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Language skills are essential to a child’s ability to communicate and develop. These skills enable children to engage with other people and learn from their surroundings and in the classroom.

Evolutionary DNA changes may explain differences in primate brain development

What makes the human brain so much larger and more complex than the brains of any other mammals?

13 Nov 2026

University of Michigan dashboard tracks public transit accessibility for people with disabilities

A new national database developed at the University of Michigan shows that none of the top 99 federally funded public transportation systems in the United States are easy for people with disabilities to use in four key areas of accommodation and accessibility.

13 Nov 2026

Experts warn against pharmaceutical influence in obesity destigmatization campaigns

We should be wary of campaigns by pharmaceutical companies to destigmatize obesity, say experts in The BMJ today.

12 Nov 2026

Language barriers delay early peanut introduction for many infants

Feeding peanut products to infants early in life is one of the best tools doctors have to help prevent peanut allergy.

12 Nov 2026

Researchers associate personality shifts with frontotemporal dementia functional decline

Frontotemporal dementia often results in early changes in personality or behavior before changes in cognitive skills.

12 Nov 2026

Exercise benefits people with chronic disease, but does the type matter?

A meta-analysis of 48 studies found that physical activity improved several chronic disease-related health indicators, particularly blood pressure, heart rate, and cardiorespiratory fitness, with significant benefits among people with hypertension and diabetes. Aerobic exercise had the strongest statistical evidence in the primary analysis, but no exercise type proved superior, and substantial variation between studies limited the certainty of the findings.

11 Nov 2026

Case report highlights urgent communication gaps for deaf NHS patients

Deaf patients get a raw deal in NHS hospitals, suggests an illustrative case history of a deaf person's experience as an inpatient, published in the online journal BMJ Case Reports.

11 Nov 2026

Study evaluates AI tools for making medical documents easier to read

A team of researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has evaluated various artificial intelligence (AI) language models to simplify medical reports and adapt them into clearer language for non-expert audiences.

11 Nov 2026

Rare visual disorder causes cat features to appear on human faces

Karl, a 28-year-old man living in the northeastern United States, has a grey tabby cat named "Luna". In the morning, his cat is often the first face that he sees.

10 Nov 2026

Scientists scanned people's brains before and after 45 days of yoga. Here's what changed

In a randomized controlled trial involving 139 healthy adults, 45 days of a standardized yoga program improved mood, self-reported sleep quality, and selected short-term memory measures compared with a waitlist control group. Brain scans from 43 participants also revealed changes in functional connectivity across networks involved in movement, attention, language, and cognitive processing, although the long-term significance remains uncertain

10 Nov 2026

Could eating more mushrooms help protect your brain as you age?

A review of existing research suggests that ergothioneine, a natural antioxidant found primarily in mushrooms, may protect brain cells against oxidative stress, inflammation, and damage associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Although laboratory and animal studies show promising neuroprotective effects, human evidence remains limited, and larger clinical trials are needed to determine whether supplementation can prevent or slow neurodegeneration.

10 Nov 2026

Your Instagram photos may reveal more about loneliness than you think

Researchers analyzing Instagram data from 415 US college students found that photographs, language, and online activity provided moderately useful indicators of subjective loneliness but were less informative about social isolation. Social loneliness was associated with lower interpersonal engagement, while emotional loneliness was linked to negative language, sad or angry facial expressions in profile photographs, and late-night posting.

9 Nov 2026

Study highlights the need for better nutrition tracking in NICUs

During daily rounds in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), physicians need to balance many considerations in their decision-making about nutrition plans for premature infants.

9 Nov 2026

Five AI models tackled 227 pharmacy exam questions. Here's where they struggled

Researchers evaluated five large language models using 227 infectious disease-related pharmacy examination questions and found that all achieved approximately 90% accuracy, with ChatGPT-4o-mini scoring highest at 91.2%. Accuracy was significantly lower for medicinal chemistry, clinical microbiology, higher-order cognitive questions, and image-containing questions, raising concerns about relying on AI-generated answers without independent verification.

9 Nov 2026

AI tool uses emergency room narratives to predict PTSD risk

An AI tool can analyze patients' narratives about injuries that sent them to the emergency room to predict who will later develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new study found.

9 Nov 2026

Searching for medicine in Europe? Not every Google result is what it seems

A study examining 9,000 Google search results across 30 European countries found that 36.3% of links to online medicine sellers led to illegal vendors, rising to nearly 77% for controlled substances. Countries that permitted legitimate online medicine sales generally had fewer illegal vendors among highly ranked search results than countries that prohibited such sales, although the observational findings do not establish causation.

8 Nov 2026

Harvard-led team receives $7 million to develop AI co-scientists for cancer research

A team led by Marinka Zitnik, associate professor of biomedical informatics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, has received a grant of nearly $7 million from Cancer Grand Challenges to create artificial intelligence (AI) "co-scientists" that help cancer researchers analyze data, generate hypotheses, and suggest new experiments, speeding new knowledge and therapies.

6 Nov 2026

SCAI updates consensus framework for assessing cardiogenic shock severity

The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) today released the 2026 SCAI SHOCK Classification Expert Consensus Update, providing refined guidance to help clinicians from diverse settings prioritize and recognize inadequate organ perfusion across a broad range of shock presentations, assess shock severity over time, and determine whether treatment is restoring adequate circulation.

6 Nov 2026

Autistic children show reading gains through online instruction tool

Despite many obstacles presented by students being at home during COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, the autistic children involved in this research project still showed significant progress through online instruction.

6 Nov 2026

Digital program boosts positive experiences for Chinese-American dementia caregivers

Chinese-American family caregivers of people with dementia reported a greater sense of control and competence in their caregiving roles and more positive views of caregiving after taking part in a seven-week digital support program, researchers at George Mason University found.

6 Nov 2026