Reliability engineering concerned with failure of technical inanimate systems usually uses the vocabulary and notions of human mortality, e.g., infant mortality vs. senescence mortality. Yet, few data are available to support such a parallel description. Here, we focus on early-stage (infant) mortality for two inanimate systems, incandescent light bulbs and soap films, and show the parallel description is clearly valid. Theoretical considerations of the thermo-electrical properties of electrical conductors allow us to link bulb failure to inherent mechanical defects. We then demonstrate the converse, that is, knowing the failure rate for an ensemble of light bulbs, it is possible to deduce the distribution of defects in wire thickness in the ensemble. Using measurements of lifetimes for soap films, we show how this methodology links failure rate to geometry of the system; in the case presented, this is the length of the tube containing the films. In a similar manner, for a third example, the time-dependent death rate due to congenital aortic valve stenosis is related to the distribution of degrees of severity of this condition, as a function of time. The results not only validate clearly the parallel description noted above, but also point firmly to application of the methodology to humans, with the consequent ability to gain more insight into the role of abnormalities in infant mortality.

中文翻译：

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婴儿死亡率的物理模型：对生物系统缺陷的影响


涉及技术无生命系统故障的可靠性工程通常使用人类死亡率的词汇和概念，例如婴儿死亡率与衰老死亡率。然而，很少有数据可以支持这种并行描述。在这里，我们关注白炽灯泡和肥皂膜这两个无生命系统的早期（婴儿）死亡率，并表明平行描述显然是有效的。对电导体热电特性的理论考虑使我们能够将灯泡故障与固有的机械缺陷联系起来。然后我们证明了相反的情况，即知道了一组灯泡的故障率，就可以推断出该组中线材厚度缺陷的分布。通过测量肥皂膜的寿命，我们展示了这种方法如何将故障率与系统的几何形状联系起来；在所呈现的情况下，这是包含薄膜的管的长度。以类似的方式，对于第三个例子，先天性主动脉瓣狭窄导致的时间依赖性死亡率与该病症的严重程度的分布相关，作为时间的函数。结果不仅清楚地验证了上述平行描述，而且坚定地表明该方法适用于人类，从而能够更深入地了解异常在婴儿死亡率中的作用。