Some brains resist Alzheimer's, and eyes evolved from an ancient "cyclops

Some of these brains were loaded with the amyloid plaques and tau tangles that define Alzheimer's, yet the person who owned that brain never lost their memory. The team, publishing in Nature Medicine, traced the difference to microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, which shift into distinct protective states in the resistant brains. "This has been an exciting journey with many partners," said co-senior author Bart De Strooper. "The study provides insight into one type of resilience mechanism in the progression of AD to dementia."

That animal likely started out with two eyes, lost them because it settled into a stationary, filter-feeding life where paired vision wasn't worth the upkeep, and kept only a simple central eye good for telling night from day. "The results are a surprise. They turn our understanding of the evolution of the eye and the brain upside down," said Lund's Dan-E Nilsson. When descendants of that creature started swimming and hunting again, parts of that old median eye were repurposed into the paired eyes vertebrates use today.

In the second, 57 people tapped along to audio tones for 21 minutes. Across both, spontaneous sighs showed up as a kind of physiological correction: they steadied breathing that had drifted into chaotic variability, and they appeared linked to the brain's noradrenaline system, the one that governs alertness and makes your pupils dilate when you need to pay attention.

Brazil, Chile and Guyana have all been removed from the UN's Hunger Map entirely. Argentina sits just under 3%. Colombia and Paraguay are close behind at 4%, and even Peru and crisis-battered Venezuela are making inroads near 5%. "If there is a region in the world that can potentially achieve" zero hunger by 2030, said FAO chief economist Máximo Torero, "it's South America."

Once running, it will deliver 300 megawatt-hours of storage and power roughly half a million homes for six hours. In Nevada, a separate project heats industrial salt to 1,040°F and can hold that heat almost indefinitely. Neither needs the cobalt, nickel or lithium that conventional batteries do. Former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham called the Trafford project evidence that "this decade is the most exciting since the Victorian period" for the region.

On June 30, after an 18-month wait while the sanctuary was built, she made the three-hour truck ride to her new 1,000-acre home in Alentejo and, by all accounts, settled in immediately. "There couldn't be a more fitting first resident than Portugal's last circus elephant," said managing director Kate Moore.

The Commission estimates that transition could prevent 15 million premature deaths every year, more than a quarter of all premature deaths worldwide, while cutting food-system emissions by 20% by 2050 when paired with halved food waste and better farm productivity. "Transforming food systems would deliver enormous potential benefits to our health and the environment," said lead author Matt Gibson.