The Framingham Heart Study is an ongoing observational study first initiated in 1948 that currently spans three generations.

The Columbia analysis is the first to connect educational mobility with pace of biological aging and mortality. “We’ve known for a long time that people who have higher levels of education tend to live longer lives. But there are a bunch of challenges in figuring out how that happens and, critically, whether interventions to promote educational attainment will contribute to healthy longevity,” said Daniel Belsky, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School and the Aging Center and senior author of the paper.

To measure pace of aging, the researchers applied an algorithm known as the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock to genomic data collected by the Framingham Heart Study. The latest findings showed that, according to the yardstick of the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock, two years of additional schooling translated to a two- to three percent slower pace of aging. This slowing in the pace of aging corresponds to a roughly 10 percent reduction in risk of mortality in the Framingham Heart Study, according to previous research by Belsky on the association of DunedinPACE with risk of death.

DunedinPACE was developed by the Columbia researchers and colleagues and reported in January 2022. Based on an analysis of chemical tags on the DNA contained in white blood cells, or DNA methylation marks, DunedinPACE is named after the Dunedin Study birth cohort used to develop it. DunedinPACE (stands for Pace of Aging Computed from the Epigenome), is measured from a blood test and functions like a speedometer for the aging process, measuring how fast or slow a person’s body is changing as they grow older.

Biological aging refers to the accumulation of molecular changes that progressively undermine the integrity and resilience capacity of our cells, tissues and organs as we grow older.

The Columbia researchers used data from 14,106 Framingham Heart Study spanning three generations to link children’s educational attainment data with that of their parents. They then used data from a subset of participants who provided blood samples during data collection to calculate the pace of biological aging using the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock. In primary analysis, the researchers tested associations between educational mobility, aging, and mortality in a subset of 3,101 participants for whom educational mobility and pace of aging measures could be calculated.

For 2,437 participants with a sibling, the researchers also tested whether differences in educational attainment between siblings was associated with a difference in the pace of aging.

“A key confound in studies like these is that people with different levels of education tend to come from families with different educational backgrounds and different levels of other resources,” explained Gloria Graf, a PhD candidate in the Department of Epidemiology supervised by Belsky, and first author of the study. “To address these confounds, we focused on educational mobility, how much more (or less) education a person completed relative to their parents, and sibling differences in educational attainment — how much more (or less) education a person completed relative to their siblings. These study designs control for differences between families and allow us to isolate the effects of education.”

By combining these study designs with the new DunedinPACE epigenetic clock, the researchers were able to test how education affects the pace of aging. Then, by linking the education and pace of aging data with longitudinal records of how long participants lived, the team was able to determine if a slower pace of aging accounted for increased longevity in people with more education.

“Our findings support the hypothesis that interventions to promote educational attainment will slow the pace of biological aging and promote longevity,” noted Graf. “Ultimately, experimental evidence is needed to confirm our findings,” added Belsky. “Epigenetic clocks like DunedinPace have potential to enhance such experimental studies by providing an outcome that can reflect impacts of education on healthy aging well before the onset of disease and disability in later life.”

“We found that upward educational mobility was associated both with a slower pace of aging and decreased risk of death,” said Graf. “In fact, up to half of the educational gradient in mortality we observed was explained by healthier aging trajectories among better-educated participants.” This pattern of association was similar across generations and held within family sibling comparisons: siblings with higher educational mobility tended to have a slower pace of aging as compared with their less educated siblings.

Co-authors are Calen Ryan, Meeraj Kothari, and Alison Aiello, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and Butler Columbia Aging Center; Peter Muennig, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; Terrie Moffitt, Avshalom Caspi, and Karen Sugden, Duke University; and Hexuan Liu, University of Cincinnati.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, grants R01AG073402, R01AG073207, and R21AG078627.

The psychological term to describe this mental process is called valence weighting bias, which describes people’s tendency to adapt in new circumstances by drawing more strongly from either their positive or negative attitudes — or, in the context of approaching an unpleasant task, whether negative or positive internal “signals” carry the most weight in guiding the final behavior.

“And the question is, which wins that battle — if, indeed, there are elements of both positivity and negativity?” said Russell Fazio, senior author and professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.

In a series of studies, Fazio and first author Javier Granados Samayoa, a former Ohio State graduate student, found links between a more negative-leaning attitude and procrastination. They also found it’s possible to shift the weighting bias of strong procrastinators toward neutrality and reverse their tendency to delay a task.

“We’re looking at this consideration of the positives and negatives that exist when people are making decisions, and how valence weighting bias shapes which route people take,” Granados Samayoa said.

The research was published recently in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

The first of three studies tested a real-world scenario: preparing a federal tax return.

“The idea is that people, at least for a brief moment, are asking the question, ‘Do I want to do this now?'” Fazio said. “And there really are both positive and negative signals: ‘I certainly don’t want to do that. It’s an aversive task.’ That’s the negative signal. But then there’s also a positive signal: ‘I’ve got to get it done and I’ll feel good if I do it right.'”

A sample of 232 participants reported whether they routinely filed returns early or late during tax season. With that data in hand, Fazio and Granados Samayoa used a research tool to gauge the extent to which participants weighed positive or negative signals more strongly when encountering something new.

Their analysis showed an association between a more negative weighting bias and a delay in submitting a tax return.

“What we find is that people whose negative attitudes generalize more strongly tend to engage in unnecessary task delay to a greater extent,” Granados Samayoa said.

The second study involved 147 college students in a program allowing them to accumulate course credit in exchange for participating in research.

In addition to gauging the students’ weighting bias, the study explored whether students’ measures of self-control influenced task-related behavior: How did students characterize their level of motivation or capacity to mull over their initial thoughts about the research program, and did that affect whether students got an early start on research participation or put it off?

Results showed the combination of negative weighting bias and self-reported low motivation or emotional energy for effective self-control was linked to students putting off research program participation by getting started later in the semester.

“The first study established the basic effect of negative weighting bias, but study two provides some nuance,” said Granados Samayoa, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. “For people who don’t think about it too much or can’t think about it too much, their valence weighting tendencies guide their behavior in a straightforward manner. But if somebody is more motivated and able to think more about it, that might bring other considerations that dampen the influence of the valence weighting bias.”

Study three was designed to look for a causal effect of valence weighting bias in completing or delaying a task. Students in the research-for-credit program who were self-reported procrastinators and who scored high for negative weighting bias were recruited for the study. Researchers then manipulated the valence weighting bias tool for one group in a way that led participants to weigh positive and negative signals in a more balanced way. This shift toward neutrality changed students’ behavior: They accumulated credit hours more quickly than the control group, whose negative weighting bias and low self-control reliably predicted their delay in securing extra credit.

Negative weighting bias can have a positive effect on behavior, too. These researchers have also found evidence that a negative weighting bias may help people be more realistic when they’re asking themselves, for example, “Have I studied enough for this test?” A positive weighting bias may lead people to convince themselves they’re ready when they’re not.

“It’s better to be more objectively balanced than to be at either extreme,” Fazio said. “But the situation where a particular valence weighting bias is likely to be problematic is going to vary.”

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Now, a world first study from the University of South Australia shows that getting a good night’s sleep is tied to how you structure your day, with exercise at the heart of sleep quality.

The study examined different components of time use and different aspects of sleep among 1168 children (average age 12 years) and 1360 adults (their parents, average age 44 years, mainly mothers) the study found that children and adults with higher levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity had less troubled sleep, reduced tiredness, and better sleep quality.

Australian guidelines indicate that most adults need about eight hours of sleep per night, with children and teenagers requiring 8-11 hours per night.*

UniSA researcher, Dr Lisa Matricciani, says understanding factors that affect sleep quality is vital for good health and wellbeing.

“Despite what we know about sleep, many people still struggle to achieve a good night’s sleep,” Dr Matricciani says.

“When people think about sleep quality, they tend to focus on adjustments immediately before bedtime — for example, avoiding screens, not eating too much, and avoiding alcohol — but our research looks beyond this to the range of activities we undertake during the day.

“What we found is that our daytime activities are tied to different aspects of our sleep, from sleep quality, sleep efficiency (how much of the time you spend in bed when you are actually asleep), and the overall amount of sleep we get, to levels of tiredness during the day, and when we choose to go to bed.

“Sometimes, the activities we choose might directly displace sleep — think of kids playing video games late into the night — but other times, it’s how we spend our daytime hours.

“In this study we created different simulations to see how extending and restricting aspects of time were related to different aspects of sleep.

“We found that if children and adults increased moderate to vigorous physical activity, they would feel less tired, have less troubled sleep and better-quality sleep.

“Interestingly, simply making more time for sleep predicted more restless sleep.

“Everyone wants a good night’s sleep. If it’s simply a matter of being more active during the day, then it may be a relatively achievable goal for most of us.”

The last decade has seen major advances in computer simulations that can realistically calculate how galaxies form. These cosmological simulations are crucial to our understanding of where galaxies, stars and planets come from. However, the predictions from such models are affected by limitations in the resolution of the simulations, as well as assumptions about a number of factors, such as how stars live and die and the evolution of the interstellar medium.

To minimise the sources of error and produce more accurate simulations, 160 researchers from 60 higher education institutions — led by Santi Roca-Fàbrega at Lund University, Ji-hoon Kim at Seoul National University and Joel R. Primack at the University of California — have collaborated and now present the results of the largest comparison of simulations done ever.

“To make progress towards a theory of galaxy formation, it is crucial to compare results and codes from different simulations. We have now done this by bringing together competing code groups behind the world’s best galaxy simulators in a kind of supercomparison,” says Santi Roca-Fàbrega, a researcher in astrophysics.

Three papers from this collaboration, known as the CosmoRun simulations, have now been published in The Astrophysical Journal. In these, the researchers have analysed the formation of a galaxy with the same mass as the Milky Way. The simulation is based on the same astrophysical assumptions about the ultraviolet background radiation produced by the first stars in the Universe, the gas cooling and heating, and the process of star formation.

The new results allow the researchers to conclude that disc galaxies like the Milky Way formed very early in the history of the Universe, in line with observations from the James Webb Telescope. They have also found a way to make the number of satellite galaxies — galaxies orbiting larger galaxies — consistent with observations finally solving a problem well known in the community and known as “the missing satellites problem.”

In addition, the team has revealed how the gas surrounding galaxies is the key to realistic simulations, rather than the number and distribution of stars, which had previously been the standard.

“The work has been going on for the past eight years and has entailed running hundreds of simulations and using a hundred million hours of supercomputing facilities,” says Santi Roca-Fàbrega.

Now the journey continues to further refine the simulations of galaxy formation. With each technological achievement, Santi Roca-Fàbrega and his colleagues hope to add new pieces to the dizzying puzzle of the birth and evolution of the universe and galaxies.

“This is the start of more reliable simulations of galaxy formation, which in turn will help us to better understand our home galaxy, the Milky Way,” says Santi Roca-Fàbrega.

In addition to Lund University, some 60 universities and organisations have participated in the work.

Available data showing ice thickness variation already allows a prediction for the upper ocean of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, and a NASA mission’s planned orbital survey of Europa’s ice shell should do the same for the much larger Jovian moon, enhancing the mission’s findings about whether it could support life.

The researchers propose that a process called “ice pumping,” which they’ve observed below Antarctic ice shelves, likely shapes the undersides of Europa’s and Enceladus’ ice shells, but should also operate at Ganymede and Titan, large moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. They show that temperature ranges where the ice and ocean interact — important regions where ingredients for life may be exchanged — can be calculated based on an ice shell’s slope and changes in water’s freezing point at different pressures and salinities.

“If we can measure the thickness variation across these ice shells, then we’re able to get temperature constraints on the oceans, which there’s really no other way yet to do without drilling into them,” said Britney Schmidt, associate professor of astronomy and of earth and atmospheric sciences. “This gives us another tool for trying to figure out how these oceans work. And the big question is, are things living there, or could they?”

Along with current and former members of Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab, Schmidt is a co-author of “Ice-Ocean Interactions on Ocean Worlds Influence Ice Shell Topography,” published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

In 2019, using the remotely operated Icefin robot, Schmidt’s team observed ice pumping inside a crevasse beneath Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf.

The researchers mapped ranges of potential shell thickness, pressure and salinity for ocean worlds with varying gravity and concluded that ice pumping would occur in the most probable scenarios, though not in all. They found that ice-ocean interactions on Europa may be similar to those observed beneath the Ross Ice Shelf — evidence that such regions may be some of the most Earth-like on alien worlds, said Justin Lawrence, a visiting scholar at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and a program manager at Honeybee Robotics.

NASA’s Cassini probe generated data sufficient to predict a temperature range for Enceladus’ ocean, based on the slope of its ice shell from poles to equator: minus 1.095 degrees to minus 1.272 degrees Celsius. Knowing temperatures informs understanding of how heat flows through oceans and how they circulate, affecting habitability.

The researchers expect ice pumping to be weak at Enceladus, a small moon (the width of Arizona) with dramatic topography, while at larger Europa — nearly the size of Earth’s moon — they predict it acts quickly to smooth and flatten the ice shell’s base.

Schmidt said the work demonstrates how research investigating climate change on Earth can also benefit planetary science, a reason NASA has supported Icefin’s development.

“There’s a connection between the shape of the ice shell and the temperature in the ocean,” Schmidt said. “This is a new way to get more insight from ice shell measurements that we hope to be able to get for Europa and other worlds.”

The research was supported by NASA’s Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program and the National Science Foundation.

But what if humans could have jellyfish explore the oceans on our behalf, reporting back what they find? New research conducted at Caltech aims to make that a reality through the creation of what researchers call biohybrid robotic jellyfish. These creatures, which can be thought of as ocean-going cyborgs, augment jellyfish with electronics that enhance their swimming and a prosthetic “hat” that can carry a small payload while also making the jellyfish swim in a more streamlined manner.

The work, published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, was conducted in the lab of John Dabiri (MS ’03, PhD ’05), the Centennial Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, and builds on his previous work augmenting jellyfish. Dabiri’s goal with this research is to use jellyfish as robotic data-gatherers, sending them into the oceans to collect information about temperature, salinity, and oxygen levels, all of which are affected by Earth’s changing climate.

“It’s well known that the ocean is critical for determining our present and future climate on land, and yet, we still know surprisingly little about the ocean, especially away from the surface,” Dabiri says. “Our goal is to finally move that needle by taking an unconventional approach inspired by one of the few animals that already successfully explores the entire ocean.”

Throughout his career, Dabiri has looked to the natural world, jellyfish included, for inspiration in solving engineering challenges. This work began with early attempts by Dabiri’s lab to develop a mechanical robot that swam like jellyfish, which have the most efficient method for traveling through water of any living creature. Though his research team succeeded in creating such a robot, that robot was never able to swim as efficiently as a real jellyfish. At that point, Dabiri asked himself, why not just work with jellyfish themselves?

“Jellyfish are the original ocean explorers, reaching its deepest corners and thriving just as well in tropical or polar waters,” Dabiri says. “Since they don’t have a brain or the ability to sense pain, we’ve been able to collaborate with bioethicists to develop this biohybrid robotic application in a way that’s ethically principled.”

Previously, Dabiri’s lab implanted jellyfish with a kind of electronic pacemaker that controls the speed at which they swim. In doing so, they found that if they made jellyfish swim faster than the leisurely pace they normally keep, the animals became even more efficient. A jellyfish swimming three times faster than it normally would uses only twice as much energy.

This time, the research team went a step further, adding what they call a forebody to the jellies. These forebodies are like hats that sit atop the jellyfish’s bell (the mushroom-shaped part of the animal). The devices were designed by graduate student and lead author Simon Anuszczyk (MS ’22), who aimed to make the jellyfish more streamlined while also providing a place where sensors and other electronics can be carried.

“Much like the pointed end of an arrow, we designed 3D-printed forebodies to streamline the bell of the jellyfish robot, reduce drag, and increase swimming performance,” Anuszczyk says. “At the same time, we experimented with 3D printing until we were able to carefully balance the buoyancy and keep the jellyfish swimming vertically.”

To test the augmented jellies’ swimming abilities, Dabiri’s lab undertook the construction of a massive vertical aquarium inside Caltech’s Guggenheim Laboratory. Dabiri explains that the three-story tank is tall, rather than wide, because researchers want to gather data on oceanic conditions far below the surface.

“In the ocean, the round trip from the surface down to several thousand meters will take a few days for the jellyfish, so we wanted to develop a facility to study that process in the lab,” Dabiri says. “Our vertical tank lets the animals swim against a flowing vertical current, like a treadmill for swimmers. We expect the unique scale of the facility — probably the first vertical water treadmill of its kind — to be useful for a variety of other basic and applied research questions.”

Swim tests conducted in the tank show that a jellyfish equipped with a combination of the swimming pacemaker and forebody can swim up to 4.5 times faster than an all-natural jelly while carrying a payload. The total cost is about $20 per jellyfish, Dabiri says, which makes biohybrid jellies an attractive alternative to renting a research vessel that can cost more than $50,000 a day to run.

“By using the jellyfish’s natural capacity to withstand extreme pressures in the deep ocean and their ability to power themselves by feeding, our engineering challenge is a lot more manageable,” Dabiri adds. “We still need to design the sensor package to withstand the same crushing pressures, but that device is smaller than a softball, making it much easier to design than a full submarine vehicle operating at those depths.

“I’m really excited to see what we can learn by simply observing these parts of the ocean for the very first time,” he adds.

Dabiri says future work may focus on further enhancing the bionic jellies’ abilities. Right now, they can only be made to swim faster in a straight line, such as the vertical paths being designed for deep ocean measurement. But further research may also make them steerable, so they can be directed horizontally as well as vertically.

Funding for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation and the Charles Lee Powell Foundation.