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The average age at which U.S. researchers receive their first grant from NIH has increased from 34.3 in 1970, to 41.7 in 2004. These data raise the crucial question of the effects of aging on the scientific productivity and impact of researchers. Drawing on a sizeable sample of 6,388 university professors in Quebec who have published at least one paper between 2000 and 2007, our results identify two turning points in the professors' careers. A first turning point is visible at age 40 years, where researchers start to rely on older literature and where their productivity increases at a slower pace-after having increased sharply since the beginning of their career. A second turning point can be seen around age 50, when researchers are the most productive whereas their average scientific impact is at its lowest. Our results also show that older professors publish fewer first-authored papers and move closer to the end of the list of co-authors. Although average scientific impact per paper decreases linearly until about age 50, the average number of papers in highly cited journals and among highly cited papers rises continuously until retirement. Our results show clearly that productivity and impact are not a simple and declining function of age and that we must take into account the collaborative aspects of scientific research. Science is a collective endeavor and, as our data shows, researchers of all ages play a significant role in its dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Japanese professional chess (Shogi) players' records in the setting where various external factors are controlled in deterministic and finite games, this paper examines how and the extent to which the emergence of technological changes influences the ageing and innate ability of players' winning probability. We gathered games of professional Shogi players from 1968 to 2019, which we divided into three periods: 1968-1989, 1990-2012 (the diffusion of as information and communications technology (ICT)) and 2013-2019 (artificial intelligence (AI)). We found (1) diffusion of AI reduces the impact of innate ability in players performance. Consequently, the performance gap among same-age players has narrowed; (2) in all the periods, players' winning rates declined consistently from 20 years and as they get older; (3) AI accelerated the ageing decline of the probability of winning, which increased the performance gap among different aged players; (4) the effects of AI on the ageing decline and the probability of winning are observed for high innate skill players but not for low innate skill ones. The findings are specific to Shogi as a kind of board games although it is valuable to examine the extent to which the findings hold for other labor market., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 YAMAMURA, HAYASHI. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

In China, the number of senior citizens has grown, along with the burden of old age, and aging has hampered economic growth. The advent of the digital age has led to the emergence of the digital economy as a new engine for economic growth. This paper uses DEA-Malmquist index model to measure the total factor productivity growth rate of 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2021, and uses the moderating effects model to empirically investigate the relationship between the digital economy, aging and total factor productivity, and to verify whether the development of the digital economy can mitigate the negative impact of aging on total factor productivity. The results show that aging inhibits total factor productivity growth, and the digital economy can promote total factor productivity growth. Digital economy can alleviate the negative impact of aging on total factor productivity growth, and has a moderating effect. Digital economy plays a moderating role by improving the level of human capital and facilitating technological progress. The regional heterogeneity analysis shows that the moderating effect of the digital economy exists in the eastern and western regions and the southern region, but not in the central region and the northern region. Furthermore, the digital economy has a moderating effect on both the high and low aging groups. The research in this paper not only helps to evaluate the productivity effects of the digital economy, but also has important implications for finding ways to mitigate the negative effects of aging., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Meng, Wen. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Introduction: Latinos are the fastest growing aging population in the U.S. However, there has been limited attention to conceptualizing successful aging among Latinos, especially those residing in rural communities. Latinos are the largest racial or ethnic group residing in rural underserved communities and rural Latinos experience significant structural barriers to access the conditions they need to age well. The goal of this study is to make unique contributions to the successful aging literature by describing what successful aging means for middle-aged Latinas residing in a rural community., Methods: This qualitative paper used inductive thematic content analysis to examine definitions of successful aging among Latina women (n = 40) residing in an underserved agricultural community and entering mid-life (mean = 49 years old; age range 40-64)., Results: With regards to definitions of successful aging, four themes emerged: 1) Having good health; 2) maintaining an active lifestyle; 3) the wellbeing of one's children; and 4) being independent., Discussion: Participants' definitions of successful aging aligned to some extent with existing frameworks, specifically related to health and independence. However, middle-aged Latina participants' unique definitions of successful aging also diverged from existing frameworks, especially around the wellbeing of their children and the importance of work as a way of maintaining an active lifestyle. More research is needed to understand the unique social context and circumstances of middle-aged Latinos residing in rural communities and how they influence their aging journeys. This can provide important information for the development of culturally sensitive services, interventions, and policies to help Latinos age well., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Ambriz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

This paper studies the role played by the digitization level of inclusive finance for the aging population. We leverage an unexpected Chinese national strategy that promotes mobile internet and other internet related integration in China to identify the impact of changes in state policies on the digitization level for inclusive finance in a regression discontinuity design. Although aging population is negatively correlated with the digitization level of inclusive finance, our empirical analysis reveals that the policy shock significantly increased the digitization level of inclusive finance among the aging population. We also find two opposite mechanisms: the income effect and the caring effect. Finally, our study suggests that the economic and social outcomes of the digitization level among aging population are bifurcated: happiness decreased but real estate investment increased., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Zhou, Ye. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The steady increase in China's ageing population and an upswing in migration among the country's population, on the whole, has caused a continuous expansion of the scale of older migrants. The migration of older adults not only directly affects the well-being of individual families but also significantly impacts the population structure and economic development of the places of origin and destination. Despite this, in China, the various relevant aspects concerning this age group and, in particular, its migration choices and the patterns thereof have only rarely been the subject of sound research. The study presented in this paper seeks to fill this gap; the present study makes use of the microdata obtained from the national population censuses of 2000 and 2010 and the 1% population sample surveys conducted nationally in 2005 and 2015. The findings of the present study were the following: ① During 1995-2015, the efficiency of older adults' migration was significantly higher in the eastern region than in the central and western regions. ② Older individuals migrating to urban areas are increasingly choosing, for their relocation, economically developed, urban areas such as the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. ③ Relocation of older adults to urban areas was much more than to rural areas. The latter group has a more diverse choice of destination, and the larger migration flow is primarily from developed provinces to relatively underdeveloped provinces. ④ The results of binary logit regression indicated that the factors that significantly and consistently influence the migration decisions of older adults were found to be the following: age, education level, health status, the primary financial resource, children aged ≤ 6 years being members of the household that would receive the migrants, and the average wage of employees. As for the geographical characteristics of the province to which the older adults migrate, a substantial difference was observed between the preferences of older adults migrating to urban regions and those of older adults relocating to rural areas. The findings of the present study provide further insight into the decision-making of older adults regarding migration. Further, these findings constitute an empirical basis for the local governments concerned to devise and implement policies to better cope with an ageing population., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Wu, Wu. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Budding yeast, which undergoes polarized growth during budding and mating, has been a useful model system to study cell polarization. Bud sites are selected differently in haploid and diploid yeast cells: haploid cells bud in an axial manner, while diploid cells bud in a bipolar manner. While previous studies have been focused on the molecular details of the bud site selection and polarity establishment, not much is known about how different budding patterns give rise to different functions at the population level. In this paper, we develop a two-dimensional agent-based model to study budding yeast colonies with cell-type specific biological processes, such as budding, mating, mating type switch, consumption of nutrients, and cell death. The model demonstrates that the axial budding pattern enhances mating probability at an early stage and the bipolar budding pattern improves colony development under nutrient limitation. Our results suggest that the frequency of mating type switch might control the trade-off between diploidization and inbreeding. The effect of cellular aging is also studied through our model. Based on the simulations, colonies initiated by an aged haploid cell show declined mating probability at an early stage and recover as the rejuvenated offsprings become the majority. Colonies initiated with aged diploid cells do not show disadvantage in colony expansion possibly due to the fact that young cells contribute the most to colony expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Associative memory deficit underlies a part of older adults' deficient episodic memory due to the reduced ability to bind units of information. In this article we further assess the mechanism underlying this deficit, by assessing the degree to which we can model it in young adults under conditions of divided attention. We shall describe two experiments in this paper; these experiments investigate item and associative recognition in young adults under full- or divided-attention conditions. The secondary tasks employed were N-back like (NBL), which serves as a working memory updating task, and parity judgement and visuospatial (VS) tasks, which serve as non-working memory tasks. The results of both experiments show that only the NBL specifically affected associative recognition, while the other tasks affected item and associative memory to the same degree, indicating a general resource competition. These results presented a convergence of evidence for the associative deficit in older adults by modelling it in young adults., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

A wide body of literature has demonstrated that the neural representation of healthy swallowing is mostly bilateral, with one hemisphere dominant over the other. While several studies have demonstrated the presence of laterality for swallowing related functions among young adults, the data on older adults are still growing. The purpose of this paper is to investigate potential changes in hemispheric dominance in healthy aging adults for swallowing related tasks using a behavioral dual-task paradigm. A modified dual-task paradigm was designed to investigate the potential reduction in hemispherical specialization for swallowing function. Eighty healthy right-handed participants in the study were divided into two groups [Group 1: young adults (18-40 years) and Group 2: older adults (65 and above)]. All the participants performed a timed water swallow test at baseline and with two interference conditions (silent word repetition, and facial recognition). The results of the study revealed the following 1) a statistically significant effect of age on swallow performance; 2) statistically significant effect of each of the interference tasks on two of the swallow measures (VPS and VPT) in younger adults; and 3) no significant effect of the interference tasks on the swallowing performance of older adults. These findings suggest that aging substantially affects swallowing in older individuals, and this potentially accompanies a reduction in the hemispheric specialization for swallowing related tasks., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The changing population age structure has a significant influence on the economy, society, and numerous other aspects of a country. This paper has innovatively applied the method of compositional data forecasting for the prediction of population age changes of the young (aged 0–14), the middle-aged (aged 15–64), and the elderly (aged older than 65) in China, India, and Vietnam by 2030 based on data from 1960 to 2016. To select the best-suited forecasting model, an array of data transformation approaches and forecasting models have been extensively employed, and a large number of comparisons have been made between the aforementioned methods. The best-suited model for each country is identified considering the root mean squared error and mean absolute percent error values from the compositional data. As noted in this study, first and foremost, it is predicted that by the year 2030, China will witness the disappearance of population dividend and get mired in an aging problem far more severe than that of India or Vietnam. Second, Vietnam’s trend of change in population age structure resembles that of China, but the country will sustain its good health as a whole. Finally, the working population of India demonstrates a strong rising trend, indicating that the age structure of the Indian population still remains relatively “young”. Meanwhile, the continuous rise in the proportion of elderly population and the gradual leveling off growth of the young population have nevertheless become serious problems in the world. The present paper attempts to offer crucial insights into the Asian population size, labor market and urbanization, and, moreover, provides suggestions for a sustainable global demographic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographic factors, such as population aging and shrinkage, and non-demographic factors, such as hospitalization rate and length of hospital stay, generate challenges for inpatient care. This paper used decomposition analysis to assess how changes in these factors affected the number of hospital treatment days from 2000 to 2015 in Germany. Demographic aging was linked to increases in the number of treatment days for women (+10.0%) and men (+19.2%) and in hospitalization rates for women +6.0% and men +5.4%. However, these increases were offset by decreases in the number of hospital days (women: 16.5%; men: 7.3%) and length of stay (women: -27.4%; men -26.3%). For the projection up to 2040, 12 scenarios were developed (six for women and six for men) using three variants for future population demographics and two variants for future length of stay and hospitalization rates. One of the two variants for future length of stay and hospitalization rates provides for a constant value for the year 2015. For the second of these two variants variant, a logarithmic model was estimated on the basis of values from 2000 to 2015. and the trends were extrapolated using this model until 2040. The strongest overall predicted increase was 18.4% between 2015 and 2040, including a 22.4% increase for men. In two scenarios for women, only slight declines were predicted. All results, both for the decomposition analysis and projection, indicated a moderate but sustained effect of demographic aging on the number of hospital treatment days, leading to a significant increase in hospital treatment days over the study period. Non-demographic factors also had strong influences, especially in shorter time periods, but these effects offset each other over time. The change in the population size in the period under study had very little effect on the number of hospital treatment days., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: The ε4 allele of apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene and increasing age are two of the most important known risk factors for developing Alzheimer disease (AD). The diagnosis of AD based on clinical symptoms alone is known to have poor specificity; recently developed diagnostic criteria based on biomarkers that reflect underlying AD neuropathology allow better assessment of the strength of the associations of risk factors with AD. Accordingly, we examined the global and age-specific association between APOE genotype and AD by using the A/T/N classification, relying on the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of β-amyloid peptide (A, β-amyloid deposition), phosphorylated tau (T, pathologic tau), and total tau (N, neurodegeneration) to identify patients with AD., Methods and Findings: This case-control study included 1,593 white AD cases (55.4% women; mean age 72.8 [range = 44-96] years) with abnormal values of CSF biomarkers from nine European memory clinics and the American Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study. A total of 11,723 dementia-free controls (47.1% women; mean age 65.6 [range = 44-94] years) were drawn from two longitudinal cohort studies (Whitehall II and Three-City), in which incident cases of dementia over the follow-up were excluded from the control population. Odds ratio (OR) and population attributable fraction (PAF) for AD associated with APOE genotypes were determined, overall and by 5-year age categories. In total, 63.4% of patients with AD and 22.6% of population controls carried at least one APOE ε4 allele. Compared with non-ε4 carriers, heterozygous ε4 carriers had a 4.6 (95% confidence interval 4.1-5.2; p < 0.001) and ε4/ε4 homozygotes a 25.4 (20.4-31.2; p < 0.001) higher OR of AD in unadjusted analysis. This association was modified by age (p for interaction < 0.001). The PAF associated with carrying at least one ε4 allele was greatest in the 65-70 age group (69.7%) and weaker before 55 years (14.2%) and after 85 years (22.6%). The protective effect of APOE ε2 allele for AD was unaffected by age. Main study limitations are that analyses were based on white individuals and AD cases were drawn from memory centers, which may not be representative of the general population of patients with AD., Conclusions: In this study, we found that AD diagnosis based on biomarkers was associated with APOE ε4 carrier status, with a higher OR than previously reported from studies based on only clinical AD criteria. This association differs according to age, with the strongest effect at 65-70 years. These findings highlight the need for early interventions for dementia prevention to mitigate the effect of APOE ε4 at the population level., Competing Interests: No conflicts of interest with regards to this paper. Outside the submitted work, TG reported having received consulting fees from Actelion, Biogen, Eli Lilly, Iqvia/ Quintiles; MSD; Novartis, Quintiles, Roche Pharma, lecture fees from Biogen, Lilly, Parexel, Roche Pharma, and grants to his institution from Actelion and PreDemTech.

'Normal aging' in the brain refers to age-related changes that occur independent of disease, in particular Alzheimer's disease. A major barrier to mapping normal brain aging has been the difficulty in excluding the earliest preclinical stages of Alzheimer's disease. Here, before addressing this issue we first imaged a mouse model and learn that the best MRI measure of dendritic spine loss, a known pathophysiological driver of normal aging, is one that relies on the combined use of functional and structural MRI. In the primary study, we then deployed the combined functional-structural MRI measure to investigate over 100 cognitively-normal people from 20-72 years of age. Next, to cover the tail end of aging, in secondary analyses we investigated structural MRI acquired from cognitively-normal people, 60-84 years of age, who were Alzheimer's-free via biomarkers. Collectively, the results from the primary functional-structural study, and the secondary structural studies revealed that the dentate gyrus is a hippocampal region differentially affected by aging, and that the entorhinal cortex is a region most resistant to aging. Across the cortex, the primary functional-structural study revealed and that the inferior frontal gyrus is differentially affected by aging, however, the secondary structural studies implicated other frontal cortex regions. Together, the results clarify how normal aging may affect the brain and has possible mechanistic and therapeutic implications., Competing Interests: I have read the journal's policy and the authors of this paper have the following competing interests: FAP is a consultant for and has equity in Imij Technologies. SAS serves on the scientific advisory board of Meira GTX, recently came off the scientific advisory board of Denali Theraputics, and has equity in Imij Technologies. AMB is a scientific consultant to Cognition theraptueics, Keystone Heart, and MedAvante-ProPhase, and recently served on an advisory board for F. Hoffmann-La Roche and Keystone Heart. XF, FAP, SAS and AMB have either granted patents or applications in neuroimaging for which no royalties are received. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

By conventional measures, it is often remarked that Central and South America is one of the fastest aging geographic regions in the world. In recent years, however, scholars have sought to problematize the orthodox measures and concepts employed in the aging literature. By not taking dynamic changes in life expectancy into account, measures which hold chronological age constant (e.g. defining a boundary to old age at 60 or 65) represent a very narrow view of population aging. Furthermore, such constant measures may misrepresent differences between territories when performing a comparative analysis. Prospective measures based on the number of years until death present an alternative approach which can adapt to dynamic changes in life expectancy and differences over time and space. The objective of this paper, then, is to apply the new 'prospective' measures of aging to the territories of Central and South America. We calculate prospective median age; an alternative old-age threshold based on the age at which remaining life expectancy is 15 years, and calculate prospective old-age dependency ratio for 1950-2100 using estimated and projected life tables from the latest iteration of the UN's World Population Prospects. These new measures present a very different view of aging in Central and South America. While there are significant differences across countries, the pace and scale of aging are considerably slower and diminished when compared to standard, orthodox measures based on fixed chronological ages. Applying these new measures can not only serve to present a more realistic view of aging which maps onto demographic reality but can also serve to reconceptualize and reframe the issue as something which is far more manageable (e.g. through institutional reform) than is often perceived to be., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The risk of dying increases exponentially with age, in humans as well as in many other species. This increase is often attributed to the "accumulation of damage" known to occur in many biological structures and systems. The aim of this paper is to describe a generic model of damage accumulation and death in which mortality increases exponentially with age. The damage-accumulation process is modeled by a stochastic process know as a queue, and risk of dying is a function of the accumulated damage, i.e., length of the queue. The model has four parameters and the main characteristics of the model are: (i) damage occurs at random times with a constant high rate; (ii) the damage is repaired at a limited rate, and consequently damage can accumulate; (iii) the efficiency of the repair mechanism decays linearly with age; (iv) the risk of dying is a function of the accumulated damage. Using standard results from the mathematical theory of queues it is shown that there is an exponential dependence between risk of dying and age in these models, and that this dependency holds irrespective of how the damage-accumulation process is modeled. Furthermore, the ways in which this exponential dependence is shaped by the model parameters are also independent of the details of the damage accumulation process. These generic features suggest that the model could be useful when interpreting changes in the relation between age and mortality in real data. To exemplify, historical mortality data from Sweden are interpreted in the light of the model. The decrease in mortality seen between cohorts born in 1905, compared to those born in 1885, can be accounted for by higher threshold to damage. This fits well with the many advances made in public health during the 20th century., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Shanghai has experienced rapid urbanization and has a serious housing aging problem. The situation of urban housing safety management needs to be strengthened. However, in China, housing safety management (HSM) is just in its beginning stage and it lacks thorough research. Housing safety awareness is one of the most significant aspects of housing safety management. Therefore, in order to investigate the housing safety awareness of Shanghai residents, this paper investigates the safety attitudes of residents living in housing of different ages using consulting questionnaires and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. The results show that in Shanghai, the residents lack an understanding of housing management law, policy, and awareness of safety use and have low willingness to buy commercial insurance. Based on these results, the factors that affect the safety awareness of Shanghai residents are summarized as follows: (1) asymmetric information; (2) assessment of the safety status of the premises; and (3) differences in house users., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Objective: Although there is anecdotal evidence of ageism occurring at both the structural level (in which societal institutions reinforce systematic bias against older persons) and individual level (in which older persons take in the negative views of aging of their culture), previous systematic reviews have not examined how both levels simultaneously influence health. Thus, the impact of ageism may be underestimated. We hypothesized that a comprehensive systematic review would reveal that these ageism levels adversely impact the health of older persons across geography, health outcomes, and time., Method: A literature search was performed using 14 databases with no restrictions on region, language, and publication type. The systematic search yielded 13,691 papers for screening, 638 for full review, and 422 studies for analyses. Sensitivity analyses that adjusted for sample size and study quality were conducted using standardized tools. The study protocol is registered (PROSPERO CRD42018090857)., Results: Ageism led to significantly worse health outcomes in 95.5% of the studies and 74.0% of the 1,159 ageism-health associations examined. The studies reported ageism effects in all 45 countries, 11 health domains, and 25 years studied, with the prevalence of significant findings increasing over time (p < .0001). A greater prevalence of significant ageism-health findings was found in less-developed countries than more-developed countries (p = .0002). Older persons who were less educated were particularly likely to experience adverse health effects of ageism. Evidence of ageism was found across the age, sex, and race/ethnicity of the targeters (i.e., persons perpetrating ageism)., Conclusion: The current analysis which included over 7 million participants is the most comprehensive review of health consequences of ageism to date. Considering that the analysis revealed that the detrimental impact of ageism on older persons' health has been occurring simultaneously at the structural and individual level in five continents, our systematic review demonstrates the pernicious reach of ageism., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Network modeling is a challenging task due to non-trivial evolution dynamics. We introduce multiple-selection-procedure with 'N' possible growth mechanisms (MSP-N). In MSP-N, an incoming node chooses a single option among N available options to link to pre-existing nodes. Some of the potential options, in case of social networks, can be standard preferential or random attachment and node aging or fitness. In this paper, we discuss a specific case, MSP-2, and shows its efficacy in reconstructing several non-trivial characteristic properties of social networks, including networks with power-law degree distribution, power-law with an exponential decay (exponential cut-off), and exponential degree distributions. We evaluate the proposed evolution mechanism over two real-world networks and observe that the generated networks highly resembles the degree distribution of the real-world networks. Besides, several other network properties such as high clustering and triangle count, low spectral radius, and community structure, of the generated networks are significantly closer to the real-world networks., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

There has been strong interest in the role of metals in neurodegeneration, and how ageing may predispose the brain to related diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. Recent work has also highlighted a potential interaction between different metal species and various components of the cytoskeletal network in the brain, which themselves have a reported role in age-related degenerative disease and other neurological disorders. Neurofilaments are one such class of intermediate filament protein that have a demonstrated capacity to bind and utilise cation species. In this study, we investigated the consequences of altering the neurofilamentous network on metal ion homeostasis by examining neurofilament light (NFL) gene knockout mice, relative to wildtype control animals, at adulthood (5 months of age) and advanced age (22 months). Inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy demonstrated that the concentrations of iron (Fe), copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) varied across brain regions and peripheral nerve samples. Zn and Fe showed statistically significant interactions between genotype and age, as well as between genotype and region, and Cu demonstrated a genotype and region interaction. The most substantial difference between genotypes was found in Fe in the older animals, where, across many regions examined, there was elevated Fe in the NFL knockout mice. This data indicates a potential relationship between the neurofilamentous cytoskeleton and the processing and/or storage of Fe through ageing., Competing Interests: The authors have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this paper have the following competing interests: Paul Adlard is a paid consultant and shareholder in Alterity Therapeutics. Additionally, the authors would like to declare the following patents/patent applications: 1. PCT/AU2018/050294 Prophylaxis and treatment of cognitive dysfunction and decline. Portbury and Adlard are named as inventors. 2. US20050130888, WO2003105910, EP1531905, NZ537103, AU2003000735 Metallothionein based neuronal therapeutic and therapeutic methods. West, Chuah, Vickers and Chung are named as inventors. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Drawing on job design theories and a conceptual framework of work-related goals and motivation in later adulthood, the aim of this paper is to explore how work-related and individual factors are separately and jointly related to psychological work ability and bridge employment intentions via late job mobility. The cross-sectional study is based on a sample of 171 older Spanish workers aged 45–65 and beyond. We differentiated between groups of older workers in mid career (45–55 years of age) and in their later careers (56 years and beyond). Our results confirm that task characteristics and, secondarily, knowledge characteristics are the most relevant factors in perceptions of psychological work ability among aged workers. Both age groups display a very marked personal mastery trait, which mediates the relationships between job characteristics and both psychological work ability and late job mobility intentions. The paper concludes with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications and suggestions for future research on the issues implied in the psychological adjustment of older workers in their mid and late careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This paper examines the ethnic and gender differentials in high blood pressure (HBP), diabetes, coronary heart disease (CHD), arthritis and asthma among older people in Malaysia, and how these diseases along with other factors affect self-rated health. Differentials in the prevalence of non-communicable diseases among older people are examined in the context of socio-cultural perspectives in multi-ethnic Malaysia. Methods: Data for this paper are obtained from the 2004 Malaysian Population and Family Survey. The survey covered a nationally representative sample of 3,406 persons aged 50 and over, comprising three main ethnic groups (Malays, Chinese and Indians) and all other indigenous groups. Bivariate analyses and hierarchical logistic regression were used in the analyses. Results: Arthritis was the most common non-communicable disease (NCD), followed by HBP, diabetes, asthma and CHD. Older females were more likely than males to have arthritis and HBP, but males were more likely to have asthma. Diabetes and CHD were most prevalent among Indians, while arthritis and HBP were most prevalent among the Indigenous groups. Older people were more likely to report poor health if they suffered from NCD, especially CHD. Controlling for socio-economic, health and lifestyle factors, Chinese were least likely to report poor health, whereas Indians and Indigenous people were more likely to do so. Chinese that had HBP were more likely to report poor health compared to other ethnic groups with the same disease. Among those with arthritis, Indians were more likely to report poor health. Conclusion: Perceived health status and prevalence of arthritis, HBP, diabetes, asthma and CHD varied widely across ethnic groups. Promotion of healthy lifestyle, early detection and timely intervention of NCDs affecting different ethnic groups and gender with socio-cultural orientations would go a long way in alleviating the debilitating effects of the common NCDs among older people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the accuracy of using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to predict the age of Anopheles mosquitoes reared from wild larvae and a mixed age-wild adult population collected from pit traps after exposure to pyrethroids. The mosquitoes reared from wild larvae were estimated as <7 or ≥7 d old with an overall accuracy of 79%. The age categories of Anopheles mosquitoes that were not exposed to the insecticide papers were predicted with 78% accuracy whereas the age categories of resistant, susceptible and mosquitoes exposed to control papers were predicted with 82%, 78% and 79% accuracy, respectively. The ages of 85% of the wild-collected mixed-age Anopheles were predicted by NIRS as ≤8 d for both susceptible and resistant groups. The age structure of wild-collected mosquitoes was not significantly different for the pyrethroid-susceptible and pyrethroid-resistant mosquitoes (P = 0.210). Based on these findings, NIRS chronological age estimation technique for Anopheles mosquitoes may be independent of insecticide exposure and the environmental conditions to which the mosquitoes are exposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study aims to assess the decline in telomere length (TL) with age and evaluate effect modification by gender, chronic stress, and comorbidity in a representative sample of the US population., Methods: Cross-sectional data on 7826 adults with a TL measurement, were included from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, years 1999-2002. The population rate of decline in TL across 10-year age categories was estimated using crude and adjusted regression., Results: In an adjusted model, the population rate of decline in TL with age was consistent and linear for only three age categories: 20-29 (β = -0.0172, 95% CI: -0.0342, -0.0002), 50-59 (β = -0.0182, 95% CI: -0.0311, -0.0054) and 70-79 (β = -0.0170, 95% CI: -0.0329, -0.0011) years. The population rate of decline in TL with age was significantly greater for males and those with high allostatic load and a history of comorbidities. When the population rate of decline in TL was analyzed by gender in 10-year age bins, a fairly consistent yet statistically non-significant decline for males was observed; however, a trough in the rate was observed for females in the age categories 20-29 years (β = -0.0284, 95% CI: -0.0464, -0.0103) and 50-59 years (β = -0.0211, 95% CI: -0.0391, -0.0032). To further elucidate the gender difference observed in the primary analyses, secondary analyses were conducted with reproductive and hormonal status; a significant inverse association was found between TL and parity, menopause, and age at menopause., Conclusions: TL was shorter with increasing age and this decline was modified by gender, chronic stress and comorbidities; individuals with chronic morbidity and/or chronic stress and females in their twenties and fifties experienced greater decline. Female reproductive factors, i.e., parity and menopause, were associated with TL., Competing Interests: The authors have read the journal's policy and the authors of this paper have the following competing interests: Rachelle Rodriguez is currently a paid employee at Purdue Pharma, L.P., Stamford, CT. However, she was not employed by Purdue Pharma during the duration and completion of the study. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

The subset of pro-inflammatory B cells, called late memory, tissue-like or double negative (DN), accumulates in the blood of elderly individuals. Here we show that DN B cells do not proliferate and do not make antibodies to influenza antigens, but they secrete antibodies with autoimmune reactivity, in agreement with their membrane phenotype (CD95+CD21-CD11c+) and their spontaneous expression of the transcription factor T-bet. These cells also increase in the blood of individuals with obesity and autoimmune diseases, but causative mechanisms and signaling pathways involved are known only in part. In the present paper we compare frequencies and metabolic requirements of these cells in the blood of healthy individuals of different ages and in the blood and the subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) of individuals with obesity. Results show that DN B cells from young individuals have minimal metabolic requirements, DN B cells from elderly and obese individuals utilize higher amounts of glucose to perform autoimmune antibody production and enroll in aerobic glycolysis to support their function. DN B cells from the SAT have the highest metabolic requirements as they activate oxidative phosphorylation, aerobic glycolysis and fatty acid oxidation. DN B cells from the SAT also show the highest levels of ROS and the highest levels of phosphorylated AMPK (5'-AMP activated kinase) and Sestrin 1, both able to mitigate stress and cell death. This metabolic advantage drives DN B cell survival and function (secretion of autoimmune antibodies)., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: Bhutan, a small land-locked country in the eastern Himalayas has been undergoing an epidemiological and nutritional transition in the last two decades. The objective of this paper was to determine the prevalence and explore the risk factors of self-reported diabetes among Bhutanese adults., Methods: We conducted a secondary data analysis among adults 18 years and older Bhutanese using the data from the National Health Survey 2012 (NHS, 2012) of Bhutan. The self-reported information on risk factors was obtained using standard protocols of the WHO STEPwise approach to Surveillance. The outcome of interest was self-reported diabetes on medication. Adjusted and unadjusted logistic regression analyses were performed to identify the risk factor of diabetes., Results: A total of 31,066 participants aged 18 years and older were included for the analysis. The prevalence of self-reported hypertension was 1.8% (491). Risk factors for diabetes were: age groups: 35-44 years adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 2.82 (95% CI, 1.07, 7.41), 45-54 years AOR = 6.02 (95% CI, 2.29, 15.83), 55-64 year AOR = 15.7 (95% CI 5.93, 41.55) and >65 years AOR = 19.60 (95% CI, 6.93, 55.71); high school and diploma/certificate education AOR = 2.57, (95% CI 1.62, 4.07) and AOR = 3.92 (95% CI 1.70, 9.07); and urban dwellers AOR = 2.37, (95% 1.58, 3.57); hypertension AOR = 3.3, (95% CI 2.47, 4.41); and fruit servings of 1-3 per week AOR = 1.63 (95% CI 1.15, 2.31)., Conclusion: The number of Bhutanese adults with diabetes and co-morbidities associated with it is likely to increase with the ageing of the population, nutrition transition, and high rural-urban migration in the near future. This calls for an urgent need to implement strategies to prevent diabetes in the Bhutanese population targeting risk factors including healthy lifestyle with increased physical activities and reduced smoking. At the same time treating other chronic morbidities including hypertension., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In this paper we investigate the changes in the functional connectivity intensity, and some related properties, in healthy people, across the life span and at resting state. For the explicit computation of the functional connectivity we exploit a recently proposed model, that bases not only on the correlations data provided by the acquisition equipment, but also on different parameters, such as the anatomical distances between nodes and their degrees. The leading purpose of the paper is to show that the proposed approach is able to recover the main aspects of resting state condition known from the available literature, as well as to suggest new insights, perspectives and speculations from a neurobiological point of view. Our study involves 133 subjects, both males and females of different ages, with no evidence of neurological diseases or systemic disorders. First, we show how the model applies to the sample, where the subjects are grouped into 28 different groups (14 of males and 14 of females), according to their age. This leads to the construction of two graphs (one for males and one for females), that can be realistically interpreted as representative of the neural network during the resting state. Second, following the idea that the brain network is better understood by focusing on specific nodes having a kind of centrality, we refine the two output graphs by introducing a new metric that favours the selection of nodes having higher degrees. As a third step, we extensively comment and discuss the obtained results. In particular, it is remarkable that, despite a great overlapping exists between the outcomes concerning males and females, some intriguing differences appear. This motivates a deeper local investigation, which represents the fourth part of the paper, carried out through a thorough statistical analysis. As a result, we are enabled to support that, for two special age groups, a few links contribute in differentiating the behaviour of males and females. In addition, we performed an average-based comparison between the proposed model and the traditional statistical correlation-based approach, then discussing and commenting the main outlined discrepancies., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Telomere length (TL) has been associated with a range of aging outcomes as well as mortality. Recent research has shown both high heritability (~70%) of TL as well as moderate spousal similarity (r~0.3) using European datasets. This paper explores the level of spousal concordance in telomere length in the Health and Retirement Study, a national sample of adults in the US. The results show that the spousal correlations are lower (r~0.11). Regression-based associations in TL in the US are low (beta~0.08) and also vary by the number of times respondents have been married, where spouses married a single time have higher associations in TL (beta~.12) than spouses married more once (beta~0.03). I also find variation in spousal TL association levels based on husband's education level. These findings suggest the possibility of both assortative mating patterns related to telomere length as well as likelihood of shared environmental factors that cause TL similarity in people who are socially connected., Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Knowledge of the human visual system helps to develop better computational models of visual attention. State-of-the-art models have been developed to mimic the visual attention system of young adults that, however, largely ignore the variations that occur with age. In this paper, we investigated how visual scene processing changes with age and we propose an age-adapted framework that helps to develop a computational model that can predict saliency across different age groups. Our analysis uncovers how the explorativeness of an observer varies with age, how well saliency maps of an age group agree with fixation points of observers from the same or different age groups, and how age influences the center bias tendency. We analyzed the eye movement behavior of 82 observers belonging to four age groups while they explored visual scenes. Explorative- ness was quantified in terms of the entropy of a saliency map, and area under the curve (AUC) metrics was used to quantify the agreement analysis and the center bias tendency. Analysis results were used to develop age adapted saliency models. Our results suggest that the proposed age-adapted saliency model outperforms existing saliency models in predicting the regions of interest across age groups.

In this paper, we examined the age-related changes in control of preprogramed movement, with emphasis on its accuracy. Forty-nine healthy subjects participated in this study, and were divided into three groups depending on their ages: the young group (20-39 years) (n = 16), the middle-age group (40-59 years) (n = 16), and the elderly group (60-79 years) (n = 17). We asked the subjects to perform step-tracking movements of the wrist joint with a manipulandum, and recorded the movements. We evaluated the accuracy of control of preprogramed movement in the three groups in terms of the primary submovement, which was identified as the first segment of the step-tracking movement based on the bell-shaped velocity profile, and calculated the distance between the end position of the primary submovement and the target (i.e. error). The error in the young group was found to be significantly smaller than that in the middle-age and elderly groups, i.e., the error was larger for the higher age groups. These results suggest that young subjects have better control of preprogramed movement than middle-age or elderly subjects. Finally, we examined the temporal property of the primary submovement and its age-related changes. The duration of the primary submovement tended to be longer for the aged groups, although significance was reached only for the elderly group. In particular, the ratio of the duration of the primary submovement to total movement time tended to be lower for the aged groups, suggesting that the proportion of additional movements that are required to compensate for the incomplete control in the preprogramed movement, which are under feedback control, was higher for the aged groups. Consequently, our results indicate that the distance between the end point of the primary submovement and the target center (i.e. error) in the step-tracking movement is a useful parameter to evaluate the age-related changes in control of preprogramed movement.

Background: Frailty is a major health issue which impacts the life of older people, posing a significant challenge to the health system. One of the key emerging areas is the development of frailty interventions to halt or reverse the progression of the condition. In many countries, economic evidence is required to inform public funding decisions for such interventions, and cost-effectiveness models are needed to estimate long-term costs and effects. Such models should capture current clinical understanding of frailty, its progression and its health consequences. The objective of this paper is to present a conceptual model of frailty that can be used to inform the development of a cost-effectiveness model to evaluate frailty interventions. Methods: After critical analysis of the clinical and economic literature, a Delphi study consisting of experts from the disciplines of clinical medicine and epidemiology was undertaken to inform the key components of the conceptual model. We also identified relevant databases that can be used to populate and validate the model. Results: A list of significant health states/events for which frailty is a strong independent risk factor was identified (e.g., hip fracture, hospital admission, delirium, death). We also identified a list of important patient attributes that may influence disease progression (e.g., age, gender, previous hospital admissions, depression). A number of large-scale relevant databases were also identified to populate and validate the cost-effectiveness model. Face validity of model structure was confirmed by experts. Discussion and conclusions: The proposed conceptual model is being used as a basis for developing a new cost-effectiveness model to estimate lifetime costs and outcomes associated with a range of frailty interventions. Using an appropriate model structure, which more accurately reflects the natural history of frailty, will improve model transparency and accuracy. This will ultimately lead to better informed public funding decisions around interventions to manage frailty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Consideration of older adults’ quality of life (QoL) is becoming increasingly important in the evaluation, quality improvement and allocation of health and social care services. While numerous definitions and theories of QoL have been proposed, an overall synthesis of the perspective of older adults themselves is lacking. Methods: Qualitative studies were identified in PubMed, Ebsco/Psycinfo and Ebsco/CINAHL, through a search on 28 November 2018. Articles needed to meet all of the following criteria: (i) focus on perceptions of QoL, (ii) older adults living at home as main participants, (iii) use of qualitative methodology, (iv) conducted in a Western country and (v) published in English (vi) not focused on specific patient groups. A thematic synthesis was conducted of the selected studies, using the complete ‘findings/results’ sections from the papers. Results: We included 48 qualitative studies representing the views of more than 3,400 older adults living at home in 11 Western countries. The QoL aspects identified in the synthesis were categorized into nine QoL domains: autonomy, role and activity, health perception, relationships, attitude and adaptation, emotional comfort, spirituality, home and neighbourhood, and financial security. The results showed that although different domains can be distinguished, these are also strongly connected. Conclusion: QoL can be expressed in a number of domains and related subthemes that are important for older adults living at home. The findings further support that the concept of QoL should be seen as a dynamic web of intertwined domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aging is accompanied by cognitive decline, although recent research indicates that the rate of decline depends on multiple lifestyle factors. One of such factors is musical practice, an activity that involves several sensory and motor systems and a wide range of high-level cognitive processes. This paper describes the first systematic review and meta-analysis, to our knowledge, of the impact of musical practice on healthy neurocognitive aging. The inclusion criteria for the review required that studies were empirical works in English or Spanish that they explored the effects of musical practice on older people; they included an assessment of cognitive functions and/or an assessment of brain status; and they included a sample of participants aged 59 years or older with no cognitive impairment or brain damage. This review led to the selection of 13 studies: 9 correlational studies involving older musicians and non-musicians and 4 experimental studies involving short-term musical training programs. The results of the meta-analysis showed cognitive and cerebral benefits of musical practice, both in domain-specific functions (auditory perception) and in other rather domain-general functions. Moreover, these benefits seem to protect cognitive domains that usually decline with aging and boost other domains that do not decline with aging. The origin of these benefits may reside, simultaneously, in the specific training of many of these cognitive functions during musical practice (specific training mechanism), in the improvement of compensatory cognitive processes (specific compensatory mechanism), and in the preservation of general functions with a global influence on others, such as perceptual capacity, processing speed, inhibition and attention (general compensatory mechanism). Therefore, musical practice seems to be a promising tool to reduce the impact of cognitive problems associated to aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The world population is aging rapidly and the well-being of older people is of great interest. Therefore, this study investigates the determinants of life satisfaction among the oldest-old (i.e. individuals aged 80 or over) in China., Materials and Methods: We use the 2011/2012 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey data (n = 6530) for this paper. Logistic regression is used to analyse the effects of socio-demographic, economic, health, instrumental activities of daily living, family and community factors on life satisfaction and depression among the oldest-old in China., Results: Our analysis confirms the significance of many factors affecting life satisfaction among the oldest-old in China. Factors that are correlated with life satisfaction include respondent's sex, education, place of residence, self-rated health status, cognitive ability (using mini mental state examination), regular physical examination, perceived relative economic status, access to social security provisions, commercialized insurances, living arrangements, and number of social services available in the community (p<0.05 for all these variables). Although life satisfaction is negatively associated with instrumental activities of daily living (β = -0.068, 95%CI = -.093-.043), and depression (β = -0.463, 95%CI = -.644-.282), the overall effect of self-rated health status is positive (p<0.001). This confirms the primacy of health as the determinant of well-being among the oldest-old., Conclusions: Majority of the oldest-old in China rated their life satisfaction as good or very good. Our findings show that health and economic status are by far the most significant predictors of life satisfaction. Our finding on the primacy of health and relative income as determinants of well-being among the oldest-old, and the greater influence of self-rated health status over objective health measures is consistent with the findings of many past studies. Our results suggest that efforts should be directed at enhancing family support as well as health and social service provisions in the community to improve life satisfaction of older people., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In line with the dimensional theory of emotional space, we developed affective norms for words rated in terms of valence, arousal and dominance in a group of older adults to complete the adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for Italian and to aid research on aging. Here, as in the original Italian ANEW database, participants evaluated valence, arousal, and dominance by means of the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in a paper-and-pencil procedure. We observed high split-half reliabilities within the older sample and high correlations with the affective ratings of previous research, especially for valence, suggesting that there is large agreement among older adults within and across-languages. More importantly, we found high correlations between younger and older adults, showing that our data are generalizable across different ages. However, despite this across-ages accord, we obtained age-related differences on three affective dimensions for a great number of words. In particular, older adults rated as more arousing and more unpleasant a number of words that younger adults rated as moderately unpleasant and arousing in our previous affective norms. Moreover, older participants rated negative stimuli as more arousing and positive stimuli as less arousing than younger participants, thus leading to a less-curved distribution of ratings in the valence by arousal space. We also found more extreme ratings for older adults for the relationship between dominance and arousal: older adults gave lower dominance and higher arousal ratings for words rated by younger adults with middle dominance and arousal values. Together, these results suggest that our affective norms are reliable and can be confidently used to select words matched for the affective dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance across younger and older participants for future research in aging., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: Obesity is one of the major public health challenges worldwide. It involves numerous endocrine disorders as etiological factors or as complications. Previous studies strongly suggested the involvement of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity in obesity, however, to date, no consistent trend in obesity-associated alterations of the HPA axis has been identified. Aging has been demonstrated to aggravate obesity and to induce abnormalities of the HPA axis. Thus, the question arises whether obesity is correlated with peripheral indicators of HPA function in adult populations., Objectives: We aimed to meta-analyze literature data on peripheral cortisol levels as indicators of HPA activity in obesity during aging, in order to identify possible explanations for previous contradictory findings and to suggest new approaches for future clinical studies., Data Sources: 3,596 records were identified through searching of PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library Database. Altogether 26 articles were suitable for analyses., Study Eligibility Criteria: Empirical research papers were eligible provided that they reported data of healthy adult individuals, included body mass index (BMI) and measured at least one relevant peripheral cortisol parameter (i.e., either morning blood cortisol or 24-h urinary free cortisol)., Statistical Methods: We used random effect models in each of the meta-analyses calculating with the DerSimonian and Laird weighting methods. I-squared indicator and Q test were performed to assess heterogeneity. Meta-regression was applied to explore the effect of BMI and age on morning blood and urinary free cortisol levels. To assess publication bias Egger's test was used., Results: Obesity did not show any correlation with the studied peripheral cortisol values. On the other hand, peripheral cortisol levels declined with aging within the obese, but not in the non-obese groups., Conclusions: Our analysis demonstrated that obesity or healthy aging does not lead to enhanced HPA axis activity, peripheral cortisol levels rather decline with aging., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

We previously developed an image analysis approach for the determination of local sites of bone remodelling using time-lapse in vivo HR-pQCT. The involved image filtering for removing noise was chosen rather aggressively, and also removed some effects of the bone remodelling. In this paper, we quantify these filtering settings using ex vivo reproducibility HR-pQCT images, and determine the least-detectable bone remodelling using in vivo reproducibility HR-pQCT images, as well as testing whether the approach is capable of capturing age-related bone remodelling by use of in vivo long-term HR-pQCT images. We found that a threshold value of 225 mg HA/cm3 for the filtering led to acceptable results with falsely determined bone remodelling of less than 0.5%, and that the least-detectable bone formation and bone resorption are 2.0 ± 1.0% and 2.2 ± 0.7% respectively. We also found that age-related local bone remodelling can be captured satisfactorily in postmenopausal women. The latter revealed new insights into the effect of ageing on bone remodelling, and showed that bone remodelling seems to take place through a few small formation packets and many large resorption volumes leading to a net bone loss. We conclude that local in vivo bone remodelling can be successfully assessed with time-lapse in vivo HR-pQCT capable of assessing age-related changes in bone remodelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As people age, their ability to maintain homeostasis in response to stressors diminishes. Physical frailty, a syndrome characterized by loss of resilience to stressors, is thought to emerge due to dysregulation of and breakdowns in communication among key physiological systems. Dynamical systems modeling of these physiological systems aims to model the underlying processes that govern response to stressors. We hypothesize that dynamical systems model summaries are predictive of age-related declines in health and function. In this study, we analyze data obtained during 75-gram oral-glucose tolerance tests (OGTT) on 1,120 adults older than 50 years of age from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging. We adopt a two-stage modeling approach. First, we fit OGTT curves with the Ackerman model—a nonlinear, parametric model of the glucose-insulin system—and with functional principal components analysis. We then fit linear and Cox proportional hazards models to evaluate whether usual gait speed and survival are associated with the stage-one model summaries. We also develop recommendations for identifying inadequately-fitting nonlinear model fits in a cohort setting with numerous heterogeneous response curves. These recommendations include: (1) defining a constrained parameter space that ensures biologically plausible model fits, (2) evaluating the relative discrepancy between predicted and observed responses of biological interest, and (3) identifying model fits that have notably poor model fit summary measures, such as Rpseudo2 , relative to other fits in the cohort. The Ackerman model was unable to adequately fit 36% of the OGTT curves. The stage-two regression analyses found no associations between Ackerman model summaries and usual gait speed, nor with survival. The second functional principal component score was associated with faster gait speed (p<0.01) and improved survival (p<0.01). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Depression is one of the most common mental health disorders among older people. Depressive symptoms are often overlooked and untreated in primary care settings. This study aims to assess the prevalence of depressive symptoms and associated factors among older people in Vietnam. Method: The study analyzed data from the Vietnam National Aging Survey (VNAS) conducted in 2022 with a nationally representative sample of 3,006 older people aged 60 and over in 12 provinces. The 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15) was used to assess depressive symptoms. Bivariate and multiple logistic regression analyses were used to explore the association between depressive symptoms and other related factors such as sociodemographic and economic characteristics, social support, health status, Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) limitations, chronic diseases, cigarette smoking status, alcoholic drinking, and domestic violence. Results: The prevalence of depressive symptoms among older people was 20.2%. The associated factors that increase the odds of having depression among older people were female gender (OR = 2.21, 95% CI 1.34–3.62), living in rural areas (OR = 1.83, 95% CI 1.15–2.89), the poorest quintile (OR = 2.26, 95% CI 1.39–3.66), self-rated poor health (OR = 11.68, 95% CI 4.96–27.49), ADL limitations (OR = 2.12, 95% CI 1.51–2.99), IADL limitation (OR = 1.61 95% CI 1.16–2.25), and experiencing domestic violence in the last 12 months (OR = 6.66, 95% CI 4.00–11.05). Conclusion: Depression symptoms were prevalent among older people in Vietnam. Depression screening for older people should be included in primary care settings for early identification and treatment of depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aging is associated with a wide range of physiological and behavioral changes in many species. Zebrafish, like humans, rodents, and birds, exhibits gradual senescence, and thus may be a useful model organism for identifying evolutionarily conserved mechanisms related to aging. Here, we compared behavior in the novel tank test of young (6-month-old) and middle aged (12-month-old) zebrafish from two strains (TL and TU) and both sexes. We find that this modest age difference results in a reduction in locomotor activity in male fish. We also found that background strain modulated the effects of age on predator avoidance behaviors related to anxiety: older female TL fish increased bottom dwelling whereas older male TU fish decreased thigmotaxis. Although there were no consistent effects of age on either short-term (within session) or long-term (next day) habituation to the novel tank, strain affected the habituation response. TL fish tended to increase their distance from the bottom of the tank whereas TU fish had no changes in bottom distance but instead tended to increase thigmotaxis. Our findings support the use of zebrafish for the study of how age affects locomotion and how genetics interacts with age and sex to alter exploratory and emotional behaviors in response to novelty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflamm-aging refers to the chronic low-grade inflammation that occurs with aging and cellular senescence, and it is linked to various diseases. Understanding the markers involved in inflammation and aging, as well as their interaction with environmental factors and bodily control mechanisms, can provide crucial tools for assessing the resilience (i.e. the ability to adapt and improve) of the human body, particularly in the presence of chronic degenerative conditions or vulnerable life stages, that place the individual and the community to which he belongs in a state of potential fragility. HEBE focuses on physical exercise, along with nutritional and lifestyle recommendations, to reduce systemic inflammation and promote healthy aging. HEBE encompasses multiple research lines (LR). In the ongoing LR1 ("proof of concept"), healthy lifestyle recommendations were provided to University of Milan employees, and changes in quality of life and well-being were assessed using a specialized questionnaire. The first 100 eligible subjects, who expressed their willingness to participate, underwent a personalized physical exercise protocol based on clinical and objective assessments. Biomedical samples were collected at baseline (T0) and follow-up (T1) to establish a shared biobank and identify non-invasive biomarkers that monitor the impact of physical exercise on individual characteristics such as cardiovascular and metabolic health. Subsequently (LR2-LR10), the proof of concept findings will be expanded to include various conditions of vulnerability such as obesity, cancer, endocrine disorders, cardiovascular diseases, infertility, functional syndromes, respiratory disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and autoimmune conditions. The research lines will leverage the expertise of the 94 participating investigators to form a collaborative network that maximizes the potential for investigation and knowledge exchange. This approach fosters a culture of health promotion and disease prevention. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05815732. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ) is a 100-item owner-completed survey instrument used for assessing behavior and temperament of companion dogs. The shortened version of the C-BARQ (C-BARQ(S)) consists of 42 items of the long C-BARQ. We aimed to validate the shortened C-BARQ(S) by comparing it with the long questionnaire in the same human-dog pair. We examined data from a nationwide cohort of companion dogs enrolled in the large-scale longitudinal Dog Aging Project (DAP) study. Among 435 participating owners who completed both the long and shortened versions of the C-BARQ within 60 days of each other, agreement between individual questions of the long and shortened C-BARQ using an unweighted kappa statistic and percent agreement was examined. Associations between the two questionnaires for mean behavior and temperament domain scores and mean miscellaneous category scores were assessed using Pearson correlation coefficients. Of 435 dogs in the study, the mean (SD) age was 7.3 (4.3) years and 216 (50%) were female. Kappa values between the long and shortened C-BARQ for individual questions within the 14 behavior and temperament domains and a miscellaneous category ranged from fair to moderate (0.23 to 0.40 for 21 items and 0.41 to 0.58 for 26 items, respectively). Pearson correlation coefficients above 0.60 between both questionnaires for 12 of the 14 mean behavior and temperament domain scores and a category of miscellaneous items were observed. Kappa values for individual questions between the long and shortened C-BARQ ranged from fair to moderate and correlations between mean domain scores ranged from moderate to strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) for sequences is thought to be crucial for daily behaviors. Decades of research indicate that oscillations in the gamma and theta bands play important functional roles in the support of visuo-spatial working memory, but the vast majority of that research emphasizes measures of neural activity during memory retention. The primary aims of the present study were (1) to determine whether oscillatory dynamics in the Theta and Gamma ranges would reflect item-level sequence encoding during a computerized spatial span task, (2) to determine whether item-level sequence recall is also related to these neural oscillations, and (3) to determine the nature of potential changes to these processes in healthy cognitive aging. Results indicate that VSWM sequence encoding is related to later (∼700 ms) gamma band oscillatory dynamics and may be preserved in healthy older adults; high gamma power over midline frontal and posterior sites increased monotonically as items were added to the spatial sequence in both age groups. Item-level oscillatory dynamics during the recall of VSWM sequences were related only to theta-gamma phase amplitude coupling (PAC), which increased monotonically with serial position in both age groups. Results suggest that, despite a general decrease in frontal theta power during VSWM sequence recall in older adults, gamma band dynamics during encoding and theta-gamma PAC during retrieval play unique roles in VSWM and that the processes they reflect may be spared in healthy aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many social complex systems, in which agents are linked by non-linear interactions, the history of events strongly influences the whole network dynamics. However, a class of "commonly accepted beliefs" seems rarely studied. In this paper, we examine how the growth process of a (social) network is influenced by past circumstances. In order to tackle this cause, we simply modify the well known preferential attachment mechanism by imposing a time dependent kernel function in the network evolution equation. This approach leads to a fractional order Barabási-Albert (BA) differential equation, generalizing the BA model. Our results show that, with passing time, an aging process is observed for the network dynamics. The aging process leads to a decay for the node degree values, thereby creating an opposing process to the preferential attachment mechanism. On one hand, based on the preferential attachment mechanism, nodes with a high degree are more likely to absorb links; but, on the other hand, a node's age has a reduced chance for new connections. This competitive scenario allows an increased chance for younger members to become a hub. Simulations of such a network growth with aging constraint confirm the results found from solving the fractional BA equation. We also report, as an exemplary application, an investigation of the collaboration network between Hollywood movie actors. It is undubiously shown that a decay in the dynamics of their collaboration rate is found, even including a sex difference. Such findings suggest a widely universal application of the so generalized BA model.

Background: Smoking, alcohol consumption, poor diet and low levels of physical activity significantly contribute to the burden of illness in developed countries. Whilst the links between specific and multiple risk behaviours and individual chronic conditions are well documented, the impact of these behaviours in mid-life across a range of later life outcomes has yet to be comprehensively assessed. This review aimed to provide an overview of behavioural risk factors in mid-life that are associated with successful ageing and the primary prevention or delay of disability, dementia, frailty and non-communicable chronic conditions., Methods: A literature search was conducted to identify cohort studies published in English since 2000 up to Dec 2014. Multivariate analyses and a minimum follow-up of five years were required for inclusion. Two reviewers screened titles, abstracts and papers independently. Studies were assessed for quality. Evidence was synthesised by mid-life behavioural risk for a range of late life outcomes., Findings: This search located 10,338 individual references, of which 164 are included in this review. Follow-up data ranged from five years to 36 years. Outcomes include dementia, frailty, disability and cardiovascular disease. There is consistent evidence of beneficial associations between mid-life physical activity, healthy ageing and disease outcomes. Across all populations studied there is consistent evidence that mid-life smoking has a detrimental effect on health. Evidence specific to alcohol consumption was mixed. Limited, but supportive, evidence was available relating specifically to mid-life diet, leisure and social activities or health inequalities., Conclusions: There is consistent evidence of associations between mid-life behaviours and a range of late life outcomes. The promotion of physical activity, healthy diet and smoking cessation in all mid-life populations should be encouraged for successful ageing and the prevention of disability and chronic disease.

Aging is commonly described as being a continuous process affecting progressively organisms as time passes. This process results in a progressive decrease in individuals fitness through a wide range of both organismal-decreased motor activity, fertility, resistance to stress-and molecular phenotypes-decreased protein and energy homeostasis, impairment of insulin signaling. In the past 20 years, numerous genes have been identified as playing a major role in the aging process, yet little is known about the events leading to that loss of fitness. We recently described an event characterized by a dramatic increase of intestinal permeability to a blue food dye in aging flies committed to die within a few days. Importantly, flies showing this so called 'Smurf' phenotype are the only ones, among a population, to show various age-related changes and exhibit a high-risk of impending death whatever their chronological age. Thus, these observations suggest that instead of being one continuous phenomenon, aging may be a discontinuous process well described by at least two distinguishable phases. In this paper we addressed this hypothesis by implementing a new 2 Phases of Aging mathematiCal model (2PAC model) to simulate longevity curves based on the simple hypothesis of two consecutive phases of lifetime presenting different properties. We first present a unique equation for each phase and discuss the biological significance of the 3 associated parameters. Then we evaluate the influence of each parameter on the shape of survival curves. Overall, this new mathematical model, based on simple biological observations, is able to reproduce many experimental longevity curves, supporting the existence of 2 phases of aging exhibiting specific properties and separated by a dramatic transition that remains to be characterized. Moreover, it indicates that Smurf survival can be approximated by one single constant parameter for a broad range of genotypes that we have tested under our environmental conditions.

DNA methylation is an important epigenetic modification regulating gene expression, genomic imprinting, transposon silencing and chromatin structure in plants and plays an important role in leaf senescence. However, the DNA methylation pattern during Gossypium hirsutum L. cotyledon senescence is poorly understood. In this study, global DNA methylation patterns were compared between two cotyledon development stages, young (J1) and senescence (J2), using methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP-Seq). Methylated cytosine occurred mostly in repeat elements, especially LTR/Gypsy in both J1 and J2. When comparing J1 against J2, there were 1222 down-methylated genes and 623 up-methylated genes. Methylated genes were significantly enriched in carbohydrate metabolism, biosynthesis of other secondary metabolites and amino acid metabolism pathways. The global DNA methylation level decreased from J1 to J2, especially in gene promoters, transcriptional termination regions and regions around CpG islands. We further investigated the expression patterns of 9 DNA methyltransferase-associated genes and 2 DNA demethyltransferase-associated genes from young to senescent cotyledons, which were down-regulated during cotyledon development. In this paper, we first reported that senescent cotton cotyledons exhibited lower DNA methylation levels, primarily due to decreased DNA methyltransferase activity and which also play important role in regulating secondary metabolite process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Liver fibrosis was viewed as a reversible process. The activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) is a key event in the process of liver fibrosis. The induction of senescence of HSCs would accelerate the clearance of the activated HSCs. Previously, we demonstrated that soluble egg antigens (SEA) of Schistosoma japonicum promoted the senescence of HSCs via STAT3/P53/P21 pathway. In this paper, our study was aimed to explore whether there are other signaling pathways in the process of SEA-induced HSCs aging and the underlying effect of SKP2/P27 signal on senescent HSCs. Methodology/Principal findings: Human hepatic stellate cell line, LX-2 cells, were cultured and stimulated with SEA. Western blot and cellular immunofluorescence analysis were performed to determine the expression of senescence-associated protein, such as P27, SKP2 and FoxO3a. Besides, RNA interfering was applied to knockdown the expression of related protein. The senescence of HSCs was determined by senescence-associated β-gal staining. We found that SEA increased the expression of P27 protein, whereas it inhibited the expression of SKP2 and FoxO3a. Knockdown of P27 as well as overexpression of SKP2 both suppressed the SEA-induced senescence of HSCs. In addition, the nuclear translocation of FoxO3a from the nucleus to the cytoplasm was induced by SEA stimulation. Conclusions/Significance: The present study demonstrates that SEA promotes HSCs senescence through the FoxO3a/SKP2/P27 pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses individual-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to model trends in population health in terms of cognition, physical fitness, and mental health between 2006 and 2012. The focus is on the population aged 50-90. We use a repeated population-based cross-sectional design. As outcome measures, we use SF-12 measures of physical and mental health and the Symbol-Digit Test (SDT) that captures cognitive processing speed. In line with previous research we find a highly significant Flynn effect on cognition; i.e., SDT scores are higher among those who were tested more recently (at the same age). This result holds for men and women, all age groups, and across all levels of education. While we observe a secular improvement in terms of cognitive functioning, at the same time, average physical and mental health has declined. The decline in average physical health is shown to be stronger for men than for women and found to be strongest for low-educated, young-old men aged 50-64: the decline over the 6-year interval in average physical health is estimated to amount to about 0.37 SD, whereas average fluid cognition improved by about 0.29 SD. This pattern of results at the population-level (trends in average population health) stands in interesting contrast to the positive association of physical health and cognitive functioning at the individual-level. The findings underscore the multi-dimensionality of health and the aging process.

Although the prostate is androgen-dependent, it is also influenced by estrogens, which act via the estrogen receptors ERα and ERβ. In the prostate, ERβ is highly expressed in the epithelium and appears to participate in the regulation of cell proliferation, apoptosis and differentiation. Evidence shows that ERβ is decreased in malignant prostate, suggesting that it plays an important role in protecting this tissue. Despite the relationship between reductions in ERβ and abnormal growth of the gland, little is known about the age-dependent variation of this receptor. Therefore, we aimed to investigate ERβ expression in the prostatic lobes of aging Wistar rats (3 to 24 months). Histopathological alterations, including hyperplasia, intraluminal concretions, nuclear atypia and prostate intraepithelial neoplasias (PIN), were observed in the prostates of aging rats. Epithelial proliferation led to cribriform architecture in some acini, especially in the ventral prostate (VP). In the VP, areas of epithelial atrophy were also observed. Furthermore, in the lateral prostate, there was frequent prostatitis. Immunohistochemistry revealed that the expression of ERβ is reduced in specific areas related to PIN, atrophic abnormalities and cellular atypia in the prostate epithelium of senile rats. Corroborating the involvement of the receptor with proliferative activity, the punctual reduction in ERβ paralleled the increase in cell proliferation especially in areas of PIN and nuclear atypies. The decrease in ERβ reactivity occurred in a hormonal milieu characterized by a constant concentration of estradiol and decreased plasmatic and tissue DHT. This paper is a pioneering study that reveals focal ERβ reduction in the prostate of aging rats and indicates a potential disorder in the ERβ pathway. These data corroborate previous data from humans and dogs that silencing of this receptor may be associated with premalignant or malignant conditions in the prostate.

Bone resorption in the first spine of the first dorsal fin of Atlantic bluefin tuna (ABFT) has long been considered for age estimation studies. In the present paper spine bone resorption was assessed in wild (aged 1 to 13 years) and captive-reared (aged 2 to 11 years) ABFT sampled from the Mediterranean Sea. Total surface (TS), solid surface (SS) and reabsorbed surface (RS) were measured in spine transverse sections in order to obtain proportions of SS and RS. The spine section surface was found to be isometrically correlated to the fish fork length by a power equation. The fraction of solid spine bone progressively decreased according to a logarithmic equation correlating SS/TS to both fish size and age. The values ranged from 57% in the smallest examined individuals to 37% in the largest specimens. This phenomenon was further enhanced in captive-reared ABFT where SS/TS was 22% in the largest measured specimen. The difference between the fraction of SS of wild and captive-reared ABFT was highly significant. In each year class from 1- to 7-year-old wild specimens, the fraction of spine reabsorbed surface was significantly higher in specimens collected from March to May than in those sampled during the rest of the year. In 4-year-old fish the normal SS increase during the summer did not occur, possibly coinciding with their first sexual maturity. According to the correlations between SS/TS and age, the rate of spine bone resorption was significantly higher, even almost double, in captive-reared specimens. This could be attributed to the wider context of systemic dysfunctions occurring in reared ABFT, and may be related to a number of factors, including nutritional deficiencies, alteration of endocrine profile, cortisol-induced stress, and loss of spine functions during locomotion in rearing conditions.