Life Extension Technology Research Articles

Divine Purpose? Religion, Race, and Attitudes Toward Life Extension Technology

Abstract There is a growing sociological literature examining how religion shapes attitudes toward science and technology. However, sociologists have done little to explore how attitudes toward religion and science shape support for end-of-life and life extension technologies. Past research suggests that those most likely to be interested in life extension technologies are nonreligious and White. However, we draw on theories in sociology of religion to examine how race and religion might intersect to shape attitudes about life extension. We find that Black Americans are significantly more interested in life extension than White Americans, and while religiosity decreases interest in life extension among White Americans, religiosity increases interest for Black Americans. And we find that Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than White Americans to cite other-oriented and religious reasons over self-oriented reasons for wanting to extend their lives, such as “divine purpose” and a desire to contribute more to society.

The Finite Element Analysis on the Effects of Overlapping Rate in Low-Energy Laser Shock Peening

Laser shock peening has been widely studied and pioneeringly applied in aerospace industry as a life-extension technology for structured mechanical components. However, in other promising fields such as nuclear power industry, little has been studied concerning such critical issues as long-distance transmission of the laser beam by optical fiber and optimized parameters of typically low pulse energy with micrometer-sized beam spots. In such scenario, the overlapping rate between adjacent small spots plays a critical role in obtaining homogenous residual stress and surface morphology. In this study, a three-dimensional finite element model in AISI 420 martensitic stainless steel has been developed to correlate the residual stress as well as surface morphology with varying overlapping rates. Multiple laser spots are loaded with VDLOAD user subroutine in Abaqus. The residual stress distribution is analyzed with respects of laser shocking and in-depth planes. And the surface morphology is evaluated in terms of depression depth as well as surface roughness. Combined results suggest that the overlapping rate of 61% as an optimized value, which can be used as a basis for future experimental studies and industrial applications.

Attitude toward death, not religious commitment mediates the relationship between political ideology and attitudes toward life extension

Previous research has linked political ideology – right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation – with more positive attitudes toward life extension. The purpose of this study was to investigate death attitudes and religious commitment as mediators of the relationship between political ideology and attitudes toward life extension. College students (N = 406) completed an online survey. One death attitude – neutral acceptance – and not religious commitment mediated the relationship between political ideology and attitudes toward life extension. Individuals with more intolerant political ideology may see death as aberrant and thus be more likely to embrace life extension technology.

Fatigue mechanism of medium-carbon steel welded joint: Competitive impacts of various defects

Fatigue of welded joint is a scientific issue of great significance, because welding process always causes the loss of fatigue strength up to 40–60% for welded joint of the key components, resulting in a relatively poor reliability in service. In the present work, the fatigue behavior and damage mechanism of a medium-carbon steel welded joint were systematically investigated by microstructure observation and fatigue tests. It was found that, for the medium-carbon steel welded joint, fatigue crack mainly initiated at the welding defects, e.g., welding porosity, slag inclusion and heterogeneous microstructure with a poor mechanical property (i.e., the network-block proeutectoid ferrite). The competitive impact of various defects on the fatigue damage behaviors of welded joint was discussed, i.e., the competition between the volume defects (e.g., porosity and inclusions) and the heterogeneous structure. It is revealed that the smaller surface defects are more susceptible to fatigue damage due to the low constraint of plane stress state and higher stress intensity factor at high stress amplitude, while the larger internal defects easily cause fatigue damage at low stress amplitude because the driving force for crack propagation is larger than that of the damage case from the sample surface. Generally, the fatigue lives of samples with fatigue crack initiating from the weak phase are relatively longer, about 10 times as long as those of the samples with fatigue crack starting from the sample surface. In addition, the residual fatigue crack growth life, Nf, and the initial stress intensity factor (SIF), ΔK1 at the volume defect tip exhibit a linear relation in the double logarithmic coordinate system. The present findings can provide a theoretical basis for the anti-fatigue design and fatigue life extension technology for the metallic component with welded structures.

Life extension analysis of high speed ball bearing based on multi-parameter coupling

The internal contact nonlinear characteristics caused by the quasi-static properties of high-speed ball bearing is taken as a breakthrough point. Based on the L-P fatigue life theory, the bearing parameters and the preload load are used as the constraint variables to establish an overall bearing life extension model. Then, combined with the influence of geometric parameters on the osculation, the influence mechanism between spin-to-roll ratio and the life of the bearing are studied under the individual variation of the geometric parameters. Finally, the variation law of the bearing life, frictional heat generation and spin-to-roll ratio under the coupling changes of various parameters, and the priority of each parameter on the bearing life sensitivity, are investigated. The results show that the bearing life could be prolonged when the initial contact angle and the number of rolling elements increase but the inner and outer raceway curvature radius coefficients of the bearing and the preload force reduce. And the priority order of each parameter to bearing life sensitivity is as follows: the inner and outer raceway curvature radius coefficients shows the strongest influence on the bearing life, followed by the number of balls, and then the initial contact angle. This research provides a reliable theoretical basis for the design of high-speed ball bearings and life extension technology.

2. Speaking of God in the Post-Human Era: An Examination of Radical Life Extension in Relation to Key Theological Concepts and Narratives

Rapid advancements in radical life extension technologies contribute to humanity’s ever-changing world. The normalization of radical life extension technologies would signify that the present era in which biology and evolution act as dictators of human life and health would come to an end, thereby ushering in the age of the post-human. The purpose of this paper is to engage in a theological analysis of how and to what degree the ways in which humanity speaks about God could be changed or influenced if radical life extension becomes normative within society. . It is likely that this powerful technology would have a significant impact on many facets of culture, including the way in which humanity engages with religion, in particular Christianity. To accomplish this, the technology that could potentially support radical life extension, namely nanotechnology and cybernetic immortality, will be explained in terms of their relevance and function. Subsequently, the affects of radical life extension for human life will be addressed. Specifically, the implications of the partial or full eradication of human biological and psychological suffering and death through the use of cybernetic immortality and nanotechnology and will be considered. From there, the core theological concepts and narratives will be analyzed in the context of the potential actualization of radical life extension technology. A focus will be placed on the ethic of loving thy neighbour, Christ’s suffering on the cross, the hope of salvation and the Christian hope of entrance into heaven after death.

Mismatch between food sustainability and consumer acceptance toward innovation technologies among Millennial students: The case of Shelf Life Extension

The academic interest towards food products produced with innovative technologies has increased and a specific attention has been paid on the factors that could explain consumer acceptance or skepticism with regard to these new technologies. In this frame, the aim of this work is to analyze the factors that affect consumer acceptance towards new technologies in food with a special focus on Shelf Life Extension, which is considered to be one of the most sustainability-driving food innovations. The target group for the analysis is represented by the Millennial Generation (MG) students (n = 1027), recruited through a face to face survey.The results evidenced that higher levels of food knowledge led to an increase in acceptance whereas, in contrast, a greater interest in sustainability led to technology rejection. As the main scope of these technologies is to increase the overall sustainability of food products by reducing food loss and chain fails, the mismatch evidenced by the rejection of Shelf Life Extension technology by eco-friendly individuals outlines that the innovation technologies in food products is perceived by consumers as risky per se, regardless of the specific technology. In a nutshell, individuals characterized by high sustainability concerns fail to recognize, in science and technology, a possible contribution for a more sustainable world.

Hardfacing technologies for improvement of wear characteristics of hot working tools: A Review

The severe operation conditions of the hot working process lead to premature failure of the hot working tools. The dominant failure of hot working tools is wear of the tool surfaces induced by the thermal softening phenomenon. Several researchers related to the service life extension technology of hot working tools paid attention to the protective overlay coating technology, so called hardfacing, for preventing premature wear of the hot working tool. This paper reviewed recent research on the application of hardfacing technology to hot working tools. In addition, the key technology and the state-of-the art of the hardfacing technology related to improvement of the wear characteristics of hot working tools were discussed. Finally, future research issues of the hardfacing technology to enhance the service life and wear characteristics of the hot working tools were described.

Life Extension and Mental Ageing

Objections to life extension often focus on its effects for individual well-being. Prominent amongst these concerns is the possibility that life extending technologies will extend lifespan without preventing the ageing of the mind. Writers on the subject express the fear that life extending drugs will keep us physically youthful whilst our minds decay, succumbing to dementia, boredom, and loneliness. Generally these fears remain speculative, in part due to the absence of genuine life extending technologies. In this paper, however, I examine the implications of an existing life extension technology. Caloric restriction (CR) and drugs that mimic its effects, such as rapamycin, metformin and resveratrol have been shown to increase average and maximum lifespan in a wide variety of organisms, and seem likely to do so in humans. Moreover, some CR mimetic drugs (CRMs) are already widely used. This means that they present a pressing test case for fears about mental ageing in an extended life. Misgivings about mental ageing can be divided into biomedical factors such as the likelihood of brain ageing, and psychological factors such as loss of meaning and boredom. I argue that studies of CR suggest that brain ageing will be beneficially slowed. However, it is less clear that deleterious aspects of psychological ageing can be similarly retarded. I argue that this reduces the desirability of life extension unless major social changes can be made.

Public attitudes towards human life extension by intervening in ageing

A number of biogerontologists have expressed an interest in intervening in the ageing process in order to extend the human life span. This study explored the attitudes of members of the Australian public towards the potential development and use of life-extension technologies and their attitudes towards the ethical, social and personal implications of life extension. Participants were presented with a vignette outlining the prospect of a “life-extension pharmaceutical” that could increase maximum life span by slowing the ageing process. While 65% supported such research, only 35% said that they would use a life-extension technology if one became available. Men were more supportive of research and more disposed to use life-extension technologies than women. Concerns about the potential ethical, social and personal implications predicted levels of overall support for, and intention to use, life-extension technologies. Our survey suggests that public attitudes towards life extension are neither overwhelmingly “pro” or “con” and in fact more nuanced than either proponents or opponents of life extension have often assumed.

The Implications of “Advanced Therapies” Regulation

Recent policy developments in the United States and Europe have created new regulatory regimes for advanced and complex treatments such as cell therapies, tissue engineering, and gene therapies that are of particular relevance for regenerative medicine. Where these new legal rules operate as a mere extension of existing regimes, they risk stifling innovation in these areas of life extension technology.

The Salience of Language in Probing Public Attitudes about Life Extension

The Salience of Language in Probing Public Attitudes about Life Extension

Life extension technology: Implications for public policy and regulation

While commentaries about life extension from biogerontologists, demographers, geneticists and ethicists have increased in recent years, these have paid little attention to the public policy implications of life extension or the perspectives of community members and policymakers themselves. This paper draws on the findings from a three-year research project about strong life extension which involved interviews with community members, and state and federal policymakers. The paper explores and compares the views of community members and policymakers about policy priorities arising from life extension, and examines these within the context of existing literature and available evidence. Thus the paper provides an important evidence base to inform policy development on life extension and argues that general community perspectives are important to consider in public and policy debates about the development and regulation of life extension.

Moral pluralism versus the total view: why Singer is wrong about radical life extension

Peter Singer has argued that we should not proceed with a hypothetical life-extension drug, based on a scenario in which developing the drug would fail to achieve the greatest sum...

Radioisotope electric propulsion (REP): A near-term approach to nuclear propulsion

Studies over the last decade have shown radioisotope-based nuclear electric propulsion to be enhancing and, in some cases, enabling for many potential robotic science missions. Also known as radioisotope electric propulsion (REP), the technology offers the performance advantages of traditional reactor-powered electric propulsion (i.e., high specific impulse propulsion at large distances from the Sun), but with much smaller, affordable spacecraft. Future use of REP requires development of radioisotope power sources with system specific powers well above that of current systems. The US Department of Energy and NASA have developed an advanced Stirling radioisotope generator (ASRG) engineering unit, which was subjected to rigorous flight qualification-level tests in 2008, and began extended lifetime testing later that year. This advancement, along with recent work on small ion thrusters and life extension technology for Hall thrusters, could enable missions using REP sometime during the next decade.

Community perceptions on the significant extension of life: An exploratory study among urban adults in Brisbane, Australia

Some researchers in the field of ageing claim that significant extension of the human lifespan will be possible in the near future. While many of these researchers have assumed that the community will welcome this technology, there has been very little research on community attitudes to life extension. This paper presents the results of an in-depth qualitative study of community attitudes to life extension across age groups and religious boundaries. There were 57 individual interviews, and 8 focus groups (totalling 72 focus group participants) conducted with community members in Brisbane, Australia. Community attitudes to life extension were more varied and complex than have been assumed by some biogerontologists and bioethicists. While some participants would welcome the opportunity to extend their lives others would not even entertain the possibility. This paper details these differences of opinion and reveals contrasting positions that reflect individualism or social concern among community members. The findings also highlight the relationship between Christianity, in particular belief in an afterlife, and attitudes to life extension technology. Overall, the study raises questions about the relationship between interest in life extension, the medicalisation of ageing and the increasing acceptability of enhancement technologies that need to be addressed in more representative samples of the community.

Remanufacturing strategy for chemical equipment

Failure, especially induced by cracks, usually occurred in the service process of chemical equipment, which could cause the medium leakage, fire hazard and explosion and induced the personnel casualty and economic losses. To assure the long-term and safety service, it is necessary to apply the remanufacturing technology on the chemical equipment containing cracks. The recent research advances on the remanufacturing, the failure modes and the life extension technology for chemical equipment were reviewed. The engineering strategy of the remanufacturing for the chemical equipment was proposed, which could provide a reasonable and reliable technical route for the remanufacturing operation of chemical equipment. In the strategy, the redesign was also been considered.

The choosy reaper

Our increased understanding of the biology of ageing has revived prospects for radical anti‐ageing medicine. Ethicists have often tried to argue against these endeavours, but with little success. Their arguments, which appeal to the natural order, are either circular or self‐defeating. Invoking the invariance of the human condition cuts no ice as rational argument and often turns into an avowedly irrational appeal to the ‘yuk reaction’ that exotic technologies evoke. Does that mean that anti‐mortality technologies are ethically innocuous? Not if we consider the reality of unequal death in today's world, in which differences in longevity highlight the gap between the haves and the have‐nots. Even in affluent societies, in which the basics of food, shelter and medicine are widely available, the grim reaper is very much class conscious. Without returning to the concern for equality that was once the hallmark of the Enlightenment, radical life extension may well add to these existing inequalities, and create more resentment and strife in the future. Many aspects of current biomedical research, especially in the more avant‐garde areas of neuroscience and stem‐cell research, are united under the alluring label ‘regenerative medicine’. These developments fuel legitimate hopes for new treatments of degenerative diseases, which, in an age of increasing longevity, represent the main focal point for prevailing anxieties about ill health and the frailties of old age. But regenerative medicine is often taken more literally to mean rejuvenation—a genuine turning back of the clock—which leads to more florid speculations about massive increases in human lifespan. These futuristic views are often criticized by scientists as daydreams that owe more to science fiction than to a sober appraisal of predictable advances. But they are taken more seriously by a different category of opponents, namely those who condemn these prospects on ethical grounds. For many conservative critics, …

Life extension technology for steam pipe systems. II. Development of life prediction methodology: Liaw, P. K., Saxena, A. and Perrin, J. S. Eng. Fract. Mech. (Aug. 1993) 45 (6), 787–798

High-pressure braking hose in the automobile power braking system undergoes the complicated large deformation cyclic motion during the driver’s steering operation and the up and down motion of vehicle, so that the fatigue damage becomes accumulated in proportional to the cycle number. Since the occurrence of fatigue-induced micro crack in the braking hose may cause the oil leakage, the fatigue life assessment becomes the most important task in the design of high-durable braking hose. In this context, this paper intends to introduce a numerical method for predicting the fatigue life of braking hose in the lamination structure composed of pure rubber and fabric braided layers. A specific trajectory of braking hose in the combined tire’s steering and car’s up-down motion is defined as the target cyclic path, and the variations in strain and stress fields along the cyclic path are analyzed by the large deformation finite element analysis. The strain and stress cycles in their variations are calculated by the rainflow cycle counting method, and the fatigue life cycle is evaluated by three fatigue life evaluation models, together with the Palmgren–Miner accumulative damage law. The ε−N curves of rubber layers are obtained by a specially designed displacement-controlled fatigue test using rubber specimens, while the inserted fabric braided layers which are excluded from the fatigue life assessment are modeled as an orthotropic material. The validity of the proposed numerical method is illustrated by the numerical experiments, and the fatigue life cycles to the evaluation model and to the cyclic path are investigated and compared.

Life extension technology for steam pipe systems. I. Development of material properties: Liaw, P.K., Saxena, A. and Perrin, J. Eng. Fract. Mech. (Aug. 1993) 45 (6), 759–786

Life extension technology for steam pipe systems. I. Development of material properties: Liaw, P.K., Saxena, A. and Perrin, J. Eng. Fract. Mech. (Aug. 1993) 45 (6), 759–786