Related papers: Ultimate limit to human longevity
Reconstructing past population size from present day genetic data is a major goal of population genetics. Recent empirical studies infer population size history using coalescent-based models applied to a small number of individuals. Here we…
The anthropic principle implies that life can emerge and be sustained only in a narrow range of values of fundamental constants. Here we show that anthropic arguments can set powerful constraints on {\em transient} variations of the…
Aging includes both continuous gradual decline from microscopic mechanisms together with major deficit onset events such as morbidity, disability and ultimately death. These deficit events are stochastic, obscuring the connection between…
Time perception is crucial for a coherent human experience. As life progresses, our perception of the passage of time becomes increasingly non-uniform, often feeling as though it accelerates with age. While various causes for this…
Oscillating population model realistic situations in different contexts.We examine this situation with reasonable mathematical models and come to interesting conclusions,such as for example,that the population at most points of the cycle…
A wide range of stochastic processes that model the growth and decline of populations exhibit a curious dichotomy: with certainty either the population goes extinct or its size tends to infinity. There is a elegant and classical theorem…
Humans are the ultimate ecosystem engineers who have profoundly transformed the world's landscapes in order to enhance their survival. Somewhat paradoxically, however, sometimes the unforeseen effect of this ecosystem engineering is the…
A new expression to the total age of the Universe is derived in terms of the average deceleration parameter. This kinematic result holds regardless of the curvature of the universe as well as of the underlying gravity theory. It remains…
Aging is a fundamental aspect of living systems that undergo a progressive deterioration of physiological function with age and an increase of vulnerability to disease and death. Living systems, known as complex systems, require complexity…
As cell proliferation is limited due to the loss of telomere repeats in DNA of normal somatic cells during division, telomere attrition can possibly play an important role in determining the maximum life span of organisms as well as…
Do biological cells sense time by the number of their divisions, a process that ends at senescence? We consider the question "can the cell's perception of time be expressed through the length of the shortest telomere?" The answer is that…
In this kind of model, the main characteristic that determines population viability in the long term is the stochastic growth rate (SGR) denoted $\lambda_S$. When $\lambda_S$ is larger than one, the population grows exponentially with…
We employ the novel theory of heterogeneous extreme value statistics to accurately estimate the ultimate world records for the 100-m running race, for men and for women. For this aim we collected data from 1991 through 2023 from thousands…
Various features of the development of individual living species, including individual humans, are programmed. Is death also programmed, and if yes, how is it implemented and what can be the underlying mechanism providing the inevitability…
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 have found an empirical law for the variation of the length of the Earth's day with geologic time employing Wells's data. We attribute the lengthening of the Earth's day to the present cosmic expansion of the Universe. The prediction of…
A multilevel functional data method is adapted for forecasting age-specific mortality for two or more populations in developed countries with high-quality vital registration systems. It uses multilevel functional principal component…
Political regimes have been changing throughout human history. After the apparent triumph of liberal democracies at the end of the twentieth century, Francis Fukuyama and others have been arguing that humankind is approaching an `end of…
We consider age-structured models with an imposed refractory period between births. These models can be used to formulate alternative population control strategies to China's one-child policy. By allowing any number of births, but with an…
Numerous Earth-destroying doomsday scenarios have recently been analyzed, including breakdown of a metastable vacuum state and planetary destruction triggered by a "strangelet'' or microscopic black hole. We point out that many previous…