Select Page ::

Consuming Olive Oil After Exercising Can Aid Good Health And Longevity – International Business Times

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

KEY POINTS

Olive oil has been renowned for its umpteen health benefits and for adding to the Mediterranean diets excellence. A new study reported that olive oil could be associated with good health and longer lives.

The researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School studied how olive oil affected human cells in Petri dishes and found that the fats present in the oil activate certain cellular pathways associated with longevity. The study also demonstrated that olive oil reduced the risk of age-related ailments including diabetes and cardiovascular conditions.

The findings of the study suggested that olive oil fats get stored in the body and gets released during exercise. While combining olive oil consumption with fasting or exercising, the effects of the oil will be more pronounced.

We found that the way these fat works is it first has to get stored in microscopic things called lipid droplets, which is how our cells store fat. And then, when the fat is broken down during exercising or fasting, for example, is when the signaling and beneficial effects are realized," Insider quoted the studys lead researcher Dr. Doug Masheks press release.

Clinical trials might be the next steps for their research in order to discover new drugs or to further tailor dietary regimes that aid health benefits.

Mediterranean diet emerged from the countries surrounding the Mediterranean sea, where individuals historically consumed vegetables, healthy fats, nuts, and oily fish. Unlike the fad diets including Atkins or the keto, the Mediterranean diet allows people to eat a wide variety of foods in moderation. It is one of the safest diets for most people, including older adults and children.

Mediterranean diet staples including fresh fruits, whole-grain bread, salads, nuts, olive oil, beans, and salmon promote a wide range of health benefits, Insider mentioned.

This is not the first study to demonstrate the benefits of olive oil. Previous researches have reported that the oil could reduce frailty in older individuals, reduce inflammation in older people, prevents stroke risk, protect against heart diseases, prevent breast cancer risk and also prevent cognitive diseases including Alzheimers and Parkinsons as well.

olive oil for heart attack Photo: congerdesign - Pixabay

Read the original here:
Consuming Olive Oil After Exercising Can Aid Good Health And Longevity - International Business Times

Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market Analysis, Segmentation, Key Players, Opportunities and Forecast 2020 2026 – Galus Australis

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

This Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market research report is focused at providing its reader with all the necessary details that can help them make necessary business decisions. It provides wholesome information that is necessary to understand the market inside-out.

ReportsnReports has recently added a new research report to its expanding repository. The research report, titled Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market, mainly includes a detailed segmentation of this sector, which is expected to generate massive returns by the end of the forecast period, thus showing an appreciable rate of growth over the coming years on an annual basis. The research study also looks specifically at the need for Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market.

Report Scope:

The scope of this report is broad and covers various therapies currently under trials in the global longevity and anti-senescence therapy market. The market estimation has been performed with consideration for revenue generation in the forecast years 2018-2023 after the expected availability of products in the market by 2023. The global longevity and anti-senescence therapy market has been segmented by the following therapies: Senolytic drug therapy, Gene therapy, Immunotherapy and Other therapies which include stem cell-based therapies, etc.

Revenue forecasts from 2028 to 2023 are given for each therapy and application, with estimated values derived from the expected revenue generation in the first year of launch.

The report also includes a discussion of the major players performing research or the potential players across each regional longevity and anti-senescence therapy market. Further, it explains the major drivers and regional dynamics of the global longevity and anti-senescence therapy market and current trends within the industry.

The report concludes with a special focus on the vendor landscape and includes detailed profiles of the major vendors and potential entrants in the global longevity and anti-senescence therapy market.

Download A Sample Report athttps://www.reportsnreports.com/contacts/requestsample.aspx?name=2255402

Report Includes:

71 data tables and 40 additional tables An overview of the global longevity and anti-senescence therapy market Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2017 and 2018, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2023 Country specific data and analysis for the United States, Canada, Japan, China, India, U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Middle East and Africa Detailed description of various anti-senescence therapies, such as senolytic drug therapy, gene therapy, immunotherapy and other stem cell therapies, and their influence in slowing down aging or reverse aging process Coverage of various therapeutic drugs, devices and technologies and information on compounds used for the development of anti-ageing therapeutics A look at the clinical trials and expected launch of anti-senescence products Detailed profiles of the market leading companies and potential entrants in the global longevity and anti-senescence therapy market, including AgeX Therapeutics, CohBar Inc., PowerVision Inc., T.A. Sciences and Unity Biotechnology

Summary:

Global longevity and anti-senescence therapy market deals in the adoption of different therapies and treatment options used to extend human longevity and lifespan. Human longevity is typically used to describe the length of an individuals lifetime and is sometimes used as a synonym for life expectancy in the demography. Anti-senescence is the process by which cells stop dividing irreversibly and enter a stage of permanent growth arrest, eliminating cell death. Anti-senescence therapy is used in the treatment of senescence induced through unrepaired DNA damage or other cellular stresses.

Global longevity and anti-senescence market will witness rapid growth over the forecast period (2018-2023) owing to an increasing emphasis on Stem Cell Research and an increasing demand for cell-based assays in research and development.

An increasing geriatric population across the globe and rising awareness of antiaging products among generation Y and later generations are the major factors expected to promote the growth of global longevity and the anti-senescence market. Factors such as a surging level of disposable income and increasing advancements in anti-senescence technologies are also providing traction to the global longevity and anti-senescence market growth over the forecast period (2018-2023).

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the total geriatric population across the globe in 2016 was over REDACTED. By 2022, the global geriatric population (65 years and above) is anticipated to reach over REDACTED. An increasing geriatric population across the globe will generate huge growth prospectus to the market.

Senolytics, placenta stem cells and blood transfusions are some of the hot technologies picking up pace in the longevity and anti-anti-senescence market. Companies and start-ups across the globe such as Unity Biotechnology, Human Longevity Inc., Calico Life Sciences, Acorda Therapeutics, etc. are working extensively in this field for the extension of human longevity by focusing on study of genomics, microbiome, bioinformatics and stem cell therapies, etc. These factors are poised to drive market growth over the forecast period.

Please Share Your Specific Interest To Serve You Better | Download PDF Brochure athttps://www.reportsnreports.com/contacts/requestsample.aspx?name=2255402

Global longevity and anti-senescence market is projected to rise at a CAGR of REDACTED during the forecast period of 2018 through 2023. In 2023, total revenues are expected to reach REDACTED, registering REDACTED in growth from REDACTED in 2018.

The report provides analysis based on each market segment including therapies and application. The therapies segment is further sub-segmented into Senolytic drug therapy, Gene therapy, Immunotherapy and Others. Senolytic drug therapy held the largest market revenue share of REDACTED in 2017. By 2023, total revenue from senolytic drug therapy is expected to reach REDACTED. Gene therapy segment is estimated to rise at the highest CAGR of REDACTED till 2023. The fastest growth of the gene therapy segment is due to the Large investments in genomics. For Instance; The National Human Genome Research Institute (U.S.) had a budget grant of REDACTED for REDACTED research projects in 2015, thus increasing funding to REDACTED for approximately REDACTED projects in 2016.

Recent Industry Trend:

The report contains the profiles of various prominent players in the Global Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market. Different strategies implemented by these vendors have been analyzed and studied in order to gain a competitive edge, create unique product portfolios and increase their market share. The study also sheds light on major global industry vendors. Such essential vendors consist of both new and well-known players. In addition, the business report contains important data relating to the launch of new products on the market, specific licenses, domestic scenarios and the strategies of the organization implemented on the market.

Access Full Report athttps://www.reportsnreports.com/purchase.aspx?name=2255402

Scope of the Report:

Through following the Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market through depth, the readers should find this study very helpful. The aspects and details are depicted by charts, bar graphs, pie diagrams, and other visual representations in the longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market study. This intensifies the representation of the pictures and also helps to improve the facts of the Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market industry. At a substantial CAGR, the Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market is likely to grow. Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market reports main objective is to guide the user to understand the market in terms of its definition, classification, industry potential, the latest trends, and the challenges facing the Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market.

And More

About Us: ReportsnReports.com is your single source for all market research needs. Our database includes 500,000+ market research reports from over 95 leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over 5000 micro markets.We provide 24/7 online and offline support to our customers.

E-mail: [emailprotected]

Phone: +1 888 391 5441

View post:
Longevity and Anti-senescence Therapy Market Analysis, Segmentation, Key Players, Opportunities and Forecast 2020 2026 - Galus Australis

Silicon Valley startup tries to move executive physicals beyond the C-suite – STAT

Posted on February 22, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

SAN FRANCISCO The three-martini lunch may be on the decline, but many big companies still reward their C-suite with that traditional corporate perk: getting poked and prodded as part of an executive physical that can carry a five-digit price tag.

Now, a Silicon Valley startup wants to reimagine these medical workups by offering a version for a broader audience, one that would run 75 minutes and have patients undergo an MRI scan and genetic analysis, among other testing.

You can pay $20,000 and go to Mayo and spend a weekend there. But thats not ever really going to be scalable, said Jeffrey Kaditz, co-founder and CEO of Q Bio, which announced on Thursday that it raised $40 million from leading Silicon Valley venture capital investors.

Q Bio is interested in a different question, Kaditz said: What is the most valuable information we can collect about your body, in as short a period of time as possible, as efficiently as possible, and non-invasively as possible?

It will still not be cheap. The price for a yearlong membership to Q Bios service starts at $3,500 out of pocket, with more comprehensive options available for $6,500 and $15,000.

By comparison, major U.S. hospitals offer executive physical packages ranging from $1,700 to $10,000, according to a research letter published in JAMA last year. The most famous of the bunch is the Mayo Clinics executive health program, founded more than four decades ago; its price tag varies based on factors including age and family history. Then theres Human Longevity Inc., the company formerly led by the genomics pioneer Craig Venter, which in 2015 launched an extraordinarily in-depth $25,000 physical.

When people sign up for Q Bios service, the startup asks them to list their health care providers as well as clinics and hospitals where theyve been seen; the company then aggregates and digitizes those records. Two weeks after the exam, the company generates a report based on the results of the MRI as well as testing of blood, urine, and saliva samples.

The report, which can be used by the customers health care providers, surfaces the most important and potentially concerning findings up top. Q Bio wants people to undergo follow-up exams so that changes in their baseline can be tracked over time.

That approach may draw criticism.

Experts say there is not strong evidence that such testing and monitoring offer widespread health benefits, or that it can save the health care system money over time. Theres also the risk of false positives, if something turned up in a medical workup leads to unnecessary and potentially harmful follow-up testing or medical interventions.

Q Bios service stands in contrast to the approach more commonly seen in medicine, in which patients are compared to population distributions and population norms, said Vijay Pande, the general partner at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz who led Q Bios new Series B funding. That makes sense when you dont have a baseline for yourself, Pande said.

Q Bios approach, on the other hand, recognizes that you can actually be within tolerance of a population norm, but be way out of scope for your personal norm, Pande said. He said hes optimistic that that approach, along with the wide range of measurements the company is collecting, has potential to dramatically minimize false positives.

Kaditz said the company tried to be conservative in deciding which things in the body to monitor, opting to capture only that which could be measured in a reproducible way and would be useful for doctors. For example, Q Bio steered clear of measuring the microbiome. And in contrast to competing medical workups that pitch whole genome sequencing, Q Bio decided to analyze a panel of just 147 genes.

One of Q Bios co-founders is Michael Snyder, a Stanford geneticist who has been an evangelist and a human guinea pig for an approach to precision medicine involving intensive health tracking over time. Last year, Synder and his team reported results from a longitudinal study of 109 people who underwent an initial intensive physical and genetic analysis and then provided blood and other samples every quarter for a number of years. The researchers identified more than 67 clinically actionable health discoveries.

Q Bio, founded in late 2015, came out of stealth mode on Thursday. Kaditz wouldnt say how many people have paid to get exams since the Q Center opened in Silicon Valley late last year, but he said demand from locals and people who have flown in has been so high the company had to create a waiting list.

Kaditz said there have been instances in which executives who have paid for a membership for themselves have proceeded to decide to cover it as a benefit for their C-suite or other employees. He wouldnt say how often thats happened.

With the new funds announced on Thursday, the company plans to open additional Q Centers in other U.S. cities and to invest in trying to line up deals with employers to cover memberships for their employees.

Continued here:
Silicon Valley startup tries to move executive physicals beyond the C-suite - STAT

Human emotions must adapt to thrive in the machine age – TNW

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Did you know TNW Conference has a track fully dedicated to bringing the biggest names in tech to showcase inspiring talks from those driving the future of technology this year?Tim Leberecht, who authored this piece, is one of the speakers.Check out the full Impact program here.

If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, dont snuff it out, dont be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than wed want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything what a waste!

These are the words of theclosing monologue of the movieCall Me By Your Name(based on the namesake book by Andre Aciman); the monologue of the father, Mr. Perlman, who assures his son Ellio of the inconceivable magnitude of emotions, insisting that even the most conflicted ones are better than none.

These lines could not be more timely. We have begun to realize that feeling more not only makes for richer lives but is also the best antidote to a world of self-optimization and efficiency, in other worlds, a world of machines.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, Alibaba co-founder and executive chairmanJack Mamade the case for investing in our emotional capacities and even proposed a love quotient. Management thinkers believe that socio-emotional skills are going to be a key asset in tomorrows marketplace, simply because tasks requiring operational excellence and efficiency are likely to be performed much more effectively by AI and robots. Emotions, however, remain a human bastion. Our very weakness is our strength.

In a 2016survey, the World Economic Forum ranked socio-emotional skills as increasingly critical for future career success. Business schools are adjusting their curricula to include them, and private educational institutions such asThe School of Lifehave made it their mission to teach them.

Read: [Humility, trust, and empathy: The skills needed to work with robots]

And yet, despite our most ambitious efforts to demystify them, emotions remain utterly mysterious and elusive. They are better felt than explained, better portrayed often through works of arts than analyzed. We dont understand them unless we feel them, and feeling them, of course, is the very blind spot that may prevent us from ever objectively understanding them.

There even appears to be some confusion as to what counts as human emotion and what does not, and which of our emotions are distinctive. For a considerable period of time, common wisdom held that there is a base set of six classic emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad. But in 2014, a study by theInstitute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgowclaimed there are only four basic emotions happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted. Ah, wouldnt life be easy and yet oh-so-boring if that were the case!?

However, in 2017, a new study by theProceedings of National Academy of Sciencessuggested that there are as many as 27 different categories of emotions, and that they in fact occur along a gradient and are not sharply distinguishable or mutually exclusive. This new set of emotions ranges from admiration, adoration, awe, and surprising outliers such as aesthetic appreciation, to envy, excitement, horror, and empathetic pain to equally unexpected contenders such as nostalgia, romance, or triumph.

Looking at this comprehensive list, a few emotions stand out. One wonders whether romance is an emotion or a feeling, an interpretation of an emotion, or simply a way to relate to the world. Similarly, the omission of loneliness is glaring, although in this case, too, one could argue that it is a feeling, not an emotion. Per neuroscientistDr. Sarah McKays definition, feelings aremental experiences of body states, which arise as the brain interprets emotions, themselves physical states arising from the bodys responses to external stimuli. Yet the line between the two remains blurry.

Moreover, some emotions may not have been listed because they areculturally unique, e.g.Schadenfreude, the very German joy over another persons mishap or misfortune. Or these Bantu, Taglog, and Dutch terms:mbuki-mvuki the irresistible urge to shuck off your clothes as you dance kilig the fluttering feeling as you talk to someone to whom you are attracted oruitwaaien the refreshing effects of taking a walk in the wind. Others that were included in the list such as triumphappear to be a temporary sign of our times more than a fixed emotion: in our winner-takes-all societies, winning is arguably the one emotion that is putting all the others in second place. The winner feels it all.

How will digital technology, specifically AI and robotics, affect our emotions?

Researchers have long studied our emotional relationship to machines. Numerousstudieshave proven that we quickly form emotional attachments to robots, and it might indeed be worthwhile exploring which social skills we need in order to collaborate with them.

So-called Artificial Emotional Intelligence (AEI), advanced by firms such asAffectiva,Emotient(acquired by Apple), andEmotion Research Lab, now seeks to analyze our emotions by scanning our facial expressions and body language. From studyingMark Zuckerbergs behavior during the congressional hearingsto the use for candidate assessments in job interviews (HireVue), AEI, like any technology, can be used for benevolent and malicious purposes, from boosting our emotional intelligence to manipulating and emotion-engineering us as citizens and consumers, from helping autistic children recognize their emotions (see, for example, theKaspar project) topenalizing us at the workplace for not being happy.

Empathetic robots occur at the timely convergence of two trends: empathy and AI. As we fear the loss of civility and with xenophobia, racism, and nationalism on the rise in many liberal societies, empathy has become a hot topic, and initiatives to muster it range from podcasts with those who are not like us or even bully us (e.g.Conversations with People Who Hate Me) toMITs Deep Empathyinitiative orGoogles Empathy Lab, to using VR and other immersive technologies as the great empathy machines.

At this yearsConsumer Electronics Showin Las Vegas, several robots were exhibited that can apply empathy and emotional intelligence toward their human user, e.g. the social robot Buddy; the table-tennis playing Forpheus that can read its opponents body language to anticipate their moves; or Pepper, which is capable of interpreting a smile, a frown, your tone of voice, as well as the lexical field you use and non-verbal language such as the angle of your head, according to its manufacturer, SoftBank. InJapan, a society with an aging population, empathetic robots like Paro, applied in elderly care, are becoming a mainstream phenomenon.

Analyst firmGartnerrecently predicted that by 2022 smart machines will understand our emotions better than our close friends and relatives, which of course is an outrageous claim, as the ethnographerJonathan Cookhas pointed out: The more certain research firms claim to be in their ability to measure emotion with quantitative precision, the more incompetent they are likely to actually be at accomplishing the task because they have lost touch with what emotion actually is, he writes.

And yet, the question remains: If robots become better at reading and responding to our human emotions, could technological advances in AI and robotics lead to the emergence of new emotions that were not only previously unmeasured, unnamed, and unidentified, but also un-felt?

You could argue that all possible human emotions have always been present and that we just lacked the words to describe them and only over time simply refined our understanding of them. But there are good arguments for accepting the notion of a history of emotions, the belief that emotions, like our bodies and cognitive abilities, have evolved over time as well, in response to everchanging environments and social stimuli.

Piotr Winkielman and Kent Berridge, psychologists at the UC San Diego and the University of Michigan, conducted an experiment in 2014 in which they showed participants sad and happy faces in such fast order that these had no conscious awareness of seeing any faces at all. When participants were asked afterward to drink a new lemon-lime beverage, those who had subliminally been exposed to the happy faces rated the drink better and also drank more of it than the others. The researchers took this as evidence to suggest the existence of unconscious emotions: feelings we have without actually feeling them. Evolutionarily speaking, the ability to have conscious feelings is probably a late achievement, they concluded. In other words, asentimental education, the education of our hearts, may indeed have been an accomplishment of civilization, a blessing and curse of modern man alike.

Aside from our consciousness of emotions, evolution may have caused new emotions to form. Take envy, and specifically status envy, as a more recent phenomenon, as a product of the industrial revolution and growing consumerism in developed countries. Envy necessitates a materialistic culture. Envy, if you will, is the refined, commoditized version of jealousy. It describes the disappointment and humiliated self that doesnt possess or receive what another one does, a self that finds itself excluded from the marketplace and not able to participate in the transaction.

The natural companion to envy in todays experience economy isFOMO the Fear-Of- Missing-Out. This fear is about missing out onexperience: it is a preemptive fear of loss as much as it is an envy for anothers, possibly richer and more rewarding experience. Ultimately, FOMO is a fear of dying dying without having lived.

While FOMO is its perverse version, boredom is the realhorror vacui. At first glance, it seems like an increasingly precious good. In fact, boredom might become extinct because of the proliferation of smart phones and other devices that deprive us of any vacant moment in time. However, due to automation and the loss of traditional employment, many of us will face more unstructured time in the future and will need help to combat the numbness of boredom as it engulfs our lives.

At the TED conference this year, science writerJessa Gambleheld a fascinating workshop on awe, an emotion triggered, by say, entering the St. Peters Basilica or experiencing the vastness of a desert.

Gamble referenced Stanford researcherMelanie Ruddwho studied the effects of awe on consumer behavior and claims that after feeling awe we tend to choose experiential goods like a movie over material goods like clothes. She further concludes that it also makes us more willing to volunteer in our communities. It looks like we need not only citizenship classes but also experiences of awe to build more civil societies.It is important though to note that awe empowers and disempowers at once. It makes us bigger and smaller. Gamble pointed out that the smaller self was both a prerequisite and consequence of awe: awe overpowers the self. That is both inspiring and humbling.

This very sentiment is at work in our relationship to AI and robots: we are in awe of them, which means, we are enamored and terrified at the same time. The uncanny valley a term used to describe the creepiness of an AI that is nearly fully artificial nor fully flesh, that is arrested at the blurry border between robotic and human, just humanoid enough to trigger our perception of human derangement will be our constant state for the foreseeable future.

It is this tension, this kind of contradictory feeling, that might serve as a blueprint for the future of emotions. The range of what we feel may increase, and it will be less and less binary. Even our language will have to catch up and come up with neologisms expressing this ambivalence. As always, the Germans are especially skilled at inventing new verbs, just consider Verschlimmbessern (which, loosely translated, means making something significantly worse by trying to make it incrementally better).

On the one hand, we are witnessing a radicalization of our emotions, as they are fleeing to the extreme edges (most of us will nod their heads in response to a book title like Pankaj Mishras The Age of Anger); on the other hand, our emotions are becoming more mixed, more conflicted, with different kinds of emotions overlaying each other.

At the same time, the volatility and complexity of our digital times are popularizing emotional states that are simple and balanced, such as mindfulness or the Japanese concept ofikigaithat is attracting more and more followers in the Western world. The Japanese island of Okinawa, whereikigaihas its origins, is said to be home to the largest population of centenarians in the world, and one of the allures of ikigai is the promise of longevity.Ikigaiis the convergence of four primary elements: What you love (your passion), what the world needs (your mission), what you are good at (your vocation), and what you can get paid for (your profession).

Ikigai is similar to the Western concept of purpose that has emerged as the holy grail of organizational and personal transformation. Whats your purpose? as a brand, company, individual, and even nation is the biggest and yet the smallest question everybody is happy to ask and only rarely really able to answer, despite an army of consultants and agencies devoted to it. It is not an entirely new concept. The American philosopher and civil rights leader Howard W. Thurman put it best: Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Mindfulness, ikigai, or purpose are neither emotions nor feelings they are techniques to help us restore balance as our emotions become more extreme and tools to help us refine how we manage them.

Naturally, emotions, too, are affected by the digitization, the atomization of our lives. In our fast-paced daily interactions, micro-aggressions the subtle humiliation by a cranky waiter can sour our mood as much as moments of micro-attachment the smile of a stranger on the subway can make our day. It appears that were transitioning from one emotional state to another much more quickly (the psychologist Susan David has coined the term emotional agility to pinpoint a new skill we must develop to cope with this phenomenon), that were losing the middle ground, the common thread, as well as the stability and continuity of long-term relationships. Instead, we are satisfying our emotional needs either through the instant kicks of the dopamine economy online, little escapisms (social media, gaming, movies, travel), or big ones: assuming an alternate identity, an avatar, a fluid self.

This virtualization of our selves may ultimately lead to the virtualization of our emotions, too, with us going from experiencing age-old emotions in new virtual environments to experiencing new emotions in digital or at least partly digital interactions, to full-on surrogate emotions, digital placeholders of the real thing: fake intimacy, virtual grief, and so on.

Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who builds humanoid robots and was recently portrayed in this rivetingWired story,is convinced that human emotions are nothing more than responses to external stimuli. David Levy, in his seminal 2007 book,Love and Sex With Robots, subscribes to this point of view: If a robot behaves as though it has feelings, can we reasonably argue that it does not? He argues that human emotions are no less programmed than those of an AI: We have hormones, we have neurons, and we are wired in a way that creates our emotions. Levy projects that roughly by the year 2050 humans will want robots as friends, sexual partners, and even spouses.

This raises some big questions: Will it matter if our human emotions are increasingly manipulated by smart algorithms or even un-real, or does it suffice that wefeelthem? Have emotions ever been pure and can they? Arguably, weve never had much control over them. Emotions are never fully ours rather, despite our insisting on their private nature, theyre part of the public commons and some sort of open-sourced software. And yet, so much of what we feel we are incapable of sharing. We seem to lack the full code for unlocking it, which causes great frustration and a great desire to overcome it. Perhaps, in the future, hacking our brains may involve hacking our emotions, too. Technology may allow us to (re-)mix our emotions together with those of others, as the ultimate form of deep connection.

What makes us human is our proclivity to fall for the other: somebody who is not us, something beyond our control, greater than ourselves. We cant help but be drawn to persons, objects, or experiences that promise us new emotions, new sensations, new highs and lows, new joy and happiness, but also new heartbreak and suffering.

Although we are calling them by our name (Alexa, Buddy, Sophia, Kaspar, Samantha, Erica.), as a mirror of ourselves, the AI bots remain elusive. They are the enigmatic other, the greatest desire of all, the ultimate romance. If they can help us feelmoreand feel new emotions, and if we refine these emotions through more advanced emotional intelligence, with the arts and humanities as our interpreters, then the very machines that are growing adept at analyzing and manipulating how we feel will ensure that we stay a step ahead of them.

This article was originally published by Tim Leberecht, an author, entrepreneur, and the co-founder and co-CEO of The Business Romantic Society, a firm that helps organizations and individuals create transformative visions, stories, and experiences. Leberecht is also the co-founder and curator of the House of Beautiful Business, a global think tank and community with an annual gathering in Lisbon that brings together leaders and changemakers with the mission to humanize business in an age of machines.

Read next: The sustainability of wearables will depend on how we use them

Read more from the original source:
Human emotions must adapt to thrive in the machine age - TNW

Human Longevity’s Largest Study of its Kind Shows Early Detection of Disease and Disease Risks in Adults – Cath Lab Digest

Posted on February 4, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

SAN DIEGO, January 31, 2020Human Longevity, Inc.(HLI),an innovator in providing data-driven health intelligence and precision health to physicians and patients, announced the publication of a ground-breaking study in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS). The study titled, Precision medicine integrating whole-genome sequencing, comprehensive metabolomics, and advanced imaging, showed thatby integrating whole-genome sequencing with advanced imaging and blood metabolites, clinicians identified adults at risk for key health conditions.Data from 1190 self-referred individuals evaluated with HLIs multi-modal precision health platform, Health Nucleus, show clinically significant findings associated with age-related chronic conditions including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, chronic liver disease, and neurological disorders leading causes of pre-mature mortality in adults.

The goal of precision medicine is to provide a path to assist physicians in achieving disease prevention and implementing accurate treatment strategies, said C. Thomas Caskey, MD, FACP, FACMG, FRSC, chief medical officer for Human Longevity, Inc., lead author of the study, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Our study showed that by employing a holistic and data-driven health assessment for each individual, we are able to achieve early disease detection in adults.

Study highlights include:

This study shows that the definition of healthy may not be what we think it is and depends upon a comprehensive health evaluation, said J. Craig Venter, PhD, founder, Human Longevity, Inc. and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The data underscore Human Longevitys innovative approach to helping clinicians with early detection and personalized treatments, potentially achieving better health outcomes for patients.

Our traditional approach to the annual health assessment has been very superficial and will need to be replaced by data-driven measures that will be made possible as costs continue to decline for whole- genome sequencing, advanced imaging, especially MRI, and specialized blood analytics, said David Karow, MD, PhD, president and chief innovation officer, Human Longevity, Inc.

ABOUT THE STUDY

The study cohort was composed of 1190 self-referred participants who enrolled at Health Nucleuswith a median age of 54 y (range 20 to 89+ y, 33.8% female, 70.6% European). A multidisciplinary team, including cardiologists, radiologists, primary care physicians, clinical geneticists, genetic counselors, and research scientists, integrated deep phenotype data with genome data for each study participant.Participants were enrolled in the study between September 2015 and March 2018.

ABOUT THE HEALTH NUCLEUS

Health Nucleus is Human Longevitys premier health intelligence platform utilizing state-of-the-art technology to provide an assessment of current and future risk for cardiac, oncologic, metabolic, and cognitive diseases and conditions. This is provided through a proprietary, multi-modal approach, integrating data from an individuals whole-genome sequencing, brain and body MRI imaging, cardiac CT calcium scan, metabolomics, advanced blood test, and more. The health assessment is conducted at Human Longevitys Health Nucleus precision medicine center in La Jolla, California.For more information, visitwww.healthnucleus.com.

ABOUT HUMAN LONGEVITY

Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI)is a genomics-based,health intelligence companyempowering proactive healthcare and enabling a life better lived. HLIs business focus includes the Health Nucleus, a genomic-powered, precision medicine center which uses whole-genome sequencing analysis, advanced imaging, and blood analytics, to deliver the most complete picture of individual health. For more information, visitwww.humanlongevity.com.

# # #

For more information, contact: Debbie Feinberg, VP of Marketing, Human Longevity, Inc., 858-864-1058,dfeinberg@humanlongevity.com

Read this article:
Human Longevity's Largest Study of its Kind Shows Early Detection of Disease and Disease Risks in Adults - Cath Lab Digest

Marketing To 100-Year-Olds: How Longevity Will Transform Finance, Healthcare And Education – Forbes

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Right now, Stanford University is addressing a pressing and fascinating question:

What happens to society when everyone starts living to 100? How will we stay physically fit, financially stable and mentally sharp, especially in that back half?

Exploring these questions is the goal of the Stanford Longevity Project. To answer them, theyve partnered with major brands like Wells Fargo, Instructure, and Principal to help research key elements like financial security, lifelong learning, and healthcare.

Despite Americas average life expectancy declining the past couple years due to more overdoses, suicides and alcohol-related illnesses, people are going to be able to live longer. Strong advancements have been made in cancer. This month, the U.S. saw its sharpest one year decline in cancer death rate. That will save millions of lives alone.

But this isnt just a health and wellness conversation. What this presents are multiple opportunities in multiple verticals for marketers.

One of the biggest trends at CES this month was a new generation of healthcare wearables. There were earbuds designed to detect blood pressure for those with hypertension, temporary tattoos that tell you when to get out of the sun, smart glasses that assist people with dyslexia and watches that detect sleep apnea. These technologies are all discreet, easy to use, and built in to everyday things we already use.

We are heading toward a near future in which every human body will have a functioning check engine light. You can imagine how much better healthcare will be when a sensor will tell you something needs attention, rather than panicked scrolling through WebMD.

We will have the ability to know when something is wrong and immediately trigger tests, medication and treatment. Imagine if that sensor, using the IoT, could immediately send and fill a prescription for you.

This is all coming down the pipeline, and its going to help us live longer. Its also going to change the way marketers do their jobs and open up countless new opportunities to reach new audiences.

Heres what some of those opportunities will look like.

Cincinnati has one of the best healthcare startup scenes in the country. Cincinnati Childrens Hospital is ranked #3 nationally. CincyTech has raised nearly a billion in healthcare follow-on investment over the past ten years.

The common thread these organizations share is they are tackling high-use issues in different ways. That includes everything from small, wearable, injectable devices (Enable Injections) that can be used for a multitude of conditions, to analyzing peoples sweat to ensure proper medication dosing (Eccrine Systems).

One of the most interesting might be Sense Diagnostics because their simple device addresses a huge need: stroke detection. Right now there isnt a good way to tell which kind of stroke (transient ischemic, ischemic, or hemorrhagic) someone is having in the field. An ambulance with this non-invasive device will be able to quickly diagnose which stroke is occuring, allowing them to begin the best possible treatment immediately.

As people begin living longer, well see that the traditional approach to education and work must change. A longer living workforce will be more likely to need to reskill for second and third careers.

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is buying Instructure (makers of the popular Canvas Learning Management System) for $2 billion, precisely because of the projected growth and opportunity in education as people extend their careers.

Of course, four-year higher education will still exist. But new avenues and approaches to learning will emerge as supplemental or alternative ways of reskilling for jobs that will target people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Curricula will obviously also have to adapt, becoming more flexible, personalized, and life-long. Being able to brush up every three months on relevant skills via a subscription model may be a better future model for education than entering a full-time program. Most of the marketing opportunities will be around aiding employers, because they have the budgets and the competition for retention.

Living longer changes a persons entire financial strategy.

Most standard retirement principles assume that retirement will last a maximum of 30 years. The commonly-used "4% rule" of retirement is an example of this. However, if you live to 100 or beyond, your retirement could last 35 years, 40 years, or longer, said Nathan Hamilton, director and industry analyst at The Ascent from The Motley Fool.

A deferred annuity could be worth a look. Essentially, you put some money into an annuity when you first retire (or earlier), but that won't start paying out until a certain agesay, 80 or 85. The idea is that even if your retirement nest egg is getting low as you get older, this move guarantees you a predictable income stream for life.

How we invest may also change as we look to create steady income streams that kick in throughout retirement rather than just upfront. This also may inevitably cause people to work later and longer especially as our workforce trends farther away from physical labor to more mental and creative labor.

The biggest takeaway here isnt that living longer will impact one thing. It will impact everything.

As humans, we need to think about that for ourselves and our future generations. And as marketers and entrepreneurs, we can start thinking about ways we can make that reality better, more productive, and more secure for people.

Visit link:
Marketing To 100-Year-Olds: How Longevity Will Transform Finance, Healthcare And Education - Forbes

12 Must-See Exhibitions This Week, from San Francisco to Paris and Beyond – Surface Magazine

Posted on January 21, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

ITINERARY Justin Matherly's contorted sculptures, Doug Wheeler's deep dives into light and space, Madeline Hollanders luminous Bortolami debut, and more. THE EDITORS January 20, 2020

When: Jan. 8Feb. 22

Where: Demisch Danant, New York

What: In the 1960s and 70s, French design took a turn toward rounded forms, saturated colors, and a medley of textures that designers such as Pierre Paulin and Olivier Mourgue playfully employed to soften the severity of modern architecture. Color Diaries riffs on this humanization by presenting a curated color field in three-dimensional soft forms, encouraging visitors to engage in color play guided by none other than their own personal associations.Ryan Waddoups

When: Jan. 10Feb. 22

Where: Bortolami, New York

What: Over the past few years, Madeline Hollander has choreographed bewitching, systems-based dance pieces that have established her as one of the most whip-smart artists in town, and also one of the most thrilling. (A memorable 2018 piece had four performers enacting intricate, athletics-inspired moves until they raised the heat in the room enough to activate air conditioners. When the temperature dropped sufficiently, they went at it again.) For her Bortolami debut, Hollander is working with objects instead of humans, programming scores of car headlights and taillights to respond to the traffic light at the nearby intersection. When that light goes red, the taillights come alive in a sea of disparate sequences that she has conceived, imagining drivers stuck in traffic. Transposing peoples everyday actions into a symphonic light work, the piece is uncanny and oddly moving. It seems likely to become even more so. Once the driverless car competition is won, the wildly blinking field will be a memorial to one more form of human control that has been replaced by machines.Andrew Russeth

When: Jan. 11Feb. 15

Where: Modern Art, London

What: The interlocking figures that populate Paul Mpagi Sepuyas photographs are his close companions: friends, lovers, or fellow queer artists interlocking with fragments of his own body. For the artists first solo exhibition in the U.K., presented in collaboration with New Yorkbased Team Gallery, a series of recent visuals range from close-up mirror portraits of tangled limbs to self-reflexive collages, conveying his sensitivity and skill in capturing bodies on camera.Ryan Waddoups

When: Jan. 12Feb. 23

Where: Magenta Plains, New York

What: Growing up in Arendal, Norway, about three hours southwest of Oslo by car, the artist Tiril Hasselknippe watched a lot of nature documentaries. One program, focused on a volcano whose eruption was 100 years overdue, convinced her that the end was near, and she has held onto that apocalyptic worldview. Thats just how Im wired, the 35-year-old says, sitting in the Magenta Plains gallery in New York, where her latest solo show just went on view. Much of her work, which has appeared in the 2018 New Museum Triennial and shows at kunsthalles across Europe, could be seen as attempts to stave off or mitigate such disastertheyre scrappy, hand-fashioned solutions to potential catastrophes.Tiffany Jow

When: Jan. 16Feb. 15

Where: The Future Perfect, San Francisco

What: As FOG Design+Art kicks off in San Francisco, the Los Angelesbased ceramist Bari Ziperstein is presenting her Tube collection, a line of new and exclusive ceramic pieces, in her first solo exhibition at The Future Perfects Bay Area outpost. The work on view riffs on an industrial tube, curving, cutting, and combining different versions of the cylindrical shape in artful, unexpected ways.Tiffany Jow

When: Jan. 16Feb. 22

Where: Lehmann Maupin, New York

What: Erwin Wurms One Minute Sculptures are everyday objects accompanied by instructions that tell viewers how to interact with them (usually in ways that are playful and absurd). The artist, whos been experimenting with video, performance, installation, and other mediums for more than three decades, will present a series of new sculptures in this exhibition. One piece, One Minute forever (hands/fruits) (2019), consists of a concrete cast hand with oranges pushed onto its fingertipsan act that prolongs Wurms participatory project for eternity.Tiffany Jow

When: Jan. 17April 30

Where: Carpenters Workshop Gallery, San Francisco

What: The Dutch design duo known for ambitious projects and asking really big questions scales things up even more with About Nature, Technology, and Humankind, which marks the largest installations to date of their seminal works Flylight and Fragile Future III in the United States. Both works, which showcase how artists utilize cutting-edge technology to mimic existing natural phenomena such as the flight patterns of birds and longevity of dandelions, are presented during a time of dire environmental turmoil that beckons new scrutiny of the sustainability of human progress.Ryan Waddoups

When: Jan. 22March 7

Where: Gladstone Gallery, Brussels

What: One of the standout participants in the central show of the 2019 Venice Biennale, the Paris-based artist Cameron Jamie makes figures and masks in a panoply of mediums (glazed stoneware, most famously) that are fearsome, inventive, and often discomfitingly familiar; they suggest dark emotions and unsettled states of mind. For his first exhibition at Gladstones stately Brussels branch, Jamie is presenting what the enterprise is terming a rogues gallery of ceramic masks. Some are faced away from the viewer, a signature move that the artist seems to use to invite viewers to venture into the alternate states that he conjures, or simply to embody the hidden ones that he recognizes in us all.Andrew Russeth

When: Jan. 23April 18

Where: Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York

What: Julia Morgan (18721957) was the first female architecture student at the Paris in cole des Beaux-Arts and later became a proponent of the American Arts and Crafts movement. Jules Bourgoin (18381908) was a Paris-born professor at the institution who spent time exploring the Middle East and North Africa, intricately documenting the ornate structures he encountered. While Bourgoins exact impact on his students is not known, the Beirut-based artist Rayyane Tabet juxtaposes their work in this exhibition, prompting viewers to consider notions of appropriation and context. Tiffany Jow

When: Jan. 24March 21

Where: David Zwirner, New York

What: Though he began his career as a painter, Doug Wheeler quickly became fascinated with light, incorporating actual bulbs into his wall-mounted artworks and then a light environment inside his Venice Beach studio in 1967. Since then, the American artist has realized ethereal luminous environments at the Guggenheim, Hirshhorn, and Stedelijk museums, which fellow artist Daniel Buren has likened to experiencing a spatial event, entering into light. Wheelers latest exhibition, which takes over David Zwirners 19th Street gallery, continues his lifelong study of lights atmospheric and perceptual effects. Ryan Waddoups

Jan. 25March 14

Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich

American artist Justin Matherly uses Greek and Roman antiquity as a jumping-off point for his weird, contorted sculptures. This exhibition presents new work that showcases his interest in statues, columns, and reliefs as well as his production process, in which forms are first carved out of XPS insulation foam then cast in concrete, gypsum, or fiberglass resin. Tiffany Jow

More here:
12 Must-See Exhibitions This Week, from San Francisco to Paris and Beyond - Surface Magazine

YANG | Do You Still Watch Buzzfeed? – Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

Posted on February 4, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

For the past few weeks, videos from Buzzfeed have popped up in my Youtube recommendations. I guess nostalgia is coded in the algorithms. Either way, I fell for it. My past viewing history informed Youtube of my possible current interests, so it is merely my past self suggesting content to my current self, right?

I tend to perceive this as an iterative cycle of optimization: We search for what we are interested in, the platforms offer suggestions based on our behavior, we again make decisions when we browse the platforms with advertisements embedded and the algorithms are refined in this process. But what is the driving force behind this cycle? Our data, our attention, our time. The rhetoric of automation is merely delusional. The platforms create the impression that they are helping us find the right content, but the hidden labor of recommendation algorithms is performed by us. Our attention is extracted like raw materials, and to stay on the platforms for social participation, we are forced to pay more attention and make more decisions for the platforms profit maximization. In fact, the more time we spend on the platforms, the more time we have to spend to stay on the platforms.

Attention is an intriguing concept: We dont exactly have control over what we pay our attention to, and we cannot necessarily overlook something were already paying attention to. With everything now first being fed into these tech giants before they turn to demand our attention, our attention is enslaved in the information economy. We no longer have full autonomy over what we spend our time consuming with the endless browsing we have to perform for the free platforms.

As for Buzzfeed, the company rose to prominence by leveraging this new business model based on attention colonialism. The new media companys strategy is clear more clicks, more money. Buzzfeed uses every way conceivable to grab your attention to click on their content, but their reliance on social media platforms has posed a threat to their longevity. When the algorithms make decisions based on the interests of the social media platforms, how can new media companies gain visibility? It doesnt sound right if new media companies pay the platforms to have their content promoted in the first place. The platformization of media is challenging the very distinction between a media company and a content creator.

So I watched the Buzzfeed video. After a year of not getting exposed to any Buzzfeed content, I couldnt recognize any of the new Buzzfeed people. The video does not feature any of the big names Im familiar with because they have all left Buzzfeed. Remember when there was a wave of prominent producers leaving Buzzfeed to embark on their journey as content creators? The Why I Left Buzzfeed genre became sensational hits and garnered more views than the videos Buzzfeed produced at the time. The new people still share the likable Buzzfeed spirit, but theyre just not the Try Guys, Safiya Nygaard or Michelle Khare.

A netizen myth emerged that Buzzfeed is dying with these people leaving. Have trends proved this assertion right? Judging by the views of their recent videos, it is indeed slowly dying in peoples attention. What happened?

With the platformization of media, branding for media companies has been a difficult task. In the new media landscape, it is far more common for people to recognize personalities rather than non-human brands. (On the other hand, we dont just look at humans. There are non-human personalities that might be entirely artificial yet immensely attention-grabbing). With Buzzfeed losing its known faces, it is getting increasingly challenging for the company to retain its presence in the audiences mind. Buzzfeed doesnt just fail to retain its stars, it has also been laying off its emerging talents. While the business itself is still profitable, such practices to help it remain profitable have destructively hurt the branding of the company. Influencers now dominate new media, and companies are struggling to keep up with that.

The most notable exception to this rule of celebrity dominance in the new media landscape is perhaps in the realm of journalism. When people look for quality news, they look for The New York Times or The Washington Post, but we wont necessarily be able to recognize Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight or Ezra Klein from Vox. In the case of Buzzfeed, its identity crisis is also rooted in its hybridity of news and entertainment. It is often overlooked that Buzzfeed News is, in fact, a reputable news outlet that has been finalists for Pulitzer Prizes for its contribution to investigative journalism. Nonetheless, the popular image of Buzzfeed as an entertainment company obscures its position as a media company. With Buzzfeed blurring the line between news and entertainment, the company as a brand is having a hard time standing out. It is not as trustworthy as The Atlantic, but it is also not as interesting as Kim Kardashian.

So, with Buzzfeed Newss editor-in-chief Ben Smith moving to The New York Times as the next media columnist, are we witnessing the burst of the digital media bubble? I shall say not yet. Digital media consumption is at an all-time high. What we are seeing now is a stormy reshuffling of the organizational hierarchies of the new media landscape. In my opinion, a radical restructuring of the business model rooted in attention colonialism is in urgent need of radical refashioning, or else we will just spend an absurd amount of time reading and watching nothing.

Stephen Yang is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He can be reached at syang@cornellsun.com. Rewiring Technoculture runs alternate Mondays this semester.

View post:
YANG | Do You Still Watch Buzzfeed? - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

Hemsworth rumoured to be filming new project at dam – Central Telegraph

Posted on February 4, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

A SECRETIVE filming event closed Rocky Creek Dam for four days, with Rous County Council saying they couldn't divulge any details because of a "confidentiality agreement".

But Hollywood superstar Chris Hemsworth is understood to be the real reason behind the controversial closure.

Locals were outraged they couldn't visit their favourite recreational area and wanted answers.

Rous general manager Phillip Rudd confirmed the dam was in lockout mode from 5pm on Saturday until 9am on Tuesday due to the filming of a National Geographic documentary.

"Due to a signed confidentiality agreement I can't say much more than that," he said.

"We decided to close Rocky Creek Dam to the general public and tour groups mostly from a safety point of view due to the use of plant equipment."

Rocky Creek Dam was closed for filming.

However sources have confirmed the filming was for a new science doco-series, Limitless.

The show is being produced by Darren Aronofsky and Jane Root, and will be hosted by Hemsworth.

"Basically, I was somehow convinced to volunteer myself as a human guinea pig and endure a series of mental and physical challenges across the globe, all for the sake of science," Hemsworth told The Daily Telegraph.

"We're hoping to shed some light on new ideas and emerging science with the focus on extending a healthy life span. Production starts soon, so wish me luck."

The series seeks to expand our knowledge on how to live healthier, longer lives.

Hemsworth will undertake both mental and physical challenges to push the science and himself - to the limits of human potential.

National Geographic said that the series will showcase extraordinary examples of longevity science from around the world, from centenarian martial artists through to how navy seals conquer stress.

The filming crew finished up at Rocky Creek Dam on Tuesday morning, and the area has since reopened to the public.

Originally posted here:
Hemsworth rumoured to be filming new project at dam - Central Telegraph

How to be a healthier, happier human in 2020 – Mother Nature Network

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

It's that time again when a fresh, new year awaits with so many possibilities. You want to make resolutions, but you definitely don't want to fail. We can help with that.

Here are plenty of great ideas to make this year a healthier, happier one Pick one, two or several ideas. They're not monstrously big changes but big enough that you'll feel better. And what better way to kick off a new decade?

There's a reason the gym is so packed in January. Many people make huge plans to hit the elliptical every day or attend regular aerobics classes. But when life starts to get in the way, attendance dwindles and the gym begins to look normal again.

The good news is that you don't have to do a serious workout to get the benefits of being active. Even 10 minutes of activity here and there adds up and gives you health benefits. Try pacing when you're on the phone, taking things up and down the stairs one at a time or dancing to a couple of your favorite songs. Or make a promise to walk your dog every day. You'll both love the exercise.

What if you added just an extra serving of vegetables each day? (Photo: Pinkyone/Shutterstock)

Going on a diet is another common resolution. But if you try to overhaul your diet completely, chances are you'll default to old habits quickly. You'll have much better luck if you start small.

Try making gradual diet changes like adding one more fruit or vegetable to your daily diet. Or try eating less meat and sugar. Once you conquer one small change, see if you can add another.

Although diet and exercise are two of the most popular resolutions, they aren't equal if weight loss is your goal. Moving matters, but cutting calories counts more when you want to drop pounds. Ideally, the two should go hand in hand for a well-rounded, healthier you.

If you increase only your exercise regimen without changing your eating habits, you're unlikely to lose much weight. This "exercise paradox" might be because your body adapts or you make up for your workouts by being sedentary the rest of the day.

Walking in the woods can lower stress and make you sleep better. (Photo: Skumer/Shutterstock)

Everyone knows that being in nature is good for your health. So make time to get outside. Just a simple walk in the woods boosts your well-being and has benefits from better sleep to lower stress. One study even found that walking in a park can give you the same feel-good sensations as Christmas.

If you don't have time to head to the park, try taking a walk at lunch. A lunchtime stroll can immediately improve your mood, increase relaxation and make you more enthusiastic about your work.

Stress in small doses is a normal part of everyday life. But when you're overwhelmed at work or at home, your body can suffer. Too much stress can take a toll on your heart, your brain and your weight, leading to headaches and trouble sleeping, upset stomach and chest pain, reports WebMD.

It's hard to get rid of stress completely, but there are ways to tackle it when it comes barreling your way. Try a few moments of deep breathing, yoga or meditation to calm your brain and body. One recent study found that people who learned eight happiness strategies were more easily able to conquer stress and were happier. You can choose the skills that work for you, including writing in a gratitude journal, recognizing a positive event every day and practicing a small act of kindness daily.

Spending time with pets is good for your physical and mental health. (Photo: ABO PHOTOGRAPHY/Shutterstock)

Dogs and cats are good for your health. If you have a pet, you know that great feeling when they crawl up in your lap or you go for a walk or play a game of fetch. Study after study shows how pets are good for everything from your heart health and longevity to your fitness and social life.

If you don't have a pet, consider getting one or at least maybe foster one or volunteer at a local shelter. If you do have a pet, dedicate yourself to spending more time with your four-legged pal.

You know you're helping others when you volunteer, but you will also reap the rewards of your kindness.

Studies have shown that people who volunteer for selfless reasons live longer than those who don't do charity work (or who do it because they have to). Other research has found that people who volunteer are less stressed and have lower blood pressure than those who don't help others in the community.

Getting a good sleep routine can mean less tossing and turning. (Photo: Stock-Asso/Shutterstock)

Just going to bed earlier or trying to sleep in longer doesn't count for getting better rest. You have to work on your sleep routine in order to wake up feeling amazing.

Make your bedroom inviting with comfortable sheets and no electronics. Have a nighttime ritual and go to bed and wake up at the same time even on weekends. Don't nap during the day and watch your caffeine. Be smart about exercise late in the day and consider whether your pet should be sharing your space.

There are so many reasons to declutter in the new year. You can get rid of things you don't need and donate them to people who can use them instead.

But having piles of paper and loads of things all around you also can lead to anxiety and stress, according to WebMD. You can feel overwhelmed and become nonproductive when you have too much stuff. It can be bad for your mental health and your physical health because of the dust and mold that can collect.

Take your cluttering a little at a time. Tackle a drawer, a shelf, a closet or a room at a time. Divide items into things you can donate, throw away or keep.

Standing at your desk can help ease some of the risks linked with too much sitting. (Photo: Juhan Sonin [CC by 2.0]/Flickr)

If you sit at a desk most of the day, it's easy to forget to get up and take a break. But sedentary behavior like sitting at a computer or watching TV for hours on end is linked to a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes, among other problems.

Just because you exercise at the beginning or end of the day, that doesn't offset sitting for nearly eight or nine hours straight. The best thing to do is take lots of breaks throughout the day or consider a standing desk.

If you didn't get your flu shot yet, you're not out of luck or out of the woods. Ideally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests everyone get the flu shot by the end of October. Flu season is October through March, but peak activity is typically in February.

While you're at it, check to see if you're up to date on other vaccines. If you're over 50, for example, you're due for a shingles shot. And when was the last time you had a tetanus booster?

Mary Jo DiLonardo writes about everything from health to parenting and anything that helps explain why her dog does what he does.

How to be a healthier, happier human in 2020

These small resolutions can make for a great start to the new year.

Read the rest here:

How to be a healthier, happier human in 2020 - Mother Nature Network

Player of the Moment: Wardell Julius Clark – Newcity Stage

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Marking progress through a life in the arts is often measured in inches across years. Day-to-day, month-by-month, year after year after year. A show here, a break, another show. Life intervenes: relationships with artists are notoriously complicated for all involved, though not without distinct rewards. Issues of finances and longevity, ethics and the elusive nature of quality, that most subjective of measures, which moonlights under the auspices of its opposite, are daily considerations. Making art as a person of color, a woman, or an artist who is unquietly queer, femme, trans, non-binary or otherwise socially or culturally marginalized redoubles these complications and adds a few more: institutionalized racism and sexism, the demand for excellence in the face of white cis male mediocrity, a constant barrage of microaggressions, well-meaning liberalism. The list goes on and on.

And yet, against the odds, the artist rises. One of the most gratifying ascents to behold in the last few years has been that of Wardell Julius Clark. After a decade as a professional actor, Julius Clark switched his focus to directing in 2018while maintaining a foothold in the world of actingand has achieved a degree of critical and popular success the likes of which are rare for artists at any point in their career, with each new play building on the artistry of the ones before it. I spoke with Wardell via email as well as in person during this years Players photoshoot, where he was generous, thoughtful and game for anything, qualities that gracefully transpose onto his art and activism.

We talked a little over a year ago but it seems like a lifetime at the clip youve been working at. Catch us up on what youve been up to and whats coming next.

I went back on the other side of the table to act in Flyin West at American Blues Theater, then directed two staged readings at TimeLine Theatre. I worked with Make Believe Productions, recording an audio drama written by Nate Marshall, Bruh Rabbit, in front of a live studio audience. I opened the critically acclaimed Dutch Masters at Jackalope Theatre, The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963 at Chicago Childrens Theatre, His Shadow at 16th Street Theater, and Hoodoo Love at Raven Theatre. I workshopped and did a stage reading of a brand new Calamity West play, Christmas at Home, with Sideshow Theatre this summer, as well as finally joining the ensemble of The Fly Honey Show for their tenth anniversary. Coming up, the Chicago premiere of Sheepdog opens at Shattered Globe, followed by the Chicago premiere of James Ijames Kill Move Paradise at TimeLine Theatre Company. After that, I head to Steppenwolf as associate director on the world premiere of the new Rajiv Joseph play King James with Anna D. Shapiro, which will move to the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles later in the summer.

What are the most significant things youve learned along the way about yourself as an artist and particularly as a director?

What I know for sure is that I am walking in my calling, living in my purpose and growing as a human being through my art. My ideologies have morphed and changed greatly over the past years, especially the last five. I have found a specific mission, one that is about illuminating, celebrating and relishing black life onstage, as a means to seek liberation for my people through the art we create. I have also learned that it is okay to not have all the answers. The best thing a director can do is surround themselves with a fierce, diverse team of individuals who share a common goal for the work, with a myriad of ideas about how to achieve our collective goal. Ive learned that my connection to any play is directly tied to how effective and powerful I think a story can be for the audience.

Because I spent ten years as a professional actor before adding director to my resume, it is less about learning new things and more about sharpening instincts that are already there. Ive learned that if I cannot figure out the big moment in the play before I accept the job, then I cant do the play. I have to have an instinctual, mental and visual understanding of how that works in the storytelling. Ive learned that taking something as small as three lines of stage direction can spark an entire theatrical moment in my mind, unrealized to the playwright and fully in service of the story.

Every storefront show you directed last year sold out. What is it about the work that you and your collaborators are doing that draws such enthusiastic crowds?

To me, theater is church. A sacred place to tell truths, to be a conduit and a reflection. Lifes mirror. I often talk about the distinction between concept and intention. What I mean by that is, every director has a concept for how they choose to interpret the text of a play. However, there are many productions that do not fully connect the concept to what the intention of the audiences emotion should be. From initial design meetings throughout preproduction and first rehearsal and the entire rehearsal process, I am continually reminding myself and all collaborators what the intention of our concept is. That idea fuels the theatrical relationship between production and audience. Audiences have to know that a Wardell Julius Clark production will be a full-bodied, visceral, emotional journey. That is because in every area of the production my collaborators and I intentionally seek to be as effective as possible in creating a world that not only the actors can live inside of but the audience as well. Chicago audiences have always known and continually crave this unabashed in-your-face experience from their storefront theater. Theater is both entertainment and education, even in the darkest moments onstage I want the audiences to be fully enthralled. The collective experience of the audience by nature makes people want to share it with each other. I like to build early word of mouth, buzz and excitement around the shows that I do. That, coupled with social media marketing and a lot of self-promotion [laughs] makes the whole thing work.

Critics like to note, or perhaps project patterns onto an artists output. What connections do you see between the plays youve directed?

All of the plays that I have directed so far deal with some aspect of the black experience juxtaposed against a past, present and future society seeking to invalidate our existence. I am drawn to work that illuminates black folks in our current condition while always striving for a more equitable existence in the world. A lot of my work has social justice themes. Growing up in Fairfield, Alabama and being steeped in the history of Birmingham, I have always thought of myself as an activist. A lot of the work that I have donefrom my first play Insurrection: Holding History at Stage Leftto the upcoming Kill Move Paradise at Timeline Theatreis steeped in various forms of liberation of black people. I am drawn to plays that have large theatrical moments or plays absent of blocking on the page. I said in our previous interview, and I still believe, what we do with our art is our revolution. I seek to do work that leads audiences on a revelatory journey, that can also act as a conduit for a better society.

Take us inside your directorial process. Where do you begin? Whats it like in the room? Are you nervous when a new show opens or are you already thinking about the next?

I begin with the images in my minds eye on my first read of the text. There are usually moments that I see from the page that are in the final form of the production. My conversations with designers during preproduction are less instructive and more free-form exploration of ideas. I always have a very clear understanding of how the world of the play should function and seek to collaborate with designers to bring their instincts to my vision. On the first day of rehearsal I always begin with a James Baldwin quote. Baldwin for me articulates the vast dexterity of black life. It sets the tone for how we will work over the next several weeks in rehearsal. My rehearsal room is very fun, I like to think. When the play is hard, the work shouldnt be.

I am always nervous when a new show opens, in that I hope the work resonates with audiences. I am also always thinking about the next show, usually based on necessity. Because of the freelance lifestyle, and scheduling, it has become a regular occurrence for me to be in preproduction while in rehearsals for another show. For example, my first week of rehearsals for Kill Move Paradise overlaps with tech and previews for Sheepdog.

You dont show much sign of slowing down but lets talk about self-care. What does a day off look like for you? Do you have a go-to getaway spot?

A day off? Whats that? Ha. Yes. My best friend Sydney Charles often jokes that I need a hobby. If I am gifted with a day off, I prefer to stay in bed. Self-care for me comes in very simple forms. Catching up on television shows, books that Ive been meaning to read, and checking in on pop culture. If I am treating myself, there are specific foods and beverages that I will indulge in. A Popeyes chicken sandwich and a Kentucky mule can do wonders. Dance for me is the loftiest of art forms and through daily practice and the occasional patronage I use dance as a form of rejuvenation and healing.

Who or what is currently inspiring you?

I am inspired by the artists in my inner circle. As a person who is constantly on the hunt for inspiration, surrounding myself with a small group of humans who share similar values and passion for life is my inspiration. My partner, Regina Victor, a person who embodies what I personally feel are the best qualities of the human spirit, is a daily inspiration in the way they pursue life. That daily interaction alone facilitates an energy in me that allows me to continue on my hardest days. I am inspired by the everyman in America who, in spite of everything, not only survives but thrives in their own world. My mothers joy inspires me. My brother Phillip James Brannon, who Ive long considered one of the greatest young actors in the American theater and now a rising TV and film star, has maintained his unique sense of self while continually growing and pursuing the very heights of our industry. There are also visual artists who greatly inspire me: Kara Walker, Hebru Brantley, Kerry James Marshall and Erin Mitchell.

Anything else you want our readers to know?

Yes. We are at a vital point in the American society and the human condition. As we have been before and more than likely will be again. It is more imperative than ever that we as people acknowledge the humanity in one another, and seek to find a more united understanding of how we can all exist together. That is what I search for in my work and that is the social media gospel I preach. The fundamental understanding that there are more things that connect us than separate us is the key to whatever comes next.

Read the rest here:

Player of the Moment: Wardell Julius Clark - Newcity Stage

10 Things We Learned About Humans in 2019 – Livescience.com

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Humans are incredible living machines, with legs strong enough to run marathons and brains smart enough to know that invisible dark matter exists. Our bodies make sure we hear the correct frequencies, send the right immune cells to a paper cut and know when to stop drinking water. But there's still much to untangle about our human bodies, so all the time, we are discovering new organs and new secrets about how all of our nooks and crannies keep us going. This past year, new discoveries revealed an invisible network of immune cells, a "Jell-O" violin in our ears and how the oldest people in this world survived to such extreme ages.

Humans might hear so well because of a tiny "Jell-O" violin that sits inside the ears. The thin, blob of tissue, otherwise known as the tectorial membrane, is made up of 97% water. This tissue helps to bring sound waves from the ear to nerve receptors, which then translate that vibration into an electrical signal the brain can read. New research conducted on mice has found that this ear Jell-O helps the cochlea a cavity in the inner ear that contains these nerve receptors separate high frequencies from low frequencies. It does so by changing its stiffness, based on water flow that runs through its tiny pores, similar to what happens when you tune a violin or guitar. [Read more about the 'Jell-O' Violin]

Our bones might be full of a previously unknown network of microscopic tunnels. These pathways might be vital for transporting immune cells made in bones out to the blood for circulation. A group of researchers discovered hundreds of these tiny blood vessels, or capillaries, in the leg bones of mice. But finding something in mice doesn't necessarily translate to humans, so one of the researchers decided to stick his own leg into an MRI machine. The scans of the researcher's leg showed that there were holes in the bone tissue that could indicate that these capillaries also exist in humans. [Read more about these microscopic tunnels]

The brain makes sure that we don't drink too much or too little water, using a prediction mechanism in the gut, according to new research. The group figured this out by implanting optical fibers and lenses in mice near the hypothalamus a brain region that regulates blood pressure and other bodily processes and is home to "thirst cells." A few seconds after drinking something, the mouth and throat begin firing signals to the brain. These signals tell the brain that you feel less thirsty so you stop drinking. That way, you don't keep drinking for the 10 minutes to an hour it takes for that liquid to actually enter the bloodstream and circulate to cells in the body.

But your mouth and throat would tell your brain to quench your thirst, irrespective of the type of liquid you're drinking, if it weren't for another mysterious signal. This one comes from the gut, and it makes sure the brain knows that the water reaching it is salty which can dehydrate the body or nonsalty, ensuring that the brain quenches thirst only when the mice drank fresh water. [Read more about how the body knows when to stop]

This year, scientists discovered a previously unknown organ that sits right under the skin, and it may help you feel the pain of a pinprick. It was previously thought that needle pricks were sensed by nerve endings that sit below the outer layer of the skin. But a new study conducted on mice (but which is also thought to apply to humans) found that nerves tangled up in special cells are what help us feel this sensation. This mesh of branched cells called "Schwann cells" and nerves together makes up a new "sensory organ" because it responds to external pressure signals (pricks or jabs) and relays that information to the brain. [Read more about this new organ]

Human embryos grow extra, lizardlike muscles in their hands and feet that disappear before birth, scientists found. By looking at 3D images from an embryonic image database, a group found that at about week seven of gestation, human fetuses had hands and feet that contained about 30 muscles each. Six weeks later, they contained only 20. Before the baby is born, those extra muscles either meld into other muscles or shrink away, but it's unclear why or how.

These temporary muscles might be leftovers from our ancestors and may have vanished from adult humans over 250 million years ago, when mammals first began evolving from mammal-like reptiles, the researchers suggest. But because the study was small, it needs to be replicated with a much larger group before researchers can say for certain that these appearing and disappearing muscles exist in all fetuses. [Read more about these minimuscles]

Supercentenarians, or people who are 110 years of age or older, might have a secret. A study published this year found that supercentenarians have higher-than-average concentrations of an immune cell called a "T helper cell" that may protect them from viruses and tumors. To figure this out, researchers drew blood from seven supercentenarians and five control participants, who ranged in age from those in their 50s to those in their 80s. They then isolated the immune cells and figured out what they were doing by measuring the messenger RNA that is produced by the genes in the cells.Messenger RNA translates genetic instructions from DNA and brings it to the nucleus of the cell, so that specific proteins can be produced.

The supercentenarians had a type of T helper cell called CD4 CTLs that had the capability to attack and kill other cells. Of course, it's not clear if supercentenarians owe their longevity to these immune cells, but previously, such cells have been shown to attack tumor cells and protect against viruses in mice. [Read more about the world's oldest people]

There might be a reason why some people are really good at trivia and seem to "know everything": very efficiently wired brains. A group of researchers in Germany analyzed the brains of 324 people who had varying degrees of general knowledge or semantic memory (the type of information that would come up in a game of trivia), based on questions given to them concerning various fields such as art, architecture and science.

Brain scans of the participants showed that those people who had retained and could recall more general knowledge had more efficient brain connections stronger and shorter connections between brain cells. This makes sense, because imagine answering the question, "What year did the moon landing happen?"

We might have the word "moon" stored in one area of the brain, but the "moon landing" in another, and knowledge of the year it happened in yet another. People with an efficient brain can better connect those various items together to quickly answer the question. (But, the researchers didn't find any link between more general knowledge and more brain cells.) [Read more about how trivia masters do it]

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown type of cell in the human body called the "immune cell X," and it could act as two other immune cell types, playing a role in triggering type 1 diabetes, new research suggests. There is likely not a lot of these cells in the human body maybe less than 7 out of every 10,000 white blood cells, but they might be powerful players in driving autoimmunity when the body mistakes its own cells for something foreign and attacks them.

These X cells resemble both B cells and T cells, two cell types that are important for fighting infections (but are also responsible for autoimmune diseases). The X cell makes antibodies like B cells that activate T cells, which then go on to attack anything it deems foreign. In the case of type 1 diabetes, immune cells mistakenly destroy healthy beta cells in the pancreas that make the hormone insulin. The researchers found evidence that these X cells exist in those with type 1 diabetes, but not in healthy controls. Even so, it's not clear if there are one or multiple cells responsible for the disease. [Read more about these rogue cells]

In other news, the cells in your tongues have the ability to smell. Researchers discovered this after growing human taste cells in the lab. They found that those cells contained a couple of molecules found in olfactory cells, the cells found in the nose that are responsible for, well, smelling. When they exposed taste cells to odor molecules, the cells responded just like the olfactory cells do. But this isn't uncommon olfactory cells have also previously been found in the gut, in sperm cells and even in hair. Though we knew that taste and smell were greatly intertwined (which becomes apparent when a blocked-up nose makes food taste more bland), this study suggests human taste cells might be much more complicated than previously thought. [Read more about your tongue's strange ability]

It turns out, humans, even endurance athletes, have limited energy. Scientists calculated the limit of human endurance to be around 2.5 times the body's resting metabolic rate (the number of calories the body burns for basic physiological needs such as maintaining body temperature or breathing), or 4,000 calories per day for an average person. They calculated this by analyzing data from some of the most extreme endurance events that take place on our planet, such as the Race Across the USA, and by comparing that data to other endurance events.

They found that the longer the event, the more difficult it became to burn calories. But athletes don't fall to the ground when they reach this 2.5-times threshold. They can keep going, but they can't maintain a balance of the number of calories consumed and the amount burned, so they begin to lose weight, which isn't sustainable in the long term. What's more, researchers found that pregnant women operated at around 2.2 times their resting metabolic rate, just by growing a baby. So no matter the activity, growing a baby, cycling or running across the U.S., the body seems to have a limit to the amount of energy it can give you in the long term. [Read more about this ultimate limit]

Originally published on Live Science.

See original here:

10 Things We Learned About Humans in 2019 - Livescience.com

Happy birthday, Mr Bean! Celebrating 30 years of a major comedy character – The Conversation AU

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

January 1 1990, Mr Bean debuted on ITV to an audience of 13.45 million. The brainchild of Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, the pilot episode marked the birth of a major comedy character.

Bean has become so familiar, so comfortably part of our pop-culture tapestry, that its easy to miss how striking a creation he is.

At the time, the talented Atkinson was best known for his four incarnations of Blackadder.

After a slapsticky first iteration, Blackadder traded heavily on acidic and acerbic dialogue and Atkinsons knack for delivering it. Even the most lethargic line delivery (To you Baldrick, the Renaissance was just something that happened to other people.) dripped with disdain and venomous wit.

In sharp contrast, Bean was a largely silent character arguably the last great predominantly silent comic creation, extending a genealogy including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Harpo Marx and Jacques Tati.

While not to all tastes, Bean is widely recognised and beloved. The absence of dialogue helped the show become a global hit, transcending language and cultural differences to screen in almost 250 countries.

So what is it that makes Mr Bean such an adored creation?

Think of the most iconic images of silent comedy: Lloyd hanging from a clock tower, Keaton commandeering trains for the Confederacy, Chaplin body surfing through a network of oversized mechanical gears.

Now think of the most iconic Mr Bean vignettes: Bean at the swimming pool, in the dentists chair, entertaining a sick child on a plane, eating lunch at the park. All exquisite comedic scenes, shot on unflattering videotape in familiar environments.

The smaller sketches hold up stronger on repeat viewing, while more elaborate high jinks Bean playing mini-golf across a whole county, Bean looking after a lost infant at a carnival have not aged as well and tend to pale in charm and dilute the purity of the concept.

Bean is best when he works on a small scale.

Mr Bean has a child-like nature. Silent comedy stars typically played moderately functional adults. Even Harpo Marx, the most overtly childlike of them, had a predatory edge.

In contrast, Bean is, as Atkinson notes, a child in a grown mans body.

The series opening credits, in which Bean falls to the ground with a splat from a spaceship, conjure other possible backstories. Is Bean an abductee returned to Earth minus some crucial grey matter? Or an alien attempting (poorly) to pass for human?

Most of the characteristics that made Bean an indelible creation were introduced in the very first episode.

As he sits for an exam, reads the wrong test paper and attempts to cheat his way through it in the first sketch, we see his idiot savant status (he does know trigonometry), his competitiveness and compulsive one-upmanship, and his cruel sense of humour.

In the next sketch, Bean goes to the beach and changes into his bathers in the most complicated way possible.

The sketch introduces Beans imbecilic ingenuity finding inordinately convoluted solutions for basic predicaments as well as his tendency to generate his own complications and desperation to avoid social humiliation (it is British comedy, after all).

In the third and best sketch a tour de force showcasing Atkinsons rubbery complexion and virtuoso gangly physicality Bean attends a church service, where he struggles to stay awake and clandestinely eat some candy under the admirably straight and puritanical eye of Richard Briers.

The sketch introduces the motif of Bean attempting to imitate human behaviour and everyday rituals and failing, earning the ire of others in the process.

Bean headlined 14 television episodes from 19901995, two feature films and an animated series, and appeared in various shorts, sketches and the 2012 Olympics.

The films and cartoon somewhat diluted the brand, and the character has endured the wear and tear that comes with longevity and cultural omnipresence: parents getting sick of their children watching Bean, adolescents thinking theyre too cool for Bean.

However, Mr Beans worldwide audience speaks loudly to the genius of the character and Atkinsons performance. By returning to this first episode, 30 years on, we can re-experience the birth of this remarkable comic creation.

A line delivered by Groucho Marx in Duck Soup nicely encapsulates the simple core of Beans widespread appeal. He may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but dont let that fool you: he really is an idiot.

Original post:

Happy birthday, Mr Bean! Celebrating 30 years of a major comedy character - The Conversation AU

Eating for luck on New Year’s: Why foods from grapes to peas promise prosperity – USA TODAY

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Some foods are just plain lucky to eat on New Years Eve. What associates these dishes with good fortune, exactly? Thats tough to pinpoint, but much of the answer has to do with symbolism and superstition.

It also has to do with a human tradition of eating something special, like a birthday cake, to mark the passage of time. So what will people be biting into at the top of 2020 to set them up for success? We talked to food historians Megan Elias, food writer and director of the gastronomy program at Boston University, and Linda Pelaccio,who hosts culinary radio showA Taste of the Past, about some of the lucky foods youll find on global New Years menus.

Spaniards eat 12 grapes when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve.(Photo: JAIME REINA, AFP/Getty Images)

As the tradition goes, believers eat 12 grapes at midnight, one for each month of the year. According to one story, the ritual started in Spain around 1900, when a grape grower had a bumper crop, says Pelaccio, and was creative about giving away the surplus.But that history is fuzzy at best, she says.

Regardless, stuffing a dozen grapes into ones mouth is a tradition that has spread to citizens of many Latin American countries. As Elias says, people annually eat the grapes as fast as physically possible without puking.

Peas and lentils are round and coin-like, and so they are considered a harbinger of prosperity.(Photo: SASCHA STEINBACH, EPA-EFE)

Round foods resemble coins and money, Pelaccio says. Eat these symbolic foods, many believe, for a financially successful new year. On the contrary: Dont eat the round foods and you could have a year of bad luck!

If you eat peaswith greensand cornbread, thenthat's even more auspicious, what with green being the color of money and cornbread calling to mind gold.

Black-eyed peas are served with rice in the traditional Southern U.S. dish called Hoppin John for New Years Eve.Or, the peas can be part of a soup.In Italy, lentils mix with pork for a lucky dish.

Since pigs root forward, eating pork at the start of a new year symbolizes moving ahead.(Photo: FRANK AUGSTEIN, Associated Press)

Speaking of pork,pigs have long been considered lucky.

Pigs can be rich and fat, which is what you want in a meal promoting prosperity. And, says Pelaccio, "Pigs take their snout and root forward, as opposed to digging backwards." Forward momentum; good. "Whereas, its not good to eat lobsters, because they walk backwards."

A popular lucky New Year's Day dish in Germany is pork and sauerkraut, promising as much luck as the many strands in the cabbage.

In Japan, it is customary to eat soba noodles on New Year's Eve (and on many other days) for good luck.(Photo: JOHN SAMORA, GANNETT)

Noodles are long, and that length is thought to symbolizelong life and, yes, luck, Elias says.

In Japan, soba noodles are served on New Years.In China, during the Chinese New Year (or the Lunar New Year), which falls on Jan. 25 next year, people inhale so-called longevity noodles.Its OK to slurp.

In Prairie du Chien, Wis., "Droppin' of the Carp" is a New Year's Eve tradition. A fish like this one (named Lucky) is lowered by a crane into a wooden cradle on St. Feriole Island, where hundreds line up to kiss her frozen lips for good luck.(Photo: John Hart, AP)

Eating a whole fish has become another Dec. 31 tradition across the globe. Why? Perhaps because in lean times people saved anything they could including fish to eat on a special occasion. Herring is a fish of choice in Eastern European countries. In Germany, those looking to obtain all lucky advantages in the new year do more than just eat an entire carp: They save fish scales in their wallets for extra good fortune.

Pomegranate seeds are symbols of abundance. It is a Greek New Year's custom to break seeds on the door's threshold for good luck.(Photo: kostman, Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Seeds are round and coinlike, which makes themautomatically lucky by the rules we have already set forth. Pomegranates, which come from the Middle East, also make sense to eat on New Years because they happen to be ripe that time of year.

Elias adds that pomegranates have symbolic power because they come from a land where so many religions come from. Plus, seeds are associated with life and fertility. Another promising food, indeed.

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2019/12/30/new-years-foods-good-luck-black-eyed-peas-grapes-pork-whole-fish-pomegranate-green-peas-noodles/2677764001/

Read the original post:

Eating for luck on New Year's: Why foods from grapes to peas promise prosperity - USA TODAY

New Years Eve good luck foods: Grapes, black-eyes peas and more – Chicago Sun-Times

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

It also has to do with a human tradition of eating something special, like a birthday cake, to mark the passage of time. So what will people be biting into at the top of 2020 to set them up for success? We talked to food historians Megan Elias, food writer and director of the gastronomy program at Boston University, and Linda Pelaccio, who hosts culinary radio show A Taste of the Past about some of the lucky foods youll find on global New Years menus.

If you eat peas with greens and cornbread, then thats even more auspicious, what with green being the color of money and cornbread calling to mind gold.

Black-eyed peas are served with rice in the traditional Southern U.S. dish called Hoppin John for New Years Eve. Or, the peas can be part of a soup. In Italy, lentils mix with pork for a lucky dish.

Speaking of pork, pigs have long been considered lucky.

Pigs can be rich and fat, which is what you want in a meal promoting prosperity. And, says Pelaccio, Pigs take their snout and root forward, as opposed to digging backwards. Forward momentum; good. Whereas, its not good to eat lobsters, because they walk backwards.

A popular lucky New Years Day dish in Germany is pork and sauerkraut, promising as much luck as the many strands in the cabbage.

Noodles are long, and that length is thought to symbolize long life and, yes, luck, Elias says.

In Japan, soba noodles are served on New Years. In China, during the Chinese New Year (or the Lunar New Year), which falls on Jan. 25 next year, people inhale so-called longevity noodles. Its OK to slurp.

Seeds are round and coinlike, which makes them automatically lucky by the rules we have already set forth. Pomegranates, which come from the Middle East, also make sense to eat on New Years because they happen to be ripe that time of year.

Elias adds that pomegranates have symbolic power because they come from a land where so many religions come from. Plus, seeds are associated with life and fertility. Another promising food, indeed.

NMN Benefits – The Path of Longevity – ProHealth

Posted on January 21, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Gauging the benefits of NMN, or any supplement, medicine, or treatment regimen can be a bit tricky if done without the benefit of scientific methods and testing standards.

Treatments, and human perception itself, can be influenced by several factors. If we make changes to our diet or lifestyle routine while using a particular herb or vitamin, for example, was it the supplement that produced the perceived effects, or was it those salads?

Perhaps it was just our own mind, convinced that the supplement would produce a particular benefit. This mental ability to influence a treatment regimens outcome is called the placebo effect. The placebo effect can account for a large portion of any treatments success or failure, which is why many research studies are designed to minimize it.

Another dynamic at play to consider is a persons perception and evaluation of a particular treatment, called anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence, while not considered reliable by scientists, is nonetheless a common feature of day-to-day health care. If your doctor prescribes a medicine or supplement, and then later asks, What happened?, he or she is asking for anecdotal evidence

Chip Walter is dying for you to read his new book on immortality. Or is he? – NEXTpittsburgh

Posted on January 21, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Is it possible to cure aging?

Chip Walter says yes. The author spent years researching and writing his new book Immortality, Inc.: Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions, and the Quest to Live Forever which explores the efforts being taken to cure aging and hence dramatically prolong life.

This is not a work of fiction.

Walter, a science journalist, filmmaker, skeptic and former CNN bureau chief interviewed many authorities, including Craig Venter, the scientist who accelerated the completion of the first human genome and Robert Hariri, one of the worlds leading stem cell experts.

The book, published by National Geographic, is available in bookstores and online. As part of his tour to promote the book, Walter will appear at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall in Oakland on Thursday, Jan. 16 to discuss the death of growing old. The event, which is part of the Pittsburgh Arts & Lecture Series, is free with registration.

The topic is fascinating with so many implications. NEXTpittsburgh caught up with Walter to ask him some burning questions of our own.

Define immortality. Is it infinite or are we talking hundreds of years?

None of us is going to live forever. Sooner or later well be hit by a bus or lightning, or maybe an angry spouse who just cant stomach celebrating their 400th anniversary! We used the title Immortality, Inc. in the book to differentiate it from simply living a couple of extra years or even a couple of extra decades. So, this book doesnt pretend to have revealed science that will guarantee infinite life, but it does explore scientific advances on the horizon that will very likely diminish and then eliminate aging. And since aging and age-related diseases are the number one reason why we die (one million people a week die of age-related disease), curing aging would radically lengthen healthy life spans into the hundreds of years, crazy as that may sound.

Do we have to cure cancer and conditions like depression first?

The opposite, I think.

If scientists solve aging, then it would also vastly reduce the number of people who die from cancer and many other diseases. The reason most people get cancer is because they are aging. If science can solve the underlying, biological causes of aging, these killer diseases would largely disappear. Well basically grow younger. And, as a rule, most people do not die when they are young unless its from an accident, murder or a severe genetic problem.

So, by curing aging, we will, in one fell swoop, cure much of the cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers and other major diseases. This arguably makes solving aging the best way to eliminate a whole group of diseases, rather than try to track each one down individually like were playing some game of whack-a-mole. In fact, you could argue that these diseases will never be eliminated unless aging is eliminated first. Well just create a series of band-aids, but eventually something will get us.

Issues like depression are more problematic because they are not directly related to aging (though they sometimes can be). But, an additional bonus is that as science attempts to cure aging, we may well develop cures for many diseases that afflict people in their youth genetic diseases, mental and emotional syndromes, viruses, childhood cancer because we will understand the genomics of the human body so much better.

How close are we really to achieving immortality and what will be the first discovery?

I doubt there will be a silver bullet any more than scientists found a silver bullet that would cure cancer when the war against cancer was launched in the 1970s. Its just too complex. But, I do believe that some major advances will be revealed and in use within the next four years. These advances will be incremental, but they will also gather speed. First, I expect to see a far broader use of stem cell technology to repair damaged and diseased bodies from arthritis to kidney disease. A company and scientist I explore in the book (Celularity) is tackling that.

Next, will come major advances as we better understand the human genome. We are gathering more and more information that is enabling us to decode the genome so that we can understand and develop drugs tailored to each individual. But first we have to understand what interactions within our DNA unravel the human body in the first place. ( I explore a company called Human Longevity, founded by genomic pioneer Craig Venter, that is working on that.) Third, based largely on genomics, will come advances that truly unveil why we age at all. Clearly we do. But why? Calico and Apple Chairman Arthur Levinson is working on that.

How will we solve all of these complex problems? Only the development of increasingly robust computing can solve that problem, and that software is advancing at an exponential pace. Ultimately, those machines, working with scientists of many stripes will crack some of these profoundly complex challenges. Generally, I believe those are the four forces that I believe will lead to the end of aging.

Has there been an actual breakthrough and if so, what is it?

There have been breakthroughs, but no cures (because, again, I doubt there will be a silver bullet). But as I reveal in the book, scientists now know, definitively, that genetics is the source behind why we age (or one of the key sources). We also know that certain key genes in other animals (like mice) can be switched, and when they are, the mice live far longer and healthier lives, sometimes more than four times longer. We also know that some mammals simply dont age. They die of other things, but not aging. This was discovered while I was writing the book. Scientists in the book also have discovered what they suspect is the explanation of youth. Why are we born young? How does that happen and then why and how do we age? So, we have already seen significant fundamental advances, and theyll continue to come.

How much of the book is about the personalities and how much is about science?

I did not want to write a book that was just a bland science survey filled with a bunch of facts. Theres a difference between fact and truth. When I first set out to explore and research Immortality, Inc., the main question in my mind was this: are we actually now living in a time when science could solve one of the greatest mysteries the human race has ever faced? And if science can accomplish that, what does it mean? To tell that story I needed to understand the history of the key scientists, and the finances and thinking of those involved. And I needed to gain access to them. It wasnt easy, but eventually I did. Much of what I found is exclusive information. Unknown until now.

In the end I wanted to thread all of those themes together into one larger, compelling story. How did something like this come to be? Who were these scientists? What motivated them? Are they crazy or geniuses? So, I spent a lot of time with all of them and I wrote about who they are and what led them to undertake such a monumental task. Who does that? Once I set the stage for outlining the personalities and the cultural and historical and financial issues, then I dove into the science that these scientists and companies were developing. I think this makes the book a much more compelling human story. At least I hope so.

How would you respond to critics who think the book is more about very wealthy older people in a quest to cheat death?

Well, the simple answer is thats not what the book is about. So folks should read it and theyll see that such an assumption would be off-base. I am sure that there are many well-heeled older people who would like to live longer and healthier lives. And I am sure that there are many not-so-well-heeled people who would as well. That doesnt make them evil. This is only evil if the rich, and only the rich, hold on to technologies that would lead to longer life. That would be wrong. But history shows that as new technologies evolve, costs drop and then they become more ubiquitous. I believe that will happen here. Insurance companies will begin to see that they can save a lot more money by enabling people to remain healthy longer than by paying to have them go into the hospital again and again.

When it comes right down to it, does anyone want to die (unless you are facing horrible physical, emotional or mental pain)? I mean when each of us is facing death, that day, do we really want to blink out? Living is literally wound into our DNA. Every living thing does everything it can to remain alive, until it simply cant anymore. From the beginning of time we have always tried to avoid dying. Thats the origin and purpose of Medicine with a capital M. Now, if we solve that problem and huge numbers of us live exceptionally long, will that create problems? Absolutely. But again, will most people say, Its okay, Ill die so we dont have an over population problem. Lets imagine someone has cancer and science offers a potential solution, do they say, No thanks. Not usually. I suspect the same will be true of drugs and treatments that extend life. A bigger issue in my mind is how, as a society, we are going to deal with a world in which we are living, not decades longer (as we already are), but hundreds of years longer. These advances are going to capsize everything. So I suggest we get a handle on it now.

Did you discuss immortality with any religious leaders or people in the death care industry? What were their thoughts?

I did speak to those people, but I didnt get deeply into it in the book or it would have been 600 pages long. Peoples feelings about this are all over the map, pro and con. There is, however, no religion that fundamentally holds that we must die. Some people, however, do feel its wrong to want to cheat death. That somehow its unnatural or that God wants us to die. But if this were universally true, then why take antibiotics? Why try to save people from automobile accidents? Why try to cure or treat any disease? All of these are basically ways to cheat death, at least for awhile.

But again, I want to clarify that my goal with this book isnt to advocate one way or another for outfoxing the grim reaper. I am simply trying to tell the story of these forces and people who are creating profound and fundamental change in the human story. I wanted to tell that tale, not explore the theology and philosophy of life and death because its not about my point of view. Its about whats happening and why its important.

Carnegie Library Lecture HallChip WalterImmortalityInc.National GeographicPittsburgh Arts and Lecture Series

Continue reading here:
Chip Walter is dying for you to read his new book on immortality. Or is he? - NEXTpittsburgh

Active Video Games are the secret weapon for New Years Resolutions – Metro.co.uk

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Ring Fit Adventure gaming thats good for you (pic: Nintendo)

A reader suggests playing games like Pokmon Go and Ring Fit Adventure can help keep you fit and help recover from a gluttonous Christmas.

Its resolution season, and once again, for as long as I can remember, Ive pledged to become a smarter, fitter, leaner, stronger, wealthier, funnier, and an all-round more appealing/dashingly handsome human being. While I have achieved some success, I have significantly more failures.

Through active video games (AVGs) like Pokmon Go and Ring Fit Adventure I would like you, dear readers, to learn from my successes and failures in the getting fitter, leaner, and stronger aspect of my resolution history.

AVGs offer an incredible, almost utopian promise: you can get fit and play video games at the same time. This is the dream for me, an ideal bridging of two of my favourite aspects of modern culture. Sadly, this logic is not shared across society, something I call the Active Video Game Paradox: I can play games and get fit, two things I love/want/need, but dont, for some reason

I wondered why this paradox existed. Ultimately, I think it boils down to the positioning of AVGs, which is as much a curse as it is a gift. You see, in my head, Im thinking two things:

1. Are AVGs equally/more effective at health promotion and fitness development than sport/exercise?

2. Are AVGs equally/more entertaining, immersive, relaxing, and awesome (plus many, many more adjectives) than traditional, non-active video games?

The answer really needs to be a resounding yes for both, for a rational person to commit lots of time to AVGs. I call this positioning problem The Battle for Attention.

For health and fitness: AVGs like Pokmon Go are an engaging way to increase/maintain a healthy step count. Walking may be great at achieving cardio targets at an introductory fitness level, but there will come a time (a great time of developed fitness) when walking is not enough, although still useful, and different methods will be needed to achieve further progress/benefits. A good step count alone is not all it takes to achieve thriving health and fitness.

Another side of health and fitness, coming recommended at two times a week by the Chief Medical Officer, is muscle-strengthening exercise. This is important for developing muscle strength and bone density, which is awesome for quality of life, health, and longevity. This is where Pokmon Go fails and Ring Fit Adventure steps in with colourful visuals, a classically Nintendo storyline, and social hilarity to boot.

This game is your crash course to the main movement patterns that are useful for everyday living. As before, this is useful up to the point of adaptation, where it stops becoming muscle-strengthening exercise and starts becoming movement maintenance/energy burning. Useful, but eventually not enough to keep you moving forward on your journey to excellent health and fitness.

For AVG engagement there are some standout performers: Just Dance, Beat Saber (deep love), Pokmon Go, and Ring Fit Adventure. All exceptions to the rule, outliers. Ultimately though, non-active games have, on average, more fans/players, less risk attached to investors, bigger budgets, better community infrastructures, and, personally, significantly more engagement across the board.

I remain optimistic that a new experience will be built (maybe even by me) that has the incredibly gratifying benefits of games and fitness, without compromising on the overall experience of either. Until then, if youre new to fitness this year, let AVGs such as Pokmon Go and Ring Fit Adventure be your spirit guide, preparing you for an incredibly gratifying existence as a long term benefactor of sport and exercise. When youre ready.

By reader Sam Peter Kirk

The readers feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. As always, email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk and follow us on Twitter.

MORE: Metro GameCentral video games preview of 2020 release dates for every new game

MORE: Metro GameCentral video game review of 2019 a year in waiting

MORE: The worst video game disasters of the decade - Readers Feature

Long Beach Aquatic Academy Focuses On Health Earth’s And Ours – Gazette Newspapers

Posted on March 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

How the Earth's health impacts human health will be the topic of the Spring Aquatic Academy at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

The four-session program will be on Wednesday evenings in March. Each session runs from 7 to 9 p.m. and features scientists and professors with expertise in the topics.

Dr. Jonathan Patz, Professor and Director, Global Health Institute, University of Wisconsin, will present at the first session on March 4, talking about how the way climate change is dealt with will impact our health as individuals and a species. The other three sessions drill down to specifics, from increases in infectious diseases to crop failures due to climate change.

The aquarium typically sponsors two aquatic academies a year. Last fall, the program addressed human longevity.

Cost for the series is $40 for adults, $25 for students and aquarium members. Continuing education credit through Cal State Long Beach is available with an additional $10 fee. All classes are at the aquarium, 100 Aquarium Way.

For more information and to sign up, go towww.aquariumofpacific.org/events/info/aquatic_academy.

Neural excitation linked to shorter lifespan – National Institute on Aging

Posted on April 3, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Increased neural activity was linked to a shorter lifespan, according to a study funded in part by NIA and published in Nature. The study, conducted using human brain tissue and worm and mouse models, suggests that suppressing electrical activity in the brain could lead to a longer life.

Led by researchers at Harvard Medical School, the team first studied gene-expression data from brain tissue samples donated by hundreds of older adults with normal cognition. They found that people 85 years and older had fewer transcripts of genes involved in neural excitation a process through which a nerve cell signals the next receiving nerve cell and synaptic function than those who were 80 years of age or younger. Specifically, they found that people who lived longer had higher levels of repressor element 1-silencing transcription factor (REST), which appeared to suppress excitation-related genes.

To further investigate the association between REST and aging, the researchers genetically altered mice to lack the transcription repressor. Imaging scans revealed an increase in neuronal activity, measured by glucose uptake, in the brains of mice without REST.

The scientists also investigated neural regulation in C. elegans worms, a well-established model for aging research. They found that as the worms aged, neural activity heightened. By suppressing this excitatory neuronal activity with a calcium channel blocker, they found that the worms lived longer.

The researchers then boosted SPR-4, the worm equivalent of REST, which resulted in decreased excitation and extended lifespan. They found that SPR-4 relied on another transcription factor, called DAF-16, in order to reduce neural excitation. Without DAF-16, SPR-4 did not extend worm life, suggesting that the extension in lifespan was contingent on an insulin/insulin-like growth factor signaling pathway in worms. The researchers noted that the human equivalent to DAF-16, FOXO1, was similarly linked to the expression of REST in the human brain samples. In addition, findings showed REST knockout mice had less FOXO1 than age-matched controls.

The study demonstrates that REST and the suppression of neuronal activity may converge with insulin signaling pathways to extend lifespan. The authors suggest that the activation of REST and reduction of excitatory neural activity could act as an approach to slowing the aging process and extending human longevity. These findings also may inform additional research into conditions that can induce excessive neural activity, such as Alzheimers disease.

This research was funded in part by NIA grants RO1AG046174, RO1AG26651, P30AG10161, R01AG15819, R01AG17917, R01AG36836, U01AG46152, K99AG050830, P01AG02219and P50AG05138.

Reference: Zullo J, et al. Regulation of lifespan by neural excitation and REST. Nature. 2019;574:359-364. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1647-8.

Originally posted here:
Neural excitation linked to shorter lifespan - National Institute on Aging

Select Page ::