Category: death

Jane Little, world’s longest-serving orchestra musician, collapses and dies performing

On By A.P.In death, music, World RecordsLeave a comment

Jane Little, who debuted as a bassist in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1945, at age 16 and who never stopped playing, died during a performance of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra on Sunday. She was said to be the longest tenured orchestra musician in the world. She was 87.

“We can say that Jane was fortunate to do what she loved until the very end of her storied life and career,” the symphony said in a Facebook post. “The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was truly blessed to have Jane as part of our family for the past 71 years and we all miss her passion, vitality, spirit and incredible talent.”

“Her footprints are permanently etched on that stage,” wrote another admirer, Doug Ireland. “Everyone who ever attended a concert was amazed to see this tiny woman with that huge instrument!”

“Was at the performance today when Jane Little collapsed,” said a post by Rosemary Kord. “So sad to witness this tragedy. Happened in the last couple of minutes of the final song. I am still shakened and send my prayers to Jane’s family and to her musical family, The Atlanta Symphony. If there is a Requiem in her honor, I would like to be in attendance. RIP dear lady; you are an inspiration!”

The symphony was performing a pops concert called “Broadway’s Golden Age,” according to its schedule. A spokeswoman said the players were about 30 seconds from the last measures of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” from Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun,” the encore to the concert when Little collapsed and was carried backstage by her fellow bassists. She never regained consciousness.

“She seemed to be made of bass resin and barbed wire. She was unstoppable,” bassist Michael Kurth, who was playing next to Little when she collapsed, told The Washington Post on Sunday night.

Kurth, 44, added that “I honestly thought I was going to retire before she did, honestly.”

“What an amazing way to go,” added Amanda Turner in a post on the ASO website.

The symphony did not provide a cause of death. Little had not been feeling well. She’s been undergoing chemotherapy for multiple myeloma, had missed the orchestra’s April concert in Carnegie Hall in New York, and told Russell Williamson, the ASO’s senior orchestra manager, during intermission at Saturday night’s concert that she felt weak and woozy. That night, violinist Ellie Kosek asked Little to call when she got home safely, which she did.

Little was not a physically imposing figure. She weighed 98 pounds and had battled through, in addition to the myeloma, a broken shoulder, elbow and pelvis in recent years. Last August, she fell and cracked her vertebra, leaving her unable to play.

But in February, after months of rehabilitation, Little took to the stage and passed the record set by Frances Darger, the Utah Symphony violinist who had retired in 2012 after 70 years of playing. Little took pride in her feat.

“I’d thumb through the Guinness book and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat?’” Little told The Post in February. “A lot of people do crazy things like sitting on a flagpole for three days. I just kept on. It was just me and the lady in Utah. So finally, I said, ‘I’m going to do this.’”

Though frail and injury-prone, the prospect of setting the record seemed to have helped keep her going, albeit not for every ASO concert. “I was competing with this woman out in Utah, who played 70 years, 69 of them with the Utah Symphony,” she told Atlanta Magazine. “When I heard she was retiring, I said, ‘I’m going for it.’”

“Seventy-one years ago,” Little told The Post during the intermission after a five-minute-long standing ovation earlier this year. “It’s hard to remember when I wasn’t here.”

By then, she had already said she would retire at the end of the season. Little, a widow with no children, planned to spend time at her house in North Carolina. Truth is, she hated the idea of walking away.

“She wanted to play,” Williamson said. “She certainly could have afforded to retire years and years ago. But this is what she did. This was her family.”

Little did not set out to play the bass when she first took an interest in music during the Great Depression. She wanted to be a ballerina, she recalled in an interview with Atlanta Magazine.

I always loved music from the time I was a kid. My aunt had a dancing school in Atlanta, and my mother was the piano accompanist. She played by ear; she could just sit down and play everything. I started dancing, and I wanted to be a ballerina, but to be a ballerina, you need to have these nice feet, and mine just weren’t right. So my dreams were shattered there. But I still loved music, and I taught myself to play the piano on my next-door neighbor’s piano. This was during the Depression, and we didn’t own one, even though my mother was a pianist.

Later, at Girls High School in Grant Park, I wanted to join the glee club, and I found out that freshmen had to take a musical aptitude test….I took the test along with all the other freshmen, and about a week later, I was called up to the orchestra room. I had scored really well, in the top percent of all the students. The orchestra leader asked me what instrument I played, and I told her I didn’t really play an instrument, I just wanted to join the glee club. She was shocked. She told me, you must play an instrument! You’ve obviously got the ear for it, and the rhythm for it.

She asked what I’d like to play, and I named a few small instruments like the clarinet and the violin. She said, “Actually, we really need bass players.” I was five-foot-three and weighed all of 98 pounds at the time, but she asked me to try it. She gave me lessons, and within a month, I was hooked. I loved it. It was awfully difficult to push those heavy strings down, and to carry the instrument around, but I just loved it.

According to her profile on the website of the American Federation of Musicians, “She struggled at first to hear the lowest pitches and could barely press down the thick E string — not to mention, even just carrying the bass around was no easy task. ‘I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be a challenge!’ she says. ‘But I was back for the next lesson, and the next, and the next.’ After just a couple months of private lessons, Little was ready to join the orchestra — and not only did she join, but she was quickly appointed principal bass.”

While playing in the symphony, she met the man who would become her husband, Warren Little, who played the flute. Their first date was a performance by the legendary violinist David Oistrakh.

“’I must say that when I met Warren, I was very impressed that he played a small instrument,’” she commented in the profile, “‘so he could carry my bass around!’” He retired in 1992 and died in 2002.

There was no Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at that time. But there was an Atlanta Youth Symphony, for which she auditioned and joined in 1945. Three years later, that youth symphony became the Atlanta Symphony.

“It’s just mind-boggling,” Timothy Cobb, the principal bassist with the New York Philharmonic, told The Post in February. “It takes a tremendous amount of physical power, frankly, and just brute force to play in a big orchestra. I have had friends who have made it into their 70s but to be pumping it out in the orchestra is really something.”

Little took a fall last August, cracked a vertebra and was so weak and in such pain she could only practice for minutes at a time during her recovery. She was taking prescribed steroid pills to help her through performances.

Little, according to the ASO, played under all four of the orchestra’s music directors, as well as guest conductors including Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Pierre Montez, Leopold Stokowski, John Barbirolli and James Levine.

“To me, it seems like more than the end of an era,” Kurth said. “She outlasted every era of this orchestra. She outlasted three music directors. The next, most longest tenured member was here I think twenty years less than she was. There are no words to describe how remarkable she was. You think of superlatives and you just run out.”

There was great sadness among orchestra members Sunday night. There was also a sense that there was a poetic beauty to the timing of Little’s death, playing her bass during a performance of a classic from the “Great American Songbook.”

“Hollywood could not have scripted it better,” said Paul Murphy, the orchestra’s associate principal viola.

“For her to go out at the end of a concert, the golden age of Broadway, and it was during the encore,” said Williamson. “The words are ‘let’s go on with the show.’”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/16/what-an-amazing-way-to-go-bassist-jane-little-worlds-longest-serving-orchestra-musician-dead-at-87-after-collapsing-while-performing/?tid=pm_national_pop_b

World’s oldest person dies in New York at age 116

On By A.P.In death, World RecordsLeave a comment

The death of 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones in New York City on Thursday leaves just one person on Earth who was alive in the 1800s.

Born about a month before 1900 began and when England’s Queen Victoria was still on the throne, Emma Morano is now the oldest living person. Incredibly, she still lives on her own in northern Italy.

On Friday, she was happy to hear the title had passed to her, one of her relatives told London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. “She was told this morning and she said ‘My word, I’m as old as the hills,’ but she was very pleased,” Rosi Santoni said.

Morano was not able to come to the phone, the Telegraph reported – she is almost completely deaf. When the Telegraph reporter called she was eating a lunch of semolina with a boiled egg. She eats a raw egg each day, ever since a doctor’s recommendation when she was diagnosed with anemia at the age of 20.

Here is her story:

Name: Emma Morano
Country of residence: Italy
Birthday: Nov. 29, 1899

Morano was the first of eight children, all of whom have since died. One sister lived to be 102. In 1926, she married and in 1937 her only child was born, but died at a few months old. In 1938, she separated from her husband, Giovanni Martinuzzi, but never divorced. Until 1954, she was a worker at a jute factory in her town before working in the kitchen of a boarding school. She retired at 75.

When asked about the secret of her longevity by the La Stampa newspaper in 2015, she first mentioned her daily glass of homemade brandy.

But Morano mostly cites her eating habits for helped her live so long. “For breakfast I eat biscuits with milk or water,” she said. “Then during the day I eat two eggs — one raw and one cooked — just like the doctor recommended when I was 20 years old. For lunch I’ll eat pasta and minced meat then for dinner, I’ll have just a glass of milk.”

Sleep is another important factor in her longevity, she told the newspaper. Morano goes to bed before 7 every night and wakes up before 6 a.m.

Her physician, Dr. Carlo Bava, is convinced there’s a genetic component as well.

“From a strictly medical and scientific point of view, she can be considered a phenomenon,” he told the Associated Press, noting that Morano takes no medication and has been in stable, good health for years.

Italy is known for its centenarians — many of whom live in Sardinia — and gerontologists at the University of Milan are studying Morano, along with a handful of Italians over age 105, to try to figure out why they live so long.

“Emma seems to go against everything that could be considered the guidelines for correct nutrition: She has always eaten what she wants, with a diet that is absolutely repetitive,” Bava said. “For years, she has eaten the same thing every day, not much vegetables or fruit. But she’s gotten this far.”

When the AP visited in 2015, Morano was in feisty spirits, displaying the sharp wit and fine voice that she says used to stop men in their tracks.

“I sang in my house, and people on the road stopped to hear me singing. And then they had to run because they were late and should go to work,” she recalled, before breaking into a round of the 1930s Italian love song Parlami d’amore Mariu.

“Ahh, I don’t have my voice anymore,” she lamented at the end.

But even though her movements now are limited, according to the AP — she gets out of bed and into her armchair and back again, her eyesight is bad and hearing weak — she does seem to walk around at night.

“Her niece and I leave some biscuits and chocolates out at night in the kitchen. And in the morning they’re gone, which means someone has gotten up during the night and eaten them,” Bava said.

On her 116th birthday last year Morano received a congratulatory telegram from Sergio Mattarella, the president of Italy, according to the Telegraph, and a signed parchment of blessing from Pope Francis, which is now framed and hangs on the wall of her apartment.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/05/13/shes-only-person-left-born-1800s/84321322/

Wife crashes her own funeral, horrifying her husband, who had paid to have her killed

On By A.P.In Crime, deathLeave a comment

By Sarah Kaplan

Noela Rukundo sat in a car outside her home in Melbourne, Australia, watching as the last few mourners filed out. They were leaving a funeral — her funeral.

Finally, she spotted the man she’d been waiting for. She stepped out of her car, and her husband put his hands on his head in horror.

“Is it my eyes?” she recalled him saying. “Is it a ghost?”

“Surprise! I’m still alive!” she replied.

Far from being elated, the man looked terrified. Five days earlier, he had ordered a team of hit men to kill Rukundo, his partner of 10 years. And they did — well, they told him they did. They even got him to pay an extra few thousand dollars for carrying out the crime.

Now here was his wife, standing before him. In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Rukundo recalled how he touched her shoulder to find it unnervingly solid. He jumped. Then he started screaming.

“I’m sorry for everything,” he wailed.

But it was far too late for apologies; Rukundo called the police. The husband, Balenga Kalala, ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison for incitement to murder.

The happy ending — or as happy as can be expected to a saga in which a man tries to have his wife killed — was made possible by three unusually principled hit men, a helpful pastor and one incredibly gutsy woman: Rukundo.

Here is how she pulled it off.

Rukundo’s ordeal began almost exactly a year ago, when she flew from her home in Melbourne with her husband, Kalala, to attend a funeral in her native Burundi. Her stepmother had died, and the service left her saddened and stressed. She retreated to her hotel room in Bujumbura, the capital, early in the evening; despondent after the events of the day, she lay down in bed. Then her husband called.

“He told me to go outside for fresh air,” she told the BBC.

But the minute Rukundo stepped out of her hotel, a man charged forward, pointing a gun right at her.

“Don’t scream,” she recalled him saying. “If you start screaming, I will shoot you. They’re going to catch me, but you? You will already be dead.”

Rukundo, terrified, did as she was told. She was ushered into a car and blindfolded so she couldn’t see where she was being taken. After 30 or 40 minutes, the car came to a stop, and Rukundo was pushed into a building and tied to a chair.

She could hear male voices, she told the ABC. One asked her, “You woman, what did you do for this man to pay us to kill you?”

“What are you talking about?” Rukundo demanded.

“Balenga sent us to kill you.”

They were lying. She told them so. And they laughed.

“You’re a fool,” they told her.

There was the sound of a dial tone, and a male voice coming through a speakerphone. It was her husband’s voice.

“Kill her,” he said.

And Rukundo fainted.

Rukundo had met her husband 11 years earlier, right after she arrived in Australia from Burundi, according to the BBC. He was a recent refugee from Congo, and they had the same social worker at the resettlement agency that helped them get on their feet. Since Kalala already knew English, their social worker often recruited him to translate for Rukundo, who spoke Swahili.

They fell in love, moved in together in the Melbourne suburb of Kings Park, and had three children (Rukundo also had five kids from a previous relationship). She learned more about her husband’s past — he had fled a rebel army that had ransacked his village, killing his wife and young son. She also learned more about his character.

“I knew he was a violent man,” Rukundo told the BBC. “But I didn’t believe he can kill me.”

But, it appeared, he could.

Rukundo came to in the strange building somewhere near Bujumbura. The kidnappers were still there, she told the ABC.

They weren’t going to kill her, the men then explained — they didn’t believe in killing women, and they knew her brother. But they would keep her husband’s money and tell him that she was dead. After two days, they set her free on the side of a road, but not before giving her a cellphone, recordings of their phone conversations with Kalala, and receipts for the $7,000 in Australian dollars they allegedly received in payment, according to Australia’s The Age newspaper.

“We just want you to go back, to tell other stupid women like you what happened,” Rukundo said she was told before the gang members drove away.

Shaken, but alive and doggedly determined, Rukundo began plotting her next move. She sought help from the Kenyan and Belgian embassies to return to Australia, according to The Age. Then she called the pastor of her church in Melbourne, she told the BBC, and explained to him what had happened. Without alerting Kalala, the pastor helped her get back home to her neighborhood near Melbourne.

Meanwhile, her husband had told everyone she had died in a tragic accident and the entire community mourned her at her funeral at the family home. On the night of Feb. 22, 2015, just as the widower Kalala waved goodbye to neighbors who had come to comfort him, Rukundo approached him, the very man whose voice she’d heard over the phone five days earlier, ordering that she be killed.

“I felt like somebody who had risen again,” she told the BBC.

Though Kalala initially denied all involvement, Rukundo got him to confess to the crime during a phone conversation that was secretly recorded by police, according to The Age.

“Sometimes Devil can come into someone, to do something, but after they do it they start thinking, ‘Why I did that thing?’ later,” he said, as he begged her to forgive him.

Kalala eventually pleaded guilty to the scheme. He was sentenced to nine years in prison by a judge in Melbourne.

“Had Ms. Rukundo’s kidnappers completed the job, eight children would have lost their mother,” Chief Justice Marilyn Warren said, according to the ABC. “It was premeditated and motivated by unfounded jealousy, anger and a desire to punish Ms. Rukundo.”

Rukundo said that Kalala tried to kill her because he thought she was going to leave him for another man — an accusation she denies.

But her trials are not yet over. Rukundo told the ABC she’s gotten backlash from Melbourne’s Congolese community for reporting Kalala to the police. Someone left threatening messages for her, and she returned home one day to find her back door broken. She now has eight children to raise alone and has asked the Department of Human Services to help her find a new place to live.

And lying in bed at night, Kalala’s voice still comes to her: “Kill her, kill her,” she told the BBC. “Every night, I see what was happening in those two days with the kidnappers.”

Despite all that, “I will stand up like a strong woman,” she said. “My situation, my past life? That is gone. I’m starting a new life now.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/05/wife-crashes-her-own-funeral-horrifying-her-husband-who-had-paid-have-her-killed/

More people have died from selfies than from shark attacks this year

On By A.P.In Accidents, deathLeave a comment

Over the past nine months, deaths have been reported from being electrocuted, falling from bridges, and running with bulls—all while attempting to capture an outrageous selfie. Now, following the most recent news of a Japanese tourist who fell to his death after trying to pose for a picture at the Taj Mahal’s Royal Gate in India, media website Mashable investigated just how many accidents like this have taken place over the last year, and compared that to the number of shark-related deaths.

Their findings: since the beginning of the year, 12 people have died while attempting to take selfies, while only eight people died following a shark attack. Mashable also pointed out that only four of the selfie fatalities occurred from falling; others died after being struck by trains, for example, and a Texas teenager recently died from accidentally shooting himself while posing for a selfie with a gun.

Back in January, two men were killed in Russia after posing for a selfie with a hand grenade, according to Al Jazeera, prompting the Russian police to launch a “safe selfie” campaign. And other tourist attractions—including Disneyland!—have banned selfies or selfie-sticks entirely, citing safety concerns. Selfie-related injuries and deaths even has its own Wikipedia page.

http://news.health.com/2015/09/24/selfie-shark-attack-deaths-mashable/

Medieval ‘vampire skull’

On By A.P.In archeology, death, vampireLeave a comment


In a mass grave dating to the 1500s on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, this skull of a woman was found with a brick shoved in its mouth. Researchers think gravediggers came upon the skeleton and feared she was a vampire.

by Heather Whipps

The remains of a medieval “vampire” have been discovered among the corpses of 16th century plague victims in Venice, according to an Italian archaeologist who led the dig.

The body of the woman was found in a mass grave on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo. Suspecting that she might be a vampire, a common folk belief at the time, gravediggers shoved a rock into her skull to prevent her from chewing through her shroud and infecting others with the plague, said anthropologist Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence.

In the absence of medical science, vampires were just one of many possible contemporary explanations for the spread of the Venetian plague in 1576, which ran rampant through the city and ultimately killed up to 50,000 people, some officials estimate.

Italy’s famous canal city wasn’t really overrun with medieval Draculas, however.

With hundreds of Venetians dying every day, gravediggers likely just misinterpreted the corpses they saw at varying levels of decomposition while reopening fresh mass graves, said Borrini.

The “stages which reduce the corpse to a skeleton were poorly known because they happen in the grave,” Borrini told LiveScience. “Graves were usually reopened after years, when the body had completely turned into a skeleton.”

Death exposed

Vampire superstition was already part of European culture by the time the bubonic plague reappeared on the continent in sporadic outbreaks throughout the late 1500s. The classic folkloric image of the undead, bloodsucking vampire likely originated in Eastern Europe and spread westwards, historians say, blending and morphing with local beliefs as it went.

Ignorance about the natural stages of decomposition probably fed the original vampire myths, Borrini said, noting that historical documentation of vampires harped on the oddly life-like appearance of recently buried bodies.

“There are some recurring aspects in vampire exhumation reports (usually written in the 17th and 18th century by church-goers and well-educated men, and sometimes even by scientists): uncorrupted corpse, pliable limbs, smooth and tensed skin, renewed beard and nails,” Borrini said. At the time “death was linked to a cold and stiff corpse, or to a blanched skeleton (dry bones),” he said, so evidence of anything to the contrary was considered worrisome when the rare body was exhumed for examination.

In the middle of the plague in Venice, however, victims were being dumped into mass graves such as the one on Lazzaretto Nuovo very regularly, exposing bodies at every gruesome stage of decay.

Frightened gravediggers

A phenomenon that occurs early on in the process of decomposition – abdominal bloating – is what likely concerned the Venetian gravediggers, Borrini said. When humans die, the body releases a myriad of bacterial gases that cause a corpse to bloat with fluid, usually just a few days after death in the absence of any kind of preservation or protection from coffins.

“During this phase, the decay of the gastrointestinal tract contents and lining create a dark fluid called ‘purge fluid’; it can flow freely from the nose and mouth…and it could easily be confused with the blood sucked by the vampire,” said Borrini.

If the “vampire” woman was emitting blood from her mouth, the fluid likely moistened her burial shroud causing it to sink into her jaw cavity and be dissolved by the fluids, Borrini said, making it appear as though she was trying to bite through her shroud. When discovered in that state, a stone was jammed into her mouth as a kind of exorcism to prevent her from potentially spreading the disease further, the researchers think.

Medieval skeletons have been found in a similar state in other parts of Europe, Borrini said.

Bad times = superstition

It is difficult to decipher whether the brick-in-mouth tactic discovered in Venice was truly based on a deep fear of vampires or was merely extra precaution in troubled times, Borrini acknowledged.

“From a forensic point of view, we can accept the reports about the ‘vampire corpses’ as real descriptions, but we can also realize why those legends spread especially during plagues,” Borrini said. The mere fact that tombs and mass graves were reopened so frequently during pandemics to bury new victims of a disease, exposing partially decomposed bodies, only increased “dread and superstition among people who were already suffering pestilence and massive death,” he said.

Borrini presented his findings to a recent meeting of the American Association of Forensic Sciences, along with forensic orthodontist Emilio Nuzzolese.

http://www.livescience.com/3374-medieval-vampire-skull.html

Couple married 75 years die in each other’s arms

On By A.P.In death, loveLeave a comment

A California couple, married for three-quarters of a century, took their “til death do us part” vow seriously, passing away in each other’s arms last month.

Jeanette and Alexander Toczko were born in 1919, met when they were just 8 years old and fell in love immediately, their children told KGTV in San Diego.

The couple married in 1940 and moved to San Diego in 1970, according to their daughter, Aimee Toczko-Cushman. She told KGTV that her parents couldn’t bear the thought of being apart and said they hoped to one day die in their bed, holding hands.

“Their hearts beat as one from as long as I can remember,” Toczko-Cushman said.

Until recently Alexander, 95, was healthy and playing golf every day, their son, Richard Toczko, told the news station.

“He must have fallen. He broke his hip,” Toczko said. He told KGTV that his father never fully recovered and his health began fading quickly.

Unwilling to keep their parents apart, they had hospice bring Alexander Toczko’s bed into the couple’s home and place it beside his wife.

On June 17, he passed away.

“And he died in her arms, which is exactly what he wanted,” Toczko-Cushman told KGTV. “I went in there and told my mother he was gone; she hugged him and she said, ‘See this is what you wanted. You died in my arms, and I love you. I love you, wait for me, I’ll be there soon.’ ”

Within 24 hours, she passed away, holding her husband’s hand.

The couple was buried on June 29.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/2015/07/03/couple-dies-in-each-others-arms/29662581/

Antechinus mate until the point of death

On By A.P.In antechinus, Australia, death, sexLeave a comment

The antechinus is a small, shrewlike marsupial indigenous to Australia and New Guinea. These animals are best known for their odd practice of having sex until it kills them, but what else does their mating behavior entail?

There are currently 15 known species of antechinus (animals in the Antechinus genus) living in the forests and woodlands of Australia and New Guinea, five of which were discovered since 2012, said Andrew Baker, a mammal ecologist at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia and leader of the group that made the discoveries.

Generally speaking, antechinus are loners that stick to themselves until the breeding season nears.

Antechinus breed during the Australian winter, when their food — small vertebrates and invertebrates — is scarce. This timing ensures their babies will be born in the spring, when food is bountiful.

Interestingly, males stop producing sperm before the mating season begins.

It’s not clear how sexually mature males and females find mates, but Baker suspects scent, and pheromones, are involved. And as with many other species, males likely roam longer and wider in search of sex, he said.

Baker also suspects that male-male fighting is probably common among antechinuses. “They have surging testosterone levels that tend to make them very aggressive,” Baker said.

Antechinus don’t bother wasting time with wooing mates or engaging in courtship rituals. Instead, they prefer to get down to business immediately.

In fact, a male has no issue with resorting to ambush mating, during which he will catch hold of a female from behind and mate with her while grabbing the scruff of her neck with his forepaws and biting her neck.

It’s not uncommon to find females with tufts of fur around the neck area missing, Baker said, adding that females are fine with the rough ambush as long as they have an opportunity to mate with other males afterward.

Both male and female antechinus are promiscuous, and will try to mate with numerous partners throughout the breeding period. However, to increase their chances of fathering offspring, males will mate with females for as long as possible.

Scientists have documented antechinus copulation events lasting for 10, 12 and even 14 hours. “That’s intermittent thrusting between just one male and one female,” Baker said. When not thrusting, the male will guard the female, keeping her from getting away (and looking for other mates) and other males from getting to her.

Anetchinus will mate continuously for the entire breeding period, which lasts, on average, about two weeks. This activity takes a toll on the male’s body.

The sustained high levels of testosterone stop the production of cortisol from being turned off, allowing males to burn more sugar, Baker said. “It frees them from the need to feed as often, but the downside is that cortisol in sustained levels is poisonous,” he said.

Over time, the males will start to behave erratically, bleed internally, lose fur, develop sores and ulcers that don’t heal, become blind, and develop high parasite loads as their immune system shuts down. “They are like a blank slate for every parasite and disease going around,” Baker said.

It’s rare for a male to survive the breeding period.

Females, on the other hand, may die of exhaustion after weaning their litter, which have multiple paternities. Less than 50 percent of females make it to their second breeding season, and only a very small percentage make it to their third, Baker said.

http://www.livescience.com/51371-animal-sex-antechinus.html

Map of the most unusual way that people die in each of the United States

On By A.P.In CDC, deathLeave a comment

Every one of us will die someday, but not necessarily in an interesting way. Courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, here’s a map you can use to figure out just what kind of unusual causes of death occur in your state.

The CDC recently released an infographic of the “most distinctive causes of death” in each of the 50 states. The peer-reviewed paper, which was published on the CDC’s website, details which cause of death in each state sticks out when compared to the national average. The authors write that the results, which used data from 2000 to 2010, were intended to give a “more nuanced view of mortality variation” across the country.

Lenin’s Body Improves with Age

On By A.P.In death, Uncategorized1 Comment

Russian scientists have developed experimental embalming methods to maintain the look, feel and flexibility of the Soviet Union’s founder’s body, which is 145 years old.

For thousands of years humans have used embalming methods to preserve dead bodies. But nothing compares with Russia’s 90-year-old experiment to preserve the body of Vladimir Lenin, communist revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union. Generations of Russian scientists have spent almost a century fine-tuning preservation techniques that have maintained the look, feel and flexibility of Lenin’s body. This year Russian officials closed the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square so that scientists could prepare the body for public display again in time for the Soviet leader’s 145th birthday anniversary today.

The job of maintaining Lenin’s corpse belongs to an institute known in post-Soviet times as the Center for Scientific Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies in Moscow. A core group of five to six anatomists, biochemists and surgeons, known as the “Mausoleum group,” have primary responsibility for maintaining Lenin’s remains. (They also help maintain the preserved bodies of three other national leaders: the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and the North Korean father–son duo of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, respectively.) The Russian methods focus on preserving the body’s physical form—its look, shape, weight, color, limb flexibility and suppleness—but not necessarily its original biological matter. In the process they have created a “quasibiological” science that differs from other embalming methods. “They have to substitute occasional parts of skin and flesh with plastics and other materials, so in terms of the original biological matter the body is less and less of what it used to be,” says Alexei Yurchak, professor of social anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. “That makes it dramatically different from everything in the past, such as mummification, where the focus was on preserving the original matter while the form of the body changes,” he adds.

Yurchak has been writing a book describing the history of Lenin’s body, the history of the science that arose around it, and the political role that the body and science have played in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Much of his material comes from original interviews with Russian researchers working at the “Lenin Lab” (Yurchak’s nickname for the institute). He has already published a paper on this project in the journal Representations, and previously published a book, “Everything Was Forever, until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation.”

When Lenin died in January 1924, most Soviet leaders opposed the idea of preserving his body beyond a temporary period of public display. Many envisioned a burial in a closed tomb on Moscow’s Red Square. But the cold winter kept Lenin’s publicly displayed corpse in fair condition for almost two months as huge crowds waited to pay their respects. That also gave the leaders time to reconsider the idea of preserving the body for a longer period. To avoid any association of Lenin’s remains with religious relics, they publicized the fact that Soviet science and researchers were responsible for preserving and maintaining it.

The leaders eventually agreed to try an experimental embalming technique developed by anatomist Vladimir Vorobiev and biochemist Boris Zbarsky. The first embalming experiment lasted from late March to late July in 1924. Such an effort was complicated by the fact that the physician who carried out Lenin’s autopsy had already cut the body’s major arteries and other blood vessels. An intact circulatory system could have helped deliver embalming fluids throughout the body.

Lenin Lab researchers eventually developed microinjection techniques that used single needles to deliver embalming fluids to certain bodily parts, preferentially places where cuts or scars from past treatments already existed, Yurchak says. They also created a double-layered rubber suit to keep a thin layer of embalming fluid covering Lenin’s body during public display; a regular suit of clothes fits over the rubber suit. The body gets reembalmed once every other year; a process that involves submerging the body in separate solutions of glycerol solution baths, formaldehyde, potassium acetate, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, acetic acid solution and acetic sodium. Each session takes about one and a half months.

Such painstaking maintenance goes above and beyond common embalming methods used to preserve bodies for funerals and medical education. “Most embalming uses a mix of formaldehyde and alcohol or water, which is called formalin,” says Sue Black, director of the Center for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee in Scotland. “This has good preservation qualities and has good antifungal properties. Bodies embalmed in this way have a shelf life of tens of years.”

Both conventional embalmers and the Lenin Lab face several common challenges, Black explains. Bodies must be kept from drying out so that they don’t mummify. Heavy use of formalin can also turn human tissue the color of “canned tuna fish,” which is why funeral embalmers use colorants in their embalming fluids to make the recently deceased look a healthy pink. Funeral embalmers also apply cosmetics for temporary funeral displays prior to burial.

But bodies preserved in formalin become discolored, stiff and fragile over the long run. A modern alternative called the Thiel soft-fix method combines a different mix of liquids—including nitrate salts—to maintain the natural color, feel and flexibility of the tissues. Such a method is useful for medical education and training. “Plastination,” a technique popularized by Body Worlds exhibits around the world, replaces all the liquid in bodies with a polymer to transform bodies into hard, static sculptures frozen in time.

Although such modern approaches were not available to the Lenin Lab, a technique such as plastination would not have been acceptable in any case, because it creates unnatural stiffness in preserved bodies. To maintain the precise condition of Lenin’s body, the staff must perform regular maintenance on the corpse and sometimes even replace parts with an excruciating attention to detail. Artificial eyelashes have taken the place of Lenin’s original eyelashes, which were damaged during the initial embalming procedures. The lab had to deal with mold and wrinkles on certain parts of Lenin’s body, especially in the early years. Researchers developed artificial skin patches when a piece of skin on Lenin’s foot went missing in 1945. They resculpted Lenin’s nose, face and other parts of the body to restore them to their original feel and appearance. A moldable material made of paraffin, glycerin and carotene has replaced much of the skin fat to maintain the original “landscape” of the skin.

At the height of activity from the 1950s to the 1980s, the lab employed up to 200 people who did research on subjects ranging from the aging of skin cells to skin transplantation methods, Yurchak says. The institute temporarily lost government funding in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, but survived on private contributions until government money returned at more modest levels.

During his book research, Yurchak discovered that the Lenin Lab’s efforts have even led to spinoff medical applications. One technique influenced Russian development of special equipment used to keeping the blood flowing through donor kidneys during transplantation. In another case veteran lab researcher Yuri Lopukhin and several colleagues developed a “noninvasive three-drop test” to measure cholesterol in skin tissue in the late 1980s. The Russian invention eventually received a patent in 2002 and was commercialized by the Canadian company PreVu as “the world’s first and only noninvasive skin cholesterol test” for patient home care. That’s one legacy of Lenin that neither the Soviets nor the West could have imagined a century ago.

6 Tools to Help Predict Your Life Expectancy

On By A.P.In ageing, aging, death1 Comment

There’s always the Magic 8 Ball, but when it comes to determining life expectancy, some people want a little more scientific help. Thankfully, there are some useful tests and calculators to help us figure out how many more years we have left — at least until the Fountain of Youth is available in pill form. With that in mind, here are six ways to help predict whether you should keep on working and paying the mortgage or just blow it all on a big beach vacation.

Treadmill test
Want to know if you’ll survive the decade? Hop on a treadmill. Johns Hopkins researchers analyzed more than 58,000 stress tests and concluded that the results of a treadmill test can predict survival over the next 10 years. They came up with a formula, called the FIT Treadmill Score, which helps use fitness to predict mortality.

“The notion that being in good physical shape portends lower death risk is by no means new, but we wanted to quantify that risk precisely by age, gender and fitness level, and do so with an elegantly simple equation that requires no additional fancy testing beyond the standard stress test,” says lead investigator Haitham Ahmed, M.D. M.P.H., a cardiology fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

In addition to age and gender, the formula factors in your ability to tolerate physical exertion — measured in “metabolic equivalents” or METs. Slow walking equals two METs, while running equals eight.

Researchers used the most common treadmill test, called the Bruce Protocol. The test utilizes three-minute segments, starting at 1.7 mph and a 10 percent grade, which slowly increase in speed and grade.

Researchers analyzed information on the thousands of people ages 18 to 96 who took the treadmill test. They tracked down how many of them died for whatever reason over the next decade. They found that fitness level, as measured by METs and peak heart rate reached during exercise, were the best predictors of death and survival, even after accounting for important variables such as diabetes and family history of premature death.

Sitting test
You don’t need special equipment for this adult version of crisscross applesauce that uses flexibility, balance and strength to measure life expectancy. Brazilian physician Claudio Gil Araujo created the test when he noticed many of his older patients had trouble picking things up off the floor or getting out of a chair.

To try, start by standing upright in the middle of a room. Without using your arms or hands for balance, carefully squat into a cross-legged sitting position. Once you’re settled, stand up from the sitting position — again, without using your arms for help.

You can earn up to 10 points for this maneuver. You get five points for sitting, five for standing, and you subtract a point each time you use an arm or knee for leverage or 1/2 point any time you lose your balance or the movement gets clumsy.

The test seems fairly simple, but Araujo found that it was an accurate predictor of life expectancy. He tested it on more than 2,000 of his patients age 51 to 80, and found that those who scored fewer than eight points were twice as likely to die within the next six years. Those who scored three points or even lower were five times more likely to die within the same time frame.

Araujo didn’t have anyone under 50 try the test, so the results won’t mean the same if you’re younger. As MNN’s Bryan Nelson writes, “If you’re younger than 50 and have trouble with the test, it ought to be a wake-up call. The good news is that the younger you are, the more time you have to get into better shape.”

Test your telomeres

A simple test may help determine your “biological age” by measuring the length of your telomeres. Telomeres are protective sections of DNA located at the end of your chromosomes. They’re sometimes compared to the plastic tips of shoelaces that keep the laces from fraying.

Each time a cell replicates, the telomeres become shorter. Some researchers believe that lifespan can be roughly predicted based upon how long your telomeres are. Shorter telomeres hint at a shorter lifespan for cells. Longer telomeres may mean you have more cell replications left.

Originally offered a few years ago only as an expensive — and relatively controversial — blood test in Britain, telomere testing in now available all over the world, and some companies even test using saliva. The results tell you where your telomere lengths fall in relation to other participants your age.

The link between genetics and longevity has been so embraced that testing companies have since been founded by respected scientists and researchers including Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn of UC San Francisco and George Church, director of Harvard University’s Molecular Technology Group.

The increase in the number of at-home tests is getting the attention of concerned federal regulators and other researchers who question whether the science should stay in the lab.

“It is worth doing. It does tell us something. It is the best measure we have” of cellular aging, aging-researcher and Genescient CEO Bryant Villeponteau told the San Jose Mercury News. But testing still belongs in a research setting, he said, not used as a personal diagnostic tool.

As more people take them, he said, “I think the tests will get better, with more potential to learn something.”

Grip strength

Do you have an iron handshake or a limp fish grasp? Your grip strength can be an indicator of your longevity.

Recent research has shown a link between grip strength and your biological age. Hand-grip strength typically decreases as you age, although many studies have shown links between stronger grip strength and increased mortality.

You can keep your grip strong by doing regular hand exercises such as slowly squeezing and holding a tennis or foam ball, then repeating several more times.

Take a sniff

Does every little smell bug you? People who wear too much perfume? Grilled fish in the kitchen? A sensitive sense of smell is good news for your lifespan.

In a study last fall, University of Chicago researchers asked more than 3,000 people to identify five different scents. The found that 39 percent of the study subjects who failed the smelling test died within five years, compared to 19 percent of those with moderate smell loss and just 10 percent of those with a healthy sense of smell.

“We think loss of the sense of smell is like the canary in the coal mine,” said the study’s lead author Jayant M. Pinto, M.D., an associate professor of surgery at the University of Chicago who specializes in the genetics and treatment of olfactory and sinus disease. “It doesn’t directly cause death, but it’s a harbinger, an early warning that something has gone badly wrong, that damage has been done. Our findings could provide a useful clinical test, a quick and inexpensive way to identify patients most at risk.”

Life expectancy calculator

There are many online calculators that can serve up you estimated last birthday — thanks to some fancy algorithms. Some only take into account a few simple factors such as your age, height and weight. The better ones consider a range of variables including family health history, diet and exercise practices, marital and education status, smoking, drinking and sex habits, and even where you live.

Enter as much data as you can into an online form, like this one from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, and click to get your results: http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality/perl/CalcForm.html

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/6-tools-to-help-predict-how-long-youll-live#ixzz3WScKjbUW