New Genetic Model Accurately Predicts Who's Likely to Live to 100

In 1997, Jeanne Louise Calment of France died at the age of 122, making her the oldest documented human to have ever lived. But is there something genetically unique about centenarians that enables them to age gracefully and relatively disease-free?

According to the results of a long-term study at Boston University School of Medicine, the answer is yes. People who live to be 100 years or older are rare, and only about 1 in 600,000 people in industrialized nations live that long.

As part of the New England Centenarian Study, a team of aging research specialists led by Paola Sebastiani and Tom Perls looked at 300,000 genetic markers in 800 centenarians and compared their profiles with those of random individuals. They then developed a genetic model that can compute an individual's predisposition to living a long life and found that centenarians shared a common genetic signature that could predict extreme longevity — with 77 percent accuracy. The findings represent a breakthrough in understanding how genes influence human life spans.

"Out of 100 centenarians we could correctly predict the outcome of 77 percent, while we incorrectly predicted the outcome of 23 percent," said Sebastiani. The researchers believe the 23 percent error rate can be attributed to genetic variance not yet known and included in the analysis, as well as other factors that influence longevity. "Making healthy lifestyle choices such as eating a well balanced diet or exercising regularly and avoiding exposure to tobacco plays an undisputed role in determining how each of us will age," said Andrew Sugden, international managing editor of Science.

Centenarians are a model of aging well, and 90 percent of people who reach this milestone are disability free at the average age of 93, Perls said. But he advised caution about the possibility of "testing" people to determine longevity, saying that much more study needs to be done regarding how health care providers and the research community guide individuals about what to do with the information they get. "I think a test for exceptional longevity is not quite ready for prime time," he said. "We're quite a ways from understanding what pathways governed by these genes are involved and how the integration of these genes, not just with themselves but with environmental factors, are all playing a role in this longevity puzzle."

According to Perls, future analysis of the results may shed light on how specific genes protect centenarians from common age-related diseases, such as dementia, heart disease, and cancer. "I look at the complexity of this puzzle and feel very strongly that this will not lead to treatments that will get a lot of people to become centenarians, but it could make a dent in the onset of age-related diseases like Alzheimer's," he said.

No Cuteness Can Make Needles Any Less Terrifying

Syrinx is a syringe substitute for kids. The designers think that, by making them look like little animals with needles coming out of their noses, they are making syringes kid-friendly. Because, you know, blood sucking animals are so cute:







When they are done, the doctor can give the detachable animal to the kid, so they can keep reliving the moment when the-bad-man-in-the-white-lab-coat took a glass of blood out of their bodies in the comfort of their own bedroom.

Pioneer of In Vitro Fertilization Wins Nobel Prize

The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded this year to Robert G. Edwards, an English biologist who with a physician colleague, Patrick Steptoe, developed the in vitro fertilization procedure for treating human infertility.

Since the birth of the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, on July 25, 1978, some four million babies worldwide have been conceived by mixing eggs and sperm outside the body and returning the embryo to the womb to resume the normal development. The procedure overcomes many previously untreatable causes of infertility and is used in 3 percent of all live births in developed countries.

Dr. Edwards, a physiologist who spent much of his career at Cambridge University in England, devoted more than 20 years to solving a series of problems in getting eggs and sperm to mature and successfully unite outside the body. His colleague, Dr. Steptoe, was a gynecologist and pioneer of laparoscopic surgery, the method used to extract eggs from the prospective mother.

Dr. Steptoe, who presumably would otherwise have shared the prize, died in 1988. Dr. Edwards, born in 1925, has now retired as head of research from the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, which he and Dr. Steptoe founded as one of the world’s first centers for in vitro fertilization.

Though in vitro fertilization is now widely accepted, the birth of the first test tube baby was greeted with intense concern that the moral order was subverted by unnatural intervention in the mysterious process of creating a human being. Dr. Edwards was well aware of the ethical issues raised by his research and took the lead in addressing them.

The objections gradually died away, except on the part of the Catholic church, as it became clear that the babies born by in vitro fertilization were healthy and that their parents were overjoyed to be able to start a family. Long-term follow-ups have confirmed the essential safety of the technique.

The deliberations of the prize-giving committee at the Karolinksa Institute in Sweden are confidential and it is unclear why it took so long to acknowledge Dr. Edwards’s achievement. The committee routinely ignores the stipulation in Alfred Nobel’s will that the prize should be awarded for a discovery made the preceding year, because it takes longer than that to evaluate most scientific claims, but delays of 30 years or more are unusual. The Lasker Foundation in New York, whose jurors often anticipate the Nobel prize committee, awarded Dr. Edwards its prize in 2001.

Dr. Edwards’s research proved too controversial for the Medical Research Council, a government funding agency that is the British equivalent of the National Institutes of Health. In 1971 the council rejected an application from Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe to work on in vitro fertilization, but they were able to continue with private funds.

“In retrospect, it is amazing that Edwards not only was able to respond to the continued criticism of in vitro fertilization, but that he also remained so persistent and unperturbed in fulfilling his scientific vision,” Christer Höög,a member of the Nobel prize committee, writes on the Nobel Foundation’s web page.

Both Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe had to endure an unremitting barrage of criticism while developing their technique. Dr. Steptoe “faced immense clinical criticism over his laparoscopy, even being isolated at clinical meetings in London,” Dr. Edwards wrote in Nature 2001 after receiving the Lasker award. “Ethicists decried us, forecasting abnormal babies, misleading the infertile and misrepresenting our work as really acquiring human embryos for research.”

Dr. Edwards fought back, forming alliances with ethicists in the Church of England and filing libel actions — eight in one day — against his critics. “I won them all, but the work and worry restricted research for several years,” he wrote.

Even after the birth of Louise Brown, the government refused to support his work which was delayed for two and a half years, Dr. Edwards wrote, until he secured private funds. “There was at one time a possibility that Steptoe and Edwards would emigrate to the United States,” said Dr. Michael Macnamee, director of the Bourn Hall clinic and a longtime colleague of Dr. Edwards.

In parallel with defending his work in public, Dr. Edwards had to surmount one daunting problem after another in his laboratory. It sounds easy — mix eggs and sperm in a Petri dish and let nature do the rest. But the opposite is the case.

At the outset of his research, Dr. Edwards wasted two years trying to get eggs to mature outside the body, based on a report that human eggs matured in 12 hours. Eventually he learned that at least 25 hours is required.

Needing a reliable supply of human eggs, he approached Dr. Steptoe at the Oldham and District General Hospital because of his expertise at retrieving unfertilized eggs from the ovary through minute incisions in the patient’s skin. The two agreed to work as equals, to halt their work if danger emerged to patients or children and to ignore all criticism they deemed frivolous. The partnership lasted 20 years until Dr. Steptoe’s death.

The two began transferring fertilized eggs to the womb in 1972, assuming that the rate of implantation would be as high as with farm animals. Their hopes were dashed. At first, the hormones given the mother to induce ovulation made the ovaries unable to support the growth of the embryo. They then injected mothers with extra hormones, but these turned out to induce abortions.

They persisted through more than 40 embryo transfers before obtaining their first pregnancy. Unfortunately it was ectopic and had to be aborted. Louise Brown was born from the second pregnancy.

“It required grit and determination to keep going,” Dr. Macnamee said of his colleague. “But he had the conviction of his research work and he wanted to see it delivered to the people who needed it.”

Despite the ethical objections leveled at his work, Dr. Edwards was nonetheless allowed to develop the technique over many years. “It would be very difficult to develop in vitro fertilization now because the ethical committees would have stopped his research,” Dr. Macnamee said.

Dr. Edwards himself was not available to reflect on his research career or the four million children alive because of his achievement. “Unfortunately he is not in a position to understand the honor he has received today,” Dr. Macnamee said. “He remembers the past very well but not the present.”

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: October 4, 2010, NYT

Scientists Create World's First Laser Pacemaker

Scientists have successfully controlled a living creature's heart with a laser beam, taking a first step towards technology that could prevent serious heart defects. The procedure used pulses of light to pace the heart of a two-day old quail embryo.

The research team, headed by Michael Jenkins at Case Western Reserve University, stuck a small laser only a millimeter away from the embryo's heart, and believe the resulting light pulses created a temperature gradient that spurred muscle contractions. By showing that lasers can regulate an organism's heartbeat without damaging tissue, scientists could someday create human pacemakers that don't require invasive surgery or heart-weakening electrodes. As well, Jenkins points out that a regular heartbeat means a healthier heart down the line, meaning laser pacemakers could someday be an effective preventative tool. It'll take a while to work our way from quail embryos to humans, but this is a breakthrough nonetheless.

Doctors Blog About the Weirdest Stuff They've Removed From Patients

That's a fragment of a Wendy's spork that was removed from a man's throat last year. It is by far the least weird thing that shows up on a new, cringe-inducing list of bizarre things doctors have extracted from patients.

Sermo, a members-only website for doctors, asked its doctor users to post about the strangest things they had ever pulled out of their patients. Then, they published some of the weirdest on their public blog. They are very weird, and probably mentally not safe for work. Here are some noteworthy ones, in ascending order of how much they disturbed me:

Allergist & Immunologist:

I once retrieved a plastic helicopter from a child's nose.

General Surgeon:

5 pens, 2 permanent markers, 3 straws, 2 toothbrushes, 4 Oreo cookie wrappers. All at the same time from the stomach of a patient.

Urologist:

At our hospital recently the general surgeons removed from the stomach a bound and gagged barbie doll that the patient had swallowed.

Pathologist:

Large zucchini (rectum). The spiral from a spiral-bound notebook (male urethra). Pencil (male urethra). Cigarette lighter (stomach).

OH MY GOD I'm only going to consume smoothies for the next several months.

How Astronauts' Experience Could Help Trapped Chilean Miners

The trapped Chilean miners may face their most severe psychological challenges in a couple of months' time, if experience from space missions is anything to go by.

A recent NASA study suggests rescuers need to be especially vigilant at the halfway stage of the project. It found that the morale of astronauts on the International Space Station declines during the third quarters of their expeditions.

Jack Stuster of Anacapa Sciences in Santa Barbara, California, carried out a systematic analysis of diaries that were kept for this purpose by astronauts during their six-month ISS expeditions. Each of more than 4000 diary entries were categorised as positive, negative or neutral in tone.

Stuster found the strongest overall negative tone in the third quarter of expeditions, a period that has also been said to affect scientists on long stays in the Antarctic. Communications with management deteriorated in the third quarter too, and the frequency of interpersonal problems rose by a fifth.

Ground support

Other studies have not found the third-quarter effect, however, and suggest that if appropriate measures are taken, the miners need not suffer from it. Earlier studies of psychological issues in space – on the Russian space station Mir in the 1990s (Gravitational and Space Biology Bulletin, vol 14, p 35) and on the ISS (Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, vol 78, p 601) – found no evidence of a dip.

"We didn't find that on Mir or the ISS, and it was mainly because of great support the guys got from the ground, both in the US and Russia," said Nick Kanas of the University of California, San Francisco, who helped lead the studies.

By using questionnaires to score the mood and behaviour of crews aboard Mir and the ISS, Kanas's teams showed that constant and high-quality communication and support from the ground is key to helping people cope with long periods of physical isolation.

These and other studies show that maintaining communications, honesty and day-night cycles, and keeping the miners occupied, will be key in the four months it may take to rescue them.

Keep in touch

"One of the main things a crew needs is to be supported from outside and have a goal," says Jennifer Ngo-Anh, project manager of the European Space Agency's ongoing Mars500 experiment, in which six pretend astronauts are spending 500 days in isolation on a mock trip to the Red Planet.

Appointing a colleague as an intermediary on the surface – perhaps a mining foreman or manager – is also important, as that person will already be trusted and respected by the men underground. This has worked well in space exploration, with former astronauts and flight surgeons on the ground serving as first points of liaison with the crews.

It's also vital to keep the miners' families in close and regular touch with the men underground, and to provide the miners with surprise calls and gifts, which on space missions have raised morale hugely.

Tell the truth

There is no point in lying to the men about how long it will take to rescue them. "If they don't give some realistic expectation, the men's anxiety will become acute, especially if nothing seems to be happening," says Sheryl Bishop, a social psychologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who specialises in human survival in extreme environments. Other psychologists contacted by New Scientist unanimously agreed.

"The best thing is to make sure those men believe they are part of all the decision-making and being kept truthfully in the loop," she says. Also, rescuers should beware of issuing promises they can't meet, as these destroy morale. Estimates of escape time should err on the long side, to avoid dashing hopes of earlier rescue.

Night and day

Studies of astronauts (Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, vol 76, p B94) and scientists on long-term Antarctic expeditions (The Lancet, vol 371, p 153) demonstrate the significant and damaging consequences of disrupting day-night cycles. Loss of sleep results in depression, lack of concentration and irritability.

Maintaining a regular sleep-wake cycle will provide the men with milestones and a structure which will make the highly unusual experience seem more normal. "Daylight" could be provided by sending the miners hundreds of light-emitting diodes, which are bright and have very long lifetimes.

Keep busy and get organised

Astronauts have endless tasks and experiments to perform, which keep them constantly occupied – not so the miners. It will be vital to send down sources of entertainment, such as MP3 players, crosswords and reading matter to keep the men occupied.

Even more valuable would be arrangements for the men to adopt a leader – some news reports suggest this has already happened – and to assign tasks to groups of men, giving them a sense that they're contributing to the relief effort themselves. This will increase their self-esteem and morale, and conquer boredom.

"There could, for example, be 10 guys in charge of consumables, another 10 in charge of getting rid of waste, or monitoring information from the surface," says Jason Kring, president of the US Society for Human Performance in Extreme Environments, based in Orlando, Florida. "It's critical because it gives them all something valuable to do."

Stuster even suggests that with an estimated 2 kilometres of tunnels at their disposal, some might be able to carry on prospecting.

Rs 28,000cr Games expense sounds like wrong priority

It was 45 years back -chairman of world bank Lord Mcnnmara had said - "we need to think twice before granting aid/loan to India as India has a Rolls-Royes administration in Bullock cart country !! Read Azim Premji's thought provoking article!

Recently, the central government disclosed that its total spend on the Delhi Commonwealth Games is likely to be Rs 11,494 crore. This number is disconcerting for two reasons. One, because it is an order-of-magnitude away from its original estimate of Rs 655 crore. Two, because the real cost of the games will be much higher if we were to include:

*Rs 16,560 crore additionally spent by Delhi government on upgrading the capital's infrastructure — a new airport terminal, wider roads, new flyovers, Metro rail extensions, and so on;

*Real cost of labour — labourers got sub-minimum wages, worked in unsafe conditions, and were housed in sub-human tenements;

*The human cost of driving the poor out of streets and out of sight.

The term 'commonwealth' originally meant public welfare, things that are for the greater good of society. Do the Commonwealth Games pass this commonwealth test? Is this Rs 28,000-crore drain on public funds for the greater common good?

Before I respond to the question, let me clarify my position on the Games themselves. The desire to celebrate runs deep in our collective psyche. The teachings of a spiritual master, the creation of a nation, the birth of a child — celebrating each of them is important because they are our cultural compass; they remind us of things we value most. There are few things as uplifting as watching a sportsperson push physical and mental limits to achieve the incredible. The Commonwealth Games, like the Olympics, are a celebration of the human spirit of excellence. Therefore, in itself, the Games are a worthy endeavour.

However, given the thousands of crores being spent on the Delhi Commonwealth Games, we need to ask if this is money spent wisely. As a country, we are constantly forced to compromise on funds. For instance, India needs more schools, and the existing schools need better infrastructure and more teachers. This will require us to spend 6% of our GDP on education, but we manage just over half that figure. Similarly, the country has very little sports infrastructure on the ground. To encourage sports, our first step has to be to ensure children get access to playgrounds, good equipment and quality coaching. To not have this, and to instead spend on a grand sporting spectacle sounds like we have got our priorities wrong.

Despite the wonderful economic strides of the past two decades, the reality is that India is a poor country. A recent study by the University of Oxford measured levels of education, health and living standard in the world's poorest countries. This study shows that India continues to be predominantly poor. In fact, there are more poor people in eight Indian states than in the 26 poorest African countries combined. Delhi has amongst the lowest occurrences of poverty in India, while at the other extreme, 81% of Bihar's population is poor. No surprise then that many of the 100,000 labourers who worked for unfair wages to prepare Delhi for the Commonwealth Games were from Bihar.

The capital already boasts of some of India's best infrastructure. Instead of spending crores to widen Delhi's roads, should we not prioritize building roads and schools in Bihar where none exist in the first place? If we have Rs 500 crore to spare, should we use it to build basic sports facilities in thousands of government schools, or should we spend it all on renovating one stadium?

In real terms, such choices are not all that easy to make. For instance, it is important for our cities to have great infrastructure, and money spent on a metropolis like Delhi will in turn catalyse our national economy. Our leaders have to constantly juggle and prioritize among many equally deserving needs, and it is not as if they are uninformed or wrongly intentioned. Over the last decade, the Indian government has taken important strides in social welfare and inclusive development. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan are but two examples. However, ( THOUGH THERE IS LOTS OF CORRUPTION IN NREGA )it is not enough to have specific schemes such as the NREGA. Rather, equity and inclusion considerations must underlie each and every policy decision. Let me suggest that all public policy must recognize that GDP growth is meaningless if it does not uplift the most underprivileged of our country.

How can we forget that for Rs 28,000 crore we could have established primary schools and health centres in tens of thousands of villages? Can we ignore this splurge the next time a malnourished child looks at us in the eye?

At times like these, it will serve our leaders well to recall Gandhiji's talisman: "Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?"

Premji is chairman of Wipro.