Category Archives: Longevity

Elephant instead of wild boar? What could have been in Europe

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Elephants are among the largest land mammals on Earth and are often referred to as “ecosystem engineers” because they sustainably alter their surroundings through grazing, trampling, and digging. Europe, too, had an elephant: the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) lived on our continent for around 700,000 years. The species survived multiple ice ages before becoming extinct during the last one due to additional hunting pressure from humans. Throughout its existence, the straight-tusked elephant helped shape Europe’s landscape, maintaining open spaces and light woodlands. Many native plant species are still adapted to these conditions today.

“The German name Waldelefant (forest elephant) originates from the assumption that this species primarily lived in the wooded regions of Europe. However, fossil evidence shows that P. antiquus often inhabited open or semi-open habitats with mosaic-like vegetation, similar to modern elephants,” explains Prof. Dr. Manuel Steinbauer, Chair of Sport Ecology at the University of Bayreuth.

To reconstruct the way of life of P. antiquus and, in particular, its actual habitat — known as the realised niche — the research team examined scientific literature and palaeontological databases for fossil finds of P. antiquus that could be assigned to specific Marine Isotope Stages. Marine Isotope Stages are periods in the earth’s history that reflect climate history, representing warm and cold stages. The Bayreuth research team assigned fossil finds from across Europe to either a warm or cold stage and used climate models from these periods to reconstruct the realised niche of the straight-tusked elephant. A comparison with modern climate data suggests that straight-tusked elephants would still be able to live in Europe today. The climate in Western and Central Europe would be particularly suitable, except for mountainous regions such as the Alps and the Caucasus.

“In the past, megafauna like the straight-tusked elephant and their regulatory mechanisms — such as grazing — were omnipresent. Many European species, particularly plants that thrive in open habitats, likely established in their diversity in Europe because they benefited from these ecological influences. Traditional conservation strategies in Europe primarily aim to protect biodiversity by shielding habitats from human activities. However, this strategy alone is unlikely to restore the lost ecological functions of megafauna,” says Franka Gaiser, a doctoral student in the Sport Ecology research team and lead author of the study.

Modern conservation projects actively reintroduce large herbivores to Europe. However, this comes with challenges, as the ecological processes that have shaped modern ecosystems are not yet fully understood. Additionally, today’s large herbivores cannot entirely replace the role of extinct megafauna, as both the animals themselves and the landscape structures, as well as species interactions, have changed significantly.

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Mental health inquiry chair vows to ‘seek out’ truth

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An inquiry led by Baroness Lampard is examining more than 2,000 deaths at mental health units in Essex.

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Prescription charges frozen in England

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The charge for a single item will remain at £9.90 in 2025-26, the government has announced.

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Urgent care worse than pre-pandemic, think tank says

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The Health Foundation argues that the NHS was “in distress” this winter with A&E waiting times reaching a record high.

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CGC Year 9 Is Open: The Sensing and Thinking Behind the Invitation

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Yay! Conscious Growth Club is now open for enrollment for our 9th year together. You can see the invitation here:

❤️ Conscious Growth Club Year 9 Invite ❤️

This year I posted a very different kind of invitation than ever before. CGC itself is very growth-oriented – a living entity – so it evolves every year. This is another big step forward, so I wanted an invitation that captured its essence well, something that strong matches would resonate with.

Here are some thoughts about the evolution of Year 9.

Building Upon CGC’s Strengths

Year 8 was a truly fabulous year in the club. We’ve had 103 members in the club this year, so there was lots of activity all throughout. We introduced many new types of Zoom calls, bringing the total to 14, so we had more range and variety than ever before. This was also the most interactive year in the club with all kinds of participation. That created some delightful intimacy inside. I got to know many members better than ever this year.

Year 8 was a truly loving, caring, and supportive container inside. That’s super satisfying because it’s hard to develop a community like this. It takes tons of nurturing and also filtering, always being careful to invite the right people in who can help us co-create this kind of field together, so we can all benefit from it.

Rachelle and I can’t do it all by ourselves, and my heart is so filled with joy for how much help and support we’ve received in making this a reality – from the vibrational level all the way down to the practical action steps.

Going into Year 9 then, my attitude wasn’t about fixing things but about flowing with the wonderful momentum we have.

One of my core recent lessons this year has been that even when life is going really well, don’t stop there. Keep growing. Don’t settle for limits because growth is limitless. When life is good, go for great. When it’s great, go for fabulous. When it’s fabulous, go for extraordinary… then for extra-extraordinary.

This was the mindset and heartset I used when crafting Year 9’s invitation.

Deep Reflection

It took a 3-night ayahuasca ceremony last month (intense!) to really drive this home for me. My lessons while sitting with Aya’s energy were all about letting go of old limits and not settling, especially when life is going really well. She reminded me to keep stretching. This includes stretching my imagination to keep discovering more ways to stretch.

Don’t settle for abundance. Don’t settle for love. Don’t settle for caring. Don’t settle for fun. As good as those vibes are, there’s plenty more to experience beyond them. There are even more abundant, more loving, more caring, more playful frequencies of life to tap into. There are no limits.

We as humans may still be dealing with various self-imposed limits and filters, but life itself is not nearly so limited. So even as we release old limits, it’s important to remind ourselves to keep on stretching. This is where some of the most rewarding self-development work unfolds. This also speaks to the kinds of people I want to invite to join us for CGC Year 9 and beyond.

It was during the integration process for that Aya experience that tons of clarity about CGC Year 9 really flowed through, and all the dots began to connect. I’ll share some of those realizations here.

Even More Range

One of CGC’s core strengths is that we have massive range in what we’re able to cover. This isn’t a group just for entrepreneurs, wellness enthusiasts, lifestyle explorers, or online creators. CGC’s expression is like a self-development Disneyland. I love that we can talk about and work on anything in the club. Whatever impacts us is fair game since it’s a part of our journeys. We’re also very playful inside, where advancement is smoothed by approach life as a game much of the time.

Our 14 call formats are now going to be 18 formats for Year 9, which takes our range and variety from major abundance to ultra-major abundance. You can see all the formats listed about halfway down the invite page.

CGC has become a space of stretching, not of limitation. We’re not here to box you in but to invite you to really stretch your self-image much closer to how you imagine your higher self to be. This is a place where your strongest and most vibrant self gets to be nurtured into its fullest expression. It’s a place where we can relate to you as the being you’re becoming, not as your past baggage.

Connecting the Dots From Sensing to Thinking to Acting

At its core, every problem has a vibrational side and a physical side (at least). Solving problems vibrationally first, then physically, is a powerful way to advance. I’ve been sharing this method here and there in the club already, but this year I sensed it would be wise to go big with it.

One new call type we’ve added for Year 9 is called “Sense & Solve.” This is where we’ll get extra practice solving problems harmoniously, so that the practical solution not only works, but it feels very satisfying too.

I’ve been getting a lot of traction in using this approach across multiple areas of life. It’s been especially useful for stuck areas where projects were stagnant and not progressing. Earlier this year I completed some projects that had been stagnant for years, and I did them with a great sense of ease and flow. Because I paid attention to the vibrational side first, the physical solutions were very aligned with how I wanted to feel. Some of these were relatively simple problems – at least they appeared so – but once I unpacked them and got inside of them, I realized that these were powerful and meaningful vibrational lessons in disguise, just waiting for me to finally see them as such.

If you have some of this stuck energy somewhere in your life, like an area or project that’s lingering on the back burner and not progressing, bring it with you into CGC, and we’ll help you crack it open and get it moving. The process is different than you’d think. The key is to see even seemingly mundane problems as your vibrational teachers. Once you realize that your problems are actually here to help you grow stronger, that’s very transformational. The skill aspect is getting enough practice that you can do this consistently. Then your problems will start to look like Dominoes.

CGC as a Leadership Dojo

Many members in the club have been gradually evolving in the direction of leadership. I don’t mean the corporate or hierarchical kind. This is more of a vibrational shift. As members step into their power, they increase their ability to create more ripples in other people’s lives as well. As they begin to see some of these ripples revealed, that gets people thinking even more about purpose and contribution.

As this path to purpose has been unfolding at the individual level, I’ve been reflecting on how CGC could better support this opening. CGC’s core purpose is to lovingly and powerfully support our members’ paths of growth, so it too needs to grow as we do.

Las year we added the new Contribution Café call format to specifically focus more energy on purpose and contribution for members who align with this. We’re keeping these calls going for Year 9, but I’ve also sensed that it’s time to evolve the club to provide even more support for this direction.

The phrase “Leadership Dojo” came through several weeks ago, and I immediately thought: That’s it!

I love this framing because it speaks to who we’re becoming. We’re emerging leaders – first in consciously leading our own lives, then in creating positive ripples – and CGC is our training Dojo.

So if you’ve been seeing this leadership direction opening up in your life too, and you’re reading this now, that a good hint that you’re likely to be a strong match for CGC.

Being Seen

For CGC Year 8, our overall theme was Fire Infusion. Working with fire energy was a big through-line for the year as we burned off and released misalignments from our lives and amped up our motivation and centeredness.

For CGC Year 9, the theme is Be Seen. This has many facets, but I’d say the biggest one is allowing people to truly witness your unfolding growth journey. There’s something remarkably powerful about working through your advances in the presence of others inside the CGC field.

For our first 8 years of CGC, we’ve had an old energy that’s been coming along for the ride, one that we must release for Year 9. That’s the energy of hiding – of being a background character inside the field of CGC.

On a practical level, this old energy took the form of some members attending Zoom calls in a non-participatory mode – camera off and not raising hands during opportunities to share. And that was okay for the first 8 years. We held space to work with this energy too. But this energy doesn’t mesh with where we’re heading. It doesn’t support a strong enough field. It doesn’t align with CGC being a Leadership Dojo.

So for CGC Year 9, we’re strengthening the field by releasing this background mode from live calls, at least for the ones that Rachelle and I host. That means that everyone is on camera, fully present, ready to participate.

In CGC Year 8, we introduced a “splash zone” feature to some calls. This meant if you were on camera, you were open to being called upon to participate – no need to raise your virtual hand. But there was still the option to turn off the webcam and just watch. Most calls, however, just had voluntary sharing, so even if you were on camera, you wouldn’t be expected to share unless you volunteered.

Near the end of this CGC year, we also began practicing “splash chaining,” whereby a member who shares gets to randomly call upon another member to share – anyone on camera is a fair choice. But again, there was still the off-cam option available too.

For Year 9 there isn’t a passive-attendance option for these live calls. If you’re in the space with us, you’ll need to be on camera and willing to actively participate. That doesn’t mean that everyone will be called upon to share something each time, but it does mean being open to it. Otherwise if someone tries to attend a call in hiding mode, we would invite them to join us on camera, and if they declined, we would drop them from the call.

This change isn’t to punish or shame anyone. It’s to elevate, protect, and strengthen our field inside. There’s a different energy on a call when everyone is on camera and fully seen. Having even one person in the space in off-cam mode shifts the vibe of the experience for all involved. It’s like having an intimate conversation while someone else is hiding behind the drapes, watching you engage. And even when you acknowledge their presence and invite them into the space to be seen and to participate, they still choose the drapes.

The whole experience on a live call is stronger and more aligned if everyone is fully present, just as if we were gathering in person. We want people who are in the space of these calls to really be in the space with us, not half-present. We want everyone shining their light together to help co-create the experience. That’s our standard for Year 9 and beyond.

Not everyone is willing to do this. We’re here to engage with the willing.

Every call in CGC is optional. None are mandatory. So if someone doesn’t feel up to contributing to our strong, mutually supportive, we-are-all-seen-here energy for these calls, they can skip the call. But in Year 9, they do not have the option of merely showing up to watch. We are releasing this energy starting on May 1st, so passive watch mode will no longer be part of the club.

If other members who host their own calls in CGC want to allow for an off-camera mode, that’s their choice, but all of the calls that Rachelle and I host together from May 1st onward will be on-camera for everyone.

This is an example of looking at the vibrational aspect of a situation first, finding the place of alignment, and then translating it into the physical layer. The transformational energy is clearly stronger when we all agree to harmonize our co-creative energy, and being seen together in our emergence is a big part of that. All this requires at the action level is a simple change to what we invite.

From Depletion to Overflow

In CGC Year 9, we’re placing an even stronger emphasis on living from overflow instead of depletion.

When you build excess capacity within yourself – energetically, emotionally, creatively – you have more to share without running dry. You can lift others without sacrificing your own footing. You can contribute with delight instead of draining yourself.

In CGC we’re making this our norm: to meet each other in a state of overflow. To give from abundance, not from scarcity. To share from wholeness, not from woundedness. This practice strengthens not just individuals, but the entire community field.

Overflow doesn’t mean perfection. It means investing in yourself first – restoring, nourishing, aligning – so you’re showing up fully charged, ready to support and be supported.

Year 9 is about learning to live there. What most people don’t realize is that living from overflow is a choice – one that must be made vibrationally before it can be engineered into existence physically.

Building a Stronger Club

Practically speaking, CGC has never offered a better value for members than it does now.

Once you join CGC from here on, you can continue renewing each year for $1111 – only a third of the new member price of $3333. This rewards commitment, consistency, and long-term investment in your growth. It recognizes that our core members are also contributing by helping us to hold and sustain the field in which we all grow together.

The bar to get in is higher than it is to renew. Renewing is a breezier and lighter decision. For new members considering joining, we want you to pause and reflect first. Joining CGC, especially for Year 9, is a big deal. We don’t want this to be an impulse choice for anyone. We want you to make it thoughtfully.

We’re very protective of our space, and it’s definitely not for everyone, so it’s important that we continue to filter and deflect the misaligned – no Trump supporters, no prima donnas, just growth-oriented team players who align with our purpose. We’ve been doing a great job of that for many years now, which is one reason we have such a strong and aligned club inside. We filter for truth-alignment, love-alignment, and power-alignment at the door. The invitation is meant to deflect and repel as much as it is to invite. Only strongly aligned people are likely to find it enticing.

One of the best ways for us to keep attracting new members is also to grow from within. So we’ve added a simple and generous referral program starting this year. Members who refer a new member to join can get their own renewal totally free. So if you refer at least one new member to us each year, you can essentially lock in a perpetually free membership – simply by continuing to bring in highly attuned people who resonate with CGC’s energy and purpose. In this way we support those members who help support the club’s ongoing growth and evolution.

Infusing More Playfulness and Sexiness

Another theme weaving through Year 9 is the infusion of more playfulness and sexiness into the club’s energy.

Growth doesn’t have to be heavy. Alignment doesn’t have to be stoic. Transformation doesn’t have to feel like trudging uphill.

It can be lively. It can be sensual. It can feel like flirting with reality, dancing with your dreams, turning your own evolution into an art form.

In CGC we embrace the idea that conscious growth can feel good, energizing, and even a little mischievous. When your life feels deeply attractive to you, you naturally magnetize the right people, opportunities, and experiences into your field.

We’re allowing that aliveness to breathe through everything we do. And we’re also giving it even more space to breathe with new the Fun & Games and Mating Call formats this year. Many of us bond through fun and laughter, so we want to keep enhancing this aspect of the club’s field too.

Life Support Team

One of the aspects I appreciate most about CGC is the incredible level of support that flows through the club.

It’s not just Rachelle and me holding space. It’s a collective of caring, wise, heart-centered beings who know how to hold, love, uplift, and stretch each other.

CGC isn’t just a group you join. It’s a life support team you consciously weave into your journey – people who see you, believe in you, and encourage you to rise into your truest expression.

If you’re a very nurturing person yourself, you’ll find this to be a space where that quality is deeply appreciated. I’ve also seen how some members who weren’t very nurturing of others at first have really developed this quality in themselves, sensing the joy that comes from encouraging others.

I feel deeply held by this community too. It supports not just my personal growth but also the projects, courses, and events I create. Many of my best ideas and initiatives over the past several years were birthed and nurtured through the energy of CGC.

If you want to feel truly supported – not just tolerated or superficially encouraged but deeply witnessed and championed – CGC is one of the best places to experience that.

We don’t run CGC in some corporate way. We have a strong structure for it, and it’s maintained very responsibly, but it’s very important to me to keep the field caring, gentle, and intimate, even as we stretch ourselves.

Starfire Nursery – Discover Your Core Vibescapes

One of the most intimate and powerful additions for CGC Year 9 is the introduction of Starfire Nursery, an 8-week live series we’ll be hosting this fall. This is exclusively for CGCers and won’t be offered to anyone outside the club.

Starfire Nursery is about stepping into the vibrational roots of who you are. It’s not about goal-setting or external vision boards. It’s about discovering the inner stellar nursery that’s been generating your most meaningful desires, goals, and creations all along – the living frequencies that nourish your path.

Each week we’ll meet live online (but not recorded) to explore these core vibescapes – the emotional, energetic terrains that power your alignment. You’ll map, name, and begin cultivating your inner landscape with exquisite clarity.

The intention isn’t to force new outcomes. It’s to fall in love with the fertile vibrational ground inside you – to nourish it, trust it, and let it guide your expressions and creations more naturally.

These sessions will be highly interactive, playful, deep, and spacious. They’ll encourage emotional honesty, vibrational tuning, and creative revelation.

I sense that for many members, Starfire Nursery will become one of the most meaningful experiences we’ve shared so far – not just for what it helps you create, but for how it helps you become.

Starfire Nursery begins this September and will run weekly through late October. It’s woven directly into the Year 9 flow – part of the living expansion we’re stepping into together. The exact dates and times are shared on the Year 9 invite page.

Gathering In Person

I’m thrilled to share that we’re planning our first in-person CGC gathering for April 2026 in Las Vegas.

It will be a four-day event, free to CGC members as part of their membership. You’ll just cover your own travel, lodging, and personal expenses like food.

I’m envisioning a vibrant, co-creative experience – not just passive consumption but active participation and spirity collaboration.

This gathering will be another step forward in weaving the CGC field even tighter and deeper. For many it will be the first time meeting face-to-face with people who’ve already been walking alongside them for years, supporting, challenging, and inspiring them.

Feeling the Call

If you feel the call, if your spirit stirs when you imagine yourself growing and co-creating alongside other conscious, courageous souls, I encourage you to step through the portal and join us for Year 9.

We only open once a year – and enrollment closes at midnight Pacific on May 1st.

Explore the full invitation here:

❤️ Conscious Growth Club Year 9 Invitation ❤️

I’d love to welcome you into CGC if it resonates for you. If you’re a match for the energy we’re cultivating, you’ll feel it. Trust that.

And if you’re already walking alongside us, thank you for being part of what makes this journey so extraordinary.

Here’s to the next extraordinary chapter. ❤️

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Longevity Expert Said Women Should Be Able To Do 11 Push-Ups – And Experts Have Thoughts

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If you’re into podcasts, you’ve probably heard of the hugely popular Mel Robbins Podcast, which is currently the No. 1 podcast on Apple podcasts and is in the Top 10 podcasts on Spotify.

If you aren’t familiar, Robbins is a motivational author, speaker and podcast host who regularly talks about mental health topics such as anxiety, stress and confidence, as well as physical health topics such as disease prevention and women’s fitness.

Her podcast episodes often inspire lots of conversations and even lifestyle changes, and a March episode of the podcast was no different.

On the episode, podcast guest Dr. Vonda Wright, who is an orthopedic surgeon and longevity expert, shared with Robbins the weekly exercise regimen that all women should follow: It included walking a total of three hours each week (broken up over at least four days), lifting heavy weights at least twice a week, and learning “to lift your own bodyweight” — which according to Wright means all women should be able to do 11 push-ups. Robbins asked if those push-ups can be on your knees, and Wright replied “no.”

The 11 push-up idea quickly caught the attention of women across the country who took to social media to try the challenge. But do all women really need to be able to do 11 push-ups? Or are there better measures of fitness?

Below, trainers share their honest thoughts on this 11 push-up challenge:

No, all women should not be able to do 11 push-ups

According to Katie Gould, the founder of KG Strong, a strength-training gym in Philadelphia, the idea that all women should be able to do 11 push-ups likely comes from a 2019 study of 1,100 male firefighters that found that men who could do more than 40 push-ups had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared to men who could do fewer than 10 push-ups.

“So, these findings aren’t really directly … applicable to women,” Gould noted.

Danielle Repetti, the founder and head coach at Iron and Mettle, a women’s strength training gym in San Francisco, agreed and said the 11 push-up number feels arbitrary.

Gould also questioned how fast people were doing the push-ups, which can make them easier to do, or if they were doing them with resistance, which can make them tougher, and if they even had proper form.

“If you’re doing three super slow push-ups, to me, I would say that that’s an even greater indicator of strength than doing 11 improper form fast push-ups,” Gould said.

“I’ve had clients that can bench press 100, 125 pounds, and they aren’t able to do 11 push-ups on their toes, and that doesn’t mean that they’re not strong, and it doesn’t really mean anything about them as people in a body,” Repetti said.

Both Repetti and Gould said there are many reasons why a fit, strong person can’t do a chest-to-floor push-up. Maybe they just had a baby, have wrist issues, have larger bodies or are older, Repetti said.

“I’m not going to ask them to do a full-range push-up. It doesn’t feel good, it hurts. So that’s not how we’re necessarily going to strengthen their upper body,” said Gould.

“We’re going to do single-arm floor press, or we’re going to do a plank and hold that. There’s so many other exercises that can build your upper body if a full-range hands-on-floor push-up isn’t accessible to you,” Gould noted.

Your strength goals should be personal and should make you feel good

While it’s important to have benchmarks when it comes to bettering your health and fitness, it doesn’t mean one across-the-board benchmark is right for everyone, noted Gould.

“Your personal goals are really going to be the determining factor for what your benchmark should be. Not everybody’s goal is going to be to do 11 push-ups,” Gould said.

“Strength goals should be personalised, and while push-ups are a really valuable measure of upper body and core strength, they’re not the only indicator of fitness, and they’re not a sole indicator of health conditions,” Gould added.

Plus, your strength goal shouldn’t make you feel bad. That will only discourage you from returning to a workout class or personal training session in the future.

“Any time we embark on a strength journey, I think it’s really important to feel good about your body while you’re doing it, and not look at it from the lens of ‘Oh, I failed and that means something about me and my body,’” Repetti added.

An 11 push-up challenge is a fast-track way to feel discouraged if you can’t hit the number.

Everyone expresses strength in different ways, and everyone has different places where they excel and where they struggle, Repetti said.

“If you go and do the push-ups and you can’t do it … I just really want women to know that doesn’t mean anything about you and your own strength,” Repetti noted.

In strength training, you’ll find the movements that you’re great at and not so great at. “It’s important that women don’t think of the push-up as being the end all be all,” Repetti added.

The most important strength training regimen is one you'll stick to.

Hiraman via Getty Images

The most important strength training regimen is one you’ll stick to.

But push-ups do have benefits when it comes to healthy aging and building strength

“So, push-ups work pretty much all the muscles in the upper body — chest shoulders, triceps, those are all parts of the horizontal pressing motion, and then push-ups also challenge our core,” Repetti said.

Push-ups benefit your posture, your functional strength, and can help with daily activities like lifting things, pushing things away, pulling yourself up and even boosts your bone density (which is crucial for women as they age and bone density drops), said Gould.

Push-ups can also help you have the strength to push yourself off the ground, whether you’re playing with your grandkids, your pets, or if you fall down, both experts said.

Like all strength training, push-ups can help you continue to do the things you want to do as you get older, such as move around your home, go up and down stairs, even dance.

“How you feel in 50 years is kind of dependent on some of the things you’re doing now,” Repetti said. “We really want to build as much strength as we can so that … we don’t have to be one of those people who are like, ‘Oh, I used to do that, and now I don’t anymore because my body doesn’t feel good when I do that.’”

If you do want to be able to do push-ups, there are steps you can take to get there

So, not being able to do a push-up (let alone 11) on your toes doesn’t mean anything about you or your fitness, but if you do have a goal to be able to do some push-ups, the trainers who spoke with HuffPost have some tips.

First, you can try to do push-ups on your knees, but Gould said she prefers an incline push-up as a way to build your upper body strength.

For this type of push-up, you’ll want to put your hands on an elevated surface like a bench or box, said Repetti. Or, you can even do it with your hands on your couch.

This way, you’re moving less of your body weight while still maintaining a push-up position. You can also see your progress as you move to lower and lower surfaces, said Gould, “and that is a big thing for me with my clients.”

These modifications allow you to “train the full range of motion and get the most out of learning that movement,” noted Repetti.

“So, once you strengthen some of those muscles, then the push-ups in and of themselves get easier,” Repetti said. “We want to essentially make the movement easier at first, so that our body can learn how to do it, and then slowly and gradually over time, make that movement more and more challenging.”

“I would consider a push-up on your toes one of the more challenging variations of the push-up,” Repetti said ― and noted that you can make a push-up even harder by adding weight.

“But, for most people, I think learning some of the easier variations and then slowly building up to push-ups on your toes is the best way to get better at push-ups,” she said.

And, if you find that you can’t hit 11 push-ups even with some additional training, that’s OK. There are other ways to get strong and stay strong – what matters most is that you find a sustainable strength regimen that makes you feel good and keeps you moving.

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Less intensive farming works best for agricultural soil

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The less intensively you manage the soil, the better the soil can function. Such as not ploughing as often or using more grass-clover mixtures as cover crops. These are the conclusions from a research team led by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). Surprisingly, it applies to both conventional and organic farming. These important insights for making agriculture more sustainable are published in the scientific journal Science today. ‘It offers clear evidence to help farmers manage soils better.’

Growing food more sustainably: what’s the best way to do this? It is one of the big challenges: producing enough food without compromising the soil. After all, healthy soil has many functions — called multifunctionality — and for sustainable agriculture these must be preserved.

‘A multifunctional soil is essential for sustainable food production, because plants get their food from it,’ state the researchers from NIOO and Wageningen University & Research (the Netherlands), and the Universität Tübingen (Germany). ‘Soil also has indispensable roles in water storage, coping with climate change and disease suppression.’

Organic vs conventional

Research on farms across the Netherlands now shows that it is mainly the intensity of tillage that determines whether the soil can retain all its functions. Interestingly, the difference between conventional and organic farming has less of an influence. In both types of agricultural systems, a lot of variation is found in soil tillage and management.

‘The good news is that in conventional agriculture, which is the vast majority, there is a lot to gain,’ states soil ecologist and NIOO professor Wim van der Putten. ‘On all farms, including organic ones, it is important at this point not to cultivate the soil too intensively. For example: ploughing less. Inverting the soil during ploughing is a very big disruption for soil life.’

More than ploughing less

Not only less frequent ploughing but also making more use of mixtures of grasses and plants from the bean family, such as clovers, contributes to multifunctional healthy soil. You can alternate these with growing cereals such as wheat, barley, spelt and rye.

The research team took samples and carried out measurements at more than 50 Dutch agricultural farms on both clay and sandy soils. This was always done in pairs: a farm with conventional agriculture plus an organic neighbouring farm. The soil type and other conditions were then very similar. ‘That way, we could compare them like twins,’ clarifies Guusje Koorneef. Together with Sophie van Rijssel, she conducted her PhD research on this topic.

Sustainable and productive

A wide array of soil properties was measured and farmers shared what farming practices they applied. The organic carbon present in the soil proved to be the best predictor of soil multifunctionality, and for biological indicators this was the bacterial biomass. Koorneef adds: ‘We looked at both sandy and marine clay soils. These are two very different soil types in the Netherlands. And we see the same picture in both soil types.’

‘The popular term of sustainable intensification is contradictory to our results,’ argues contributing researcher Kyle Mason-Jones, now working at the Universität Tübingen. ‘More intensive soil management leads to reduction of soil functions and is thus less sustainable.’ Therefore, the researchers propose a new, appropriate goal. ‘Productive de-intensification. If it is successful, you will get more functions from a less intensively cultivated soil while retaining the crop yield as much as possible.’

Vital soil

These findings are the final result of the Vital Soils project. The project was subsidised by NWO Groen, coordinated by NIOO and carried out together with Wageningen University & Research. Besides the scientific partners, there were also several social partners involved: Eurofins-Agro, BO Akkerbouw, Open Teelten (formerly PPO-AGV) and LTO-Noord.

Previous research using satellite imagery, within the same project, measured the ‘greenness’ of crops in the field. This gives us an estimate of production levels. It showed that the degree of greenness (the crop yield) did not suffer from a decrease in management intensity. Interestingly, organic farming could return to being as productive as conventional farming about 17 years after the transition.

Back to the current research. ‘You don’t necessarily have to have gone through the entire transition to organic farming to still have a positive impact on soil health,’ says Koorneef. ‘I find it really promising that in both conventional and organic farms you can strengthen the functioning of the soil by working it less intensively.’

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Are ‘zombie’ skin cells harmful or helpful? The answer may be in their shapes

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Senescent skin cells, often referred to as zombie cells because they have outlived their usefulness without ever quite dying, have existed in the human body as a seeming paradox, causing inflammation and promoting diseases while also helping the immune system to heal wounds.

New findings may explain why: Not all senescent skin cells are the same.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have identified three subtypes of senescent skin cells with distinct shapes, biomarkers, and functions — an advance that could equip scientists with the ability to target and kill the harmful types while leaving the helpful ones intact.

The findings were published today in the journal Science Advances.

“We’ve known that senescent skin cells are different from senescent immune cells or senescent muscle cells. But within a cell type, senescent cells are often considered the same — in essence, skin cells are either senescent or not, for example,” said Jude Phillip, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “But we’re finding that when a skin cell goes into senescence, or a zombie-like state, the cell could go down one of three different paths, each leading to a slightly different subtype.”

Leveraging new advances in machine learning and imaging technology, the researchers compared skin cell samples from 50 healthy donors between the ages of 20 and 90 who participated in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study, an NIH-funded project that is the longest ongoing study of aging in the United States.

Researchers extracted fibroblasts — cells that produce the scaffolding to give tissues their structure — associated with skin tissue and pushed them toward senescence by damaging their DNA, something that happens with aging. Because senescent cells build up naturally as people grow older, the aged samples contained a mix of healthy/nonsenescent and senescent fibroblasts.

Using specialized dyes, the researchers were able to capture images of the cells’ shapes and stained elements that are known to indicate senescent cells. Algorithms developed for this study analyzed the images, measured 87 different physical characteristics for each cell, and sorted the fibroblasts into groups.

Fibroblasts come in 11 different shapes and sizes, three of which are distinct to senescent skin cells, the researchers found. Only one subtype of senescent fibroblast, which the researchers named C10, was more prevalent in older donors.

In the petri dishes, each subtype responded differently when exposed to existing drug regimens designed to target and kill zombie cells. Dasatinib + Quercetin, a drug being tested in clinical trials, for example, most effectively killed C7 senescent fibroblasts but was limited in killing the age-associated C10 senescent fibroblasts.

Though further research is needed to verify which fibroblast subtype is harmful and which is helpful, the findings show that drugs can target one subtype and not the others.

“With our new findings, we have the tools ready to develop new drugs or therapies that preferentially target the senescence subtype that drives inflammation and disease as soon as it is identified,” Phillip said.

More precise targeting of senescence could benefit cancer treatments, the researchers said.

Certain therapies are being designed to trigger senescence in cancer cells, converting uncontrollably replicating cancer cells into dead-in-the-water zombie cells. While these therapies could stop tumor growth, they leave senescent cells in their wake. Conventional chemotherapies also push cells like fibroblasts toward senescence as a side effect. The buildup of senescent cells during treatment can be problematic as those cells may promote inflammation at a time when a patient’s immune system is at its most vulnerable.

Patients may benefit from a drug administered after chemotherapy that can sweep up the mess, removing harmful senescent cells while leaving behind the helpful senescent cells. These types of drugs are called senotherapies.

Next, the researchers plan to look at senescence subtypes in tissue samples, not just in flasks and petri dishes, to see how those subtypes might be associated with various skin diseases and age-associated diseases.

“We hope, with some more development, our technology will be used to help predict which drugs might work well for targeting senescent cells that contribute to specific diseases,” Phillip said. “Eventually, the dream is to be able to provide more information in a clinical setting to help with individual diagnoses and boost health outcomes.”

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Nudges improve food choices and cut calories when shopping for groceries online

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A team of Duke-NUS Medical School researchers designed and tested a new digital toolkit that helps consumers make healthier grocery choices online — an innovation that could play a major role in the global fight against chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

In their study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the researchers found that when simple but strategic digital features, such as colour-coded nutritional quality signals and a healthier alternative prompt, were added to an online grocery shopping platform, the nutritional quality of shoppers’ carts improved significantly.

The team’s findings verified the effectiveness of deploying front-of-package (FOP) labels — which only marginally improve diet quality when used alone — alongside other interventions.

In a randomised trial conducted on NUSMart, an online grocery store designed by the Duke-NUS team, study participants were randomly divided into two groups and asked to make a total of three orders over a period of three to six weeks. While those assigned to the control group used a standard version of the store, those assigned to the experimental group used a version of the store with additional digital features, including:

Signalling nutritional quality with a traffic light: FOP labels resembling traffic light signals alerted shoppers to food products’ nutritional quality using three colour bands — green (best), amber and red with an “X” mark — for easy identification of foods to avoid.

Items were sorted into the colour bands based on their Nutri-Score (NS)[1] points, which were assigned according to energy, sugar, sodium, saturated fat, fruit/vegetable, protein, and dietary fibre levels per 100g/ml. The points were then converted into grades on a five-letter grading system, with A being the healthiest and E being the least healthy.

Sorting groceries by nutritional value: Using food products’ NS points, the researchers presented the items by order of nutritional value, with the healthiest options appearing first. Items in the control version of NUSMart appeared in alphabetical order.

Showing real-time cart feedback: Participants could track the nutritional quality of their grocery carts via a pie chart that indicated the proportion of items in each colour band. They could also compare their carts with a reference cart for health grocery shopping, which the researchers had curated using past data.

Suggesting healthier options: Shoppers could also view up to four healthier alternatives with similar prices and characteristics to each selected food product and replace their chosen product with the healthier alternative at the click of a button.

With these interventions, the nutritional quality of participants’ grocery carts improved from NS grade C to NS grade B, which was more significant than results from previous studies involving standalone FOP labels. The interventions also reduced the amount of calories (12.86 kcal), total fat (1.21g), saturated fat (0.85g), sugar (0.82g) and sodium (156.64mg) purchased.

Notably, the researchers found that shopping with the four digital features led to healthier food choices across all three orders.

Assistant Professor Soye Shin from Duke-NUS’ Health Services and Systems Research Programme, the study’s first author, said of the findings: “As online grocery shopping is rapidly gaining ground, we wanted to see if we could design low cost, scalable online tools that could be used to nudge consumers toward healthier choices at the point of purchase. These results show the potential of these tools to improve diet and health outcomes.”

These findings underscore the advantages of introducing diet quality labels, such as Singapore’s Nutri-Grade labelling initiative, which currently only includes beverages but is planned to expand to other food categories.

Senior author Professor Eric Finkelstein, from Duke-NUS’ Health Services and Systems Research Programme, said: “These results are encouraging but the next step is to work with retailers to incorporate these features into existing online stores. Only then will the full value of this approach be realised.”

Next, the researchers will expand the study to include consumers of low socio-economic status and little nutritional knowledge. They will also investigate if the multi-pronged intervention strategy has the potential to positively impact consumers’ health in the long term.

Professor Patrick Tan, Senior Vice-Dean for Research at Duke-NUS, commented on the study’s impact: “This study reflects how smart, evidence-based interventions — when applied at the right moment — can empower people to make better everyday choices for their health. It also shows how research can lead to practical tools that improve not just individual choices, but population health outcomes.”

Duke-NUS is at the forefront of biomedical research and translational innovations. This new study is part of the School’s ongoing efforts to improve global health through systems research and scientific breakthroughs.

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Animal energy usage made visible through video

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Energy scarcity is a central driver of animal behavior and evolution. The amazing diversity of life on this planet is a testament to the plethora of novel biological solutions to the problem of securing and maintaining energy. However, despite being so central to biology, it remains difficult to quantify, and thereby empirically analyze, energy consumption.

While organisms use energy for a very wide variety of processes — from growth to cognition — one activity is a major drain for many animals: movement. For highly mobile animals, movement is as such a powerful lens through which to estimate energy usage.

Strong methods do exist for measuring animal movement in the context of energy expenditure, but these are limited by the physical size of the equipment used. Now, in a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, researchers from the Marine Biophysics Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), in collaboration with Professor Amatzia Genin from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, describe an innovative method for measuring energy usage during movement with video and 3D-tracking via deep learning. “The best method without space limitations has until now been ruled out in the study of about half of the world’s species, due to the reliance on wearable equipment,” says Dr. Kota Ishikawa, first author of the study. “With video, we now have a more inclusive method for studying energy usage in the context of animal behavior and ecology.”

Dynamic Body Acceleration (DBA) has long been the state-of-the-art method for estimating energy usage during movement. In essence, DBA involves measuring the oxygen consumption of a given species performing a given behavior in the lab, by simply measuring the amount of oxygen consumed through the activity. Oxygen is a good indicator of energy, as it is consumed as part of aerobic respiration to produce ATP — the ‘fuel’ providing energy for most bodily processes, including muscle contraction. The acceleration of the animal is measured simultaneously with an accelerometer, and in most cases, because the correlation between acceleration and oxygen consumption during the behavior is very strong, DBA provides a reliable estimate of energy consumption.

With the standard set in the lab, DBA is then measured in the wild, where reliably measuring oxygen consumption is impossible, through a wearable accelerometer. However, relying on physical equipment presents a major barrier. “To ensure accurate measurements without influencing the behavior during observation, researchers have used equipment that weighs at least ten times less than the animal. Given that the accelerometer and battery pack weigh 10-20 grams, this rules out the study of any animals below 100 grams — about half the world’s vertebrate species. It can also affect movement, especially when it depends on drag efficiency, such as swimming or flight,” says Dr. Ishikawa.

Their solution to this problem is elegantly simple. Instead of using a physical accelerometer to measure the movements, two cameras capture video footage of the behavior — in this case, a damselfish swimming in a fishtank — from multiple angles to reconstruct the behavior in 3D space. A few frames of the videos are then used to train a deep learning neural network to track the position of body features such as eyes, which allows researchers to subsequently measure the movement-related acceleration.

Both in the field and in the lab, once cameras are set up to capture animal movements, energy consumption can be estimated. For example, video-based DBA can be used in the context of collective behavior: “Energy expenditure during schooling of small fish has long remained mysterious,” explains Dr. Ishikawa. “For example, do the leading fish use more energy, and is schooling an energy-efficient form of movement? And what can that tell us about the ecology and evolution of fish schooling?”

With video-based DBA, the accurate measurement of energy usage during free-ranging animal behavior has been opened to the smaller half of the world’s vertebrate species, potentially enabling many new research avenues into the breadth of life on our planet.

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