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 

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