Explainer: Naming of Parts for an Instrument of Civilian Slaughter

The PTAB 2.5M anti-armor bomblet has a cylindrical body with a dome-shaped ballistic cap at its front and it terminates in a four-fin tail unit that is structured in a drum configuration. In its Aug. 2, 2012 online posting, Jane's Air-Launched Weapons noted that the tail unit comes in both short and long versions. The entire bomblet measures 0.87 meters in length, has a body diameter of 60 millimeters and weighs 2.5 kilograms. Just behind the nose is a shaped charge weighing 660 grams and consisting of a RDX/TNT mixture, which is detonated by an ADTS-583 impact fuze. Thirty or more bomblets, or sub-munitions, fit into the RBK-250-275 cluster bombs and the RBK 500 can carry 75. The PTAB 2.5M is able to penetrate up to 120 millimeters of armor. The Soviets originally designed the PTAB 2.5M to be dropped on lines of Allied tanks steadily advancing toward the Iron Curtain countries. On Dec 12, while many were fretting or making jokes about the Mayan Apocalypse, Syrian military aircraft released RBK 250s on the civilian population of Marea, near Aleppo. For a few civilians from Marea, the world did end.

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Former President George H.W. Bush remains hospitalized

Former President George H.W. Bush, who has been hospitalized for a month undergoing treatment for bronchitis, may not be released from a Houston hospital in time to celebrate Christmas at home as doctors had hoped. Bush, 88, remained in stable condition and doctors were optimistic he would make a full recovery, George Kovacik, a spokesman at Methodist Hospital, said in an emailed statement on Sunday. But doctors were being "extra cautious" with his care and no discharge date had been set, the statement said. Earlier this month, Kovacik said doctors expected Bush would be able to spend Christmas at home with his family. "His doctors feel he should build up his energy before going home," the statement said. Bush, the 41st president and a Republican, took office in 1989 and served one term in the White House. The father of former President George W. Bush, he also is a former congressman, U.N. ambassador, CIA director and vice president for two terms under Ronald Reagan.

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Few tests done at toxic sites after superstorm

For more than a month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that the recent superstorm didn't cause significant problems at any of the 247 Superfund toxic waste sites it's monitoring in New York and New Jersey. But in many cases, no actual tests of soil or water are being conducted, just visual inspections. The EPA conducted a handful of tests right after the storm, but couldn't provide details or locations of any recent testing when asked last week. New Jersey officials point out that federally designated Superfund sites are EPA's responsibility. The 1980 Superfund law gave EPA the power to order cleanups of abandoned, spilled and illegally dumped hazardous wastes that threaten human health or the environment. The sites can involve long-term or short-term cleanups. Jeff Tittel, executive director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey, says officials haven't done enough to ensure there is no contamination from Superfund sites. He's worried toxins could leach into groundwater and the ocean. "It's really serious and I think the EPA and the state of New Jersey have not done due diligence to make sure these sites have not created problems," Tittel said. The EPA said last month that none of the Superfund sites it monitors in New York or New Jersey sustained significant damage, but that it has done follow-up sampling at the Gowanus Canal site in Brooklyn, the Newtown Creek site on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, and the Raritan Bay Slag site, all of which flooded during the storm. But last week, EPA spokeswoman Stacy Kika didn't respond to questions about whether any soil or water tests have been done at the other 243 Superfund sites. The agency hasn't said exactly how many of the sites flooded. "Currently, we do not believe that any sites were impacted in ways that would pose a threat to nearby communities," EPA said in a statement. Politicians have been asking similar questions, too. On Nov. 29, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., wrote to the EPA to ask for "an additional assessment" of Sandy's impact on Superfund sites in the state. Elevated levels of lead, antimony, arsenic and copper have been found at the Raritan Bay Slag site, a Superfund site since 2009. Blast furnaces dumped lead at the site in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and lead slag was also used there to construct a seawall and jetty. The EPA found lead levels as high as 142,000 parts per million were found at Raritan Bay in 2007. Natural soil levels for lead range from 50 to 400 parts per million. The EPA took four samples from the site after Superstorm Sandy: two from a fenced-off beach area and two from a nearby public playground. One of the beach samples tested above the recreational limit for lead. In early November, the EPA said it was taking additional samples "to get a more detailed picture of how the material might have shifted" and will "take appropriate steps to prevent public exposure" at the site, according to a bulletin posted on its website. But six weeks later, the agency couldn't provide more details of what has been found. The Newtown Creek site, with pesticides, metals, PCBs and volatile organic compounds, and the Gowanus Canal site, heavily contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals, volatile organics and coal tar wastes, were added to the Superfund list in 2010. Some say the lead at the Raritan Bay site can disperse easily. Gabriel Fillippeli, director of the Center for Urban Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said lead tends to stay in the soil once it is deposited but can be moved around by stormwaters or winds. Arsenic, which has been found in the surface water at the site, can leach into the water table, Fillippeli said. "My concern is twofold. One is, a storm like that surely moved some of that material physically to other places, I would think," Fillippeli said. "If they don't cap that or seal it or clean it up, arsenic will continue to make its way slowly into groundwater and lead will be distributed around the neighborhood." The lack of testing has left some residents with lingering worries. The Raritan Bay Slag site sits on the beach overlooking a placid harbor with a view of Staten Island. On a recent foggy morning, workers were hauling out debris, and some nearby residents wondered whether the superstorm increased or spread the amount of pollution at the site. "I think it brought a lot of crud in from what's out there," said Elise Pelletier, whose small bungalow sits on a hill overlooking the Raritan Bay Slag site. "You don't know what came in from the water." Her street did not flood because it is up high, but she worries about a park below where people go fishing and walk their dogs. She would like to see more testing done. Thomas Burke, an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, says both federal and state officials generally have a good handle on the major Superfund sites, which often use caps and walls to contain pollution. "They are designed to hold up," Burke said of such structures, but added that "you always have to be concerned that an unusual event can spread things around in the environment." Burke noted that the storm brought in a "tremendous amount" of water, raising the possibility that groundwater plumes could have changed. "There really have to be evaluations" of communities near the Superfund sites, he said. "It's important to take a look." Officials in both New York and New Jersey note they've also been monitoring less toxic sites known as brownfields and haven't found major problems. The New York DEC said in a statement that brownfields in that state "were not significantly impacted" and that they don't plan further tests for storm impacts. Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said the agency has done visual inspections of major brownfield sites and also alerted towns and cities to be on the lookout for problems. Ragonese said they just aren't getting calls voicing such concerns. Back at the Raritan Bay slag site, some residents want more information. And they want the toxic soil, which has sat here for years, out. Pat Churchill, who was walking her dog in the park along the water, said she's still worried. "There are unanswered questions. You can't tell me this is all contained. It has to move around," Churchill said.

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Fear, finger-pointing mount over "fiscal cliff"

Some lawmakers voiced concern on Sunday that the country would go over "the fiscal cliff" in nine days, triggering harsh spending cuts and tax hikes, and some Republicans charged that was President Barack Obama's goal. "It's the first time that I feel it's more likely that we will go over the cliff than not," Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said on CNN's "State of the Union." "If we allow that to happen it will be the most colossal consequential act of congressional irresponsibility in a long time, maybe ever in American history." "It looks like to me that obviously this is going to drag on into next year, which is going to hurt our economy," Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee said on CBS "Capitol Gains." The Democratic president and Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the two key negotiators, are not talking and are out of town for the Christmas holidays. Congress is in recess, and will have only a few days next week to act before January 1. On the Sunday TV talk shows, no one signaled a change of position that could form the basis for a short-term fix, despite a suggestion from Obama on Friday that he would favor one. The focus was shifting instead to the days following January 1 when the lowered tax rates dating back to President George W. Bush's administration will have expired, presenting Congress with a redefined and more welcome task that involves only cutting taxes, not raising them. "I believe we are," going over the cliff, Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming said on Fox News Sunday. "I think the president is eager to go over the cliff for political purposes. I think he sees a political victory at the bottom of the cliff." Some Republicans have said Obama would welcome the fiscal cliff's tax increases and defense cuts, as well as the chance to blame Republicans for rejecting deal. Obama has rejected that assertion. Democrats have charged that Boehner has his own self-interested reasons for avoiding a deal before January 3, when the House elected on November 6, is sworn in and casts votes for a new speaker. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Boehner has been reluctant to reach across the political aisle for fear it could cost him the speakership when he runs for re-election. "I know he's worried," said Schumer. Boehner, who so far has no serious challenger for the job of speaker, has said that he has no such concerns. Such finger pointing has been under way since Congress returned after the election, but it has gained intensity in the past few days, with the heightened prospect of plunging off the cliff. Congress started the clock ticking in August of 2011 on the cliff. The threat of about $600 billion of spending cuts and tax increases was intended to shock the Democratic-led White House and Senate and the Republican-led House into bridging their many differences to approve a plan to bring tax relief to most Americans and curb runaway federal spending. Economists say the harsh tax increases and budget cuts from the fiscal cliff could thrust the world's largest economy back into a recession, unless Congress acts quickly to ease the economic blow. MARKETS COULD TUMBLE The most immediate impact could come in financial markets, which have been relatively calm in recent weeks as Republicans and Democrats bickered, but could tumble without prospects for a deal. Markets will be open for a half-day on Christmas Eve, when Congress will not be in session, and will be closed on Tuesday for Christmas. Wall Street will resume regular stock trading on Wednesday, but volume is expected to be light throughout the week with scores of market participants away on a holiday break. If Congress fails to reach any agreement, income tax rates will go up on just about everyone on January 1. Unemployment benefits, which Democrats had hoped to extend as part of a deal, will expire for many as well. In the first week of January, Congress could scramble and get a quick deal on taxes and the $109 billion in automatic spending cuts for 2013 that most lawmakers want to avoid. Once tax rates go up on January 1, it could be easier to keep those higher rates on wealthier taxpayers while reducing them for middle- and lower-income taxpayers. Lawmakers would not have to cast votes to raise taxes. Some lawmakers expressed guarded hope that a short-term deal on deficit reduction could be reached in the next week or so, with a longer, more permanent deal hammered out next year. But a short-term deal would need bipartisan support, as Obama has said he would veto a bill that does not raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, said Obama and Boehner are not that far apart and that both sides should keep pushing for a long-term big deal. "I would hope we would have one last attempt here to do what everyone knows needs to be done, which is the larger plan that really does stabilize the debt and get us moving in the right direction," Conrad of North Dakota told Fox News Sunday. But most Republicans are now looking past January 1 to what they consider their next best chance of leveraging Obama for more cuts in the Federal budget - a fight over the debt ceiling expected in late January or early February. At that time, the administration will need Congress' authorization to raise the limit on the amount of money the government can borrow. "That's where the real chance for change occurs, at the debt-ceiling debate," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on "Meet the Press.

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The Most Popular Scientific American Stories of 2012

The top 10 most popular stories published in 2012: 1. Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends" 2. The World’s Last Worm: A Dreaded Disease Nears Eradication 3. NASA Crushes 2012 Mayan Apocalypse Claims 4. How Hollywood Is Encouraging Online Piracy 5. Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Livingin Mothers’ Brains 6. Psychiatry's "Bible" Gets an Overhaul 7. “Once in a Civilization” Comet to Zip Past Earth Next Year 8. The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance 9. Obama and Romney Tackle 14 Top Science Questions 10. North Carolina Considers Making Sea Level Rise Illegal Honorable mentions: old stories that surfaced with a vengeance this year. Why Do Cats Purr? April 3, 2006 Why does lactic acid buildup in muscles? And why does I tcause soreness? January 23, 2006 How Long Can a Person Survive without Food? November 8, 2004 Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.

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An ‘Encore’ Life Beckons … on the Far Side of Midlife

Marion Jackson’s airy, light-filled studio is filled with Brazilian art and sculpture. It sits on the third floor of a five-story, 100,000-square-foot industrial building in downtown Detroit that opened in 1927 to house the service department for Pontiac. The Corvette was later designed there. But that was before the U.S. auto industry declined, and the neighborhood became a wasteland of abandoned buildings. Not anymore. Today, 250 start-up companies inhabit the renovated building, which is the centerpiece of a business incubator called TechTown. Jackson’s venture, Con/Vida—in Spanish, “with life”—sells indigenous art from Latin America and curates exhibitions for galleries and museums. Jackson, 70, retired as an art-history professor at Detroit’s Wayne State University last year and applied her knowledge of northeastern Brazil to the pursuit of a second career as Con/Vida’s codirector. This new chapter in Jackson’s work life, much like the building the studio inhabits, amounts to a kind of adaptive reuse—of skills instead of space. In this, she has company. TechTown is run by Randal Charlton, a 71-year-old former jazz impresario and serial entrepreneur, whose human-tissue company was the resurrected building’s first tenant. TechTown, an independent nonprofit, was launched a decade ago by Wayne State—which recently hired 77-year-old Allan Gilmour, a former Ford Motor chief financial officer, as its president. By the prevailing definitions, all three of them are in old age—often portrayed as a wasteland of its own. We’re set to become “a planet that’s a whole lot more crowded—with old people,” Phillip Longman, a senior research fellow on health policy at the New America Foundation, lamented in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy. He and other scholars who predict the “hyper-aging” of the developed world—when walkers will outnumber strollers—worry about too few working-age adults having to support too many children and retirees. But economists such as Stanford University’s John Shoven find these gloomy forecasts “deeply flawed” because, he has written, of “the misleading way in which we measure age” as longevity becomes reality for more and more Americans. Our notions of old age are themselves old-fashioned, reflecting a time when the typical 60-something was physically worn out from laboring in an auto plant or some other factory. In recent years, scholars in a range of academic disciplines report seeing signs of a new stage of life between the prime working years and full retirement. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a Harvard education professor, calls this phase the “third chapter,” after childhood and younger adulthood, defining it as “the generative space” between 50 and 75 years old. Cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson—Margaret Mead’s daughter—labels the period “Adulthood II.” The creation of a new stage of life may seem counterintuitive. However, phases of life aren’t natural phenomena, like the seasons of the year, but rather social constructions. Consider adolescence. The concept didn’t exist until 1904, when G. Stanley Hall, a 60-year-old psychologist emerging from his own midlife crisis, wrote a book of more than 1,000 pages titled Adolescence. He was describing an extended period between childhood and adulthood free from grown-up responsibilities. The concept had a romantic tinge, but it grew out of fears that in a period of rapid industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, these minors would be running wild—anxieties that inspired laws requiring high school attendance and banning child labor. Adolescents began to be called “teenagers” after Seventeen magazine began publishing in 1944. Hall, as it happens, also introduced the idea of a new stage on the other side of midlife. In a book published in 1922, he described an “Indian summer” between the middle years and old age. Humans, he reflected, “rarely come to anything like a masterly grip til the shadows begin to slant eastward.” The book’s title, Senescence, may help explain why the concept didn’t catch on. But will it now? That’s hard to say. Before the Great Recession struck, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted a more than fivefold gain in labor-force participation by Americans over 55, compared with younger age groups. The economic downturn has intensified this pressure to extend working lives, while in other ways it has hurt. The unemployment rate for Americans age 55 and older was only 6.4 percent in November. But those who do lose their jobs tend to be unemployed far longer than younger workers. Fewer than a quarter of workers over 50 who lost their jobs from mid-2008 through 2009, the Urban Institute reported, found work within a year. Even so, older Americans appear to be trying to fashion a working life beyond the middle years—and often succeeding. Entrepreneurship, for one thing, is rising. For 11 of the 15 years from 1996 to 2010, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity of any age group, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Twice as many founders of U.S. technology companies were over age 50 as were under 25. Across the socioeconomic spectrum, 9 percent of Americans ages 44 to 70 have launched “encore” careers, according to a 2011 study by Penn Schoen Berland. Their paying jobs, part- or full-time, are often in the public sector—as teachers, nurses, home health aides, and the like—or with nonprofit groups. The practical idealism of these late careers may reflect a shift in values as people mature and focus more on activities meant to contribute to society’s greater good. Such late-stage jobs fit nicely within the socially beneficial lines of work that Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone has predicted will need more labor: education, health care, nonprofit community groups, religious organizations, and government. An encore career may entail some preparation. The number of over-50 Americans entering divinity school has doubled since 1990. A Catholic seminary near Milwaukee, the Sacred Heart School of Theology, specializes in training second-career priests—widowers, mainly. This past fall, high-tech billionaire Steve Poizner and former Hollywood studio executive Sherry Lansing announced a $15 million partnership with the University of California (Los Angeles) to launch the Encore Career Institute, a program of continuing education aimed at baby boomers. The American Association of Community Colleges has started an initiative to accommodate the growth of the over-50 student population, which increased by 17 percent from 2007 to 2009. These things are happening without much of a push from Washington. After World War II, the GI Bill helped ex-soldiers gain an education and thrive. Nowadays, the federal Troops to Teachers initiative helps military personnel, many of them retired, earn a degree in education. But aspiring encore careerists can’t look to the government for much more help. A 2009 law promoting national service established Encore Fellowships for adults who want to move into nonprofit or public-sector employment, but Congress hasn’t appropriated a cent to fund them. Unless Washington summons up the desire—and money—to urge this transition along, the future of encore careers will depend on the private sector. And on a generation’s entrenched culture. As baby boomers live longer and wrestle with retirement, they won’t accede easily. The willful generation that Time magazine named as its Man of the Year—“25 and Under,” in 1966—never has.

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Are Connected Baby Boomers Antisocial?

Each day millions of people of all ages around the world use the Internet to communicate. Friends and family can instantly share thoughts, pictures, and even videos of events happening in their lives. Social media has enhanced creativity through sites such as YouTube and encouraged us to share our lives in as intimate detail as we choose on Facebook. [See Retirees Fastest-Growing Users of Social Networks.] But is all of this sharing, tweeting, four-squaring, and texting adding to our quality of life? Virtual contact is hardly as fulfilling and impactful as communicating face to face with a fellow human being. Baby boomers who are online all the time may be missing something more important. Antisocial social media. Take a moment and think back to a time when you were at a restaurant and no iPhones were being used by patrons. Any luck? You probably witnessed couples sitting across the table from one another having a nice dinner. But instead of conversing, each had their own mobile device in hand and was lost in communicating with someone not sitting at their table. Few people can resist snatching up their iPhone each time a new e-mail arrives. Is it really that important? The problem is, by putting the remote person at the forefront of your attention, you neglect the flesh and blood person sitting beside you. And the message is apparent that your virtual friend is more important than your real friend. [See How to Tweet Your Way to Retirement Goals.] Young people these days have some of the fastest thumbs you have ever seen, seasoned by years of frenetic texting and Internet surfing. Their wit and humor comes across in links they share and clips they reference. But have you tried to have a real conversation with them without access to a mobile device? How effectively do they engage without the help of a video clip or other special effects? Effective communication skills are learned over time and perfected through practice. Just like texting, the more you do it, the better you get. Conversely, if you do not practice you are less adept. There is real value in social media to the extent you reach out to people that you would not otherwise be in contact with. My daughter and me text each other almost every day. But a little balance between virtual and real life is not a bad thing. It's better to work on both sets of skills. I enjoy the cute cat videos and the laughing baby clips just as much as anyone else. But losing Internet connectivity should not be more important than losing our connection with real people around us.

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Advocates: More gay-friendly senior housing needed

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — At age 62, Donald Carter knows his arthritis and other age-related infirmities will not allow him to live indefinitely in his third-floor walk-up apartment in Philadelphia. But as a low-income renter, Carter has limited options. And as a gay black man, he's concerned his choice of senior living facilities might be narrowed further by the possibility of intolerant residents or staff members. "The system as it stands is not very accommodating," Carter said. "I don't really want to see any kind of negative attitude or lack of service because anyone ... is gay or lesbian." ___ EDITOR'S NOTE — This is the latest in the ongoing AP-APME joint project looking at the aging of the baby boomers and the impact this so-called silver tsunami will have on the communities in which they live. ___ Many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender seniors fear discrimination, disrespect or worse by health care workers and residents of elder housing facilities, ultimately leading many back into the closet after years of being open, experts say. That anxiety takes on new significance as the first of the 77 million baby boomers turns 65 this year. At least 1.5 million seniors are gay, a number expected to double by 2030, according to SAGE, the New York-based group Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders. Recognizing the need, developers in Philadelphia have secured a site and initial funding for what would be one of the nation's few GLBT-friendly affordable housing facilities. They hope to break ground on a 52-unit, $17 million building for seniors in 2013. Anti-discrimination laws prohibit gay-only housing, but projects can be made GLBT-friendly through marketing and location. And while private retirement facilities targeted at the gay community exist, such residences are often out of reach for all but the wealthiest seniors. Census figures released this month indicate about 49 percent of Americans over 65 could be considered poor or low-income. Gays are also less likely to have biological family to help out with informal caregiving, either through estrangement or being childless, making them more dependent on outside services. And that makes them more vulnerable, SAGE executive director Michael Adams said. "They cannot at all assume that they will be treated well or given the welcome mat," he said. Cities including San Francisco and Chicago also have projects on the drawing board. But the first and, so far, only affordable housing complex for gay elders to be built in the United States is Triangle Square-Hollywood in Los Angeles. Open since 2007, the $22 million facility has 104 units available to any low-income senior 62 and over, gay or straight, according to executive director Mark Supper. Residents pay monthly rent on a sliding scale, from about $200 to $800, depending on their income. About 35 units are set aside for seniors with HIV/AIDS and for those at risk of becoming homeless, Supper said. The Triangle's population is about 90 percent GLBT and it has a waiting list of about 200 people. The project's developer, Gay & Lesbian Elder Housing, plans to build a second facility in Southern California in the next 18 months, Supper said. But what took so long for the need to recognized? Chris Bartlett, executive director of the GLBT William Way Center in Philadelphia, noted that advocates spent the better part of two decades devoting their energy to programs for those affected by HIV or AIDS, which were decimating the gay community. While AIDS remains a priority, Bartlett said, the crisis mentality has passed and allowed the community to focus on other things. He said he looks forward to the Way Center providing social services at the planned Philadelphia senior housing facility, in a sense repaying those who led the gay liberation movement. "Don't we owe it to them ... to ensure that they have an experience as elders that's worthy of what they gave to our community?" Bartlett said. The Philadelphia group has been trying to get its project off the ground for about eight years but has been stymied by location problems, a tough economy and stiff competition for federal housing tax credits. Rejected once for the credits, developers recently reapplied and hope for a different answer this spring, said Mark Segal, director of the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Fund, which is spearheading the project. It's planned for a thriving section of the city affectionately known as the Gayborhood. "I'm extremely optimistic," said Segal, also publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News. However, Adams said the real solution lies not only in building more facilities, but in cultural competency training for staffers at existing elder programs. The Philadelphia Corporation on Aging, the private nonprofit that serves the city's seniors, began offering such seminars to health care workers a couple of years ago, said Tom Shea, the agency's director of training. "They're going to be seeing a diverse slice of the aging population in Philadelphia ... and we need to be sensitive to all their needs," Shea said. Adams suggested that discrimination faced by today's GLBT elders could diminish in the decades ahead, since he said opinion research shows that younger generations are less likely to harbor anti-gay biases than older generations. "So we hope that the passage of time will provide part of the solution," he said. "But of course, today's LGBT elders can't wait for that." Jackie Adams, 54, of Philadelphia, said being diagnosed with AIDS many years ago meant she never thought she'd live long enough to need elder housing. But now Adams, who was born male and lives as a female, is part of a local initiative focused on GLBT senior issues.

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Mental Decline Can Start at 45, Study Finds

THURSDAY, Jan. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Sorry, Boomers, but a new study suggests that memory, reasoning and comprehension can start to slip as early as age 45. This finding runs counter to conventional wisdom that mental decline doesn't begin before 60, the researchers added. "Cognitive function in normal, healthy adults begins to decline earlier than previously thought," said study author Archana Singh-Manoux. "It is widely believed that cognitive ability does not decline before the age of 60. We were able to show robust cognitive decline even in individuals aged 45 to 49 years," added Singh-Manoux, research director at INSERM's Center for Research in Epidemiology & Population Health at the Paul-Brousse Hospital in Paris. These findings should be put in context of the link between cognitive function and the dementia, Singh-Manoux said. "Previous research shows small differences in cognitive performance in earlier life to predict larger differences in risk of dementia in later life," she said. Understanding cognitive aging might enable early identification of those at risk for dementia, Singh-Manoux said. The report was published in the Jan. 5 issue of BMJ. For the study, Singh-Manoux and colleagues collected data on nearly 5,200 men and 2,200 women who took part in the Whitehall II cohort study. The study, which began in 1985, followed British civil servants from the age of 45 to 70. Over 10 years, starting in 1997, the participants' cognitive function was tested three times. The researchers assessed memory, vocabulary, hearing and vision. Singh-Manoux's group found that over time, test scores for memory, reasoning and vocabulary skills all dropped. The decline was faster among the older participants, they added. Among men aged 45 to 49, reasoning skills declined by nearly 4 percent, and for those aged 65 to 70 those skills dropped by about nearly 10 percent. For women, the decline in reasoning approached 5 percent for those aged 45 to 49 and about 7 percent for those 65 to 70, the researchers found. "Greater awareness of the fact that our cognitive status is not intact until deep old age might lead individuals to make changes in their lifestyle and improve [their] cardiovascular health, to reduce risk of adverse cognitive outcomes in old age," Singh-Manoux said. Research shows that "what is good for the heart is good for the head," which makes living a healthy lifestyle a part of slowing cognitive decline, she said. Targeting patients who have risk factors for heart disease such as obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol might not only protect their hearts but also prevent dementia in old age, the researchers said. "Understanding cognitive aging will be one of the challenges of this century," especially as people are living longer, they added. In addition, knowing when cognitive decline is likely to start can help in treatment, because the earlier treatment starts the more likely it is to be effective, the researchers noted. Francine Grodstein, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and author of an accompanying editorial, said more research is needed into how to prevent early cognitive decline. "If cognitive decline may start at younger ages, then efforts to prevent cognitive decline may need to start at younger ages," she said. "New research should focus on understanding what factors may contribute to cognitive decline in younger persons," Grodstein added. "This is consistent with what we have seen in other studies and the cognitive changes that occur as we age," said Heather M. Snyder, senior associate director of medical & scientific relations at the Alzheimer's Association. These changes do not mean that all these people will go on to develop Alzheimer's disease or another dementia, Snyder noted. "It is important to remember that the cognitive changes associated with aging are very different from the cognitive changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease," she stressed. Although some of these people may go on to develop Alzheimer's disease there is currently no way to tell who is at risk, Snyder said. "This is why it is so important to continue to investigate biological changes that occur in the earliest stages, because it is difficult to [determine] the cognitive changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease," she said. Snyder noted that Alzheimer's disease can start 15 to 20 years before symptoms are apparent, which makes finding a biological marker so important. "If a therapeutic is available, we can intervene at that point," she said.

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Why Some People Live to 110

SUNDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) -- People who live 110 years or longer have as many disease-associated genes as those in the general population, but they may also be blessed with protective genes that help them live so long, researchers report. The team of U.S. scientists noted that supercentenarians, as they are called, are extremely rare, with only one per 5 million people in developed nations. There is growing evidence that genetics play a major role in living to such an old age. In what they describe as a first-of-a-kind study, the researchers analyzed the whole genome sequences of a man and a woman who lived past the age of 114 and found that they had as many disease-associated genes as other people. For example, the man had 37 genetic mutations associated with increased risk for colon cancer. "In fact, he had presented with an obstructing colon cancer earlier in his life that had not metastasized and was cured with surgery. He was in phenomenal cognitive and physical shape near the time of his death," study senior author Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study, said in a Boston University Medical Center news release. The woman had numerous genetic variations associated with age-related disease, such as heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. She did develop congestive heart failure and mild cognitive impairment, but these conditions didn't become evident until she was more than 108 years old. "The presence of these disease-associated variants is consistent with our and other researchers' findings that centenarians carry as many disease-associated genes as the general population," Perls said. "The difference may be that the centenarians likely have longevity-associated variants that cancel out the disease genes. That effect may extend to the point that the diseases don't occur -- or, if they do, are much less pathogenic or markedly delayed towards the end of life, in these individuals who are practically living to the limit of the human lifespan." The study was published Jan. 3 in the journal Frontiers in Genetics, and researchers will be able to access the information at the U.S. National Institutes of Health data repository.

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65-and-Older Population Soars

There are now more Americans age 65 and older than at any other time in U.S. history. According to a new Census Bureau report, there were 40.3 million people age 65 and older on April 1, 2010, up 5.3 percent from 35 million in 2010 (and just 3.1 million in 1900). "The population age 65 and older has increased notably over time," says Carrie Werner, a Census Bureau statistician and author of the report. "It is expected to increase more rapidly over the next decade as more baby boomers start to turn 65 in 2011." [See 10 Cities With the Most People Over 65.] The 65-and-older population jumped 15.1 percent between 2000 and 2010, compared with a 9.7 percent increase for the total U.S. population. People age 65 and older now make up 13 percent of the total population, compared with 12.4 percent in 2000 and 4.1 percent in 1900. Females significantly outnumber males at older ages, but the gap is narrowing. In 2010, there were 90.5 males for every 100 females among people age 65 and older, up from 88.1 males per 100 females the same age in 2000. "Women outnumber men in the older population at every single year of age," says Werner. "Males showed more rapid growth in the older population than females over the past decade." In the 2010 Census, there were approximately twice as many women as men beginning at age 89. This point occurred about four years older than it did in 2000, and six years older than in 1990. [See Tips for Baby Boomers Reaching Retirement Age in 2012.] All regions of the country have seen growth in their 65-and-older populations since the 2000 Census. The older population is growing most rapidly in the West, where the number of senior citizens increased 23.5 percent, from 6.9 million in 2000 to 8.5 million in 2010. The Northeast is home to the largest percentage of people 65 years and older (14.1 percent), followed by the Midwest (13.5 percent), the South (13.0 percent), and the West (11.9 percent). Florida has the greatest proportion of people who are at least 65 (17.3 percent), followed by West Virginia (16 percent), Maine (15.9 percent), Pennsylvania (15.4 percent), and Iowa (14.9 percent). The state with the smallest share of 65-and-older individuals is Alaska (7.7 percent). Rhode Island is the only state that experienced a decrease in the number of residents age 65 and older. The older population declined 0.3 percent, from 152,402 in 2000 to 151,881 in 2010. "The fairly stagnant Rhode Island economy during periods of economic expansion elsewhere in the '80s and '90s meant fewer people at peak job earning ages arriving and more people leaving," says Andrew Foster, an economics and community health professor and director of the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. "However, recent arrivals of Hispanics and the attractiveness of Rhode Island as a place to live are leading to substantial growth in the 55-to-65 age range? so it is likely that Rhode island will see an increase in 65-plus by 2020." The District of Columbia's older population also decreased from 69,898 in 2000 to 68,809 in 2010, a 1.6 percent decline. Scottsdale, Ariz. had the highest percentage of people 65 and older among places with 100,000 or more people in 2010 (20 percent), compared with the national average of 13 percent. "Scottsdale, like much of Arizona, has attracted a large number of older migrants from other parts of the country," says Victor Agadjanian, director of the Center for Population Dynamics at Arizona State University. Four Florida cities, Clearwater, Hialeah, Cape Coral, and Miami, are also among the 10 cities with the highest percentages of senior citizens. Surprise, Ariz., Honolulu, Metairie, La., Warren, Mich., and Independence, Mo., also have large proportions of retirement-age residents. [See 11 Retirement Benefit Changes Coming in 2012.] West Jordan, Utah, has the lowest percentage of people age 65 and up (4.6 percent), followed by Killeen, Texas, (5.2 percent) and Frisco, Texas (5.4 percent). "Higher concentrations of people in the younger ages resulted in a smaller relative share of older adults in 2010," according to the Census Bureau report. Many of the places with the lowest proportions of older residents have large populations of young people due to the presence of a college or military base. Killeen, Texas, for example, is near Fort Hood military base, and Provo, Utah, where people 65 and older make up just 5.8 percent of the population, is home to a large university.

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