Related papers: The human longevity record may hold for decades
The Hubble constant, which measures the expansion rate, together with the total energy density of the Universe, sets the size of the observable Universe, its age, and its radius of curvature. Excellent progress has been made recently toward…
Longevity of a taxonomic group is an important issue in understanding the dynamics of evolution. In this respect a key observation is that genera, families or orders can each be assigned a characteristic average lifetime [Van Valen, L.,…
We study the dynamics of an age-structured population in which the life expectancy of an offspring may be mutated with respect to that of its parent. When advantageous mutation is favored, the average fitness of the population grows…
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…
The statistics of records for a time series generated by a continuous time random walk is studied, and found to be independent of the details of the jump length distribution, as long as the latter is continuous and symmetric. However, the…
Forecasts of mortality provide vital information about future populations, with implications for pension and health-care policy as well as for decisions made by private companies about life insurance and annuity pricing. Stochastic…
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…
The provision of intergenerational care, via the Grandmother Hypothesis, has been implicated in the evolution of post-fertile longevity, particularly in humans. However, if grandmothering does provide fitness benefits, a key question is why…
Predicting an individual's aging trajectory is a central challenge in preventative medicine and bioinformatics. While machine learning models can predict chronological age from biomarkers, they often fail to capture the dynamic,…
Application of some basic notions and statistics of ageing distributions used in mathematical theory of reliability including the Gini-type index is discussed as a methodological tool for investigation of human population ageing and…
The aging of population is a social phenomenon in the world. In this study, series of controlled experiments were performed to investigate the movement characteristics of elderly pedestrians passing through bottlenecks. Similar…
The influence of per capita income on life expectancy is well documented, mostly through studies of multinational samples. However, one expects fairly weak correlations at both ends of the life span, that is to say in early infancy and in…
In this paper we explore the life expectancy limits by based on the stochastic modeling of mortality and applying the first exit or hitting time theory of a stochastic process. The main assumption is that the health state or the "vitality",…
Ecologists have long argued about the strength of density dependence and population regulation, respectively defined as the short-term and long-term rates of return to equilibrium. Here, I give three arguments for the intractability of…
We introduce the following model for the evolution of a population. At every discrete time $j\geq 0$ exactly one individual is introduced in the population and is assigned a death probability $c_j$ sampled from $C$, a fixed probability…
We examine astronomical observations that would be achievable over a future timeline corresponding to the documented history of human civilization so far, $\sim 10^4$ years. We examine implications for measurements of the redshift drift,…
We propose two simple probability models to compute the probability of an influenza pandemic. Under a random walk model the probability that all pandemics between times 0 and 300 occur by time 150 is 1/2. Under a Poisson model with mean…
For decades the number of scientific publications has been rapidly increasing, effectively out-dating knowledge at a tremendous rate. Only few scientific milestones remain relevant and continuously attract citations. Here we quantify how…
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…
Globular clusters are the oldest objects in the Galaxy whose age may be accurately determined. As such globular cluster ages provide the best estimate for the age of the universe. The age of a globular cluster is determined by a comparison…