X-Message-Number: 25217 From: "The NanoAging Institute" <> Subject: Reliability Theory Explains Human Aging Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 00:01:06 -0500 The reliability-engineering approach to understanding aging is based on ideas, methods, and models borrowed from reliability theory. Developed in the late 1950s to describe the failure and aging of complex electrical and electronic equipment, reliability theory has been greatly improved over the last several decades. It allows researchers to predict how a system with a specified architecture and level of reliability of the constituent parts will fail over time. But the theory is so general in scope that it can be applied to understanding aging in living organisms as well. In the ways that we age and die, Gavrilov and Gavrilova find, we are not so different from the machines we build. "The difference is minimized if we think of ourselves in this unflattering way: we are like machines made up of redundant components, many of which are defective right from the start," the two write in the September issue of IEEE Spectrum. http://www.nanoaging.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=725 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25217