ISSN 0964-5659

LONGEVITY REPORT 98

Click box below for the Life Extension Foundation Louis Epstein's tables of the oldest people. Click here to track emerging epidemics. Exterminate the The Norwalk "Winter Vomiting" Virus. Click here to read the web site Unraveling the Secrets of Human Longevity by Dr. Leonid Gavrilov, Ph. D. and Dr. Natalia Gavrilova, Ph. D. Join our mailing list to discuss articles and for news of web postings! To e-mail: Click here. Join Longevity Report's discussion list Powered by groups.yahoo.com I use and recommend this system which bounces spam and viruses using your own and web based blacklists. You can have a free month's trial. Click box below. Search this site

Volume 17 no 98. First published October 2004. ISSN 0964-5659.

I have a fantasy to bring three men back to life, who were instrumental in creating the automobile...

Nicolaus August Otto who in 1876 invented an effective gas motor engine.

Karl Benz was the German mechanical engineer who designed and in 1885 built the world's first practical automobile (3 -wheeled) to be powered by an internal-combustion engine.

Gottlieb Daimler, who1886, took a stagecoach (made by Wilhelm Wimpff & Sohn) and adapted it to hold his engine, thereby designing the world's first four- wheeled automobile, powered by a V2 four stroke engine.

... and take them to a busy intersection in a large city. I am sure the would be in awe of the monster they have given birth to.

I would love to bring back to life Orville and Wilbur Wright and to repeat Wilbur's trip to Paris, but this time we would not send Orville to Virginia or sail by ship, but fly with both of them from JFK Airport in New York to Charles de Gaulle in Paris in a jumbo jet with 400 other passengers. I am sure, they would be fascinated.

But most of all I would love to bring my dad back, who died in 1962 in East Germany, where aside from antenna fed TV and nylon stockings the consumer oriented technology was essentially still pre WWII, and show him all the wonders of our modern technology, the "open sesame" of my garage door opener would have to appear like magic to him. During the last few weeks, as an exercise I have imagined him beside me during all the simple acts I perform daily and envisaged, how he would perceive the world around us. Simple things, the disposable plastic shopping bag, its lightness and strength; shoes, which do not push nails into your foot as the heals of the shoe wear down. Satellite TV, which lets us observe events on the opposite side of the globe, as they happen; an ATM machine which allows us to instantly withdraw money from an account on another continent; the microwave and remote sensing devises, which open doors for us as we approach; the car, that beeps obnoxiously, when I do not fasten my seatbelt and gets outright hysteric, when I open the door with the key in the ignition. The enormous amount of information on our fingertips and how little we learn from it would flabbergast him. Almost every step we take together offers something new and exiting to him. Our liberal attitude toward sex and our uptight code of political correctness, which puts 90% of all good jokes out of bounds would seem contradictory to him. He would find the sudden crumbling of the Soviet empire astounding and the drawing together of the 25 nations in the EU exhilarating.

It is incredible how fundamentally our world has changed in those 42 years and the above exercise gives us an indication, how much we will be "babes in the woods", when revived out of cryo- suspension. If you have a loved one, who died 3-5 decades ago, bring him/her back in your mind and observe, how s/he would perceive the modern world, as s/he "accompanies" you in your daily routine.

Experiments with Mice

by Russian Doctor Kostenko

by Parhatsathid Napatalung < parhat@yahoo.com >

Dr. Kostenko has had surprising results that support Dr. Volkov's viewpoints. In discussing his experiments with one-year-old mice, Dr. Kostenko notes, "I was periodically making the acid washing of the mice ... in the medium enriched with CO2 (Carbon Dioxide, also known as Carbonic Acid). The condition of their eyes, hair has improved, improvement of the DNA condition in comparison with the control group, i.e., the quantity of defects accumulating with age have decreased. The gain of average life duration was 131 percent, and four mice are in good health for the fifth year, that corresponds to 220 human years approximately."

Dr. Kostenko also conducted the experiments on himself. He asserts that he has recovered from chronic illnesses, that he looks younger, and that he has improved his physical parameters. Dr. Volkov has a very simple explanation for Dr. Kostenko's surprising results. He believes that "the acidation of [a] living organism with CO2 promotes the carbonic acid production by an organism. Therefore, blood acidation by a carbon dioxide results in the filling up of the hydrogen deficiency of an organism - And in the prolongation of life!"

Additional support for Dr. Volkov's theory comes from the work of Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., who is the Medical Director at Tahoma Clinic in Kent, Washington. Dr. Wright says, "...when you get past 35, 40, 45, and start to develop indigestion, it's highly likely that the indigestion is due to a weaker stomach, not a stronger one, a stomach making less acid, less pepsin." He notes that since 1976 he has used "a commercially available, extremely precise, research-verified procedure" to literally check the stomach acid production of thousands of people, who had complaints of "heartburn" and indigestion. He found that the majority of people did indeed have under acidity in their stomachs.

What makes your body alkaline or acidic?

In my opinion, your body's pH is determined by two things:

1) What you put into your body (food, beverages, drugs, etc.) and

2) What you eliminate or withhold inside your body (removal or harboring of acidic waste).

I personally believe Dr. Volkov's claims, and am presently beginning research to verify the hypothesis that increased acid in the gut will help to restore and maintain the body's natural pH balance through a process called homeostasis. I am of the opinion that at birth the pH of our gut is generally around 1.0. As we get older, our gut pH may rise to 2.0 or more. This is an astronomical difference and at this higher level the stomach may have trouble breaking down the foods we consume.

I am working to prove that disease comes from the same root cause-an increase of the pH of the gut, which can cause a massive overload of undigested food to build up in the intestines, eventually turning into putrefied acid waste (toxins). The body would then have no choice but to store this acid waste in its own tissues and stored fat, thus creating a more friendly environment for disease.

I want to prove that the countless names attached to illnesses do not really matter. What does matter is that they all come from the same root cause- too much tissue acid waste in the body!

Of course it is also possibility to easily replicate Max Odens study by just watching improvement in rat's fur after 2-3 weeks through using brewer's yeast extracted from chloroform saturated water. We need not wait that long to see how it lives but to notice just health improvement in rats. There is a cell food DNA/RNA product given sublingually or transdermally after mixing with DMSO that we can easily test on my aging dogs.

Douglas Skrecky Comments:

I could not find anything on about this on Pubmed, though perhaps this not is surprising with Russian research. I would be quite sceptical about this, as large percentage increases (200%+) in lifespan have been obtained in short lived rodent strains in some studies, purely by inhibiting the disease which renders the rodent short lived in the first place. I've tried acids on flies, and citric acid has been a standard additive to fly food for quite some time, in my fly longevity experiments.

As Others See Us
Eddie Harriman
New Hope International Review - http ://www.nhi.clara.net/online.htm
NHI Review, 20 Werneth Avenue, Gee Cross, Hyde, Cheshire SK14 5NL

Longevity Report #97

This cryonics newsletter informs and updates its readers for information only, under the right to free speech. There are articles Libertarianism, Cryonics, Religion - Ideas That Don't Work - Millionaires Survival Instinct -- Extinct - and others.

To the enthusiast, supporters, purveyors of the aspirations for long life, this newsletter is a commendable enterprise. But to the layman it's fairly heavy going. Whether or not an individual would want his or her own body preserved from decay after death and then possibly brought back to life at some stage in the future is either a fascinating or horrific proposition depending if you are in favour of, or against, such instigation.

Anyway, who is to know if future rulers of the planet -- currently called Earth -- would allow resuscitation; or, if they do, to what purpose re-animated ancestors would be used? On the benevolent side, a future generation which could actually talk to a man or woman who had lived, say, 200 years ago would then be able to write 'history' as it is 'lived'. I'd like to talk poetry with Percy Shelley; chew the fat with Tom Paine. The list for anyone is endless. Would it be a planet without war? But what about the other side of the coin? A man or woman who is woken up would have no idea, literally, what is at stake. Would they be able to 'talk' as we understand it now and understand each other? Whatever you say might be treasonable, or you may be deemed as a worthless specimen: an unintelligent savage with nothing to contribute whatsoever to the present order of things, not even to science, medicine, history or social values, as we know them now, but not in the future, then. Would it be a planet of total, global warfare?

The Longevity Report certainly gets you thinking, and any interested reader or enthusiast for or against long life should get hold of a copy.

Utopia as a Technology of the Future
by Roger L. Bagula < tftn@earthlink.net > © 2 Aug 2004

Suppose that a science of mathematical prediction of the future were to exist as Isaac Asimov predicted in his Foundation trilogy more than half a century ago (called psychohistory)? B. F. Skinner recognised in his book Walden II that such an understanding would lead to a technology: a design engineering of social systems. People like Jane Jacobs have become famous in recent years for programs of urban planning based on understanding of individual motivations and needs. The development of cities and road systems have been recently studies as being like colonies of coral by Michael Batty. Per Bak tells us that biological and physical systems share an likeness to sand piles in that they have universal principles of self-organization. We are on the verge of a true science in the terms of complexity and chaos of social and cultural history based on mathematical principles or laws. Just as Newton's laws of gravitation allowed men to calculate their charges and loads as a technology that led to the Napolonic accuracy where his gunner hit the nose of the Egyptian Sphinx, so a science which can predict the future behaviour of civilisations can also be used to defuse the forces that cause their fall.

Utopias are not a new concept: Plato started this line of thought with his Republic. Sir Thomas Moore gave us the name in his classic. Looking Backward by Bellamy and Huxley's Brave New World gave us more modern versions. Colonies of idealistic thinkers like those in Oneida gave us concepts like plural marriage and feminine equality. We see religious groups like the Hutterites as strange social 'cults' that are dreaded. One thing that the B. F. Skinner approach gave us was a modern scientific version of 1984 where 'freewill' is bent to the good of society. The concept of a 'soma' based social structure where a drug induced tranquillity made the society crime free seems repugnant to most of us in modern America.

A truly stable Utopian society would be free to advance scientifically and culturally on an unlimited scale ( as long as the science wasn't culturally destabilising). Since the great depression in the United States a federal banking committee has set interest rates. The interest rate has been seen to be the 'critical' loading factor in market collapses and it's control has avoided the worse fluctuations of the free enterprise financial system. It has been one of the first modern technologies of social control. It was this social variability that the Soviet Communist economists had attacked early in the last century as the major fault of free enterprise. Other have said that media 'mind control' of a consumer based economy was just as dangerous where TV send the herds to buy their brand products (people buy the name brand beer without tasting it?). What place do and educated and sophisticated people have in an externally controlled culture? Can we sacrifice our individual identity and freedom for the promise of stability, long life ( maybe unlimited lifetimes) and scientific advance? This kind of problem has to be faced by a society where measurement of psychological variables becomes more accurate each day. The creativity of much genius comes with a price of mood variation that has been sometimes fatal, but putting such people on tranquillisers also dulls them to a point where their great discoveries are gone.

Facing the music of an aging culture is hard for many intellectuals. In many cases they have become part of the institutions by 'buying in' A very good resent example is in the area of prehistoric anthropology in the Clovis first doctrine. It was theorised that the first people to north and South America came during the last ice age following herds of Mammoths from Siberia about 13,000 years ago. It became a part of texts and history books as much as 50 years ago. About 40 years ago evidence of earlier people came from carbon 14 measurements on fossils found in California. For those last 40 years until the evidence was just too overwhelming to ignore, that doctrine was 'enforced' by the professors in charge (papers weren't published, data was falsified, fossils were hidden in back rooms of museums, etc. ). The 'buying in' thing is a part of modern scholarship necessary for many to get their life credentials: it has nothing to do with fact or truth, but has very much to do with stable social structures. Current events where trusted leaders openly lie to the whole world as a pretext for killing large numbers of people show us that we are not living in an as honest or open a society as we have been led to believe.

Having a technology doesn't mean that we have to use it. In DNA research it has become possible to modify existing species by using the new technology. There is a genetically engineered tomato, a corn, a wheat and a rice. We could, for instance, evolve ourselves to some better genetic state. Suppose that we could add the gene for manufacturing vitamin C to the human genes? Should we use such technology or make the choice with the consequences of not using it? As you can see modern science has also brought what can only be called a new level of 'ethical' problems. because we can do it, does it mean we should? The idea of cultural/ civilisation engineering is very much like this: if we can create a Utopian society and maintain it's stability, should we? Or should we suffer 'dark ages' as stock market depressions were once suffered?

One of the major 'loading factors' in a culture is it's faith in it's leaders which is a clearly measurable variable. Election polls are very much trusted by our candidates in our American elections. I once read about a Greek who was approached on the street in an election time and told to vote against himself because he had some false fault that was being passed around. He did lose the election, too. Such 'popularity' has nothing to do with the actual virtues of the situation as the German rise of Hitler shows. People in a civilisation vote on it everyday by their actions. In a strong civilisation the people feel good about themselves and their leaders. In a stable Utopian society we would find ourselves with a Stalin like propaganda machine propping up men who might actually be monsters in real life? And with unlimited life spans the our technology promises in the near future, they might stay in power much longer as well. A tyranny of technology and science is no better than any other such tyranny, is it? Would it be an wiser or more virtuous? Can one say that a robot would logically make a better judge of rightness than a human jury? Science tends to divorce itself from human sensibilities: medical doctors cut up dead people to learn anatomy and are thought weak if they aren't hard about it. So a technology of a Utopian stabilised society where mathematical laws are used to judge how actions are carried out to 'eliminate' threats to that stability, might turn out in several thousand years to be a tyranny worse than in Hitler had won World War II! I don't say that 'freedom' is all important, but I think we must work to preserve the rights of the individual over that of a state bent on an artifici0al stability.

In contrast I think that the study of psychohistory of the Asimov kind is necessary. I think Utopia is a universal concept or ideal and that in such a 'real' Utopia as mankind may find, freedom of thought and expression will be encouraged as a cultural strength. Behaviourist models that rob the individual to pay the culture are in the end wrong and are a new sort of problem. A Walden where a minimal control of social and cultural variables allows freedom of choice is an individualistic society that can be made stable without taking away human rights.

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Fly Longevity Experiments 129-152
Doug Skrecky <oberon@vcn.bc.ca>

This is the 129^th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 20.8 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 130 days.

Here I retest French lentils. Although maximum lifespan was again increased, I'm still not convinced t this was not due to chance.

The most intriguing result this time was not something that would show up in the survival statistics. Flies fed New Roots brand of sterols & sterolins showed an unusual ability to continue flying at advanced ages. I'd been recording flying ability on a four point scale for quite some time, but had never mentioned this before since no note worthy results had showed up, before this run. At 90 days of age all sterol fed flies were still capable of flight, as defined by being able to remain aloft for the full width of the milk bottle (3 inches). By comparison none of control flies could fly at 83 days of age. Even at 99 days of age, some sterol fed flies could still take flight, which is an anomaly I have never before observed. Run #137 takes a second look at sterols, both by themselves, as well as in combination with some other supplements, to try to counter the negative effect sterols apparently have on early mortality.

This is the 130^th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 20.2 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 137 days.

Lipoic acid by itself was something of a disappointment previously.

This time a rather more expensive R(+) isomer was tested. One is reminded of the saying "throwing good money after bad".

Aspirin had provided contradictory results in published experiments. This difference had been attributed to the confounding effect of pathogens in an experiment where positive effects were detected. Since I regard pathogens as being a major factor in fly mortality in my own "homebrew" experiments, there seemed to be a possibility of aspirin might be helpful.

The present results indicate that this may indeed be so, provided the dosage is low enough to avoid toxicity.

This is the 131^st update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 20.1 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 138 days.

Tea leaves have generally been useful in the past. Here I take a look at the effect of different types of tea. Overall black tea, both regular and decaffeinated seemed best.

This is the 132^nd update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 20.5 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 134 days.

Here I retest blacks teas, and coffee. These can all inhibit iron availability, and possibly increase survival by limiting the growth of iron dependant bacteria on the medium, and in the gut. I also take a second look at peanut skin.

To no great surprise, both tea and coffee again offered some benefit, with decaffeinated coffee offering the best results over-all. The null results with resveratrol-rich peanut skin, are in agreement with my earlier null results with resveratrol itself. After starting this run I discovered an explanation for this lack of effect of resveratrol: ("A Drosophila Homoloque of Sir2 Modifies Position-Effect Variegation but does

not Affect Life Span" Genetics 162: 1675-1685 December 2002.) In short the powerful effect of resveratrol on (d)Sir2, can not be expected to affect lifespan, because (d)Sir2 itself does not affect fly lifespan. Since yeast lifespan is modulated by Sir2, then resveratrol does prolong yeast lifespan. The biochemistry of aging is different in different species.

This is the 133^rd update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 20.7 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 131 days.

Here I take a look a various different methods of black tea preparation. In addition to adding the blended leaves directly to the fly food, I also created both normal hot, and as well as cold water extracts of tea leaves. Since the cold extracts were very dilute I continued the cold extractions over-night in a fridge. The hot extracts were merely stored as is in the fridge over-night. I also look at some different types of seaweed.

Although the tea leaves themselves improved day 70 survival, none of the leaf extracts offered any advantage at this time point. This contradicts my previous results. After looking through the published

literature one explanation suggested itself. The survival improving effect of black tea on drosophila has been ascribed to the presence of a "volatile" iron chelator. If this is the case, then it is possible that this may have evaporated during over-night storage of the tea extracts.

I'll have to take a second look at this variable in future.

Of the seaweeds, nori appeared to be modestly beneficial, while high dose wakame turned out to be unexpectedly toxic.

This is the 134^th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 21.1 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 127 days.

Several records were set in this run. The maximum control longevity of 113 days eclipses the previous record of 95 days set back in run #89. Marmite yeast extract at the 1/2 tsp dose also set an all-time record of 129 days, which beats the previous record of 124 days set by pomegranate syrup in run #87. Marmite is being retested in run #148.

I attribute both of these records partly to improved pathogen control in the breeding bottle used to supply the flies for this run. I had been "rotating" breeding bottles more often of late, and this change may be

reducing pathogen load.

For some time I had been thinking that the primary pathogen(s) killing most of my flies before they can get "old", were viruses. However many of the supplements I have been feeding to flies in these experiments had documented antiviral effects, yet failed to significantly increase survival. The benefit in the present experiment of both fructose and the probiotic lactobaccilus makes me think that it is bacteria, and not viruses or other pathogens that are the primary threat. Some previous tests of glucose, and sucrose also pointed in this direction.

For some time I have been adding 1/8 tsp citric acid to all bottles, despite previous tests indicating that higher doses were more beneficial. This has resulted in some false positive results, when an added supplement provided addition acid. I had been concerned that many phytochemicals would be less stable at acid pH, hence the conservative use of citric acid. However I have since learned that some plant phytochemicals are more, not less stable at acid pH.

In update #139 I will be reporting on further tests on sugars, and there are a number of other, later experiments in progress testing the effects of other interventions targeting bacteria. Ultimately, I hope to

eliminate most deaths due to infection, so that longevity is then largely determined by the rate of motor neuron degeneration. This is the main limiting factor in fly longevity found in high quality experiments

published in medical journals. If pathogen mortality were to be avoided in my own fly experiments, then these experiments too might become a straight forward series of battles against age-associated motor neuron degeneration.

Although the motor neuron is not a major factor in human mortality, central nervous system health does appear to be important. Fly supplements with significant neurotropic effects might reduce dementia risk in humans, and thereby possibly exert at least some salutary effects on maximum human lifespan.

This is the 135^th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 20.9 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 129 days.

This run examines more types of cooked beans. The only notable item is that the control maximum longevity was 95 days, which ties with the 2^nd highest previous control longevity, obtained in run #89.

This is the 136'th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 21.0 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 128 days.

Hard to believe how many different types of beans there are. There is nothing much of interest to report.

This is the 137^th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 20.9 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 129 days.

Of the lettuces types previously tested, only head lettuce seemed to be beneficial. Here I seek to rule out chance, in this result from run #111. Similarly I also look again at a sterol mixture, which appeared to prolong the ability of drosophila to fly in run #129, though there was also some increase in early mortality.

Head lettuce turned out to be a dud. Once again sterols appeared to increase early mortality. My workbook indicates that the fly food appeared to be quite wet in many of the sterol bottles. This may account for their increased mortality. I suspect the flies became dirty from the wet fly food, and suffered from infections. Adding carob or coffee may have helped prevent this. The hydrophobic nature of sterols may be inhibiting the ability of fly food to hold water. Experiments adding some extra sugar to the fly food to help prevent this are also in progress.

This is the 138^th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 22.1 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 116 days.

This run had one intriguing result. Although control flies had lost the ability to fly after the day 79 census, flies fed a high dose of purple sweet potato were able to continue flying during the day 91 census, and were still rather "frisky" at the day 100 census. It is tempting to surmise that it was a slowing down of motor neuron degeneration that was responsible for the increase in maximum survival from 91 to 110 days. It is extremely doubtful that any putative anti-pathogen effect could account for this, particularly since early mortality was actually increased by this (raw) sweet potato. Only replication studies, now in progress will be able to determine if this increased flying ability, at advanced ages is a real effect, or is simply due to chance.

If the reader wishes to sample purple sweet potato, this item can usually be found in any Chinatown, where it is often mislabeled as purple yam. No purple "yam" as such is available in North America.

This is the 139^th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 22.1 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 115 days.

This run compares the effects of various sugars. Sugars exert a mild antibacterial effect via increased osmotic stress. However increasing the sugar content, and not adding any additional water can also stress the flies, as well as bacteria.

At equivalent doses glucose outperformed both fructose, as well as sucrose, which itself is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. The result with 4 tsp fructose indicates that high doses might be optimal. However since addition of any supplements may also increase osmotic load, if sugars become a standard additive to the fly food, the dosage should be conservative so as to avoid possible dehydration problems. On the other hand, at low sugar levels osmotic effects may account for some of the benefit of some supplements.

I also checked sterols out again, with a little added sugar to help prevent sterol induced wetting of the fly food. Unfortunately the dosage of sugar was inadequate to prevent this wetting, and so once again sterols caused a reduction in survival.

This is the 140^th update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 22.1 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 115 days. My previous effort at testing ling zhi (or ganoderma lucidum) was with a supplement which in fact had only a small amount of ling zhi in it. Here I set the record straight, by testing Jilin brand powdered mushroom. Also with reports coming in that nicotine may exert an anti-dementia effect, I try feeding my flies a little tobacco.

Both ganoderma lucidum and tobacco turned out be duds. For some mysterious reason pollen allergy capsules from Chinatown had a mild beneficial effect on maximal lifespan.

This is the 141^st update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 22.9 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 106 days.

Here I retest some amino acids at higher doses than previously. Lysine can inhibit some glycation reactions, while tyrosine inhibits cellular senescence of human fibroblasts grown in Eagle medium. (Experimental Cell Research 1972, 566-568)

Bragging rights to last surviving fly this time went to a lysine bottle. However, since this is due to a single fly living for a long time, I am inclined to regard this as a fluke. Phenylalanine did appear to be slightly beneficial, but most of the others were toxic to some degree.

Possibly the most interesting results were with high dose tyrosine. (Unfortunately the low dose bottle was eventually destroyed by mould .) Control flies had lost the ability to fly by the day 70 census. Although tyrosine increased early mortality, flies did continue to "fly" till day 80. Although this could easily be a chance finding, it is still tempting to speculate that this might be due to a slowing of motor neuron degeneration.

* = mould

This is the 142^nd update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 23.6 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 99 days.

Here I test a number of pills I picked up from a Chinese store, and compare them to additions of sugars. One pill called tonic-for-rejuvenation I selected just for the name.

The tonic did OK anyhow, as did the "cataract" tablets. However inexpensive common table sugar (sucrose) was effective as well. Once again sucrose out-pointed fructose. I hypothesize that the advantage of added sugars might be due to (osmotic) inhibition of bacteria.

This is the 143^rd update of my fly longevity experiments. Average temperature was 24.1 C during this run. Estimated maximal longevity using the formula (363 - T*11.2) is 93 days.

For some time, 1/8 tsp of citric has been a "standard" additive to 4-24 fly food, to help remedy a deficiency with respect to resistance to bacteria. Some previous testing had indicated that higher dosages of citric acid are more beneficial, and that sucrose additions are helpful as well. Here I seek to determine what the optimal amounts of citric acid and sucrose should be.

Just how poor 4-24 fly food could be, took me by surprise. Although this was an "older" batch of fly food I did not expect to see visible "rotting" of the food in the no-additive, and 1 tsp sucrose bottles. Fortunately neither the 2 tsp sucrose bottle, nor any of the bottles with added citric acid showed such visible rotting.

Although throughout most of the experiment the bottles with 1/2 tsp citric acid were significantly superior, there was a late onset of mould in these three bottles, which I believe destroyed the surviving flies. My workbook blamed a bad batch of fly food.

Naturally I would never consider using such a poor fly food, except for two factors. 4-24 "medium" is the ONLY commercially available fly food I have been able to import. My previous attempts to manufacture my own fly food failed when I was refused access to a mould inhibitor, due to the lack of certain letters after my name. For the foreseeable future I will remain stuck with 4-24 fly food, though I do plan on ordering it in smaller batches. (Run #157 is taking a look at citric acid again, while using a new batch of fly food.)

Finally I have to account for the anomalously poor result for the 1/8 tsp citric bottle. This one is my fault. I use bleach to help clean out old breeding bottles. My workbook listed that less care than usual was spent washing two of these bottles. The 1/8 tsp citric bottle likely accounts for one of these, while the second bottle appears to have been used in the next run. In future a more time consuming procedure will be followed in my bottle washing.