Elderly people who live by themselves gather at a monthly cooking club near Tokyo to share the joy of eating together.
Self-cooking "breakfast club" supports eat-alone seniors in Japan
2018年12月30日 星期日
Self-cooking "breakfast club" supports eat-alone seniors in Japan
Self-cooking "breakfast club" supports eat-alone seniors in Japan
2018年12月27日 星期四
71歲的薩文（Jean-Jacques Savin）乘木桶橫渡大西洋探險
A 71-year-old Frenchman has set sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a large orange barrel.
He hopes to float to the Caribbean by the end of March -- and you can track his journey online.
法國老人乘木桶橫渡大西洋探險
法國退休老人、探險家讓-雅克·薩文決定使用特殊交通工具——一個膠合板木桶橫渡大西洋。在探險過程中, 這位法國老人自己也成了科研試驗的對象。
（德國之聲中文網）橙色的膠合板木桶長3米，寬2.1米。內部設有睡眠區、休息區、廚具、茶几和一些存儲空間。探險家薩文（Jean-Jacques Savin）可以通過地板上的一個透明孔觀看海中的魚。
現年71歲的這位法國退休老人希望在接下來的三個月裡獨自在這個膠合板木桶中度過。這位昔日的飛行員和跳傘運動員為這次旅行做了幾個月的準備工作。他計劃在三個月後到達加勒比海。"盲目"的旅行
週三（12月26日）, 他從西班牙加那利群島的耶羅島（ el hierro ）起航。起航後他在電話中說："天氣很好"。"我遇到了1米高的海浪，並以每小時2到3公里的速度前進"。他乘坐的表層塗了合成樹脂的膠合板木桶將完全借助海浪和風力漂往目的地。不過，薩文並不知道他會在哪裡登陸。他說："也許在巴巴多斯, 但我認為在一個法國島嶼, 如馬提尼克島或瓜德羅普島可能手續上更簡單一些。"
薩文將帆船運動員邦巴德（Alain Bombard）視為楷模。1952年, 邦巴德乘坐一艘小橡皮艇橫渡大西洋。沒有食物，他就以浮游生物和壓碎的魚為食。據法國廣播公司的報導, 薩文為這次旅行帶了幾升葡萄酒，為的是研究酒精在海上如何老化。不過，為慶祝除夕和一月份的72歲生日，薩文還額外攜帶了一瓶紅葡萄酒和一瓶白葡萄酒。
聖誕節第二天, 他從西班牙加那利群島的耶羅島（ el hierro ）起航
退休老人成試驗對象
薩文還想利用漫長的漂流過程為科學做貢獻: 他為一家研究所帶上了一個測量水流的浮標, 並將自己作為在狹小空間內長時間逗留的孤獨試驗對象。
通過衛星定位系統，人們可以在互聯網上隨時跟踪關注這位冒險家的旅程。
李京慧/凝煉(法新社、德新社)
2018年12月16日 星期日
The Science of Healthy Aging
What are some of the lessons you’ve shared?
There are so many. Some may seem small, but they’re important. For example, Mailman School researchers have been looking at how urban infrastructure and public policy can affect the lives of older city dwellers. We’ve shown that installing more street benches, giving older people free access to public transportation, and inviting them to take classes at local universities and at other institutions through which they can stay engaged can dramatically increase their levels of physical, social, and mental activity, and thereby improve their overall health. These are enormously cost-effective measures that can be implemented in cities around the world.
And then there are larger-scale interventions. My Mailman colleague Kavita Sivaramakrishnan is now working in India, China, and Kenya to understand culturally relevant approaches to long-term-care programs for older people. We believe that expanding such programs is a critical need, because these and many other developing nations are undergoing social changes similar to those that occurred in the US many decades ago, when grown children began moving far away from their parents and so were no longer available to directly care for them in their later years. China has the most urgent need for new approaches, as a result of its one-child policy.
To get back to the US, what work must still be done here?
We are still in the process of defining what we want our lives to look like in our seventies, eighties, nineties, and beyond. While many people are truly happy retiring and devoting their time to family, hobbies, and leisure, others feel the urge to do more. We know this is true because Experience Corps, along with a handful of other nationwide volunteer programs for older people, always has long waiting lists of would-be participants. I’m an advocate for these programs not because I think doing volunteer work is the only way to age healthfully but because I’ve seen firsthand what it can mean for older people to know that their lives still have a larger purpose. I’ve sat with retired police officers, plumbers, lawyers, corporate CEOs, and others who, after mentoring children, have looked me in the eye and said things like, “This is the most important work I’ve ever done.” That conviction inspires them to get out of bed every day, to walk to a nearby school, and to stay physically and mentally fit. And as a result, a child who might otherwise have dropped out of school goes on to graduate. Two lives are changed.
We need to design more roles like this for older people, whether that means having them serve as community health advocates, companions for homebound people, or mentors to younger employees at their companies. We need to stop bemoaning the challenges posed by our population’s aging and instead ask ourselves a bold question: how could this transition be great?
Columbia Magazine talked about the secrets to living a longer, healthier, and happier life and why the graying of America may be a good thing with Dean Linda P. Fried.
2018年11月28日 星期三
Henry Miller 的 "80歲感言" On Turning Eighty 的摘句有趣。
我今四十餘，從此終身閒。若以七十期，猶得三十年。
卷429_33 「游悟真寺詩（一百三十韻）」白居易
卷429_33 「游悟真寺詩（一百三十韻）」白居易
---
Henry Miller 的文集，可在中國出版社找到。
今天注意到港版Taipei People封面有他的讚美。去Wikipedia 讀他的簡介，"80歲感言" On Turning Eighty 的摘句有趣。
今天注意到港版Taipei People封面有他的讚美。去Wikipedia 讀他的簡介，"80歲感言" On Turning Eighty 的摘句有趣。
Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses.[37]
2018年11月25日 星期日
您卻還要自命為青年嗎？
大法官：您的身上已經寫滿了老年的字樣，您還要把您的名字登記在少年人的名單裡嗎？您不是有一雙昏花的眼、一對乾癟的手、一張焦黃的臉、一把斑白的鬍鬚、兩條瘦下去的腿、一個胖起來的肚子嗎？您的聲音不是已經嗄啞，您的呼吸不是已經短促，您的下巴上不是多了一層肉，您的智慧不是一天一天空虛，您的全身每一部分不是都在老朽腐化，您卻還要自命為青年嗎？啐，啐，啐，約翰爵士！(朱生豪譯、吳興華校)
William Shakespeare
eek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly?
Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double,
your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity, and will you yet call yourself young?
Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!"
--Lord Chief Justice from "The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth" (Act I, Scene II)
Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double,
your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity, and will you yet call yourself young?
Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!"
--Lord Chief Justice from "The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth" (Act I, Scene II)
2018年11月22日 星期四
'Too Late', William Lindsay Windus, 1858
Windus emphasises the woman's unhealthy appearance by contrasting her pale clothes, lank hair and pinched features with those of her ringletted, rosy-cheeked companion.
This painting was originally exhibited with a quotation from Alfred Tennyson's poem Come not when I am dead. The woman on the left is dying of consumption .
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/too-late/5AGg417aRYWh8w
'I wished I loved more.'"「餘年集」
剛讀點吳魯芹的「餘年集」，有點不習慣，因為他談的是花甲之年退休的成就。現在，須推出「九十幾」的，談悔，談憾，才有點說服力，才容易心服。
不過，「愛」人這回事，與年歲無關。永遠都不要怕說出我愛你。
不過，「愛」人這回事，與年歲無關。永遠都不要怕說出我愛你。
"When I asked one person, 'Do you wish you accomplished more?' He responded, 'No, I wished I loved more.'"
2018年11月11日 星期日
美國： Senior Citizens Are Replacing Teenagers as Fast-Food Workers
Fast-food restaurant chains are recruiting at churches, senior centers and AARP.
2018年10月30日 星期二
百歲萬歲：長恨此身非我有：Barbara Ehrenreich wants readers to ditch the “illusion of control” over their bodies
Once Barbara Ehrenreich realised she was "old enough to die" she stopped going for checkups. Since death is the only end of old age, why waste time in "windowless waiting rooms"?
ECONOMIST.COM
The body is a battleground not a well-oiled machine
Barbara Ehrenreich wants readers to ditch the “illusion of control” over their bodies
2018年10月26日 星期五
夢想、創造力、事業團隊，國家共業： 尊重傳統看命的、尊重科學算命的
hc評：在【每日遇見杜拉克】(台北：天下文化，2005)中，將 ‘Lord Heart of the Matter’ 翻譯成"事情的真相"。 (頁35；1月15日)
在G. Greene 的小說Heart of the Matter，有時譯成【事情的真相】。
由於Harry Hopkins是小羅斯福總統最倚重的外交顧問，又曾秘密"出使"英國，受邱吉爾的招待---可參見Wikipeia 的Harry Hopkins條---所以邱吉爾稱呼他為"萬事之核心/關鍵之大臣"。
在G. Greene 的小說Heart of the Matter，有時譯成【事情的真相】。
由於Harry Hopkins是小羅斯福總統最倚重的外交顧問，又曾秘密"出使"英國，受邱吉爾的招待---可參見Wikipeia 的Harry Hopkins條---所以邱吉爾稱呼他為"萬事之核心/關鍵之大臣"。
胡適在論文多引用 Harry Hopkins 的Yelta 會議記錄：
China in Stalin's Grand Strategy By Hu Shih, Octob...
China in Stalin's Grand Strategy By Hu Shih, Octob...
Peter Drucker pointed to the example of Harry Hopkins, an adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II. “A dying, indeed almost a dead man for whom every step was torment, he could only work a few hours every other day or so,” Drucker wrote of Hopkins. “This forced him to cut out everything but truly vital matters. He did not lose effectiveness thereby; on the contrary, he became, as Churchill called him once, ‘Lord Heart of the Matter’ and accomplished more than anyone else in wartime Washington.”
想著林懷民近日的尊重看命的。
Web results
雲門舞集創辦人林懷民：一個人的人生，什麼都可以被拿走，只有夢想不能 ...
www.cheers.com.tw/article/article.action?id=5086346
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雲門舞集總監林懷民宣佈退休！就在70歲的林懷民即將在本月底推出第90號作品《
一位牽著孫子的手上學的阿公說，以後他老了，就無法再送你了。
學習打字，上網，其實很複雜，很難。教老曹有感。他說要請人打字，他為好友寫的傳。我說該學習，事事煩人總不方便。
轉載https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612256/want-to-know-when-youre-going-to-die/?
Rewriting Life
Want to know when you’re going to die?
Your life span is written in your DNA, and we’re learning to read the code.
by Karen Weintraub
October 19, 2018
It's the ultimate unanswerable question we all face: When will I die? If we knew, would we live differently? So far, science has been no more accurate at predicting life span than a $10 fortune teller. But that’s starting to change.
The measures being developed will never get good enough to forecast an exact date or time of death, but insurance companies are already finding them useful, as are hospitals and palliative care teams. “I would love to know when I’m going to die,” says Brian Chen, a researcher who is chief science officer for Life Epigenetics, a company that services the insurance industry. “That would influence how I approach life.”
The work still needs to be made more practical, and companies have to figure out the best uses for the data. Ethicists, meanwhile, worry about how people will cope with knowing the final secret of life. But like it or not, the death predictor is coming.
The clock
Steve Horvath, a UCLA biostatistician who grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, describes himself as “very straight,” while his identical twin brother is gay. So he had a personal interest when, a few years ago, a colleague asked him for help analyzing biological data from the saliva of twins with opposite sexual orientations. The colleague was trying to detect chemical changes that would indicate whether certain genes were turned on or off.
The hypothesis was that these so-called epigenetic changes, which alter the activity of DNA but not the DNA sequence itself, might help explain why two people with identical genes differ in this way. But Horvath found “zero signal” in the epigenetics of the twins’ saliva. Instead, what caught his attention was a powerful link between epigenetic changes and aging. “I was blown away by how strong the signal was,” he says. “I dropped most other projects in my lab and said: ‘This is the future.’”
Horvath became particularly intrigued by how certain chemical changes to cytosine—one of the four DNA bases, or “letters” of the genetic code—make genes more or less active. Given someone’s actual age, looking for these changes in that person’s DNA can tell him whether the person’s body is aging unusually fast or slowly. His team tested this epigenetic clock on 13,000 blood samples collected decades ago, from people whose subsequent date of death was known. The results revealed that the clock can be used to predict mortality.
Because most common diseases—cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s—are diseases of aging, the ticking of Horvath’s clock predicts how long someone will live and how much of that life will be free of these diseases (though it doesn’t foretell which ones people will get). “After five years of research, there is nobody who disputes that epigenetics predicts life span,” he says.
Horvath, 50, says his work is motivated by self-interest. “I’m as desperate as anyone else to find ways of slowing aging.”
DAMON CASAREZ
Aging eight or more years faster than your calendar age equates to twice the typical risk of dying, while aging seven years slower is associated with half the risk of death, Horvath says. His lab has developed a new version that is such a precise life span predictor they named it after the Grim Reaper: DNAm GrimAge. The epigenetic clock is more accurate the younger a person is. It’s especially inaccurate for the very old.
“At this point, we don’t have any evidence that it’s clinically useful, because there are big error bars,” Horvath says. Besides, there’s no pill to reverse the effects. But though it will never be perfectly accurate, Horvath and his clock are getting closer than anyone else ever has to answering the question that hangs over us all—and determining whether there is anything we can do to change the answer.
Slow the ticking
As we age, the cytosine at hundreds of thousand of spots in our DNA either gains or loses methyl chemical groups (CH3). Horvath’s insight was to measure these increases and decreases in methylation, find the 300 to 500 changes that matter most, and use those to make his clocks. His findings suggest that the speed of the clock is strongly influenced by underlying genes. He estimates that about 40% of the ticking rate is determined by genetic inheritance, and the rest by lifestyle and luck.
Morgan Levine, who completed postdoctoral research in Horvath’s lab and now runs her own lab at Yale, is starting to compare an individual’s epigenetic profile with the profile of cells from the lining of a healthy umbilical cord. The more people deviate from that standard, the worse off they are likely to be. She thinks she will eventually be able to compare various epigenetic age measures to predict even in childhood who is going to be at greatest risk of which diseases—when it’s still early enough to change that future. “Your genes aren’t your fate, but even less so with things like epigenetics,” she says. “There definitely should be things we can do to delay aging if we can just figure out what they are.”
A few likely contenders are totally unsurprising. Eating a healthy diet including lots of vegetables and fish is associated with slower epigenetic aging. Feel older when you’re sleep deprived? It’s probably not a coincidence. Horvath has shown that people with insomnia are more likely to show accelerated epigenetic aging. “Everything you associate with a healthy lifestyle does relate to the new biomarkers in the expected way, which is a boring result, but it’s scientifically very exciting,” he says.
More unexpectedly, he finds that regular exercise won’t add much more than a few months to your life. But those measurements are only on the DNA in blood, and Horvath says he’d like to look at changes in muscle, too, to see whether exercise makes a bigger difference there.
“After five years of research, there is nobody who disputes that epigenetics predicts life span.”
Horvath’s own clock is not inspiring. He was surprised in analyzing his urine to find that he was epigenetically tracking five years older than his chronological age. A few years later, he tested his blood and was relieved to find the results more in line with his years, but still, he says, “I would say I’m not blessed in terms of epigenetic aging.”
At age 50, he says his work is motivated by self-interest—“I’m as desperate as anyone else to find ways of slowing aging.” But he also keeps in mind the social and financial costs of an aging population. “We need to find ways to keep people healthier longer,” he says.
He hopes that refinements to his clock will soon make it precise enough to reflect changes in lifestyle and behavior. Investors and biotech companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars right now on drugs that might slow aging and defer disease. But how will we know what’s effective? Those working on drug discovery can’t wait 50 years to find out. Horvath hopes his clock will provide the answers.
The business of death prediction
Companies like Reinsurance Group of America are already looking into using the epigenetic clock to tweak and personalize risk assessments for life insurance. Right now, rates are based largely on demographics—people’s gender and age—and a few health metrics, such as whether they smoke. The clock adds another useful data point.
Such personalization raises questions about fairness. If your epigenetic clock is ticking faster through no fault of your own, should you be charged a higher rate for life insurance? The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008—known as GINA—protects against discrimination on the basis of genes. But it doesn’t address epigenetics.
There’s also the issue of privacy. Your likely life span or true biological age is information that many consider intensely personal. For now, regulations and privacy policies don’t even consider the possibility of such information. But as the science quickly progresses, questions about how to use and protect this data will become ever more pressing.
Can Horvath’s clock and other technologies being developed to predict death ever be accurate enough to be truly useful? “I haven’t seen any of these purported predictive algorithms be precise in terms of timing of death—to the contrary,” says Diane Meier, a professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “People live for a really long time with a very high burden of disease and frailty,” she says.
Gal Salomon, CEO of Clew Medical, an Israeli company that uses artificial intelligence to identify medical risks in hospitals, says he initially resisted the idea of developing a death predictor, thinking it unethical. Then he realized that doctors could use the technology “to understand where we need to stop.” An algorithm Clew developed can help doctors and family members make the decision to switch from aggressive to palliative care, he says, overruling the typical instinct to provide heroic live-saving measures. The system, which for the moment is used only in hospitals, can also alert a family that the end is near, he says.
Atul Butte, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies quality of care, says the jury is still out about whether this kind of machine learning from patterns of care actually provides better treatment. But there’s no doubt, he adds, that medical care is headed in that direction. “Five to 10 years from now, the health system that doesn’t use this data to improve their medical delivery is going to be deemed archaic,” he says.
Karen Weintraub is a freelance writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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