WORLD – Page 36 – GREEK WORLD MEDIA

The timeline of Earth, mankind and the universe has been mapped out

Source: News.com.au

CONTINENTS fuse, galaxies collide, man dies out and the Earth plunges into the Sun.

This is what will happen in the future (but don’t worry, you’ve got a few quintillion years yet).

We find it hard enough to plan ahead to the weekend, but some scientists have mapped out what will happen to the Earth and the universe’s major events all the way to over one hundred quintillion years from now.

BBC Future created a meandering infographic based on research and hypothesis from scientists and NASA with major natural milestones laid out in front of our worrying eyes. The ambitious predictions begin around one thousand years from now, when most of our words would have become extinct, up to the moment when the Earth stops spinning and falls into the Sun.

We’ve plucked the biggest events worth looking out for (if you live to one hundred quadrillion years old, that is). These are all years from now:

One thousand years to ten thousand years from now. Source: Supplied

1,000: If civilisation fails to make it another thousand years, all the buildings, dams and bridges decay and fall

1,000: Most words are extinct due to the rapid evolution of languages

2,000: Greenland ice sheet melts

5,125: Mayan time ends again. World didn’t come to an end last time. Probably won’t next time.

13,000: Earth’s axial tilt reverses. Northern hemisphere suffers extreme weather due to higher percentage of land

20,000: Chernobyl finally safe

One hundred thousand to one million years from now. Source: Supplied

50,000: Niagara Falls disappears

100,000: Laptops dissolve. The titanium in MacBooks will corrode

100,000: Global disaster. A supervolcano or climate-altering asteroid would have affected the Earth by now.

1,000,000: All glass created will have degraded.

One hundred to one billion years from now. Source: Supplied

10,000,000: New ocean formed. Red sea flooded dividing Africa.

50,000,000: Australia and Indonesia merge.

250,000,000: All continents fuse to make one supercontinent.

1,000,000,000: Game over. The sun’s luminosity rises by 10% evaporating the Earth’s oceans.

2,800,000,000: The end of all life on Earth. Even cockroaches.

One trillion to one hundred quintillion years from now. Game over. Source: Supplied

5,400,000,000: Sun’s hydrogen exhausted and begins to swell into a red giant consuming nearby planets.

20,000,000,000: All matter is torn apart by the expansion of the universe. All distances become infinite.

110,000,000,000,000: All stars have died.

100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s one hundred quintillion years from now): Earth dies. If not already consumed by a swollen sun, the Earth’s orbit will have decayed and it will plunge into the sun.

IBIS World releases list of best and worst industries for 2014

Source: News.com.au

The world is your oyster, unless you want to own a DVD store, according to IBISWorld. Picture: Thinkstock Source: ThinkStock

IT’S a great time to be in gemstones or online shopping, but if you dream of starting your own video store, look out.

That’s according to the latest list of industries set to fly and fall in 2014 released by research company IBISWorld.

General manager Karen Dobie said it’s forecast to be a great year for diamond and gemstone mining, which is set to receive a 24 per cent boost taking revenue to $821.9 million, amid strong demand from South-East Asia.

“High-quality stones as a share of total output is expected to increase, which will have a positive impact on total industry revenue,” she said.

Superannuation funds will also be big business as sharemarkets return to levels seen before the financial crisis. The sector is expected to grow 23 per cent to take revenue to $356.6 billion due to the increased super guarantee and stable labour market.

“Characterised by a growing labour force, the conditions in our employment market mean more people are contributing to superannuation than before,” Ms Dobie said.

Aussie super funds are in for a good year as sharemarkets recover and the labour force stays steady. Picture: Thinkstock Source: ThinkStock

Organic farmers will also be in for a boost as organic products become more mainstream. Revenues in the sector are expected to rise nearly 14 per cent to more than $707 million.

“A broader selection of organic foods in supermarkets, independent retailers and markets should assist in increasing sales and driving revenue for primary producers. This will include more private-label organic products available at lower pricepoints”, Ms Dobie said.

Online shoppers and internet publishing are also expected to take off as people increasingly live their lives online.

The online retailing sector will rise 13 per cent to become a $13.2 billion industry while internet publishing will grow by 11 per cent to become a $1.7 billion sector, IBISWorld forecasts.

Organic farming is set to be a high growth area in 2014. Picture: Thinkstock Source: Supplied

However it’s not such a rosy picture for other industries, with some set to experience major downturns.

Video and DVD hire shops will suffer due to competition online with the industry contracting 15 per cent to $534.2 million, while sugar cane growers will also have it tough due to extreme weather conditions.

After years of booming mineral exploration, this sector will shrink nearly 8 per cent as the Chinese economy slows down and companies shift their focus from exploration to production.

Newspaper publishing will also take a hit with more people getting their news online, IBISWorld reports.

Horse and dog racing will also suffer, with $1.6 billion in revenue down nearly 4 per cent on the previous year due to tighter regulations and falling attendance.

IBISWorld’s industries set to rise in 2014

• Diamond and gemstone mining

• Superannuation funds

• Organic farming

• Online shopping

• Internet publishing and broadcasting

Industries set to fall in 2014

• Video and DVD hire outlets

• Sugar cane growing

• Mineral exploration

• Newspaper publishing

• Horse and dog racing

Unprecedented success in trialling new adult leukaemia therapy

Source: ACRF

A new, potentially life-saving drug has raised new hope for patients in advanced stages of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia – one of the most common types of adult leukaemia in Australia.

In many cases this cancer becomes resistant to traditional treatment methods such as chemotherapy. This is because of its high levels of a “pro-survival” protein called BCL-2 that render cancer cells, according to Walter and Eliza Hall Institute haematologist Prof. Andrew Roberts “basically indestructible”.

This new drug, currently in phase one clinical trials, targets this BCL-2 protein and breaks down the leukaemia cancer cells with-in the patient’s body creating a positive outlook for many patients battling the advanced stages of this disease.

Results from the trial reveal the cancer has become completely undetectable in almost a quarter of patients and in 61 per cent of cases the patient has gone into partial remission.

Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre chair of haematology, Professor John Seymour, said while trials were at an early stage, the drug’s success was unprecedented. “Patients on the trial were typically incurable, with an average life expectancy of up to 18 months, so to see complete clearance of cancer in nearly one quarter of these patients after taking this single therapy is incredibly encouraging,” he said.

The protein and its significance in leukaemia – as well as several other cancers including some lymphomas, breast and prostate, was first identified by scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in 1988. Professor Andrew Roberts said it had long been a target of scientists trying to develop anti-cancer drugs.

The drug, taken as a pill, also shows promise for the treatment of these other types of cancer, which are also reliant on the BCL-2 protein.

Melbourne patients with advanced stages of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia were the first in the world to receive this new therapy developed in partnership with the WEHI. Trials have been run by the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. The ACRF is very proud to have provided significant funding to each of these three research centres in Melbourne.

A phase two trial to establish the drug’s safety and effectiveness in a larger group of patients in Australia, the US and Europe is under way and could lead to approval for wider use by regulatory authorities within three years.

The history of the Christmas tree

christmas tree

A modern take on the Christmas tree. Picture: Thinkstock

Source: Bigstory.ap.org

Harmless lung cancer? A provocative study found that nearly 1 in 5 lung tumors detected on CT scans are probably so slow-growing that they would never cause problems.

The analysis suggests the world’s No. 1 cause of cancer deaths isn’t as lethal as doctors once thought.

In the study, these were not false-positives — suspicious results that turn out upon further testing not to be cancer. These were indeed cancerous tumors, but ones that caused no symptoms and were unlikely ever to become deadly, the researchers said.

Still, the results are not likely to change how doctors treat lung cancer.

For one thing, the disease is usually diagnosed after symptoms develop, when tumors show up on an ordinary chest X-ray and are potentially life-threatening.

Also, doctors don’t know yet how to determine which symptomless tumors found on CT scans might become dangerous, so they automatically treat the cancer aggressively.

The findings underscore the need to identify biological markers that would help doctors determine which tumors are harmless and which ones require treatment, said Dr. Edward Patz, Jr., lead author and a radiologist at Duke University Medical Center. He is among researchers working to do just that.

Patz said patients who seek lung cancer screening should be told about the study results.

“People have to understand that we’re going to find some cancers which if we’d never looked, we never would have had to treat,” he said. Among patients and even many doctors, “it’s not something that is commonly known with lung cancer.”

A leader of an influential government-appointed health panel agreed.

“Putting the word ‘harmless’ next to cancer is such a foreign concept to people,” said Dr. Michael LeFevre, co-chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

The panel recently issued a draft proposal recommending annual CT scans for high-risk current and former heavy smokers — echoing advice from the American Cancer Society. A final recommendation is pending, but LeFevre said the panel had already assumed that screening might lead to overdiagnosis.

“The more we bring public awareness of this, then the more informed decisions might be when people decide to screen or not,” LeFevre said. He called the study “a very important contribution,” but said doctors will face a challenge in trying to explain the results to patients.

In testimonials, patients often say lung cancer screening via CT scans cured them, but the study suggests that in many cases, “we cured them of a disease we didn’t need to find in the first place,” LeFevre said.

The study was published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

More than 200,000 Americans are diagnosed with lung cancer each year, and more than half of them die. Worldwide, there are about 1.5 million lung cancer deaths annually.

The new study is an analysis of data from the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial — National Cancer Institute research involving 53,452 people at high risk for lung cancer who were followed for about six years.

Half of them got three annual low-dose CT scans — a type of X-ray that is much more sensitive than the ordinary variety — and half got three annual conventional chest X-rays. During six years of follow-up, 1,089 lung cancers were diagnosed in CT scan patients, versus 969 in those who got chest X-rays.

That would suggest CT scans are finding many early cases of lung cancer that may never advance to the point where they could be spotted on an ordinary chest X-ray.

An earlier report on the study found that 320 patients would need to get CT screening to prevent one lung cancer death.

The new analysis suggests that for every 10 lives saved by CT lung cancer screening, almost 14 people will have been diagnosed with a lung cancer that would never have caused any harm, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the cancer society’s deputy chief medical officer.

He said that is a higher rate of overdiagnosis than he would have predicted, but that the study shows how much understanding of cancer has evolved. Decades ago, “every cancer was a bad cancer,” he said.

Now it’s known that certain cancers, including many prostate cancers, grow so slowly that they never need treatment.

The American College of Radiology said in statement Monday that the earlier study showed lung cancer screening significantly reduces lung cancer deaths in high-risk patients and that the benefit “significantly outweighs the comparatively modest rate of overdiagnosis” found in the new analysis.

Low-dose CT scans are the only test shown to reduce lung cancer deaths in high-risk smokers, the radiology group said, adding, “Overdiagnosis is an expected part of any screening program and does not alter these facts.”