Longer Legs Linked to Cancer Risk

by Sara G. Miller, Staff Writer | April 19, 2016 06:52pm ET

Credit: Stanislav Fridkin/Shutterstock.com

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NEW ORLEANS Colorectal cancer has been linked to a number of risk factors, such as inactivity,
smoking and eating a lot of red meat. Now, a new study suggests a slightly more surprising risk
factor: long legs.
Compared with people who had shorter legs, those with longer legs had a 42 percent higher risk of
developing colorectal cancer, according to the new study presented here today (April 19) at the
American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting.
Evidence from previous studies has suggested that taller people in general are more likely to develop
colorectal cancer, said Guillaume Onyeaghala, a graduate student in epidemiology at the University
of Minnesota and the lead author of the study.
Researchers have two hypotheses that may explain the association between height and cancer risk,
Onyeaghala told Live Science. [Top 10 Cancer-Fighting Foods]
One idea is that because taller people have longer colons (and therefore, more surface area within
the organs where colon cancer could develop), they have more chances to develop the condition,
Onyeaghala said. The other suggestion is that increased levels of growth hormones which affect
leg length in particular are also the driving factor for colorectal cancer, he said. (The growth
hormone "insulin-like growth factor 1" is elevated during puberty, and has been shown to be a risk
factor for colorectal cancers at high levels, the study said.)
The researchers looked at data on participants in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, a
long-running cohort of more than 14,500 men and women. Specifically, the new study examined three
aspects of the participants' height: overall height, torso height and leg length. Researchers also
looked at how many participants developed colorectal cancer over the nearly 20-year study period.
The only factor that was linked to people's colon cancer risk was their leg length; the researchers did
not find a significant link between people's overall height or torso height and their cancer risk,
Onyeaghala said. [10 Do's and Don'ts to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer]
Because sex is related to height, the researchers also looked at men and women separately. Results
showed that in men, those with the longest legs (an average length of 35.4 inches, or 90 centimeters)
had a 91 percent greater risk than those with the shortest legs (an average length of 31.1 inches, or
79 cm), Onyeaghala said. In women, there were no statistically significant differences in risk.

Because leg length was more strongly associated with colorectal cancer risk than were sitting height
or overall height, these results support the hypothesis that the growth factors that drive bone growth
in the legs are a risk factor for the disease, Onyeaghala said. (However, the idea that a longer colon
is to blame cannot be ruled out based on these results.)
The findings have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Follow Sara G. Miller on Twitter @SaraGMiller. Follow Live
Science@livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

Dinosaur Decline Started Long Before

Asteroid Impact
by Laura Geggel, Staff Writer | April 19, 2016 01:51pm ET

Artist's illustration of asteroids headed toward Earth.

Credit: ESA/P. Carril
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The dinosaurs the so-called tyrants of the Mesozoic era weren't exactly thriving during their last
few million years on Earth, a new study finds.
The new analysis of the dinosaur family tree reveals that dinosaurs were disappearing even before
the asteroid hit about 65.5 million years ago. Roughly 24 million years before that impact, dinosaur
extinction rates passed speciation rates, meaning that the animals were losing the ability to replace
extinct species with new ones, the researchers said.
The findings suggest that these striking extinction rates made the dinosaurs vulnerable to drastic
environmental changes, such as the asteroid collision, the researchers said. [Wipe Out: History's
Most Mysterious Extinctions]
"This implies that any group of animals that is under prolonged periods of high extinction rate can
undergo mass extinction should there be a catastrophic event," said study lead researcher Manabu
Sakamoto, a postdoctoral research assistant of biological sciences at the University of Reading in the
United Kingdom.
The study isn't the first to suggest that dinosaurs were in a major decline before the asteroid event. In
previous studies, scientists have recorded the number of species in each geological age and
compared those levels to the subsequent ages (each age lasts for millions of years) to get a sense of
how diverse the dinosaurs were, Sakamoto said.

But that method focuses on snapshots in time and doesn't take into account the extinction and
speciation rate within each branch of thedinosaur family tree. So the researchers of the new study
looked at the dinosaur fossil record and the family tree to get a robust picture of when new dinosaur
species came onto the scene, Sakamoto said.
"Our study is the first to incorporate such phylogenetic [family tree] information when studying
speciation and extinction in dinosaurs," Sakamoto told Live Science. "This is what has allowed us to
build a more nuanced and certain picture of dinosaur speciation than has ever before been possible."
Dinosaur detectives
The researchers separately analyzed the three major groups of dinosaurs: the ornithischians (such
as Stegosaurus), sauropodomorphs (the long-necked, long-tailed herbivores) and theropods (bipedal,
mostly carnivorous dinosaurs, such as T. rex and Albertosaurus).
The sauropodomorphs had the most prominent downturn, the scientists found. The research showed
spikes in new species of this type of dinosaur emerging during the Triassic and early Jurassic
periods, until about 195 million years ago, when that speciation rate began to slow down. At 114
million years ago, during the early Cretaceous period, species of sauropodomorphs were going
extinct faster than new species were emerging, the researchers found.
"The subsequent originations of [the] titanosaurian [group] were not nearly enough to compensate for
the continuous loss of sauropods throughout the remainder of the Cretaceous," the scientists wrote in
the study.

Duck-billed dinosaurs were one of the few dinosaur groups to thrive during the late Mesozoic period.
Credit: Catmando | Shutterstock.com
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Theropods had an "early burst" of speciation followed by a speciation slowdown from the late Triassic
to the early Cretaceous (about 215 million years ago to about 120 million years ago), when extinction
rate exceeded speciation rate, the researchers found.
Likewise, ornithischians show an early increase followed by a speciation slowdown at about 114
million years ago, when extinction rate surpassed speciation rate. But there were a few success
stories within this group. The hadrosauriforms (duck-billed dinosaurs) and ceratopsids (the horned
dinosaurs, such asTriceratops) did well, likely because they had developed jaws that helped them
munch on new food, possibly flowering plants, the researchers said. [Dinosaur Detective: Find Out
What You Really Know]
When the researchers considered the three dinosaur groups separately, "We found unequivocal
evidence that dinosaurs were in decline up to 50 million years prior to the mass extinction event 66
million years ago," Sakamoto said.
Extinction lessons
It's unclear why the dinosaurs started going extinct so early, but there are clues as to why speciation
increased during certain periods, the scientists said. One idea is that rising sea levels cut into the

land, fragmenting dinosaur habitats and nudging the beasts to evolve separately into new species in
different areas, the researchers said.
However, after dinosaur extinction rates began to rise, another group of animals started thriving:
mammals.
"The decline of the dinosaurs would have left plenty of room for mammals, the group of species which
humans are a member of, to flourish before the impact, priming them to replace dinosaurs as the
dominant animals on Earth [after the impact]," study co-author Chris Venditti, an evolutionary biologist
at the University of Reading, said in a statement.
The new findings may help scientists understand the possible consequences of today's extinctions,
the researchers added.
"We live in a time when species are undergoing unprecedented levels of extinctions," Sakamoto told
Live Science. "This means that if some major catastrophe hits, then it is highly possible that whole
groups of animals [will] be completely wiped out off the face of the Earth."
The study is an interesting one, said Alan Turner, an associate professor of anatomical sciences at
Stony Brook School of Medicine in New York, who was not involved in the research.
"Through modeling of speciation dynamics, it appears that dinosaur diversity was declining well in
advance of the end-Cretaceous extinction event that killed off all nonavian dinosaurs, as well as
numerous other vertebrate groups," Turner told Live Science in an email.
The study was published online April 18 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live
Science@livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

How the Plants Around Your Home May

Affect Your Life Span
by Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer | April 19, 2016 12:37pm ET

Credit: marekuliasz | Shutterstock

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Having a lot of green around your home might help you live longer, according to a new study of more
than 100,000 U.S. women.

Women in the study with the most greenness near their homes whether it was plants, trees and
other vegetation had a 12 percent lower death rate during the study period, compared with women
who had the least amount of vegetation near their homes, the researchers found.
"It is important to know that trees and plants provide health benefits in our communities, as well as
beauty," Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which
funded the study, said in a statement. "The finding of reduced mortality suggests that vegetation may
be important to health in a broad range of ways."
For the study, researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and
Women's Hospital in Boston looked at the level of vegetation around the homes of about 110,000
women who were registered nurses living across the United States, and were participating in a large
ongoing research effort called the Nurses' Health Study. The participants had given their home
addresses, and the researchers used satellite imagery to determine the amount of vegetation within
250 meters (820 feet) of their homes.
Then, the researchers tracked the women from 2000 to 2008, during which there were 8,604 deaths.
[Extending Life: 7 Ways to Live Past 100]
Living in an area with a lot of vegetation was linked with a lower rate of death from any cause
(excluding accidental injuries).
Women living near areas with the most vegetation had a 41 percent lower death rate from kidney
disease, a 34 percent lower death rate from respiratory disease and a 13 percent lower death rate
from cancer, compared with women living in areas with the least vegetation, the study found.
There are a number of reasons why vegetation near the home could lead to a longer life span,
including providing space for physical activity or social gatherings, or decreasing stress
and depression through contact with nature, the researchers said.
Indeed, the study showed that women with lots of vegetation near their homes had lower levels of
depression, and spent more hours participating in social groups such as charities, than people with
less vegetation near their homes, suggesting that these were the biggest factors driving the link.
The researchers took into account changes in vegetation around the home during the study period,
as well as other factors that can affect mortality, such as a person's age, ethnicity or income level.
The study was published April 14 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. FollowLive Science@livescience, Facebook& Google+.
Original article on Live Science.

The 10 Best Scientific Discoveries of 2015

By Eric Walters | December 29, 2015 | 4:00pm
TECH | LISTS

It was a monumental year for science. There were groundbreaking discoveries across numerous
concentrations, but the ever-confounding curiosities of space and medicine led the pack. Our
imaginations were tickled by New Horizons flyby of the bemoaned ninth rock from the Sun, Mars
finally stopped playing coy and proved it had water all along and the Kepler spacecraft found us a
potential new home.
Meanwhile, tireless researchers in the medical field discovered the first new antibiotic in 30 years,
created a bionic lens that can perfect human vision and may have found a vaccine to rid the world of
HIV.
Yes, 2015 was a banner year for science nerds, with a new, essential discovery happening nearly every
day. Here are the 10 best:

10. New Species of Human Ancestor

It was a big year for fossils, and an even bigger calendar for evolutionary science. In March, a 2.8
million-year-old jawbone was found in Ethiopia, extending the Homo genus evolutionary timeline by
400,000 years. Then, in September, a collection of weird and bizarre bones were found in a South
African cave. Not much is known about them, but scientists considered the remains different enough
from anything previously known to garner a new classification of species, Homo naledi, a discovery
that could force scientists to rethink human evolution.

9. Its Not Just Gas, Liquid and Solid, Anymore

The belief that matter exists in three states, solid, liquid or gaseous has been around for generations,
but that changed this year. Joining the big three is Jahn-Teller metal, which is not a catchy name
but is an important discovery. In this new, cool state localized electrons on the fullerene molecules
demonstrate coexistence with metallicity. It wont permeate everyones lives the way most matter
does, but the new state is influential for the world of superconductors.

8. New Horizons Pluto Flyby

After being knocked down in 2006, Pluto made a huge comeback this year when the New Horizons
probe completed a flyby of the dwarf planet. The flyby produced a bevy of discoveries, many of which
are still being analyzed and considered, but among them are Plutos significant geological activity that
includes mountain ranges and nitrogen glaciers.

7. Bionic Lens
Dr. Garth Webb, an optometrist in British Columbia developed the Ocumetics Bionic Lens which
could give patients perfect vision and removes the chance of cataracts because the new lens replaces
the existing, natural one. Even more impressive, Webb says the surgery can be done in eight minutes
and will immediately correct the patients vision. The lens is custom-made and inserted like a taco
into a saline-filled syringe, then placed into the eye where it unfolds within 10 seconds. Depending on
how animal and human trials go, the new lens could be available within two years, and could
completely change the eyecare industry.

6. First Man-made Leaf

The pesky lack of oxygen in space is a major hindrance to increased exploration, as is the inconsistent
results with growing plants outside of Earth. Enter Julian Melchiorri, a Royal College of Art graduated
that invented the first man-made, biologically functioning leaf. Made out of chloroplasts and silk
protein, the leaf is capable of absorbing carbon dioxide and light, converting it into oxygen. The most
obvious application is for space travel, but Melchiorri sees Earth-bound applications as well, like
providing bursts of fresh air in otherwise stale office buildings.

5. First New Antibiotic in 30 Years

If youre like me and not on the up and up with the world of antibiotics, youll be surprised to learn
that doctors have used the same antibiotics for decades to fight disease. In that time, the diseases have
fought back, many developing resistances to common antibiotics. Early in 2015, a team from
Northeastern University in Massachusetts put a notch in the win column for medicine when it
discovered Teixobactin, the first new antibiotic in 30 years. The team used it to treat drug resistant
disease-infected mice and hope to begin human trials within two years. If those trials go well,

Teixobactin could be instrumental in treating the mutated, resistant diseases, and the method used to
discover it could lead to more antibiotic findings.

4. Water on Mars

The prospect of water on Mars has been debated for decades, but 2015 finally gave us a definitive
answer. Sadly, the water found on the Red Planet is not in the same family as Earths vast oceans,
lakes and rivers. Instead, the water is whats called recurrent slope linae and is thought to be the
Martian equivalent of seasonal melt water. Nonetheless, the discovering of flowing, liquid water on
Mars is groundbreaking, and could lead to more revelations about the planets history.

3. First Laboratory Grown Human Muscle

Using human cells that had progressed beyond stem cells, but were not yet muscle, a team at Duke
University grew muscle that contracts and responds to stimuli just like native tissue. Though not
expected to revolutionize the medical world in terms of growing new tissue for humans, the work
done at Duke is still monumental. The ability to grow muscle tissue in a lab could lead to safer drug
testing and medical experiments, removing living humans from the equation.

2. Kepler-452b

The search for a second Earth has been at the forefront of science, and science-fiction, for years, and
now scientists have found an exoplanet so similar to our home its been dubbed Earth 2.0. The
planet is located in the Cygnus constellation and orbits the G-Class start Kepler 452. There are
numerous parallels, such as the same size orbit around the same kind of star and same year length, to
make scientists excited about the prospect of life on the planet, or the potential of it being a second
home for the human race. The issue of distance is real, however, as Kepler-452b is 1,400 light years
from Earth.

1. HIV Vaccine
The fight against HIV and AIDS took a huge step forward in 2015 when researchers at the Scripps
Research Institute developed a vaccine that was incredibly effective against HIV-1, HIV-2 and simian
immunodeficiency virus. The key difference here is the new HIV vaccine actually alters DNA to fight
off the virus, rather than injecting a weakened form into the body so the immune system can learn to
fight it. The research is still in the early stages, but the results thus far are extremely promising and if
they continue to be, HIV treatment will become far simpler.