Related papers: Why humans die -- an unsolved biological problem

Death has long been overlooked in evolutionary algorithms. Recent research has shown that death (when applied properly) can benefit the overall fitness of a population and can outperform sub-sections of a population that are "immortal" when…

Gompertz's law tells us that for humans above the age of 35 the death rate increases exponentially with a doubling time of about 10 years. Here, we show that the same law continues to hold even for ages over 100. Beyond 106 there is so far…

Mortality displacement is the concept that deaths are moved forward in time (e.g., a few days, several months, and years) by exposure from when they would occur without the exposure, which is common in environmental time-series studies.…

The analysis of the demographic transition of the past century and a half, using both empirical data and mathematical models, has rendered a wealth of well-established facts, including the dramatic increases in life expectancy. Despite…

For billions of years, evolution has been the driving force behind the development of life, including humans. Evolution endowed humans with high intelligence, which allowed us to become one of the most successful species on the planet.…

The Gompertz law of dependence of human mortality rate on age is derived from a simple model of death as a result of the exponentially rare escape of abnormal cells from immunological response.

There is overwhelming evidence that human intelligence is a product of Darwinian evolution. Investigating the consequences of self-modification, and more precisely, the consequences of utility function self-modification, leads to the…

The problem of the rate and mechanisms of biological evolution was considered. It was shown that species could not be formed due to undirected mutations in characteristic times of about one million years. A mechanism of deterministic…

The concept of random deaths in a computational model for population dynamics is critically examined. We claim that it is just an artifact, albeit useful, of computational models to limit the size of the populations and has no biological…

An agent-based computer simulation of death by inheritable mutations in a changing environment shows a maximal population, or avoids extinction, at so intermediate mutation rate of the individuals. Thus death seems needed to al for…

There has been a recent surge of interest in what causes aging. This has been matched by unprecedented research investment in the field from tech companies. But, despite considerable effort from a broad range of researchers, we do not have…

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…

Traditionally evolution is seen as a process where from a pool of possible variations of a population (e.g. biological species or industrial goods) a few variations get selected which survive and proliferate, whereas the others vanish.…

There is sustained and widespread interest in understanding the limit, if any, to the human lifespan. Apart from its intrinsic and biological interest, changes in survival in old age have implications for the sustainability of social…

Survival analysis studies and predicts the time of death, or other singular unrepeated events, based on historical data, while the true time of death for some instances is unknown. Survival trees enable the discovery of complex nonlinear…

Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…

We present numerical results based on a simplified ecological system in evolution, showing features of extinction similar to that claimed for the biosystem on Earth. In the model each species consists of a population in interaction with the…

Biological evolution depends on the passing down to subsequent generations of genetic information encoding beneficial traits, and on the removal of unfit individuals by a selection mechanism. However, selection acts on phenotypes, and is…

It is important to be clear as to whether a theory such as evolutionary archaeology pertains to biological evolution, in which acquired change is obliterated at the end of each generation, or cultural change, in which acquired change is…

Ignoring the differences between countries, human reproductive and dispersal behaviors can be described by some standardized models, so whether there is a universal law of population growth hidden in the abundant and unstructured data from…