New Delhi: The UK Biobank has collected the scans of 100,000 volunteers in the world’s largest whole body imaging project, to understand how bodies change with age, and how disease begins. The milestone was announced Tuesday in a release by UK Biobank, a biomedical database and research resource.
Since 2015, researchers have used this vast dataset, which includes MRI scans of the brain, heart and abdomen, bone and fat measurements, and more, to develop earlier and more accurate diagnostics for conditions like dementia, heart disease and cancer. The project is impactful not just because of the deep imaging, but also because of 10 years’ worth of lifestyle, genetic and health data from the same volunteers.
It is transforming healthcare, because UK National Health Service clinics now use Biobank-developed tools for faster, sharper diagnosis. The project is still ongoing and is expected to end by 2029.
Scientists have also used the data to train AI models that can predict diseases years before symptoms appear, and altogether around 1,300 peer-reviewed scientific studies have been published worldwide using this data. The Biobank will soon make available a billion anonymised images of MRI scans of the 100,000 volunteers, providing increasing access for global biomedical research.
‘Family recipes’ of Neanderthals
Just like modern humans, the Neanderthals too had their own “family recipes”, according to a new peer-reviewed study published Thursday.
The paper in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology by researchers from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem talks about the different meat curing methods of two Neanderthal groups, with researchers studying animal bones from two nearby caves in northern Israel, named Amud and Kebara, which were occupied by Neanderthals around 500,000 years ago.
Both groups seemed to have hunted the same animals and used similar tools, yet their butchery marks were surprisingly different. At Amud, the cut-marks on the meat were more densely packed and irregular, while at Kebara, they were more spaced and orderly. These differences weren’t due to skill or resources; instead, the researchers wrote that they reflect cultural food practices passed down through generations, like drying or ageing meat before cutting it.
It is one of the strongest pieces of evidence yet that Neanderthals had distinct traditions, possibly shared through social learning. It’s a glimpse into their cultural complexity and shows that meat prep may have carried deeper meaning in their communities, much like the food rituals we have today.
Scientists catch a planet dying
It is rare that a cosmic tragedy unfolds in real time, but astronomers from Australia’s Macquarie University have caught a distant planet in the act of dying.
In their study on orbital decay, the astronomers have found TOI-2109b, a giant exoplanet nearly five times the mass of Jupiter and twice the size, spiralling dangerously close to its host star, completing one blistering-hot orbit every 16 hours. This is even shorter than Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. It is the shortest orbit ever seen for a planet this big.
Using data that was collected over 14 years from NASA’s TESS, ESA’s CHEOPS and ground-based telescopes, the researchers confirmed that the planet’s orbit is shrinking by about 10 seconds over the next few years.
What happens next? According to the study, TOI-2109b might plunge into its star, be shredded by gravity, or have its gas layers stripped away, leaving just a rocky core behind. This rare glimpse into a planet’s “death spiral” is giving scientists new insights into how planetary systems change over time.
The peer-reviewed study was published in The Astrophysical Journal Tuesday.
A refuge for wildlife
After a massive wildfire swept through Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands in 2020, researchers noticed something surprising: more jaguars showed up. A protected 36,700-acre site that already had the world’s highest jaguar density saw an increase in both jaguar activity and new cubs.
A new peer-reviewed paper in Global Change Biology, published Tuesday, describes the findings. Led by Oregon State University, US, the study used camera traps and analysis of animal droppings to study jaguar populations before, during, and after the fire. The researchers found that resident jaguars stayed put, while others migrated in, and that the cats continued to feed mostly on aquatic prey like fish and caiman, rather than switching to land animals.
The authors said the area may be acting as a climate refuge, a safe haven for wildlife during extreme climate events like wildfires and drought. They highlighted the value of protected wetlands in an era of increasing climate extremes.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)