In this talk, Catherine will shine a spotlight(焦点)on the latest science on brain health, including what we know about preventing cognitive(认知的)decline as we get older and what we can do about improving our mental health today. She will unpack the latest understanding on the way that sleep, diet, exercise and our social lives are vital for maintaining the grey matter in our brain and will share practical tips that can produce long-term brain benefits.

Catherine is an award-winning journalist and is Head of Features at New Scientist. Her work has been widely published including in Nature. The Observer. BBC and The Washington Post.

What's included in your ticket:

✓On-demand lecture lasting 60 minutes including Q&A（Question and Answer）with Catherine.

✓On-demand access to a recording of the lecture and Q&A for 12 months.

Bonus content from New Scientist

You can purchase a single ticket to one lecture for just £13(early booking rate), or save 25% off the standard ticket price by purchasing a series ticket to all 4 talks.

Grille Health and Wellbeing series from New Scientist events features three other online talks, which are all available on-demand now as part of a series ticket.

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19-year-old Zara Rutherford has made some records after completing a 32,000-mile flying around the world. Landing at Kortrijk-Wevelgem Airport in western Belgium on Thursday, she became the youngest woman, and first Belgian to fly alone around the world—as well as the first person ever to do it in an ultralight (轻型的) aircraft. It took her 155 days.

The previous youngest-ever woman to accomplish the celebrated achievement of flight was American Shaesta Waiz, who also founded a non-profit called Dreams Soar, which Rutherford was supporting on her long journey. A funny twist of fate saw the two globe travelers united on a stopover.

Rutherford made the 41-country crossing to inspire more women and girls into entering other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields, but obviously and particularly flight. Remarking on how only 5.1% of pilots are women, she described the occupation last year as “a career where you basically get paid to travel around the world.”

It wasn't all smooth flying for the 160-mph ultralight aircraft, and both extreme weather and visa difficulties took their toll on the plane and the pilot. Originally planned for three months and 52 countries, the route had to be changed due to unscheduled landings such as to avoid wildfires in California, and a denial for crossing permission over Japan.

“I would say the hardest part was definitely flying over Siberia—it was extremely cold. It was minus 35 degrees Celsius on the ground,” Rutherford said when interviewed. "If the engine were to stop, I'd be hours away from rescue and I don't know how long I could have survived for.”

Rutherford was piloting Shark Aero, one of the fastest ultralight aircraft in the world-built by specialists and improved for the standards of flying around the world.

A team of researchers at MET and in China has come up with a solution to the problem of salt accumulation. The process could also be used to treat waste water or to produce steam for cleaning medical instruments, all without requiring any power source other than sunlight itself.

The findings are described in the journal Nature Communications published on February 14, 2022, by MIT students Lenan Zhang, Xiangyu Li, Professor Evelyn Wang, and four others.

“There have been a lot of solar-based designs of various systems,” Wang says. “The challenge has been the salt fouling issue, which people haven’t really solved. Over time, things will get worse without a desalination(脱盐) system.”

Li says that the advantages of this system are “both the high performance and the reliable operation, especially under extreme conditions. And that means it’s also very useful for waste water treatment” He adds that much work on such solar-powered desalination has focused on new materials. “But in our case, we use really low-cost, almost household materials. ” The key was analyzing and understanding a special flow that drives this entirely passive system, he says. ” People say you always need new materials, expensive ones, or complex structures to do that. And this is, I believe, the first one that does this without complex structures.”

Just as hot air rises and cold air falls, Zhang explains, such movement of water drives the desalination process in this system. Because of the salt, the density(密度) of water at the very top is higher, and the bottom water has lower density. So, this is an original driving force for such movement of water because the higher density at the top drives the salty liquid to go down. The water evaporated(蒸发) from the top of the system can then be collected on a special surface, providing pure fresh water.

So far, the team has proved the approach to be workable, with no signs of any salt accumulation, so the next step will surely witness systems that could have practical applications.

Bicycle riding has taken the world by storm. Bicycles are typically made of steel or aluminum（铝）but now there is a unique company that is growing bikes on trees.

These bicycles are made of British-grown ash trees（白蜡树）by Welsh furniture maker Andy Dix. His company, Twmpa Frames, is making bikes that are both high performance and environmentally sustainable. Going from furniture to bicycles came about after a conversation with author Rob Penn. Penn was looking for craftsmen to make things from an ash tree that fell for his book: The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees.

“We talked about what I might build, and I suggested a bike,“ said Dix. "It seemed like a good fit, but actually I had no experience in bike building, and Rob had a publishing deadline. In the end, I built him a writing desk instead." But the idea interested Dix who decided that he had to make it happen just to see if he could.

It took two years to build the prototype（原型）that was made from ash wood Dix tested the wooden bike on the roughest roads he could find and discovered that it was comfortable, and excellent at absorbing vibrations（振动）.He put more than 3,000 miles on the bike. While cutting down trees can add to more carbon in the atmosphere, sustainable tree farming is possible. Sustainable forestry is about balancing the needs of the environment and forest communities through limiting harvests and replanting trees.

Producing a ton of aluminum in Britain results in carbon emissions of 4,532kg while producing a ton of wood only results in 457kg. Making bicycle frames out of wood won't make a huge difference but it is a small roll in the right direction.

The cost of a new Twmpa Cycle is out of reach for many bicycle riders; the idea of using sustainable materials like ash could start a new cycling revolution that puts the environment first. The company is even making plans to produce a wooden e-bike. Helping the environment could be just a pedal away.