Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

• Introduction – 1
  1. A working definition
  2. A few ground rules
  3. Figure 1: Animal Cell Architecture
  4. Figure 2: Spotlight on the Cell
• 1. A slippery overarching definition – 7
  1. How Valentino died
  2. Science land
  3. Life spans
  4. No predictions here
  5. Flexibility
  6. Slime and punishment₁
  7. Sponges
  8. Figure 3: Creatures That Don’t Die
  9. So what?
  10. The numbers
  11. Death decisions
  12. The dinner
  13. The rule
  14. The origins
  15. The complexity grows
  16. Termites
  17. A lesson for us
  18. The point
  19. Under the hood
  20. Cell replication and aging
  21. Cellular immortality
  22. Conclusions
• 2. Humanizing aging and death – 29
  1. Keats
  2. The chapter before us
  3. The need for a guard
  4. How guards work
  5. Figure 4: Normal Human Flora
  6. How the system learns about this
  7. Figure 5: Fighting Foreigners
  8. Programmed obsolescence
  9. The point
  10. Figure 6: The process of Apoptosis
  11. The nervous system
  12. Figure 7: Cellular Aging and Death
  13. What that was
  14. Apoptosis on the brain
  15. Why bring this up?
  16. The moment of death
  17. Antiquity
  18. Sometimes a great notion
  19. The strange case of Bruce Tucker
  20. The trial
  21. The provocation
  22. Of all the nerve
  23. The definitions
  24. So then what do we do?
  25. Conclusions
• 3. Why age at all? – 55
  1. Introduction
  2. An important question
  3. A framework
  4. The hows of natural selection
  5. An intersection
  6. Figure 8: A quick review of Natural Selection
  7. The ideas of Wallace
  8. Weismann
  9. An example in army ants
  10. But back to Weismann
  11. A prophesy in numbers
  12. The mathematics of the aging process
  13. Medawar
  14. Still more lessons from a tumor
  15. Taking care of business
  16. The hypothesis
  17. Cancer and reproductive fitness
  18. In summary

Introduction – 71
• 4. How the skin and hair age – 75
  1. Introduction
  2. Skin and aging
  3. A quick anatomy lesson
  4. Historical attempts at modification
  5. The reason for the make-up
  6. Wrinkle, wrinkle little star
  7. Other layers
  8. Figure 9: Why human skin wrinkles and sags
  9. The body overall
  10. Figure 10: How the face ages
  11. A hair-raising fortune
  12. Hair today, gone tomorrow
  13. Figure 11: What aging does to your hair
  14. Thinning and greying
  15. Graying
  16. The biochemistry of greying
  17. The motion for a change
• 5. The aging of bones, muscles and joints – 91
  1. Introduction
  2. The power of immobility
  3. Deep in our bones
  4. Figure 12: The structure of human bone
  5. Low-interest bones
  6. Figure 13: A tale of two fractures
  7. The role of gender
  8. Joint custody
  9. Figure 14: Three types of human joints
  10. Aging the joints
  11. Figure 15: How human joints age
  12. Muscles
  13. Muscle sprouts
  14. What skeletal muscles do
  15. The cellular connection
  16. What a skeletal muscle cell looks like
  17. Figure 16: Human skeletal muscles
  18. It’s what’s inside that counts
  19. The aging process
  20. An example of the toll
  21. What happens
  22. Credibility
  23. What do we make of appearance?
• 6. The aging of the brain – 113
  1. Introduction
  2. What we study next
  3. The changes
  4. Intelligence²
  5. Memory
  6. Sleep³
  7. Age-related changes
  8. Neural reasons
  9. Figure 17: How nerves talk to each other
  10. The synapse
  11. The overall characteristics
  12. Neuronal Fallout Model
  13. Neuronal Plasticity Model
  14. The resolution
  15. Of dinosaurs and neurons
  16. The brain stem
  17. The cerebellum
  18. Figure 18: How the brain is organized
  19. The diencephalon
  20. The limbic system and the hippocampus
  21. The cerebrum⁴
  22. The strange case of Phineas Gage
  23. Figure 19: Nerve cell survival in aging
  24. In summary
  25. Conclusions
• 7. How the heart ages – 141
  1. Introduction
  2. A chapter devoted to hearts
  3. A cardiac introduction
  4. How the pump works
  5. Blood vessels
  6. Figure 20: The structure and function of the heart
  7. Veins
  8. Aging and the vasculature
  9. Figure 21: How the human heart ages
  10. Time-out for an interesting exception
  11. Other reasons for aging
  12. Figure 22: How arteries age
  13. Conclusions
• 8. The aging of the lungs – 155
  1. Introduction
  2. The purpose of this chapter
  3. A brief tour of the human lung
  4. Structure and blood
  5. Figure 23: Lungs under the surface
  6. The mechanics of breathing
  7. A most unusual sled
  8. The aging process
  9. What happens
  10. Elastic recoil
  11. Why do we have to lose elastic recoil?
  12. Figure 24: The aging lung
• 9. What happens to the digestion – 167
  1. Introduction
  2. The next section
  3. The oral phase of digestion
  4. How it ages
  5. Figure 25: How to digest a chocolate torte
  6. What happens next?
  7. Does it age?
  8. Figure 26: How the digestive system ages
  9. On to the small intestine
  10. How it ages
  11. The organs that help the small intestine
  12. Aging in the liver and pancreas
  13. The colon
  14. But does it age?
  15. The kidneys
  16. Do kidneys age?
  17. Figure 27: Changes in elimination
  18. Let’s not leave the bladder out
  19. Taken together
• 10. How the senses age – 185
  1. Introduction
  2. The power of living
  3. The eyes have it
  4. Figure 28: Eyes and Human Vision
  5. The aging of the eye
  6. The effect of vision
  7. Figure 29: How Vision Changes with Age
  8. We are all hear
  9. Figure 30: Ears and Human Hearing
  10. For those who have ears
  11. I sit and watch as ears go by
  12. Figure 31: How hearing changes with age
  13. Days of wine and roses
  14. A matter of taste
  15. How it ages
  16. Figure 32: The aging of taste
  17. For whom the smell tolls
  18. Figure 33: Smell: Anatomy and function
  19. How does our sense of smell age?
  20. A touching reminder
  21. The biology of touch
  22. How to make sense of this
• 11. The aging of the reproductive system – 209
  1. Introduction
  2. This section
  3. What happens to women
     … The anatomy
  4. How the system ages
  5. Figure 34: The role of estrogen in the female anatomy
  6. A many-faceted event
  7. What does it do to sexual activity?
  8. Sexual interest
  9. Figure 35: The changes of menopause
  10. What happens to men
  11. What happens to testicles
  12. As the sperm turns
  13. Semen production
  14. Figure 36: Aging and male sexuality
  15. Erections and sexual activity
  16. So what?
  17. Conclusions

• Introduction – 225
• 12. A tale of two theories – 229
  1. Introduction
  2. Two theories about aging
  3. Error Accumulation
  4. Genetic Program Activation
  5. A hard-cell setting
  6. Figure 37: The Anatomy of the Nucleus of a Human Cell
  7. So how does a gene make a protein?
  8. Figure 38: The Genetic Code
  9. Activation
  10. Developing answers
  11. Figure 39: A genetic problem solved
  12. Selective activation
  13. Crowded runways
  14. Figure 40: How genes are turned on
  15. Promoters
  16. Popcorn-strung Christmas ornaments
  17. The role of histones
  18. Stopping a prickly gene
  19. Conclusions
• 13. Error accumulation – 249
  1. Introduction
  2. This chapter
  3. The power of electrons
  4. Radical formation
  5. Tiny toxic dumps
  6. Figure 41: Free Radical Formation
  7. Figure 42: Radical Damage
  8. Relevance to the section
  9. The culprit
  10. A heat-shocked lawyer
  11. A heat-shocked gene
  12. Figure 43: The Heat Shock Response
  13. The heat-shock genes and aging
  14. Error accumulation
  15. The process of communication
  16. Figure 44: How DNA Ages
  17. But what about age-related errors?
  18. One last gasp of biochemistry
  19. Conclusions
  20. Figure 45: The Aging of Proteins in Human Cells
  21. The prescience of playwrights
• 14. Programmed death – 271
  1. Introduction
  2. This section
  3. A genetic basis
  4. Cellular timing
  5. Figure 46: The Molecular Clock of Aging
  6. Genetic programs and stupid thieves
  7. The aging process
  8. The first gene – fos
  9. Coal-driven people
  10. Other genes
  11. The bcl-2 gene
  12. Figure 47: The Genes of Life and Death
  13. Death in the Philippines
  14. The subject of aging
  15. As the worm turns
  16. A human program
  17. Conclusions
• 15. Winding back the clock – 293
  1. Introduction
  2. An introduction to the section
  3. The role of exercise in extending longevity
  4. Skin
  5. Skeletal muscles
  6. Bone
  7. Joints
  8. Heart, blood and lungs
  9. The effects of diet
  10. The role of anti-oxidants in extending longevity
  11. Cognitive abilities
  12. The role of hormones in extending longevity
  13. Does this mean anything for humans?
  14. In summary
• 16. Conclusions – 311
  1. Introduction
  2. The Merlins of the 20th Century
  3. But seriously, folks
  4. The end of The Clock of Ages
  
  Further Reading – 317
  Index – 327

Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)

1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2021
2. Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)