For the first time in nearly a century, a new genus of plant has been discovered in Japan, but it looks more like a squid or an alien than a plant.
The total solar eclipse isn’t the only reason to keep your eyes to the sky this year. For the first time in 80 years, a star system 3,000 light years away will be visible to the naked eye thanks to a once-in-a-lifetime nova outburst.
NASA announced that the nova, which will create a “new” star in the night sky, will light up the night sky some time between now and September and be as bright as the North Star. One of only five recurring novae in our galaxy, it will be visible for a week before it fades back down.
Jonathan Blazek, an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University, says this is an exciting moment for amateur astronomers and astrophysicists alike. It’s not technically a new star, just a star that is now bright enough for people to see more clearly, Blazek says, but it provides an opportunity to see and understand the cosmos in a new way.
For several years, Jimo Borjigin, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan, had been troubled by the question of what happens to us when we die.
New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought by Alex Blasdel.
When Jeff Siewerdsen, Ph.D., joined MD Anderson last year, he finally got the opportunity to work more closely with clinical teams to make advances that would benefit patients and clinicians in the operating room.
Flames exhibit a spectrum of colors, ranging from yellow and orange to red, blue, and violet. Discover which hue denotes the highest temperature.
The startup emerged from stealth with a goal of extending the range of EVs while also eliminating fossil fuels from home heating.
Results of DNA studies also seem to confirm the idea that optimism is an effective tool for slowing down cellular aging, of which telomere shortening is a biomarker. (Telomeres are the protective caps at the end of our chromosomes.) This research is still in progress, but the early results are informative. In 2012, Elizabeth Blackburn, who three years earlier shared a Nobel Prize for her work in discovering the enzyme that replenishes the telomere, and Elissa Epel at the University of California at San Francisco, in collaboration with other institutions, identified a correlation between pessimism and accelerated telomere shortening in a group of postmenopausal women. A pessimistic attitude, they found, may indeed be associated with shorter telomeres. Studies are moving toward larger sample sizes, but it already seems apparent that optimism and pessimism play a significant role in our health as well as in the rate of cellular senescence. More recently, in 2021, Harvard University scientists, in collaboration with Boston University and the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan, Italy, observed the telomeres of 490 elderly men in the Normative Health Study on U.S. veterans. Subjects with strongly pessimistic attitudes were associated with shorter telomeres — a further encouraging finding in the study of those mechanisms that make optimism and pessimism biologically relevant.
Optimism is thought to be genetically determined for only 25 percent of the population. For the rest, it’s the result of our social relationships or deliberate efforts to learn more positive thinking. In an interview with Jane Brody for the New York Times, Rozanski explained that “our way of thinking is habitual, unaware, so the first step is to learn to control ourselves when negative thoughts assail us and commit ourselves to change the way we look at things. We must recognize that our way of thinking is not necessarily the only way of looking at a situation. This thought alone can lower the toxic effect of negativity.” For Rozanski, optimism, like a muscle, can be trained to become stronger through positivity and gratitude, in order to replace an irrational negative thought with a positive and more reasonable one.
While the exact mechanisms remain under investigation, a growing body of research suggests that optimism plays a significant role in promoting both physical and mental well-being. Cultivating a positive outlook, then, can be a powerful tool for fostering resilience, managing stress, and potentially even enhancing longevity. By adopting practices that nurture optimism, we can empower ourselves to navigate life’s challenges with greater strength and live healthier, happier lives.
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“More testing, a purification system and approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would be needed to put the strategy to work. But insulin produced by transgenic cows could ease shortages that often make the hormone hard to come by for the 8.4 million Americans with diabetes who rely on it to survive.”
MONDAY, March 18, 2024 (HealthDay News) — There may be an unexpected fix for ongoing shortages of insulin: A brown bovine in Brazil recently made history as the first transgenic cow able to produce human insulin in her milk.
