Stochastic and statistical models in the biodemography of aging

衰老生物人口学中的随机和统计模型

• 批准号: 327483-2006
• 负责人: Steinsaltz, David
• 金额: $ 1.54万
• 依托单位: Queen's University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2006-01-01 至 2007-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=335190
• 关键词: Stochastic; statistical; models; biodemography; aging

New developments in the science of aging have struck a bridge between demography and population biology.  On the one side we have the exploration and cataloguing of vital statistics in human populations, on the other we have observational and experimental studies of growth and life-histories in nonhuman species.  In this new field of "biodemography", the demographers have expanded their scope beyond our own species, and assimilated the evolutionary theory of life histories.  The biologists, for their part, have adopted both the quantitative techniques of demography, and the concern with measuring survival in large populations. The repercussions for the study of aging, in particular, have been momentous. Biodemography today is in flux, as empirical data collide with time-honoured mathematical models. This project will advance the mathematical biology of biodemography, formulating and analysing new models, and extend the statistical methods for linking the models to data.  The modelling serves to translate between specific instances and general structures,  to provide context for the interpretation of experimental findings, and to guide new experiments. Some goals of this project are purely mathematical, including the development of a new model for explaining the evolution of tiny age-specific mutations that some believe are the root cause of aging.  Other goals are data analysis, such as the collaboration with fruit fly and nematode laboratories in California to quantify the changes in behaviour of those organisms with age.  Many components of the project straddle this divide, such as the collaboration with researchers collecting new data on sex-ratio and social support in humans and other species.  Here the goal is to develop new mathematical models which do justice to the data, and help to clarify the role of social support in the evolution of aging.

老龄科学的新发展在人口学和人口生物学之间架起了一座桥梁。一方面，我们对人类人口的生命统计进行了探索和编目，另一方面，我们对非人类物种的生长和生活史进行了观察和实验研究。在“生物人口学”这一新领域，人口学家已经将他们的研究范围扩大到我们自己的物种之外，并吸收了生命史的进化理论。生物学家，就他们而言，既采用了人口统计学的定量技术，又关心测量大种群的生存。特别是对衰老研究的影响是巨大的。随着经验数据与历史悠久的数学模型发生冲突，今天的生物人口学处于不断变化之中。该项目将推进生物人口学的数学生物学，制定和分析新的模型，并扩展将模型与数据联系起来的统计方法，建模用于在具体实例和一般结构之间进行转换，为解释实验结果提供背景，并指导新的实验。该项目的一些目标是纯数学的，包括开发一种新模型，用于解释一些人认为是衰老根源的特定年龄的微小突变的进化。其他目标是数据分析，例如与加州的果蝇和线虫实验室合作，量化这些生物体随年龄的行为变化。该项目的许多组成部分跨越了这一鸿沟，例如，与研究人员合作收集人类和其他物种性别比例和社会支持的新数据。这里的目标是开发新的数学模型，以公正的数据，并帮助澄清社会支持在老龄化进化中的作用。