After running the serious risk of looking like vaporware, Notion Ink's prices have been revealed for the Adam tablet, which runs Android on a Tegra chip. Sounds like we'll still have to wait another six or so months, though. More »
“Who wants to live forever?” Freddie Mercury asks on behalf of the Highlander. Michio Kaku (whom you should be reading because he’s wonderful) has started a two-part investigation over at Big Think on just that query. The cliché question comes from the basic problem of living a long time: no one wants to die, but no one wants to get old either. Pulitzer Prize-winner Jonathan Weiner’s new book Long For This World examines the science and scientists of gerontologology (aging). Stanford University professor of internal medicine Abraham Verghese reviewed Long For This World in The New York Times and was inspired by Weiner’s discussion of longevity. Verghese reflects on his own experience with terminally ill patients:
As a young physician caught up in the early years of the H.I.V. epidemic, I was struck by my patients’ will to live, even as their quality of life became miserable and when loved ones and caregivers would urge the patient to let go. I thought it remarkable that patients never asked me to help end their lives (and found it strange that Dr. Kevorkian managed to encounter so many who did). My patients were dying young and felt cheated out of their best years. They did not want immortality, just the chance to live the life span that their peers could expect. What de Grey and other immortalists seem to have lost sight of is that simply living a full life span is a laudable goal. Partial success in extending life might simply extend the years of infirmity and suffering — something that to some degree is already happening in the West.
I cannot get over the logic Verghese displays here. He notes the will of people to live in spite of suffering and lowered quality of life. The patients merely wanted “the chance to live the life span that their peers could expect.” Does he mean the life span science and civilization has already artificially extended fifty years beyond biological design? How does one differentiate between a 30-year-old who wants to be healthy enough to live to fifty and a 90-year-old who wants to be healthy enough to live to be over 100? Verghese is unable to reconcile the desire to live with a terminally low quality of life. The goal of anti-aging is not to simply increase the number of years a person spends alive; instead, the goal is to make every year, even into mid and late life, as healthy and youthful as possible.
In his post “Bullish on Longevity” Discover blogger Chris Mooney discusses a pill that would extend healthy life by about seven years. The trick is not to merely extend life, but to instead create a “compression of morbidity: The period of life beset by disease-related suffering and impairment would be compressed, and essentially come right at the end. You live long, you prosper–and then you die fairly quickly.”
Think of it this way: After taking a special test, you know you will die at the age of 77, but I offer you two options. Option one is that you live a normal life, aging naturally as your genes and lifestyle choices allow. Option two is that you take a pill that keeps you as healthy as you would be at age 30 until you were 74. You’d still mature mentally, build life experience, raise a family and expand your career. But at 70 you could be rock-climbing and getting your third PhD or running marathons and keeping pace with your grandchildren. Which option do you pick?
Aubrey de Grey, the prime subject of Weiner’s new book, focuses on making option two a reality. Contra Verghese, immortalists have their sights focused directly on allowing a full life span, instead of having the second-half hindered and hobbled by weakness, mental degeneration, and frailty. Alex Horne has a lovely article at the Guardian in which he interviews a bunch of old people who don’t seem to enjoy being old. Horne comes to the general conclusion that the death of friends, the Shakespearian loss of senses and abilities, and lack of purpose make being ancient less-than-spectacular. So the trick, as de Grey and other longevity supporters see it, is to stymie aging’s worse traits until the very last minute.
What Weiner and Verghese seem to miss is that longevity research isn’t necessarily about living forever, or even a spectacularly long time, but instead making the years one is alive less hindered by the very process of having lived so long. Make youthful health the bulk of life, not just the early peak.
Image: “Old persons home” by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu from Saatchi Gallery, London, via Wikipedia, shared through Creative Commons
Have a '98 Ford E250 van, 5.4 liter engine, dedicated CNG. What is the fuel pressure supposed to be? I have 90 lbs. at the fuel rail schrader. Vehicle will not start. Is this a fuel pressure problem?
Seagate and Samsung, giants of hard drives and flash memory, respectively, will work together to develop technologies for SSD storage devices. Now would be a fine time to brush up on (and covet) the great solid-state drive. [Giz] More »
When I was a kid and traveled up to the big city, my sister and I would point out the car window and cry "dinosaurs" when pylons appeared on the hills. In this Icelandic dreamland, kids would shout "people!" More »
Doctors recently found a surprising growth in Ron Sveden’s lung: a pea plant.
Sveden, a 75-year-old man from Massachusetts reportedly suffered from emphysema for months. He worried when he met with New York City pulmonologist Len Horovitz that he might have lung cancer. Instead, X-rays revealed a pea plant, the BBC reports, which Sveden estimates grew to around half an inch.
Dr. Horovitz says that the lung’s warmth and moisture made the perfect pea habitat and suspects a pea seed went down the wrong way. He told AOL Health:
“That can definitely happen. This did not surprise me…. You can inhale a seed of a plant or sprouting plant and it can cause bronchial obstruction. I’ve pulled food out of people’s lungs before.”
Still, given the popularity of this story, we’re guessing lung gardening is pretty rare. As Sveden says in the ABC News video above, he’s not sure how big a lung-born pea plant can grow:
“Whether this would have gone full-term and I’d be working for the Jolly Green Giant, I don’t know.”
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Between one-quarter and one-third of the food produced in the U.S. gets wasted. Why care? A new analysis by my colleagues Amanda Cuellar and Michael Webber at the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at UT found that the energy embedded in wasted food accounts for at least 2 percent of our national energy budget. This week’s New Scientist features an Op-Ed I composed with Michael about wasting less to conserve more. We begin:
IT IS no secret that meeting the world’s growing energy demands will be difficult. So far, most of the focus has been on finding oil in areas that are ever more difficult to access – think BP’s Deepwater Horizon well – bringing new fossil fuels such as tar sands online and increasing energy efficiency.
Yet we have been overlooking an easier way. We could save an enormous amount of energy by tackling the huge problem of food waste. Doing so is likely to be quicker than many of the other options on the table, while also saving money and reducing emissions.
The energy footprint of food is enormous. Consider the US, where just 5 per cent of the global population consumes one-fifth of the world’s energy. Around 15 per cent of the energy used in the US is swallowed up by food production and distribution.
–
Global energy consumption is projected to increase by close to 50 per cent between 2006 and 2030. That makes reducing our dependency on fossil fuels even more challenging.
Tackling food waste should be added to the toolbox of policy options because its relative impact is on the same scale as more popular measures such as biofuel production and offshore drilling. Although we will never eliminate food waste completely, we can assuredly create the means to discard less by coming up with the right incentives for producers and consumers.
Read on at New Scientist…
Apple has pulled Camera+ from the App Store. Its only sin: Allow iPhone customers to press the volume button to take photos. But why are they taking away a feature that everyone has been demanding since the JesusPhone was introduced? More »
Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Echo 1, history's first passive satellite. NASA's Echo mission began rather poorly. A test launch had exploded so brightly, so spectacularly, that it prompted frightened calls up and down the entire eastern seaboard. More »
Sure, most of the big show car debuts take place at the Detroit auto show these days, but the New York auto show is no slouch, especially with 110 years of history behind it. In June 1983, Audrey M. Snediker reviewed that history and showed us some of the more unique and eye-catching cars that
BREAKING NEWS!!
From Eric Dondero:
Embattled Virginia Democrat Congressman Tom Perriello, 20 points behind Republican Bob Hurt in the polls, is making a play for libertarian votes. In an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner Perriello told reporter Richard Sincere that he believed that ObamaCare was actually consistent with libertarian values.
From The Examiner "Congressman Tom Perriello explains his appeal to libertarian voters in Virginia’s 5th District" Aug. 11:
Perriello replied that he has “taken a strong position in terms of regulation of farming, and manufacturing, and other issues from a libertarian perspective.”
Referring to his votes to support the comprehensive health-care overhaul bill pushed by President Barack Obama (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), Perriello suggested that his vote was motivated, in part, by libertarian concerns.
“Again,” he said, “I think there are ways to understand some things that have been pitched as government takeover as really being about individual rights and libertarian rights,” for example, for “people to not get screwed by your insurance company, the right to not have to pay for other peoples’ illnesses.”
“To me,” Perriello said, these “have a libertarian undercurrent.”
Joe Sciarino, spokesman for the NRCC provided Libertarian Republican with this response:
“Congressman Perriello clearly lives in a fantasyland where, magically, voting for a government-takeover of healthcare somehow doesn’t constitute stripping Americans of an individual right. What’s next, that this bill was deficit neutral and won’t raise costs for consumers? If Perriello thinks the people of Virginia’s Fifth District appreciate his “efforts” on their behalf, we’ll just have to see how they respond in November.”
Story developing... LR will have more on this later today and tomorrow.
They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and for many of us that means the one on our phone. Photojojo's ingenious magnetic lenses are the easiest way to make your best camera even better. More »
Is there any standard that describes the spacing between the supports in a piping?
This video is terrifying. Big Wave surfer Chuck Patterson was stand up paddle surfing in San Clemente, CA when two sharks circled him for 15 minutes. So of course, he went back looking for them the next day. More »
The 18th annual SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas will be held on March 11-15, 2011. They bill the event as “five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders.” Potential presenters submit panel session proposals, which are sifted and selected for voting.
I’ve never been to SXSW, but I’ve wanted to go for years. Now is the time, I hope — with your help.
Our panel “Space Buzz: The New High” has been selected for consideration by YOU. You’ll have to sign up for an account, then you can vote and comment. Our panel will explore NASA’s social media conversation, specifically how to create and collect the buzz.
Come visit us in the NASA Buzzroom to see what the buzz is all about.
Star -powered panel: Jesse Thomas of Jess3.com, NASA’s Stephanie Schierholz, Miles O’Brienand Ariel Waldman have agreed to share the stage, if we get selected.
It’s all up to you to GIVE SPACE A CHANCE!
Let’s create some space buzz. Vote now…and tell all your friends.
Crosspost on BethBeck’s Blog and GovLoop.com.
From Technology Review RSS Feeds:
The 2011 Sonata Hybrid will be the first mass-market car to use the battery technology. In December, Hyundai will launch the 2011 Sonata Hybrid, the world's first mass-market hybrid with a lithium-ion battery pack. Lithium cells provide much highe
After extensive testing, McSweeney's has declared "the Newspaper" the top e-reader. Despite using an older version of e-ink and lacking Wi-Fi connectivity, the Newspaper was lauded for the size and versatility of its screen and its fly swatting capabilities. More »
“I heard a rustling in a tree near, and, looking up, saw a large red-haired animal moving slowly along, hanging from the branches by its arms. It passed on from tree to tree until it was lost in the jungle, which was so swampy that I could not follow it.”
These are the words of the great naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, describing how he caught sight of his very first orangutan. Around two weeks later, Wallace found his second individual and, as you would expect for a 19th century British explorer, he shot it dead.
During his fifteen-month stay in Borneo, Wallace ‘collected’ a further 28 orangutans and his tales of slaughter and science are vividly described in his famous tome, The Malay Archipelago (immortalised here by Google).
Wallace wasn’t the only explorer to shoot his way through Borneo’s orangutan population. Odoardo Beccari shot or saw at least 26 individuals in just over 5 weeks, while Emil Selenka collected around four hundred specimens over four years. All of these records attest to the fact that orangutans were relatively common in the late 19th century, such that zealous Europeans had no problems in finding them.
The same can’t be said now. Field scientists working in Borneo rarely see a wild orangutan and when they do, they’re usually alone or in very small groups. You can travel down the very rivers where naturalists once described seeing orangutans many times in the same day, and find only nests.
Today, we might raise an eyebrow at the trigger-happy antics of Wallace and his contemporaries but, at the very least, they carefully documented what they did. And those tales, together with museum collections, have allowed Erik Meijaard from The Nature Conservancy in Indonesia to reconstruct the history of the Bornean orangutan since the 19th century.
Meijaard studied records from 59 Bornean expeditions and found that the odds of encountering an orangutan on any given day have fallen by 6 times in the last 150 years. This downward trend stayed the same even after Meijaard accounted for the fact that expeditions have become shorter and involve fewer people.
In Wallace’s time, explorers relied on the skills of local trackers to find orangutans and the focus was very much on these prized animals. Today, scientists often survey orangutan populations by looking for their nests instead. However, when Meijaard only looked at expeditions that specifically set out to count as many orangutans as possible, he still found a sizeable drop between historic rates and modern ones.
Finally, it’s possible that orangutans have learned to avoid people because of the likelihood of getting shot by an intrepid European. Wallace’s accounts certainly suggest a less cautious attitude than one might expect. But Meijaard argues that orangutans, being largely solitary animals, have little opportunity to learn from the death of other group members. Nor would they learn from individuals who escaped 19th century rifles, for very few did – these slow-moving and large apes were easily shot once spotted. So a more elusive temperament might contribute to the rarity of modern orangutans, but Meijaard thinks that it can’t fully explain it.
With all these possibilities considered and potentially ruled out, the most likely explanation for the downward trend is that it’s real: the ape’s population has actually declined. The genes of the surviving individuals support this conclusion. The genetic similarities between orangutans from the Bornean state of Sabah suggest that the population has fallen by around 10 times in the last one or two centuries. The big question is: why?
Surprisingly, it seems that deforestation hasn’t played a big role. It’s true that logging threatens the safety of orangutans today, but the decline in orangutan numbers was well underway some 120 years before logging kicked off. This industry really intensified during the 1960s and 1970s and during that time, orangutans didn’t suddenly become harder to see. Disease is another possibility, but one with little evidence to back it up.
For Meijaard, one explanation remains – hunting. Orangutans give birth to relatively few young and they have large generation gaps. As such, the adult population takes a long time to replenish. Even before Wallace and his chums arrived in Borneo, orangutans had already been severely hunted by nomadic humans, and been driven to extinction in some parts of Indonesia. Thousands of buried teeth in Borneo and Sumatra harken back to a time when these apes were hunted as commonly as wild pigs.
Once Europeans came on the scene, they weren’t just killed for food any more, but for scientific study, trophies, and the pet trade, while locals continued to kill them for traditional medicine, or as agricultural pests. Ironically, the colonial ban on head-hunting in Sabah may have made matters worse. By suddenly making large tracts of the jungle safe to travel in, the end of head-hunting tribes allowed Western hunters to spread to the jungle, shooting as they went.
Meijaard doesn’t think that his study is the final word on orangutan populations. In fact, he openly wishes that he had better data to work on and hopes that other scientists will take up the challenge. But he says that studies like these are important because they conservationists a better understanding of the real challenges facing a threatened species.
To work out how humans have affected a particular species, you need to know how that creature was faring before we came along. But usually, scientists assess the health of a species after a long period of exploitation and they end up using a baseline that has already been shifted. The result is what Meijaard describes as “historic amnesia”.
This is certainly the case for orangutans – it’s often said that this red ape has a low population density, even in parts of the forest that haven’t been disturbed by logging. The common wisdom says that the orangutan depends on fruit that is sparsely distributed, so a given patch of jungle can only hold so many individuals. This new study suggests that this isn’t true.
This has the potential to change not only our approach to orangutan conservation, but our understanding of their behaviour. Modern individuals are operating at much lower densities than their ancestors used to, and we need to bear that in mind when interpreting the way they act. How differently would they behave if 6 times as many orangutans lived in the same patch of forest?
Reference: PLoS ONE http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012042
More on orangutans:
If the citation link isn’t working, read why here
(HealthDay News) -- A very private health problem, it turns out, is associated with potentially significant and costly complications.
In a review of the scientific evidence, researchers found that constipation might lead to or boost the risk for more serious complications such as hemorrhoids, anal fissures, fecal incontinence, colonic conditions and urologic disorders.
Dr. Nicholas J. Talley, chairman of internal medicine at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, said that few people appreciate the seriousness of constipation because symptoms can vary greatly, from mild to severe.
"Most people have mild intermittent symptoms, and they should not worry, although some do become excessively concerned," said Talley, who is also a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Mayo's College of Medicine. "Others suffer in silence, because it's embarrassing to talk about your bowels."
Roughly 12 to 19 percent of the population in North America -- as many as 63 million people -- suffer from constipation, according to the review. Read more...
Toxins cleanse, Liver detox
