Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i BBC Science Focus Magazine

GERONTOLOGY DISCOVERIES Humans can effectively de-age after recovering from stressful events, a new study from Harvard Medical School and Duke University School of Medicine has found. The study shows that while stress can age a person biologically, the body can reverse this effect. While chronological age represents the number of years you've lived, biological age is defined by how much your DNA has been altered by a chemical reaction called methylation (loosely speaking, a process that turns genes off). Your biological age is influenced by factors like disease, lifestyle and environmental exposure. Stress, whether physical or mental, has also been found to rapidly age a person biologically. “The ability to recover from stress may be an important determinant of successful ageing” The study, published in Cell Metabolism, shows that your…

HNTHROPOLOGY Dairy consumption was crucial to the survival of ancient humans in one of the world's most inhospitable environments at least 3,500 years ago, according to new research at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. Archaeologists at the Institute used a new tool called palaeoproteomics to locate milk proteins in the dental remains of ancient skeletons, and the prevalence of milk consumption on the highland Tibetan Plateau surprised the researchers. Examining 40 individuals across 15 sites on the plateau, they found that all skeletons belonging to milk drinkers had been recovered from locations sitting more than 3,700m above sea level – with the highest dairy consumer found at a dizzying altitude of 4,654m. These sites are in the northern and western part of the vast plateau where crop…

Tick bites | Alien life | Gene-edited food REVIEW TICK BITES: HOW TO AVOID THEM AND WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET BITTEN With the number of critters on the rise, the UK is seeing increasing cases of tick-borne viruses “When ticks bite they can transmit microorganisms into our blood through their saliva.” Visit the BBC's Reality Check website at bit.ly/reality_check_ or follow them on Twitter @BBCRealityCheck Earlier this year, a 50-year-old man in Yorkshire became the first person in England to contract a confirmed case of tick-borne encephalitis, after being bitten while mountain biking. The virus has since been detected in Dorset, Norfolk and Hampshire. With tick numbers increasing in the UK over recent years, the likelihood of being bitten is also rising. So just how dangerous are tick bites?…

1. DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM YOUR ANXIETIES Bouts of anxiety often begin with catastrophic thinking about an upcoming event. You start imagining the myriad ways you'll make a fool of yourself on a first date; you picture yourself tongue-tied during an interview; or you conjure vivid images of the various ways that an aeroplane can malfunction. One way to dampen anxiety is to calm these racing thoughts. Don't do this with brute mental force – simply trying to stifle the thoughts and push them out of your mind is unlikely to work and could even backfire. Instead, try to create some distance from the thoughts, to help you realise that thoughts can be wrong and are not self-fulfilling. Say to yourself: “I am having the thought that… I am going to…

Mental health conditions are not only common, they're increasing, with one report estimating that 1 in 6 children had a probable mental health condition in 2021. The NHS spends £15.5 billion every year on treatment and still thousands of people who could benefit from help are unable to access it. But what if there was a way to detect people who were at risk of developing a mental health condition, and intervene, before they even began experiencing symptoms? That's exactly what a new paper, published in the journal NeuroImage, claims to have done. The researchers used a database of brain scans of teenagers from the Sunshine Coast, on the eastern edge of Australia. The first scans were taken when the teenagers were 12 and taken again every four months for…

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Anew form of the fatty acid omega-3 could help to stave off the deterioration in vision related to Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and several other disorders, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have found. In healthy eyes, an omega-3 fatty acid called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) helps to maintain photoreceptors – specialised neurons that convert light into electrical signals that are sent to the brain via the optic nerve – in the retina. Patients with Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, age-related macular degeneration and several other disorders have low levels of DHA, which often results in sight loss. The form of DHA commonly found in omega-3 fish oil supplements is the closely related triacylglycerol DHA, or TAG-DHA. However, this form can't pass from the bloodstream to the retina. As a result, “increasing…

Biologists from Tel Aviv University have found that plants emit sounds comparable in volume to normal human conversation when they are stressed. With frequencies of 20-100kHz, these sounds are too high-pitched for humans to hear, but it is likely they can be heard by insects and perhaps by other mammals, the researchers say. “Even in a quiet field, there are actually sounds that we don't hear, and those sounds carry information,” said senior author Prof Lilach Hadany, an evolutionary biologist based at Tel Aviv University. The researchers recorded the sounds made by tomato and tobacco plants using regular microphones, placing the plants in a soundproofed acoustic chamber and then later in a noisy greenhouse. In both situations they stressed some of them first, by not watering them for several days…

The building industry accounts for an astonishing 37 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. To address this, the roof-window specialists VELUX recently launched Living Places Copenhagen: an open-source “experimental living environment”. The seven prototype buildings, including community pavilions and two homes, are designed to reduce environmental impact and improve human health – and have a carbon footprint that's a third lower than the equivalent conventionally constructed buildings. But how is this possible? We spoke to Lone Feifer, Director for Sustainable Buildings for VELUX, to find out more. THE MATERIALS USED TO BUILD THE HOUSES ARE SOURCED LOCALLY. DOES THAT PLAY A BIC PART IN REDUCING THEIR CARBON EMISSIONS? he building industry accounts for an astonishing 37 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. To address this, the roof-window specialists…

Everyone, it seems, has heard of the idea that the US government is sitting on proof that extraterrestrials exist and have been visiting Earth for decades. It's a conspiracy theory so prevalent it has entered the mainstream. It's easy to dismiss such stories but, seriously, could there be even a small amount of truth in it? Could extraterrestrial probes really be functioning near Earth? We don't know. But Harvard astronomer Prof Avi Loeb's Galileo Project aims to investigate. What used to be called UFOs (unidentified flying objects) have now been retitled as UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena). In a blow against the conspiracy theorists, a report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence was released in 2021 detailing the UAPs they had been investigating. According to the document,…

1. CONFRONT YOUR FEARS It's natural to want to avoid the situations that make you anxious but, in the long-term, this is only likely to fuel your anxiety. When you avoid anxiety-provoking situations, not only do you risk missing out on opportunities in life, but you never get to ‘reality-check’ your worst fears – for instance, to go on a date without it being a disaster, or fly on a plane and find that it stays in the air. Unconfronted fears can grow and fester, assuming an out-of-proportion aura of doom. In contrast, when you face your fears and find that the worst doesn't happen, psychologists call it an ‘expectancy-violation’. You burst the baleful balloon. By undermining your negative expectations like this, you gradually teach your brain to be less…

FEATURE | SELF DIAGNOSIS If you're struggling with your mental health, what are you meant to do about it? Thanks to many campaigns dedicated to it, ‘awareness’ of mental health concerns is rising all the time. And that's good. Awareness is only the beginning, however. It's all well and good to tell people it's ‘time to talk’, or to insist there's no shame in asking for help, but what if that heln isn't forthcoming? This isn't a hypothetical. For years now, UK mental healthcare has been in a poor state, as damning statistics show. 40 per cent of mental health trusts are dangerously understaffed. Just 14 per cent of crisis patients report receiving all the care they need. Waiting times often stretching to over a year mean 75 per cent…

ASTRONOMY FOR REGINNERS During May, the length of darkness falls dramatically and quick sky navigation helps maximise your observing time. As an example, consider this route to find an object called Messier 13. First, locate the Plough or, as it's also known, the Saucepan asterism (an asterism is an unofficial pattern), which is situated almost directly overhead as darkness falls in late May. Identify the three ‘handle’ stars furthest from the pan. Extend their are away from the pan to arrive at the bright orange star, Arcturus. Next, identify the star in the corner of the pan furthest from the handle. Extend a line from that corner starthrough the mid-point of the top of the pan (check 4 the graphic above - it's easier than it sounds). Keep going for…

ELINOR BOESE, BERKSHIRE WHY DO I FEEL FINE UP TO LUNCHTIME, BUT AS SOON AS I'VE FINISHED EATING, I'M SUDDENLY RAVENOUS? It coild be that you're eating too many highsugar foods, which readily release glucose in the body. This causes a spike in insulin and a subsequent drop in blood sugar levels, which can leave you craving more of the same. Foods rich in protein and fiber take longer to digest, leaving you feeling full for longer. The metabolic hormones leptin and ghrelin also play a rote in your hunger. Leptin is a hormone made by fact cells that regulates hunger by providing a sensation of feeling full. Meanwhile, ghrelin, known as the hunger hormone, is released primarily in the upper part of the stomach and cells your brain when…

PROF PETE ETCHELLS A professor of psychology, Pete researches how screens, and in particularvideo games, affect children. We asked him whethersocial media is ruining childhood. ➔p70 GINNY SMITH Neuroscience expert Ginny finds out whether the blueprints of teenagers brains can predicttheir likelihood of suffering poor mental health. ➔p74 PROF STEPHON ALEXANDER In his first column, Stephon investigatesthe ideathat the Higgs boson may have been involved inthe birth of the Universe. ➔p32 DR EMMA BECKETT Emmaisafoodand nutrition scientist at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She exploresthe potential for gene-edited food to boost our health. ➔p38…

Easy listening makes sleeping easier The article by Catherine Offord about how it can be hard to get a good night's sleep (February, p66) certainly resonated with me. Up to a few years ago, I slept soundly most of the time. Then I had a number of health and family problems and, of course, there was COVID-19. My sleep deteriorated and I often gave up on bed, instead trying to doze in a chair in the living room. I found that by playing easy-listening music at a very low volume, I tended to drift off and at least get enough sleep to function properly. It seemed that if I focused my mind on the music, I couldn't focus on my problems. I therefore invested in sleep headphones (a headband with…

ENYIRONMENT Red decorator crabs could help to save the Great Barrier Reef from coral-crunching starfish by eating them for lunch, according to a study carried out at the University of Queensland. The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system and the largest single structure made by living organisms on Earth. It's made up of 2,900 individual reefs spread over nearly 350,000km2. Crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) feed on coral. They can grow to 45cm in diameter and can eat up to 10m2 of coral a year. Under normal circumstances, they're a healthy part of the reef's ecosystem but when they proliferate they can become a serious problem. Not all reefs experience proliferation, however. The team suspected that this was due to certain predators feeding on COTS and controlling the…

On 3 April, NASA announced the names of the four astronauts who will crew Artemis 2, in preparation for the first Moon landing in over 50 years. The crew, formed of three NASA astronauts and one astronaut from the Canadian Space Agency, includes the first woman and the first African American to be assigned to a lunar mission. Following the success of the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission in Novcmher 2022, Artemis 2 is scheduled for launch in late 2024. Its crew will be formed of astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman from NASA and Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The four astronauts will attempt to complete a lunar orbit aboard NASA's Orion capsule and then return to Earth. If Artemis 2 is successful, Artemis 3…

This June, four volunteers will begin a year-long simulated Mars mission, and what you see here is the 3D-printed ‘habitat’ they'll call home. The 518m2 Mars Dune Alpha habitat sits within a white warehouse at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; a warehouse that's been redecorated to resemble the red planet, complete with red mountains on the ‘horizon’ and red sand underfoot. The crew will go about their daily lives as though they're stationed on Mars, growing their own food, conducting experiments and completing missionspecific tasks, including using a large sandpit for spacewalks (or ‘Marswalks’). The volunteer crew, made up of civilians with expertise in research science, engineering and medicine, will be locked in during the simulation so that NASA can test the effects of isolation on their health…

COMMENT When we look across vast distances using our most advanced telescopes, we look back in time. Einstein taught us that light has a finite speed; therefore, it takes light longer to travel to us the further one looks. Thanks to this, cosmologists have been able to see light dating back to about 14 billion years ago. This light reveals something spectacular and mysterious - the Universe was once filled with a sea of energy, waves of tangled electrons and photons in the form of a hot fluid, known as a plasma. We call this plasma the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We cosmologists have precise theoretical and observational evidence that this plasma underwent gravitational collapse with the aid of an invisible form of matter, called dark matter, forming the first…

So-called ‘superfoods’ are often touted as being beneficial for our health but the concept is mostly just marketing hype designed to sell us more expensive fruit and veg, rather than providing any actual benefits. However, with gene editing now approved by the government for use in commercial crops in England, that could be about to change. Gene editing, using technologies like CRISPR/Cas9 or TALEN, is faster and cheaper than conventional breeding techniques and less controversial than genetically modified (GMO) foods. This is because, instead of inserting whole genes from outside of the plant, as is the case with GMOs, gene editing allows for small and targeted changes to subtly alter the genetic makeup of existing crops, potentially allowing us to create foods with different properties. We all know that fruits,…

FEATURE | SOCIAL MEDIA What do we really know about the relationship between social media and teenage mental health? I ask because the other day, my daughter asked me if she could have her own phone. She's only three years old, so the request caught a little off guard. This wasn't a conversation I was expecting to have until she becomes a teenager. ‘You're too little to have a phone yet,’ I said to her. ‘Why do you want one?’ No clear reason was forthcoming, save for a beautiful stream of consciousness that one of her friends at nursery had a friend at school who was four and had a phone, and because three is nearly four could she, my daughter, have one. I gently explained to her that this…