LONGECITY

I was looking at Wikipedia's list of oldest people (some of them still alive) link and thought of this "experiment"..

- We put together a list of questions directed towards all people who are older than 110 years (Supercentenarians). The questions would have to be such, where statistics of the answers would give us meaning relevant to future longevity research (ideas where to search further, what areas to explore, etc..)
- We put up a website for this project, and create a system where researchers can log in and keep adding data (which is published for everyone to see).
- The system allows for public "question suggestions" where we can add the good questions to the questionairy
- The system also allows for anyone to download the current questionary and volounarily gets it answered from their local supercentenerians then return the results to us (ofcourse in such situations as authenticity verification we would need proof of age, a copy of photo ID of the voluunteer and the supercenterian + a photo taken from them together)
- This would be an ongoing project for a long, long time

Some questions for the Supercentenerians from the top of my head:

- List your top 10 favourite foods / drinks
- What's the longest habbit(s) you've had
- List of your favourite things to do
- Where did you grow up
- List of places where you lived (how long each location)
- What kind of plants do you keep around your house
- What do you think is bad for health
- What do you think is the key to your long life
- etc..

Each question added to the questionairy would be accompanied with an explanation on what is hoped to be accomplished by gathering statistics of that particular answer. Some questions would in time obviously get obsolete and removed from the questionairy.

What I'm thinking this project could accomplish is reveal some of the "secrets" of super long life and point us in the right direction on what to research, etc..

What do you guys think about this one?

Thanks for your idea David3, the recorders deadline for this idea is April 1st 2009.

Firstly, are you familiar with the
Supercentenarian Research Foundation?
It is my impression that they are very much aligned with the ImmInst mission and could usefully be involved in any project in this area. However, they have been burned by being affiliated with anti-aging causes in the past, so they might not be keen on an afficial collaboration.

In a nutshell, if I understand you correctly, ImmInst may be able to assist with an online questionnaire (leaving the relevant questions to the experts) and encourage members to interview very old people in their family and the wider community. Personally I'd be inclined not to look only at supercentararians but at everybody with a larger than average lifespan. This would allow more members to take part, especially young people.
So I guess what we would need from a project champion(s) is
-- someone who would help with setting up a web questionaire (should be fairly easy with the right software package)
-- someone who would liasie with SRF and similar orgs about a good questionaire

My initial impressions only, lets see what others think.

I've used http://www.surveymonkey.com/ to create online surveys about human happiness it is a pleasant rapid way to create surveys Numeric transfer to a spreadsheet was a premium feature though

When I advertised at craigslist.com I got hundreds of responses but only because I gave away $3 "greenzap webcash" with each survey. At the time I had deluded my own thinking to believe the survey respondents could use greenzap webcash to actually acquire things online (the greenzap webcash had a fairly high ebay value for a while) Women made up more than 4/5 the respondents possibly as a result of "couponing culture"

One I realized greenzap webcash was useless I just asked people to participate gratis I got perhaps a dozen responses

Thus as bizarre as it may sound I urge the surveyors to consider giving to the respondents to achieve more than an order of magnitude greater responsiveness
Edited by treonsverdery, 21 March 2009 - 09:12 PM.

I just took a look at the "Supercentenarian Research Foundation" and also found Gerontology Research Group where they maintain a list of currently living supercentenarians. From what I could see at first glance they seem to be doing some pretty good work.

I'm probably not the first to think of this and my guess would be people are already on it, but still here is an addon to the idea I mentioned in the first post:

One of the google founder (Sergei Brin's)'s wife Anne Woycicki runs 23andme.com, a site where people can have their DNA sequenced. It takes 10 weeks to sequence and after that you get to see, examine, browse, compare, etc, your digital genome. Basically your genome can be "googled". Having your dna sequenced costs $400. They send you a kit, you spit in the included tube and send it back to them to analize.

So this project's website could also take donations, for every $400 accomulated another supercentenarian DNA gets sequenced. That will give us a database their genomes. Then we can compare similarities, among the super's and differences between them and various groups.

Taking care of the website, system, project promotion, donations should be no problem - It's what I do for a living (10 years of software development, 14 years of online marketing).

I'll talk to the grg.org people and see what they think about this

David3
Please let us know what they say. May be a marketing boost.
For clarification: Are you proposing now to focus on gene sequencing or would you still mainly focus on the questionaire?


As the recorders meeting is coming up, I'd be grateful of people could contribute any pertinent items of literature.
We also need people to step foward now, if they'd like to volunteer for steering this idea further.

lastly... please RATE this project idea

The recorders meeting identified this idea as noteworthy, potentially eligible for funding and requiring further discussion.

It was felt that the idea would benefit if it incorporated

-a- a broader focus than just supercentenarians. (90+ years was mentioned)

-b- a community element, where it would enable Imminst members to interview elderly people and benefit from their experience (not just "what did you eat when you were younger?" but "why do you think you lived longer than average?")

-c- an agreement with a genetic testing company to provide these tests at a radical discount (for marketing benefit)

-d- contact with other projects or initiative of similar setup

This idea will only go ahead if one or more project champions can be identified.
Please speak up if you have an interest in championing this -or a similar- project.

Could someone convince some old people to put up an accounts on imminst? like in their 80's or 90's. Maybe Denham Harman the gerontology professor who is still working full-time at 93 would be interested?

maybe a centenarian in a sunday chat That would be a very nice idea, at least I think so.

status: awaiting response from David3

The recorders meeting identified this idea as noteworthy, potentially eligible for funding and requiring further discussion.

It was felt that the idea would benefit if it incorporated

-a- a broader focus than just supercentenarians. (90+ years was mentioned)

I think living to 90+ could be a coincidence (it's actually very common in my area - south-western europe), but people living to 110+ must have done something special/differently during their lifetime to reach that age. Either that or it's genetic. While there will not be all that many supercentenarians to interview to start with, I'm sure if the word gets out we are looking for them, people (especially imminst community) can reach a significant number of them to start this research. If each of us goes to the local govt. agency which controls public records, and explains our cause, I'm sure most will help by searching through their records and producing a list of supercentenarians.

Maybe we can split the research into two groups.. one is supercentenarians and the other people just over 100 (there's quite a few of them in my area too - this guy could be seen in the park just a few years ago http://en.wikipedia....ki/Leon_Štukelj).

David3
Please let us know what they say. May be a marketing boost.
For clarification: Are you proposing now to focus on gene sequencing or would you still mainly focus on the questionaire?

both at the same time for each "case".

-c- an agreement with a genetic testing company to provide these tests at a radical discount (for marketing benefit)

Maybe 23andme.com would be interested in helping with this. I think they are already doing some research of their own in this area

This would be the to-do list (as I see it):

- produce a paper (blueprint), describing details of the entire system (software) which will run off a website, dedicated to this project.
- find/hire a developer or two who will create it (freelancers etc.) from experience I would guess that for indian coders to produce this, they would charge around $1500 + possibly another $500 for fine tuning and addons. It would take about 2 months to build.
- talk to 23andme.com or other equivalents, get a lab to join in on the project and give us heavily discounted prices for gene sequencing
- get a cool domain. A friend of mine holds supercentenarian.org and is willing to give it to us for free. I talked to the supercentenarians.com owner and he is willing to sell it to us for this cause for $1200
- when the system is up and fine tuned, we need to produce info documents and guidelines for the project
- get imminst people to join as researchers
- start with the marketing and get the project in the news
- start gathering data and posting statistical results
- organize a fund for this project and accept donations (public list of donors and amounts, public current budget and expenses)
- search for scientists working in similar fields, let them know about the project and get their thoughts/suggestions on it. Figure out how to further develop it and take it up a notch. Maybe some of the scientists could use our collected data or maybe they need us to add a few questions to the questionary (for their projects).

Here's what I can do:
- produce the "blueprint" for the required software
- get programmers / web designers to complete the system and website
- talk to 23andme.com (and other similar companies), find one which is willing to go along
- when the project is ready to launch I can take care of marketing (get it in the news, on blogs, forums, etc..)
- I can also contribute as a researcher (I'll find a few supercentenarians in my area and organize a group of researchers who will find more)
- I can donate some money to the project

What we need to start with it:

- some funding
- people interested to actively help out, I don't want to work on this alone
Edited by David3, 07 April 2009 - 08:21 AM.

Fresh news - World's oldest person celebrates another birthday (115 years old)

Recorders meeting minute:

As a telephone scheduled telephone meeting was canceled, the deadline for this project was extended to April 16th.

Recorders meeting minute:

This deadline has been extended again to April 30th, waiting to hear back from David3.

For the recorders meeting:

It looks like there are no developments here.

Before shelving this project, can we get details on when we tried to liase with the proposer and why we were unsucessful?

Would anyone else want to pursue this idea?

Moving this to the IdeasDewar for the time being as we can not find a project champion.

If anyone would like to take on this project in the future, feel free to post up.

I'd like to revive this idea and move it out of the dewar.
I'm asking for $200 in treasure chest money to fund the following announcement:

ImmInst "Elders Advice" video challenge!

Submit a video interview with someone aged 88 or older and win a book, CD or video game of your choice from the ImmInst bookstore and free membership for a year.

Entry conditions:

1- The interviewee must be aged 88 or older. We are willing to trust you on this one, but we may ask for documentation if there is real doubt.

2- The interview should be between 10 and 20 minutes in length.

3- The interview *must* include an answer to all of the following questions:
a. Would you like to live forever and why or why not?
b. Why do you think you are still alive today?
c. Do you have any advice for people trying to live for a very long time?

4- Beyond these questions, you can include anything of interest in the interview. You could ask the interviewee about their life history, memorable experiences, their nutrition, their philosophy, their life now, whatever you think is interesting.

5- Submissions will be displayed on the ImmInst website and the interviewee must have given consent to that.

6- Submissions may be rejected at the discretion of the Executive Director for any reason.

7- All accepted submissions will win a prize as long as there is funding available.

The annoncement should be displayed oin the frontpage, in the supecentanarians forum and at other suitable places.
I am willing to be project leader, but I put the ED in the text above to make it more official.

I am willing to put forth the Treasure Chest money.

Great! Out of the dewar.

Mind can you advise on a frontpage advert?
(maybe using the movie pic -- but maybe something new?)

As the art team was not inspired, I think I'll go with the PD image below.

ready to launch?

JediMasterLucia and I were chatting about this a bit. We dug up some pictures off the net of some old people sitting on benches and she was thinking about trying to photoshop an hour glass in and make it look like they are all looking at it. She may still do that if you prompt her a bit.

I suggest we call this project:

Insight for Living
by ImmInst.org

or

Insight for Longevity
by ImmInst.org

to avoid any confusion with the Chuck Swindoll program.

Jedi master, I'm ok with the pic above, but if you have any alternatives, they would be welcome.

to avoid any confusion with the Chuck Swindoll program.

for that reason alone I'd be inclined to stick with "Elder Advice" but if more people speak out for "Insight for Longevity" there is still time.

The positive aspect of "Elder Advice" is that it is more strongly associated with the meme of "passing on wisdom" to a new generation. "Insight for Longevity" sounds more scientific, which is fine as well. I don't have a strong opinion either way.

JediMasterLucia and I were chatting about this a bit. We dug up some pictures off the net of some old people sitting on benches and she was thinking about trying to photoshop an hour glass in and make it look like they are all looking at it. She may still do that if you prompt her a bit.

I forgot to do this...
* JML adds this to her to do list *

I signed up to see how this project was going, whereabouts can I read the results?

Thanks