Study reveals new way to inhibit capillary leakage in sepsis
Jun 25 2018Leakage from the blood capillaries is a key mechanism leading to septic shock and multiorgan failure, which affect millions of patients annually worldwide. However, there is no effective way to inhibit the vessel leakiness. A new study by scientists at the University of Helsinki and Wihuri Research Institute demonstrates that vascular leakage can be inhibited by targeting vascular integrins.Increased capillary permeability and subsequent leakage from the capillaries is associated with numerous difficult-to-cure diseases, including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), severe Dengue fever and malaria, and sepsis.Currently, there is no effective therapy to inhibit capillary leakage and to maintain vessel stability in these diseases.The latest research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA (PNAS) indicates that a monoclonal antibody targeted against β1-integrin inhibits vascular leakage in a mouse model of sepsis.Integrins are heterodimeric cell surface receptors that mediate interactions between cells and the surrounding extracellular matrix. β1-integrin is a key molecule in endothelial cells, which form the inner layer of the blood vessel wall. Previously, β1-integrin has been known to regulate blood vessel formation and vessel stability. Scientists have now identified a novel function for β1-integrin in vascular leakage associated with severe inflammation and sepsis.Principal investigator, Dr. Pipsa Saharinen, at the University of Helsinki and Wihuri Research Institute said:”We made a remarkable discovery: a molecule that was previously known to mediate vessel stability, behaved in an opposite manner in inflammation, by inducing vessel destabilization and leakage. We found that inflammatory agents induced cell contractility that was mediated via β1-integrin, leading to gap formation between endothelial cells and increased permeability.”Related StoriesStudy explains why several clinical trials of treatments for sepsis have been failedNew research defines the chain of molecular events that goes awry in sepsisSepsis Alliance launches Maternal Sepsis Day to raise awareness and save livesANTIBODY AGAINST β1-INTEGRIN RESOLVES VASCULAR LEAKAGEThe scientists used a mouse model of gram-negative sepsis (also termed endotoxemia), which was induced in mice by a bacterial component (LPS). The scientists found that the antibody against β1-integrin bound to the vascular endothelium, improved the junctions between endothelial cells and decreased vascular leakage in sepsis. In addition, the antibody protected the mice from sepsis-induced heart failure.The antibody against β1-integrin was effective as a prophylactic treatment, but also as an intervention therapy i.e. when the antibody was administered after the onset of the disease.”This is important since it mimics more the situation in real life. Sepsis may develop unexpectedly and proceed fast. When the patients arrive at the hospital, the disease may have already progressed. It would be important to have the means to inhibit vessel leakiness and the development of a more severe diseases. In our study, the antibody against β1-integrin was effective in inhibiting vascular leak in mice even when it was administered after the onset of the leakage”, Dr. Saharinen said.In sepsis the body’s own inflammatory reaction becomes overwhelming. Due to the increased level of numerous inflammatory agents, it has been so far difficult to develop a targeted therapy for sepsis.”Using endothelial cells in culture, we found that β1-integrin is a key mediator of not only one, but several inflammatory agents that are upregulated in sepsis. Furthermore, we found that a vascular growth factor Angiopoietin-2, which is known to play a role in the pathogenesis of sepsis, regulated β1-integrin signaling in endothelial cells. Although there is still a lot of work to do to, these exciting results could ultimately help us develop an effective treatment to block capillary leak in sepsis”, Saharinen concluded. Source:https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/health/scientists-found-means-to-inhibit-capillary-leakage-in-sepsis
The finding illustrates for the first time that a single component in the memory circuits can affect memory formation. It provides renewed hope that it may be possible to develop strategies that counteract memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Sources:Uppsala University press release 5 July 2018.Siwani S, et al. OLMα2 cells bidirectionally modulate learning. Neuron. We had expected to be able to impair learning, since it seemed likely that the effect of our experiment at the cellular level would disturb the normal function of the nervous system. However, we were surprised to find that learning and memory also could be improved”.Professor Klas Kullander, Uppsala University By Kate Bass, B.Sc.Jul 5 2018A new study published today reports the identification of a type of brain cell that plays a crucial role in memory and learning processes. Researchers were able to affect memory and learning by modulating the activity of these cells. Image Credit: Argus / ShutterstockAlthough memory formation and retrieval have been explored in behavioural studies, our understanding of the biological basis of memory processes remains limited.With the increasing prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, researchers have focussed heavily on understanding the cellular processes behind memory function and dysfunction.It is hoped that a greater understanding of the biological basis for memory formation, storage, and retrieval will enable the development of successful treatments for memory dysfunction. There are currently no curative treatments for dementia, nor treatments that can slow the decline in memory function.Patients with dementia have an impaired ability to form new memories, yet can still recall in detail events that occurred decades ago.Short-term memory loss as a result of aging and dementia has long been attributed to damage in the hippocampus. Researchers previously identified that this constitutes a failure to maintain a proper balance of excitatory and inhibitory control of the hippocampal network.Oriens-lacunosum moleculare (OLM) or ‘gatekeeper’ cells within the hippocampus were subsequently identified as being involved in the process of encoding new memories.In the latest research, increased activation of OLM cells in laboratory mice was found to be detrimental to memory and learning functions. In contrast, inactivation of OLM cells improved new memory formation in the mice.
Reviewed by James Ives, M.Psych. (Editor)Sep 14 2018Pectus Excavatum (PE), Pectus Carinatum (PC), Poland Syndrome (PS), Sunken Chest Deformity (SCD), Barrel Chest Deformity (BCD), Body Builder Deformity (BBD), and Long Upper Chest Wall (LCW) are Chest Wall Deformities (CWDs) that are documented in the medical literature. A scoliotic CWD, unlike PE or PC, does not only concern the anterior chest wall but is an expression of thoracic torsion due to the scoliotic torsion of the spine and adjacent ribs. Typically, we find a rib hump dorsally on the convex side of the curvature when the thoracic spine is affected and a lumbar hump dorsally on the convex side of a lumbar curve when the lumbar spine is affected. When thoracic scoliosis is analysed more closely using a 3D scan of the trunk, we typically find a rotation of the trunk backward on the rib hump side and a rotation forward on the thoracic concave side.A new form of CWD has been found by the first author: As has been shown in this case series, a Hemidystrophic Thorax (HDT) was found in patients with slight scoliosis and in cases without scoliosis (Cobb angle of 10° or less). The condition of HDT may lead to significant rib humps, which mimic scoliosis. According to our case series, mild scoliosis can also be associated with HDT. HDT, according to the cases presented in this study, seems to be a relatively benign deformity. Long-term observations are necessary before a final conclusion can be drawn with respect to prognosis. Source:https://benthamscience.com/
That could help cancer physicians such as Mainprize deliver chemotherapy drugs into the brain. Hynynen also hypothesized that the brief leakage would rev up the brain’s inflammatory response against β amyloid—the toxic protein that clumps outside neurons in Alzheimer’s and may be responsible for killing them. Disposing of such debris is normally the role of the microglia, a type of brain cell. But previous studies have shown that when β amyloid forms clumps in the brain, it “seems to overwhelm microglia,” Bacskai says. Exposing the cells to anti bodies that leak in when the blood-brain barrier is breached could spur them to “wake up and do their jobs,” he says. Some antibodies in blood may also bind directly to the β-amyloid protein and flag the clumps for destruction.Hynynen and others have recently tested the ultrasound strategy in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s. In December 2014, for example, he and colleagues reported in Radiology that the method reduces amyloid plaques in a strain of mice engineered to develop the deposits, leading to improvements in cognition and spatial learning. Microglia consumed more β amyloid after the treatment, suggesting the cells do play a role in the effect, says neuroscientist Isabelle Aubert, who collaborates with Hynynen at Sunnybrook.This week, neuroscientist Jürgen Götz of the Queensland Brain Institute in St. Lucia, Australia, and his Ph.D. student Gerhard Leinenga report that they have built on Hynynen and Aubert’s protocol, using a different mouse model of Alzheimer’s. After injecting these animals with a solution of microscopic bubbles, they scanned an ultrasound beam in a zigzag pattern across each animal’s entire skull, rather than focusing on discrete areas as others have done. After six to eight weekly treatments, the team tested the rodents on three different memory tasks. Alzheimer’s mice in the control group, which received microbubble injections but no stimulation, showed no improvement. Mice whose blood-brain barriers had been made permeable, in contrast, saw “full restoration of memory in all three tasks,” Götz says.The team also found a two- to fivefold reduction in different types of β-amyloid plaques in the brain tissue of the treated group. The attempt to stoke microglia’s appetite appeared to work; Götz and Leinenga found much more β-amyloid protein within the trash-eating cells of treated animals. Yet rousing microglia may not be the only mechanism responsible for the rodents’ memory boost, Aubert notes. She and Hynynen recently reported in Brain Stimulation that ultrasound also boosts the birth and growth of new neurons in mice.Götz and Leinenga next plan to test the whole-brain ultrasound scan method in larger animals with β-amyloid deposits, such as sheep. The approach, which could in theory be used for other brain diseases involving abnormal protein clumps, “is exciting,” says Gerald Grant, a neurosurgeon at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. “We’ve been thinking of opening up the blood-brain barrier as a way to get things into the brain, but this pays attention to getting things out.”It’s far from settled that eliminating β-amyloid deposits outside of neurons is the key to treating or stopping Alzheimer’s disease, however. And Bacskai is skeptical that the mouse results say much about the technique’s potential in humans. The range between a mouse that can learn and one that cannot learn “is pretty small,” so big gains in behavioral tests in mice may mean nothing in humans, he says. He adds that nonstandardized ultrasound equipment makes it hard to answer basic safety questions: “How long is the blood-brain barrier open? How big are the pores? What’s the damage?”Hynynen, who is working with a medical imaging company to commercialize the technique, notes that ultrasound application to the brains of animals including rabbits and monkeys has produced no negative side effects. And Mainprize’s clinical trial may provide more safety data. He hopes to open the blood-barrier to increase chemotherapy delivery to a brain cancer patient just before he operates to remove the tumor. Using Hynynen’s technology, he and colleagues will apply ultrasound and microbubbles to tissue in and around the tumor, as well as to several unaffected brain areas. Then they’ll examine excised tissue for hemorrhages and to see if the treatment boosted the concentration of the drug. A similar trial is now recruiting participants in France.If these phase I trials establish safety, “it opens the door for phase II trials looking to see if there’s any benefit” to opening the blood-brain barrier, including for conditions beyond cancer, Mainprize says. Despite his doubts, Bacskai can’t fully resist the dream driving this fledging field. “Imagine if your grandmother went to the clinic once per year, and it cleared amyloid β and that was all it took—no surgery, no drugs. It would be amazing.” Click to view the privacy policy. Required fields are indicated by an asterisk (*) From imaging babies to blasting apart kidney stones, ultrasound has proved to be a versatile tool for physicians. Now, several research teams aim to unleash the technology on some of the most feared brain diseases.The blood-brain barrier, a tightly packed layer of cells that lines the brain’s blood vessels, protects it from infections, toxins, and other threats but makes the organ frustratingly hard to treat. A strategy that combines ultrasound with microscopic blood-borne bubbles can briefly open the barrier, in theory giving drugs or the immune system access to the brain. In the clinic and the lab, that promise is being evaluated.This month, in one of the first clinical tests, Todd Mainprize, a neurosurgeon at the University of Toronto in Canada, hopes to use ultrasound to deliver a dose of chemotherapy to a malignant brain tumor. And in some of the most dramatic evidence of the technique’s potential, a research team reports this week in Science Translational Medicine that they used it to rid mice of abnormal brain clumps similar to those in Alzheimer’s disease, restoring lost memory and cognitive functions. If such findings can be translated from mice to humans, “it will revolutionize the way we treat brain disease,” says biophysicist Kullervo Hynynen of the Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, who originated the ultrasound method. 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Opening up the blood-brain barrier just enough to get a beneficial effect without scorching tissue, triggering an excessive immune reaction, or causing hemorrhage is the “crux,” says Brian Bacskai, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who studies Alzheimer’s disease and used to work with Hynynen.Safely and temporarily opening the blood-brain barrier is a long-sought goal in medicine. About a decade ago, Hynynen began exploring a strategy combining ultrasound and microbubbles. The premise is that ultrasound causes such bubbles to expand and contract, jostling the cells forming the blood-brain barrier and making it slightly leaky.
EMMANUEL THÉVENOT/LAB OF ISABELLE AUBERT; COURTESY OF SUNNYBROOK RESEARCH INSTITUTE Sign up for our daily newsletter Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Country Email
Click to view the privacy policy. Required fields are indicated by an asterisk (*) Originally published by E&E News.The World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer agency is firmly defending its finding that a widely used herbicide is “probably carcinogenic” despite reports cited by key House lawmakers.The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC’s) unwavering stance was publicly revealed yesterday by Oregon Representative Suzanne Bonamici, the top Democrat on the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment, at a full committee hearing on the controversial 2015 glyphosate evaluation. Bonamici entered into the hearing record a series of responses that IARC Director Christopher Wild has sent to the panel in recent months.Wild specifically criticized two stories from Reuters reporter Kate Kelland that suggested the evaluation, known as a monograph, excluded key information. Both stories were cited in letters to IARC by Republican Representatives Lamar Smith of Texas and Andy Biggs of Arizona, the respective chairmen of the full committee and Environment Subcommittee. This kind of shoddy work is unacceptable from any scientific body, let alone one funded by the American taxpayer. For instance, Representative Frank Lucas (R-Oklahoma), the vice chairman of the full committee, slammed IARC for evaluating the carcinogenic potential of chemicals but not determining the dose at which they could cause cancer.IARC’s focus on conducting hazard rather than risk assessments is because the agency refuses to “bring their scientific methods into the modern age,” Lucas said. “This kind of shoddy work is unacceptable from any scientific body, let alone one funded by the American taxpayer.”Wild, however, said last month in his response that “identifying carcinogenic hazards is a crucially important and necessary first step in risk assessment and management; it should be a ‘red flag’ to those charged with protecting public health.” Regulators can then take immediate action to ban or label carcinogenic substances, or use the observed data to determine how much risk the substances pose.”IARC defers risk assessment and risk management to national and international bodies, restricting itself to provision of hazard identification as a scientific foundation to those subsequent steps,” Wild added.Anna Lowit, a senior science adviser in EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs who testified yesterday, also defended her agency’s draft risk assessment on glyphosate, which found that the common weedkiller doesn’t cause cancer (Greenwire, 19 December, 2017).The draft assessment was released as part of a registration review for Roundup that began in 2009. Lowit said EPA plans to begin accepting comments on it soon.Roundup has been on the market since 1974. Approximately 270 million pounds are applied annually, mainly to corn and soybeans that have been genetically modified to tolerate the herbicide.EPA’s internal watchdog is currently investigating allegations that former agency official Jess Rowland colluded with Monsanto during the review process to counter suggestions it endangers human health (E&E News PM, 7 June, 2017).Reprinted from E&E Daily with permission from E&E News. Copyright 2017. E&E provides essential news for energy and environment professionals at www.eenews.net. Sign up for our daily newsletter Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Country Read more… Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX) leads the U.S. House of Representatives science committee. Email By Corbin Hiar, E&E NewsFeb. 7, 2018 , 3:30 PM One claimed that Aaron Blair, a U.S. National Cancer Institute epidemiologist who led the glyphosate review, excluded from the assessment forthcoming research that he knew would find no link between the herbicide and cancer (Greenwire, 15 June, 2017).That was because “IARC monographs are based on independent scientific review of published and not on the basis of unpublished or ‘secret data’ unavailable publicly,” Wild explained in a 20 November 2017 letter.Notably, under Smith, the Science Committee has railed against U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that are based on what he often refers to as “secret science.””Therefore,” Wild wrote, “it is false to assert that Dr. Blair was in a position to withhold critical information from IARC.”The other story from last year flagged by Science Committee leaders claimed that IARC omitted evidence that went against its conclusion that glyphosate likely causes cancer in humans and edited a draft review significantly before it was released to the public (Greenwire, 20 October, 2017).But most of the differences between that draft and the final monograph “specifically relate to a review article” that litigation against Monsanto Co., which uses glyphosate in its popular Roundup herbicides, revealed was ghostwritten by the company, Wild said (E&E News PM, 12 October, 2017).”The Working Group considered that information in the review article and its supplement was insufficient for independent evaluation of the individual studies and the conclusions reached by the Monsanto scientist and other author,” he added. “As a result, the draft was revised.”Abbe Serphos, the global head of communications for Reuters, offered a one-line response to the errors IARC alleged: “We stand by our reporting.”Smith and Biggs had also asked Wild to provide a witness for the hearing. When they didn’t immediately receive one, the lawmakers threatened to pull federal support for the agency, which has received more than $48 million from the U.S. since 1985 (Greenwire, 8 December, 2017).Wild politely declined their demand and instead invited them to visit him in Lyon, France, where the WHO’s cancer agency is based. Then in an 11 January letter, he acknowledged “the valuable support of the US National Institutes of Health” and noted that the agency is one of the most highly cited medical research organizations in the world.It is unclear if Smith and Biggs visited IARC. The committee didn’t respond to a request for comment on Wild’s offer.In a 10-page January response that summarized and expounded on the points he made in his letters to lawmakers, Wild also preemptively rebutted many of the criticisms that Republican committee members and the witnesses they invited made of IARC yesterday. Under fire by U.S. politicians, World Health Organization defends its claim that an herbicide causes cancer Representative Frank Lucas (R–OK) NASA/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0) Country * Afghanistan Aland Islands Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote d’Ivoire Croatia Cuba Curaçao Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People’s Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Qatar Reunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Barthélemy Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Martin (French part) Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten (Dutch part) Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Vietnam Virgin Islands, British Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe
Sign up for our daily newsletter Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Country Greg McCormick Many new U.S. leprosy cases likely are somehow transmitted from armadillos to humans. U.S. leprosy budget cut closes clinics, threatens research The United States has long had the National Hansen’s Disease Program, which is based in Baton Rouge and has a network of 16 clinics across the continental United States and Puerto Rico that treat the disease. (A clinic in Hawaii is its own program and is funded separately.) The clinics regularly send patient samples to the national program, which has a prominent research wing. Administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in Rockville, Maryland, the national program has, for several years, had a budget of $15.2 million. The new congressional budget reduces it to $13.7 million, a cut of about 10%.The program was spared a bigger, 23% cut prescribed in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, which would have reduced HRSA funding to $11.7 million. In anticipation of the deeper cut, HRSA on 1 January closed clinics in six states. In the continental United States, the only remaining Hansen disease clinics are in California, New York, Texas, and Florida. “There are large areas of the country where there’s no expertise,” says David Scollard, a pathologist who ran the national program until 2016. “The research done in this country also is heavily associated with the clinical situation. When you shrink that, you shrink the kind of studies done around this.”Although a 10% cut may seem minor, Richard Truman, a microbiologist who headed the research branch of the national program until retiring last year, says it will likely impact research—given that patient care has long been the main focus of the program. Truman says the cut “comes completely out of the blue,” and warns that the priority shifts driven by it may threaten funding to the only laboratory colony in the world of armadillos infected with M. leprae. “Understanding the links people have to armadillos and how this bug is transmitted between animals and human beings is an important question,” Truman says. The animal model also has been used to test vaccines, drugs, and pathogenesis of the disease.HRSA denied a request from Science to interview the current head of the national program, but issued a statement in response to questions about the impact budget cuts might have on research. “The National Hansen’s Disease Programs is currently assessing all services it provides to align resources with the appropriate levels of care and research.”Truman says the cuts already have shrunk the small community of skilled clinicians who care for patients with Hansen disease, who ultimately will find it more difficult to find quality care. “It can be expensive to treat patients who are not well managed and it can be very harmful to them,” he says. “You have to have some sort of brain trust or cohort of individuals who can translate new technology into the field or you’re going to go back to 1980s.”*Correction, 2 April, 2:45 p.m.: An earlier version of this article misspelled Richard Truman’s name.*Correction, 4 April, 12:15 p.m.: This story has been revised to clarify the origin of new cases diagnosed each year in the United States. By Jon CohenApr. 2, 2018 , 12:25 PM
Country * Afghanistan Aland Islands Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote d’Ivoire Croatia Cuba Curaçao Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People’s Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Qatar Reunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Barthélemy Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Martin (French part) Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten (Dutch part) Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Vietnam Virgin Islands, British Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Email Click to view the privacy policy. Required fields are indicated by an asterisk (*) Leprosy, a much feared and stigmatized scourge in history, affects a tiny number of Americans, but Congress’s decision to make a modest cut to its annual budget for care and research will have an outsize negative impact, leaders in the field warn.About 3300 people in the United States need care for leprosy, also known as Hansen disease, which can damage nerves and the eyes, discolor skin, and cause disfigurement if untreated. Although antibiotics can clear the infection with Mycobacterium leprae, the causative bacterium, U.S. clinicians often have difficulty diagnosing this rare and confusing disease. As a result, patients sometimes do not receive proper diagnosis and care until they suffer from paralysis, blindness, clawed hands, and a collapsed nose.The World Health Organization estimates that about 200,000 people globally still suffer from the disease, with the majority of new cases in Brazil and India. The United States has fewer than 200 newly diagnosed cases a year. Some cases are thought to occur because of transmission from armadillos, which live in southern states and are naturally infected with M. leprae. The exact route of transmission from armadillos to humans is not well understood, but it may have to do with coming in contact with the animals or with soil that’s contaminated with their feces or urine.
Nunavut and Svalbard topped the list. Travel accounted for nearly half the cost of Arctic work. Airfare alone could be $6000 for a single round-trip ticket from Halifax to Resolute Bay, a hamlet in Nunavut. When Mallory and his colleagues factored in the cost of conducting community workshops—two researchers traveling to two northern sites for 5 days, including honoraria and Inuktitut translators—the price tag surged to $71,000, nearly 19 times more than working in the south. And, the authors told Science, these costs appear to be rising faster than inflation.Isla Myers-Smith, an ecologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not a co-author on the paper, said the budgets aligned with her experience, particularly the high cost of travel. During the summer field season, Myers-Smith travels as far north as Herschel Island in the Beaufort Sea for her research on the response of tundra vegetation to climate warming. “If we only work at the sites that are easy to get to, we’re not getting a representative sample of what’s really going on,” she says.Many countries have additional funds available for north-bound scientists. In Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) offers up to CA$25,000 annually to offset some of the costs, and the Polar Continental Shelf Program, which manages northern logistics, also provides some grants. But not all the researchers who want or need the supplement get it, nor does the extra money “level the playing field,” Mallory says. “I certainly don’t get eight times more funding than someone working in the south.”Marine ecologist Jennifer Provencher, a postdoctoral fellow in Mallory’s research group, feels that pinch. In the past, many Arctic researchers did “fly in, fly out” science that did not much involve northern communities. Today, scientists spend more time on the ground and are sometimes legally obligated to consult with communities to receive a research permit. Provencher travels during the field season to collect birds, eggs, and other samples, and in the off-season to consult with indigenous hunters, host workshops, and teach students. “These are all things we want to do and feel are necessary, but the funding doesn’t always match,” she says.In Canada, early career researchers tend to get about 25% less core funding than established researchers. That may mean they are unable to do Arctic research at all, the authors write.NSERC spokesperson Valérie Levert-Gagnon acknowledged the high costs of Arctic research. Over the past 5 years, she said, NSERC’s Northern Research Supplement Program funded 73% of applications; supported projects received about 50% of the amounts requested. NSERC will conduct a scheduled review of its grants and supplement programs this year to see how effectively they address the needs of research communities.Mallory wants funding agencies to understand the true cost of doing Arctic research. “We’re hoping this [study] can be used as a yardstick.” Email Sign up for our daily newsletter Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Country By Hannah HoagJun. 18, 2018 , 10:30 AM Mark Mallory, who has studied Arctic seabirds for more than 20 years, often notes in his scientific papers how expensive it is to conduct fieldwork in the far north, as have some of his colleagues. But when they recently tallied up their costs systematically, they were shocked to find the true price of northern research was eight times greater than for similar studies of seabirds in southern locations.The findings, reported on 4 June online in Arctic Science, are among the first to quantify the high costs of Arctic research. The authors say funding sources are often insufficient to cover these expenses, limiting scientists from collecting enough data to understand how Arctic ecosystems are responding to climate change.Mallory, a professor at Acadia University in Wolfville, Canada, convened seabird researchers who work in the Arctic and in temperate regions. Based on their actual expenses, they estimated costs for a generic scenario in which three researchers establish a field camp for 4 weeks to monitor the breeding success of seabirds, including travel; accommodation; and shipping food, equipment, and supplies for sites in Nunavut and northern Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada; Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago; Greenland; and the Aleutian Islands. The researchers compared these estimates to calculations for southern locales. Fieldwork in the Arctic is surprisingly costly, limiting the research done there
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After visits with Vesta and Ceres, asteroid-exploring Dawn spacecraft goes dark The diversity of planets was a surprise, however. Multiplanet systems proved to be common, but they often looked wildly unlike our solar system in the sizes and orbits of their planets. “Theorists haven’t caught up yet,” Macintosh says. For instance, the most common planet type in the sample is a variety unknown in our solar system, halfway between Earth and Neptune in size.The planets came so fast and furiously that, a few years into the mission, the Kepler team ended a data policy that gave mission scientists exclusive access. It began to release processed data after a few months and, last year, it began to release raw data immediately. “It made it easy for people to enter the field,” Macintosh says.There were hiccups, however. Operators found that both the camera’s output and the stars themselves were more variable than predicted, making it harder to spot the tiny light dips of true Earth twins. By 2013, two of the four gyros used for pointing had failed, and the drifting spacecraft had to abandon its fixed view of the stars. Mission controllers then took advantage of sunlight pressure to partially steady the craft, but the rate of discovery slowed. As a result, the mission had to abandon a primary goal: assessing the frequency of Earth twins around sunlike stars. But given the wealth of data that hardly seems to matter. “People don’t really care,” Queloz says.Successors are ready to pick up the torch. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched in April to look for nearby exoplanets, has already found two, with one more awaiting confirmation. And the European Space Agency has two missions in the works: the Characterising Exoplanets Satellite, due for launch in 2019, and Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars in 2026. “It’s an OK time to say goodbye,” Macintosh says. Carter Roberts/NASA Country * Afghanistan Aland Islands Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote d’Ivoire Croatia Cuba Curaçao Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People’s Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Qatar Reunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Barthélemy Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Martin (French part) Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten (Dutch part) Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Vietnam Virgin Islands, British Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe *Update, 30 October, 4:55 p.m.: NASA announced today that after 9 years in space, the Kepler planet hunter has run out of fuel and will be switched off in its current safe orbit far from Earth. It found a menagerie of many planet types, some unknown in our solar system and thought to be impossible. It was “the little spacecraft that could,” project scientist Jessie Dotson told a press briefing. “It did everything we asked of it, and more.” Here is our early obituary, published on 17 October:Kepler, the NASA space telescope that almost single-handedly transformed the study of exoplanets, may have sent its last data home. Managers halted the craft’s latest observing campaign last month, when its pointing became unstable—a sign of low fuel supplies. To conserve fuel, they put it in “nap mode” until a scheduled high-speed download opportunity began on 10 October. Observations are still on hold as the mission team sifts the spacecraft’s vital signs for hints of the remaining fuel supply, but the end could come suddenly and without warning, says project scientist Jessie Dotson of NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California. “The only way to tell is to watch the spacecraft,” she says. “We’ll know when we know.”When the end comes, it will be a bittersweet conclusion to a prolific mission that upended theories. Before Kepler, astronomers had found only a few hundred exoplanets, mostly gas giants uncomfortably close to their parent stars. Kepler found thousands, of many sizes—including 30 tantalizingly similar to Earth. Kepler, which pioneered a novel approach to planet finding, was a gamble, says Bruce Macintosh of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. But, “The universe cooperated, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.” Email Until several of its pointing gyroscopes failed, Kepler stared at a fixed field of the sky containing 150,000 stars. By Daniel CleryOct. 30, 2018 , 4:55 PM Kepler’s success is a vindication for William Borucki, the NASA space scientist who struggled to persuade the agency to build it. Early exoplanet discoveries came from observations of stars wobbling from the tug of large planets. Borucki suggested planets would also reveal themselves when they passed in front their host star, blocking a tiny fraction of its light. He just needed a photometer 1000 times more sensitive than any available. “You can do an awful lot with dedicated people and technology if you persist,” says Borucki, now retired from NASA Ames.Persist he did. Borucki’s proposals were rejected four times before NASA finally approved the mission in 2001. “He really had a long fight,” says Didier Queloz, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom who in 1995 helped discover the first exoplanet around a normal star, using the wobble technique.The $692 million Kepler finally launched in 2009, with a 1.4-meter mirror and a 95-megapixel camera, the largest in space at the time. It stared at the same patch of sky, about the size of a fist at arm’s length, simultaneously monitoring the brightness of 150,000 stars. To date, it has captured about 2650 confirmed exoplanets, and nearly 3000 more await confirmation. Among the haul are 30 rocky planets, all less than twice the size of Earth, orbiting in habitable zones where liquid water could exist. Assuming Kepler’s star field is typical—and allowing for the fact that it detects only the small fraction of planets that transit—astronomers estimate the Milky Way harbors at least as many planets as stars: 100 billion. Kepler, NASA’s planet-hunting space telescope, is dead Click to view the privacy policy. Required fields are indicated by an asterisk (*) Related Sign up for our daily newsletter Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Country
Read more… Originally published by E&E NewsPlans to drill Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have underestimated the effects of climate change, one arm of the Interior department is warning another.The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) pointed to several aspects of climate change that were minimized or absent in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) draft environmental impact statement (EIS). In some cases, the service corrected BLM characterizations of climate research. Click to view the privacy policy. Required fields are indicated by an asterisk (*) Parts of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been opened to oil drilling after a decadeslong battle. 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Country Email It’s an unusual—but not unprecedented—critique within an administration that has downplayed climate change in its regulatory actions, experts said. The administration has suffered court defeats after low-balling the emissions impact of projects; the FWS comments suggest Interior also might be underestimating how global warming affects the projects themselves.”The effects of a changing arctic environment should be further addressed within the EIS. There is a large body of literature that describes the potential landscape level changes on the North Slope, including changes in permafrost, hydrology, land cover and infrastructure stability,” the service said, pointing to several specific studies.”We recommend that studies like these be included in the analysis of potential impacts to various development scenarios,” said the formal comments signed by director of the FWS Alaska Region, Greg Siekaniec, a career official.The service corrected BLM’s statement that the biosphere is gaining mass as it sequesters a significant portion of human’s carbon dioxide emissions.”Please remove this line as a significant fraction of human-sourced CO2 is also not sequestered by the biosphere, resulting in increasing CO2 atmospheric concentrations and increasingly obvious patterns of climate change effects, particularly in the Arctic,” the service said.The impacts of climate change could affect endangered species protections, which in turn could alter demands on drilling projects.FWS said the draft “does not accurately assess” climate impacts on birds, and rebuffed insinuations that longer summers could help birds by bringing more insects and lengthening mating seasons. The service also pointed to already-visible effects from the landscape becoming more dry in some places and newly inundated from glacier melt in others.”Contrary to what is stated in the DEIS, avian habitat is changing rapidly, both on the coast and inland tundra areas” FWS said. “Please ensure the EIS accurately assesses the potential impacts to birds and their habitat resulting from a changing climate based on the best available science.”Sea-level rise, sea-ice loss and stronger storm surges will make conditions on the barrier islands more precarious for birds and polar bears than BLM acknowledges, potentially driving them inland toward operations, the service said.More flooding heightens the risk of drilling operations causing contamination of entire populations, especially with heavy metals, FWS said.The service also urged BLM to correct or remove its assertion that more saltwater intrusion could be a positive, saying there’s no evidence that “tundra may be colonized by salt-tolerant species and develop into salt marsh, a rare but important post-breeding habitat for geese.”The comments were dated March 13, a day after Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) in Silver Spring, Maryland, released leaked internal memos on the scientific “unknowns” of Arctic drilling. PEER said Interior had hidden the memos and buried unfavorable science. The department and Siekaniec said that was false (Greenwire, 12 March).Legal experts said these comments probably won’t change the trajectory of ANWR drilling by themselves, but they could offer more grist for the lawsuits that will inevitably challenge the leasing—and could drag out beyond the 2020 election. They could also form the basis for Congress rolling back the areas available to drill.”Sounds like authentic science is raising its head above water, which is refreshing,” said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law scholar at Columbia University.”The fact that another agency has raised the [climate] issue makes it more perilous to ignore it in the final EIS, but it does not necessarily compel a different outcome,” he said.It’s notable that BLM is facing such basic scientific concerns after a draft has already been published, said Kate Kelly, director of public lands at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C.”They’re ignoring existing, peer-reviewed literature, and two, they have made no attempt to fill the glaring science gaps on impacts to the refuge,” she said. “There’s a lot more that we need to know before we undertake such a massive project in this wildlife refuge.”An Interior spokeswoman said the FWS submission numbered among the 4,000 unique comments on the draft, which received more than a million comments overall.”BLM has an obligation to consider all of these comments—including those from its sister agency—and anticipates they will inform the Final EIS (FEIS) in multiple ways,” press secretary Molly Block said.Read the FWS comments here.Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. Copyright 2019. E&E provides essential news for energy and environment professionals at www.eenews.net The Asahi Shimbun/Contributor Plan to drill in Alaskan wildlife refuge downplays climate impact, U.S. agency argues By Adam Aton, E&E NewsApr. 25, 2019 , 3:00 PM
In undecided Congress, first open call for Priyanka: She should be party chief “He used to call the students into his room and would ask them to massage his hands and feet before raping them,” the officer added.The incident triggered protests in the area with hundreds of people demanding severe punishment for the teacher. Karnataka: SC to rule today, says Speaker’s powers need relook Karnataka: SC to rule today, says Speaker’s powers need relook NRC deadline approaching, families stranded in Assam floods stay home Advertising Top News Her uncle filed a case while the father of another girl filed another case against the teacher on similar charges.During the interrogation, Belali told police that he has raped eight of the 35 students of the institution.“Initially, charges of attempted rape were brought against Belali. Later, we talked to the student and learnt that she was raped,” a police official said.The man has admitted to raping eight students aged between 8 and 11 in one year, he said. 1 Comment(s)
Abul Khayer Belali, 33, who joined a madrasa for girls a year ago, confessed to the crime after being arrested on charges of trying to rape another girl student, bdnews24.com reported.Belali, also a cleric at a nearby mosque, was caught by locals who beat him up before handing him over to the police after the eight-year-old class II student cried for help as he attempted to rape her on Friday, the report said.The girl, whose mother works as a domestic help, was one of the 15 residential students of the madrasa, it said. Advertising In undecided Congress, first open call for Priyanka: She should be party chief By PTI |Dhaka | Updated: July 7, 2019 2:25:17 pm Best Of Express 
During the interrogation, Belali told police that he has raped eight of the 35 students of the institution.A madrasa teacher has been arrested for allegedly raping eight students aged between 8 and 11 inside the institution in Bangladesh, police said Sunday. NRC deadline approaching, families stranded in Assam floods stay home 
By Sally Robertson, B.Sc.Oct 16 2018Reviewed by Kate Anderton, B.Sc. (Editor)An investigation has found that hundreds of over-the-counter dietary supplements contain unapproved pharmaceutical ingredients that have the potential to cause serious adverse health effects. Image Credit: Lallapie / ShutterstockThe analysis of 10 years-worth of FDA records, showed that between 2007 to 2016, the unapproved substances were present in 746 brands of dietary supplements commonly marketed for sexual enhancement, weight loss, and muscle building.As reported in the journal JAMA Network Open, researchers from the California Department of Food and Agriculture extracted data from the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Tainted Products Marketed as Dietary Supplements_CDER database.The data included the date, product name, company, hidden ingredients, product category and source of sample for each product.The most commonly identified contaminants were sildenafil for sexual enhancement, sibutramine for weight loss and designer steroids for muscle building. Approximately one-fifth (157) of the products contained more than one adulterant and in two cases, up to six contaminants were identified.The researchers say the adulterants have the potential to cause adverse health effects “owing to accidental misuse, overuse, or interaction with other medications, underlying health conditions, or other pharmaceuticals within the supplement.”Furthermore, of the 746 products found to be contaminated, less than half (48%) were recalled as a result, leaving the majority of adulterated supplements available for sale.In an associated commentary, general internist Pieter Cohen warns that more than FDA action will be needed to ensure that contaminated supplements are removed from the market, saying that congress would need to reform the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. In the meantime, the process that the FDA is required to follow to remove supplements from the marketplace will remain cumbersome and time-consuming; nevertheless, the agency’s failure to aggressively use all available tools to remove pharmaceutically adulterated supplements from commerce leaves consumers’ health at risk.”
Source:This article is based the original investigation, published by JAMA and an invited commentary.
Source:https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2019/february/health-related-google-searches-doubled-in-the-week-before-patients-emergency-department-visits Reviewed by Alina Shrourou, B.Sc. (Editor)Feb 20 2019Penn researchers found that patients are often willing to share their Google search histories with medical researchers and allow them to be analyzed alongside their medical recordsHealth-related internet searches doubled during the week before patients visited an emergency department, according to a new study from researchers at Penn Medicine who examined consenting patients’ Google search histories in relation to their electronic health records (EHRs). The study, published today in BMJ Open, is believed to be the first of its kind to link private search data to EHRs at the individual level. The study also shows that patients–roughly half–are willing to share their search histories and combine them with their personal health records.”Even though we’re in the early stages of this research, we’ve learned a lot about the questions patients ask before making the decision to visit an emergency department (ED), as well as questions they have about their care after their visit,” said lead author Jeremy Asch, an innovation strategist in the Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health. “Knowing what patients look for before visiting an ED can help us anticipate their needs and direct them to the best sources of care. And knowing what they search for afterward tells us how we can communicate better and help patients on their paths.”Between 2016 and 2017, the researchers approached adult patients in a large, urban emergency department to determine whether they would be interested in sharing their Google search histories and electronic health records for the study. Of more than 300 patients who reported having a Google account, almost half (49 percent) were willing to share access to their search histories and health records with researchers.Google searches for health-related information doubled among patients in the week before an ED visit, with more than half searching for clinical information related to the reason for their visit, such as the symptoms they were experiencing or potential illnesses they believed they might have. Another 15 percent searched for the location of the emergency department or other logistical information. Patients often searched health-related terms multiple times before heading to the hospital.The results also revealed gaps in communication that clinicians may not realize they’ve created. One participant in the study first searched, “How big is a walnut?” followed by “What is a fibrous tumor?” The medical records revealed that the patient had been told she had a “walnut-sized fibrous tumor.”Related StoriesMathematical model helps quantify metastatic cell behaviorResearch sheds light on sun-induced DNA damage and repairTAU’s new Translational Medical Research Center acquires MILabs’ VECTor PET/SPECT/CT”The physician caring for that patient might have believed effective communication took place,” said Asch. “But if the patient then had to look up the two key terms–‘walnut’ and ‘fibrous tumor’–it’s clear that the patient communication wasn’t effective enough.”Senior author Raina Merchant, MD, director of the Center for Digital Health and an associate professor of Emergency Medicine, pointed out that this type of data can “reveal what patients are uncomfortable asking about,” along with what they might not understand. Through this, physicians can adjust how they present information or approach certain topics.”Rather than sending patients to ‘Dr. Google,’ we wonder whether we can provide more useful information in their appointments based on what they really care about,” Merchant said.Other studies examining social media have turned up promising results, such as one by Merchant and her colleagues showing that terms in Facebook posts can predict the diagnosis of depression three months before doctors put it in the medical record. But search histories are hidden and may reveal what people are truly wondering or might be too embarrassed to bring up. In this way, the search histories examined in this study are potentially more revealing than Tweets or Facebook posts.”When you read Facebook posts, you are listening to what people want to tell you, but when you read search histories, you learn what people want to know,” said Merchant. “In the end, really understanding what people want to know may be the most beneficial for impacting care.”Asch said that the rate of people who consented to have the researchers analyze their search histories was actually consistent with previous studies examining social media posts.”When the study began, we wanted to understand more about patients’ willingness to share online search data,” Asch said. “As it turns out, people are fairly willing to share this information for health research. And with the right privacy and use protections, it’s a great thing. People use digital resources constantly, and we want to know what the data says about us and how it can help.”
Reviewed by James Ives, M.Psych. (Editor)Apr 25 2019A new study has found that people who reported intense feelings of responsibility were susceptible to developing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) was published in the International Journal of Cognitive Therapy.”People with OCD [are] tortured by repeatedly occurring negative thinking and they take some strategy to prevent it… GAD is a very pervasive type of anxiety. [Patients] worry about everything.” describes Associate Professor Yoshinori Sugiura of the University of Hiroshima.Anxiety and OCD-like behaviors, such as checking if the door is locked, are common in the general population. However, it is the frequency and intensity of these behaviors or feelings that make the difference between a character trait and disorder.”For example, you’re using two audio recorders instead of one,” says Sugiura when interviewed. “It’s just in case one fails … having two recorders will enhance your work but if you prepare [too] many recorders … that will interfere with your work.”A problem Sugiura identifies in psychology is that each disorder that sufferers experience has several competing theories regarding their cause.”There are too many theories and therapies for mental disorders for one expert to master them all.” elaborates Sugiura.The goal of this research team (consisting of Sugiura and Associate Professor Brian Fisak (University of Central Florida)) was to find a common cause for these disorders and simplify the theories behind them.Sugiura and Fisak first defined and explored “inflated responsibility”. The team identified 3 types of inflated responsibility: 1) Responsibility to prevent or avoid danger and/or harm, 2) Sense of personal responsibility and blame for negative outcomes and 3) Responsibility to continue thinking about a problem. The research group combined tests used to study OCD and GAD as there had been no previous work that compared these tests in the same study.Related StoriesNew study explores link between traffic-related air pollution and childhood anxietyIndividual variation in genes alters our ability to regulate emotionsCannabidiol reduces cue-induced craving and anxiety in individuals with history of heroin abuseTo establish whether inflated responsibility was a predictor of OCD or GAD, Sugiura and Fisak sent an online questionnaire to American university students. Through this survey they found that respondents who scored higher in questions about responsibility were more likely to exhibit behaviors that resemble those of OCD or GAD patients. Personal Responsibility and Blame and the Responsibility to Continue Thinking, had the strongest link to the disorders.The researchers would like to clarify that this preliminary study is not representative of the general population due to the small scale and skewed population (mostly female university students). However, the promising findings suggest that this format can be applied to a larger population and yield similar results.Sugiura is currently looking into how to reduce responsibility and the preliminary outcomes are positive. When asked for any tips to reduce anxiety or obsessive behaviors he said:”[A] very quick or easy way is to realize that responsibility is working behind your worry. I ask [patients] “Why are you worried so much?” so they will answer “I can’t help but worry” but they will not spontaneously think “Because I feel responsibility” … just realizing it will make some space between responsibility thinking and your behavior.”Source: https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en
Reviewed by James Ives, M.Psych. (Editor)May 8 2019Communicating food benefits to children that they can relate to may get them to eat healthier.That’s according to a study published today in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior by Washington State University and Florida State University scientists.The researchers found affirming statements like ‘eat your lentils if you want to grow bigger and run faster’ were more effective at getting kids to make healthy food choices than presenting the food repeatedly without conversation.In fact, kids ate twice as much healthy food when they were told how it would benefit them in terms they could understand as opposed to when they were given the food with no contextual information.”Every child wants to be bigger, faster, able to jump higher,” said Jane Lanigan, associate professor in the WSU Department of Human Development and lead author of the study. “Using these types of examples made the food more attractive to eat.”Previous research shows that offering foods repeatedly increases the likelihood that kids will try something new. But that research didn’t look at the context of those offerings, Lanigan said.In their study, Lanigan and her colleagues wanted to see if child-centered nutrition phrases (CCNPs), affirmative statements that simply convey the benefits of healthy food, influenced young children to make healthier food choices. The phrases focus on goals children have and are based on accurate nutrition information.The WSU and FSU research team ran an experiment where they offered healthy foods to a group of three-to-five-year old children for six weeks.Before beginning, the 87 children in the experiment ranked how much they liked four foods chosen from different food groups including, green peppers (vegetable), tomatoes (vegetables), quinoa (grain), and lentils (protein).Related StoriesNew therapeutic food boosts key growth-promoting gut microbes in malnourished childrenGuidelines to help children develop healthy habits early in lifeDaily intake for phosphates in infants, children can exceed health guidance valuesThe kids were then offered two of the foods they liked the least twice a week. Over the six-week experiment, the researchers presented the children one of their low-rated foods with pre-selected age-appropriate facts about the benefits of the food. The other food was merely given to them to taste. A coin flip determined which food would be paired with the CCNP. The experiment was built into the kids’ normal class routine, Lanigan said.The researchers then measured how much the kids ate at three times: pre-test, post-test, and one month after the study ended. The immediate post-test showed no result, likely because the kids “got sick of eating the same foods,” Lanigan said.Results and impactThe month-after measurement told a different story.”We found that a month later, the kids ate twice as much of their CCNP food with the repeated exposure compared to the food without the positive words,” Lanigan said. “For example, when we presented lentils we would say, ‘This will help you grow bigger and run faster.”Over time, Lanigan and colleagues’ study shows that using CCNPs is likely to increase the amount of healthy food that children eat.”I have two kids and I probably could have done things differently when trying to get them to eat healthier,” Lanigan said. “We wanted to fill a gap, where parents are often told what their kids should be eating but not how to get them to eat it. And that’s really important.” Source:https://wsu.edu/
Reviewed by Alina Shrourou, B.Sc. (Editor)May 15 2019Researchers at UC Davis and UC San Francisco have found a way to teach a computer to precisely detect one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease in human brain tissue, delivering a proof of concept for a machine-learning approach to distinguishing critical markers of the disease.Amyloid plaques are clumps of protein fragments in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease that destroy nerve cell connections. Much like the way Facebook recognizes faces based on captured images, the machine learning tool developed by a team of University of California scientists can “see” if a sample of brain tissue has one type of amyloid plaque or another, and do it very quickly.The findings, published May 15 in Nature Communications, suggest that machine learning can augment the expertise and analysis of an expert neuropathologist. The tool allows them to analyze thousands of times more data and ask new questions that would not be possible with the limited data processing capabilities of even the most highly trained human experts. In this study, she partnered with Michael J. Keiser, PhD, an assistant professor in UCSF’s Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, to determine if they could teach a computer to automate the laborious process of identifying and analyzing tiny amyloid plaques of various types in large slices of autopsied human brain tissue. For this job, Keiser and his team designed a “convolutional neural network” (CNN), a computer program designed to recognize patterns based on thousands of human-labeled examples.To create enough training examples to teach the CNN algorithm how Dugger analyzes brain tissue, the UCSF team worked with her to devise a method that allowed her to rapidly annotate or label tens of thousands of images from a collection half a million close-up images of tissue from 43 healthy and diseased brain samples.Like a computer dating service that allows users to swipe left or right to label someone’s photo “hot” or “not,” they developed a web platform that allowed Dugger to look one-at-a-time at highly zoomed-in regions of potential plaques and quickly label what she saw there. This digital pathology tool — which researchers called “blob or not” — allowed Dugger to annotate more than 70,000 “blobs,” or plaque candidates, at a rate of about 2,000 images per hour.Related StoriesResearch sheds light on sun-induced DNA damage and repairOlympus launches next-generation X Line objectives for clinical, research applicationsOlympus Europe and Cytosurge join hands to accelerate drug development, single cell researchThe UCSF team used this database of tens of thousands of labeled example images to train their CNN machine-learning algorithm to identify different types of brain changes seen in Alzheimer’s disease. That includes discriminating between so-called cored and diffuse plaques and identifying abnormalities in blood vessels. The researchers showed that their algorithm could process an entire whole-brain slice slide with 98.7% accuracy, with speed only limited by the number of computer processors they used. (In the current study they used a single graphics card like those used by home gamers.)The team then performed rigorous tests of the computer’s identification skills to make sure its analysis was biologically valid.”It’s notoriously hard to know what a machine-learning algorithm is actually doing under the hood, but we can open the black box and ask it to show us why it made its predictions,” Keiser explained.Keiser emphasized that the machine learning tool is no better at identifying plaques than Dugger, the neuropathologist who trained the computer to find them in the first place.”But it’s tireless and scalable,” he said. “It’s a co-pilot, a force multiplier that extends the scope of what we can accomplish and lets us ask questions we never would have attempted manually. For example, we can look for rare plaques in unexpected places that could give us important clues about the course of the disease.To promote use of the tool, the researchers have made it and the study data publicly available online. This has already generated interactions with other researchers who have evaluated the data and the algorithms in their own labs. In the future, the researchers hope that such algorithms will become a standard part of neuropathology research, trained to help scientists analyze vast amounts of data, tirelessly seeking out patterns that could unlock new insights into causes and potential treatments for the disease. If we can better characterize what we are seeing, this could provide further insights into the diversity of dementia. It opens the door to precision medicine for dementias.These projects are phenomenal examples of cross-disciplinary translational science; neuropathologists, a statistician, a clinician, and engineers coming together, forming a dialogue and working together to solve a problem.”Brittany N. Dugger, PhD We still need the pathologist. This is a tool, like a keyboard is for writing. As keyboards have aided in writing workflows, digital pathology paired with machine learning can aid with neuropathology workflows.”Brittany N. Dugger, PhD, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UC Davis and lead author of the study Source:University of California – Davis Health
Explore further © 2018 AFP MonetizingPopular podcasts have been able to create a successful revenue model as well, say analysts.”When you look at the top 500 or 1,000 podcasts, there are now hundreds of shows with hundreds of thousands of listeners each that are making sustainable amount of revenue in the half a million to million dollar range, which is a significant jump from a few years ago,” said Erik Diehn, chief executive of the podcast ad firm Midroll Media.While the majority of the estimated 500,000 podcasts produce little or no revenue, some top podcasts can generate “millions of dollars” annually, according to Diehn.But some are starting to introduce a subscription model, like Midroll’s Stitcher platform offering “premium” podcasts for $4.99 a month.Spotify, the big streaming music platform, is also in podcasting and recently invested $1 million for a podcast hosted by actress Amy Schumer. Other models like one offered by the Castbox platform are based on the newspaper “paywall” system allowing access to a certain number of podcasts for free, with paying customers getting more.As podcasting becomes more popular, some are attracting big stars and offering tie-ins to film and television programs.Gimlet Media, for example, created the ABC TV show Alex Inc. starring Zach Braff based on one of its podcasts. And the new Amazon show “Homecoming” starring Julia Roberts is based on one of Gimlet’s podcasts.Podcasting is particularly suited to the smartphone generation and is likely to grow with increased use of connected devices.”Right now we’re spending a lot of time thinking about how our work should be presented on connected speakers, in connected cars and other technologies that are here with us but maybe haven’t evolved to their final state yet,” said NPR’s Carruth. “People recognize the value of audio and are really embracing it. That’s an incredible foundation to build on. We can be the trusted companion for people wherever they are.” As radio fades in the new world of digital media, podcasting has become hot. In less than 15 years, on-demand podcasts have become a key part of the media landscape that is luring advertisers to a market that is worth tens of millions of dollars and growing.According to Edison Research, 124 million Americans listen to audio podcasts including 73 million on a monthly basis.”Podcasts are now getting to the point where they sit alongside other forms of premium media like video and books and television and music,” said Matt Lieber, a co-founder of Gimlet Media, a major podcast producer.”Now there are reviewers of podcasts. The Financial Times has a person on staff that reviews podcast. It’s almost like if you’re not listening to podcast you’re out of the loop.”Podcasts are a natural choice for a generation accustomed to on-demand services like Netflix. Listeners are younger and better educated than the average radio listener, with more women in the mix, creating an important demographic for advertisers.Podcast ad revenues doubled in 2017 to $313 million, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). That is far less than the estimated $14 billion in radio ad revenues for 2016, but podcasting is showing strong growth—likely to double again by 2020 according to the PwC/IAB report.A study by New York University researchers found traditional AM/FM radio is rapidly losing ground to in-demand services, especially among younger audience, with listening by those 13-18 down by almost 50 percentage points between 2005 and 2016.”Podcast sponsorship revenue is growing just like the audience is growing,” said Neal Carruth, general manager of podcasts for National Public Radio, a key player in podcasting.”Large brand advertisers have become more interested in recent years. They’re very attracted to the age of the podcast audience, to the engagement of the podcast audience, to the intelligence, the education and the professional accomplishments of the podcast audience. It’s a very desirable audience.”NPR, one of the earliest entrants in podcasting more than a decade ago, has some 17 million listeners to its podcasts such as “Planet Money,” “Fresh Air” and “Ted Radio Hour,” far more than any rivals.
Citation: Podcasts take growing role in shifting media landscape (2018, August 15) retrieved 18 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2018-08-podcasts-role-shifting-media-landscape.html Podcast platform opens up dialogue on mental illness, research finds This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
German car giant Daimler reported Thursday a slump in third-quarter profits, confirming a weaker 2018 outlook as it suffered lower sales and shouldered costs for refits to polluting diesel cars. Citation: Daimler profits hit by diesel scandal (2018, October 25) retrieved 17 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2018-10-daimler-profits-diesel-scandal.html Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler said third quarter earnings were hit by the dieselgate scandal Explore further Net profit at the Mercedes-Benz maker shed 21 percent year-on-year between July and September, to 1.76 billion euros ($2.0 billion), short of analysts’ forecasts.Operating, or underlying profits were even harder hit, falling 27 percent to 2.5 billion euros, while revenues were down 1.0 percent at 40.2 billion.”The automotive industry and thus also Daimler are still in a very challenging environment,” chief executive Dieter Zetsche said in a statement.At the Mercedes-Benz cars arm, the third quarter brought a four-percent drop in unit sales to 795,000 vehicles, and a seven-percent drop in revenue.But the flagship division’s operating profit tumbled 35 percent over the quarter as it faced “ongoing governmental proceedings and measures taken for diesel vehicles”, the group said.Weighing on the carmaker was a recall ordered by the German government in June of some 774,000 cars Berlin said had been equipped with illegal software to conceal excessive emissions of harmful nitrogen oxide gases (NOx).The measure was the biggest blow yet for Daimler in the industry’s “dieselgate” scandal that began with Volkswagen’s 2015 admission to manipulating 11 million vehicles worldwide.Daimler, rival BMW and VW also face a European Commission cartel probe into whether the firms agreed not to compete with each other on anti-pollution systems.New more stringent EU emissions tests have proven to be a bottleneck in getting new cars registered on the roads.The group is also suffering from the US-China trade war as Beijing levies tariffs on its cars exported from America.There was a brighter picture at Daimler’s other major unit, Daimler trucks, which revved up operating profit 38 percent.Looking ahead, executives confirmed their full-year outlook issued last week of a group-wide operating profit “significantly lower” than 2017’s 14.7 billion euros.It was the second time this year that the company had slashed its forecast.Daimler expects group revenue to “increase slightly” compared with the 164 billion euros booked in 2017.
© 2018 AFP This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. Daimler cuts 2018 profit forecast on diesel woes
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber has sought to clean up the image of the global ride-hailing giant as it prepares for its massive Wall Street listing This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. Media reports said the ride-hailing giant is seeking to raise some $10 billion in what would be the largest stock offering of the year.That could result in a valuation close to $100 billion—an impressive figure but below some earlier estimates amid an ebbing of enthusiasm on growth and profitability, the Wall Street Journal reported.The Journal said details of Uber’s initial public offering (IPO) would be released Thursday and the market debut was expected in May.The IPO comes after a lackluster response to last month’s market debut for Lyft, the main US rival of Uber.Lyft shares rose on the first day of trade and then lost ground. On Wednesday, shares were down more than 10 percent from the $72 offering price.The Journal, citing unnamed sources, said Uber recently provided documents showing a potential price range of between $48 and $55 a share, implying a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion.These figures could change ahead of the market launch but would be below the estimated $120 billion suggested by some investment bankers, according to the report.”Even a valuation in the $90 billion to $100 billion range would represent a healthy premium to the latest private valuation (some $76 billion) in August 2018,” said Matt Kennedy of the IPO research firm Renaissance Capital.”Uber will definitely be pegged to Lyft. So they can’t be too aggressive on valuation, given where Lyft is trading. Though it’s possible that some of the pressure on Lyft is related to investors looking to pick up Uber instead.”Analysts warn both Uber and Lyft will need strong growth to justify their lofty valuations, and face multiple challenges to their business model which has disrupted traditional taxi services and relies on drivers to be independent contractors. Uber is reportedly seeking a valuation close to $100 billion—impressive but below some earlier estimates for the ride-hailing giant Explore further Uber could become a $100 billion company with a massive share offering that will be a bellwether for tech startups looking toward Wall Street. But some of the early enthusiasm about this unicorn herd has waned and there are hints that private investment rounds may have been priced too high.Pinterest, a virtual bulletin board that connects people with interests including food, fashion, travel and lifestyle, plans to trade under the symbol PINS on the New York Stock Exchange.Pinterest unveiled its IPO price range with an estimated valuation of some $11 billion, below the $12 billion in its most recent private funding round.Other big tech firms which could join the stampede include the business collaboration startup Slack and big data firm Palantir.Aswath Damodaran, a New York University business professor specializing in corporate valuations, calculated Lyft to be worth around $16 billion, below its the more than $20 billion at its IPO price.Uber released financial data earlier this year showing it lost $865 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, compared with $1.1 billion in the same period a year earlier.The San Francisco-based firm reported revenue of $3 billion, a 25 percent increase from a year earlier.Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi has promised greater transparency as he seeks to restore confidence in the global ridesharing leader hit by a wave of misconduct scandals over executive misconduct, a toxic work atmosphere and potentially unethical competitive practices. Lyft set for March market debut: report The ride-hailing firms are also investing in other “last mile” transport options such as electric bikes and scooters, and in the long run are looking to autonomous vehicles as a way to reduce dependence on private cars and reshape urban landscapes.Unicorn stampedeUber is the latest, and will be largest of the so-called “unicorns,” or venture-backed startups worth at least $1 billion, to look to Wall Street listings to expand their capital base. Citation: Uber steers toward blockbuster IPO as road looks rocky (Update) (2019, April 10) retrieved 17 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2019-04-uber-bn-ipo-scales.html © 2019 AFP