Short Brisk Walks Instead of Long Strolls May Cut Risk of Heart Disease, Says Key Study of 88,000:
Photo by Maurice T (CC license)
When it comes to exercise, intensity is everything, and while a brisk daily 15-minute walk is enough to cut the risk of heart disease, a leisurely 30-minute stroll is not. Scientists from the NIH Care Research Center at Cambridge studied data from heart-rate wearables of more than 88,000 middle-aged adults and followed up on their heart health for an average of around 7 years. Through their study, they found that intensity rather than time is the primary factor in decreasing the chances of heart disease. When the low-level exercise of participants doubled there was no significant boost to heart health while the amount of moderate to vigorous activity someone did remained at 10%. However, when that vigorous proportion rose by 20% disease risk fell by 23%. When it rose by 40%. disease risk fell by 40%. To put this in perspective, this change is the same as turning a daily 30-minute stroll into a brisk 15-minute walk. The researchers also add that easy activities such as washing the car or doing laundry, which has counted as exercise in earlier research, are not enough to stave off heart problems.
Artificial intelligence and Molecule Machine Join Forces to Generalize Automated Chemistry:
Illinois researchers led an international team that combined powerful AI and a molecule-making machine to find the best conditions for automated complex chemistry. Pictured, from left: University of Illinois chemistry professor Martin D. Burke, materials science and engineering professor Charles M. Schroeder, graduate student Nicholas Angello and postdoctoral researcher Vandana Rathore. Pictured on the screen behind them are international collaborators, led by professors Bartosz A. Grzybowski and Alán Aspuru-Guzik. Credit: Fred Zwicky, University of Illinois
Artificial intelligence, "building-block" chemistry, and a molecule-making machine teamed up to find the best general reaction conditions to speed up and ease of drug innovation and discoveries. With the machine-generated optimized conditions, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators in Poland and Canada doubled the average yield of a special, hard-to-optimize type of reaction linking carbon atoms together in pharmaceutically important molecules. The researchers say this new system provides means to find general conditions for other classes of reactions and solutions for similarly complex problems, allowing researchers to be more flexible and to leave it to the AI. Not only this, but it creates an automated and scalable way complete otherwise complex drug-creation processes. There is also a hope that this process can go further than just general drug fabrication orders and instead brand out into other general chemistry areas such as polymer engineering.
Particles From Space Provide a New Look Inside Cyclones:
Fewer muons make it through the high-pressure portions at the edges of a swirling cyclone (yellow and green in this muograph) than through the low-pressure regions in the center (red), providing a map of conditions inside the storm (illustrated outline). The darkened portion was outside the viewing angle of the muon detector. ©2022 H.K.M. TANAKA
Particles created from cosmic rays that smash into Earth’s upper atmosphere have revealed the inner workings of cyclones over Japan. The new imaging approach could lead to a better understanding of storms, the researchers say, and offer another tool to help meteorologists forecast the weather. These particles measured are called muons which have been measured due to its consistent level changes due to air pressure and density changes within tempests. By counting how many muons arrived at a detector on the ground in Kagoshima, Japan as cyclones moved past, Tanaka and colleagues produced rough 3-D maps of the density of air inside the storms. The approach gave the team an inside look at the low-pressure regions at the centers rotating storm systems which were otherwise unknown.
Sources:
Muons from cosmic rays provide a new look inside cyclones (sciencenews.org)