The brightest take on this week’s science

The Great Salt Lake in Utah, sometimes known as 'America's Dead Sea', is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere.

But it was once even greater in size, albeit a lot less salty.

Researchers from the US have now analyzed a 120-meter (394-foot) sediment core taken from the lake bed and found that this body of water swelled up twice in its deep past.

Both times, the lake became 10 times larger than it is today, and its salt content was greatly diluted.

But as the lake shrank again, its salinity rose.

Today, some parts of the lake are up to 10 times saltier than seawater.

Read more.

Osteoarthritis has long been considered a consequence of wear and tear.

As cartilage in a joint gradually erodes away, it can lead to painful, bone-on-bone friction.

But a new study, led by a team from Chonnam National University in South Korea, explores an alternative hypothesis:

What if high blood pressure contributes to the breakdown of cartilage?

The team analyzed the health records of 36,820 individuals aged 45 and over, and found that people with high blood pressure have a much higher chance of having osteoarthritis.

In a follow-up experiment on mice, researchers identified a neuroendocrine pathway that could explain how hypertension accelerates osteoarthritis within joints.

It’s a promising therapeutic target.

Read more.

A) Fungal mycelium
B) Woolly aphids
C) Fiberglass
D) Denim

Answer at the bottom.

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If the brain is starved of oxygen, neurons can start dying within minutes.

So how do freedivers do it?

Despite holding their breath for minutes at a time, these athletes don't show the impaired memory function scientists would expect.

A new brain scan study, uploaded ahead of peer review, suggests a reason why.

When researchers watched the neural activity of 17 freedivers over seven months of training, they noticed their brains reorganized themselves on a large scale.

The hippocampus, an area heavily involved in memory and learning, showed selective functional reorganization as participants trained to freedive.

The authors suspect that these brains are adapting to intermittent bouts of low oxygen.

Read more.

Did you know that scientists can control brain cells with light?

This year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to a trio of scientists for creating an incredible new way to map brain activity, called optogenetics.

Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel first discovered a remarkable algal protein capable of responding to light in the early 2000s.

Then, Karl Deisseroth helped transform it into a light 'switch' for brain cells.

Lumos! 🪄

Watch the moment the scientist Karl Deisseroth tells his family he won the Nobel Prize.

It will bring a smile to your face.

Microscope answer: Denim.

This tangled mess is the fabric of your jeans, magnified 21 times. Traditionally, denim is made from cotton fibers, spun into a thick yarn, and then woven into a dense, durable fabric that can withstand years of wear.