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Blood thinner could offer a new way to treat osteoarthritis

Blood thinner could offer a new way to treat osteoarthritis
Dabigatran attenuates OA development in NHPs. Credit: Science Translational Medicine (2026). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aec8494

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of joint disease, a condition that causes joints to become painful and stiff. It can happen to any joint when the cartilage cushioning the ends of bones breaks down or wears away. Currently, there are no approved drugs to slow or stop the underlying disease. But there is a promising development from an unexpected quarter—a blood thinner.

Researchers led by Chuan-ju Liu from the Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation at Yale University School of Medicine screened a library of nearly 1,000 approved drugs for compounds that could suppress the inflammatory signals underlying osteoarthritis.

Although inflammation ...

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NASA’s Perseverance confirms a key ingredient for life hidden in ancient Mars rocks

NASA’s Perseverance rover has confirmed complex organic carbon just beneath the surface of ancient Martian rocks, raising intriguing questions about the Red Planet’s potential to have supported life. The remarkable preservation of these compounds, along with similar discoveries thousands of miles away, suggests the building blocks of life may once have been widespread across Mars.

Organic carbon has been confirmed in two ancient Martian rocks examined by NASA’s Perseverance rover, adding an important new piece to the puzzle of whether Mars once supported life. Even more surprising, the material was found just beneath the planet’s surface, where harsh conditions can destroy organic compounds.

The discovery builds on NASA’s September 2025 announcement that Perseverance had identif...

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Brain imaging uncovers a shared memory network linked to mild cognitive impairment

Imaging study uncovers a memory network linked to mild cognitive impairment
Workflow of individual weighted key atrophy network mapping. Credit: Huang et al. (Translational Psychiatry, 2026).

As they age, many individuals can struggle to remember recent events or what they meant to say next during a conversation, while also frequently losing or misplacing objects. In some cases, cognitive tests detect these memory impairments. In others, people notice and report a decline even though their test scores remain within the normal range.

The term mild cognitive impairment (MCI) refers to measurable difficulties with memory or other thinking skills in people who remain largely independent in daily life. Subjective cognitive decline (SCD), on the other hand, is a perceived decline despite normal performance on standard cognitive tests...

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Euclid offers best-ever 3D map of the universe to date

Best-ever 3D map of the universe to date
As part of its DR1 Foundation data release, Euclid observed Abell 3128, a cluster of hundreds of galaxies located about 800 million light-years away from us. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin

The Euclid Consortium and the European Space Agency (ESA) have released the first major batch of data from the Euclid space telescope. This release, which captures light from more than a billion objects and covers an area of sky equivalent to 9,500 full moons, lays the foundation for Europe’s dark universe detective’s largest-ever 3D map of the cosmos. Several German research facilities play crucial roles in the Euclid mission’s success.

The new data release, named DR1 Foundation, comprises some 13 months of observations and marks the ...

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