Living to 120: An Imaginable Future | AR-15 Creator's Unexpected Outcomes | CEO Sacrifices Salary for Staff Raises | Glacial Early-Warning on Volcanoes

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� � � � � � Living to 120 is becoming an imaginable prospect - The Economist    Want to live longer? For centuries the attempt to stop ageing was the preserve of charlatans touting the benefits of mercury and arsenic, or assortments of herbs and pills, often to disastrous effect. Yet after years of false starts, the idea of a genuine elixir of longevity is taking wing. Behind it is a coterie of fascinated and ambitious scientists and enthusiastic and self-interested billionaires. Increasingly, they are being joined by ordinary folk who have come to think that the right behaviour and drugs could add years, maybe decades, to their lives. Living to 100 today is not unheard of, but is still rare. In America and Britain centenarians make up around 0.03% of the population. Should the latest efforts to prolong life reach their potential, living to see your 100th birthday could become the norm; making it to 120 could become a perfectly reasonable aspiration. More exciting still, those extra years would be healthy. What progress has been made in expanding lifespans has so far come by countering the causes of death, especially infectious disease. The process of ageing itself, with its attendant ills such as dementia, has not yet been slowed. This time, that is the intention. Continued here � � � � � � Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium The Creator of the AR-15 Didn't See This Coming - The Atlantic    Eugene Stoner wanted to design a modern rifle for the U.S. military. Today, it’s a weapon of choice for mass shooters. Eugene Stoner was an unassuming family man in postwar America. He wore glasses and had a fondness for bow ties. His figure was slightly round; his colleagues called him a teddy bear. He refused to swear or spank his children. “Boy, that frosts me,” he’d say when he was upset. He liked to tweak self-important people with a dry sense of humor. He hated attention. A lifelong tinkerer and a Marine veteran, he was also fascinated by the question of how to make guns shoot better. When an idea came to him, he scribbled it down on anything he could find—a pad of paper, a napkin, the tablecloth at a restaurant. He had no formal training in engineering or in firearms design. Yet it was inside Stoner’s detached garage in Los Angeles, during the 1950s, that the amateur gunsmith, surrounded by piles of sketches and prototypes, came up with the idea for a rifle that would change American history. Continued here � � � � � � A millionaire CEO just cut his salary to make sure his staff could all get raises this year (the ones who weren't laid off) - Fortune    While the Container Store is facing some very real retail headwinds, some employees can still expect a raise this year, thanks to the company’s CEO. Satish Malhotra has voluntarily reduced his salary by 10% to help offset costs of pay increases for others at the company. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company noted Malhortra’s annual salary would drop from $925,000 to $832,500 for a six-month period. The Container Store reported an adjusted net loss of $10.1 million in its most recent quarterly results, more than $20 million worse than the same period a year ago. In May, it announced a round of layoffs that affected roughly 15% of its support center workers and 3% of the employees at its distribution centers and stores. The exact number of people affected by the cuts was not disclosed. Continued here � � � � � � Glaciers on volcanoes could serve as early-warning systems - The Economist    Mapping glaciers was once a difficult and arduous job. So was monitoring volcanoes for the grumblings and rumblings that might herald an eruption. In recent decades, the old methods of hiking boots and mountaineering gear have been joined by satellites and remote sensing, making things both easier and safer. But looking from afar has its drawbacks too. If a volcano is high enough to sport glaciers on its flanks (and many are), then the thick layer of ice can make it harder, or impossible, to get accurate temperature readings from the rock beneath. And that is a particular problem, for glacier-topped volcanoes are some of the most dangerous of all. If they do erupt, the heat can melt the glaciers, forming torrents of fast-moving mud called lahars that can flatten anything in their path. In 1985 the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in western Colombia erupted. The glaciers on its summit and flanks formed several gigantic lahars, one of which buried the nearby town of Armero, killing more than 20,000 of its inhabitants. It remains the worst natural disaster in the country’s history. Continued here

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