Scientists finally solve a 100-year-old mystery in the air we breathe

 Researchers at the University of Warwick have developed a new method that makes it possible to predict how irregularly shaped nanoparticles move through the air. These particles are a major category of air pollution and have long been difficult to model accurately. The new approach is the first that is both simple and predictive, allowing scientists to calculate particle motion without relying on overly complex assumptions.

Each day, people inhale millions of microscopic particles, including soot, dust, pollen, microplastics, viruses, and engineered nanoparticles. Some of these particles are so small that they can penetrate deep into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream. Exposure has been linked to serious health problems, including heart disease, stroke, and cancer.Most airborne particles do not have smooth or symmetrical shapes. However, traditional mathematical models usually assume these particles are perfect spheres because spherical shapes make equations easier to solve. This simplification limits scientists' ability to accurately track how real-world particles behave, especially those with irregular shapes that may pose greater health risks.

Reviving a Century-Old Equation for Modern Science

A researcher at the University of Warwick has now introduced the first straightforward method that can predict how particles of virtually any shape move through air. The study, published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics Rapids, updates a formula that is more than 100 years old and addresses a major gap in aerosol science.

The paper's author, Professor Duncan Lockerby, School of Engineering, University of Warwick said: "The motivation was simple: if we can accurately predict how particles of any shape move, we can significantly improve models for air pollution, disease transmission, and even atmospheric chemistry. This new approach builds on a very old model -- one that is simple but powerful -- making it applicable to complex and irregular-shaped particles."

Correcting a Key Oversight in Aerosol Physics

The breakthrough came from taking a fresh look at one of the foundational tools in aerosol science, known as the Cunningham correction factor. First introduced in 1910, the correction factor was designed to explain how drag forces on tiny particles differ from classical fluid behavior.

In the 1920s, Nobel Prize winner Robert Millikan refined the formula. During that process, a simpler and more general correction was overlooked. Because of this, later versions of the equation remained restricted to particles that were perfectly spherical, limiting their usefulness for real-world conditions.

Professor Lockerby's work restructures Cunningham's original idea into a broader and more flexible form. From this revised framework, he introduces a "correction tensor" -- a mathematical tool that accounts for drag and resistance acting on particles of any shape, including spheres and thin discs. Importantly, the method does not rely on empirical fitting parameters.

Source: ScienceDaily

Scientists turn sunflower oil waste into a powerful bread upgrade

 As interest grows in healthier alternatives to traditional wheat-based foods, scientists are exploring new ingredients that can improve nutrition without sacrificing practicality. One promising option is partially defatted sunflower seed flour (SF), a material left behind after sunflower oil is produced. This underused by-product has shown strong potential for enriching bread with protein, fiber, and antioxidant compounds.

"Our aim was to optimize the reuse of sunflower seed flour considering its high protein and chlorogenic acid content," says biologist Leonardo Mendes de Souza Mesquita, who is currently based at the Institute of Biosciences of the University of São Paulo (IB-USP) in Brazil. He is the lead author of a study published in ACS Food Science & TechnologyTesting Sunflower Flour in Bread Recipes

To evaluate how sunflower seed flour performs in baking, the research team prepared bread recipes that replaced wheat flour (WF) with sunflower seed flour (SF) at levels ranging from 10% to 60%. Each version was carefully analyzed for its chemical makeup, dough behavior, and the physical characteristics of the finished bread.

"Sunflower seed flour has been shown to contain a very high percentage of protein, from 40% to 66%, as well as dietary fiber, iron, calcium, and high levels of chlorogenic acid, a phenolic compound associated with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and hypoglycemic effects," Mesquita explains. He adds that using this by-product increases the nutritional value of bread while lowering the environmental footprint of sunflower oil production. Because it is sold cheaply to avoid disposal, sunflower seed flour is also a low-cost ingredient.

Major Gains in Protein and Antioxidants

The results showed clear nutritional improvements. Breads made with sunflower seed flour contained significantly more protein and fiber than standard wheat bread. At the highest substitution level, the bread reached 27.16% protein, compared with 8.27% in conventional bread. Antioxidant levels rose alongside protein content.

Antioxidant activity was measured using Trolox, a water-soluble analog of vitamin E that serves as a reference standard. The values recorded in sunflower flour breads were much higher than those seen in bread made entirely from wheat flour.

"The result reinforces the potential of sunflower seed flour to promote health benefits associated with reducing oxidative stress," says Mesquita. He also notes strong inhibition of digestive enzymes, including α-amylase (92.81%) and pancreatic lipase (25.6%), suggesting that bread containing SF or SFE may help slow the digestion of starches and fats.

Clean Processing and Food Safety

Another key finding involves how sunflower oil is produced. According to the researchers, industrial extraction relies on mechanical pressing rather than chemical solvents. As a result, the leftover flour is free from processing contaminants, aside from residues already present from agricultural sunflower cultivation.

Source: ScienceDaily

Gut bacteria can sense their environment and it’s key to your health

 

The gut microbiome, also called the gut flora, plays a vital role in human health. This enormous and constantly changing community of microorganisms is shaped by countless chemical exchanges, both among the microbes themselves and between microbes and the human body. For these interactions to work, gut bacteria must be able to detect nutrients and chemical signals around them. Despite their importance, scientists still know relatively little about the full range of signals that bacterial receptors can recognize.

A key question remains. Which chemical signals matter most to beneficial gut bacteria?

Moving Beyond Pathogens in Microbiology Research

Until now, much of what scientists understand about bacterial sensing has come from studying model organisms, especially disease-causing bacteria. Far less attention has been given to commensals, the non-pathogenic or beneficial microbes that naturally live in the human body. This gap has left researchers wondering what kinds of chemical information these helpful bacteria are actually detecting in their environment.An international research team led by Victor Sourjik set out to address that question. The group included scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, the University of Ohio and the Philipps-University Marburg. Their work focused on Clostridia, a group of motile bacteria found in large numbers in the human gut that are known to support gut health.

Gut Bacteria Detect a Wide Range of Nutrients

The researchers found that receptors from the human gut microbiome can recognize a surprisingly broad array of metabolic compounds. These substances include breakdown products from carbohydrates, fats, proteins, DNA, and amines. Through systematic screening, the team also identified clear patterns. Different types of bacterial sensors showed distinct preferences for certain classes of chemicals.

This finding revealed that gut bacteria are not responding randomly to their environment but are selectively tuned to specific metabolic signals.

Lactate and Formate Stand Out as Key Signals

By combining laboratory experiments with bioinformatic analysis, the researchers identified multiple chemical ligands that bind to sensory receptors controlling bacterial movement. These receptors help motile bacteria detect nutrients that are especially valuable for growth. The results suggest that movement in these bacteria is primarily driven by the search for food.

Among all the chemicals tested, lactic acid (lactate) and formic acid (formate) appeared most frequently as stimuli. This suggests that these compounds may serve as especially important nutrient sources for gut bacteria.

Cross-Feeding Supports a Healthy Microbiome

Some gut bacteria can produce lactate and formate themselves, highlighting the importance of 'cross-feeding'. In this process, one bacterial species releases metabolites that other species use as food. This kind of cooperation helps stabilize the gut ecosystem.

Source: ScienceDaily

Singing to babies improves their mood

 Singing to your infant can significantly boost the baby's mood, according to a recent Yale study published May 28 in Child Development.

Around the world and across cultures, singing to babies seems to come instinctively to caregivers. Now, new findings support that singing is an easy, safe, and free way to help improve the mental well-being of infants. Because improved mood in infancy is associated with a greater quality of life for both parents and babies, this in turn has benefits for the health of the entire family, the researchers say. The study also helps explain why musical behaviors may have evolved in parents."Singing is something that anyone can do, and most families are already doing," said Eun Cho, postdoctoral researcher at the Yale Child Study Center, and co-first author of the study. "We show that this simple practice can lead to real health benefits for babies."

"We don't always need to be focusing on expensive, complicated interventions when there are others that are just as effective and easy to adopt," added Lidya Yurdum, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Amsterdam, affiliated with the Child Study Center, and co-first author.

Increased singing improves infants' moods

The new study included 110 parents and their babies, most of whom were under the age of four months. The researchers randomly assigned the parents into two groups, encouraging one group to sing to their infants more frequently by teaching the parents new songs, providing karaoke-style instructional videos and infant-friendly songbooks, and sending weekly newsletters offering ideas for incorporating music into daily routines.

For four weeks, these parents received surveys on their smartphones at random times throughout the day. Parents answered questions related to infant mood, fussiness, time spent soothing, caregiver mood, and frequency of musical behavior. For instance, parents were asked to rate how positive or negative their baby's mood was within the last two to three hours before receiving the survey. The 56 parents in the control group also received an identical intervention in the four weeks following the initial experiment.

The researchers found that parents were successfully able to increase the amount of time they spent singing to their babies. "When you ask parents to sing more and provide them with very basic tools to help them in that journey, it's something that comes very naturally to them," said Yurdum.

Not only did the parents sing more frequently, but they also chose to use music especially in one context in particular: calming their infants when they were fussy. "We didn't say to parents, 'We think you should sing to your baby when she's fussy,' but that's what they did," said Samuel Mehr, an adjunct associate professor at the Child Study Center, and director of The Music Lab. Mehr is also the study's principal investigator. "Parents intuitively gravitate toward music as a tool for managing infants' emotions, because they quickly learn how effective singing is at calming a fussy baby."Most surprisingly, the responses to the survey showed that increased singing led to a measurable improvement in infants' moods overall, compared to those in the control group -- in other words, parents who sang more rated their babies' moods as significantly higher. Importantly, improved mood was found in general, not just as an immediate response to music.

While singing did not significantly impact caregivers' moods in this study, Mehr believes that there could be follow-on effects on health in young families. "Every parent knows that the mood of an infant affects everyone around that infant," said Mehr. "If improvements to infant mood persist over time, they may well generalize to other health outcomes."

Follow-up study to further explore singing's benefits

The team believes that the benefits of singing may be even stronger than the current study shows. "Even before our intervention, these participating families were particularly musical," Yurdum explained. "Despite that, and despite only four weeks of the intervention, we saw benefits. That suggests that the strength of singing to your babies would likely be even stronger in a family that does not already rely on music as a way of soothing their infants."

The Child Study Center researchers are currently enrolling parents and babies under four months old in a follow-up study, "Together We Grow," which will investigate the impact of infant-directed singing over an eight-month period.

Although the researchers did not see an improvement in caregiver mood within four weeks, they are intrigued to see if singing can help alleviate stress or conditions such as postpartum depression in the long term. They are also interested in exploring whether singing might have benefits beyond mood in infants, such as improved sleep.

Source: ScienceDaily

Doctors used music instead of medication—what they saw in dementia patients was remarkable

 A new treatment that uses music therapy on dementia wards could improve care and support for some of the NHS's most vulnerable patients.

Researchers at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust have piloted a music therapy approach called MELODIC, across two NHS dementia wards.More alternatives to psychotropic medication are needed to support dementia patients who experience severe distress.

The pilot study involved a music therapist being embedded on hospital wards, the delivery of clinical music sessions and the implementation of musical care plans for each patient, and results from the research have now been published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry.

Music therapy, delivered by trained therapists, can include singing, playing or listening to music. The therapist can also identify specific ways that music can be used by families and carers in an individual's daily care routine.

During the study, patient data suggested a slight improvement in quality-of-life scores among patients and a reduction in the severity of distress symptoms and disruptiveness, although agitation scores increased slightly.

There were no increases in routinely reported incidents, and no adverse events related to music therapy interventions were reported. This is relevant for future research on mental health dementia wards where limited studies have been conducted to date.

Lead author Naomi Thompson, a researcher at the Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), said: "People with dementia on inpatient mental health wards are often experiencing very high levels of distress, and staff are under immense pressure to manage this in ways that are safe and compassionate.

"Our study yielded promising results and importantly showed that the MELODIC tool can be used effectively in these highly complex settings, giving an alternative option to current ways of managing severe distress, such as psychotropic medication."

The approach was shaped by interviews with 49 healthcare professionals, patients, and their families about their experiences managing distress on dementia wards and using music in everyday care and life to help develop the intervention, with findings published in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Importantly, the intervention -- which has been co-designed by clinicians, researchers, and people with lived experience - cost just £2,025 per month for the therapist and £400 initial outlay for equipment, suggesting a low-cost, scalable model.Dr Ben Underwood, Research and Development Director and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at CPFT said: "Some people with dementia can get so confused and distressed that we need to admit them to hospital to keep them safe. It can be difficult to manage distress in a ward environment and hard for patients, families and staff."I am very excited that it may now be possible for NHS staff to improve their experience on dementia wards using the power of music, and we look forward to working with ARU to develop this further."The current study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and is published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry.

Source: ScienceDaily

Dancing brainwaves: How sound reshapes your brain networks in real time

 What happens inside your brain when you hear a steady rhythm or musical tone? According to a new study from Aarhus University and the University of Oxford, your brain doesn't just hear it -- it reorganizes itself in real time.

Every beep, tone and new sound you hear travels from the ear to registering in your brain. But what actually happens in your brain when you listen to a continuous stream of sounds? A new study from Aarhus University and University of Oxford published in Advanced Science reveals that the brain doesn't simply register sound: it dynamically reshapes its organization in real time, orchestrating a complex interplay of brainwaves in multiple networks.The research, led by Dr. Mattia Rosso and Associate Professor Leonardo Bonetti at the Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, introduces a novel neuroimaging method called FREQ-NESS -- Frequency-resolved Network Estimation via Source Separation. Using advanced algorithms, this method disentangles overlapping brain networks based on their dominant frequency. Once a network is identified by its unique frequency, the method can then trace how it propagates in space across the brain.

"We're used to thinking of brainwaves like fixed stations -- alpha, beta, gamma -- and of brain anatomy as a set of distinct regions," says Dr. Rosso. "But what we see with FREQ-NESS is much richer. It is long known that brain activity is organized through activity in different frequencies, tuned both internally and to the environment. Starting from this fundamental principle, we've designed a method that finds how each frequency is expressed across the brain."

Opens the door to precise brain mapping

The development of FREQ-NESS represents a major advance in how scientists can investigate the brain's large-scale dynamics. Unlike traditional methods that rely on predefined frequency bands or regions of interest, the data-driven approach maps the whole brain's internal organization with high spectral and spatial precision. And that opens new possibilities for basic neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, and clinical diagnostics.

This study adds to a growing body of research exploring how the brain's rhythmic structure shapes everything from music cognition to general perception and attention, and altered states of consciousness.

"The brain doesn't just react: it reconfigures. And now we can see it," says Professor Leonardo Bonetti, co-author and neuroscientist at Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University, and at the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, University of Oxford. "This could change how we study brain responses to music and beyond, including consciousness, mind-wandering, and broader interactions with the external world."

Source: ScienceDaily

Scientists reveal how breathwork unlocks psychedelic bliss in the brain

 Breathwork while listening to music may induce a blissful state in practitioners, accompanied by changes in blood flow to emotion-processing brain regions, according to a study published August 27, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Amy Amla Kartar from the Colasanti Lab in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, U.K., and colleagues. These changes occur even while the body's stress response may be activated and are associated with reporting reduced negative emotions.

The popularity of breathwork as a therapeutic tool for psychological distress is rapidly expanding. Breathwork practices that increase ventilatory rate or depth, accompanied by music, can lead to altered states of consciousness (ASCs) similar to those evoked by psychedelic substances. High ventilation breathwork (HVB) might offer a non-pharmacological alternative, with fewer legal and ethical restrictions to large-scale adoption in clinical treatment. However, the neurobiological mechanisms and subjective experience underlying ASCs induced by HVB have not been studied extensively.To fill this knowledge gap, Kartar and colleagues characterized ASCs induced by HVB in experienced practitioners by analyzing self-reported data from 15 individuals who participated online, 8 individuals who participated in the lab, and 19 individuals who underwent magnetic resonance imaging. Their task consisted of a 20- to 30-minute session of cyclic breathing without pausing while listening to music, followed by a series of questionnaires within 30 minutes of finishing the breathwork session.

The results showed that the intensity of ASCs evoked by HVB was proportional to cardiovascular sympathetic activation, as indicated by a decrease in heart rate variability, indicating a potential stress response. In addition, HVB-evoked ASCs were associated with a profound decrease in blood flow to the left operculum and posterior insula - brain regions implicated in representing the internal state of the body, including breathing. Also, despite HVB causing large and global reductions in blood flow to the brain, there was a progressive increase in blood flow during the session to the right amygdala and anterior hippocampus, which are brain regions involved in the processing of emotional memories. These blood flow changes correlated with psychedelic experiences, demonstrating that these alterations may underlie the positive effects of this breathwork.

During all experimental sessions, participants reported a reduction in fear and negative emotions, with no adverse reactions. Across participants and experimental settings, HVB reliably enhanced ASCs dominated by Oceanic Boundlessness (OBN), which is a term coined by Freud in 1920 that describes a set of related feelings including spiritual experience, insightfulness, blissful state, positively experienced depersonalization, and the experience of unity. OBN is considered as a defining aspect of ASCs evoked by psychedelic substances, such as psilocybin.

According to the authors, their study was novel and exploratory and requires replication by future research including larger sample sizes and a control group to separate the effects of music on the brain. Despite these limitations, the findings provide a better understanding of HVB and direct research to investigate its therapeutic applications.

Source: ScienceDaily