Studies Show That Singing Your Favorite Showtunes Can Help Fight Dementia

In 2013, researchers discovered that listening to show tunes can help improve mental performance in dementia patients. Now, a study of nursing home patients found that those who sang their favorite songs showed a marked improvement compared to those who just listened. A similar study in Finland demonstrated that singing not only helped dementia patients feel better and focus, but actually improved certain types of memory as well.

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ENIAC, the First Computer, is On Display at the University of Pennsylvania

A piece of computing history is sitting inside a university classroom in Pennsylvania. At the University of Pennsylvania's Moore Building in Philadelphia, part of ENIAC remains on display. ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, and it is known as the first programmable, electronic computer. Its construction was finished in 1945. Historian Paul Shaffer told ABC11, "The University of Pennsylvania is very proud to have started all this and we like to think this was the start of the information age!" Four of ENIAC's panels and one instrument table are housed in the Moore Building at the University of Pennsylvania. The computer was unveiled in 1946 and originally took up an entire laboratory. It had 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed more than 30 tons. ENIAC was designed and built to handle computations for the military's artillery firing table. Before ENIAC, that work would take hours. Newspapers at the time called it "Giant Brain." It remained in operation until 1955 and was eventually moved to Aberdeen, Maryland. The university also chose six women to be programmers of ENIAC. They played an important role in the development and usage of the computer through the years. Today, students walk by and study next to this piece of computing history every day. While Silicon Valley in California is known for the tech industry's giants, ENIAC's history is tied to Pennsylvania. More information on ENIAC is available at https://www.seas.upenn.edu. 📸credit: Paul W. Shaffer, University of Pennsylvania

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Scientists Identify World’s First Known Dog, Pushing Back Genetic Record 5,000 Years

Dogs were hanging around people a lot earlier than the genetic record had shown. Two studies published in Nature on March 25 found that dogs were living alongside humans in western Eurasia about 14,000 to 16,000 years ago, before humans developed agriculture. The findings push back the earliest genetic evidence of a domesticated canine by about 5,000 years and add new detail to how dogs spread. Modern dogs descended from ancient wolves, but researchers still do not know exactly when domestication began. A 2015 analysis using computer simulations of the canine family tree suggested the split happened around 27,000 to 40,000 years ago. Before the new papers, the oldest genetic evidence of a domesticated dog came from remains in northwestern Russia dated to nearly 11,000 years ago. One of the new studies examined DNA from bones of more than 200 canines recovered from archaeological sites in Europe and southwestern Asia, including Turkey, Switzerland and Scotland. The analyses showed that some of the animals were dogs. The oldest was a Swiss animal dated to 14,200 years ago that lived with a hunter-gatherer group. That Swiss dog shared ancestry with later dogs from other places, suggesting the animals descended from one population and that different human societies were acquiring dogs from each other. “It is kind of the equivalent of a new blade or a new point or a new kind of material culture or art form or something, where everybody’s getting really excited about having this fun new thing around,” Greger Larson, a paleogeneticist at the University of Oxford in England and co-author of both studies, told Emily Anthes at the New York Times. “And it’s useful, and it’s interesting, and it’s probably cute.” The second study found even older genetic evidence of a dog. Remains from a site in Turkey produced a 15,800-year-old domesticated animal. DNA analysis also identified ancient dogs at other sites in western Eurasia, including a 14,300-year-old individual in England. The Turkish and English dogs lived nearly 2,000 miles apart, but they were still closely genetically related. The researchers said that suggests dogs were already widespread across the region by then. The studies also found signs that humans in different places treated dogs in similar ways. William Marsh, a paleogeneticist at the Natural History Museum in London and co-author of the study, told Ewen Callaway at Nature that the animals “were treated in very similar ways.” Chemical analyses suggested that people at both sites fed their dogs the same food they ate. The English dog’s skull had decorative perforations like those found on human skulls. In Turkey, dogs were buried on top of deceased people. The research also tracked what happened later, when the first farmers moved into Europe from southwestern Asia about 9,000 years ago. The studies found that these farmers brought dogs with them, which led to more animal trading. Those farmers nearly fully replaced earlier human populations in Europe, but the research suggests they did not do the same with dogs. According to the studies, only about 50 percent of European dog DNA was replaced in later animals. “They seem to incorporate these dogs rather than trying to replace them with their own,” Anders Bergström, a geneticist at the University of East Anglia in England who co-authored both papers, told David Grimm at Science. The work supports the idea that all dogs came from one place, possibly somewhere in Asia, with additional interbreeding between early dogs and wolves. Adam Boyko, a geneticist at Cornell University who was not involved in the research, told Science News’ Tom Metcalfe, “Of course, we can’t rule out that some early fossils classified as wolves were actually tame and effectively dogs.” He added, “But from the standpoint of modern dogs, it seems they all share a single domestication origin.” Researchers still do not know what roles dogs had in hunter-gatherer groups 14,000 years ago. Laurent Frantz, a paleogeneticist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany who worked on both studies, told the Times that it is possible the animals did different jobs in different human societies. Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the work, told Science News the studies were a “significant advance” in understanding the origins of dogs. Photo by Ambareesh Sridhar Photography on Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/photo/street-dog-in-thiruvananthapuram-kerala-34059239/)

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Abandoned At Birth, She's Now Leading Care On A Hospital Ship

For Becky Chaplin, the road from a bag on a roadside in Kenya to a hospital ship in Sierra Leone has come full circle. Chaplin, 30, was found abandoned in a bag on the side of the road as a newborn in Kenya in 1995. She was so young that her umbilical cord was still attached. A missionary was out jogging when they spotted the bag and looked inside to find the baby girl. She was taken to an orphanage, and seven weeks later she was adopted by two British missionary workers stationed in Kenya. Becky said: "Mom said when she picked me up that she felt that God was saying 'this is your daughter'." She was raised in Kenya by her British parents until the age of 10, when the family moved back to East Grinstead, London. Chaplin said her early years in Kenya shaped what came next. She said: "Living in Kenya, I was exposed to extreme poverty and the opportunities you can have with education. "I was fortunate to be adopted into a family that gave me that opportunity." She said she had wanted to work with disabled children and adults since she was young. Becky said: "I've known since I was little that I wanted to help children and adults with disabilities." She went on to pursue a career in healthcare and became an occupational therapist. After completing her degree, she also pursued a master's degree focusing on hand therapy, burns and working in low-income countries. Chaplin then worked in the UK for four-and-a-half years. She specialised in hand therapy and gained experience on the burns unit in East Grinstead. Later, she heard about Mercy Ships, a hospital charity, and decided to leave her job in the UK to volunteer. Becky said: "I left my work in the UK to volunteer with Mercy Ships because I've always had a heart to come back to an African country. "I wanted to do it once I had the skill or experience to be able to help." She joined the Global Mercy in Sierra Leone as a rehabilitation team leader. In that role, she worked with burns patients recovering from free surgery on the hospital ship. Her work then shifted when the Global Mercy moved to the port of Freetown in Sierra Leone. In 2018, Sierra Leone established its first university-level physiotherapist course at the Tonkolili District College of Health Sciences. Chaplin said that before the degree programme began, people who wanted to train as physiotherapists had to leave the country. She said: "Before the degree programme was started, anyone wishing to become a physiotherapist would have to fly to Ghana, Cuba, Kenya, or further afield for training." With an estimated population of around nine million people, Sierra Leone had six fully trained physiotherapists, according to the source text. That began to change in 2023, when 15 new graduates emerged from the bachelor's programme and another 15 from the diploma programme. Chaplin said she had the privilege of working alongside them. Over time, she said, the mentorship programme grew. She now works in a local hospital close to where the Global Mercy is docked in Freetown, assisting with mentoring and upskilling physiotherapists around burn patients. Her focus is on helping local staff build their methods of treating patients, especially young children. Becky said: "The high proportion of burn patients are under five years old. "You see many accidents from boiling water or soup spilling onto small children. "I work alongside the physios to build their methods of treating patients. "As Sierra Leone develops their resources, we hope we'll begin to see less contractures come to the ship when we next visit Sierra Leone." Mercy Ships is an international health charity that deploys hospital ships to some of the poorest countries, delivering free healthcare. Chaplin now serves as a mentor to trainee physiotherapists in Sierra Leone, after first volunteering there as rehabilitation team leader on board the Global Mercy.

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Melbourne Zoo Snow Leopard Cubs Get Vaccinations Before Habitat Debut

Four snow leopard cubs at Melbourne Zoo have had their vaccinations before stepping out confidently into their habitat. The cubs, the only snow leopard cubs in Australia, were born in January to 9-year-old mother Miska and 10-year-old father Kang Ju. The two girls and two boys are named Maya, Kira, Lumi and Sabu. Laura Weiner, manager of carnivores and ungulates, said: "The names were inspired by the range countries where snow leopards are found, a wide variety of locations around the Himalayas. "We didn’t know what their personalities would be like and it was obvious very quickly, three of them were really quite calm and curious and the other one was very feisty and quite a handful!” The cubs weigh 3 kilograms and have been playful with their mother. Laura Weiner said: "As the cubs grow they start to practice some of those hunting behaviors and they’ve started to practice them on Miska, they’re pouncing on her, they’re chewing on her tail, they’re grabbing her. "As you can imagine, four cubs are a lot to handle! So, she does take some time on her own away from them." Snow leopards are classed as vulnerable, and Zoos Victoria is contributing to a global breeding program for their conservation. 📸 Talker News

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Virunga National Park Sees Elephant Return and Rare Gorilla Twins Born

After years of empty flights over part of Virunga, the view has changed. Elephants are crossing back into the park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and mountain gorillas have recorded a run of healthy births, including rare twins. Things are looking up in the Virunga Mountains, where scores of elephants have been returning across the border following a reduction in militia violence. This spring, 9 healthy births have also been recorded among the mountain gorillas, including twins that a ranger officer called “a very encouraging sign.” There were once thousands of African bush elephants roaming freely between Virunga National Park in Congo and Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. But mountains, jungles and borderlands are among the areas most commonly used by violent rebel groups around the world, and Virunga includes all three. The park has suffered from decades of violent insurgency in DR Congo, with elephants poached by rebels to sustain themselves. In recent years, however, 480 elephants from the Ugandan side have been documented travelling back into Virunga. “For years I haven’t seen any animals when I flew over this area, just rebels,” said Anthony Caere, a Belgian anti-poaching helicopter pilot at Virunga National Park. “Now not only are we seeing the elephants, which is an unbelievable sight from above, but we’re noticing the impact of such a big herd on the park. They’re restoring everything back to what it was 50 years ago and doing so much faster than we could have imagined. If the elephants continue to stay here in these numbers, this place will look totally different in just a few years.” The returning elephants are also changing the park itself. Their size and appetites are cutting trails through the forest, scything back invasive shrubs and expanding clearings. The area is beginning to look like a “forested savannah” again. There have also been sightings of buffalo, Ugandan kob, warthogs, topi and even a pair of lions. Virunga is the oldest national park on the continent and is home to extraordinary biodiversity. It has received millions in aid money from Re:Wild, Global Wildlife Conservation, the European Union and other organisations, including from a fund established by Leonardo DiCaprio. That backing has helped the park scale back poaching and put development programs in place to try to steer impoverished locals away from illegal agriculture, poaching or militia life. The recent stability has also benefited the park’s mountain gorillas. A female in the Bageni family, the park’s largest gorilla family group with 59 members, was recently observed to have given birth to twins. The babies are now 2 months old. Jacques Katutu, head of gorilla monitoring, said the twins are developing well and that their mother is managing the demands of two babies, which is uncommon among gorillas. “The five births recorded since the start of 2026, including twins in the Bageni family, are a very encouraging sign,” Mr. Katutu said in a statement. “Behind every confirmed birth is the patient and dedicated work of our community trackers. Present in the field every day, often under challenging conditions, they are the first to witness these extraordinary moments.” The births add to the signs of recovery in a park that has long been shaped by conflict. Alongside the gorilla births, the return of 480 elephants from Uganda has brought back the ecosystem engineering associated with the largest land animal on Earth. According to the account from Virunga, the elephants are helping restore the park to what it was decades ago. Caere said the change is already visible from the air. “They’re restoring everything back to what it was 50 years ago and doing so much faster than we could have imagined,” he said. 📸 credit: Virunga National Park

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A Young Fan Lost a Souvenir — So, An Officer Made It Right

What started as a letdown at a hockey game in Hartford ended with a police officer turning the night around for one young fan. Earlier this month, a family was at a Hartford Wolf Pack game when the team mascot pointed to a girl and her brother and tossed a T-shirt toward them. For a moment, it looked like the children had their big souvenir. Instead, the shirt bounced off the wall and ended up with another child, and the excitement quickly gave way to disappointment. Officer Christopher Vanwey, who was working the game, saw what happened and decided to step in. He surprised the little girl with a hockey toy and a soccer ball, changing the course of her night with what the family later described as a simple act of kindness. The moment stayed with the family, who said it gave them a chance to teach their children about compassion and the positive role police officers play in the community. In a letter later shared with the Hartford Police Department, the girl’s mother thanked Vanwey for what he did. She wrote that the gesture “made my daughter’s day.” She also wrote: “I hope this card can get to the police officer. Thanks for all you do each and every day to protect us all. Thanks for teaching my children about kindness. A very appreciative mom, Leah.” The girl, Bella, wrote her own thank-you note to the officer. “You are very thoughtful. Thank you for the hockey toy and the soccer ball. I hope you have a good day. – Bella.” The Hartford Police Department later shared the story on Facebook and said the moment reflected the kind of work that matters most to officers. “This is what policing is about, showing up, paying attention, and making a difference when it matters most.” 📸Credit: Hartford Police CT

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Exercise In Midlife Cuts Premature Death Risk For Women in Half, Study Finds

For women in midlife, keeping moving appears to matter a lot. New research found women who stayed active throughout middle age cut their risk of premature death by half. The study tracked more than 11,000 women and found that meeting exercise guidelines during midlife had “strong” benefits in terms of living longer. The findings showed that women who consistently met physical activity guidelines throughout middle age had half the chance of dying from any cause compared to women who remained inactive. Researchers used data from 11,169 women born between 1946 and 1951 who enrolled in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health. Participants were surveyed nine times between 1996 and 2019, about once every three years. The study collected data on how often the women met the World Health Organization recommendation of at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week. The results were published in the journal PLOS Medicine. Physical activity is already known to provide multiple well-being benefits and to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and premature death. But the researchers said most previous studies measured physical activity at only a single point in time, which failed to capture how activity levels changed over time. In this study, consistently meeting moderate-to-vigorous physical activity recommendations throughout midlife was linked to a relative risk of death from any cause that was half that of women who consistently did not meet the recommendations. The incidence of death was 5.3 percent among women who consistently met the guidelines. That compared with 10.4 percent among women who consistently did not meet them. The researchers said the apparent effect was similar, or even stronger, for deaths linked to cardiovascular disease and cancer. But they said those estimates came with greater uncertainty, making the findings less conclusive. They said that may be because fewer deaths from those causes were observed in the study. The study also looked at the benefits of starting to meet physical activity recommendations later in midlife, at age 55, 60 or 65, instead of throughout all of midlife. The researchers said the evidence for benefits in those cases was uncertain and inconclusive. Study author Dr. Binh Nguyen, of the University of Sydney, Australia, said: “This study supports the growing evidence that maintaining an active lifestyle in midlife provides health benefits. “Women should be encouraged to meet physical activity recommendations throughout middle age to derive these benefits.” Dr. Nguyen added: "Staying active throughout midlife can make a real difference for women’s long-term health. "Our study shows that maintaining recommended levels of physical activity over multiple years helps protect against early death.” The study followed women over more than two decades, with surveys carried out from 1996 to 2019. It focused on a group born between 1946 and 1951 and measured how often they reached the World Health Organization target of at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week. The central finding was clear. Women who kept meeting that target across middle age had a much lower risk of dying from any cause than women who stayed inactive. The death rate in the active group was 5.3 percent, compared with 10.4 percent in the inactive group. The researchers said the findings add to evidence in support of regular physical activity in midlife, while also showing the value of tracking activity over time instead of relying on a single snapshot. Dr. Nguyen said: “Women should be encouraged to meet physical activity recommendations throughout middle age to derive these benefits.”

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Scientists Discover Alien Space Weather Stations That May Reveal Habitable Planets

It turns out some young stars may come with their own built-in monitoring system. Carnegie researcher Luke Bouma is studying a new way to examine how stars shape the planets around them, using naturally occurring "space weather stations" that appear around some young stars. His findings are being presented this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting. The work focuses on M dwarf stars, which are smaller, cooler and dimmer than our Sun. Most of them host at least one rocky planet about the size of Earth. Many of those planets are not seen as friendly to life. The source text says they may be too hot, may lack stable atmospheres, or may be exposed to frequent flares and intense radiation. Even so, they give scientists a chance to study how stars affect the conditions around their planets. "Stars influence their planets. That's obvious. They do so both through light, which we're great at observing, and through particles -- or space weather -- like solar winds and magnetic storms, which are more challenging to study at great distances," Bouma explained. "And that's very frustrating, because we know in our own Solar System that particles can sometimes be more important for what happens to planets." Directly placing instruments around distant stars to measure that space weather is not possible, according to the source text. Bouma, working with Moira Jardine of the University of St Andrews, instead turned to an unusual class of M dwarfs known as complex periodic variables. These young stars spin rapidly and show repeated dips in brightness. Scientists had been unsure if those dips came from dark spots on the star itself or from material orbiting nearby. "For a long time, no one knew quite what to make of these oddball little blips of dimming," Bouma said. "But we were able to demonstrate that they can tell us something about the environment right above the star's surface." To study that further, the team created what the source text describes as "spectroscopic movies" of one of the stars. Their analysis found the dimming comes from large clouds of relatively cool plasma trapped within the star's magnetosphere. Those plasma clumps are carried along by the star's magnetic field and form a doughnut-shaped structure called a torus. "Once we understood this, the blips in dimming stopped being weird little mysteries and became a space weather station," Bouma exclaimed. "The plasma torus gives us a way to know what's happening to the material near these stars, including where it's concentrated, how it's moving, and how strongly it is influenced by the star's magnetic field." Bouma and Jardine estimate that at least 10 percent of M dwarfs may have these plasma structures during their early stages. The source text says that could give astronomers a way to better understand how stellar particles affect planetary environments. Bouma's next goal is to work out where the material in the torus comes from, either the star itself or an external source. "This is a great example of a serendipitous discovery, something we didn't expect to find but that will give us a new window into understanding planet-star relationships," Bouma concluded. "We don't know yet if any planets orbiting M dwarfs are hospitable to life, but I feel confident that space weather is going to be an important part of answering that question." 📸 Credit: Navid Marvi, Carnegie Science

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Epilepsy Drug Cuts Children's Seizures by 80% in Phase 2 Trial

For children with Dravet syndrome, a rare form of treatment-resistant epilepsy, a phase 2 clinical trial in England has delivered striking results. The trial tested a drug called Zorevunersen in 81 children aged 2 to 18 who were having up to 18 seizures a month as a result of the condition. The children were given three doses at Great Ormond Street Hospital, in a trial co-organised by University College London. After one dose, monthly seizures were reduced by 50 percent. After three doses, that reduction reached 80 percent. The drug was well-tolerated by all 81 patients, and no significant side effects were reported. Researchers also reported improvements beyond seizure numbers. The reduction in seizures was linked to better quality of life for the children, including improved development outcomes, especially in motor skills and communication. It also improved their markers for “coping” with Dravet syndrome. Dravet syndrome is believed to affect 3,000 children in England. It is one of hundreds of forms of genetic epilepsy that have no pharmacological options. The trial was led by Helen Cross, director and professor of childhood epilepsy at the UCL Institute of Child Health, and consultant pediatric neurologist at Great Ormond. “I regularly see patients with hard-to-treat genetic epilepsies, who can have multiple seizures a week,” Professor Cross said. “Many are unable to do anything independently for themselves; they require around the clock care and are at high risk of sudden expected death in epilepsy.” Professor Cross said she was hopeful that Zorevunersen “could help children with Dravet syndrome lead much healthier and happier lives”. She is now organising a phase 3 trail that will study the drug over a much longer period of time to control for potentially serious side effects. Scientists not involved in the study said the result could reach beyond one condition. They said the success of Zorevunersen showed pharmaceuticals can improve the lives of patients with these epilepsies, and could help drive work on other treatments and cures. “There are now over 800 genetic epilepsies that need therapeutics similar to Zorevunersen,” Dr Alfredo Gonzalez-Sulser, from the Institute for Neuroscience and Cardiovascular Research at the University of Edinburgh, told the Guardian. “This sets a clear path to achieve effective interventions for these severe life-altering diseases for both patients and carers.” Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/photo/cancer-ribbon-on-white-surface-8385408/)

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Kung-Fu Master Achieves Highest Honor, Level 10 Grandmaster, at 83 Years Old

For Henry Sue, kung fu started as a way to push back. As a teenager in Brisbane in the 1950s, he learnt martial arts after bikie gangs repeatedly targeted his father's Chinese restaurant. "The bikie gangs would come to the place, eat, and don't want to pay, just go out," he told ABC News Australia. "You'd ask them for money and they'd smash your stuff. "Because of the White Australia policy there was fighting almost every Friday, Saturday, Sunday." Mr Sue said the shop windows were smashed so often that insurers refused to cover them. He said kung fu taught him to stand up for himself at a time when the Chinese community was marginalised in Australia. Now, decades later, the 83-year-old is set to receive the highest rank in the art he turned to in those years. On Saturday, Mr Sue will become a level 10 kung fu grandmaster, the highest possible rank in kung fu. He will receive the honour at his Chinese Kung Fu Academy in East Brisbane, the oldest surviving kung fu school in Australia. Mr Sue teaches Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, a style known for its aggressive, close quarters techniques. He teaches his own variant, Circular Tong Long, which incorporates the circular movements of Tai Chi. Among his students is Marc Webster, who now teaches Circular Tong Long at his own academy on the Gold Coast. Grandmaster Webster said the tenth level was kung fu's highest honour, with only a few existing in the entire world. He said Mr Sue's role as a sifu went well beyond training students in martial arts. "Sifu is a teacher, [a] father," Mr Webster said. "If we have a problem and want to come see him he'll make time for us. "It's not just about the art, but making sure we're moving ahead with our lives in the right direction." Mr Sue said that approach has shaped the way he has run his school. He said he followed a strict "no thugs" policy and had expelled students in the past for using kung fu to bully others. For him, kung fu was never meant to be used as a tool for violence. He said it was a pathway to living an honourable life. "Kung fu is the last thing you learn," Mr Sue said. "You've got to respect your parents, respect your teacher, respect the teaching, and learn to be kind, forgiving and courageous." 📸 credit: ABC News: Luke Bowden

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