Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging

As recent articles about "the graying of America" suggest, a demographic revolution is well underway. The number of people living into extreme old age is increasing dramatically. By the year 2050 one in five of the world's population, including the developing countries, will be 65 or older, a fact which presages profound medical, biological, philosophical, and political changes in the coming century. In Time of Our Lives, Tom Kirkwood unfolds some of the deepest mysteries of medical science while demolishing some of the most persistent misconceptions. He overturns the almost universally held belief that aging is either necessary or inevitable--it isn't--and debunks the idea that there exists a "death gene" that evolved to inhibit population growth. Instead, Kirkwood shows that we age because our genes, evolving at a time when life was "nasty, brutish, and short," placed little priority on the long-term maintenance of our bodies. With such knowledge, along with new insights from genome research, we can devise ways to target the root causes of aging and of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and osteoporosis. Expanding his thesis of the "disposable soma," developed over twenty years of research, Kirkwood makes sense of the evolution of aging, explains how aging occurs, and answers fundamental questions like why women live longer than men. He even considers the possibility that human beings will someday have greatly extended life spans or even be free from senescence altogether. Beautifully written by one of the world's pioneering researchers into the science of aging, Time of Our Lives is a clear, original and, above all, inspiring investigation of a process all of us experience but few of us understand.

Kirkwood, Tom

Parenting & Relationships

Oxford University Press

In Chance, Development, and Aging, two leading biological gerontologists review and evaluate all of the available data to elucidate the respective roles played by genes and chance developmental events in determining the course of aging in individuals. The combination of genetic and external environmental influences provides only an incomplete answer. Inbred laboratory animals, for example, exhibit a wide range of life spans despite having nearly identical genes and environments. Similarly, uncovering the genetic risks for Alzheimer's disease has not enabled doctors to predict with confidence its onset and severity. This book argues that understanding chance events, specifically random variations during prenatal development, is essential for answering these questions. The book draws on the extensive research in developmental biology on random variations in form and function, while putting this research in a new context. The discussion sheds light on a range of questions, from understanding menopause to explaining why identical twins are not truly identical. The book will be invaluable for gerontologists, geneticists, developmental and reproductive biologists, physiologists, and a broad range of physicians and investigators in experimental medicine.

Chance, Development, and Aging

Science & Math

Finch, Caleb E.

Biological Sciences

By the year 2050 one in five of the world's population will be 65 or older, a fact which presages profound medical, biological, philosophical, and political changes in the coming century. In Time of Our Lives, Tom Kirkwood draws on more than twenty years of research to make sense of the evolution of aging, to explain how aging occurs, and to answer fundamental questions like why women live longer than men. He shows that we age because our genes, evolving at a time when life was "nasty, brutish, and short," placed little priority on the long-term maintenance of our bodies. With such knowledge, along with new insights from genome research, we can devise ways to target the root causes of aging and of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and osteoporosis. He even considers the possibility that human beings will someday have greatly extended life spans or even be free from senescence altogether. Beautifully written by one of the world's pioneering researchers into the science of aging, Time of Our Lives is a clear, original and, above all, inspiring investigation of a process all of us experience but few of us understand.

This book presents new and updated developments in the molecular theory of mixtures and solutions. It is based on the theory of Kirkwood and Buff which was published more than fifty years ago. This theory has been dormant for almost two decades. It has recently become a very powerful and general tool to analyze, study and understand any type of mixtures from the molecular, or the microscopic point of view. The traditional approach to mixture has been, for many years, based on the study of excess thermodynamic quantities. This provides a kind of global information on the system. The new approach provides information on the local properties of the same system. Thus, the new approach supplements and enriches our information on mixtures and solutions.

In Time of Our Lives, Tom Kirkwood unfolds some of the deepest mysteries of medical science while demolishing some of the most persistent misconceptions. He overturns the almost universally held belief that aging is either necessary or inevitable - it isn't - and debunks the idea that there exists a "death gene" that evolved to inhibit population growth. Instead, Kirkwood shows that we age because our genes, evolving at a time when life was "nasty, brutish, and short," placed little priority on the long-term maintenance of our bodies. With such knowledge, along with new insights from genome research, we can devise ways to target the root causes of aging and of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and osteoporosis. Expanding the thesis of the "disposable soma," developed over twenty years of research, Kirkwood makes sense of the evolution of aging, explains how aging occurs, and answers fundamental questions like why women live longer than men. He even considers the possibility that human beings will someday have greatly extended life spans or even be free from senescence altogether.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Diane Pub Co.

Race Passing and American Individualism

In the literature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, black characters who pass for white embody a paradox. By virtue of the "one drop" rule that long governed the nation's race relations, they are legally black. Yet the color of their skin makes them visibly-and therefore socially-white. 
In this book, Kathleen Pfeiffer explores the implications of this dilemma by analyzing its treatment in the fiction of six writers: William Dean Howells, Frances E. W. Harper, Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, and Nella Larsen. Although passing for white has sometimes been viewed as an expression of racial self-hatred or disloyalty, Pfeiffer argues that the literary evidence is much more ambiguous than that. Rather than indicating a denial of "blackness" or co-optation by the dominant white culture, passing can be viewed as a form of self-determination consistent with American individualism. In their desire to manipulate personal identity in order to achieve social acceptance and upward mobility, light-skinned blacks who pass for white are no different than those Americans who reinvent themselves in terms of class, religion, or family history. 
In Pfeiffer's view, to see race passing as a problematic but potentially legitimate expression of individualism is to invite richer and more complex readings of a broad range of literary texts. More than that, it represents a challenge to the segregationist logic of the "one drop" rule and, as such, subverts the ideology of racial essentialism.

Dramatic increases in life-expectancy are shaking the structure of societies around the world and changing our ideas of life and death. But despite the successes that allow countless lives to be lived to the full, which might have been cut short by early death, the future is uncertain. Predictions range from doom-laden images of economic and social disaster to fantasies of technological fixes for the problems of ageing. To understand what is happening we have to harness science. Why and how do we age? Where will the lifespan increase end? Why does ageing make us frail and increasingly vulnerable to disease? Can we slow or even stop the clock?

The End of Age: Why Everything About Aging Is Changing

Profile Books, Ltd.

El fin del envejecimiento: Ciencia y longevidad (Spanish Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Tusquets Editores S.A.

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Books by Kirkwood, Tom

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kirkwood, Tom. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging

Chance, Development, and Aging

Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging

Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging

Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging

Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging

Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging

The End of Age: Why Everything About Aging Is Changing

El fin del envejecimiento: Ciencia y longevidad (Spanish Edition)