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The US government shut down at 12:01 a.m. et on 1 October, after lawmakers in Congress failed to agree on a funding bill to keep the government running. Threats of federal shutdowns have become routine in the past decade, but this closure could be different: US President Donald Trump’s administration has encouraged mass firings of federal workers — a group that includes tens of thousands of scientists — during the lapse in funding.

“When you shut it down, you have to do lay-offs. So, we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected,” Trump said on 30 September. It’s not clear when such lay-offs would begin, whether they would survive legal challenges or how extensive they would be. Even without any shutdown-driven lay-offs, the Trump administration projects that it will cut 300,000 people from the roughly 2.4-million-person federal workforce by the end of the year as part of its efforts to downsize the government.

In the meantime, the federal government has stopped non-essential operations. Science-agency staff members have been sent home, their research suspended. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had planned to halt its in-house basic research and stop admitting new people to the NIH hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. If the shutdown lasts more than a few days, it will directly affect non-government researchers: both the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would stop awarding new grants.

Shutdowns “can have a significant impact on the scientific research enterprise, and a lot of that does depend on how long a shutdown is”, says Joanne Padrón Carney, the chief government-relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a non-profit organization in Washington DC.

It’s unclear how long the shutdown could last. The first Trump administration (2017–21) featured a 35-day closure, the longest in US history, that cost roughly US$5 billion and led to disruptions across most US science agencies. There is no set date for the parties to meet for negotiations.

The White House did not respond to Nature’s questions about mass layoffs and the shutdown’s effect on science.

Shutdown showdown

In March, a small group of Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to pass a bill to keep the government open. But this time, Democratic lawmakers have voiced concerns about loss of health-care subsidies and a range of other issues, including attacks on free speech.

Although many scientists worry about the effect of a shutdown, some, including some federal researchers, see this as an opportunity for Congress to derail the Trump team’s activities, which have already included substantial lay-offs, budget cuts and disruption to research.

At a public protest in Washington DC on 29 September, federal employees spoke out against the actions of the Trump administration. “American science, the gold-standard and world-leading science and innovation enterprise, is being destroyed,” said Mark Histed, a neuroscientist at the NIH in Bethesda. “Congress has a rare moment of leverage to check Trump’s executive overreach and it must stand up and do so.”

Drastic reductions

No previous shutdowns carried the threat of mass firings, officially called reductions in force (RIFs). According to guidance issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the office has directed agencies to consider issuing RIF notices to all employees who are working on certain projects: those whose Congressional funding lapsed on 1 October and whose goals are not “consistent with the President’s Priorities.” Carney says that the memo could be used to close programmes, leading to a loss of institutional knowledge at science agencies.

Agencies whose budgets are cut have discretion to cut staff, but it’s unclear whether that authority applies during shutdowns, says Nick Bednar, a legal scholar at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis. “We are in largely uncharted territory,” he says. The administration has already faced legal push-back on previous mass firings. In September, a judge ruled that the termination of 25,000 federal workers earlier this year was unlawful, but that too much time had passed since the termination to mandate their reinstatement. On 30 September, two unions sued the administration to block any RIFs.

Scanty details

Nature contacted multiple federal agencies about their shutdown plans. None provided information about potential RIFs. But huge numbers of federal employees at science-heavy agencies are already on unpaid leave.

According to plans disseminated before the government closed, the NSF intended to furlough roughly 75% of its staff. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was expecting to furlough 54% of its personnel, halting “most research activities”. At NASA, in which 83% of staffers were furloughed, a skeleton crew will keep active satellites operational.

The US Department of Energy’s website did not have a detailed contingency plan and an agency spokesperson declined to provide specifics about furloughed staff. At the EPA, 86% of the staff are to be furloughed, but ongoing experiments will be preserved.

A contingency plan for the NIH specified a furlough of 78% of workers, preserving only crucial functions such as care for existing patients. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will furlough 64% of its staff.

One set of activities has been authorized to continue across all agencies during the shutdown: on 28 September, the Office of Personnel Management published guidance stating that activities related to administering RIFs — such as sending termination notices — are exempted from shutdown-related freezes.

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Staying healthy may seem like an impossible ask.

Research into the best ways to keep fit or maintain a healthy diet is constantly evolving, and people also have to navigate around the issues of modern life, from pollution and processed foods to viruses and corporate office jobs.

But, experts say there are five everyday practices you can always rely on to keep you in top shape.

Focusing on different areas of wellness, they can easily be worked into daily routines.

They might seem simple, but they’re effective – unlike quick fixes and fads, according to Harvard researchers.

Be mindful

More than a quarter of American adults suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Researchers have found that anxiety and depression can be incredibly harmful to both physical and mental health. Depression and anxiety are risk factors for developing heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and chronic pain.

Practicing mindfulness can help counter these effects and help you feel positive. Intentional breathing, exercising in nature, and eating nutritiously are all steps that can help you relieve muscle tension and regulate your nervous system.

Sleep well

Staying mindful can help you sleep better. And sleep is a critical component of overall health and longevity.

However, one in three Americans aren’t getting the recommended seven to nine hours each night.

Prioritizing your sleep can help support heart health, lower your risk of diabetes, help your muscles recover faster, keep you from getting sick, increase your attention span, and reduce the risk of injury.

“When we sleep, the brain totally changes function,” Dr. Marishka Brown, a sleep expert at the National Institutes of Health, said. “It becomes almost like a kidney, removing waste from the system.”

Try to go to sleep earlier, not look at screens, and drink water for better sleep health.

Do some cardio and move around

Exercise can help you fall asleep and feel less tired during the day.

Fitness can also lower blood pressure and reduce inflammation that can lead to heart disease and cancer.

Health authorities recommend adults get 150 minutes every week of moderate intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity.

Cardio gets you breathing harder and your heart beating faster, but it also benefits your lungs, digestion, skin, muscles, joints, heart, and brain, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

People can run, jump rope, or go cycling for these benefits. But, just walking also counts, and taking more steps a day helps lower the risk of premature death.

An estimated 110,000 deaths per year could be prevented if U.S. adults ages 40 and older increased their moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Eat whole foods

Diet and nutrition are just as important for your health as fitness.

Eating whole and vitamin-rich foods free of a lot of salt, sugar, and saturated fats can also stave off disease.

Many experts say the Mediterranean diet is the key to the best health. The diet includes fatty fish, nuts, fruits and vegetables, olive oil, and beans.

Experts also advise people to avoid ultraprocessed foods, which additives that reduce products’ nutritional value.

“Industries are adding ingredients like excess salt, sugar, artificial sweeteners, colorings, and other chemicals that may be unhealthy or trigger reactions in the brain to keep us craving more,” Dr. Wynne Armand, a primary care physician at Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham, explained.

Protect yourself from pollution

While you may not be able to move, there are steps you can take to protect yourself from air and other sources of pollution.

Make sure to stay inside when air quality has been degraded and wear a mask or respirator when needed.

Microplastics and forever chemical pollution are in our skies and waterways, but people can reduce their plastic use, buy pans that are PFAS free, and use a water filter to mitigate exposure.

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For longer life, focus on fitness over weight loss

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This spirit of shutdown fun was not consistent with the message delivered by the White House press secretary on Friday.“There are significant personal impacts on millions of Americans as a result of this current government shutdown,” the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said from the podium. She said that there are 1.3 million men and women in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Space Force who are not being paid.

“Military families are already seeking out food assistance because of financial anxiety,” she said. She described an article she read about military families near Fort Hood, Texas, having to line up outside a Y.M.C.A. food pantry at 5 in the morning.

“This madness must end,” she declared at one point.

So then, she was asked, what was with all the shutdown japery from her boss on social media? Just a night earlier, Mr. Trump had posted an A.I.-generated video of his budget chief, Russell T. Vought, dressed as the grim reaper, wielding a scythe, while A.I. versions of Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance (both draped in black cloaks as well) played percussion set to the Blue Öyster Cult jam “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.”

“Look,” Ms. Leavitt said, “the president likes to have a little fun every now and then.”

“We don’t like laying people off,” she insisted. “Nobody takes joy in that around here.” (She did not define the difference between “fun” and “joy.”)

“If you think that,” she continued, “then I think that’s very sad; you view the White House and our staff as wanting to put people out of work. Nobody wants to do that, but sometimes in government you have to make tough decisions.”

Ms. Leavitt’s explanation that these unfortunate firings must be carried out was about as puzzling as her saying that no one at the White House was enjoying what was happening, even as they were posting online, seeming very much to enjoy what was happening.

It is out of the ordinary to use a government shutdown to fire people. The way this usually goes down is that workers get furloughed during a shutdown, and then often many of them get back pay once it ends. Already, lawsuits are being brought against the Trump administration for its efforts to straight-up fire people this week.

As for the press secretary saying that “nobody” wants any of this to happen? That seemed difficult to square with Mr. Trump’s assertion that “a lot of good” could come from this shutdown. “We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want,” he said on Tuesday, “and they’d be Democrat things.”

Come on, baby, don’t fear the reaper — he’s just having a little fun.

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Visitors outside the White House on Friday, the third day of the government shutdown.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times

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Maria Branyas Morera lived to the age of 117 with a bit of genetic luck and a healthy diet that included daily yogurts, according to a study published today in Cell Reports Medicine. During her final year — she died on 19 August 2024 — she was verified as the oldest living person, a feat that drew the attention of researchers who explore the biology of ageing.

“We wanted to learn from her particular case to benefit other people,” says Manel Esteller, a physician specializing in genetics at the University of Barcelona in Spain.

At the time, Branyas was living in the small town of Olot, in the Catalonia region of Spain, where she enjoyed reading books, playing with dogs and spending time with friends and family, including her two daughters, both in their 90s. Over several encounters with Branyas and her family, Esteller and his colleagues collected samples of her blood, saliva, urine, and stool that provided insights into her unique physiology, including her genetics, metabolism, and gut microbiome.

The supercentenarian was happy to collaborate. “She was a very humble person,” Esteller recalls. “She said: ‘My only merit is that I’m alive’.”

The researchers compared Branyas’s genetic, metabolomic, and other profiles with those of women of various ages living in the same region. One of the main insights from the work, Esteller says, is that it is possible to distinguish molecular changes that happen in the body because of ageing from those that occur because of poor health.

For instance, the research team learnt that Branyas’s telomeres — the stretches of repetitive DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes — were exceptionally short. Telomeres naturally shorten with age, and unusually short telomeres have been associated with age-related diseases. But Branyas had no such illnesses. “This is telling us that the loss of telomeres is not necessarily associated with disease, it’s simply associated with being old,” Esteller says.

Mayana Zatz, a geneticist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil who studies the genetics of healthy centenarians, says the study is thorough but notes that conclusions that are based on a single individual are limited. “It would be interesting to compare the findings with supercentenarians in other populations,” she says.

Winning the genetics lottery

While analysing Branyas’s genome, the authors spotted genetic variants that are known to protect against cardiovascular disease, cognitive loss, and diabetes. By contrast, they found no variants associated with increased risk for certain deleterious conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers also looked for genes linked to longevity. “She had variants in genes that, in other beings like dogs, worms, and flies, are associated with extreme lifespan,” Esteller says. “She was lucky in the genetics lottery.”

But her luck didn’t end there. Branyas aced her bloodwork; she had low levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol and high levels of ‘good’ cholesterol, which suggests an efficient lipid metabolism. Her inflammation markers were also low, and she had a strong immune system — at the age of 113, she was the oldest person in Spain to have COVID-19 and survive. “Sometimes our immune cells get a little bit unloyal and start to attack our own cells, causing inflammation,” Esteller says. “There was nothing like that.”

Esteller thinks Branyas’s lack of inflammation could be linked to her healthy gut microbiome, which resembled that of a much younger person. He points to her high levels of Bifidobacterium, a genus of beneficial bacteria that was probably boosted by her diet, which included three daily servings of yogurt.

Some of her other lifestyle choices that probably contributed to her longevity included eating a Mediterranean diet and exercising regularly. “Our genes are the cards in a poker game,” Esteller says. “But how we play them is what really matters.”

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The Trump administration has revived the practice of separating families in order to coerce immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US, attorneys and former immigration officials allege.

In several cases, officials have retaliated against immigrants who challenged deportation orders by forcibly separating them from their children, a Guardian investigation found. The officials misclassified the children as “unaccompanied minors” before placing them in government-run shelters or foster care.

The new practice has taken effect as the administration has also issued stringent new limits on who can take custody of unaccompanied minors, which advocates say keep thousands of children away from their relatives.

“This is a tactic to punish people for not acquiescing,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, head of external affairs at the legal aid group Raíces. “It’s a tactic to get immigrants to relent, to agree to self-deport.”

The recent separations echo the “zero tolerance” policy of the first Trump administration, when the US systematically separated more than 5,600 migrant children from their parents and caregivers at the US-Mexico border. Images of agents pulling children from their parents’ arms and placing them in overcrowded metal cages sparked domestic and international outrage, and Donald Trump ended the policy.

But seven years later, hundreds of parents have still been unable to reunify with their children; the administration lost track of many of the families it tore apart. Though the new separations so far appear less pervasive than the original policy, experts and attorneys said that it could result in another crisis of prolonged, permanent separations.

“I would say that the main difference is just that the separations are now happening all over the country, as opposed to at the border, concentrated in areas where you could visibly go see it,” said Michelle Brané, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official who served under the Biden administration. “But the rest of it is not that different. The objective is still to be cruel and send a message that people should not come to the US – that they should leave.”

Family separation is one of several ways in which the US government is, increasingly, moving immigrants around the country – shuffling detainees through a vast, chaotic system that advocates say is intentionally cruel.

An analysis of leaked flight records and US government detention data, as well as interviews with immigrants, attorneys, and former officials, revealed that immigrants are increasingly moved without notice away from their families, communities,s and legal counsel – leading to apparent violations of constitutional due-process rights.

The Guardian reviewed leaked flight data from Global Crossing Airlines, the charter company that operates the majority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flights, and found that the vast majority of these trips during the first three months of the second Trump administration were between domestic US airports. The airline transported nearly 44,000 immigrants – including 1,000 children – during that time. US detention data revealed that since the inauguration, nearly 2,350 kids under the age of 18, including 36 infants, have been booked into immigration detention centers around the country.

In cases reviewed by the Guardian, parents were moved between detention centers several times after being separated from their children, and in the process were unable to coordinate calls with their kids or their lawyers. Amid the chaos, immigration experts and advocates have the raised alarm that the government could, as it did during the first Trump administration, lose track of where it is sending parents and children, resulting in indefinite or permanent separations.

For LW, a 37-year-old mother who came to the US with her 10-year-old son in April seeking political asylum, returning to China was not an option.

LW told her lawyers and immigration officers that she had been sexually assaulted by multiple high-ranking government officials in China. After reporting an assault to the police, Chinese government operatives threatened her with imprisonment – or death. That’s what was awaiting her in China, she told US immigration agents.

In a sworn declaration in her immigration case that her lawyers shared with the Guardian, LW alleged her pleas to allow her and her son to remain together while they applied for asylum were ignored by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in San Diego, California, who forced the mother and son into an unmarked vehicle, and began driving them toward the local airport. According to her sworn declaration, agents told her if she refused to get on a flight back home, the government would take her son away from her.

At the airport, the agents tried to drag LW toward the terminals. “I said I needed a lawyer, but they refused, telling me that nobody would want to help me,” she said in her declaration. “Desperate and terrified of what might happen, I dropped to the ground and the officers let me go.”

Later that day, she said they drove her and her son back to a CBP facility in San Diego – and then moved them to an Ice facility in Texas. But a month later, she said, immigration agents followed through on their threat: they took her son away and placed him in foster care.

Her lawyers said that she and her son have now been separated for nearly five months. He turned 11 in the interim.

LW remains detained at an Ice facility in New Mexico, while her son has been placed at a government shelter for unaccompanied minors in New York.

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Family separations were the hallmark of the first Trump administration’s border policy. Now advocates allege migrant families are being split up again as a retaliatory measure

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