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Roughly one in three people over the age of 80 experiences age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a condition that affects the retina and leads to central vision loss. In the United States, about 20 million adults aged 40 and older are currently living with AMD. The vast majority have the “dry” form, which develops gradually and…

The brain’s ability to interpret the visual world does not depend solely on its advanced outer layer, the cortex. A new study in PLOS Biology reveals that an evolutionarily older brain region, the superior colliculus, contains neural networks capable of carrying out fundamental visual computations. These circuits enable the brain to separate objects from their…

Superconductors work like express trains for electricity. Once electric current enters one, it can travel through without resistance or energy loss. Because of this remarkable efficiency, superconductors are already key to technologies such as MRI scanners and particle accelerators. However, these “conventional” superconductors only operate at extremely cold temperatures. They must be kept in specialized…

A new study from the University of Hawai’i (UH) at Mānoa, published on November 6 in Nature Communications, provides the first direct evidence that waste from deep-sea mining could disrupt vital ecosystems in the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). This area, one of the most biologically rich regions of the deep sea, is now the…

Black holes are often described as cosmic gluttons, consuming everything that drifts too close — including light itself. This is what makes the images of the supermassive black holes at the centers of the galaxy M87 and our own Milky Way so remarkable. Captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration a few years ago,…

A team of scientists has found that the Southern Ocean emits far more carbon dioxide (CO2) during the lightless Antarctic winter than researchers once believed. According to their new study, this wintertime release of CO2 has been underestimated by as much as 40%. The research was led by scientists from the Second Institute of Oceanography,…