Your mother’s diet, your immune system and air pollution affect how long you will live and whether you will develop Alzheimer’s or cancer. Not only are European Research Council (ERC) funded researchers unravelling the secrets of longevity, they are exploring ways of adding ‘life to years’ as well as ‘years to life’. But is it worth extending lifespan if it only adds years of misery? Clearly not – but many are trying to do something about it.
The European Union set a bold target in 2012: to increase the average healthy lifespan of Europeans by two years by 2020. And separately, the ERC with its bottom-up funding competitions is backing top scientists in their quest to figure out how we can live longer, better lives.
The Longevity theme will launch tomorrow, March 21st, and Ecsite members in Austria (ScienceCenter Netzwerk), Spain (Parque de las Ciencias) and Poland (Experyment) are going to implement their public and dialogue activities combined with makers' workshops and fab labs over the next three months. Stay tuned by following the ScienceSquared project on its website or Twitter and Facebook accounts.
To explore the longevity content click here.