Englund is a Swedish artist and portrays his superhero confronting the vagaries of old age. You can find his character trying to open a jar of jam, dropping his shopping, and taking a break after a fight. The character was created in 2004 and Englund plans on trying to explore different media to make him shine.

The paintings are vivid and humorous, which is probably why people like them so much. I’d actually like to find out the name of the superhero, although he does seem to be wearing a logo that and drive a car that looks an awful lot like The Punisher’s.

[via My Modern Met]

The experiment was conducted by dermatologist Emi Nishimura in 2004. She exposed mice (their hair also grays with age) to genotoxic stressors – things that can damage our DNA – such as  chemotherapy drugs and x-rays. The hair of the mice turned gray, and as Nishimura said, “the stressed mice’s gray hairs and the cell populations in their follicles were indistinguishable from those of elderly mice, suggesting that genotoxic stress might drive natural graying as well.”

So what does all of this mean? Oncologist David Fisher says that while it’s very strong evidence that the things we encounter everyday – radiation from the sun, household chemicals, perhaps even the medicine we take – can all damage us at a genetic level, the experiment doesn’t prove that emotional stress can damage our DNA or induce premature maturation of our cells.

More importantly, the experiment shows that to some extent our body is capable of protecting itself from DNA-damaged cells by accelerating their aging. Fisher thinks that the experiment is a good starting point to find ways for our body to do the same to cancer cells – which are also DNA-damaged cells.

[via Science]

The study, published in Psychology & Aging, reports that the test group who played the real-time-strategy title Rise of Nations, showed some cognitive improvement after time with the title. While the subjects — all of whom were 60 or older — did not improve in all categories, the gaming group showed increased reasoning ability and were better able to swap between tasks. Clearly, they are spreading the ADD to our parents and grandparents now, but if it gets them into multiplayer Civilization on Wednesday nights, is it worth a complaint?

Arthur Kramer, the man behind the study, cautioned that spending hours building a nation is certainly not the only thing older adults should do to help stave off loss of cognitive function, but he pointed out the connection between managing resources in a strategy game and managing one’s real-life finances. Anything that can help with that, and which also happens to be fun, can’t be a bad idea.

[PhysOrg via Wonderland]