Aging Ageing ( BE) or aging ( AE) is the process of becoming older. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi, whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentially biologically immortal. In ...

is the effect of time on a person. Aging or ageing may also refer to:

Biology

Senescence Senescence () or biological aging is the gradual deterioration of functional characteristics in living organisms. The word ''senescence'' can refer to either cellular senescence or to senescence of the whole organism. Organismal senescence inv ...

, the biological effect of time on an organism ** Aging in cats ** Aging in dogs

Demography

Population ageing Population ageing is an increasing median age in a population because of declining fertility rates and rising life expectancy. Most countries have rising life expectancy and an ageing population, trends that emerged first in developed countries b ...

, a shift in the distribution of a population towards older ages

Chemistry and materials science

* Polymer degradation, a change of polymer properties due to environmental factors * Precipitation hardening, a heat treatment of materials * Ostwald ripening, precipitate or deposit aging in chemistry *

Ageing (textiles) Ageing (Stoving, Hanging, or Aging) is a kind of after treatment process for certain printed textile materials in which the goods are exposed to warm and moist atmosphere. Steaming is an evolved way to obtain the intended results. The objectives ...

, after treatment of textiles

Food preparation

* Aging (food), the leaving of a product to improve its flavor **

Aging of wine The aging of wine is potentially able to improve the quality of wine. This distinguishes wine from most other consumable goods. While wine is perishable and capable of deteriorating, complex chemical reactions involving a wine's sugars, acids and ...

, the effect of time on wine **

Barrel aging A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, u ...

, a method of maturing wine, spirits, etc. **

Beef aging Beef aging (American English) or ageing is a process of preparing beef for consumption by aging it, in order to break down the connective tissue within the meat. Dry-aged beef Dry-aged beef is beef that has been hung or placed on a rack to dry ...

, a process of preparing beef for consumption ** Cheese ripening, a process in cheesemaking

Computers

Aging (file system) In computing, file system fragmentation, sometimes called file system aging, is the tendency of a file system to lay out the contents of files non-continuously to allow in-place modification of their contents. It is a special case of data fragmen ...

, a tendency towards data fragmentation in file systems *

Aging (scheduling) In computer science for Operating systems, aging (US English) or ageing is a scheduling technique used to avoid starvation. Fixed priority scheduling is a scheduling discipline, in which tasks queued for utilizing a system resource are assigned a ...

, an operating system technique for resource allocation * Software aging, the tendency of software to exhibit problems as time passes by

Other uses