Chances are that the end of the year has made you assess some of your 2024 New Year's resolutions.

Perhaps you, like us, bought a home spin bike or rowing machine in January. Most likely by March, you realised you used it a lot less than you planned. And very probably by June, it disappeared under a pile of clothes.

You are not alone. A recent Gallup survey shows seven out of ten adults plan to set goals for the next year. According to statista, the most common ones are health goals (exercise and diet), followed by saving money. This is why exercise equipment sales peak in January.

But research shows a quarter of us fail to stick to our New Year resolutions after just one week and more than half within six months. At the end of two years, only 20% succeed.

So why do we keep making resolutions – often accompanied by considerable expense – even though we keep breaking them, and what can we do to persevere? How can you redeem your spin bike? Recent insights from behavioural science hold some answers.

Why we try, and why we fail

You bought a spin bike because you are human.

Other animals do not exercise. Many of them are goal-oriented (they chase or flee), but only humans have the ability to pursue self-improvement to better achieve goals in the future. Exercise is an example of this.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow famously put self-actualisation – fulfilling your potential – at the top of the hierarchy of human needs. You want to be the fittest version of yourself you can be. It's only natural.

The problem is that regular exercise involves willpower and discipline beyond most of us. Especially when faced with the choice between comfy couch and spin bike. Your ambition may be willing, but your flesh is weak. Exercise feels hard.

This is because our brains evolved in the Stone Age when it made survival sense to loaf about whenever the opportunity arose. With limited food, our ancestors needed to conserve energy for the next chase or flight.

This is true for other vices too, such as binge eating or gorging on sugary foods. But these things are often counterproductive in the modern world where we consume a lot more energy than we normally expend.

Self-regulation

But your bike is also a beacon of hope. Even though our psychology is often at odds with modernity, we have a trump card: the ability to self-regulate. At our best, we can override daily temptations and move towards longer-term goals.

Psychological research has identified two key ingredients to this (in addition to setting goals): monitoring your behaviour for any breaches, and correcting them whenever detected.

You've scored two out of three so far: you made the commitment to the bike and you noticed you failed to live up to it. Now it's time to work on the correction.

Nudge yourself

Zen masters turn weakness into strength. You too can use the human psychological failings from our evolution to your advantage. This is known as self-nudging: changing your own choices to make your best decisions more likely.

An example is the "sunk cost fallacy", our tendency to base decisions on irrecoverable past expenses.

Here is where the spin bike makes sense: having incurred the expense, you might have a greater motivation to go on your own new bike than to go to the gym. Membership can easily be cancelled, but the bike has been bought.

You could also go wholesale and use the very tools governmental Behavioural Insights Units use, on yourself. For example, policymakers use the EAST framework to make our desired behaviours easy, attractive, social and timely for us.

The spin bike at home is easy to use compared with changing into your fanciest lululemons, packing your gear, driving to the gym and parking your car.

It is also timely. You can use the home spin bike whenever it suits you without needing to queue for lockers, equipment and showers.

Why not make it attractive too? Many home exercisers use a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. In our house, the spin bike is permanently parked in front of the widescreen TV. Behavioural scientists call this temptation bundling.

You can also make your spin bike experience social. This is the Peloton phenomenon: instructors, leader boards and interactions with the exercise community.

Turn over a new leaf

So should you try again in 2025? Yes.

The new year is a natural opportunity for self-improvement due to the fresh start effect. Psychologists found events that mark the passage of time (birthdays, holidays, new years) allow people to mentally consign their failures to the past and start again with a clean slate. It's an uncanny tactic and it works.

The lesson is that the end of the year provides a great opportunity to ring in much-needed changes. But that's not enough. You also need some simple strategies to help you stick to them.

Swee-Hoon Chuah, Professor of Behavioural Economics, Tasmanian Behavioural Lab, University of Tasmania and Robert Hoffmann, Professor of Economics, Tasmanian Behavioural Lab, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Here's a new perspective to motivate yourself (or someone else) to give up smoking: every cigarette smoked can take 20 minutes off your life expectancy, according to experts. Quit for a week, and your life could be a whole day longer.

The new metrics have been estimated by researchers from University College London (UCL), and are based on recent data added on top of a 2000 study that estimated each cigarette smoked equated to 11 minutes of lost life.

We now have more statistics for mortality rates across a greater number of smokers, which means a more accurate estimate for predicting their life expectancy.

The researchers were keen to update the calculation to motivate people to give up the smoking habit, which dramatically increases the risk of developing lung cancer, brain damage, and a host of other harms.

"Conveying these harms in a clear and accessible way that resonates with smokers can be challenging," write the researchers in their published paper.

"One potentially impactful way to express the harm caused by smoking is to estimate the average loss of life expectancy for each cigarette smoked."

Of course, 20-minute increments are a generalization based on a simplified measure of each person's habit. Everything from how deeply smokers inhale with each puff, to the other medical conditions they have, can make a difference to life expectancy.

However, 20 minutes is a useful shorthand for imagining the impact every cigarette has on the body, emphasizing the fact that benefits of being smoke-free increase over time.

"Epidemiological data indicate that the harm caused by smoking is cumulative and the sooner the person stops, and the more cigarettes they avoid smoking, the longer they live," write the researchers.

"Thus, a person smoking 10 cigarettes per day who quits smoking on the 1st of January 2025 could prevent loss of a full day of life by the 8th of January, a week of life by the 20th of February, and a month by the 5th of August. By the end of the year, they could have avoided losing 50 days of life."

In the UK, where the study data was sourced, being a smoker equates to an average reduction in lifespan of 10 years for men, and 11 for women. Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death, disability, and ill health in the country (as it is in the US).

And the researchers emphasize that it's not enough to cut down on how much you smoke; stopping completely is the only option if you want to eliminate the added risks of disease. No matter how old you are or how long you've smoked for, you can see benefits by finding a way to quit.

"Stopping smoking at every age is beneficial but the sooner smokers get off this escalator of death the longer and healthier they can expect their lives to be," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Addiction.

Gen Alpha is about to have some competition.

Babies born from January 1st are part of Generation Beta, a label for those born from 2025 to 2039.

The research firm McCrindle said in a blog post that Gen Beta will make up 16% of the global population by 2035, and that many Gen Beta children will live to see the 22nd century.

The firm was founded by the social researcher Mark McCrindle, who coined the term Gen Alpha.

Here is a rundown of the generational buckets commonly used for those born in the last 100 years:

• Gen Beta: 2025-2039
• Gen Alpha: 2010-2024
• Gen Z: 1997-2009
• Millennials: 1981-1996
• Generation X: 1965-1980
• Boomers: 1946-1964
• The Silent Generation: 1928-1945

Gen Beta is also expected to be heavily shaped by technology, just like their Gen Alpha forebears who have occasionally been nicknamed "iPad kids" due to their perceived reliance on tech.

McCrindle wrote that Gen Beta lives would be defined by AI and automation – and that they will face major societal challenges such as the climate crisis and global population shifts.

Parents of Gen Alpha kids are increasingly grappling with how to manage their children's relationship with technology and AI tools, which have become widespread since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022.

A study by the Pew Research Center released in November 2023 found that one in five students who had heard of ChatGPT used it to help with their schoolwork.

Parenting commentators previously told Business Insider that Gen Alpha parents should seek to keep their children off social media for as long as possible, citing the harmful impact it can have on mental health.

The validity of using generational tags has been questioned in the past.

Pew Research Center president Michael Dimock cautioned in 2019 that it was best to view the categories as a lens to think about societal change, rather than a label with which to oversimplify differences between groups.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

Ready for another amazing year of skywatching?

The very first weekend of 2025 offers up a flurry of wintertime astronomy events, eluding a swift meteor shower, a January 'SuperSun,' and a lunar planetary pair up at dusk.

January's 'Quad Watch'

This year, the Quadrantid meteors peak on January 4^th with a respectable projected Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) of 80.

This is versus a 27% illuminated waxing crescent Moon. Said slender Moon won't hamper observations, making 2025 an ideal year for the 'Quads'.

Prospects in 2025

The short peak arrives at around 15:00-18:00 Universal Time (UT) on January 3rd, which favors the northern Pacific region at dawn.

Keep in mind, it is still worth it for North American and European observers to watch on the mornings of January 3rd, and the 4th, before and after, in the event the peak arrives late.

The obscure name for the Quadrantids is the remnant of the now defunct constellation Quadrans Muralis (the Mural Quadrant). This was divided up between Draco, Hercules, and Boötes (where the present-day radiant lies at the shower's maximum) when the modern constellations were formalized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1928 and published in 1930.

I think it's great how an obscure piece of astronomical history turns up in skywatching discussions once a year…

The source of the Quadrantids is asteroid 2003 EH1, a rarity among meteor showers.

The December Geminids also have a similar strange source, in rock-comet 3200 Phaethon.

It has always been my experience that the 'Quads,' while they're a strong stream, are often elusive, with a swift and brief peak.

Maybe, it's just because it tends to be brutally cold outside in early January, cutting the observing window short.

Be sure to dress warm, fill up your travel mug with hot tea or cocoa, and keep those backup camera batteries toasty warm on your January Quadrantid meteor quest.

Earth at Perihelion

Meanwhile, our home world reaches perihelion, or its closest approach to the Sun, on January 4^th at 0.98333 AU distance, at around 13:00 UT/8:00 AM EST.

It may seem ironic that we actually reach our closest point in our orbit in the depths of Northern Hemisphere winter. Of course, it's currently summertime in the Southern Hemisphere.

This is also only true in our current epoch, as eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, the obliquity of the poles and precession of the equinoxes all change over time in what's known as Milankovitch cycles.

The Sun does indeed appear slightly bigger in January versus aphelion in July (32′ 32″ versus 31'28" across in apparent size)… we checked.

A 'Great European Occultation'

Finally, the Moon occults (passes in front of) Saturn on January 4^th at ~17:24 Universal Time (UT).

The event favors Europe at dusk, and the Moon is a 25% illuminated, waxing crescent, one of the best times to catch an occultation. This is the first planetary occultation by the Moon for 2025.

This should be a spectacular event, as the planet disappears behind the dark limb of the Moon, and reappears behind the bright sunlit side. 39″ wide (including rings), +1^st magnitude Saturn will take a leisurely 45 seconds to a minute to fully disappear behind the Moon.

The rings, though still barely visible, are headed towards the edge this year on March 23^rd.

The rest of us get a consolation prize of seeing a close pairing on Saturn and the crescent Moon at dusk worldwide.

The Moon occults Saturn twice in 2025, with the next and final event occurring on February 1^st for the remote Canadian Arctic and Alaska.

The International Occultation Timing Association lists ingress/egress times for locations along the track for the January 4th event.

…And Something More

Clouded out… or simply live in the wrong hemisphere?

Astronomer Gianluca Masi will host no less than three virtual sessions this weekend, covering the Quadrantid meteors, the occultation of Saturn by the Moon, and the Moon's close pass near Venus on January 3^rd, just one week prior to its greatest (dusk) elongation 47 degrees east of the Sun on the 10^th:

The Moon joins an enthralling planetary parade this weekend, sliding by Saturn and Venus to the west at dusk.

Meanwhile, Jupiter and Mars await their turn to greet the Moon later in January to the east.

Wherever you may happen to observe from this weekend, there's a skywatching event for you.

Be sure to embrace the cold as we kick off another year of astronomy and skywatching in 2025.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

While our body shuts down in slumber each day, the brain remains busy at work, filing through the day's recordings and making sense of them with respect to past experiences.

Just how fresh memories are processed without blurring into old recollections has never been clear, with scientists hypothesizing different methods of keeping our memories separate while we sleep.

Researchers from Cornell University in the US strapped brain-scanning electrodes and tiny eye-tracking cameras to mice, monitoring them as they learned new tasks in the day, such as navigating a maze, and slept during the night. (Fun fact: mice can sleep with their eyes open.)

The team found two substages happening during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, that restorative period crucial to forming memories. One replayed new memories, coinciding with a constriction of the pupils. The other substage featured recall of older memories, with the pupils dilated. Each phase occurred in quick succession.

The findings help answer the question of why consolidation of new memories doesn't erase old ones; for example, learning to play the piano without forgetting how to ride a bike. A similar analysis will need to be carried out in humans to verify the results, even if we do share a lot of brain similarities with mice.

"Our results suggest that the brain can multiplex distinct cognitive processes during sleep to facilitate continuous learning without interference," write the researchers in their published paper.

Previous studies have identified links between pupil size and sleep state, and between sleep state and memory formation, but this study adds a whole new level of detail to those connections.

Before now, there had been plenty of debate over how the brain fitted new memories in amongst the old ones during sleep – specifically, just how separated and intentional these processes are.

The team also found that blocking sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) – known to affect memory storage – during contracted pupil stages in the mice limited their capabilities to remember anything new.

"It's like new learning, old knowledge, new learning, old knowledge, and that is fluctuating slowly throughout the sleep," says neuroscientist Azahara Oliva, from Cornell University.

"We are proposing that the brain has this intermediate timescale that separates the new learning from the old knowledge."

The implications of the study are far-reaching: having a non-invasive means of monitoring brain function may help in the treatment of memory issues or the boosting of memory, for example.

The findings also lend weight to hypotheses on how our brains and computer systems have the potential to forget old information on a significant scale. In AI, it's known as catastrophic forgetting, and is one area where the machines are still way behind biology.

"This finding provides a potential solution for the long-standing problem in both biological and artificial neural networks of preventing catastrophic interference while also enabling memory integration," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Nature.

Volcanic activity bubbling away beneath the Yellowstone National Park in the US appears to be on the move.

New research shows that the reservoirs of magma that fuel the supervolcano's wild outbursts seem to be shifting to the northeast of the Yellowstone Caldera. This region could be the new locus of future volcanic activity, according to a team led by seismologist Ninfa Bennington of the US Geological Survey.

"On the basis of the volume of rhyolitic melt storage beneath northeast Yellowstone Caldera, and the region's direct connection to a lower-crustal heat source, we suggest that the locus of future rhyolitic volcanism has shifted to northeast Yellowstone Caldera," they write in their paper.

"In contrast, post-caldera rhyolitic volcanism in the previous 160,000 years has occurred across the majority of Yellowstone Caldera with the exclusion of this northeast region."

Yellowstone is one of the world's largest supervolcanoes; a vast, complex, dynamic region of Earth's crust that is both spectacularly beautiful and deeply dangerous.

In the past 2 million years, Yellowstone has undergone three huge, caldera-forming eruptions – those that create the cauldron-like basins on Earth's surface when a subterranean magma chamber empties and collapses in on the hollowed-out cavity. These huge eruptions have been interspersed with smaller eruptions.

The caldera-forming eruptions at Yellowstone are sourced from reservoirs of rhyolitic melt. That's silica-rich magma, the volcanic equivalent of granite, sticky and viscous and slow-moving, and thought to be stored in vast volumes underneath the Yellowstone region.

Previous studies presumed the rhyolitic reservoirs were supported by deeper reservoirs of basaltic magma – molten material that has a much smaller silica content than rhyolite, but abundant iron and magnesium. It's also significantly less viscous than rhyolite, but also denser, and the way it conducts electricity differs to rhyolite.

This latter difference in properties gave Bennington and her colleagues the tools they needed to probe the magmatic reservoir contents beneath the Yellowstone Plateau.

One way to monitor activity beneath Earth's surface involves measuring surface variations in the planet's magnetic and electric fields. This is known as magnetotellurics, and it's particularly sensitive to the presence of subsurface melts.

Bennington and her colleagues carried out a wide-scale magnetotelluric survey across the Yellowstone Caldera, and used the resulting data to model the distribution of the melt reservoirs lurking therein.

Their results revealed that there are at least seven distinct regions of high magma content, some of which are feeding into others, at depths between 4 and 47 kilometers (2.5 to 30 miles) beneath the ground – down to the boundary of the crust and mantle.

The most interesting melt storage was in the northeast. There, huge reservoirs of basaltic magma in the lower crust heat and maintain chambers of rhyolitic magma in the upper crust. These chambers of rhyolitic magma contain an estimated melt storage volume of around 388 to 489 cubic kilometers – almost an order of magnitude higher than melt storage zones to the south, west, and north, where previous eruptions took place.

This volume, the researchers note, is also comparable to the melt volume of previous caldera-forming eruptions in Yellowstone.

The rhyolitic caldera-forming eruptions, the researchers note, were interspersed with smaller, basaltic eruptions within the caldera. However, it's unclear exactly how these kinds of eruptions work. The team's research suggests that the rhyolitic magma chambers have to cool completely before the basaltic magma can move in.

Exactly when and how these future eruptions are going to take place will, the researchers say, require further analysis.

The research has been published in Nature.

Low doses of a drug used to treat ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) could help people focus on the road when driving for long, monotonous stretches risks sending their mind wandering.

Researchers from Australia's Swinburne University were curious about risks and benefits the pharmaceutical methylphenidate might have on driving performance, specifically in cases of individuals who don't have ADHD.

Up to 90 percent of people medicated for their ADHD are prescribed the drug, which is commonly sold under the brand name Ritalin. For a medicated person with ADHD, driving without it can feel a bit like driving without their glasses.

Adults with ADHD are more at risk for road accidents, motor vehicle injuries, traffic tickets, and hard braking events. Taking methylphenidate is known to improve their driving performance. All this probably contributes to the fact that ADHD medication can literally add years to some people's lives.

Yet many individuals take methylphenidate without a prescription. In the US alone, 5 million adults misuse prescription stimulants by taking them at higher doses, longer durations, or simply without a script. It's important to know how these people may be affected while driving under the influence of unauthorized stimulants, especially those tasked with long and monotonous journeys.

This study enlisted 25 mentally and physically healthy drivers without a diagnosis of ADHD to learn what impact methylphenidate might have on their driving performance.

The volunteers were given 10 mg of methylphenidate or a placebo 85 minutes before stepping behind the wheel of a driving simulator that mimics a 105-kilometer (65-mile) bi-directional, four-lane highway with standard Australian road markings and signage. The experiment was undertaken twice, with different participants allocated the placebo and drug.

They were asked to 'drive' for 40 minutes, maintaining a steady 100 kilometers per hour speed in the left-most lane. Occasionally, traffic conditions required them to overtake other vehicles.

While the participants focused on the 'road', a machine kept close watch on their eye movements, tracking eye fixation duration and rate via a driver-facing camera mounted on the dashboard, and the computer recorded how far the drivers deviated from the center of their lane.

A mathematical algorithm assessed how dispersed or focused the drivers' gazes were during the task, as well as how random or structured their visual scanning behaviour was.

"Methylphenidate significantly improved driving performance by reducing lane weaving and speed variation, particularly in the latter half of the drive," the authors report.

"Although a significant reduction in fixation duration was observed, all other ocular metrics remained unchanged."

Methylphenidate reduced the drop in performance drivers usually experience during driving tasks, and in comparison to the placebo, drivers who took the drug had better vehicle control and maintained a more constant speed.

It didn't cause any problems with people's visual scanning, although it didn't seem to improve it, either.

Previous studies raised concerns about a 'tunnel vision' effect associated with psychostimulants that could limit a driver's ability to respond to sudden or unexpected obstacles entering from the periphery, like a pedestrian or car.

While this effect didn't show up in the latest study, the authors suggest it may be because they used a relatively low dose taken short-term.

This study doesn't capture the effects that might be seen at higher doses or taken for longer, which, they write, "are arguably more common in real-world misuse scenarios and likely associated with road traffic collisions."

"There is a clear need for further research in this area, particularly studies aimed at identifying more pronounced alterations in ocular behaviour caused by methylphenidate and other psychostimulants," the authors conclude.

The research was published in Journal of Psychopharmacology.

By the end of this decade, nations and private companies may well be mining the surface of the Moon.

But as space becomes accessible to more nations and corporations, we need to stop and ask ourselves what commercial activities we want to allow, including on the Moon.

Now is the time to create the rules and regulations that will protect humanity's shared future in space and ensure the Moon remains a symbol and inspiration for generations to come.

NASA sees lunar mining trial within the next decade (Reuters). https://t.co/90iyLQqlTk pic.twitter.com/ZXrqbbbnyy

— Gilles F. Leclerc (@spaceleclerc) June 28, 2023

1. Why mine the Moon?

NASA's multibillion dollar Artemis program isn't just about sending astronauts back to the Moon. It's about paving the way for mining operations.

China is also on a similar trajectory.

All of this has set in motion a new lunar race with private companies competing to figure out how to extract the Moon's resources, potentially selling it back to governments in a cosmic supply chain.

Currently, all supplies for space exploration are shipped from Earth, making essentials like water and fuel eye-wateringly expensive.

By the time a single litre of water reaches the Moon, its cost beats that of gold.

But by converting water ice on the Moon into hydrogen and oxygen, we can refuel spacecraft on-site. This could make deeper space journeys, especially to Mars, far more feasible.

The Moon's wealth of rare Earth metals, essential for technologies like smartphones, also means lunar mining could ease the strain on Earth's dwindling reserves.

Private companies might beat space agencies to the punch; a startup could be mining the Moon before NASA lands its next astronaut.

2. Could mining change how we see the Moon from Earth?

When material is extracted from the Moon, dust gets kicked up. Without an atmosphere to slow it down, this lunar dust can travel vast distances.

That surface material is "space weathered" and duller than the more reflective material beneath. Disturbing the lunar dust means some patches of the Moon may appear brighter where the dust has been kicked up, while other patches may appear more dull if dust resettles on top.

Even small-scale operations might disturb enough dust to create visible changes over time.

Managing lunar dust will be a crucial factor in ensuring sustainable and minimally disruptive mining practices.

3. Who owns the Moon?

The Outer Space Treaty (1967) makes it clear no nation can claim to "own" the Moon (or any celestial body).

However, it is less clear whether a company extracting resources from the Moon violates this non-appropriation clause.

Two later agreements take up this issue.

The 1979 Moon Treaty claims the Moon and its natural resources as "common heritage of mankind". This is often interpreted as an explicit ban on commercial lunar mining.

The 2020 Artemis Accords, however, allow for mining while reaffirming the Outer Space Treaty's rejection of any claims of ownership over the Moon itself.

The Outer Space Treaty also notes the exploration of space should benefit everyone on Earth, not just the wealthier nations and corporations able to get there.

When it comes to resource extraction, some argue this means all nations should share in the bounty of any future lunar mining endeavour.

4. What would miners' lives be like on the Moon?

Imagine you've worked 12 hours straight in hot and dirty conditions. You are dehydrated, hungry and overwhelmed. Some of your co-workers have collapsed or been injured due to exhaustion. You all wish you could just get another job with good safety standards, fair pay and reasonable hours. But you can't. You're stuck in space.

This dystopian vision highlights the potential dangers of rushing into lunar mining without addressing the risks to workers.

Working in low gravity conditions brings health hazards. Lunar miners are more likely to suffer:

• bone and muscle loss
• osteoporosis
• renal and cardiovascular damage, and
• impaired immunity.

Exposure to cosmic radiation not only carries an increased risk of various cancers but can also affect fertility.

Lunar miners will also face prolonged isolation and intense psychological stress. We'll need good laws and guidelines to protect the health and wellbeing of the space workforce.

Regulatory bodies to enforce worker rights and safety standards will be far away on Earth. Miners may be left with little recourse if asked to work unreasonable hours in unsafe conditions.

British astrobiologist Charles S. Cockell claims this makes space "tyranny-prone". Powerful individuals could, he argues, be able to abuse people who have nowhere else to go.

The Moon holds incredible promise as a stepping stone for human exploration and a potential source of resources to sustain life on Earth and beyond.

But history has shown us the consequences of unchecked exploitation. Before we mine the Moon, we must establish robust regulations that prioritise fairness, safety and human rights.

Evie Kendal, Senior Lecturer of Health Promotion, Swinburne University of Technology and Alan Duffy, Pro Vice-Chancellor Flagship Initiatives, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you're looking to improve your performance, both cognitively and physically, you need to start by giving a crap.

No, quite literally. Go to the toilet and empty your bowel. If you're about to compete in a triathlon, it will make you both faster and smarter, according to two recent studies.

The latest research involved 13 triathletes, a cognitive test called the Stroop test, and a magnesium oxide laxative.

The result? The athletes performed measurably better on the cognitive test after voiding their large intestines, a finding that suggests an underexplored link between the rectum and cognitive function. This potential link has interesting implications, not just for peak performance, but for understanding cognitive decline.

"The most striking finding of this study is the unequivocal improvement observed in Stroop test performance for all participants consuming magnesium oxide," writes a team of researchers led by biochemist Chen-Chan Wei of the University of Taipei in a new paper.

"Even in the absence of magnesium oxide, defecation led to improved Stroop test results for 9 out of 13 individuals."

A Stroop test is one that presents you with a visual of conflicting information. The word "red" might appear in blue text, for example; the test participant needs to say aloud the color of the text, not the color word that is written. It evaluates cognitive flexibility and response time.

A 2022 study found that patients with early-stage Parkinson's disease can exhibit mild cognitive impairment when constipated, suggesting a link between the rectum and the brain. Such a concept isn't without precedent. Your gut contains hundreds of millions of neurons, and the gut microbiome may play a role in your mood, as well as neurological and mental health disorders.

Wei and colleagues wanted to investigate the link for athletes. Triathlons, involving three different sports disciplines, are taxing on both mind and body. The athlete needs to make fast decisions to navigate the course, have the fortitude to last the distance, and in the process try to best their fellow athletes.

The researchers previously showed that having a poop before getting on a bike resulted in improved performance – and improved blood flow in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain – in triathletes. The next step, after establishing a link between an empty bowel and increased physical performance, was to try to identify if there was a similar link to cognitive performance.

"When you do exercise, especially long-distance exercise, your brain is going to be sending high amounts of commands to the muscles," explains physiologist Chia-Hua Kuo of the University of Taipei.

"Whether or not you can sustain muscle contraction is not really depending on whether your muscle has wrung out the energy, it's whether your brain is able to challenge your muscle."

Each of the 13 triathletes in the study participated in three sessions of Stroop testing. For the first session, the test was taken without a prior bowel movement. For the second session, after a careful diet, the test was administered an hour after a bowel movement. Finally, for the third session, the athletes were given magnesium oxide; they took the test 13 hours after taking the laxative, and an hour after defecation.

More than two thirds of participants performed better on the test with empty bowels in the second session. Intriguingly, 100 percent saw improvement after a laxative-aided defecation.

Although the sample size was small, the difference in performance between the sessions suggests that emptying one's bowels could be linked to improved cognition.

The link and the reasons for it have not been definitively established, but the researchers believe that it may have something to do with finite resources in the body. When you have material in your digestive tract, blood and oxygen are used to help break it down. With no material to digest, those resources can be used elsewhere.

In fact, insufficient resourcing during exercising is thought to be the cause of the well-known phenomenon of runners' diarrhea, in which athletes lose control of their bowels while engaged in intense exercise.

In a 2012 review, scientists found that "During physical exercise, the increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system redistributes blood flow from the splanchnic organs to the working muscles… A severely reduced splanchnic blood flow may frequently cause gastrointestinal ischemia."

That means that the body redirects blood away from the gastrointestinal organs to work on the exercise; and the reduced blood flow causes gastrointestinal pyrotechnics.

It's all connected in strange and wonderful ways. Or, as Kuo puts it: "Our spirit is not only inside the skull, but also in other parts. And the rectum is also part of the brain."

The researchers caution against taking laxative drugs. If you are having issues maintaining gastrointestinal regularity, seek help from a medical professional.

The findings have been published in Sports Medicine and Health Science.

How about that eclipse in 2024? Certainly, the Great North American Eclipse of April 8^th 2024 was one for the ages, instilling the eclipse-chasing bug in many a new skywatching fan.

Now, for the bad news: 2025 is a rare, totality free year, featuring only a pair of remote partial solar eclipses.

The good news is, there's lots more in store to see in the sky in 2025, with a pair of fine total lunar eclipses, Mars at its best, and lunar occultations galore.

And hey, the Sun is still mighty active, and the cosmos does still owe us another fine comet.

2024: The Year in Brief

To be sure, the April eclipse was spectacular… but 2024 was almost more notable for the unpredictable.

First, the Sun unleashed two epic solar storms, sending amazing aurora displays southward towards latitudes and populations of skywatchers that rarely see them.

Then, Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS survived perihelion in late September, and went on to put on a fine show for northern hemisphere watchers at dusk in October.

All of this transpired against a record number of rocket launches worldwide, as SpaceX and its competitors race to fill the sky with Starlink and its ilk.

Will artificial stars outnumber real ones in the coming generation? We're differently witness to an evolving sky, as the clockwork gears unfold in the drama of the heavens above us.

The Rules

First up, some ground rules. We think of this list as a 'best of the best' for the year, distilled down to top events, with a little strangeness thrown in to make things unique. Think conjunctions closer than a degree, comets brighter than +6^th magnitude, etc. as a sort of '101 Top Astronomy Events for the Year.'

The Top 12 Events for 2025

Such is astronomy and skywatching in 2025. First, here's a quick subjective rundown of the dozen very best skywatching events to look forward to in the coming year:

• The peak for Solar Cycle 25 continues
• Mars at opposition in January
• Venus rules the dusk sky at the start of the year, and transitions to the dawn sky
• A once a generation Major Lunar Standstill sees the Moon swinging wide north-to-south
• Saturn's rings are edge on as seen from our Earthly vantage point
• Comet G3 ATLAS 'may' break negative magnitudes in January
• Two total lunar eclipses for the year worldwide
• Lunar occultations worldwide for the stars Spica, Regulus and Antares
• A rare 'triple year' for lunar-stellar occultations
• The Moon meets up with Saturn and Mars multiple times in 2025
• A rare, 'smiling emoticon' triple conjunction involving the Moon, Regulus and Venus on September 19th
• The Moon occults sections of Messier 45 (The Pleiades) on every pass for 2025

The Sun, the Seasons and the Solar Cycle in 2025

We're just coming off of the historic solar maximum in 2024 for Solar Cycle Number 25, and the wild ride is far from over.

On an 11-year period from one maxima to the next, the Sun doubtless has more in store for 2025 in terms of space weather and aurora. We're now on a long, slow downslide towards solar minimum in 2029-2030.

Earth reaches perihelion on January 4^th at 0.98333 AU in 2025, and aphelion on July 3^rd at 1.01664 AU from the Sun.

Seasons in 2025 start on:

• March 20^th (northward equinox)
• June 20^th (northward solstice)
• September 22^nd (southward equinox)
• December 21^st (southward solstice)

The Moon in 2025

2025 is a 'hilly' year for the path of the Moon, as we cross what's known as a Major Lunar Standstill. The actual node crossing for the event occurs on January 29^th.

The Moon's orbit is inclined a little over five degrees relative to the ecliptic plane. The entire orbit of our Moon is also dragged (mainly by the Sun) one revolution every 18.6-years, in what's known as lunar nodal precession.

All this means that once every 18.6 years, the Moon 'swings wide' in the sky, as the tilt of its orbit is applied to the Earth's versus the ecliptic plane.

A 'Hilly Year'

We just had the northernmost Full Moon the decade on December 15^th, 2024, and we're due for the southernmost Full Moon on June 11th.

The year is also rare in that a Black Moon (in the old-timey sense as the third New Moon in an astronomical season with four) occurs on August 23^rd, and the Harvest Moon nearest to the September Equinox occurs in October, on the 7^th.

Moon Phases for 2025 (in Universal Time)

Eclipses in 2025

As mentioned previously, 2025 features 4 eclipses – the minimum number than can occur in a calendar year. These are 2 total lunar and 2 partial solar eclipses, bookending two eclipse seasons in 2025:

• A total lunar eclipse on the night of March 13-14^th for the Americas;
• A partial solar eclipse for March 29^th spanning the North Atlantic;
• A total lunar eclipse on the night of September 7-8^th centered on Central Asia;
• A partial solar eclipse on September 21^st for New Zealand and the South Pacific.

The Inner Planets in 2025

Fleeting Mercury reaches greatest elongation six times in 2025 (3 in the dawn and 3 in the dusk) marking the best time to spy the elusive world:

• March 8^th – Mercury is 18º east (dusk)
• April 21^st – Mercury is 27º west (dawn, best for 2025)
• July 4^th – Mercury is 26º east (dusk)
• August 19^th – Mercury is 18º west (dawn)
• October 29^th – Mercury is 24º east (dusk)
• December 8^th – Mercury is 21º west (dawn)

Meanwhile, Venus is busy in 2025. The brilliant world starts off dominating the evening sky, reaching greatest elongation 47 degrees east of the Sun on January 10^th and shining at magnitude -4.5.

This is the best apparition of Venus since 2017. Venus then takes the plunge towards the Sun, passing less than nine degrees north of the Sun on March 21st-22nd.

This is a good time to try the challenging feat of seeing Venus near inferior conjunction… just make sure that the Sun is physically blocked from view.

Venus then goes on to a fine dawn appearance for the remainder of 2025, reaching greatest elongation 46 degrees west of the Sun on June 25^th.

The Outer Planets in 2025

The big ticket planetary event kicks off 2025, when Mars reaches opposition on January 16^th.

To be sure, this opposition is part of an unfavorable cycle as the Red Planet is currently moving away from us towards aphelion on April 16^th, 2025, but noteworthy as it marks the biannual Mars observing season.

At its best, Mars shines at -1.5 magnitude and presents a disk 15″ across.

Beyond opposition, Mars spends most of the rest of 2025 in the evening sky, and reaches solar conjunction on January 9^th, 2026.

Jupiter in 2025

Jupiter reached opposition on December 7^th, 2024, skips in 2025, and heads to opposition next on January 10^th, 2026. Jupiter last performed such a bypass in 2013.

Callisto (the only major moon that can 'miss' Jove) starts shadow-casting and passing back into Jupiter's shadow on May 11^th. This is a prelude to another bidecadal mutual eclipse season for Jupiter's moons starting in 2026.

We have three double shadow transit seasons to watch for in 2025:

(Thanks to John Flannery and the late John O'Neill who edited the 'Sky-High' publication for the Irish Astronomical Society for years for calculating and passing this info on).

• February 25^th (Ganymede-Europa)
• October 13^th (Ganymede-Io)
• October 29^th (Io-Europa)
• November 5^th (Io-Europa)
• November 21^st (Callisto-Io)

Also watch for a unique event, when only Callisto is visible on October 6^th. Jupiter reaches solar conjunction on June 24^th, transitioning from the dusk to dawn sky.

Saturn in 2025

Saturn starts off 2025 in the evening sky, and passes behind the Sun and into the dawn sky on March 12^th. Saturn reaches opposition once on September 21^st, marking the best time to spy the ringed world.

Saturn's rings are edge on on March 23^rd, 2025, providing us a twice every 29-year view of an apparently 'ring-less' Saturn… just think how bland the solar system would be, if Saturn always appeared thus?

Ring plane-crossing also means it's time to see Saturn's moons transiting across its disk.

These are tougher to spot versus the Galilean moons of Jupiter, though shadow transits of 0.8″ Titan are in the range of backyard telescopes. Use the IMCCE's site to generate shadow transits for Titan in 2025.

Looking outward, Uranus reaches opposition on November 21^st in the constellation Taurus, Neptune passes opposition on September 23^rd in Pisces, and distant Pluto hits opposition on July 25^th in Capricornus.

The Best Conjunctions and Groupings in 2025

2025 is an intriguing year for lunar-planetary meetups.

First off, you have a rare chance to see all of the naked eye planets (from Mercury to Saturn) in the evening sky at once in mid-March, as Mercury briefly completes the scene.

The best planet-versus-planet pairing occurs on August 12^th with Jupiter and Venus just 54′ apart, 36 degrees from the Sun at dawn.

The best planet-versus-bright star conjunction for the year happens when Venus passes 30′ north of Regulus on September 19^th, also at dawn.

Incidentally, a remote region in the Siberian Arctic will actually see the 5% illuminated waning crescent Moon cover the pair simultaneously, while the rest of us will see a skewed, 'smiley face' emoticon grouping hanging in the dawn sky, demonstrating that perhaps the Universe does indeed have a sly sense of humor.

A triple conjunction grouping of this sort won't grace the skies of our fair planet again until February 13^th, 2056, when the Moon, Mars and Mercury meet up.

Bright Planets vs. Clusters

Three planets that transit the Beehive Cluster (Messier 44) in 2025:

• May 4^th Mars vs. M44 (83º from the Sun at dusk)
• July 2^nd Mercury vs. M44 (25º from the Sun at dusk)
• August 31^st Venus vs. M44 (31º from the Sun at dawn)

Planets Occulted by the Moon in 2025

The Moon occults 4 naked eye planets (all except Jupiter) a total of 7 times in 2025:

Bright Stars Occulted by the Moon in 2025

2025 is also rare in that the Moon will occult three of the four +1^st magnitude stars that it can occult: Spica (11 times), Antares (12 times) and Regulus (6 times). Only Aldebaran sits this one out.

Spica occultations are on their way out and headed towards the Antarctic region in 2025, while Regulus events are just sliding on to the scene to the north from the Arctic.

Meanwhile, Spica occultations are still ongoing in 2025, and run out in November.

Occultations of the Pleiades by the Moon in 2025

The Moon occults the Pleiades 14 times worldwide in 2025, in a series of ongoing occultations running all the way out to 2029:

Bright Comets to Watch for in 2025

Right now, there's only one comet with real potential to reach naked eye visibility in 2025: Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS.

This comet reaches perihelion 0.094 AU from the Sun on January 13^th, and 'may' top -1^st magnitude or brighter.

At magnitude +7 as of writing this in late December 2024, Comet G3 ATLAS could become a fine object low in the dawn sky for southern hemisphere observers… but only if it holds together and performs as expected.

Meteor Showers to Watch For in 2025

Here are prospects for annual meteor showers in 2025:

• Quadrantids – Peak at a Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) of 80 on January 4^th versus a +27% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.
• Lyrids – Peak on April 22^nd with an ZHR of 18, versus a -32% illuminated, waning crescent Moon.
• Eta Aquariids – Peak on May 5^th with a ZHR of 50, versus a +64% illuminated, waxing gibbous Moon.
• Southern Delta Aquariids – Peak on July 31^st, with a ZHR of 25, versus a +44% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.
• Perseids – Peak on August 12^th, with an expected ZHR of 100, versus a -87% illuminated, waning gibbous Moon.
• Orionids – Peak on October 21^st with an expected ZHR of 20, versus a New Moon.
• Leonids – Peak on November 17^th, with a ZHR of 10, versus a -5% illuminated, thin waning crescent Moon.
• Geminids – Peak on December 14^th, with a ZHR of 150, versus a -23% illuminated, waning crescent Moon.
• Ursids – Peak on December 22^nd, with a ZHR of 10, versus a 7% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.

My money is on the Geminids for the best expected meteor shower of 2025.

Weirdness and More

Well, we're now officially a quarter of the way into the 21^st century.

For fans and users of stellar cartography, 2050.0 coordinates will now slowly start to come into vogue versus 2000.0, as we inch ever closer to mid-century.

It's a strange thought, for those of us who still remember 1950.0 coordinates on star maps (and star maps in general!).

Looking out of the solar system, we're still waiting for the reclusive (and now overdue) recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis to finally pop.

Also, the white dwarf star Sirius b is now at apastron 11.5″ from its brilliant primary, making this an excellent time to cross it off of your life-list… the +4 and +6 magnitude double star 70 Ophiuchus also reaches maximum separation of 6.7″ in 2025.

Finally, will the defunct Soviet Kosmos 482 Venus mission reenter in 2025? Should we alert the Six Million Dollar Man to stand-by to fight the 'Venus Death Probe?'

…And a Teaser for 2026

The sky just keeps turning into 2026. Watch for mutual eclipse season for the major moons of Jupiter, as the moons pass one in front of the other.

Also, the ongoing solar cycle is also still expected to be active into 2026, producing sunspots, space weather and more.

And (finally!) we'll see the return of total solar eclipses on August 12^th, as the umbral shadow of the Moon crosses Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain.

Don't miss all of these great sky-watching events and more, coming to a sky near you.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.