Science & Health

Infographic: Beyond the Bluebird Sky

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Infographic: Beyond the Bluebird Sky Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 00:00

With at least eight institutions dedicated to solar and space physics, the city of Boulder is a global mecca for science related to the sun. Since the end of World War II, CU has made major contributions to this research. In 1946, solar labs existed on campus, and today the East Campus houses the National Solar Observatory (NSO), the national center for ground-based solar physics, which is building the largest solar telescope in the world.

��񱦵� Collaboration

The NSO and ��񱦵� share three joint faculty positions, each specializing in solar astrophysics.

Ivan Milic researches solar atmosphere by viewing polarized spectra.
Maria Kazachenko researches how eruptions on the sun work
Adam Kowalski researches solar flares.

Photo credit: NASA; Information Sources: NSO, NASA, NSF, Maria Kazachenko, Adam Kowalski

Infographic text

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is the world’s largest solar telescope. The telescope contains a four-meter primary mirror, the largest of any solar telescope. It’s located in Hawaii on the summit of Haleakala, Maui, with its data center at ��񱦵�.

The sun is the only star that we can look at with a high spacial resolution and understand its life cycles and moods. The sun’s atmosphere is hotter than the surface (more than 1 million degrees vs. 5,500 degrees).

The sun is the largest object within our solar system, comprising 99.8 percent of the system’s mass. Northern Lights occur when the sun’s charged particles hit Earth’s atmosphere during a solar storm.

Funded by the National Science Foundation

The DKIST is located on land of spiritual and cultural significance to Native Hawaiian people. The use of this important site to further scientific knowledge is done so with appreciation and respect.

With at least eight institutions dedicated to solar and space physics, the city of Boulder is a global mecca for science related to the sun.

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Sweat Effects

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Sweat Effects Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 00:00

90%

Approximate amount of time people spend indoors

Person exercising emits as many chemicals as five resting people

Additional airborne compounds created from sweat-produced amino acids and bleach products

Unique compounds directly emitted from people exercising in gyms

Unique compounds originating from personal care products released by people exercising

78%

of deodorant applied in the morning evaporates from the body by noon

Human sweat and bleach cleaners mix to create new airborne chemicals in gyms. A CU study from Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) says this could affect air quality.

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Frozen in Ice, Frozen in Time

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Frozen in Ice, Frozen in Time Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 00:00

Kelsey Simpkins

A CU team froze their ship in Arctic ice in the name of science and storytelling.

When the sea ice shifted beneath him, sending a crack straight between his two feet, Matthew Shupe didn’t panic.

He calmly looked at his precious scientific equipment — installed only four feet away — and debated the merits of moving or leaving it. This was just one of the daily dilemmas he and his team faced atop the Arctic Ocean.

Tomorrow, they would head out onto the ice and do it all again.

In fact, Shupe (MAtmos’06; PhD’07) was in one of the safest places in the world at the time. As the COVID-19 pandemic developed and spread across the world in late 2019 into 2020, he and hundreds of others purposely froze themselves into the Arctic Ocean sea ice on the RV Polarstern, thousands of miles from land. Their only unplanned visitors were the occasional wandering polar bear or fox.

The crew conducted groundbreaking scientific research, studying everything from the atmosphere above their heads to the sea ice beneath their feet during the largest expedition of its kind in history. MOSAiC, the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate, was an international effort led by the Alfred Wegener Institute with a mission to gather as much data as possible about the Arctic while deliberately stuck in it.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the scientists on board, and for science worldwide, as climate change rapidly threatens the existence of Arctic sea ice, which may disappear entirely in the summer by 2035.

An Icy Oasis

MOSAiC was an international feat and the culmination of more than 12 years of work. The expedition was modeled on Shupe’s first time in the Arctic 22 years ago, when he spent seven months on a ship frozen in sea ice.

But MOSAiC had many more moving pieces. Shupe, who co-coordinated the expedition, and his colleagues gathered funding from 20 nations and made sure that over 400 people — many of whom had never been to the Arctic before — could travel to and from the RV Polarstern on one or more of the five transports that occured between September 2019 and October 2020.

Scientists from 37 nations covering different disciplines and a wide range of career stages — including 35 researchers from ��񱦵� and its Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies (CIRES) — came together for this once-in-a-lifetime chance to tell stories of the Arctic.

“It didn’t matter if you were from China, Russia, the U.S. or Germany. We were all a team,” said Shupe, senior research scientist at CIRES and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “It teaches us about humans and our ability to work together on shared priorities and interests.”

Researchers brought cutting-edge technologies to the ice, opening new avenues of scientific insight and gathering almost a thousand different types of measurements. Atmospheric scientists like Shupe worked alongside those who study everything from physics to biology, a rare interdisciplinary experience in the Arctic that will allow for deeper insight into the data.

Transporting five groups of crewmembers back and forth safely during a global pandemic — without an outbreak on the ship — was perhaps the most ambitious scientific experiment of the entire expedition.

While most of the world was living in quarantine, the isolated researchers only wore masks to guard their faces from the cold. They could hug each other, shake hands and share meals indoors. “There were days I did not think one bit about the virus,” said Shupe.

The first time Gina Jozef (PhDAtmos’24) heard about COVID-19, she was sitting in a hotel lobby in Tromso, Norway. It was January 2020 and MOSAiC’s third crew was preparing to head north on a resupply vessel to the Polarstern. The latest news about the virus flashed across the lobby TV: still mostly in China.

“I remember thinking, I hope that doesn't get to the U.S., but it's probably fine,” recalls Jozef, laughing nervously in hindsight. “Getting on the ship and starting an expedition, I had no thoughts that anything would be disrupted.”

In the weeks to come, she would find herself and many others huddled in the stairwell of the resupply ship, searching for a signal on WhatsApp to find out how quickly the world south of them was changing. It was taking twice as long as expected to reach the Polarstern and Jozef feared they might have to turn back. Luckily, and despite arriving behind schedule, their leg of the mission was extended.

Everyday Adventures

Jozef and her team, who needed to gather meteorological measurements of the atmosphere, were initially threatened by minus 40°F temperatures. Luckily they resumed their drone flight work when it warmed up to a balmy minus 22°F.

“Every single day was a new, very exciting adventure,” said Jozef. “You never knew what was going to happen when you stepped on the ice.”

She kept busy gathering data out on the ice, but there were weeks when Jozef was left wondering how they would ever return home.

“I realized, there's nothing I can do. But what can I do to make the best of this moving forward?” Jozef said. “It’s improved my ability to just accept things and not try to fight the situation, which was very helpful in these times.”

Most days the air was thick with fog, a challenge not only for the scientists but also for the photographers and filmmakers on board.

Tasked with documenting the work on board to educate the public about MOSAiC’s scientific mission, Amy Richman (MFA’19), who filmed the first leg of the expedition, struggled to keep camera batteries warm long enough to capture key shots. Lianna Nixon (Class’17; MEdu’21), who filmed and photographed the mission for CIRES and the Alfred Wegener Institute, fell through the ice more than once — but only up to her knees.

Despite the ever-present challenges, Nixon was inspired to capture “the joy and passion of scientists on the field every day.” “We were out there to get the story of the Arctic, and then tell that story and what might happen to the Arctic using the data,” said Jackson Osborne, an associate scientist for CIRES during MOSAiC.

Telling the Arctic Story

With the mission complete and the crew home, they face a new kind of challenge: a world still facing the effects of COVID-19.

Nixon remembers the last time she could hug anyone freely. In October, crewmates squeezed each other tight knowing that once they left the ship, they would enter a socially distanced world.

Now, MOSAiC’s legacy lives on through its data, its relationships and its eye-opening message for the public.

“We’re all part of the Arctic story, no matter where we live. And I think that we have a responsibility now that scientists have brought back this knowledge to continue to be part of that narrative,” said Nixon.

For Shupe, the planning and fieldwork is done, but a wealth of data now waits to be explored — a crucial part of the scientific process.

“There’s so many fantastic stories in that data that we just have to reveal, we have to find them,” said Shupe. “Now is a time to really look forward to.”

MOSAiC was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Photos by Lianna Nixon

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How to Cope in a Pandemic

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:00:00 +0000

How to Cope in a Pandemic Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 00:00

Doug McPherson

Reneé Crown Wellness Institute

The Renée Crown Wellness Institute at ��񱦵� opened in 2019 to perform research and offer programs that develop healthy young people and the adults who support them. It recently unveiled the following resources on its website related to COVID-19 and mental health:

WOW Podcasts: Listen to a series of words-of-wellness (WOW) podcasts featuring faculty experts and students who explore health, society and wellness.

Wellness Practice Tools:Explore booklet and audio sessions that cover wellness practices like compassion, emotions, relationships, mindfulness and more.

Online Courses: Take a virtual class like “Health, Society and Wellness in COVID-19 Times” or "Compassion & Dignity for Educators."

Studies: Access research and studies that explore strategies for wellness such as behavioral activation skills, meditation and more.

Visit Crown Institute

CU psychology professors share tools to improve mental health amid COVID-19.

As the world plunged into the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Sona Dimidjian knew a parallel and more silent crisis was brewing in mental health.

Dimidjian, a ��񱦵� psychology professor, immediately saw a trifecta of trouble: COVID-19 disrupted our basic daily routines, upended socializing and delivered a flood of uncertainty.

“People were challenged to navigate each of those issues right from the get-go, and we know they’ve led to more depression, anxiety, substance abuse, domestic violence ... a whole host of problems,” said Dimidjian, also the director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute, which focuses on research and programs to develop healthy young adults.

The statistics back her up. A September 2020 survey from the Colorado Health Foundation found 53% of Coloradans reported anxiety, loneliness or stress related to COVID-19.

Dimidjian and her CU colleagues say there are simple, research-based strategies that can offer relief.

“Good science is our guide, and my team has been doing research on how to treat and prevent these issues for the last 20 years,” Dimidjian said. “The good news is that the lessons learned are very relevant to the challenges we face today.”

Behavioral Activation

The first coping strategy, called behavioral activation (BA), is based on the idea that you can change how you feel by changing what you do. Studies have shown it can sometimes quell depression just as well as medication. That’s why Dimidjian also calls BA “behavioral antidepressants.”

“We know that being involved in activities that give us a sense of accomplishment, enjoyment and control is critical to a positive mood,” she said.

BA invites people to research the connection between their daily habits and moods: Which activities are draining? Which ones add pleasure, enjoyment or a sense of mastery? BA participants then add at least one pleasurable and one mastery activity to their schedule every day to make them a normal part of their lives.

Dimidjian is seeing BA work — even without the aid of mental health professionals — in research at the Crown Institute, where new and expectant women suffering from perinatal depression help each other apply BA skills.

Erin Wood, research participant and mother of two from Franktown, Colorado, said she found BA helpful not only during and after pregnancy, but also as the pandemic unfolded.

“Even though I didn’t have to take a shower or get dressed, it was important to feel like I was accomplishing something,” Wood said.

Acknowledgement

The second coping tool is to acknowledge how the pandemic is disrupting your life.

“It’s normal to grieve for lost experiences, to feel uncertain about the future and to be angry about the state of the world,” said Roselinde Kaiser, assistant professor in CU’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. “These emotions don’t make us weak, flawed or powerless. Understand that stress — even coronavirus-related stress — can be an opportunity for new growth.”

June Gruber, director of CU’s Positive Emotion and Psychopathology Lab, said negative emotions — fear, anger or sadness — are normal.

“Instead of suppressing or criticizing yourself for those emotions, accepting them as being valid may stave off spiraling into more clinically significant symptoms of depression or anxiety,” Gruber said.

Kaiser suggests that after acknowledging your emotions, you can reflect on and list the issues affecting your emotions and thoughts.

Then, inventory your best coping strategies and responses to stress: “Think about what’s worked well for you in the past and why it was successful,” Kaiser said.

Next, brainstorm how you might adjust your coping strategies to the pandemic. If exercise helps but your gym is closed, see if you can find a workout online.

Finally, approach it like an experiment. “You’re testing new ways of building wellness,” Kaiser said. “Some will work better than others.”

Mindfulness

Dimidjian said a third tool, mindfulness, is a way to stay grounded in the present moment. “Mindfulness helps us become aware of our thinking patterns and reorients us toward the present,” she said. “And that frees us from that sense of dread about the future.”

To become more mindful, Dimidjian suggests taking a few minutes each day to notice your breath, sensations in your body and any anxious or upsetting thoughts. Learning to pay attention to what you’re doing — whether it’s eating, walking or listening to music — and noticing when your attention wanes is what makes a mindful life, she said.

Kaiser added that even though the pandemic has led to “a profound disruption” to daily life and routines, humans can learn to cope.

“You may find that you discover new resilience-boosting skills that serve you not only during the pandemic but for years to come,” she said.

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, chat with a representative at suicidepreventionlifeline. org/chat, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.

Illustration by Brian Stauffer

Updated on April 21, 2021. A previous version of this story reported that 77% of Coloradans reported anxiety, loneliness or stress related to COVID-19.

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Healthcare at Home

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 17:40:00 +0000

Healthcare at Home Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/01/2020 - 11:40

Christie Sounart

��񱦵� computer science assistant professor Mirela Alistar wants to make healthcare more personal. Her work with microfluidic biochips is getting us there. Here, the director of the ATLAS Institute’s Living Matter Lab discusses her biochips, in-home testing and melding science with art.

What brought you to CU?

I was ready to start my own research group, so I embarked on an exciting journey of applying to more than 100 universities for a faculty position. While interviewing all over the world, I was impressed with the interdisciplinarity of ATLAS Institute, with CU’s ambition and drive to support young faculty and with Boulder’s natural beauty and progressive culture. Needless to say, choosing ��񱦵� was the easiest decision I ever made.

What is your main intention with the Living Matter Lab?

As the name says, I am interested in living matter, especially in its non-human form. In the Living Matter Lab, we explore the connection between humans and the life around us by focusing on personal healthcare. Specifically, we are investigating how far we can push healthcare into the hands of people by the means of technology. To do this, we develop biochip instruments that can be used at home by people for various medical applications.

Can you describe these instruments?

Biochips are small electronic devices that manipulate droplets of fluids by executing bio-protocols — programs that move, split and mix droplets containing chemical compounds (reagents). Biochips automate processes traditionally performed in wet labs. The key advantage of biochips is that they are adaptable, thus capable of running different bio-protocols. Instead of going to a specialist, a patient can download a bio-protocol.

Why do we need biochips?

Microfluidics is the engineering that figures out how to manipulate fluids in very small amounts, at micro level. You see, fluids at large scale — the coffee in your cup, the water coming from the tap — behave very differently than when in very small amounts. To give you an idea of how small we are talking, the size of a rain droplet is about 20 microliters [one-millionth of a liter] and that is around the maximum size approached with microfluidics. Such tiny amounts of fluids are hard to manipulate because they have a strong surface tension that has to be overcome. Biochip instruments are able to manipulate such droplets in the picoliter [a trillionth of a liter] range.

What sort of tests might people perform with these?

Biochips have been shown to be able to perform basic tests, such as detecting the glucose levels on physiological fluids such as blood, saliva, urine and serum. We are working on developing a procedure that allows biochips to test for bacterial and viral infections.

Mirela Alistar

Could these biochips detect coronaviruses or other viral infections?

I am working on developing biochips that can perform ELISA [enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay], a standard procedure used to detect viral infections. ELISA is currently used as one of the methods of testing for [the novel] coronavirus. We do hope during the next year we will have a biochip that can run ELISA, and that means it will be able to detect various viral infections. I am also aware and even had collaborated with other research labs working on the same problem. However, even if any of us are successful in developing such biochips, they will still need quite a few years of development until approved to be used as a diagnosis tool.

What do you see them being used for the most initially?

I foresee a progressive roadmap for biochips, where they first will be adopted by doctors as an effective way of performing quick tests, an essential step in differential diagnosis. Then, I see a lot of potential for biochips to be used in mobile settings, such as during traveling or outdoor activities. Finally, biochips will empower patients to perform selected tests at home, as part of their decision whether to see a doctor.

How could these change our healthcare system?

Similar to how mobile computing has enabled over 60% of the population to solve a wide range of problems by means of software, I believe that biochips will change how people interact with a wide range of healthcare processes. In the long run, I believe biochips will lead to democratizing healthcare, and to a process that moves away from the current ‘one size fits all’ concept towards more personalized care.

Are there non-health uses for these biochips?

Yes, for example, researchers at University of Washington forked one of our older biochip devices and are using it for DNA computing. That means they embed DNA inside the droplets and use the droplet mixing and splitting to perform operations on the information contained in the DNA. I am also aware of people that replicated our biochips to use them for perfume mixing. One of the students in my class is designing a biochip that tells the time, basically a clock with fluids.

What other things are you working on right now?

Apart from personal healthcare, we have a second angle to approach our work in the Living Matter Lab. This angle is an artistic one, where we explore and design interactions and tangible interfaces between humans and non-human life. Examples of current projects include designing an escape room where humans and dinoflagellates [algae] collaborate to find the exit, developing do-it-yourself spirulina bioreactors for at-home use and inventing biomaterials that allow kids to grow their own toys and people to ‘cook’ their own clothes.

What do you do outside of your work?

I am focused right now on building a strong community in Boulder that engages in sci-art and bio-art. I would love to see science, technology and art coming together in interactive installations and performances available to the public at large.

Interview condensed and edited.

Illustration by TheiSpot/ Keith Negley

��񱦵� computer science assistant professor Mirela Alistar wants to make healthcare more personal. Her work with microfluidic biochips is getting us there.

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The Anti-Aging Pill

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 07:00:00 +0000

The Anti-Aging Pill Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/01/2020 - 00:00

Lisa Marshall

Eating less may help the body age more slowly. Rather than promote starvation, CU researchers are testing a nutritional supplement that mimics the same effects of caloric restriction.

In 1935 in upstate New York, a little-known animal husbandry researcher named Clive McKay looked into the rat cage in his lab and found an unexpected window into the Fountain of Youth.

Conventional wisdom at the time held that the more animals were fed, the better they’d fare. But McKay noticed something different: Long after the well-fed rats began to show signs of aging, those on a nutrient-dense but super-low-calorie diet retained a silky sheen to their fur, remained alert and agile and lacked the age-related health problems of their more gluttonous peers. In the end, the calorie-restricted mice also lived about 300 days longer — nearly a third of a lifetime in rat years.

Fast forward to 2020, and studies in everything from fruit flies and worms to monkeys and people have confirmed that sharply restricting calories (by 20-40 percent) while maintaining essential nutrients can fend off age-related diseases and, in some cases, extend lifespan. The problem: People like to eat, so almost no one is willing to do it. And it can be dangerous.

“From a public health perspective, caloric restriction is not a practical strategy,” said professor Doug Seals, director of ��񱦵�’s Integrative Physiology of Aging Laboratory.

So in recent years, Seals and his research trainees have taken a different path toward that elusive Fountain of Youth, testing a novel nutritional compound that stimulates the same physiological pathways that calorie restriction (CR) does. The compound, a form of Vitamin B called nicotinamide riboside (NR), is one of several so-called CR-mimetics under investigation in labs around the country, in what researchers are calling an exciting renaissance in the quest to slow biological aging and extend both lifespan and “healthspan” — the period of life that we remain healthy with good physical and cognitive function.

Doug Seals

Already, in a small, first-of-its-kind study, Seals’ team found NR can improve blood pressure and reduce arterial stiffness (a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairments) in older adults.

Now, with a $2.5 million, five-year grant from the National Institute on Aging, they’re conducting a study of about 100 more adults to assess the compound’s impact on the heart, brain and body.

Meanwhile, Seals and his CU Anschutz colleague, professor Michel Chonchol, also are assessing the effects of NR in patients with chronic kidney disease (a major disease of aging that is on the rise). At the University of Delaware, assistant professor Christopher Martens — who began his study of CR-mimetics as a postdoctoral researcher in Seals’ lab — is testing NR in older patients with mild cognitive impairment.

Daniel Craighead

And several investigators, including in Seals’ laboratory, are looking at forms of intermittent fasting as another potential approach to mimic CR and delay aging.

“We are gaining a better understanding of how the aging process works at the cellular level and how calorie restriction affects it, and coming up with therapies that mimic that,” said Martens. “It’s an exciting time for aging research.”

The CR-Healthy Aging Connection

To better understand why eating less might prompt the body to age more slowly, one need only think back to hunter-gatherer days, when humans were forced to go long periods without food. Scientists believe the body evolved to sense that deficiency and respond accordingly, with cells switching on an array of molecular pathways — including activation of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds — to conserve energy and protect cells, making them more resistant to stress.

“In general, when we shift from the normal diet that we eat now to a calorie-restrictive diet, our cells tend to activate defensive enzymes that protect us so we can live to see another day when food becomes more available,” said Martens.

While large human studies testing the concept long-term are, for good reason, hard to find, a few anecdotes from history lend credence to the theory, he noted.

For instance, when food rations were issued in Denmark during World War I, and in Norway during World War II, death rates and prevalence of cardiovascular disease decreased.

And when eight people living in a self-contained environment near Tucson, Arizona, called Biosphere 2 were forced to slash their food intake for two years due to poor crop yields, their blood pressure, blood glucose and serum cholesterol levels all declined, according to a 2002 study.

Research also has shown that people will not comply with a low-calorie diet.

Three Ways to Slow Aging

At CU’s Integrative Physiology of Aging Laboratory, scientists are conducting human trials exploring these unlikely paths for preserving youth:

Strength training for your breathing muscles

A five-minute daily workout called Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) has lowered blood pressure, improved large artery function and boosted cognitive and physical fitness in preliminary research. It involves breathing in vigorously through a hand-held device called an inspiratory muscle trainer that provides resistance.

Hot tub time machine

Preliminary research suggests that sitting in warm water (about 103 degrees) for 60 minutes four to five times per week for eight weeks can have significant cardiovascular benefits for healthy twenty-somethings. More research is currently underway to determine safety and efficacy in older adults, but preliminary results are highly encouraging.

Healthy gut bugs, healthy cardiovascular system

��񱦵� animal research has shown that age-related changes in the gut microbiome (the microorganisms living inside us) can have an adverse effect on vascular health. A new campus study is examining how different diets impact the gut microbiome and slow or hasten age-related cardiovascular disease risk.

In one recent study called the CALERIE study, 143 people were asked to cut their calorie intake by 25 percent for two years. They could only cut it by about 11 percent, and while they did see some cardiovascular benefits, they also lost bone and muscle mass and, in some cases, their sex drive.

Calorie-restriction mimetics, including supplements, could possibly bypass those downsides.

“There are a number of different supplements out there targeting these same pathways involved in caloric restriction, but we believe NR is among the most promising,” said Daniel Craighead, an integrative physiology postdoctoral researcher heading up the ��񱦵� NR study.

How It Works

NR is a key building block for a compound called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which plays an important role in helping vital cell-protective enzymes called sirtuins do their job.

Notably, NAD+ declines with age, but caloric restriction prompts the body to conserve it.

The idea: Rather than starving themselves to kick-start this protective process, older adults could take so-called NAD+ precursors like NR.

So far, the research is promising.

For a 12-week pilot study, published in the journal Nature Communications in 2018, Seals’ team looked at 24 lean and healthy men and women, ages 55 to 79, and found that 1,000 mg daily of NR boosted levels of NAD+ by 60 percent.

They also found that in participants with elevated blood pressure or early-stage hypertension, systolic blood pressure was about 10 points lower after supplementation.

A drop of that magnitude could translate to a 25 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease risk, the authors noted.

“I definitely wouldn’t call it an anti-aging miracle pill, but it does look like a very promising nutraceutical that is safe and activates some of the same biological pathways that caloric restriction does,” said Craighead.

In the new study, 100 people will be divided into two groups, with half taking 1,000 mg per day of NR for three months and half taking a placebo. Along the way, the researchers will measure their vascular health, blood flow to their brain and changes in cognition and physical fitness along the way.

“If confirmed, this could be something people could take to improve their cardiovascular health and enjoy more healthy years of life,” said Craighead.

Time-Restricted Feeding

Nutritional supplements aside, Seals’ team is also looking into whether “time-restricted feeding” (eating only within an eight-hour window of the day) might also kick-start some of those same cellular-defense mechanisms as constant dieting.

In a study to be published in the aging research journal GeroScience, they found that six weeks of time-restricted feeding improved blood glucose control and increased endurance exercise capacity in healthy adults ages 55-79. And unlike calorie-restricted diets, 85 percent of the participants were able to adhere to the eight-hour eating window.

Seals and his fellow researchers stress that the science is young, and it’s too early to recommend supplements or fasting with any certainty to aging adults.

But participants in their study say they’re cautiously optimistic.

Since Dec. 3, 74-year-old Ian MacFadyen has been popping two blue capsules in the morning and two at night, not knowing whether he’s taking NR or a placebo pill. He says he feels no difference yet, but he’s happy to be contributing to the science.

“We all know that, inevitably, youth starts slipping away. So you might as well do all you can to preserve it,” he said.

And if science comes up with a pill that works?

“I’d take it for sure.”

Illustration by Paul Blow

Eating less may help the body age more slowly. Rather than promote starvation, CU researchers are testing a nutritional supplement that mimics the same effects of caloric restriction.

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Icebound

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Icebound Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/01/2019 - 00:00

Trent Knoss

CU researchers will join a year-long Arctic expedition to study the changing Earth from an icebound ship

In 1893, Norwegian explorers deliberately froze their ship in the Arctic ice near Siberia in hopes of drifting to the North Pole and studying ocean currents. This September, CU researchers will depart from Norway on a similar mission: Getting stuck in the Arctic ice to study firsthand the region’s rapidly changing climate.

The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition will send the German icebreaker Polarstern deep into the central Arctic, where it will remain for a full year.

About 500 researchers from 17 countries and many government agencies and universities — including two dozen CU scientists — will rotate in for two-month stints, ferried to and from the Norwegian mainland by aircraft.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for CU’s climate scientists, many of whom have studied the Arctic for decades.

“We have a chance to measure the complex interactions between the atmosphere, the ocean and the ice like never before,” said atmospheric scientist Matthew Shupe, one of the mission’s coordinators and a researcher at NOAA and the ��񱦵�-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

The researchers’ equipment, which includes drones and sleds carrying sensitive instruments, must be weather- and polar bear-proofed before the journey, as replacements will be hard to come by. The scientists and crew will endure months of near-total darkness as the Arctic winter sets in.

It will all be worth it, said Shupe: The planned research projects will inform the next big advances in climate modeling and shed light on how the warming Arctic affects the rest of the globe, including glacial melt and sea level-rise.

“This is an all-star team, bringing expertise from all around the world and working on a shared vision,” he said.

Photos by JR Ancheta

CU researchers will join a year-long Arctic expedition to study the changing Earth from an icebound ship

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Photo of the Week: Nighttime on Mars

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 19:33:36 +0000

Photo of the Week: Nighttime on Mars Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/26/2019 - 13:33

Giordan Thompson (MechEngr’20) was one of 21 ��񱦵� engineering students enrolled in the Maymester course, "Medicine in Space and Surface Environments," focused on aerospace engineering, human physiology and medicine. For one week of the three-week course, the students lived at the Mars Desert Research Station in southern Utah, where they simulated medical scenarios. The course was taught by faculty from ��񱦵�’s aerospace department and from CU Anschutz.

Photo by Matt Kaskavitch/CU Anschutz

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Infographic: CU's Martian Missions

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:56:21 +0000

Infographic: CU's Martian Missions Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 11:56

CU scientists have been involved in learning about our neighbor in the solar system since at least the 1960s.

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In Colorado's Garden of the Gods, John Conway is the Ant King

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:24:55 +0000

In Colorado's Garden of the Gods, John Conway is the Ant King Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 11:24

Amanda K. Clark

It had been nearly 40 years since John R. Conway laid eyes on the towering red and white sandstone formations in Colorado’s Garden of the Gods. He took a few moments to appreciate the view, then began scouring the path ahead. He hadn’t come for the scenery — he’d come for the ants.

When John R. Conway (MZool’68; PhDBio’75) set foot in Colorado’s Garden of the Gods National Natural Landmark in June 2018, the wave of nostalgia that hit him was as strong as the wind that threatened to snatch his hat.

It had been nearly 40 years since he’d laid eyes on the towering red and white sandstone formations thrusting hundreds of feet skyward. He only took a few moments to appreciate the view before he began scouring the path ahead.

He hadn’t come for the scenery — he’d come for the ants.

From 1971 to 1975, Conway, a University of Scranton professor emeritus, hiked the 1,320-acre park, at the foot of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, in search of the unique, elusive and minimally studied insect called the honey ant. The project, which led to his CU doctoral thesis, inspired a lifelong scientific mission to uncover the insect’s mysterious ecology and evolution.

Last summer, encouraged by the City of Colorado Springs, Conway began meticulously retracing his steps to evaluate the current number, size and location of the ants. His goal: To understand how climate change and the park’s 5.8 million annual visitors were impacting their ecosystem.

“We were concerned that the increase in visitors in the park was disturbing the ants,” said Bret Tennis, operation administrator for Garden of the Gods Park.

Conway’s most recent research validated Tennis’ suspicions.

What he found was sobering: The number of honey ant nests in the Garden of the Gods had fallen 58 percent, from 50 in 1975 to 21 in 2018.

“Ants aren’t always things that pop into people’s heads when making decisions about the land, but they are hugely important,” said Tennis. “We suspected that there are not as many nests in the park compared to 1975 due to a lot of factors including climate change.”

What makes the honey ant stand out from the more than 10,000 different species of ants world-wide is the presence of specialized workers called repletes, which gorge themselves with food until their abdomens swell to the size of grapes. The repletes extract nectar from scrub oak and yucca trees, as well as by “milking” aphids, a mutually beneficial interaction in which an ant will stroke an aphid with its antennae and consume the liquid that is released by the aphids, known as “honeydew.”

The repletes become “living larders” within the colony, functioning both as benevolent members of community, as well as prisoners of their own bodies, growing so large that they become unable to move from their specialized chambers within the nest.

When the climate is dry and there’s little to eat, the repletes regurgitate food to nourish other ants. Once emptied of stored food, the repletes die.

The behavior of the so-called sacrificial ant has long baffled scientists, and little was known about the honey ant until Rev. Henry Christopher McCook classified the species in the Garden of the Gods in 1882 — the research that inspired Conway’s scientific endeavours back in 1971.

Conway found that the number of honey ant nests in the Garden of the Gods had fallen 58 percent.

When Conway first arrived at the Garden of the Gods with his wife, Sharon, in 1971, he was equipped with aerial photographs and topographical maps to help him locate potential nests. But there was one characteristic of the ant that made his investigations especially hard, then and lately.

The ants are nocturnal.

“To see the ants in action, that didn’t start till dusk,” he said.

As the park’s visitors were packing up their hiking gear for the day, Conway would lace his boots and hit the trails with a flashlight in one hand and his maps and camera in the other. Often, he’d stay up all night stalking honey ants as they foraged. As the sun peeked over the towers of sandstone, he’d sleepily veer toward his camp as hundreds of six-legged organisms marched back to their own nests.

Though the nests were easy to recognize (they look like small volcanic craters with perfectly round entrances about the size of a pea), they were difficult to get to. Most were at about 7,000 feet, along the park’s rugged ridgelines —making his nighttime explorations undeniably more difficult.

After he completed his Ph.D. in 1975, Conway moved to Pennsylvania for a teaching position at the University of Scranton, and his fascination for honey ants followed close behind. During his 30-year-tenure, he traveled the world — from Belize to South Africa — researching and teaching tropical biology courses to undergraduates.

One of his most memorable field expeditions occured in 1984, when Cheonway traveled to the Australian outback to locate two species of honey ants, Camponotus inflatus and Melophorus bagoti, which also have specialized replete workers like the ones found in Garden of the Gods. He found that the Australian honey ants were an example of convergent evolution — a phenomenon where organisms of different ancestry independently evolve the same solution to a common problem. In this case, though continents apart, both species of ants evolved the formation of replete workers to help keep the colony well fed in the arid climate.

Though Conway dedicated his career to science, he considered it a duty to make science accessible and interesting to non-scientific communities, and frequently published in the popular press, including Science Digest, National Geographic World and Earthwatch Magazine, as well as in scholarly journals.

Though Conway officially retired in 2016, he’s stayed plenty busy.

Currently, he’s working on a book about the diversity of life, focused on the 100 or so naturalists who first discovered and named most of the approximately two million species on Earth. He also plans on writing an autobiography that covers his many research and photography exhibitions.

Conway has also been settling into a new home. In April 2018, he and his wife, Sharon, built a house in Durango.

“We were looking forward to retiring in the state where we fell in love,” said Conway, who met Sharon in a human physiology class at CU.

So far, he’s found one species of ant in his new backyard — the western thatch mound ant.

Photo courtesy of ShutterStock/Romiana Lee

It had been nearly 40 years since John R. Conway had visited Colorado’s Garden of the Gods. He hadn’t come for the scenery — he’d come for the ants.

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In Colorado's Garden of the Gods, John Conway is the Ant King

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