Low-Flavanol Diet drives Age-related Memory Loss, Large Study finds

A large-scale study led by researchers at Columbia and Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard is the first to establish that a diet low in flavanols—nutrients found in certain fruits and vegetables—drives age-related memory loss.

The study found that flavanol intake among older adults tracks with scores on tests designed to detect memory loss due to normal aging and that replenishing these bioactive dietary components in mildly flavanol-deficient adults over age 60 improves performance on these tests.

“The improvement among study participants with low-flavanol diets was substantial and raises the possibility of using flavanol-rich diets or supplements to improve cognitive function in older adults,” says Adam Brickman, Ph.D...

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AI Tool Generates Video from Brain Activity

“Alexa, play back that dream I had about Kirsten last week.” That’s a command that may not be too far off in the future, as researchers close in on technology that can tap into our minds and retrieve the imagery of our thoughts.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore and the Chinese University of Hong Kong reported last week that they have developed a process capable of generating video from brain scans. The research is published on the arXiv preprint server.

Using a process called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers Jiaxin Qing, Zijiao Chen and Juan Helen Zhou coupled data retrieved through imaging with the deep learning model Stable Diffusion to create smooth, high quality videos.

Successful recreations of still imagery gleaned from brain ...

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Research Team reveals Reconfiguration Process of Solar Eruptions

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Gou Yanyu from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) found that the solar outburst structure undergoes a complex reconfiguration evolution during the early outbursts. This is an important advancement in the study of solar outburst activity. This study was published in Nature Astronomy.

In classical images, the core structure of a solar eruption is a magnetic rope consisting of spirally wound magnetic lines. When the eruption begins, the magnetic ropes around the core are transformed by magnetic reconnection into spirally wound magnetic lines, which wrap around the original core, leading to its rapid growth in a “snowball” fashion...

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Super Low-cost Smartphone Attachment brings Blood Pressure Monitoring to your Fingertips

Two hands hold a black smartphone against a white background.
Prototype of the blood pressure monitoring clip. The user presses on the clip and a custom smartphone app guides the user on how hard and long to press during the measurement. Photos courtesy of the Digital Health Lab / UC San Diego.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a simple, low-cost clip that uses a smartphone’s camera and flash to monitor blood pressure at the user’s fingertip. The clip works with a custom smartphone app and currently costs about 80 cents to make. The researchers estimate that the cost could be as low as 10cents apiece when manufactured at scale.

The technology was published May 29 in Scientific Reports.

Researchers say it could help make regular blood pressure monitoring easy, affordable and accessible to people in resource-p...

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