Women tend to outlive men by about four years, and up until now the difference in lifespans had been attributed to things like testosterone, and men’s general inclination to engage in risky behaviour. Some joint Australian-British research however has found that women are less prone to certain cell mutations than men, and this may account for their longer lives:

Both men and women have mitochondrial DNA but researchers from Monash University in Melbourne and Lancaster University in Britain found only females were immune to mutations carried in the mitochondria, which is found in every cell of the body. This “evolutionary quirk” means males are more susceptible to the mutations, negatively affecting their life expectancy. “A significant genetic difference in lifespan between men and women can be traced back to the mitochondria,” said the Monash University evolutionary biologist Damian Dowling. “This difference is not caused by hormonal differences between the sexes, such as testosterone in males, or to risk-taking behaviour. It’s genetic.”

Annoying colleagues may be more than a mere (or not so mere) nuisance… their antics may be detrimental to your health and even longevity…

In particular, the risk of death seemed to be correlated with the perceived niceness of co-workers, as less friendly colleagues were associated with a higher risk of dying. While this correlation might not be surprising – friendly people help reduce stress, and stress is deadly – the magnitude of the “friendly colleague effect” is a bit unsettling: people with little or no “peer social support” in the workplace were 2.4 times more likely to die during the study, especially if they began the study between the ages of 38 and 43. In contrast, the niceness of the boss had little impact on mortality.

Twelve “unusual” tips for living a longer – possibly eternal – life, including advice to eat less and exercise more.

Live fast, or hard… and die young, in the longevity stakes its the well-behaved, conscientiousness, and confident, who will outlive the rest of us.

Studies have shown for nearly 20 years that the key personality trait that predicts longevity is conscientiousness. In one long-term study, students judged by their parents and teachers to be conscientious as 12-year-olds were more likely to be alive when researchers followed up 64 years later. Surprisingly, though, the same study found that cheerfulness was related to greater mortality risk, suggesting that happy, popular kids turn out to be at greater risk for disease later on, perhaps because they feel overly confident about their abilities to defeat life’s difficulties.

Finger length, grip strength, birth order, height, and a person’s partialness to flossing (all sorts of nasties are manifest in tooth plaque) can be used to draw reasonably accurate conclusions as to a person’s overall health, and also act as a gauge to their risk of developing certain medical disorders.

Today’s computer-powered studies allow researchers to look beyond obvious health risks of the past. New analyses show, for example, that finger length, grip strength and even height may be reliable predictors of cancer, longevity and heart disease.

While I’m not sure about living forever, the ability to remain fit and active to our final days is another matter, a state of affairs medical science may be able to bring about while trying to figure out to live eternally.

The researchers profiled by Stipp are seeking to master the mechanisms of our decline, so that we can frolic vigorously for eight or nine decades before dying in a brief and efficient fashion. Weiner’s muse is prophet, maverick, and crank Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge University, whose vision is more ambitious. A theoretician in the gerontology field, he challenges bench scientists to come up with the necessary biological fixes so humans can reach something close to immortality.

The main problem with immortality – as I see it – is trying to keep ourselves amused for, like, forever. It occurs to me that slow technology may be part of the solution though.

For instance, due to various technology failures this morning it’s taken two hours to churn out the last two posts here. Software therefore that hinders or throttles our progress, to the extent we end each day having taken two steps forward and one back, will ensure we always have something to do the next day.

Medical technology and know-how that either exists, or is close to fruition, could allow people who are aged 60 today to live through to their 1000th birthday claims Aubrey de Grey, a geneticist at Cambridge University.

I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already. It is very complicated, because ageing is. There are seven major types of molecular and cellular damage that eventually become bad for us – including cells being lost without replacement and mutations in our chromosomes. Each of these things is potentially fixable by technology that either already exists or is in active development.

A career as a rock musician may bring you fame and fortune but, more than likely, not much in the way of longevity, as Alexa Edgerton’s infographic goes to show.

Adhere to these 11 pointers and you may just live to see your one-hundredth birthday:

• Drink green tea
• Floss
• Embrace new technology
• Lie in
• Laugh
• Be outgoing
• Eat nuts
• Do not smoke
• Have a baby later in life
• Take more holidays
• Drink a little wine

Via Chris Glass.

Also, from New Scientist, people who smile like they mean it tend to live longer lives than who fake their smiles.

People with names beginning with the letter A tend to live longer than people with a name starting with D, with one study finding a correlation with school grading systems, A being a successful grade, D obviously not so good.

The study, led by academics at Wayne State University in Detroit, America revealed that people whose first name begins with A live longer by 10 years those whose initial is D. They claim it stems from school grades, where A spells success and D failure. People whose name starts with D are more likely to have low self-esteem, which is linked to cancer and other illnesses.

People with names starting with the letters E through Z apparently have more normal life expectancies.