Category Archives: Human Longevity

CORVALLIS, Ore. A new grant will allow Oregon State University researchers to study the nutritional value of more than 100 bee-pollinated crops, native plants and commonly used ornamental plants, a project that could help scientists better understand the global decline of bee populations.

Certain plants attract bees more than others, but whether those flowers contain the optimal nutrition needed for the insects has yet to be determined. The grant will allow researchers in the Honey Bee Lab led by Ramesh Sagili, OSU associate professor of apiculture and OSU Extension specialist, and Priyadarshini Chakrabarti, former OSU research assistant and new assistant professor at Mississippi State University, to begin to fill that knowledge gap.

With the $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, the team hopes to improve bee nutrition by building a database of macro and micronutrients found in the flowering plants used in the study. Poor nutrition due to agricultural mono-cropping and loss of habitat is an important factor in bee declines and the researchers anticipate alleviating this problem by providing better forage choices for bees backed by science-based results.

In addition to beekeepers, land managers, conservation groups will benefit from the data base. The public also will be able to use the information to choose the most nutritious plants for both native and managed bees.

With global decline in both native and honey bee populations and given the importance of honey bees for commercial pollination of hundreds of crops, choosing the best supplemental forage can help mitigate poor nutrition in bees. Well-nourished bees can also better withstand things that plague them like Varroa mites, pesticides, parasites and loss of habitat.

If you look at it from the human side, the healthier you are, the better you can fight off diseases, parasites and other health issues, Sagili said. With a better immune system, youre stronger and more resilient. Its the same with bees. Nutrition is their first line of defense against stressors.

Optimal nutrition has been shown to enhance resistance to stressors and increase survival and longevity, according to Chakrabarti. Even though there has been much research done to determine the causes of honey bee decline, few studies have addressed the underlying problems of bee nutrition.

For the past few years there has been a significant movement to improve nutrition and increase habitat for bees and to provide better forage, Chakrabarti said. For farmers, its important to understand the nutrition contained in pollens from significant crops like almonds in California, a $7 billion industry that relies on honey bees for pollination.

There are efforts geared toward famers so that they can plant supplemental forage adjacent to their orchards or fields to provide the additional nutritional resources that bees need, Sagili said. Seventy-five percent of honey bee hives managed by beekeepers in the United States go to Californias Central Valley in February to pollinate the almonds and they need forage before the almonds come into bloom. Thats a big, big problem. There might be some wild mustard or dandelion, but its really meager and there is no other source of pollen for bees.

Beekeepers feed the honey bees with sugar syrup and protein supplements when natural forage is unavailable, which is not the optimal diet but can sustain bees for the short term.

The impacts of certain fungicides called sterol biosynthesis inhibitors or SBI will also be investigated to determine their effect on the availability of pollen sterol and bee health, Sagili said. Pollen sterols are a type of lipids that are required for development and growth of bees. Findings from examining the impacts of SBI fungicides on sterol availability in pollen will not only show how these widely used fungicides may affect bees, but also demonstrate for the first time if this group of fungicides could compromise the quality of pollen.

Sagili and Chakrabarti are looking for community scientists to help with the study. Those interested in participating can contact Sagili at 541-737-5460; or [emailprotected], and Priya Chakrabarti at [emailprotected]).

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OSU study will provide insight into optimal nutrition for bees - Oregon State University

With the beauty industry expanding at a rapid pace, we are often introduced to new supplements and ingredients. The most recent rising star is silica. Its said to have a radiant effect on your complexion. Its also claimed that it can leave you with a healthy glow from the inside out.

This is a beauty-boosting supplement that you have probably never heard of until now, but watch this space, in the months to come, silica is set to be the next big thing in skincare.

In science-speak, when the elements silicon and oxygen are combined, the result is silica, which is also known as silicon dioxide. This under-the-radar mineral naturally occurs in the human body but can be derived from several places, such as quartz dust and dark leafy vegetables.

It also plays an important role in collagen synthesis. Since silica is required for building collagen, without it, we would literally fall apart.

Silica is a superstar in the beauty world. It supports your bodys ability to produce collagen and maintain healthy hair, skin, and nails. Were talking thicker hair with less breakage, firmer and smoother skin, and long, strong nails. The fact is that this wonder mineral is an overachiever. It also gives you a glow because it increases the transport of nutrients and oxygen to your skin. The result is hydrated skin.

If silica is a naturally occurring mineral in our body, why should we supplement it? The sad truth is that silica production slows from around the age of 25, just like collagen. I suggest that you look to start taking silica in your late 20s/early 30s, or when you see fine lines appearing.

Prevention is always better than cure. There are many ways that you could increase your silica intake, such as through your diet. These foods include green beans, bananas, leafy greens, brown rice, and lentils.

That said, the only way to get enough to see a marked difference is by taking a supplement. As a supplement, silica can be taken in gel, capsule, or liquid form. My recommended brand for adding silica to your daily routine is Alexia Rich. Be sure to only use Orgono Silica. Its a quartz derivative thats clinically proven to be 400% easier for your body to absorb than other types.

Remember, like any other supplement, it will take some time to see results. Over time, you should notice a difference. Your complexion might become brighter. Your skin will be firmer, glowing, and have improved elasticity with increased hydration. It also helps reduce pores, blemishes, and wrinkles. It can also rebuild joint cartilage, speed up recovery from exercise, improve digestion and detox your system.

Visit SkinMiles and sign up for a free Face2Face Assessment. You will receive personal recommendations from Dr. Nikolic for your skin type or skin concerns.

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Silica: The Secret Skin Supplement We Should Be Taking - Longevity LIVE - Longevity LIVE

In the same family as functional medicine, functional nutrition is a personalized, systems-oriented approach that goes beyond managing the immediacy of symptoms and diseaseand rather looks at the whole person.

"With an emphasis on personalized food and lifestyle approaches to wellness and disease management, functional nutrition focuses on the patient (not just on their disease or condition) while taking a holistic approach to optimizing an individual's health based on their unique needs," says registered dietitianJess Cording, M.S., R.D., CDN.

Through the lens of this integrative, science-informed approach to well-being, functional nutrition reaffirms the dynamic interconnectedness of the body, by acknowledging how each organ and system operate together to achieve optimal function. It recognizes that food is not only a source of fuel but an exceptional device to address the underlying basis of disease while paving the way toward ultimate, everyday wellness.

As for the strategic nutrition itself, this method specifically emphasizes high-quality foods, phytonutrient diversity, plus their role in supporting physiological function and overall health.

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This Nutrition Method May Be The Key To Better Overall Health & Longevity - mindbodygreen.com

The International Economic Associations triennial World Congress has long been one of the most important global gatherings of economists, owing to its success in bringing together researchers and policymakers from the poorest to the wealthiest corners of the world. The 19th edition of the event earlier this month, albeit held via Zoom instead of in person, was no exception.

One recurring theme of this years Congress was that the global economy and capitalism are at a crossroads. While the COVID-19 crisis was the immediate impetus for this view, other major shiftsfrom climate change and the rise of digital technology to the changing nature of labor marketshave been increasingly salient. The pandemic has merely accelerated these shifts or thrown them into sharper relief.

COVID-19 has forced us into one kind of learning by doing, an idea that the Nobel laureate economistKenneth J. Arrow, who emphasized that much learning is the product of experience, developed in the abstract a long time ago. We have learned to give lectures and hold conferences by Zoom, and to make complex decisions in meetings conducted via Webex. People have suddenly realized that they had been spending more time than necessary in the office, and that they can do much of their work from home. And we have learned to shop at home, too, via digital platforms.

Economists and society as a whole must confront profound intellectual and moral challenges in order to come to grips with the changing world.

As a result, demand for office and retail space will fall, even after the pandemic. And because more people will have the freedom to work remotely, property prices will gradually rise where they were previously low and fall where they were high, leading to greater leveling.

On the other hand, salary disparities will increase, because the labor market will tend to be more of a common pool with heightened competition for talent. Most important, globalization, after some initial stumbles, will accelerate, with rapid growth in cross-country outsourcing. This is likely to have a significant effect on labor markets, national politics, and the nature of conflict.

Understanding this new world will require major breakthroughs in economic thinking. Economics normally proceeds by contesting the explicit assumptions and axioms on which theory is built. But all scientific disciplines also have hidden assumptions that are so deeply embedded that we do not state them explicitly and often forget they exist. In their celebratedresearchin the 1950s that provided a formal structure for understanding Adam Smiths idea of the invisible hand, for example, Arrow and fellow Nobel laureate Grard Debreu showed the many assumptions that were needed for Smiths conjecture to be valid.

There were other assumptions that were taken for grantedsimply part of the woodwork of economicsincluding the symmetry of knowledge among buyers and sellers. One of the biggest breakthroughs of modern economics was the insight that knowledge is often asymmetric, and that this asymmetry can shatter the invisible hand. This breakthrough earned Joseph E. Stiglitz, George Akerlof, and Michael Spence the 2001 Nobel prize in economics, and led to new forms of regulation that made the modern economy possible. We owe many of our regulations concerning quality control and product standards to this breakthrough, which showed definitively that the markets invisible hand cannot ensure standards when information is asymmetric.

It remains to be seen what form the economics professions new intellectual discoveries will take and what regulations we will need to apply them. What is clear is that the strain humanity has imposed on the environment means growth as we currently know it cannot be sustained. But that does not mean we have to learn to live with lower growth. In fact, I believe future growth will be faster than we have seen thus far.

The lower-growth camps mistake stems from a common misunderstanding of GDP or national income. A higher GDP is often taken to indicate more wasteful consumption and consumerism of the kind we are indulging in now. But that need notand now must notbe the case.

The consumption of more art, music, and learning, as well as better health and greater longevity, are all components of GDP, and are, or can be, environmentally friendly. Reforming our regulatory system can foster rapid GDP growthbut with the content of GDP changing dramatically, and with a disproportionate amount of human labor directed to creative activities. The nature of reform for the new world is a big topic, but policymakers will need to focus on curricula that nurture creativity, because routine work will increasingly be automated; shift consumption away from environmentally wasteful goods; and redistribute wealth radically to lessen inequalities.

My recent research on group morality, however, highlights a caveat that we must address. When discussing matters like climate change and current global inequities, we urge people to be other-regarding. In other words, they should not be concerned solely about their own well-being but also consider the welfare of the current poor and future generations who will be affected by our decisions.

But as moral philosophers have long known, group morality is a problematic concept. I have recently tried to address the Samaritans Curse, whereby a future generation can end up being hurt when all individuals today take its well-being into consideration. This problem, like the prisoners dilemma but in the moral domain, can potentially defeat our best intentions.

So, the road ahead will not be easy. Economists and society as a whole must confront profound intellectual and moral challenges in order to come to grips with the changing world. But humans have done it before. One can only hope that our intelligence and resolve enable us to do it again.

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The changing map of economics - Brookings Institution

ClickHEREto visit the Ellis County Employment Opportunities page.

The Human Resources Coordinator is responsible for the major areas of employee recruitment, selection, and retention through employee relations, compensation, professional development, and benefits. This position will manage processes for new employee orientation as well as employee transfers and terminations. The Human Resources Coordinator has considerable latitude for independent judgment and initiative within established policies and procedures when determining work priorities. This employee handles confidential information when working with personnel records and will ensure the privacy of all protected information in compliance with federal and state laws. A resume will be required to be submitted with application. Starting Pay is $27.71 per hour with a pay raise at 6 months and one year, 10 paid holidays and 21 days paid vacation per year, KPERS retirement, longevity bonus after two years, and health insurance paid at 86%.

This employee is responsible for the bookkeeping and clerical duties, as well as coordinating environmental activities with the Environmental Associate. The Environmental Technician routinely acts in implementing and monitoring Ellis County environmental programs. This employee may assist with field testing and review, perform site inspections under supervision, and develop database programs in relation to environmental activities. High school diploma or GED and two years of clerical and bookkeeping experience are preferred. Starting Pay is $16.05 per hour with a pay raise at 6 months and one year, 10 paid holidays and 21 days paid vacation per year, KPERS retirement, longevity bonus after two years, and health insurance paid at 86%.

Under the supervision of the Shop Foreman, the Mechanic performs semi-skilled and skilled mechanical work on equipment and vehicles assigned to the Ellis County Public Works Department. The employee in this position is responsible for performing the required maintenance and repair of vehicles and equipment for the Public Works Department. High School diploma or GED and two years of mechanic experience is required. A class B commercial driver's license with tanker endorsement is required. Successful applicant will be required to participate in the FHWA (CDL) drug-testing program. Starting Pay is $17.34 per hour with a pay raise at 6 months and one year, 10 paid holidays and 21 days paid vacation per year, KPERS retirement, longevity bonus after two years, and health insurance paid at 86%.

Ellis County Public Works is accepting applications for the full time position of Truck Driver in the Road and Bridge division. This employee hauls material to the job site for the repair and construction of roads within Ellis County. The truck driver also performs routine manual work in the operation of light and heavy equipment for loading and transporting materials. High school diploma or GED and one year truck driving experience are required. A class B commercial drivers license with tanker endorsement is required. Successful applicant will be required to participate in the FHWA (CDL) drug-testing program. Starting Pay is $14.25 per hour with a pay raise at 6 months and one year, 10 paid holidays and 21 days paid vacation per year, KPERS retirement, longevity bonus after two years, and health insurance paid at 86%.

A paid-per-call firefighters respond to fires, rescues, medical assists, hazardous conditions, and other related emergencies. It requires a significant amount of teamwork when working on emergency scenes to conducting regular fire company activities. Our firefighters work under the direct supervision of company officers to include a company chief.

Each firefighter understands they represent a larger ECFD organization and shall act, train, perform duties in such a way that they demonstrate pride and ownership in their department. An ECFD firefighter should have excellent interpersonal communication skills as they are expected to have direct contact with different public safety officials, the community, as well as fire and rescue victims. ECFD firefighters must be able to make quick decisions, take calculated risks, and take immediate actions on emergency scenes while maintaining safety in these actions.

Firefighters are required to complete basic NIMS courses, maintain CPR/First aid certification, hazardous materials awareness, attend 75% of scheduled monthly trainings, and report to their assigned companies when available for emergency responses. ECFD firefighters must read, understand, and abide by the ECFD standard operating procedures. Before firefighters are able to respond and/or drive apparatus to emergencies, firefighters are to complete an in-house training program. ECFD firefighters must be 18 years of age with a valid drivers license.

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SPONSORED: Join the team! Ellis County is hiring - hays Post

Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Growth 20202027 is the latest updated report announced by Oneup Business Insights which is a complete research study on the market, which attempts to provide a clear picture of the key factors that shape this market.

This marketplace additionally analyzes the marketplace status, share, demand, boom rate, destiny trends, marketplace drivers, opportunities, and challenges, dangers and access barriers, income channels, and vendors with the assistance of SWOT evaluation and Porters Five Forces Analysis. In this bit of the research the organizations chief outlines, monetary outlines, and field-tested strategies are introduced.

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Acorda Therapeutics, Calico Life Sciences, Human Longevity Inc., Insilico Medicine, Oisin Biotechnology, Proteostasis Therapeutics Inc., Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Restorbio, Senex Biotechnology, Senolytic Therapeutics, and Sierra Sciences LLC

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Hemolytic Drug Therapy

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Chapter 2: Global Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Status and Forecast by Regions

Chapter 3: Global Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Status and Forecast by Types

Chapter 4: Global Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Status and Forecast by Downstream Industry

Chapter 5: Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Driving Factor Analysis

Chapter 6: Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Competition Status by Major Manufacturers

Chapter 7: Major Manufacturers Introduction and Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Data

Chapter 8: Upstream and Downstream Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Analysis

Chapter 9: Cost and Gross Margin Analysis of Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy market

Chapter 10: Marketing Status Analysis of Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy market

Chapter 11: Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Report Conclusion

Chapter 12: Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market Research Methodology and Reference

Research Objectives of this report:

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Longevity and Anti-Senescence Therapy Market 2021 Size, Status and Global Outlook Acorda Therapeutics, Calico Life Sciences, Human Longevity Inc.,...

"I was pleasantly surprised that our results suggest that responsibly eating cheese and drinking red wine daily are not just good for helping us cope with our current COVID-19 pandemic, but perhaps also dealing with an increasingly complex world that never seems to slow down," Willette said.

"While we took into account whether this was just due to what well-off people eat and drink, randomised clinical trials are needed to determine if making easy changes in our diet could help our brains in significant ways."

Weekly consumption of lamb, but not other red meats, was shown to improve long-term cognitive function.

Excessive consumption of salt is invariably bad, but only individuals already at risk for Alzheimer's Disease may need to watch their intake to avoid cognitive problems over time, the study suggested.

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How to live longer: Two surprising foods that help fight decline in later life - Daily Express

Jul 3rd 2021

CAIRD COLLECTIVE, LUNA

Editors note: This year What If?, our annual collection of scenarios, considers the future of health. Each of these stories is ction, but grounded in historical fact, current speculation and real science. They do not present a unied narrative but are set in dierent possible futures

THEY CAN, at times, look somewhat sinister, their faces oddly small for their heads, their white ear tufts jutting out almost aggressively. Their ability to throw themselves at people across seemingly unfeasible distances can be unsettling, and their buzzing and shrieking takes a lot of getting used to, as does their smell. But the members of the Caird collective will not hear a word spoken against the marmosets with whom they share their spaces at the Moons South Pole. As they sit in their insulated caves hoovering moondust out of the animals tails, few of the Cairders can imagine their life on the rim of Shackleton crater without themand none wants to. The marmosets of the Moon are the first and best example of what has turned out to be a fundamental fact of space flight: that the further humans get from Earth, the more they benefit from the companionship of other Earthly animals.

The marmosets were originally brought to the Moon as unwilling participants in a vital research project. Marmosets are lighteven under Earth gravityand reasonably easy to care for, but they have placentas much more like those of humans than any other animal their size, and reasonably short gestation periods. That made them ideal for looking at a fundamental question: can humans have healthy pregnancies in the low gravity of the Moon, where things weigh only one-sixth what they do on Earth?

In the 2020s and 2030s, the years of what the novelist Wil McCarthy called the Rich Mans Sky, questions of obstetrics and gynaecology received remarkably little attention. For many, the idea of staying in space long enough for such things to matter made little sensespace stations in Earth orbit and bases on the Moon were places for fixed-length work contracts and research sojourns, or for tourism. Babies were no more of an issue than they were in isolated 20th-century Antarctic research outposts.

There were, as it happens, a few babies born in Antarctica even back then, when its ice cover was all but intact. The Argentine and Chilean governments both saw the creation of natives on the continent as a way to establish sovereignty and arranged births to that end. But there was no reason to think that Antarctica was inimical to pregnancy and infancy. The long-term health effects of low gravity and microgravitywhich for those in orbit include brittle bones, muscle wasting and eye diseasewere something else. Adults could counter some of these effects with treadmills and tension cords. But as the title of an early paper on the subject succinctly put it, The fetus cannot exercise like an astronaut.

Even those, like Elon Musk, who talked of permanent settlements on Mars spent little time working on the question. It was left to a small team of scientists in the Japanese modules of the Artemis base founded in 2029 by America and its allies to explore the question experimentally with the help of marmosets, gene-splicing technology, intra-uterine monitoring devices and a giant centrifuge.

They had some success. Like human fetuses, marmoset fetuses spend most of their gestation with a density equal to that of the amniotic fluid around them, a neutral buoyancy that leaves them indifferent to local gravity; only relatively late on do differences due to gravity start to crop up. After a few years of trial and error, and some dainty gene-editing to rebalance the rate at which bones grow when not stressed through use, the researchers developed a regime involving hormone treatments for the mothers and regular late-pregnancy sessions in their custom-made room-sized centrifuge, known as the marmo-go-round. This reliably produced pups with strong-enough bones and muscles and little by way of deformity, though their tails were impressively long even by marmoset standards.

Unfortunately, in 2038 that research was interrupted by the geopolitical meltdown of the wolf-and-wimp war and then by the 26 months of the Great Grounding. With all powered flight within or through the Earths atmosphere prohibited, the various Moon bases seemed doomed even after they agreed to pool their resources to create what became known as the Polynational James Caird Collective. With all the groups biotech know-how turned to increasing food production and nutrient recycling, the marmosets were at first ignored and then freed to roam within the bases. Their effect on morale was instantaneous and profound.

The importance of companion animals to the mental health of people engaged in a homeless lifestyle was well documented in pre-war societies. It has been suggested that the effect of the marmosets on the Caird collective was similar; cut off from Earth, the humans were more homeless than any group of people had ever been before. Caring for, playing with and grooming marmosets also became a basis for bonding between humans, many of whom had not known each other before the Grounding, and some of whose countries had been adversaries in the war. By the time the mysterious entity responsible for the Great Grounding finally abandoned its control of the Earths air-traffic-control and missile-defence systems, allowing traffic with the Moon to resume, the marmosets had become an indispensable part of the settlers new identity and society. Few believe that a lack of companion animals was, in itself, the reason that the Mars base failed during the Grounding. But it surely did not help.

The bond between the Moons larger and smaller primates persisted even as the rigours of separation came to an end. Almost all Cairders still dislike spending any significant time deprived of marmoset company. They cuddle them and relish their low-gravity acrobatics. In a joking way that seems, at some level, not to be a joke, they treat the abnormally long tails of the Moon-born marmosets as a sign of providence, holding the tail-fur to be particularly good at picking up moondust. The dust, which can cause lung disease, infiltrates their habitats despite all the airlock precautions; its suppression is a constant battle. Whether hoovering it out of tails which accumulate it in the manner of a feather duster is in fact more effective than the settlements electrostatic air-filtration systems is open to question. But it is clearly more therapeutic. And the marmosets enjoy the attention.

The oldest Earth-born marmoset, New Mrs Chippy (who is, despite his name, male) enjoys an honorary seat on the collectives council. He has now reached the age of 31 with no obvious signs of ageing other than a pelt almost as white as his ear tufts. This is seen as a good omen for human longevity among those Cairders who refuse to countenance a return to Earth. In Japan, by contrast, laboratory marmosets rarely make it past their 21st birthday.

The most salient biological, as opposed to sociological, novelty among Moon-born marmosets is a very high prevalence of adolescent-onset blindness. The constellation of eyesight problems known as Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS) has been studied since early this century. In adult humans SANS normally develops only during long stays in the microgravity conditions of space stations; it is rare and mild among humans on the Moon. But in marmosets born in low gravity it develops swiftly and severely at the onset of puberty and leads to almost complete loss of vision.

There is as yet no agreed explanation for this pathology. Some researchers believe it is not in fact gravity-related but the result of an off-target effect of the gene editing which realigned the calcium pathways used in bone growth, but it is hard to square this with the similarity to SANS as experienced by genotypical adult humans. Others think its onset could be avoided if newborn pups were required to spend more, or all, of their time in the simulated Earth-normal gravity of the centrifuge. But it has proved hard to test this hypothesis. Infants that have spent any time at all in lunar gravity are greatly distressed by the rigours of the centrifuge and will not suckle when put into it. And Cairders are unanimous in their opposition to anything that causes marmosets distress.

The blind marmosets are not badly off. Their sibling groups and human companions provide what little practical support they need. And they are happier than sighted marmosets to travel in the pouches which many Cairders have incorporated into the suits they use for working on the lunar surface. Sighted marmosets are clearly disturbed by the harsh monochrome landscape, even when emotionally supported with the amplified sound of their companions heartbeat.

Sudden-onset SANS leaves the question of whether human children can be born and raised on the Moon unanswered. It is sometimes suggested that a blind woman happy with the idea of a child who might also be blind could choose to join the collective and explore the issue. But bringing a child to term would require a centrifuge capable of holding a grown human, rather than a 250-gram marmoset. There is no appetite among Cairders for devoting resources to such a project, and their juche ethic of self-sufficiency will not let them accept funding for such experiments from Earth. Thus how well humans may eventually be able to breed on alien worlds remains unknown, even today.

That they will take animal companions with them, though, now seems certain. And some of those companions will surely have shocking-white ear tufts, odd little faces and very long tails.

Full contents of this What If?Freedom to tinker, October 2029: What if biohackers injected themselves with mRNA?The other epidemic, June 2025: What if America tackled its opioid crisis?A tale of two cities, June 2041: What if a deadly heatwave hit India?You are what you eat, January 2035: What if everyones nutrition was personalised?iHealthy, September 2028: What if smartphones become personal health assistants?Mrs Chippys benediction, February 2055: What if marmosets lived on the Moon?*Novel treatments, August 2050: What if dementia was preventable and treatable?Rage against the machine, December 2036: What if an AI wins the Nobel prize for medicine?Germ of an idea: What if germ theory had caught on sooner?

This article appeared in the What If? section of the print edition under the headline "Mrs Chippys benediction"

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What if marmosets lived on the Moon? - The Economist

Michael Jackson's casket is brought out during public memorial service held at Staples Center on ... [+] July 7, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. Jackson, 50, the iconic pop star, died at UCLA Medical Center after going into cardiac arrest at his rented home on June 25 in Los Angeles, California. AFP PHOTO/ Kevork Djansezian / POOL (Photo credit should read KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/AFP via Getty Images)

If you are a young public figure, and will die an unnatural death, then I have good news for you! You will most likely be remembered for a long time after you die. Conversely, if you are older, are not a public figure, and will die of a natural cause, then the odds that you will be forgotten over time are strong.

Remembering those who have passed on from this life has been an important theme throughout human history. Our ancestors used to remember those who died by sharing their memories with the next generation in the form of stories and ballads. They would sit around a fire and exchange memories and hope they would be passed through generations after them. Later when the printing press was invented, humans began to store, collect and spread information on a massive scale. The printing press made it easier to collect and preserve memories of the deceased because it is easier to store written pieces of information. Today, the developments in communication technologies such as the internet have changed how we create, store and retain memories. The internet also allows us to analyze memory through large-scale data in a quantitative framework.

Being remembered after death has been such an important concern throughout history that civilizations such as the Romans considered damnatio memoriae, or being erased from the publics memory, as one of the severest punishments imaginable. At some point, many of us might have wondered how we will be remembered after passing on from this life too.

The h-index, the number of research papers with the same number of citations is one of the common ways to evaluate academic performance. It is a very important number in academia. The mean and median Hindex for all peer reviewed papers at the time of promotion to Professor in the JHU School of Medicineis 25 and 23 respectively. In computer science and math, scientists do not cite each other as often as in biomedicine and there are very few young computer scientists with the H-index of 100. So it is natural to follow them on Google Scholar and learn about their research. One of the scholars I follow is Jure Leskovec (h-index = 117) the co-author of the famous node2vec and an authority on graph neural networks (GNNs).

So imagine my surprise, when I saw the paper by Robert West, Jure Leskovec, and Christopher Potts titled Post-mortem memory of public figures in news and social media in my Scholar feed. I dont know any of the authors personally but based on their work, they are extremely credible, and productive. In this paper the authors identified trends and analyzed how people are remembered in news and social media one year before and after death. It technically answers a question how long will your name last in peoples memory after you die. We know what you needed to do in ancient Greece to make it last (hello, Achilles!) but what about today? So, if you ever wondered how you can stay famous after you die, then this paper is for you!

Robert is an assistant professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne where he also leads the data science lab. Jure is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University. He is also an investigator at nonprofit research organization Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. Meanwhile, Christopher is professor and chair of the linguistics department at Stanford University.

Despite their varying backgrounds, the trio have a few things in common: they are experts in the field of artificial intelligence and data analytics.

In this short but fascinating paper, the three scientists tracked mentions of 2,362 public figures in English-language online news and social media (Twitter) one year before and after death. The tracked people died between 2009 and 2014. They then looked at the spike and decay of attention after death and modeled the two as the interplay of communicative memory, which is sustained by the oral transmission of information and cultural memory, which is sustained by the physical recording of information.

In order to track mentions, they combined the Freebase knowledge base with online news and social media compiled through Spinn3r, an online media aggregation service that tracks mentions from a complete set of all 6,608 English-language web domains indexed by Google News as well as media posts from Twitter. For each of the 2,362 people, the scientists tracked the frequency with which they were remembered in the two medias on a daily basis during the year before and the year after death. This allowed them to quantify the spikes and decay of attention that follow the death of public figures.

The analysis of mention frequencies revealed that for most public figures, a sharp increase of media attention followed immediately after death, whereby mention frequency increased by 9,400% in the news and by 28,000% on Twitter in the median. The average mention frequency then declined around one month after death and eventually decayed slowly to the pre-mortem level. These two stages are consistent with the two components of collective memory: communicative memory, which dominates early on and decays quickly, and cultural memory, which dominates starting around two weeks after death and decays slowly.

Based on the study, the researchers concluded that artists remain more present in the collective memory because they tend to leave a legacy that can long survive them, whereas leaders, athletes, etc who are noteworthy for the actions they take during their lifetime, are of decreased interest once they cannot replicate their actions anymore. This is most pronounced for leaders. Artists also stand out with respect to cultural memory, while no notability type stands out with respect to communicative memory. Ceteris paribus, an unnatural death, also increased the rank with respect to the short-term mention. The effect of age at death also was significant. For instance, on Twitter, the post-mortem boost was monotonically and negatively associated with age at death. Likewise, the increased short-term boost associated with unnatural deaths was more pronounced in the news than on Twitter.

Separately, the study also revealed that Twitter users pay less attention when an old public figure or leader died. Deaths of these poor souls were boosted more by the news both in the short and long-term. Additionally, the researchers noted that future studies may also add language, tone and attitude towards public figures one year before and after death to see if the study would come to a different conclusion.

To conclude, the researchers found that the largest post-mortem boost in English-language media attention can be described as an anglophone of any gender who was already well-known before death and died a young and unnatural death. So, try and get famous before you die if you want to be remembered for a long time!

And if you are interested in ways to avoid dying prematurely and gaining some time to become famous, consider finding more ways to live longer and attending the 8th Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference organized by University of Copenhagen and Columbia University. I am sure that one way to become famous in late life is to set a longevity record, currently held by Jeanne Calment (122.5).

aging process, young woman become old

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How To Stay Famous After You Die. AI Scientists Have An Answer - Forbes

A new report underscores the devastating toll COVID-19 took on nursing home residents, outlining an overall increase in the mortality rate of nursing home residents by 32 percent in 2020 compared to year-over-year data.

Released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the report looks at 2020 data on the number of nursing home residents and Medicare beneficiaries who were either diagnosed with or likely had COVID-19, as well as those who died from causes related to the virus.

The results indicate that the overall mortality rate rose by 32 percent, and numerical death statistics showed that in April 2020 alone, as the pandemic peaked in the U.S., 81,484 Medicare beneficiaries in nursing homes died.

This amounts to a 1,000-person increase in fatalities per day compared with April 2019 rates.

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Among those in nursing homes and on Medicare who were diagnosed with COVID-19 in 2020, 51 percent were Black, compared to 41 percent who were white.

Hispanic and Asian residents also experienced a higher chance of testing positive for the virus than their white counterparts. This coincides with national data noting Black, Hispanic and Native Americans are more likely to suffer severe illnesses related to COVID-19, part of longstanding racist disparities in access to health care.

The authors noted that this data can help illustrate how to handle future outbreaks among nursing home residents and staff to better prevent high mortality rates.

We knew this was going to be bad, but I dont think even those of us who work in this area thought it was going to be this bad, David Grabowski, a Harvard health policy professor, told The Associated Press.

One of the first COVID-19 outbreaks to occur on U.S. soil was at the Kirkland Nursing Home outside of Seattle, Washington. There 35 people, workers and residents, died from COVID-19, and roughly 66 percent tested positive for the virus.

Inspector General Nancy Harrison, who helped author the report, said that the country needs to learn from the disproportionate impact COVID-19 had on nursing homes.

Hopefully, COVID will go away, she said to AP reporters. But once that happens, there will always be infectious diseases, and we all need to ask ourselves what we can do to protect vulnerable nursing home residents going forward.

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Link:
HHS report says nursing home deaths rose by 32 percent due to COVID-19 | TheHill - The Hill