Whenever Harry Wuest has a doctors appointment in northern Atlantas hospital cluster dubbed Pill Hill, he makes sure to stop by the office of Dr. Douglas Doug Murphy for a quick chat.

And Murphy, unless hes tied up in the operating room, always takes a few minutes to say hello to his former patient. Remember when . . . ? is how the conversation typically starts, and its always tinged with laughter, often joyful, sometimes bittersweet.

Its a reunion of two men who shaped a piece of Georgias medical history.

Almost 35 years ago, Murphy opened the chest of Wuest and sewed in a new heart, giving him a second shot at life. Wuest was the third heart transplant patient at Emory University Hospital.

Tall, lanky, with short curly hair and a quiet demeanor, Wuest is the longest-surviving heart transplant recipient in Georgia and one of the longest-surviving in the world. The 75-year-old accountant still plays golf twice a week and only recently went from working full-time to part-time.

My heart is doing just fine, he says.

Murphy is now the chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Emory Saint Josephs Hospital and still in the operating room almost every day. He has moved on to become the worlds leading expert in robotically assisted heart surgery.

***

Harry Wuest is originally from Long Island, N.Y. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force, he moved to Florida to work and go to school. He wanted to become a physical education teacher. Then, in 1973, he fell ill. It started with some pain on his left side. He didnt think much of it, but when he got increasingly winded and fatigued, he went to see a doctor.

Several months and numerous specialists later, he received the diagnosis: Cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that can make the heart become enlarged, thick and rigid, preventing it from pumping enough blood through the body.

They didnt know how I got it, says Wuest, sitting back in a brown leather armchair in the dark, wood-paneled living room of his Stone Mountain home. Maybe it was a virus. And back then, there wasnt much they could do to treat it, except bed rest.

For the next 12 years, Wuest lived life as best as he could. He got a degree in accounting from the University of Central Florida and worked for a real estate developer. There were good days, but there were more bad days. He was often too weak to do anything, and his heart was getting bigger and bigger.

***

The first successful human-to-human heart transplant was performed in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1967 a medical breakthrough that catapulted the surgeon, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, onto the cover of Life magazine and to overnight celebrity status.

This highly publicized event was followed by a brief surge in the procedure around the world, but overall, heart transplants had a rocky start. Most patients died shortly after the surgery, mainly due to organ rejection. Back then, immunosuppressive drugs, which can counteract rejection, were still in their infancy. Many hospitals stopped doing heart transplants in the 1970s.

That changed with the discovery of a highly effective immunosuppressive agent. Cyclosporine got FDA approval in 1983 and altered the world of organ transplants.

It was shortly thereafter when Emory University Hospital decided to launch a heart transplant program, but none of the senior surgeons wanted to do it. Even with the new drug, it was a risky surgery, and mortality was still high.

Its an all-or-nothing operation, Murphy says, as he sits down in his small office overlooking the greyish hospital compound. Hes wearing light blue scrubs from an early morning surgery. At 70, he still has boyish looks, with a lean build and an air of laid-back confidence. If you have a number of bad outcomes initially, it can be detrimental to your career as a surgeon, he says.

But Murphy didnt really have a choice. He remembers that during a meeting of Emorys cardiac surgeons in 1984, he was paged to check on a patient. When he returned, the physicians congratulated him on being appointed the head of the new heart transplant program. He was the youngest in the group and had been recruited from Harvards Massachusetts General Hospital just three years before.

Yeah, thats how I became Emorys first transplant surgeon, says Murphy.

He flew to California to shadow his colleagues at Stanford University Hospital, where most heart transplants were performed at the time. Back home at Emory, he put together a team and rigorously rehearsed the operation. The first transplant patient arrived in April 1985. The surgery was successful, as was the second operation less than a month later.

Around the same time, Harry Wuest wound up in a hospital in Orlando. He needed a transplant, but none of the medical centers in Florida offered the procedure. One of his doctors recommended Emory, and Wuest agreed. I knew I was dying. I could feel it. He was flown to Atlanta by air ambulance and spent several weeks in Emorys cardiac care unit until the evening of May 23, when Murphy walked into his room and said, Weve got a heart.

***

The heart, as the patient later learned, came from a 19-year-old sophomore at Georgia Tech who had been killed in a car crash.

Organ transplants are a meticulously choreographed endeavor, where timing, coordination and logistics are key. While Murphy and his eight-member team were preparing for the surgery, Wuest was getting ready to say farewell to his family his wife and three teenage sons and to thank the staff in the cardiac ward.

I was afraid, he recalls, especially of the anesthesia. It scared the heck out of me. He pauses during the reminiscence, choking briefly. I didnt know if I was going to wake up again.

The surgery took six hours. Transplants usually happen at night because the procurement team, the surgeons who retrieve different organs from the donor, only start working when regularly scheduled patients are out of the operating room.

Despite the cultural mystique surrounding the heart as the seat of life, Murphy says that during a transplant surgery, its not like the big spirit comes down to the operating room. Its very technical. As the team follows a precise routine, emotions are kept outside the door. We dont have time for that. Emotions come later.

After waking up from the anesthesia, Wuests first coherent memory was of Murphy entering the room and saying to a nurse, Lets turn on the TV, so Harry can watch some sports.

Wuest spent the next nine days in the ICU and three more weeks in the hospital ward. In the beginning, he could barely stand up or walk, because he had been bedridden weeks before the surgery and had lost a lot of muscle. But his strength came back quickly. I could finally breathe again, he says. Before the surgery, he felt like he was sucking in air through a tiny straw. I cannot tell you what an amazing feeling that was to suddenly breathe so easily.

Joane Goodroe was the head nurse at Emorys cardiovascular post-op floor back then. When she first met Wuest before the surgery, she recalls him lying in bed and being very, very sick. When she and the other nurses finally saw him stand up and move around, he was a whole different person.

In the early days of Emorys heart transplant program, physicians, nurses and patients were a particularly close-knit group, remembers Goodroe, whos been a nurse for 42 years and now runs a health care consulting firm. There were a lot of firsts for all of us, and we all learned from each other, she said.

Wuest developed friendships with four other early transplant patients at Emory, and he has outlived them all.

When he left the hospital, equipped with a new heart and a fresh hunger for life, Wuest made some radical changes. He decided not to return to Florida but stay in Atlanta. Thats where he felt he got the best care, and where he had found a personal support network. And he got a divorce. Four months after the operation, he went back to working full-time: first in temporary jobs and eventually for a property management company.

After having been sick for 12 years, I was just so excited to be able to work for eight hours a day, he recalls. That was a big, big deal for me.

At 50, he went back to school to get his CPA license. He also found new love.

Martha was a head nurse in the open-heart unit and later ran the cardiac registry at Saint Josephs Hospital. Thats where Wuest received his follow-up care and where they met in 1987. Wuest says for him it was love at first sight, but it took another five years until she finally agreed to go out with him. Six months later, they were married.

Having worked in the transplant office, I saw the good and the bad, Martha Wuest says. A petite woman with short, perfectly groomed silver hair, she sits up very straight on the couch, her small hands folded in her lap.Not every transplant patient did as well as Harry. And I had a lot of fear in the beginning. Now he may well outlive her, she says with a smile and a wink.

Wuests surgeon, meanwhile, went on to fight his own battles. Two and a half years into the program, Murphy was still the only transplant surgeon at Emory and on call to operate whenever a heart became available. Frustrated and exhausted, he quit his position at Emory and signed up with Saint Josephs (which at the time was not part of the Emory system) and started a heart transplant program there.

At St. Joes, Murphy continued transplanting hearts until 2005. In total, he did more than 200 such surgeries.

Being a heart transplant surgeon is a grueling profession, he says, and very much a younger surgeons subspecialty.

He then shifted his focus and became a pioneer in robotically assisted heart surgery.He has done more than 3,000 operations with the robot, mostly mitral valve repairs and replacements more than any other cardiac surgeon in the world.

***

Since Murphy sewed a new heart into Wuest, 35 years ago, there has been major progress in the field of heart transplants,but it has been uneven.

Medications to suppress the immune system have improved, says Dr. Jeffrey Miller, a transplant surgeon and heart failure specialist at Emory. As a result, we are seeing fewer cases of rejections of the donor heart.

Also, there are new methods of preserving and transporting donor hearts.

Yet patients requiring late-stage heart failure therapy, including transplantation, still exceed the number of donor hearts available. In 2019, 3,551 hearts were transplanted in the United States, according to the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. But 700,000 people suffer from advanced heart failure, says the American Heart Association.

New technologies and continued research are providing hope to many of these patients. There has been significant progress in the development of partial artificial hearts, known as Left Ventricular Assist Devices, or LVADs, says Miller.

These are implantable mechanical pumps that assist the failing heart. Patients are back out in society living normal lives while theyre waiting for their donor hearts, he explains.

LVADs are used not only as bridge devices but as destination therapy as well, maintaining certain patients for the remainder of their lives.

Also, total artificial hearts have come a long way since the first artificial pump was implanted in a patient in 1969.

Long-term research continues into xenotransplantation, which involves transplanting animal cells, tissues and organs into human recipients.

Regenerative stem cell therapy is an experimental concept where stem cell injections stimulate the heart to replace the rigid scar tissue with tissue that resumes contraction, allowing for the damaged heart to heal itself after a heart attack or other cardiac disease.

Certain stem cell therapies have shown toreverse the damage to the heart by 30 to 50 percent, says Dr. Joshua Hare, a heart transplant surgeon and the director of the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute at the University of Miamis Miller School of Medicine.

All of these ideas have potential, says Miller. But they have a lot of work before were ready to use them as alternatives to heart transplantation. I dont think were talking about the next few years.

Besides Emory, other health care systems in Georgia that currently have a heart transplant program are Piedmont Healthcare, Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta and Augusta University Health.

Organ rejection remains a major issue, and long-term survival rates have not improved dramatically over the past 35 years. The 10-year survival is currently around 55 percent of patients, which makes long-term-survivors like Harry Wuest rare in the world of heart transplants.

The United Network of Organ Sharing, or UNOS, which allocates donor hearts in the United States, doesnt have comprehensive data prior to 1987. An informal survey of the 20 highest-volume hospitals for heart transplants in the 1980s found only a scattering of long-term survivors.

***

Being one of the longest-living heart transplant recipients is something that Wuest sees as a responsibility to other transplant patients, but also to the donors family, which hes never met. If you as a transplant recipient reject that heart, thats like a second loss for that family.

Part of this responsibility is living a full and active life. Both he and Martha have three children from their previous marriages, and combined they have 15 grandchildren. Most of their families live in Florida, so they travel back and forth frequently. Wuest still works as a CPA during tax season, and he does advocacy for the Georgia Transplant Foundation. In addition to golf, he enjoys lifting weights and riding his bike.

Hes had some health scares over the years. In 2013, he was diagnosed with stage 1 kidney cancer, which is in remission. Also, he crossed paths with his former surgeon, and not just socially. In 2014, Murphy replaced a damaged tricuspid valve in Wuests new heart. That operation went well, too.

Murphy says there are several reasons why Wuest has survived so long. Obviously, his new heart was a very good match. But a patient can have the best heart and the best care and the best medicines and still die a few months or years after the transplantation, the surgeon says. Attitude plays a key role.

Wuest was psychologically stable and never suffered from depression or anxiety, Murphy says. Hes a numbers guy. He knew the transplant was his only chance, and he was set to pursue it.

Wuest attributes his longevity to a good strong heart from his donor; good genetics; great doctors and nurses; and a life that he loves. Im just happy to be here, he says.

Quoting his former surgeon and friend, he adds: Doug always said, Having a transplant is like running a marathon. And Im in for the long haul.

Katja Ridderbusch is an Atlanta-based journalist who reports for news organizations in the U.S. and her native Germany. Her stories have appeared in Kaiser Health News, U.S. News & World Report and several NPR affiliates.

This is a slightly modified version of the article 34 Years with a New Heart, published by Georgia Health News on February 18, 2020.

Excerpt from:
34 Years with a New Heart and Counting | 90.1 FM WABE - WABE 90.1 FM

People frequently ask themselves, Why did I do that? Attempting to understand how we react to and interact with changing environments has resulted in years of research on human behavior.

Neurobiologists and psychologists study the biological basis of how the brain responds under certain situations. Social scientists like anthropologists explain what factors guide our behavior and engineers are taking all these studies to design tools that enforce human interaction, intelligence, and growth.

Human nature is complex, and interdisciplinary considerations may help us answer some interesting questions about how people think, remember, and behave.

Things that are good for one's health and longevity such as finding mates, food, and children; the dopamine reward or evaluation system is important to recall that success, Sheri Mizumori, a professor in the department of psychology who studies behavioral neuroscience, said.

Dopamine is known as the feel-good neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger that relays information between neurons. It is released by the brain when we eat food, exercise, and crave sex, helping reinforce desirable behaviors by encoding values of rewards. Psychologists and neurologists have studied this through animal models that help explain how humans access their own memory to guide their actions.

From a young age, babies learn that if an outcome is not what they want, they will change, Mizumori said. Much of the brain has evolved to be a predictor of outcomes.

Memory can be thought of as a repository of past experiences that did and did not work. When we are placed in a new situation, we use strategies we learned from previous experiences to guide our actions.

You are driving behavior based on memory and [guiding] behavior correctly the next time, Mizumori said.

The brain uses decision circuits that integrate information about past values from memory and evaluates it against our motivational, or internal, state. Understanding how the brain can switch behaviors or learn new ones is known as flexible decision making.

Theoretical psychologists study human behavior from a philosophical and social standpoint. A commonly known study argues if nature or nurture genetic or acquired influences behavior.

Maslows hierarchy of needs outlines a five-tier pyramid of deficiency and being needs. Once deficiency needs the first tier are met, people strive for self-fulfillment and personal growth, behaviors that encompass the fifth tier of the pyramid.

Depression is an interesting example of behavior at the intersection of social sciences and biology. Behavioral theory argues depression results from peoples interactions with the environment and psychodynamic theory states it stems from inwardly-directed anger or loss of self-esteem.

Conversely, Mizumori explained depression from a behavioral switch, or flexible decision-making standpoint.

Researchers in human centered design and engineering (HCDE) are attempting to design technologies that can support or prompt changes in peoples behaviors.

A lot of the research projects we explore are real-world-problem driven, Gary Hsieh, an associate professor in HCDE, said. How do we encourage users to eat healthier or exercise more? These are health-related problems aligned to behavior-related problems.

By studying the needs and values of certain groups, researchers like Hsieh are able to design technologies that encourage people to communicate and interact in welfare-improving ways. In a growing age of data, engineers and scientists are able to learn about people from social networks.

Data allows us to study people in ways that we could not before, Hsieh said. It ties in with the types of interventions and applications that we can build.

Human behavior presents unknown complexities that arise from cultural, social, internal, environmental, and biological factors. Being able to integrate all those is a challenge that many will be addressing for generations to follow.

Reach reporter Vidhi Singh at science@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @vidhisvida

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Human behavior at the intersection of many sciences - Dailyuw

Summary: Industrial revolutions reshaped the world. But during the long pause of tech progress since WWII, we forgot what they do to society. Here is a reminder. A timely one, since a new revolution has begun.

For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air. Treebeard the Ent in Tolkiens The Return of the King.

Technological progress slowed so much after WWII that we no longer remember what rapid change looks like. Compare two lives to see what it was like.

Bat Masterson was born on a farm in 1853, amidst people living hard lives with only simple machines. Women drew water from wells, making them old before their times. He became a gunfighter in the tech boom known as the Wild West. He was a sportswriter for the New York Morning Telegraph when he died in 1921 in a city of cars, telephones, electricity, and a powerful public health infrastructure. If we transported his mother through the Time Tunnel from her 1853 home to his 1921 home, how quickly could she adapt? Everything would be different, with a thousand advances beyond her imagination.

June Cleaver was a mother in the 1957 sitcom Leave it to Beaver

Another example: imagine if we shifted General Pershing one hundred years into the future from 1918 WWI to command a modern Army division. He would recognize all the major new tools: aircraft (fighters and bombers), submarines, rockets, radio, and tanks. But if we shifted the Duke of Wellington from the Battle of Waterloo (1815) to WWI (1917), the Duke would be lost amidst the new tech.

The specific dates of the previous industrial revolution are arbitrary, depending on whether one looks at the laboratory breakthroughs or when engineers build them. Whatever the dates, it reshaped the world.

The Singularity has happened; we call it the industrial revolution or the long nineteenth century. It was over by the close of 1918. Exponential yet basically unpredictable growth of technology, rendering long-term extrapolation impossible (even when attempted by geniuses) Check. Massive, profoundly dis-orienting transformation in the life of humanity, extending to our ecology, mentality and social organization? Check. Annihilation of the age-old constraints of space and time? Check.

The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone by Cosma Shalizi (Assoc. Prof of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon).

The revolution gave per capita GDP in the developed nations a boost that lasted through the 1960s. But few noticed its ending. In the 1960s, people believed in a future of rapid technological progress. But all we got was the manned space program (an expensive trip to nowhere) and the supersonic transport (a premature technology) and radical changes in the narrow fields of communications and computing. So technological progress slowed, as did economic growth.

Now a new revolution might have begun.

The most obvious wave coming is more automation from the combination of semi-intelligent machines, better algorithms, improved cheap sensors, and better manipulators.

Algorithms have already changed the workplace. In the days of yore, for example, every bank had credit officers who personally approved each loan; now algorithms do so faster, better, and cheaper for most consumer loans and mortgages.

As the revolution begins, we have credit cards with chips (replacement for cash), self-driving cars with Star Trek-like sensors and computers, retail kiosks, and facial recognition systems. All have the ability to reshape the workplace. For example, fast-food ordering kiosks provide faster and cheaper service and customers prefer them.

An industrial revolution differs from the narrow advances in the past few generations by its breath. Drones, solar power, gigabyte broadband, smart machines, 3-D printing, re-usable spaceships these and a host of other new technologies are already reshaping our world.

Coming are far greater advances, such as guard robots, computer-generated actors and models, sexbots, and wonders as yet seen only in science fiction tales. They will have a Richter 10 impact on society.

{The arrival of sexbots} will blow up the world. It will make crack cocaine look like decaffeinated coffee. Anonymous (source here).

The pace of progress appears to be accelerating towards greater breakthrough technologies.Here are three candidates from a long list. Only a few need succeed to change everything.

All this is great news for our descendants, as we move to the wonderful world predicted by Lord Keynes in 1930. Revolutions do not solve problems so much as make them irrelevant. But rapid growth creates its own problems. Look at 1880s London in this slightly altered quotation from William Manchesters biography The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory.

The city itself is overwhelmed, engulfed by changes with which it has not learned to cope, and which are scarcely understood. Some were inherent in the trebling of the population, some consequences of industrialization. Particles of grime from the factory smokestacks produce impenetrable smog which reduces visibility to a few feet.

Much of the city stinks. The citys sewage system is at best inadequate and in the poorer of neighborhoods nonexistent. Buildings elsewhere are often constructed over cesspools which, however, have grown so vast that they form ponds, surrounding homes with moats of effluvia.

And the narrow, twisted streets are neither sealed nor asphalted. People lock their windows, even in summer, but they have a lot to keep out: odors, dust.

And then there was the manure from the horses (in 1880, NYC had 180 thousand) Nobody saw this coming, and so people had to react instead of prepare. Lets do better this time.

Among the biggest economic disruptions will be from big companies unable to ride these waves. Such as Xerox who dominated the copier business and invented most of the key elements of personal computing. Such as Kodak inventor of the digital camera (1975) and organic LEDs (1987), the one-time leader in digital radiography and blood testing equipment (history here). Such as GE whose serial screw-ups are legion (e.g., see Fast Heat: How Korea Won the Microwave War by Ira C. Magaziner and Mark Patinkin in the Harvard Business Review, January-February 1989).

The social and political problems from an industrial revolution will be even more difficult for investors to manage. Two can be foreseen. First, the struggle to share the fruits of increased productivity between labor and owners. This can be solved with a little wisdom, but often a little wisdom is more than a people have on tape. Failure at this could make burying gold in the backyard a winning strategy.

Second, coping with widespread unemployment. Many remain in denial about this. In their 2004 book, The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane discuss fields where computerization should have little effect on the percentage of the workforce engaged in these tasks. They list truck driving as one such field. Only 16 years later that prediction looks foolish. Imagine what another 16 years will bring. Discussing the coming job apocalypse is beyond the scope of this article. I will write about it if there is any demand.

So far we prepare for these things by closing our eyes. I doubt that will prove successful, and it squanders our lead time.

Risk and reward. Greed and fear. Booms and busts. Industrial revolutions do not change their natures, but make all of these larger. Understanding the economic regime of our time can inform your decision-making in all aspects of life.

Just as the date is vague when the previous revolution began, so will the start of the next one. There are no milestones for such things. But if you look for it, you will see the signals.

Ideas!For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and filmsat Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.

If you liked this post,like us on Facebookandfollow us on Twitter. See all posts about singularities, about robots, how the 3rd industrial revolution has begun, andespecially see these

By Ray Kurzweil. See his website.

From the publisher

At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and the most thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity.

For over three decades, the great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

That merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. We will be able to assume different bodies and take on a range of personae at will. In practical terms, human aging and illness will be reversed; pollution will be stopped; world hunger and poverty will be solved. Nanotechnology will make it possible to create virtually any physical product using inexpensive information processes and will ultimately turn even death into a soluble problem.

While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development. As such, it offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

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The new industrial revolution will change everything - Fabius Maximus journal

Five days after giving birth, Melissa Dimmick felt worn out. She knew having a baby was exhausting, but this seemed like something different.

Hoping for relief, she visited a local clinic for an antibiotic to treat what she thought was a respiratory infection. But, this was no ordinary cold.

"There is something really wrong," the doctor said, according to the now 31-year-old Dimmick from Painted Post, New York.

She wasn't overly concerned and figured an antibiotic would help her. The doctor, however, thought Dimmick had a pulmonary embolism and urged her to go to the emergency room right away. She relented and went.

In the ER, doctors diagnosed her with a rare type of heart failure called postpartum cardiomyopathy, which occurs during the last month of pregnancy or up to five months after delivering a baby.

I had never heard of this before," she said. "I would have never guessed that anything like this was going on."

Thats because some of the symptoms are similar to what women experience while pregnant, including labored breathing, struggling to breathe when lying down and difficulty walking without shortness of breath.

Though it can be hard for women to tell the difference, the severity and longevity of the signs set it apart.

Its much more pronounced symptoms and the symptoms dont go away after you give birth, Dr. Maya Barghash, a cardiologist at the Mount Sinai Hospital, told TODAY.

Dimmick, like so many young mothers, had no idea that she could even go into heart failure, especially at the age of 29. She was shocked. Although she was overweight, she didnt notice any other signs and learned she had no genetic markers for the heart failure.

Trending stories,celebrity news and all the best of TODAY.

I literally pulled the short end of the stick, she said.

At 288 pounds, doctors worried Dimmick wouldnt qualify for a heart transplant because her body mass index, or BMI, was above 35.

My heart function was to the point where it was a possibility that a transplant was going to need to happen, Dimmick said. I needed to make better choices.

When she was discharged from her local hospital with blood pressure medication and an external defibrillator, she felt hopeless.

They told me if I was still alive in six months they would see me for a follow up, she said. I was devastated. How do you tell someone, Your heart's not working, but it's no big deal. Just go home and try not to die?'

Desperate not just to live, but to thrive, she visited Mount Sinai. At first, she wanted to know if she could have another baby. But, they balked at this.

The doctor said, No more babies ever. You're all done. You have to see our heart failure team, Dimmick said. I didn't necessarily understand the extent of how bad my heart was.

Thats when she met Barghash. The cardiologist implanted a wireless heart monitor in Dimmick to detect if she went into heart failure and a defibrillator to shock her heart if she started having electrical complications."

It is kind of like a seatbelt. If you were in a car you hope youll never need it, Barghash said. But if you do, its there to protect you.

Months after her heart started improving in October 2018, Dimmick had bariatric surgery. Since then, shes lost 86 pounds and learned more about nutrition.

We worked very hard, like giving up fast food, she said. Were eating a lot more fresh foods.

This change has had a tremendous impact on her health.

Weight loss was very important and helped her recover even more, Barghash said.

Some days, Dimmick feels winded walking up the stairs, doing laundry or holding her son, Kale, now 2. And she feels a little embarrassed when shes the youngest person in the cardiologist's office by decades. But, she relies on her sense of humor to stay optimistic, which has helped her heal.

I have to laugh, she said. I'm like, Yeah it's my bum ticker, just because I have to lighten the mood a little bit. It is a really serious condition, but lightening the mood makes it a little bit easier.

She wants other people to feel empowered to take control of their health when they hear her story.

I was given the choice: I could go home again and give up or I could kick butt and I decided to kick butt, she said. I have this human being Im responsible for ... Im going to be here for him.

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Woman had postpartum cardiomyopathy and heart failure at 29 - TODAY

Long before Apple watches, grandfather clocks or even sundials, nature provided living things with a way to tell time.

Life evolved on a rotating world that delivered alternating light and darkness on a 24-hour cycle. Over time, cellular chemistry tuned itself to that rhythm. Today, circadian rhythms governed by a master timekeeper in the brain guide sleeping schedules and mealtimes and influence everything from diet to depression to the risk of cancer. While an Apple watch can monitor a few vital functions such as your heart rate, your bodys natural clock controls or affects nearly all of them.

Circadian rhythms impact almost every aspect of biology, says neuroscientist Joseph Takahashi of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Lately, research by Takahashi and others has suggested strategies for manipulating the bodys clock to correct circadian-controlled chemistry when it goes awry. Such circadian interventions could lead to relief for shift workers, antidotes for jet lag, and novel treatments for mood disorders and obesity, not to mention the prospect of counteracting aging.

Prime weapons for the assault on clock-related maladies, Takahashi believes, can be recruited from an arsenal of small molecules, including some existing medical drugs.

Researchers are increasingly interested in developing small molecules to target the circadian system directly for therapeutic gains, Takahashi and coauthors Zheng Chen and Seung-Hee Yoo wrote in the 2018 Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

In sophisticated life-forms (such as mammals), central control of the bodys clock resides in a small cluster of nerve cells within the brains hypothalamus. That cluster, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus SCN for short is tuned to the day-night signal by light transmitted via the eyes and the optic nerve.

But the SCN does not do the job alone. Its the master clock, for sure, but satellite timekeepers operate in all kinds of cells and body tissues.

There isnt just an SCN clock in the brain, Takahashi said at a recent meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. There are clocks throughout the entire body. Every major organ system has its own intrinsic clock.

The proliferation of clocks throughout the body makes circadian chemistry relevant to various behaviors and physiological processes, such as metabolism and blood flow. Maintaining healthy physiology requires all the bodys various clocks to be synchronized by signals (in the form of hormones and nerve impulses) from the SCN. SCN signals govern the timing of genetic activity responsible for the production of numerous clock-related proteins. Studies mainly in mice have shown how those proteins participate in complex chemical feedback loops, perpetuating rhythmic genetic activity in which proteins are first produced and then degraded to drive circadian cycles. Similar chemistry operates in humans.

Key molecular players in keeping the bodys clocks ticking are the proteins known as CLOCK and BMAL1. Studies of liver cells in mice show that CLOCK partners with BMAL1 to regulate gene activity, driving all the important circadian chemical reactions. Generally in many cells you see a similar kind of picture, in the brain or other tissues, Takahashi said.

The CLOCK-BMAL1 tandem activates genes that produce several forms of the circadian proteins period and cryptochrome. In mice, that process starts work in daytime, leading to a substantial buildup of period (PER) and cryptochrome (CRY) by evening. At night, PER and CRY migrate into the cells nucleus and block the action of CLOCK-BMAL1, thereby halting production of PER and CRY themselves. PER and CRY amounts then diminish as other molecules degrade them. By morning, PER and CRY levels drop so low that CLOCK and BMAL1 are no longer disabled and can begin producing PER and CRY anew.

Many other molecules participate in circadian chemistry; the exact molecular participants differ from tissue type to tissue type. In the (mouse) liver alone, the activity of thousands of genes fluctuates on a circadian schedule.

An hourglass uses the flow of sand to mark time. The body uses the build-up and flow of proteins to keep its rhythms. Although there are numerous different players in the bodys many clocks, the workings of the circadian proteins period (PER) and cryptochrome (CRY) (and their counterparts CLOCK and BMAL1) exemplify the kind of feedback loop that keeps the body in sync with the day-night cycle.

While signals from the SCN set the daily schedule for circadian chemistry, various small molecules, such as many medicinal drugs, can disrupt cellular timing. (Thats one reason certain drugs such as blood thinners and chemotherapy treatments are more or less effective depending on the time of day that they are administered.) Researchers have identified dozens of small molecules that can influence circadian processes.

Some such molecules change the length of the circadian period. Some alter the precise timing of specific processes during the cycle. Others help maintain robust signals for synchronizing the bodys clocks. Circadian signaling weakens with age, possibly contributing to many age-related disorders such as impaired metabolism or sleep problems.

Among the common drugs that exert effects on the circadian system are opsinamides, sulfur-containing compounds that suppress the amount of light input into the SCN. Nobiletin, found in the peels of citrus fruits, manipulates circadian rhythms to improve metabolism in obese mice. (Nobiletin also counters tumors and inflammation.) Resveratrol is a well-known compound that alters the activity of certain clock genes, with some possible human health benefits.

Scientists have discovered a long list of existing medicines and small molecules now under investigation that act on or influence the bodys circadian system.

Todays challenge, Takahashi and coauthors say, is to identify the precise targets where small molecules exert their influence. Knowing the targets should help researchers find ways to repair defects in the circadian system or alleviate temporary inconveniences such as jet lag.

Jet lag occurs when sudden changes in time zone generate a mismatch between the body clocks expectations and the actual day-night cycle (not to mention timing of meals and social activities). While it is usually just an annoyance for travelers, shift workers face long-term consequences for working when the body clock advises sleep. Shift workers, Chen, Yoo and Takahashi point out, are at risk for sleep problems, gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer and mood disorders. Molecules tested in mice have shown promise for reconciling expectations with reality, getting the clock back in phase with the bodys environment.

Clock malfunction also affects the bodys disease-fighting immune system, and certain clock components have been identified as potential targets for alleviating autoimmune disease and excessive inflammation. Other recent studies have shown that molecular intervention with clock components can aid proper functioning of mitochondria, the cellular structures responsible for energy production.

While most of the details about circadian chemistry come from studies in mice, studies of human sleep disorders indicate that the basic circadian story is similar in people. A mutation in the human gene responsible for making one of the period proteins has been linked, for example, to familial advanced sleep phase disorder. (In people with that mutation, the normal sleep-wake cycles shift by several hours.) Other research has shown that a variant version of the human gene for cryptochrome protein increases the risk of diabetes.

An especially intriguing possibility is that body clock management could provide strategies for slowing down aging.

Many studies have shown that aging in some animal can be slowed by restricting food intake. Fewer calories can lead to longer lives. But work by Takahashi and others has found that (in mice, at least) timing of ingesting the calories can be almost as important as the quantity.

Mice allowed to eat a normal amount of calories, but only within restricted hours, have lived about 15 percent longer than usual, Takahashi reported at the neuroscience meeting. In humans, that would correspond to a life span increase from 80 years to 92.

Were super excited about these results, because these are the first experiments to show that you can extend life span by restriction of time of nutrient intake only without a reduction of calories, Takahashi said.

For us its much easier to restrict the time that we eat than the amount that we eat. Now if you can do both, thats even better. I think that this, I hope, could have benefit for human health and longevity in the future.

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Winding the body's clock - Knowable Magazine

In his new book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Our Conscious Brains, neuroscientist Joseph Ledoux assigns himself the simple tasks of explaining how consciousness developed and redefining how we create and experience emotions.

Obviously, I'm being facetious. There's nothing simple about these tasks, yet in Ledoux's capable hands the reader is led, step by step, through the past four billion years of life on this planet. Consciousness, a phenomenon responsible for your ability to read and understand these words (as well as much, much more), often feels like a given, yet that's only because human life is short and evolution is so very long.

Ledoux writes about history splendidly. In his last book, Anxious (which I write about here and here), he investigates the development of nervous systems, entertaining the prospect that anxiety and fear are not innate physiological states but rather assembled experiences that can be sorted through and overcome. Throughout the book he overturns common assumptions about behavior and cognition.

Ditto Deep History. Ledoux writes that consciousness is "often a passive observer of behavior rather than an active controller of it." This conflicts with the assumption that every decision we make is of our own volition. He also argues that emotions "are cognitively assembled states of autnoetic consciousness," products of the same processes experienced via higher-order circuitry. Emotions are not separate from thoughts; they too are created in our nervous system by the same mechanisms.

From a 30,000-foot view this makes sense. Humans did not arrive on the planet whole-cloth. We are constructed from parts that started self-assembling billions of years ago, the consequence of billions of years of chemistry, biology, and physiology. Deep History is an engrossing investigation of the human condition through the lens of ancient evolutionary history.

No single summation could suffice to cover this book's depth and complexity, nor should itsome arguments take time to unfold. Below are five fascinating passages pulled from the brain of one of the most thoughtful neuroscientists alive.

Survival precedes behavior.

It's easy to believe there's a reason for every action, yet reason comes after the survival instinct. Humans do many things for seemingly strange (or no) reason, only later attempting to explain the cognitive process that led to the actionfilling in a psychological gap rather than actually defining the event. The mind likes to insert itself in places evenespeciallywhen it's late to the game.

"Behavior is not, as we commonly suppose, primarily a tool of the mind. Of course, human behavior can reflect the intentions, desires, and fears of the conscious mind. But when we go deep into the history of behavior, we can't help but conclude that it is first and foremost a tool of survival, whether in single cells or more complex organisms that have conscious control over some of their actions. The connection of behavioral to mental life is, like mental life itself, an evolutionary afterthought."

Neuroscience is, relatively speaking, still new.

It is common to assign certain brain regions as responsible for the creation and/or management of functions, which is a bit misleading. As far as neuroscience has advanced the field is still in its infancy. Brain scans track blood flow; that does not mean specific functions are limited to that region. (Of course, as Ledoux's friend and mentor, Michael Gazzaniga (listen to my interview with him here) has shown in his work in split-brain patients, localization does matter in certain regards; Ledoux even co-wrote a book with him on the topic.)

"Functions are not, strictly speaking, carried out by areas, or even by neurons in areas. They come about by way of circuits that consist of ensemble of neurons in one area that are connected by nerve fibers of axons to ensembles in other areas, forming functional networks. As with other features, the wiring pattern of sensory and motor systems is evolutionarily conserved across the vertebrates."

Don't get comfortable.

We like to believe ourselves to be separate from our environment. This is a false assumption. Life has always been about the interaction of species within their environment. Humans are no different. As everyone on the planet is experiencing the consequences, to varying degrees, of climate change, Darwinian fitness matters. Those trying to coast by on previous standards might find themselves in a rough situation.

"What works in a given environmental situation is determined by natural selection, but as the environment changes, or the group moves to a new niche, new traits become important and previously useful traits become detriments."

Pain is a state of mind.

Ledoux writes that pain and pleasure are often treated as emotions, but that's not quite true. There are no specific receptors for fear, joy, or anger. By contrast, certain receptors are activated when experiencing pain or pleasure, yet even those are subjective. For example, certain painful sensations are required for one person's erotic pleasure, while in others those same sensations might be translated as traumatic. Even chronic pain, it turns out, can be overridden at times.

"If a person with chronic pain is distracted by a funny joke, he does not experience the pain while laughing. The nociceptors are still responding, but the subjective pain is not noticed."

Humans are unique. So is every species.

Many people believe Homo sapiens represent the apex of the animal world. Some even believe we have a divine mandate to lord over other species. In reality, we are a quick blip in the long history of species. Ledoux points out factors that truly make humans uniquelanguage, autonoesis, complex emotions. He also warns against the dangers of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. Fitness means adapting to the environment. Over the course of the last century we've arguably accomplished the opposite.

"Differences, while important in defining a species, do not endow some with greater value than others in the vast scheme of life. We may prefer the kind of life we lead, but in the end there is no scale, other than survivability, that can measure whether ours is a better or worse kind of life, biologically speaking, than that of apes, monkeys, cats, rats, birds, snakes, frogs, fish, bugs, jellyfish, sponges, choanoflagellates, fungi, plants, archaea, or bacteria. If species longevity is the measure, we will never do better than ancient unicellular organisms."

--

Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter and Facebook. His next book is Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy.

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5 important features of your brain, according to a top neuroscientist - Big Think

For nearly 70 years, Palomar College Community College located in San Marcos, has provided transformational education and career opportunities to students of diverse experiences, needs, and abilities. Our commitment is to our students. We remain focused on their success. We are training the workforce of the future and in this lies our focus.

Upon my appointment to the position of superintendent/president of the Palomar Community College District in June 2016, the Governing Board established explicit goals for me. My board-given mandate was to increase enrollment, address diversity among faculty, work with the Palomar College Foundation to enhance fundraising efforts, and most importantly improve the fiscal health of the college.

The transformational changes my team has instituted to meet these goals are intended to end deficit spending and safeguard the longevity of our institution. These changes are disruptive and difficult, and have led many faculty and staff at Palomar College to call for my resignation. While I understand their anxiety and anger over my decision-making, I will never be pressured out of policies and governance structures that enable us to better serve our students.

Over the past three-plus years, we have taken a forensic look at long-standing obstacles that have prevented the college from attaining fiscal stability. It is not unusual during this type of endeavor that angst ensues.

We have had to examine the costs associated in providing full health benefits to all employees and their families. We have scrutinized our course scheduling and faculty assignments to ensure our human and fiscal resources align with the new student-centered funding formula mandated by the Board of Governors of the California Community College System. These evaluative exercises are not complete and there is much work left to do in order to secure the fiscal stability of the college. I am committed to establishing long-term financial stability for the college. We must do so in order to effectively serve our current and future students.

The transformational changes during my tenure do not stop there, and there is good news: We have increased our fall enrollment by 5% over the last two years. Community college enrollment growth during a healthy economy is an achievement only a few community colleges in California can celebrate. Under my teams leadership, the Palomar College instruction and enrollment teams have instituted strategies that generated these results. It is through this type of leadership that we will continue to help our students achieve the learning outcomes necessary to contribute as individuals and global citizens living responsibly, effectively, and creatively in an interdependent and ever-changing world.

We also have been fortunate to recruit new and diverse faculty. While we have more work to do in this area, research indicates that student success is much more likely if students are able to see themselves in their professors and that students learn in environments in which they feel connected, welcomed and engaged. As a federally recognized Hispanic-serving institution, the need to increase the diversity of our faculty is at the forefront of our ongoing and intentional hiring practices.

And finally, we are immensely proud of the work of our Palomar College Foundation. We have hired new leadership, and worked with the strong and focused Foundation Board of Directors. In the past year, the foundation generated its highest annual revenue in foundation history, awarded over $600,000 in scholarships and textbook assistance, and launched a new and more beneficial fundraising event strategy.

Since we know that many of our students face non-academic obstacles that impede student success, in 2018 we opened a new food and nutrition center on campus. Within the nine months of opening, the Anita and Stan Maag Food and Nutrition Center impacted over 3,000 households, providing over 40,400 pounds of food to students, staff and faculty facing food insecurity. While I am superintendent/president at Palomar Community College District, we will continue to focus on eliminating the non-academic obstacles that impede the success of our students.

For as long as I serve, these intentional transformational changes will continue until Palomar College is financially sustainable, our faculty and staff reflect the diversity of our students, and our foundation is able to support all students who need it.

Unapologetically, this mandate is my mantra. Despite the outrage and hostility thrust upon me by those who do not share my students-first focus and financial goals, I am confident in the bright, sustainable future we are working toward. The transformational journey is long and difficult; our students are worth it and it is an honor to serve them.

Blake is superintendent/president of Palomar College.

Continued here:

Commentary: Why Palomar College leadership is on the right track - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Traditional recycling is the greatest example of modern-day greenwashing.

Recycling is championed as the strategy to enable a cleaner, healthier world by those businesses that have profited the most from the extractive, take-make-waste economy. In reality, it is merely a cover to continue business as usual. Corporations espouse the efficacy of recycling via hollow "responsibility commitments" in order to avoid examination of the broader negative consequences that their products and business models have wrought.

Recycling is good for one thing, though it helps us dodge the responsibility of our rampant and unsustainable consumption.

Now is the time to challenge our core assumptions of the global waste management and recycling industry. After nearly 50 years of existence, recycling has proven to be an utter failure at staving off environmental and social catastrophe. It neither helps cool a warming planet nor averts ecosystem destruction and biodiversity loss.

This house of cards is beginning to tumble. In the past two years, several end markets for materials thought to be readily recyclable plastics, glass, cardboard even low-quality aluminum have evaporated. Chinas recent ban on foreign waste imports places the unsustainability of our material management markets front and center. Other countries have followed Chinas lead: Malaysia and the Philippines shipped thousands of tons of waste back to the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, shattering any illusion of the useful blue bin.

After nearly 50 years of existence, recycling has proven to be an utter failure at staving off environmental and social catastrophe.

Why is this happening? Simply put, the global recycling markets have relied on aggressive and disingenuous marketing, exploitative labor practices and global energy prices to remain competitive. At risk of oversimplification, recycling cannot work if it is more profitable to produce goods from virgin materials than recycled ones. As Stiv Wilson from the Story of Stuff put it: "if you want to stop plastic going into the ocean in Indonesia, you need to ban fracking in the Ohio River Valley." The low price of petroleum, coupled with stricter international material management policies, means that ineffective recycling markets are here to stay unless systemic change occurs.

Not only is recycling completely ineffective, it is directly contributing to global health degradation and associated societal injustices.

Where recycling is conducted, the aggregation, separation and reconstruction of materials and products is primarily done using low-cost labor in China and Southeast Asia. This workforce is consistently exposed to dangerous working conditions and toxic chemicals for minimal pay. The injustices of the exploitative labor system that powers the global waste and recycling system are rarely (if ever) factored into the equation. The result is that the true cost of our current material management system is hidden.

Even in the United States, recycling workforce conditions are bleak. During my time inspecting a U.S. material recovery facility (MRF), I was almost severely injured by an improperly locked out piece of machinery called a downstroke baler. The machines massive metal door burst open with the kinetic force of an elephant as I was standing in an unmarked blast zone. Luckily, just as the 1,000-pound hunk of metal started to swing, I took a half a step back and ended up only feeling wind on my face. I was lucky to come away physically unscathed and am privileged to no longer inspect such facilities for a living.

Not everyone has the ability to opt out. The top global waste management corporations purposefully shift these environmental and social risks off their balance sheet to those that cannot afford to say no, a practice reminiscent of food brands refusal to take responsibility for the factory farms that supply their packing operations. The recycling industrys foundation has been built on an opaque, inequitable labor system that consistently exposes a global work force and its communities to dangerous and toxic conditions. This alone should call into question its efficacy.

Perhaps most important, recycling has become a distraction during a time in desperate need of collective urgency and focus. It continues to perpetuate the faade that society can consume with abandon and without consequence. The IPCC estimates we have 10 to 30 years to act if we are to stave off the worst scenarios of global climate change and biodiversity loss. In this all-hands-on-deck moment, recycling initiatives continue to siphon a disproportionate amount of public goodwill, entrepreneurial focus and investment dollars away from meaningful solutions.

We need to implement strategies and invest in existing technologies that can help solve the root causes of climate change and pollution. These solutions fit into two buckets: circular design and green chemistry.

Circular design

Lets not mince words we have a consumption problem. We must dramatically reduce the number of materials and products we consume through design and education and rid ourselves of our reliance on the blue bin. Products should be designed for longevity, advanced disassembly and reuse rather than obsolescence. Complementary policies need to protect a consumers right to repair while enacting attainable extended producer responsibility.

As a society, we need to untether happiness from the act of purchasing goods and embrace business models that promote higher resource use, reuse and true repurposing. Product manufacturers can take inspiration from the natural world to create products designed to optimize for human happiness and environmental health using resources such as IDEOs Circular Design Guide and MBDCs Cradle-to-Cradle protocol. Several organizations are putting these ideas into practice including Metabolic, Fashion for Good and ReFED. Technologies such as Algramo, Vessel, Yerdle, Trumans and Loop can help consumers participate in this journey as well.

Green chemistry

Recycling materials that are inherently toxic means that were simply giving a dangerous substance another chance to poison the environment and our bodies. We must endeavor to make products from safer materials using non-hazardous chemicals and restorative manufacturing processes.

The "bio-economy" aims to make use of chemicals and materials that are readily found in nature, improve ecosystem health where production occurs, and eliminate toxic pollutants regardless of how materials and products are managed at end of use. Organizations such as GC3, Materiom, SaferMade and The Biomimicry Institute are leading the transition.

Unfortunately, corporate responsibility strategies continue to be dominated by traditional recycling initiatives and little else. It is less risky to double down on recycling rather than invest in the strategies outlined above.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, an NGO created by the major petrochemical manufacturers in 2018, is an example of how organizations are muddying the waters. The organization will commit to anything other than those solutions that target the root causality. They're simultaneously promising beach cleanups, while its key members including Shell, ExxonMobil and SABIC announce plans to build new multi-billion-dollar polyethylene and petrochemical plants that produce the inexpensive, toxic products that wash up on those same beaches.

The organizations that profit from exploitative recycling business models have a massive economic conflict of interest in shifting toward a fundamentally different system that promotes circular design and green chemistry. Their shareholders will not allow it, so theyll continue investing in peddling the lie that is modern day recycling.

Unfortunately, we have run out of time to entertain business as usual. If we infuse this discussion with the urgency that our polluted ecosystems demand of us, it becomes apparent that squeezing efficiency from the ineffective and exploitative system that is recycling is utterly absurd.

To borrow from Ellen MacArthur, one of the most prominent voices in the circular economy: "Were not going to recycle our way out of this."

Lets stop acting like it.

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It's time to trash recycling - GreenBiz

FROM 1960 till 2020, there has been a 28-fold increase in the number of centenarians. The path to longevity is strewn with false promises of expensive elixirs, exotic supplements, and stem cell rejuvenation. Human longevity is a complex interplay between the genes, the environment and lifestyle.

Genes and longevity

The study of human longevity genes is a developing science. Scientists estimate that between 15 and 30 per cent of the variation in human life span is determined by genes, but it is not clearly understood which genes are relevant, and how they contribute to longevity. In 2015, Ancestry, a genealogy and genetics company, partnered Calico, a Google spinoff, to study data from more than 54 million families and their family trees representing six billion ancestors, and were able to tease out a set of pedigrees that included over 400 million people. These individuals were connected to one another by either a parent-child or a spouse-spouse relationship.

In 2018, they published their results in Genetics, a journal of the Genetics Society of America. The study found that the lifespan of spouses were more similar and better correlated than in siblings of opposite gender. The study concluded that life span heritability is likely 7 per cent or less, and hence the contribution of genes to longevity is even lower.

Although genes seem to have only a small influence on lifespan, they appear to play a larger role in centenarians. Hence, there are a few genetic factors that do give you a headstart in the journey to longevity.

Being a first-degree relative of a centenarian makes it more likely for you to remain healthy longer and to live to an older age than your peers. First-degree relatives are less likely at age 70 years to have the age-related diseases that are common among older adults.

Women generally live longer than men , and the number of female centenarians is more than fourfold higher than that of male centenarians. It is thought that this is due to a combination of social and biological factors. Studies on mammals and Korean eunuchs has shown that the removal of testosterone at a young age was correlated with an increase in lifespan.

Genetic studies show that centenarians have a lower genetic risk of having heart disease, stroke , high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Alzheimer's disease and decreased bone mineral density. A study on Chinese centenarians published in 2013 showed that 55 per cent have normal systolic blood pressure, 82 per cent had normal diastolic blood pressure and less than 20 per cent were on long term medication. Hence, centenarians appear to have genes that reduce that risk of age-related chronic illnesses.

Biological clock

Epigenetics is the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself. One of the major mechanisms in which epigenetics manifest itself is by the process of DNA methylation, which involves the chemical modification of the DNA, thereby modifying the gene function and expression.

Through this process, certain genes can be silenced or activated and potentially impact age-related diseases such as cancer, osteoarthritis, and neurodegeneration. The biological or epigenetic clock in centenarians show a decrease in DNA methylation age, indicating that they are biologically younger than their chronological age. There is also data to suggest that although circadian rhythms deteriorate during ageing, they seem to be well preserved in centenarians, including preserved sleep quality.

Environment and longevity

Environmental factors have a large impact on longevity. Better living environment, clean food, clean water, good sanitation, reduction of infectious diseases, and access to better healthcare have resulted in significant improvement in human longevity.

Using Italy as an example of the impact of a better living environment, the average life expectancy went up from 29 years in 1861 to 84 years in 2020. The number of centenarians in Italy increased from 165 in 1951 to more than 15,000 in 2011, and the incidence of deaths occurring in those less than 60 years of age, decreased from 74 per cent in 1872 to less than 10 per cent in 2011 .

The continuous increase in lifespan in recent decades is mainly due to the advances in medical science. It is estimated that medical advances have allowed an increase in lifespan of five years in the last two decades and additional two years in the last decade.

When comparing two countries at different stages of development in 1950, the average life expectancy increase of 11 years from 68 years in 1950 to 79 years in 2020 in the USA, which was more developed in 1950, was much less remarkable than the increase of 3114 years in average life expectancy from 43 years in 1950 to 77 years in 2020 in China, which was less developed in 1950. The significant improvement in the living environment in China has contributed to the narrowing in the average life expectancy between those living in the US and China.

Lifestyle and longevity

In addition to environmental factors, lifestyle factors have an important impact on longevity. A study of more than 300,000 individuals over 7.5 years showed that individuals with social relationships have more than 50 per cent greater probability of survival compared with those with few and poor social interactions.

A study on centenarians in Utah in the US between 2008 and 2015 suggested that sleep, life satisfaction and social attachment were significant predictors of days lived. There is an extricable linkage between lifestyle and socioeconomic status. The term socioeconomic status as used in longevity studies encompass all the factors that can impact longevity including wealth, geography, education, occupation, ethnicity, cultural environment, neighbourhood environment, quality of healthcare and quality of diet. It is well established that the socioeconomic status of an individual will have a major impact on health and longevity.

A study on more than 120, 000 individuals by researchers from Harvard, published in the Circulation journal in April 2018, identified five low-risk lifestyle factors for increased life expectancy. They were: no smoking, non obese ( body mass index of 18.5 to 24.9 kg/m2), exercise (at least 30 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity, including brisk walking), low-risk alcohol consumption (5 to 15 gm/day for women and 5 to 30 gm/day for men), and a high score for healthy diet.

In this study, the projected life expectancy at age 50 years was on average 14.0 years longer among female Americans with five low-risk factors compared with those with zero low-risk factors; for men, the difference was 12.2 years.

These findings are consistent with a study on Chinese centenarians in which less than 20 per cent were smokers and less than 40 per cent drank alcohol. Hence, in general, most centenarians do not smoke, do not drink alcohol or are low-risk alcohol drinkers, are sociable, friendly, cope well with stress, are satisfied with life, have healthy diets and sleep well.

In summary, the main drivers of longevity in the first eight decades of life are the socioeconomic environment and lifestyle choices. Beyond the eighties, the inheritance of genes that defer age-related chronic diseases and a younger biological clock will help to propel these individuals beyond a hundred years.

This series is produced on alternate Saturdays in collaboration with Singapore Medical Specialists Centre

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How to live to 100 - Business Times

Purpose. Impact. These terms are thrown around more than ever these days, including in some unexpected places, like one of the worlds largest investors annual letter. Purpose statements are printed on everyday objects and impact investing or sustainability are as likely as gross margins to be discussed over lunch in some offices.

We have yet, though, to pay as much attention to the concept of meaning, at our collective peril. This oversight is a root cause of companies and investments inadequate progress toward becoming better for the people and planet around them.

Why do we need to develop this third, perhaps apparently overlapping, concept? Without meaning, impact is neutral: defined as a marked effect or influence, by the Oxford English Dictionary. Similarly, purpose without meaning is an ambitious mission that fails to engage or motivate the people required to get it done. Purpose, impact, and meaning are closely related, but they are not synonyms or substitutes. We need all three to fulfill our human potential and build a healthier, more equitable version of capitalism.

We are living in the time of peak purpose where your dish soap or toothpaste label is as likely to have a purpose statement as a not-for-profits annual report. This is a good thing, and arguably not surprising: humans are evolutionarily predisposed to do things that contribute to some outcome larger than our own survival. And now that our careers and purchases are so intertwined with our identity, we have even higher expectations that the companies we work for and buy from to have this same sense of purpose.

We get anxious when we dont understand the larger goal that our daily efforts are advancing. Indeed, ample research has shown that identifying and pursuing a purpose improves individuals physical and mental well-being. Other studies have shown organizations to perform better (financially and in other terms) when they have a purpose AND employees are clear about what that purpose is and how they contribute to it. But none of these benefits are felt if the purpose isnt anchored by specific impacts and the meaning that they have to each individual participant.

These days, there is also a lot of talk about impact. Impact investing is all the rage these days, though many deals that claim the label dont pass muster for many experts (at least not as being markedly different from deals that have always happened) as simply good business.

Millennials have become famous for wanting measurable and immediate impact from their jobs, purchases, and donations. Theyre not the weird ones, its just that the rest of us are products of the last industrial revolution, in which we operated machines, pushed paper, or otherwise served as cogs in processes that separated us from our direct impact.

Purpose and impact at the organizational level are also having a heyday. Larry Finks annual letters pushed his portfolio CEOs a plurality of the global economy at this point to consider their organizations purpose and impact, beyond financial returns. In August 2019, 181 CEOs of large, publicly traded corporations issued a statement, revoking Milton Friedmans position that shareholder value was the primary and sole purpose of corporations.

The concept that hasnt been making headlines is meaning. This is a problem. Without meaning, impact is a neutral term: a marked effect or influence, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Similarly, purpose without meaning is a lofty aspirational statement. And while other creatures also are driven to contribute to something larger than their own evolutionary success (ever seen an ant colony work, or eaten honey?), what is uniquely human is the meaning that we are able to ascribe to those efforts. In other words, the impacts of our actions, and what purpose they serve. So without making meaning of the impact of our actions, and why they matter in a larger sense, over time, we are not fulfilling our human potential. Were just ants building a hill.

Ants work hard and collaboratively, but without the human ability of assigning meaning to their ... [+] efforts.

Dont want to be an ant? Great, heres your playbook.

First, lets agree on definitions.

Consider your morning workout. Its impact might include releasing endorphins, strengthening your heart or muscles, burning fat, distracting you from worries about the day ahead, providing quality time with friends, exposing you to potential new friends, building your confidence to tackle other, non-physical challenges, upholding your side of a bet with a friend or group, or preparing you for a marathon or other physical feat. These are all wonderful effects, but will not matter equally to every person or even to a single individual at different times of their life. This is where it matters that we make meaning of our impact. A prescribed marathon training routine or group commitment to regular workouts are proven to have far higher persistence rates than the famous new years resolution to work out more. The stronger the sense of significance, what the workout means to you the more likely you are to perform the act, meet your goals, and unleash your potential in this area of your life.

So imagine youre someone who finds great purpose in supporting friends and family. You build a workout routine that has the impact of keeping your heart healthy and body strong. This will mean that you are around for a long time and able to play with grandchildren, nieces and nephews, biological or otherwise. You also know that in our increasingly inactive culture plagued by diabetes and heart disease, its powerful to set an example of physical fitness. The impact of setting this example has great meaning for you as part of how you advance your purpose of supporting your friends and family.

Taking the time to make these connections between the impact of your workouts to their specific meaning for you, and how that ladders up to your purpose, provides powerful motivation. You likely wouldnt be as motivated by the other impacts of your workout mentioned above, such as social contact or buffer arms.

On the other hand, the heart health and longevity that directly advance your personal purpose are way too distant and abstract for other people whove just moved to a new city and have a purpose to build a community of fellow devotees of physical activity. They would be most motivated by workouts with a social element and a group of regular participants who might become friends.

Meaning is a critical element to derive the observed benefits of living and working with purpose.

We can apply the same meaning-making process in our professional lives. Imagine that youre a supply chain manager and have taken to mentoring and now more actively sponsoring a newly hired woman on your team. You see great potential, and shes very interested in integrating circular economy principles and social responsibility into your companys approach. Over time, your support has the impact of providing this woman with formative learning experiences, advancing her career and salary, improving conditions for the factory workers in your supply chain, and extending the useful life cycle of your products.

Most of us can see the meaning of all of these impacts. But well derive more motivation and fulfillment by focusing on the ones that connect most directly to our individual sense of purpose. In other words, if you see your purpose as reducing gender inequality, focus on the two former impacts and the meaning they have to you in elevating a woman toward your companys leadership. On the other hand, if your purpose is about reducing waste, spending time thinking about the meaning of your colleagues impact extending your products life cycle.

Playing the four-year-old favorite Game of Why is a simple way to get from impact to meaning and eventually the overarching purpose of your work. Your inner dialog (or eventually conversation with a direct report) could go something like this:

A: Why are you sponsoring this female colleague?

B: So that she gets a promotion.

A: Why do you want her to get a promotion?

B: So that she has more influence on our companys future.

A: Why do you want her to have influence?

B: Because our senior leadership team isnt yet representative of the diversity of our customers gender identities.

A: Why [you get the idea by now]?

B: Because when leadership represents customers gender mix we create a company and products that are better for all stakeholders and improve the companys performance.

A: Why?

B: Because that will provide advancement, professional satisfaction, and wealth to our female colleagues as well as products that best serve our female customers needs.

A: Why?

B: Because our society functions best when all of its members reach their potential, and currently were losing out on serious potential economic growth and social innovation.

We're born to want to know 'why,' as you know if you've spent time with a four-year-old!

Just keep asking yourself why, and be curious about your answers. This simple process works amazingly well with colleagues and direct reports to help them connect the dots between their impact on your team and the meaning they do or could draw from it, and eventually the purpose that unites and motivates their work.

Its exciting to be part of this twenty-first century evolution of corporate purpose, which is leading us to a more equitable and regenerative form of capitalism. But we must both 1) ground our lofty individual and organizational purposes in action, and 2) help all employees connect the dots of their day-to-day impact to its meaning the significance it has to them personally. Without investing the time and money to learn and do this meaning-making process, we are just ants building hills. And leaders commitments in Davos, at the Business Roundtable, and in the BlackRock portfolio, will remain admirable but empty pledges.

On the other hand, when we make the time to understand and then share the current and potential impact of our work, and explore what it might mean to us each as employees, we create the motivating drive that is required to transform our economy. We have all the technology and resource to make our impact more positive. The meaning-making process is simple remember our four-year-old Game of Why. And purpose emerges organically once we are really paying attention to themes in the meaning we derive from our work, individually and collectively.

All thats required is that we believe that businesses can and should work alongside the public sector and not-for-profits to have positive impact on the planet and all people. And then remember that work can be a powerfully meaningful part of the human experience. If we make these basic shifts in belief systems (which have long been and are still held by many global communities), we are positioned for a rapid transition to the most equitable, peaceful, and healthy global society ever.

The transition to a healthier, more equitable and regenerative capitalism is within reach.

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How Impact, Meaning, And Purpose Are Different (And Why You Should Care) - Forbes

PLYMOUTH - Jae Dunn has been quietly working behind the scenes to make the towns 400th anniversary later this year a success. And when the opportunity to make a longer lasting impression arose, the local woman knew she must have a part.

While local students celebrated recess last week, Dunn was one of a dozen women taking a hands-on class in embroidery that will leave her mark on history for generations and generations to come even if it is just a couple of large letters on a piece of fabric.

Using skills she learned at her grandmothers knee as a child, Dunn spent two days last week stitching the letters P and L to the prologue panel of the Plymouth Tapestry, a heroically scaled commemorative embroidery interpreting the people and events central to the founding of Plymouth in 1620.

Based on the Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidery project that was crafted in 1066 to celebrate the Norman Conquest of England, the Plymouth tapestry will tell the story of Plymouth from its native American origins to the arrival of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.

When finished, it will feature 20 six-foot panels and span 120 feet. But it is its longevity, not length, that has undeniable appeal.

What motivated me first is its outrageously beautiful," Dunn said. "But the thought of leaving something around, something that should be around for the 500th anniversary, that really appealed to me. This is a real, tangible thing that will last long after Im gone.

Plymouth CRAFT offered stitchers the opportunity to have a hand in the project, running two three-day workshops at Pilgrim Hall Museum that taught basic stitches and allowed needle workers like Dunn to work on the title panel.

The class included a visit to the home of Elizabeth Creeden of Wellingsley Studio, who turned her 17th century home on Sandwich Street into a tapestry workshop.

With the help of local historians, Creeden has been designing the panels for years. A team of volunteer stitchers has been helping her embroider the six-foot sketches since last fall.

Two of the panels are complete and were in Pilgrim Hall as inspiration for last weeks Plymouth CRAFT class. Pilgrim Hall expects to unveil four of the panels for the public later this spring. The entire 120-foot tapestry is slated for completion and unveiling in the fall of 2021 for the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving.

Participants in the class included two nationally known embroiderers who have been working with Creeden on the project. Kathy Neal and Barbara Jackson have traveled to Plymouth from their homes out of state repeatedly to help stitch.

For the class they spent the first morning of both sessions teaching their students a half dozen or so stitches like the reverse chain, the alternating stem stitch and invisible couching that will go into the prologue piece a six-foot title page that feature the likeness of the Mayflower.

Local historian Ginny Davis provided the drawing of the ship. It was on a linen napkin she has from 1957, when Mayflower II, the replica of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to America, sailed from England to Plymouth.

Davis husband, Karl Lekberg, already had a hand in the project. He built the custom wooden frames being used to hold the fabric panels during stitching.

Davis got a glimpse of the project as a result and, like Dunn, knew she wanted to be part of something so grand. What she didnt realize was the peace it would bring.

They gave us little panel to practice on, then we sat down to stitch. It was a transformational experience. I didnt even get tired. I got energized. It was like meditation for me, Davis said. Its something that truly makes you feel like youre tied to the past and the future.

Davis said she used the stem stitch almost exclusively to stitch letters during her session. Even that was exacting work, as every line had to be straight and without split strands.

It was very painstaking, but also they can be taken out," she said. "Even the best of the stitchers have taken their stitches out. Sometimes they do a piece and come back the next day and start over.

Celia Nolan traveled from Hull to stitch on the project. A volunteer knitter for Plimoth Plantation, Nolan stitched as a child and thought it would be fun to get back into needlework on such a momentous project. She was also perfectly happy to perfect a single stitch if thats what was needed.

Its an amazing project that looks backward and will last long into the future - something my children can go look at and their children, Nolan said.

She stitched the first T in Massachusetts and most of the Y in Plymouth. Like many of her classmates, Nolan said she is hopeful that her skills might be deemed worthy enough for a call up to Sandwich Street and a chair at one spot on the main tapestry panels.

The H in Plymouth belongs to Caitlin Doyle.

The Hingham woman learned to embroider on her own using online resources after graduating from college a few years ago and was looking for a way to turn a solitary hobby into more of a social occasion.

Since learning about the Bayeux Tapestry, Doyle also dreamed of having a hand in a story telling tradition that started so long ago and commemorates so much human history.

The Bayeux has lasted a thousand years even after being forgotten in a chest for a few centuries," she said. "The Plymouth Tapestry will be cared for with a museums meticulous love and attention from the beginning, so who know how much longer than that it could last?

The Plymouth Tapestry experience was a wonderful way to practice this beautiful art that ties us to people past and present, all over the world, and I am proud to have a part of it. Also, Im so excited to bring everyone I know to see it on display say, Look how great the letter H in Plymouth is - I did that!

Rich Harbert can be reached at rharbert@wickedlocal.com.

Visit link:
A stitch in time: Plymouth Tapestry Experience traces history of Native Americans and Pilgrims - Wicked Local

The number of Pennsylvania state government employees who make at least six figures currently includes nearly 10,000 workers, according to a Pennlive.com report published Tuesday.

There were 9,751 state employees who surpassed $100,000 in earnings in 2019, the news organizationfound. That number increased by 7.5% from the prior year and has grown by about 27 percent over Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's five years in office, Pennlive reported.

About one in every 11 stateemployees across all three governmental branches are paid more than $100,000 a year, it reported.

The total payroll cost for the $100,000 club is now more than $1.2 billion per year, based on 2019 records.

The highest earners are three people who get paid more than $400,000 a year a Department of Human Services supervisory physician, the chief investment officer at the Public School Employees Retirement System and the chancellor at the State System of Higher Education.

Others in the earnings top 10 include other physicians, deputy chief investment officers and a university president.

The earnings can include more than salary to encompass overtime, longevity payments, bonuses and other compensation.

Pennlive said the administration's own statistics show theaverage full-time salary of the more than 80,000 peopleunder Wolf's jurisdiction was $58,332 last year.

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Nearly 10K State Government Workers Are Paid At Least $100K - 90.5 WESA

Modern chewing gums, which often contain polyethylene plastic, could stick around for tens or even hundreds of years, and perhaps much longer in the right conditions. Some of the first chewing gums, made of birch tar and other natural substances, have been preserved for thousands of years, including a 5,700-year-old piece of Stone Age gum unearthed in Denmark.

For archaeologists, the sticky stuffs longevity can help piece together the lives of ancient peoples who masticated on the chewy tar. The ancient birch gum in Scandinavia preserved enough DNA to reconstruct the full human genome of its ancient chewer, identify the microbes that lived in her mouth, and even reveal the menu of a prehistoric meal.

These birch pitch chewing gums are kind of special in terms of how well the DNA is preserved. It surprised us, says co-author Hannes Schroeder, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Its as well-preserved as some of the best petrous [skull] bones that weve analyzed, and they are kind of the holy grail when it comes to ancient DNA preservation.

Birch pitch, made by heating the trees bark, was commonly used across Scandinavia as a prehistoric glue for attaching stone tools to handles. When found, it commonly contains toothmarks. Scientists suspect several reasons why people would have chewed it: to make it malleable once again after it cooled, to ease toothaches because its mildly antiseptic, to clean teeth, to ease hunger pains, or simply because they enjoyed it.

The gums water-resistant properties helped to preserve the DNA within, as did its mild antiseptic properties which helped to prevent microbial decay. But the find was also made possible by the conditions at the site, named Syltholm, on an island in southern Denmark, where thick mud has perfectly preserved a wide range of unique Stone Age artifacts. Excavations began at the site in 2012 in preparation for the construction of a tunnel, affording the Museum Lolland-Falster a unique chance for archaeological field work.

No human remains have yet been found at Syltholmunless you count the tiny strands of DNA preserved in the ancient gum Schroeder and colleagues described today in Nature Communications.

The discarded gum yielded a surprising amount of information about its 5,700-year-old chewer. She was a female, and while her age is unknown, she may have been a child considering similar birch pitch gums of the era often feature the imprints of childrens teeth.

From the DNA, researchers can start to piece together some of the ancient womans physical traits and make some inferences about the world she lived in. We determined that she had this striking combination of dark skin, dark hair, and blue eyes, Schroeder says. Its interesting because its the same combination of physical traits that apparently was very common in Mesolithic Europe. So all these other ancient [European] genomes that we know about, like La Braa in Spain, they all have this combination of physical traits that of course today in Europe is not so common. Indigenous Europeans have lighter skin color now but that was apparently not the case 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The gum-chewers family ties may also help to map the movement of peoples as they settled Scandinavia.

The fact that she was more closely related genetically to people from Belgium and Spain than to people from Sweden, which is just a few hundred kilometers farther north, tells us something about how southern Scandinavia was first populated, Schroeder says. And it looks like it was from the continent. This interpretation would support studies suggesting that two different waves of people colonized Scandinavia after the ice sheets retreated 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, via a southern route and a northeastern route along todays Norwegian coast.

The individual was part of a world that was constantly changing as groups migrated across the northern regions of Europe. We may expect this process, especially at this late stage of the Mesolithic, to have been complex with different groups, from south, west or even east, moving at different times and sometimes intermingling while perhaps other times staying isolated, Jan Stor, an osteoarchaeologist at Stockholm University, says via email.

Additional archaeological work has shown that the era was one of transition. Flaked stone tools and T-shaped antler axes gave way to polished flint artifacts, pottery and domesticated plants and animals. Whether the regions turn to farming was a lifestyle change among local hunter-gatherers, or spurred by the arrival of farming migrants, remains a matter of debate.

This is supposed to be a time when farming has already arrived, with changing lifestyles, but we find no trace of farmer ancestry in her genome, which is fairly easy to establish because it originated in the Near East. So even as late as 5,700 years ago, when other parts of Europe like Germany already had farming populations with this other type of ancestry present, she still looked like essentially western hunter-gatherers, like people looked in the thousands of years before then, Schroeder says.

The lack of Neolithic farmer gene flow, at this date, is very interesting, adds Stor, who wasnt involved in the research. The farming groups would probably have been present in the area, and they would have interacted with the hunter-gatherer groups.

The eras poor oral hygiene has helped add even more evidence to this line of investigation, as genetic bits of foodstuffs were also identifiable in the gum.

Presumably not long before discarding the gum, the woman feasted on hazel nuts and duck, which left their own DNA sequences behind. The dietary evidence, the duck and the hazel nuts, would also support this idea that she was a hunter-gatherer and subsisted on wild resources, Schroeder says, noting that the site is littered with physical remains which show reliance on wild resources like fish, rather than domesticated plants or animals.

It looks like in these parts maybe you have pockets of hunter-gatherers still surviving, or living side-by-side with farmers for hundreds of years, he says.

Scientists also found traces of the countless microbes that lived in the womans mouth. Ancient DNA samples always include microbial genes, but they are typically from the environment. The team compared the taxonomic composition of the well-preserved microbes to those found in modern human mouths and found them very similar.

Satisfied that genetic signatures of ancient oral microbes were preserved in the womans gum, the researchers investigated the specific species of bacteria and other microbes. Most were run-of-the-mill microflora like those still found in most human mouths. Others stood out, including bacterial evidence for gum disease and Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause pneumonia today and is responsible for a million or more infant deaths each year.

Epstein-Barr virus, which more than 90 percent of living humans carry, was also present in the womans mouth. Usually benign, the virus can be associated with serious diseases like infectious mononucleosis, Hodgkins lymphoma and multiple sclerosis. Ancient examples of such pathogens could help scientists reconstruct the origins of certain diseases and track their evolution over time, including what factors might conspire to make them more dangerous.

What I really find interesting with this study is the microbial DNA, Anders Gtherstrm, a molecular archaeologist at Stockholm University, says in an email. DNA from ancient pathogens holds great promise, and this type of mastics may be a much better source for such data than ancient bones or teeth.

Natalija Kashuba, an archaeologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues have also extracted human DNA from ancient birch gum, from several individuals at a 10,000-year-old site on Swedens west coast. Its really interesting that we can start working on this material, because theres a lot of it scattered around Scandinavia from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, she says, adding that gums may survive wherever birches were prevalentincluding eastward toward Russia, where one wave of Scandinavian migration is thought to have originated.

The fact that the discarded artifact survived to reveal so much information about the past isnt entirely due to luck, Kashuba says. I think we have to thank the archaeologists who not only preserved these gums but suggested maybe we should try to process them, she says. If it hadnt been for them, Im not sure most geneticists would have bothered with this kind of material.

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Human Genome Recovered From 5700-Year-Old Chewing Gum - Smithsonian.com

In the depths of a European cave, dwells what must be the laziest and most underwhelming of all creatures to have ever been called a dragon.With disturbingly fleshy-coloured skin, it has also earned the label of "human fish".

But the olm (Proteus anguinus), with its cute stubby limbs, is actually an amphibian - a type of salamander that has adapted to life in the eternal darkness of a skyless existence. This troglobitelifestyle has resulted in under-developed eyes covered by layers of skin, which led Charles Darwin torefer tothe speciesas "wrecks of ancient life".

Olm eyes can only detect the presence of light, but not much else. Thus, these little gill-adorned weirdos are essentially blind, but they make up for this with a keen sense of smell, underwater hearing, and the ability to detect movements in their watery home.

Between 2010 and 2018, researchers captured, tagged, and recaptured a number of olms in the caves of eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina.Based on the frequency of their encounters, they estimated there were 26 adult olms making themselves at home there; across these eight years, checking in on their research subjects revealed the animals had a rather limited movement range.

"The majority of recaptured individuals moved less than 10 metres (33 feet) during several years," wrote zoologist Gergely Balzs from Etvs Lornd University and colleaguesin their paper.

One of these individuals was even lazier than the rest. It was found in the exact same spot a crazy 2,569 days after it was first recorded. That's over seven years! But there are clues in olm biology that might explain this seemingly unbelievable feat.

(Javier balos Alvarez/Flickr/CC BY SA 2.0)

These little slackers have a lifespan of up to a century. For such slight creatures, up to 20 grams (0.7 ounces) and 30 centimetres long (12 inches), that's an impressive feat, so clearly they're doing something right.

"They are hanging around, doing almost nothing," Balzs told New Scientist.

This may be key to their longevity - the olms' strategy of primarily doing diddly-squat has been working well for them since they colonised caves around 20 million years ago.

Olms are able to achieve these epic heights of laziness thanks to a very low metabolism. They eat snails and crustaceans (which aren't exactly plentiful in the caves), but can survive for years without food.

The lack of predators within their cave systems would also encourage their couch potato ways, allowing olms to be perfectly safe just plonking themselves wherever.

Additionally, they only bother to breed about every 12 years. But when they do, they produce a clutch of around 35 of these spectacular looking eggs.

And it's not like they can't move - some olms have easily fled from nosy scientists, by wiggling their way through tens of metres of water. Nor can the scientists say for sure that their tagged subjects didn't go for a wonder while they weren't looking, before sneaking back to their favourite position.

(Arne Hodali/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)

But Balzs and colleagues found this group of olms has very low genetic diversity, suggesting the population recently shrunk, or has a high level of inbreeding, which again hints at a very sedentary life. A previous study suggested only their young might be dispersing.

This lack of genetic diversity was not found in Slovenian olm populations, so further research is required to see if the incredibly slow-paced lifestyle of the recently studied population is shared by the rest of the species.

"We can only speculate that animals feeding on a very low food supply, reproducing sporadically and living for a century are very energy cautious and limit their movements to the minimum," the researchers wrote.

Biologist Matthew Niemiller of the University of Alabama, who was not involved in the study, agrees. He told Science News:

"If you're a salamander trying to survive in this food-poor environment and you find a nice area to establish a home or territory - why would you leave?"

In this fast-paced, stressed-out world, perhaps we should all aspire to be a bit more like these olms.

This research was published in the Journal of Zoology.

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Scientists Find a Wild Salamander That Hasn't Moved From Its Spot For 7 Years - ScienceAlert

A long, long time ago, the Indigenous Gunditjmara people the traditional owners of lands in southwest Victoria, Australia are said to have witnessed something truly remarkable.

An ancient oral tradition, passed down for countless generations, tells of how an ancestral creator-being transformed into the fiery volcano, Budj Bim. Almost 40,000 years later, new scientific evidence suggests this long-shared legend of the Dreaming could be much more than a myth.

New mineral-dating measurements conducted by Australian scientists highlight the possibility that the traditional telling of Budj Bim's origins may be an actual account of two historic volcanic eruptions that took place in the region about 37,000 years ago which, if true, might make this the oldest story ever told on Earth.

"If aspects of oral traditions pertaining to Budj Bim or its surrounding lava landforms reflect volcanic activity, this could be interpreted as evidence for these being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence," the researchers, led by geologist Erin Matchan from the University of Melbourne, write in their study.

Up until now, most evidence for the oldest known human habitation in Australia comes from radiocarbon dating or optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, using samples of ancient charcoal, or sediments from rock shelters.

Unfortunately, a lack of both ceramic artefacts and permanent structures in the Indigenous Australian context makes finding archaeological samples a challenge. Only six sites in southeast Australia have been definitively dated to older than 30,000 years, the researchers say despite evidence from elsewhere in the country suggesting it could have been inhabited as far back as 65,000 years ago, or even older.

Luckily, recent technological advancements in an alternative technique called argonargon dating could provide new ways of dating volcanic rock in the southeast landscape, especially when coupled with interpretations of cultural knowledge, the authors suggest.

"The oral traditions of Australian Aboriginal peoples have enabled perpetuation of ecological knowledge across many generations, providing a valuable resource of archaeological information," Matchan and study co-author David Phillips explain in an article summarising their findings.

"Some surviving traditions appear to reference geological events such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and meteorite impacts, and it has been proposed that some of these traditions may have been transmitted for thousands of years."

In the case of the now-extinct Budj Bim volcano, and another nearby inactive volcano located 40 kilometres (25 mils) away, called Tower Hill, we now have a better estimate of just how many thousands of years ago their ancient eruptions happened, thanks to the argonargon technique.

In the new research, the team dated a sample from a lava bomb hurled from the historic Tower Hill eruption, along with a sample of lava flow from Budj Bim's eruption.

The results suggest the eruptions may have been contemporaneous, with lava dated to 36,800 years ago ( 3,800 years) for Tower Hill, and 36,900 years ago ( 3,100 years) for Budj Bim.

Given Tower Hill's eruption was the most recent comparatively, the researchers suggest its eruption age "directly constrains a minimum age for human presence in Victoria".

That conclusion is based on the existence of a lone stone axe called the 'Bushfield axe' which was previously discovered buried beneatha layer of volcanic rock and ash from the eruption, and is therefore considered to be evidence of contemporaneous human occupation in the area.

As for whether the long-told oral tradition of Budj Bim truly chronicles these awesome, ancient volcanic outbursts, it's impossible to be sure. Some researchers say we need to be cautiousabout how we interpret stories from so long ago.

But we should also be curious.

"We in the West have only scratched the surface of understanding the longevity of Australian Indigenous oral histories," archaeologist Ian McNiven from Monash University told Science.

The findings are reported in Geology.

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This Legend of a Volcano Erupting 37,000 Years Ago May Be The Oldest Story on Earth - ScienceAlert

Homo erectus was a very successful early human, spreading across the ancient world and surviving Earths changing environments for nearly two million yearsat least five times longer than our own species has been around.

Now scientists may have pinpointed where and when Homo erectus made a final stand. The youngest known fossils of the long-lived species were identified on the Indonesian island of Java, where a dozen skulls found before World War II have finally been definitively dated to between 108,000 and 117,000 years ago.

Those dates mark the end of a long run. Homo erectus was the first known human species to evolve modern body proportionsincluding shorter arms and longer legs that indicate an upright walking lifestyle that permanently traded the trees for the ground. The close relative to Homo sapiens was also the first hominin known to leave Africa, and Homo erectus spread more widely than any other human species except our own. The fossils of H. erectus have been found in Western Asia (Georgia), Eastern Asia (China), and, thanks to a land bridge during a glaciated era of low sea levels, the islands of Indonesia, where the species persisted longest.

The new dates from Ngandong, Java, place the species end days in context. When Homo erectus was living at Ngandong, Homo sapiens had already evolved in Africa, Neanderthals were evolving in Europe, and Homo heidelbergensis was evolving in Africa, said co-author Russell Ciochon, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Iowa. Basically, Homo erectus sits back there as the ancestor of all these later hominins.

In a new study in Nature, Ciochon and colleagues have written what, at least for now, appears to be the hominins final chapter. Of course it would be presumptuous for us to say weve dated the very last Homo erectus, he says. Weve dated the very last evidence that we have, the last appearance of Homo erectus. We dont know if on some neighboring island Homo erectus existed for a little longer after our date.

The fossils in question have their own long and complex history. They were unearthed near the muddy banks of the Solo River in the early 1930s by a Dutch team that spotted an ancient rhino skull sticking out of the eroding sediments of a riverside terrace.

The bones puzzled scientists over the succeeding years. Along with thousands of animal remains, a dozen human skull caps were found, but just two lower bones, which made experts wonder how the skulls came to be isolated without their attending skeletons.

Because the bones were excavated nearly a century ago, it has been difficult to date them. The team tackled the problem by dating the wider geological context of the river system and the bone bed where the skulls were found, which sits some 20 meters above the current river thanks to thousands of years of erosion.

Ciochon and colleagues began excavations in 2008, launching the comprehensive study more than a decade in the making. Weve dated everything that was there, the river terraces, the fossils themselves, the bone bed, and the stalagmites that formed in the karst caves, he says.

The geological work suggests that the dozen Homo erectus individuals died upriver and were washed downstream by monsoon flooding, then were caught in debris jams where the ancient river narrowed at Ngandong. At that spot, they were further buried by channels of flowing mud.

At least their skulls were. The research team also offers an explanation for why the rest of the Homo erectus skeletons went missing

Where burials were in terraced deposits, once water eroded them out the skulls seemed to separate from the limb bones, Ciochon says. Limb bones are heavy and they dropped to the bottom of whatever water was moving them, but the skulls float. That may be why the skulls at Ngandong ended up separated from all but two of the long bones.

Although most of the ancient skeletons were lost to the river, the skulls strange journey and fortunate discovery provided plenty of evidence for the team to examine.

Theyve done some extensive excavations and geological studies, and theyve done a tremendous job integrating a variety of dating techniques to show very tight age constraints for that fossil bed and by inference the last appearance of Homo erectus, says Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist and head of the Smithsonians Human Origins Program. We have evidence for terrace formation, we have evidence for these flood deposits and rapid deposition, all the fauna is coming from that bed, and so its most likely that Homo erectus did, too.

Homo erectus survived so long in present-day Indonesia that the species ended up sharing the planet with new groups of humans. Our own species is among these, but the new dates suggest that that we never lived side by side. Homo sapiens lived in Africa 117,000 years ago, but theres no evidence they reached Java before about 73,000 years agoat least 35,000 years after the last known Homo erectus died out. (African H. erectus are thought to have vanished some 500,000 years ago.)

What finally finished Homo erectus off after nearly two million years of survival? Ciochon and colleagues theorize that climate change played a role. The bone bed at Ngandong was also filled with animal remains, especially deer and the large bovid ancestors of water buffalo and Javas banteng wild cattle. These large mammals thrived in open woodland ecosystems like the African homeland of Homo erectus.

Ngandong was an open country habitat, with a little woodland, somewhat like the savannas of East Africa, Ciochon said. Then around 120,000 or 130,000 years ago, we know that there was a change in the climate, and this rainforest flora spread across Java. Homo erectus was not able to adapt. Other than Homo sapiens, no other early human was adapted to living in a rainforest.

Though Homo erectus did finally fade away, it will always retain a prominent place on the family tree of human ancestors.

Homo erectus is one of the iconic species in human evolutionary history, Potts says. Its perhaps the most important species that indicates how branchy the human family tree is, because Homo erectus persisted through all of those other species, including eventually Homo sapiens, coming into being from earlier populations of Homo erectus.

Though this branch of our ancestral tree survives only in the distant past, the dates of Homo erectus last stand show the species enjoyed a longevity that only we might matchif we can survive another 1.5 million years.

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What Happened to Homo Erectus? | Science - Smithsonian

I am rarely cast as an ingnue anymore, Lois Smith was saying on Monday afternoon. It was a joke, obviously, and her fellow actresses Estelle Parsons, 92, and Vinie Burrows, who recently turned 95 but rounds that up to 96 burst into laughter.

At 89, Smith was the baby of this bunch. Between them, they have more than 200 years of performance experience, including the film Lady Bird and the title role in Marjorie Prime (Smith), the movie Bonnie and Clyde and the sitcom Roseanne (Parsons), the American premiere of Jean Genets The Blacks and experimental work with the director Rachel Chavkin (Burrows).

Theyre still busy adding to their rsums: Parsons currently at the Public Theater in Tony Kushners A Bright Room Called Day, as a character whose name translates to The Old One; Smith on Broadway, with a talky role in Matthew Lopezs The Inheritance; Burrows back Off Broadway next month in Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories, at the Mint Theater Company.

In the room with them, youd never guess their ages from their appearance, only from the discussions vintage details as when Burrows and Smith tried to figure out what they might have worked on together, and the closest they got was a play each of them did on Broadway with Helen Hayes. (Burrows was in the original 1950 production of The Wisteria Trees, Smith in the 1955 revival.)

The shyest of the group was Burrows, while Parsons and Smith had the comfort of old acquaintance. Gathered around a table in a Midtown restaurant, they spoke about perseverance, longevity and improving with age. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

So many people count down to retirement. Was that ever a goal for any of you?

LOIS SMITH Not me!

ESTELLE PARSONS I dont think people in the theater are like that. Edward Albee said the reason we live so long is because we never retire.

VINIE BURROWS The work satisfies us, recharges our batteries.

PARSONS Also, when youre an actor, youre like retired a lot of the time because youre waiting for the jobs to come along. Theyre always talking about women have jobs when theyre young and then theres this trough.

BURROWS It was slightly different with me because as a young black actress, I didnt have the quality or the quantity of roles that I wanted, so I created my own one-woman show, had a New York Times review that said I was a magnificent performer. It was in the 60s. I went on the college market. More than 6,000 performances, booking them myself.

And you started as a child actor?

BURROWS On radio.

PARSONS Were they parts for black people on radio?

BURROWS No, no.

PARSONS Nobody could see you, so

BURROWS Nobody could see, so.

PARSONS I didnt start acting till I was 32. Well, I was one of eight people who started the Today show. Back in the 50s.

But you were also on Broadway in the 50s. You all were.

PARSONS My first thing with Ethel Merman, yeah, after I left the Today show because I didnt want to go to the Grace Kelly wedding. I hated interviewing people. (laughter)

SMITH My first professional job was in a Broadway play that ran all season, in 1952. Time Out for Ginger. And Melvyn Douglas was my father. It was a nice way to begin.

Whats gotten easier and whats gotten harder about acting?

PARSONS What has gotten easier for me is that when you start out, your work is kind of erratic. Now my work is of a standard. Its not wonderful one night and terrible the next night. Listen, Im 92, but I feel (laughs) that Im finally in command of my work.

BURROWS Im 96, and I feel as if Im better now than I ever was.

SMITH Whats harder is my body is not as agile as it used to be. Im very grateful that Im mobile and can do it. Its true I get bed parts sometimes, or wheelchair parts oh, boy! but I also get standing-up-all-the-time parts, like I have right now.

PARSONS I dont like parts where people are self-pitying old. I dont take those.

SMITH (laughs) I know what you mean. Probably 15, 20 years ago, I began to find I was getting all these offers to do play readings where the memory was gone. And I thought, Not yet!

PARSONS I dont really get a lot of offers, though, do I? Do you get as many offers as you did when you were younger?

SMITH At least. Maybe more.

BURROWS I dont have an agent, so when I hear of something, I go, but then they dont want to see you. I dont belabor what is; I go out and find.

How is it learning lines?

SMITH Its about the same. Ive changed methods along the way. I grew up learning my lines in rehearsal, on my feet. And I began to think I wanted to learn it ahead of time. Ive really enjoyed it, the time with myself and the script alone.

PARSONS In my late 70s and 80s I began to worry about whether I could really do it anymore. I was doing this play down at La MaMa. Id gone offstage at the wrong time. Id have an experience like that, or where Id forget a line, and I would blow it up into a very big thing. As I got toward my 90s (laughs), I got my confidence back. People say, Oh, I want to be just like you, and I think, Ive never been different from anybody else. I just keep on going. Thats just luck.

Luck plays a part, but so does perseverance.

SMITH Theres another thing, I think: that we get to do it together. That means a lot to me. It seems to me thats a good part of the production of longevity.

BURROWS Community.

SMITH And a constant exchange. Its growthful.

What difference might a level playing field have made in your careers?

BURROWS Oh-ho-ho. Its not level.

PARSONS Its never level for women. I dont think men and critics think of women as artists. I mean, everybody thinks of men as artists, men actors. And look at the jobs men actors have. I dont even want to think about that.

BURROWS Well, they are definitely privileged. I should be able to use my talents more. And I can say that at 96 I should have been able to use them more when I was 20 or 25 or 35 or 45 or 65 or 75. There were limitations. There are still limitations. But I do my work. When I can. And I support every baby born having the opportunity to develop to his or her potential.

When you think about having a long career, whats your greatest wisdom to offer?

BURROWS Gratitude. Gratitude for the chance to work and develop.

PARSONS Im amazed that more people arent interested in our wisdom. Its a funny thing, because we are wise in so many ways. Even solace that we could give to some people on the long journey. There are some, like probably us, who persevere. And there are some who dont.

SMITH Maybe some of these people say, I dont want to do that anymore.

BURROWS I cannot imagine myself saying that. Give me the chance, Ill leap at it!

PARSONS Im worried about staying on longer than I should. I had a time in our rehearsal period here where I thought, Maybe I should get out, maybe I should understand when is my time to get out. You know what I mean?

SMITH I guess I do. I also feel that in just about every rehearsal process there are times where you think, Well, this is impossible. It isnt going to work.

Is there anything you want to know from one another?

BURROWS (to Parsons and Smith) Where do you get your strength from?

SMITH I do get it from working, partly. Im stronger if Im working.

PARSONS I just said to my husband yesterday, when I do a really good performance, or (laughs) what I think is a really good performance, I feel so fulfilled and confident and all those good things, the way you want to feel.

Vinie, whats your answer to that question?

BURROWS My strength comes from those who came before me, as a black person. Those who survived that Middle Passage, across the Atlantic, some who died in the holds of the ship. It definitely comes from that human experience that belonged to my great-grandparents, men and women, kidnapped from their home. Their struggle gives me my strength.

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200 Years of Experience, and Still Learning Onstage - The New York Times

During the last ice age some 100,000 to 15,000 years ago mammoths were widespread in the northern hemisphere from Spain to Alaska.Although some endured on a tiny island in the Arctic until 1650 BCE, most mammoths perished about 10,000 years ago during a time when they still interacted with humans. A new study that estimated a species lifespan from DNA suggests that these mammoths were most likely much older than the human hunters on their prowl, reaching up to 60 years of age.

The team of researchers at CSIRO and the University of Western Australia estimated a species lifespan based on its genome sequence. In order to unravel the lifespan clock, the researchers screened 42 genes from the DNA of 252 vertebrate species, both living and extinct. The higher the density of these genes, the higher the predicted lifespan.

When studying extinct animals, the researchers had to also use their living relatives and descendants for reference. In the case of the wooly mammoth and straight-tusked elephant, the Australian researchers performed estimations based on the genome of the modern African elephant, whose lifespan is of about 65 years.

So how long did mammoths live? The researchers estimate that they were able to live up to 60, and the same applied for straight-tusked elephants. Meanwhile, the maximum lifespan of Homo sapiens was deemed to be 38 years, according to this method. This may seem to invalidate the method seeing how the average lifespan in the United States currently is 78, but this figure actually matches other estimates of early modern human lifespans before the advent of medicine, agriculture, and sanitation.

Neanderthals and Denisovans, our close extinct relatives from the genus Homo, had a maximum lifespan of 37.8, very similar to modern humans living around the same time.

We estimated that Denisovans and Neanderthals both had a lifespan of 37.8 years. This suggests that these extinct Hominidae species had similar lifespans to their early human counterparts, the researchers wrote.

The famous Lonesome George was the last remaining Pinta tortoise (C. abingdoni) when he died in 2012. He had been living in captivity at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the Galapagos Islands since 1972 and died at age 100. Thats relatively close to the maximum lifespan estimate of 120 years found by the study.

Other extinct animals whose lifespan were calculated by the study include the little bush moa (23 years) and the passenger pigeon (28 years). The animal with the largest lifespan is the bowhead whale (268 years). However, the longest-living vertebrate may be the Greenland shark, which could live to see 512 years of age, according to a 2017 study.

The estimates for invertebrates werent nearly as accurate, possibly because they do not exhibit the targetted genes to the same extent as vertebrates.

In the future, these genes could be used to further studying aging. For instance, theres a debate among researchers as to what is the absolute limit of human longevity. The method elaborated by this study, however, cannot be used on individuals.

It cannot be used to determine the lifespan of any individual human and the purpose of this study was to determine an important parameter of ecological significance which may assist in wildlife management, said Benjamin Mayne, a scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Western Australia.

The findings appeared in the journal Scientific Reports.

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DNA reveals lifespan of mammoth and other extinct animals - ZME Science

Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

Hey everyone, its our final Mailbag of 2019. A rare departure into sentimentality but here comes the cut and paste from years past: If you get half as much pleasure (guilty, to be sure) from reading this column as I get from writing it, we're all doing pretty well. Your questions and observations are, reliably, thoughtful and informed and passionate, and please know that every last oneeven the ones wishing me incurable cold soresare read. Think of this as a sincere invitation to belly up to the bar in 2020 and we can resume the conversations. Happy holidays, Happy New Year.

I am flattered and humbled by how many of you have requested to receive the column via email each week, newsletter style. Offer still holds.

A few of you asked about Sundays 60 Minutes piece. Heres a link.

If youre interested in a holiday-time contribution, consider:

a) Andrea Jaeger Little Star Foundation b) the MaliVai Washington Youth Foundation c) NYJTL

Onward

Have a question or comment for Jon? Email him at jon_wertheim@yahoo.com or tweet him @jon_wertheim.

Jon, I heard you mention on the podcast that this was the end of the decade, the 2010s. Maybe because weve all been distracted with so many world events, I hadnt really thought of that. Overall, do you think it was a good decade for tennis?Charles, London

Imagine its December of 2009 and, after putting on your Carnac hat, you said, Behold! I can see into the future. In ten years from now.

Serena Williams will be the womens tennis center of gravity.Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer will be 1-2-3.The field will be getting increasingly older....More and more minorities, especially on the womens side, will follow the lead of the Williams sisters and break through.Tennis will be subject to relentless global forces, a net positive, but it will mean power will not be concentrated in one place. The U.S., for instance, will go 0-40 on the mens side.Rampant conflicts of interests and self-interested turf wars will stunt the sports growth. Your audience would doubtlessly have heard these pronouncements and responded, So, in other words, nothing changed.

Now imagine another soothsayer. Wait, I can see tennis in December 2019! Canada will be a superior tennis power to the U.S.! Top players will compete into their late 30s without an appreciable dropoff.Pete Sampras will be ranked fourth on the all-time Slam list. There will be a doping scandal involving a top player, and though more about sloppiness than ill-intent, it will still be damaging to the brand. And that player will be: Maria Sharapova.Spain will have won the Davis Cup in Madrid: and what a spirited weeklong, single-site competition it will have been. All of which is to say: plenty changed in ten years.

Overall, Id contend that it was a terrific decade for the sport. It took advantage of globalization, of the great virtue of both genders, and of star power. The four thoroughbredsthe Big Three and Serena, of coursewere still high in the saddle as the decade drew to a close. And everyone benefitted from the longevity.

In many ways, tennis is so well-poised for the future. Its already penetrated markets other industries arent even sniffing. (An Australian just beat a Ukrainian to earn $4.5 million by winning a tournament...in China.) The sport benefits from changes to media and technology and communications. The sport benefits from two genders playing simultaneously. But in this star-driven world, tennis also needs to consider a future without the four mainstays in the workforce. In a mobile world it needs to consider how to compete not just with other sports but with other entertainment. In a world where inefficiency gets punished, it will pay a bigger price than ever for conflicts and sloppy governance and dinosaurs in the executive offices.

All of which is to say.tennis breezed though the 2010s without much sweating. Now it needs to come back strong for the 2020s, prepared to get its serve broken a few times and take some setbacks but still prevail.

Whats your favorite Wozniacki memory?! Australian Open in 2018 comes to mind, but Im also tempted to go with her 2014 U.S. Open win against Sharapovaa year in which Sharapova was playing very well (won French) and Wozniacki was back on the uptick. That win underscored Wozniackis grit and ability to run forever. Her performances in the 2017 (won) and 2014 (finals) year-end championships were also pretty epic. I really like her. She has a great vibe about her from a fans perspectiveboth on and off the court. Would love to hear your thoughts!Damian, Melbourne, Australia

Obviously the 2018 Australian Open, a career highlight that enabled her to shed dreaded the Best player never to have won a Major costume. But you know what story was underrated? Her running of the New York City Marathon. She was in the middle of her career25 years old and ranked in the top tenand trained to run a marathon that she completed in 3:26:33! A) what a strong message this sends about the athleticism and durability and conditioning of WTA players; B) what a strong message this sends about independence and autonomy. Sometimes we can do things because we want to; even if they fly in the face of conventional professional wisdom.

A personal story, that I fear is going to sound unseemly and humblebraggy, but here goes. Wozniacki and I are not friends, but friendly. I think I mentioned that her apartment in New York is a few blocks away from mine. We run into each other in the neighborhood and, of course, at events. Last year, she popped into my office at CBS and I showed her around. After she left, a colleague asked nervously, Are we going to hire that woman?

What woman?

The woman you were interviewing.

Interviewing?

That blond woman.

Oh, no. Shes a tennis player. She already has a job.

Tennis player? Shes came across so professional and was so friendly, I figured she was gunning for a job here.

Nope, shes a tennis player.

Is she any good?

Jon: A few weeks ago, you wrote, "Sports are predicated on the idea that the competition is honest. If not, if the integrity is being undermined, the whole Jenga tower collapses. Mostly this means doping and paying college athletes and stealing signs and, generally, being the Houston Astros."

After I stopped cracking up at the Houston Astros, I noticed the college athlete comment. I guess this means you're against paying college athletes? Care to share your reasoning? I'm still trying to make up my mind about the issue. Paul

No, no, noI am fully, squarely, unambiguously in favor of paying college athletes. College sports have become morally indefensible. You have assistant coaches in college football making seven-figure salaries. Yet the athleteswho are the ones generating the revenue, putting themselves at risk and often the least likely students on campus to graduateare not being compensated? One day, we will be telling our grandkids about this economic injustice and shrugging when asked how this was allowed to persist.

My point was this: if one athlete is doping and the other is not, the tower collapses. If one team is paying its athletes and the other is not, the tower collapses. If the Patriots are secretly video-taping and the other teams arent, the tower collapses. We can debate which rules are fair and unfair and should be changed. But if one side complies with the rules and the other doesnt, the integrity of fair competition is undermined.

I happened to run across a video on YouTube of Gabriella Sabatini and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario. Looking back, it seemed like Sabatini came out of the gates faster and should have had the more successful career of the twowasnt she the only player to defeat Graf three times in 198889? Sabatini didnt have a slouch of a careerone Slam and some Slam finals. But no No. 1 ranking or multiple slams like ASV, who seemed to have a more limited game. What do you attribute to the difference in their careers? The power of hyphenated last names? Do you see any parallels to a couple of players today?PN

If it were about the power of the hyphenated name, a junior player named Rafael Nadal-Parera would have made a splash. As for your question, its an interesting comparison of contemporaries who came with very different skill sets and governing principles. As is the case in most contexts, style versus substance is too crass. But ASV played at an uncommon level of competitive resolve, which enabled her to have the superior career, both to Sabatini and to everyone else in her era, save Steffi Graf and Monica Seles.

I just read an extraordinary article on Federer. Extraordinary to me, because I had no idea of all these hidden machinations and power brokering by my favorite current player. So, my question is this: is this article being fair? Is it correct? Can Federer really not "even drink tea without a stratagem?"

Or, are the arguments just correlations leading to causation? "2 + 2 = 11" types?!! In other words, is Federer's goody-goody persona a mere smokescreen, or, is the article just smoke without a fire? Insider perspective needed! Arun Narayanan, Lappeenranta, Finland

Is none of the above an option?

Know that Im in the tank for Simon Briggsa journalist who does rigorous and unimpeachable workand think the story is completely legitimate and fair. I also think Federer is well within his rights to take a stake in the sport. In fact, I would almost take the opposite angle: if Federerage 38 and armed with moral authorityDID NOT wield his moral authority, it would be deeply disappointing.

Tennis is in desperate need of conflicts disclosure. It would be great if everyone in the sport revealed where their proverbial bread was buttered and simply spoke the truth. (In Federers case: The Davis Cup and even, to some extent, this cockamamie ATP Cup are both trying to take my market share; so the idea that I would play either is as preposterous as my wearing jorts to the Met Gala.)

But I dont read that story and see anything inconsistent, much less unethical. Just a guy, nearing the end of his career, exerting some well-earned authority, and taking the equivalent of equity stakes in some ventures.

My first time writing to you. I am intrigued. There is a tennis lineswoman, she looks Asian and is short, whom I see at many big matches. She is the only tennis linesman or woman I recognize from year to year. I first noticed her when she called the footfault on Serena Williams in the semifinal of the U.S. Open in 2009, was threatened by Serena, and reported it to the chair umpire. Serena lost the match to Kim Clijsters as a result. I have seen this lineswoman on TV many times since, at big matches (I guess because those are televised), including matches in 2019.Marika in Maryland

Here comes Gayle Bradshaw of the ATP, one of tennis good guys, to explain:

Officials, including line umpires, are not allowed to speak to the press unless permission is granted by the governing authority for that event. This would rarely be authorized, but when it is the subject matter would be limited to how they got into officiating or a human interest angle. Nothing about players, matches, controversial calls, other officials is allowed even if an interview was authorized. They can have social media presence but the same prohibitions would apply to anything they post. Speaking about these prohibited subjects would place the official in violation of the Code for Officials and could face sanction ranging from a warning to a loss of their certification. They could also fall afoul of the Tennis Integrity Program if they were to post anything that could be interpreted as inside information.

Who hires them? It is the responsibility of the tournament organizers. They hire a chief of officials who in turn hires the line umpires and additional chair umpires needed for the event. In the US for ATP events, the tournaments contract for their officials through the ATP and we have a Chief we keep on retainer who manages this program. Line umpires are selected on a rating system where they are graded on their performance at every match and then are given an overall grade. Acceptance to events is based similar to the way players are accepted to events based upon their ranking. We also give the USTA a few spots (wild cards) to place up-and-coming officials who would not have an established rating yet.

Once retired from officiating, an official would be free to write a book and several officials have done so. Charlie Beck, former MTC Supervisor; Alan Mills, fmr Wimbledon Referee are some of the more well-known but there are others also. Both of these books were released after the officials retired from officiating.

Robin Montgomerya 15-year old from D.C.and Argentinas Thiago Tirante triumph at the Orange Bowl. Colette Lewis has you covered. Of course she does.

Hold your nose, here comes a match-fixing scandal.

Thanks,reader Cesar Torres.Heres an interesting academic read on the WTAs family leave policy.

Who double-bageled Roger Federer?

From Chris Jordan: I noticed you posted about a book about pro tennis by Peter Underwood. A few months ago, I released a book on pro tennis, which contains the largest collection of pre-open era pro tennis results ever assembled (it contains over 420 pages of results, plus a narrative section of over 110 pages). It took me many months of detailed research. It is called The Professional Tennis Archive and is available from amazon worldwide. The Tennis Hall of Fame library and Wimbledon library have copies of it. I would be grateful if you could post a link to it.

International Tennis Federation (ITF) President, David Haggerty, has been nominated as a candidate by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to become an IOC member as an International Federation representative. The elections are due to take place on 10 January 2020 in Lausanne, Switzerland.

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Mailbag: Looking Back on the 2010s Decade in Tennis and Ahead to the Future - Sports Illustrated

Starting a truly innovative tech company is tough in todays world. With so many brilliant ideas available via open sourcing, it seems like every idea has been tried and tested a thousand times already.

But then you meet entrepreneurs such as Sergey Young and Jessica Maslin, whove been successful at creating something that will change our lives in the years to come. These tech luminaries have founded companies, beaten the odds and have been beyond successful in ways one can only dream of.

These men and women are obviously doing something right. Here at Technowize, we take a look at their work which has now made them household names.

A highly acclaimed technologist and investor, Sergey Young, is making longevity his lifelong mission. Young is the founder of the $100 million Longevity Vision Fund, whose goal is to accelerate the most promising longevity breakthroughs and make them accessible and affordable for all. His investment in human longevity, online education, digital healthcare, and real estate technologies spans over 20 years, making him one of the most qualified experts in this field.

Longevity Vision Fund was launched in February 2019, and in those eight months has come a long way. LVF has assembled am impressive Advisory Board of five leading longevity scientists: Vadim Gladyshev, Aubrey De Gray, Richard Faragher, Joao de Magalhaes, and Morten Scheibye-Knudsen.

Sergey Young is on the Innovation Board of XPRIZE Foundation and a Development Sponsor of Longevity XPRIZE. He is also on the Financial Advisory Board for the UKs All Party Parliamentary Group on Longevity.

Alex is Vice President and Head of the North America Strategy Office at Fujitsu, one of the world's leading information and communication technology (ICT) companies, with over $46 billion in annual revenue across more than 100 countries and 162,000 employees.

At Fujitsu, Alex Lam leads the Global Product Business strategy organization for the North American market and oversees strategic planning and business development for Fujitsu's global solutions (Enterprise, AI, SDx) with key Silicon Valley and US-based technology companies. In his role, Lam spearheaded the launch of the Fujitsu Solutions Lab, a technology partner incubator and customer POC showcase for Fujitsu's Enterprise data center solutions with innovative IT technology partners.

Alex Lam is also spearheading a team at the Fujitsu Solutions Lab that promises to revolutionize the CPU/GPU for enterprises. Fujitsu's groundbreaking technology innovation optimizes business processes and leverages the benefits of AI. Fujitsu is developing an AI-specific microprocessor called the Deep Learning Unit (DLU). The companys goal is to produce a chip that delivers 10 times better performance per watt than the competition. This is a progressive goal.

Jessica Maslin and Josh Dubon are the co-founders of Mieron, the Worlds First Virtual Reality NeuroTherapy system that helping to rehabilitate patients all over the world. MieronVR, the companys brand new virtual reality technology is being used by doctors and medical practitioners help patients rehabilitate from spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries.

The Mieron library is full of locomotive training exercises, trunk stability, strength and conditioning, upper body mobility, lower body mobility, balance and stability exercises that complement physical therapy and occupational therapy practices. The goal is to improve range of motion, execution of tasks, independence by improved mobility, and mental wellness.

There are two versions of the device currently in production, the Mieron Pro, which is used in hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, and the newly-created Mieron Go, which is a consumer version that patients can use at home.

In 2004, Brian Gill co-founded one of the worlds most successful data recovery labs with his brother Tyler and PhD Greg Piefer. The trio, along with their business partners and Gregs family, then founded Phoenix Nuclear Labs, which currently manufactures the strongest compact neutron generators in the world.

Brian Gill was on the board of PNL when it was decided to spin off medical isotope startup SHINE Medical Technologies to tackle the Mo-99 crisis. Over 56,000 American patients are imaged every day and over 30 medical procedures require Mo-99, and as of 2018 0% of the worlds supply of Mo-99 is produced in the US.

Most recently, he has teamed up with worldwide forensics thought leader Cindy Murphy to found Gillware Digital Forensics. Past successes have allowed him to make over a dozen angel investments, most recently in Medaware Systems, Pacifica Labs and Allergy Amulet.

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Most Innovative People to Watch in 2020 - Technowize