Category Archives: Human Longevity

Somewhere in the predictions about Earth being unable to support 3.7 billion more people by the end of the century, a Saskatoon author is able to be hopeful.

Paul Hanley's book ELEVEN, nominated for two 2015 Saskatchewan Book Awards, argues that a sustainable future for 11 billion people will require an ethical revolution that will wholly transform humankind.

He's presenting "11 reasons to be hopeful about the future (despite a lot of bad news about it)" at the University of Regina this afternoon.

The bad news, he said, is that according to an ecological footprint theory, humans are already over-taxing Earth's biocapacity by about 60 per cent and it will only get worse.

"To make the world work with that many people, I think we're really going to have to be a different kind of person," Hanley, 62, said Tuesday.

He said the transformation process will result in a new culture, a new agriculture and ultimately a new human race.

"Since the Industrial Revolution, we've developed a vision of what a human being is, which is highly materialistic, and I think we can develop a new vision, sort of reconstruct who we are as a people," Hanley said,

He can't predict exactly what the new human race will look like, but he said the change must be drastic - and should have started decades ago.

However, he has ideas for what sustainable traits will emerge: people will be more service oriented, more communal, less individually competitive and will have an agricultural focus on health.

But what about resistance from those who enjoy the comforts of materialistic living?

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After the chaos will come the development of the new human race: Hanley

MONDAY, April 6, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Although any amount of exercise offers health benefits, a new study suggests that rigorous physical activity may be key to boosting longevity.

Australian researchers found that middle-aged or older people who get at least some high-intensity exercise that makes them sweaty and winded may reduce their chances of dying early by up to 13 percent.

The researchers concluded that doctors' recommendations and public health guidelines should encourage participation in some vigorous types of exercise.

The study involved more than 204,000 people aged 45 or older who were followed for more than six years. Researchers compared those who engaged in only moderate activities -- like gentle swimming, social tennis or household chores -- with people who got some amount of vigorous activity -- such as jogging, aerobics or competitive tennis.

The participants were divided into three groups based on their levels of physical activity: those who didn't engage in any vigorous activity, those who said up to 30 percent of their exercise was vigorous and those who said more than 30 percent of their exercise was vigorous.

The death rate for those who said up to 30 percent of their physical activity was vigorous was 9 percent lower than those who reported no vigorous activity. The risk of death dropped 13 percent for those who said that more than 30 percent of their exercise was vigorous, the study authors reported.

"The benefits of vigorous activity applied to men and women of all ages, and were independent of the total amount of time spent being active," study author Dr. Klaus Gebel, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention at James Cook University in Cairns, said in a university news release. "The results indicate that whether or not you are obese, and whether or not you have heart disease or diabetes, if you can manage some vigorous activity it could offer significant benefits for longevity."

The findings were published online April 6 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Most current guidelines for physical activity advise adults to get 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise on a weekly basis. The idea is that two minutes of moderate activity is the same as one minute of vigorous activity.

"It might not be the simple two-for-one swap that is the basis of the current guidelines," said study co-author, Dr. Melody Ding, who's with the University of Sydney's School of Public Health. "Our research indicates that encouraging vigorous activities may help to avoid preventable deaths at an earlier age."

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Regular, vigorous exercise may lengthen your life

NCI News Note

A new study has found that people who engage in three to five times the recommended minimum level of leisure-time physical activity derive the greatest benefit in terms of mortality reduction when compared with people who do not engage in leisure-time physical activity. The 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, developed by the Department of Health and Human Services Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, recommend a minimum of 2.5 hours of moderate-intensity exercise per week or 1.25 hours of vigorous aerobic activity, but more activity is encouraged for additional health benefits. Before this study, experts did not know how much additional health benefit might accrue for those doing more exercise. This study confirms that much of the mortality benefit is realized by meeting the minimum recommended levels of physical activity and describes the increased mortality benefit associated with higher levels of physical activity. The study appeared online April 6, 2015, in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Hannah Arem, Ph.D., Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI, and her colleagues studied data from over half a million men and women in the United States and Europe who reported on their leisure-time physical activities, which included walking for exercise, jogging/running, swimming, tennis/racquetball, bicycling, aerobics, and dance. The investigators also factored in data such as race/ethnicity, education, smoking status, history of cancer, history of heart disease, alcohol consumption, marital status, and body mass index. Their findings, which will help inform healthcare professionals, included the following:

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Study reports peak longevity benefit with an hour of daily exercise

Human Longevity Secrets: Lifestyle Changes

By: Top Sites

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Human Longevity Secrets: Lifestyle Changes - Video

What Will it Take to Make you Look Good, Feel Good, and Think Good at 100? With Peter Diamandis
Entrepreneur Peter H. Diamandis discusses his work with the new company Human Longevity Inc., which seeks to extend the healthy human lifespan. The goal is to make 100 years-old the new sixty...

By: Big Think

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What Will it Take to Make you Look Good, Feel Good, and Think Good at 100? With Peter Diamandis - Video

At just 40 years old, Bill Maris is on a mission to save the world with his investments. Bloomberg recently highlighted Mariss quest to improve the quality and longevity of human life. This quest is evident in Google Ventures growing biotech portfolio, which now includes36 percent health and life science investments.

Maris, who is a managing partner at Google Ventures, has gone from sitting next to Anne Wojcicki at a Swedish investment bank to Kevin Systrom as a Noogler to managing one of the worlds most capitalized corporate funds to even a brief stint on tour with his wife, singer songwriter Tristan Prettyman.

And now hes trying to win at life. Literally. Part of it is that it is better to live than to die, he told Bloombergs Katrina Brooker.

Maris will be joining us at Disrupt NY to talk about his search for startups that will bring us one step closer to living until 500 startups like Foundation Medicine and Flatiron Health. Well also be asking him tough questions like, Is Google working on its own self-driving car app? (Uber is a Google Ventures investment), What does Calico, Googles surreptitious anti-aging initiative, actually do?, and Why are health-focused investments all the rage these days?

So come. You might learn how to live longer.

The show runs May 4-6 at the historic Manhattan Center. Tickets are available at an early-bird discount rate until April 11.

Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact sponsors@techcrunch.com.

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Bill Maris To Talk Longevity At Disrupt NY

A summary of MEX, March 2015

Change is a fickle notion which plays with our perception of time. In digital, at least, it is characterised by the very human tendency to over-estimate short term impact and under-estimate long term meaning. At the 15th edition of MEX, an initiative and event now in its 10th year, we found ourselves in search of techniques which can enhance digital user experience in the present and trends which might result in significant, long-term change. Through its own longevity, MEX has become well suited to this type of exploration by drawing on a useful depth of prescience and learning from its fair share of misguided hopes.

Our title for the 2 days was 'Under the skin of user experience', hosted by Marek Pawlowski, founder of MEX, and Andrew Muir Wood. It was a theme which spoke of our desire to go beyond paying lip service to the importance of UX and actually advance the art of user-centred methodologies. At the same time, it asked a second question: how is the human relationship with digital technologies changing as they get physically closer to our skin in the form of wearables and, indeed, become fully woven into the fabric of our lives - at first metaphorically and, perhaps in time, physically too.

Marek Pawlowski, founder of MEX, (right) and Andrew Muir Wood (left)

Setting out on this path with the eclectic crowd of investors, strategists, developers and designers required a shared assumption: the term 'mobile' no longer simply describes a class of devices, but rather an attitude of mind that technology is something which accompanies and surrounds us, and in some cases, now moves itself without human intervention in the form of robots and artificial intelligence.

Opening creative exercise by Think with Things

We were conscious that progress would only be made on novel themes like this if participants embraced novel ways of thinking. It was for that reason that the audience arrived for the first session to find a room empty of chairs and absent of the usual screen of projected slides. In their place, the Think with Things team had laid out thousands of objects, and a series of questions inviting people to use the materials they found to solve challenges linked to the event themes. The atmosphere in the room was fascinating to watch: a large group of people who'd never met each other, suddenly confronted with a shared experience of an unexpected and, initially, uncomfortable scenario: all the traditional conventions of a conference room were missing.

Drawn to the glow of an old-fashioned OHP

After a couple of minutes, the first brave souls began to investigate the objects and their enthusiasm was infectious. Within 5 minutes, the whole room was buzzing with participants collecting, sorting, sharing and using the objects individually and in groups to address the various challenges at stations around the room. One zone employed an old-fashioned overhead projector to create shadow maps on the wall. Participants found this particularly compelling and its glow drew nearly everyone least once during the session, as they considered how physical objects could be used to interface with virtual worlds.

Isobel Demangeat (right) and Julie Anne Gilleland (left) of Think with Things

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A summary of MEX, March 2015

Quest to prolong human life indefinitely obsesses the rich and powerful The head of Googles investment arm thinks it is possible to live to 500 Americas tech moguls are spending billions of dollars to defeat ageing

By Tom Leonard In New York For The Daily Mail

Published: 19:54 EST, 1 April 2015 | Updated: 04:11 EST, 2 April 2015

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Googleco-founder Sergey Brin talks of one day curing death

The ancients believed in a magical elixir, a potion that would grant what man most desired eternal life.

Chinese emperors chased the dream by consuming long-lasting precious substances such as jade and gold, often with fatal effects.

Elizabeth Bathory, a 16th-century Transylvanian countess dubbed Lady Dracula, made an even more drastic attempt to conquer death, by bathing in the blood of young girls.

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Could humans live to 500? Billionaires spend fortunes on research

March 31, 2015

Jonas, the world's oldest known dwarf lemur, died this January just months shy of his 30th birthday. Duke researchers are using lemurs like Jonas to study the biology of aging. (Credit: Photo by David Haring, Duke Lemur Center)

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com @BednarChuck

Conventional wisdom indicates that larger species live longer than smaller ones, but lemurs are on notable exception to that rule, and researchers from Duke University believe that the secrets of their longevity could lead to new insights into the aging process.

In January, the worlds oldest known dwarf lemur, Jonas, passed away, and inspired Sarah Zehr and Marina Blanco of the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina to analyze over 50 years worth of medical records pertaining to his species and three other types of lemurs.

Suspended animation, suspended life

Dwarf lemurs live two to three times longer than similar-sized animals, they explained, and the duo was searching for clues to help explain their longevity. They found that these hamster-sized creatures are actually capable of placing their bodies in suspended animation to prevent aging.

How long the animals live and how quickly they age directly correlates with the amount of time they spend in this state, which is known as torpor and is comparable to the standby or sleep mode feature found in many modern electronic devices. Lemurs that enter this state and put their body functions on hold can outlive those that dont by up to 10 years, the data revealed.

[STORY: Lemurs match scent to voice]

Jonas was one of the most extreme examples found in the study, the researchers said. While in the wild, he spent up to half the year in this state of deep hibernation. Most dwarf lemurs go into a semi-hibernation state for no more than three months in captivity, Zehr said, but that was still enough to give them added longevity.

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Long-lived lemurs could hold secret to human aging

New York, NY (PRWEB) March 31, 2015

On the evening of Monday, March 16th, DOROT, a nonprofit organization working to prevent social isolation among older adults in New York, hosted Dr. Nir Barzilai, the Director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging and of the Nathan Shock Center of excellence in biology of aging. Dr. Barzilai spoke to a crowd of 65 DOROT supporters about his current study on the genetics of longevity and the biology of aging.

Dr. Barzilai is studying Ashkenazi Jews who are approaching or exceeding age 100, and their offspring, to identify genetic markers that may indicate or lead to longer lifespan. He opened his talk by pointing out that many illnesses that humans experience in their lives are experienced at old age, and so if one could eliminate the factor of aging, one could possibly eliminate those illnesses. He went on to explain that he does not want to stop aging, but he wants to increase the ability of individuals to age healthfully and well. Dr. Barzilai spoke of research participants who were siblings in their early 100s and had been partaking in risky behaviors (cigarette smoking, poor diet, etc.) for decades, but who had still experienced good quality of life at advanced age. He used these individuals as examples of how long lifespan could possibly be genetically linked. He also identified a number of other possible factors for longevity, including: shorter stature, heavier frame, hormones, and nutrition.

Guests asked thoughtful questions such as whether Dr. Barzilai had taken happiness into consideration, or whether the longevity genes were more predominant on maternal or paternal sides. After the talk, guests were able to individually ask the presenter more personal questions. Attendees were delighted at the opportunity. One guest said, The lecture by Dr. Barzilai was the best lecture I have ever heard on the aging process. I went up to him after his lecture and told him I was the son of a centenarian. He told me to contact him; I did and have been accepted into his current study! I am so excited to be part of a study that could improve the health of people as they age.

In addition to a thought-provoking lecture, guests got to meet one another and learn more about DOROT as well as about upcoming volunteer opportunities. One told us, The whole experience of the evening at DOROT was one of dignity and beauty! My wife and I plan to participate in some of your volunteer programs.

DOROT became connected to Dr. Barzilai through a volunteer who brought the study to the attention of Executive Director, Mark Meridy. Meridy met with Dr. Barzilai and agreed to help him find participants for his study, as both the doctor and DOROT have similar missions: to help older adults live well and independently long into advanced age.

It was an honor to host Dr. Barzilai at DOROT, Meridy said. Our guests found his talk engaging and thought-provoking, and we look forward to a continued relationship with him and the rest of the team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

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Dr. Nir Barzilai Presents Study on Longevity at DOROT