A newly discovered suite of 150 "long life" variants in about 70 genes allows scientists to guess, with 77 percent accuracy, whether a person can live into their late 90s or longer, a new study says.
These long-life gene variants, the authors speculate, may suppress genes associated with ailments often linked to aging, such as dementia and heart problems.
"This is just a genetic predisposition," cautioned study leader Paola Sebastiani, a biostatistician at the Boston University School of Public Health. "It doesn't mean that you're going to live to be a hundred. Many things can happen in life."
At this moment, 4,547 comments have rained down upon me for that blog entry. I'm informed by Wayne Hepner, who turned them into a text file: "It's more than Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and The Brothers Karamazov." I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread. Still, they were a good set of comments for the most part. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition.
(Image credit: Flickr user Thomas Hawk)
STAGED FRIGHTFor seven hours, I was entertained and, I hope, moderately entertaining, as a parade of moms with strollers, grandparents with charges, art students from Santa Ana College, biology students from Fullerton College, friends, regular readers and media types wandered up.
If they had no idea a human being was on loan from the Register, the look on their faces said, "What the ..." If they did know, they wanted to know, "Why the ..."
"Three days, and you're getting paid?" one woman asked, as I regaled onlookers with a variety of tricks that included blowing smoke rings and figuring out how to extract tiny bits of papaya from a hollow ball my keeper tossed at me.
"Well, uh, yeah, I guess I am getting paid," I replied indignantly.
"Paid just to sit in a cage three days a week," she said, shaking her head.
"Oh, no!" I said, finally realizing where she was going. "I'm not here three days every week!"
We are excited about doing this for all sorts of reasons. One, our business model is so vague that there’s no way Amazon can possibly change what it is we’re truly doing: preparing the way for the rise of the Lava Men in 2012. Also, our deal means that Jason Toon will finally be released from that Mexican jail owned by Zappos honcho Tony Hsieh. No, don’t lie, Tony, we’ve seen the paperwork. And we need a powerful ally in case Steve Jobs finally breaks down and comes after us for all our Apple jokes over the years. Don’t think of it as a buyout; think of it as NATO!
Today’s sperm whale has no functional teeth in its upper jaw and only small ones in its lower jaw (which are mostly used in fights). It feeds through suction, relying on a rush of water to carry its prey into its open mouth. But Leviathan’s mouth was full of huge teeth, the largest of which were a foot long and around 4 inches wide. This was no suction feeder! Leviathan clearly grabbed its prey with a powerful bite, inflicting deep wounds and tearing off flesh as killer whales do, but with a skull three times bigger.
Leviathan was at the very top of the food chain and it must have needed a lot of food. While modern sperm whales mainly eat squid, Lambert thinks that Leviathan used its fearsome teeth to kill its own kind – the giant baleen whales. At the same point in prehistory, baleen whales started becoming much bigger and they were certainly the most common large animals in the area that Leviathan lived in. Lambert thinks that the giant predator evolved to take advantage of this rich source of energy. He says, “We think that medium-size baleen whales, rich in fat, would have been very convenient prey for Leviathan.”
In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India, researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day.
After three months, they found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced.
It's not just the honey that will be lost if populations plummet further. Bees are estimated to pollinate 90 commercial crops worldwide. Their economic value in the UK is estimated to be $290 million per year and around $12 billion in the U.S.
The low-tech, wholly organic approaches to pest control are likely to draw little notice from the up to 40,000 golf fans who show up to check out Tiger Woods and other PGA luminaries at the show, though a closer look will reveal the birdhouses sited amid the fescue of the roughs.
Course regulars fondly swap stories about Charlie, the black-and-white canine called "part of the staff" by course superintendent John Gosselin for her help with geese and other critter interlopers - including foxes and, two summers ago, a coyote.
"She's just prepared to chase anything that moves," assistant superintendent Ben Little said. "Never actually caught anything, but she has fun with it."
She was not injured. Her husband arrived on the scene and took her home. Troopers do not suspect alcohol or drugs to be factors in this accident.
They added that they found no evidence of a vampire.
