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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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The Rubber Research Institute of Maylasia in Kuala Lumpur has successfully produced genetically modified rubber plants that produce human proteins.

Human serum albumin, which is a nutrient given to patients on intensive care, is now being produced in steady quantities from rubber plants into which the appropriate human genes have been implanted. According to Hoong-Yeet Yeang of the Institute, “we’re getting continuous production simply by tapping it for milk.”

The yield is high enough to make the human proteins very cheaply, and the rubber left over can still be used for tires.

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