Want to know how long you have to live?

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SCIENTISTS have invented a blood test that may help determine how long a person has left to live.

The controversial procedure could be available to the public for as little as $670 as early as next year.

The test measures microscopic DNA sequences on the tips of human chromosomes called telomeres, believed to be the most accurate signposts to how fast a person ages.

UK researchers claim measuring telomeres will calculate someone's biological age and whether this differs from their chronological age.

Medical experts said the practice was expected to grow rapidly over the next decade, with major implications for life-insurance policies or medical cover.

Some scientists fear the breakthrough may be hijacked by unscrupulous "snake-oil" salesmen, peddling fake or unproven anti-ageing remedies.

They also raised concerns about how people may react to a test telling them how old they "really" are.

Telomere expert Associate Professor Tracy Bryan, of Sydney's Children's Medical Research Institute, doubted the test's accuracy, saying a correlation between short telomeres and age-related diseases did not mean it was possible to determine how long a person had to live.

"I think this may lead to unnecessary worry," she said.

Medical ethicist Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini also doubted such a test could accurately predict when a person's time was up.

Dr Tonti-Filippini said the best medical technology could do was calculate an individual's average life-span, something that didn't take into account other factors that could contribute to death, such as heart disease or cancer.

"When a person's time is up, it won't be affected by the length of their telomere," he said.

"My guess is this is just nonsense."

Functional Dysphonia: Vocal Cord Massage Brings Mom's Voice Back

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After coming down with a cold in May 2010, Erin Martin could only muster a whisper for weeks and then months.

"I woke up on a Sunday with a really bad sore throat," she said. "A week and a half went by and I didn't have a voice."

Three months later, the hairstylist who rarely found herself at a loss for words with clients was rendered voiceless.

Martin of Wilmington, Del., said she thought she would never speak again -- that was until she visited Dr. Claudio Milstein at the Cleveland Clinic's Head and Neck Institute and was diagnosed with functional dysphonia, an abnormal tightening of the muscles around the voice box.

After 15 minutes of massaging and manipulating Martin's vocal cords, Milstein had the mother of four laughing -- and crying -- and speaking in her regular voice.

"It just felt so great, like it was a dream," she said.

No Voice? Doctors Have No Answers

Before she traveled to the Cleveland Clinic, Martin said the eight or so doctors she saw were perplexed by her condition.

"They were like, 'You should wait another week, give it another month. Call a specialist,'" she said.

Nothing in Martin's life was the same -- not at her kids' baseball games, not at the salon and not at home with her husband and kids.

"At that point, I was getting depressed," she said. "Everything was just hard. Just things you took for granted. ... You couldn't do it."

"The un-fun part was that she had to bang the wall to wake us up in the morning," said 7-year-old daughter Hayley Martin. "She would have to ask someone else to talk for her."

Twelve-year-old Alex Martin said she was stressed out. "Everyone thought it was going to be like a month and after a month went by, everyone was worrying," Alex Martin said. "It felt like two years."

"We weren't talking the same way we did," said husband Tom Martin. "It was like I wasn't married almost. A lot of things we did, we weren't doing together."

Voiceless: Possible Answer in the News?

Erin Martin said one day her brother and friend told her about a story they'd heard in the news.

"They called and said, 'You gotta listen to this woman. She sounds just like you,'" she said.

The woman in the news had functional dysphonia, in which the vocal cords get very tight and locked in position, making them unable to vibrate to produce sound.

Martin said she was skeptical but made an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic and drove seven hours to get there on her birthday.

Voiceless: 'It's Not a Prank Call. It's Me'

After five minutes of massage and manipulation, hints of her voice were starting to appear. Fifteen minutes later, Martin was laughing. "I am going to cry," she said.

Milstein, who specializes in voice and throat disorders at the Voice Center, said functional dysphonia was common after an upper respiratory condition, cold for flu or after a trauma.

He said being able to help patients was very rewarding.

"Usually in one intervention you can make a huge difference and improve their quality of life right away," Milstein said. "Sometimes I see patients that have had this condition for years and they are able to regain their voice in one session."

When Martin called home, her son didn't believe it was really her. "Are you sure it's not a prank call?" he said. "No, it's not a prank call. It's me," she responded.

She says she's gotten her voice back and her life. "My vocal cords work right and my voice is loud," she said.

Cali Swag District Rapper M-Bone Killed in Calif. Drive-By

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Cali Swag District member Mante "M-Bone" Talbert, 22, was killed in a weekend drive-by shooting in his hometown of Inglewood, Calif., police said on Monday.

Cali Swag District rose to fame in 2010 with their hit song "Teach Me How to Dougie," inspiring everyone from Wolf Blitzer to NBA star John Wall to show off their own version of the classic dance craze, "the dougie." The group had been recording tracks for an upcoming album in their hometown of Inglewood, when "M-Bone" was shot and killed.

Talbert's manager told ABC News that Talbert was taking a break from the recording session to drive out to a store to get something to drink, when another car pulled up beside him and an unidentified person fired two shots, hitting him in the head.

Inglewood police said Monday that Talbert was found in his car at a liquor store Sunday night, and died at a hospital. Lt. James Madia told the Associated Press the motive for the shooting is still under investigation.

Greg Miller, the group's manager, released a statement Monday saying, "Mante was the comedic entertainer of Cali Swag District and was an inspiration to his family, friends and fans. He was a hardworking, passionate artist and dancer that will be deeply missed."

The statement added that, "What makes this especially sad is that none of the guys have ever been involved in any type of gang activity."

"Nightline" reported on the members of Cali Swag District earlier this year and how they wanting to be positive role models for young kids. We followed them as they visited an elementary school in Rochester, N.Y., in December 2010 to talk to the kids about believing in themselves and achieving their dreams. The members of the group seemed to be kids themselves when they started an impromptu snowball fight and snow angel making contest with the students after school. It was also the first time the group had left Inglewood and saw snow for the first time.

Kenya's Olympic marathon champ jumps to death

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Olympic marathon gold medalist Samuel Wanjiru died early Monday from injuries sustained after jumping from the balcony of his Nyahururu home in central Kenya, a senior police official said.

Wanjiru jumped from the second-floor of his home late Sunday after his wife caught him in the company of another woman, said Jasper Ompati, a police official in Nyahururu.

Wanjiru's wife, Tereza Njeri, and another woman were taken to the police station to give statements but were not considered suspects, Ompati said. The death remains under investigation, he said.

Njeri, who lives in Nairobi, returned home unexpectedly to find the two together, Ompati said. Wanjiru is believed to have jumped after his wife locked him inside a bedroom on the second floor, making it impossible for him to leave, he said.

Wanjiru achieved worldwide fame when he became Kenya's first Olympic marathon champion at the Beijing Games in 2008.

Kenyans were mourning the death of Wanjiru, who was considered a national hero. Hundreds were lining up to view his body at a Nyahururu funeral home.

Athletics Kenya, the governing athletic body, said the country lost a great athlete. The association said it had pinned its hopes on Wanjiru to win another medal at the London Olympics in 2012.

"He's left a gap that will be hard to fill," said David Okeyo, the secretary-general of Athletics Kenya.

The International Olympic Committee praised Wanjiru as an accomplished runner who will be remembered for winning his country's first Olympic gold medal in the marathon and setting a new Olympic record in the process.

"Our thoughts are with his family and friends," the IOC said in a written statement sent to CNN.

At 21, Wanjiru was the youngest gold medal winner in the marathon at an Olympics since 1932.

After his Beijing triumph, Wanjiru has set about dominating the marathon distance, claiming a number of victories in races.

It helped him be crowned the men's champion in the 2009 and 2010 world marathon majors series.

In recent years, Wanjiru has had a number of troubles.

In December 2010, Wanjiru was charged with making death threats against his wife and illegally possessing an AK47 rifle. At the time, prosecutors alleged Wanjiru was drunk when he made the threats.

Wanjiru pleaded innocent to the charges during a court appearance in his home town of Nyahururu. His wife later dropped the charges, though he still faced a weapons charge.

Wanjiru was forced to withdraw from the London Marathon, a premier running event ahead of the 2012 Olympics, after he was involved in an automobile accident in January in Kenya.

27 people found dead at a Guatemalan farm

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Security forces in Guatemala have found 27 bodies, the majority of which were decapitated, at a farm in the northern region of Peten, Col. Rony Urizar, an army spokesman, said Sunday.

Among the victims were two women and 25 men, he said.

Peten is the northernmost part of Guatemala, which borders Mexico.

Urizar declined to say what might be behind the killings, but did not rule out the possibility they could be related to drug trafficking.

He said the military is assisting police in the investigation.

Guatemala has seen a significant spike in drug violence, including clashes between authorities and members of the Zetas drug cartel, Guatemalan Interior Minister Carlos Menocal told CNN en Espanol last year.

In December, the government declared a state of siege and sent hundred of troops to Alta Verapaz where officials say the Mexican drug gang is overtaking towns and threatening residents. Alta Verapaz is the region directly south of Peten.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Guatemala since 1970, mostly as a result of organized crime, drug-trade violence and a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.

The vast majority of murders in the country are never solved.

Jupiter moon 'holds magma ocean'

Get This Widget The moon of Jupiter erupts about 100 times more lava on to its surface each year than does Earth.

A re-assessment of data from Nasa's Galileo probe suggests all this activity is being fed from a giant magma ocean under Io's crust.

Researchers tell Science magazine that this blisteringly hot reservoir is probably some 50km (30 miles) thick.

And that figure is a minimum. It could be much, much thicker, says the study's lead author, Krishan Khurana, who is affiliated to UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.

"When scientists first started looking at the images of Io from the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft in the late 70s, the moon appeared so alien," he told the BBC.

"Right away, the scientists were asking questions; and one of them questions was, 'why are volcanoes present all over the surface?' Well, it's because there's a giant aquifer of magma present right beneath the crust. That's what our study is telling us."

Io's volcanism is driven by its parent planet - Jupiter. The great gas giant's enormous bulk produces colossal tides on the moon that squeeze and pull its body, melting its rocks.

The distribution of volcanoes on Io is quite different to that on Earth, however. They are everywhere, whereas on Earth the volcanoes tend to be collected at the boundaries of tectonic plates, the huge slabs of cold rock that cover our planet's surface.

Nasa's Galileo probe, following up the observations of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, made seven close passes of the moon.

Readings from its magnetometer instrument indicated the moon was dramatically distorting Jupiter's magnetic field - but what was going on inside Io to produce the effect was not clear.

It has taken several years to work through the problem and identify the solution, and it comes down to the nature of the rock in the moon and how it behaves when it melts.

Dr Khurana explained: "The data was available almost seven or eight years ago. However, we could not at that time explain what we were seeing.

"Later experiments in mineral physics found out that when ultramafic rocks, which are rocks very high in magnesium and iron - when those are melted, their conductivity shoots up by orders or magnitude. And it is that very high conductivity that can create the type of signature we have seen. So, we needed mineral physics to catch up with our data."

Tests have shown that the signatures detected by Galileo are consistent with a rock like lherzolite, an igneous rock rich in silicates of magnesium and iron. You find this rock, for example, in Scandinavia.

The picture emerging of Io is of a world that apes a body considerably bigger in size.

Its magma ocean layer is at least 50km thick, and probably makes up at least 10% of the moon's mantle by volume. Its temperature probably exceeds 1,200C.

This aquifer sits under the crust, some 50km down. The mantle - the moon's interior mid-layer - probably extends for a further 700-800km. And at the core? Gravity measurements suggest it is made of iron and possibly liquid - much like the Earth.

"The moon in size is only about one-fortieth the volume of the Earth; in mass it's only one-sixtieth," said Dr Khurana.

"And yet because of the tremendous amount of heat generated by tides that Jupiter raises on this very small moon, its internal structure is very similar to the Earth or a bigger planet that has a lot of tectonics on it."

Scientist seeks to banish evil, boost empathy

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Simon Baron-Cohen has been battling with evil all his life.

As a scientist seeking to understand random acts of violence, from street brawls to psychopathic killings to genocide, he has puzzled for decades over what prompts such acts of human cruelty. And he's decided that evil is not good enough.

"I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil'," says the Cambridge University psychology and psychiatry professor, one of the world's top experts in autism and developmental psychopathology.

"We've inherited this word... and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don't think it's anything more than another word for doing something bad. And as a scientist that doesn't seem to me to be much of an explanation. So I've been looking for an alternative -- we need a new theory of human cruelty."

Baron-Cohen, who is also director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, has just written a book in which he calls for a kind of rebranding of evil to offer a more scientific explanation for why people kill and torture, or have such great difficulty understanding the feelings of others.

His proposal is that evil be understood as a lack of empathy -- a condition he argues can be measured and monitored and is susceptible to education and treatment.

NEW THEORY

Baron-Cohen defines empathy in two parts -- as the drive to identify another person's thoughts and feelings, and the drive to respond appropriately to those thoughts and feelings.

It is also, he says, one of the most valuable resources in our world -- one which is currently woefully underused.

"We all have degrees of empathy... but perhaps we are not using it to its full potential," he explained in an interview with Reuters after delivering a lecture in London.

He says erosion of empathy is an important global issue that affects the health of communities, be they small ones like families, or big ones like nations.

If we all used our ability to empathize more, and recognized its value, he says, conflicts such as the decades of tit-for-tat violence between Palestinians and Israelis could be resolved.

"If you think about conflict resolution at the moment, usually we are dependent on diplomatic channels, legal frameworks, or military methods. But all those things operate at a very abstract level and they don't seem to get us very far.

"Empathy is about two people -- two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling."

As an example, Baron-Cohen cites the meeting of minds between Nelson Mandela and the then South African president F. W de Klerk, which helped end apartheid in the early 1990s.

"The progress that came out of just that one relationship -- well, arguably, it broke through where all other methods had failed, and at far less cost in terms of human life," he says.

PSYCHOPATHS HAVE "ZERO DEGREES OF EMPATHY"

A Jewish upbringing peppered with tales about the horrors of the Nazis' treatment of Jews and other minorities was early motivation for Baron-Cohen to seek to deconstruct human cruelty

He cites times when his father told him how the Nazis turned Jews into lampshades, or into bars of soap, and a tale about the mother of a family friend whose hands had been severed by Nazi scientists who switched them around and sewed them back on again so that her thumbs were on the outside.

"Today, almost half a century after my father's revelations...my mind is still exercised by the same single objective: to understand human cruelty," he writes in his book.

In the book, entitled "Zero Degrees of Empathy" in Britain, and "The Science of Evil" in the United States, where it comes out in July, Baron-Cohen seeks to pick apart and define components of empathy -- including hormones, genes, environment, nurture, and early childhood experiences.

Citing decades of scientific research, he says there are at least 10 regions of the brain which make up what he calls the "empathy circuit." When people hurt others, either systematically or fleetingly, parts of that circuit are malfunctioning.

Baron-Cohen also sets out an "empathy spectrum" ranging from zero to six degrees of empathy, and an "empathy quotient" test, whose score puts people on various points along that spectrum.

Drawing a classic bell curve on a graph, Baron-Cohen says that thankfully, the vast majority of humans are in the middle of the bell curve spectrum, with a few particularly attuned and highly empathetic people at the top end.

Psychopaths, narcissists, and people with borderline personality disorder sit at the bottom end of the scale -- these people have "zero degrees of empathy."

But rather than labelling them as evil, Baron-Cohen says they should be seen as sick, or "disabled," and we should seek to understand why they have such an empathy deficiency and help them replace it.

Baron-Cohen shies away from saying that psychopaths can be "cured" of extreme behaviour, but he argues strongly against locking them up and saying there is nothing society can do.

"I try to keep an open mind. I would never want to say a person is beyond help," he explains. "Empathy is a skill like any other human skill -- and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it."

Scientists find genetic link to depression

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Scientists say they have discovered the first solid evidence that variations in some peoples' genes may cause depression -- one of the world's most common and costly mental illnesses.

And in a rare occurrence in genetic research, a British-led international team's finding of a DNA region linked to depression has been replicated by another team from the United States who were studying an entirely separate group of people.

"What's remarkable is that both groups found exactly the same region in two separate studies," Pamela Madden, who led the US team at Washington University, said in a statement.

The researchers said they hoped the findings would bring scientists closer to developing more effective treatments for patients with depression, since currently available medicines for depression only work in around half of patients.

"These findings ... will help us track down specific genes that are altered in people with this disease," said Gerome Breen of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, who led the other research group.

The researchers said they believed many genes were involved in depression.

These findings are unlikely to benefit patients immediately, with any new drugs developed from them likely to take another 10 to 15 years. However, they will help scientists understand what may be happening at the genetic and molecular levels in people with depression.

The first study analysed more 800 families with recurrent depression, while the second examined depression and heavy smoking in a series of families from Australia and Finland.

Both studies were published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on Monday and both teams reported a strong link between depression and genetic variations in a region called chromosome 3p25-26.

"Normally in genetic studies of depression, replication of findings is very difficult and frequently takes years to emerge, if ever," said Breen, who gave a briefing in London about the work.

Major depression affects about 20 percent of people at some point in their lives. Severe and recurring depression affects up to 4 percent of people and is notoriously hard to treat.

The World Health Organisation has forecast that depression will rival heart disease as the health disorder with the highest disease burden in the world by 2020.

According to a 2006 study, depression is responsible for 100 million lost working days a year in England and Wales alone at a cost of 9 billion pounds ($14.6 billion).

Studies of families with depression have indicated that the disorder has a genetic link and scientists think around 40 percent of the risk of developing it is contributed by genes, with the rest down to environmental and other external factors.

"We are just beginning to make our way through the maze of influences on depression and this is an important step toward understanding what may be happening at the genetic and molecular levels," Michele Pergadia, who worked on Washington University study, said in a statement about the findings.

Breen's team is now conducting detailed gene sequencing studies in 40 of the families involved in the first study to try to find specific genes and variations that show a link.

Japan doctors used Twitter to save patient lives after quake

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Doctors in Japan used Twitter to reach chronically-ill patients in the wake of the devastating March earthquake and tsunami, telling them where to go to get life-saving treatment after phone networks became unusable.

In a letter published in The Lancet on Friday, doctors Yuichi Tamura and Keiichi Fukuda said they sent tweets to 60 patients to tell them where to obtain crucial daily refills of a drug to prevent heart failure when they realized they couldn't reach them by phone due to congestion or damage.

"There are only about 1,000 such patients in all of Japan. It is a rare disease and there are not many hospitals that supply such rare drugs," Tamura, based at the Keio University School Of Medicine cardiology department in Tokyo.

The patients suffered from pulmonary hypertension and needed once-daily refills of a drug that is pumped into a catheter connected to a vein in their neck. It prevents blood clots and heart failure.

"We directly contacted 60 patients and they re-tweeted to over 100. Some couldn't reach hospitals because they were living in disaster areas, so we took drugs to them using cars and, in one case, by helicopter."

Short message services (SMS) and now online social media are increasingly used by healthcare workers around the world to remind patients of appointments and to take their medicines.

The March 11 quake and ensuing tsunami have left nearly 25,000 dead or missing in Japan.

Saudi diplomat shot dead in Pakistan

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A Saudi Arabian diplomat was shot and killed by unidentified attackers in Karachi on Monday, just five days after explosives devices were lobbed at the Saudi consulate in the southern Pakistani port city.

The Saudi diplomat, identified in media reports as Hasan M M Al-Kahtani, was attacked by four gunmen riding two motorcycles while he was driving to work. The attack occurred a short distance from the Bahrain consulate, reports NDTV.

The Saudi Embassy in Islamabad confirmed that the victim was a diplomat.

Police officials said the gunmen intercepted the car and fired over a dozen bullets at the victim.

He was declared dead on arrival at the Jinnah Hospital.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

On May 11, two men riding a motorcycle lobbed two low intensity explosive devices at the Saudi consulate in Karachi though no one was injured in the attack. Saudi officials said the blasts caused minor damage to buildings within the consulate compound.

The attacks came in the wake of the May 2 raid by US special forces in the garrison city of Abbottabad that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Saudi assistant foreign minister Prince Khaled bin Saud had urged Pakistani authorities to ensure the protection of the kingdom's diplomatic missions in the country.

Lightning kills 6 in Kishoreganj

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At least six people have been killed and four others injured in lightning strikes in Bajitpur and Nikli upazilas of Kishoreganj.

The deceased were identified as 'Ishak', 50, 'Ibrahim', 60, of Noagaon, and Shuklal Das, 28, of Parabalia in Bajitpur and 'Shamsuddin, 50, 'Manik', 38, and 'Rasel', 16, of West Nikli.

Zahurul Islam Medical College and Hospital's doctor Mohammad Yunus told bdnews24.com the dead and wounded had been working in the fields on Monday when the thunderbolts struck around 7:30 in the morning.

The injured — 'Kalachan', 35, Fazar Ali, 38 and Kafiluddin, 13, and 'Jaman', 12 — were admitted to the hospital.

The bodies were sent to the hospital morgue for autopsy.