Media Coverage and Discussion of the Article
"The Reliability Theory of Aging and Longevity"
Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2001, 213(4):
527-545
Media Coverage:
Excerpts from Spontaneous Scientific Discussion on the Internet
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Excerpts from:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crsociety/message/16129
On 24 Dec 2001, Tom Kobzina wrote:
>
> This theory ("Reliability Theory of Aging
> and Longevity") claims that aging is a
> direct consequence of systems redundancy.
>
> J Theor Biol 2001 Dec 21;213(4):527-545
> The Reliability Theory of Aging and Longevity.
> Gavrilov LA, Gavrilova NS.
...
> The full text of this article is at:
> http://www.src.uchicago.edu/~gavr1/JTB-01.pdf
> The Concluding Remarks section has a summary of the theory.
Tom:
A nice paper -- Thank you. I read it front to back.
Aging means that the probability of death increases
with age (time) -- the Gompertz law, human mortality
rate doubling time of approx 8 yrs, yielding an
exponential mortality rate distribution.
With n = number of survivors at time t,
dn/dt = -k2*n*exp**(a*t)
If the probability of death were constant with age,
we wouldn't age, but still would all eventually die --
following the Weibull (power) law distribution.
With n = number of survivors at time t,
dn/dt = -k1*n
And the general mortality curve (Gompertz-Makeham law)
containing both aging and non-aging components:
dn/dt = -k1*n - k2*n*exp**(a*t)
-- Warren
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Excerpts from:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crsociety/message/16213
Tom,
Thanks for this abstract and link to the full paper. This is a very
interesting theory!!
I worked with reliability modeling for 15 years and
suspected that this same modeling approach could be applied to modeling
animal lifetimes.
......
Doug Younkin
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Excerpts from:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crsociety/message/16272
Tom and all:
The paper originally noted by Tom, "The Reliability Theory of Aging
and
Longevity," is quite interesting and I think provides a pointer in the
direction of how to understand the aging process.
The main point of the paper is that animal aging looks just like a
system of redundant elements
that do not age, but fail randomly. "Redundant elements" means that an
organism has many ways to cope and still remain alive.
......
Now I could grasp what kind of redundancy might be in my own life
that would
deteriorate as I age. It is as simple as counting what faculties of
life I
still have or have lost. ...
So, on a macroscopic scale, my ability to remain alive depends on
how many
ways I have left of coping with my environment. At some point, I will
be in
the situation of the "straw that broke the camel's back": one more loss
of
capability and I die. Sort of obvious, but this way of looking at
mortality
of a population of organisms seems to explain the Gomperz rate of aging
(mortality rates increase exponentially with age, doubling about every
eight
years) until old age, then non-Gomperz aging rate (flattened tail, with
a
constant failure rate) in the very oldest old.
Doug Younkin
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Excerpts from:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crsociety/message/16298
Hi Doug,
You might say that the endocrine and autocrine hormones comprise
redundant systems
Tom Kobzina
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