We are Living a Decade Longer Than Our Parents’ Generation Due to Healthy Aging - Senior Journal - 24 Mar 2010

Good news is that after age 110, chance of death does not increase. Bad news is that it holds steady at 50% per year.

March 24, 2010 – People today are living substantially longer than their parents’ generation, not because aging has been slowed or reversed, but because they are staying healthier. A demographer writes on the longevity phenomenon in the March 25 edition of Nature and wonders how we can keep in going. 

People in developed nations are living in good health as much as a decade longer than their parents did. 

"We're living longer because people are reaching old age in better health," said demographer James Vaupel, author of a review article appearing in the March 25 edition of Nature. 

“But once it starts, the process of aging itself - including dementia and heart disease - is still happening at pretty much the same rate. 

"Deterioration, instead of being stretched out, is being postponed."

The better health in older age stems from public health efforts to improve living conditions and prevent disease, and from improved medical interventions, said Vaupel, who heads Duke University's Center on the Demography of Aging and holds academic appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and the institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Demark.

Over the past 170 years, in the countries with the highest life expectancies, the average life span has grown at a rate of 2.5 years per decade, or about 6 hours per day.

The chance of death goes up with age up until the most advanced ages. The good news is that after age 110, the chance of death does not increase any more. The bad news is that it holds steady at 50% per year at that point, Vaupel said.

"It is possible, if we continue to make progress in reducing mortality, that most children born since the year 2000 will live to see their 100th birthday -- in the 22nd century," Vaupel said. If gains in life expectancy continue to be made at the same pace as over the past two centuries, more than half of the children alive today in the developed world may see 100 candles on their birthday cake.

This leads to an interesting set of policy questions, said Vaupel. 

  ●  What will these dramatically longer lifespans mean for social services, health care and the economy?

  ●  Can the aging process be slowed down or delayed still further? And why do women continue to outlive men – outnumbering them 6 to 1 at age 100?

It also may be time to rethink how we structure our lives, Vaupel said. "If young people realize they might live past 100 and be in good shape to 90 or 95, it might make more sense to mix education, work and child-rearing across more years of life instead of devoting the first two decades exclusively to education, the next three or four decades to career and parenting, and the last four solely to leisure."

One way to change life trajectories would be to allow younger people to work fewer hours, in exchange for staying in the workforce to a later age. 

"The 20th century was a century of the redistribution of wealth; the 21st century will probably be a century of the redistribution of work," Vaupel said.

Remembering the Good Times Is Secret to Happiness for Oldest American Seniors - Senior Journal - 9 Apr 2010

Iowa State researchers find loss of cognitive ability is major source of depression for centenarians and older senior citizens

April 9, 2010 – A new study of senior citizens has found that past satisfaction with life - even if it's simply recalling isolated career accomplishments - is the key to happiness in our oldest years. Researchers from Iowa State University's gerontology program have helped identify what predicts happiness and long life in centenarians, as well as what causes depression in 80-somethings and above.

The Ames, Iowa researchers studied 158 Georgia centenarians.

"The past is the best predictor of the future, so you're not going to turn your life around at 85 or 90," said Peter Martin, director of Iowa State's gerontology program and a professor of human development and family studies (HDFS), who collaborated on both studies.

"But it's also good to know that past accomplishments and the happiness that you had -- looking back at your past -- carries you through these very last years."

Depression grows from loss of cognitive ability

For the depression study, researchers added 78 octogenarians (people 80 or older) to the happiness centenarian sample. They found that diminished cognitive problem-solving ability was a significant predictor of depressive symptoms in octogenarians, while living in a nursing home and greater neurotic tendencies increased depression among centenarians.

Both studies were published online in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Gerontology. Jennifer Margrett, an assistant professor of HDFS, was the lead author on the depression study. Alex Bishop, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Oklahoma State University (who was a doctoral student at Iowa State), was lead author of the happiness study.

Past life satisfaction pays happiness dividends

In that study, researchers analyzed the subjects' responses to a series of questions that assessed their happiness, perceived health, social provisions, economic security and life satisfaction. While there was no indication that resources affect happiness, past life satisfaction - even individual achievements - was found to have a direct association.

Because of their results, the researchers urge caregivers of the elderly to implement programs - including reminiscence therapy and structured life review sessions - to foster feelings of happiness among very old populations.

"You can be not overly satisfied with your overall current capacity and physical well-being, but you can still be a very happy person because there's a lot you can contribute just by sharing some of the things that nobody knew because it was 80 or 90 years ago," said Martin, who is also in the second year of a three-year study of Iowa centenarians.

In the second other study, researchers measured depressive symptoms, demographics and functional indicators, cognition and personality in the subjects. They then compared the ability of cognition, personality, and demographic and functional indicators in explaining depressive symptoms in the octogenarians and centenarians respectively.

They were surprised to learn that overall cognition was not a stronger predictor of depressive symptoms at either age. Rather, it was the loss of the subject's control -- problem-solving in the octogenarians, and choosing where they lived in the centenarians -- that tended to depress them.

"In the case of the octogenarians, it's not so much your intellectual ability as it is the ability to come up with a solution to a particular task that you used to be able to solve in your 60s and 70s," Martin said. "And so for the first time, you realize that there may be decline in being able to manage tasks.

"And at 100, it's not so much the surrounding of the nursing home that gets you depressed," he added.

"But in a nursing home, two things have changed. First, there's a sign that you cannot take care of yourself anymore. And then there's the sign that you know you only have limited time to live, which is different for an 80-year-old."

Elderly worried about direction country is headed

The research also confirmed that worry and anxiety contribute to depression in centenarians. And one of the things they're worried about, according to Martin, is the direction the country is headed and the world they're leaving for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Martin says these studies have practical applications for elderly care providers.

"When we have professionals who work with elderly in nursing homes, we pay so much attention to the helping condition -- make sure they eat, make sure they have their hygiene taken care of, and so forth -- but you also have to work on the mood aspect of it," Martin said.

"And I know people who work in nursing homes have difficult jobs, but just a brief conversation with a very old person can lighten up their entire day."

The research team also published two related papers in the Jan. 26 issue of Gerontology. One confirms the importance of family history on present-day functioning among centenarians and octogenarians, while the other analyzed the influences on their economic dependency.

Internet ban slammed - ST Online - 11 June 2010

ANKARA (Turkey) - TURKEY'S president has used his Twitter account to slam the country's ban on YouTube and some Google services.

In separate tweets sent out late on Thursday, Abdullah Gul says he does not approve of the bans and has instructed officials to look into legal ways to reopen access.

Courts have blocked access to YouTube since 2008 over videos deemed to be insulting to Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Last week, Turkey extended the ban to some Google pages that use the same Internet Protocol addresses as YouTube.

In January, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, urged Turkey to abolish or reform a law allowing it to block around 3,700 Internet sites. -- AP

US debates its broadband future - BBC News - 11 June 2010

By Maggie Shiels

lans for the future of the internet in the US are "under seige" by powerful interests, warns the Federal Communications Commission.

The warning was given by Commissioner Michael Copps as the agency prepares for a vote on its plans for the development of broadband in the US.

The plan followed a court decision that the FCC had no authority to stop ISPs slowing traffic to some users
The ruling was a blow to a central tenet of the agency's broadband plan.

That plan aims to to provide every American in the country with high speed internet access by 2020.

Enshrined in the FCC plan is strong backing for so-called "net neutrality" principles. This means that all web data is treated equally and stops ISPs favouring some traffic in preference to others.

'The third way'

The court decision put a question mark over the FCC's ability to enforce these principles and put the broadband plan in legal limbo.

In response, the FCC decided to reclassify internet services from an information service to a telecommunications service. Under present rules broadband providers like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon are lightly regulated.

Reclassification gives the Commission greater authority and it has drawn up a so-called "third way" to help assuage opponents and perhaps stave off a long legal fight.

Under this approach, the agency has said it will set aside moves to regulate rates charged by telephone and cable companies for internet services, as well as that of internet content, services, applications or electronic commerce sites.
Mr Copps warned that the proposal was not guaranteed to be approved.

"If the Commission fails to reassert its authority, then the days of the open internet will be succeeded by the age of the gatekeepers," said Commissioner Copps.

"Make no mistake about it. This is not going to be an easy fight. The big telephone and cable companies are doing everything they can to prevent the reclassification of internet access services. They have redeployed their troops at the FCC, throughout Washington and in the blogosphere."

Education

Mr Copps' comments came during a visit to Silicon Valley in which he visited Google and Apple to discuss support for the broadband plan.

As the Commission's longest serving member, Mr Copps said he wanted to publicise the issue because he was worried that telecoms and other well funded lobbying groups would drown out the voices of the ordinary citizen.

He said it needed to be more than an issue debated only in Washington among politicians and advisors.
"People need to realise that meeting the broadband challenge is something really important in their lives and for their futures," he told the BBC. "And they need to understand that a competitive nation cannot tolerate digital divides between haves and have nots."

'Rules of the road'

A week ahead of the FCC's vote on reclassification, the nation's biggest broadband providers and a number of hi-tech firms created a group to draw up voluntary guidelines in a bid to appease regulators pushing for stronger internet access rules.

The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group, formed by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Google, Intel and Microsoft, will "develop consensus on broadband network management practices or other related technical issues that can affect users' internet experience".


"This or any other voluntary effort is not a substitute for the government setting basic rules of the road for the internet, said Chris Riley, policy counsel at Free Press a Washington based advocacy group.
"Allowing industry to set its own rules is like allowing BP to regulate its drilling."

More information - US National Broadband Plan

Did the over-45s ruin life for the rest of us? - BBC News - 29 March 2010

By Neil Boorman

The richest, most powerful generation that ever lived is embarking on a comfortable retirement. But why does it feel like they've pulled up the ladder with them?

The demographic model of the UK population looks like the side profile of a middle-aged man stuffed into a pair of drainpipe jeans - scrawny at the top and the bottom, with a muffin top in the middle. The skinny chest is the "Silent Generation", born before 1946.

The weedy legs at the bottom are Generations X and Y, the people born after 1964. And the bloated tum and bum in the middle represents the baby boomers, the population explosion that began after World War II.

Baby boomers don't dominate the country in size alone; living through various employment and house price booms, they are the richest and most powerful generation that ever lived.

Source - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8593210.stm

Take exams at leisure - ST Online - 9 June 2010

By REUTERS

LONDON - BRITISH students might soon have the chance to take college exams in their own bedrooms at any time of the day or night - without being able to cheat.


US firm Software Secure has developed a programme which is designed to make sure students stay honest while taking the exam by keeping them under surveillance and cutting off any access to cribbing material.

The software firstly locks down the use of all files and the internet, other than those specifically needed for the exam.

It then asks for a fingerprint test to ensure the candidate is the correct person and uses audio and video recording to ensure that the student is under exam conditions during the whole period.

The firm says on its website that it 'brings the exam room into the computer age, making exam time less stressful for students, faculty and administrators.'

At least one college in Britain, the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, is experimenting with the system and others may follow suit. Several universities in the United States already have the system in place.

'Gen Next ' are tech experts - ST Online - 10 June 2010

By AP

CHICAGO - THEY aren't even out of elementary school. But already, people are trying to name the youngest up-and-coming generation in the United States and figure out how they might be different from their predecessors.


At a loss for something more original, many call them Generation Z, because they follow Generations X and Y. They've also been referred to as Generation Net or iGen, since they've never known a world without the Internet.

That's the one point everyone can agree on - they are the tech-savviest generation of all time, so much so that even toddlers can manoeuver their way through YouTube and some first-graders are able to put together a PowerPoint presentation for class. But beyond that, who are they, really? Most people agree it's just too early to know for sure. But that hasn't stopped marketers from trying to figure out this young crowd of consumers. Parents, too - many of them Gen Xers - are weighing in, saying they are raising a different brand of kid than baby boomers did. 'I would like to think that ideally, and this might be a bit naive, Gen Xers are a bit more freethinking and not necessarily as compelled to keep up with the Joneses,' says Kris Sonnenberg, a teacher in Chicago and 38-year-old mother of three children, ages 8, 12 and 17.

Many parents also think the recession will play a role in shaping who their kids are, and perhaps make them less 'entitled,' a label that - fair or not - has been slapped frequently on Generation Y, also known as the 'millennials.' 'We're not afraid to say money's tight, so I feel like our kids are going to have that sense long-term,' says Andrew Egbert, a 41-year-old dad who works in manufacturing in Greensboro, NC. He has a son in fifth grade and a daughter who's a first-grader. OK, so, let's take a look at the picture that's emerging of Gen Z. They're young - roughly age 12 or younger. Generational expert Neil Howe, who coined the term 'millennials,' says 2008 may turn out to be one year with a big influence on this generation, due to both the recession and the election of the nation's first black president.

He is calling them the 'homelanders' because they are growing up in a time of 'greater public urgency and emergency, both at home and around the world.' For that reason, he speculates they could be a new version of the so-called Silent Generation, the group that grew up in the Depression era, who saw the country through World War II and who birthed the baby boomers. That elder generation was pegged as hardworking and anything but entitled. Janet Reid thinks that's a pretty fair appraisal. She also thinks this generation will take characteristics already affiliated with Gen Y to a new level - be that multitasking or a comfort level with different races, ethnicities and cultures.

That fits with the notion that, recession or no recession, this generation has a big expectation when it comes to technological gadgets, whether that be cell phones, laptops or the latest version of the iPod or other music players. And in many instances, their parents are getting them those gadgets, says Nicole Williams, a 39-year-old mom of three who's also a fifth-grade teacher in Seattle. Among other things, he also thinks this generation is more likely to be debt-ridden, partly because getting a college degree will be as important for them as a high school diploma was for their grandparents.