In my life, I’ve personally witnessed three elite salespeople at work. The first was in the Johnson County, Iowa, jail, where I spent July 4 and 5 some years ago for reasons I’d rather not go into here. It was so overcrowded that we had to sleep head to foot on foam pads, and on the second day, as the discharge process dragged into the afternoon and hangovers set in, the inmates became restive. Among us was a nondescript heavyset guy who started to hold forth: Y’all want to know how to disable a burglar alarm with aluminum foil? Want to know how to cook meth without using fertilizer? Did you know there’s a way to open the door of a squad car from the inside? Soon, almost the entire jail had gathered around him like kindergartners at story time, listening raptly as he dispensed criminal wisdom. Possibly he was making it all up as he went; a guy lying on the floor next to me with his forearm over his eyes would periodically mutter that’s not true, uh-huh, that’s a great way to burn down your house, that kind of thing. But if anything, that only increased my admiration—this guy had installed himself as top dog just by bullshitting.
I know a good salesman when I see one. I was, briefly, the No. 1 telemarketer in the United States. I can’t prove it; this was around 20 years ago, and I haven’t kept any of my framed “top seller” certificates or the daily sales sheets showing me already hitting 350 percent of my weekly quota by Tuesday afternoon. But the company I worked for had one of the biggest telemarketing divisions in the world, and during my hot streak there were several weeks in which I was the top salesperson in the entire company. Believe me or not, but who’d lie about being good at telemarketing? It’s like falsely claiming to have gonorrhea.
What’s strange is how completely I’d forgotten about this period in my life in the decades since, as one “forgets”—maybe represses is the more accurate word—certain embarrassing exes or haircuts. But it all came back to me recently, when I watched the HBO docuseries Telemarketers. If you’ve ever worked in telemarketing, you’ll immediately recognize the setting: the low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit office building at the edge of town, the empty liquor bottles piled up in the men’s room, a time capsule of a world that came and went nearly unnoticed. You may even recognize yourself in the grainy VHS footage: an alternative but otherwise identical self, hunched over in an upholstered cubicle, rattling off canned rebuttals to some baffled retiree as you mime the jack-off motion for the amusement of the temporarily bankrupt drug dealer in the next cubicle. It was the Y2K-adjacent midpoint between the door-to-door salesmen of the boomer era and the present-day dystopia of A.I.–enhanced robocalling—the last few years before American credulity (and disposable income) was decisively strip-mined by post–9/11 disillusionment, the emergence of the internet, an economy that seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis, and, well, petty cheats like me, the bedrock of this nation.
I became a telemarketer only because I’d bombed out of every other job in Iowa City, from making the federal minimum wage at a video arcade in Iowa’s largest shopping mall (fired for abusing the “free game” key) to working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour adult video store (fired for being “too horny”). There was unlimited demand for telemarketers in those days; this was in the early aughts, at the tail end of the long-distance wars, when more than 25 million people a year were switching phone companies in pursuit of lower rates on long-distance calls, a sentence that might as well be written in ancient Sumerian to anyone under 30. You didn’t really even have to apply back then. You just put your name in and they told you what day you were starting.
Everyone said that telemarketing was the worst job in town, and for once, everyone was right. Your very first day, you understood that this was the culmination of a long series of bad decisions, the consequences of which you thought you’d escaped—but no, you realized as you walked past the cars in the parking lot with trash bags duct-taped over shattered windows and avoided eye contact with the loiterers in the break room who checked the change slot after you bought a drink from the Coke machine—you’d only put them off until right now. After a short training period that seemed designed mostly to weed out the people who weren’t capable of sitting in a chair for four hours at a time (about half the applicants), we spent some time listening in on the calls of top sellers. I expected them to be devilishly persuasive, modern-day snake charmers, but there didn’t seem to be much to it. They’d tell people they could save them money on their phone bills. If the prospect said they weren’t interested, the seller would either keep talking as if they hadn’t heard or, if a hang-up seemed imminent, recite a “resistance buster” like “I am going to send YOU a check!” The abruptness of this non sequitur, half-shouted over the tail end of the conversation, almost always derailed the lead’s attempts at disengagement, and few people could resist asking, “For how much?”
Between jobs, school, kids, and other physical and mental tolls on our time and energy, we could all use better, more restful sleep. There’s no question that good shut-eye is important for our health. Research has linked poor sleep with imbalanced sugar levels and metabolism and with elevated risk of cardiovascular issues and neurological conditions, including dementia. And slumbering bodies are very fickle: sleep quality can be easily thrown off by any number of environmental disturbances or emotional or physical stressors.
We’re channeling some of the most helpful science-backed tips and findings that sleep experts have shared with us this year—so hopefully we feel more refreshed and reenergized in 2025.
Short Daytime Naps Sharpen the Mind
If you’re feeling sluggish in the middle of the day, a short snooze could be the refresher the brain needs. Growing evidence suggests that daytime power naps can actually give a boost to critical thinking skills, memory, productivity, and mood. As Science of Health columnist Lydia Denworth reports, there is a science to napping effectively.
It’s best to keep napping sessions 20 to 30 minutes long and before 5 P.M., for those who are regularly awake during daytime hours. That’s enough time to get in a cycle of “light sleep,” which is easier to wake up in, while avoiding disruptions to regular sleep at night. But note that regularly taking very long naps could be a sign of an underlying health issue.
Staying in Bed All Day, or “Bed Rotting,” Can Worsen Sleep
“Bed rotting,” or opting to stay in bed for prolonged periods of time, is one of social media’s favorite mental health trends. Conditions or disabilities may cause people to remain in bed, but bed rotting is seen as a kind of elective counterculture to “productive” activities—the opposite of working, exercising or studying. People who bed rot often claim that they feel rejuvenated after hours or even days during which they stay in bed, only leaving to go to the bathroom or get food.
But experts say this behavior can throw off the body’s internal clock, or circadian rhythm, which controls sleep-wake cycles. This could alter someone’s sleep drive (making them feel restless when they should be normally asleep) and sleep cues (making them less likely to associate their bed with sleepy times). To get out of a bed rotting cycle, experts say to first evaluate the reason why you feel the need for that kind of mental recharge. Then try to consistently wake up early in your sleep-wake cycle, no matter what time you went to sleep, and get natural light for an hour upon waking, if possible.
The “Sleepy Girl Mocktail” Reminded Us Magnesium Is Important for Sleep
The “sleepy girl mocktail,” a concoction of cherry juice, seltzer, and magnesium, was another trend that took off this year. People on TikTok touted that the homemade sip helped them slip into slumber more easily. But evidence that it works is up in the air. That said, one of the ingredients, magnesium, has been shown to play a role in sleep. The mineral can help relax muscles and affect pathways in the brain that stabilize mood and anxiety. Magnesium supplements can be found at local drugstores—but some types can act as a laxative that can disrupt sleep.
Have you ever wondered what visiting Phuket, the Thai island beloved by celebrities, felt like before throngs of tourists transformed its fishing villages and isolated beaches into a world-renowned destination? The Cambodian island of Koh Rong, in the Gulf of Thailand, has just started down that development path. A 40-minute ferry ride from the coastal port of Sihanoukville, it still has rustic charm aplenty for explorers who like their island adventures a little on the wild side. Like Phuket, Koh Rong is the quintessential tropical island, complete with palm trees, white sand beaches, and jungle waterfalls. In fact, several seasons of the global “Survivor” franchise have filmed there over the years.
Paved roads and electricity have appeared only recently, so you can happily zip around the island from beach to beach on rented scooters without the traffic risks you’d face in Thailand. But if your party is large enough to, well, have a party, then renting a traditional long boat, which comes with a captain, to tour the more remote beaches is a decadent, day-long must-do. Visitors rave that Sok San Beach is the prettiest they’ve seen anywhere in the world. Whether you’re on a gap-year backpacking tour or a romantic anniversary trip, there’s a beach shack with your name on it at day’s end, though it’s up to you and your budget whether it will be a bungalow on stilts over a river in a real fishing village or a villa at a resort.
Touristy (in a good way) Koh Touch beach is a burgeoning backpacker-circuit party mecca lined with beachfront bars and hotels where you can sun, swim, dance ride a zip line, kayak, or even sail a catamaran without ever needing to don shoes or put down your beer can. Did you really do the limbo under a flaming pole at the Nest Beach Club’s Saturday night “Nestival” rager last night? Apparently so! Local nightclubs can keep going until the wee hours, so you might want to pack the ibuprofen and plan to spend Sunday lounging in a hammock strung between two palm trees.
Just up the beach, a favorite place to stay is the Tree House Bungalows. Its thatched or wood-slatted beach shacks sit high up on stilts, tucked into the jungle along the beach. Grab a loaner snorkel and mask and wade right on into the pristine waters for some float time with the fishes.
For more wildlife and less nightlife, you can find a more serene scene by seeking out a bungalow at the less-developed north end of the island, where you can canoodle the day away in one of the many signature swing sets built for two. If you’re ready to go off grid, you can go for a thatched-hut dorm bed or private bungalow in Sangkat village’s Coconut Beach, where daylight filters through the wood slat walls, waking you in time for just another day in paradise. The Lonely Beach Resort also offers solar-powered thatched cottages called “bird’s nests” right on the beach. From there, you can trek through the jungle to a quaint Khmer fishing village.
When Purple’s partner first told her about the FIRE movement — which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early — in 2013, she wasn’t convinced.
“The first thing I said was, ‘What do I even do with all that time? Why would I want to retire early?’” she says. “I was like, ‘I just need to find my dream job, and then I’ll be happy to work for another 40 years.’”
But in October 2020, Purple retired at just 30 years old with $540,000 in savings, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. She goes by Purple online and in the media to maintain her privacy.
In 2014, she got the dream job she mentioned — but it didn’t bring the satisfaction she thought it would. So the next year, she revisited the FIRE idea and started calculating.
She estimated she could live on roughly $20,000 a year in retirement and would need $500,000 set aside upfront based on the 4% rule, which contends that you can safely withdraw 4% of your portfolio per year to cover your expenses without running out of money. Purple figured if she could boost her income and reduce her spending, she could reasonably retire in 10 years — a goal she hit five years early.
So far, she’s enjoying the freedom to spend her days however she likes and has no problem filling her time. “I’m very good at doing nothing and relaxing and finding new random hobbies,” she says.
Purple wishes she had gotten on board with FIRE when her partner first told her about it. Otherwise, “I don’t have any regrets in retirement,” she says. Her partner hit his FIRE number of $777,000 in November 2023, but he plans to keep working for a few more years to help support some of his loved ones.
Here are the three major moves Purple made to be able to retire early.
1. Job-hopping to maximize her income
Before Purple officially started her FIRE journey, she was making $48,000 a year working in advertising and living in New York City, leaving her virtually ”$0 after rent,” she says. When she decided to increase her income, she knew the best way to do it was through job-hopping.
“In my experience, [job-hopping] has been the only way I can get significant raises and even promotions,” she says.
She also learned early in her career that it doesn’t always pay off to be blindly loyal to a company; it won’t necessarily earn you a raise or promotion. As a result, Purple got very comfortable leaving jobs and companies she felt didn’t meet her financial or psychological needs.
That mindset paid off. Five years and as many jobs later, Purple had more than doubled her salary. As of 2017, at age 28, she earned nearly $107,000 a year. By the time she was getting ready to retire in 2020, her final salary was $114,230.
2. Cutting her spending
A major factor that allowed Purple to stack her savings was moving from New York to Seattle in 2015 to drastically reduce her cost of living. In Seattle, “they pay Manhattan salaries, in my experience, but the cost of living is about half of New York City,” she says.
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Purple, an anonymous blogger, retired at 30 and now travels the world purple of A Purple Life
Marie Maynard Daly should have received a Nobel Prize. She was the first Black woman in the country to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry, and in the 1950s and 1960s, she discovered the critical relationship between high cholesterol, high blood pressure and clogged arteries, and how this could cause heart attacks, strokes, and other medical issues. This was a huge discovery in medicine, paving the way for the development of statins, which millions of Americans are still prescribed each year to reduce their risk of heart attack.
Such a discovery easily embodies Alfred Nobel’s legacy to award the Nobel Prizes to those who “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” And later research on cholesterol metabolism and regulation did earn several other scientists Nobels. So why didn’t Daly, who made the initial connections, win this prestigious award during her lifetime?
We think it’s because the Nobel Committees, whose selection process is notoriously secretive, place emphasis on the way scientists reference one another’s work as grounds for how important that work is. Typically, Nobel Prize–winning research is referenced more than 1,000 times before the scientists who conducted that research win. These references, known as citations, are a proxy for scientific importance but leave room for bias.
Despite their own discoveries leaning heavily on Daly’s initial findings, neither Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen, who won the Nobel in Physiology or Medicine in 1964, nor Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein, who won that award in 1985, mentioned her in their awards speeches. As those researchers and others made discoveries and published findings, they rarely referenced her work at all. Without such references and credit deserved, Daly and other Black scientists have not been awarded Nobels they could have rightfully earned—and instead have been suppressed, even erased, from the historical record of science.
We believe the Nobel Committees need to recognize that, whether overtly or subconsciously, scientists can and do show gender and racial bias when they recognize people as leaders in their fields. While there have been 17 Black Nobel laureates in peace, literature and economics, a Black scientist still has never won a Nobel in physiology/medicine, physics, or chemistry. Asking the question “Why have Black scientists not been awarded?” is a first step toward acknowledging the contributions that Black scientists have made throughout history.
As current and future Black doctors and scientists, we are disheartened by reports that the published research of Black scientists is referenced far less often than that of their white peers. In the hierarchy of publications, the first author of a paper is typically the scientist who has done much of the experimental work it describes, while the last author is usually the scientist who has overseen the research program or the individual project—typically a very senior scientist. In studying who cites whom in neuroscience research papers, neuroscientist Maxwell A. Bertolero and others discovered that papers with white first and last authors were cited 5.4 percent more than expected, while papers with first and last authors of color were cited 9.3 percent less than expected. Inspired by this study, Fengyuan Liu, Talal Rahwan, and Bedoor AlShebli, all at New York University Abu Dhabi, asked a similar question but looked deeper into four racial categories and several scientific fields. They found that Black scientists’ research is significantly undercited compared with similar research published by scientists of other races.
With such studies revealing that Black scientists’ research is often not recognized, we have been intently investigating how this difference in citation numbers could be diminishing the paradigm-shifting discoveries made by Black scientists. It is clear that the number of times a scientist’s research is referencedis important to the Nobel Committees that select each prize. The more cited you are, the more impact your work appears to have on your field. But how can this be an objective measure when citations are affected by such underlying biases? Collating all that we’ve read, it is also clear that the use of citations as a proxy for the importance of a scientific discovery unintentionally ignores the contributions of Black scientists, who are already less likely to be cited regardless of the true impact of their research. And this emphasis on citations over true impact explains scenarios such as that of Marie Maynard Daly, whose research was foundational to work that received two Nobel Prizes but whose name was not deemed worthy of such recognition. It also explains why the major scientific discoveries made by other Black scientists, such as Percy Lavon Julian, Katherine Johnson, and Charles Drew, to name a few, have been overlooked by awarding bodies and the field as a whole. This is a further reflection of systemic inequities in education, mentorship, funding, and recognition, all of which have been described and explored, not just in the U.S. but around the world.
Recognizing the biases in the criteria used by the Nobel Committees, and broader biases woven into academic fields when it comes to underciting Black scientists, is the first step toward creating more equal measures of scientific impact. Further addressing this underlying bias in the Nobel Committees selection process and beyond will not just help the work of Black scientists gain well-deserved recognition; it will also enrich science and society as a whole. This is not about representation; it’s about scientific innovation and progress, especially with research indicating that scientists from minority backgrounds are highly innovative.
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The Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony 2024 at Stockholm Concert Hall on December 10, 2024, in Stockholm, Sweden. Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
In 1943, a Greek war veteran named Stamatis Moraitis came to the United States for treatment of a combat-mangled arm. He’d survived a gunshot wound, escaped to Turkey, and eventually talked his way onto the Queen Elizabeth, then serving as a troopship, to cross the Atlantic. Moraitis settled in Port Jefferson, N.Y., an enclave of countrymen from his native island, Ikaria. He quickly landed a job doing manual labor. Later, he moved to Boynton Beach, Fla. Along the way, Moraitis married a Greek-American woman, had three children, and bought a three-bedroom house and a 1951 Chevrolet.
One day in 1976, Moraitis felt short of breath. Climbing stairs was a chore; he had to quit working midday. After X-rays, his doctor concluded that Moraitis had lung cancer. As he recalls, nine other doctors confirmed the diagnosis. They gave him nine months to live. He was in his mid-60s.
Moraitis considered staying in America and seeking aggressive cancer treatment at a local hospital. That way, he could also be close to his adult children. But he decided instead to return to Ikaria, where he could be buried with his ancestors in a cemetery shaded by oak trees that overlooked the Aegean Sea. He figured a funeral in the United States would cost thousands, a traditional Ikarian one only $200, leaving more of his retirement savings for his wife, Elpiniki. Moraitis and Elpiniki moved in with his elderly parents, into a tiny, whitewashed house on two acres of stepped vineyards near Evdilos, on the north side of Ikaria. At first, he spent his days in bed, as his mother and wife tended to him. He reconnected with his faith. On Sunday mornings, he hobbled up the hill to a tiny Greek Orthodox chapel where his grandfather once served as a priest. When his childhood friends discovered that he had moved back, they started showing up every afternoon. They’d talk for hours, an activity that invariably involved a bottle or two of locally produced wine. I might as well die happy, he thought.
In the ensuing months, something strange happened. He says he started to feel stronger. One day, feeling ambitious, he planted some vegetables in the garden. He didn’t expect to live to harvest them, but he enjoyed being in the sunshine, breathing the ocean air. Elpiniki could enjoy the fresh vegetables after he was gone.
Six months came and went. Moraitis didn’t die. Instead, he reaped his garden and, feeling emboldened, cleaned up the family vineyard as well. Easing himself into the island routine, he woke up when he felt like it, worked in the vineyards until midafternoon, made himself lunch and then took a long nap. In the evenings, he often walked to the local tavern, where he played dominoes past midnight. The years passed. His health continued to improve. He added a couple of rooms to his parents’ home so his children could visit. He built up the vineyard until it produced 400 gallons of wine a year. Today, three and a half decades later, he’s 97 years old — according to an official document he disputes; he says he’s 102 — and cancer-free. He never went through chemotherapy, took drugs or sought therapy of any sort. All he did was move home to Ikaria.
I met Moraitis on Ikaria this past July during one of my visits to explore the extraordinary longevity of the island’s residents. For a
decade, with support from the National Geographic Society, I’ve been organizing a study of the places where people live longest. The project grew out of studies by my partners, Dr. Gianni Pes of the University of Sassari in Italy and Dr. Michel Poulain, a Belgian demographer. In 2000, they identified a region of Sardinia’s Nuoro province as the place with the highest concentration of male centenarians in the world. As they zeroed in on a cluster of villages high in Nuoro’s mountains, they drew a boundary in blue ink on a map and began referring to the area inside as the “blue zone.” Starting in 2002, we identified three other populations around the world where people live measurably longer lives than everyone else. The world’s longest-lived women are found on the island of Okinawa. On Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, we discovered a population of 100,000 mestizos with a lower-than-normal rate of middle-age mortality. And in Loma Linda, Calif., we identified a population of Seventh-day Adventists in which most of the adherents’ life expectancy exceeded the American average by about a decade.
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Stamatis Moraitis tending his vineyard and olive grove on Ikaria.Credit…Andrea Frazzetta/LUZphoto for The New York Times
About half of working women reported feeling stressed “a lot of the day,” compared to about 4 in 10 men, according to a Gallup report published this week.
The report suggests that competing demands of work and home comprise part of the problem: working women who are parents or guardians are more likely than men who are parents to say they have declined or delayed a promotion at work because of personal or family obligations, and mothers are more likely than fathers to “strongly agree” that they are the default responders for unexpected child care issues.
And 17% of women overall report having to address personal or family responsibilities at work “daily” or “several times a day,” compared with 11% of men overall.
“There’s been much attention and discussion about promoting women’s well-being and helping women succeed as leaders in the workplace. But at the same time, we’re seeing record levels of stress, of worry, of burnout for women,” said Gallup managing director Ilana Ron Levey at an event on Wednesday presenting the research findings, which were based on four separate surveys of nearly 20,000 adults working full time or part time, conducted between February 2023 and October 2024.
But changing workplace culture and prioritizing well-being can improve the problem, according to Karen Guggenheim, creator of the World Happiness Summit and CEO of WOHASU, the organizing body behind the event and other well-being initiatives.
“Why do we have to choose? Why are we creating environments where people have to make a choice between being the most amazing parent, partner, friend, daughter, sister, whatever, and also thriving at work?” she said, adding: “Investing in women well-being isn’t just good business – it’s a blueprint for societal progress.”
The survey, which also found that working mothers are nearly twice as likely to say they have considered reducing their hours or leaving their job altogether because of child care issues compared to working fathers, also highlights the fallout of the country’s child care crisis weeks ahead of the start of President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration.
Trump has said that child care is “something you have to have in this country” and suggested that his plans to tax imports from foreign nations at higher levels would cover the cost of child care reform, although his campaign website does not mention the issue among the administration’s priorities. Vice President-elect JD Vance has criticized efforts by the Biden administration to control rising costs in child care centers, arguing that doing so encourages parents to go back to work and neglects those who prefer to care for their children at home.
Regarding prohibitively high child care costs —- which can exceed the cost of rent for some families, according to a Department of Labor report published last month — Vance suggested parents should lean more on family members for care.
But juggling work and family responsibilities can be draining for both men and women, who are about as likely to report thinking about work during personal time, the Gallup report found.
Yet researchers also found that employers can significantly improve well-being by supporting work-life balance: Women who say they are able to maintain a healthy balance between work and personal commitments are more likely to be engaged at work, and less likely to be actively looking for a new job, the report says.
Organizations can take action by establishing informed policies, programs, and resources, positioning managers to be the support system employees need, and prioritizing a culture of well-being, explained Kristin Barry, director of hiring analytics at Gallup.
And with women comprising nearly half of the workforce and the narrowest workforce participation gender gap in U.S. history, “turning a blind eye to this challenge women are facing means we are not going to accomplish our goals,” Barry said.
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FILE – A display of clothes is organized at a retail store on Nov. 25, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, File)
Bold hues of red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple help plants and animals communicate with their own species and others in their efforts to survive. Vivid orange dart frogs warn predators of their toxicity. Different birds use a rainbow of plumage to attract mates. Flowers in a rainbow of colors lure birds and bees to disperse pollen and seeds.
The coloration of living things has evolved slowly: colorful fruitlike seeds started dotting an otherwise bland landscape around 300 million years ago, vibrant flowering plants appeared 100 million years later, and animals—namely cockroaches and butterflies—started sporting bolder pigmentation 70 million years after that. But now, in a puzzling twist, new research shows that animals’ ability to perceive many colors came long before the colors themselves existed for them to see.
A recent study in Biological Reviews found that color vision dawned about 500 million years ago—against a drab backdrop of browns and grays and muted shades of some other colors. And it wasn’t until around 400 million years later that bright colors expanded across vertebrates and arthropods (a group of invertebrates with an exoskeleton, such as insects and spiders). “There was this long lag time between the explosion of color and the origins of color vision,” says John J. Wiens, a co-author of the study and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.
Researchers previously pinpointed the origination of various coloration using a diagram called a phylogenetic tree, which maps organisms’ genetic relationships to one another. This, coupled with fossils that happened to include preserved pigments, allowed evolutionary biologists to trace bright coloration back to the first types of organisms to carry this feature. Wiens and his co-author Zachary Emberts, an integrative biologist at Oklahoma State University, took that work further, analyzing genes that encode protein receptors in animals’ visual system to determine when a species could perceive color. By analyzing the timeline of color vision and that of conspicuous coloration, the study showed that hundreds of millions of years elapsed between the development of the former and the latter.
An evolutionary trait almost always occurs for a reason; this raises the question of why animals would gain the ability to see distinctions in bright color long before they would need to. According to the new study, color vision likely played an important role in early species’ ability to see whether a plant had living green leaves or dead brown ones or to pick a predator out of the background. Color vision also probably proved especially important underwater, where vertebrate species first evolved, for differentiating hues that resulted when light was filtered through the liquid. “In a marine environment, there’s a lot of motion where light is moving, so color vision would have been especially helpful in navigating underwater,” Wiens says.
The study’s scope is impressive but doesn’t tell the whole story of color vision, says Innes C. Cuthill, a professor of behavioral ecology at the University of Bristol in England, who was not involved in the research but provided comments for the manuscript. This research focused on trichromatic color vision—the type of visual color perception that humans possess; it didn’t look at ultraviolet (UV) vision, which most insects have. Bees, for example, use UV light to distinguish different flowers. “The colors that we see aren’t what matters to most animals,” Cuthill says.
Wiens acknowledges that many aspects of color vision are still a mystery. “There’s a very long fuse before this explosion of color occurred,” he says, “and we don’t really know why.”
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The nonvenomous Arizona mountain kingsnake, which resembles a venomous coral snake, has a survival advantage by warning off would-be predators that avoid colorful coral snakes. Daniel Heuclin/Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo
In the United States, strokes are a top cause of death and a major cause of disability, according to the American Stroke Association. This is a scary reality, especially since many of the stroke risk factors are pretty silent (like high cholesterol and high blood pressure) ― until they’re not.
But just because some of the risk factors aren’t always obvious doesn’t mean strokes can’t be controlled. In fact, it’s estimated that 80% of strokes are preventable through lifestyle changes like exercise, diet, and more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
No one knows that more than the experts who treat the issue. Stroke doctors say they think a lot about the key ways to lower their risk (and their patients’ risk) of stroke.
“I like to think of it more proactively — what I could do to prevent stroke,” said Dr. Anthony Kim, a vascular neurologist and medical director of the University of California at San Francisco Stroke Center.
Below, stroke doctors share the habits they personally avoid ― and why you should avoid them, too.
Have A Sedentary Lifestyle
According to Dr. Arthur Wang, director of endovascular neurosurgery at Tulane University School of Medicine, one of the modifiable risk factors for stroke is having a sedentary lifestyle.
While there isn’t one across-the-board definition of a sedentary lifestyle, overall, it means spending too much time sitting or lying down and not enough time exercising or moving around.
“It’s been shown that regular physical activity helps keep your blood vessels clog-free. It stops the buildup of plaque in the arteries,” Wang said. “And so we generally recommend that people get probably 30 minutes of moderate exercise maybe five times a week.”
This could mean going for walks, runs, biking, gardening, or joining a group workout class — there is no wrong way to get moving.
Ignore High Blood Pressure
“It turns out that a lot of the same things that we would recommend for a healthy lifestyle also reduce the risk of both heart disease and stroke,” Kim said. “But if there’s one factor that is the most impactful it would be blood pressure, blood pressure, blood pressure.”
Elevated blood pressure, particularly over time, can lead to problems, he said: High blood pressure is the biggest modifiable
stroke risk facto
“If you took a magic wand and waved it and suddenly eliminated high blood pressure from the U.S. population, there would be 60% fewer strokes,” Kim said. “It’s by far the leading risk factor for stroke and we call it the silent killer because oftentimes, patients don’t feel it; you have to have it checked and monitored and treated.”
If you took a magic wand and waved it and suddenly eliminated high blood pressure from the U.S. population, there would be 60% fewer strokes.Dr. Anthony Kim, University of California, San Francisco, Stroke Center
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It’s important to lead an active lifestyle, eat nutritious foods, and manage things like your blood pressure, doctors say.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo
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James' World 2 