The new bivalent COVID-19 booster is now approved for children as young as 5 years old, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday. The bivalent booster shot includes one part that protects against the original strain of the COVID-19 coronavirus, and another part that targets the highly transmissible Omicron strain. Moderna’s bivalent vaccine is…  read on >  read on >

Scientists have taught a brain cell culture living in a laboratory dish to play the vintage table-tennis video game Pong. It’s the first demonstration that a collection of lab-grown brain cells can be taught to perform goal-directed tasks, the Australian researchers report. They call the culture of 800,000 brain cells “DishBrain,” and they next plan…  read on >  read on >

Human brain tissue has been successfully transplanted into the brains of rats using a cutting-edge experimental procedure, say researchers. They envision the achievement as a promising new frontier in medical research. Groups of living human nerve cells have become integrated into the brains of laboratory rats, creating hybrid brain circuits that can be activated through…  read on >  read on >

While working on a senior research project as part of her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University, Serah Sannoh decided to analyze peer-reviewed studies on diet and menstrual period pain, partly because of her own struggles with the issue. What did she find? Sannoh reported in her new study that her research showed foods high in…  read on >  read on >

That e-bike might make hilly rides a lot more fun, but it’s not improving your fitness the way a good old-fashioned bicycle would, a new study shows. People riding e-bikes are 44% less likely to reach weekly targets for physical activity than those on regular bicycles, according to a report published online Oct. 12 in…  read on >  read on >

The earlier a woman is diagnosed with diabetes, the sooner she may enter menopause, new research shows. Rates of diabetes have grown steadily, so researchers wanted to understand the long-term implications of premenopausal diabetes on women’s reproductive health. Their study of more than 11,000 women found that being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before age…  read on >  read on >

As some workplaces have added robots to the crew, workers in the United States and parts of Asia are feeling uneasy. Concerns about robots also happen even in industries where they’re not used yet, according to new research. “Some economists theorize that robots are more likely to take over blue-collar jobs faster than white-collar jobs,”…  read on >  read on >