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Living Beyond 100

Many of today's children will live for a century or longer. Which factors will affect their longevity? Will they be happy, healthy and productive?

Emerging science and medical technologies provide many clues regarding the future of aging, but changing demographics and economics have also begun to influence society's views. Beyond doubt, each of us will face new levels of scientific complexity in this new world. This Spring, the College of Science will present six free lectures on the effects of long life, addressing the opportunities and costs of the new longevity, the biology of aging, the effects of aging on the brain, regenerative medicine, the impact on global populations, and the increasing intimacy between informatics and the aged. (from UA Science Lecture Series)

1. Can We, and What if We Do?
Medicine and nutrition are also making rapid progress, and in many cases what were terminal diseases are becoming treatable inconveniences. But if being alive well beyond 100 years is possible, is it really "living"?

2. The Biology of Aging: Why Our Bodies Grow Old
All organisms age, but we really do not have a clear explanation how and why. This lecture will address theories of aging, emphasizing those that show most potential promise.

3. The Aging of the Brain
Over the past half-century, ideas about the aging brain have evolved away from it being an organ of passive deterioration towards the realization that it is capable of dynamic adaptation and high levels of function well past 100 years.

4. Repair, Regeneration and Replacement Revisited
From advances in composite tissue transplantation to stem cells to bionic human-machine interfaces, we are experiencing a present-day revolution in replacement parts.

5. Society, Geographic Change and the New Longevity
Aging will continue to present new challenges as our global population reaches toward 9 billion over the next 40 years. To better respond to the needs of our world's changing demographic distributions, it is critical that we understand the nature of aging at both global and local scales today.

6. Information and Immortality
Informatics will eventually merge one's self and one's likeness into bio-robotic complexes of parts and information, maintained by corporations and governments. Then the relationship between information and immortality will be more complicated than ever.