Forever Young summary
Linh Nguyen
04/04/2015
The article "Forever Young" of the author Hillary Rosner was published on Septemper 2014 on Discover Magazine. The article was the summary and overview of the initial success of Daniel Doak when he studied the negative aging on Moss Campion.
Ten years ago, Doak started to pay attention and study of the slow growth of Moss Campion, a low and flat plants that were found in the Alaska which are very small as the pushpin. According to the observation result, Moss Campion does not seem to grow up throughout ten or maybe 20 years. Doak used colorful toothpicks to mark the location of the smallest plants, as well as mapping and surveying to conduct the growth of more than 2500 objects in the Arctic. From the obtained data, Doak came to the conclusion that the Moss Campion can live a life through centuries even in harsh weather conditions of Alaska. At the same time, Doak posed hypothetical questions and tried to answer how Moss Campion maintain long life and whether it is possible to apply this method to prolong human life. Since then, the theory of negative aging or also negative senescence was established. “Senescence is the scientific term for what we commonly think of as aging.” With normal aging, the terms of human health are weakened, the function of the senses decrease markedly, the skin changes appear. However, in the negative senescence theory, the risk of death decreases markedly when the plants grow up over the years. This does not mean that the plants are immortal, because they can be killed by the natural disasters or human impacts. Overall, the discoveries of Doak gave the positive signals that he believed “It doesn't seem that hard to defeat senescence.”
On the other hand, the hypothesis of Doak seems contrary to the general perceptions of the scientific community about the aging which have existed for decades. “One theory holds that organisms age because of built-up genetic mutations that aren't weeded out by natural selection --
04/04/2015
The article "Forever Young" of the author Hillary Rosner was published on Septemper 2014 on Discover Magazine. The article was the summary and overview of the initial success of Daniel Doak when he studied the negative aging on Moss Campion.
Ten years ago, Doak started to pay attention and study of the slow growth of Moss Campion, a low and flat plants that were found in the Alaska which are very small as the pushpin. According to the observation result, Moss Campion does not seem to grow up throughout ten or maybe 20 years. Doak used colorful toothpicks to mark the location of the smallest plants, as well as mapping and surveying to conduct the growth of more than 2500 objects in the Arctic. From the obtained data, Doak came to the conclusion that the Moss Campion can live a life through centuries even in harsh weather conditions of Alaska. At the same time, Doak posed hypothetical questions and tried to answer how Moss Campion maintain long life and whether it is possible to apply this method to prolong human life. Since then, the theory of negative aging or also negative senescence was established. “Senescence is the scientific term for what we commonly think of as aging.” With normal aging, the terms of human health are weakened, the function of the senses decrease markedly, the skin changes appear. However, in the negative senescence theory, the risk of death decreases markedly when the plants grow up over the years. This does not mean that the plants are immortal, because they can be killed by the natural disasters or human impacts. Overall, the discoveries of Doak gave the positive signals that he believed “It doesn't seem that hard to defeat senescence.”
On the other hand, the hypothesis of Doak seems contrary to the general perceptions of the scientific community about the aging which have existed for decades. “One theory holds that organisms age because of built-up genetic mutations that aren't weeded out by natural selection --