A King’s College London study of more than 5,500 adolescents published in JAMA Network Open finds that every extra 1,000 to 2,000 daily steps is linked to fewer mental health symptoms a year later — with no plateau up to 12,000 steps — and teens with the highest step counts showed measurably thicker brain tissue in regions tied to movement and emotional regulation. Also: researchers in China published a two-part system combining a spiral microfluidic chip and a deep learning AI model that can separate and identify breast cancer cells from blood with no fluorescent dye labels required — 89.2% tumor cell recovery, 96% AI identification accuracy, all from standard microscope images. And the Guardian reports Los Angeles has documented more than 180 cases of West Nile virus this year — the highest in nearly a decade — as relentless heatwaves and a powerful El Niño have created the worst mosquito conditions in recent memory. Plus orphaned kittens touring the Mall of America aquarium, a couch on a North Carolina road, the world’s longest-lived male orca, and a bouncy castle fraud.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}