An international collaboration between researchers at Queen Mary University of London and the Chinese Academy of Science in Nanjing has led to the discovery of world’s oldest animal sperm inside a tiny crustacean trapped in amber around 100 million years ago in Myanmar.

• In their last hours, many people become unresponsive
• However, EEG data indicated that their awareness of sounds was similar to healthy people
• This suggests that they may still be aware of the presence of their loved ones, even though they seem unconscious  

Even if they appear unresponsive, dying people may still be able to hear.

That’s the takeaway from a Canadian analysis of hospice patients in Vancouver.

Researchers compared electroencephalography (EEG) data – a measure of electrical activity in the brain – collected when patients were conscious and when they became unresponsive at the end of life. Those patients were compared to a healthy control group.

The study looked at brain response to various patterns of common and rare sounds that changed frequency, and found that responses of some of the dying patients were similar to those of healthy people – even hours before death.

Dying brain can respond to sound

“In the last hours before an expected natural death, many people enter a period of unresponsiveness,” said lead author Elizabeth Blundon, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of British Columbia at the time of the study.

“Our data shows that a dying brain can respond to sound, even in an unconscious state, up to the last hours of life,” she said in a university news release.

Co-author Lawrence Ward, a professor of psychology, said researchers were able to identify specific mental processes in both groups of participants.

“We had to look very carefully at the individual control participants’ data, to see if each one of them showed a particular type of brain response before we felt confident that the unresponsive patient’s brain reacted similarly,” he said in the release.

The findings were recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Being present is meaningful

“This research gives credence to the fact that hospice nurses and physicians noticed that the sounds of loved ones helped comfort people when they were dying,” said study co-author Dr Romayne Gallagher, a now-retired palliative care physician at St. John Hospice in Vancouver.

“And to me, it adds significant meaning to the last days and hours of life and shows that being present, in person or by phone, is meaningful,” she said. “It is a comfort to be able to say goodbye and express love.”

While the evidence of brain activity supports the idea that dying people might hear, it’s not known if they’re aware of what they’re hearing, Blundon noted.

“Their brains responded to the auditory stimuli, but we can’t possibly know if they’re remembering, identifying voices, or understanding language,” she said. “There are all these other questions that have yet to be answered. This first glimpse supports the idea that we have to keep talking to people when they are dying because something is happening in their brain.”

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Boris Johnson also pledges to release a new “action plan” for care homes this week.

Normal coughs and fevers alone will lead to high demand for coronavirus tests over winter, it says.

• Signs of stress, depression or anxiety beyond the normal teenage angst may predict future heart problems in men
• In a study, lower physical fitness was associated with poorer mental health 
• Fitness in youth, which is sustained into middle age is, therefore, likely to protect against heart disease

Middle-aged men who were anxious or depressed teens are at increased risk for heart attack, according to a large, long-term study.

It included more than 238 000 men born between 1952 and 1956 who underwent extensive exams when they were 18 or 19 years old and were followed to age 58.

Men diagnosed with anxiety or depression in their late teens had a 20% higher risk of heart attack than those who didn’t, the study showed.

‘Be vigilant’

The findings only reflect an association. The link was partly, but not fully, explained by poorer ability to cope with everyday stress and lower physical fitness in teens with the mental health conditions, according to findings presented at a virtual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.

The takeaway: “Be vigilant and look for signs of stress, depression or anxiety that is beyond the normal teenage angst: Seek help if there seems to be a persistent problem,” suggested study author Cecilia Bergh, a senior lecturer in health sciences at Orebro University in Sweden.

“If a healthy lifestyle is encouraged as early as possible in childhood and adolescence it is more likely to persist into adulthood and improve long-term health,” she said in a meeting news release.

Bergh said researchers already knew that men who were physically fit but stressed as teens seemed less likely to maintain fitness.

Strategies to deal with stress

“Our previous research has also shown that low stress resilience is also coupled with a greater tendency towards addictive behaviour, signalled by higher risks of smoking, alcohol consumption and other drug use,” she noted.

Better fitness in youth is likely to protect against heart disease, particularly if people stay fit as they age, Bergh said, adding that exercise may also alleviate negative consequences of stress.

“This is relevant to all adolescents, but those with poorer well-being could benefit from additional support to encourage exercise and to develop strategies to deal with stress,” she said.

Research presented at meetings is typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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• Increased cellphone and social media use are causing teens to face more cyberbullying
• With unemployment and more parents at home, family dynamics have also changed
• Adolescents with loving parents are, however, less likely to engage in cyberbullying, researchers found

Cyberbullying is less common among teens who feel loved and supported by their parents, new research shows.

The findings could be especially relevant during the coronavirus pandemic, say a team from New York University.

“With remote learning replacing classroom instruction for many young people, and cellphones and social media standing in for face-to-face interaction with friends, there are more opportunities for cyberbullying to occur,” noted study author Laura Grunin. She’s a doctoral student at NYU’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing, in New York City.

“New family dynamics and home stressors are also at play, thanks to higher unemployment rates and more parents working from home,” she added in a university news release.

Emotional support

For the study, which was based on surveys from 2009 and 2010, Grunin and her team analysed responses from more than 12 600 US youth aged 11 to 15 years. The kids were asked about their bullying behaviours and their relationship with their parents.

The more adolescents considered their parents as loving, the less likely they were to cyberbully, the survey findings showed.

Those who said their parents were “almost never” loving were at least six times more likely to engage in high levels of cyberbullying than those who said their parents were “almost always” loving.

Other types of emotional support, including how much adolescents felt their parents help and understand them, also influenced cyberbullying behaviour, the researchers noted.

The study was published in the International Journal of Bullying Prevention.

Teen’s perception of emotional support

More than half of US teens say they’ve experienced online harassment, insults, threats or spreading rumours.

According to study co-author Sally Cohen, a clinical professor at NYU Meyers, “Understanding what factors are related to a young person’s cyberbullying of peers is important for developing ways that families, schools and communities can prevent bullying or intervene when it occurs.”

Grunin said the findings point to the importance of emotional support from parents.

“I would stress to parents it is not necessarily if they think they are being supportive, but what their adolescent thinks,” Grunin explained. “Parents should strive to discern their teen’s perception of parental emotional support as it might be associated with youth cyberbullying behaviour.”

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• Many kids who are not physically going to school are losing out on exercise
• As it is, about 60% of US kids have an insufficient level of cardiorespiratory fitness
• With a bit of imagination, teachers and parents can adapt lessons to include physical activity

When schools close to protect families from the coronavirus, the main worry for many parents might be the lost learning. But for students who end up staying indoors and staring at phones and monitors most of the day, there could be health costs, too.

“You have to give the parents some grace and say we’re all sort of in survival mode right now,” said Hildi Nicksic, a clinical assistant professor in the department of health and kinesiology at Texas A&M University in College Station. Still, the increase in screen time and inactivity makes for “a really scary reality”.

If you’re a kid who has lost access to school, you’ve also lost recess and all the other opportunities for moving around during a school day. You’ve lost physical education classes and sports teams. “And really, you might not even be going outside because maybe you live in an area where your parent doesn’t feel comfortable with you exiting the house,” Nicksic said.

Families can find ways to cope, said Dr Geetha Raghuveer, a paediatric cardiologist at Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, Missouri. But it starts with knowing how vital it is for a child to stay physically active.

Benefits beyond basic health

According to a 2020 report in Circulation written by an American Heart Association panel Raghuveer led, about 60% of US youth have a less-than-healthy level of cardiorespiratory fitness.

The effects of low fitness are multifaceted, she said. “It’s physical, it’s cardiac, it’s mental, it’s academic, it’s long term, it’s short term.”

Federal guidelines recommend children and teens ages six to 17 get at least an hour of moderate to vigorous activity a day, including more intense activities at least three times a week.

Nicksic, who spent more than 10 years as a teacher in public schools before earning her doctorate, said the benefits of activity go beyond basic health.

Regular physical activity has been shown to boost academic results. “A lot of the improvement is seen specifically in math, but there is a general understanding that that benefit will happen across subjects,” she said.

And it might make things easier on teachers and parents by helping kids focus, studies have shown.

Adapt lessons to include action

“If you take a 60-minute lesson, and you pare that down to 55 minutes and have five minutes of physical activity, the remaining 55 minutes is likely going to be a more productive learning time,” Nicksic said.

Breaks aren’t the only way to get kids to move. Teachers – or parents – can adapt lessons to include action. Younger students learning to use a ruler can actively measure things around the room instead of sitting in front of a piece of paper. A teacher working with students over video could ask them to fetch a topic-relevant item from somewhere in their home. “That gets the student away from just looking at the screen, even if it’s just to stand up, move around and come back and sit down.”

The Wide Open School project offers additional ideas, in English and Spanish, at wideopenschool.org. Nicksic compiled her own list at classroomsinmotion.com. The American Heart Association has suggestions through efforts such as Kick Cabin Fever to the Curb and the NFL Play 60 Challenge.

Ultimately, Nicksic and Raghuveer said, fitness works best as a family activity.

“It helps a lot if the family can engage in physical fitness activities as a family as opposed to just telling the kid to go out and do something,” Raghuveer said.

Some families are privileged

That approach has worked for Jenny Groshong, a fourth-grade teacher in Eugene, Oregon.

Her daughters – Libby, 13, and Peyton, 12 – have had plenty of screen time this year, she said. But when it got to be too much, she didn’t always just tell them to put the screen down.

“I’m a runner, so I would make one of them come with me. Some days, the other one would just jump up and say, ‘I’m coming too,’ and they ride their bikes while I go run.”

Their family also hikes. An old tandem bike even gets hauled out sometimes. “Every once in a while, they’ll get on that, which is hysterical,” she said, laughing. “You want to teach your kids how to get along? Put them on a tandem.”

She’s aware that her family is privileged to get to do all they do. “When families are in crisis, or they’re struggling financially, or they’re having a hard time getting food on the table, they don’t have the luxury of hopping in their Suburban and driving an hour to go on a hike,” she said.

Okay to start small

Groshong, who teaches at a school with many students from low-income families, found small ways to work movement into her curriculum. This spring, as the region’s abundant plant life was in full bloom, she sent students (who had school-issued equipment) to capture images of flowers in “all the colours of the rainbow” and arrange them in a colour-wheel collage. Not every kid had to walk very far, she said. “But at least they got outside.”

Raghuveer and Nicksic would approve. Both emphasized it’s OK to start small.

“Baby steps are fine,” Nicksic said. “You don’t need to go from no physical activity to making sure your kid goes for an hour-long walk or something. Anything helps.”

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The country has been adding more than 90,000 cases every day as it continues to reopen.

A new study, co-led by University of Cincinnati researchers, describes the development of a refining process that scientists deem a superior method to help produce better dietary omega-3 health and dietary supplements containing fish oil.