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IS THERE A limit to how old humans could one day become?
French researchers trying to answer the age-old question said they found evidence in two categories of people who lived long lives of a “biological barrier” to living forever.
The team used the recorded deaths of 1,205 “supercentenarians” who died between 1899 and 2013 aged 110 or older, and of 19,012 athletes who had competed in the Olympics from 1896 to 2012.
The athletes are considered among the longest-living people.
For the supercentenarians, the researchers found longevity had steadily increased until 1997, when the rate levelled out. A similar ceiling was observed among the athlete group.
These trends “provide no signs of a recent increased longevity pattern among the longest-lived,” which is not good news for people with average life expectancies, the authors wrote in the Journal of Gerontology.
Had there been a non-stop upward trend, they would have expected to find evidence of more people living ever longer, the team said.
Instead, their results support theories of an “invisible barrier” to a non-stop increase in longevity.
The team conceded the number of people they studied was “relatively small” and the observation period restricted, meaning the trend they observed could be merely a temporary anomaly.
In other words: now is not the time to cry – now’s the time to find out why*.
*sorry
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I’d have thought it would be far easier to fake set up a fake Facebook account than it is to forge a fake utility bill. Or is there some step in the process I’m missing?
I’d imagine that recently set up Facebook accounts with little activity would be rejected, and a Facebook account that has loads of friends, several years of history and a fair but of activity would take a lot longer to set up or fake than a few bogey utility bills and might not be worth the return for a fraudster.
I’m not convinced. You can buy friends, and established accounts quite cheaply on Fiverr, and the likes.
The whole point of TrustEv is that fake accounts are detected and fake friends cause a fail.
They’re not getting all this revenue and investment because it doesn’t work.
They could have dressed up for the photo.
Best of luck to them. Hope it goes well.
You have to wonder how messy and/or full of inappropriate calendars their offices are.
“Is there anywhere else we can take a photo?”
“I dunno, maybe the stairs.”
“Sure that’ll have to do.”
They could do with sinking a few quid into their website, not too impressive. The 80′s called and want their photos back!
What’s wrong with their website. I think it looks professional and modern.
Your man looks like the Rubberbandits version of Danny Dyer
I’m sure they’ve already thought of everything but I can go into my Facebook page right now and change my name. How do they catch that sort of thing ?
One name is probably linked to one account id#
“We don’t look at the English language… or the content, we look at the metadata behind it.”
“It’s only Metadata” – Isn’t that what the NSA said?
Yes.
But unrelated. Or is it?
Yes. Probably.
Not sure how this could work for banks, though.
Verification of identity is for govt regulations not the bank themselves. It will take another 10 years for those regulations to be changed so that we can verify our identities without 20th century paper utility bills.
have your say