Albert Einstein is – to put it mildly – a bit of a ledge so science fans will be interested to note that a handwritten essay by the granddaddy of modern physics is being flogged by Boston-based RR Auction.

The auction house, which specializes in historical documents and autographs, says that the six-page essay is unsigned and undated, but is believed to have been written around 1947-48 in Einstein's native German.

It forms the draft for "The Essence of the Theory of Relativity," an article that would go on to be published in English as part of volume XVI of The American Peoples Encyclopedia in 1948.

The special and general theories of relativity are discussed within, and the manuscript includes several equations and graph sketches. The introduction, translated, reads:

Mathematics deals exclusively with the relation of concepts to each other without regard to the relation to objects of experience. Physics also deals with mathematical concepts; but these concepts acquire physical content only due to the fact that their relation to objects of experience is determined in a clear way. This is the case in particular with the concepts of motion, space, time. The theory of relativity is that physical theory, which is based on a consistent physical interpretation of these three terms. The name "theory of relativity" is due to the fact that motion from the point of view of perceptability always occurs as relative motion of a thing against others (e.g. a car against the ground, or the earth against the sun and the fixed stars) (however, motion is not perceptible [;] not as "motion against space" or – as it has also been expressed – as "absolute motion").

The "principle of relativity" in the broadest sense is contained in the statement: The totality of physical phenomena is such that it offers no support for the establishment of the concept of "absolute motion", or more briefly but less precisely: there is no absolute motion.

"Einstein also pens several equations in ink and pencil on the reverse of the fourth page. In fine condition, with a minor rust mark to the first page," RR Auctions says. The spindly scrawls are nigh-on indecipherable to this pathetic monoglot, but the manuscript does come with a full English translation.

The institution or private collector that bids for the essay will need deep pockets, however, as it is estimated to be worth more than $350,000. The auction will end on May 11 and after seven bids currently stands at an already handsome $93,500.

RR Auctions says that at the time of the essay's writing, nuclear physics were under public scrutiny following the advent of the atomic bomb. Thorough explanations for the layman at this point in history didn't really exist so this is Einstein's attempt to simplify his works for publication in a popular encyclopedia.

"Einstein begins by offering a simplified discussion of his theories before launching into an increasingly technical explanation," the auction house says. "A significant scientific manuscript by Albert Einstein, discussing the history, meaning, and influence of his theory of relativity."

While we needn't point out why the manuscript is remarkable to the little Einsteins known as The Reg readership, for everyone else:

Einstein is widely considered one of the most important scientists in history due to his groundbreaking work in theoretical physics. His contributions to the field revolutionized our understanding of the universe and paved the way for modern physics.

He is best known for his theory of relativity, which fundamentally altered our understanding of space and time. This theory is based on the idea that the laws of physics are the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion. It also introduced the concept of space-time, which treats time and space as two components of a single entity.

He also made significant contributions to the development of quantum mechanics, a branch of physics that deals with the behavior of matter and energy at the smallest scales. He proposed the idea of wave-particle duality, which states that particles can exhibit both wave-like and particle-like behavior.

Einstein's work also had implications beyond the field of physics. His famous equation E=mc2, which relates energy to mass, has led to the development of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb. One of his earliest scientific contributions sought to explain Brownian motion, which occurs when particles are suspended in a fluid.

Though he did not "discover" black holes, his theory of general relativity predicted their existence. The first solution to the equations of general relativity that described a black hole was found by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, just a year after Einstein published the theory. The mind-melting cosmic phenomena continue to be a subject of intense scientific study and research.

Born to a family of secular Ashkenazi Jews in Ulm, Germany, 1879, he also had a career as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, from 1902 to 1909. It's during this time that he developed some of his most groundbreaking ideas, with 1905 in particular cited as his "Annus Mirabilis" (miracle year). In 1933, he fled Germany to escape persecution by the rise of Nazism, eventually making his way to the United States, where he was made a citizen in 1940.

In other news from RR Auction, a 46-year-old check signed by none other than infamous Apple asshole Steve Jobs is going under the hammer.

Items even tangentially related to Jobs can fetch a pretty penny thanks to his undying and deluded cult, and this one is no different, with an estimated value of $250,000. The check is actually made out for $175.00 to a Palo Alto management consulting firm – inflation in action, people.

But if it does happen to sell for more than Einstein's ruminations, well, here's another little equation: faith in humanity = dead. ®

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As per the study, which was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology on Tuesday, more than 100 types of consumer products contain toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which turn into gas and combine with other air pollutants to create ozone when exposed to sunlight.

The researchers behind the study estimated that around 5,000 tons of VOCs were released from general consumer care products in 2020, polluting the atmosphere in California. They believe these products can bring about a range of health issues such as health defects and reproductive harm, as well as cancer, UPI reported.

Moreover, they identified 30 product categories that they think need to be scrutinized, as they are likely to lead to exposure to VOCs. These include nail polish, shampoo, makeup and the likes of them, which contain formaldehyde — the most common harmful VOC. Other household products that emit VOCs reportedly include other household products such as cleaners, art supplies, laundry detergents, mothballs and adhesives.

"This study is the first to reveal the extent to which toxic VOCs are used in everyday products of all types that could lead to serious health problems," lead author Kristin Knox, scientist at Silent Spring Institute, said, according to U.S. News. "Making this information public could incentivize manufacturers to reformulate their products and use safer ingredients."

To come up with the findings, Knox and her colleagues collected data from the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which has been monitoring VOCs in consumer products for over 30 years to combat smog.

The researchers focused on 33 VOCs listed under California's right-to-know law, Prop 65 because they are most potentially harmful to human health.

Experts suggested that they were particularly concerned for the salon workers who are regularly exposed to carcinogen-concentrated cosmetics used for a diverse range of grooming services.

The researchers then found that at least nine VOCs were linked to salon products. They also learned that people involved in janitorial work could be exposed to more than 20 harmful VOCs as they use general cleaners, degreasers, detergents and maintenance products.

"The same thing goes for auto and construction workers. All these exposures add up and might cause serious harm," co-author Dr. Meg Schwarzman, physician and environmental health scientist at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, said, according to UPI.

"At the most basic level, workers deserve to know what they're exposed to," Schwarzman continued. "But, ultimately, they deserve safer products and this study should compel manufacturers to make significant changes to protect workers' health."

The scientists called on manufacturers to replace the harmful chemicals with safer alternatives. They also urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to add more of these harmful VOC-emitting chemicals to the list of those regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

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Published in BMC Public Health, the study examined how the recommendation to use face coverings among children 12 years and above in Finland in autumn 2021 affected the incidence of COVID-19. At the time, the country implemented mandatory masking in schools nationwide to help curb cases. Some cities extended the recommendation to kids aged 10 and 11.

To determine how masking impacted Finnish children and adults during the fall season of 2021, the team collected case number data from the National Infectious Disease Register (NIDR) of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and compared the incidence per age group.

The researchers compared the incidences of infection in 14-day periods for four months among kids 7 to 9 and 10 to 12, as well as adults 30 to 49 years of age. They found no significant effect between the younger unvaccinated age groups.

"According to our analysis, no additional effect was gained from mandating face masks, based on comparisons between the cities and between the age groups of the unvaccinated children (10-20 years versus 7-9 years)," the study authors wrote.

Unfortunately, the study failed to determine how rigorously the children used their masks at school and the types of masks they used during the period. They also noted that the data only reflected positive cases during the delta variant. Thus, their findings might not be comparable to those from the omicron and other variants, according to Medical Xpress.

In February, another study showed similar findings when its authors reported that the masking efforts during the peak of the pandemic did not help prevent the transmission of the virus.

"The pooled results ... did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection," the study authors noted.

The meta-analysis involved a review of 78 randomized trials on the effectiveness of physical interventions against respiratory viruses, including COVID-19, particularly their ability to interrupt or reduce the spread of disease.

 This photo shows students wearing masks with no smoking signs to support World No Tobacco Day at a primary school in Handan, northern China's Hebei province, May 30, 2016. GETTY IMAGES/STR/AFP

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China’s leader Xi Jinping sees the United States as a nation in decline. So do many Americans. It’s not surprising, then, that a recent The Economist cover story has commanded so much attention. For in four deeply reported pages, The Economist presents a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Anxiety over America’s decline, the editors conclude, “obscures a stunning success story – one of enduring but underappreciated outperformance. America remains the world’s richest, most productive and most innovative big economy. Along an impressive number of dimensions, it is leaving its peers further in the dust.”

This challenge to conventional wisdom has energized pundits. The New York Times has run two op-ed commentaries on consecutive days. One, by conservative columnist David Brooks, agrees with The Economist, concluding that American capitalism – for all its faults – “has proved superior to all real-world alternatives.”

The other, by progressive economist Paul Krugman, cautions: “The numbers aren’t really as good as they look, and there are shadows over America that aren’t captured by gross domestic product.”

Agree or disagree with The Economist’s conclusion, its evidence is impressive:

• In 1990, the gross domestic product of the US represented 25% of the world’s total. Despite the rise of China, the US still accounts for 25% of the world’s economic output.
• Compared with its counterparts in the G-7, a group that includes Japan and Germany, the US share is growing. Adjusted for purchasing power, the US accounts for 51% of G-7 GDP, up from 43% in 1990.
• America’s income per person was 24% higher than Western Europe’s in 1990. It is 30% higher today.
• Between 1990 and 2022, labor productivity (output per hour worked) rose 67% in the US, 55% in Europe and 51% in Japan.
• US spending on research and development has risen over the past decade to 3.5% of GDP, well ahead of most countries.
• America spends 37% more on education per pupil than the 23 other rich countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – and 34% of Americans have completed tertiary education, a proportion exceeded only by Singapore.

Photo: Asia Times files / Reuters / Brian Snyder

And this is only a partial list. The magazine cites other evidence, including statistics showing Americans are more mobile, start more businesses and have much stronger and deeper financial markets. (The magazine doesn’t mention another American strength: its highly productive agriculture and food system.)

The Economist concedes there are negatives, particularly income inequality. A lot of the growth in US income per capita went to the “ultra-rich,” who the magazine says have done “ultra-well.” At 77 years, Americans’ life expectancy is five years shorter than in other rich countries, in part because America’s poor get poor medical care.

Yet, while the US has the most unequal income distribution in the G-7, The Economist also notes that “a trucker in Oklahoma can earn more than a doctor in Portugal.”

Presidents usually get credit for strong economies but The Economist implicitly criticizes both Biden and Trump, warning that their turn to protectionism and industrial policy risks squandering America’s strengths.

Income inequality and lower life expectancies are among the negatives Krugman plays up. “Do we care,” he asks, “that the rich can afford more and bigger superyachts?” Krugman also argues that, while Europe lags behind the US economically, Europeans enjoy a higher quality of life. Their long vacations give them a better work-life balance.

Unfortunately, in focusing on GDP’s limitations as a measuring rod, Krugman ignores the many other dimensions on which The Economist rates the American economy highly.

Moreover, the tradeoff between European and American capitalism is broader than vacations. Brooks calls it “the tension between economic dynamism and economic security.” American capitalism, he says, “has always been tilted toward dynamism.”

And even though this tilt has weakened as US social spending increased, the US economy continues to outperform.

On one thing both Times pundits agree: American society is a mess. In Brooks’s words, “We’ve lived through a wretched political era. The social fabric is fraying in a thousand ways.” No doubt this fraying contributes to the feeling so many have that America is in decline.

There were similar feelings in the 1980s when Japan was on the rise. By the mid-1990s, it was clear those feelings had been overwrought.

Will history repeat itself? Today’s challenges, external and domestic, may be more serious. Still, by pointing out America’s continuing strengths, The Economist has contributed a fresh and helpful perspective.

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The survey of over 18,000 nurses, conducted by AMN Healthcare Services Inc in January, showed on Monday that 30% of the participants are looking to quit their career, up 7 percentage points over 2021, when the pandemic-triggered wave of resignations began.

The survey also showed that 36% of the nurses plan to continue working in the sector but may change workplaces.

"This really underscores the continued mental health and well-being challenges the nursing workforce experiences post pandemic," AMN Healthcare CEO Cary Grace told Reuters in an interview.

The survey showed there are various changes needed, with 69% of nurses seeking increased salaries and 63% of them seeking a safer working environment to reduce their stress.

This comes at a time hospital operator and sector bellwether HCA Healthcare Inc indicated a recovery in staffing situation.

While a shortage of staff in hospitals has been an issue for a couple of years, it gained traction globally in late 2021 and hit a peak early last year following a large number of resignations due to burn out.

The staffing crisis drove up costs at hospital operators, while boosted profits at medical staffing providers such as AMN Healthcare.

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Murthy said half of U.S. adults experience loneliness, which has consequences for mental and physical health, including a greater risk of depression, anxiety — and, perhaps more surprisingly, heart disease, stroke and dementia.

His advisory calls for a collective effort to “mend the social fabric of our nation,” including teaching children how to build healthy relationships; talking more to relatives, friends and co-workers; and spending less time online and on social media if it comes at the expense of in-person interactions.

Time spent with friends declined 20 hours a month between 2003 and 2020, according to research cited in the advisory, while time spent alone increased by 24 hours a month in that period. These trends probably intensified during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans were sequestered at home, experts say.

“What covid did is really pour fuel on a fire that was already burning,” Murthy said in an interview. “I want the entire country to understand how profound a public health threat loneliness and isolation pose.”

That threat can prove deadly.

The risk of premature death posed by social disconnection is similar to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day and even greater than obesity and physical inactivity, according to a review of research on social connection. And socially connected people live longer.

Loneliness can lead to chronic stress, which in turn causes inflammation that damages tissues and blood vessels and is associated with chronic conditions, experts say. Isolation and frayed social connections could make it harder to maintain or develop healthy habits such as exercise and good nutrition.

“This isn’t just people feeling good or bad about their social life,” said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University and lead science editor of the advisory. “It truly has an impact on our physical health.”

The surgeon general serves as a chief advocate for public health, using the office as a bully pulpit to sound alarms about issues threatening American lives. Cigarette packaging bears surgeon general warnings, and C. Everett Koop, who became surgeon general during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, advocated for the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, defying conservatives who insisted on promoting abstinence.

Murthy said the federal government could fund research on loneliness to better understand the problem and identify the best interventions. He also urged different levels of government to prioritize social connection in policymaking, such as designing walkable communities that encourage residents to interact. Health-care providers could screen patients for signs of loneliness, Murthy said, while insurers could pay for programs that help people cultivate healthy relationships as a form of preventive care.

Recommendations from the loneliness advisory extend far beyond the confines of the doctor’s office and public health department, with technology companies, schools and workplaces urged to unite behind goals of increasing social engagement and reducing isolation.

Murthy has advocated for treating loneliness as a public health issue for years and wrote a book about the issue published early in the pandemic. Now he’s sharing his own experiences with loneliness as he calls for a national movement to address it.

Murthy largely neglected friendships when he served as surgeon general under President Barack Obama, he wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times that previewed the advisory. He said he felt ashamed to reach out to old friends and suffered a loss of self-esteem and a sense of identity.

In his second stint as surgeon general, Murthy said he spends time with his children without any devices in reach, visits his parents and sisters as often as he can and answers the phone when friends call, even just to ask if he can call them back.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy has advocated for treating loneliness as a public health issue for years and has described his own experiences with loneliness. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
© Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post

“There are days I slip and sometimes a week will go by and I realize I’m feeling more disconnected from family and friends because I didn’t invest in small moments,” Murthy said, adding his situation has improved. “I feel much more connected to them, and I feel like I’m a better surgeon general as a result.”

Research shows loneliness and isolation are most prevalent in people who are in poor health, struggling financially or living alone. Strikingly, older adults have the highest rates of social isolation, but young adults are almost twice as likely to report feeling lonely as senior citizens do.

The surgeon general’s advisory casts the digital revolution as a double-edged sword for social engagement. It has made it easier for people who feel like outcasts in their communities to find others like themselves around the world. But social media and the internet can also replace or degrade in-person socializing.

“In many ways, technology is a really great thing. It connects you to long-lost friends, and you can see faces on your computer screen,” said Kerstin Gerst Emerson, a clinical associate professor at the University of Georgia who studies loneliness. “But it can have a negative side. It can disconnect you while you are with others, you are not present, you are on your phone. You can be in a room with family and friends, but you are not getting the social connections you want.”

One 2017 study cited in the advisory showed that people who used social media more than two hours a day were twice as likely to experience increased feelings of social isolation compared with those who spent less than 30 minutes a day on social media. The report calls on technology companies to avoid algorithms that promote division and polarization, while developing features that encourage healthy dialogue.

Regardless of how institutions respond, experts say individuals can help reshape society in a more collegial and connected direction.

“Probably our most effective way to reduce loneliness is if we take more care of the people in our lives,” said Richard Weissbourd, a psychologist and senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who has studied loneliness. “We have to have parents and schools and communities that put caring for people front and center again, and if they do that, we are going to have a society where people are less lonely but also people are more moral, more justice-minded and healthier.”

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MAUR, Switzerland—In this land of cheese and chocolate, children are being schooled in the more subtle pleasures of eating mealworms, locusts and crickets.

On a recent morning, students at a middle school outside Zurich gathered around a table laden with snacks made of insects. They quickly scooped up spiced mealworms, crickets dusted with paprika, and crackers made with flour from ground-up crickets.

“It doesn’t taste like a bug,” said Ana Munoz, 13, as she nibbled on a cricket. “It just tastes like what it’s seasoned with.” Then she ate chile-pepper mealworms and made a face: “blech.” 

Switzerland in 2017 became the first country in Europe to allow insects to be sold as food for humans after a lobbying campaign by edible-insect startups. That was the easy part. Now the companies must overcome what entomologists call the “yuck factor,” the gut feeling among many Western diners that insects are signs of rot and pestilence that shouldn’t be placed in one’s mouth.

To do that, the industry is recruiting consumers whose tastes are still in the larval state. Timothée Olivier, who works for Swiss Insects, an association of companies that sell bugs for human consumption, organized the tasting at the middle school. For the past four years, he has been touring Swiss schools touting the benefits of eating insects and bringing along samples.

“They are young, more open to novelty,” noted Mr. Olivier. “At some point, if not tomorrow then later, they will include insects in their diet.”

Until recently, Western Civilization sought to keep insects out of food. Regulators viewed them as a threat to human health. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration classifies insects that aren’t an intentional ingredient as “filth.” But now more government officials, academics and companies want to make insects a feature, not a bug, of the Western diet.

Insect burgers, anyone? PHOTO: ESSENTO

Insects are an environmentally-friendly source of protein and vitamins, and generate a fraction of the greenhouse gases of raising cattle, pigs and other livestock. And scientists say they are safe to eat, provided they are raised in controlled environments.

People across Asia, Africa and South America eat insects, from fried grasshoppers in Thailand to roasted big-bottomed ants in Colombia. Several children at Mr. Olivier’s presentation were accustomed to such critters because of trips to visit family abroad.

“I already eat enough insects when I go to Colombia, so I don’t have to eat them here,” said one 13-year-old. 

The European Union in 2021 followed Switzerland and so far has authorized four types of bugs for human consumption: yellow mealworms, migratory locusts, crickets and lesser mealworms. The FDA is less restrictive: Unintentional bugs are considered to be contaminants, but the agency doesn’t object to intentional bugs, so long as the product is made according to good manufacturing practices. 

Still, companies are struggling to find a mass audience for their products in the West, the yuck factor being a major obstacle.

 “We haven’t had problems getting people to eat insects once,” said Bastien Rabastens, founder of Paris-based Jimini’s, which sells salted-butter caramel mealworms, yellow- curry grasshoppers and a host of other insect-based fare. “The real challenge for us is that this won’t be just one time, ticking the box ‘I’ve eaten insects’ like ‘I’ve gone skydiving.’”

Some people spread their wings, and sample six-course (six legs, that is) snacks. A man holds a cracker made of a locust in Paris.

PHOTO: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The pandemic didn’t help either, Mr. Rabastens said. Consumers weren’t in the mood to eat bugs while sitting at home under lockdown. Most recently, right-leaning politicians across Europe were set abuzz after the EU in January authorized cricket flour as a food ingredient.

“This European Commission-which gives in to anti-meat lobbies and which undermines our agriculture and our gastronomic culture–I don’t want it anymore!” said Laurent Duplomb, a French senator and farmer. “I invite those who wish to eat crickets to come and eat them directly in my meadows: They will be natural, whole, unground and unprocessed!”

The movement to eat insects took off in the West a decade ago when the Food and Agriculture Organization published a 200-page report touting their merits. Since then, investors have plowed billions of dollars into the business of raising insects to feed to animals. Scores of companies in the U.S. and Europe also popped up to cut out the middle animal, and sell bugs directly to people. 

“Why do you need a cow or a pig in between when you can just eat the insect itself?” said Noelle Gmür, head of sales and marketing at Essento, a Zurich-based startup that sells insect snacks.

But in the following years, startups in the bugs-for-people sector began dropping like flies. One problem was European regulators, which hadn’t yet approved insects for human consumption as companies started selling.

Green Kow, a Belgian company that made tapenade with mealworms, had its goods seized by the Italian authorities at a food exposition in Milan. The company folded in 2019 after it couldn’t shoulder the burden of seeking approval from the EU. 

Mr. Rabastens in 2014 began a yearslong legal battle with the French government after the Paris prefecture seized 209 boxes of Jimini’s bugs at a food exposition. The dispute went all the way to the European Court of Justice, which sided with Mr. Rabastens in 2020.

In Switzerland, Essento has managed to get the country’s two largest supermarket chains to sell its products, a feat that edible insect companies have struggled to replicate elsewhere in Europe. The company raises its own mealworms at a small facility in the hills north of Zurich. 

Essento’s insect farm in Endingen PHOTO: ESSENTO

The process is simple: Tiny eggs are placed on organic grain in stacks of plastic boxes, with a little water added. The worms are ready to be harvested in a matter of weeks.

“It’s kind of like when you forget to bring out your vegetable trash,” Ms. Gmür said. “After two weeks or so, your trash is sometimes moving around.”

The worms are then boiled in a jury-rigged noodle cooker, killing them instantly. The process is meant to address growing concerns in the industry that insects suffer when they are killed.

“We don’t know what they feel,” said Ben Steiner, a veterinarian who runs the farm. “Whatever we do, it’s probably a good idea to be fast.”

The presence of edible-insect snacks on Swiss supermarket shelves meant that a number of children attending Mr. Olivier’s presentation had already tried them. Sydney Soldini, 13, recently bought some and fed them as a prank to her friends without telling them what was inside.

“Thinking of the insects, it’s a little bit disgusting,” she said, “but it was good.”

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When I was first setting up my resume, I was constantly advised that Microsoft Office was the best skill I could list. A new study shows that job applicants may want to add ChatGPT instead. 

Udemy, an online learning platform, compiled a Global Workplace Learning Index in which the company analyzes its course consumption to see what skills businesses are the most interested in. 

The index showed that the top global tech skill for businesses in the first quarter of 2023 was ChatGPT, which experienced a 4,419% increase in global topic consumption from the fourth quarter of 2022. 

Udemy

Other AI-focused skills such as Azure Machine Learning (281%) and AI art generation (239%) also saw significant increases, landing them spots within the top 10 global tech skills. 

The company compiled this data by comparing the consumption of courses in the Udemy Business collection from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023. 

"Having a comprehensive understanding of ChatGPT and other emerging AI technologies will be imperative to quickly pivot in today's era of rapid digital transformation," said Diego Davila, Udemy Instructor, Entrepreneur & Social Media Innovator. 

The U.S. saw an overall 5,226% increase in ChatGPT topic consumption, highlighting a growing interest businesses are showing in learning more about the topic. 

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"It was previously thought that cancer patients should just rest after a cancer diagnosis. Today, we have more and more researched information that exercise can even improve the prognosis of cancer. However, it is not yet fully known how exercise controls cancer," explains Research Assistant Tiia Koivula.

Previous preclinical studies have found that exercise affects the functioning of the immune system so that more immune cells are transferred to the tumor site and they become more active in destroying cancer cells. Two studies conducted at the Turku PET Center of the University of Turku in Finland aimed to find out whether a short exercise bout affects the mobilization of immune cells in cancer patients.

10 minutes of exercise were enough

The two studies involved 28 recently-diagnosed lymphoma and breast cancer patients. The lymphoma patients were between the ages of 20 and 69 and the breast cancer patients between the ages of 37 and 73. The studies were published in Frontiers in Physiology and Scientific Reports in January and April 2023.

During the study, the patients did a 10-minute exercise on bicycle. Blood samples were taken once before the exercise and twice after the exercise.

"The pedaling resistance was determined individually for each patient so that it corresponded to light or moderate physical activity. The most important goal was that the patients were able to pedal for 10 minutes straight without exhaustion, but so that their heart rate increased," Koivula says.

The researchers analyzed the number of several different immune cells, which are also known as white blood cells, from the blood samples and compared the numbers in samples before and after the exercise.

Exercise increased the number of immune cells capable of destroying cancer cells

During the exercise, cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cells increased in the bloodstream of lymphoma patients.

In breast cancer patients, the exercise also increased the total number of white blood cells, as well as the number of intermediate monocytes and B cells in addition to the cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cells. The change was quick and transient and, in most of the patients, the number of immune cells returned to a level corresponding to the resting value in the blood samples that were taken 30 minutes after the end of the exercise.

"It is especially interesting that we saw an increase in cytotoxic immune cells during the exercise in both patient groups. These immune cells are capable of destroying cancer cells," Koivula notes.

The researchers also found a link between the intensity of exercise and the change in the number of immune cells in both patient groups. The more the patients' heart rate and blood pressure increased, the more immune cells were transferred into the bloodstream.

"Although our results indicate that the higher the exercise intensity is, the more immune cells are transferred from their storage organs into the bloodstream, it is notable that also light or moderate intensity exercise lasting for only 10 minutes will cause an increase in the number of immune cells which are important for fighting cancer," Koivula says.

Koivula says that it is important for patients to find a physical exercise that they enjoy.

"Cancer treatments can make you tired and lower your motivation for exercise, which is why it is comforting to know that just 10 minutes of cycling or walking to a supermarket, for example, can be enough to boost the body's immune system."

Does exercise transfer immune cells to the tumor?

Tiia Koivula states that, based on the studies, it is not yet known where the immune cells enter the bloodstream and where they go after the exercise.

"Further research in cancer patients is needed to study whether the immune cells are transported to the tumor after the exercise, where they could destroy cancer cells. This has been shown to happen in preclinical studies, but research in cancer patients is still rather incomplete," Koivula says.

Cancer treatments often affect the immune defense by reducing the number of immune cells. When the immune system weakens, the boosting role of exercise can be especially important.

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The study repurposed data from 1,017 healthy adults enrolled in TWIN-E (Twin study in Well-being using Integrative Neuroscience of Emotion), a 2012 study looking for endophenotype markers of mental health that included personality evaluations based on web-based neurocognitive tests.

The results showed that neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness and cognitive reappraisal were the strongest predictors of well-being at the initial assessment. Extraversion was the strongest predictor of change in well-being, followed by the extent to which the individual perceived themselves to have experienced positive or negative events over the one-year period.

One explanation offered by the authors is the tendency for individuals higher in extraversion to have more abundant social connections that may facilitate maintenance or improvement in well-being over time. However, there was no capture of this information anywhere in the data.

What does jump out from the data provided, though not part of the current study, is the large swings in individual assessment categories as correlated to well-being. For example, getting more than eight hours of sleep per night was negatively correlated to well-being in the baseline assessment and was the most significant correlation to positive well-being in the follow-up. There were also dramatic flips in positive and negative correlations to exercise frequency, low body mass index and smoking behavior (past and current).

Additionally, a sustained negative impact on well-being was associated with spending time with family as well as volunteering three or more times per week.

The researchers suggest that while personality traits are useful predictors of well-being, recent life events and health behaviors are also important.

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Starting in mid-March, data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) leaps dramatically from earlier recordings, following lows of both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice this year.

Dark line shows the current year. (climatereanalyzer.org)

As a consequence, a large number of ocean heat waves are emerging around the globe, putting untold pressure on wildlife.

The events are alarming, but sadly not unexpected for those working in climate sciences.

"While it is comforting to see that the models work, it is terrifying, of course, to see climate change happening in real life," explains WHOI biogeochemist Jens Terhaar. "We are in it and it is just the beginning."

The previous temperature record was in 2016, during an El Niño – a climate pattern that further warms the oceans. While there's growing evidence that we'll soon be entering just such an event, we're not there quite yet, making it likely that sea surface temperatures may rise even further over the next year.

Heat gathering off the east coast of Chile tends to predict El Niños and that's exactly what we're witnessing at the moment.

Chart of sea surface temperature anomalies. (NOAA)

"If a new El Niño comes on top of it, we will probably have additional global warming of 0.2 to 0.25 °C," Potsdam Institute for Climate Research Earth systems scientist Josef Ludescher told the BBC.

The extra heat from an El Niño event would nudge some areas of our planet past 1.5 °C of warming for the first time, oceanographer Moninya Roughan explains for The Conversation.

Roughan believes what we're seeing is the easing of La Niña, which has brought brings cooler conditions that mask the extra heat in our planet's systems. However, some scientists are so worried and stressed by the possible implications they're reluctant to speak out.

As retired mathematician Eliot Jacobson explains on Twitter, the certainty of the shifted ocean temperature signal is unsettling.

Sigma probabilities are used to calculate the likelihood that the data in question is the result of something other than the hypothesis. We often report on this statistic in our physics and astrophysics articles, and 5 sigma is the threshold at which researchers are really confident that what they're seeing isn't merely the chaos of the Universe at work.

To put it another way, five sigma means there's a 99.99972 percent likelihood that the numbers are a measure of a predicted phenomenon, even if it happens to be a highly anomalous one.

Researchers fear that such a certain, anomalously large deviation from previous temperatures would indicate our oceans have reached the limits of their heat-absorbing capacity. This would be extremely bad news given our oceans have so far absorbed over 90 percent of the excess heat we've pumped into our climate systems.

"The cause for concern is that if it carries on, this will be well ahead of the climate curve [predicted] for the ocean," oceanographer Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey told The Guardian. "But we don't know yet if that is going to happen."

So we're not quite there yet, but the trend follows last week's forecasts that we're currently on track for 3 °C of warming by 2100.

Still, it's important to remember that even if the ocean's heat storage limits are reached, everything we can do to reduce our harmful fossil fuel addiction still matters, perhaps even more so than ever.

As climate scientist Katharin Hayhoe has said in the past: "It's true some impacts are already here. Others are unavoidable. But my research, and that of hundreds of other scientists, clearly shows that our choices matter. It is not too late to avoid the worst impacts."

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The question I always hear is whether you should nap for a short amount of time, or long. Short sleep was more useful and less harmful than a prolonged sleep or a long nap. This is due to the dramatic increase in blood pressure and heart rate that exists when you wake up from a longer sleep. The increase is much less pronounced when sleeping for a short time.

REM sleep is a state of paralysis when we sleep. It first occurs about 90 minutes after falling asleep, and then moves through different cycles. The only things that are active are the eyes and your breathing. By taking a short nap, you will avoid entering REM sleep and that feeling of drowsiness you get when waking up from a long nap.

Many people tend to feel sleepy around three in the afternoon, what we call "the 3 p.m. crash." This can be caused by fluctuation with insulin and blood sugar that happens after you eat your lunch. If you eat a heavy lunch, you might feel the need to nap more often than not. If your lifestyle doesn't support resting in the afternoon, focus on incorporating healthy, energy boosting foods like fruits and vegetables into your lunch. This will give you the strength to power through that crash.

The most ideal way to remain fresh and energized throughout the day is by getting a full night of quality sleep every night. However, if for some reason you are not able to do that, short naps that last less than 30 minutes will be more beneficial than longer naps.

Provided by University of Kentucky

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Some degree of memory problems and a modest decline in other thinking skills are common parts of aging. However, there's a difference between normal memory changes and memory loss associated with dementia, Alzheimer's disease and other related disorders. And some memory problems could be caused by other treatable conditions.

Memory loss and aging

It's normal to have minor memory loss as you age. This type doesn't prevent you from living a full, productive life. For example, you may occasionally forget an acquaintance's name but recall it later. You might misplace your glasses or need to write a list to remember tasks.

These changes in memory can be irritating, but are normal and manageable. They don't disrupt your ability to work, live independently or maintain a social life.

Memory loss and dementia

Dementia isn't a specific disease. It's a group of symptoms that affect memory, reasoning, judgment, language and other thinking skills.

Dementia usually begins gradually, worsens over time and interferes with a person's daily life, including working, managing daily tasks, social interactions and relationships.

Memory loss often is one of the first or more recognizable signs of dementia. Other early signs can include:

• Asking the same questions repeatedly.

• Forgetting common words when speaking.

• Mixing words up, such as saying "bed" instead of "table."

• Taking longer to complete familiar tasks, like following a recipe.

• Misplacing items in inappropriate places, such as putting a wallet in a kitchen drawer.

• Getting lost while walking or driving in a familiar area.

• Having changes in mood or behavior for no apparent reason.

Mild cognitive impairment

Mild cognitive impairment involves a notable decline in at least one area of thinking skills, like memory. This decline is greater than the changes of aging and less than those of dementia. Having mild cognitive impairment doesn't prevent you from performing everyday tasks and being socially engaged.

Researchers and physicians are still learning about mild cognitive impairment. For some people, the condition doesn't worsen, and they can remain independent. For others, mild cognitive impairment is an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease or another disorder causing dementia.

Reversible causes of memory loss

Many medical problems can cause memory loss or other dementia-like symptoms. Most of these conditions can be treated. Your health care team can screen you for conditions that cause reversible memory impairment.

Possible causes of reversible memory loss include:

• Medications. Certain medications or a combination of medications can cause forgetfulness or confusion.

• Minor head trauma or injury. A head injury from a fall or accident—even if you don't lose consciousness—can sometimes cause memory problems.

• Emotional disorders. Stress, anxiety or depression can cause forgetfulness, confusion, difficulty concentrating and other problems that disrupt daily activities.

• Sleep disorders. Poor quality or insufficient sleep can cause mental fogginess and forgetfulness that can interfere with a person's daily life. Obstructive sleep apnea is a common example of a sleep disorder that causes cognitive impairment that can be reversed with treatment of the underlying problem.

• Alcoholism. Chronic alcoholism can seriously impair mental abilities. Alcohol also can cause memory loss by interacting with medications.

• Vitamin B12 deficiency. Vitamin B12 helps maintain healthy nerve cells and red blood cells. A vitamin B12 deficiency, common in older adults, can cause memory problems. Learn how to maximize memory function with a nutrient-rich diet.

• Hypothyroidism. An underactive thyroid gland, or hypothyroidism, can result in forgetfulness and other thinking problems.

• Brain diseases. Although less common than other causes, a tumor or infection in the brain can cause memory problems or other dementia-like symptoms.

When to see your health care team

Talk with your health care team if you're concerned about memory loss or if a family member has brought up concerns about changes in your thinking. Sometimes the people who know you best will notice changes earlier than you will. It's good to have a family member or friend along to answer some questions based on observations.

Questions you may be asked may include:

• When did your memory problems begin?
• What medications, including prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements, do you take and in what doses?
• Have you recently started a new drug?
• What tasks do you find difficult?
• What have you done to cope with memory problems?
• How much alcohol do you drink?
• Have you recently been in an accident, fallen or injured your head?
• Are you having difficulty sleeping?
• Have you recently been sick?
• Do you feel sad, depressed or anxious?
• Have you recently had a major loss, change or stressful event in your life?

You may have a general physical exam, blood tests or brain imaging. These can help identify reversible causes of memory problems and dementia-like symptoms.

You might be referred to a specialist who can diagnose dementia or memory disorders, such as a neurologist, psychiatrist, neuropsychologist or geriatrician. You may need additional testing, known as a neuropsychological test, to determine whether your thinking changes are normal for your age or not.

The importance of a diagnosis

Coming to terms with memory loss and the possible onset of dementia can be difficult. Some people try to hide memory problems, and some family members or friends compensate for a person's memory loss―sometimes without being aware of how much they've adapted to the impairment.

Getting a prompt diagnosis is important, even if it's challenging. Identifying a reversible cause of memory impairment enables you to get appropriate treatment.

Also, an early diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease or a related disorder is beneficial because you can begin treatment, identify resources, settle legal matters and determine future care preferences.

Provided by Mayo Clinic

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Road trips are never easy, but they are far more unpleasant when your child repeatedly vomits in the back seat because they’re carsick. I know, because that’s what happens whenever I drive more than an hour with my 8-year-old. She’s now had enough practice to neatly throw up into a plastic bag, but I feel for her every time it happens and wonder what I can do to ease her misery.

This summer, we took multiple road trips, and we tried many remedies: moving her position inside the car, acupressure wristbands, bizarre-looking anti-motion sickness glasses, Dramamine. Some things worked better than others, and during each experiment I wondered why motion sickness — nausea and vomiting induced by riding in cars, boats, planes or using virtual reality devices — occurs in the first place. Why are some people more susceptible than others? Are there research-backed cures, or is trial-and-error really the best approach? I interviewed four motion sickness experts to get answers.

The causes aren’t clear, but motion sickness may have evolved for a reason.

Most experts believe that people feel motion sick when the parts of their brain responsible for maintaining balance receive conflicting sensory information, often due to a difference between what they’re feeling and what they’re seeing. Usually, when you turn your head, take a step or initiate any kind of motion, your brain receives signals from your inner ear about what that should feel like. When you’re sitting inside a car or boat but still feel a sense of motion from the vehicle, your brain notices a sensory conflict and you start to feel sick. (Similarly, virtual reality devices cause motion sickness because your eyes receive motion signals that your body doesn’t feel.) Other experts, including Thomas Stoffregen, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, argue that the body’s inability to stabilize itself while in motion plays a role.

Some researchers speculate that motion sickness evolved to protect us from poisoning. When our perceptual experiences don’t line up with what is expected, “the brain goes, ‘aha, maybe I’ve been poisoned,’” said John Golding, an applied psychologist at the University of Westminster in Britain.

We then feel nauseated and start vomiting, ostensibly to eliminate these potential poisons from the body.

Kids do not typically start experiencing motion sickness until the age of 4 or 5, if they ever do, because their bodies have to first build an internal model of what various motions should feel like, Dr. Golding explained. The peak age for motion sickness is around 8 — this explains my daughter — and susceptibility decreases over the tween years as kids’ bodies start to naturally habituate to and resolve these sensory conflicts. But of course, many adults experience motion sickness, too.

Prevention is the best cure.

One key tidbit I learned from my interviews is that it’s hard to alleviate motion sickness once it fully sets in on a given trip, so it’s far better to try to prevent it from happening or to take steps to alleviate it when it’s starting.

The best way to prevent motion sickness is to look out at the horizon when you’re moving in a car, boat or plane — this helps to eliminate the sensory mismatch, because your eyes see that you’re moving, Dr. Golding said. (You don’t, however, want to focus on the ground or trees rushing by, because that movement is too fast to provide you with a sense of stability.) When we shifted my daughter’s booster seat from the side of the back seat, where her view was of my headrest, to the middle, where she looked out the front windshield and saw the car moving, she was much less likely to feel sick. Dr. Golding also suggested trying to keep your head fairly still, but added that it’s always a bad idea to read or look at devices, because you’re focusing your eyes on something that isn’t moving.

Some medications can help prevent motion sickness, such as those containing dimenhydrinate, meclizine or scopolamine. (All of these drugs cause drowsiness, and scopolamine can also cause blurred vision and problems urinating.) Dr. Golding emphasized that the medications work best when given 45 minutes to an hour before a trip starts, and that they don’t work as well — if at all — once motion sickness has set in. That’s in part because, once you feel sick, your digestion slows and the drugs are less likely to get into your system, Dr. Golding said. (Also, if you vomit, you’ll throw the drugs right up.)

He added that there is some research suggesting that focusing on your breathing can prevent motion sickness, too. Before a trip, he suggested practicing breathing in deeply and keeping your breaths slow and steady, and to try to do this while you’re traveling, too.

Also, be on the lookout for early motion sickness symptoms, which include yawning and fatigue, said Charles Oman, an aerospace engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who studies motion sickness. If you or a family member is starting to feel tired or sick and you’re in a car and have the time, it may help to make a pit stop until everyone feels better, he said. If possible, then wait an additional 10 to 15 minutes before starting to drive again. If you’re starting to feel sick and you’re able to lie down (something you probably can’t do in a car, but perhaps in a boat), that may also help, he said.

Some alternative treatments work better than others.

I have succumbed to motion sickness from time to time — especially on boats — and I swear by the acupressure wristbands that push on a point three finger-widths above the wrist joint on the forearm. According to traditional Chinese medicine, this pressure point plays a role in regulating nausea. But research suggests these wristbands typically don’t work any better than a placebo, said Andrea Bubka, a psychologist at Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey. That said, the placebo effect can be strong, and Dr. Golding emphasized that if these treatments work for you or a family member, you might as well keep using them. (I certainly will, although they haven’t worked for my daughter.)

As for the weird anti-motion sickness glasses that were recommended to me by a friend, there isn’t yet scientific evidence on how well they work, but Dr. Bubka said she’s heard anecdotally that they ease motion sickness symptoms because their circular rims contain liquid that moves as your body moves, providing an artificial horizon. However, when my daughter wore them while watching her iPad on a car trip, she still felt sick, so I’m not convinced (but perhaps we should try them while she’s not on her iPad).

When it comes to the effects of ginger, experts disagree. Dr. Stoffregen said that eating ginger snaps or ginger candies before a trip can help prevent motion sickness, as can sipping ginger ale, as long as it contains real ginger and not artificial flavoring. But Dr. Bubka said she hasn’t seen good research supporting ginger’s benefits.

Three days ago, my family had the opportunity to put many of these suggestions to the test when we embarked on an ‌eight-hour car journey home from Maine. Hoping to minimize the chance that my daughter got sick — and wanting to let her watch her iPad on the long drive — I gave her dimenhydrinate (Dramamine) 45 minutes before we started off. I also sat her in the middle of the back seat and told her to look at the horizon if she started to feel woozy. It was a success: One of our first vomit-free, whine-free family travel experiences in years.

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Why champagne has stable “bubble chains” and other carbonated drinks do not

“God mode”, for those who aren’t gamers, is a mode of operation (or cheat) built into some types of games based around shooting things. In God mode you are invulnerable to damage and you never run out of ammunition.

There’s no God mode in real life, of course, but the world’s military organizations are very interested in weapons that promise something like it: lasers and other “directed energy weapons.” The US government, for example, is spending nearly US$1 billion per year on directed energy projects.

Australia is not immune to the appeal. The 2020 Force Structure Plan called for a directed energy weapon system “capable of defeating armored vehicles up to and including main battle tanks.”

In March this year, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles launched Australian startup AIM Defence’s new directed energy testing range on the outskirts of Melbourne. In April, the Defense Science and Technology group announced a A$13 million (US$8.6 million) deal with British defense technology company QinetiQ to develop a prototype defensive laser.

And directed energy technology is a priority in the new A$3.4 billion Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) program.

A directed energy weapon concentrates large amounts of electromagnetic energy on a remote target. This energy might be in the form of light (a laser), but microwaves or radio waves can also be used.

In the interest of brevity, we’ll concentrate on laser-based directed energy weapons here, but much of the argument also applies to the other types.

Depending on how much energy is focused on the target, these weapons can damage the delicate electronic systems that control devices and the people who operate them, or melt or burn sturdier hardware.

The US tested experimental laser weapon systems in the 1980s. Photo: AP via The Conversation

Because electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light, they are much faster than even the fastest traditional weapons.

Take a hypersonic missile traveling at ten times the speed of sound towards a target 10 kilometers away. It would have moved only about 10 centimeters by the time the directed light energy from a high-power laser would have reached the target.

What’s more, because these weapons project light rather than munitions, they will never run out of ammunition. This also means ammunition does not have to be manufactured in a factory and transported to the weapon.

Directed energy is not affected by gravity like missiles and bullets are, so it travels in a straight line. This makes aiming and targeting easier and more reliable.

And because directed energy weapons cause damage by heating up a target area, they have less potential to hit nearby objects or send shrapnel flying.

Although directed energy weapons have all these advantages over conventional weapons, useful ones have proven difficult to build.

One problem faced by laser weapons is the huge amount of power required to destroy useful targets such as missiles. To destroy something of this size requires lasers with hundreds of kilowatts or even megawatts of power. And these devices are only around 20% efficient, so we would require five times as much power to run the device itself.

We are well into megawatt territory here – that’s the kind of power consumed by a small town. For this reason, even portable directed energy devices are very large.

(It’s only recently that the US has been able to make a relatively low-power 50kW laser compact enough to fit on an armored vehicle, although devices operating at powers up to 300kW have been developed.)

The US’s Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense, or DE M-SHORAD, is a 50kW laser system mounted on an armored vehicle. Photo: Jim Sheppard / US Army via The Conversation

Also, all that heat needs to be removed from the delicate optical equipment that produces the light very rapidly, or it will damage the laser itself. This has proved difficult, though laser technologies with more efficient heat transfer have gradually increased the amount of light energy that can reliably be produced.

Another side effect of dealing with such large amounts of energy is that any imperfections in the optical systems used to focus and direct the light can easily cause catastrophic damage to the laser system.

Nor is it easy to focus a laser on a spot the size of a 10 cent piece tens of kilometers away, through atmospheric turbulence and dust or rain. Add to this the difficulty of holding the energy in the same location on a fast-moving target for tens of seconds, and the practical difficulties become apparent.

Having said this, technologies to overcome all of these obstacles continue to improve.

But suppose all the technical problems of directed energy weapons are overcome. Even then, to manufacture them in quantity we will face significant supply chain and infrastructure challenges.

There are companies in Australia with the expertise to make such devices. However, to develop and mass-produce directed energy weapons requires an industrial capacity for the fabrication of the necessary laser diodes and high-quality optics, which does not exist in Australia.

To have a “sovereign capability” – being able to produce these weapons without relying on inputs from overseas – we will need to develop such industries.

This is a time-consuming and expensive national infrastructure investment. In peacetime, it is relatively easy to acquire the raw materials for a directed energy weapon from overseas, but in a large-scale conflict countries that are able to produce these devices will likely be producing them for their own needs.

The potential military advantages of directed energy weapons, and the consequences of an adversary having them, mean Australia and many other countries will maintain an interest in developing them.

But as recent policy decisions about nuclear submarines have shown, it is no easy task to quickly develop an industrial capability in technologies that our industrial base has until now largely ignored.

Sean O’Byrne is Associate Professor, Deputy Head of School (Research), School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The petrified waterfalls and terraced basins look like a dreamy cascade of infinity spas, which is exactly what they once were for the kings of Pergamon. Image credit: Ryzhkov Oleksandr/Shutterstock.com

Since the second century BCE, the city of Pamukkale, which neighbors the ancient Roman site of Hierapolis, has been used as a natural spa. The ancient formation was once believed to have healing powers, decked out with hot thermal springs and white terraces that make for some pretty visually stunning R&R.

The natural site in Denizli Province in southwestern Turkey was made possible by thermal spring water that brought bucketloads of calcite into the region. It’s classed as travertine, a type of limestone that forms when a mineral-rich lake or river system evaporates and leaves behind a crusty, but admittedly quite beautiful, calcium carbonate trail.

As a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988, it’s recognized as a site of cultural and natural heritage to be protected and admired. A fitting status for a spot that once bathed the kings of Pergamon, a Greek state that ruled during the Hellenistic period.

Hierapolis is the name of the ancient Greek city that was built on top of the travertine formation, which has been nicknamed the Cotton Palace for its snow-white limestone. The crusty cotton formed over millennia as mineral-rich waters dripped down the mountainside.

As a type of sedimentary rock, the travertine was deposited by 17 hot springs in the region whose temperatures range from 35°C (95°F) to 100°C (212°F), aka balmy to boiling. The milder temperatures made for a warming spa for humans of the second century BCE at a time when doctors considered it to be a healing center.

The site’s historic significance is remembered in a museum that contains historical artifacts including Bronze Age trinkets. Its past is also spelled out in archaeology, as the site boasts the Theatre of Hierapolis and a necropolis (ancient cemetery) with sarcophagi that stretch for over a mile. 

How to get there

The Çardak Airport is the nearest airport to Pamukkale. From there, it’s around an hour’s drive.

CURIOUS magazine is a digital magazine from IFLScience featuring interviews, experts, deep dives, fun facts, news, book excerpts, and much more. Issue 10 is out now.

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Brains, eyes, and digestive organs. Those were just some of the soft tissue surprises waiting for researchers processing 462-million-year-old specimens retrieved from Castle Bank Quarry in Wales, UK. The Castle Bank Community, as the collection of ancient marine oddities is known, demonstrates remarkable diversity as well as preservation, contributing more than 170 new species to science with the help of crowdfunding.

Exceptional specimens such as these are sometimes called Burgess Shale-types after a location in Canada where fossils were found with soft tissues preserved, extending our understanding of the evolution of animal groups. Typically, they’re limited to the Cambrian period that stretched between 541 and 485 million years ago, but on occasion, science is treated to an extra old glut of gorgeous fossils.

A new species of tiny bivalved arthropod with long grasping appendages (left). Image credit: Joe Botting

That could be said of the Castle Bank Community which dates back to 462 million years ago, landing them in the Middle Ordovician epoch. They are mostly small in size, sitting between 1 to 5 millimeters in total body length (0.04 to 0.2 inches).

Organisms among the Castle Bank Community include worms, starfish, sponges, crustaceans, and arthropods, making for quite the colorful cast of Ordovician marine beasties. Such a roster gives scientists a magnificent snapshot of the lives of some of the earliest animal-dominated communities, allowing them to track ecological development across time.

As well as being incredibly diverse, the Castle Bank Community was also incredibly well preserved. Soft tissues found among the fossils included eyes, optic nerves, brains, and digestive tissues. They also demonstrated unexpectedly small body sizes, which the researchers hypothesize could’ve been an adaptive response to their changing ecology.

A strange, tube-dwelling animal with two long tentacles and a delicate lobe of soft tissue. Image credit: Joe Botting

“Many of the exceptionally preserved fossils (for example, tube-dwelling organisms and algae) were small and sessile but do not have holdfasts or attachment preserved, suggesting that they were forcibly removed from a hard substrate before burial,” they explained. “The small size of many of the Castle Bank species may therefore reflect an expected phase of ecological evolution between the Cambrian and modern faunas, revealed here in a specific community that was possibly associated with undersea rock exposures.” 

There are several possible drivers that could’ve made small size and mobility beneficial traits in the Middle Ordovician epoch, including changes in predation strategy or the distribution of nutrients during what the authors term a “phytoplankton revolution”.

Whatever the cause, the Castle Bank Community is an example of how miniaturization was occurring with specific ecosystems at this time, though questions remain as to how widespread it was.

A new species of arthropod with visible gut (dark line down the body). Image credit: Joe Botting

The fossil bonanza in Wales was made possible thanks to a crowdfunding project that raised money to fund the microscopy equipment needed for gleaning insights from such miniature specimens. With more than 170 species already under the researchers’ belts, it’s hoped the project's efforts will yield even more in future, shining light on a murky period in the evolution of early animals.

The study is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.  

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A man from the Netherlands has been ordered by the courts to stop donating sperm after allegedly fathering over 550 children worldwide.

The 41-year-old, named Jonathan in press reports, has been donating his sperm to fertility clinics since 2007 according to BBC News. In 2017, when it was discovered he had fathered over 100 children, he was banned from donating to sperm clinics in the Netherlands. According to the findings of a recent civil case, however, he continued to donate to clinics abroad, to people he met via online advertisement, and to Dutch sperm banks that offer services internationally.

While Jonathan's lawyers said that their client was motivated by his want to help people conceive, the court stressed that his actions could plausibly have negative consequences for the families who received the sperm, who are now "confronted with the fact that the children in their family are part of a huge kinship network. with hundreds of half-siblings, which they did not choose".

Guidelines used in the Netherlands allow sperm donors to father a maximum of 25 children in 12 families, though it becomes harder to police when donors can offer their sperm internationally. According to judges in the civil case, brought by a foundation aiming to protect the rights of children born via a donor, Jonathan has produced between 550 and 600 children. The judge added that he had "deliberately misinformed prospective parents about the number of children he had already fathered in the past".

The man has now been banned from fathering any more children via sperm donation, with a potential €100,000 ($110,0000) fine per breach. 

A surprising number of cases like this have happened in the Netherlands in recent years. One prolific sperm donor known as "Louis" fathered over 200 children via sperm donations, specifically hoping that if he donated enough of his sperm, one of his children would track him down. 

“If I had 10 children this way, there would be a very slim chance of success,” he told The Guardian in 2018. “But what if I had 100… or even more?”

In 2019, DNA analysis found fertility doctor Jan Karbaat fathered at least 49 children via his work at a Rotterdam Clinic, secretly using his own sperm instead of donor sperm. It is believed that the total could be as high as 60, though he died in 2017 aged 89, making the case much more difficult to investigate.

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In issue 5 of CURIOUS we mentioned HALO Space, an ambitious company with big plans to send people into space in a balloon. Well, more of a capsule suspended by a balloon. The curious contraption gives passengers a 360-degree view of Earth as they drift down from the stratosphere, or at least it will if all goes well in the lead-up to HALO Space’s estimated commercial launch of 2025.

Since they first came on our radar, HALO Space has been busy conducting their first test flight to send one of their balloons, complete with a full-size uncrewed capsule, 40 kilometers (25 miles) into the air, which in December 2022 they successfully did. To learn more about the highs and lows of going to space in a balloon, we caught up with the folks over at HALO Space to hear how the first test flight went and find out how soon we can expect to see humans floating through the stratosphere.

Forget flying kites, Poppins. We’re going space ballooning.

What is the HALO Space balloon?

Carlos Mira, CEO: The balloon is made of a polycarbonate fabric and has a maximum dimension of between 110 and 120 metres [360 and 394 feet], the length of a football field, at full extension. The balloon reaches that size at an altitude of 35 kilometres [22 miles], when the gas filling it is fully expanded. The gasses used to inflate it will be helium or hydrogen. The balloon connects to the capsule with a flight train.

How did the test flight go?

CM: Our first test flight went exactly as planned, delivering successful results for all systems and components being tested. The balloon, carrying a full-size prototype of our capsule, flew to an altitude of 37 kilometres [23 miles] into the stratosphere and landed safely and successfully after a flight that lasted four hours. The most important thing is that the flight demonstrated the behaviour of the HALO capsule at launch, ascent, cruise, descent, and landing, as well as safety systems, ground and onboard equipment, which are the most critical parts of HALO’s flight program.

Is the balloon piloted or self-driven?

CM: During the test phase, such as the recent test flight in India, the capsule is uncrewed. However, following completion of all required tests, the balloon and capsule will be piloted by a pilot who will be able to direct the flight and determine the landing location to be used, updating the route with real time data during the flight.

How many people will it eventually carry, and for how long?

CM: The capsule will be able to take eight passengers alongside a pilot. The commercial flight will fly between 25-40 kilometres [16-25 miles] high allowing passengers to observe the curvature of planet Earth and the vastness of space in a flight lasting up to six hours.

Is the balloon really going to space?

CM: The balloon will take passengers to “near space” [somewhere between the Armstrong limit at 19 kilometres (12 miles) and the Kármán line], to a maximum altitude of 40 kilometres. 

What do you hope to achieve during the next test flight?

CM: The second test flight is scheduled for the first half of 2023 in southern Spain, where HALO Space will test the steerable parachute navigation system as well as advancements to its current systems based on what has been learned from its first flight.

What sights can future visitors expect to see while riding with HALO Space?

CM: We want to give customers a life-changing experience, The Overview Effect – a view of the curvature of the Earth that can only be experienced starting at an altitude of 30+ kilometres [19+ miles]. Astronauts have described it as a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus, from space.

It's a pretty incredible view from up there. Image credit: HALO Space

What obstacles does HALO Space have to overcome before tickets go on sale?

CM: Safety is of course our highest priority, and we will be continuing our extensive testing program in the coming years, including achieving FAA certification. We plan to begin operating commercial flights in 2025 and aim to reach up to 400 commercial trips with 3,000 passengers carried per year by 2029.

Does the idea of drifting to the mid-stratosphere in a balloon float your boat? With just two years until HALO Space’s estimated launch date, you’d best get thinking.

CURIOUS magazine is a digital magazine from IFLScience featuring interviews, experts, deep dives, fun facts, news, book excerpts, and much more. Issue 10 is out now.

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An analysis of old newspapers in the USA has highlighted the persistence of the enslavement and indentured servitude of Native Americans into the 19th century. 

Two researchers from the Annenberg School for Communication and Brown University searched through newspapers from 1704-1804, souring for references to Indigenous Americans (largely termed "Indians" by the papers) being sold, or asking for readers to "return" self-emancipated Indigenous Americans to their captors. The authors found that there were over 75,000 references to the word "Indian" during this timeframe in the papers available, with 1,066 references appearing in adverts relating to sales of slaves or notices offering rewards for their return.

"Ran away from Capt. John Aldin of Boston, on Monday the 12th Currant, a tall lusty Indian Man call’d Harry, about 19 Years of Age, with a black Hat, brown Ozenbridge Breeches and Jacket," one advert run in the 19 June 1704 edition of The Boston News-Letter read. "Whoever will take up said Indian, and bring or convey him safe either to John Campbell Post master of Boston, or to Mr. Nathaniel Niles of Kingstown in Naraganset, Master to said Indian, shall have a sufficient Reward."

The ages of the enslaved and self-emancipated Native Americans mentioned by the newspapers ranged from six months – a baby sold alongside their mother – to 45 years old, with the majority falling between 16 and 20 years old.

"Over the time period included in this study, there was an uptick in the average age for the first few decades, and then a trend downwards. The fact that the averages of the enslaved and unfree population in these advertisements decrease over time, rather than increase, suggests that this is not simply a case of a stable enslaved and unfree population aging through the century," the team noted in their paper. "Instead, it suggests an active replenishment of the wider enslaved and unfree Indigenous population, both through ongoing importation from the Caribbean and other parts of North America as well as multi-generational enslavement through reproduction (something we know enslavers specifically valued and cultivated)."

The practice of selling Native Americans as slaves continued into the 1860s, past the time surveyed by the team. The team notes that the language around how slaves and indentured servants were sold changed over the 100 years they studied. Generally, the advertisements did not specify whether the person being sold was a slave or an indentured servant. The way readers distinguished between the two was down to whether or not the advert listed how many years of "time remaining to serve" were left. If no time was listed, this would "surely lead the buyer to understand that this was a slave for life".

"What is somewhat surprising is that the specific verbiage of slavery increases, not decreases, over time in these advertisements," the team writes, adding that it noticeably picked up after 1760. "This is likely due to the proliferation of other kinds of unfreedom, including an expansion of indentured servitude, prompting the need to be more specific when servitude is referring to outright enslavement."

The team writes that the media of the time had a "vital and often underexamined role" in sustaining slavery, and profiting from it.

"Newspaper printers gave enslavers an incredibly powerful and public bullhorn through which to assert their attempted ownership and mastery over Indigenous people, to vastly reduce Indigenous identities through erasing tribal affiliations and names," they write, "and to control the narratives about the skills, physiognomic features, and supposed moral liabilities people listed as runaway or for sale possessed (or lacked)."

"In a way, printers themselves acted as slave brokers by facilitating the buying and selling of people," co-author Anjali DasSarma said in a statement. The team draw particular attention to how publishing ads asking people to return self-freed individuals turned "citizens into ‘slave catchers’" while the media profited.

"Our analysis of these advertisements reveal an overlooked and important aspect of the history of this country," co-author Linford Fisher added. "America was not only built on Native American land, it was also built on the backs of Native American laborers, who were enslaved by the tens of thousands and who worked alongside enslaved Africans on plantations and in households well into the nineteenth century."

The study was published in the journal Slavery and Abolition.

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As far as we know, it went something like this.

One morning in September 2020, a van collected five elderly guests from a Marriott hotel in San Diego, California. It drove south, crossing the border into Mexico, and stopped in front of the mirrored windows of the Regenerative Medicine Institute in Tijuana. Among the passengers was MJ, who had recently been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, which is often followed by dementia. “My mind was not what it should be,” she says. “I was having a lot of trouble with dates and the time.”

The guests were helped out of the van and taken in twos into a room with two beds. “We really had no idea what to expect,” MJ tells me. She is in her early eighties and lives in a retirement community with her husband in Kansas. They make a sweet couple. To protect MJ’s privacy, I’m using only her initials. “I thought they were gonna give me a shot of some kind,” she says. MJ had been told she was taking part in a trial for a new Alzheimer’s treatment—a gene therapy, developed by the US biotech company BioViva.

Before arriving in Tijuana, MJ had had very little contact with the trial’s doctor. “He came in and had these two syringes in his hand,” she says. “He put one syringe up my nostril. I felt like he was sticking it up to my brain.” The doctor squeezed the syringe and the treatment was over. “We were put back in this very nice car and brought back up to the hotel, and they said: ‘We’ll be in touch.’”

There are 5 million adults in the US living with dementia, with a further 50 million across the world. By 2050, it’s estimated that this number will have roughly tripled. Alzheimer’s is the most common form, and research into treatments is known as “the graveyard of drug development.” Despite the billions of dollars spent and thousands of trials performed, there is no cure, and the few drugs that exist only slow its progress. But new treatments claim to be unearthing untold benefits if you know where to look—and are willing to take a risk.

MJ was willing to take that risk. To participate in the BioViva trial, she had paid only for her travel to Mexico, expenses, and some initial tests and scans—an organization called Maximum Life Foundation (MLF) had covered the treatment costs. Founded by David Kekich, a well-known figure among researchers and activists who believe lifespan can be greatly expanded, MLF says its aim is to “reverse the human aging process by 2033.” It plans to do so by funding experimental technologies involving genomics, proteomics, regenerative medicine, nutraceuticals, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. “When people get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, everything stands still, it’s a death sentence,” Kekich told me in April 2020. “That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.” Kekich died the following year, though not of dementia. His body was cryogenically frozen, in case he can one day be revived.

In the BioViva trial, MJ and the other patients had two “anti-aging” genes delivered into their brains, with a virus used for transport. Rather than treat dementia directly, these genes supposedly instruct brain cells to create two enzymes—telomerase and Klotho—that play a role in controlling cellular aging. The idea is that boosting levels of these enzymes helps rejuvenate cells in the brain, turning back the clock and erasing age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s.

When the trial’s results were published in November 2021, BioViva boasted that it had done just that. “Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars devoted to dementia research, we have seen very little progress … until now,” founder CEO Liz Parrish declared in a press release. Working at the fringes of medicine, she claimed her company had succeeded where countless others had failed—by reversing the effects of aging.

Gene therapies, which modify a patient’s cells, are at the forefront of medical research. Testing is highly regulated. In the US only a few dozen have been authorized, for treating serious conditions such as cancer, vision loss, or muscular dystrophy. But in 2015, the same year it was founded, BioViva became the first company in the world to try to use a gene therapy to reverse aging, injecting a treatment it had developed into a single person. The patient? Liz Parrish, the company’s founder and CEO. This wasn’t part of a clinical trial, and it didn’t happen in the US; this wild, one-person experiment took place at a clinic in Bogota, Colombia, far from the oversight of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Shortly afterward, on Reddit’s Futurology forum, Parrish announced that she had received this treatment in South America. She also announced that BioViva would be working to bring life-extension therapies like these to the general public. Parrish had seemingly uncovered the fountain of youth—or at least had convinced her followers of as much.

After her self-experiment, Parrish carved out a successful career promoting the potential of gene therapies for life extension, speaking at events across the world (including at WIRED’s own health summit). I first saw her in person at one of these events: the Longevity World Forum in Valencia in 2019. I would have guessed her to be in her late thirties, although by then she was almost 50. When we chatted afterward, she insisted I squeeze her arm to feel the toned muscles underneath—the product, she said, of an experimental, and as yet unapproved, gene therapy for follistatin, a protein involved in muscle growth, which she received alongside the therapy for telomerase, one of the enzymes given to MJ. A press release issued in 2016 stated that her experiment had wound back the clock 20 years, while a paper published last year claims that, thanks to subsequent gene therapy treatments, Parrish now apparently has a biological age of 25. She is, in fact, 52.

Parrish bemoans the lethargy with which these longevity treatments are making their way to the public. Regulatory authorities are the enemy of progress, she claims; they need to stand aside and let those who are willing try anti-aging treatments. This is not only pragmatic, according to Parrish, it is ethical. Millions of people die every year of something that might potentially be cured: aging.

Parrish has codified her philosophy into something she calls “best choice medicine.” In the US, federal and state “right-to-try” laws allow doctors to offer experimental, unproven treatments to terminally ill patients. Parrish wants to see the same provisions extended to unapproved anti-aging gene therapies. When we met at her home in Bainbridge Island, Washington, last summer, she told me that the elderly should be allowed to put their lives on the line to improve their children’s chances of reaching a healthy old age. It’s the Silicon Valley “move fast and break things” mantra brought to medicine.

There has never been a shortage of medical salespeople with dubious credentials who claim to have discovered some potion or process to reverse aging. Humans have obsessed over finding a cure for aging for pretty much as long as they have been getting old. The idea that many age-related diseases could be expressions of a single underlying process—one that might be treatable—is powerful, intoxicating.

At least some of Parrish’s claims are based on established science. Every time our cells divide, our telomeres—the protective caps on our chromosomes, the cell’s DNA molecules—shorten. This gives our cells a limited lifespan: when the telomeres get too short, the cell can no longer survive. Sometimes, instead of dying, these cells fall into a moribund state called senescence. The gradual build-up of senescent cells is a hallmark of aging, and the damage they inflict is being investigated as the underlying cause of a wide range of seemingly different age-related diseases, from dementia to arthritis.

But some of our cells, such as stem cells, do not have this limiting factor. They express the gene for telomerase, and so produce this enzyme, which repairs telomeres, extending the lifespan of the cell. Artificially introduce that gene to other cells, and it might not only slow their aging, but even push those that are senescent back into healthy life by resetting their chromosomal clock.

Work carried out by Maria Blasco, director of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center in Madrid, shows that mice given injections of transporter viruses loaded with telomerase genes not only experience healthier aging with less disease, but also live longer—a heady 25 percent longer. Findings like this are fueling a tremendous interest in the potential for gene therapies to allow us to live longer, healthier lives. But science moves slowly—too slowly, apparently, for Parrish.

In December 2018, a little over three years after she was injected with telomerase gene therapy in Bogata, Colombia, Parrish spoke at People Unlimited, a membership organization in Scottsdale, Arizona, “for people passionate about radical life extension.” It owes its existence to Charles Brown, a nightclub entertainer who claimed to have been rendered immune to death by “cellular awakening”—a quasi-religious experience he described as a “piercing through to the core of the cells and atoms of the body, which awaken the DNA.”

Brown died in October 2015, of complications arising from Parkinson’s and heart disease, but his adherents still come together every week to support one another in their quest to live forever. Ideas of cellular awakening passed away with Brown; these days the group invites speakers from across the world to discuss the latest longevity science has to offer—Parrish among them.

Speaking via video-link, she revealed that BioViva was engaged in human trials of anti-aging medicine. Her company had struck a partnership with Integrated Health Systems (IHS), a network of doctors in clinics outside the US that would carry out experimental gene therapies and share the data generated with BioViva to accelerate the development of these therapies. “Three steps to a healthier you,” Parrish told the group. She rattled off a list of treatments on offer: klotho gene therapy for cognition, follistatin gene therapy for muscle growth, telomerase gene therapy for anti-aging.

Patients apply for treatments via the IHS website. When they do, they’re told that safety is not guaranteed—and that neither, crucially, is efficacy. One thing is though: Prices start at $75,000. No refunds.

When I asked Parrish if promoting these unlicensed treatments was necessary, she was clear. “This is new technology that needs to get to humans. These terminally ill patients need access.” I asked her if the terminal illnesses included aging. “Yeah, well,” she replied, “that’s the number one killer on the planet.”

Longevity science, like all of medicine, moves slowly. There are good reasons for this. Stem cells aren’t the only ones that express high levels of telomerase. The most notable exceptions are cancer cells. By manufacturing high amounts of telomerase, cancerous cells suspend the natural limit to replication. This allows them to grow and spread. It’s a fair guess that this is why our cells have the limit in the first place: As they age, cells accumulate mutations that could be harmful to you. Making sure they die or are subsumed before they collect too many mutations is, quite likely, a safety measure. Injecting someone with a gene therapy that gets rid of this could be disastrous if their cells have other defects that allow them to become cancerous.

Operating outside of the FDA’s reach, Parrish, BioViva, and its partners have adopted a shroud of secrecy. IHS is registered in the British Virgin Islands, a jurisdiction that does not require companies to disclose their directors or shareholders. And IHS doesn’t list an address or a phone number on its website. “They seem really cryptic,” says Leigh Turner, a bioethicist at the University of California, Irvine. “The details that have come out have not been reassuring in terms of the credentials and qualifications of clinicians involved, the clinical facilities that people go to, or the protocols that are in place.”

The murkiness extends to the relationship between BioViva and IHS. Parrish insists they are separate, independent entities. She says she has no idea who runs IHS, despite their partnership. Yet the two companies seem to be incredibly, confusingly interlinked.

Enquiries to the IHS email address result in replies from BioViva. When I track down one of the doctors in the IHS network, Leonardo Gonzales of the Zelula Institute in Bogota, Colombia, he tells me that Parrish personally recruited him. Another of its doctors, Patrick Sewell, who injected MJ with the experimental gene therapy in Tijuana, is credited as BioViva’s director of clinical affairs in the press release announcing the results of MJ’s trial. That experiment was originally scheduled to take place in Mexico City, at the clinic of doctor Jason Williams, before the pandemic complicated air travel. Williams—who also administered the gene therapy to Parrish back in 2015—is the cofounder of BioViva, and its chief medical officer.

Shortly after I raised these connections with Parrish last year, Williams’s profile vanished from the staff page on the IHS website, and numerous videos on BioViva’s YouTube page featuring him and Parrish together were made private. BioViva and Parrish failed to provide an attributable response to a number of questions on issues raised by our reporting.

Turner, the bioethicist, has history with Williams. In 2013, Turner wrote to the FDA with his concerns about Precision StemCell, a company based in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where Williams—a radiologist by training—was administering unlicensed procedures to patients, extracting stem cells from their fat tissue and injecting these back into the body, including into the spine. Applications ranged from sports injuries to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—a progressive and deadly disease of the nervous system.

When representatives from the patient advocacy group ALS Worldwide visited the clinic, they were alarmed by what they said were dangerous interventions performed incompetently in unsanitary conditions. The group later warned members: “Patients and caregivers are urged to avoid any further procedures conducted by Williams or his colleagues in any locale.” Williams strongly disputed the assessment, but soon after, under pressure from the FDA, he relocated to Colombia. “A great country with very nice people,” he told his patients, where “they are very open to stem cells and gene therapy.”

The evidence Parrish has offered in support of human telomerase therapy has been questioned by other scientists. The paper detailing the results of the Tijuana experiment—supposedly the world’s first ever effective treatment for dementia—was published not in Nature or Science, but the little-known Journal of Regenerative Biology and Medicine, one of 22 launched in just the past four years by publisher Maples Scientific. Recent papers in the journal include “Control of Mind Using Nanotechnology” and “Zorbing in Impaired Children: An Innovative New Alternative for Better Self-Consciousness.” Joel Osorio, editor-in-chief of the journal, has an anti-aging clinic in Cancun, Mexico, where he sells a penis enhancement injection called the I-Guana Shot. Maples Scientific did not respond when approached for comment.

Everything is wrong with the methodology of this paper, says Charles Brenner, a specialist in age-related diseases at the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope in Los Angeles, California. “It’s not established that telomerase activity limits human healthspan, and cognitive impairment is not very well understood.” Despite this, the paper sets out a very firm hypothesis: Increase telomerase in patients with signs of cognitive decline, and very quickly they will show signs of improvement.

From here, the actual substance of the paper is lacking, says Brenner. The absence of a control group means that no conclusions can be drawn—any recorded changes could be attributed to other factors—and the impact of any change in telomerase activity was not properly investigated, he says. “The experiment that was done is not capable of producing meaningful results. I wouldn’t expect it to work, and I doubt that it does.”

Brenner also points to the known risks associated with this area of research, such as the viruses used in gene therapy producing adverse immune responses—which in extreme cases can be fatal—as well as the cancer risk from elevating telomerase expression.

Parrish’s own claimed rejuvenation is equally problematic. According to Brenner, the concept of “biological age,” determined by looking for certain signals and substances inside the body,  is more of a research tool under development than an accepted measurement of anything useful. Besides, Bill Andrews, a telomerase specialist who prepared the gene therapy for Parrish’s 2015 experiment in Colombia and who has been instrumental in BioViva’s work, tells me that even he couldn’t support the results she had claimed after receiving the gene therapy. He believes Parrish probably took only a thousandth of an effective dose.

Nor is there any reliable evidence of Parrish’s purported 20-year reduction in biological age. The 2016 press release detailing her treatment says that the results were independently verified. But both the organizations that undertook this—a UK charity called the Biogerontology Research Foundation and the Healthy Life Extension Society, a European nonprofit—have links to Parrish. That press release was written by BioViva’s chief technology officer, Avi Roy—who was serving as president of the Biogerontology Research Foundation at the time. Parrish has also served on the board of the International Longevity Alliance, an umbrella organization that counts the Healthy Life Extension Society as a member. To date, the results of Parrish’s experiment, and the procedure carried out on MJ and her covolunteers, have never truly been independently verified.

It's easy to get swept up in the idea that aging might be curable. And it’s no surprise that longevity medicine is also a profitable hunting ground for quacks. “Some really do think that they’re offering meaningful interventions,” says Turner. “Where this starts to get problematic is when they’re driven entirely by enthusiasm.”

Parrish—who often describes her interest in aging medicine as humanitarian—has no medical qualifications. Yet she is unapologetic about her gung-ho attitude to medicine. “I believe I’m on the right side of history,” she says. “The truth is, to treat very serious diseases, we are going to have to take risks. What I would say is: Was anyone hurt? I seriously doubt it.”

If you can convince people that aging is a disease, it’s no surprise that some will clamor for a cure—and pay whatever they can for it. This, if anything, ought to underline exactly why medicine carried out under stringent regulations really is the best choice. “We need to protect patient populations,” says Brenner.

For now, the medical establishment has little to offer those who are diagnosed with age-related diseases such as dementia. And warranted skepticism toward last-ditch efforts to cure them can come off like cynicism. MJ has no regrets about participating in the experiment in Tijuana. “I think somebody has got to go out there and try these things and see if they actually work,” she tells me. “By the time we got home, I really did feel sharper. Now I’m fading, and I can tell I’m fading. I wanna go back for another shot. I’m ready.”

Inside the Secretive Life-Extension Clinic

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Twitter founder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey admitted he was wrong when he said that Elon Musk was the “singular solution” he trusted with the company and criticized his one-time friend for going through with his $44 billion takeover even after he got buyer’s remorse.

Over on Twitter competitor Bluesky, a decentralized network similar to Mastodon that Dorsey helped start, the former Twitter leader struck a harsh tone on the subject of Musk and said that it was important to build something new that would avoid the fate of the blue bird app. In the roughly seven months since Musk took over, Twitter’s layoffs have made the company a shell of what it was, dominated by its new owner’s topsy-turvy commitment to “free speech” and prone to technical failures, even for advertisers.

Dorsey made his comments in response to a question from a Bluesky user who asked, “Do you think Elon has proven to be the best possible steward for the platform? Answer earnestly.”

“No,” Dorsey said on Friday. “Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad.”

Dorsey also blamed Twitter’s board, which sued to enforce the company’s acquisition deal with Musk in July 2022.

“Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale,” he continued. “It all went south. But it happened and all we can do now is build something to avoid that ever happening again. So I’m happy [Bluesky CEO] Jay and team and nostr devs exist and building it.”

Dorsey funded the team that would go on to become Bluesky when he was still CEO of Twitter back in 2019, stating then that, “the goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard.” Bluesky announced in 2022 that Dorsey was joining the company’s board. Dorsey is also a frequent presence on nostr, another decentralized social media protocol, and gave 14 bitcoin (about $245,000 at that time) to fund its development last year.

Dorsey went on to say that he believed Musk should have just paid the $1 billion penalty in the takeover agreement to back out of the deal.

“I wish the board would not have forced the sale. Maybe there was a chance, but now we’ll never know,” Dorsey stated, as reported by the Washington Post. “I think he should have walked away and paid the $1b.”

It’s not as simple as Dorsey makes it out to be, though. As explained by CNBC, the $1 billion reverse termination fee only applied if there was some outside reason Musk couldn’t complete the takeover, such as receiving pushback from regulators or having trouble obtaining financing. However, that wasn’t the case, which put Musk on the hook for paying a lot more than $1 billion.

As for his role in Twitter’s acquisition, Dorsey clarified that despite his endorsement of Musk, he didn’t have the final say in approving the sale. He also agreed with a Bluesky user who said it was “pretty sad how it all went down.”

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Do Cats Always Land on Their Feet?

In his 2019 book Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics, Greg Gbur, a physics professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, gives a delightful tour through the history of the science of falling cats (with fascinating detours into related history and science). According to Gbur's accounting, the problem has intrigued and vexed scientists since the 1700s.

By the mid-1800s, the basic laws of motion had been established; it was assumed that the law of conservation of angular momentum meant that an object in free fall needed something to push against to give it initial rotation. In other words, a cat couldn't just flip itself in space after it began falling. It must have been pushed off a tree limb or the hands of the person dropping it.

Then in 1882, French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey developed a technique called chrono-photography and used it to photograph a falling cat at 12 frames per second. The resulting images clearly showed that the cat could right itself in mid-air without pushing off anything. When Marey presented his findings at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in 1894, the reaction was intense. It seemed that Marey had presented evidence that contradicted the laws of physics.

It turns out, however, that the initial study of angular momentum was limited to rigid bodies. Cats are anything but. Cats are soft, cuddly, supple things. The flexibility of a cat's body makes it capable of pulling off these mid-air gymnastics.

Finding Out How Cats Land When They Fall

Scientists quickly realized their mistake, and soon an explanation was proffered. French mathematician Émile Guyou proposed a solution endorsed by Marey and accepted by most of the members of the Academy. In a manner similar to ice skaters pulling in their arms to spin faster or stretching out their arms to slow down, cats used the position of their front and back legs to control their spin.

(Credit:Étienne-Jules Marey, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons/) {{PD-US}}

When a cat first falls, Guyou suggested, it extends its rear paws and tucks in its front paws. This allows it to twist its upper body without much counter-twist from the lower body. Then the cat tucks its rear paws, extends its front paws and twists its lower body into the desired position without much counter-twisting from the upper body. Gbur calls this the Tuck and Turn model, and it was fine as far as it went. 

Ongoing Debate Of Cat Gymnastics

Then in 1935, a team of Dutch physiologists, G. G. J. Rademaker and J. W. G. ter Braak, took another look at Marey's photos and noticed something others had missed. When cats start to fall, they arch their backs, bend their bodies in the middle, then rotate the two halves in opposite directions. The front part and the back part are essentially two cylinders rotating in opposite directions. The angular momenta of the two turning parts of the cat's torso offset each other, resulting in an angular momentum of essentially zero. When the cat straightens back out, it will have flipped over. This is called the Bend and Twist model of cat turning.

But even that is not quite the final word. There are many different motions that come into play when a cat is falling, says Gbur, and there are many cats with individual personalities. "Each cat probably does their own little twist on it."

And there are many scientists, too, each with an individual personality. Gbur says he sees the "Falling Cat Problem" as something like a Rorschach test for physicists. When looking at films of falling cats, "everybody kind of sees what they want to see. If you're looking for Tuck and Turn, you'll probably notice the motion of the limbs more. If you're looking for Bend and Twist, you're probably going to spot the folding and the twisting of the body."

Despite small distinctions in form, the physics of the falling cat problem is more or less solved. At this point, says Gbur, the remaining questions are more about the neuroscience involved — how the brain senses the fall and the rotation.

Don't Try This at Home

Gbur offers a word of advice to amateur scientists who are interested in the physics of falling cats: "Please, please don't drop your cats. All cats presumably have this reflex, but not all of them are very good at it. And there are plenty of videos online of falling cats that you can look at and study."

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The variant was originally detected in January 2023 in India. The rise in cases of COVID-19 in that country at that time made health offices suspect that it might be a more infectious form of the omicron XBB strains.

From national genetic surveillance, XBB1.16 is now causing about 12% of COVID-19 cases in the United States. If indeed this strain is more transmissible, that proportion would grow over time, said Dr. Pavitra Roychoudhury, acting instructor, Division of Virology, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

In the Washington state area, XBB1.16 is causing about 10% of current COVID-19 cases. It was first detected in the Seattle area in February through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's airport surveillance program.

The Virology Lab at UW Medicine had its first detection of the XBB1.16 strain in a sample it received in early March 2023.

With the closure of several COVID testing sites during the winding down of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency and the reliance of many symptomatic people on home testing, there has been a decline in PCR laboratory testing for the COVID virus. This is affecting surveillance at a fine-grade level, due to the reduction in PCR test samples.

Although the national pandemic public health emergency is expected to expire May 11, 2023, the SARS-CoV-2 virus will remain a public health priority as the country transitions out of the emergency phase.

"As long as samples keep coming in, we at the UW Medicine virology lab will continue to conduct genomic sequencing for viral surveillance for as long as we can," said Roychoudhury, who works on COVID virus genetic tracking.

She added that at this point it is too early to tell if the XBB.1.16 strain is better at evading immunity from prior infections or vaccinations. The hypothesis is that this strain might have a combination of mutations that make it more transmissible, but Roychoudhury said that scientists do not yet have the details to confirm that. It is also not known at this time if this strain will replace other strains that are currently circulating, or if a different variant may take off as had happened with some prior waves of variants.

The symptoms of COVID-19 from the XBB1.16 are like other current strains—cough, fever, general malaise. Some reports from India suggest that pink eye is seen more often with this variant of the virus. Pink eye is an inflammation that causes redness, itchiness, and tearing or a crusty discharge.

A bit of promising news is the overall decline in COVID-19 cases in the United States as we approach the late spring and early summer seasons. Wastewater monitoring indicates a reduction in the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in all four U.S. regions contributing to the national data.

However, Roychoudhury added, coronavirus trackers cannot foresee what could happen in the fall when conditions, such as more people gathering indoors, once again support coronavirus transmission. "Fortunately, we have built the infrastructure and capacity to respond quickly to any future surges."

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