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<\/a><\/p>\nTheoretically, I like the idea of the Arab Spring. Democracy and all that. But practically, it sucks. Our little Libyan adventure \/ meddling may or may not have saved some lives. But, meantime, it’s shut off the vital Libyan oil to Europe and driven up the price of oil. And there appears no early end to Libya. I bet the price of oil will go even higher. I read forecasts of $200 a barrel.<\/p>\n
If you don’t believe the impact that high oil prices have on people’s lives, go stand around a gas station for an hour or two. Ask people how this is affecting them. You hear some real sad stories.<\/p>\n
Our economy remains fragile, with high unemployment.<\/p>\n
The stockmarket and corporate earnings are hanging in. But the fundamentals of oil’s higher price are not good.<\/p>\n
Be cautious. Keep your stops tight.<\/p>\n
The biggest reason to sell: It’s driving you nuts. <\/strong>It’s giving you agita. From this Economist — what we’ve always known. Stress is not good for you.<\/span> Stress and ageing. from the print edition of the Economist<\/p>\n Bad for your telomeres<\/em><\/p>\n TELOMERES are to chromosomes what plastic caps are to shoelaces\u2014they stop them fraying at the ends. Unlike shoelaces, though, chromosomes replicate themselves from time to time as the cells they are in divide. This shortens the telomere and, after 50-70 such divisions (a number known as the Hayflick limit, after its discoverer), a chromosome can grow no shorter and the cell it is in can divide no more.<\/p>\n That provides a backstop against cancer. The rapidly dividing cells in a tumour soon hit the Hayflick limit and the process is brought to a screeching halt. Which is a good thing. The bad thing is that reaching the limit is one of the markers of old age. You do not want it to happen too quickly, particularly in tissues that have to do a lot of dividing in order to work properly, such as those in the immune system.<\/p>\n It has been known for some time that chronic stress (caring for a child with a protracted illness, for example) causes premature shortening of the telomeres. What has not been clear is whether this is a one-way trip, with each stressful period turning the telomeric ratchet irreversibly. This week, though, at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Orlando, Florida, a group of researchers led by Edward Nelson of the University of California, Irvine, showed that it isn\u2019t. Their research suggests that stress management not only stops telomeres from shortening, it actually promotes their repair.<\/p>\n Dr Nelson drew this welcome conclusion from a previous study that measured the impact of telephone counselling on women who had been treated for cervical cancer. The study found that such counselling worked, both mentally and physically. Women who had been counselled reported that the quality of their lives had improved, compared with those of a control group who had not been counselled. They also showed improvements in the strength of their immune systems.<\/p>\n Given those benefits, Dr Nelson wondered if he could find others, and he re-examined the participants\u2019 samples to look at the lengths of the telomeres in their white blood cells (red cells have no nuclei, and therefore no chromosomes). What he found surprised him. Not only did counselling stop telomere shrinkage, it actually promoted telomere growth. Those women for whom counselling had worked (ie, those who reported a decrease in emotional stress) had longer telomeres at the end than they did at the beginning. Their Hayflick countdowns were being reset.<\/p>\n A single such result must, of course, be treated with caution. But another study reported at the meeting, by Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco (who shared the Nobel prize for the discovery of the enzyme that repairs telomeres), gave some support. This showed that exercise has a similar effect to counselling on the telomeres of the stressed.<\/p>\n If Dr Nelson\u2019s work is successfully replicated, it will shine more light on the ill-understood relationship between the health of the mind and the health of the body. For, as he points out, nothing actually changed in the lives of the women in question. They still had cancer, albeit under treatment, and they were still under stress. Nothing, that is, except their attitude.<\/p>\n Circumnavigating the New York Times Paywall<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Frustrated by the idea of paying for what was once free, some New York Times readers have devised widely publicized methods for subverting its newly erected paywall. Their efforts, it turns out, may have been for naught.<\/p>\n While testing out the paywall Monday afternoon, Mashable readers Dmitry Beniaminov and Yuri Victor pointed out that it\u2019s breathtakingly easy to subvert the paywall. Readers need only remove \u201c?gwh=numbers\u201d from the URL. They can also clear their browser caches, or switch browsers as soon as they see the subscription prompt. All three of these simple fixes will let them continue reading.<\/p>\n We were already aware that the Times doesn\u2019t want to make it difficult for readers who want to access its content to be able to do so without paying \u2014 in addition to 20 free articles per month, readers can view 25 free articles per day through search, and an unlimited number via blogs and social networks. But we weren\u2019t aware the Times wanted to make it quite that easy. Especially if, as rumors suggest, the Times paid $40 million to erect its paywall in the first place.<\/p>\n
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\nThe link between chronic stress and a marker of old age is being disentangled<\/strong><\/p>\n