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On the late 19th century scientist Charles-douard Brown-Squard

He was one of the great scientists of the 19th century; he's regarded as the founder of endocrinology, the study of glands. When he got to be about 70 years old he wasn't feeling so hot and he started to wonder why. He thought the answer had to do with something produced in the gonads, so he mixed up a little mixture of crushed up dog testicles, testicular blood and semen, mixed it all up and injected himself with it for a period of about three weeks. In 1889, he gave a triumphant address to the society of biology in Paris describing this experiment and how it had miraculously rejuvenated him, an old man, he could work through the night now, he could lift much more weight, he could urinate farther, all these fantastic things and people were horrified. ...

He was already 70 or 71 and he lived about another five years, so he did pretty well for the 19th century, but whether the treatment extended his lifespan, [it's] difficult to say. They now think it was pretty much a placebo effect.

It became a cultural sensation. ... It was called the Squard Elixir and all kinds of quacks set up mail order businesses where you could get 10 syringes for $2.50. There were songs written about it; it was written up in all the papers. People went crazy. He never made a dime off it. ...

In a way, Squard's elixir was kind of a precursor of the testosterone replacement and estrogen replacement therapies that are extremely popular right now. So he was onto something.

On the controversial pre-Depression era scientist John Brinkley

In between the elixir and the testosterone, there was an unfortunate intermediate step where a salesman named John Brinkley down in Texas began implanting goat testicles in worn out middle-aged men and he did similar surgeries in women. Obviously [this was] not a good idea and many people died on his operating table, but he became fabulously wealthy. He was one of the richest men in the pre-Depression era. He actually had a radio station down there. He was just across the border in Mexico because they kicked him out of the country, but he had this hugely powerful radio station that broadcast some of the early country music stars.

On the conference for anti-aging and human growth hormones

It was founded by these two doctors in Chicago who basically pioneered the use of human growth hormone as a treatment for aging back in the '90s. And a study had come out in about 1990 saying that older men gained muscle mass when they were on an exercise program and human growth hormone.

"The scientists I spoke to feel that human growth hormone, far from reversing aging, actually accelerates aging."

- Bill Gifford

So they kind of took this and ran with it, and now, 20 years later, older Americans inject themselves with about $1.4 billion worth of human growth hormone per year and the system of injections costs about $10,000 to 12,000 a year. ...

[But] the scientists I spoke to feel that human growth hormone, far from reversing aging, actually accelerates aging. It turns on these pro-growth, pro-aging pathways. And there aren't clinical trials of this stuff because it's technically illegal for this use, but let's just say the longest [living] laboratory mice had zero growth hormone. Their cells had no growth hormone receptors. So human growth hormone might make you feel better for a short time, but it's very doubtful that it will lengthen your life and may do the opposite.

On anti-aging supplements

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There's very little evidence for most of these supplements that you see marketed to older people. Supplements are very poorly regulated in this country and there just aren't the same evidentiary standards that you need for say, a drug. There was just a recent case where the attorney[s] general of several states found that supplements sold in places like Walmart had things like grass clippings in them.

On studying people who are over 100 years old

At [Albert] Einstein College of Medicine ... the theory is that that they have genes that protect them from the diseases of aging that the rest of us get. So they get to 100 and they don't have diabetes; they don't have heart disease; they don't have cancer; they've been protected somehow. So the question is: Do they have genes that protect them from these diseases and what are the genes and ... can we make a drug that can kind of imitate the action of those genes.

On how exercise affects aging

Anything really, is better than nothing. Basically, we evolved to move around, to run, to walk, to use our bodies and not to just sit around the way most of us do for most of the day. There's kind of an idea of use it or lose it and that's really programmed into our biology. The more you use your muscles, the more you're walking around, the more you're going to hang on to your muscle as you get older. That's really important because muscle wasting with age is the second leading cause of admission to nursing homes after Alzheimer's disease.

On the theory that short-term, controlled physical stress is good for longevity

[Blogger Todd Becker] believes in small amounts of stress as a way of life. It sounds completely crazy but there's actually a scientific basis to it. ... He wakes up in the morning every day and he takes a freezing cold shower, that's how he starts off. Then he'll skip lunch at work and then at the end of the day, without having eaten all day, he'll go for a trail run in Palo Alto, [Calif.], where he lives. ... I started looking into the science and cold water exposure actually has some pretty interesting affects. [There are] studies of cold water swimmers and they are healthier than people who don't go cold-water swimming. ...

"Organisms that are exposed to stress in certain ways respond to it and become stronger. ... On the cellular level ... it has an effect of almost like cleaning up or reorganizing your proteins so they're in better shape."

- Bill Gifford

The idea is this concept of hormesis — that's the stress response. That's another thing we have hard-wired into our biology. Organisms that are exposed to stress in certain ways respond to it and become stronger. One obvious example is exercise. You stress out your muscles, you lift a weight or whatever, they're damaged, and then they come back stronger. On the cellular level it also works. It has an effect of almost like cleaning up or reorganizing your proteins so they're in better shape.

On the theory that eating less helps you live longer

[There is] something called the Caloric Restriction Society, and there are people who basically make a great effort to eat anywhere from 15 percent to 30 percent less than most of us eat. So obviously they're very skinny, but they're doing this because research for decades has shown feeding mice and other animals a lot less seems to make them live longer. ...

When we were hunter gatherers, we didn't get three meals a day, we might get three meals a week. So the people who survived — or the critters who survived — were the ones who could go for pretty decent periods without food and even then, not eat a whole lot of food. So our biology is kind of tuned to survive famines, to survive low-nutrient conditions. What that does [is it] puts our cells in a sort of stress-resistant state that ends up prolonging life.

Read an excerpt of Spring Chicken

growth hormone

Aging

The name of the man who has recorded videos of himself threatening and killing several Western hostages in the name of the self-proclaimed Islamic State is Mohammed Emwazi, according to multiple news outlets. He is reportedly a British citizen from West London who was born in Kuwait.

British security services have been aware of the man's identity, the BBC says, adding that "They chose not to disclose his name earlier for operational reasons."

The same name is being reported by The Washington Post, citing interviews with friends and associates of Emwazi. The newspaper says he is "from a well-to-do family... and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming."

There's been no official confirmation of the name of man who had formerly been dubbed "Jihadi John" by media outlets; we'll update this post as more details come in.

The BBC reports, "Emwazi is believed to be an associate of a former UK control order suspect, who travelled to Somalia in 2006 and is allegedly linked to a facilitation and funding network for Somali militant group al-Shabab."

Emwazi has been a central figure in the grisly ISIS videos in which prisoners have been beheaded and threats have been delivered against the U.S. and other countries.

Dressed all in black with only his eyes and hands exposed, the ISIS figure first attracted notice last August, when he addressed the camera in fluent English before hostage James Foley, a U.S. journalist, was beheaded.

Shortly after Foley's death, British ambassador to the United States Peter Westmacott said, "We are close" to identifying the central figure in the video.

Since then, the man named today as Emwazi has appeared in more videos in which hostages were killed, including the Britons David Haines and Alan Henning, as well as the Americans Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig, who changed his first name to Abdul-Rahman during his captivity.

The same man is also believed to be in more recent videos in which two Japanese hostages, Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, were beheaded.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Joe Biden and John Travolta don't seem to know when they're getting too close for comfort.

Last week, the vice president went up to Stephanie Carter, the wife of the newly named secretary of defense, and put his hands on her shoulders and whispered in her ear. She did not look at all amused.

At the Oscars, Travolta did a double no-no. Before the ceremony he put his hand on Scarlett Johansson's waist and leaned in for a smooch. She had a deer-in-the-headlights look. During the show, he touched the chin of co-presenter Idina Menzel. It's unclear if that was scripted or spontaneous. To judge by the flustered look on her face, I'd vote for the latter.

Joe Navarro, a former FBI agent who's written about body language in , who's the author of What Every Body Is Saying, says "9 inches" is as close as you'd want to go in a social setting in the U.S. (Unless you know the person very very well.)

That made me wonder: What about other countries? What are the rules of personal space?

When Navarro's family emigrated from Cuba to the U.S., he remembers his American teacher telling him, "You have to stand back a little bit." In social settings in the U.S., he has found, people keep a 3 to 4 feet distance. "But in Latin America," says Navarro, "that's just frigid, that's like an icicle."

Our global health correspondent Jason Beaubien recalls meeting a local minister of health in Mexico. It was their first encounter. He leaned in to give her an air kiss, which is customary in Latin America. She took him to task for not actually planting his lips on her cheek.

Nurith Aizenman, NPR's international development correspondent, remembers a totally different experience as a woman covering Afghanistan for The Washington Post. She had to train herself not to offer a handshake when interviewing men. Any contact between unrelated men and women is taboo. So she'd stand face-to-face, place her hand on her heart and give a slight bow.

She got so good at the no-handshake posture that when she shifted to covering Central America, she was momentarily stunned the first time a man she was interviewing went for the standard Latin kiss on the cheek.

i

A scene in Mexico city affirms that Latin America is a land of openly expressed affection. Esteban Felix/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Esteban Felix/AP

A scene in Mexico city affirms that Latin America is a land of openly expressed affection.

Esteban Felix/AP

So yes, different strokes, for different parts of the world. And you really do have to tune into the local culture.

There are also different rules about touching.

"In Senegal, which is deeply conservative, majority Muslim and openly very friendly to foreigners, people don't even hold hands in public," reports NPR's West Africa correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. "It always struck me as quite unusual when I moved here. Now I'm quite used to it. Even young people are not given to public displays of even hand-holding!

In fact, in different African countries there are many ways to greet that do not involve physical touching: clasp your hands together, touch your heart, nod, genuflect, curtsy, clap your hands.

In Ghana, however, men are comfortable holding hands — or little fingers – "and there's nothing unusual or no-no about it," Quist-Arcton says.

Respect for the person you approach, she says, is critical all over Africa.

But she adds that you have to be flexible and adapt, wherever you find yourself on the continent. From country to country, customs may vary: from air kiss, to cheek kiss to hand shaking. Even how long to shake can vary.

However you greet someone in Africa, you need to show respect, Quist-Arcton says. So Travolta and Biden wouldn't get a thumbs up for their behavior. "You're definitely not going to see a man taking a woman's head in his hands," Quist-Arcton says.

Nor is it a good idea to come up from behind, as Biden did. Quist-Arcton wonders: "Is that a good thing anywhere?" I think the answer is self-evident!

John Travolta

Joe Biden

Regulations intended to block money from getting into the hands of terrorist groups has led the last bank that handles most money transfers from the United States to Somalia to pull out of the business.

Somali refugees in the U.S. say their families back home need the money they send each month to survive, and they're counting on lawmakers and Obama administration officials, who are meeting in Washington on Thursday, to try to find a solution.

"If they don't get this money they will starve."

- Omar Shekhey

Like tens of thousands of Somali Americans, Omar Shekhey, who lives in Georgia, pulls together a couple of hundred dollars every month and sends the money to his two sisters back in Somalia.

"This is like their paycheck," Shekhey says. "It's money that they need to survive. There are no jobs; nothing. They will starve. If they don't get this money they will starve."

And right now, he's extremely worried. This month, Merchants Bank of California — the last U.S. bank to handle most of these transactions — pulled out of the business. It cited concerns about meeting federal banking requirements, which are intended to stop the flow of funds to criminals and terrorists.

"And I don't know where to go, and I don't know where to send that money," Shekhey says. "This is facing not only me, but the whole community."

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Immigrants Sending Money Back Home Face Fewer Options

Nasir Warsama is regional manager for Amal USA, a money transfer business that until last week operated outside Atlanta.

"Well, the business basically it's closed," Warsama says.

He says his firm would collect small amounts of cash from people like Shekhey, bundle it together and work through a U.S. bank to transfer the funds overseas, where the money would be distributed. He says there are few other options in Somalia because the war-torn nation has no central banking system.

"There's no functioning financial institutions," Warsama says. "So the only way they can get support from outside is either through the [United Nations] or the NGOs or the support from their family members."

That support has been huge: An estimated $1.3 billion a year from relatives around the world, including more than $200 million from the U.S.

But U.S. authorities worry that some of the money could end up in the wrong hands — like those of al-Shabab, the Somalia-based terrorist group that just released a video calling for attacks on Western shopping malls.

Strict tracking rules have been imposed on such money transfers, but Rob Rowe, a vice president at the American Bankers Association, says it's all but impossible for banks to comply in a country like Somalia.

"It's very chaotic because of all the civil unrest," Rowe says. "And so when a bank from the United States sends the money, they don't have the information or the transparency that they're required to have."

Like knowing exactly where the money goes.

"Bankers are looking at all this and they know that they're under the microscope and if they don't do the right thing, they're going to be held accountable," Rowe says.

Government regulators say they're trying to find a reasonable solution. They say they recognize the hardship for Somalis and that the end of regulated transfers could cause more serious problems. That's why a group of lawmakers has asked for an emergency meeting on Thursday with representatives from the Treasury and State departments and other agencies.

Minnesota Democratic congressman Keith Ellison says he fears more economic disruption in Somalia will only help al-Shabab.

"The last thing that we want to do is push Somalis into the hands of these homicidal maniacs," Ellison says.

He says people have been talking about the issue for years, but maybe now, with the crisis at hand, something will get done.

al-Shabab

somalia

money