Your neighborhood may be aging you at the cellular level

Researchers have determined that neighborhood conditions may be driving aging at the cellular level.

Their study in Social Science and Medicine finds that people living in neighborhoods with fewer social and economic opportunities such as jobs and stable housing are more likely to have an abundance of CDKN2A RNA, a measure of cellular aging.

“Our health is shaped not only by individual behaviors, but also by the environments we live in,” says Mariana Rodrigues, a PhD student at New York University’s School of Global Public Health and the study’s first author.

“This study suggests that structural conditions may become biologically embedded and influence aging processes over time.”

Neighborhood factors such as green spaces, clean air, jobs, well-resourced schools, and affordable housing can influence our well-being. Studies show that people living in areas lacking these opportunities have a higher risk of chronic disease and shorter life expectancies, but less is known about the impact on health and aging at a cellular level.

As cells age, they stop dividing but remain metabolically active and secrete substances that fuel inflammation. These cellular changes are connected to frailty and aging-related diseases. Measures of cellular senescence—an indicator of biological aging—include: CDKN2A RNA abundance, which is involved in halting cell division; DNA damage response, reflecting genomic instability; and senescence-associated secretory phenotypes, which activate inflammatory pathways.

To understand the connection between neighborhood factors and cellular aging, the researchers analyzed data from 1,215 American adults in the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, including blood samples measuring four molecular markers of cellular aging. They also assessed neighborhood opportunity based on a participant’s census tract using the Childhood Opportunity Index 3, which calculates 44 location-specific measures of education (e.g., test scores and graduation rates), health and environment (e.g., air and water quality, walkability, and health insurance coverage), and social and economic resources (e.g., employment, homeownership, and income).

The researchers found that people living in low-opportunity neighborhoods had significantly elevated CDKN2A RNA, even after accounting for other socioeconomic, health, and lifestyle factors. The association between neighborhood opportunity and CDKN2A expression was strongest for social and economic factors, meaning that cellular senescence may be driven by a neighborhood’s lower social and economic opportunity rather than by a lack of education, health, or environmental factors.

“Stressors related to income, jobs, and housing are not occasional, but persistent conditions that shape daily life,” says Adolfo Cuevas, associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at NYU School of Global Public Health and the study’s senior author.

“Our findings suggest that chronic stress caused by economic deprivation and limited mobility may be the primary driver of cellular aging.”

The researchers hope that future studies will hone in on community-related factors that could buffer against health risks and continue to examine how neighborhood conditions influence aging over time, which could help pinpoint critical windows of exposure.

However, they note that many environmental factors that influence health are structural—”not things we can fix as individuals, but rather, what we should be addressing as a society,” noted Rodrigues.

“Improving neighborhood conditions, particularly social and economic resources, may be important for promoting healthy aging and reducing health disparities, but if we really want to address health disparities and improve health for everyone, it’s important to consider what needs to be changed at the structural level,” says Rodrigues.

Additional study authors are from the NYU School of Global Public Health as well as the University of California, Los Angeles.

Support for this work came from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Source: New York University

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How does narcissism affect relationships?

New research challenges the popular assumption that narcissists gradually damage their relationships over time.

The study used longitudinal data to track over 5,000 couples for up to six years. Participants completed questionnaires that measured two dimensions of narcissism: narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry.

“Narcissists have two different ways to maintain their inflated positive self-perceptions,” says Gwendolyn Seidman, lead author of the study and associate professor in Michigan State University’s psychology department.

“They can puff themselves up by trying to impress others (narcissistic admiration) or they can put other people down to show they are superior to them (narcissistic rivalry).”

Published in the Journal of Personality, the study found that narcissistic rivalry traits were consistently linked to lower relationship satisfaction for both partners, but contrary to earlier research, narcissistic admiration had no meaningful effect on either partner’s satisfaction.

In addition, the study found that the rate of decline was no steeper for couples where one partner scored highly on narcissism. This suggests that long-term effects of narcissism on romantic relationships may unfold in ways that are more nuanced than previously thought.

The study also looked at couples who had been together for a year or less—and found that narcissistic traits showed no association with satisfaction at all.

“People often assume that narcissists are charming at first but gradually damage their relationships over time. Our findings suggest that the reality may be more complicated,” says Seidman.

“Perhaps there is some turning point in the relationship where things change and satisfaction nosedives or perhaps the ‘honeymoon’ phase with narcissists is longer. Another possibility is that the harm caused by narcissists doesn’t show up directly in their partners’ overall relationship satisfaction. For example, narcissists may gradually erode their partners’ self-esteem or sense of agency.”

The researchers hope that by understanding how personality traits shape relationship experiences, clinicians and other researchers can better understand why some relationships struggle and how partners influence each other’s well-being over time.

Source: Michigan State University

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New nasal flu vaccine shows promise in mice

Researchers have developed a new vaccine platform to bring about broad, protective immunity against numerous influenza virus infections that’s showing promise as an effective vaccine strategy, according to a new study.

The study in the journal ACS Nano used cell-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) as a vaccine platform to display various human and avian influenza hemagglutinins (HAs) in an upside-down manner on the EV surfaces.

The inverted HA tends to present the conserved HA stalk to the immune system to induce cross-protective influenza immunity while hiding the highly variable HA head to avoid strain-specific immunity.

The investigators used mice to evaluate cellular and mucosal immune responses induced by the multiple HA EV vaccines. HA is a major influenza surface glycoprotein. EVs are natural nanoparticles that facilitate cell-to-cell communications.

The researchers found that EV-based inverted HA vaccines hold great promise for developing universal influenza vaccines that target a mucosal route.

Developing innovative vaccine platforms and delivery strategies to induce protective immunity against diverse influenza virus strains in the respiratory tract is crucial for preventing influenza infection and transmission in potential epidemics and pandemics.

Mucosal vaccination effectively induces local immune responses, protecting against respiratory virus infections at the site of invasion. Although various mucosal vaccines have been studied for intranasal administration against respiratory virus infections in clinical trials, FluMist (MedImmune and AstraZeneca) remains the only FDA-approved mucosal influenza vaccine. Creating an effective mucosal vaccination strategy that elicits robust mucosal immune responses while minimizing safety concerns is still urgently needed.

“The influenza virus is smart. They have evolved to evade the immune system by hiding their critical conserved structures, rendering these elements poorly immunogenic,” says Bao-Zhong Wang, senior author of the study and a professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.

“These results highlight that the inverted HA is a smarter strategy for inducing protective immunity to the conserved HA stalk. Meanwhile, cell-origin EVs are a biocompatible platform for mucosal vaccine delivery. Using EVs simultaneously displaying multiple inverted HAs is a powerful approach for developing universal influenza vaccines.”

The investigators determined that immunization with the multiple HA-EV vaccine elicited cross-reactive antibodies against influenza HA stalks and viruses, robust virus-specific cellular immune responses and a balanced Th1/Th2 immune profile.

“Intranasal immunization with multiple inverted HA-EV vaccines conferred complete protection against lethal heterosubtypic challenges with H7N9 and H5N1 reassortants,” says Wandi Zhu, first author of the study and a research assistant professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Source: Georgia State University

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Listen: Could AI predict extreme weather events?

What if we could predict the world’s most dangerous weather events—not days, but weeks in advance?

Extreme events like heat waves, hurricanes, and floods cause massive loss of life and billions in damage, but they’re also some of the hardest events for traditional weather forecasting to predict.

In this episode of the Big Brains podcast, Associate Professor Pedram Hassanzadeh of the University of Chicago explains why forecasting extreme weather has long pushed science to its limits—and how a new wave of AI models could transform the field at a time when climate change is making these events more common.

By learning directly from decades of atmospheric data, these systems can generate forecasts faster, more cheaply, and in some cases more accurately than traditional models—and could one day predict freak “gray swan” weather events no one has ever seen.

Listen to the episode here:

Source: University of Chicago

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How to dye your Easter eggs naturally

Dying Easter eggs is an age-old tradition, but many Americans are looking for a more natural way to get those signature pastel colors, particularly with the US Food and Drug Administration’s recent push for fewer synthetic dyes in food.

Melissa Wright, director of Virginia Tech’s Food Producer Technical Assistance Network in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has advice on how to use ingredients you might already have in your kitchen to safely and naturally dye eggs this year.

“There are many foods that can impart color to eggshells,” Wright says.

“Yellow coloring can come from saffron, turmeric, or carrots; red or pink from beets, raspberries, or blueberries; green from spinach or matcha; and blue from purple cabbage.”

Not only can Easter egg dyes be a fun food science experiment, but they also don’t prevent you from having a tasty snack at the end of the process.

“There is nothing about dying eggs that makes them unsafe for consumption,” Wright says. “You should consider how the eggs are stored, however, to make sure they remain safe to eat. Once you have hard boiled an egg, the protective coating is removed from the shell, which leaves pores in the shell for bacteria to enter.”

Whether using dyed eggs for a hunt or a snack, it is still important to keep food safety guidelines in mind to ensure no one gets sick.

“Hard boiled eggs should be consumed within one week of preparation,” Wright says. “They should be kept under refrigeration temperatures of less than 40 degrees Fahrenheit until consumption. Any eggs, hard-boiled or raw, used for an Easter egg hunt should not be consumed if they are outside of refrigeration temperatures for more than two hours, or one hour if the outside temperature is above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Wright suggests the following process for naturally dying Easter eggs:

• Prepare the coloring solutions first by adding the chosen ingredient(s) to water and boiling. More water will result in a diluted color, while less water will result in a more concentrated color.
• Remove the solids using a strainer, slotted spoon, or by filtering them out.
• Add a teaspoon of white vinegar to each color solution to help the color adhere to the shell of the eggs.
• Prepare your hard boiled eggs by covering them in a pot with cold water and bringing the whole pot to a rolling boil of at least 212 F. Remove from the heat and let the eggs cook for 15 minutes. Remove the eggs from the water and cool them quickly in an ice bath, then dry and refrigerate them until ready to decorate.
• After ensuring your eggs are dry, place them in your chosen color or color mixture. The longer the eggs are in the dye solution, the darker the color will be.

Source: Virginia Tech

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What you should know about Iran’s cyber threats

As US strikes on Iran continue, questions are mounting about the risk of retaliatory cyberattacks on American infrastructure.

Alex K. Jones is the electrical engineering department chair and a professor in Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Here, he breaks down the realistic threat landscape—from water systems and power grids to the looming question of quantum computing—and explains what organizations can do to protect themselves:

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Plants use this trick to survive extreme stress

Researchers have identified a mechanism that allows plants to rapidly slow growth in response to extreme environmental stress.

The finding could help farmers grow more resilient crops. One researcher even continued the work years into retirement to uncover it.

The rapid response system is based on a process inside plant cells that produces compounds needed for growth, development, and survival. If even one of the key enzymes in this process fails, the plant cannot live.

Under stress conditions such as intense light, this biological pathway behaves in an unexpected manner. Rather than being governed by changes in gene expression, a standard mechanism in biology, it is modulated instantly through direct alterations in enzyme activity.

In most living things, cells adjust their RNA levels to alter protein production, which then changes the balance of other important molecules. But this process takes time that plants may not have when faced with sudden light or heat stress.

In plants, the response is much faster. Stress directly alters the activity of enzymes already present in the cell, allowing leaves to respond immediately without waiting for new proteins to be made.

“This kind of response has to be immediate,” says Katie Dehesh, UC Riverside distinguished professor of molecular biochemistry. “Changing gene expression takes time, but modifying enzyme activity allows the plant to react right away and survive.”

Reactive oxygen molecules interfere with the enzymes, reducing their activity and slowing the pathway. At the same time, new compounds build up, blocking earlier steps in the process and preventing some enzymes from working efficiently.

The immediate effect is protective. By limiting the pathway’s output, the plant reduces production of growth-related compounds, effectively pausing development while it copes with stress.

Over time, a second phase begins as the plant adjusts its internal machinery to prolonged stress. These longer-term changes help the plant adapt, but often at a cost, redirecting resources away from growth and resulting in smaller or slower development.

There have been many efforts to engineer plants to increase crop yields and drought tolerance as well as produce valuable molecules like carotenoids, which protect against damage. However, these engineering efforts often fail because they did not account for the two-stage response identified by the Dehesh laboratory and described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The breakthrough was the result of painstaking work led by Mien van de Ven, a former lab manager and research supervisor who continued contributing to the project even after retiring. She systematically measured intermediate compounds at each step of the pathway, even though they are present in extremely small amounts.

“There were both conceptual and experimental challenges,” Dehesh says. “The metabolites are at very low levels, and even identifying them required careful, step-by-step work.”

The team’s progress began with an unexpected clue. A mutation in one enzyme caused plants to grow smaller without dying. Following this lead, the researchers analyzed each step of the pathway and discovered that one downstream compound accumulated at unusually high levels.

They eventually determined why. The compound binds to an upstream enzyme, blocking it and slowing the entire pathway.

Proving this interaction was technically difficult. The team had to isolate delicate enzymes and recreate the right conditions for them to function outside the plant. Even then, the work was challenging. Proteins can become unstable outside their natural environment, and excess materials can interfere with measurements.

“It took a lot of time to get all the components working together under the right conditions,” van de Ven says.

The work culminated in a clearer picture of how plants balance survival and growth under stress. Because similar pathways exist in bacteria, the findings may reflect a broader strategy used by living organisms to respond to environmental change.

The research also has practical applications. Enhancing this natural pathway could help scientists develop crops that are more resilient to drought and high light as well as temperature extremes and salinity.

Equally notable is the path to the discovery. Van de Ven continued working on the project for two years after retiring, returning to the lab to complete key experiments.

“She just kept going,” Dehesh says. “It shows how much impact one person can have on science through dedication.”

For van de Ven, now enjoying baking and line dancing in retirement, the decision was simple: finish what she started.

“I didn’t know it would take as long as it did,” van de Ven says. “But it was worth continuing to see it through.”

Source: UC Riverside

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