Sudden danger: the science and stakes of flash flood forecasting - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (.gov)

A large study led by Rutgers researchers has identified a possible vision risk associated with widely used diabetes and weight loss medications, including Ozempic and Wegovy. The findings suggest that people taking these drugs may face a slightly higher risk of developing a rare eye condition that can cause sudden and potentially permanent vision loss. The condition, known as ischemic optic neuropathy, occurs when blood flow to the optic nerve is reduced. Because the optic nerve carries visual information from the eye to the brain, damage to it can lead to significant vision problems.

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:The human body doesn’t age steadily—instead, organs largely experience two phases of rapid aging, also known as biphasic aging. A new study found that while some tissues, such as vascular, uterine, or vaginal tissue, don’t follow this two-phased aging, most do. Scientists reached this conclusion by developing a deep-learning model called Pathology-based Structural Aging Rate (PathStAR) to extract underlying tissue structure from 25,000 organ images in a public database and then plot molecular changes over time. Time is an incredibly complex concept that we tend to define in simple terms. Time marches inexorably forward—second by second, day by day, decade by decade—but if you plug Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity into this conceptualization, things suddenly aren’t so simple. In some ways, the same can be said for aging. Every year we add more candles to the birthday cake, but like time, this steady progression of aging is just a conception, not physical reality.