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Immune cells rush to the brain and promote deep sleep after a heart attack, according to a new study involving both mice and humans. This heavy slumber helps recovery by easing inflammation in the heart, the study found.

The findings, published on October 30 in Nature, could help to guide care for people after a heart attack, says co-author Cameron McAlpine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who studies immune function in the cardiovascular and nervous systems. “Getting sufficient sleep and rest after a heart attack is important for long-term healing of the heart,” he notes.

The implications of the study go beyond heart attack, says Rachel Rowe, a specialist in sleep and inflammation at the University of Colorado Boulder. “For any kind of injury, your body’s natural response would be to help you sleep so your body can heal,” she says.

The heart needs its sleep

Scientists have long known that sleep and cardiovascular health are linked. People who sleep poorly are at a higher risk of developing high blood pressure, for example, than are sound sleepers. But how cardiovascular disease affects sleep has been less explored.

To learn more, the authors induced heart attacks in mice and investigated the animals’ brainwaves. The researchers found that these mice spent much more time in slow-wave sleep — a stage of deep sleep that has been associated with healing — than did mice that hadn’t had a heart attack.

Next, the authors sought to understand what was causing that effect. One obvious place to look was the brain, which controls sleep, notes McAlpine. After a heart attack, immune cells trigger a massive burst of inflammation in the heart, he says, and the researchers wondered whether these immune changes also occurred in the brain.

The team found that, after a mouse’s heart attack, immune cells called monocytes flooded its brain. These cells produced large amounts of a protein called tumour necrosis factor (TNF), which is an important regulator of inflammation and also promotes sleep.

To confirm that these cells were linked to the increased sleep, researchers prevented monocytes from accumulating in the rodents’ brains. As a result, “the mice no longer had this increase in slow-wave sleep after their heart attack,” McAlpine says, supporting the theory that the influx of monocytes to the brain contributes to the post-heart-attack sleep boost. Similar experiments confirmed TNF’s role as a messenger to sleep-inducing brain cells.

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Researchers think they have found a depiction of Noah’s Ark on the 3,000-year-old Babylonian Map of the World. Also known as the Imago Mundi, the clay tablet has baffled archaeologists for over a century. 

Archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam discovered the tablet in 1882 in Sippar, an ancient Babylonian city in present-day Iraq. It now lies in the British Museum, and researchers finally think they have decoded it. Curator Irving Finkel says that the cuneiform writing on the tablet tells of the ancient Babylonians’ beliefs and culture. 

The tiny tablet has cuneiform on both sides and a map of sorts etched into it. The writing above the map tells of the creation of the Earth, and the map itself seems to give an aerial view of Mesopotamia. 

On the tablet, Mesopotamia is surrounded by a double circle that is labeled the “Bitter River.” At the time of creation, this was considered the boundary of the known world. Within Mesopotamia, clear markings depict the Euphrates River, Babylon, and other features.

“In this circular diagram, you have captured the entirety of the known world, where people lived, thrived, and perished,” said Finkel.

Triangles outside the double ring represent distant mountains and realms beyond that of the known world.

Mysterious triangles

The back of the tablet is covered in cuneiform, which speaks of what lies within the eight triangles that sit outside the double circle. Here, the information slips between reality and imagination. Those creating it did not know exactly what lay beyond Mesopotamia. The stories tell of giant birds and trees with jewels hanging from them instead of fruit. 

Researchers think the back acts as a guide to unknown lands for any explorer who is considering a journey beyond the Bitter River. A story about one of the mysterious realms shows a striking resemblance to the biblical tale of Noah’s Ark. It says that the explorer must pass through “seven leagues…[to] see something  thick as a parsiktu-vessel.”

The word parsiktu was of immediate interest to Finkel. He says this word would make any Assyriologist’s ears prick up. It is only seen on one other cuneiform tablet, which describes an ark built by the ancient Babylonian version of Noah. The Ark eventually crashes on the other side of a mountain beyond the Bitter River. 

Finkel believes the Imago Mundi tells adventurers the journey they must take to find Noah’s Ark and gives us an incredible insight into the crossover of ancient stories and cultures.

“It shows that…from the Babylonian point of view, this was a matter of fact…That if you did go on this journey, you would see the remnants of this historic boat,” he says. 

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Noah’s Ark Shown on Ancient Babylonian Map

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There are more effective ways to deny, deter, or discipline your child than repeatedly saying “no.” Frequent use of the word “no” can exhaust both parent and child. Some parenting experts also suggest that overuse can breed resentment or encourage future rebellion.

Overusing “no” can desensitize a child to its impact, so experts recommend reserving it for life-threatening situations, says Audrey Ricker, PsyD, co-author of Backtalk: 4 Steps in Ending Rude Behavior in Your Kids. Instead, use short, clear, and direct phrases to explain why a behavior is inappropriate.

The next time you find yourself in one of these common scenarios with your toddler, consider one of the alternatives below to simply saying “no.”

Reaching for More Sweets

David Walsh, PhD, author of No: Why Kids—of All Ages—Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It, suggests that parents deny certain junk food requests, like ice cream and candy, by offering a healthier alternative, such as yogurt. Avoid the promise of “maybe tomorrow,” Dr. Walsh advises.

“Toddlers can’t comprehend time very well, so it doesn’t make sense to tell them exactly when in the future they will get ice cream. Most toddlers just want what they want,” Dr. Walsh explains. “Parents need to calmly, firmly, and warmly offer the healthy snack in spite of a toddler’s protests.” This way, your toddler still gets a treat, but it’s better option.

Pay attention to messaging around food as well. Terms like “healthy” versus “unhealthy”, or “good” versus “bad” can create unhelpful emotions about food, explains Emily Edlynn, PhD, Parents’ Ask Your Mom advice columnist. Instead, she suggests explaining that certain foods give our body more energy and help us think better, run faster, and stay healthy.

Flinging Their Food

Toddlers often play with food because they may still feel full from an earlier meal, turning the food into a toy, explains Linda Shook Sorkin, a licensed marriage and family therapist in San Diego.

Instead of shouting when your toddler flings a bowl full of macaroni and cheese to the floor, calmly remove the bowl and explain why throwing fo

A similar, calm approach works when your little one starts bouncing on the bed late at night. You might say, “Beds are for sleeping and relaxing, not for jumping.” But if they take a sip of milk without protest, acknowledge the good behavior with a compliment.

Knocking Down Someone Else’s Toys

If your curious toddler decides to go “Godzilla” on their sibling’s LEGO tower, it’s not always a sign of jealousy—at least not consciously, explains Fran Walfish, PsyD, author of The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Building a Better Bond with Your Child.

“He may simply see the LEGO building and think that it would be fun to knock it down,” Dr. Walfish says. However, remember that “most kids hate to be told what to do—some more than others.” Instead, try asking if you can join in and model how to play respectfully with others.

Being Rough With Plants or Pets

If you catch your toddler pulling petals off prized peonies or tugging a family pet’s tail, gently point out that plants and animals are alive, too. You might say, “When you hurt the flower (or pet), you hurt its feelings and growth.” This approach helps your child develop empathy and awareness of other living beings.

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An almost impossible alignment of galaxies that forms a giant magnifying lens could give astronomers an unprecedented deep view of the universe.

The Carousel Lens—named for its concentric circular patterns, like the reflections in a fun-house mirror—incorporates a cluster of galaxies about five billion light-years from Earth whose gravity is so intense that it magnifies the light of seven galaxies behind it, between 7.6 billion and 12 billion light-years away. This phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, occurs only when galaxies line up precisely from our perspective.

As seen from Earth, the massive gravitational lens creates multiple images of six of the seven background galaxies, each of whose light arrives to us by a slightly different path. If a “transient” event, such as a supernova, occurs in any one of those galaxies, astronomers here will have up to four views of it at slightly different times.

“If we had a supernova exploding, we would have as many images of the supernova as we have images of the source,” says cosmologist Nathalie Palanque-­Dela­brouille, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s physics division, which took part in the lens’s discovery. “That would provide just amazing information.”

Careful observations of both the foreground cluster—which may itself be made up of hundreds of galaxies—and the background galaxies can help astronomers better understand how dark matter and dark energy behave, as well as more about the universe’s ancient past. The farthest background galaxy is so distant that it must have developed in an early phase of the universe, which most scientists think is around 13.7 billion years old.

Researchers used artificial-intelligence systems to find potential gravitational lenses by sorting through millions of galactic survey images. They then arranged for the Hubble Space Telescope to image the location, revealing the Carousel Lens at high resolution.

William Sheu, an astrophysics graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead author of a new study about the discovery in the Astrophysical Journal, says analysis of the Hubble images could reveal even more background galaxies that have been magnified by the gravity of the same foreground galaxy cluster.

Gravitational lensing follows Einstein’s 1916 general theory of relativity, which predicted that gravity would bend light; the first such lens was found in 1979. Boston University astronomer Tereasa Brainerd, who was not involved in the discovery, says the lenses have become powerful tools for studying many of the open questions of the cosmos.

“This is an especially remarkable object,” Brainerd says. “It’s the result of outstanding good luck that the lens and the seven background galaxies are almost perfectly lined up along our line of sight.”

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Fascinating Video!

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The Hubble Space Telescope has given humanity a unique window to observe the distant universe, free from the limitations of atmospheric interference. In this video, we present NASA’s most recent discoveries at the universe’s edge, showcasing incredible images and explaining what they mean for our understanding of space and time.

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A healthy life is all about balance. If you’re older than 50 and can stand on one leg for at least 30 seconds, scientists say you’re aging really well, even if you sway from side to side.

A small new study has found evidence that as a person ages, their balance deteriorates faster than their muscle strength or their walking speed.

“To the best of our knowledge, such a comparison is the first of its kind within the elderly population,” the team writes in their published paper.

“This study underscores the significance of the unipedal balance test in monitoring elderly subjects in the community, regardless of sex.”

The authors, led by biomedical engineer Asghar Rezaei from the Mayo Clinic, hope their results can improve training programs for the elderly population, maintaining their physical independence for as long as possible.

A unipedal balance test is often used for older adults because balance is a known measure of neuromuscular aging.

A 1997 study, for instance, found those who are unable to balance on one leg for 5 seconds had over twice the risk of a future injurious fall, indicating their level of physical frailty. This type of test can also hint at neurological issues.

The new study investigates how long a person should be able to balance for, given their age.

Among a group of 40 healthy individuals, aged 50 and over, researchers found the length of time that a person could stand on their non-dominant leg fell by about 2.2 seconds a decade, regardless of their sex.

Time spent standing on the dominant leg, meanwhile, declined by 1.7 seconds per decade. When standing on one leg, the number of times a person swayed on the spot was not related to age.

While the cohort is small, this simple test of balance showed significant age-related declines – more so than measures of muscle strength, like grip, or the extension of the knee against resistance.

Gait speed, meanwhile, showed no significant changes across ages.

“This finding is significant because this [balance] measurement does not require specialized expertise, advanced tools, or techniques for measurement and interpretation,” they add. “It can be easily performed, even by individuals themselves.”

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An expedition to a deep-sea ridge, just north of the Hawaiian Islands, revealed a surprise discovery back in 2022: an ancient dried-out lake bed paved with what looks like a yellow brick road.

The eerie scene was chanced upon by the exploration vessel Nautilus, while surveying the Liliʻuokalani ridge within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM).

PMNM is one of the largest marine conservation areas in the world, larger than all the national parks in the United States combined, and we’ve only explored about 3 percent of its seafloor.

Researchers at the Ocean Exploration Trust are pushing the frontiers of this wilderness, which lies more than 3,000 meters below the waves, and the best part is, anyone can watch the exploration.

A highlight reel of the expedition’s footage published on YouTube in April 2022 captured the moment researchers operating the deep-sea vehicle stumbled upon the road to Oz.

“It’s the road to Atlantis,” a researcher on the radio can be heard exclaiming.

“The yellow brick road?” another voice counters.

“This is bizarre,” adds another member of the team.

“Are you kidding me? This is crazy.”

Despite being located under about a thousand meters of ocean, the lake bed discovered by researchers on the summit of the Nootka seamount looks surprisingly dry.

On the radio, the team notes that the ground looks almost like “baked crust” that could be peeled off.

In one tiny section, the volcanic rock has fractured in a way that looks strikingly similar to bricks.

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Yellow Brick Road Seen by Nautilus

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Once upon a time, eating your ‘5 a day’ (the UK government-backed campaign to reinforce the importance of nutrient-rich foods) and fitting in a semi-regular jogging session felt like enough. Now? Darling, don’t you want to live forever? Step it up! Alongside witnessing a boom in extreme biohackers (TLDR: millionaire YouTubers spending thousands trying to reverse biological aging through hundreds of daily supplements, intense diet regimes, fitness, and…plasma infusions), us Average Joannes are also becoming increasingly drawn to personalized approaches when it comes to health. Something that the wellness set has dubbed as achieving ‘optimal’ health—in order to lengthen our ‘longevity’.

But what are these shiny new alternatives that demand data to create your plan? Is this the death of ‘one-size-fits-all’ fitness guidance? I decided to trial three contenders for three weeks each to learn more…

What: A DNA workout 

Tell me more: The brainchild of Samantha Decombel, a genetics scientist as well as co-founder/CEO of FitnessGenes (a UK-based a direct-to-consumer DNA testing company) involves spitting in a tube in exchange for reports promising to ‘unlock’ information about your insides—and tips on how to hack any hurdles. It also takes lifestyle factors into account. After all, genes respond to the environment we build around them. Initially, the company targeted bodybuilders wanting to better understand their specific muscle-related markers and which training programs they’d likely bulk best with (e.g. optimal number of workouts a week and reps vs rest time). Now, FitnessGenes measures more than 150 traits, from your natural sleep cycle to whether you have ‘endurance’ gene variants associated with being an Olympic level sprinter (shockingly…I do. Shame I despise running). 

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Zackary Dunivin, a sociologist now at the University of California, Davis, was watching a movie about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat when something in the epilogue caught his attention. Basquiat, the explanatory text stated, died of a drug overdose at the age of 27. Dunivin felt that something about this particular age seemed to lend additional weight to the tragedy of Basquiat’s death, and he quickly realized why: Basquiat was a member of the “27 Club.” This widespread myth holds that famous people, especially musicians, are unusually likely to die at age 27.

The film, Basquiat, made Dunivin wonder about how the 27 Club myth propagates itself and what that means for the people who are caught up in it. In a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA paper, he provides some answers: more attention is paid to people who die at the age of 27 because of the existence of the club, he found, and this creates a positive feedback loop that both strengthens the legend’s potency and the fame of those it pertains to.

“The weird thing about this particular myth is: even if you don’t know about the 27 Club, you encounter more famous dead people who died at 27,” Dunivin says. “We’ve made this myth appear to be true because the appearance that more people who die at 27 is real.”

The idea that especially talented people are prone to untimely deaths goes back to ancients. As noted by the Greek playwright Menander in the Fourth Century B.C.E., “Whom the gods love die young.”

The idea that musicians, artists, actors, and other creative people are more likely to die specifically at the age of 27, however, emerged more recently, after a series of high-profile deaths in the early 1970s. Between 1969 and 1971, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison each died at that age. By chance, these rock stars were all icons of the counterculture movement, and the first and last of their deaths occurred two years apart to the day. “We are meaning-making machines—that’s what we do as human beings,” Dunivin says. “You look at that and say, ‘It can’t be a coincidence!’”

The fact that people latched on to this particular group of deaths in the 1970s is somewhat justified, Dunivin continues, because of just how unusual it was. In the new paper, he calculated a steep one in 100,000 chance that four 27-year-olds at the top of a Wikipedia list of famous people—the list’s 99.9th percentile, “true superstars,” as Dunivin says—would die in a two-year period.

The myth’s popularity has been revived and reinforced over the years, he adds, by other headline-making deaths of famous 27-year-olds, including Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.

Dunivin did not set out to debunk the myth itself—that had already been done by another group of researchers in 2011. Instead, he wanted to untangle how a legend that emerged out of a random but “truly strange” series of events went on to have a real-world impact by shaping the legacies of other famous people who subsequently died at 27.

For the data, Dunivin and his co-author, sociologist Patrick Kaminski of Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Stuttgart in Germany, turned to a database of notable people that includes nearly everyone with a Wikipedia page in all languages. They limited their analysis to people who were born after 1900 and who died before 2015, leaving them with 344,156 individuals. The researchers used page visits as a proxy for fame.

Statistical models that they used reconfirmed that there is no increased risk of famous people dying at age 27. Among those in the 90th percentile of fame and higher, however, those who died at 27 did experience an extra boost in popularity that could not be accounted for by other factors. The effect was particularly pronounced for the most famous of the famous, or individuals who roughly achieved the 99th percentile of fame. That bump indicates that people who die at age 27 “are considerably more likely to be more famous” than those who die at 26 or 28, Dunivin says.

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