But being overweight, smoking, and having a previous knee injury does increase the risk, the team from Oxford Brookes University found They looked at more than 100 women aged between 50 and 70 waiting for knee surgery, and found that choice of shoes was not a factor.
Another man, aged 22, was slightly more successful, passing on his 36th attempt at a test centre in Chelmsford in Essex.
However, judging from Chinese idiom qiushi (autumn scholar, meaning and aged scholar grieving over frustrations in his life) and frequent selection in textbooks of Ouyang Xiu's On the Autumn Sough and Su Dongpo's On the Red Cliff, Chinese men of letters seem to be particularly autumn-minded.
"Few guys for example would say 'look, I'm a middle aged alcoholic who's been married five times, pick me'.
But the good news is that if people make it to aged 70 and are still physically fit, they are on average as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year old.
The participants were aged 35 to 55 at the beginning of the study, which followed some subjects up to 17 years.
Researchers from King's College London studied 2,160 women aged between 18 and 79, looking at their telomeres - a biological marker of ageing found in DNA.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute queried men and women aged 50 and older about their diets, then followed participants for five years to record all diagnoses of head and neck cancer, which is the sixth-leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide.
Sarah Walkley, now aged 40, was five years old when she asked her father for the doll's house on Christmas Eve 1978.
An aged man was standing at a window.
Then the man saw that his aged father was coming, and hastily took the chicken and hid it, for he would not permit him to have any of it.
In olden times there lived an aged queen who was a sorceress, and her daughter was the most beautiful maiden under the sun.
Then an aged woman came up to them who inquired why they were so sad.
And when the aged king saw all the proofs of this, he could no longer doubt, and said that he was very glad he knew how everything had happened, and that the huntsman should have her to wife, on which the maiden was glad at heart.
Then Hans the hedgehog descended the tree with the cock, and told the aged king that he would show him the way, if he would give him for his own whatsoever first met him in front of his royal palace.
So the child went into the forest, and there an aged woman met her who was aware of her sorrow, and presented her with a little pot, which when she said, cook, little pot, cook, would cook good, sweet porridge, and when she said, stop, little pot, it ceased to cook.
" Then the king gave him the youngest, who was quite willing to do it to please her father, and thus the devil's sooty brother got the king's daughter, and when the aged king died, the whole kingdom likewise.
She said, go further into the forest, and you will find a house, wherein sits an aged woman, who will offer you meat and drink, but you must accept nothing, for if you eat and drink anything, you will fall into a sleep, and then you will not be able to set me free.
When the time came for her to be married, and she had to journey forth into the distant kingdom, the aged queen packed up for her many costly vessels of silver and gold, and trinkets also of gold and silver, and cups and jewels, in short, everything which appertained to a royal dowry, for she loved her child with all her heart.
The aged king ordered the cook to be torn in four pieces, but grief consumed the king's own heart, and he soon died.
