Brain cells can live at least twice as long as the organisms in which they reside, according to new research.
The study, published Monday, Feb. 25, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that mouse neurons, or brain cells, implanted into rats can survive with the rats into old age, twice as long as the life span of the original mice. The findings are good news for life extension enthusiasts.
'We are slowly but continuously prolonging the life of humans.'
- Dr. Lorenzo Magrassi, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pavia in Italy
"We are slowly but continuously prolonging the life of humans," said study co-author Dr. Lorenzo Magrassi, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pavia in Italy.
So if the human life span could be stretched to 160 years, "then you are not going to lose your neurons, because your neurons do not have a fixed lifetime."
Long-lived cells While most of the cells in the human body are being constantly replaced, humans are born with almost all the neurons they will ever have. [10 Odd Facts About the Brain]
Magrassi and his colleagues wanted to know whether neurons could outlive the organisms in which they live (barring degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's).
To do so, the researchers took neurons from mice and implanted them into the brains of about 60 rat fetuses.
The team then let the rats live their entire lives, euthanizing them when they were moribund and unlikely to survive for more than two days, and then inspected their brains. The life span of the mice was only about 18 months, while the rats typically lived twice as long.
The rats were found to be completely normal (though not any smarter), without any signs of neurological problems at the end of their lives.
And the neurons that had been transplanted from mice were still alive when the rats died. That means it's possible the cells could have survived even longer if they were transplanted into a longer-lived species.
Life extension The findings suggest that our brain cells won't fail before our bodies do.
"Think what a terrible thing it could be if you survive your own brain," Magrassi told LiveScience.
While the findings were done in rats, not humans, they could also have implications for neuronal transplants that could be used for degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease, Magrassi said.
But just because brain cells may be able to live indefinitely doesn't mean humans could live forever.
Aging is dependent on more than the life span of all the individual parts in the body, and scientists still don't understand exactly what causes people to age, Magrassi said.
Copyright 2013LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
What a derby ... the North London rivals are set for an epic.Source: Ian Kington / AFP
They checked-in dreaming off UEFA Champions League Football; all that was required was a win on the final day of season 2005-2006.
They ate lasagna and 10 players went down with food poisoning and their dreams of Europe were shattered when they lost 2-1 to West Ham.
To make matter worse for Tottenham the club that sealed a place in Europe at their expense was Arsenal.
It had Spurs fans understandably crying foul play.
The Frenchmen in charge of Arsenal seemed an obvious suspect but he insisted he was not cooking that day at the Marriott Hotel.
Wenger said if he had been they would have felt even worse.
After an investigation by the Health Protection Agency the hotel was cleared of any blame, with tests on the players showing that one was suffering from norovirus, which may have spread to his teammates.
The conspiracy theory was left in tatters and the reality was that Champions League football was not coming to White Hart Lane.
Perhaps even more hurtful was the fact that Arsenal was still the dominant power in North London.
And so it has remained with Arsenal finishing above Tottenham in every season since.
You have to go back to the 1994-1995 season for last time Tottenham finished above Arsenal.
Watch all the action unfold live on Fox Sports 1 HD, 245am (EDT) Monday.
Ahead of this weekend’s North London derby Arsenal have never faced such a challenge from Tottenham.
Last season they finished just one point ahead of their bitter rivals.
This campaign sees Tottenham come into the second derby of the season four points ahead of Arsenal.
Interestingly it is the same margin they found themselves ahead of the Gunners at the same point last season only to surrender their lead and a place in the Champions League.
It could be suggested that history will repeat itself and Spurs will wilt when Arsenal make a late charge.
But this feels like a very different Tottenham.
It was not how most predicted the campaign would unfold under Andre Villa-Boas.
Most thought it was likely to end as it did at Chelsea when the young Portuguese was fired after overseeing a poor run of form.
This has proved to be misguided, with Villas-Boas improving an already formidable squad.
The Welshmen is still deployed to the left of a front three but he has been given licence to roam across the front and come inside at every opportunity.
By allowing Bale to come inside he has increased his involvement in the game and the result has been devastating with the 23-year-old scoring 15 times in the League so far this season.
His outstanding winner against West Ham on Monday was the fourth EPL game in a row in which he has scored, leading to Villas-Boas to describe him as ‘unbelievable.’
"Players like this take responsibility at key moments, he is tremendous," the Spurs Boss said after the win over West Ham and then added.
P
W
D
L
GD
Pts
1
Man United
27
22
2
3
33
68
2
Man City
27
16
8
3
26
56
3
Tottenham
27
15
6
6
15
51
4
Chelsea
27
14
7
6
25
49
5
Arsenal
27
13
8
6
22
47
6
Everton
27
10
12
5
7
42
7
West Brom
27
12
4
11
2
40
8
Liverpool
27
10
9
8
15
39
9
Swansea
27
9
10
8
4
37
10
Stoke
27
7
12
8
-6
33
11
Fulham
27
8
8
11
-5
32
12
Norwich
27
7
11
9
-14
32
13
Newcastle
27
8
6
13
-10
30
14
West Ham
27
8
6
13
-10
30
15
Sunderland
27
7
8
12
-7
29
16
Southampton
27
6
9
12
-11
27
17
Wigan
27
6
6
15
-18
24
18
Aston Villa
27
5
9
13
-26
24
19
Reading
27
5
8
14
-18
23
20
QPR
27
2
11
14
-24
17
"The player continues to make the difference and he was tremendous once again.”
It has not been all about Bale.
The players Villas-Boas has brought-in since he was appointed in the off-season have vastly improved the squad.
Jan Vertonghen, Lewis Holtby, Mousa Dembele and Clint Dempsey have all settled quickly and have instantly made an impact.
So to have the players promoted from the club’s youth academy with Steven Caulker in particularly impressing so far this season in the heart of the Spurs defence.
In the match against West Ham there were three academy products in the Tottenham squad underlying the sense that Villas-Boas is building something for the long-term.
This has been illustrated by a run of form that has seen Spurs win three and draw two of their last five games.
Their surge into the top three would suggest they are the form team ahead of the derby.
But this is not true when you look at results alone.
Despite their poor form in the FA Cup and Champions League first leg match against Bayern Munich Arsenal are in good form in the League.
In the past five matches the Gunners have won four and drawn one.
Despite winning, as they did against Aston Villa on the weekend, their performances have been far from convincing and have added to the sense that Tottenham is pulling ahead of their North London rivals.
Bale stated his belief that this is now the case when asked about the weekend’s derby.
"Over the past few seasons we have closed that gap and I think now we have overtaken them on the pitch. I think we have the stronger squad."
Arsenal fans are likely to disagree and many have been quick to point out that Spurs are having an excellent season and the Gunners are struggling but the gap is only four points.
This may indeed be the case but if Spurs finish above Arsenal at the end of the season few at White Hart Lane will be bothered by what the margin was.
Arsenal fans may point to 16 seasons of finishing above Spurs as proof of what it takes to be number one in North London.
But finishing below Spurs will hurt, the last manager at Arsenal who did so paid for it with his job.
Wenger appears unlikely to face the same consequences but a loss to Spurs will add to the sense that his club are on the wane and that their bitter rivals are very much on the up.
Either way there have been few more significant derbies.
As President Obama prepared to highlight the impact of looming spending cuts with a trip to a Virginia military community, Republicans accused the president Tuesday of using America's service members as a campaign "prop."
Republicans in the House and Senate had tough words for Obama, as the White House sought once again to pressure Congress to avert the cuts by agreeing to new tax increases. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell claimed the president was trying to sow a sense of chaos, but he and other GOP leaders were increasingly agreeing on one thing -- the sky is not falling.
"Personally, I don't believe the world will end if the president's sequester takes effect," McConnell said. "But our country would be much better served if the Democrats who run Washington would get off the campaign trail and work with us to trim the budget in a more rational way."
McConnell suggested that despite Obama's warnings of "utter chaos," the government should be able to cut 2 percent of its budget "without inviting disaster."
Republicans on Tuesday again called Obama's visit a "road show." House Speaker John Boehner claimed the president was using military members as a "prop." Frustration showing through, Boehner also used salty language as he urged the Senate to act, arguing the House has passed two bills already to deal with the so-called sequester.
"We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass," he said.
On the other side, Senate Democratic Harry Reid said his party wants to work with Republicans on a "balanced" plan.
"But my Republican colleagues are standing in the way of a solution. They only want cuts and more cuts. They are willing to sacrifice three-quarters of a million jobs rather than ask multi-millionaires to pay a penny more," Reid said.
The Senate is expected to hold votes on a Democratic and a Republican plan later in the week. But with the $85 billion in cuts set to start taking effect Friday, hope is diminishing that any compromise could be reached before then.
Amid the gridlock, Obama was traveling to a Virginia shipyard on Tuesday to press his argument that looming government-wide spending cuts could hurt military readiness.
Obama planned to appear at Virginia's largest industrial employer, Newport News Shipbuilding, to stress that the spending cuts will idle military resources like naval aircraft carriers. The president warned Monday that if cuts to naval spending take effect, the company's "workers will sit idle when they should be repairing ships, and a carrier sits idle when it should be deploying to the Persian Gulf."
The White House has warned that the cuts could affect everything from commercial flights to classrooms to meat inspections. The cuts would slash domestic and defense spending, leading to furloughs for hundreds of thousands of workers.
Despite the grim outlook, both sides seem more focused on blaming each other than coming up with a deal. Obama urged Congress to compromise, but the last known conversation between Obama and Republican leaders was last week and there have been no in-person meetings between the parties this year.
Some congressional leaders have recently indicated their willingness to let the cuts take effect and stay in place for weeks, if not longer. There is some breathing room for political settlement even after Friday's deadline comes and goes: Provisions are in place to preserve the most crucial services and furloughs of federal workers are at least a month away.
McConnell claimed the president has presented the country with two options: "Armageddon or a tax hike."
Echoing comments made by House Republicans a day earlier, he said this is a "false choice."
A Florida case could signal the wave of the future in voter fraud.
South Florida election officials have reportedly foiled a plot to fraudulently apply online for thousands of absentee ballots in three 2012 primaries, but the masterminds remain at large amid concern that they could be successful the next time around by making minor adjustments.
Officials in the state’s Miami-Dade region said they blocked the effort to get 2,552 absentee ballots in three August primaries because the requests rolled in just minutes apart on July 7, 2012, according to The Miami Herald, which conducted its own investigation.
A six-month grand jury probe found the requests were made under the cover of international Internet provider addresses and were limited to three races --- a congressional race in which the hackers tried to request absentee ballots for Democratic voters and two state legislative races in which they tried to get ballots for Republican voters.
But the newspaper found at least two of the requests originated in Miami and could have been further traced, which purported has prompted State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle to review at least some parts of the case.
The absentee ballots still would have gone to the rightful voters. So short of stealing ballots from mailbox, the hackers’ only way to have swayed or flipped the voters would likely have been to inundate them with calls and mailers.
Officials say the ballots would not have changed the outcome of the races. But there is a concern that another attempt, with hackers slowing the pace of the requests, could go undetected.
Steven Rambam, a New York-based private investigator with experience in computer database and privacy issues, told the newspaper that the hackers -- with a little more skill -- could have included computer code to keep the program from triggering the elections department’s safeguard.
Heads must roll ... AFL boss Andrew Demetriou and chairman Mike Fitzpatrick.Source: David Caird / News Limited
Enough of the pulpit-pounding and furious finger waving ... let's see the guillotine.
As dramatic as Thursday's announcement about corruption in Australian sport was, it failed to leave the scorch marks created by naming names, dates and places.
The fear of multiple defamation cases saw the handbrake on the release of names but we have been told the curtain of deceit will eventually be ripped down and the naming and shaming will come in time.
Don't count on it. Not with the sports taking charge now.
If the Australian Crime Commission was so confident of its findings it should have blown the roof off the scandal by naming names, like the day when Melbourne Storm were exposed as salary-cap cheats.
By not outing anyone they incriminated everyone.
It is essential Australian sport learns who is dirty, if only to learn who is clean.
A decade ago international cricket had a day like this when anti-corruption chief Paul Condon released a document about widespread match-fixing in cricket, revealing threats to players' lives.
He made dam-busting headlines around the globe and was branded the great crusader but he didn't name names and the dramatic announcement was followed up with ... nothing.
Not a single charge. He was all hot air.
Heads must roll here.
On Thursday we heard probably a fifth of the story.
Beneath hard core accusations of drug peddling by unnamed sports scientists and doctors, and drug use by players, there is a disturbing appearance of words such as "suspected", "could", "potentially" and "possibly" in the report.
For goodness sake fellas, just give it to us straight. Did they or didn't they?
Sports Minister Kate Lundy, sounding like she had just had breakfast with Dirty Harry, claimed: "If you want to dope and cheat, we will catch you. If you want to fix a match, we will catch you."
Really? Can anyone name me a big-name Australian sportsman caught by Australia's drug police for performance enhancing drugs? The Storm's Rodney Howe, Richmond's Justin Charles and ... ?
Perhaps Lundy's line should have read: "If you want to dope we will catch you and then let you go, twice."
That's the thing. The AFL may be duty bound by its own system to keep their problems to themselves under its three strikes policy.
The word has been on the streets for ages that doping has been rampant in Australian sport yet barely anyone gets caught.
This was, however, a chastening day for Australia because historically our discerning gaze has been focused beyond our own shores when it comes to major drug scandals to the likes of Ben Johnson, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong.
Now it's us and we can't blame our headache tablets or our Mum's diet pills.
Australia is about a decade behind US drug police, who are far more aggressive and have dragged American sports up with their standards.
Australian sport had been so focused on testing for traditional steroids and recreational drugs it let steroid substitutes like peptides - the big issue here - sneak through its dropped guard.
Alarm bells rang for drug authorities when the detection of these drugs in customs soared 100 per cent last year.
AFL seems destined to be the hardest hit by this scandal.
You only had to watch the early episodes of Underbelly, which pitched mafia figures sitting in the grandstands at football training, to know that in Melbourne, the worlds of drugs and sport and money laundering are disturbingly intertwined.
With a 140 per cent mark-up on the sale of some illegal supplements, you can understand why the underworld are so keen to be involved, especially since if anyone gets caught the athlete may be banned for life but the man in the dark sunglasses who sold him the drug gets nothing.
It sure beats peddling cocaine.
AFL is the sport that most trusted those mysterious sports science medicos who introduced the super-supplement culture.
The paranoia that comes with fearing you are going to be left behind prompted the clubs to match your frothing test tube with my Dr Who.
AFL players were ripe for these supplements because they train to breaking point and their bodies crave artificial regeneration.
Dr Robin Willcourt, who tested the blood of the Essendon players, found they were alarmingly down in testosterone and hormones because the players were so exhausted.
The great benefit of the "bust" is not that it will catch the cheats but that it will shake up the entire system.
Fear is a much greater weapon than force. Everyone is terrified now. This season there will be players checking Minties wrappers to make sure they are clean.
Surely we will never again witness a system where Essendon players, with about as much personal willpower as a lemming following its mates over a cliff, headed off site to get injected with mysterious substances after signing a waiver form.
Essendon have got what they deserved - a shameful dressing down. It will be a surprise if coaches James Hird and Mark Thompson survive the endless inquisitions that must follow.
Never again will sports boffins be as powerful as they were in recent seasons.
Sports like cricket will surely regret handing over the core of their selection philosophy to the men in white coats, some of whom think a googly is an internet search engine.
The match-fixing allegations about as-yet unnamed sports are fascinating, as was the reaction of sports officials at yesterday's press conference where soccer and rugby union officials denied match-fixing claims and AFL and rugby league bosses sat there looking as guilty as the kids with chocolate lips when asked who stole the last donut.
It was the first of many uncomfortable moments to come.
Even the most open, democratic governments have sought laws and new forms of surveillance that many see as a new wave of censorship -- and that includes the United States.
The U.S. government asked Google for data on its users more than 31,000 times in 2012 alone, for example. And the government rarely obtained a search warrant first, Google recently revealed; in nearly all cases, the company ended up turning over at least some data.
Some argue that heightened surveillance, restrictions on Internet freedom and even censorship are necessary to protect intellectual property rights, prevent cyberespionage, fight child pornography, and protect national interests such as nuclear power plants from hackers. And here the U.S. is far from alone.
"A number of democratic states have considered or implemented various restrictions in response to the potential legal, economic, and security challenges raised by new media," notes the Freedom House report "Freedom on the Net 2012."
Anxiety over online theft and cyberattacks is not unwarranted. Virtually every major U.S. company and media outlet has been a victim. Google was attacked back in 2009. Facebook, Apple and Microsoft revealed this month that hackers had breeched their defenses. And The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have fought off Chinese hackers for months. Indeed, dozens of countries have their own online hacking groups -- so-called cyber or asymmetrical warfare divisions.
'A number of democratic states have considered or implemented various restrictions.'
- Freedom House report Freedom on the Net 2012
"It's been going on in China since at least at least May 2002," said Alan Paller, founder of the SANS Institute, an information security and training firm.
Consequently, lawmakers -- even President Obama in his State of the Union speech -- have been motivated to take steps to stem the hacking tide. However, the road to better security could also stifle free speech.
When the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) met in Dubai in December, some 89 member countries including Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran, supported a treaty that would give individual governments more control over the Internet's infrastructure.
Sensing a thinly veiled attempt to suppress dissent, 55 countries -- including Canada and the U.S. -- said no.
North of the border, for example, the Canadian government proposed Bill C-30, known as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. Proponents claimed the measure was designed to combat the exploitation of children, but it required Internet service providers to create monitoring systems that would allow the police to intercept and track all online communications -- without a warrant. The public reaction was so fiercely opposed to Bill C-30 that Canadian authorities were forced to withdraw it this month.
Watchdog Agencies
Far from leading to the spread of democracy and freedom online, the events of the 2011 Arab spring led many authoritarian countries to clamp down more tightly, fearful of rebellious citizens inciting and organizing online.
Here's the latest from three groups monitoring Internet freedom:
Reporters Without Borders A 2012 list of countries that are “Enemies of the Internet” notes that more than ever before, online freedom of expression is now a major foreign and domestic policy issue.
Freedom House According to Freedom on the Net 2012, a survey by the independent watchdog group, of the 47 countries covered "20 have experienced a negative trajectory since January 2011.
Google The Web giant has been using its reach to monitor Internet openness. The Transparency Report visualizes disruptions in the free flow of information, whether it's a government blocking information or a cable being cut.
On this side of the border, the U.S. government continues to conduct warrantless online searches. Thanks to outdated laws such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and other regulations protecting copyrighted materials, U.S. authorities are increasingly looking at private online communications, often without any oversight by a judge.
Google says it has seen a 70 percent increase in requests from authorities for information about its users, information which includes private e-mails and search data. The biggest requester? The U.S. government, which sought information 8,438 times in the last six months of 2012. Google complied with those requests in roughly 88 percent of the cases.
While Google states it is against such broad government access to personal information -- dealing with such requests costs Google time and money -- where it stands on strict Internet freedoms is mutable.
Shortly before his State of the Union speech, President Obama signed an executive order designed to let federal government agencies share critical cyberthreat information with private companies to protect companies involved in supporting the nation's critical infrastructure.
“We know hackers steal people’s identities and infiltrate private e-mail," the President said in his speech. "We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy."
Even though the data shared by the government could include personal information, in this case companies have been in favor of the executive order. The reason: private firms don't have to in turn share data their data about their users with the government.
However, that may be about to change. As the President implied, Congress is working on reintroducing the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). It would enable companies to divulge private information to government authorities if the companies perceived some form of "cyber threats." Any personal information -- Facebook jokes, Twitter tussles, errant Web searches -- could be handed over to a variety of government agencies if that information has anything to do with the potential vulnerability of a computer network.
"CISPA offers broad immunities to companies who choose to share data with government agencies," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Mark M. Jaycox explained in a blog post. "It also creates avenues for companies to share data with any federal agencies, including military intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency."
While congress has yet to hammer out new, possibly more precise, language for a reintroduced CISPA bill, the powers it grants to both private companies and government authorities could end up making them partners in nationwide surveillance -- the same complaint often levied against countries like China.
Follow John R. Quain on Twitter@jqontechor find more tech coverage atJ-Q.com.
Argument ... Michu tries to calm Nathan Dyer down.Source: Adrian Dennis / News Limited
Pretend for a minute you were a Barclays Premier League manager and had to make a choice.
After winning a penalty in a cup final, does your regular penalty taker step up or do you let the youngster with two goals have a crack at a Wembley hat-trick?
That was the scenario for Swansea City in Sunday's (EDT) League Cup final.
Watch the video below and decide, then leave a comment at the bottom of the page to join the debate.
Up stepped penalty specialist Jonathan de Guzman - decision made - and the Swans extended their lead over Bradford City to 4-0.
Unfortunately, it didn't go down too well with young striker Nathan Dyer who was distraught or threw a hissy fit, depending on which side of the argument you're on.
It would have been the first hat-trick in League Cup history but professionalism won out.
Dyer pleaded, remonstrated, abused de Guzman and anyone who tried to calm him down, including Michu and referee Kevin Friend.
However, as a way of apologising Dyer gave de Guzman a hug after the penalty.
After the game Dyer said he was disappointed to miss out on a dream maiden hat-trick but was glad the team had won the title.
"I had two goals and it's not every day you get the chance for a hat-trick at Wembley so I wanted the third but I didn't get the chance and that was that," he said.
"It was disappointing but the most important thing was that we scored the goal and won the match. It's all done and dusted now."
"To get a hat-trick at Wembley in my first cup final for Swansea City, you can’t write that and I feel like it did get taken away from me a little bit.
"But we’re teammates at the end of the game and you have to move on. I haven’t scored a hat-trick in my career, so I was devastated not to have got it.
"It was hard to take and hard to swallow but we won, we won the cup and made history and that’s the main thing. I scored two goals as well and got the man-of-the-match, so I can’t really ask for more."
