Jim Hammond is an elite athlete. He works out two hours a day with a trainer, pushing himself through sprints, runs, and strength-building exercises. His resting heart rate is below 50. He’s won three gold medals and one silver in amateur competitions this year alone, running races from 100 to 800 meters. In his division, he’s broken four national racing records. But perhaps the most elite thing about Hammond is his age. He is 93. And really, there’s nothing much wrong with him, aside from the fact that he doesn’t see very well. He takes no drugs and has no complaints, although his hair long ago turned white and his skin is no longer taut. His secret? He doesn’t have one. Hammond never took exceptional measures during his long life to preserve his health. He did not exercise regularly until his fifties and didn’t get serious about it until his eighties, when he began training for the Georgia Golden Olympics. ‘I love nothing better than winning,’ he says. ‘It’s been a wonderful thing for me.’ Hammond is aging, certainly, but somehow he isn’t getting old-at least, not in the way we usually think about it. They say […]
As we age, it becomes harder and harder to recall names, dates-even where we put down our keys. Although we may fear the onset of Alzheimer’s, chances are, our recollective powers have dulled simply because we’re getting older-and our brains, like our bodies, are no longer in tip-top shape. But what is it that actually causes memory and other cognitive abilities to go soft with senescence? Previous research has shown that bundles of axons (tubular projections sent out by neurons to signal other nerve cells) wither over time. These conduits, collectively referred to as white matter, help connect different regions of the brain to allow for proper information processing. Now, researchers have found that these white matter pathways erode as we age, impairing communication or ‘cross talk” between different brain areas. ‘What we were looking at was the communication or cross talk between different regions of the brain,’ says study co-author Jessica Andrews-Hanna, a Harvard University graduate student. ‘The degree to which white matter regions are actually stable predicts the degree to which other regions are able to communicate with each other.’ Andrews-Hanna and other Harvard researchers (along with collaborators at the University of Michigan at […]
WASHINGTON — The birth rate among teenagers 15 to 19 in the United States rose 3 percent in 2006, according to a report issued Wednesday, the first such increase since 1991. The finding surprised scholars and fueled a debate about whether the Bush administration’s abstinence-only sexual education efforts are working. The federal government spends $176 million annually on such programs. But a landmark study recently failed to demonstrate that they have any effect on delaying sexual activity among teenagers, and some studies suggest that they may actually increase pregnancy rates. ‘Spending tens of million of tax dollars each year on programs that hurt our children is bad medicine and bad public policy,’ said Dr. David A. Grimes, vice president of Family Health International, a nonprofit reproductive health organization based in North Carolina. Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said that blaming abstinence-only programs was ‘stupid.’ Mr. Rector said that most young women who became pregnant were highly educated about contraceptives but wanted to have babies. President Bush noted the long decline in teenage pregnancy rates in his 2006 State of the Union address, saying, ‘Wise policies such as welfare reform, drug education […]
A U.S. Senate committee is scheduled for an historic vote on a global warming bill this week, perhaps as early as Wednesday. Environmental groups are planning a flurry of press conferences Tuesday to try to influence the vote. Meanwhile, in Maryland, Gov. Martin O’Malley’s advisory Commission on Climate Change is scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss possible steps to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emmissions. The 22-member goup, headed by state Environmental Secretary Shari T. Wilson, is looking to recommend that the state adopt laws to cut greenhouse gases by 25 percent by 2020, and then move aggressively to slash the pollutants by 90 percent by 2050, according to a draft report. To achieve these goals, the state should tighten its energy efficiency standards, strengthen building codes, require more clean energy generation, among other steps. ‘As a coastal state with extensive low-lying land on the Eastern Shore and around the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland is exceeded only by Louisiana, Florida and Delaware in the percentage of its land vulnerable to accelerated sea level rise,’ the draft report warns. On the Federal level, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday is expected to debate amendments […]
On Nov. 25, 13 million people on Earth’s driest continent cast votes that shifted the global politics of perhaps the most challenging geopolitical issue: climate change. Australian citizens - the world’s highest per capita consumers of coal - elected a new government to be led by Kevin Rudd, who campaigned prominently on addressing the climate crisis. Aside from the Bush administration, John Howard’s ousted conservative Liberal-National Coalition had been the only other government of a developed nation that refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty. (New Australian Prime Minister Rudd signed off on the pact Monday.) This change of power in Australia is globally significant - not simply because the Bush administration will be isolated in the upcoming Bali meeting on climate policy, which is to be attended by most nations from around the world. It may also foreshadow that, here in the U.S., climate change is likely to play an increasingly prominent role in electoral politics. Climate change was front-of-mind for Australians as they entered the polls on Saturday, with 73 percent saying it had a strong influence on their choice of candidates. This concern grew by more than 10 points during the course […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
