Ageing, features and articles | Educational Science

Feb 14, 2023

What are 'Blue Zones,' and do they really hold the secrets to a longer life?

Is there a key to living a long and healthy life? A popular answer to this question has looked to so-called Blue Zones, a nonscientific term given to geographic regions where people supposedly have higher longevity, according to a 2016 review published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. The...

Feb 20, 2023

Telomeres: What are they, and how do they impact aging?

Telomeres are the caps that protect the ends of DNA strands from being destroyed by a cell. They are made up of areas of repeated DNA sequences combined with specific proteins at the ends of chromosomes — the tightly wound structures of DNA and proteins inside cells. Telomeres play a...

Mar 29, 2023

We're nowhere near reaching the maximum human life span, controversial study suggests

Scientists have long debated the greatest possible age of a person, with previous studies placing the limit at up to 150 years. But in the past 25 years, no one has surpassed the record for the world's oldest person, held by Jean Louise Calment, who died at age 122 in...

Mar 30, 2023

Extreme longevity: The secret to living longer may be hiding with nuns... and jellyfish

On March 4, María Branyas Morera turned 116. In January, the great-grandmother, who was born in San Francisco in 1907 and now lives in a nursing home in Catalonia, Spain, became the world's oldest person following the death of Sister André (née Lucile Randon), a French nun who lived to...

Apr 10, 2023

Mysterious 'cryptic' molecules made by zombie cells may drive aging, scientists say

Zombie cells that lurk in the body and contribute to age-related diseases make small, strange molecules not seen in normal cells. The exact function of these cryptic molecules remains a mystery, but now, scientists think they may know why zombies build them in the first place, The Scientist reported. Scientifically...

Apr 21, 2023

'Biological aging' speeds up in times of great stress, but it can be reversed during recovery

Our biological age, which reflects signs of age-related decline in our cells and tissues, doesn't steadily increase along with our chronological age. Instead, new research suggests that biological aging can accelerate during stressful events and then reverse after those events. In other words, there are measurable biological markers linked to...

Jun 8, 2023

Amino acid taurine can slow aging in animals, but we don't know if it works in people

Taurine — an amino acid made by the human body and often added to energy drinks — can slow aging and extend the life spans of certain animals, a new study suggests. Whether it could work in humans, however, is still a big unknown. Taurine extended the life spans of...

Jun 10, 2023

Why does hair turn gray?

Gray hair is an inevitable part of growing older. The chances of hair graying increase 10% to 20% every decade after age 30, the Library of Congress notes. By age 61 to 65, 91% of people will display some level of hair graying, according to Melissa Harris, an associate professor...

Oct 10, 2023

Scientists find 10 'markers' in blood that predict people's chances of reaching 100

Centenarians, once considered rare, have become commonplace. Indeed, they are the fastest-growing demographic group of the world's population, with numbers roughly doubling every ten years since the 1970s. How long humans can live, and what determines a long and healthy life, have been of interest for as long as we...

Nov 2, 2023

Sped-up 'biological aging' linked to worse memory

An internal clock attached to a person's DNA may be a better predictor of age-related memory decline than their actual, chronological age, a new study suggests. As people age, they tend to gradually lose the ability to process information and retain memories. How quickly and to what extent this happens...

Dec 11, 2023

Epigenetics linked to the maximum life spans of mammals — including us

Why do common shrews live for only two years, while bowhead whales survive for two centuries? And could the answer give us hints as to how to extend our own, human life spans? The maximum life span of each species is estimated using the age of its longest-living member, and...

Dec 27, 2023

Do ears and noses get bigger with age?

When we look at old pictures of our grandparents, we often notice how drastically their facial features changed throughout the years. But it's not just that they gained new wrinkles and their cheeks sag a bit — it's that their noses and ears appear to have gotten visibly bigger over...

Dec 28, 2023

Why do wrinkles form?

Wrinkles are a telltale sign of aging, but not everyone develops them at the same rate. Some people get their first wrinkles in their early 20s, while others may boast a smooth-faced, youthful look well into old age. So why do wrinkles form, exactly? There is no single answer to...

Jan 19, 2024

Worldwide, the life-span gap between the sexes is shrinking

People around the world are, on the whole, living longer. At the same time, the gap between how long men and women live is decreasing, new research shows. The study of more than 190 countries identified these trends around the world. Zooming in on the cluster of countries with the...