AN UNUSUAL OPPORTUNITY

This year's DDP meeting will be cosponsored by Access to Energy and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and will be held August 4-6 in Grants Pass, Oregon. (Use the nearby airport in Medford, Oregon.) Scientists who have already agreed to speak include:

Sam Cohen - inventor of the neutron bomb.

For those wishing to estimate the probable length of their own individual future, we reproduce Figure 1 taken from "Temperament for Longevity'' by Constance Holden in Science 267, p 1269 (1995). The 74-year study upon which this figure is based defined "conscientious'' males and females as high IQ high school students who were rated as "prudent, conscientious, truthful, and free from vanity.'' For example, the age at which 50% will be dead for currently 53-year-old conscientious males is that where the curve crosses 0.1 + (1.0 - 0.1)/2 = 0.55 or 83 years. This is a 50% life expectancy of 30 years. The calculated value corrects for deaths that have already been avoided by those who have reached 53. Parental divorce, here used as a measure of social stability, reduces the life expectancy by 4 years.