A better understanding of processes and mechanisms linking human aging with changes in health status and survival requires methods capable of analyzing new data that take into account knowledge about these processes accumulated ...

We address comments from the three discussants of our paper, paying particular attention to the properties of our model likely to be of interest in new applications to complex dynamic systems. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

The objective of this paper is to investigate dynamic properties of age trajectories of physiological indices and their effects on mortality risk and longevity using longitudinal data on more than 5,000 individuals collected ...