A hormone that ups longevity if you're rich

A hormone that ups longevity if you're rich

LONDON: British scientists have identified a hormone which they claim helps you live longer — but only if you are rich. Researchers at the University College London found that higher levels of the hormone, called DHEAS, help boost memory and ability to cope with stress, particularly in men aged over 50 years. 

But the levels of DHEAS, secreted by the adrenal glands that sit on top of the kidneys, are found to be higher among those who exercise more and have an active life with lots of pastimes, interests , friends and family — all of which tend to come with wealth. 

The findings, according to the researchers, could pave the way for new class of drugs, patches or injections which will help boost the DHEAS level. Michael Marmot , who led the study, said it's too early to say higher level of DHEAS is a result of being rich. 

But, factors such as a better diet, greater control over life, less stress, more travel and involvement in the wider world through hobbies, sport or other interests — which all are benefits of wealth — seem to be encouraging the body to create DHEAS, he said. Improving the level of the hormone is not a simple matter of popping a pill. "In my view, it is a much bigger issue and involves the package of choices that wealth opens up," he said. 

Production of DHEAS is greatest in childhood and teenage years, before gradually declining through adult life. By the age of 80 it could be just 10% of the peak teen level. The two hormones help control reactions to stress and regulate various body processes including digestion, the immune system, mood and energy, the experts said.



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Moon has water and its own water cycle: NASA

Moon has water and its own water cycle: NASA

WASHINGTON: A year after announcing the discovery of water molecules on the moon, NASA scientists have now said the earth's satellite is not only rich in useful materials, it has a water cycle of its own.

In fact, new studies suggest that there is a lot more water on the moon than earlier thought.

The new data uncovered by NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO found evidence that the lunar soil within shadowy craters is rich in useful materials, and the moon is chemically active and has a water cycle.

Scientists also confirmed the water was in the form of mostly pure ice crystals in some places. The results are featured in six papers published in the October 22 issue of Science.

"NASA has convincingly confirmed the presence of water ice and characterised its patchy distribution in permanently shadowed regions of the moon," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The twin impacts of LCROSS and a companion rocket stage in the moon's Cabeus crater on October 9, 2009, lifted a plume of material that might not have seen direct sunlight for billions of years.

As the plume traveled nearly 10 miles above the rim of Cabeus, instruments aboard LCROSS and LRO made observations of the crater and debris and vapour clouds.

After the impacts, grains of mostly pure water ice were lofted into the sunlight in the vacuum of space, NASA said.

"Seeing mostly pure water ice grains in the plume means water ice was somehow delivered to the moon in the past, or chemical processes have been causing ice to accumulate in large quantities," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"Also, the diversity and abundance of certain materials called volatiles in the plume, suggest a variety of sources, like comets and asteroids, and an active water cycle within the lunar shadow," he said.

Volatiles are compounds that freeze and are trapped in the cold lunar craters and vaporise when warmed by the sun.

The existence of mostly pure water ice could mean future human explorers would not have to retrieve the water out of the soil in order to use it for valuable life support resources.

In addition, an abundant presence of hydrogen gas, ammonia and methane could be exploited to produce fuel, it said.

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coming soon-take a back up of your memories and store in hard drive

coming soon-take a back up of your memories and store in hard drive

LONDON: Similar to the computer file back-up system, humans will also be able to back up of their brains and all memories contained in them within the next two decades, a leading scientist has claimed. 

    Dr.Raymond Kurzweil
Speaking at a science conference , Raymond Kurzweil, the award-winning American inventor and futurist, said that the human brain backup was now already technically possible. The 62-year-old scientist , who has pioneered in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-tospeech synthesis, speech recognition technology, said humans can achieve this feat within the next 20 years. 

By that time, "We will have thousands of nanobot computer machines in our blood that will heal our bodies, improve our performance, and even be able to back up all the contents of our brains, just as you backup your files on a computer," he told a gathering of 500 guests at a "future talk" event in Vienna, Austria. 

"That means they would back up every thought, every experience, everything that makes us an individual," he was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. "It may sound farfetched but in the early 1980s, people thought I was crazy for predicting the emergence of the world wide web by the middle of the 1990s; but it happened , and on the schedule I predicted." 

At the age of 15, Kurzweil created a programme that could recreate music in the style of the great composers. He also built the first machine that could read written speech for the blind for his friend Stevie Wonder — for whom he also later made a revolutionary musical synthesiser capable of recreating real instruments .

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