Why are babies born young? This sounds like an odd question. People would say "of course babies are born young". However, this goes to the core of the question of human (or animal) development. Why is it that as time passes people develop initially through puberty and then for women through menopause and more generally getting diseases such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer, but most of the time babies start showing no signs of this. Lots of research into this has happened over the years and now I think it is clear why this is. It raises some interesting questions. Biological youth is about how well a cell functions. Cells that are old in a biological sense don't work that well. One of the ways in which cells stop working is they fail to produce the full range of proteins. Generally the proteins that are produced from longer genes stop being produced. The reason for this relates to how the Genes work (the Genome). Because the genome is not gettin...
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That image did remind me of a conversation some of my work collegues and I had last week. We were discussing where parliament would move to when London is too badly flooded and has to be abandoned. Birmingham would be the obvious location due to being built on a hill, our transportation network and the fact that we already have 3 venues that could be easily adapted to accomodate the government.
A number of people did comment, however, that the rampant Brummiephobia that seems to infest the south east would mean that Manchester would be a more likely relocation site.