Open problems: ten questions we want help with

Each is concrete enough to start on, with data or code that already exists. Pick one and tell us.

The problems

• P1. Mitochondrial efficiency: marker or mechanism?

  Is the body's falling energy efficiency a sign of wear, or the thing that tips people into disease?

  Good for: mitochondrial biology, physiology, dynamical systems

• P2. Identifying personal parameters from three to five visits

  How much can three to five blood tests, years apart, tell us about one person's own path?

  Good for: statistics, hierarchical modelling

• P3. Separating ageing, cohort and survival

  When older people look different from younger ones, how much is ageing and how much is who was born when and who survived?

  Good for: epidemiology, demography

• P4. Informative sampling in clinical lab data

  Clinic tests are ordered when something seems wrong; how do we learn from them without mistaking being tested for being ill?

  Good for: biostatistics, health-system data

• P5. Resilience as a measurable quantity

  Can routine measurements show that the body is losing its ability to bounce back, before decline?

  Good for: complex systems, time-series statistics

• P6. The value of a measurement

  Which test, at which age, tells you most about a person's future for its cost?

  Good for: decision science, health economics

• P7. Growth versus scarring

  Why does the same stress make some people stronger and leave others worse off?

  Good for: stress physiology, life-course epidemiology

• P8. Slowing near a measurable edge: exercise intensity

  Does recovery from a small push slow down as exercise nears a person's limit?

  Good for: exercise physiology, dynamical systems

• P9. Blunted reactivity near the edge

  Why do people with high blood pressure or diabetes react less to a lab stress task, instead of recovering more slowly?

  Good for: psychophysiology, mathematical modelling

• P10. Recovery near the glycaemic edge

  After the same meal, does blood glucose take longer to settle back in people closer to diabetes?

  Good for: metabolism, continuous glucose monitoring