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One of the main problems that astronauts face on long space journeys is the loss of muscle tissue, due to long periods without enough exercise. Bears solved this problem long ago-they lose hardly any muscle when they hibernate.

Henry Harlow of the University of Colorado wanted to find out why. He believes that bears have evolved a way of conserving muscle tissue so that if they are disturbed by predators, such as wolves or mountain lions, they will still be able to get away.

He and his team have been analyzing muscle samples from black bears in the Rockies. They’ve found that the bears lose only 22 percent of their muscle strength over a long winter’s sleep.
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Scientists have long reassured us that, with the new advances in nutrition and medicine, we should all be able to live to be 100.

But now researchers who have analyzed the death trends between 1985 and 1995 say that even for people born 80 years from now, the average life expectancy will only be 85.

“Everyone alive today will be long dead before life expectancy at birth of 100 is achieved-if it ever is,” says Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois. “No technologies exist today that would permit us to increase life expectancy to 100 or even 120, as has been claimed.”
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Autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, fibromyalgia and some types of asthma, are among the most mysterious of human maladies. Why do our bodies suddenly attack and destroy themselves?

Scientists now say that the trigger may be two generations of “foreign” cells in a mother’s body, and that this may explain why these diseases attack three times as many women as men.

The first foreign cells are picked up when a fetus shares blood with its mother. When that fetus is born, grows up and becomes pregnant herself, a second set of cells infiltrates her body from her own unborn baby.
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A new interpretation of light emissions from stars has led scientists to the conclusion that there may be vast numbers of earthlike planets in the universe.

Norman Murray of the University of Toronto claims that the presence of iron in the starlight of more than half the stars in a sample of our galaxy indicates that they may have rocky planets in orbit around them.

Professor Murray says, “if there are bodies in orbit around these stars, at least the probability that there is life–similar to what we consider to be life–has to be more likely than it would have been before we discovered this evidence.”
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