Predicting Human Lifespan Limits

Recent discoveries show steady improvements in life expectancy during modern decades. Does this support that humans continue to live longer in future? We recently put forward the maximum survival tendency, as found in survival curves of industrialized countries, which is described by extended Weibull model with age-dependent stretched exponent. The maximum survival tendency suggests that human survival dynamics may possess its intrinsic limit, beyond which survival is inevitably forbidden. Based on such tendency, we develop the model and explore the patterns in the maximum lifespan limits from industrialized countries during recent three decades. This analysis strategy is simple and useful to interpret the complicated human survival dynamics.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables; Natural Science (in press

A Study on the Expansion of the Audiences’ Aesthetic Experience by Applying the Punctum in Interactive Installations

This study suggests ways to expand aesthetic experience through Roland Barthes’ concept the punctum found while creating the interactive artwork deBallution based on the audiences’ throwing activities. Roland Barthes defined the punctum in his book Camera Lucida as applying not a studium or thematic element but the elements of personal experience and memory to an aesthetic element in the photograph. This study develops a methodology for applying the punctum to interactive artwork based on the five symbolic elements of the punctum mentioned by Roland Barthes: String, Speck, Cut, Little hole, and Cast of the dice. It also confirms whether audiences actually experienced the five elements of the punctum and the studium through user testing conducted after making a new test version of the interactive artwork deBallution: Randomized Trip

Single inorganic–organic hybrid nanowires with ambipolar photoresponse

We report for the first time single nanowires (NWs) with ambipolar (positive/negative) photoresponse that changes sign depending on the illumination wavelength. The single NWs were grown by the meniscus-guided method using inorganic (ZnO nanoparticles)–organic (PEDOT:PSS) hybrid materials. The ambipolar photoresponse of the single NWs enabled us to develop an unprecedented spectrum-discriminating NW photodetector array

On some Gronwall type inequalities with iterated integrals

The main objective of the present paper is to establish some new Gronwall type inequalities involving iterated integrals

Light propagation in conjugated polymer nanowires decoupled from a substrate

Light-emitting conjugated polymer nanowires are vertically grown and remotely manipulated into a freestanding straight or curved structure in three-dimension. This approach enabled us to eliminate substrate coupling, a critical issue in nanowire photonics in the past decade. We for the first time accomplished characterization of propagation and bending losses of nanowires completely decoupled from a substrate

Haemorheologic and fibrinolytic activity in Nigerian HIV infected

Objective: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients, especially those on antiretrovirals are at risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The haemorheologic and fibrinolgtic activity of treatment naïve Nigerian HIV-infected patients were investigated. Methods: Blood was collected from 50 newly diagnosed treatment naïve HIV-infected patients and 50 apparently healthy HIV seronegative individuals that served as controls. Haematocrit values, plasma and serum viscosity, plasma fibrinogen concentration and euglobin lysis time were determined. Result: The mean ± standard deviation of haematocrit value of HIV infected patients (31.70 ± 6.33%) was significantly lower (