This diet may slow brain aging by 2.5 years - Science Daily

Most of us have heard of the Mediterranean diet and its many health benefits, but there's another European eating plan that could also help you live longer. It's called the Nordic diet, and it is based on the traditional foods of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. It shares many elements with the Mediterranean diet, but it's essentially the cold-climate version. Sometimes it's called the 'Mediterranean diet of the north'. The meals are mainly plant-based and tend to emphasize long-established foods from the Nordic culture, such as fatty fish and root vegetables. This means favoring rapeseed oil over olive oil, oats and rye over wheat and rice, and pears and apples over oranges and bananas. Now, a new study adds to growing evidence that a healthy Nordic diet may help you live longer. Researchers in Denmark drew on health data from more than 64,000 middle-aged and older adults in Sweden and used it to emulate a long-term randomized trial comparing dietary interventions. Their hypothetical analysis estimates that strictly following a healthy Nordic diet could significantly lower the risk of dying from any cause over 24 years.

Mud from a fjord shows an Atlantic air pattern brought wetter, colder spells to southern Greenland, a clue to how its ice may fare. Greenland’s ice is shrinking as the planet warms. But in the island’s southwest, rainfall and snowfall have been influenced by the same North Atlantic air-pressure pattern for at least 5,000 years. When that pattern tipped one way, the region turned wetter and colder. The record comes from mud on the floor of a Greenland fjord, and it suggests snowfall, not only temperature, shaped how the area’s ice grew and shrank. It doesn’t yet show how glaciers there will respond to the warming ahead. Johan Faust, a researcher at MARUM, the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen in Germany, led the work with colleagues in Germany, Norway, Denmark and Canada. A seesaw in the airThe pattern is called the North Atlantic Oscillation. It’s the difference in air pressure between a low that sits near Iceland and a high near the Azores, and it’s strongest in winter. When that difference is large, the pattern is in its positive phase. Northwestern Europe and southwestern Greenland both get more rain and snow.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.