Great apes share alcoholic fruit with their peers Drinking binges in the animal kingdom: Chimpanzees may have alcoholic "parties" similar to humans – and thus strengthen the sense of community within the group, biologists have discovered. They observed the great apes in the wild several times communally consuming fermented breadfruit. Chimpanzees rarely share their food. The celebratory mood of humans and apes could, in this case, be traced back to a common ancestor, the team

Archaea Could Play a Previously Underestimated Role in the Microbiome A new roommate: Scientists have discovered a previously unknown microbe in our gut. It's not a bacterium, but a species of archaea. The species, dubbed Methanobrevibacter intestini, produces the gas methane – similar to a newly discovered variant of the archaea species Methanobrevibacter smithii. These findings suggest that our intestinal flora is significantly more influenced by archaea than previously tho

Antibody drug against Alzheimer's now also available in Europe How Lecanemab works against dementia and who is eligible for it Hope for Alzheimer's patients: Earlier this week, the European Commission approved the first antibody drug for the treatment of Alzheimer's in Europe. The active ingredient, lecanemab, can slow the progression of the disease in some early-stage Alzheimer's patients, but cannot cure or stop it. Early diagnosis of the first symptoms of dementia remains

Only the T cells best adapted to the "enemy" undergo the second activation phase First trained, then selectively activated: The "killer cells" of our immune system are prepared for action in two phases instead of just one, as researchers have discovered. In the first phase, the T cells learn the characteristics of the pathogens they are to destroy. In the second, newly discovered phase, however, only the T cells that best recognize the pathogens are activated and dispatched,

A one-minute 100-hertz tone reduces dizziness and nausea caused by seasickness, driving, or flying Sound as medicine: A new type of sound stimulation could help combat motion sickness and seasickness. When our ears are exposed to a loud, pure tone of 100 hertz, it helps our vestibular system, as experiments with test subjects have shown. The approximately one-minute tone triggers vibrations in the inner ear and counteracts the disruptive effects of the rocking ship, the fligh

Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, the 2024 Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry, have developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures.In 2020, Hassabis and Jumper presented an AI model called AlphaFold2. With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified. Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold2 has been used by more than two million people from 190 count

Cellular highways under the microscope Neuron images provide information about degenerative neurological diseases