Happy Deathday? You’re More Likely To Die On Your Birthday

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(Photo from hdwallpapersinn.com)

Besides the cards, cake, candles, and gifts, there might be one more unexpected surprise in store for you on your birthday — a higher risk of dying.

A new study suggests that men and women are 14 percent more likely to die on their birthday than any other day of the year.  This effect was strongest in people aged 60 and older, who were up to 18 percent more likely to die on their birthday.

“We find more deaths than expected solely on birthdays, that is neither in the days before nor after the birthdays,” says lead author Dr. Vladeta Ajdacic-Gross, an epidemiologist for the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Why Birds Keep Crashing Into Cars And Planes

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First US Airways Flight 1549, and now Southwest Airlines. Birds are highly skilled at evading predators, but with faster-moving objects, they just won’t get out of the way

Most birds are idiots. They fly into airplanes, smash into cars and fling themselves at pigs with reckless abandon.

Over 11,000 birds smashed into airplanes in 2013 alone, and those collisions create more havoc than simply flattened animal carcasses and clouds of feathers: Bird strikes in the air have killed at least 255 people since 1988. On U.S. highways, about 80 million birds—some of them endangered—die every year when beak meets windshield.

Tobacco ‘Kills Two in Three Smokers’

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The death risk from smoking may be much higher than previously thought – tobacco kills up to two in every three smokers not one in every two, data from a large study suggests.

The study tracked more than 200,000 Australian smokers and non-smokers above the age of 45 over six years.

Mortality risk went up with cigarette use, BMC Medicine reports.

Smoking 10 cigarettes a day doubled the risk, while 20-a-day smokers were four to five times more likely to die.

Black Hole Breaks Records, Swallows Up Scientific Theory

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Supermassive black hole at centre of a quasar is 12 billion times more massive than the sun

With measurements indicating it is 12 billion times more massive than the Sun, the new black hole, seen in an artist’s conception, challenges a widely accepted hypothesis about black hole growth rates. (Zhaoyu Li/Shanghai Astronomical Observatory)

Scientists say they have discovered a black hole so big that it challenges the theory about how they grow.

Scientists said this black hole was formed about 900 million years after the Big Bang.

But with measurements indicating it has 12 billion times the mass of the sun, the black hole challenges a widely accepted hypothesis of growth rates.

Marijuana May Be Even Safer Than Previously Thought, Researchers Say

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Compared with other recreational drugs — including alcohol — marijuana may be even safer than previously thought. And researchers may be systematically underestimating risks associated with alcohol use.

Those are the top-line findings of recent research published in the journalScientific Reports, a subsidiary of Nature. Researchers sought to quantify the risk of death associated with the use of a variety of commonly used substances. They found that at the level of individual use, alcohol was the deadliest substance, followed by heroin and cocaine.

Tilapia: A Fish that Will Heal Your Wounds

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The other use for tilapia.

Tilapia is best served with a side of French fries and cabbage, but scientists from Shanghai believe they have discovered an even better use: Collagen extracted from tilapia can be applied as a wound dressing that helps accelerate healing.

Collagen, a protein found in connective tissue which is produced by cells called fibroblasts, facilitates wound healing. Collagen from cows and pigs has been used previously, but the chance of disease transmission, in addition to religious objections, has prompted scientists to seek alternatives. The abundant supply of aquacultured tilapia (PDF) makes for an attractive substitute.

Mars One, a Group that Plans to Send Humans on a One-Way Trip to Mars, has Announced its final 100 Candidates

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Mars One, a group that plans to send humans on a one-way trip to Mars, has announced its final 100 candidates. They have been selected from 200,000 applicants and will go on to further testing later this year, which they expect to include team-building exercises and later, isolation.

Eventually, 24 will be selected to make up six crews of four, which Mars One says they hope to launch to the Red Planet every two years from 2024, with the aim of starting a colony there.

Dogs Can Tell the Difference Between Happy and Angry Human Faces

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This is the experimental set-up used to test whether dogs can discriminate emotional expressions of human faces. CREDIT: Anjuli Barber, Messerli Research Institute

Dogs can tell the difference between happy and angry human faces, according to a new study in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on February 12. The discovery represents the first solid evidence that an animal other than humans can discriminate between emotional expressions in another species, the researchers say.

“We think the dogs in our study could have solved the task only by applying their knowledge of emotional expressions in humans to the unfamiliar pictures we presented to them,” says Corsin Müller of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.

Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Unveil a New Kind of Battery to Power Your Home

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The eccentric CEO said the product will be ready for production in a matter of months

Tesla didn’t ship nearly as many cars this quarter as it had projected, but CEO Elon Musk remained upbeat during today’s earnings call as he let some details slip about a brand new product. According to Musk, the company is working on a consumer battery pack for the home. Design of the battery is apparently complete, and production could begin in six months. Tesla is still deciding on a date for unveiling the new unit, but Musk said he was pleased with the result, calling the pack “really great” and voicing his excitement for the project.

Smoking Thins Vital Part of Brain. Quitting Reverses the Effect

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Years ago, children were warned that smoking could stunt their growth, but now a major study by an international team including the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University and the University of Edinburgh shows new evidence that long-term smoking could cause thinning of the brain’s cortex. The cortex is the outer layer of the brain in which critical cognitive functions such as memory, language and perception take place. Interestingly, the findings also suggest that stopping smoking helps to restore at least part of the cortex’s thickness.