Living past 90, and living well, may be more than a matter of good genes and good luck. Five behaviors in elderly men are associated not only with living into extreme old age, a new study has found, but also with good health and independent functioning. The behaviors are abstaining from smoking, weight management, blood pressure control, regular exercise and avoiding diabetes. The study reports that all are significantly correlated with healthy survival after 90. While it is hardly astonishing that choices like not smoking are associated with longer life, it is significant that these behaviors in the early elderly years - all of them modifiable - so strongly predict survival into extreme old age. ‘The take-home message,’ said Dr. Laurel B. Yates, a geriatric specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was the lead author of the study, ‘is that an individual does have some control over his destiny in terms of what he can do to improve the probability that not only might he live a long time, but also have good health and good function in those older years.’ The study followed more than 2,300 healthy men for as long as […]
I would tell audiences that we were facing not a bubble but a froth – lots of small, local bubbles that never grew to a scale that could threaten the health of the overall economy,’ wrote Alan Greenspan, in The Age of Turbulence. That used to be Mr Greenspan’s view of the US housing bubble. He was wrong, alas. So how bad might this downturn get? To answer this question we should ask a true bear. My favourite one is Nouriel Roubini of New York University’s Stern School of Business, founder of RGE monitor. Recently, Professor Roubini’s scenarios have been dire enough to make the flesh creep. But his thinking deserves to be taken seriously. He first predicted a US recession in July 2006*. At that time, his view was extremely controversial. It is so no longer. Now he states that there is ‘a rising probability of a ‘catastrophic’ financial and economic outcome’**. The characteristics of this scenario are, he argues: ‘A vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe.’ Prof Roubini is even […]
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) – Florida education officials voted on Tuesday to add evolution to required course work in public schools but only after a last-minute change depicting Charles Darwin’s seminal work as merely a theory. Bending to pressure from religious conservatives, the State Board of Education on a 4-3 vote included the ‘theory’ language as part of a retooling of the state’s science standards for public school education. The compromise would require teaching that Darwin’s proposal — that natural selection has driven the evolution of many species from a few common ancestors over billions of years — has yet to be conclusively proven. ‘To say there is no debate is ridiculous,’ said board member Phoebe Raulerson. ‘Then why are we here today?’ The panel includes the word ‘evolution’ in state science standards for the first time, but it is relegated to a place among a host of ideas, including Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. By contrast Isaac Newton’s law of gravity is taught as undisputed fact. During more than two hours of testimony, scientists and religious representatives argued over whether teaching that humans evolved from a single-celled species over hundreds of millions of years should […]
The Moon will turn an eerie shade of red for people in the western hemisphere late Wednesday and early Thursday, recreating the eclipse that saved Christopher Columbus more than five centuries ago. In a lunar eclipse, the Sun, Earth and Moon are directly aligned and the Moon swings into the cone of shadow cast by the Earth. But the Moon does not become invisible, as there is still residual light that is deflected towards it by our atmosphere. Most of this refracted light is in the red part of the spectrum and as a result the Moon, seen from Earth, turns a coppery, orange or even brownish hue. Lunar eclipses have long been associated with superstitions and signs of ill omen, especially in battle. The defeat of the Persian king Darius III by Alexander the Great in the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC was foretold by soothsayers when the Moon turned blood-red a few days earlier. And an eclipse is credited with saving the life of Christopher Columbus and his crew in 1504. Stranded on the coast of Jamaica, the explorers were running out of food and faced with increasingly hostile local inhabitants […]
A tussle that began with a condom and a banana has morphed into all-out war at a New Jersey high school, with some parents trying to end a peer-to-peer sexual-education course taught in about 45 other public schools statewide. Parents opposed to the classes at Clearview Regional High School, in Mullica Hill, say that kids shouldn’t be instructing kids about sex and that the elective course doesn’t go far enough in stressing abstinence. Some have accused the school of being deceptive about what is taught in the New Jersey Teen Prevention Education Program, known as Teen PEP. And they contend that public money has been misspent on the curriculum, developed with help from state health officials and taught since 1994. School district administrators say misinformation has fueled the firestorm, which began last month and is expected to continue at a Feb. 28 school board meeting. They say New Jersey law requires them to teach a comprehensive class that addresses abstinence, safe sex, dating violence, HIV-AIDS, and how alcohol and drugs affect sexual decision-making – a fact confirmed by the state health department. Six students have withdrawn from the coeducational program, in which faculty-supervised juniors and seniors […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
