The VIIIth Annual International Spring Symposium on Health Sciences held at the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., attracted over three hun dred fifty scientists from twenty-five countries. The leading scientific experts in the field reported on recent biomedical advances in aging. They provided an up-to-date account of the molecular, genetic, nutritional, and immunological mechanisms associated with the aging process and approaches to intervention and treatment of the major disorders associated with the aging process, including Alzheimer's disease. A unique aspect of this meeting was a concurrent one-day hearing of the U.S. Senate Sub-Committee on Aging, organized by the Alliance for Aging Research. The theme for the hearing was "Advances in Aging Research." Seven scientists attending our aging sym posium were asked to testify. They were Drs. Carl Cotman (University of California-Irvine), Trudy Bush (Johns Hopkins University), Takashi Makinodan (University of California-Los Angeles), William Ershler (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Gino Doria (ENEA, Rome), Mr. Dan Perry (Director of the Alliance for Aging Research), and myself.

Emerging and currently available technologies offer great promise for helping older adults, even those without serious disabilities, to live healthy, comfortable, and productive lives. What technologies offer the most potential benefit? What challenges must be overcome, what problems must be solved, for this promise to be fulfilled? How can federal agencies like the National Institute on Aging best use their resources to support the translation from laboratory findings to useful, marketable products and services? Technology for Adaptive Aging is the product of a workshop that brought together distinguished experts in aging research and in technology to discuss applications of technology to communication, education and learning, employment, health, living environments, and transportation for older adults. It includes all of the workshop papers and the report of the committee that organized the workshop. The committee report synthesizes and evaluates the points made in the workshop papers and recommends priorities for federal support of translational research in technology for older adults.

Americans are living longer than ever before. For many, though, these extra years have become a bitter gift, marred by dementia, disability, and loss of independence. Extending Life, Enhancing Life sets the course toward practical solutions to these problems by specifying 15 research priorities in five key areas of investigation: Basic biomedicine-To understand the fundamental processes of aging. Clinical-To intervene against common disabilities and maladies of older persons. Behavioral and social-To build on past successes with behavioral and social interventions. Health services delivery-To seek answers to the troubling issues of insufficient delivery of health care in the face of increasing health care costs. Biomedical ethics-To clarify underlying ethical guidelines about life and death decisions. Most important, the volume firmly establishes the connection between research and its beneficial results for the quality of life for older persons.

Over the past 20 years, the biomedical research community has been delivering hundreds of breakthroughs expected to extend human lifespan beyond thresholds imaginable today. However, much of this research has not yet been adopted into clinical practice, nor has it been widely publicized. Biomedicine will transform our society forever by allowing people to live longer and to continue working and contributing financially to the economy longer, rather than entering into retirement and draining the economy through pensions and senior healthcare. Old age will become a concept of the past, breakthroughs in regenerative medicine will continue, and an unprecedented boom to the global economy, with an influx of older able-bodied workers and consumers, will be a reality. A leading expert in aging research, author Alex Zhavoronkov provides a helicopter view on the progress science has already made, from repairing tissue damage to growing functional organs from a single cell, and illuminates the possibilities that the scientific and medical community will soon make into realities. The Ageless Generation is an engaging work that causes us to rethink our ideas of age and ability in the modern world.