Patience is truly, seriously a virtue. Especially when it boils down to handling someone as ass-headed as me. Yup, stubbornness is really my thing. I'm so good at it I won't budge for a mean million dollars.
So, how's life for you?? :) What generates life anyway??
I'm almost on the brink of starvation (I'm exaggerating) but I'm too lazy to walk down for a bowl of noodles or some cookies. Ugh.
Anyway, today's post- A BBC news reporter has written about signs of ageing (research by Doctors James Kirkland and Jan Van Deursen) being halted in the lab. Of course, no one ever wants to get old.
James Gallagher, health reporter-BBC.
"Will it be possible to stop ageing one day??"
The answer is-Maybe. Perhaps. Perhaps one fine day, all the old people in the world would be oozing 'pulchritudinous'. Oh and the weather is SUDORIFIC. Phew* Father Sun must enjoy beaming down. Okay, digressions.
Retired cells accumulate naturally with age. Old age causes a human to start look like a shriveled prune with white gonad eyes (okay, maybe gonad wasn't the word) and a chimp-looking face.
However, the onset of wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataract has been delayed and even eliminated in mice, so American researchers say. How is it done?? It's done by flushing out retired cells that have stopped dividing. The target cells in this particular experiment were the 'senescent cells' which are, cells that have stopped dividing after usually about 50 times of division. These cells are usually cleared out by the immune system but they accumulate in the body over time. So what scientists did with the lab mice was to feed them 'the drug' and they would miraculously stop ageing so rapidly. Ageing in the lab mice was dramatically delayed. This could actually be a new revolution for mankind; if the process of old age could be slowed down. The drug (name unknown for now) works like an anti-ageing (not lifespan prolonging mind you) magical elixir. There also was muscle improvement in the mice that were fed the drug.
Doctor James Kirkland and Doctor Jan Van Deursen told the BBC when interviewed that they were very surprised by the effects of the drug. However, this drug is not lifespan prolonging (although it might improve the quality of life), it just is a pre-study of what could really turn about in the future IF we continue to play with phenotypes and drugs altering them.
On a sad note, the Science world mourns 2 deaths this year; the death of Steven Rawlings-an astrophysicist and professor at Oxford uni, and Ahmadi-Roshan, a nuclear scientist; whose people (Iranians) believe that he was targeted and shot by members of the CIA.
Sigh, conspiracy theories.
On a lighter note, I got to eat my noodles :) With a healthy dollop of Bovril and oats. Yummy.
Oh and I got my drawing mojo back a little. LOL I did a Mahathir/Bean caricature, whichever you think it is.
Toodle loo.
P.s# The study was published here: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
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