Related papers: Socio-economic constraints to maximum human lifesp…
We examine the dynamics of an age-structured population model in which the life expectancy of an offspring may be mutated with respect to that of the parent. While the total population of the system always reaches a steady state, the…
The question as to why most higher organisms reproduce sexually has remained open despite extensive research, and has been called "the queen of problems in evolutionary biology". Theories dating back to Weismann have suggested that the key…
Trends in human longevity are puzzling, especially when considering the limits of human longevity. Partially, the conflicting assertions are based upon demographic evidence and the interpretation of survival and mortality curves using the…
Biological aging is characterized by an age-dependent increase in the probability of death and by a decrease in the reproductive capacity. Individual age-dependent rates of survival and reproduction have a strong impact on population…
Many life-history traits, like the age at maturity or adult longevity, are important determinants of the generation time. For instance, semelparous species whose adults reproduce once and die have shorter generation times than iteroparous…
Economic growth and the growth of human population in the past 2,000,000 years are extensively examined. Data are found to be in a clear contradiction of the currently accepted explanations of the mechanism of growth, which revolve around…
Understanding the statistical dynamics of growth and inequality is a fundamental challenge to ecology and society. Recent analyses of wealth and income dynamics in contemporary societies show that economic inequality is very dynamic and…
The Gompertz model since 1825 has significantly contributed to interpretation of ageing in biological and social sciences. However, in modern research findings, it is clear that the Gompertz model is not successful to describe the whole…
Online genealogy datasets contain extensive information about millions of people and their past and present family connections. This vast amount of data can assist in identifying various patterns in human population. In this study, we…
From the perspective developed in this paper, it can be argued that exponential population growth resulted in the exponential decrease of the life-span of consecutive stable periods during the life-span of the European international system…
We present a model for biological aging that considers the number of individuals whose (inherited) genetic charge determines the maximum age for death: each individual may die before that age due to some external factor, but never after…
The concept of progress has characterized human society from millennia. However, this concept is elusive and too often given for certain. The goal of this paper is to suggest a general definition of human progress that satisfies, whenever…
Theoretical analysis proves that human survivability is dominated by an unusual physical, rather than biological, mechanism, which yields an exact law. The law agrees with all experimental data, but, contrary to existing theories, it is the…
This chapter reviews some aspects of the theory of age-structured models of populations with finite maximum age. We formulate both the renewal equation for the birth rate and the partial differential equation for the age density, and show…
The study considers the model of an abstract organism, called Arbitrary Oscillator (ArbO), which is capable of making decisions at each timed step. These decisions are 'critical' since, randomly, their outcome can be 'fatal' for ArbO, thus…
Essential to each other, growth and exploration are jointly observed in populations, be it alive such as animals and cells or inanimate such as goods and money. But their ability to move, crucial to cope with uncertainty and optimize…
It is still common wisdom amongst economists, politicians and lay people that economic growth is a necessity of our social systems, at least to avoid distributional conflicts. This paper challenges such belief moving from a purely physical…
In a recent study (Garrett, 2011), I described theoretical arguments and empirical evidence showing how civilization evolution might be considered from a purely physical basis. One implication is that civilization exhibits the property of…
Real GDP growth rate in developed countries is found to be a sum of two terms. The first term is the reciprocal value of the duration of the period of mean income growth with work experience, Tcr. The current value of Tcr in the USA is 40…
Understanding how decision making changes across the lifespan is a central challenge for neuroscience, yet research on cognitive aging has remained largely disconnected from the theoretical and computational advances that now shape modern…