A pill for longer life?

Rapamycin, a drug commonly used in humans to prevent transplanted organs from being rejected, has been found to extend the lives of mice by up to 14% — even when given to the mice late in life.

In flies and worms, drug treatments have been shown to prolong lifespan, but until now, the only robust way to extend life in mammals has been to heavily restrict diet.

The researchers caution, however, that using this drug to extend the lifespan of humans might be problematic because it suppresses the immune system — potentially making people who take it more susceptible to infectious diseases.

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Via: Nature

Oldest known Bible goes online

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The world's oldest known Christian Bible goes online Monday -- but the 1,600-year-old text doesn't match the one you'll find in churches today.

Discovered in a monastery in the Sinai desert in Egypt more than 160 years ago, the handwritten Codex Sinaiticus includes two books that are not part of the official New Testament and at least seven books that are not in the Old Testament.

The New Testament books are in a different order, and include numerous handwritten corrections -- some made as much as 800 years after the texts were written, according to scholars who worked on the project of putting the Bible online. The changes range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.

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Via: CNN

Wikipedia entry for Codex Sinaiticus

Five Myths about America’s Origins

As students of American history, most children learn about the heroes of the Revolutionary War, the discovery of the American continent, and other stories that illuminate the courageous people who contributed to the formation of the United States. In learning about Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, we’re regaled with stories of their personal valor—how Washington chopped down his cherry tree, how Columbus proved the flat-earthers wrong, and how Franklin discovered electricity in a lightning storm.

We learn all these quaint and quixotic stories, despite the fact that not one of them is true. George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree; geological evidence from his boyhood home shows that no cherry trees have ever grown there. A preacher looking to sell books propagated the story. As we prepare for our country’s 233rd birthday, we should think about the fact that many of the stories sold as historical fact would be better categorized as sheer fiction.

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Via: Divine Caroline

How to build a bigger brain

Push-ups, crunches, gyms, personal trainers — people have many strategies for building bigger muscles and stronger bones. But what can one do to build a bigger brain?

Meditate.

That's the finding from a group of researchers at UCLA who used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of people who meditate. In a study published in the journal NeuroImage and currently available online (by subscription), the researchers report that certain regions in the brains of long-term meditators were larger than in a similar control group.

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Via: UCLA Newsroom

The Rand Corporation: The Think Tank That Controls America

If you think the Internet came out of Silicon Valley, that NASA planned the first satellite to orbit Earth, or that IBM created the modern computer—think again. Each one of these breakthroughs was conceived at RAND, a shadowy think tank in Santa Monica, California.

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Via: Mental Floss

8 Science Kit Reviews and 8 DIY Experiments You Can Do for Free

Science kits aren't what they used to be. If you look at a kit from, say, 1950, you may notice that it is full of complex, mechanical parts, requires adult supervision just to read the directions and doesn't shy away from including dangerous elements (u-238 included!). Modern-day kits don't dumb lessons down, but are easier to play with, solo, and appeal to the diverse, real-world interests of contemporary kids. Being big, curious kids ourselves, we ordered eight kits on different subjects and tested an experiment from each. But homemade experiments can be just as complex and educational (while costing up to $100 less), so we found alternatives to each of the boxed kits that teach similar lessons just as well. Bottom line: Whether preassembled or drawn from kitchen cupboards, science kits can be educational and fun.

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Via: Popular Mechanics

Scientists find a biological 'fountain of youth' in new world bat caves

Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history -- significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice.

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Via: PhysOrg.com

World's first ever 'self-watering' plant discovered in Israel

The Desert Rhubarb can hold 16 times more water than its rivals and has developed a unique ability to effectively water itself in its barren habitat.

Researchers were confounded by the metre-wide plant's giant leaves, compared to its desert counterparts, whose tiny leaves stop dangerous moisture loss.

But they found the plant's large leaves are the key to its success, because they are covered in microscopic streams through which water can be channelled.

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Via: The Telegraph

Why Saints Sin and Sinners Get Saintly

The study suggests that people with ample moral self-worth in one aspect of their lives can slip into immorality or opposite behavior in other areas -- their abundant self-esteem somehow pushing them to balance out all that goodness.

Conversely, the study shows, people who engage in immoral behavior cleanse themselves with good work.

Other studies have shown the moral-cleansing effect, but this new Northwestern model shows that the cleansing also has to do with restoring an ideal level of moral self-worth. In other words, when people operate above or below a certain level of moral self-worth, they instinctively push back in the opposite direction to reach an internally regulated set point of goodness.

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Via: PhysOrg

Are human beings impossible to ape?

Chimpanzees share 98.4 per cent of our DNA, but the differences between us and them are still profound, as a new book argues.

Taylor agrees that chimpanzees "show many fundamentally human skills – to a degree that they have the ability to do maths, think abstractly, demonstrate altruism, make tools and imitate each other. There is nothing humans can do that apes can't do, however simplistically."

But, he adds, "we are talking about the difference between using a twig as a tool and using the internet. It is humans that have speech and language, humans that have culture, art, music, science and technology, humans who remember the past, plan for the future, fear death and pay taxes.

"Sometimes, amid all this scientific talk of genetic and cognitive similarity, we can lose sight of the most important facts."

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Via: The Telegraph

The 10 Most Important Technologies of Modern World History

Technology, for the most part, exists to make life easier. By that definition, we’ve got it pretty good thanks to the hard work of our fellow humans. In weighing the world’s most important technologies, we ruled out the nitty gritty that led to some of the creations below — transistors, electricity and the combustion engine, to name a few — and focused on products that changed the world forever. Here are the 10 technologies, in our mind, that have shaped the world in a way we could never go back.

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Via: Gadget Crave

The 16 Members of the U.S. Intelligence Community

With 16 agencies and organizations working both independently and together to collect, analyze, and disseminate information in the interest of protecting U.S. national security, it’s difficult to keep track of who exactly does what among the 16 members of the Intelligence Community. Just ask President Barack Obama. During his recent trip to the burger joint Five Guys, C-SPAN cameras caught Obama asking a man who works at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to explain what the NGA does. Here’s the answer to that question and a rundown of the 15 other members’ main responsibilities.

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Via: Mental Floss

Why Is Sumo Wrestling Such a Big Deal?

Quick, name a Japanese sport! Well, you probably said “sumo” because you’ve already read the headline of this article. But when it comes to the martial arts, sumo is inextricably associated with Japan. But how did it get started, and why is it still so popular? Read on for those answers and more.

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Via: Mental Floss

A few extra pounds can add years to your life: study

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Carrying a little extra weight may actually be good for you, according to a Canadian study that showed a few pounds appear to protect people from an early death.

Researchers found that while underweight and extremely obese people die earlier than people of a normal weight, people who are slightly overweight actually live longer than those of a normal weight.


"But overweight individuals were 17 percent less likely to die. The relative risk for obese people was nearly the same as for people of normal weight."

A Z Lynch Comments:
Could this be because overweight and obese individuals are forced to pay closer attention to their overall health?

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Via: Reuters

10,500-year-old well found, along with skeleton

NICOSIA, Cyprus - Archaeologists have discovered a water well in Cyprus that was built as long as 10,500 years ago, and the skeleton of a young woman at the bottom of it, an official said Wednesday.

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Via: MSNBC