A team has developed a wearable designed to aid navigation for people who are blind or visually impaired. The system uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to probe the environment and send signals to the wearer when approaching an obstacle or object. The technology, which is presented in Nature Machine Intelligence, was tested with humanoid robots and blind and partially sighted participants in both virtual and real environments.

According to a meta-analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour, the widespread use of digital technology may be associated with lower rates of cognitive decline in people over the age of 50. The results of the study — which analysed 57 studies involving more than 400,000 people with an average age of 69 — seem to contradict the hypothesis that the daily use of technology weakens cognitive ability.

The KATRIN (Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment) team has published the most accurate measurement to date of the upper limit of the neutrino mass in the journal Science, establishing it at 0.45 electronvolts (eV), less than a millionth of the mass of an electron. The KATRIN experiment, launched in 2018 in Germany, will finalise its neutrino mass measurement campaign this year, having reached 1,000 days of data acquisition.

In humans, larger birth canals are associated with slower labour and less back pain, but a higher risk of osteoarthritis of the hip, while narrower birth canals are associated with a lower risk of pelvic floor disorders, but a higher risk of obstructed labour, according to one study. The analysis published in Science is based on genetic and clinical data and bone densitometry images from more than 31,000 people in the UK Biobank to identify 180 genetic positions associated with seven ‘highly heritable’ pelvic characteristics.

Only 9.5% of plastics produced globally in 2022 were generated from recycled materials. The findings, published in Communications Earth & Environment, are part of a comprehensive analysis of the global plastics sector, which also reveals a large increase in the amount of plastic being disposed of by incineration and substantial regional differences in its consumption.

One of the problems with prostate cancer screening is that it results in a high rate of false positives, that is, erroneous diagnoses in people without the disease. A study in the UK has applied a genetic test to more than 6,000 people aged between 55 and 69, analysing 130 variants related to this tumour, which allows a ‘risk score’ to be calculated. According to the results, which are published in the journal NEJM, the test detected the disease more likely in people with higher values than traditional screening.

While some studies have suggested that having a mother with Alzheimer's may increase the risk of developing the disease, a new study reveals that having a father with the disease may be related to a greater spread of tau protein in the brain, which is a sign of the disease. The study, published in Neurology, does not prove that having a father with Alzheimer's causes these brain changes; it only shows an association.

A set of articles published in Nature and Nature Methods draws a high-resolution map of the structure of and connections between the brain cells of mice. The map is based on data from a single cubic millimetre of brain and includes more than 200,000 cells, around 84,000 neurons and 524 million synaptic connections. Although this is a very small part of the mouse brain, it will help us understand how different types of cells work together.

Two independent teams have developed photonic computing chips - which use photons instead of electrons - that could help cope with the increased energy demanded by AI-based technologies. The work is published in two papers in the journal Nature. ‘Photonic computing has been decades in the making, but these demonstrations could mean that we can finally harness the power of light to build more powerful and energy-efficient systems,’ notes a piece accompanying the research in the same journal.

An international team with Spanish participation has analysed the usefulness of a blood biomarker - the p-tau217 protein - for detecting Alzheimer's disease in 1,767 patients. According to the authors, who publish the results in the journal Nature Medicine, the test has detected the disease with high reliability in four hospital cohorts, as well as in a primary care cohort. They add that it is an assay that can be easily implemented in clinical laboratories and is already routinely used in some centres in Spain.