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Death Spiral: 4th Phase of Life May Signal the End Is Near — **There may be common signs in organisms that signal a spiral toward death.**
**Credit: lassedesignen / Shutterstock.com**

Biologists separate life into three phases: development, aging and late life. But a growing body of research now suggests that there is a fourth phase immediately preceding death that scientists have dubbed the "death spiral."

Although most of the "death spiral" research has focused on fruit flies, scientists think these studies can offer valuable insight into the last stage of human life as well.

"We believe this is part of the process of, basically, genetically programmed death," Laurence Mueller, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine, said in an interview with Live Science. [What Are Your Odds of Dying From …]

Expiring fruit flies

Over the past decade, several studies of fruit flies have suggested this spiral toward death can be seen in the drop in reproductive rate (fecundity), according to a review of this research by Mueller and his colleagues, published earlier this year in the journal Biogerontology. For instance, researchers reporting in 2015 in The Journals of Gerontologyfound that the first day a female fly laid zero eggs was a significant predictor of death: Indicators of fecundity started to decline about 10 days before young female fruit flies laid zero eggs. The researchers think that whatever leads to the flies' deaths also affects their ability to reproduce in their final days.

In the new review, Mueller said that the timing of this decline matchesanother previous estimate of the death spiral's duration. Relative to the average life span of a fruit fly, 10 days could be as much as a third of a fly's life, Mueller said. Research from 2002 on Mediterranean fruit flies, called medflies, found that 97 percent of males began lying upside down about 16 days prior to death. In relative terms, this potential indicator of a death spiral is also approximately equal to the timing of the fecundity decline in the fruit flies. [The Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt & Beyond]

In another study, scientists observed fruit flies, nematodes and zebrafish, to see if their intestines exhibited increased leakiness before death. The researchers tested this leakiness, called permeability, by feeding food dye to each animal. If permeability increased, that dye would leak out into the animal's body, and its body would change color — blue in the flies and fish, and fluorescent green in the nematodes. The research, published online March 22 in the journal Scientific Reports, concluded that this intestinal leakiness was a marker of death in all three species.

A human death spiral?

The hope is that death-spiral research in fruit flies and other organisms could someday tell scientists more about the decline of humans prior to death. [8 Tips for Healthy Aging]

In their review paper, Mueller and his colleagues cited a study from 2008 published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesas evidence that people may experience the death spiral as well. In that study, researchers analyzed data collected on the physical and cognitive abilities of 2,262 Danish people, ages 92 to 100, from 1998 to 2005. They found that the physical and cognitive scores of individuals who died within the first two years of the study were significantly lower than the scores of those who were still alive in 2005. The assessments included measures of grip strength, ability to complete daily activities (such as using the toilet and eating) and exams that helped evaluate cognitive impairment.

Basically, Mueller said, a death spiral in people could be the reason we often see a distinct increase in disability just before a person dies. Humans are challenging study subjects for both ethical and biological reasons, but looking at the death spiral in other organisms could give scientists a window into how this works in humans, the researchers said.

According to Mueller, the next step in this research might be to selectively breed the flies to create groups that experience death spirals of different durations.

"Once you create populations that are genetically different in that way, you can ask, 'What genes were changed in order to reduce the length of the death spiral?'" Mueller said. Using that knowledge, researchers could look at the human genome for similar genetic markers; humans are genetically similar to fruit flies, Mueller noted. According toyourgenome.com, a website of the Wellcome Genome Campus, 75 percent of disease-causing genes in humans are also present in fruit flies.

Mueller said the research isn't about stopping or even delaying death. Rather, he sees it as a way to improve people's quality of life when they are reaching the end and potentially save immense amounts of money in end-of-life health care.

"Even if we don't affect when you die, we'd like to make you fully functional up to the day you die," he said.

Original article on Live Science.

New Tech Lets You Watch 3D Movies Without the Funky Glasses — **A new prototype display could enable people to watch 3D movies from any seat in the theater, without having to wear 3D glasses.**
**Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT**

Someday, moviegoers may be able to watch 3D films from any seat in a theater without having to wear 3D glasses, thanks to a new kind of movie screen.

The new technology, named Cinema 3D, overcomes some of the barriers to implementingglasses-free 3D viewing on a larger scale, but it's not commercially viable yet, the researchers said when describing their findings.

Although 3D movies can offer unique perspectives and experiences, one major drawback is the cumbersome eyewear that moviegoers typically have to wear. Although glasses-free 3D strategies already exist, these technologies currently cannot be scaled up to movie theaters. [10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life]

For example, glasses-free 3D methods for TV sets often use a series of slits known as a parallax barrier that is placed in front of the screen. These slits allow each eye to see a different set of pixels, creating the illusion of depth.

However, for parallax barriers to work, they must be placed at a set distance from viewers. This makes parallax barriers difficult to implement in larger spaces such as theaters, where people can sit at a variety of distances and angles from the screen.

In addition, glasses-free 3D displays have to account for the different positions from which people are watching. This means that they have to divide up the limited number of pixels they project so that each viewer sees an image from wherever he or she is located, the researchers said.

"Existing approaches to glasses-free 3D require screens whose resolution requirements are so enormous that they are completely impractical," study co-author Wojciech Matusik, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, said in a statement.

But in the new method, the researchers used a series of mirrors and lenses to essentially give viewers a parallax barrier tailored to each of their positions.

"By careful design of optical elements, we can achieve very-good-quality 3D content without using glasses," study co-author Piotr Didyk, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and Saarland University, both in Germany, told Live Science.

"This is the first technical approach that allows for glasses-free 3D on a large scale," Matusik said in a statement.

In addition, the scientists reasoned that instead of displaying images to every position in a theater, they would need to display images only to a relatively tiny set of viewing positions at each theater seat.

"In our solution, we exploit the layout of the audience in a cinema," Didyk said.

The scientists developed a simple Cinema 3D prototype that could support a 200-pixel image. In experiments, volunteers could see 3D versions of pixelated figures from a number of different seats in a small theater.

The scientists cautioned that Cinema 3D is currently impractical to implement commercially. For instance, their prototype requires 50 sets ofmirrors and lenses, but the screen is just barely larger than a pad of paper. The researchers hope to build a larger version of their display and further boost the image resolution.

"It remains to be seen whether the approach is financially feasible enough to scale up to a full-blown theater," Matusik said in a statement. "But we are optimistic that this is an important next step in developing glasses-free 3D for large spaces like movie theaters and auditoriums."

The scientists detailed their findings July 26 at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Anaheim, California.

Original article on Live Science.