The first scientific team to sequence the genomes of 100 one-hundred year olds wins $10 million. It’s the latest offering from the science competition organization, X Prize Foundation, a non-profit designed to spur science and technology by awarding big cash prizes for significant breakthroughs.

Their most famous and first prize was the Ansari X Prize which started the commercial race to space.

Now the foundation is challenging biologists to sequence the genetic code of 100 centenarians in an effort to learn something new about longevity. Is there a longevity gene or are these folks just doing the right combination of eating right and exercising to get the most out of their lives?

Studies of very healthy elderly people show that they don’t eat a vegetarian diet. They are often obese, smoke and drink and get little exercise. Those who study the healthy elderly find there is something inexplicable that prevents them from getting diseases like Alzheimer’s and they just don’t age like other people.

With more people living longer, the new X Prize genomics competition will shed some light on aging and to see if the secret to a long life is written in our DNA.

Dr. Thomas Perls, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Boston University is the director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world. He is thrilled that Archon Genomic X Prize is focusing on sequencing the genomes of 100 centenarians.

And he is helping the competition find the one-hundred-plus year olds, drawing from his own study which has a minimum age requirement of 105 to participate.

He says, “It’s very hard to get there without some genetic advantages.”

Noted biologist Craig Venter is co-chairing the Archon Genomics X Prize, which will be judged on accuracy, completeness and the speed and cost of sequencing.

He says, “We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness.” This X Prize is merely the first step in revealing the genetic secrets of a long life.

Irving Kahn, oldest living financial analyst

In 1978, he began his own firm, which now manages more than $700 million in assets. He adapts to the changing times and now communicates with friends and clients all over the world via the Internet. BBC News interviewed him about the 2008 financial crisis in 2008.

If you know people like Irving, send them to the Medco 100 over 100. That’s the search to find the 100 centenarians to have their genomes sequenced.

These people could hold the secrets to better health for us all, hidden within our own genetic code. This prize could also unleash the era of personalized medicine where health and disease treatment will vary based on a person’s DNA.

After the healthy centenarians have been selected the teams will race for the $10 million prize, which will be given to the first team that accurately sequences the whole genome of 100 subjects within 30 days for $1,000 or less per genome, at an error rate no greater than one per million base pairs (that’s 98% accuracy).

The human genome contains more than six billion pairs of nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA. Ultimately, the competition looks to usher in a new era of personalized medicine through sequencing the whole human genome to a level of fidelity never before measured.

Kahn, the oldest living money manager says, “I’m at the stage in life where I get a lot of pleasure out of finding a cheap stock.”

With the new twist on the genomics X Prize, science will begin taking stock of healthy elderly people and study their secret to a long and healthy life.

History of the Archon Genomics X Prize
The $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco was originally launched in
October 2006, its purse underwritten by a generous donation from Dr. Stewart and Marilyn
Blusson, challenging scientists and engineers to sequence 100 whole human genomes in 10
days or less for less than $10,000 per genome at an unprecedented rate of accuracy.
In the following years, sequencing technology progressed through multiple platforms, carving
out niche research markets, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Teams originally registered
to compete were not yet able to meet the requirements.

In 2010, Grant Campany, who has 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry, signed on
as Senior Director for the Archon Genomics X PRIZE. A new approach to the competition was
developed by Mr. Campany, X PRIZE Foundation leadership and the competition’s Scientific
Advisory Board, including Dr. Venter, X PRIZE Foundation Scientific Advisory Co-Chair, and
one of the first to sequence the human genome in 2000 and create the first cell with a synthetic
genome in 2010. Recognizing that no single technology was serving medical/clinical
requirements, the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco was revitalized to be more
inclusive, relevant and robust.

Pee pressure, beer bottle-humping beetles and a wasabi-flavored fire alarm were among the top prizes awarded at Harvard University’s 21st Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, a more laid back version of the Nobel Prize ceremony. Nobel Prize laureates present the Ig Nobels to scientists and philosophers who have made legitimate contributions toward the sillier side of science.

Top honors in literature went to a researcher who 15 years ago wrote a paper about procrastination. Waiting a ridiculous amount of time before honoring the man is indicative of the Ig Nobel prizes. His theory holds that even the best procrastinator can successfully execute a complex task if he believes that he is working on it to avoid an even greater task.

Stanford University philosophy professor John Perry says, “To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.”

A Japanese team decided that during an emergency people would much rather be awoken or alerted using a fire alarm that produces the horseradishy smell of wasabi rather than a blaring sound. They won the Ig Nobel Chemistry prize for determining the correct and patent-pending density for airborne wasabi, a feat fit for a sushi restaurateur.

A group from the beer-swilling nations of Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. stumbled upon a species of beetle that is convinced it can mate with beer bottles. And not just a particular brand either.

Male Jewel Beetle Mates with Stubbies

Another Ig Nobel prize went to an international team from Europe, the U.S. and Australia who tested the idea that people with an overwhelming need to urinate make decisions differently. During their full-blattered research they discovered that those in greatest need to relieve themselves actually exhibited the same level of clarity as a drunk person. One of the papers is titled “Inhibitory Spillover.” (PDF) Just don’t hold it and drive.

Finally, the Math prize went to a group of people predicting the Apocolypse, including Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end again on October 21, 2011). They won the prize “for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.”

The Nobel laureates who physically handed the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new winners:

Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986)
Rich Roberts (physiology or medicine, 1993)
Roy Glauber (physics, 2005)
Eric Maskin (economics, 2007)
Peter Diamond (economics, 2010)
Louis Ignarro, (physiology or medicine, 1998)

Cover Photo: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania and winner of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

A pioneering researcher was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Monday, three days after dying of pancreatic cancer without ever knowing he was about to be honored for his immune system work that he had used to prolong his own life.

Ralph Steinman, 1943-2011

Cell biologist Ralph Steinman died just three days before he won the coveted science prize. When the announcement was made this morning, the committee held an emergency meeting since Nobel Prizes are given to living scientists. But they decided to award the prize to Dr. Steinman despite his untimely death because the prize was made in good faith while he was still alive. Only the announcement followed his death.

He shares half of the prize with Bruce Beutler who holds joint appointments at University of Texas Southwestern and at University of California San Diego Scripps Research Institute and with Jules Hoffman, a French researcher who is also the form head of the French National Academy of Sciences.

The Canadian-born Steinman made his mark in 1973 when he discovered a new type of cell called the dendritic cell that has a unique ability to activate immune cells called T-cells.

Dendritic Cell, discovered by Nobel Prize winner Ralph Steinman

Both Drs. Beutler and Hoffman made their contributions in the late 1990s. First, Hoffman studied how fruit flies fight infection in 1996. Two years later Beutler discovered similar findings in mice, demonstrating that flies and mammals activate innate immunity in similar ways when attacked by germs.

Gerold Schuler, head of the department of dermatology at the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany and Steinman’s former post-doc, told The Scientist magazine that Steinman’s work is worthy of the Nobel Prize. He says Steinman’s advances, “are now crucial to understanding and fighting diseases, notably for designing better vaccines.”

Mouse geneticist Alexander Poltorak at Tufts University says the work that Beutler does is a rare example of exploratory research. While looking for cell receptors for a bacterial byproduct that produces septic shock, Beutler and his team observed that mice with a mutation in a particular gene were resistant to septic shock, a potentially fatal over-stimulation of the immune system.

That gene happened to be quite similar to the Toll gene which Hoffman had discovered in fruit flies a couple years before.

Poltorak, who was the lead author on Beutler’s groundbreaking 1998 Science paper says, “We didn’t have any hypothesis, and that’s the beauty of it.”

Since then, scientists have reported about a dozen discoveries of various Toll-like receptors in humans and mice, each of which recognizes certain types of microbial molecules.

This research is important because mutations in any of these receptors can increase the risk of infections or chronic inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

Starting in a couple of years you may be able to let out a big sigh of relief that medical diagnostics are moving away from needles and other invasive ways of figuring out what’s going on in the human body.

New technology that takes detailed readings from our breath are already being tested to determine whether an infection is viral, fungal or bacterial. Heart and cancer patients are also benefiting from such advances.

Even with the proliferation of medical technology in the last decade most patients still have to go to unwieldy machines or send tissue samples collected to labs with similar unwieldy machines. But lab-on-a-chip novel technologies are reducing the size of medical equipment while improving the ability to diagnose with greater accuracy.

In just a few years the advances will make most of the diagnostic equipment handheld. A doctor may have you blow into what looks like a large remote control and then all sorts of information can be gathered by the breath you exhale.

A new non-invasive disease detection facility, developed by the University of Leicester, has just been unveiled.

Students at Leicester University teamed up with researchers from emergency medicine, physics and astronomy, engineering, IT services – among others – to pool their knowledge and resources and create the Star Trek inspired unit.

The new facility is designed to detect the “sight, smell and feel” of disease without the use of invasive probes, blood tests, or other time-consuming and uncomfortable procedures.

Scientists from different disciplines worked closely with new technologies and figured out how to use them to examine patients. Their goal was to combine existing diagnostic tools to create a futuristic hospital bed where everything comes to the patient.

Leicester Royal Infirmary's Star Trek Inspired Sick Bay, courtesy of UKPA

The team from the Chemistry department focused on analyzing a patient’s breath.

Budding astronomers used imaging technology from the Mars rover to search for signs of disease on the surface of a patient’s body.

A third group peered inside the patient to measure blood flow and oxygenation using engineers and information technology monitors.

Chemistry Professor Paul Monks says that all these different projects were working independently when he and others had a eureka moment, realizing they could combine their efforts.

Dr. Tim Coats, who is a professor of medicine at the university and the head of the accident and emergency department at Leicester’s Royal Infirmary says the sci-fi inspired sick bay will be used to to diagnose a wide range of diseases from sepsis to bacterial infections and even some cancers.

He says, “Ultimately in the longer term we would aim to work towards something like the ‘tricorder’ device seen in futuristic science series like Star Trek. What we are developing so far is more like a first attempt at the medical bed in the sci-fi series.”

Already talking to commercial partners, the tricorder team is hoping to move this type of service into hospitals as well as have it available for emergency services in ambulances.

Leicester space scientist Mark Sims co-led the project. He says that years ago doctors would walk up and down the hallways and sniff out disease. Now there are tools to do the sniffing. This project is aiming to connect those technological advances more easily. He says, “Ten years from now it could be routine for diagnostic technology to be combined in this way.”

But for now, it’s another sample of science fiction breathing life into science fact.

Many doctors aren’t prescribing biotech company Dendreon’s experimental prostate cancer drug. The company’s stock shares dropped sharply after it announced it was firing workers and lowering its revenue forecast for the year. But the drug is hailed as a powerful, yet complicated way to fight cancer.

Two million men live with prostate cancer. Each year another 217,000 men are diagnosed and for 100,000 of them, it is in late stage and spreading. For them, there is little treatment hope. Or was until Provenge came along last year.

It works by teaching the cancer patient’s own immune system to attack tumors. Provenge has been lauded as an extremely innovative drug and Dendreon was hailed known as the darling of biotech companies.

Provenge is the first FDA approved prostate cancer immunotherapy treatment. Because prostate cancer cells and hide from or trick immune system T cells, Dendreon has created a unique personalized therapy that uses the patient’s own natural defenses combined with a unique protein to help immune cells find the cancer cells.

“For years scientists have been attempting to achieve an elusive goal — to stimulate the body’s immune system against cancer.” Dave Urdal, Chief Scientific Officer, Dendreon

Doctors seem to be getting sticker shock because Provenge costs $93,000 and until last month Medicare and Medicaid weren’t reimbursing for it.

According to information on the Provenge website, the drug vaccine teaches the immune system to attack cancer like it would any other non-lethal infection.

The company says it is moving into a big marketing push to get doctors in private practice to begin prescribing the expensive but effective drug. The median life expansion for men using Provenge is 4.1 months. It may not seem like a long survival time but many patients live much longer.

When the final mission of the U.S. space shuttle program blasted off flawlessly on Friday, over one million onlookers gathered in Florida for the launch. Tens of millions more watched on television. But what they couldn’t see amid the liftoff fire and smoke was all the science that was en route to the International Space Station.

Space Shuttle Atlantis has a lot of experiments, including one from a Hawaiian biotech company called Tissue Genesis Incorporated. The company has been working with NASA for ten years to study the effects of microgravity on stem cells regenerated from fat tissue.

The research can be applied to fight vascular disease, improve heart bypass surgery and orthopedics.

Houston’s Odyssey Space Research put two Apple iPhones on the last shuttle mission, not so they can phone home from space but to conduct experiments using mobile applications.

Astronauts will use an app called SpaceLab. The experiment app was built to test iPhone cameras and gyroscopes as well as test the effects of radiation on the devices.

Others hope that iPhones will be able to replace some of the expensive and faulty navigation equipment that generally accompanies most space missions.

Besides biotech and high tech companies sending experiments into space the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program has sent a few projects as well.

A mini lab, about the size of a brick contains both professional and student science experiments. The Materials Dispersion Apparatus (MDA) houses about 90 different experiments, including 11 student experiments.

Ranging from yeast to tomatoes and from goldfish eggs to mouth bacteria student experiments will study the effects of microgravity by comparing samples on the ground to those that flew into space. Students will look for differences in cell structure, behavior or growth of their samples.

And though it is the last shuttle mission to the ISS, one experiment will perform a white-glove test of the space station to see if it is remaining biological clean after years of use. a state of the art lab on a chip will be able to detect biological and chemicals on any surface.

Another novel experiment comes from Arizona State University, where Cheryl Nickerson is working on developing next generation vaccines.

The microbiologist has been studying infection in microgravity and has already discovered that the salmonella bacteria becomes more virulent in zero-gravity.

She says, “Our earlier work showed the potential for spaceflight to provide novel insight into the mechanisms of microbial virulence that may lead to innovations in infectious disease control here on Earth.”

Now Nickerson and her colleague Roy Curtiss III, the director of the Biodesign Institute are hoping to find cures to hepatitis B, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, AIDS and pneumonia by enlisting the help of salmonella.

When the final flight of Atlantis returns she and Curtiss will examine their Recombinant Attenuated Salmonella Vaccine (RASV) payload to determine if microgravity makes the experimental vaccine that already proves powerful against pneumonia even stronger after going to outer space.

Emotional pain, like that associated with a heartbreak hurts with the same intensity as physical pain and it lights up the same part of the brain. Now researchers have discovered that the pain is just as real and can be reduced with a common painkiller.

It’s been said that love hurts, especially a breakup. New research reported in the journal Psychological Science now proves that it does.

By looking at brain scans of people who were enduring the emotional loss of a bad breakup, scientists noticed that the people showed reduced emotional pain and physical pain — like headaches — after being given acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol.

Every year, there are a few cases of leprosy in southern states, where armadillos are as common as squirrels in urban areas. Just being around the odd-looking creatures is not enough to acquire the bacteria but those who hunt the animals, handle their raw meat or eat them could be at higher risk for getting leprosy.

Leprosy experts have known for years that the armadillos carry the leprosy bacteria. In fact, scientists use them to grow the bacteria, which can’t be cultured in the laboratory.

Richard Truman of the National Hansen’s Disease Program in Baton Rouge, Louisiana led the new study. He used DNA testing to show that a strain of Mycobacterium leprae not found anywhere else in the world was present in 28 out of 33 wild armadillos and 25 out of 39 U.S. patients who lived in areas where the animals lived.

Dr.Truman told Reuters, “Around the world, we think of human beings as the only reservoir of Mycobacterium leprae and that leprosy is a human disease.” But now it appears that armadillos are giving the disease back to humans after first receiving it from people coming to the New World from Europe and Africa hundreds of years ago.

Researchers think the reason the leprosy bacteria grow in armadillos, but not most other animals, is due to the armadillos’ lower body temperature of 89 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just because Texas oil tycoon Tom Slick died in a plane crash in 1962 doesn’t mean his vision died with him. In fact, his legacy has grown a few lone-star state institutions that bring in over $1 billion a year to the San Antonio area. The Southwest Research Institute and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute are much more well known than one of his other visionary organizations–the Mind Science Foundation.

Originally started as a search for paranormal activity–from the hunt for Bigfoot to telekinesis–the foundation changed focus about ten years ago. It now funds researchers all over the world who are conducting neuroscience studies that will help scientists understand how the human brain creates the experience of consciousness.

The Mind Science Foundation has moved from the realm of spoon bending to studying the generosity hormone, oxytocin. But in keeping with Tom Slick’s vision, the foundation also likes to explore the edge of neuroscience, wherever that may lead.

Stem cells are changing medicine. Every day it seems like there is a new story of a person whose life was spared thanks to advances in stem cell research.

Now, John Christy, a Vietnam veteran, becomes the first person in the U.S. to have his own bone marrow stem cells harvested to save his heart.

He thought he was just getting old and becoming tired more easily. But it turns out that he had advanced coronary artery disease.

Dr. Joseph Woo at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has been testing the use of stem cells in animals for five years and recently used the procedure to grow blood vessels around Christy’s heart.

Within two days of surgery, Christy says he had “more oomph.”

Dr. Woo does this transplant in one short surgery, compared to two surgeries weeks apart in Europe.

Radio frequency exposure to cell phones may increase brain activity and glucose metabolism.

Scientists don’t know what it means for our health but a new National Institutes of Health study has found that hand held cell phone use stimulates brain activity.

Dr. Nora Volkow says the study shows that the human brain is sensitive to the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted from cell phones.

But the piece scientists don’t yet understand is whether this rise in brain metabolism is harmful in the long run. More research is needed to answer that question.

Tony Ford may call himself a ‘technician,’ but in reality he’s more like a flimflam man: A purveyor of potions. A glorified vitamin salesman.

But he is one of thousands of independent sellers of L-Arginine, the latest miracle health cure, said to cure stroke, cancer, diabetes, reverse Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and lower cholesterol.

The FDA doesn’t regulate nutritional supplements and this hidden camera investigation shows the dubious medical science at the heart of this product’s claims.

KRQE’s Larry Barker reports.

Find out just how incredible the human body is.

How fast do you sneeze?
How much heat does your body produce?
How much blood do you pump?
How many miles of nerves do you have in your body?
How many scents can your nose detect?
How much saliva will you produce over your lifetime?

Is there a gene that determines how generous you are? That’s one of the questions that a new research initiative at the University of Notre Dame hopes to answer. The new Science of Generosity Initiative has just finished funding 13 projects that will help science (mostly social science) better understand the effects of generosity on the giver and the receiver.

Over the course of the next two years this group of researchers from across the country will study various elements of generosity, from socio-economic conditions that allow people to give to what neural circuitry is involved in doing generous behavior like donating blood or helping the less fortunate.

Based on the premise that underpinned Notre Dame professor Christian Smith’s book Passing the Plate, which examined why Christians in the U.S. don’t give more, the generosity research is aimed at helping non-profit organizations — from the Salvation Army to the Peace Corps — figure out why donors give.

A man is cured, doctors are stunned and patients have new hope. It could be the cure for HIV. It worked on one man in Germany and now a San Francisco company is trying to do replicate the results in the United States.

“We have this patient in Berlin who develops leukemia, gets a bone marrow transplant from donor who has a genetic anomaly, he lacks CCR5 genes. It turns out CCR5 is the key doorway for HIV to get into the cell,” explains Quest Research’s Dr. Jacob Lalezari.

Now, four years later with no other treatment that patient is HIV free. The goal now is to replicate what happened in Berlin.

Doctors in Germany gave a patient a bone marrow transplant in 2007 to treat leukemia. The patient also was HIV-positive so doctors selected a donor known to have a specific gene mutation, known for blocking HIV from entering cells.

The risky transplant involves killing off a patient’s unhealthy bone marrow and all the white blood cells, leaving the patient without an immune system until doctors infuse donated stem cells to rebuild the bone marrow which can then produce healthy cells.

Because the stem cells that were introduced in an HIV-postive U.S. man in his 40s contained the HIV-blocking mutation, the healthy cells became resistant to HIV and wiped out the virus in the process.

Scientists have discovered it’s relatively easy to remove HIV from the bloodstream but it tends to lurk in the brain, gut and lymphatic tissue.

This breakthrough has eradicated the virus from the patient’s entire body.

Experts at Quest Research are removing CCR5 from patients genes, replicating them and then putting them back. Dr. Lalezari says without CCR5 the virus can’t infect new cells and it eventually goes away.

Only time will tell if the new treatment can actually cure patients. So far Quest Research is treating ten patients with the gene therapy and experts call their results encouraging.

Professor Basil Donovan from the University of New South Wales in Australia says, “There is no guarantee that it would work in everyone you did it in, but the fact that it worked at all is encouraging.”

Dr. Jonathan Ball from the University of Nottingham in England says, “This is the first time the mutated gene has been harnessed to cure HIV infection.”

Doctors warn that this one case is an outlier and should by no means be viewed as a panacea to cure everyone living with HIV. The procedure itself kills about 30 percent of patients and is very expensive.

But experts are nevertheless blown away by this case, which you can read more about in the December issue of the journal, Blood.

It’s an opportunity so rare only 16 schools in the nation will participate, and one of those schools is from Jefferson County, Kentucky. As WLKY’s Monica Hardin reports, these students are taking their knowledge in science to a whole new level that’s out of this world.

Their experiment will fly aboard the last shuttle Endeavour mission, slated for April 2011. The students from Shawnee High School want to know whether the probiotic lactobacillus gg — a common good bacteria that grows in our gut — can live in microgravity, the conditions astronauts experience in outer space.

Here’s a list of the the other schools participating in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program.

In Mono Lake, California, NASA says that a form of life, never before found on Earth, is thriving. This potato-shaped microbe is not proof of aliens among us but it is a big deal for scientists.

NASA’s announcement on Thursday of radical new bacteria that survive by incorporating arsenic instead of phosphorus into its DNA has shifted what scientists consider necessary for life to exist.

This is opening up the possibility of life existing on other planets previously thought inhospitable for life as we know it. Researchers now plan to take a closer look at Mars for this new arsenic-loving bacteria.

When the tax man comes calling most people do not feel a sense of satisfaction or pleasure. But new research from Oregon may have found the part of the brain that enjoys giving money away—especially if it’s voluntary.

Plants have been a mainstay in traditional African medicine. Now a group of scientists has taken 16 common South African plants and discovered that eight of them have properties that reduce blood pressure. They are:

Blood Pressure Plant