Free Republic

This week at a tele-town hall hosted by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, a caller asked Newt Gingrich if he would consider choosing former half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Gingrich responded by saying that Palin “is certainly one of the people you would look at” and told the caller that he is “a great admirer of hers.” "She is certainly one of the people you would look at. I am a great admirer of hers and she was a remarkable reform governor of Alaska, she’s somebody who I think brings a great deal to the...

Until recently, few people gave much thought to senescent cells. They are cells that linger in the body even after they have lost the ability to divide. But on Nov. 2, in what could be a landmark experiment in the study of aging, researchers at the Mayo Clinic reported that if you purge the body of its senescent cells, the tissues remain youthful and vigorous. The experiment was just in mice, and it cleared the cells with a genetic technique that cannot be applied to people. Like all critical experiments, it needs to be repeated in other labs before it...

A diagnostic video.

The onset of wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataracts has been delayed and even eliminated in mice, say researchers in the US.It was done by "flushing out" retired cells that had stopped dividing. They accumulate naturally with age. The scientists believe their findings could eventually "really have an impact" in the care of the elderly. Experts said the results were "fascinating", but should be taken with a bit of caution. The study, published in Nature, focused on what are known as "senescent cells". They stop dividing into new cells and have an important role in preventing tumours from progressing. These cells...

(Reuters) - Plants and animals are shrinking because of warmer temperatures and lack of water, researchers said on Monday, warning it could have profound implications for food production in years ahead. "The worst-case scenarios ... are that food crops and animals will shrink enough to have real implications for food security," Assistant Professor David Bickford, of the National University of Singapore's biological sciences department, said. Bickford and colleague Jennifer Sheridan trawled through fossil records and dozens of studies which showed that many species of plants and creatures such as spiders, beetles, bees, ants and cicadas have shrunk over time in...

Destiny Is Demography By Bill Bonner 09/16/11 Baltimore, Maryland – The San Francisco Federal Reserve bank came out with a gloomy forecast last month. Its analysts said that stocks were likely to earn paltry returns over the next 10 years. The reason cited was simple enough; stockholders don’t live forever. ‘Demography is destiny,’ said Auguste Comte. ‘It works the other way around too,’ he might have added. If they thought they were going to live longer, America’s most ubiquitous age cohort — the baby boomers — might continue to buy stocks. Instead, the cold hand of the grave is on...

In Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," Gulliver encounters small group of immortals, the struldbrugs. "Those excellent struldbrugs," exclaims Gulliver, "who, being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death!" But the fate of these immortals wasn't so simple, as Swift goes on to report. They were still subject to aging and disease, so that by 80, they were "opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative," as well as "incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below...

Who says smoking cigarettes is so bad ... well, aside from the World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and every medical board and association on the face of the Earth? But should smokers be fortunate enough to dodge all that cancer, heart disease, emphysema and the like, they will be uniquely protected — for reasons unexplained by science — against a handful of diseases and afflictions. Call it a silver lining in their otherwise blackened lungs. Although long-term smoking is largely a ticket to early death, here are (gulp) five possible benefits...

Japan closer to doubling sales tax amid fiscal woes Friday 03rd June, 07:00 AM JST TOKYO — The Japanese government on Thursday announced a social security reform plan that would result in a doubling of the country’s consumption tax rate to 10% in stages by the year through March 2016 and lower pension payments to the elderly with higher incomes. The move came as the country has been struggling under swelling welfare costs due to the aging population, which have added to the government’s difficulty in restoring its fiscal health, the worst among major developed economies. But the reform initiative...

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 13 (UPI) -- A blood test that measures the length of a person's telomeres -- a predictor of longevity -- may be available soon, U.S. and Spanish researchers say. "Knowing whether our telomeres are a normal length or not for a given chronological age will give us an indication of our health status and of our physiological 'age' even before diseases appear," Maria A. Blasco, who heads the Telomeres and Telomerase Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center and who co-founded the company Life Length, told Scientific American. Telomeres are caps on the ends of...

China's population ageing rapidly China is heading for an elderly population crisis with over 60s now accounting for more than 13 per cent of the population and the country's 'one child' policy meaning there are not enough younger people to support them. By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai 3:25PM BST 28 Apr 2011 The first national census for a decade revealed demographic problems that could derail China's booming economic growth and which are placing a heavy burden on young Chinese. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there has been a sharp spike in older Chinese, with the percentage of over-60s rising...

There's still no foolproof way to predict who will develop dementia, but brain scientists say they have identified a new clue: Cluelessness, as in an inability to tell when people are lying or using sarcasm. A preliminary new study conducted at the University of California at San Francisco suggests that the neurodegenerative process responsible for dementia also causes deterioration of regions of the brain responsible for detecting insincere speech. "These patients cannot detect lies," study author Dr. Katherine Rankin, of the university's Memory and Aging Center, said in a written statement. "This fact can help them be diagnosed earlier." It...

Am I the only one wondering why Barry Soetoro is wasting away to nothing?

If life begins at 40, you’d better hurry up and enjoy it, ladies. For in another ten years you are likely to think all men are ignoring you. A survey has found that eight out of ten women over the age of 50 think members of the opposite sex no longer notice them. So while The Beatles famously lamented becoming over the hill ‘When I’m 64’, women in 2011 will instead be wondering: ‘Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m... 50?’ As if that’s not bad enough, seven out of ten women also feel overlooked...

who turns 60 today (Feb 15) — is convinced she’s the last actress of her age who still has “her own face” and insists her natural appearance appeals to directors looking to cast older women.

The World Won't Be Aging Gracefully. Just the Opposite. By Neil Howe and Richard JacksonSunday, January 4, 2009 The world is in crisis. A financial crash and a deepening recession are afflicting rich and poor countries alike. The threat of weapons of mass destruction looms ever larger. A bipartisan congressional panel announced last month that the odds of a nuclear or biological terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the year 2014 are better than 50-50. It looks as though we'll be grappling with these economic and geopolitical challenges well into the 2010s. But if you think that things couldn't...

The German government on Friday said it was working on a bill aimed at battling a growing tide of complaints against noisy children in what is a rapidly ageing society. Regulations on noise fall under Germany's emissions laws, and a bill tweaking these is due to go before Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet in February, a spokesman for the environment ministry said. "Noise made by childcare centres, playgrounds and places where ball games are played do not generally constitute a harmful environmental effect," the Passauer Neue Presse daily cited the bill as saying. The government is also working on an amendment...

Harvard scientists were surprised that they saw a dramatic reversal, not just a slowing down, of the ageing in mice. Now they believe they might be able to regenerate human organs Scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the ageing process after rejuvenating worn out organs in elderly mice. The experimental treatment developed by researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies. The surprise recovery of the animals has raised hopes among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat...

For decades, scientists have been searching for the fundamental biological secrets of how eating less extends lifespan. It has been well documented in species ranging from spiders to monkeys that a diet with consistently fewer calories can dramatically slow the process of aging and improve health in old age. But how a reduced diet acts at the most basic level to influence metabolism and physiology to blunt the age-related decline of tissues and cells has remained, for the most part, a mystery. Now, writing in the current online issue (Nov. 18) of the journal Cell, a team of scientists from...

“The fact that you are reading this indicates you escaped the abortion holocaust. But don’t relax yet. We are all candidates for the growing euthanasia movement.” These oft-repeated words of Msgr. William B. Smith, one of the Church’s best moral theologians until his death last year, came to mind as my father lay in the emergency room and a grave-faced doctor called me, my brother and our mother aside for a consultation. Since this was a top-rated yet secular hospital, I was already reviewing in my mind all I knew about Church teaching regarding “ordinary” and extraordinary” care. But I...

My friends all wait. They wait to make use of their degrees. They wait for a job to open. They wait to finish graduate school. Again. They all wait. The economy stinks. It stunk before we started earning salaries. The job market is nonexistent. Even small colleges are filled up. The technology we mastered as curious children is sitting there, but we can't do anything with it. No, it's too busy. It's being used by you people. And the jobs? You people. The schools? Again, you people. You baby boomers. You're why we're waiting. Like every generation before us, my...

SACHIRE, Georgia – Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Georgia claim a woman from a remote mountain village turned 130 on Thursday, making her the oldest person on Earth. Antisa Khvichava from western Georgia was born on July 8, 1880, said Georgiy Meurnishvili, spokesman for the civil registry at the Justice Ministry. The woman, who lives with her 40-year-old grandson in an idyllic vine-covered country house in the mountains, retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was 85, records say. "I've always been healthy, and I've worked all my life — at...

Life looks a little rosier after 50, a new study finds. Older people in their mid- to late-50s are generally happier, and experience less stress and worry than young adults in their 20s, the researchers say. The results, based on a Gallup phone survey from 2008 of more than 340,000 Americans, held even after the researchers accounted for factors that could have contributed to differences in well-being with age, such as whether the participants were married, had children at home or were employed. So if having a partner and getting rid of the kids aren't responsible for the uptick in...

In the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, conducted last spring, only 18 percent of Japanese said they expected economic conditions in their country to improve over the next year. Remarkably, that represented a 13-percentage-point increase from 2008, when just 5 percent of Japanese said they expected improvement. The corresponding 2009 figures in China, India, and the United States were 82 percent, 75 percent, and 59 percent, respectively. Fewer than one-fifth (19 percent) of Japanese told the 2009 Pew interviewers that children in their country would grow up to be “better off” than people are today, compared with 89 percent of...

VIENNA (AFP) – A new vaccine against Alzheimer's, developed by the Austrian biotechnology firm Affiris, will soon be tested in six European countries, the company announced Friday.

LONDON (Reuters) – British scientists studying the genetics of aging said on Thursday that experiments on laboratory worms showed that a specific gene is strongly linked to lifespan, immunity and disease resistance. Since the gene, called DAF-16 in worms, is found in many animals and in humans, the finding could open up new ways to affect aging, immunity and resistance in humans, the scientists said. "We wanted to find out how normal aging is being governed by genes and what effect these genes have on other traits, such as immunity," said Robin May of the University of Birmingham, who led...

By Andy Xie 03.15.2010 18:20 Our Next Economic Plague: Japan Disease Growing old is hard, but watching formerly vibrant economies choke on debt and wither away is downright ugly Japan's nominal GDP fell 6 percent to 475 trillion yen last year, while its real GDP declined 5 percent. Meanwhile, nominal GDP in the United States decreased 1.3 percent to US$ 14.2 trillion and real GDP fell 2.4 percent. If you travel across Japan and the United States, you get the impression that America is in much worse shape: Americans cannot stop screaming about their woes, while the Japanese face economic...

February 28, 2010 Fighting Alzheimer's With A Touch of Beauty A pioneering care project demonstates how literature, music, art and love can improve the lives of dementia sufferers Rita Hayworth [Pic in URL] Margarette Driscoll In her heyday, Rita Hayworth was known as the “Love Goddess”: so explosive was her appeal that her image was placed on the first nuclear bomb to be tested on Bikini Atoll after the second world war. As befits one of the world’s most glamorous women, she danced her way through 61 movies and five husbands. She was a pin-up for American servicemen and is...

Those who live in industrialized countries have easy access to healthy food and nutritional supplements, but magnesium deficiencies are still common. That's a problem because new research from Tel Aviv University suggests that magnesium, a key nutrient for the functioning of memory, may be even more critical than previously thought for the neurons of children and healthy brain cells in adults. Dr. Inna Slutsky of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine published results of a 5-year probe which has significant implications for the use of over-the-counter magnesium supplements.

Jane Fonda Goes Back Under The Knife Despite Her Vow To Grow Old Gracefully SIMON CABLE 19th February 2010 New face: Jane Fonda admitted that she had surgery on her neck, chin and eyes. [Pic in URL] She once vowed to stop her fellow actresses turning to surgery. But having already undergone multiple cosmetic procedures herself, not many were willing to take her too seriously. And now Jane Fonda seems to have completely abandoned her crusade after admitting to yet more operations. Despite having a lucrative six-figure contract to promote L'Oreal anti-ageing cream, the 72-year-old revealed she visited doctors just...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Despite studies suggesting that erectile dysfunction drugs promote irresponsible sexual behavior, men who receive prescriptions for them are no more likely to engage in risky sex acts than men who do not receive prescriptions for the medications, according to a University of Florida study. “For this study we took the perspective of a doctor who may worry that prescribing erectile dysfunction drugs to patients could contribute to the spread of HIV,” said lead researcher Dr. Robert Cook. “The findings from this study should provide some reassurance to health-care providers that erectile dysfunction drugs appear to be prescribed...

Age Studies, Part Two Bethany Stotts, January 12, 2010 As reported earlier, one professor discussing age studies at the 2009 Modern Language Association Convention focused her talk on Ghost World’s messages about adolescence and other items of a more prurient nature. The other three speakers, however, drew a parallel between ageism and “neoliberal” economic policies. Age as Class Conflict Speaking on a panel entitled “Age and Affect: Fear, Denial, Fantasy,” Ph.D. candidate Andrea Charise discussed elder abuse as it is depicted in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and Anthony Trollope’s The Fixed Period. “In this paper I argue…that disgust is a...

Someone once wrote: "After thirty-five usually something in your body hurts at all times, and after sixty-five it's just patch, patch, patch!"

Worries about the economy and healthcare are pushing people into middle age earlier, making 35 the new 40, according to a new report. While 40 was once widely considered the milestone that defined middle age, this has been lowered to 35, according to research by the Philips Center for Health and Well-Being. "Thirty five is the new 40 as Americans feel the pressures of middle age earlier than ever," the Amsterdam-based centre said in a statement. Katy Hartley, the director of the centre, which aims to improve quality of life, said stress about the economy and healthcare that you would...

Women who have plump full lips look younger than their years, scientists have said. Devotees of collagen injections and silicone implants have long believed it and now research has backed their theory that a bee stung pout can belie their true age. Even if the woman in question has wrinkles, eye bags, sagging jowels and greying hair, a rosy and firm set of lips will make them appear younger

If you bother to read Joanna Weiss' column in today's Boston Globe, expect to get a sense of deja . . . lu. Like untold screeds that have preceded it, "Hollywood’s burden on aging women" stamps its feet over the unequal treatment of aging in men and women. You know: male stars are allowed to age gracefully, but women must struggle ever-harder to conform to a youthful stereotype of sex-appeal. Unfair! The feminist response is to blame the culture, in this case embodied by Hollywood, for promoting shallow, sexist values. But the fault, dear Joanna, is not in our stars...

LONDON – Those baby-faced people now have another reason to be smug: a new Danish study says looking young apparently means a longer life. Research published online Monday in the British medical journal BMJ suggests that people who look younger than their years also live longer. In 2001, Danish researchers conducted physical and cognitive tests on more than 1,800 pairs of twins over aged 70, as well as taking photos of their faces. Three groups of people who didn't know the twins' real ages guessed how old they were. The researchers then tracked how long the twins survived over 7...

Senior citizens in Maine have greeted over 900,000 US troops at a tiny local airport. For the past five years, a group of senior citizens has made history by greeting over 900,000 American troops at a tiny airport in Bangor, Maine. Take an intimate look at three of these greeters as they confront the universal losses that come with aging and rediscover their reason for living. Link to video

Most would agree that conserving resources and minimizing adverse impacts on the environment make sense, but something has gone terribly awry within the Green Movement. Environmental extremists championing "population control" as a means of protecting Mother Earth show that they have little regard for the human species. Some recent comments by prominent Green advocates suggest that one of the simplest and most effective ways to reduce the global carbon footprint is to reduce the population. As means to that end, they advocate aggressive birth control and abortion. Their argument is simple enough: fewer people put less strain on natural resources,...

MONDAY, Oct. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Surfing the Internet just might be a way to preserve your mental skills as you age. Researchers found that older adults who started browsing the Web experienced improved brain function after only a few days. "You can teach an old brain new technology tricks," said Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatry professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of iBrain. With people who had little Internet experience, "we found that after just a week of practice, there was a much greater extent...

An unusual enzyme called telomerase acts on parts of chromosomes known as telomeres. The enzyme has recently been found in many human tumors and is being eyed as a new target for cancer therapyEditor's note: We are posting the main text of this article from the February 1996 issue of Scientific American for all our readers because the authors have won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Subscribers to the digital archive may obtain a full PDF version, complete with artwork and captions. Often in nature things are not what they seem. A rock on the seafloor may...

Vienna (dpa) -- A substance contained in sperm fluid prolongs life and might be used in fighting Alzheimer disease, Austria's Graz University announced Monday. Researchers Tobias Eisenberg and Frank Madeo have found that the substance spermidine extends the lifespan of human immune cells, as well as of mice, flies, worms and yeast fungus. "We might have found the holy grail of age research," said Eisenberg, whose study involved 29 colleagues in six countries and was published in the British journal Nature Cell Biology on Sunday. In tests with mice treated with spermidine, cell damage linked to aging was reduced, and...

NAPLES, Fla. — So, a man and a woman walk into a strip-mall restaurant packed full of retirees, and start mouthing off about sagging breasts, lost dentures and how everyone there is standing at death's door. What's the punchline? Rick Compton and Betsy Bennett implore you to find out with "Assisted Living: The Musical." The singer-songwriter duo dares to poke fun at the aged in ways often off-limits on stage and screen — and audiences are laughing so hard they cry... ...the topics include elderly romance, senior driving and Viagra. Among the song titles: "Help! I've Fallen for You and...

Could a pill one day slow ageing in humans?Punchstock 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 —...

Here is a forensic artist's drawing of what Michael Jackson would have looked like at age 45 (and presumably today) without all that plastic surgery and skin bleaching: What a difference!

The American Medical Association is taking on a segment of the $50 billion "anti-aging" industry that promotes the use of hormones as a treatment for consumers to slow or reverse the aging process. In a report presented Sunday in Chicago to a committee of the AMA's 543-member policymaking House of Delegates, the AMA Council on Science and Public Health calls into question claims made by for-profit Web sites, anti-aging clinics and other businesses promoting hormones as anti-aging treatments. "Despite the widespread promotion of hormones as anti-aging agents by for-profit Web sites, anti-aging clinics and compounding pharmacies, the scientific evidence to...

Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests. Professor Timothy Salthouse of Virginia University found reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualisation all decline in our late 20s. Therapies designed to stall or reverse the ageing process may need to start much earlier, he said. His seven-year study of 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60 is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging. To test mental agility, the study participants had to solve puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols. The same tests...

Getting old already? 27-year-old singer Beyonce Knowles is already past her mental peak according to new research According to scientists, our mental abilities begin to decline from the age of 27 after reaching a peak at 22. The researchers studied 2,000 men and women aged 18 to 60 over seven years. The people involved – who were mostly in good health and well-educated – had to solve visual puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols. The first age at which performance was significantly lower than the peak scores was 27 – for three tests...

Enlarge ImageChanging of the guard. In these nuclei from muscle cells, yellow indicates where nuclear pore proteins are being replaced.Credit: Maximiliano D'Angelo As if gimpy knees, clogged arteries, and forgetfulness weren't bad enough, new research has identified another way our bodies falter as we get older. The pores that permit only certain molecules to enter and exit the nuclei of our cells start leaking. A new study raises the possibility that permissive pores trigger some of the physical decline of old age. Nuclear pores aren't mere portholes. Each consists of about 30 different proteins called nucleoporins that control what...

Here is a video report on the rapid aging of Presidents of the United States. The report shows before and after photos of several Presidents, and discusses the way Presidents age rapidly while in office with a Doctor. The Doctor says Presidents age about two years for every year they are in office. . . . . . . . (watch video)