Spaceflight could change how astronauts swallow, eat and drink in subtle ways

Keeping your food from floating away in space is only half the battle. NASA via Getty Images

Imagine trying to swallow a sip of water while your face feels stuffed with congestion, your sense of taste is dulled and your body is floating 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

That scenario is part of everyday life for astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Spaceflight changes the human body in dramatic ways. Muscles shrink, bones lose density and bodily fluids shift toward the head. Astronauts often return with puffy faces, stuffy noses and a feeling similar to a lingering cold. When you’re congested, you might have more difficulty swallowing—but does microgravity also affect this important body function?

As a speech-language pathologist and researcher who studi...

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Soy lysolecithin counters high-salt diet-induced hypertension and cognitive impairment

Soy lysolecithin counters high-salt diet-induced hypertension and cognitive impairment
The study explores how a soy-derived lysolecithin, LPC70, mitigates HSD-induced hypertension and cognitive impairment, by regulating prostaglandin production and signaling mechanisms. Credit: Professor Akihiro Mouri, Fujita Health University, Japan

High-salt (HS) intake is a major global health concern, closely linked to hypertension and growing evidence of cognitive and emotional decline. Although salt is a routine part of daily diets, long-term overconsumption can negatively affect both the cardiovascular system and the central nervous system, underscoring the need for practical dietary strategies to mitigate these adverse health effects.

Prostaglandins (PGs) are lipid compounds derived from arachidonic acid (AA) that act as potent local hormones...

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Quantum computer completes verified task beyond practical reach of classical simulations

Black and white toned photo of a set of large metallic boxes with blurred people walking past.
IBM and researchers from the University of Chicago announced a demonstration in quantum computing that meets the fundamental criteria for “quantum advantage”—the point where quantum computers can be confirmed to have outperformed classical computers.Photo courtesy IBM

IBM and researchers from the University of Chicago announced a demonstration in quantum computing that meets the fundamental criteria for “quantum advantage”—the point where quantum computers can be confirmed to have outperformed classical computers on trusted computations.

The collaboration said its system had performed computations beyond the reach of leading classical simulation methods while providing confidence that the computation returned accurate results.

In their new paper, the researchers showed th...

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Homing in on the X-ray sky with eROSITA’s second data release

An X-ray image of galaxy cluster A3266
An X-ray image of galaxy cluster A3266 – The massive galaxy cluster A3266 is shining brightly in the X-ray light and is connected to a nearby group of galaxies by a gaseous filament.© Jakob Dietl/Uni Bonn/eROSITA-DE

The German eROSITA consortium (eROSITA-DE), which includes the University of Bonn and is led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), has released its second major public data set, the “eROSITA Data Release 2” (DR2).

Built from the first three all-sky surveys conducted by the eROSITA telescope aboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission, DR2 provides the most sensitive and comprehensive catalog of the X-ray sky currently available to the public...

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