This narrative review examines how psychobiotics may influence anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia through gut-brain pathways involving neurotransmitters, inflammation, immune regulation, gut barrier function, and stress signaling. Specific Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains showed encouraging effects, but wide differences in strains, doses, populations, and study desi…

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Published online: 27 August 2026; doi:10.1057/s41599-026-08732-5 Social anxiety, loneliness, and learning difficulties in primary school students: examining the roles of loneliness and AI usage frequency

A voice companion prompt can be edited in seconds. That does not make it a harmless change. A small wording adjustment can alter how the companion handles hesitation, recovery, or uncertainty. If the prompt changes during an active conversation, two consecutive turns may follow different instructions even though the user never changed sessions. That creates an uncomfortable engineering tension: A…

Are DNA traces in two liters of water enough to track how a river’s biodiversity changes over the course of a year? A study by the University of Duisburg-Essen, using the Lippe River as a case study, demonstrates how biodiversity in water bodies can be analyzed in a pragmatic, comprehensive, and cos...

Here’s a look at the most interesting products from the past week, featuring releases from A10 Networks, Abnormal AI, F5 Networks, Intezer, Netscout, ScienceLogic, Searchlight Cyber, SelectHub, ServiceNow, Snyk, Tanium, and Tufin. ServiceNow organizes autonomous security around six solution areas ServiceNow has announced an acceleration of its Autonomous Security vision with six unified solutions…

Thanks in part to the revolution cell therapy brought to treating blood cancers, the modality is now showing promise in some autoimmune applications. This expansion is poised to yield even wider benefits.

Boson particles have been predicted by some to have been able to form stars known as Boson Stars . I am curious as to how these stars could have formed given that Boson particles are not truly affected by gravity. Also, given that Boson particles that have the same energy level can occupy the same space and move freely within other Boson particles, then how would the stars have been able to form …

In a large Australian cohort of adults with hypertension, use of blood-brain barrier-crossing antihypertensive medications was associated with a lower risk of dementia and mortality than use of non-crossing drugs. The association was strongest for beta-blockers and angiotensin II receptor blockers, although the observational design means the findings cannot establish causality.