Fish may be highly sensitive to antidepressants found in water - EurekAlert!

Things that once brought pleasure lose their appeal. Getting out of bed, talking to friends, or finishing everyday tasks becomes harder. For someone living with depression, treatment can offer a way back into daily life. People undergoing cancer treatment can also experience depression or anxiety, taking medication for their mental health alongside drugs aimed at their tumors. Researchers are now investigating an unexpected connection between those treatments. A new analysis found that patients taking common antidepressants had fewer deaths recorded over two years after beginning immunotherapy, a treatment that helps the immune system attack cancer. "The simplest way to put it is that SSRIs may release a second brake on immunity that sits right next to the one checkpoint inhibitors release," oncologist Cho-Hao Lee of Tri-Service General Hospital and National Defense Medical University in Taiwan told ScienceAlert. SSRIs, short for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, block the reuptake of serotonin, a chemical messenger. The group includes fluoxetine, sertraline, and escitalopram.

With about 30 visual pigments, compared to just three in humans, mantis shrimp possess a visual system that remains a mystery. Researchers from ULiège and Humboldt University in Berlin have, for the first time, analyzed these pigments one by one and discovered that some detect red light that very few animals can perceive. This finding, published in Science Advances, has potential applications in optogenetics. Vision is one of the most sophisticated sensory systems; it relies on proteins (opsins) that capture light and convert the signal into an electrical message that the brain can interpret. When combined with retinal, a small, universal molecule derived from vitamin A, opsins form the visual pigments (rhodopsins) that absorb light in the photoreceptors of the retina. In humans, three cone pigments are sufficient for color perception.

Collisions between gold nuclei have revealed unexpected behavior in matter compressed to extreme densities. The experiment takes place at the RHIC collider in the United States. Gold nuclei are accelerated there and then projected at one another. For a fraction of a second, the collision creates matter far denser than that found in an ordinary atomic nucleus.