tapered ribbon particle?

In the ribbon particle example, is there any way to make the beginning of the ribbons tapered?

If you watch the example, once the lead particle dies, the beginning of the ribbon starts to make a hard edge: http://i.imgur.com/XUV5wcL.png

I wanted to change the initial size over time so that new parts of the ribbon spawn progressively smaller and smaller. However, this doesn’t seem to work: http://i.imgur.com/FdCjTBK.png

Bump… perhaps this should have gone in the Rendering subforum?

Size over life curve where t0 is small and to t1 is big?