Good Science Good Life

What makes for a good life? Such a simple question, yet we don't have great answers. Most of us try to figure it out as we go along, and many end up feeling like they never got to the bottom of it. Shouldn't something so important be approached with more scientific rigor? In 1938, Harvard researchers began a study to fill this gap. Since then, they’ve followed hundreds of people over the course of their lives, hoping to identify which factors are key to long-term satisfaction. Eighty-five yea...

Last Thursday, scientists at Columbia University published a new study finding that cutting down on calories could lead to longer lives. In the phase 2 trial, 220 healthy people without obesity dropped their calories significantly, and a test of their biological age showed that their rate of aging slowed by 2 to 3 percent in over a couple of years. Small though that may seem, it amounts to a decline of about 10 percent in the risk of death as people get older, according to the researchers' es...

The Friday Five covers five stories in research that you may have missed this week. There are plenty of controversies and troubling ethical issues in science – and we get into many of them in our online magazine – but this news roundup focuses on scientific creativity and progress to give you a therapeutic dose of inspiration headed into the weekend. It features interviews with Dr. Christopher Martens, director of the Delaware Center for Cogntive Aging Research and professor of kinesiology a...

In recent years, researchers of Alzheimer’s have made progress in figuring out the complex factors that lead to the disease. Yet, the root cause, or causes, of Alzheimer’s are still pretty much a mystery. In fact, many people get Alzheimer’s even though they lack the gene variant we know can play a role in the disease. This is a critical knowledge gap for research to address because the vast majority of Alzheimer’s patients don’t have this gene variant. A new study provides key insights into ...

Tom Oxley is building what he calls a “natural highway into the brain” that lets people use their minds to control their phones and their computers. The device, called the Stentrode, could improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people living with spinal cord paralysis, ALS and other neuro degenerative diseases. Leaps.org talked with Dr. Oxley for today’s podcast. A fascinating thing about the Stentrode is that it works very differently from other “brain computer interfaces” you may b...