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In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration an Alzheimer’s therapy shown in clinical trials to modestly slow disease progression but side effects, brain swelling and bleeding, occurred in some.Though clinical trials have taken twice as long and cost twice as much due to government regulations, they can't  cover everything and a successful doesn't mean broader demographics won't show different effects. Lawyers are gleeful at the opportunity to sue but they will be disappointed in the latest results for lecanemab. Adverse events associated with lecanemab treatment in clinic patients were rare and manageable.

You've heard that you should get eight hours of sleep per night, a whole industry has built up trying to help people who can't do that, but like BMI, organic food, and 'alcohol in moderation is okay', there is no science to it.

Humans are the only species on earth that uses language, combining sounds into words and words into sentence with infinite meanings. We do this using linguistic rules for calls and sentence structure. "A dog eats" tells us one thing while "a big dog" means another while "you're such a dog" from a friend at the bar means something else completely.Humans have mastered syntax.How did that evolve? The comparative approach, comparing the vocal production of other primates, with that of humans, provides some answers. Other primates typically use a single call type while some species combine calls, it is mostly as an alarm. All those known are too limited to be a precursor to the complex, open-ended combinatorial system that is human language.

Some psychologists believe our brains and bodies don’t just understand music, we become it. We physically resonate with it. They call their belief Neural Resonance Theory (NRT). They use Theory is in the name, but it is not a theory like gravity or evolution, the proper name means it is more like String Theory. An idea that needs scientific rigor to be shown true. NRT maintains that rather than relying on learned expectations or prediction, musical experiences arise from the brain’s natural oscillations that sync with rhythm, melody and harmony.

Nature is out to kill everything, it is the circle of life, and that is why replanting rainforest without including some termites is counter-intuitively bad, finds a new paper.The balance of nature doesn't exist and believing that plant diversity alone will work is in defiance of how ecosystems work. That may mean introducing termites. There is a certainly NIMBYism that will occur, just like wealthy elites who oppose nuclear energy and claim wind power is viable hire a phalanx of lawyers to block wind projects near their homes. A company or agency spending money on new trees isn't going to like giving those over to termites either. It would require convincing.

In a new study, researchers found that the polyphenol fisetin helps protect blood vessels from hardening, which is a common problem in older adults and people with kidney disease. If eventually validated in human trials, it might mean it could prevent vascular calcification and reduce cardiovascular damage caused by aging and chronic kidney disease. Fisetin is in the flavonols family and is found naturally in fruits and vegetables but is also sold as an unvalidated supplement outside FDA testing.Created with Discovery Studio Visualizer.

No doctor tells patients to smoke cigarettes "in moderation", they are a known carcinogen and not smoking cigarettes is one of the top three ways to prevent lifestyle diseases. Yet culture has been grabbed by twin pincers when it comes to alcohol. American women are told if they have a glass of wine their child may get fetal alcohol syndrome while everyone else will be fine with alcohol in moderation.(1)

Albert Einstein has been proven right many times but some things his equations predicted have yet to be shown to be science and yet remain part of the popular consciousness about science.Like a "singularity", where the laws of physics cease to apply, at the heart of black holes. Though Karl Schwarzschild found an exact solution to Einstein's 1915 general relativity equations, which implied the existence of extreme objects now known as black holes, mass so concentrated that nothing — not even light — can escape their gravitational pull (thus "black"), the physics community remain unconvinced. For over 100 years many even found it problematic.Maybe singularities are just math in some cases. Math is a language, languages can tell stories.

An old saying goes that 'character is what you are in the dark', which is a way of stating that how you'd behave if no one was there to see you is really who you are outside the world of surveys.

You can't really be friends with a gorilla, but it's still easier than beating one in a fight, even if you are the 100th person trying. They are all really tough whereas an alarming number of human males buy organic beard cream but one thing they share in common is that some are more social and some are less.

Honeybees are important pollinators for agriculture like the sweetener and almond industries but are also invoked by environmentalists targeting pesticides.It's hard to separate marketing hype from reality but scholars believe simulations and a monitoring system could see if activists who target seed treatments like neonicotinoid pesticides have science or just-so stories.

For farmers, land is their most valuable asset so they protect it in ways environmentalists do not understand. By using science whenever possible, to reduce water, energy, and environmental strain.Even organic farmers use toxic pesticides but because they are older and less effective they must use a lot more. A new literature review posits that organic farmers, and conventional as well, can reduce effects on soil using cover plants. Most farmers grow cover plants, animal feed or just plants to lay there and decompose, between main crops to supply the soil with nutrients before the next planting. They also protect against erosion and may increase biodiversity above and below ground.