The Great Lifespan Escape

At the time when the lines begin, in the mid-18th century, life expectancy in Europe and the Americas was around 35, where it had been parked for the 225 previous years for which we have data.3 Life expectancy for the world as a whole was 29. These numbers are in the range of expected life spans for most of human history. The life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is around 32.5, and it probably decreased among the peoples who first took up farming because of their starchy diet and the diseases ...

 Ideal Amount of Exercise for Longevity

People who got some exercise, but not enough to meet the physical activity recommendations were still 20 percent less likely to die over a 14-year period than those who did not do any physical activity. (The recommendations say to do 150 minutes of moderate activity per week or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week.) People who engaged in the recommended level of physical activity saw even more benefit: They were 31 percent less likely to die during the study period, compared with those w...

 Actuarial Escape Velocity

actuarial escape velocity is defined as occurring when a year of medical research adds more than a year’s worth of longevity to the total population. Nothing even close to this has ever been achieved, and emerging signs of an asymptotic curve in progress suggest this velocity may never

 The Importance of Time-Stamping to Relevance

Time-stamping is of interest because the temporal element of context is essential for understanding a text (to take an obvious example, when reading a paper on global geopolitics in 2006 it is essential to know whether it was written before or after 11th September, 2001). Furthermore, some information has a 'sell-by date': after a certain point it may become unreliable. Often this point isn't predictable exactly, but broad indications can be given; naturally much depends on whether the inform...