Research
Unified approach to growth and aging in biological, technical and biotechnical systems
1 Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany
2 Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita’ di Catania, 95100 Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, Italy
3 INFN, Sezione di Catania, 95100 Catania, Italy
SpringerPlus 2012, 1:7 doi:10.1186/2193-1801-1-7
Published: 9 July 2012Abstract
Complex systems, in many different scientific sectors, show coarse-grain properties with simple growth laws with respect to fundamental microscopic algorithms. We propose a classification scheme of growth laws which includes human aging, tumor (and/or tissue) growth, logistic and generalized logistic growth and the aging of technical devices. The proposed classification permits to evaluate the aging/failure of combined new bio-technical “manufactured products”, where part of the system evolves in time according to biological-mortality laws and part according to technical device behaviors. Moreover it suggests a direct relation between the mortality leveling-off for humans and technical devices and the observed small cure probability for large tumors.



