Mice are excellent experimental models for genetic research and are being used to investigate the genetic component of organismal aging. Several mutant mice are known to possess defects in the growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor 1 (GH/IGF-1) neurohormonal pathway and exhibit dwarfism together with extended life span. Their phenotypes resemble those of mice subjected to caloric restriction...

If the claims of life extension advocates have any merit, it will soon be possible to slow down ageing and increase average human life expectancy to 100 years and beyond (Hall, 2003). Indeed, there have been reports that the first life extension drug could be available within 5–7 years (Wade, 2009). A reasonable initial increase in life expectancy for today’s generations would be an extra 7 yea...

Edible films and coatings allow preserving fresh processed food, maintaining quality, preventing microbial contamination and/or oxidation reactions increasing the shelf life of food products. The structural matrix edible is mainly constituted by proteins, lipids or polysaccharides. However, it possible to increase bioactive potential these polymeric matrices adding phenolic compounds obtained f...

Recent scientific advances have taken gerontological research to challenging and exciting new frontiers, and have given many scientists increased confidence that human aging is to some degree controllable. We have been on the front lines of some of these developments and the speculative discussions they have engendered, and we are proud to be part of the increasingly productive biomedical effor...

The use of plasma-derived and recombinant coagulation factors for the treatment of haemophilia A and B is well established and permits patients to live a relatively normal life. In order to improve treatment options, several products are in development, which have a prolonged duration of action, thus enabling less frequent prophylactic dosing and aiming to reduce the burden of treatment. Severa...

This paper presents a model that can be implemented in a personal computer, which allows for the reliability analysis of safety systems of nuclear power plants, starting from a state transition diagram, typically employed in Markovian reliability analyses. Due to the need of considering the equipment qualified life extension, an issue of utmost importance in nuclear power plants nowadays, the c...

The use of Condition Monitoring (CM) in the power industry is well established, with traditional manual analysis increasingly giving way to intelligent, automated analysis. Further, there is a growing interest in the extension of such CM systems to derive prognostic information for asset management. It is common however for CM applications to be retrofitted to existing equipment, to monitor a p...