Longevity Expectations Research Articles

Do Smokers Respond to Health Shocks?

UBLIC policy toward cigarettes is about consumer sovereignty. Can people be trusted to interpret health warnings designed to reduce tobacco use, both what is on product labels and presented in public advertisements, as intended and to make rational smoking decisions? Evaluating smokers’ reactions to health warnings requires an understanding of how people form their beliefs about the risks from smoking and update them when they encounter new information. This paper reports the first effort to use data to evaluate how new information, acquired through exogenous health shocks, affects people’s longevity expectations. We find that smokers react differently to health shocks than do those who quit smoking or never smoked. These differences, together with insights from qualitative research conducted along with the statistical analysis, suggest specific changes in the health warnings used to reduce smoking.

Longevity Expectations and Death: Can People Predict Their Own Demise?

Using four waves of the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) this paper tests whether longevity expectations predict actual mortality at the individual level. The results suggest longevity expectations do predict mortality reasonably well. Serious health shocks and new activity limitations do reduce longevity expectations. Given one is prepared to accept that other unobserved causal factors have the same means for those who die and those who survive in each wave it is possible to test whether longevity expectations can serve as a sufficient statistic. The test findings imply that they do not appear to reflect all that individuals know about their personal odds of living to seventy-five.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Longevity Expectations and Death: Can People Predict Their Own Demise?

Using four waves of the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) this paper tests whether longevity expectations predict actual mortality at the individual level. The results suggest longevity expectations do predict mortality reasonably well. Serious health shocks and new activity limitations do reduce longevity expectations. Given one is prepared to accept that other unobserved causal factors have the same means for those who die and those who survive in each wave it is possible to test whether longevity expectations can serve as a sufficient statistic. The test findings imply that they do not appear to reflect all that individuals know about their personal odds of living to seventy-five.

Proceedings of a symposium on the neurobiology of the basal ganglia. Glasgow, United Kingdom, July 1999.

The basal ganglia occupy a commanding place in neuroscience research, in clinical neurology and in biomedical education. The paucity of our understanding of the role of the basal ganglia in normal everyday life combined with our more extensive knowledge of their deficiencies in a variety of clinical syndromes is a potent spur to continuing investigation. That some of these neurodegenerative syndromes-such as Parkinson's disease-are already common only heightens the need for insight in the face of a population with increasing expectations of longevity. About a decade ago an explosion of information on the connectivity and immunocytochemistry of forebrain structures gave rise to concepts which have shaped the fabric of basal ganglia theory-'patch and matrix', 'disinhibition', 'parallel circuits'. Some of these ideas seemed to facilitate an understanding of the basal ganglia, others to render them more complex and impenetrable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the work of the last decade has tended towards consolidation and refinement. However, several new developments are receiving attention, many of them related to disorders of the basal ganglia. The realisation that some forms of Parkinson's disease have a genetic determinant is gaining strength. The molecular biology of the dopaminergic synapse on the one hand and of the production of insoluble proteins on the other will clearly influence future research into therapeutic options and neuroprotection. The importance of apoptosis, neural plasticity and free radical formation remains unresolved but these are potential areas of promise. Meanwhile, scanning techniques for brain imaging are allowing real time investigation of the working striatum in normal and disordered humans and animals.We believe that the time is opportune for a broad review of current thinking on the basal ganglia in health and disease. The following articles are based on presentations given at a Symposium on the Neurobiology of the Basal Ganglia held at Glasgow University in July 1999 as part of the Summer Meeting of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. The invited speakers were chosen to be wide ranging and contributions encompassed evolution, circuitry and receptors of the basal ganglia, striatal remodelling after dopamine loss, striatal functioning in humans with Huntington's disease and in primate models after midbrain fetal transplants, and the genetics of basal ganglia disorders. Short presentations and posters of current results supplemented the main presentations and some are also included amongst these reviews.

Do Smokers Respond to Health Shocks?

This paper reports the first test of how exogenous health shocks impact people's longevity expectations. The analysis exploits the panel structure of the Health and Retirement Study and tests whether smokers, former smokers and those who never smoked react differently to serious, smoking related health shocks. The results support the conclusion that smokers have a different risk perception process. Smokers were only sensitive to their own smoking related illnesses while former smokers and those who never smoked react to a wider range of health related signals. These findings, along with related research on how smokers react to information messages, suggest that generalized messages about the hazards of smoking may be less effective than information about personal activity restrictions associated with smoking related diseases.

The use of glass ionomer in special needs patients.

Placement of restorations for patients who are physically or intellectually disabled or mentally ill can pose considerable difficulties for the general practitioner. Access to the oral environment is often limited and patient tolerance and concentration may be reduced to rather brief periods of time. Oral hygiene routines may be less than ideal leading to a high caries rate. Enamel surfaces which do not normally become carious can develop broad but shallow lesions with a poorly defined outline. Selection of the most suitable restorative material will be important, with longevity of the restoration as the prime consideration. Other factors such as access, isolation of the lesion and patient co-operation must also be taken into account. Also, forces acting on restorative materials may be less than usual due to poor occlusion, teeth opposing dentures or being completely unopposed. Restoration by indirect techniques will often not be possible so the choice will be limited to the three plastic restorative materials normally used in restorative dentistry: amalgam, resin composite and glass ionomer. As a result of clinical experience it is suggested that glass ionomer will often be the material of choice. This paper describes five years experience with the resin-modified glass ionomers in an institutional practice which is limited to patients with special needs. Clinical significance Placement of restorations, with a reasonable expectation of longevity, can pose considerable problems for the patient with special needs. Resin-modified glass ionomer is a useful alternative material and has been placed with a high degree of success over a period of five years.

Mechanisms of Failure of Modular Prostheses

The expectations of wear and longevity of total hip components are based in large part on Charnley's early work. The evolution of the total hip from the one-piece, all-polyethylene acetabular component and fixed-head femoral component to the myriad of parts that comprise many of today's total hip designs has brought with it an array of potential mechanisms for failure that were not present in the earlier design. The risk/benefit ratio of these new designs may need to be reevaluated based on the additional mechanisms for failure that they provide. One hundred eleven acetabular hip prostheses and 139 femoral prostheses, all of modular configuration, retrieved by surgeons in the field, and sent for histologic examination, were analyzed for this study. A number of component characteristics were found to be correlated to early failure. These included acetabular designs with thin polyethylene bearings, poor fixation of the polyethylene to the metal shell, and geometries that permitted a moment to be applied to the bearing insert, tending to cause it to rotate in the metal shell. Modular femoral components were observed to be susceptible to corrosion, with titanium-alloy stems mated to cast cobalt-alloy heads at greatest risk attributable to a galvanic effect. All modular connections of femoral and acetabular components are at risk for disassociation and fretting; therefore, clever design and precision machining are necessary to produce prostheses in which the benefits of modularity exceed the risks.

Fluid Mechanics Research in 1986

In 1965, a book was published with the title Research Frontiers in Fluid Dynamics, edited by Raymond Seeger and G. Temple. It was intended to give a panoramic view of some exciting vistas in fluid dynamics. It covered the following areas: (1) High-speed aerodynamics; (2) magnetophydrodynamics (MHD); (3) physics of fluids (low or high density, low or high temperature, etc); (4) constitutive properties of fluids (viscosity, viscoelasticity, etc.); (5) oceanography and meterology; (6) astrophysical and planetary fluid mechanics; and (7) mathematical aspects and numerical aspects. A few of these areas, such as MHD, have blossomed and faded away within a short decade. Some others, such as high-speed aerodynamics, have reached maturity and hope to keep their momentum. In the intervening years, we have witnessed that a number of fields in fluid mechanics have revived from their old times into a new life; still, some have emerged with brand new growth. For instance, the subject of long waves has had a colorful development, with the result of improving our understanding of at least seven different physical phenomena, though originally the solitary water wave was its home base. Low Reynolds number flows have again received new stimuli from many needed applications such as aerosol physics, two-phase flows, rheology, geophysics of the earth interior, as well as micro and molecular biology. Oil exploration has motivated various aspects of marine-related research and development, giving ever-increasing activities in ocean engineering. The energy program, a new glamorous field by its own importance, has brought forth investigations of fluid mechanical problems pertaining to nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, ocean wave, and other forms of energy sources. Riding on the waves of these broad movements that have carried us thus far, we now hope to forecast the future of fluid mechanics research in 1986. We may like to put the focus at a slightly different depth and ask: What will be the most significant areas of fluid mechanics that by 1986 will enjoy the best prospects of vigorous development, most rewarding not only to the fluid dynamicist but also to mankind, and by then, still offer the expectation of longevity into the 1990's? The task is almost as hard as to make a prophecy on what the political world will be in 1986.

Evaluations of group products as a function of expectations of group longevity, outcome of competition, and publicity of evaluations.

Evaluations of group products as a function of expectations of group longevity, outcome of competition, and publicity of evaluations.

A Theory of Marriage: Part II

A Theory of Marriage: Part II

The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings

T HE application of capital theory to decisions on individual improvement, and in particular improvement of earning capacity, has provided a framework for the understanding of many aspects of observed behavior regarding education, health, occupational choice, mobility, etc., as rational investment of present resources for the purpose of enjoying future returns. The formulation by Friedman and Kuznets (1945) and the significant development of the theory by Becker (1962, 1964) and Mincer (1958, 1962) provided a novel view of the life cycle of earnings by linking it to the time profile of investment in human capital: People make most of their investments in themselves when they are young, and to a large extent by foregoing current earnings. Observed earnings are therefore relatively low at early years, and they rise as investment declines and as returns on past investments are realized. The main reason why investment is undertaken mostly by the young is that they have a longer period over which they can re-

A Formula for Expressing the Decrement of Human Life (Continued from p. 353, Vol. VI)

Another mode of easily appreciating the regularity and the analogies of different tables is, to construct a diagram, in the form of a curve, of which the absciss represents the age, and the ordinates the corresponding decrements of life (see opposite). The inspection of such a diagram is sufficient to convince us of the great irregularity of the Carlisle Tables of Mortality, which must obviously have been formed, as they confessedly were, from observations on a very limited number of individuals, so that they exhibit a succession of different climacterics, after which the mortality is diminished; while about the age of 74 the curve that represents them towers to an incredible height, affording an expectation of longevity which some of the strongest advocates of those tables have abandoned in their practical applications, since they take their estimate of life, in advanced age, even lower than it is represented in the Northampton Tables.