Researchers at King's College London have found that patients with early stages of kidney disease and type 1 diabetes have lower levels of the protective 'anti-ageing' hormone Klotho. This discovery could lead to the development of new treatments to prevent kidney disease in patients with type 1 diabetes.
Nagoya University researchers have discovered a link between RNA binding proteins FUS and SFPQ and the development of frontotemporal lobar degeneration, a type of dementia that starts in middle age. The study suggests that rebalancing the tau protein ratio may prevent FTLD-like phenotypes.
Deep-sea squids have developed unique eyes to spot two different sources of light: ambient sunlight and bioluminescent flashes. The large eye is adapted for gazing upwards, searching for shadows, while the small eye scans downwards for bioluminescence.
Male banded mongooses that faced poor conditions in their first year lived longer than those with an easier start, while variable conditions seemed to be beneficial for longevity and reproduction. The researchers used 14 years of data on wild banded mongooses in Uganda.
A University of Maryland physicist has improved a method for designing stellarators, complex nuclear fusion experiments that aim to explore fusion's potential as an energy source. The new method, Regularized NESCOIL, balances tradeoffs between ideal magnetic field shapes and coil shapes, resulting in designs with more space between coils.
A new smartphone app has been developed to measure ride comfort for railway companies, providing instant feedback from passengers about bumps, bangs and vibration on trains. The app uses artificial neural networks to evaluate ride quality, revealing that modern smartphones' accelerometers are suitable for measuring comfort.