2.21.2006
How Long Will You Live?
>
Building a Global Cognitive Map
Recently scientists presented a questionairre that will help you gauge, based on lifestyle, how long you might live.
For a quantitative measure, try this test, which will show you the speed of your thought to reaction... Maintaining your thinking speed is an indicator of longevity. As you age, and effectively deter some of the recent health challenges like heart disease and cancer, cognitive impairment becomes perhaps the greatest health challenge, requiring a healthcentric strategy to prevent it.
Living to 100? It might become the norm, according to scientists
ST LOUIS, United States (AFP) - Life expectancy may balloon to 100 years old in rich nations thanks to scientific advances, but such progress could widen the gap between wealthy and poor nations, according to researchers.
Within the next 10 years, state-of-the-art, anti-ageing technologies could -- if they come into widespread use -- radically start altering global demographics, extending people's lifespans by 20 years, according to Shripad Tuljapurkar, a Stanford University biologist.
Tuljapurkar, in a study presented here Friday to the annual meeting of the The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said such technologies could see people in industrialized countries living to age 100.
Aubrey De Gray, a biologist at Cambridge University in England, backed up Tuljapurkar's research.
"There is a 50 percent chance of creating therapies within 20 years to give middle-aged people an extra 25 years of life," De Gray said.
However, Tuljapurkar, who is also a professor of population studies, warned such advances could trigger critical social and socio-economic problems, creating a larger gap between the world's rich and poor.
He also questions how the world and policymakers would cope with a "longer-lived" population.
"Some people believe we are on the brink of being able to extend human lifespan significantly, because we've got most of the technologies we need to do it," Tuljapurkar said. via Yahoo!
