Author: Paul Handover

Our brains and new memories

A fascinating article!

I may be the wrong side of old but I still enjoy immensely the process of learning new things. Some of these new memories actually stay with me!

That is why it gives me great pleasure in republishing an article from The Conversation about our brains creating new memories.

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How does your brain create new memories? Neuroscientists discover ‘rules’ for how neurons encode new information

Neurons that fire together sometimes wire together. PASIEKA/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

William Wright, University of California, San Diego and Takaki Komiyama, University of California, San Diego

Every day, people are constantly learning and forming new memories. When you pick up a new hobby, try a recipe a friend recommended or read the latest world news, your brain stores many of these memories for years or decades.

But how does your brain achieve this incredible feat?

In our newly published research in the journal Science, we have identified some of the “rules” the brain uses to learn.

Learning in the brain

The human brain is made up of billions of nerve cells. These neurons conduct electrical pulses that carry information, much like how computers use binary code to carry data.

These electrical pulses are communicated with other neurons through connections between them called synapses. Individual neurons have branching extensions known as dendrites that can receive thousands of electrical inputs from other cells. Dendrites transmit these inputs to the main body of the neuron, where it then integrates all these signals to generate its own electrical pulses.

It is the collective activity of these electrical pulses across specific groups of neurons that form the representations of different information and experiences within the brain.

Diagram of neuron, featuring a relatively large cell body with a long branching tail extending from it
Neurons are the basic units of the brain. OpenStax, CC BY-SA

For decades, neuroscientists have thought that the brain learns by changing how neurons are connected to one another. As new information and experiences alter how neurons communicate with each other and change their collective activity patterns, some synaptic connections are made stronger while others are made weaker. This process of synaptic plasticity is what produces representations of new information and experiences within your brain.

In order for your brain to produce the correct representations during learning, however, the right synaptic connections must undergo the right changes at the right time. The “rules” that your brain uses to select which synapses to change during learning – what neuroscientists call the credit assignment problem – have remained largely unclear.

Defining the rules

We decided to monitor the activity of individual synaptic connections within the brain during learning to see whether we could identify activity patterns that determine which connections would get stronger or weaker.

To do this, we genetically encoded biosensors in the neurons of mice that would light up in response to synaptic and neural activity. We monitored this activity in real time as the mice learned a task that involved pressing a lever to a certain position after a sound cue in order to receive water.

We were surprised to find that the synapses on a neuron don’t all follow the same rule. For example, scientists have often thought that neurons follow what are called Hebbian rules, where neurons that consistently fire together, wire together. Instead, we saw that synapses on different locations of dendrites of the same neuron followed different rules to determine whether connections got stronger or weaker. Some synapses adhered to the traditional Hebbian rule where neurons that consistently fire together strengthen their connections. Other synapses did something different and completely independent of the neuron’s activity.

Our findings suggest that neurons, by simultaneously using two different sets of rules for learning across different groups of synapses, rather than a single uniform rule, can more precisely tune the different types of inputs they receive to appropriately represent new information in the brain.

In other words, by following different rules in the process of learning, neurons can multitask and perform multiple functions in parallel.

Future applications

This discovery provides a clearer understanding of how the connections between neurons change during learning. Given that most brain disorders, including degenerative and psychiatric conditions, involve some form of malfunctioning synapses, this has potentially important implications for human health and society.

For example, depression may develop from an excessive weakening of the synaptic connections within certain areas of the brain that make it harder to experience pleasure. By understanding how synaptic plasticity normally operates, scientists may be able to better understand what goes wrong in depression and then develop therapies to more effectively treat it.

Microscopy image of mouse brain cross-section with lower middle-half dusted green
Changes to connections in the amygdala – colored green – are implicated in depression. William J. Giardino/Luis de Lecea Lab/Stanford University via NIH/Flickr, CC BY-NC

These findings may also have implications for artificial intelligence. The artificial neural networks underlying AI have largely been inspired by how the brain works. However, the learning rules researchers use to update the connections within the networks and train the models are usually uniform and also not biologically plausible. Our research may provide insights into how to develop more biologically realistic AI models that are more efficient, have better performance, or both.

There is still a long way to go before we can use this information to develop new therapies for human brain disorders. While we found that synaptic connections on different groups of dendrites use different learning rules, we don’t know exactly why or how. In addition, while the ability of neurons to simultaneously use multiple learning methods increases their capacity to encode information, what other properties this may give them isn’t yet clear.

Future research will hopefully answer these questions and further our understanding of how the brain learns.

William Wright, Postdoctoral Scholar in Neurobiology, University of California, San Diego and Takaki Komiyama, Professor of Neurobiology, University of California, San Diego

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

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Our human brains are incredible. Billions of nerve cells. Yet we are still getting to know the science of our brains and as that last sentence was written: “Future research will hopefully answer these questions and further our understanding of how the brain learns.”

Roll on this future research.

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Sixty-Nine

Beautiful photos from my Grandson.

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I have not editted these photos. They were taken by a Lumix G7 camera that was a present from his Uncle; my son Alex.

Beautiful shots of Jupiter

Just lucky to be in the right place at the right time!

As in taken from our deck facing East just after 5am Pacific Daylight Time

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The above two photographs were taken in the early morning of the 14th April, 2025 with my Nikon D750 camera.

Here’s an extract from WikiPedia about the planet Jupiter.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined and slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Its diameter is eleven times that of Earth and a tenth that of the Sun. Jupiter orbits the Sun at a distance of 5.20 AU (778.5 Gm), with an orbital period of 11.86 years. It is the third-brightest natural object in the Earth’s night sky, after the Moon and Venus, and has been observed since prehistoric times. Its name derives from that of Jupiter, the chief deity of ancient Roman religion.

Improving equality

An extremely powerful new essay from George Monbiot.

While this post from G. Monbiot is about politics, I think it goes far beyond that. Hence my reason for republishing this essay, with George Monbiot’s permission. When I will die is not known but surely I will in the next ten years or so. I really want to leave this world seeing everything improving, from the lessening of the change in our climate, to a reduction in world fighting, to a greater equality for all.

Please, please be wrong, Mr. Monbiot.

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The Urge to Destroy

Posted on14th April 2025

It’s a cast-iron relationship: the more unequal a society becomes, the better the far right does. Here’s why. 

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  13th April 2025

“He’s really gone and done it this time. Now everyone can see what a disaster he is.” How many times have we heard this about Donald Trump? And how many times has it been proved wrong? Well, maybe this time he really has overstepped. After all, his clowning around with tariffs, sparking trade wars, then suddenly reversing his position, could provoke a global recession, perhaps even a depression. Surely his supporters will disown him? But I’m not banking on it, and this is why.

Already, Trump has waged war on everything that builds prosperity and wellbeing: democracy, healthy ecosystems, education, healthcare, science, the arts. Yet, amid the wreckage, and despite some slippage, his approval ratings still hold between 43 and 48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why? I believe part of the answer lies in a fundamental aspect of our humanity: the urge to destroy that from which you feel excluded.

This urge, I think, is crucial to understanding politics. Yet hardly anyone seems to recognise it. Hardly anyone, that is, except the far right, who see it all too well.

In many parts of the world, and the US in particular, inequality has risen sharply since the late 1970s. (The UK tracks this trend.) The world’s billionaires became $2tn richer last year, while the number of people living below the global poverty line is more or less unchanged since 1990.

There is strong evidence of a causal association between growing inequality and the rise of populist authoritarian movements. A paper in the Journal of European Public Policy found that a one-unit rise in the Gini coefficient (a standard measure of inequality) increases support for demagogues by 1%.

Why might this be? There are various, related explanations: feelings of marginalisation, status anxiety and social threat, insecurity triggering an authoritarian reflex and a loss of trust in other social groups. At the root of some of these explanations, I feel, is something deeply embedded in the human psyche: if you can’t get even, get mean.

In the US, a high proportion of the population is excluded from many of the benefits I’ve listed. Science might lead to medical breakthroughs, but not, perhaps, for people who can’t afford health insurance. A university education might open doors, but only if you’re prepared to carry tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Art and theatre and music improve our lives: good for those who can buy the tickets. So do national parks, but only if you can afford to visit them.

Democracy, we are told, allows people a voice in politics. But only, it seems, if they have a few million to give to a political party. As the political scientist Prof Martin Gilens notes in his book Affluence and Influence: “Under most circumstances, the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt.” GDP growth was strong under Joe Biden, but as the economics professor Jason Furman points out: “From 2019 to 2023, inflation-adjusted household income fell, and the poverty rate rose.” GDP and social improvement are no longer connected.

All those good things? Sorry, they’re not for you. If you feel an urge to tear it all down, to burn the whole stinking, hypocritical, exclusive system to the ground, Trump is your man. Or so he claims. In reality his entire performance is both a distraction from and an accelerant of spiralling inequality. He can hardly lose: the more he exacerbates inequality, the more he triggers an urge for revenge against his scapegoats: immigrants, trans people, scientists, teachers, China.

But such killer clowns can’t pull this off by themselves. Their most effective recruiters are centrist parties paralysed in the face of economic power. In hock to rich funders, terrified of the billionaire media, for decades they have been unable even to name the problem, let alone address it. Hence the spectacular uselessness of the Democrats’ response to Trump. As the US journalist Hamilton Nolan remarks: “One party is out to kill, and the other is waiting for its leaders to die.”

In the UK, Labour, like the Democrats, has long assured itself that it doesn’t matter how wide economic disparities are, as long as the poorest are raised up. Now it has abandoned even that caveat: we can cut benefits, so long as GDP grows. But it does matter. It matters very much. A vast array of evidence, brought together in 2009 in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and updated in 2024, shows that inequality exerts a massive influence on social, economic, environmental and political outcomes, regardless of people’s absolute positions.

If there is a such a thing as Starmerism, it collapses in the face of a paper published by the political scientists Leonardo Baccini and Thomas Sattler last year, which finds that austerity increases support for the radical right in economically vulnerable regions. (My emboldening. PH) Austerity, they found, is the key variable: without it, less-educated people are no more likely to vote for rightwing demagogues than highly educated people are. In other words, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are busily handing their core constituencies to Nigel Farage.

Of course, they deny they’re imposing austerity, using a technical definition that means nothing to those on the sharp end. Austerity is what the poor experience, while they must watch the rich and upper middle classes, under a Labour government, enjoy ever greater abundance.

Starmer and his minions suggest there’s nothing they can do: wealthy people are already taxed to the max. As private jets and helicopters cross the skies, anyone can see this is nonsense. Of all the remarkable things I stumbled across while researching this column, the following is perhaps the most jaw-dropping. On the most recent (2022) figures, once benefits have been paid, the Gini coefficient for gross income in the UK scarcely differs from the Gini coefficient for post-tax income. In other words, the gap between the rich and the poor is rougly the same after taxes are levied, suggesting that taxation has no further significant effect on income distribution. How could this possibly be true, when the rich pay higher rates of income tax? It’s because the poor surrender a much higher proportion of their income in sales taxes, such as VAT. So much for no further options. So much for Labour “realism”.

The one thing that can stop the rise of the far right is the one thing mainstream parties are currently not prepared to deliver: greater equality. The rich should be taxed more, and the revenue used to improve the lives of the poor. However frantically centrist parties avoid the issue, there is no other way.

www.monbiot.com

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George writes about Britain but my judgement is that this issue is not limited to that country; I suspect it is a far wider problem. Did you know that Finland is the world’s happiest country?

An extract of that article: “Finland has been ranked as the world’s happiest country for the eighth successive year, with experts citing access to nature and a strong welfare system as factors.

It came ahead of three other Nordic countries in this year’s UN-sponsored World Happiness Report, while Latin America’s Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time.

Both the UK and the US slipped down the list to 23rd and 24th respectively – the lowest-ever position for the latter.”

The Beatles

Some nostalgic memories.

For some odd reason I have been thinking about The Beatles.

All four singers were born before me and when I was growing up in London they were the first pop music group that I liked very much. The Beatles were formed in 1960. There are many of their tracks available on YouTube.

It is not possible to share the tracks with you (Presumably for copyright reasons). So please go to the track on YouTube and listen to: Let it Be.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=QDYfEBY9NM4&si=mSx-iOJ5ncqH-zgC

Meanwhile here are the lyrics.

Let It Be

Song by The Love Beatles ‧ 1970

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be, be

And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me
Shinin’ until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Source: Musixmatch

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Sixty-Eight

Springtime!

Photographs taken by me around our home.

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I wanted to find an appropriate quote about Spring and found this one:

“A life without love is like a year without spring.”

It was coined by Octavian Paler.

Wow!

I am republishing a post by Patrice Ayme!

But first I want to publish a comment left by me on Tuesday morning.

This is (marginally) beyond my intellect. But I understood sufficient to be amazed by the incredible facts of the vastness of space.

We live just far enough away from the nearest town so that the electric lights do not interfere with the night sky.

When we have a clear moonless night I stand on our rear deck and look up at the stars and become lost, in the sense that I do not think, in gazing and gazing and g….. and g…. and ..

The vastness of space!

Now to the article.

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Abstract: Modern cosmological theories of the 2010s are incredibly precise. Those Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛLCDM) theories have a problem: the acceleration of the expansion of the universe computed in our cosmic neighborhood disagrees with the acceleration of the expansion computed using what is viewed as the early universe. It is a question of 73 locally versus 68 early on. But these are accelerations…

Only SQPR has something deep to say about this situation, because in that theory “Dark Energy” augments with time (so the local Hubble constant should be higher than any old one…) .

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In the first half of the 20C a number of European and US astronomers, including Hubble, a lawyer turned astronomer using the world’s most powerful telescope (in California), established that the universe was expanding. Isolated galaxies, and giant clusters of galaxies, were observed to separate from each other. When Hubble announced the expansion (which had been guessed by some of his European colleagues), he got a number that was so high that the universe was younger than the Sun. That was corrected by Baade, a German astronomer. 

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DARK MATTER:

Meanwhile, in 1933 Fritz Zwicky, a Swiss at Caltech, studying the giant Coma cluster of more than 1,000 galaxies, saw that they were moving too fast for the observed mass, and announced Dunkle Materie, Dark Matter. Nobody liked that, and ignoring it was facilitated by what was viewed as Zwicky’s insufferable, eccentric personality (as all people of exceptional intellect). Fritz also coined the term “supernova” while fostering the concept of neutron stars.(Zwicky also pushed for “Tired Light” theory (which SQPR predicts)… what was viewed as a major irritant by the Big Bangists…) 

A generation later, Vera Rubin, an astronomer at Carnegie, confirmed after studying 60 galaxies and Andromeda with a state of the art spectrometer, that, well, the galaxies rotated too much like plates (and not just like vortices)… confirming Zwicky’s Dark Matter. She was not ignored, although a woman and a mother to boot. A major observatory coming on line at high altitude in the Atacama desert bears her name. It’s not called the Zwicky. Maybe Zwicky should have claimed to be a woman?

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DARK ENERGY:

Dark Energy is the name given to whatever is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe. Here’s a quick presentation of what We (Sort of) Know:

In the late 1990s, astronomers studying distant supernovae discovered that the universe’s expansion is speeding up, not slowing down. This was unexpected—gravity, a constant force towards the center of mass (whatever that is!) should be pulling everything together, slowing the expansion down. Something must be pushing it apart (another explanation -not usually considered- would be that gravity weakens over ultra-cosmological distances… as SQPR would have it).

That “something” supposedly pushing galactic clusters apart, is what we call Dark Energy. It’s not directly observed, but, like many things in science, inferred from its effects. How Much of the Universe Is It?

According to the reigning current models (like Lambda-CDM), the universe is roughly: 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter… and 5% regular matter (you, me, stars, planets, etc.)

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What Might Dark Energy Be? There are a few theoriescharacterized by a parcimony of imagination:

Cosmological Constant (Λ) – Einstein originally added this to his equations of general relativity. It represents a constant energy density filling space uniformly. Einstein put it in to prevent the equation representing gravitation in the universe to collapse the universe gravitationally. As a prima donna, he later claimed that to be his “greatest mistake”, as otherwise he, Einstein The Great Again, would have “predicted” the expansion of the universe. In any case, the Cosmological Constant (Λ) explains nothing, it’s just a description of behavior (but supposes a few things one may be able to contradict)..

Quintessence – Turning the  constant Λ into a dynamic field, evolving over space and time.

Modified Gravity – Maybe gravity doesn’t work quite the way we think on cosmic scales, and we don’t need a “dark energy” at all. The problem is that the “official” MONDs (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics) were devised to explain Dark Matter in galaxies… But they failed. 

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The only proposed theory that is not just a description of behavior, is SQPR, Sub Quantic, Physical Reality.y Is Dark Energy So Weird:

The energy density of dark energy stays constant (or nearly so), even as the universe expands.

This means more space = more dark energy, which further accelerates expansion.

In SQPR this is directly explained by the weakening of gravity as the carrier bosons are ripped apart…Because the Quantum Interaction is not of infinite range…

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73 – 68 = 5… 5 km/s per Megaparsec…Let’s meditate on this. Over a billion years, if we have two objects the distance of which augments at 15,000 km/s. It turns out that affects severely the famed high precision of the age of the universe… which I always took with a bucket of salt…

A higher Hubble constant affects key cosmic stats — assuming a flat universe with ΛCDM (standard model). These numbers are approximate and based on best-fit ΛCDM calculations — exact values depend on details like matter/dark energy density. The difference might not seem huge in light-years, but in cosmology, even a 5% shift is massive — it changes how we model the early universe, galaxy formation, and fundamental physics.

Hubble Constant (H₀) 67 km/s/Mpc (Planck satellite): Age of Universe ~13.8 billion years; Radius of Observable Universe ~46.5 billion light-years; Diameter ~93 BLY

At the higher 73 km/s/Mpc ( from Local data), the age of the universe is only ~13.0 billion years, the observable radius  ~43.8 billion light-years, its diameter, ~87.6 BLY

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Astronomy has long led towards new physics. F = ma, the crucial “2nd law” of mechanics was discovered by Buridan, circa 1340 CE, by mentally exploring what happened to a falling body (I read Buridan directly and made that conclusion myself). Then Buridan suggested that his first law (no force, no change of impetus; implicitly considers them to be vectors) implied that planets would keep rotating indefinitely… Then of course there was the synthesis in the 17C from Kepler to Newton… Observing the satellites of Jupiter and their twenty minute delay when they are the furthest from Earth, gave the speed of light..

Supposing that the Quantum Interaction which teleports quantum states does so at finite speed, gives Dark Matter and Dark Energy….

 Is a very simple modification… but quite at odds from the way physicists learn Quantum Physics.

Anyway, the mildly called “Hubble Tension” is turning into the “Hubble Crisis”. Good, With enough crises, we may get somewhere…

Patrice Ayme 

Please contemplate below with what the scandal started, the Coma Cluster of 1,000+ galaxies… Zwicky computed that the visible mass would have to be multiplied by 400 to hold the cluster together…

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The absolute vastness of space!

Crater Lake

Two shots of this beautiful lake.

I was going through some files yesterday and found many photographs taken by me.

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These were taken in 2018 which was when my son, Alex, and his partner, Lisa, came over to see us.

Here is the opening part of Wikipedia writing about Crater Lake:

Crater Lake (Klamath: Giiwas)[2] is a volcanic crater lake in south-central Oregon in the Western United States. It is the main feature of Crater Lake National Park and is a tourist attraction for its deep blue color and water clarity. The lake partly fills a 2,148-foot-deep (655 m) caldera[3] that was formed around 7,700 (± 150) years ago[4] by the collapse of the volcano Mount Mazama. No rivers flow into or out of the lake; the evaporation is compensated for by rain and snowfall at a rate such that the total amount of water is replaced every 150 years.[5] With a depth of 1,949 feet (594 m),[6] the lake is the deepest in the United States. In the world, it ranks eleventh for maximum depth, as well as fifth for mean depth.

The rest of that Wikipedia article is here.

A guide to staying fulfilled in later life.

This article in The Conversation spoke to me!

So it is the 1st April and, here in Oregon, we had over half-an-inch of rain yesterday; Spring hasn’t yet arrived!

I’m at the age where I think much more about dying than I used to, say, ten years ago. Frankly, I’m not ready to go yet!

So when I saw this article from The Conversation I wanted to share it with you.

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Want to stay healthier and fulfilled later in life? Try volunteering

New volunteers get trained in Lexington, Ky., to help out at CASA of Lexington in April 2023. AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel

Cal J. Halvorsen, Washington University in St. Louis and Seoyoun Kim, University of Michigan

As gerontologists – social scientists who study aging populations – we envision a future in which older people leave a doctor’s visit with a prescription to go volunteer for something.

Does that sound far-fetched? There’s scientific research backing it up.

Good for your health

While spending more than a dozen years researching what happens when older adults volunteer with nonprofits, including churches, we’ve found that volunteers consider themselves to be in better health than their peers who don’t. In addition, their blood pressure is lower, and they appear to be aging more slowly than other people of the same age.

Other researchers have found that volunteering is associated with a lower risk of having a heart attack.

The mental health benefits are just as striking.

Volunteering is tied to having fewer symptoms of depression and being more satisfied with your life. It often brings an instant boost in mood – along with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

Even engaging in what’s known as “informal helping” – lending a hand to friends, neighbors or community members in need, without getting paid or participating in an organized program – can help you in similar ways.

There are also health benefits for those who start volunteering much earlier in life.

Children and teens who volunteer tend to have better health and lower levels of anxiety and fewer behavioral problems than those who don’t volunteer.

Changing demographics

The number of U.S. adults at least 62 years old – the earliest age at which you can claim Social Security retirement benefits – has grown by nearly 35 million since 2000, while the number of children and teens under 18 has fallen by nearly 1.5 million. There are now about 76 million Americans over 62 and 71 million under 18.

This change has been gradual. Following a long-term demographic shift, record numbers of Americans are reaching retirement age.

Benefits for society and the economy

The benefits of volunteering aren’t just for the volunteers themselves.

The total value of the hours of unpaid work volunteers put in totals an estimated US$170 billion each year, according to AmeriCorps, the federal agency focused on national and community service.

And participating in community service programs can lead to better job prospects for volunteers, that same agency has found.

AmeriCorps Seniors, which focuses on engaging volunteers ages 55 and older, runs programs that offer major benefits to their communities. These include the Foster Grandparent program, which connects older adult mentors to children, and the Senior Companion program, which connects volunteers to older adults seeking some help to continue living independently in their own homes.

A current AmeriCorps Seniors pilot program is helping adults 55 and up, who can have more trouble landing new jobs than younger people, gain new job skills through their community service.

People of all ages can get together through volunteering. Some organizations intentionally encourage this kind of intergenerational cooperation, including CoGenerate and Generations United.

Rebuilding communities

Researchers have also found that volunteering may increase trust within a community, especially when it brings together people from different backgrounds.

It can strengthen “social cohesion,” a term researchers use to describe how much people bond and help each other, and reduce prejudice.

Volunteers’ views on social issues may change through their work, too: More than 4 in 5 adults over 55 who tutored public school students to strengthen their reading skills in the national Experience Corps program, for example, stated that their views on public education evolved as a result. Those volunteers expressed more support for public education and said they’d be more likely to vote in favor of spending on schools.

An American pastime

Our findings are backed by science, but they also have roots in American history.

Alexis de Tocqueville – a French philosopher and diplomat who arrived in the United States in 1831 to study the new nation’s penal system – was so impressed by the scale of volunteering in the U.S. that he wrote about it in his 1835 book “Democracy in America.”

Tocqueville observed that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds” were likely to unite in many kinds of groups or associations.

More recently, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has said that volunteering can strengthen communities, and that “community is a powerful source of life satisfaction and life expectancy.”

If you aren’t volunteering today, here are a few ideas to help you begin.

Start small. Try joining an organization or association in your community, taking part in neighborhood cleanups or volunteering at your local senior center, animal shelter or museum. Love gardening? You can take care of local parks, conservation areas, community gardens and more.

Once you’re ready for a bigger commitment, consider becoming a mentor through programs such as OASIS Intergenerational Tutoring or Big Brothers Big Sisters.

And consider a more extensive level of commitment to organizations or causes you care deeply about. This might include joining a nonprofit board of directors, volunteering more hours, or taking on a volunteer leadership role.

At a time when trust is eroding and divisions seem insurmountable, volunteering offers something rare: an evidence-backed way to reconnect with communities, institutions and each other.

Reach out to your favorite nonprofit, visit Volunteer.gov or VolunteerMatch.org, or connect with a nonprofit resource center, a regional United Way or a community foundation to find volunteer opportunities near you.

Cal J. Halvorsen, Associate Professor of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis and Seoyoun Kim, Associate adjunct of Sociology, University of Michigan

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

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The challenge is I no longer have a driver’s license. Plus Jean has Parkinson’s Disease. But if there is a way to overcome these obstacles and doing some volunteering then that would be a very positive way ahead.