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Category: health

This is how I’m preparing for AI (and you can too)

As AI replaces traditional wage labor, individuals should prepare for an automated future by adapting their skills, investments, and lifestyle to focus on economic stability, personal growth, and self-directed living ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.

Capital Economy Participation.

A: Invest in dividend-producing ETFs for a hands-off approach to wealth building, as AI and robotics reduce labor demand and shift wealth distribution toward capital ownership rather than wages.

🏢 Q: What ownership structures should I explore beyond traditional employment?

A: Consider Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) to become a part-owner of companies, but approach Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) cautiously due to their high-risk nature despite offering ownership opportunities.

⚠️ Q: Should I rely on Bitcoin for income generation?

Continue reading “This is how I’m preparing for AI (and you can too)” | >

From Nano to Nobel: National Lab Researchers Use MOFs to Solve Big Problems

Building on the foundational Nobel Prize-winning work, researchers at Berkeley Lab and its DOE user facilities continue to push MOF technology to address major global challenges.

For example, at the ALS, a team led by Yaghi traced how MOFs absorb water and engineered new versions to harvest water from the air more efficiently – an important step in designing MOFs that could help ease water shortages in the future. Yaghi is launching this technology through the company Waha, Inc, and working with scientists from the Energy Technologies Area to apply water-absorbing MOFs for in-building technologies and industrial applications.

Another team, led by joint Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley scientist Jeffrey Long, used the ALS to study how flexible MOFs hold natural gas, with potential to boost the driving range of an adsorbed-natural-gas car – an alternative to today’s vehicles. An international team of scientists used the ALS to study the performance of a MOF that traps toxic sulfur dioxide gas at record concentrations; sulfur dioxide is typically emitted by industrial facilities, power plants, and trains and ships, and is harmful to human health and the environment. Others have used the facility to design luminous MOFs, or LMOFs, glowing crystals that can capture mercury and lead to clean contaminated drinking water.

There’s One Critical Thing You Can Do to Cut Your Risk of Dementia

Inside the body, a 24-hour rhythm, known as the circadian rhythm, quietly coordinates when we sleep, wake, eat, and recover. This internal timing system helps keep organs and hormones working in sync.

When it becomes disrupted, the effects may extend well beyond poor sleep, with growing evidence suggesting consequences for long-term brain health.

A large 2025 study of more than 2,000 people with an average age of 79 found that those with a strong circadian rhythm had an almost halved risk of developing dementia. Circadian rhythms regulate daily processes, including sleep timing, hormone release, heart rate, and body temperature.

Two wrongs make a right: How two damaging disease variants can restore health

Scientists at Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI) have overturned a long-held belief in genetics: that inheriting two harmful variants of the same gene always worsens disease. Instead, the team found that in many cases, two harmful variants can actually restore normal protein function.

Their work appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists report new immune insights and targets into LRRK2 mutations in Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a debilitating and progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by the loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the substantia nigra, a brain region essential for motor control. Clinically, it is marked by tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia and postural instability, symptoms that progressively erode independence and quality of life.

PD affects millions of people worldwide, including nearly one million individuals in the United States, making it one of the fastest-growing neurological disorders. In the U.S. alone, the disease imposes a profound health care and socioeconomic burden, with annual costs reaching tens of billions of dollars due to medical care, lost productivity and long-term disability.

While environmental factors contribute to disease risk, genetic drivers are increasingly recognized, with mutations in the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene representing one of the most common causes of both familial and sporadic PD. Understanding how LRRK2 mutations drive disease is therefore central to developing therapies that go beyond symptoms control.

Ancient DNA insights into diverse pathogens and their hosts

Ancient DNA techniques are being applied to study increasingly diverse pathogens of the past. The authors review the latest insights into pathogen–host coevolution, zoonotic events and the spread of pathogens, all while highlighting the importance of a One Health approach to this research.

Sleep variability linked with sleep apnea and hypertension

Over 70 million Americans wear digital activity trackers (DATs) to record their sleep, steps and heart rate. A new study from Scripps Research found that these devices could also provide insight into even more, including individual health risks like obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and high blood pressure.

The findings, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research on December 3, 2025, used DATs to identify an association between sleep variability—the night-to-night fluctuation of when an individual falls asleep and wakes—and their risk of developing sleep apnea and hypertension. This research joins a growing body of evidence that DATs could become more useful clinical tools to assess health risks in the near future.

“Data from digital activity trackers provides a unique way to detect meaningful health patterns from the devices that people already own,” says Stuti Jaiswal, senior author and assistant professor at Scripps Research, who is also a faculty hospitalist at Scripps Clinic. “Digital health studies have been gaining acceptance over the past decade, and we’re now demonstrating what these technologies can reveal about how sleep influences cardiovascular health.”

Sulfate and carbon in fine air pollution tied to higher depression risk

Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter like PM2.5 components in polluted air can not only cause respiratory diseases, but also increase the risk of depression in older people, especially in those living with preexisting heart, metabolic and neurological conditions.

Depression has caused more loss of healthy life worldwide than any other mental health condition. This disorder has snatched away people’s will to perform the basics of daily activities. An analysis of global health data in 2021 showed that all the years people lived with disability or reduced quality of life because of depression added up to about 56.3 million years.

A recent population-based cohort study collected data from nearly 23.7 million U.S. Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and older between 2000 and 2018 to examine specific components of PM2.5 exposure, both individually and in combination, and its associations with the risk of developing depression. Among those tracked, more than 5.5 million developed depression during the follow-up period. These findings are published in JAMA Network Open.

Microplastics Are Leaking Invisible Chemical Clouds Into Rivers and Oceans

Researchers have mapped the molecular changes that unfold as sunlight causes plastics to leach dissolved organic matter, findings that could reshape understanding of ecosystem health, water quality, and global carbon cycling. Scientists have found that microplastics drifting through rivers, lakes

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