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Posts Tagged ‘research’

How Art Slows Ageing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 3, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: David Levene/The Guardian.
A man engages with Laure Prouvost’s art installation ‘Above Front Tears Oui Float’ at the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, Norway. 

I can’t get enough of emerging research on what activities are good for your brain. It’s interesting that so many of the studies focus on the role of art.

As Denis Campbell wrote at the Guardian in May, “Singing, painting or visiting a gallery or museum helps people age more slowly, according to the latest study to link taking an active interest in art and culture with improved health. The findings are the first to show that both participating in arts activities and attending events, such as viewing an exhibition, lead to people staying biologically younger.

“ ‘These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level. They provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognised as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise,’ said Prof Daisy Fancourt, the lead author of the research and the head of the social biobehavioral research group at University College London.

“However, slower ageing does not necessarily mean someone will live longer. … Previous studies have suggested a link between arts engagement and longer lifespan, but much more research would be needed to establish potential causal effects on longevity.

“[A new test] showed that those who undertook an arts activity at least once a week were on average a year younger biologically than those who rarely engaged in such pursuits. Those who exercised once a week were only six months younger by that measure.

“The benefit the arts confer on the pace at which people age is so dramatic that it is comparable to the difference between smokers and those who have given up smoking, the researchers say. …

“Said Dr Feifei Bu, a senior author and also a UCL academic, ‘This builds on a growing body of evidence about the health impact of the arts, with arts activities being shown to reduce stress, lower inflammation and improve cardiovascular disease risk, just as exercise is known to do.’

“The results, published in the journal Innovation in Aging, are based on blood test and survey response data from 3,556 adults taking part in the UK Household Longitudinal Study. It uses blood samples to estimate people’s biological age and the pace at which they are ageing.

“Participants were asked how often over the last year they had taken part in singing, dancing, painting, photography or crafting, or had attended an art exhibition or event, visited a heritage site such as a monument or historic building or park, or been to a museum, library or archive. …

“Evidence is emerging that the arts can improve both mental and physical health. In 2019 the World Health Organization published a report, by Fancourt and Saoirse Finn, which highlighted initiatives such as playing music to patients before surgery and using the arts with people with dementia. In the latest study, the middle-aged and older adults aged 40 or above received the biggest boost to the pace at which they aged as a result of taking part in the arts.

“ ‘Across the arts sector we have known for a long time that getting creative yields extraordinary benefits for our health, and this latest research adds a vital new piece to the puzzle, proving that arts and culture can even slow down the biological clock,’ said Mark Ball, the artistic director of the Southbank Centre, a multi-arts venue in London.

“The Southbank complex was born in 1951 out of the Festival of Britain. Its description as ‘a tonic for the nation’ was not a coincidence, Ball said. ‘It was an explicit recognition that, after the destruction and gloom of the second world war, the country needed to be convened through the arts to find a sense of optimism and healing. That sentiment is enduring and is needed now, more than ever.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Turn Off Autocomplete

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 30, 2026| 8 Comments »

Photo: Petar Milošević via Wikimedia.

I had a chat about artificial intelligence recently with author Francesca Forrest. She is really serious about avoiding AI wherever she encounters it. I tend to like it OK when it suits me: for example, when doing a search for information.

But I can sense there is something deeply insidious about it, even apart from the way it guzzles all our water resources.

There is one supposedly “helpful” feature that irritates me a lot. Autocomplete. It not only makes horrendous mistakes with slang, people’s names, and foreign words, but it suggests apparently harmless words that I simply was not intending to write. If I want to say that a relative had to go to rehab, you might think it’s fine to say “he went to rehabilitation.” But that’s not what I was going to say. It’s not the way I talk. And what else will I end up writing if I feel lazy some day?

So I turned off Autocomplete.

At Scientific American, I find that Claire Cameron agrees that autocomplete is annoying. And she describes new research suggesting it is even more insidious than it appears.

“Autocomplete suggestions,” she writes, “are perhaps one of the most annoying ‘useful’ tools for writing: increasingly integrated into anything online that requires you to input text, autocomplete harnesses artificial intelligence to suggest what to write in e-mails, surveys, and more.

“The tools are meant to save time (though many find that assessing and rewriting the suggested text takes longer than writing it from scratch). But these AI tools can also change how you express yourself. An AI writing assistant could make your writing sound more polite, for example — or boring. And now a new study led by researchers at Cornell University suggests AI autocomplete can even change the way you think.

” ‘Autocomplete is everywhere now,’ said Mor Naaman, a professor of information science at Cornell, in a statement. The research builds on work, published in 2023 by Naaman and his colleagues, that suggested short autocomplete suggestions could sway opinions. Since then the use of such tools has exploded. ‘It has become clear that bias explicitly built into AI interactions is a very plausible scenario,’ he said.

“The researchers asked participants to fill in an online survey with questions about hot-button social and political issues. Some were prompted with an AI autocomplete answer that was deliberately biased toward one side of the issue. For example, participants who were asked whether they agreed that the death penalty should be legal might receive an AI suggestion that disagreed.

“Across all the different topics in the survey, participants who saw the AI autocomplete prompts reported attitudes that were more in line with the AI’s position — including people who didn’t use the AI’s suggested text at all. Overall, the study participants who saw the biased AI text shifted their positions toward those espoused by the AI.

“Interestingly, the people in the study didn’t tend to think the AI autocomplete suggestions were biased or to notice that they had changed their own thinking on an issue in the course of the study. Warning the participants that they might be exposed to misinformation by the AI didn’t temper the persuasive effect either.

“ ‘We told people before, and after, to be careful, that the AI is going to be (or was) biased, and nothing helped,’ Naaman said. ‘Their attitudes about the issues still shifted.’ ”

See Scientific American, here.

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Gardening for Brain Health

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 10, 2026| 5 Comments »

Photo: Lane Turner/Globe Staff.
Janis Kreiger tended to a garden on Appledore Island off Portsmouth, N.H., in May 2025.

Most of the retirement communities I have visited give residents an option of doing a little gardening. Even where I live there’s a score of beautiful raised beds — and a long waiting list. Folks grow food they plan to eat and flowers to brighten their apartments, but I’d say the main reason they garden is that they love it.

But as Cheyenne Buckingham explains at the Washington Post (via the Boston Globe), there are numerous side benefits.

” ‘Gardening likely supports cognitive health,’ said Smita Patel, an integrative neurologist and sleep medicine physician at Endeavor Health. ‘Not because it definitively prevents dementia, but because it bundles physical activity, mental engagement, stress reduction and other healthy lifestyle habits into one activity.’

” ‘The research [on this topic] is more compelling than you might expect’ [adds] Jordan Weiss, an assistant professor in the division of precision medicine and the Optimal Aging Institute at New York University Grossman School of Medicine.

“One recent study that included nearly 137,000 participants aged 45 years and older found that people who engaged in regular physical activity, including activities such as gardening and yard work, were less likely to report memory problems and limitations in daily functioning connected to cognitive decline. The link appeared to be partly explained by higher physical activity levels and lower rates of depression.

“ ‘Gardening independently touches nearly every lifestyle factor brain-health research has already confirmed matters: physical movement, stress reduction, social connection, sleep quality and sustained mental engagement,’ Weiss said. …

“A separate longitudinal study, which tracked participants from childhood into older adulthood, found that those who reported gardening (anywhere from ‘rarely’ to ‘frequently’) at age 79 had better thinking and memory skills – and showed stronger cognitive performance relative to their childhood baseline – than those who never gardened.

“However, the gardeners didn’t experience slower cognitive decline between ages 79 and 90. The findings suggest that gardening may support cognitive aging from childhood to late adulthood, but it may not protect against conditions such as dementia late in life.

“This points to a broader takeaway: ‘These are large associational studies that do not give us enough evidence to recommend gardening as a specific way to stave off dementia,’ said Anna Nordvig, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian.

“But that doesn’t mean it can’t help you stay mentally sharp throughout the years. Gardening engages multiple brain systems at once, including movement, sensory processing, automatic functions and higher-level thinking, Nordvig pointed out.

“As some of the experts mentioned, gardening is a complex activity that may support cognition in multiple ways. Here are some of the specific ways it might help.

“Digging, planting and weeding all fall under low-to-moderate-intensity aerobic movement, which helps improve blood flow to the brain and is associated with a lower risk of cognitive decline, Patel said. … Exercise also increases levels of BDNF, a growth factor that helps maintain the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for forming new and long-term memories, and one that often shrinks in dementia, said Ashwini Nadkarni, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. …

“ ‘Beyond physical benefits, gardening provides mental stimulation — planning, remembering plant care and problem-solving — which engages memory and executive function, supporting slower cognitive decline over time,’ Patel said.

“It also engages multiple cognitive systems simultaneously, which ‘may help build the brain’s resilience against decline,’ Weiss added.”

More tips about supporting brain health at the Globe, here.

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What Your Horse Is Trying to Say

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 17, 2026| 6 Comments »

Photo: Rafael Hoyos/Unsplash.
What if horses could speak? What if they already do?

Who remembers Mister Ed, the television series in the early 1960s? The usual bad things were going on in the world at the time, but anyone who needed an escape could indulge in the adventures of a talking horse. Special effects in tv had not advanced very far at the time, but somehow the producers created the illusion that Mister Ed’s lips were moving as if using human speech.

And of course, he often whinnied.

Today we learn from National Public Radio that the dual-layer whinny of real horses is almost as surprising.

Ari Daniel writes that the researcher “Élodie Briefer grew up in the countryside near Geneva — and horses have long been a part of her world. …

“She recalls, ‘I can’t remember at which age I started, but maybe 6 or 7 years old. I did [a] few competitions, but I was never a big fan of that. I would prefer to go for a walk with the horse and enjoy.’

“All this time with horses means that Briefer, now an animal behavioral scientist at the University of Copenhagen, has heard a lot of whinnying over the years. She never noticed anything out of the ordinary until a little more than a decade ago when she was working on a project that involved comparing how different animals, including horses, express themselves vocally.

” ‘The first time I really listened to a horse whinny that I had recorded,’ she says, ‘I was confused because I thought there were two horses — as if there [were] two voices at the same time.’

“Briefer created a visual representation of the sound file, called a spectrogram, to inspect the whinny more closely. And that’s when she saw two frequencies occurring at the same time: one high and one low.

“In a paper appearing in the journal Current Biology, Briefer and her colleagues present a set of experiments that reveal how horses manage to create these two tones simultaneously. It’s a complex feat that seems to be made possible by the anatomy of their vocal tract.

“Briefer was perplexed by what she observed in the whinny for a couple of reasons. First, larger animals tend to produce lower vocalizations, and the high-pitched part of the horse whinny seemed too high for such a big creature. Second, a fair number of birds can produce two simultaneous frequencies like this. But among mammals, ‘it’s quite uncommon, at least when it appears all the time in one type of sound,’ says Briefer. …

“Briefer first went to a Swiss stud farm (where her sister, who’s a co-author on the study, works). She threaded a small camera down the noses of 10 breeding stallions until it was just above the larynx. It’s the same procedure that’s routinely conducted on these animals as part of their physical checkups, so they were accustomed to it.

“Briefer then played the stallions the sound of a female whinnying, or in certain instances, she paraded a mare in front of them. … She noticed how the vocal folds of the larynx vibrated (just like when we speak) to produce the low-frequency part of the whinny.

“In addition, just above the larynx, horses have strong cartilage. The video revealed the cartilage constricting, creating a small opening that likely produced a whistle — the high-frequency part of the whinny.

“Briefer had her first evidence that two different parts of the horse’s vocal anatomy were likely operating in tandem to produce the whinny’s two distinct frequencies.

“Next, Briefer’s colleagues connected with a butcher in France, a country where people eat horses. ‘I know it’s not the same in every country,’ she says, ‘but there it’s quite common.’

“The butcher provided the team with half a dozen horse larynges. ‘And then you blow air through it to reproduce the sounds,’ says Briefer.

“They successfully generated both the low and high tones in the excised larynges, confirming the results on the stud farm. Then, when they blew helium through them, the low pitch was unaffected, but the high pitch shifted higher. That’s what Briefer and her colleagues were expecting, since helium doesn’t affect the pitch of vocal fold vibrations, only that of whistles.

“CT scans provided 3D portraits of the same larynges, revealing ‘a small kind of cavity just above the vocal fold that hadn’t been documented before,’ explains Briefer. That could be where the air is forming a vortex, which then makes the whistle.’ More work needs to be done to confirm that mechanism.

“Finally, the team tracked down several stallions with a rare disease called recurrent laryngeal neuropathy, which tends to paralyze one of the vocal folds fully or in part. They recorded these animals’ whinnies. The low tone was partially absent, but the high pitch was unaffected.

” ‘That was another confirmation that the high pitch is not produced by vocal fold vibration,’ says Briefer. Briefer concludes that a whinny is a unique blending of vocal fold vibration that generates the low pitch and a whistling above the larynx that produces the high pitch. …

” ‘What I really liked in this paper is that they used a very comprehensive experimental approach that combined different techniques and that all converge [on] the same results, says Mathilde Massenet, a bioacoustician at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has worked with Briefer in the past but didn’t participate in the new research.

“As for why horses might be producing these two-toned whinnies, Briefer’s earlier work suggests they appear to encode different pieces of emotional information. ‘The [high-frequency] one indicates whether the emotion is pleasant or unpleasant,’ she says. ‘And then the [low-frequency] one indicates whether the emotion is intense or not.’

“Massenet says that discerning how complex sounds like the whinny are produced can help yield insights into what it is that animals are communicating. ‘Understanding the vocal behavior is important for us to have a better idea of how healthy’ a population of animals is, she says.”

More at NPR, here.

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How Original Art Benefits Health

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 9, 2026| 9 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
Exhibit at Concord Art, November 30, 2021. Researchers have found that visiting galleries and museums to look at original art is good for your nervous system.

The other day, I was talking with a staff member here about her plans for the weekend, and she told me she wanted to go into Boston Sunday and visit an art museum or gallery. I am always impressed when anyone drives to Boston: the one-way streets are confusing and the parking is awful. She surprised me by saying, “Parking’s the easy part. There’s a lot of free street parking on Sundays.”

After reviewing today’s articles, I can hardly wait to tell her that what she was doing for fun is also good for her health.

Rhea Nayyar wrote recently at Hyperallergic about new research suggesting that museums and galleries are “non-clinical spaces for preventive health promotion. … Supporting existing research on the benefits of viewing original artwork versus reproductions, a new study found that seeing authentic art can help drop cortisol levels, among other positive effects on the nervous system. …

“ ‘The Physiological Impact of Viewing Original Artworks vs. Reprints: a Comparative Study‘ was conducted by researchers from the Department of Psychological Medicine at King’s College in London working in collaboration with the Courtauld Institute of Art.

“Fifty adults between the ages of 18 and 40 participated in the experimental study — one half was made to view five authentic paintings with their wall labels in a gallery setting for a 20-minute period, while the other half was shown high-quality reproductions of those paintings in a similarly curated setting. All participants had their heart rate and skin temperature monitored, and they provided saliva samples before and after the viewing sessions.

“The selected works (and subsequent reproductions) were all late 19th-century figurative paintings by European artists from the Courtauld’s collection: ‘Jane Avril in the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge‘ (c. 1892) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère‘ (1882) by Éduoard Manet; ‘Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil‘ (1874) by Éduoard Manet; ‘Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear‘ (1889) by Vincent van Gogh; and ‘Te Rerioa (The Dream)‘ (1897) by Paul Gaugin.

“The recorded data showed that those who viewed original artwork had higher heart rate variability patterns compared to the reproductions group, indicating that authentic viewing experiences contribute to a more receptive and adaptable nervous system. The post-viewing saliva samples also yielded a 22% cortisol decrease among the original art group, as well as a measurable drop in two of four recorded inflammatory proteins. …

“[The researchers likened] the stimulated but calming response elicited to that provoked by exercise or meditation.”

That supports University of Pennsylvania research described by Hyperallergic‘s Elaine Velie in 2022.

“ ‘Art museums have great potential to positively impact people, including reducing their stress, enhancing positive emotional experiences, and helping people to feel less lonely and more connected,’ researcher Katherine Cotter told Hyperallergic.

“The study, titled ‘Art Museums As Institutions for Human Flourishing,’ was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology by Cotter and James O. Pawelski of the University of Pennsylvania. Their work is encompassed in the burgeoning field of positive psychology, which studies ‘the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive.’ Drawing on research from different academic disciplines, the study is part of an initiative that examines how the arts and humanities affect ‘human flourishing’ — a comprehensive framework that takes into account both ‘ill-being’ (living with disease, disorders, or in negative states) and ‘well-being’ (practicing positive health habits). …

“Cotter and Pawelski compiled and reviewed over 100 research articles and government and foundation reports. They discovered that visiting a museum reduced stress levels, frequent visits decreased anxiety, and viewing figurative art lowered blood pressure. They also found that museum visits lowered the intensity of chronic pain, increased a person’s life span, and lessened the likelihood of being diagnosed with dementia.”

More at Hyperallergic, here, and here.

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What Makes Animals Feel Joyful?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 8, 2026| 25 Comments »

Photo: Dan Cook via Unsplash.
Is the horse really laughing or is something else going on?

I was visiting Suzanne’s family recently and at breakfast one morning, my younger granddaughter started reading The Week Junior stories out loud. She got me interested in an article about scientists researching animal joy. The information was originally reported in Science News.

It turns out that although we often ascribe our own emotions to animals, we may not be on the right track.

Amber Dance writes at Science News, “For decades, scientists have struggled to identify or measure true joy — or ‘positive affect,’ in sci-speak — in nonhuman animals, even though they’ve long assumed it exists. In the late 19th century, Charles Darwin wrote, ‘The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.’

“But in the 20th century, psychologists focused on strict behaviorism, which limited scientific study to actions that could be objectively tallied. Think Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and the dogs he conditioned to expect food when he rang a bell, giving him a measurable drooling response. Or American psychologist B.F. Skinner, who put rats and pigeons in Skinner boxes where they were trained to push levers and peck keys for rewards. That history left scientists wary of anthropomorphism and subjective topics like feelings.

“That’s true for positive feelings, at least — there has been loads of scientific attention on misery. In part, that’s because researchers aimed to understand and relieve suffering, not just in animals but in people experiencing pain, depression or other clinical problems. It’s also straightforward to measure a negative response, such as freezing in fear, compared to subtler signs of contentment.

“All this history made the study of animal feelings largely taboo, a trend bucked on occasion by researchers like the late Jaak Panksepp, an Estonian neuroscientist and early leader in the study of emotions in the brain. In the early 2000s, when Panksepp reported that rats make a laughter-like sound when tickled, scientists were doubtful; the ultrasonic calls are inaudible to human ears.

” ‘He had problems publishing it at all because people thought it was crazy,’ says Michael Brecht, a neurobiologist at Humboldt University of Berlin. Skeptical but curious, Brecht did research that found rats not just laughing, but also jumping for joy and playing hide-and-seek.

“If scientists had better tools to measure positive emotions they’d be equipped to more deeply investigate the causes of happiness and how animals communicate it, with major implications for mental health among captive animals.

“This need has inspired an audacious group effort to try to develop a ‘joy-o-meter’ — or more likely, a set of happiness metrics — that could be used to better understand many critters, whether they are wild or captive, whether they walk, fly or swim. …

” ‘Studying emotions is actually really hard,’ says Colin Allen, a project lead and philosopher at the University of California, Santa Barbara who collaborates with Cartmill.

“To keep it simple, Allen and his colleagues have focused on a strict definition of joy as an intense, brief, positive emotion triggered by some event, such as encountering a favorite food or a reunion with a friend. That kind of ‘woohoo!’ moment seemed easier to assess than, say, ongoing mild contentment. Even with a strict definition, the researchers are contending with variations in joy triggers and responses from one animal to the next, including within the same species or group.

“ ‘You want to make sure that what you’re putting out there is based on reality, as opposed to just guessing what is happening in the animal’s mind,’ says Heidi Lyn, a comparative psychologist at the University of South Alabama in Mobile who is a co-leader of the project and is in charge of the dolphin studies as well as some of the ape work.

“These efforts by Lyn and colleagues are important, says Gordon M. Burghardt, a biopsychologist and emeritus professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is not involved in the joy project, but has studied animal play for more than 40 years. In that work, Burghardt says, coming up with a definition with five criteria in 2004 made it possible to identify play in diverse creatures including mammals, birds, lizards, turtles, fish, octopuses and bumblebees. …

“The team began the work in apes because its funder, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, thought the odds of success were best in humankind’s closest relatives. Bonobos are known for playful behavior, including frequent sex acts they use to create social bonds and resolve conflicts. Chimpanzees are considered more violent, though scientists have observed what are likely happy times in chimp troops. Cartmill’s and Lyn’s groups led the way, starting in 2022 with wild chimps at the Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project in Senegal; zoo bonobos at ZOO Planckendael in Mechelen, Belgium; research bonobos at the Ape Initiative in Des Moines; and bonobos at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens in Florida.

“Wild chimps don’t have easy lives, says team primatologist Gal Badihi, who spent three months following a troop around Fongoli. They contend with dominance hierarchies, competitions and the ongoing search for food. Nonetheless, Badihi recorded potentially joyful moments. For example, chimps played with infants. A juvenile called Youssa proved to be quite the goofball, hanging upside down all the time. Other young chimps liked to drink from each other’s mouths or roll around giggling. When reuniting with their fellows, chimps would embrace and kiss. ‘The joyous moments kind of stick out because they are quite rare,’ says Badihi.

“She’s currently focusing her analysis on a panting sound like unvoiced laughter that chimps often made during those apparently positive or social behaviors, as well as during situations where they wanted to communicate positive intent or de-escalate conflict. ‘It’s really similar to how we use laughter and smiles across social context as people,’ Badhi says.”

Lots more at Science News, here.

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The Argument for Dancing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2026| 3 Comments »

Photo: USA Dance.
A dance competition for seniors.

One of the exercise classes I like at my retirement community is called Movement for Body and Brain. It is led by a dancer who is trained in a variety of related disciplines, including exercise for Parkinson’s patients. I started attending because she has the best music of any of the classes. I stayed because it’s great exercise.

An article at the Washington Post by columnist Trisha Pasricha, MD, explains why movement like dancing is good for your health.

“This fun hobby,” the Post claims, “may reduce your risk of dementia by 76 percent.”

Dr. Pasricha writes, “Dancing combines some of the best elements known to be associated with longevity: exercise, creativity, balance and social connection. … One study found that people who danced frequently (more than once a week) had a 76 percent lower risk of dementia than those who did so rarely.

“In the early 1980s, a group of researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine set out to better understand the aging brain by recruiting almost 500 men and women ages 75 to 85 living in the Bronx. Each person underwent neuropsychological tests and responded to questionnaires about their health and lifestyle. Then, over the next couple of decades, the researchers tracked the people’s cognition.

“Perhaps not surprisingly, the scientists found that, for every cognitively challenging activity performed one day a week, there was an associated 7 percent reduction in dementia risk. The more often people tested their brains — such as with board games or crossword puzzles — the less likely they were to develop Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia.

“But when it came to physical activity, one hobby stood out above the others after controlling for other lifestyle and health factors: dancing.

“The researchers, who published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003, concluded that physical activities such as swimming and walking also trended in the right direction but that their results were not as profound as those associated with dancing. …

“Physical activity, especially aerobic exercise, in general is wonderful for our brain health. And this isn’t intended to knock walking. … But combining physical activity with creativity and cognitive challenges may help protect the brain further. Dancing asks your brain to do several things at once: match a rhythm, remember steps (or quickly improvise some new ones), navigate space and perhaps even respond to a partner. …

“Dancing is simply music-based movement — ideally of a kind that makes you feel good and involves the company of others. And it can truly be for almost everyone. In my own clinic, we recommend dancing as therapy for patients with movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease. …

“Besides brain health, there are other great reasons to consider shaking a hip. A 2020 meta-analysis of 29 randomized trials among healthy older adults found that social dance-based activities were associated with a 37 percent reduced risk of falling — as well as improvements in balance and lower body strength. …

“While many community centers offer dance classes specifically for older adults (often free), I know that dance classes suited to your interests and needs are not always easily available nearby. … There are also several classes on YouTube tailored to possible physical limitations and needs. …

“Even if you’re not up for dancing, there’s still power in playing your favorite tunes: A large population study published recently found that just listening to music most days was linked to a decrease in dementia risk.

“Music can evoke memory and emotions, but certain kinds of it can also offer a distinctly enjoyable challenge to the brain. As you listen to music, your brain is constantly evaluating its predictions regarding what comes next: Will the next note and beat be the one you’re anticipating?

“A  potent driver of the urge to groove is syncopation. When music is syncopated — meaning, you expect to hear a loud beat in line with the rhythm, but instead it’s weak, or there’s a quick pulse of silence — it challenges our brain’s expectations. Think ‘Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones or ‘Uptown Funk’ by Bruno Mars.

“Syncopation creates an exciting sense of ‘push and pull in the music. Humans perceive songs with a healthy dose of syncopations as more pleasurable. Studies have found that those syncopations strongly compel us to bust a move, completing that gap our brain is craving to fill.

“There’s no magic bullet to prevent dementia. Cognitive changes are the result of several factors converging in our brains — our genetics, lifestyle, stress, diets and environmental exposures. Walking and other forms of physical activity can help boost your brain health, but doing so shouldn’t feel like a chore. Cognitive strength can also grow out of many activities that give us great joy — moving to music you truly love, sharing space with someone else’s company, and trying something new without worrying how you look doing it.”

More at the Post.

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One Brilliant Teen Astronomer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Matteo Paz with Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum after winning the Regeneron Science Talent Search award. 

Today I’m thinking about competitions, particularly academic competitions and what they can do for young people. Did you ever enter one? Perhaps encouraged by a teacher?

I’ve known people who not only won money but launched a career that way, but if a teacher ever asked me to try, I shied away. Scared? Lazy? It takes a certain kind of optimism, perhaps. Optimism and the stamina to bounce back if hopes repeatedly fall apart. Do share your own experience with competition. How much does the money matter? How much did a mentor matter?

Meanwhile, here’s a great story about a young science and computer whiz from California.

Margherita Bassi writes at the Smithsonian, “In a leap forward for astronomy, a researcher has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm and discovered more than one million objects in space by parsing through understudied data from a NASA telescope.

“The breakthrough is detailed in a study published in November in The Astronomical Journal. What the study doesn’t detail, however, is that the paper’s sole author is 18 years old.

“Matteo Paz from Pasadena, California, recently won the first place prize of $250,000 in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search for combining machine learning with astronomy. Self-described as the nation’s ‘oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors,’ the contest recognized Paz for developing his A.I. algorithm. The young scientist’s tool processed 200 billion data entries from NASA’s now-retired Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope. His model revealed 1.5 million previously unknown potential celestial bodies.

“ ‘I was just happy to have had the privilege. Not only placing in the top ten, but winning first place, came as a visceral surprise,’ the teenager tells Forbes’ Kevin Anderton. ‘It still hasn’t fully sunk in.’

“Paz’s interest in astronomy turned into real research when he participated in the Planet Finder Academy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in summer 2022. There, he studied astronomy and computer science under the guidance of his mentor, Davy Kirkpatrick, an astronomer and senior scientist at the university’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC).

“Kirkpatrick had been working with data from the NEOWISE infrared telescope, which NASA launched in 2009 with the aim of searching for near-Earth asteroids and comets. The telescope’s survey, however, also collected data on the shifting heat of variable objects: rare phenomena that emit flashing, changing or otherwise dynamic light, such as exploding stars. It was Kirkpatrick’s idea to look for these elusive objects in NEOWISE’s understudied data. …

“Paz, however, had no intention of doing it by hand. Instead, he worked on an A.I. model that sorted through the raw data in search of tiny changes in infrared radiation, which could indicate the presence of variable objects. Paz and Kirkpatrick continued working together after the summer to perfect the model, which ultimately flagged 1.5 million potential new objects, including supernovas and black holes.

“ ‘Prior to Matteo’s work, no one had tried to use the entire (200-billion-row) table to identify and classify all of the significant variability that was there,’ Kirkpatrick tells Business Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen in an email. He adds that Caltech researchers are already making use of Paz’s catalog of potential variable objects, called VarWISE, to study binary star systems.

“The variable candidates that he’s uncovered will be widely studied,’ says Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE’s principal investigator for NASA, to Business Insider.

“As for the A.I. model, Paz explains that it might be applicable to ‘anything else that comes in a temporal format,’ such as stock market chart analysis and atmospheric effects like pollution, according to the statement. It’s no surprise the teenager is interested in the climate—as fires burned in L.A. earlier this year, the Eaton Fire forced him and his family to evacuate their home, Forbes reports.

“Other teenage scientists recognized by the contest studied mosquito control, drug-resistant fungus, the human genome and mathematics.”

More at the Smithsonian, here.

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MIT Aims To Prevent Next Pandemic

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2026| 3 Comments »

Photo: Craig F. Walker/Globe staff.
Using nasal swabs, scientists are collecting viral samples from the willing on Boston streets.

It’s both surprising and reassuring how groups that in normal times can expect some federal assistance (for instance, food pantries, artists, scientists) often manage to keep going in a time of government hostility. It makes me think of what ants do after you knock over their anthill. Recently, I heard a US scientist say that he always has a plan B and C for funding sources. Even funders from foreign countries.

Today’s story of persistence is about MIT scientists who think it might be a good idea to anticipate and prevent the next pandemic.

Hiawatha Bray writes at the Boston Globe, “On a bright, brisk December day, two people stood in front of Boston’s Old South Church, asking passersby to shove cotton swabs up their noses, for science — and for two bucks.

“And despite the aching cold, quite a few said ‘yes.’ Dozens by early afternoon, hundreds on a typical day. and with each swabbed-out nostril, Simon Grimm gets a little closer to his goal — a reliable method for early detection of the next major pandemic.

“ ‘We want to understand what pathogens are circulating in the population,’ said Grimm. ‘To do that, you need samples from many different people, and one straightforward way to collect them at scale is recruiting volunteers on the street.’

“Grimm, a physician born and educated in Switzerland, is a technical program manager at SecureBio, which was spun out from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Now an independent nonprofit, SecureBio has launched the Nucleic Acid Observatory, a team of scientists working on new ways to monitor the spread of diseases.

“They’re best known for searching through sewage. In cooperation with the University of Missouri, the observatory regularly tests for viruses in the sewer water of 20 US cities ranging from Boston, New York, and Chicago, to Milan, Mo. and Ottumwa, Iowa. They’ve also tried sampling toilet waste from international airplane flights landing at Logan Airport to see if anything unpleasant is coming in from abroad.

“But COVID, like many other pathogens, is an airborne virus, so testing sewer water only gets the scientists so far. That’s why the observatory last year launched Zephyr, a program that uses nasal swabs to monitor the viruses people are carrying. Even if a person isn’t infected, the viruses tend to stick around inside their nostrils. Test enough people, Grimm believes, and you’ll get a good idea of the ebb and flow of viruses in the local population. All Grimm had to do was find a few thousand people willing to poke around in their own noses for a few seconds.

“Turns out, this isn’t so hard, if you give people a financial incentive.

“Grimm figured that every nasal passage has its price, but how much? When the program started a year ago, he experimented. A dollar was too little, while five dollars would quickly drain his funds. They hit the sweet spot about six months ago, when they hit upon the idea of a two-dollar payment, in the form of a brand-new $2 bill. Since then, SecureBio has paid out about $20,000 in swab money and collected 10,000 swabs.

“Genevieve Speedy and Liam Nokes oversee the nose swabbing and dole out the cash. Speedy is a student at Boston University, majoring in genetics. She took the swab job hoping it’ll impress future employers. … Nokes signed on after speaking with members of a swab team working the T station in Harvard Square.

“ ‘I’m really interested in microbial ecology,’ said Nokes, who recently graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in mathematics, and who’s planning to pursue either a medical degree or a PhD. …

The swab donors had a variety of motives.

“Brittany Bernie was doing her bit to protect public health. ‘I did this to stop the germs and the whole spread of everything and make sure we’re all safe,’ she said. The money played no part in her decision.

“The same went for another woman, Alex Million. “‘I think it’s important to detect the next pandemic,’ she said. ‘To protect people and get the vaccine.’

“But for Eric Saarinen, the price was right. ‘I was walking by and they asked … you need a $2 bill?’ Saarinen said.

“It’s not much money, but it’s hard to resist a brand-new $2 bill. It’s a denomination you don’t often see in the real world, making the gift something of a collector’s item.

“The experiment poses no threat to privacy, the researchers say. All donations are anonymous. Volunteers swab out their own nostrils, then dunk the swab into a communal test tube partly filled with liquid. … Grimm’s team isn’t interested in individuals. They’re trying to track viruses spreading through the population at large.

“The samples are taken to a laboratory where human DNA is filtered out and discarded. Technicians home in on RNA, the genetic material found in many infectious viruses, including influenza, polio, West Nile fever, and of course COVID. They use gene-sequencing machines to identify these RNA samples, then match them with known viruses.

“Over time, this method can measure how many people have come in contact with these viruses. In addition, the tests can spot viruses that aren’t identical to known pathogens, but are genetically close enough to merit a closer look. If these new viruses begin to show up frequently in the swab tests, it’s a clear signal that they’re spreading through the population.

“For now, the swabs are being collected only in the Boston area. But if the method proves its worth, it could become part of a nationwide early warning system for the pandemics of the future.”

And, perhaps it will be states that fund it. More at the Globe, here.

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20 New Species in the Deep Sea

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 3, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: California Academy of Sciences.
A potentially new species discovered.

Looking ahead at some of the activities scheduled in my retirement community, I see that in February we can attend a lecture by Prof. Peter Girguis, co-director of the Harvard Microbial Sciences Initiative.

The announcement in our app says, “In this presentation, I will take you on a trip through the deep sea, learning about the extraordinary animals and microbes that thrive therein and about their adaptations to this environment. We will also touch on humankind’s relationship with the ocean, the birth of deep-sea biology, and the technological innovations that first took humans into the deep and how we still have time to turn the tide.”

Sounds pretty good, huh? And I think today’s article will have been the perfect preparation for the talk.

Chandelis Duster reported recently at National Public Radio [NPR] that “scientists believe they have discovered at least 20 new species in a deep part of the Pacific Ocean.

“The discoveries were found after researchers from the California Academy of Sciences retrieved 13 reef monitoring devices that had been placed in deep coral reefs in Guam, which had been collecting data since 2018. The devices, known as autonomous reef monitoring structures or ARMS, were placed up to 330 feet below the surface, an area of the ocean that receives little light.

“Over two weeks in November, scientists retrieved 2,000 specimens, finding 100 species in the region for the first time. Luiz Rocha, California Academy of Sciences Ichthyology curator, told NPR after more analysis is completed, scientists expect to discover more than 20 new species. Rocha was also part of the diving exhibition that placed and retrieved the devices.

” ‘It’s probably going to be higher than that because one of the things we do is we confirm everything with genetics. So we sequence the DNA of the species before we even really make absolutely sure that they’re new,’ Rocha said. ‘And during that process sometimes what happens is what we thought was not a new species ends up being a new species because the genetics is different.’

“He estimates that some of the potential new species could include crabs, sponges, ascidians or sea squirts, as well as new gorgonians, a type of coral.

Deep coral reefs live in an area of an ocean, nicknamed the ‘twilight zone,’ which receives little sunlight.

“Known as the mesopelagic zone, it is a difficult area for some scientists to reach because of pressure and requires specialized diving equipment. Rocha’s team studied the ‘upper twilight zone,’ which sits at 180-330 feet below the surface.

“Finding new species in that part of the ocean was not a surprise for Rocha, who said he and his team were expecting to make new discoveries. But Rocha said he was surprised to see a hermit crab, which usually make their homes in abandoned snail shells, attached to a clam.

“ ‘When they first showed me the picture of it, I’m like, “What, wait, what is that?” I couldn’t even tell what animal it was. And then I realized, oh, it’s a hermit crab, but it’s using a clamshell,’ he said. ‘The species has a lot of adaptations that allows it to do that, and it was really cool and interesting.’

“Rocha and his team have also started a two-year expedition to retrieve 76 more deep reef monitoring devices across the Pacific Ocean, including in Palau and French Polynesia.

“Although studying deep coral reefs may be difficult and challenging, Rocha said it’s crucial to learn more about the reefs and their habitat.”

More at NPR, here.

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Constant Phone Checking and Dementia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 19, 2026| 7 Comments »

Photo: Samuel Cruz/Unsplash.
New research shows that constantly breaking your focus is bad for brain health.

In one of my routine harangues, I like to say that “notifications” are part of a tech conspiracy to ensure that we are never allowed to finish a thought. I can’t tell you how much I hate notifications. I try to block them on every feature of my phone.

To back me up, there is lots of research indicating that constant phone checking undermines cognitive health. It is even associated with dementia. When you yourself are instigating the constant checking, not just a push notification, you really better do something.

The Washington Post invented a composite figure from the new data — “Amy” — to illustrate just what is going on with your brain.

Amaya Verde and Luis Melgar report, “For many of us, checking our phones has probably become an unconscious reflex, similar to breathing or blinking. And like Amy, a composite character who illustrates usual patterns of phone usage, we are interacting with our phones a high number of times.

“Glancing at your phone can begin to compromise your cognitive skills once it passes a certain threshold. Studies from Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. and Keimyung University in South Korea found that checking your phone about 110 times a day may signal high risk or problematic use.

“Over eight years of research involving teenagers and millennials, Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, observed that participants checked or unlocked their smartphones between 50 and more than 100 times per day, on average every 10 to 20 minutes while awake. …

” ‘The phones and digital media are reinforcing for our brains, activating the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. The phones create a compulsive habit loop where we check without thinking and experience withdrawal when we don’t check or don’t have access to our phone,’ said Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.

“According to a survey conducted by YouGov in May on phone use, when Americans were asked where they place their devices before going to sleep, 8 out of 10 said they keep them in their bedrooms, most often next to their beds. …

People underestimate how often they check their phones.

“When asked in the same survey how many times they pick up their devices each day, most respondents believed they did so about 10 times. A study by the Singapore Management University found that frequent interruptions to check our devices lead to more attention and memory lapses. Unlike total screen time, the frequency of smartphone checks is a much stronger predictor of daily cognitive failures. …

“The habit is widespread. YouGov found that more than half of Americans check their phones multiple times during social activities such as eating with others or meeting friends.

“At work, during a 30-minute meeting, 1 in 4 people admitted to checking their phone at least once. After each workplace interruption, it can take more than 25 minutes to regain focus, said Gloria Mark, a researcher at the University of California at Irvine.

“Most people receive push notifications throughout the day, such as messages, emails and alerts, many of which originate from social media platforms. ‘Our constant need for connection increases the brain’s biochemistry, particularly anxiety-producing chemicals such as cortisol, which nags at us to “check in” upward of 100 times a day,’ Rosen explained. … ‘Whatever generational differences that were studied when the smartphone and social media arrived are now basically minimal.’ …

“German researchers from Heidelberg University found that after just 72 hours without smartphone use, brain activity began to mirror patterns typically seen in substance withdrawal. The investigation suggests that short breaks from smartphone use can help reduce problematic habits by reorganizing our reward circuits, making them more flexible.

“Experts offered simple ways to break unhelpful device habits. ‘Make the phone less reinforcing by turning off notifications, deleting all but the most necessary apps, going grayscale and powering the phone off between use. I also recommend leaving the phone behind on occasion, just to remind ourselves we can still navigate the world without our phones,’ Lembke said.”

More at the Post, here.

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New in the Adirondacks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2026| 3 Comments »

Art: Michael Francis Reagan.
Adirondack Park covers one-fifth of New York State — larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and many other national parks combined. It differs from those national parks, says the Nature Conservancy, in that it combines existing towns, businesses, recreation, and wilderness.  

When I was very young, I used to visit a great aunt who had a “camp” in New York State’s beautiful Adirondacks. It’s all coming back to me as I read Ginger Strand’s article in the Nature Conservancy magazine.

She begins by describing a meeting she had with scientists at Follensby Pond.

“This place served as timberland for over a hundred years and was privately owned by different families, but it still has a primeval feel … a unique, interlinked landscape of forest, streams, wetlands and rare silver maple floodplains. In 2008, The Nature Conservancy bought this vast parcel of land from the estate of the former owner. In addition to Follensby Pond, the 14,600-acre property includes 10 miles along the Raquette River, a prime paddling waterway that makes up part of the longest inland water trail in the United States. …

“It was widely expected that TNC would sell the land to the state of New York. Instead, to the surprise of everyone, including itself, TNC concluded that the property needed a special level of management and protection, and kept it. In 2024 the Nature Conservancy sold two conservation easements to the state. The easements opened part of the parcel to recreational access and designated the rest of it as a freshwater research preserve with managed public access. …

“The 6-million-acre Adirondack Park, covering one-fifth of New York state, is the largest park in the lower 48 states. But it differs from national parks, like Yellowstone or Yosemite, and state parks, which are typically set aside for recreation or wildlife. Managed by two state agencies, the park has no gates or entry fees, and it’s peppered with small towns, farms, timberlands, businesses, and hunting camps, all nestled among forests, mountains, rivers, and lakes. All told it is one of the largest tracts of protected wilderness east of the Mississippi, and if it had a heart, it would be right about at Follensby Pond.

“Follensby Pond is not really a pond, but rather a 102-foot-deep lake slightly larger than Central Park. For the local Haudenosaunee and Abenaki, it was a hunting area, accessed via canoe routes that traversed the Raquette River, the historic ‘highway of the Adirondacks.’ … Tourists sought it out until the 1890s, when a timber company bought the land. In private hands, it became a family retreat as well as timberland. …

“In 2008, the Nature Conservancy closed on the Follensby property. Just about everyone expected the organization to sell it to New York state to become part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. But with the economy entering a recession, the state had no funds to buy another big parcel. Under no time pressure to transfer the land, TNC began studying it. …

“To start, TNC hosted a ‘bioblitz,’ bringing 50 scientists — geologists, soil scientists, ecologists, fish experts — onto the land to survey its flora and fauna. What the science showed was that this property wasn’t just historically vaunted; it was ecologically significant. The lake in particular held a ‘functioning ecosystem that is almost as intact as they come,’ says Michelle Brown [Michelle Brown, a senior conservation scientist for TNC in New York]. …

“This lake harbors a population of freshwater lake trout. And not just any lake trout — ‘old-growth’ lake trout, according to past research led by McGill University. Because of the minimal fishing at Follensby, the trout have been able to grow older than similar trout might in other lakes. …

“The trout’s length here can reach 2 to 3 feet; the record one here weighed 31 pounds. That’s a prized quarry for someone who has been obsessed with fishing since he was four. Yet [Dirk Bryant, who directs land conservation for TNC in New York] loves the idea of keeping the pond and these fish protected.

” ‘The hardest thing for me as an angler was to learn to think differently. … But we’re thinking about our fisheries in climate change. The lake trout is our timber wolf, our apex predator.’ Now, he says, many of the lakes that used to have the trout don’t have them anymore.

“In fact, a 2024 study found that soon only 5% of the lakes in the Adirondacks will be capable of supporting native populations of trout. … Follensby Pond is one of a rare few cool enough and healthy enough to support lake trout. …

“ ‘If you have some intact waters that can support native populations, those are the places that will support adaptation to climate change, as well as providing brood stock for restocking other waters,’ Bryant says. ‘You don’t hunt wolves in Yellowstone.’ …

“Still, when the ‘brain trust’ floated the idea of protecting the pond as a freshwater preserve, it was a surprise to many. … Paddling guidebooks in particular had been anticipating that the Follensby parcel would soon be accessible. The Adirondacks team looked for ways to balance protecting the lake with not turning the area into a conservation fortress.

“ ‘There were all these different needs: public access, Indigenous access, hunting clubs with leases, the fishery, the town,’ [Peg Olsen, TNC’s Adirondacks director] says. ‘We wanted to honor and respect all the stakeholders.’

“They landed on a compromise. The conservation easements sold to New York state create two distinct areas on the Follensby property. On nearly 6,000 acres along 10 miles of the Raquette River, one easement creates new public access for hiking, paddling, camping, hunting and fishing. The other easement protects a nearly 9,000-acre section around Follensby Pond as a freshwater research preserve, guided by a public-private consortium, to collaborate on research and preserve the lake’s unique ecosystem. While making Follensby a living laboratory, it also provides for Indigenous access and managed public access aimed at education.

“Like the wider Adirondack Park, with its combination of private lands, active towns and protected wilderness areas, it, too, will be an ongoing experiment in balancing environmental preservation with human communities.”

Read more at the Nature Conservancy magazine, here.

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Seafaring and the Human Brain

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Chewy C. Lin.
Ken Daniel, a Marshallese sailor, wears brain-recording equipment aboard a research vessel in the South Pacific.

A cool thing about scientific research today is the increased outreach to indigenous people for help with mysteries that others know little about.

Alexa Robles-Gil writes at the New York Times, about one such effort.

“When leaving an atoll of the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific, Alson Kelen prefers to sail after sunset. It’s like navigating with his eyes closed — allowing him to feel the up, down and sideways movement of every swell. ‘That’s how the Marshallese navigate,’ he said. ‘They navigate with their stomach.’

“For thousands of years, Marshallese navigators used traditional wave-piloting techniques to travel vast expanses of ocean. Wave piloting is the art of feeling and reading the swells and waves that hit and emanate from the region’s atolls. After a lifetime of studying these and other patterns, navigators pass a test devised by their chiefs to become a ri meto, or person of the sea.

“In the mid-1940s through the 1950s, nuclear testing by the American military displaced some Indigenous populations of the Marshalls. The ancient and sacred art of wave piloting was kept alive by a small group of people, among them Capt. Korent Joel, one of the last known experts in traditional navigation, who trained his younger cousin, Mr. Kelen. Captain Joel died in 2017.

“In early August, a team of international researchers, along with Marshallese sailors, set sail on a two-day voyage to study the cognitive process of way-finding at sea — and, more broadly, to help preserve the ancient art of navigation, which is having a cultural revival in the Pacific islands. Maria Ahmad, a Ph.D. student in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, devised the project after living on the Marshalls for many years. …

“Humans find their way across cities and forests by relying on visual landmarks. But the ocean, an ever-changing environment with no fixed visual markers, presents a more complex — and higher-stakes — challenge for the brain.

“A decade ago, researchers on a similar voyage documented Mr. Kelen’s understanding of the ocean as he sailed from one atoll, Majuro, to another, Aur, on a traditional Marshallese sailing canoe. The goal was to begin to understand how wave pilots successfully make their way from one destination to another despite the complexities of fluid dynamics. On board were an anthropologist, a physicist and an oceanographer, but no neuroscientists.

“This time around, the researchers hoped to answer more cognitive questions: How do people know where they are at sea? And how can that skill set be preserved? The crew comprised neuroscientists, a philosopher, a Marshallese anthropologist and two Marshallese sailors. Every 30 minutes, the people aboard the vessel had to draw their location, or at least where they thought they were, on a map — including the direction that the waves seemed to be coming from. …

“ ‘What is it that they are getting right over the rest of us?’ said Hugo Spiers, a neuroscientist at University College London who has studied navigation for more than two decades and was among the passengers. …

“Also on board were hundreds of pounds of technology: accelerometers to measure the boat’s speed; a watch on everyone’s wrist to measure heart rate; eye-tracking technology, to document where people were gazing; equipment to record brain activity relative to swell movement; a mounted 360-degree camera that captured changes in the sails and clouds; and more.

“In earlier research, Pablo Fernandez Velasco, a philosopher at the University of Stirling in Scotland, spent months in Siberia studying the Evenki people. … Dr. Fernandez Velasco has also collaborated with Dr. Spiers to study the brains of London taxi drivers, revealing just how efficiently they can plan routes. …

“The findings from the Marshall Islands voyage could also have implications for the study and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, the researchers said. With Alzheimer’s, the hippocampus becomes smaller over time, and disorientation is an early symptom.

“That research could benefit residents of the Pacific islands, where there is a high incidence of Alzheimer’s but little public awareness. … Explaining the disease requires complex translation, added Jerolynn Neikeke Myazoe, an anthropologist and translator on the voyage: ‘We don’t really have a specific word for it.’

“Although the project is still in the early stages of processing data, Mr. Kelen, who leads a canoe and sailing school in the Marshalls, finds the project promising for the Marshallese. ‘The most relevant thing to do is look back on how our ancestors survived on these rocks,’ he said. ‘This is the only weapon we have — our tradition, our culture. He added: ‘A navigator is a culture-keeper of the ocean.’ ”

More at the Times, here. Great pictures. (A tip of the hat to Hannah for the link!)

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A Brand New Island

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on December 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Arctic Images/Alamy.
Surtsey Island, off Iceland’s Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. It is rare for such longlasting islands to be created from eruptions – the last one was Anak Krakatau in 1927. 

How amazing to witness the birth of an island. People who live in Iceland have a better chance of that than most of us as Iceland is still bubbling with volcanic activity.

At the Guardian, Patrick Greenfield reports on what can be learned from an island that emerged in the 1960s. He starts with the fishermen who first noticed something unusual was going on.

“The crew of the Ísleifur II had just finished casting their nets off the coast of southern Iceland when they realized something was wrong. In the early morning gloom in November 1963, a dark mass filled the sky over the Atlantic Ocean. They rushed to the radio, thinking that another fishing vessel was burning at sea, but no boats in the area were in distress.

“Then, their trawler began to drift unexpectedly, unnerving the crew further. The cook scrambled to wake the captain, thinking they were being pulled into a whirlpool. Finally, through binoculars, they spotted columns of ash bursting from the water and realized … a volcano was erupting in the ocean below.

“By the time the sun had risen, dark ash filled the sky and a ridge was forming just below the surface of the water. By the next morning, it was 10 meters high [about 33 feet]. … An island was being born.

“Two months later, the rock was more than a kilometer long [0.6 mile]and 174 metres high [571 feet] at its peak. It was named Surtsey after the fire giant Surtr from Norse mythology. … It would be two years before it stopped erupting completely.

” ‘It is very rare to have an eruption where an island forms and is long lasting. It happens once every 3,000 to 5,000 years in this area,’ says Olga Kolbrún Vilmundardóttir, a geographer with the Natural Science Institute of Iceland. Those that do form are often quickly washed away by the ocean, she says.

“The emergence of Surtsey presented researchers with a precious scientific opportunity. They could observe how life colonizes and spreads on an island away from the human interference that has overtaken much of the Earth. …

If space is given, nature will always find ways to return, often faster and more creatively than we expect.

“The first scientists that stepped on Surtsey in 1964 could see that seeds and plant residues had been washed ashore. … Scientists had expected algae and mosses to be the first colonizers, building up a base of soil that would eventually support vascular plants. But that step was skipped completely. More plants were washed ashore in the following years, and some clung to the island’s bare volcanic rock. But after a decade, the changes seemed to stall.

“Pawel Wasowicz, director of botany at the Natural Science Institute, says: ‘People thought, what now? Around 10 species had colonized Surtsey at that point. The plant cover was really scarce. But then the birds arrived.’

“In the early 1980s, black-backed gulls started to nest on sections of the island, sheltering in one of the stormiest parts of the Atlantic Ocean. Their arrival kicked off an explosion of life. Guano carried seeds that quickly spread grasses along the island, fed in turn by the nutrients from the birds. For the first time, whole areas of bare rock became green.

“Wasowicz says … ‘Biologists thought that it was just plant species with fleshy fruits that could travel with birds. But the species on Surtsey do not have fleshy fruits. Almost all of the seeds on Surtsey were brought in the feces of the gulls.’

“One lesson from this living laboratory is that recovery after disturbance does not follow a single, predictable path, he says. Instead, it is shaped by multiple, sometimes surprising forces.

“Today, grey seals are the latest arrivals to drive changes in the island’s biodiversity. The volcanic rock has become a crucial ‘haul-out’ site where seals come ashore to rest and molt, as well as a breeding ground where they can raise their young safe from the orcas lurking nearby. …

“But the researchers warn that the colonization of Surtsey will one day go into reverse. The grey seal haul-out site is one of the areas slowly being eroded by the ocean. By the end of the century, scientists project that little will be left from that section of the island.

“Its biodiversity will probably peak, then fall over time … but the researchers say that lessons will remain.

“Surtsey demonstrates that, even in the harshest environments, resilience and renewal are possible, says Wasowicz. It offers hope and practical lessons for rehabilitating ecosystems damaged by war, pollution or exploitation. …

“Vilmundardóttir says: ‘I feel that Iceland is really contributing something important to humankind by preserving this area. On the mainland, the impact of humans is everywhere. When I am on Surtsey, I am really in nature. All you can hear are the birds.’ You see orcas along the coastline and the seals popping out and watching.’ “

More at the Guardian, here.

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Check Out the Ig Nobel Prizes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 30, 2025| 3 Comments »

Photo: AP Photo/Charles Krupa.
A detail of the 2025 Ig Nobel award, one of many that get awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine for silly sounding scientific discoveries that often have surprisingly practical applications.

If your serious research gets an award for sounding silly, it’s a good idea to put your sense of humor on display and accept the free publicity. That’s what winners of the Ig Nobel have learned to do. Some researchers even hope they’ll be chosen.

Michael Casey writes at the Associated Press, “A team of researchers from Japan wondered if painting cows with zebralike stripes would prevent flies from biting them. Another group from Africa and Europe pondered the types of pizza lizards preferred to eat.

“Those researchers were honored [in September] in Boston with an Ig Nobel, the prize — a hand made model of a human stomach — for comical scientific achievement. In lieu of a big paycheck, each winner was also given a single hand wipe.

“ ‘When I did this experiment, I hoped that I would win the Ig Nobel. It’s my dream. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable,’ said Tomoki Kojima, whose team put tape on Japanese beef cows and then spray painted them with white stripes. Kojima appeared on stage in stripes and was surrounded by his fellow researchers who harassed him with cardboard flies.

“As a result of the paint job, fewer flies were attracted to the cows and they seemed less bothered by the flies. Despite the findings, Kojima admitted it might be a challenge to apply this approach on a large-scale.

“The year’s winners, honored in 10 categories, also include a group from Europe that found drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language and a researcher who studied fingernail growth for decades.

“ ‘Every great discovery ever, at first glance seemed screwy and laughable,’ Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, said in an email interview ahead of the awards ceremony. …

“The 35th annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony is organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think. It’s usually held weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced.

“The ceremony to celebrate winners [began] with a longtime tradition: the audience pelting the stage with paper airplanes. Several of those who couldn’t attend had their speeches read by actual Nobel laureates including Esther Duflo, who won the Nobel Prize for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

“There was also a mini-opera about gastroenterologists and their patients, inspired by this year’s theme which is digestion. …

“There was also a section called the 24-second lecture where top researchers explain their work in 24 seconds. Among them was … Trisha Pasricha, who explained her work studying smartphone use on the toilet and the potential risk for hemorrhoids.

“When any winner appeared to be rambling on too long, a man wearing a dress over his suit would appear at their side and repeatedly yell, ‘Please stop. I’m bored.’

“Other winners this year included … a team of international scientists that looked at whether giving alcohol to bats impaired their ability to fly.

“ ‘It’s a great honor for us,” said Francisco Sanchez, one of the researchers from Colombia who studied the drunken bats. ‘It’s really good. You can see that scientists are not really square and super serious and can have some fun while showing interesting science.’

“Sanchez said their research found that the bats weren’t fans of rotten fruit, which often has higher concentrations of alcohol. Maybe for good reason. When they were forced to eat it, their flying and echolocation suffered, he said. …

“Among the most animated of the winners was a team of researchers from several European countries who studied the physics of pasta sauce. One of the researchers wore a cook’s outfit with a fake mustache to accept the award while another dressed as a big ball of mozzarella cheese got pummeled by several people holding wooden cookware. They ended by handing out bowls of pasta to the Nobel laureates.”

More at AP, here. Fun pictures.

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