much larger areas.

CloudKite emerging to explore shallow cumulus clouds.

(MPI-DS)



Though this may seem a neat resolution to the clustering mystery, the researchers note that the hotspots may not clearly correlate with droplet concentrations or average sizes.

Instead, they may be facilitated by dynamical factors like turbulence, which the team is currently studying.

Such factors affect how cloud components evolve and coalesce into raindrops, dictating both Earth's water budget and its energy balance, as clouds are vital for reflecting, absorbing, and emitting solar radiation.

Accordingly, future CloudKite expeditions are in the works, including flights over the Amazon, the Baltic Sea, and Finland.

Constraining hotspot formation, the droplets' collision rates, and how they join together will be essential to ironing out some sizable wrinkles in climate simulations, promising that you'll never get caught in a hairdo-ruining downpour without an umbrella again.

As Bagheri concludes, revealing the "hidden structure of warm clouds will lead to better descriptions of rain formation and more accurate weather forecasts".

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Warn of a Nearly 400% Increase in Toxic Liver Injuries – One Common Drug Leads the List

By U. of Virginia Health System, Aug. 21, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warn-of-a-nearly-400-increase-in-toxic-liver-injuries-one-common-drug-leads-the-list/

Xenobiotics such as medications, alcohol, supplements, and environmental chemicals can damage liver cells as the organ works to break down and remove them from the body. When exposure is too high or toxic byproducts accumulate, the resulting inflammation and cell death can impair liver function and, in severe cases, lead to acute liver failure.

 Credit: Shutterstock

U.S. poison centers have recorded a sharp long-term rise in liver injuries linked to medications and other foreign substances, with most severe enough to require inpatient care.

Reports to U.S. poison centers involving liver damage from medications, supplements, alcohol, and other substances rose nearly 400% between 2000 and 2024, according to research from UVA Health.

Christopher P. Holstege, MD, of UVA Health and his colleagues examined liver injuries caused by “xenobiotics,” substances that are foreign to the body. These include medications, food additives, alcohol, and environmental pollutants.

More than 80% of the reported liver injuries led to inpatient care, and medications accounted for most cases. Acetaminophen was the substance implicated most often.

“Xenobiotic-induced liver injuries reported to U.S. poison centers have steadily increased,” said Holstege, director of UVA Health’s Blue Ridge Poison Center. “The public should be aware of potential liver injury with various substances that are readily available to consumers.”

Across the 24 years examined, Holstege and his colleagues identified 220,160 cases of xenobiotic-related liver injury. After adjusting for population size, exposure rates climbed from 10.9 cases per million people to 52.9 per million.

Christopher P. Holstege. 

Credit: UVA Health



Regulation reduced combination drug exposures

One notable shift followed action by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. After the agency limited how much acetaminophen could be included in combination prescription medicines, exposures involving these products fell significantly, by 60% to 85%. Potentially harmful exposures involving acetaminophen alone, however, continued to rise throughout the 24 years.

The pattern suggests that regulation successfully reduced liver injuries associated with combination products while acetaminophen by itself remains a major contributor to cases reported to poison centers.

Women had higher rates of acetaminophen-associated liver injury than men, and suspected suicide was the most common reason for exposure in both sexes.

“Liver injuries reported to poison centers has increased substantially over the past 25 years, with acetaminophen emerging as a growing contributor,” Holstege said. “Our study findings highlight the important role poison centers play in toxico-surveillance.”

Christopher Holstege, MD, led a UVA Health study that found calls to poison centers involving liver injuries caused by medications, supplements, alcohol and other substances jumped nearly 400% between 2000 and 2024. 

Credit: UVA Health



Alcohol and other exposures also increased

Alcohol ranked a distant second among the leading causes of reported liver injury. Cases involving alcohol occurred more often in men than women, although injuries increased among both sexes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The researchers also recorded rising numbers of liver injuries involving stimulants and street drugs, herbal and dietary supplements, and environmental toxins. These cases remained far less common than those linked to acetaminophen and alcohol.

“Medications should always be taken as directed by clinicians and per pharmaceutical label instructions,” Holstege said. “Care must also be taken in consuming emerging substances that are unregulated. More studies are warranted to determine if specific populations are more at risk of liver injury.”

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Hidden Pulses Within Your Brain May Hold Your Thoughts Together

22 Aug. 2026, By E. Öz

https://www.sciencealert.com/hidden-pulses-within-your-brain-may-hold-your-thoughts-together

(True Creatives/Canva)

When you recognize a familiar face, your brain must connect that face with a name, a place, and perhaps a memory.

Those pieces of information are not necessarily handled in the same part of the brain. Yet they come together so smoothly that you experience them as a single thought.

Scientists may now have found one way the brain pulls off this trick.

A new study suggests that distant parts of the brain briefly fall into the same rhythm when we hold and retrieve information. During these fleeting moments, their cells become more likely to send signals together, potentially allowing separate pieces of a thought to be joined.

Published in Nature Neuroscience and led by medical scientist Ilya Verzhbinsky and neuroscientist Eric Halgren of the University of California San Diego, the new research examined brain recordings from 35 people being monitored for treatment-resistant epilepsy.

"'Firing together' may be the brain's basic currency for linking information."

– Medical scientist Ilya Verzhbinsky

These patients already had electrodes placed inside their brains for medical reasons. This gave the researchers a rare opportunity to listen to the electrical activity of individual brain cells while the participants completed a memory test.

They were shown either one or three images and asked to remember them for a few seconds. They then had to decide whether another image had been part of the original group.

Synchronized ripple oscillations may support communication between distant brain regions during working memory. 

(Ilya Verzhbinsky, created with assistance from Google Gemini)

The researchers were especially interested in extremely brief bursts of electrical activity called ripples.

"A ripple is a very brief burst of rhythmic oscillations in neuron excitability – roughly 90 cycles per second, lasting only about a tenth of a second," Verzhbinsky told ScienceAlert.

In simpler terms, a small group of brain cells suddenly becomes highly active and moves to the same fast beat. The entire event is over almost as soon as it begins.

Across 43 recording sessions, the researchers followed the activity of 1,373 brain cells. They discovered that ripples often appeared at the same time in two distant brain regions.

When that happened, cells in those regions were about 30 percent more likely to send signals together. In some parts of the task, the increase reached 49 percent.

This may help explain how information stored across the brain can be combined into one experience.

A face may be processed in one area, a name in another, and the place where you met that person somewhere else. The shared rhythm could briefly open a line of communication between those areas, allowing them to work as one team.

"That matters because 'firing together' may be the brain's basic currency for linking information," Verzhbinsky said.

The most surprising result was how far this coordination reached. The shared ripples linked areas separated by as much as 220 millimeters and even appeared across the brain's two halves.

Ordinarily, direct connections between brain regions become less common as the distance between them increases. If the ripples depended only on direct wiring, their coordination should have weakened over longer distances. It did not.

The results suggest this coordination may not require a single brain region acting as a conductor. Instead, the effect may resemble a crowd gradually beginning to clap to the same beat without anyone directing it.

The rhythm also became more prominent when the memory task grew harder. When participants remembered three images rather than one, coordinated signaling rose by about 13 percent while they held the images in mind and by 19 percent when they tried to recognize one.

Cells that sent signals together when an image was first seen were also more likely to repeat that pattern when the same image appeared again. Participants tended to recognize the image faster when this happened.

Previous research has connected similar ripples with the replay and storage of memories. One recent study covered by ScienceAlert found that even one exercise session could change memory-related ripples in the human brain.

The new findings suggest these brief rhythms may also help the brain keep a thought together while we are actively using it.

But the study does not prove that the ripples caused faster recognition. The researchers observed the signals but did not turn them on or off to see how memory changed.

All participants also had severe epilepsy, and the electrodes were positioned according to their medical needs. That meant only selected parts of their brains could be studied. The experiment tested just one type of memory task.

Verzhbinsky said it would be premature to consider these signals a target for treating conditions that affect memory or thinking. Researchers first need to find out whether the same activity occurs in healthy brains and whether disrupting it changes memory.

For now, the results offer a compelling possibility: A thought may feel whole because distant parts of the brain briefly find the same beat.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

This Natural Gut Compound Could Point to Better Treatments for IBD

By U. of Louisville, Aug. 20, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/this-natural-gut-compound-could-point-to-better-treatments-for-ibd/

Researchers have identified a diet–microbe signaling pathway that may protect damaged intestinal tissue. The discovery could help inspire more targeted approaches to inflammatory bowel disease. 

Credit: Shutterstock



What if your next meal could help your gut defend itself?

Your gut bacteria may be doing more than digesting dinner. They may also be making compounds that help repair the intestine when it is under attack.

Researchers at the University of Louisville have uncovered how urolithin A (UroA), a compound produced when certain gut microbes break down foods such as pomegranates, walnuts, and berries, helps protect the intestinal lining. The finding could point toward more precise treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

IBD damages the gut’s protective barrier, allowing bacteria and other irritants to move into places they do not belong. That can fuel chronic inflammation, pain, and long-term complications. Many current treatments work by calming the immune system, but that broad approach can also weaken normal defenses. The new study suggests another possibility: activating the body’s own repair programs in the right cells.

The research, published in Nature Communications, focused on the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), a protein that responds to signals from food, microbes, and the environment. AHR has a complicated reputation. Certain pollutants can activate it in harmful ways, but some dietary and microbial compounds appear to use the same receptor to support gut health.

Why the Same Pathway Can Help or Harm

The key, researchers found, is context. UroA activated AHR specifically in intestinal epithelial cells, the cells that form the gut’s protective surface. That targeted signal switched on the NLRP6 inflammasome, a cellular system often associated with inflammation.

But in this case, the inflammasome did not behave like a blunt inflammatory weapon. Instead, it helped release controlled levels of molecules involved in gut repair, mucus production, antimicrobial defense, and barrier strength.

A naturally occurring microbial metabolite from pomegranates, walnuts, and berries helps protect the gut barrier. 

Credit: University of Louisville



The result is a more nuanced view of inflammation. Some immune pathways can damage tissue when overactive or triggered in the wrong place. Under the right conditions, however, those same systems can help the intestine heal.

“This study shows, for the first time, how a natural microbial product works together with the body’s response to control complex molecular and cellular processes during intestinal injury,” the researchers reported.

Human Tissue Findings Point to New IBD Treatments

UroA is not simply found ready-made in pomegranates or walnuts. It is produced only after gut microbes transform plant compounds known as ellagitannins and ellagic acid. That means two people can eat similar foods but produce different amounts of UroA, depending on the microbes living in their intestines.

That detail makes the discovery especially interesting. It suggests future therapies may not be as simple as telling patients to eat more berries. Instead, researchers may need to understand which microbes, foods, or treatments help the body make or use UroA most effectively.

“The findings show that not all inflammatory pathways are harmful,” said Sweta Ghosh, previously a postdoctoral researcher in Jala’s laboratory and lead investigator on the study. “Under the right conditions and in the right cells, these pathways can play an essential role in maintaining gut health and supporting tissue repair.”

Toward More Targeted IBD Treatments

The team tested the mechanism in several systems, including cell studies, organoids, and intestinal tissue samples from patients with IBD. UroA activated the same protective pathway in human tissue, strengthening the case that the finding could be relevant beyond laboratory models.

The study was led by Venkatakrishna Rao Jala, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and UofL’s Brown Cancer Center. Jala previously studied UroA’s beneficial effects in the gut, and the new work helps explain how the compound communicates with the immune system.

“This study helps us better understand how natural compounds produced through interactions between diet, gut microbes, and the body can influence disease processes,” Jala said. “By identifying this specific protective pathway, we may be able to develop more targeted therapeutic approaches that restore intestinal balance instead of broadly suppressing immune responses.”

The finding does not mean foods such as pomegranates, walnuts, and berries can treat IBD on their own. But it does show how diet, microbes, and immune signaling may intersect in ways that could be harnessed for future therapies. For a disease driven by a broken barrier, the most promising strategy may be helping the gut rebuild its own defenses.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

https://www.sciencealert.com/acupuncture-seems-to-rewire-the-brain-in-depression-scans-reveal

18 Aug. 2026, By D. Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/acupuncture-seems-to-rewire-the-brain-in-depression-scans-reveal

The researchers found that acupuncture affected different parts of the brain to antidepressants. 

(Zhang et al., Medicine, 2026)

Acupuncture is a traditional and significant part of Chinese medicine that's been around for thousands of years, and continues to be used to ease the pain and discomfort that come with a wide variety of conditions, including fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis.

The practice has also shown potential for easing the symptoms of depression. What hasn't been clear, however, is why.

In a new study published in Medicine, researchers led by a team from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine analyzed brain imaging data from seven previous clinical trials, involving a total of 357 participants with major depressive disorder.

When comparing the brain scans of people who had been given acupuncture treatments against those on antidepressants or those receiving a placebo version of acupuncture, the researchers found something interesting: acupuncture seemed to be rewiring specific brain regions.

(Catherine Falls Commercial/Moment/Getty Images)



"Acupuncture shows promise as an adjunctive therapy for depression, but its neurobiological mechanisms remain incompletely understood," write the researchers in their published paper.

"Our findings indicate that acupuncture-based interventions elicit a distinct pattern of neuroplastic remodeling, targeting key regions involved in emotion regulation and reward processing, which contrasts with the hippocampal–occipital effects of conventional treatments."

Patients who had been given acupuncture as a treatment showed increased activity in the right cingulum region (linked to emotional control) and the right caudate nucleus (part of the brain's reward system).

A related analysis linked more acupuncture sessions to greater change in the left amygdala region of the brain. This region is important in emotional processing, and the suggestion is that the needle treatment might be acting as an emotional brake of some kind.

The researchers found that acupuncture affected different parts of the brain to antidepressants. 

(Zhang et al., Medicine, 2026)



It was a different story for the patients on antidepressants. In these participants, the brain activity boosts were seen in the left hippocampus (involved with memory and stress regulation) and the right middle occipital gyrus (a visual processing area).

Compared to antidepressants alone, acupuncture was more effective at reducing depression and anxiety scores in the study volunteers – though it's worth pointing out that most acupuncture participants were taking antidepressant medication too.

"The correlation between neuroplastic changes in affective circuits and clinical improvement supports a potential mechanism for acupuncture's efficacy in alleviating core depressive symptoms such as anhedonia and emotional dysregulation," write the researchers.

We're still at the early stages in terms of understanding the mechanisms, but the results show that acupuncture can be effective at reducing the symptoms of depression – and it works through different neural pathways than conventional medications do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb0miieP2Bo

That's particularly significant for the sizable chunk of people with depression that don't respond to standard treatments. Acupuncture could be an alternative route.

"This pattern suggests that acupuncture may offer complementary mechanisms for patients who exhibit hippocampal nonresponsiveness or reward-circuit dysfunction – a common phenotype in treatment-resistant depression," write the researchers.

According to the World Health Organization, almost 6 in every 100 adults worldwide suffer from depression, and it seems to be brought on by a complex combination of factors, including genetics, environmental pressures, and physical health.

While we're making progress at finding ways to combat it, not everyone who has depression is able to get relief from it – and it's also thought to raise the risk of further health problems, including dementia.

The next steps here are to test the effects of acupuncture in larger, more diverse groups of people than this analysis was able to, and over a longer period of time. The different methods of acupuncture varied over the seven trials that were analyzed, which is something that could be standardized in future work.

It's also going to be important to study in more detail the chemical processes that are driving the neural rewiring. That will require more biological data than just brain scans, and should give researchers an idea of how the benefits of acupuncture could be boosted even further.

"Future work should integrate molecular biomarkers with longitudinal neuroimaging to unravel acupuncture's systems-level mechanisms and to advance personalized neuromodulation strategies for depression," write the researchers.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Revisited a Forest Experiment That Was Forgotten for 30 Years. What They Found Was Astounding

By K. Hammond, U. of Northern B C. & C. Nitschke, P. Baker, R. Trouve, U. of Melbourne, August 21, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-revisited-a-forest-experiment-that-was-forgotten-for-30-years-what-they-found-was-astounding/

An almost forgotten forestry experiment has revealed surprising clues about how mountain ash forests respond to different kinds of disturbance. 

Credit: Center for Forest Tree Technology

A decades-old experiment in Victoria’s mountain ash forests is challenging assumptions about the trade-offs between timber production and conservation.

Should a forest remain untouched, or should some trees be harvested to sustain nearby communities and economies? Australians have debated these competing approaches for decades, often treating conservation and timber production as mutually exclusive choices.

Research into a largely forgotten experiment in Victoria’s mountain ash forests suggests the answer is more complicated.

Clearfell logging, which removes every tree from a section of forest, has faced sustained criticism since the 1970s. Conservationists argued that the practice destroys habitat for rare wildlife and diminishes ecological value. Foresters countered that mountain ash forests naturally regenerate after catastrophic bushfires, making clearfelling a comparable disturbance.

The dispute became deeply polarized, but the central scientific questions persisted. Researchers still lacked clear evidence showing how clearfelling affected these forests over time and whether less intensive harvesting methods produced better outcomes.

Aerial views of the Tanjil Bren Silvicultural Systems Project. 

L: Small cleared patches varying in size (50-140 metres wide) and shape (square vs. rectangular) 

R: Heavy thinning. 

Credit: Center for Forest Tree Technology

A landmark experiment

During a major restructuring of Victoria’s timber industry in the mid 1980s, the state government invested the equivalent of A$26 million today to investigate alternatives to clearfelling. The project focused on silviculture, the science of establishing, growing, and managing forests.

Between 1987 and 1989, researchers established the Silvicultural Systems Project at Tanjil Bren in Victoria’s Central Highlands and Cabbage Tree Creek in East Gippsland.

The landmark experiment compared forest regeneration under a broad range of management approaches. Researchers tested conventional clearfells (250–350 meters wide), smaller patch clearfells (50–140 m wide), and heavy thinning that removed 50–70% of the trees. Large areas of unharvested forest remained untouched to provide benchmarks for comparison.

L: The Silvicultural Systems Project (SSP) sign at Tanjil Bren in the late 1980s. 

R: the sign rescued from the forest floor in 2025. 

Credit: Center for Forest Tree Technology/Tom Fairman



The forest at Tanjil Bren was dense mountain ash regrowth from the 1939 fires. Hundreds of survey plots were established and thousands of seedlings were monitored. By the early 2000s, the results were clear: mountain ash regenerated best on clearfell sites. Where tall canopy trees were retained or the cleared patches were small, common understory species such as acacia dominated.

The findings were published. The access road grew over. The project sign collapsed. The experiment was forgotten. The debates continued.

But the trees kept growing.

Thinning produced an unexpected outcome

In 2014, we visited the Tanjil Bren site as part of a University of Melbourne subject on silviculture in native forests. A colleague, Simon Murphy, had been involved in its establishment and suggested our students see the long-term outcomes of different silvicultural systems side-by-side. What we found was astounding.

The original results still held: 30 years later, the mountain ash in the large cleared patches and clearfelled areas was vigorous and abundant. But it was the heavily thinned parts of the forest that really caught our attention.

The trees left behind after thinning were enormous. While they were only 80 years old, the largest averaged well over a meter in diameter at chest height, and some were more than 1.5 m. Thinning had given these trees more space and resources to grow, and they had responded dramatically. The largest trees in the thinned stands were 20% bigger in diameter than those in the unharvested control areas.

A Leadbeater’s possum in one of the heavily thinned sites 33 years after the silvicultural treatment. 

Credit: Jeremy Johnson



More remarkable still: the thinned stands of trees had stored as much or more carbon in their wood than the unharvested control areas. In just 30 years, the heavily thinned forest had not only recovered all the carbon removed during harvesting, but had also gained enough additional carbon to equal the increase seen in the unharvested controls.

These findings have profound implications. Bigger trees are more resistant to fires, so when the next fire occurs, they are more likely to survive. Bigger trees are also more likely to form hollows – a critical and declining habitat for rare species such as the greater glider and Leadbeater’s possum.

The acacia trees that grew in most of the silvicultural treatments are also vital for Leadbeater’s possums, which use it to forage and move around the forest. Camera traps across the sites confirmed this: Leadbeater’s possums were found in every silvicultural treatment plot we surveyed – but none of the unharvested areas.

Forest management needs more than one answer

The Tanjil Bren SSP offers three important lessons.

First, long-term silvicultural experiments are irreplaceable. Australia’s forests contain many forgotten experiments that could transform our understanding of how forests respond to human intervention. But all too often, they end up neglected, unfunded, and forgotten. We should find them before it is too late.

Second, forest thinning is not a trade-off. Our findings show this for mountain ash, and other studies in North America have shown this for conifer forests. It can deliver wood for local industry, absorb carbon and improve habitat for wildlife. It is a win-win-win outcome that challenges the false dichotomy of conservation versus production that has dominated public debate for decades.

While thinning cannot (and should not) be done everywhere, it may be a useful tool to create more variety in tree ages and sizes, particularly in forests impacted by clearfelling or high-severity fire.

Third, and perhaps most importantly: there is no silvicultural silver bullet for managing forests. The long-forgotten experiment at Tanjil Bren has taught us that there are options available for managing our forests beyond clearfelling that can contribute to the societal demand for wood, maintain carbon stocks, and conserve biodiversity.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Parkinson's Link to Gut Bacteria Hints at Unexpectedly Simple Treatment

18 Aug. 2026, By F. MacDonald

https://www.sciencealert.com/parkinsons-tie-to-gut-bacteria-hints-at-unexpectedly-simple-treatment

Illustration of bacteria on the colon epithelium. (Nanoclustering/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)



Years before a Parkinson's diagnosis – sometimes as many as two decades before – the disease is already making itself known in the body.

Not through tremors or anything outwardly visible, but through something less dramatic: constipation and trouble sleeping.

It's a strange, quiet early warning system, and for a long time scientists weren't sure why gut problems would show up so early for a neurodegenerative disease.

But scientists have increasingly come to suspect that the answer lies not only in the gut itself, but in what's living there.

In 2024, a team led by medical researcher Hiroshi Nishiwaki at Nagoya University in Japan added some of the most compelling evidence yet for the link between gut bacteria and Parkinson's.

After comparing fecal samples of 94 people with Parkinson's disease to those of 73 people without it, they checked the results against data from China, Taiwan, Germany, and the US.


Different countries have different mixes of gut bacteria. But the same pathways appeared to be disrupted in Parkinson's: the ones responsible for making B vitamins, specifically riboflavin (B2) and biotin (B7).

This led the researchers to suggest that supplementing B vitamins could potentially be a future treatment investigation for Parkinson's.

"Supplementation therapy targeting riboflavin and biotin holds promise as a potential therapeutic avenue for alleviating Parkinson's symptoms and slowing disease progression," said Nishiwaki when the study was published in May 2024.

In a similar vein, a small 2003 study found that high doses of riboflavin could help restore some motor functions in Parkinson's patients who also eliminated red meat from their diets, though its design could not establish whether riboflavin itself caused the improvements.

Nishiwaki and team showed the lack of B vitamins was linked to a decrease in short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and polyamines: molecules that help create a healthy mucus layer in the intestines.

"Deficiencies in polyamines and SCFAs could lead to thinning of the intestinal mucus layer, increasing intestinal permeability, both of which have been observed in [Parkinson's disease]," Nishiwaki explained.

Summary of findings from the study and speculations from previous research. 

(Nishiwaki et al., npj Parkinson's Dis., 2024)

The researchers proposed that lower levels of these metabolites could weaken the intestinal mucus barrier and increase gut permeability. This could mean more exposure to everyday toxins – cleaning chemicals, pesticides, herbicides.

"This higher permeability exposes nerves to toxins, contributing to abnormal aggregation of alpha-synuclein, activating the immune cells in the brain, and leading to long-term inflammation," Nishiwaki said.

Alpha-synuclein is a protein that clumps together in the dopamine-producing brain cells of people with Parkinson's, and its build-up is thought to contribute to the disease's slow progression toward tremors, muscle rigidity, and dementia.

In Parkinson's disease, a reduction in the gut bacteria of genes responsible for synthesizing the essential B vitamins B2 and B7 was found. 

(Reiko Matsushita)



Over the past two years, two separate teams have conducted trials on fecal microbiota transplants (or poop transplants) in people with Parkinson's.

That means exactly what it sounds like: transplanting processed stool from a carefully screened donor into a patient's gut, delivered using several methods, including via a tube during colonoscopy.

It sounds like an unlikely medical treatment but the therapy has already shown potential to alleviate depression, type 2 diabetes, and has demonstrated promising early signs against food allergies.

And in two randomized, placebo-controlled trials run in Belgium and China, there's evidence it may also help Parkinson's.

The first, a Belgian trial called GUT-PARFECT, gave 46 people with mild-to-moderate Parkinson's either a donor transplant or their own stool as a placebo.

After a year, the donor group's motor symptom score had improved by 5.8 points, compared to 2.7 points in the placebo group – with the biggest gains showing up between six and twelve months.

"After 12 months, participants who received the healthy donor stool transplant showed a significant improvement in their motor score," said gastroenterologist Arnout Bruggeman, part of the University Hospital Ghent team behind the trial, in 2024 when the results were published.

"Our study provides promising hints that [fecal microbiota transplants] can be a valuable new treatment for Parkinson's disease," said team member Roosmarijn Vandenbroucke.

"More research is needed, but it offers a potentially safe, effective, and cost-effective way to improve symptoms and quality of life for millions of people with Parkinson's disease worldwide."

Then, in March this year, a much larger trial out of Zhengzhou University in China pushed the evidence further.

Researchers gave 72 newly diagnosed, treatment-naive Parkinson's patients either repeated donor transplants or their own stool, across three rounds over several months.

After 35 weeks, motor scores improved by an average of 3.8 points in the donor group, while they changed little in the control group, worsening by 0.1 points on average. Constipation scores improved sharply too.

Nearly half the donor group saw a clinically meaningful improvement in motor function, compared to about a fifth of the control group.

In the donor group, potentially harmful bacteria like E. coli and Shigella became less abundant, the gut lining grew more robust, stool dopamine levels rose, and – notably – alpha-synuclein levels in the gut went down.

That's the same molecule Nishiwaki's team flagged two years earlier as the link between a leaky gut and a damaged brain.

"These findings demonstrate that repeated donor FMT is safe, well tolerated, and yields clinically meaningful motor and gastrointestinal improvements," the researchers behind the Chinese study wrote in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy – adding that the results "reinforce the growing body of evidence supporting gut microbiota modulation as a viable disease-modifying avenue" in Parkinson's disease.

Both trials are still small, and both come with the usual caveat attached to any phase 2 results: further verification of their results is needed.

Fecal transplants aren't necessarily the end result of the studies, either. But they provide another proof of concept that changes to gut bacteria can impact Parkinson's symptoms.

"Using these findings, we could identify individuals with specific deficiencies and administer oral riboflavin and biotin supplements to those with decreased levels, potentially creating an effective treatment," said Nishiwaki back in 2024.

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Scientists Discover a New Organ Hiding in The Skull

20 Aug. 2026, By M. Irving

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discover-a-new-organ-hiding-in-the-skull

The newly discovered structures in skull bone marrow. 

(Jang Hyun Park)



After centuries of medical science, it's reasonable to assume that we have a complete tally of all the organs in the human body by now.

But scientists just keep discovering new ones working thanklessly in the background, performing vital functions like sensing pain or producing saliva.

The latest is all in your head. In a new study published in Nature, biologists at Washington University (WashU) School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a new immune organ inside the skull.

From that crucial post, it seems to act like a 'security station' to fight brain cancer at the early stages.

So far this organ has only been found in mice, but the researchers say there are signs that humans have them, too. And if we can supercharge these structures, we might have a new weapon against deadly brain cancers.

"This study reveals that the skull bone marrow is far more than just a structural framework – it harbors previously unrecognized hubs for brain-specific immune responses," says Jonathan Kipnis, a brain immunologist at WashU and senior author of the new study.

"Uncovering this localized immune niche changes how we view neuroimmune interactions and opens exciting new avenues for treating brain tumors and other neurological diseases."

Immunohistochemistry images of different parts of the mouse skull bone marrow (left),

 highlighting clusters of immune cells that were more pronounced than in the bone marrow of the sternum (breastbone; right).

 (Hyun Park et al., Nature, 2026)

The human body is patrolled by not one, but two distinct immune systems – one for the central nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord, and one for the rest of the body.


It's long been thought that the two systems were completely separate, and in fact, immune cells from the peripheral system can cause all sorts of trouble if they get into the brain. Some are known to contribute to neurodegenerative diseases because the sensitive tissues in the nervous system can be harmed by the 'reckless' techniques that work elsewhere in the body.

But a growing body of research suggests there's a bit more crossover than previously thought. In previous work, the team behind the new study identified tiny channels running from brain tissue, through the dura mater (the outermost protective membrane around the brain) and into the skull itself.

This time, the researchers used fluorescent tracer proteins to observe how molecules moved along these channels, following them from neurons into the bone marrow of the skull.

Eventually they tracked them into what looked suspiciously like germinal centers – structures that form in lymph nodes and act like training camps for immune cells.

Basically, naive B cells enter these structures, multiply to great numbers, get armed, are handed 'Wanted' posters for particular pathogens by other immune cells, and are sent out into battle.

Schematic of a germinal center in a lymph node showing proliferation and development of a B cell. (Billy10drs/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY SA 3.0)



In this case, these training camps are strategically located near the brain, so they can fight on the front lines without having to recruit soldiers from further afield in the body.

"We have never seen such structures in healthy bone marrow before," says Jang Hyun Park, cell biologist at WashU and first author of the study.

"It is an exciting discovery that points out that a complex brain requires its own specialized immune structures to defend it."

The researchers tested that idea in mouse models of glioma, a particularly nasty form of brain cancer. They altered the activity of these lymphoid structures by applying a hydrogel laced with either immune-promoting or immune-suppressing compounds under the scalp.

Mice with disrupted skull lymphoid structures had much more aggressive tumors and lower survival rates than control mice.

However, mice given a mix of three immune-boosting proteins showed stronger immune responses from their skull lymphoids, fighting off their cancer more effectively and significantly increasing their survival.

Of course, findings in mice don't necessarily translate to humans, but the researchers say that follicular T cells have previously been detected in the bone marrow of human skulls, which could be a clue that these structures are also hiding in our own heads.

If so, it could eventually mark a major improvement in how we fight brain cancer: A hydrogel injected under the scalp is far less invasive than full brain surgery to remove tumors.

"The finding fundamentally changes our current understanding of neuroimmunology," says Kipnis.

"Knowing that the brain relies on first responders in the surrounding skull for defense has the potential to change how we think about developing therapies for many neurological conditions, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, long COVID, and many others that have an immune component to them.

"Such therapies could access these immune hubs directly through the skull, without major peripheral side effects."

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Scientists Find Just 3 Minutes of Sprinting Can Transform Blood Chemistry

By Rockefeller U., Aug. 19, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-find-just-3-minutes-of-sprinting-can-transform-blood-chemistry/

Exercise intensity may shape the body’s chemical response as much as exercise duration. Many proteins that reacted strongly to sprinting were also linked in large population data to lower risks of metabolic and cardiovascular disease.

 Credit: SciTechDaily.com

A few minutes of sprinting triggered a much larger immediate molecular response than prolonged moderate exercise and altered proteins linked to better metabolic health.

Just three minutes of intense sprinting can produce molecular changes in the bloodstream that look very different from those seen after much longer periods of moderate exercise.

Researchers at Rockefeller compared several exercise intensities and found that six 30-second, all-out sprints changed nearly one quarter of the proteins they measured immediately after exercise. By comparison, 90 minutes of continuous moderate cycling affected fewer than one quarter of one percent. Moderate treadmill running altered more proteins than cycling, but still far fewer than sprinting.

Sprinting rapidly reshapes blood chemistry

The effects extended well beyond proteins. Sprinting changed more than 200 metabolites and produced an immediate rise in proteins involved in blood vessel growth, tissue remodeling, and hormonal signaling.

Some appeared to reach the bloodstream through ectodomain shedding, a rapid signaling process in which portions of proteins already positioned on cell surfaces are cut away and released into circulation rather than being newly produced. Human fat cells exposed to blood collected after the sprints also showed widespread shifts in gene activity affecting fuel processing, hormone responses, and nutrient sensing.

Moderate exercise produced a smaller and slower molecular response. A substantial wave of fatty acids and proteins originating from the liver, which commonly appear as the body responds to the demands of endurance exercise, did not emerge in the blood until three hours later. Human fat cells exposed to blood taken after moderate cycling showed only modest changes in gene activity.

Sprint-responsive proteins track better health

The researchers next compared proteins affected by exercise with health information from more than 53,000 participants in the UK Biobank. Many of those proteins were associated with lower risks of cardiovascular and metabolic disease. The pattern was especially strong for obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other metabolic disorders. Of 33 proteins associated with lower risk, sprinting altered 32, while moderate exercise changed only three. More than one quarter of the proteins were also associated with slower biological aging.

“What’s exciting here is that just a few minutes of intense exercise can trigger a significant molecular response,” says Paul Cohen. “And we still see it after eight weeks of training, which tells us this response isn’t simply a product of the body struggling to keep up with unfamiliar stress. It may be that the responses we observed are intrinsic to intense exercise.”

“It’s well appreciated that different intensities of exercise stimulate distinct body-wide adaptations,” notes Luke Olsen, the postdoctoral fellow who conducted the studies. “However, the molecular mechanisms linking these intensity-dependent adaptations have remained largely elusive. Our work suggests that exerkines–proteins and metabolites released into the bloodstream following exercise–are highly sensitive to exercise intensity and may be the key mediators of the health-promoting effects of short bursts of vigorous exercise.”

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Neuroscientist Challenges the Idea That Your Brain “Makes” Decisions

By L. Rosdeitcher, Indiana U., Aug. 19, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/neuroscientist-challenges-the-idea-that-your-brain-makes-decisions/

Even simple systems can produce behavior that appears deliberate without anything resembling a central decision-maker. That possibility could force cognitive neuroscience to rethink how purposeful human actions arise. 

Credit: Shutterstock

A professor proposes that behavior emerges through continuous interactions among sensory, sensorimotor, and motor processes rather than a dedicated decision-making mechanism.

There may be a gap between how people believe decisions are made and what actually happens inside the brain, according to Indiana University professor Tom James.

For decades, both scientific theories and everyday thinking have treated decision-making as a separate step between perception and action. Under this traditional view, information moves through a linear sequence from sensing to thinking to acting, with each stage linked to a distinct brain function.

Many research methods, especially those used in model-based cognitive neuroscience, are built around this idea and reinforce it. It also matches our everyday experience. As James puts it, “Our actions feel like they are caused by decisions based on desires, beliefs, and intentions.”

However, James argues that this linear framework, often called the “sandwich model,” does not fit what scientists know about the brain. While researchers have identified neural systems for sensing and movement, there is no comparable brain mechanism that clearly serves as a dedicated decision-making stage.

From Decision-Making to Action Selection

Instead of proposing a separate decision-making center that directs behavior, James argues that actions emerge from the combined activity of sensory, sensorimotor, and motor processes. He prefers the term “action selection,” which reflects an ongoing interaction among the brain, body, and environment rather than a simple step-by-step process. He says this view also requires research methods that can better capture these dynamic interactions.

That does not mean decisions are unreal.

Indiana University Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Professor Tom James.

 Credit: Indiana University



As James explains, “Of course they do. We use this language all the time, and it’s very helpful in terms of describing behavior. The leap, I think, is to say that the brain works by having decision-making or control processes. It produces behavior that is well described in that way. But it doesn’t need a process that does that to make it look that way.”

James, a professor in Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, presents these ideas in a study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Why Decisions May Be Abstract Concepts

To support his argument, James draws on a “physicalist” framework associated with philosophers such as Daniel Dennett. Under this view, only physical processes, including sensory and motor activity, can directly cause physical events. Because decisions are nonphysical concepts, they cannot themselves produce actions or other physical effects.

To illustrate the idea, James offers several analogies.

One compares decisions to Dennett’s description of the self as a center of mass (CoM) or center of gravity. A center of mass is a mathematical concept rather than a physical object. You cannot move an object’s center of mass without moving the object itself. James argues that decisions are similarly abstract and cannot directly influence the physical world.

How Everyday Concepts Can Mislead Science

James also points to the difference between everyday language and detailed scientific explanations. For example, people often say “the university” when describing what happens within an institution. The phrase is a convenient shorthand for the people, buildings, and organizations that make up the university.

Likewise, saying “the university took certain actions during a campus protest” does not explain what actually happened. It leaves out the meetings, phone calls, and individual decisions that produced those actions.

James argues that the same problem applies to decisions. “As mental phenomena, they are defined on too abstract a level for the goals of cognitive neuroscience.” In other words, they do not reveal the specific brain activity responsible for behavior.

What a Simple Robot Reveals About Human Behavior

James extends the argument with an example from robotics.

He describes a robot built with only simple sensory, motor, and sensorimotor components. Even without any ability to make decisions or develop strategies, the robot displays “wall-following” behavior that appears purposeful and goal-directed.

“The robot does not have decisions built into it,” James explains. “It just senses its environment and moves around accordingly. And based on the environment, wall-following turns out to be a good thing. It looks intentional. It looks strategic. It looks like the robot is making decisions. And yet, it is not. The reason we know it is not is that there are no systems built into it to do that.”

Challenging the Central Controller Theory

If a robot without decision-making abilities can still appear to make decisions, James argues it is reasonable to ask whether humans might create the same impression. He believes this explanation is more parsimonious than one based on what he calls “a higher-level, central controller that monitors and regulates sensory and motor processes.”

James also argues that the idea of a central controller creates a philosophical problem that dates back to Descartes.

“Explaining that the brain works by way of a central controller suggests that you haven’t figured out how the brain works, because you’ve just put a person inside your brain,” says James. “Dennett called this idea the Cartesian Theatre. That person inside your brain would need another person inside its brain, which would need a person inside its brain, and so on, in an infinite regress. So the problem is never solved. It’s just passed on.”

The Future of Decision-Making Research

James concludes that testing this alternative view will require new experimental approaches capable of capturing the complex, ongoing interactions among the brain, body, and environment that give rise to what people describe as decision-making.

His own lab has already begun exploring these questions using theories of embodied cognition and ecological psychology. James believes this approach could help cognitive neuroscience better understand not only how behavior emerges but also many other mental and cognitive processes.

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