Kinds Of Watches

It is one of the oldest jokes in the gerontologists' book – if you want to live to a grand age, choose your parents carefully. Jeanne Calment, who had the longest confirmed human life span in history, attributed her longevity – she died in 1998 aged 122 years, five months and 14 days – to a diet rich in olive oil, regular glasses of port and her ability to "keep smiling". But destiny undoubtedly played the most important part.

We spend millions of pounds each year on anti-ageing tonics, potions, vitamins and creams, trying to stave off the ravages of the years. But our genetic inheritance trumps all other factors in determining how well we age and how long we live. By unravelling the genetic determinants of longevity, scientists believe they will be able to manipulate them to add not only years to life, but also life to years. An elixir of youth remains a distant dream but medicines to help us live longer and better are moving closer.

At a conference this week, Turning Back the Clock, organised by the Royal Society, researchers described the progress that has been made in the science of ageing. At least 10 gene mutations have been identified that extend the lifespan of mice by up to half, and in humans several genetic variants have been linked with longevity. They include a family of genes dubbed the sirtuins, which one Italian study found occurred more commonly in centenarian men than in the general population. A subsidiary of drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is now looking at sirtuins, and their association with a range of age-related diseases including type 2 diabetes and cancers.
Other gene variants affect the production of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor (IGF), both of which increase metabolism – organisms with higher metabolism tend to die sooner. A possible of way of slowing ageing would be to slow metabolism by blocking receptors for growth hormone and IGF.

A small Massachusetts biotech company, Proteostasis, is investigating this pathway involving IGF as a potential target for anti-ageing drugs. Another key drug target is an enzyme called cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP), which affects levels of "good" cholesterol, that help protect against heart disease. Drugs that inhibit the enzyme are being developed by two other major pharmaceutical companies, Merck and Roche.

Also promising, but still far from yielding concrete results, are telomeres, which are present in every cell. Activating telomerase, an enzyme which lengthens the telomeres, may extend cell lifespan.

Developments such as these herald a new era of longevity research and drugs based on them will "probably be available for testing from 2012", Professor Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York told the conference.

He said: "I'm seeing 100-year-olds who are not only 100 years old but in great shape. They're driving and painting, and they say life is beautiful. I have this bias that makes me believe we have the ability as a species to get to 100 if we prevent some of these age-related diseases."

Centenarians tended to have genes that delayed the onset of conditions such as Alzheimer's and heart disease. "When they eventually die they die of the same things that people die of in their seventies and eighties. It's just that they do so 30 years later," Professor Barzilai said. "The cost of treating 100-year-olds in their last two years of life is a third of what it costs to treat somebody aged 70 to 80. People who die between 70 and 80 are sick in the last few years of their life. Centenarians are dying healthy, all of a sudden."

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Now it's his turn. After the elder George Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush the younger, Barack Obama has became the fourth consecutive American president to seek international diplomacy's hitherto impossible prize: Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The roll-call of place names associated with such efforts since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 is long: Madrid, Oslo, Wye, Sharm el-Sheikh, Camp David, Taba and most recently Annapolis. One thing, though, they have in common: failure. And so to Washington, September 2010.

Just 24 hours after formally winding up the US combat mission in Iraq, Mr Obama yesterday began two days of intensive summitry with separate White House meetings: first with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, then with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.

A dinner last night followed, with the region's most important supporting players, King Abdullah of Jordan and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, among the guests, before Messrs Abbas and Netanyahu get down to business in earnest this morning in face-to-face negotiations at the State Department. The ceremony will be presided over by Hillary Clinton – who will earn her place as one of the greatest secretaries of state in history if she can succeed where such redoubtable predecessors as Henry Kissinger and James Baker could not.

"This time it's different," insist an admittedly dwindling band of optimists, echoing the refrain of losing sports teams and gung-ho stock market speculators throughout the ages. But is it different?

Mr Obama's goal is the same two-state solution sought by presidents Clinton and Bush before him, based on agreement on the four core issues of security, borders, Palestinian refugees displaced by the creation of Israel and the status of Jerusalem. Like George W Bush, he has set a one-year target for a deal.

The contours of any viable final settlement have long been known: secure borders perhaps monitored by outside forces, the return of the vast bulk of the West Bank to the Palestinians, along with territorial compensations elsewhere for areas where the density of Israeli settlements makes retrocession impossible. There would be a purely symbolic right of return for refugees to Israel proper, while both states would share Jerusalem as their capital.

In other words, the diplomats can come up with a solution. What has always been lacking is the political will to accept it. "We don't need to re-invent the wheel," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said yesterday. "The time is not for negotiations, but for decisions."

If those words are evidence of Palestinian frustration at what they see as Israeli procrastination – especially on the issue of settlements – Mr Netanyahu ostensibly shares those feelings. After months of indirect or "proximity" talks brokered by George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, the Israeli Prime Minister is now ready for fortnightly summits to achieve a deal.

As usual, everything is at the mercy of extremists, on both sides. Late on Tuesday, the military wing of Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian group and bitter rival of Mr Abbas's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for killing four Israeli settlers travelling near Hebron on the West Bank.

After a long lull in such incidents, the shootings were plainly designed to undermine the authority of Mr Abbas and derail the new talks even before they began, by demonstrating that the Palestinian leader cannot provide the security that Mr Netanyahu insists is an essential precondition for serious Israeli concessions.

A furious Mr Abbas swiftly condemned the attack, as did Mrs Clinton and the Israeli Prime Minister. Yesterday, the President himself made an unscheduled appearance in the White House Rose Garden with Mr Netanyahu, to express his disgust at the "heinous and senseless" slaughter, and the "unwavering" commitment of the US to Israel's security. The stakes are that high.

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To sceptics of alternative medicine, it will come as a surprise. Applying magnets to the brains of Alzheimer's disease sufferers helps them understand what is said to them. The finding by Italian scientsts, who conducted a randomised controlled trial of the treatment, suggests that magnets may alter "cortical activity" in the brain, readjusting unhealthy patterns caused by disease or damage. The study was small, involving just 10 patients, and the results are preliminary.

But the scientists from Brescia and Milan say they "hold considerable promise, not only for advancing our understanding of brain plasticity mechanisms, but also for designing new rehabilitation strategies in patients with neurodegenerative disease."

Sweeping claims are made for magnet therapy, including stimulating hair growth, boosting energy and warding off arthritis. Magnetic bracelets and jewellery, hairbrushes, insoles and even dog bowls are a lucrative branch of the alternative medicine industry.

Evidence for most of these claims is dubious or non-existent. But one product gained sufficient credence in orthodox circles to to be made available on the NHS. Since 2006 a device called the 4UlcerCare – a strap containing four magnets that is wrapped around the leg – has been available on prescription from GPs. Its maker, the Bristol-based firm Magnopulse, claims that it speeds the healing of leg ulcers and prevents their recurrence. It is believed that the magnets stimulate the circulation but it is not known how.

Findings from the latest study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, are likely to be seized on as further evidence of magnetism's healing powers. Although many may scoff, the capacity of magnets to affect the working of the brain is already well established.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), the technique investigated by the Italian scientists, has already been shown in separate experiments by British researchers to temporarily stun the part of the brain which controls speech, rendering volunteers unable to utter familiar words. Using a paddle placed on the head and focusing the TMS on an area of the brain at the back of the left frontal lobe, researchers found they could halt speech in mid flow. The volunteers reported having the words "right there" in their heads but were unable to make them "come out".

In a similar way, a magnetic wand waved over the left side of the head, can make the right arm jump involuntarily. The excitation of the neuronal pathways that this demonstrates suggests, according to researchers, that the technique might be useful in the rehabilitation of stroke victims.

For the latest study, Maria Costelli and colleagues applied repetitive TMS – a rapid succession of magnetic pulses – to the prefrontal lobes of the Alzheimer's patients for 25 minutes at a time.

Half the patients received daily doses five days a week for four weeks and half received a dummy treatment for two weeks followed by two weeks of TMS. Tests showed that those who had the full course of TMS had significantly higher scores on comprehension of what was said to them – up from 66 per cent to 77 per cent. The improvement was still evident eight weeks after treatment.

The authors say the technique did not affect other language abilities or other cognitive functions, including memory, which suggests that it is "specific to the language domain of the brain when applied to the prefrontal lobes".

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Defender Paul Konchesky has been reunited with former manager Roy Hodgson after finally completing his move to Liverpool from Fulham.

The 29-year-old has signed a four-year contract, with Reds reserve team players Lauri Dalla Valle and Alex Kacaniklic moving in the opposite direction as part of the deal.

Konchesky was at Anfield to watch his new team's victory over West Brom on Sunday but the completion of his deal was held up by negotiations and medicals for Dalla Valle and Kacaniklic.
The two-cap former England international, who played under Hodgson at Fulham, will provide much-needed competition for Fabio Aurelio at left-back.

Argentinian Emiliano Insua is destined to leave the club, with a proposed loan to Galatasaray, after an earlier move to Fiorentina collapsed over personal terms despite the clubs agreeing a fee.

In the wake of Dalla Valle and Kacaniklic's departure Liverpool have moved to strengthen the reserves with the signing of 16-year-old Suso from FC Cadiz on a scholarship agreement and MTK Budapest's Hungary Under-17 international Adam Hajdu on a temporary transfer until next June, with both deals subject to international clearance.

Suso, a 16-year-old forward, impressed for the reserves in pre-season and even featured as a late substitute for the first team in the friendly defeat to Borussia Moenchengladbach.

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Desperate not to miss an important cricket match between his village and its local rival, it was the liberal politician and banker Sir John Lubbock who introduced the August bank holiday in 1871. 139 years later, up and down the country, the end-of-summer weekend break is the preserve of a far more eclectic range of hobbyists and sports people.

The annual bog-snorkelling championship in Llanwrtyd Wells enjoyed its 35th year yesterday. Many competitors turned up in fancy dress for the 120-yard swim through the leech-infested bog. In Portsmouth, floating dinosaurs, goldfish and octopuses filled the sky at the International Kite Festival on Southsea Common .

Hundreds of thousands of people attended the first day of the Notting Hill Carnival in west London as sequin-clad dancers paraded through the streets to the sound of Caribbean drums.

Adults and children took part in Sky Ride Leicester, a family-orientated mass cycle ride, and at the British Powerboat Festival at Cowes, Fabio Buzzi and Simon Powell won the the Marathon World Cup Race 1 . A man acting as one of King Henry VIII's Men At Arms entertained visitors to the Tudor tournament at Hampton Court Palace, Surrey , where the jousting, fencing and pageantry continues today.

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In 2007, my sister Leah was diagnosed with bowel cancer. She's had major surgery twice, two courses of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, a temporary (now reversed) ileostomy and additional drug treatment. Three years on, she has an inoperable tumour in her liver and has just started a third course of chemotherapy. The cumulative side effects from the various cocktails of drugs have resulted in many other physical problems. An appeal to Hertfordshire Primary Care Trust for funding a new treatment was declined the first time round and again more recently following a review. Among their reasons they say that they do not feel there is any "individual exceptionality" in this case. We are still unsure what this actually means. While not a cure, this treatment would certainly give Leah a longer life. An appeal takes place on 11 August, with new evidence and the support of various professionals.

Leah is 53. She is divorced with three children and currently single. Until recently she worked for the NHS, and now relies on it for her healthcare. People comment on how well Leah looks. Admittedly, she wears her cancer with grace, but it seems that for people to accept her situation she must resemble a cancer patient as portrayed by a bad television actor. While the professionals do all they can to prolong her life, our family and her friends do what we can to ensure she is mentally and physically in a good place. The impact of her health has affected us all and, as she is my only sibling, I find myself in a place I never expected to be, thinking about life without my sister and, more importantly, thinking about life with her.

When Leah was diagnosed my heart skipped a beat. I knew too much about cancer. My wife, Stella Duffy, had breast cancer 10 years ago, and various relatives and friends have had different types of the disease. It's not something I ever considered adding to my biography: "Knows too much about cancer." It's a whole new language I share with too many people. I've come to realise that the place of siblings in illness is frequently overlooked. We are not the partners of, or the parents of, or the children of, and often our relationship is not valued as highly. I'm not sure having more than one sibling makes a difference – not all brothers and sisters are friends, or share what we do, but Leah is my only one. I have known her since the day I was born, she is party to the past intricacies and present realities of our family life.

With life-threatening illness comes the urgency to say it all and do it all. And along with that is the need to protect your loved one, find any "cure" you can, Google until the letters on the keyboard fade, search for alternative treatments, never mind the cost if it guarantees that they will survive. Hard as I try, I am aware that I can never guarantee the good health of anyone.

Leah and I couldn't be more different. She's a wonderful mother and I am a cool auntie. I regret not having kids (we tried), so we could be parents and Leah – and Stella's siblings – could be aunts and uncles. I sometimes wonder why her and not me; she has children and often society values those who are parents over those of us who are child-free/-less. Then again, Leah has children to pass herself and her stories on to. Stella's and my stories pass down to anyone who cares to listen.

Our relationship has not always been smooth, we've had some turbulent times. Fortunately we straightened things out a long time before Leah's initial diagnosis, I'm not one for keeping things quietly tucked away. My impatience drives everyone mad, not least my sister's collective of medical practitioners, who sigh when they see me approach with notebook in hand. And I'm glad I'm that way, because as far as I can tell, the sick person doesn't want to ask the scary questions. That's my job. And it is a job, a project, keeping Leah alive, keeping her going. In many ways I have stepped into that place reserved for a partner. I go to the important meetings, sit with her for hours waiting for blood test results before she can have chemotherapy, sharing scan results, which is a sickening time for us all. And I've become adept at nagging two superb specialist nurses at Barnet hospital and the Royal Free, who deserve medals.

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The New York skyline is a sculpture created by the friction between civic regulation and the capitalist love of profit. The former element might not be immediately obvious to a casual observer. Manhattan, after all, is a kind of symbol of capitalist aspiration in itself, a thrusting desire to climb a little higher up the ladder than the fellow next door. But restraint is expressed there too – and sometimes in literally concrete form.

Take the characteristic stepped form of most New York skyscrapers, for example, which looks as if it derives from engineering constraints but – in most steel framed buildings at least – is actually a capitulation to planning regulations. Those distinctive setbacks represent the architect's negotiation with something called the Sky Exposure Plane, an imaginary tapering space which New York bureaucrats devised in order to ensure that a modicum of daylight would still reach the city streets. You can meet the requirements of the Sky Exposure Plane by going up for a bit and then in for a bit before you start up again. Or, as several Seventies buildings did, you can curve your building so that it fits within it precisely. Or you can horse-trade with the authorities -- and give them a plaza at ground level in return for permission to bust through the envelope with some extra floors. And between the desire to hold new development in check and the desire to let it rip you get one of the world's most distinctive cityscapes.

That it is a kind of accidental sculpture seems to me undeniable. When the World Trade centre was first proposed back in the early Sixties the reaction of many New Yorkers was that it constituted a kind of vandalism. Those twin towers disrupted the familiar rhythm of the city, the Henry Moore swell and fall of it. There was talk of aesthetics and balance and composition -- and the philistinism of developers who couldn't understand that not everything could be measured in rentable square feet. Then, thirty years after the South Tower was completed, the World Trade centre shockingly came down again and New Yorkers grieved all over again -- not only for the human casualties but for their mutilated skyline too, whose new form had become as familiar as the old one. New York just didn't look right without that jutting prow at its southern tip.

Now another aesthetic row is in train over the plans to build a 1,200 foot skyscraper only a few blocks from the Empire State Building, a proposal that has alarmed the self-appointed guardians of the city's physical profile. The New York Times urged caution in an editorial and suggested any decision should be postponed for more detailed consideration. Another opponent was far more combative: "We view this as an assault on New York City and its iconography", said one Anthony Malkin, "It's the end of the image of New York City that billions of people hold dear". This last contribution to the debate needs a footnote, though -- because Anthony Malkin is the current owner of the Empire State Building and one of the things that he holds dearest is the lucrative prestige of having by far the tallest building in midtown Manhattan. And although the new building would be shorter than the Empire State Building, it would actually appear considerably larger – since it projects its ground footprint almost all the way to the top.

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Supermarkets are shunning seasonal British food in favour of fruit and vegetables air-freighted from thousands of miles away, according to research for the Independent.

A snapshot survey of 10 foods grown in the UK found seven leading supermarket groups selling ‘fresh produce’ from as far away as South America.

Asda had the most foreign items, five, including aspargus from Peru, strawberries from Spain and cauliflower from France. Marks & Spencer had the fewest - two, broad beans from Guatemala and broccoli from Spain.

Among the other examples, Morrisons (the second best performer) was selling Dutch radishes, Tesco Dutch strawberries and Sainsbury’s spring onions from Kenya and Mexico.

All the plants can be grown in Britain at this time of year.

The findings comes amid a controversy about the transportation of food long distances. The issue of ‘food miles’ returned to the fore last month when British asparagus growers discovered their local branch of Tesco in Evesham, Worcestershire, stocking asparagus from Peru.

The discovery caused particular consternation because the Vale of Evesham is one of Britain’s biggest areas for market gardening, yet local shoppers were being offered a product from the other side of the world. “It's such a shame it had to come all the way from Peru. I could understand if asparagus was out of season,” said one resident Paula Gordon.

Another, Terrance Anderson, 48, said: “It's an insult to our heritage. My grandfather grew asparagus and he would be up in arms about this.”

Why Tesco would be selling aspargus from 6,000 miles away when it was being harvested yards away?

Tesco said: 'We're very supportive of locally sourced produce and we're stocking the foreign asparagus to keep up with demand for the seasonal vegetable." Britain's biggest grocer added that it sold more British asparagus than any other retailer.

Generally stores say foreign crops provide an all-year round supply of fruit and vegetables, but it is the case that they are often cheaper than seasonal domestic produce - usually because labour rates in developing countries are lower.

As the Peruvian asparagus showed, some shoppers are uneasy about the sale of air-freighted food and wonder whether they should avoid buying green beans from Kenya

Experts in food sustainability say that, while complex, the food miles debate has important implications for the environment, health and the economy.

Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University in London and a Government adviser on food sustainability, first coined the term ‘food miles’ five years ago.

He wanted people to think about where their food came from - its “hidden ecological, social and economic consequences” - following a sharp rise in the distance travelled by food before reaching the plate.

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If Pakistan presumed they were back in the Test series, England's youngest bowler begged to differ yesterday. Ignoring the third Test defeat, or perhaps using the evidence of the tourists' shaky second innings, Steve Finn said: "We have bowled them out for 72 and 80 in this series so obviously there is a batting collapse waiting to happen."

This was a fairly provocative statement since there were times at The Oval, and Edgbaston before it, when Pakistan looked at last as if they were coming to terms with the longer game on sporting pitches, both of which had been alien to many of them.

The pitch at Lord's for the fourth and final Test starting tomorrow is unlikely to grant the bowlers as many favours. It was as if Finn, for a moment at least, was taking a leaf from the book of one of his heroes, the Australian fast bowler, Glenn McGrath, who regularly made it his business to get up opposition pipes with a choice goading word or two. Nor was Finn disconcerted by Shane Watson, the Australian opening batsman who had entered the Ashes phony war, an antebellum so long and distinctive that it will soon have period houses named after it. Watson had said the Aussies would target Finn's inexperience, adding: "It is so foreign, he doesn't know what to expect."

To which Finn replied he was not at all concerned. He could only bowl at what was in front of him. But he had clearly thought about Pakistan both before and after the advent of the experienced Mohammad Yousuf to shore up their middle order. Although Yousuf at times looked masterful last week in scoring 56 and 32, Finn refused to pay unqualified homage.

"There have been two innings now, the second innings of the second Test match and the first of this where they have played well and they are allowed to put partnerships together," he said. "But never at any stage have they got away from us. Their top score is just over 300 and we're not at all disappointed by that. We feel as if we're doing the right things as bowlers and I don't think them having Mohammad Yousuf in the team makes them a totally different team at all."

So there, MoYo. Finn is a confident, though not cocky, young man and it was intriguing to hear his assessment after the first Test he had played in where England did not have it all their own way, the first indeed when he had appeared on a losing side.

There were moments when Yousuf and Azhar Ali were in tandem on the second afternoon at The Oval that it seemed Finn, for the first time, was being confronted by authentic Test batsmen. Yousuf's class rubbed off on the well-ordered Azhar and in some ways it was as if Finn, in his seventh Test, was being introduced to the longer game as it was meant to be played.

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Broadcaster Andy Kershaw is to return to BBC Radio 3 after three years off-air as a result of personal problems, it was announced today.

The world music presenter saw his long term relationship break down and he was jailed after breaking a restraining order.

He is now to host the series Music Planet - a radio off-shoot of a forthcoming landmark BBC1 programme, Human Planet.

Kershaw and fellow presenter Lucy Duran visit remote destinations around the world which feature in the BBC1 show and record the music there.

It is billed as "Radio 3's most significant and ambitious world music project ever".

Human Planet is an anthropological series following man's progress, celebrating leaps in ingenuity.

Kershaw, a former Radio 1 and Old Grey Whistle Test presenter, moved to Radio 3 ten years ago.

He left his show on the station three years ago after he broke a restraining order which barred him from approaching the home of Juliette Banner, the mother of his two children. The couple, who lived on the Isle of Man, had separated a few months earlier.

He was sentenced to three months in prison in 2008 although he served only a month and a half.

Kershaw was later given a suspended six-month sentence for again breaching a restraining order.

The new series visits locations such as Madagascar, Peru and Papa New Guinea to discover different sounds. It includes music peculiar to countries like Mongolia, as well as Greenland's katajjaq, a vocal contest between Inuit women with songs that involve throat singing and imitations of animals' cries.

Kershaw, 50, said: "I am thrilled to be back on Radio 3 working again with a team of bright, imaginative, enthusiastic, people who also happen to be dear friends.

"So far we have - literally - hacked through mountain jungles to bring Music Planet listeners extraordinary music from some of the world's most isolated locations. And I cheerily risked incineration at a rocket festival in Thailand to take our Radio 3 audience into the fiery thick of the action."

Both series will be broadcast next year.

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