Comprehensive Analysis of Large Sets of Age-Related Physiological Indicators Reveals Rapid Aging around the Age of 55 Years

Abstract

Background: While many studies show a correlation between chronological age and physiological indicators, the nature of this correlation is not fully understood. Objective: To perform a comprehensive analysis of the correlation between chronological age and age-related physiological indicators. Method: Physiological aging scores were deduced using principal component analysis from a large dataset of 1,227 variables measured in a cohort of 4,796 human subjects, and the correlation between the physiological aging scores and chronological age was assessed. Results: Physiological age does not progress linearly or exponentially with chronological age: a more rapid physiological change is observed around the age of 55 years, followed by a mild decline until around the age of 70 years. Conclusion: These findings provide evidence that the progression of physiological age is not linear with that of chronological age, and that periods of mild change in physiological age are separated by periods of more rapid aging.

Authentic computer science undergraduate research experience through computational science and research ownership

“…Before the implementation of the program none of the undergraduate students submitted papers to peer-reviewed journals or conferences. After the first year of the program two papers were published [47,42], three papers in 2013 [36,13,39], seven in 2014 [14,43,17,11,26,46,21], six in 2015 [8,24,35,22,15,27], and seven in 2016 [23,38,41,45,40,50,10].…”

“…However, the proportion of female students is completely different when considering the student-authored papers published so far. Out of 27 student-authored papers published so far, about 25% were authored by female students [47,42,26,43,24,50,10], much higher than the proportion of female student in the entire student population, which is ∼9%. That proportion remains consistent also among the papers that are currently under review.…”

“…Since different students have different topics of interest, supporting the interest of the students requires a broad range of research topics on which the students can perform their studies, and new topics and disciplines are added every year based on the student request. The first interdisciplinary program was bioinformatics and medical informatics [36,26,24,41], and based on the request of students was enhanced with astroinformatics [17,11,21,35,22,23]. Other programs that followed were Zoology [47,43], art [42], music [14,15,13], literature [39], sports [46,45,50], and human aspects of computing [8,38].…”

Composite Aging Markers Can Be Used for Quantitative Profiling of Aging

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Despite numerous studies aiming at detecting a single, fully reliable aging biomarker, no such single biomarker has yet been discovered [1,2] . However, while according to the biological perspective aging consists of the biological and molecular processes associated with an organism as it becomes older, the gerontological perspective is broader than merely the biology of aging and considers aspects such as physiology, psychology, cognition, sociology, and more.

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“…However, while according to the biological perspective aging consists of the biological and molecular processes associated with an organism as it becomes older, the gerontological perspective is broader than merely the biology of aging and considers aspects such as physiology, psychology, cognition, sociology, and more. The dimensionality reduction of a large and comprehensive set of such variables provides an abstraction in the form of a composite aging score, allowing profiling physiological aging quantitatively [1] .Clearly, analyzing all possible variables that correlate with aging is not practical, also because many of these variables are not necessarily simple numerical values. For instance, age-related variables can be textures obtained from radiographs that reflect tissue alteration [3] , or epi-…”