Length Of Human Life Research Articles

Workflow for health-related and brain data lifecycle.

Poor lifestyle leads potentially to chronic diseases and low-grade physical and mental fitness. However, ahead of time, we can measure and analyze multiple aspects of physical and mental health, such as body parameters, health risk factors, degrees of motivation, and the overall willingness to change the current lifestyle. In conjunction with data representing human brain activity, we can obtain and identify human health problems resulting from a long-term lifestyle more precisely and, where appropriate, improve the quality and length of human life. Currently, brain and physical health-related data are not commonly collected and evaluated together. However, doing that is supposed to be an interesting and viable concept, especially when followed by a more detailed definition and description of their whole processing lifecycle. Moreover, when best practices are used to store, annotate, analyze, and evaluate such data collections, the necessary infrastructure development and more intense cooperation among scientific teams and laboratories are facilitated. This approach also improves the reproducibility of experimental work. As a result, large collections of physical and brain health-related data could provide a robust basis for better interpretation of a person's overall health. This work aims to overview and reflect some best practices used within global communities to ensure the reproducibility of experiments, collected datasets and related workflows. These best practices concern, e.g., data lifecycle models, FAIR principles, and definitions and implementations of terminologies and ontologies. Then, an example of how an automated workflow system could be created to support the collection, annotation, storage, analysis, and publication of findings is shown. The Body in Numbers pilot system, also utilizing software engineering best practices, was developed to implement the concept of such an automated workflow system. It is unique just due to the combination of the processing and evaluation of physical and brain (electrophysiological) data. Its implementation is explored in greater detail, and opportunities to use the gained findings and results throughout various application domains are discussed.

Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) based COVID-19 health impact assessment: A systematic review protocol

COVID-19 is a highly contagious infectious disease that emerged in 2019. This disease is causing devastating health, socio-economic, and economic crises. More specifically COVID-19 is affecting both the quality and length of human life. The overall health impact of this disease is measured by the disability-adjusted life years which is the sum of the life years lost due to disability (the effect on the health quality) and the years life lost due to premature death (effect on the length of life). The purpose of this review is to summarise DALYs-based health impact publications and produce compiled and informative literature that can aid the health regulators to make evidence-based decisions on mitigating COVID-19. The review will be conducted using the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. The DALYs-based original observational and cross-sectional studies will be collected for assessing the health impact of COVID-19. Both the life quality and length impacts of COVID-19 will be reviewed. The life quality impact of COVID-19 will be measured using the life years lost due to disability (pre-recovery illness, pre-death illness, and post-acute consequences), and its impact on the length of life will be measured with years of life lost due to premature death (shortening of life expectancy). The combined health impact of COVID-19 on the quality and length of life will be measured in disability-adjusted life years. The impacts of COVID-19 on the two health outcomes (quality and length of life) will indicate the level of COVID-19 health burden. The increase or decrease of COVID-19 health impact might be due to the sample size differences of different studies and the omission of years lost due to post-acute consequences in some studies. After having a summarized systematic review health decision-makers will apply an impact-based response to COVID-19. Systematic review registration: This protocol is pre-registered in PROSPERO with the registration number CRD42022324931.

Is Gutta-Percha Still the “Gold Standard” among Filling Materials in Endodontic Treatment?

The paper is an extensive monographic review of the literature, and also uses the results of the authors’ own experimental research illustrating the noticed developmental tendencies of the filling material based on gutta-percha. The whole body of literature proves the correctness of the research thesis that this material is the best currently that can be used in endodontics. Caries is one of the most common global infectious diseases. Since the dawn of humankind, the consequence of the disease has been the loss of dentition over time through dental extractions. Both tooth caries and tooth loss cause numerous complications and systemic diseases, which have a serious impact on insurance systems and on the well-being, quality, and length of human life. Endodontic treatment, which has been developing since 1836, is an alternative to tooth extraction. Based on an extensive literature review, the methodology of qualifying patients for endodontic treatment was analyzed. The importance of selecting filling material and techniques for the development and obturation of the root canal during endodontic treatment was described. Particular attention was paid to the materials science aspects and the sequence of phase transformations and precipitation processes, as well as the need to ensure the stoichiometric chemical composition of Ni–Ti alloys, and the vacuum metallurgical processes and material processing technologies for the effects of shape memory and superelasticity, which determine the suitability of tools made of this alloy for endodontic purposes. The phenomena accompanying the sterilization of such tools, limiting the relatively small number of times of their use, play an important role. The methods of root canal preparation and obturation methods through cold side condensation and thermoplastic methods, including the most modern of them, the thermo-hydraulic condensation (THC) technique, were analyzed. An important element of the research hypothesis was to prove the assumption that to optimize the technology of development and obturation of root canals, tests of filling effectiveness are identified by the density and size of the gaps between the root canal wall, and the filling methods used and devices appropriate for material research, using mainly microscopy such as light stereoscopic (LSM) and scanning electron (SEM). The most beneficial preparations were obtained by making a longitudinal breakthrough of 48 natural human teeth, extracted for medical reasons, different from caries, with compliance with all ethical principles in this field. The teeth were prepared using various methods and filled with multiple obturation techniques, using a virtual selection of experimental variants. The breakthroughs were made in liquid nitrogen after a one-sided incision with a narrow gap created by a diamond disc using a materialographic cutter. The best effectiveness of the root canal filling was ensured by the technology of preparing the root canals with K3 rotary nitinol tools and filling the teeth with the THC thermoplastic method using the System B and Obtura III devices with studs and pellets of filling material based on gutta-percha after covering the root canal walls with a thin layer of AH Plus sealant. In this way, the research thesis was confirmed.

Футурология и настоящее: от улучшения качества жизни человека к его бессмертию

Analyzed is the prospects for further development of humankind in future in the field of medical technologies. Trend “The science of the future” began to develop actively in the second half of the twentieth century. Futurology as a scientific and philosophical direction always actualizes the possible and alternative future, the ways of implementing the most fantastic ideas so far. Identifying possible lines of development and outlining the sphere of moral responsibility, futurology together with philosophy looks for opportunities to achieve immortality as a long-term goal. Then we consider the latest scientific medical projects to achieve a technical progress in improving quality and length of human life, bringing us closer to real immortality. While the first steps are being taken new methods of disease prevention are being tested, the causes of various pathologies are reconsidered and strategies for overcoming them are being developed. As a subject of study, the authors of the article review the role of medicine in the social life in the future as one of the most cutting-edge and high-demand areas of high-tech business, requiring philosophical reflection and fragmentation of the zone of responsibility on the way to real immortality.

From the Nathan Shock Centers Coordinating Center: Biology of Aging for Nonbiologists

Advances in the biology of aging that promise to dramatically extend the healthy length of human life are now appearing at a breathtaking rate. At the same time, baseless claims of research breakthroughs in maintaining youth have exploded on electronic media. It often difficult for people outside basic aging research to keep track of what is real, what is imaginary, progress. This symposium brings together four scientists working in some of the most exciting research areas to update attendees in terms that will be understandable to anyone. Our speakers were carefully selected both for their scientific achievements and for their outstanding skill as science communicators. Matt Kaeberlein (University of Washington) will discuss some of the most exciting emerging pharmacological interventions that delay or prevent multiple features of aging. Nathan LeBrasseur (Mayo Clinic) will update us on a specific type of pharmacological intervention – senolytics – which target aged, nonfunctioning cells distributed throughout the body to broadly improve and extend health. Morgan Levine (Yale) will discuss how newly discovered molecular clocks give us more accurate information on our real biological age than does our birth certificate and will explain the research significance of these clocks. Melissa Harris (UAB) will update us on progress in stem cell biology. The promise of stem cells to treat and possibly reverse multiple aspects of aging are real, but perhaps no area of research has been more abused by hyperbolic claims. Dr. Harris will separate the real hope from the false hype.

A statistical study of the time intervals between serial homicides

The “cooling-off period”, or inter-murder interval, has been used to differentiate between serial, spree, and mass murderers for decades. The present research examines the utility of this concept by studying the distribution of 2837 inter-murder intervals for 1012 American serial homicide offenders using data from the Consolidated Serial Homicide Offender Database. The distribution is smooth, following a power law in the region of 10–10,000 days. The power law is cut off in the region when inter-murder intervals become comparable with the length of human life. Otherwise there is no characteristic scale in the distribution. The decades long inter-murder intervals are not anomalies, but rare events described by the power-law distribution and therefore should not be looked upon with suspicion. This study found there to be no characteristic spree or serial homicide offender interval, only a monotonous smooth distribution lacking any features. This suggests that there is only a quantitative difference between serial and spree killers which represent merely different aspects of the same phenomenon.

Machine learning as a tool to design glasses with controlled dissolution for healthcare applications

The advancement of glass science has played a pivotal role in enhancing the quality and length of human life. However, with an ever-increasing demand for glasses in a variety of healthcare applications – especially with controlled degradation rates – it is becoming difficult to design new glass compositions using conventional approaches. For example, it is difficult, if not impossible, to design new gene-activation bioactive glasses, with controlled release of functional ions tailored for specific patient states, using trial-and-error based approaches. Notwithstanding, it is possible to design new glasses with controlled release of functional ions by using artificial intelligence-based methods, for example, supervised machine learning (ML). In this paper, we present an ensemble ML model for reliable prediction of time- and composition-dependent dissolution behavior of a wide variety of oxide glasses relevant for various biomedical applications. A comprehensive database, comprising of over 1300 data-records consolidated from original glass dissolution experiments, has been used for training and subsequent testing of prediction performance of the ML model. Results demonstrate that the ensemble ML model can predict chemical degradation behavior of glasses in aqueous solutions over a wide range of pH relevant for their usage in a human body where the environment can be highly acidic (for example, pH = 3), for example, due to secretion of citric acid by osteoclasts, or highly alkaline (pH ≈10) due to the release of alkali cations from bioactive glasses. Outcomes of this study can be leveraged to design glasses with controlled dissolution behavior in various biological environments. Statement of SignificanceIn this paper, we present an ensemble machine learning (ML) model for prediction of dissolution behavior of a wide variety of oxide glasses relevant for various biomedical applications. The results demonstrate that the ML model can predict the chemical degradation behavior of glasses in aqueous solutions over a wide range of pH relevant for their usage in a human body where the environment can be highly acidic (for example, pH = 3), for example, due to secretion of citric acid by osteoclasts, or highly alkaline (pH ≈10) due to the release of alkali cations from bioactive glasses. Outcomes of this study can be leveraged to design new biomedical glasses with controlled (desired) dissolution behavior in various biological environments.

The testosterone paradox: how sex hormones shape the academic mind

In my work I argue that sexual differences in the brain seem to shape the ideological gulf between the respective social groups each side represents. And most significantly, it is the male sex hormone testosterone that is the primary hormone affecting our sexual evolution. Not only does testosterone fuel the passion for reproduction and play a critical role in the length of human lives, it is an integral component to the mechanism of human civilization—its triumphs and its tragedies. In order to understand the forces that drive the life cycles of human cultures and form the engine of history, it is important to look at the most fundamental building blocks of human neuroscience. Our hormones are the impetus for our history. Hormones regulate and control the way the human mind perceives the world and forms social organizations and political order accordingly. Hormones drive waves of social mood, shaping the evolution of our social life, the fluctuations of religious doctrines, cultural crusades, and sexual norms.

Pro-health training and diet in selected disease entities

Healthy lifestyle, of which integral part is physical activity and proper diet, has an essential influence on the level of occurrence of various illnesses, as well as the length of human life. Positive aspects of physical activity include: removal of negative factors of contemporary life (stress, mental overload by intellectual work, hypokinesis), prevention the overload of motor organs and spinal pains, as well as diminution of the risk of occurrence of various illnesses like obesity, overpressure, atherosclerosis and diabetes. Besides, it toughens the organism and increases immunity. The diet of people who lead an active lifestyle should have high nutritive value, which means that it should provide proper quantity of energy mainly in form of carbohydrates (proper quantity of liquids with electrolytes is also very important). The main basis of every diet should be its diversity and balance. Besides, the diet must be adjusted to the treatment program of the disease. The aim of this dissertation is to present the influence of physical activity, pro-healthy exercises and proper diet on the treatment of the chosen diseases.

The Impact of Infrasounds Generated by Wind Power Stations on a Human Being

Abstract In some opinion-forming environments the problem of noise emitted by wind power stations is very controversial. It is even suggested that they negatively affect the quality and length of human life. Based on the review of domestic and foreign publications an analysis of the impact of the low-frequency noise on a human being was carried out. Wind power stations operating in groups (farms) constituted the source of noise. It was proved that the level of acoustic pressure with G weighting does not exceed the value of 85 dB. The value of the admissible burdensome noise (102 dB) was exceeded in the bus cabins which were driving with the speed exceeding 30 km·h−1. The opinion of the Ministry of Health confirms the findings. It proves that the present knowledge does not allow a clear indication of the relation between the wind farms and their negative impact on the human health.

Sustainable retirement spending: the Czech case

The paper is concerned with retirement planning, in particular with sustainable retirement spending towards the end of the human life cycle, which is a substantial quantitative problem in the pension framework. Some authors have recently successfully used an arithmetic Asian option pricing concept to estimate an individual’s probability of retirement ruin under constant spending rates and asset prices driven by the geometric Brownian motion. It was concluded that for an individual with a given investment portfolio, the expected rate of return and volatility of which are known, the probability of retirement ruin can be estimated using the reciprocal gamma distribution. We extend this theoretical result to the case, when remaining length of human life follows the Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality. The accuracy of presented approximation is analysed via Monte Carlo simulations. A numerical case study using Czech data is provided, including calculated maximal sustainable spending rates for Czech retirees under various combinations of wealth-to-spending ratios and investment portfolio characteristics. We also present optimal investment strategies for retirees with various risk of ruin tolerances.

The influence of a six month aerobics programme on middle aged women's aerobic capacity and body composition

Background: Regular physical activity has a positive influence on increasing physical fitness, which has considerable impact on health and, consequently, on the quality and length of human life. Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the influence of six months of physical endurance activity on the body composition and aerobic capacity of middle aged women. Methods: Forty women between the ages of 40 to 55 years with a sedentary occupation and without regular physical activity took part in the study. The experimental group (n = 21) participated in dance aerobics lessons combined with strength training three times a week for 6 months, during exercise heart rate was monitored by heart rate monitors. The control group (n = 19) did not change their lifestyle during the observed period. All participants passed an all-out bicycle ergometer test to exhaustion and anthropometric measurement (bioelectrical impedance analysis method) before and after this six month program. Results: In the experimental group, after finishing the intervention programme, positive changes were perceptible in almost all monitored parameters; specifically an increase of fat free mass in the lower limbs, peak oxygen consumption, and the duration of the exercise test was statistically significant. Although, in the control group, some monitored parameters changed almost identically; the amount of fat free mass decreased and the duration of the exercise test diminished. Analysis of variance at repeated measurements confirmed that the intervention programme had a statistically significant and positive effect on the duration of the exercise test and on the amount of muscle and fat free mass in the right lower limb. Conclusions: Physical intervention had a statistically important positive influence on the amount of muscle and fat free mass in the right lower limb and on the duration of the exercise test (also logically significant). The results were affected by the women's poor adherence to the aerobics programme, large differences in their motivation and the relatively low training intensity. Despite some inconsistent results, it can be said that an intervention programme in a style of aerobic dance combined with strengh training is suitable physical activity for increasing physical fitness in sedentary middle aged women.

The Case Against Marketing Genetic Tests to Primary Care Doctors to Promote Test Ordering

The Case Against Marketing Genetic Tests to Primary Care Doctors to Promote Test Ordering

Human lifespan: what determines the intrinsic length of human lives?

SummaryHumans have an intrinsic lifespan of approximately 120 years. Classic evolutionary theories of ageing explain the limit as a response to inevitable cellular damage. The theories share the notion that natural selection acts less strongly to purge deleterious genes that are expressed after reproduction. Reproduction schedules are influenced by a species' ecology and so it is ecological factors which explain interspecies variation in lifespan. Human ecology has favoured the selection of an unusually large brain that both confers advantages that promote longevity and requires longevity to make it a worthwhile investment. The relatively long human lifespan therefore co-evolved with the large human brain.

Children's Environmental Health: New Gains in Science and Policy

Recognition of the interconnectedness of the environment and human health stimulated the sanitary reform movement of the nineteenth century, a massive effort to bring clean water, decent housing, and effective waste removal to cities in Europe and the United States. The movement achieved great gains in public health and resulted in substantial enhancement of the quality and length of human life. Paradoxically, in much of the twentieth century, the relation between the environment and human health was forgotten. The result was that little concern was given in environmental law and regulation to protecting public health. In the 1990s, a new recognition of interconnections between environment and health was established, with children's health as the focal point. This article reviews the historical relation between environmental protection and public health. It traces the separation of these two fields and focuses on the role of children's environmental health in the current rejoining of the disciplines.

Maximizing the Length of Human Life

Maximizing the Length of Human Life

Analysis of survival rates of sportsmen utilizing Cutler-Ederer method.

Few studies have been conducted in Japan on the relationship between sports and the length of human life, i.e. the life-prolonging effect of exercise. In this paper, we conducted such research on 3,113 male graduates of a national university having a faculty of physical education. The subjects were divided according to their academic majors, which included physical education, humanities, and science courses. The following results were obtained: 1) Comparison of ages at death showed that physical education majors were distinctly represented in lower age groups. 2) Comparison of average ages at death by dividing the subjects into 20-year intervals according to their years of birth, revealed that physical education majors do not necessarily live longer and tend to die relatively young. 3) Comparison of average ages at death, including death by war, indicated that physical education majors lived 8.572 and 7.792 years less than humanities and science course majors, respectively. When death by war was excluded, the results were 6.189 and 5.548 years, respectively. Both results were statistically significant. 4) Comparison of cumulative survival rates utilizing Cutler-Ederer method showed that the rates of survival of physical education majors were low.

The value of human lifetime — and its application to environmental and energy policy

Policy alternatives in many areas, and particularly in environmental and energy policy, can have an effect on the length of human life. For example, it has been demonstrated that air pollution increases human mortality and hence shortens human life. <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1, 2</sup> One approach to making policy decisions is a cost-benefit analysis, in which the value of human lifetime increments should be an important consideration.

Influences of Various Environmental Factors and the Body Structure on the Length of Life

The length of human life is known to be influenced by various environmental and hereditary factors. The relations between the length of life and the quality of food, the body structure of school children, and cultural environment were investigated by comparing these factors in the southern Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture where many long-lived people are known, with those in the northern mountainous district where the long-lived people are rare. The following results have been obtained.1) The birth rate, death rate and infantile death rate were lower, and other environmental conditions were better in the longevity district than in the short-life area.2) The longevity was found most frequenty in the fishing villages, followed with agricultural villages. The short life was mostly found in the mountainous villages, while it was scarce in the fishing and agricultural villages.3) The length of life was found to be directly proportional to the rice-farming area, especially to the amount of rice and wheat crop.4) School children and students in the longevity district showed better physical build than those in the short life area, with higher height, slightly larger body weight and wider chest. This tendency was especially marked amohg students of junior high schools.

Dr. Richardson's Hygeia

THE eloquent address in which Dr. Richardson has sketched the possible Health City of the future might furnish matter for much discussion—among other points, the probable statistics of the community. The author contemplates the possible reduction of the death-rate to 8 per 1,000 in the first generation, and to 5 or less in the next, as suggested by Mr. Chadwick. It sounds simple enough to talk of knocking 1 or 2 per 1,000 from a death-rate, and, so long as the rate is tolerably high, such as 20 or more, the effect is not so startling, but when we come to such low figures as 8 and 5 the difference becomes enormous. Thus, whereas a diminution from 21 to 20 raises the expectation of life by only 11/2 years, a fall from 9 to 8 raises it by 9, from 6 to 5 by 21 years, and from 5 to 4 by 40 years. We should thus have at 8 per 1,000 death-rate an expectation of life of 86 years, and probable mean duration of 120, whilst there would be cases of old people living to 160. Again, at 5 per 1,000 the ages would be respectively 137 years for expectation at birth, and old people living on to 250; at 4 per 1,000 the expectation would be 177, and old people would live to beyond 330. Compare these figures with Dr. Richardson's closing address, where he claims a modest 90 years as the proper length of human life.