A groundbreaking study conducted by researchers at McGill University indicates that human sleep patterns, or chronotypes, exist on a broader biological spectrum. Each subtype is linked to distinct health and behavioral traits, challenging the conventional ‘early riser vs. night owl’ classification.
Zhou et al. The study identifies five distinct biological subtypes, each related to various behavioral patterns and health conditions. Image credit: Wok & Apix.
Chronotype refers to the specific time during the 24-hour cycle when an individual naturally feels the most alert or is prepared for sleep.
Previous research has often associated late-onset chronotypes with health issues, yet the findings have frequently been inconsistent.
“Instead of asking if night owls face greater risks, it may be more insightful to explore which specific night owls are at risk and why,” explains Dr. Yue Zhou, a researcher at McGill University.
Utilizing AI technology, Zhou and colleagues analyzed brain scans, questionnaires, and medical records from over 27,000 adults in the UK Biobank.
Their findings uncovered three night owl subtypes and two early riser groups.
One early riser subtype exhibited the fewest health issues, while the other was more closely linked to depression.
Night owls performed better on cognitive assessments but faced difficulties in emotional regulation.
One night owl group was prone to risk-taking behaviors and cardiovascular challenges, while another group showed higher tendencies for depression, smoking, and heart disease.
“These subtypes are not merely characterized by their sleep times,” stated Dr. Danilo Buzdok from McGill University.
“They represent a complex interaction of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors.”
Instead of categorizing sleep types as good or bad, the researchers emphasize how risks and strengths are distributed differently among the five profiles.
A nuanced comprehension of sleep profiles can clarify why identical sleep schedules impact individuals differently, promoting research and sleep support that transcends a one-size-fits-all methodology.
“In today’s digital age and post-pandemic world, sleep patterns are more diverse than ever,” remarks Zhou.
“Recognizing this biological diversity may ultimately lead to more personalized strategies for sleep, work schedules, and mental health support.”
For further details, refer to the published findings in the Journal on December 22, 2025, Nature Communications.
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L. Joe et al. (2025). Potential brain subtypes of chronotypes reveal unique behavioral and health profiles across population cohorts. Nat Commune 16, 11550; doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-66784-8
As soon as you exit the school environment, physical activities like sports and exercise cease to be mandatory. If you’ve allowed your kids a long hiatus since then, you’re overlooking the numerous advantages that consistent exercise can offer.
If you’re over 40, you might have fallen into the mindset that the benefits of fitness are a lost cause. Physical wellness was dismissed long ago, and the thought of reclaiming it seems futile.
However, this belief is misguided.
Even if you’ve adopted a sedentary lifestyle, increasing your movement can lead to substantial health improvements.
In recent studies published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers discovered that adults who exercised regularly had a 30 to 40 percent reduced risk of dying from any cause later in life.
Moreover, individuals who transitioned from inactivity to activity were 22 percent less likely to die compared to those who remained sedentary.
Earlier studies featured in JAMA Cardiologyrevealed that over 300,000 participants showed that those who became active after 40 enjoyed the same health advantages as lifelong active individuals.
Science confirms: it’s never too late to embark on a transformative journey.
However, if exercise has been a lower priority for the past 10-20 years, consider starting gradually, rather than preparing for a marathon.
If you’re a heavy smoker, drinker, or significantly overweight, consulting your doctor before initiating a new regimen may be wise.
How can I get started?
Walking is often regarded as one of the finest forms of exercise, according to Stacey Clemes, a Professor of Active Living and Public Health at Loughborough University, UK.
“It has minimal impact on your body, thus lowering the risk of injury. It’s free, and you don’t require special equipment. As long as you have comfortable shoes, you’re good to go.”
Through her research, she has collaborated notably with sedentary populations, such as truck drivers, aiding them to boost their activity levels.
She discovered that fitness trackers and pedometers are invaluable tools for individuals monitoring their exercise.
“It’s quite beneficial to visualize your progress, be it through step count or daily walking hours.” [data] “Using data to establish goals is also an effective strategy,” she adds.
Instead of comparing yourself to others, Clemes encourages building your activity incrementally.
“If you averaged 4,000 steps daily last week, aim for 4,500 this week. There’s robust evidence that even slight increases can lead to health improvements. The key message is to gradually do a bit more and maintain that progression.”
Now, regarding the often-cited goal of 10,000 steps daily—sounds daunting, right?
You may find relief knowing that recent research published in The Lancet indicates that merely 4,000 steps per day correlate with notable health improvements compared to 2,000 steps.
Health benefits continued to increase until reaching 7,000 steps.
Professor Stephen Harridge, the director of the Center for Human and Applied Physiology at King’s College, London, advises starting with attainable goals.
“If you’re completely inactive, begin with something small. Walk to the next bus stop instead of waiting at the nearest one. Opt for the stairs over the elevator.”
“Simple yet effective actions that elevate your overall activity can significantly benefit your muscles, metabolism, and heart health.”
Read more:
How can I avoid injury?
Rather than leaping into an intense training program, it’s wise to gradually lift your activity level to lower your chance of injury.
Injuries not only inflict pain but also demoralize you, making it harder to stay committed to a new exercise routine.
Resuming exercise can be especially tricky for those who were once active in their 20s but paused for life’s demands, says Miho Tanaka Sensei, Director of the Women’s Sports Medicine Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Associate Professor of Orthopedics at Harvard Medical School.
“Many feel they can return to their previous training regimen from their 20s,” she explains.
“The challenge lies in the fact that your 40s body responds differently compared to your 20s body; it won’t adjust in the same way to the training methods that may have worked two decades ago.”
This variation occurs as muscle mass begins to decline after 30, decreasing by 3 to 8 percent every decade and accelerating after 60.
Additionally, collagen found in muscles, joints, and tendons begins changing after 30, leading to decreased elasticity.
Thus, it’s crucial to set aside your ego. Attempting to hit previous records may lead to injury—be kind to yourself.
“The margin for injury is smaller, and recovery takes longer,” Tanaka states. “It merely slows your recovery from inflammation.”
Stretching is crucial to counteract the natural flexibility loss associated with aging – Image courtesy of Getty Images
For those new to exercise, Tanaka recommends low-impact activities such as swimming and cycling. These pursuits provide cardiovascular benefits while minimizing joint strain.
From there, you can gradually progress to activities like hiking before attempting high-impact exercises that exert stress on your joints, like running or CrossFit.
Aiming for 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise weekly maximizes benefits, enhancing cardiovascular health while reducing the risk of diabetes and certain cancers.
What types of exercises should I include?
To promote comprehensive health, incorporating resistance training several times a week is essential to combat the natural decline of muscle and bone mass that accompanies age. It’s about more than just bicep curls!
Strengthening your core and back muscles is also crucial.
The good news is that you don’t need to purchase extravagant gym memberships or trendy workout gear to perform these exercises.
Bodyweight exercises like planks, squats, and push-ups are highly effective and can be done at home. The NHS offers some excellent examples on their website.
Tanaka emphasizes that individuals over 40 shouldn’t overlook stretching. “Flexibility and range of motion can diminish,” she points out.
“To function well, whether playing tennis or running efficiently, your joints require adequate range of motion. As you age, this tends to decrease, and stretching can help.”
How can I fit exercise into my routine?
If this all feels overwhelming, considering that many people in their 40s juggle demanding careers, long commutes, childcare, and elder care, here’s a supportive note: studies have shown that consolidating exercise into weekends yields similar benefits as spreading it throughout the week.
This is based on a study involving 64,000 participants aged 40 and above tracked for 18 years.
Researchers found that “weekend warriors” who exercised once or twice weekly were able to lower their cardiovascular disease risk by 41 percent and cancer mortality risk by 18 percent compared to non-exercisers.
In comparison, regularly active people (three or more days a week) experienced a similar reduction in risks—41 percent for cardiovascular disease and 21 percent for cancer.
Still skeptical? All experts agree: the most crucial factor is finding an exercise you genuinely enjoy, ensuring sustained participation.
If running isn’t your thing, perhaps dancing piques your interest? Did you enjoy kickabouts during school? Why not consider walking soccer?
To conclude, Harridge reassures us that it’s entirely feasible to be more physically fit in your 40s than you were in your 20s or 30s.
But he emphasizes that it’s not about reversing aging; it’s about eliminating the detriment that comes from inactivity and getting back on track.
“It’s never too late,” he affirms. “If you’re 40, there’s ample time for life-changing transformations!”
Drinking enough water can help with weight loss and prevent kidney stones as well as migraines, urinary tract infections, and low blood pressure, according to a new systematic review of 18 randomized clinical trials.
A systematic review of 18 randomized clinical trials found that interventions that increased water intake (or decreased intake in some studies) were associated with statistically significant increases in weight loss and reductions in kidney stone events. A single study suggested benefits related to migraine prevention, urinary tract infections, diabetes management, and lower blood pressure, but did not reach statistical significance. Image credit: Günther.
Water is a major component of the human body and is considered an essential nutrient that cannot be produced in sufficient quantities through metabolism.
The National Academy of Medicine recommends a daily fluid intake of approximately 13 8-ounce cups for men and 9 cups for women.
A common public health recommendation is to drink 8 cups of water per day, but the evidence supporting this is not clear.
Determining a single optimal daily water intake is a difficult concept, given the wide variation in body weight, activity levels, and health status at the population level, and the numerous mechanisms that regulate water balance.
Because of the known negative effects of dehydration, behavioral factors and hydration status have been widely studied in relation to health conditions.
Professor Benjamin Breyer of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues aimed to summarize the evidence from randomized clinical trials on the effects of increasing daily water intake on health-related outcomes.
“We wanted to take a closer look at such a ubiquitous and simple intervention, as the evidence is not clear and the benefits are not well established,” Professor Breyer said.
“Although the amount of rigorous research turned out to be limited, there were statistically significant benefits in some specific areas.”
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to broadly evaluate the benefits of water intake on clinical outcomes.”
Researchers have found the most evidence supporting drinking water to prevent kidney stones and lose weight.
Drinking 8 cups of water a day significantly reduced the chance of kidney stones recurring.
Some studies have found that drinking about 6 glasses of water a day can help adults lose weight.
However, a study of adolescents found that drinking just over 8 cups of water a day had no effect.
Still, encouraging people to drink water before meals is a simple and inexpensive intervention that could have significant benefits, given the rise in obesity.
Other studies have shown that water can help prevent migraines, manage diabetes and low blood pressure, and prevent urinary tract infections.
Adults with recurring headaches felt better after drinking more water for three months.
Drinking about 4 more cups of water a day helped diabetics with elevated blood sugar levels.
Drinking an additional 6 cups of water per day also helped women with recurrent urinary tract infections. The number of infected people has decreased and the time between infections has increased.
And drinking more water helped young people with low blood pressure.
“Dehydration has been shown to be particularly harmful for people with a history of kidney stones or urinary tract infections,” says Professor Breyer.
“On the other hand, people who sometimes suffer from frequent urination may benefit from drinking less alcohol. There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to water consumption.”
of the team paper Published in a magazine JAMA network open.
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Nizar Hakam others. 2024. Results of randomized clinical trials testing changes in daily fluid intake: a systematic review. JAMA Net Open 7 (11): e2447621;doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.47621
Will robots eat us? Or will they eat robots? Tech lovers and tech haters alike want to know which will happen first. The answer has now arrived. report The work comes from a team from the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo and Osaka University in Japan.
Reader Bruce Gitelman alerted us to the synopsis passage: “We developed a pneumatically driven edible robot using gelatin and sugar. We investigated the robot's appearance and impressions when eating it.”
The researchers investigated the psychological reactions of the participants. “We evaluated two conditions: one in which the robot was moving and one in which it was stationary. Our results show that participants perceived a mobile robot differently from a stationary robot. We showed that the robot can be recognized in different ways and elicit different cognitions upon consumption.We also observed differences in the perceived texture when biting and biting the robot under the two conditions.”
This is yet another example of Stephen Sondheim's foresight when he wrote the musical (in previous feedback, I mentioned a case involving a duck and a monkey) Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sondheim has Sweeney say this: “The history of the world is about who gets eaten and who gets eaten!”
Ketchup inside
Many types of slicable sauces are not yet popular. For now, technical hopes and resources are being poured into ketchup. Not only ketchup eaters, but also food technologists can satisfy their thirst for knowledge to some extent by reading this study. ”Texture and rheological properties of slicable ketchupPublished in the magazine gel.
“There is a lack of knowledge about sliceable ketchup,” explain the authors, who are based at three Iranian institutions: Islamic Azad University, Allameh Tabatabai University, and Institute of Food Science and Technology.
For readers who are not familiar with the field of sliced sauces, they explain: “Ketchup to be used in conjunction with sausages must be viscous as a final product, elastic in terms of textural properties, solid, and, if cool, can be cut and sliced like sausages. If this research is successful, ketchup could become more than just an outer sticky coating. The interior beckons.
The research objective was to “investigate the influence of gelling hydrocolloids on the physical, textural and rheological properties of ketchup and develop new formulations of slicable ketchup and their combined use as fillers in meat products such as sausages.” “to do.”
So, I acquired a rare item called state-of-the-art ketchupree.
Ketchup on glass
The 7th European Conference on Precision Optical Component Manufacturing was held in Teisnach, Germany in 2020, according to feedback on ketchup news that broke just as the coronavirus pandemic was grabbing everyone's attention. It turns out that at the seminar, the manufacturer explained the benefits of applying ketchup to the glass. .
Max Schneckenburger and colleagues at the Center for Optical Technology in Aalen, Germany, introduced their colleagues to what was, to some, a new concept.High-precision glass polishing with ketchup”.
Their presentation explained the benefits of polishing with a “non-conventional” non-Newtonian fluid that “flows slowly under its own weight and acts like a solid under short-term stress as its viscosity increases.”
Therefore, ketchup behaves non-Newtonian in some situations. They admire the behavior. “Tomato ketchup changes its viscosity over time. The longer the ketchup is subjected to shear stress, the lower the viscosity will be. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss polishing glass surfaces with ketchup containing micro-sized Ce. We propose a new process.2O. Besides traditional ketchup, we also tested curry ketchup and organic products. ”
Schneckenburger's team used an industrial robot to guide the polishing head. To Feedback's knowledge, this was the first reported instance of a robot intentionally being placed on top of ketchup on a glass.
Financial jokes
It's fair to wonder if there's a smirk inside the financial industry, hidden deep behind the sombre and serious exterior of the buildings, business suits and hairstyles. Many top financial analysts investigate these laughs in their daily work.
In Feedback's shaky understanding of that concept, this kind of fake smile is a raw, lopsided laugh that you see in plots when you have access to certain types of financial data.
But outside of the industry, few people see these fake smiles.
That obscurity resonates with observations made by economist John Kenneth Galbraith half a century ago about the selected attitudes of financial executives. “No one wants a funny banker,” Galbraith said.
Mark Abrahams hosted the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Previously, he was working on unusual uses of computers.his website is impossible.com
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you know that person. People who use train delays as an excuse to get absorbed in good books. Someone who can crack a joke 10 seconds after breaking his ankle. He loves presentations and is never afraid of pressure. They seem to float through life, unperturbed by the stresses that can overwhelm us. What is their secret?
Are they blessed with stress-resistant genes? Did their upbringing make them exceptionally resilient? Are they learning specific ways to deal with life's challenges, or do they just know how to avoid stress altogether? To answer these questions, researchers have investigated how humans and animals respond and adapt to adversity, identifying which animals are particularly resistant to stress and elucidating the factors that contribute to this ability. Ta.it's the journey that took them Romanian orphanage From an interrogation room in North Carolina to a fire station in Indianapolis to a humor classroom in Austria.
This research helps the military recruit applicants for high-stress jobs. It also led to the first human trial of a “stress vaccine” that has the potential to prevent the devastating effects of conditions ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to depression. But there are greater benefits to understanding the secret to a stress-free life. Knowing why some people cope with stress better than others and what we can all do to increase our resilience can only help us all cope better with the challenges of everyday life. But it may also teach you how to use stress to your advantage.
One thing you can be sure of is whether or not you're going to be late.
Article amended on February 27, 2020
We found out when people are negatively affected by stress.
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