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Aging Discovery Yields Nobel Prize
An anonymous reader writes This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes, called the telomeres, and in an enzyme that forms them."
So they've changed the chromosome code to encode data using a lossless codec instead of a lossy one. Terrific, now we have to put up with people moaning about the lack of FLAC encoding in their music AND genes.
Thanks a bunch, stupid scientists.
Summation 2
Better than being dead.
You really think so? I tend to think that there are certain fates that are worse than death.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I would settle for being put to death at 85 to keep population under control, if it meant my bones, mussels and organs didn't age. One of the worst thing about watching someone get old is to see their self reliance taken away and needing someone to help them into and out of the bath, change their diaper, feed them and put them to bed. THE worst thing is realizing someday it could and probably will happen to you.
It's sad but you start off with needing someone to look after you and that's how it ends, if you live that long.
So Speak for yourself if you want to jump off a bridge at 85. I work with several incredibly bright people who are in their mid 70's who still travel the world. With the advent of information technology we can even do our work without being physically active, just a computer and internet access.
By the time I turn 85 in the 2050's, it will be the new 55! I'll race you to the top of the mountain.
I'm not sure where you are seeing that the summary sounds like it's a recent discovery. The only thing would be that the scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize this year, which is true. And yes, you're right, this discovery is not recent. Of course, it sometimes takes decades for people to be awarded a Nobel Prize for work they did decades ago.
Nobel prizes are never awarded for new work, they are awarded for work you did sufficiently far in the past that it has been extensively peer reviewed and tested and is now accepted as being one of the bits of scientific knowledge that everyone in the field knows. This one is being awarded for work originally published around 1980 (as it says in TFA). Others have now tested this the published results in sufficient detail that it is now something that almost everyone with any awareness of biology knows.
A Nobel Prize is not like a 'best paper in conference' award. You don't get it for new and exciting theories, you get it for theories that have withstood careful examination and testing. If the LHC finds a Higgs Boson then Peter Higgs will almost certainly get a Nobel, for the work that he did predicting it back in 1964.
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It's also worth pointing out that the starvation we do have is not for lack of food production.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
And some people never have any children, such as my parents.