Mighty Daily Aspirin: New Report Says No One Under 80 To Experience Cancer by 2050

A new report has drawn quite a bit of attention with its eye-popping prediction that by as early as 2050 no one under 80 will experience cancer. The claim is tremendous, but the researchers from University College London (UCL) and King’s College London say they have the science to back it up.
In truth, death rates from cancer are a third down from 1996 and are expected to continue to drop. However, according to a report released from the University City London School of Pharmacy, these numbers will nearly disappear for those under 80 in a few decades, thanks to our increasingly effective prevention techniques. Report co-author Dr. David Taylor said healthy habits such as quitting smoking and taking a daily aspirin are helping to wipe out cancer, and 2050 was a “plausible guesstimate” of a time when cancer will only affect those over 80.

"If we put all these things together ... these killers of children and working-age adults can be overcome," Taylor told The Times in the UK.

Dr. Jack Cuzick, director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine at Queen Mary University in London seemed to agree that advanced preventive measures would seriously change the scope of cancer in Great Britain.

"Taking aspirin daily looks to be the most important single thing we can do to reduce cancer after stopping smoking and reducing obesity, and will probably be much easier to implement," he told The Times. "What makes this a special point in history is that cancers are in the process of becoming either preventable or effectively curable."

Aspirin, while good at keeping cancer at bay, has been tied to increased chances of stomach bleeding. Cuzick says individuals should therefore consult their physician before taking the drug on a daily basis.

Although cancer is becoming far less deadly, a day when nearly no one dies from cancer is not yet here. Cancer prevention can only go so far, and a recent study has suggested that as many as 65 percent of cancer cases come from random genetic mutation that cannot be foreseen or stopped.

"When someone gets cancer, immediately people want to know why," said oncologist Dr. Bert Vogelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, who conducted the study, published in the journal Science, with Johns Hopkins biomathematician Cristian Tomasetti, Medical Daily reported.

"They like to believe there's a reason. And the real reason in many cases is not because you didn't behave well or were exposed to some bad environmental influence. It's just because that person was unlucky. It's losing the lottery."

While many dispute the exact figures of this number, the truth remains that some people get cancer not influenced by lifestyle or genetics.

On top of cancer being hard to predict, it’s also extremely hard to cure. There will most probably never be any one cure to cancer, and while science has become quite successful in treating some forms of cancer, such as skin cancer, for other forms of cancer, effective treatment remains elusive. One of the reasons for this is the unpredictable nature of the cancer cells. As reported by LiveScience, the cancer cells constantly change their DNA, which means that a method may only be able to prove effective on some cancerous cells. Cancer is also able to hide, rearing its ugly head years later.

Elon Musk wants to spend $10 billion building the internet in space

Elon Musk’s plan for satellite internet is even more ambitious than originally thought. At a SpaceX event in Seattle on Friday, the Tesla CEO told Bloomberg Businessweek that his unnamed Space Internet venture could one day stretch all the way to Mars — and it could cost $ 10 billion to pull off.

“I don’t see anyone else doing it.”

The news comes at the tail end of a busy week for Musk, with the CEO announcing that a five-mile Hyperloop test track is in development only a day earlier. According to Musk, the satellite internet project would make for fast, cheap global internet that isn’t impeded by terrestrial wires. “The speed of light is 40 percent faster in the vacuum of space than it is for fiber,” he says, explaining that internet…

Continue reading…The Verge

HOW TO MAKE EXTRA-EFFICIENT SOLAR PANELS USING OLD BLU-RAY DISCS.

BLU-RAY DISCS' PRETTY COLOR ACTUALLY MAKES THEM GREAT AT CAPTURING LIGHT.



You probably don't think of them that way, but Blu-ray discs have a gorgeous color. In fact, the same physics that gives butterfly wings and housefly eyes their iridescent shine are also at work on Blu-ray. All are examples of what physicists call structural color, which are colors created not from pigments, but from translucent, microscopic shapes that capture light and reflect it in such a way that it appears colored to the human eye.

Blu-ray discs are so great at capturing light, a team of engineers from Northwestern University thought they would test how well Blu-ray works for solar panels. After all, solar panels must also trap light as it comes in. Maybe by replicating the microscopic, glassy wonderland of the surface of a Blu-ray disc onto a solar panel, the engineers could up a solar panel's performance.

This isn't as weird of an idea as it seems at first blush. Solar engineers already know that certain microscopic surface patterns, like those found in structural colors in nature, make solar panels more efficient. Making such nanometer-scale patterns from scratch is expensive, however. The Northwestern team sought a cheaper way to pattern solar panels.
A Blu-ray's microscopic surface patterns follow rules Blu-ray engineers wrote for getting discs to hold the amount of information required for high-definition movies. It turns out those patterns are just right for capturing light, as well.

What the team came up with certainly does sound inexpensive. First, they trimmed the edges off of a Blu-ray disc using a pair of scissors. (The disc was Police Story 3: Super Cop, the team reports.) Then they opened up the disc, revealing the disc's patterned surface, which encodes its data. They poured liquefied plastic onto the patterned surface and let the plastic harden overnight.

At the same time, they created their own solar panels in lab. When the panels were ready, the engineers pressed their patterned plastic onto the surfaces of their panels, stamping the panels the way you might stamp cookie dough. They also made a batch of panels with smooth, unstamped surfaces, as a control.

In in-lab tests, the patterned panels were more efficient than the smooth ones, they discovered. Although they first tried Super Cop, it doesn't matter what the disc is, as long as it encodes lots of data. A Blu-ray's microscopic surface patterns follow rules Blu-ray engineers wrote for getting discs to hold the amount of information required for high-definition movies. It turns out those patterns are just right for capturing light, as well. "It's as if electrical engineers and computer scientists developing the Blu-ray technology have been subconsciously doing our jobs, too," Jiaxing Huang, a chemist who led the research, said in a statement. Huang and his colleagues published their work 25th November, 2014 in the journal Nature Communications.

CES 2015: THE WILDEST THINGS WE SAW 3-D-PRINTED

Nervous System's Kinematics Dress 

It may look like just a pretty dress, but it was far from simple to make. Design studio Nervous System used a system called Kinematics to compress the project by 85 percent. The dress came out as one single folded piece of fabric, with 2,279 unique triangular patterns.

CES was chock-full of 3-D printers—some big, some small, some for food, and some for prototyping outdoor gear. More exciting to the casual passer-by, the booths were chock-full of printed wares. Take a look at some of our favorites in this gallery.

Popular Science is covering the coolest, most futuristic, and strangest gadgets and technologies at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Catch our complete CES 2015 coverage all week long. 

An Automatic Suture Device from Formlabs

3-D printing is known for its frivolous plastic trinkets, but it's also a powerful tool for innovators to rapidly prototype. Formlabs had one pretty amazing example at its booth this year. An engineer named Alex Berry had an idea to build a device that can insert sutures during medical procedures in order to cut down on pinpricks and unnecessary punctures. To quickly and cheaply validate his designs, Berry used the Form 1+ printer. 

Food, from XYZprinting

 

Here's hoping the 3-D-printed food of the future doesn't look quite so, well, strange. XYZ demoed its latest suite of 3-D printers, including a food printer. The results were neat dino shapes, but odd colors. The printer essentially squirts dough into pre-programmed shapes, which you then need to pop in the oven. The company claims the printer will cost less than $2,000 and is slated for release later in the year.

3-D-Printed Drum Kit From 3DSystems 

 

At first, I thought the band was just a way of getting the attention of passersby. But then, I took a closer look at realized all of the instruments—drums, guitar, and keyboard—had at least some element 3-D-printed. The components were very detailed and complex, which the creator, Olaf Diegel says, is only possible with a 3-D printer. I'm no discerning ear, but it sounded pretty good to me. 

CES 2015: NVIDIA WILL SUPERCHARGE CAR INFOTAINMENT SYSTEMS WITH COMPUTER GRAPHICS

 THE DRIVE CX IS A POWERFUL COMPUTER MADE FOR CAR COCKPITS...




The Nvidia Drive CX will bring better computer graphics to car navigation, instrumentation, driver-monitoring, and infotainment systems.

Nvidia is no stranger to computer graphics. The company has been a leader in graphics processor (GPU) manufacturing for more than a decade. Now, it wants to bring its high-end graphics processing capabilities to cars.
The Nvidia Drive CX, a high-end cockpit computer, was unveiled at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and its meant to power automotive entertainment systems. That means that car navigation, infotainment, instrumentation (such as speedometers), driver-monitoring and more will be capable of displaying graphics as powerful as a high-end smartphone or tablet.
The Nvidia Drive CX is powered by a Tegra X1 or Tegra K1 processor depending on the configuration. Both chips have traditionally been used in tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices. Now that they're being brought to the automotive industry, automakers will be able to build more complex computer systems such as 3D navigation models or better collision avoidance systems.
Although Nvidia hasn’t announced any partnerships that will make use of the Drive CX just yet, the spokesperson that we talked to was extremely confident in the new platform. “We’ve been building computer systems for automakers for ten years,” said Daniel Shapiro, Sr. Director of Automotive for Nvidia. "We're already seeing lots of interest from car companies."
Popular Science is covering the coolest, most futuristic, and strangest gadgets and technologies at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Catch our complete CES 2015 coverage all week long.

Why People Cheat

Understanding the reasons behind infidelity can help you avoid its damage.

More than 90% of Nigerians believe infidelity is unacceptable, yet 30-40% of people engage in it. Infidelity is associated with adverse outcomes such as depression, domestic violence, divorce, even homicide. Considering these negative effects, why do people cheat? And is the phrase “once a cheater, always a cheater” true? 

Let's start to answer by considering three primary types of reasons for cheating: 

1. Individual reasons: The phrase “once a cheater, always a cheater” refers to individual reasons for cheating—qualities about the person that make him or her more prone to commit infidelity. Researchers have identified a variety of individual risk factors, including: 

• Gender: Men are more likely than women to commit infidelity, largely because men have more testosterone, which is responsible for the strong desire to have sex.
• Personality: Those who have less conscientious and less agreeable personalities are more likely than people high on these traits to commit infidelity.
• Religiosity and Political Orientation: Very religious people and those with a conservative political orientation are less likely than others to commit infidelity because they have more rigid values. 

2. Relationship reasons: People also cheat because of relationship reasons—characteristics about their relationship itself that are unsatisfying. For these people, becoming involved in a well-matched partnership diminishes or eliminates their desire to cheat. "Once a cheater, always a cheater” does not hold true for this group. When they stray, factors about the relationship itself must be examined. Researchers find that partnerships characterized by dissatisfaction, unfulfilling sex, and high conflict are at higher risk for infidelity. Also, the more dissimilar partners are—in terms of personality, education level, and other factors—the more likely they are to experience infidelity.

3. Situational reasons: Others cheat because of the situation: A person might not have a personality prone to cheating, and might be in a perfectly happy relationship, but something about their environment puts them at risk for infidelity. Some situations are more tempting than others. Spending time in settings with many attractive people can make cheating more likely. The nature of a person’s employment is also related to infidelity—individuals whose work involves touching other people, having personal discussions, or a great deal of one-on-one time are more likely to have an affair. When the sex ratio is imbalanced (an overabundance of men or women in the work or campus environment), people are also more likely to experience infidelity. Finally, people who live in urban areas, as opposed to rural, less populated regions, are at greater risk—people in metropolitan locations generally have more liberal attitudes about extramarital sex, and cities simply have more people, creating an environment of higher anonymity and a larger potential group of partners with whom to have sex.

How can you protect your relationship from infidelity?

First, talk to your partner about their definition of infidelity. People have different ideas about what constitutes cheating and partners need to develop consensus. It is easier to understand where the boundaries are and what will hurt your partner if you have had an open discussion about it. Most people agree that sex with another person constitutes infidelity but the reaction to other behaviors can be more nuanced. Does going out for lunch with an attractive coworker constitute infidelity? What about sexy chat sessions with strangers online? Open discussions about such questions will help set boundaries and hopefully avoid hurt feelings down the line.

If you are a person who struggles with infidelity, as a victim or participant, it is important to get help, through therapy or books by professionals with advanced degrees in psychology. "Once a cheater, always a cheater” does not have to ring true for you.

CES 2015: INTEL’S $150 COMPUTE STICK TURNS ANY HDTV INTO A WINDOWS PC TINY, CHEAP, AND SIMPLE TO SET UP, INTEL’S STICK PC CAN MAKE YOUR DUMB TV INTO A FULL-FLEDGED COMPUTER...

 

There were some impressively thin laptops and convertibles this year at CES. But the trophy of the tiniest PC has to go to Intel’s just-announced Compute Stick. Despite being just four inches long, it comes with everything you’d expect from a basic PC: an Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a MicroSD slot for adding more, and a USB port. It will even ship with Windows when it goes on sale in March.

The only thing missing is the screen, which you provide by plugging the Compute Stick into an HDMI port on any old flat screen TV or monitor. You’ll also need to plug a USB cable into the device to provide power, but many TVs have those as well.

Don’t expect to fire up your favorite first-person shooter or video editing program on the Compute Stick. Performance will be similar to what you’ll get from a low-priced Windows tablet or a very low-end laptop. But basic tasks like media playback and light productivity should work run just fine. If the $150 price tag is still too much for you, Intel will be offering an $89 Linux-based model as well.

The Compute Stick certainly isn’t for everyone, but its price will likely make it appealing to many in the developing world, as well as in education, where once-pricey, now pokey PCs tend to stick around far longer than they should.

Those who just want a cheap second or third PC will likely find the Compute Stick enticing as well. Say what you will about Windows PCs, but they’re versatile machines that can launch nearly any kind of file and run millions of programs to do just about anything. A Windows computer is the Swiss Army knife of the modern age. It’s about time someone made one that slips comfortably in your pants pocket.