Gizmorama - April 6, 2015

Good Morning,

Scientists in China claim that a person's biological age can be determine by using only an image of their face. Well, it's not quite that simple. It's more technical than that. It could be interesting what your face has to say about your age.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Study: Face scan alone enough to calculate biological age --*
SHANGHAI (UPI) - Scientists in China say they can calculate a person's biological age using only an image of their face, using a new image-scanning technology and computer algorithm.

Biological age, as opposed to chronological age, is a measure of how well or poorly a person's body is aging. Biological age is a physiological measurement, offering an estimate as to how quickly or slowly a person's body is breaking down -- showing (on the inside and outside) the effects of time.

Researchers created their aging analysis system by scanning more than 300 faces, including the faces of people as young as 17 and as old as 77. The technology, able to pick to slightest of contour changes in a person's face, was able to plot a trajectory of biological aging. Newly scanned faces are compared against this trajectory.

As the plotted trajectory shows, there are a range of changes that occur on an aging face. Noses become enlarged. Wrinkles manifest themselves. Eyes corners begin to sag. Gravity slowly but surely takes its toll.

"I did not expect to see such remarkable changes with age, nor did I expect the 3D images to be such a good biomarker for biological age," study leader Jing-Dong Han, a researcher at the the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, told the Guardian. "They turned out to be as accurate as the most accurate marker to date."

After programming the technology, researchers found the algorithm always placed a person's biological age within six years of their chronological age. Han and his colleagues tested the blood of people who showed the most difference between the two ages.

They found people whose facial age was accelerated also exhibited biomarkers associated with pronounced or faster aging. They found the opposite for those deemed to look younger.

"The predicted fast agers do have more accelerated aging blood profiles, and vice versa for the slower agers," Han added.

As all of the study participants were Chinese, additional research is needed to determine whether the technology will work with other ethnic groups.

Researchers say the technology could eventually be used to determine whether anti-aging creams and treatments are successful or not.

"Aging is associated with many complex diseases. Reliable prediction of the aging process is important for assessing the risks of aging-associated diseases," the researchers concluded in their new paper.

The study was published in the latest issue of the journal Cell Research.


*-- New study explains why Mercury is black --*
LIVERMORE, Calif. (UPI) - Mercury and the moon look a lot alike -- barren and riddled with craters. But whereas the moon appears a cream white in the light of the sun, Mercury is dark and dirty.

A new study reveals the source of color differentiation. Mercury, it turns out, has been regularly peppered by carbon from passing comets over the course of its planetary lifetime -- slowly but steadily darkening its surface.

Typically, iron is responsible for diminishing a planet's reflectivity. But for Mercury, it is its outer coating of carbon that makes it the least reflective planet in the solar system.

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory pinpointed comet carbon as the most likely source of Mercury's dark color using a computer model. Astronomers knew comets are most likely to break apart and shed their materials as they near the sun, and Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.

Their model showed most of the carbon dust would remain on the planet's surface -- and not bounce back into space -- calculating that Mercury's carbon likely accounts for 3 to 6 percent of its surface composition.

Researchers then tested the darkening effects of engrained carbon, mimicking the impacts of small meteorites on Mercury's surface at NASA's Ames Vertical Gun Range. To mimic meteorites, scientists encapsulated organic comet compounds inside a ball of sugar. Using a cannon, they blasted the sugar balls at a lunar basalt-like substance.

"We used the lunar basalt model because we wanted to start with something dark already and see if we could darken it further," study co-authro Peter Schultz, a geological science professor at Brown University, told Voice of America.

The sugar burned up in the blast and impact, while the organic compounds (including the carbon) embedded in the surface materials -- creating a darkening effect that matched Mercury's appearance.

"Understanding the role of micrometeorites in delivering dark material to Mercury provides new ways of interpreting observations of the planet," Megan Bruck Syal, a postdoctoral researcher at the lab, explained in a press release. "Additionally, we are now working on how micrometeorites may have delivered other materials of interest to Mercury, including water."

The new research was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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