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People Who Volunteer Live Longer, Study Suggests

People who volunteer for selfless reasons, such as helping others, live longer than those who don't lend a helping hand, a new study shows. However, those who volunteer for more self-centered reasons do not reap the same life-extending benefits.

"This could mean that people who volunteer with other people as their main motivation may be buffered from potential stressors associated with volunteering, such as time constraints and lack of pay," study researcher Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan said in a statement.

(Past research suggested another benefit for selfless volunteers — a date. Apparently women rate such altruism high on their list of desirable traits in a mate.)

Konrath and colleagues looked at results from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which has followed a random sample of 10,317 Wisconsin residents from their high school graduation in 1957 until the present. In 2008, the average age of the participants was about 69, and about half of the participants are female.

In 2004, the participants reported how often they had volunteered within the past 10 years. They also explained their reasons for volunteering, or, in the cases of those who had not volunteered  but were planning to, the reasons they would.

Some of the participants' motives were more oriented toward others, such as "I feel it is important to help others" or "Volunteering is an important activity to the people I know best." Other respondents, however, had more self-oriented reasons for volunteering, such as "Volunteering is a good escape from my own troubles," or "Volunteering makes me feel better about myself."

Researchers then compared the participants' responses with physical health information that had mostly been collected in 1992. The researchers also considered the respondents' socioeconomic status, mental health, social support, marital status and health risk factors, including smoking, body mass index and alcohol use.

The findings showed that those who volunteered for more altruistic reasons had lower mortality rates as of 2008 than people who did not volunteer. Of the 2,384 non-volunteers, 4.3 percent were deceased four years later, compared with 1.6 percent of altruistic volunteers who had died.

However, people who said they volunteered for their own personal satisfaction had nearly the same mortality rate (4 percent) as people who did not volunteer at all.

"It is reasonable for people to volunteer in part because of benefits to the self; however, our research implies that, ironically, should these benefits to the self become the main motive for volunteering, they may not see those benefits," said study researcher Andrea Fuhrel-Forbis, also of the University of Michigan.

The study was published in August in the journal Health Psychology.

Car that President Obama Use

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It looks like something out of a James Bond film.

 

But the presidential seal on the side marks this hulking limo out as something not even the superspy will be able to get his hands on.

These are the first pictures of the new armoured limousine which will be used to ferry Barack Obama around.

Nicknamed "The Beast", the Cadillac will make its debut on 20 January, as part of the inaugural parade.

It is traditional to show presidential cars off for the first time in this way.

'State of the art'

The Secret Service said the 2009 limo would provide it with a "valuable asset" in providing its occupant with the highest level of protection.

As expected, they are not giving too much away about the car, but Nicholas Trotta, their Assistant Director for the Office of Protective Operations is quoted in their news release:

"Although many of the vehicle's security enhancements cannot be discussed, it is safe to say that this car's security and coded communications systems make it the most technologically advanced protection vehicle in the world."

Observers say the car is likely to include bullet proof glass, an armoured body, a separate oxygen supply, and a completely sealed interior to protect against a chemical attack.

Some joke the car is so tough it could withstand a rocket-propelled grenade. Its tyres are said to work flat, so the vehicle will keep going even if shot at.

While the car's interior is a closely guarded secret, there is no doubt "The Beast" has been kitted out with the best and most up-to-date equipment.

David Caldwell, a spokesman for General Motors which makes Cadillac, told the BBC that the car is made to specifications that the company is given by the federal government.

"One of the specifications is that we don't talk about the specifications," he said.

But Mr Caldwell did reveal that the car has been made in keeping with the design of a contemporary Cadillac, and would include a hand-crafted interior.

When asked if it included such extras as an iPod dock, he said he could not comment specifically, but added that the limo would have "state of the art electronics".

NASA completes huge mirrors for next space telescope

 

NASA's next huge space telescope passed a major mirror milestone this week on its path to become the world's most powerful space observatory when it launches in 2018.

Engineers completed coating 21 mirrors that will make up NASA's flagship James Webb Space Telescope with the thin — but vital — layer of gold that will reflect the faint infrared light collected by the observatory from the most distant reaches of the universe.

"It represents not just the coating event but the completion of a huge engineering project," John Mather, the telescope's senior project scientist, told SPACE.com. "The mirrors are spectacularly new technology."

Each of the 21 hexagonal mirror segments is almost the height of a person (4.9-feet, or 1.5 meters tall) and is made of beryllium, a material chosen for its light weight, stiffness and ability to withstand huge changes in temperature without warping.

Eighteen of the segments will be combined into one giant 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) tall primary mirror. The remaining three mirrors will be used elsewhere in the telescope, NASA officials said. [Photos: Building the James Webb Space Telescope]

In June 2010, engineers began the process of coating each mirror with about 0.12 ounces of gold, applied in layers only 120 nanometers thick — about a millionth of an inch, or 200 times thinner than a human hair.

"We faced many technical challenges on the Webb mirror coating program," Ian Stevenson, director of coating at Quantum Coating, Inc., the subcontractor responsible for the mirror coating process, said in a statement. "One of the most daunting was that all flight hardware runs had to be executed without a single failure."  

To coat the mirrors, gold was heated to more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,371 degrees Celsius), at which point it melted from solid to liquid. Then, engineers allowed it to evaporate onto the beryllium panels to build up the smooth, microscopically thin layer of coating.

Completing this process is a triumph for the beleaguered Webb telescope project, which has been delayed repeatedly and seen its costs rise significantly. The observatory, a joint venture of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, is named after former NASA administrator James Webb, who ushered the agency through most of the Apollo era.

The cost for the telescope is now estimated at $8.7 billion. Because of the project's budget overruns and delays, a House Appropriations Committee spending bill in July proposed to cancel the mission. A Senate subcommittee measure approved Sept. 14, however, would provide enough money to continue the project.

"Finishing all mirror coatings on schedule is another major success story for the Webb telescope mirrors," Lee Feinberg, NASA Optical Telescope Element manager for the Webb telescope at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "These coatings easily meet their specifications, ensuring even more scientific discovery potential for the Webb telescope." 

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Google Doodle appears

Google celebrates Albert Szent-Gyorgyi’s birthday, vitamin C’s discovery.

Citrus fruit a day keeps a cancer away!

Search engine giant Google celebrates the life of Hungarian physiologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi with a Google Doodle, or the tweaked logo of the search engine site that features the contribution of the person, or components of historical events. The new Szent-Gyorgyi doodle is a simple jpeg file showing off fruits like Oranges, Pineapple and lemon. Apparently, all fruits featured in the Google homepage are fruits that contain high-level of vitamin C.

For example, Oranges contain 45 mg (54%) of Vitamin C per 100g of serving, Pineapple contains 36.2 mg (44%) per 100g, and lemon leads among the three with 53.0 mg (64%) of Vitamin C per 100g serving. Strawberry is also featured because the fruit is also a good source of vitamin C with 82mg per 144g serving.
And what’s with the vitamin c-rich fruits invasion on the Google homepage? Well, on Friday (September 16th), marks the 118th birthday of Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the physiologist who discovered the Vitamin C and the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle. According to Wikipedia, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi is a Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology or Medicine, due to his contributions in the field of the Science of the function of living systems.

Szent-Gyorgyi or Szent-Györgyi was born in Budapest on September 16, 1893. His first studied at the Semmelweis University in 1911, but his WikiPedia entry revealed that he soon “became bored with classes,” and instead of learning from books and teachers, he began research in his uncle’s anatomy lab. His laboratory activities was interrupted in 1914 because he served as an army medic in World War I.

After the war, apparently, he continued his research career, and surprisingly, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi switched schools several times over the next few years, until landing at the University of Groningen where he focused on the study of the chemistry of cellular respiration.

His work on the chemistry of cellular respiration landed him a position as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at Cambridge University. There, he received his PhD in 1927 for his work on isolating what he then called “hexuronic acid” from adrenal gland tissue. Hexuronic acid is now known as the Ascorbic Acid, an organic compound and one form of Vitamin C.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi suspected the Hexuronic acid to be the “antiscorbutic factor,” but could not prove it without a biological assay. The “ascorbic acid” study was finally done by King’s laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. The laboratory obtained the adrenal hexuronic acid indirectly from Albert Szent-Györgyi and proved that it was vitamin C by early 1932.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi migrated to the United States in 1947 where he married his first wife in 1965, and married his fourth in 1975. He died on October 22, 1986 in Massachusetts at the age of 93.