Some Longest-Living Animal include:

• American box turtle — 120 years
• Bowhead whale — 60 to 70 years (though bowheads exceeding 200 years have been reported)
• Elephant — 70 years
• Human — 70 to 80 years

Some shortest living Animal, include:

• Adult housefly — 4 weeks
• Worker bee — 5 weeks
• Ant (Worker) — ½ year
• Opossum — 1 year
• Ant (Queen) — 3 years
• Rat — 2 to 3 years

Via - livesceience

A team of scientists, headed by Ajoy Kumar Ray, head, department of electronics and technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT-Kharagpur), have undertaken a research work to find herbal cure for cancer.

Scientists are trying to clone and characterise the genes involved in cancer and gather their response to certain therapies, like herbal medicine, according to Business Standard.

IBM scientists have created specialized math algorithms to help model and manage natural disasters: wildfires, floods, diseases and more.

IBM’s “stochastic optimization model” was developed by IBM math scientists from IBM Research Labs in New York and India working with business experts from IBM’s Global Business Services and directly with clients to arm government bodies, relief agencies and companies with tools for strategic planning for more effective allocation of resources for natural disaster management and mitigation.

“Our researchers have worked on innovative optimization solutions designed to create a roadmap for a responsive disaster risk reduction,” says Dr. Daniel Dias, Director, IBM India Research Laboratory.

The same models can be explored to manage floods or famines in India, or natural disasters anywhere in the world. A fully developed, customized and implemented model can significantly help the country’s approach for disaster risk reduction and disaster management.

IBM announcement 

Other than it’s reputation as predators, Sharks can also save lives by giving early warnings of storms.

British research has found that they can sense minute changes in air pressure and head for the safety of deeper waters when a storm is brewing. A drop in air pressure - a sign of imminent bad weather - is mirrored in the pressure of the water.

“The shark’s inner ear is very similar to ours; if we go up in an aeroplane our ears pop due to the equalisation of pressures and the same thing goes on with a shark,” said Miss Lauren Smith, 24, a marine biology student, who has carried out further research into the phenomenon in the Bahamas at Aberdeen University.

“Juvenile sharks live in shallow coastal waters along the coastline and if you had monitoring stations or underwater cameras you could observe them migrating to deeper waters,” she added.