📌 Life Expectancy, Weed Dumbs Down, More

Rapid improvements in life expectancy achieved in the 20th century have slowed dramatically in the past three decades.

If 100 is to become the new 80, radical medicines that slow the aging process are needed rather than better treatments for common killers such as cancer, dementia and heart disease, according to a study of the world’s longest-living populations.

The University of Illinois at Chicago study delved into US statistics and nine countries with the highest life expectancies, focusing on 1990–2019, before Covid.

In the previous 2,000 years, experts say life expectancy crept up, on average, one year every century or two. In the 20th century, average life expectancy rocketed, with people gaining an extra three years every decade.

But data from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Australia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden and Spain showed life expectancy rises slowed, growing 6.5 years in 1990–2019. In the US, it fell.

Steven Austad, a professor of healthy aging at the University of Birmingham, Alabama, commented: “Advances [in treating the underlying biological processes of aging] are making their way to clinics. … The authors’ projection for a continued gradual slowing for the rest of this century strikes me as premature.”

Islanders evicted from their homes 50 years ago for a military base protested in London about having no say in their homeland’s fate.

The British government is returning the Chagos Islands to Mauritius under an agreement that sees the American naval and bomber base remain on one of the Indian Ocean islands, Diego Garcia.

Opponents accuse the British government of surrendering sovereignty over British territory. The deal has left displaced residents uncertain whether they can return home.

The Chagos Islands, a tropical archipelago just south of the equator off the tip of India, have been under British control since 1814. They were split off from Mauritius, a then-British colony 1,360 miles away that gained independence three years later.

Britain evicted around 2,000 people from the islands in the 1960s and 1970s so the US military could build the Diego Garcia base, which has supported US military operations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the US acknowledged it had been used for clandestine rendition flights of terror suspects.

The UN General Assembly resolved that Britain end its “colonial administration” of the Chagos Islands and return them to Mauritius. Under the agreement, Britain will retain the sovereignty of Diego Garcia for an initial period of 99 years, paying Mauritius an undisclosed rent.

Extreme natural disasters are draining public finances, and experts call for a revision in emergency spending.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says an average year since 1980 has included 8.5 disasters costing a billion dollars or more — last year, 28. Each of the previous four years has had some of the highest rates.

A report by disaster relief advocacy group Rebuild by Design says 91% of congressional districts were hit by at least one federally declared climate disaster in 2011–2023.

Director Amy Chester said: “We need to shift a majority of the dollars that come only after communities have suffered to before communities have suffered and rethink our infrastructure.”

High temperatures and massive wildfires contributed to the disaster tally. Alex Tardy, a NOAA meteorologist, said: “Some of the heat in the Southwest this year might end up being, along with the wildfires, billion-dollar disasters as well.”

According to a report by Swiss Re Institute, a reinsurance group, the US loses 0.4% of its GDP yearly from floods, hurricanes, tropical storms, winter storms and severe thunderstorms, making it the world's second-biggest loser from climate events.

An observational study finds teens who use marijuana have significantly worse outcomes at school.

Data from 63 studies involving almost 440,000 youths using cannabis in adolescence was deduced to have a likely effect on school grades, absenteeism, completion of high school, university enrollment, dropout rate, and the degree awarded.

“Chronic use among adolescents has been linked to long-term changes in brain architecture,” the study authors say, “resulting in impaired information processing and decreased cognitive, memory and attentive capacity in adulthood.”

They say that with estimates of over three million aged 12–17 having used cannabis in the past year, “effective interventions to prevent early cannabis exposure are urgently needed.” The study, conducted at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, was published in a US pediatrics peer review journal.

US scientists Gary Ruvkun (left) and Victor Ambros won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discovering microRNA.

The tiny bits of genetic material serve as on/off switches inside cells that help control what the cells do and when they do it. If scientists can better understand how they work and how to manipulate them, it could one day lead to powerful treatments for diseases like cancer.

The Stockholm panel awarding the prize said the discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”

RNA is best known for carrying instructions for making proteins, from DNA in the nucleus of the cell to tiny cellular factories that build the proteins. MicroRNA does not make proteins but helps to control what cells are doing, including switching on and off critical genes that make proteins.

Ambros' and Ruvkun's revolutionary discovery was initially made in worms. They set out to identify why some cells didn't develop in two mutant strains of worms commonly used as a scientific research model.

Ambros is a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Ruvkun is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

A Russian court on Monday sentenced a 72-year-old American in a closed trial to nearly seven years in prison for allegedly fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine.

Prosecutors said Stephen Hubbard signed a contract with the Ukrainian military after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, and he fought alongside them until being captured two months later.

He was sentenced to six years and 10 months in a general-security prison. Prosecutors had called for a sentence of seven years in a maximum-security prison.

Hubbard, from the state of Michigan, is the first American known to have been convicted on charges of fighting as a mercenary in the Ukrainian conflict.

Also on Monday, a court in the city of Voronezh sentenced American Robert Gilman, a former US Marine, to seven years and one month for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers while serving a sentence for another assault.

According to Russian news reports, Gilman was arrested in 2022 for causing a disturbance while intoxicated on a passenger train and assaulted a police officer while in custody. He is serving a 3½-year sentence.

It’s tarantula mating season, and hundreds of arachnophiles descended on the small farming town of La Junta, Colo., to watch.

In September and October, the mature males wander in search of a female’s burrow, which she marks with silk webbing. Peak viewing is an hour before dusk when the day’s heat dies down.

Nathan Villareal, a tarantula breeder from Santa Monica, Calif., knew it was a spectacle he needed to witness. Villareal sells tarantulas as pets to people around the US, and he has been fascinated with them since childhood.

So he set off for the third year of La Junta’s tarantula festival. “We saw at least a dozen tarantulas on the road, and then we went back afterward and saw another dozen more,” Villareal said.

The males grow about five inches long and develop a pair of appendages on their heads to drum outside a female’s burrow. She will crawl to the surface if she is a willing mate, and the male will hook its legs onto her fangs.

Graduate student Goran Shikak said, “Watching them do what they do ... is a joy and experience worth watching in the wild.”

Observers have to be alert as the male tries to get away quickly before he is eaten by the female, who tends to be slightly larger and needs extra nutrients to sustain her pregnancy.