When burrowing animals dig into earthen levees to make their homes, they can weaken the infrastructure to the point of collapse and localized flooding — but most flood risk models don’t take that into account. Researchers have developed a new method to estimate the risk of levee failure and flooding from burrowing animals like badgers and porcupines.

Researchers compile a dataset of over 200,000 plant species worldwide to demonstrate the extent to which species extinctions and non-native invasive plants reorganize plant communities in the Anthropocene revealing biotic homogenization results from human activity whether intentional or unintentional.

Based on the longitudinal data of over 3,000 study participants, researchers found that subjects who underwent cataract surgery had nearly 30% lower risk of developing dementia from any cause compared with those who did not. This lowered risk persisted for at least a decade after surgery. Cataract surgery was also associated with lower risk of Alzheimer disease dementia specifically. The results were reported Dec. 6 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

A new Cleveland Clinic-led study has identified sildenafil – an FDA-approved therapy for erectile dysfunction (Viagra) and pulmonary hypertension (Ravatio) – as a promising drug candidate to help prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease. According to findings published in Nature Aging, the researchers determined that sildenafil is associated with 69% reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s.