Old age is a time of losses- permanent, cumulative and irreversible. These losses include our loss of work in retirement, the eclipse of our past, our biological decline, dependency resulting from such decline, the foreshortening of our future, the abandonment of belief in our own improvement and our society’s progress, and, of course, our death. This book views these losses as part of an elegy of old age. Elegy is a poetic or prose mourning of loss. Sadness and other emotions result. With elegiac understanding we detach ourselves from these losses to seek and find consolation. This book is concerned with achieving intellectual detachment through meditative reflection with the help of reading and appreciating the classics. The final stage of the old age elegy- consolation can be found, at least in part, within the classics-“the garlands of repose”. The classics are broadly defined by Matthew Arnold as: “the best that [has} been thought and said: { or found in the fine arts}. To benefit from the classis requires a life-long liberal education. This education begins with an introduction to the classics in youth, makes use of them during our adult lives, and supplies their conclusion for old age meditation. Such significant works enable us to place the losses we suffer within an intellectual framework of perennial ideas. It is by means of such an intellectual framework that we secure consolation in old age. Classic works familiarize us deeply with the losses and emotions we endure-suggest substitutes for the goods of the life we have lost in old age, offer opportunities of catharsis for the sadness we experience and help us transform ourselves in old age. Classics help us see old age and its losses as part of a complete life which hold a unique value of its own, while remaining part of larger nature processes, history and intellectual traditions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th Iberoamerican Congress on Pattern Recognition, CIARP 2011, held in Pucón, Chile, in November 2011. The 81 revised full papers presented together with 3 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. Topics of interest covered are image processing, restoration and segmentation; computer vision; clustering and artificial intelligence; pattern recognition and classification; applications of pattern recognition; and Chilean Workshop on Pattern Recognition.

The United States is in the midst of a major demographic shift. In the coming decades, people aged 65 and over will make up an increasingly large percentage of the population: The ratio of people aged 65+ to people aged 20-64 will rise by 80%. This shift is happening for two reasons: people are living longer, and many couples are choosing to have fewer children and to have those children somewhat later in life. The resulting demographic shift will present the nation with economic challenges, both to absorb the costs and to leverage the benefits of an aging population. Aging and the Macroeconomy: Long-Term Implications of an Older Population presents the fundamental factors driving the aging of the U.S. population, as well as its societal implications and likely long-term macroeconomic effects in a global context. The report finds that, while population aging does not pose an insurmountable challenge to the nation, it is imperative that sensible policies are implemented soon to allow companies and households to respond. It offers four practical approaches for preparing resources to support the future consumption of households and for adapting to the new economic landscape.

Presents the results of the MacArthur Foundation Study of Aging in America, which show how to maintain optimum physical and mental strength throughout later life.

This book presents a collection of high-quality research papers accepted to multi-conference consisting of International Conference on Image Processing and Communications (IP&C 2021), International Conference on Computer Recognition Systems (CORES 2021), International Conference on Advanced Computer Systems (ACS 2021) held jointly in Bydgoszcz, Poland (virtually), in June 2021. The accepted papers address current computer science and computer systems-related technological challenges and solutions, as well as many practical applications and results. The first part of the book deals with advances in pattern recognition and classifiers, the second part is devoted to image processing and computer vision, while the third part addresses practical applications of computer recognition systems. Machine learning solutions for security and networks are tackled in part four of the book, while the last part collects papers on progress in advanced computer systems. We believe this book will be interesting for researchers and practitioners in many fields of computer science and IT applications.