Why aren’t Americans living longer?

Some generations—especially late Gen X and early Millennials—are already experiencing worse mortality than those before them, according to a new analysis.

Despite major advances in medicine, US life expectancy barely budged in the 2010s, and it still lags that of other wealthy nations.

Researchers have pointed to rising “deaths of despair”—drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related deaths—and stalled progress against heart disease as potential causes, but no single explanation seemed to account for this troubling trend.

In a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Leah Abrams, an assistant professor of community health at Tufts University, and her collaborators from The University of Texas Medical Branch and several research European institutions examined death certificate data for US residents born between the 1890s and 1980s. The team analyzed changes in mortality from 1979 through 2023 across age groups and over time.

The researchers analyzed deaths from all causes and from three of the most common ones in the United States: cardiovascular disease, cancer, and so-called external causes, which include drug overdoses, suicides, homicides, and accidents. This allowed the researchers to see whether shortened life expectancy has a single driver or if multiple, overlapping crises are unfolding across generations.

The research reveals that some birth cohorts, particularly late Gen Xers and early Millennials, are already experiencing worse outcomes than their predecessors, including dying from diseases once rare in the young.

Here, Abrams digs into what the findings reveal about what we can learn from past decades of US mortality—and what they may signal for the country’s future:

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Watch: This robot hand is sensitive enough to pick up a potato chip

A new type of robotic hand developed has such sensitive touch that it can grasp objects as fragile as a potato chip or a raspberry without crushing them.

The technology, called Fragile Object Grasping with Tactile Sensing (FORTE), combines advanced tactile sensing with soft robotics.

The breakthrough could improve robot performance when a light touch is needed, such as in health care and manufacturing.

“Right now, robotics is starting to be able to do large motions around the house, but struggles with really fine and delicate movements,” says Siqi Shang, lead author of a new paper published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and a doctoral student in the the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering’s electrical and computer engineering department.

“Robots can fold a shirt but may struggle to carefully pick up your glasses or unpack fruit from your groceries. We believe sensing signals will give robots a sense of touch to handle these objects carefully.”

The fingers at the heart of this technology were inspired by the fin-ray effect—a design principle derived from the natural structure of fish fins. These fingers are made using advanced 3D-printing techniques and feature internal, empty air channels that act as tactile sensors. The researchers recently applied the sensing technology to a year-long collaboration with the College of Fine Arts’ theatre and dance department.

When the fingers prepare to grasp an object, the air channels inside them also shift, causing changes in air pressure. These pressure changes are detected by small, off-the-shelf sensors that provide real-time force feedback to the robot and let it know whether the object is slipping.

The researchers tested the grippers on 31 objects, including fragile items such as raspberries and potato chips, slippery items such as jam jars and billiard balls, and everyday items such as soup cans and apples.

The system achieved a 91.9% success rate in single-trial grasping experiments, outperforming traditional grippers that rely solely on visual feedback.

The system recognized 93% of slips with 100% precision, meaning it never falsely identified a slip event. This high level of precision ensures that the robot adjusts its grip only when necessary, avoiding excessive force that could damage an object.

“Humans pick up objects with just the right amount of force; too much and you’ll crush it, but too little and it’ll slip out of your hand,” says Lillian Chin, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UT.

“Most current force sensors aren’t fast or accurate enough to provide that Goldilocks level of detail. In particular, our sensors operate closer to the timescales of human hand sensors.”

In addition to speed and accuracy, these fingers have a longer lifespan than other devices under development. Because the sensors are 3D printed, they can be easily customized to a variety of shapes.

The slip-sensing ability is what really distinguishes them. Very few robotic gripping technologies have slip detection at all, and those that do can’t match FORTE’s reaction time and speed.

FORTE is a significant milestone in the quest to create robot hands with dexterity similar to that of humans, and it could affect many industries:

• In food processing, where handling fragile items such as fruits, vegetables, and baked goods is a daily challenge, more sensitive machinery could reduce waste and improve efficiency.
• In health care, robots could handle medical instruments or fragile biological samples with precision.
• In manufacturing, the technology could be used to handle delicate components, such as electronics or glassware.

The researchers have publicly released the hardware designs and algorithms to encourage other scientists and engineers to build upon their work. They’re still fine-tuning the technology, and the next steps include making the sensors less sensitive to temperature changes and improving the ability to catch objects that are slipping.

Support for the research came from the Texas Robotics Industrial Affiliate Program, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the DARPA TIAMAT program, and South Korea’s Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation.

Source: UT Austin

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The right kind of tennis courts can absorb a lot of carbon dioxide

Green clay tennis courts are able to absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide via enhanced rock weathering, according to a new study

Enhanced rock weathering—the process of using silicate rocks like basalt to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the rocks’ chemical reaction with rainfall—has emerged in recent years as a promising method of reducing carbon emissions.

Green clay tennis courts in the US are made of metabasalt, a type of basalt with similar properties allowing for carbon sequestration.

“To mitigate climate change, we need to scale new technologies in addition to leveraging already-existing processes and infrastructure. Enhanced rock weathering started in agriculture, and we are now seeing creative and broad-ranging applications such as on coastlines, golf courses, and now our work on tennis courts,” says Jonathan Lambertopens in a new tab, an earth scientist and visiting assistant professor at the New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Lambert and coauthor Frank J. Pavia, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, used a database of US tennis courts containing the location of the courts and the type of playing surface (hardcourt, clay, or grass) to calculate gross and net carbon sequestration rates. They analyzed data for 17,178 green clay courts.

They determined sequestration rates after factoring carbon emissions during mining and processing, transportation of materials to court locations, court construction, and maintenance. Carbon removal was calculated by factoring the type of basalt used, grain size of the rocks, court temperature, and chemical composition. They used similar models to estimate the emissions of hard courts.

The researchers found that the courts collectively remove approximately 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Among these courts, 80% of them reach net zero emissions fewer than 10 years after construction, and 92% of the courts reach net zero in fewer than 20 years. The median time for a green clay court to become net negative for carbon dioxide emissions is approximately 3.5 years.

Compared to ubiquitous hard courts, which are made of concrete and do not remove carbon through weathering, clay court construction emissions are 1.6 to 3 times lower, even before factoring in weathering.

Temperature and location for clay courts were strongly related to carbon sequestration as courts with the warmest temperatures and those closest to the primary basalt processing site in Virginia had the highest sequestration rates. A small number of courts (19) in the coldest regions and furthest away from the processing site likely never achieve net zero emissions.

“We see this work as a jumping off point for engaging and accessible climate solutions outreach, and also believe this strategy has legitimate potential to scale,” Lambert says.

“For new court construction, building a green clay court appears to have less climate impact than a hard court. Changes to the composition of the crushed rock on green clay courts and more advanced tracking of court maintenance could greatly increase the amount of carbon that can be verifiably sequestered. This provides a great opportunity to organizations and facilities that want to reduce their emissions.”

The research appears in Applied Geochemistry.

Source: NYU

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Nasal swab spots early signs of Alzheimer’s

In a new study, researchers show that a quick nasal swab can pick up early biological changes linked to Alzheimer’s, even before thinking and memory problems appear.

Alzheimer’s disease affects millions of people worldwide, yet the illness is hardest to catch at the very beginning, when new treatments may work best.

The new study in Nature Communications used a gentle swab placed high inside the nose to collect nerve and immune cells. When researchers analyzed these cells, they found clear patterns that separated people with early or diagnosed Alzheimer’s from those without the disease.

“We want to be able to confirm Alzheimer’s very early, before damage has a chance to build up in the brain,” says Bradley J. Goldstein, corresponding author and professor in the departments of head and neck surgery & communication sciences, cell biology ,and neurobiology at Duke University School of Medicine.

“If we can diagnose people early enough, we might be able to start therapies that prevent them from ever developing clinical Alzheimer’s,” Goldstein says.

The procedure to collect nasal cells took just a few minutes. After applying a numbing spray, a clinician guides a tiny brush into the upper part of the nose where smell-detecting nerve cells live. Researchers then study the collected cells to see which genes are active, a sign of what’s happening inside the brain.

The study compared samples from 22 participants, measuring the activity of thousands of genes across hundreds of thousands of individual cells, amounting to millions of data points. The nasal swab was able to pick up early shifts in nerve and immune cells. This includes people who showed lab-based signs of Alzheimer’s but had no symptoms yet.

A combined nose tissue gene score correctly separated early and clinical Alzheimer’s from healthy controls about 81% of the time.

Mary Umstead, a voluntary participant in the study, says she felt moved to join the research in honor of her late sister, Mariah Umstead.

“When the opportunity came along to be part of a research study, I just jumped at it because I would never want any family to have to go through that kind of loss that we went through with Mariah,” Mary says. “I would never want any patient to go through what she went through either.”

Mary says Mariah was 57 years old when she was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s, but her family started noticing signs of the disease long before she was diagnosed.

Current blood tests for Alzheimer’s detect markers that appear later in the disease process. By contrast, this nasal swab captures living nerve and immune activity and may provide an earlier, more direct look at disease‑related changes, helping identify people at risk sooner.

“Much of what we know about Alzheimer’s comes from autopsy tissue,” says Vincent M. D’Anniballe, the study’s first author and student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Duke.

“Now we can study living neural tissue, opening new possibilities for diagnosis and treatment.”

The Duke team, in collaboration with the Duke & UNC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, is now expanding the research to larger groups and exploring whether the swab could help track how well treatments are working over time. Duke has filed a US patent related to this approach.

Funding for this study came from the National Institutes of Health.

Source: Duke University

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Exercise prescription shows promise in fighting ‘chemo brain’

New research digs into the question of whether exercise can help with “chemo brain.”

Researchers recommended a tailored, scientifically validated exercise program to individuals receiving chemotherapy for cancer, and those who were on a two-week chemotherapy schedule and followed the exercise prescription were able to maintain their walking-step goals, use resistance bands, and stay mentally sharper compared to patients who did not exercise.

Led by Karen Mustian and Po-Ju Lin from the Wilmot Cancer Institute at the University of Rochester, the nationwide study on exercise and cancer is important because:

• Up to 75% of cancer patients report cancer-related cognitive difficulties or “chemo brain.” What is chemo brain? Patients report general brain fog, and trouble managing money, medications, or maintaining a household, for example. Although there is no gold standard treatment for chemo brain, studies have shown that consistent exercise may reduce it and improve executive functioning during and after cancer treatment.
• This study builds on prior research at Wilmot and elsewhere, showing that patients need only undertake mild-to-moderate exercise during cancer treatment to gain benefits. Exercise has an anti-inflammatory effect and promotes a healthy immune system, research confirms.
• In collaboration with American College of Sports Medicine exercise professionals, Mustian developed the exercise prescription (called EXCAP) used in this study. It was designed to provide safe exercise during chemotherapy, and to be practical, low-cost, home-based, and personalized to account for a patient’s physical abilities. It includes progressive aerobic walking and resistance band exercise prescriptions.

The study appears in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

How exercise helps

“This is a safe and simple exercise prescription that can be an important part of supportive care for anyone going through chemotherapy,” says Mustian, dean’s professor of Surgery, Cancer Control, and associate director of Population Science at Wilmot.

“Cancer care providers should educate their patients about home-based options such as walking and resistance band exercises as part of optimal care, and when needed they should refer patients to exercise oncology specialists can tailor programs to individual capabilities,” she says.

In this phase 3 clinical trial, researchers reported secondary outcomes from an earlier trial that enrolled nearly 700 patients from 20 community oncology clinics across the US, who were all receiving chemotherapy for the first time for a variety of cancers.

They were randomized into two groups: standard care without exercise, or the six-week exercise prescription while undergoing chemotherapy. All participants recorded daily steps and exercises.

Prior to receiving chemotherapy, all patients walked an average of 4,000 to 4,500 steps a day. (During chemotherapy, people without a formal exercise prescription typically walk less due to fatigue, weakness, nausea, or other factors, the researchers note.)

In this study, many individuals in the exercise group were able to maintain their usual daily steps while taking chemotherapy, while those who were in the standard-care-without-exercise group reduced their daily steps by 53%.

Patients who exercised while on chemo reported they were also mentally sharper.

Lin believes that having a structured exercise prescription seems to be essential to a good outcome.

“It was striking to find that without a structured exercise prescription, patients receiving chemotherapy reduce their daily walking by half and experience notable increases in problems with thinking, memory, and mental fatigue,” says Lin, a research assistant professor and member of Wilmot’s Cancer Prevention and Control research program.

Why did some patients benefit Mmore?

The benefits of exercise while on chemo applied mostly to patients who received their treatment every two weeks, as opposed to patients who were getting chemotherapy on three- or four-week cycles.

Scientists are not sure why.

“This needs to be researched further, but speculating, the patients on two-week cycles of chemotherapy may be getting drugs that have different toxicities and less-severe side effects, which may allow them to remain more active,” Mustian says.

“Once a person starts lowering their activity levels, it is more difficult to get back to their baseline activity or maintain it. It may be possible that patients receiving chemotherapy on the three- or four-week cycles were experiencing more toxicity and more side effects.”

Lin emphasizes that regardless of the chemotherapy schedule, “non-pharmacologic” interventions, such as exercise, cognitive training, and mindfulness, are important for managing brain fog because they are safe, easy to use, and can often be delivered at low cost or even at home compared with expensive or clinic-based treatments.

The study was carried out through a unique mechanism: The University of Rochester/National Cancer Institute Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Research Base, which is a nationwide translational science network to conduct clinical trials.

Source: University of Rochester

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Is March Madness bracket success all luck?

Is picking a good March Madness bracket skill or luck?

In psychology, the concept of the illusion of control refers to the phenomenon where people believe their choices strongly affect an outcome, even though chance is doing most of the work.

The illusion of control is on full display during March Madness, where millions of people pick favorites and upsets as they fill out their bracket. So-called experts will offer their picks, and their choices feel smart but, in the end, luck still decides most of what happens. One bad game, one lucky shot, one untimely injury can bust a bracket.

Are people who accurately predict game outcomes good at what they do? Albert Cohen, director of Michigan State University’s graduate certificate in sports analytics, says that may be the case, but luck always factors into success in picking a bracket.

Cohen is director of the Actuarial Science Program, as well as a senior academic specialist in the College of Natural Science’s math department and the statistics and probability department. And while it may seem counterintuitive, statistics and actuarial science are more closely related to sports than you might think.

Here, Cohen digs into the illusion of control and how it applies to March Madness:

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Why people still care about the Oscars

A film professor has answers for you about the enduring influence of the Oscars.

“And the Oscar goes to…”

Those are the words many will tune in to hear on March 15 for the 98th Academy Awards. But the number of people viewing the broadcast is far below the peak—55 million watched in 1998 when Titanic won best picture. Last year the ceremony drew 18 million viewers.

Still, the Academy Awards haven’t lost their hold on us.

Below, David Tarleton, professor of film and chair of the film and media arts department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, breaks down the Oscars’ enduring influence and changes happening within the Academy to draw in viewers.

Still the pinnacle

Tarleton says the Oscars’ cultural influence starts with what the awards do for the people who win them.

“It makes people’s careers,” he says. “There are lots of cases of people where the Oscar is central to why an actor or filmmaker had the career they did. Frankly, even being nominated for an Oscar makes an enormous difference in terms of box office. That’s been true throughout the history of motion pictures, and it’s certainly true even today.”

An Oscar win can mean doubling your salary or more on your next project, he says.

“In the entertainment industry, it’s still enormously important and significant,” Tarleton says. “It’s still very much the pinnacle of awards.”

Tarleton says there have always been movies very few people see, until they win an Academy Award. The 2022 film Everything Everywhere All At Once, which started as a small project might have come and gone quietly, he says. Instead, it became an indie hit and took home seven Oscars.

“It was in the context of the Oscars that it became as big as it did,” he says.

More than movies

There’s no question the way people engage with the Oscars has evolved with the media landscape, Tarleton says. There are viewers who only tune in for the elements around the event—the ecosystem around the red carpet and the fashion or memes or highlights the next day.

“There’s all these other components to it,” he says. “The movies themselves are only part of it.”

There also is a generational divide for viewers that Tarleton says rivals the cultural age split seen in the 1960s.

“There’s this enormous difference between younger people and older people in terms of media consumption and who is famous to you?” he says. “Your average 50-year-old probably doesn’t know who Mr. Beast is, but your average 14-year-old certainly does. The opposite is also true—to what extent are movie stars important celebrities to younger people?”

The divide is part of a broader shift for the film industry that goes beyond the Oscars, he says. Theatrical attendance has been declining across all demographics for years, and the rise of streaming has fundamentally changed how people relate to movies.

“While I still personally appreciate watching movies in the theater, when you have a 75-inch TV and a decent sound system at home—with no need to pay for parking, a babysitter, or $18 popcorn—the case for leaving the house gets harder to make,” Tarleton says.

Yet, the Oscars still require a theatrical release as a condition for eligibility. Tarleton says he doesn’t see the Motion Picture Academy changing the requirement any time soon, since it’s part of how it maintains the allure of the Oscars’ exclusivity.

“I see the Academy more likely wanting to limit eligibility to theatrically released films more, to make it a little bit harder probably, rather than easier,” Tarleton says.

“Whether or not that works for them, we’ll have to see in the long term. Because the challenge is, if people aren’t going to the movie theater, are not seeing these movies in that way as much, does that make the Oscars even less relevant? That’s the danger.”

Evolving carefully

Tarleton says it’s clear the Academy knows it has work to do. Starting in 2029, the awards show will be exclusively streamed on YouTube. New categories have been added, and there’s awareness around pacing and creating moments during the ceremony that translate to social media.

The Oscars have also become more international, with non-English language films appearing more regularly—a shift Tarleton says reflects real changes in Academy membership and voting.

The Oscars are a measure of what members of the Academy thought best during any given year. Because of how the Academy typically admits new members—Oscar nominees can automatically join, or by being sponsored by existing members, not application—the average age of its membership is generally older. Which means the tastes tend to be more artistically conservative.

“Very young people aren’t usually represented at all, because generally it’s people who have gotten to a certain point in their careers, doing the kind of work that’s getting nominated, in order to be invited to join the Academy,” Tarleton says.

But recent movements, like the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, also brought in new members.

“There’s been a number of things that have opened up the Academy to a more diverse group of people, and that really helps in terms of the kind of work that’s being seen,” Tarleton says.

Whether the work the Academy is doing is enough to bring in new, younger audiences, remains to be seen.

“There’s no question that viewership is less in terms of real numbers, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not still significant in terms of cultural prestige or the aura around it,” Tarleton says. “Hollywood is very good at selling glamour.”

Source: Syracuse University

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