Monthly Archives: March 2017

Physiology

Behind the scenes of cardiac physiology at Salisbury District Hospital – Salisbury Journal

CARDIAC physiologists carry out a range of investigations for people with potential, or known, heart problems.

Their work includes performing electrocardiograms (ECGs), putting people on treadmills to evaluate their hearts response to exercise, performing cardiac ultrasound scans, checking and programming implanted pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, and monitoring the blood pressure and heart rhythm while stents are fitted in the cardiac catheter lab.

Claire Murray, a cardiac physiologist at Salisbury District Hospital, said: We are involved with any investigation relating to your heart. We see everybody from babies to the elderly if patients have a problem with their heart, we are involved in their care.

Cardiac physiology is one of more than 20 healthcare sciences. They involve the life sciences such as microbiology, histology and genetics, the physical sciences like medical engineering, medical physics and nuclear medicine and then the physiological sciences with people going into audiology and neurophysiology, Claire says.

Cardiac physiology is very patient-focused, which is what appealed to me.

Some of the other healthcare sciences are much more in the lab or using physics.

Cardiology is always changing theres a lot of investment into cardiac health care and theres always research going on and new developments.

We use a lot of technology and equipment and there is always something to learn which I really enjoy.

You get that feeling of really making a difference if someone comes in with a heart rate of 20 and has a pacemaker fitted, theyre instantly better. Thats so satisfying.

Procedures generally take between 10 minutes and half an hour with a cardiac physiologist writing up a report after analysing results. We are quite autonomous in our working, Claire says. For example, after doing an ultrasound, we would create a technical report on what we have found which goes back to the clinician whos asked us to do it and they will then prescribe medication or further procedures.

The most common route into cardiac physiology is a BSc in clinical physiology. Once complete, you are a healthcare science practitioner, becoming a scientist after completing the three-year Scientist Training Programme (STP).

People are educated to different levels within the scientific banner people have come in with degrees in medical engineering or microbiology, a lot of people have masters or PhDs, Claire says.

As healthcare scientists our careers have come across quite convoluted paths to get to where we are currently in the healthcare science programme.

Today, everyone will be doing science and maths as A-levels but after that point it can be very split. A lot of our scientist programmes are done as part of a national recruitment process to train people.

Previously, as a trainee cardiac physiologist, you would be employed by a hospital and do your training over four years which involved being hospital-based and going to university on block release but now you come out of university with qualifications and then look for a job.

Claires own route into the profession involved going straight from GCSEs into a two-year regional training programme.

I started in 1990, she said. The first eight months was spent in audiology, neurophysiology, respiratory physiology and cardiology. After that I chose which one and as I just loved cardiology, I spent the rest of the two years on that, doing a BTEC in medical physics and physiological measurements.

Claire has been at SDH for 15 years and is one of 12 cardiac physiologists. For any students considering a career in cardiac physiology, you have to be of scientific mind and enjoy the sciences, she says.

Its important to like working with people, you need to be prepared to talk to anybody, have excellent communication skills as we often have to explain complicated information to our patients or their carers, and have an interest in technology because everything we do is with medical equipment.

Its also about being able to keep calm in stressful situations and work as a team.

From a practical aspect, we dont tend to work shifts, although some of our role includes being on call from home, so it is very appealing from that point of view.

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Behind the scenes of cardiac physiology at Salisbury District Hospital - Salisbury Journal

Neuroscience

How MLB teams are using neuroscience to try to gain a competitive advantage – CBSSports.com

Long beforeMoneyballcame along, the game of baseball embraced numbers and statistical analysis. Every single team in baseball has a stats department. The ways and means have certainly changed, but the goal remains the same: use numbers to find a competitive advantage.

These days sophisticated tracking systems like PitchFX and Statcast record pretty much everything that happens on the field: how much a pitch moves, how quickly an outfielder takes his first step, how hard a catcher throws down to second base on a stolen base attempt. You name it, and theres a number for it.

R.J. Anderson recently spoke to several folks within baseball to get an idea of how teams are acquiring and using their data in the post Moneyball era . There are, surprisingly, many outside vendors involved. This nugget from Andersons piece stood out to me:

Right now, we have teams out there, who, when they evaluate a player, theyre taking their 2017 schedule, they are prototyping the opposing pitcher array -- perhaps, if theyre really sophisticated, even assuming what the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings look like against those teams -- and theyre simulating a batters performance, a prospective acquisition, his performance against that pitching opposition, in those ballparks, Gennaro said. Because theyre not looking at his stats, theyre looking at his exit velocity and his launch angle.

If you hit the ball 86 mph to lets call it straight-away right field at Yankee Stadium at a 32-degree launch angle, depending on the wind, that probably drops into the first couple of rows. If you hit that same velocity and launch angle at AT&T Park, Hunter Pence is taking two steps in to field it. So, all of those things are being incorporated into the analytics of the most sophisticated teams.

Thats wild. Teams are essentially modeling an entire season using all the available data to get an idea how a player may perform for them. These are still human beings of course, so nothing is 100 percent predictive, but if you have the data available, why wouldnt you use it to try to forecast performance?

The days of targeting players with high on-base percentages because the the rest of the league is undervaluing them are long, long gone. Now teams are using information in more complex ways to gain an advantage. One method is neuroscience, the science of brain function and reaction.

Baseball players are human beings. You cant ignore the human element. Everyones brain works differently and its impossible to quantify that variable. That hasnt stopped teams from trying though. A few teams started exploring neuroscience years ago, and more and more clubs have caught on since.

The Red Sox were among the first clubs to buy into neuroscience, back when Theo Epstein was running the show.As Brian Costa of theWall Street Journalexplained in 2014, the Red Sox partnered with a company called NeuroScouting that developed software to measure and improve a players reaction ability. From Costa:

Nonetheless, teams interest in the neuroscience of hitting is only growing. What began as a training tool for the Red Sox has also become a scouting device. Before each amateur draft, the Red Sox assess hitting prospects in part based on how well they score on the NeuroScouting games.

Mookie Betts, Bostons fifth-round draft pick in 2011, recalled meeting with a Red Sox scout in an empty classroom one day during his lunch period at a Tennessee high school. At the scouts request, he completed a series of games on a laptop. I was thinking, What does this have to do with baseball? Betts said. I guess I did pretty well, since he kept on pursuing me.

Betts, 21, said the daily NeuroScouting drills he did in the minors helped put him on a fast track to the majors. It gets your brain going, he said. In 43 games through Thursday, his .363 on-base percentage ranked second among major-league rookies behind Chicago White Sox star Jose Abreu.

Teams are, quite literally, attempting to measure how quickly a players brain reads a situation and reacts with a decision. Grading out well in neuroscouting doesnt guarantee success, the same way having a pretty swing or a 95 mph fastball doesnt guarantee success. Its one tool in the shed, and the more tools available to you, the more likely you are to get the job done successfully.

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How MLB teams are using neuroscience to try to gain a competitive advantage - CBSSports.com

Neuroscience

Neuroscience has identified why some works of art become universal phenomenons – Quartz

What music we love is usually a matter of personal taste. But there are some works of art that seem to transcend differences in personal aesthetics and rise to universal acclaim. Over the past 18 months, Lin-Manuel Mirandas hip-hop musical Hamilton has emerged as one such cultural phenomenon.

What is it about Hamilton that resonates so broadly? Psychology and neuroscience suggest that the magic formula for universal acclaim often comes down to a simple equation: take something familiar, and combine it with something that feels entirely new.

With or without formal musical training, most people gain an informal education in the musical patterns typical to our culture as we grow up. Lullabies, pop songs on the radio, symphonies sampled on Looney Tunes, and middle-school jazz band practice train our ears to recognize common themes. In this way, we develop expectations about musical rhythms and the way they make use of consonance (pleasant, calming sounds) and dissonance (sounds that lead to tension or irritation).

This familiarity also means that were able to anticipate musical changes. When we hear a new song, we can usually predict the introduction of the chorus after an eight-bar verse or a high note at the end of the bridge. Therefore elements of musical surprisesuch as novel lyrics, clever harmonic changes, or an unanticipated breakdownliterally excite our brain. According to a 1999 paper by neuroscientist Anne Blood and colleagues, these types of musical surprises elicit heightened activity in the brains auditory and frontal regions, where tonality is tracked and interpreted. Pleasant music is shown to cause increased activation in the medial rostral prefrontal cortexa region used to self-monitor our emotional and mental states, or those of others. This suggests that when music gives us a pleasant surprise, it helps promote the feeling that all is right with the world.

But just because we find a piece of music novel doesnt necessarily mean that well enjoy it. Humans prefer our stimuli to strike the perfect balance between simplicity and familiarity on one hand, and complexity and novelty on the other. This is because humans and other animals have evolved to feel an arousing mixture of fear and curiosity in the presence of new things.

When an encounter is sufficiently rewarding, we experience what neurobiologists Kent Berridge and Morten Kringelbach call core likinga physiologically pleasant feeling that influences our future judgments and actions, motivating us to revisit the experience. Core liking depends on our appetites for cognitive effort as well as the amount of stimulation we find pleasant. For example, psychologist Philip A. Russell pointed out that once exposure to a popular song hits our personal saturation point, we limit how often we hear it. Novel items require more cognitive effortbut were willing to make the effort in those categories that interest us.

Hamiltons monumental success, therefore, can be attributed to its unique combination of the familiar and the novel. Its musical foundation is hip-hopa genre that has dominated popular music for a few decades now. But its quite unusual to see hip-hop applied to material straight out of history books. And so when we hear Marquis de Lafayette beat-boxing, or listen to the story of the battle of Yorktown overlaid against a chorus inspired by Mary J. Blige, the recognizable elements trigger a release of dopamine in the basal ganglias caudate nucleus (a part of our brain that helps control attachments). Meanwhile, the novelty of the music engages the nucleus accumbens, the reward-seeking part of our brain. In other words, the juxtaposition of musical novelty and familiarity is more likely to engage the brains reward system, according to findings from neuroscientist Valerie Salimpoor and her colleagues.

Psychology can also help us understand the appeal of Hamiltons exuberant energy, as communicated by the musicals modern groove and urgent rap vocals. These features push us to listen to its lyrics much in the same way we did when we were teenagers. Research suggests that this phenomenon is especially powerful in adolescence. Social psychologists Morris Holbrook and Robert Schindler note that imprinting, the process by which young animals form strong and irreversible attachments to caregivers, is strongest during the critical period of our youth. Musics faculty for mediating feelings may cause teens to imprint on songs that helped them through uncertain times.

As adolescents, we bond to music at an age when our curiosity about the world is immense and our experience is small. Lyrics help us solve problems, soothe heartaches, and match our powerfully oscillating emotions. Because Hamiltons musical styling makes us feel like teens again, we listen to it with the same sense of urgency as we did when we were young. Moreover, Hamiltons young characters, captured at a moment when their personalities and achievements were still being formed, may also remind us of ourselves at our most earnest, energetic, and least self-assured periodwhen we are most open to fresh influences and thoughts.

As we get older, and we form a personal prototype of what constitutes good music, we become harder to impress. Much of our personal filter has to do with sociocultural status. Social psychologists such as Pierre Bourdieu describe a taste culture whereby professionals and working-class music lovers are drawn to genres that match their self-image. These genres roughly correspond to our ideas about what constitutes high art and low art. But Hamilton takes a historically populist art form (hip-hop) and presents it on the traditionally high brow Broadway stage, thereby eschewing easy categorization and broadening its appeal. The added bonus is that the musicals plot immerses us in an extraordinarily large and important contextthe birth of the United States of America.

In all of these ways, Hamilton is precisely calibrated to push us to listen to its soundtrack with the passion that we bring to music as young listeners, and the intellectual curiosity of adults. By linking incredibly sophisticated yet familiar musical themes to stories that are novel to all but history buffs, Hamilton reminds us that our nations founders were once beginnersand helps all of us remember what its like to be young, scrappy, and hungry.

Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Neuroscience has identified why some works of art become universal phenomenons - Quartz

Neuroscience

Author Kevin Davis on neuroscience in the courtoom: It made what would have been a regular domestic violence … – WGN Radio

The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America's Courtrooms (BN.com)

The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America's Courtrooms (BN.com)

Author Kevin Davis has just had his book, The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in Americas Courtrooms. The book explores the case of Herbert Weinstein, who mysteriously admitted to murdering his wife, following an argument. Kevin explains changes in the justice system inspired by an orange-sized cyst in Weinsteins brain.

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Author Kevin Davis on neuroscience in the courtoom: It made what would have been a regular domestic violence ... - WGN Radio

Genetics

Cattle Genetics | BEEF Magazine

A chance encounter on a country drive led to the export of 2,400 heifer calves to Turkey.

The promise of genetic editing is that it enables the deletion or insertion of a couple of base pairs in the DNA...

What are your cattle operations genetic goals? There's plenty at stake if you don't know them, or even worse...

Sign Up for the BEEF Daily newsletter today!

Cow-calf producers who dont use science when selecting genetics may find their herd on the wrong end of a smoking gun.

The beef business is moving from a segmented industry to one thats more united, and information is at the core of that shift. Genomic data is helping that transition.

The world is watching what we do and how we do it. And that need for transparency will soon hit our use of genomic technology. We need to get ready.

A cowherds ability to maintain a high weaning rate with minimal supplementation of harvested feeds is a key contributor to a ranchs overall sustainability.

BEEFs 3rd annual Seedstock 100 listing, which ranks seedstock producers by number of bulls sold, offers you a glimpse at some...

Can you breed cattle to follow the road less traveled and graze hillsides? Research says its possible.

This exclusive gallery features photos and information on the 100+ operations that make up the annual Seedstock 100 listing.

Bull buying season is nigh, and since your bull battery contributes 75% of your genetics, taking a little time to prepare ahead of the sale is time well spent. Those tips and more await you in this weeks Trending Headlines.

With most genetics available to everyone, increasingly, the primary point of differentiation among seedstock suppliers is their understanding of customer needs. That takes a relaetionship.

As the art and science of genomics becomes more accurate, cow-calf producers benefit. While cow-calf producers wont directly participate in genomic evaluation now that single-step evaluation is a reality, theyll be able to buy bulls with more...

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Cattle Genetics | BEEF Magazine

Genetics

Seattle Genetics (SGEN): FDA Lifts Hold on Trial of AML Drug – Zacks.com

Seattle Genetics, Inc. (SGEN - Free Report) announced that the FDA has lifted the clinical hold on two phase I trials of its candidate, vadastuximab talirine (SGN-CD33A; 33A).

Vadastuximab talirine is an early stage candidate that is being developed for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

The partial clinical hold was implemented in Dec 2016 to evaluate the potential risk of liver toxicity in patients treated with vadastuximab talirine, who underwent a stem cell transplant either before or after the treatment.

Seattle Genetics outperformed the Zacks classified Medical-Biomedical/Genetics industry year to date. The stock jumped almost 27.1% during this period while the industry gained 6.9%.

The clinical hold on vadastuximab talirine was resolved through an analysis of the clinical data from over 300 patients treated to date and evaluated by an independent committee of clinical experts, collaborative interactions with the FDA and protocol amendments designed to further enhance patient safety.

Consequently, Seattle Genetics will resume two phase I trials of vadastuximab talirine. The first trial will be a combination treatment with standard of care, or 7+3, chemotherapy in newly diagnosed younger AML patients. The second is monotherapy and combination treatment with hypomethylating agents in both newly diagnosed and relapsed AML patients.

Meanwhile, the company continues to enroll patients in the phase III CASCADE study in frontline older AML patients and in a phase I/II study in frontline high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Seattle Genetics currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). Some better-ranked stocks in the health care sector include Heska Corp. (HSKA - Free Report) , Sunesis Pharmaceuticals (SNSS - Free Report) and Celgene Corp. (CELG - Free Report) . While Heska sports a Zacks Rank#1 (Strong Buy), Sunesis Sciences and Celgene carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can seethe complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here

Heskas earnings estimates increased from $1.53 to $1.65 for 2017 and from $1.90 to $2.01 for 2018, over the last 30 days. The company posted positive earnings surprises in all of the four trailing quarters with an average beat of 291.54%.

Sunesis loss estimates narrowed 5.06% and 8.80% for 2016 and 2017, respectively, over the past 30 days. The company recorded positive earnings surprises in three of the last four quarters, the average being 0.54%.

Celgenes earnings estimates increased from $6.52 to $6.60 for 2017 and from $8.15 to $8.16 for 2018, over the last 60 days. The company posted positive earnings surprises in three of the four trailing quarters with an average beat of 5.08%.

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Seattle Genetics (SGEN): FDA Lifts Hold on Trial of AML Drug - Zacks.com

Genetics

Performance Genetics Offering Breeze-Ups Analytics – BloodHorse.com (press release) (registration) (blog)

Performance Genetics LLC, a leading Thoroughbred analytics and performance evaluation company is pleased to announce the launch of its two-year-old in training sale site BreezeUpIQ.com BreezeUpIQ.com uses the latest in machine learning algorithms, specifically XGBoost, to develop a predictive algorithm to select elite horses from two-year-olds in training sales. More than half of the winning solutions in machine learning challenges hosted at data science platform Kaggle adopt XGBoost as their winning algorithm. "This project is the culmination of years of work, gathering data at major two-year-olds in training sales across North America and Europe and using racetrack outcomes to develop a predictive algorithm for two-year-olds in training sales. In all, I have data on just over 6,000 horses that subsequently had 3 or more starts so are valid records to create a prediction algorithm on," said Byron Rogers of Performance Genetics. "The algorithm normalizes a breeze and gallop out for the sex and distance breezed and using other variables such as velocity, decay, stride length and strides per second it is able to capture both linear and non-linear relationships in the data to elite performance making it a unique player in the two-year-olds sales market", Rogers added. In a randomized holdout set of 1,000 two-year-olds with racing outcomes that the algorithm had not seen before, the BreezeUpIQ XGBoost model selected just 6.8% of all horses, with 23.1% of these being subsequent stakes winners. "The model doesn't find every stakes winner, as some stakes winners will for one reason or another generate breeze data that is not different to a lot of average horses, but it delivers an outstanding strike rate for selecting elite runners at two-year-olds in training sales for the relatively small number horses that it does identify as being unique. Importantly it is learning off new data every month to become more and more precise," said Rogers. Current plans will see the algorithm used at the upcoming OBS March 2YO sale and major two-year-olds sales in North America with plans to roll out the service at European two-year-olds sales this year. For further information please contact, Byron Rogers Performance Genetics LLC e: byron@performancegenetics.com m: +1 859 285 0431

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Performance Genetics Offering Breeze-Ups Analytics - BloodHorse.com (press release) (registration) (blog)

Genetics

Goods Genetics Are Key To Surviving Niche’s Harsh Worlds – Siliconera

By Joel Couture . March 8, 2017 . 2:00pm

Predators, harsh elements, and bad breeding will make quick work of careless players inNiche, a turn-based strategy game about helping animals survive in the wild.

In Niche, players will have to manage animals with a random set of genetic traits, playing to their strengths and dealing with their weaknesses as they try to survive in various environments. To do so, players will need to decide what actions to give each member of their pack on each turn, sending them out for food, digging shelters, having them mate and give birth to offspring, or attack predators.

Each turn counts as a day in the life of each animal, and after a set amount of time, each of these animals will quickly die. Death can be sped up significantly by hunger, sickness, and attacks, so players will have to deal with these issues quickly before they cut through their packs lifespan.

Players can boost their chances of survival through smart breeding. Each genetic trait can be passed on through the use of dominant-recessive genes, letting players put scientific knowledge to use, or learn more about the science of genetics through the game. In doing so, they can get rid of negative traits and boost positive ones using real science.

Niche is available now on Steam Early Access.

Video game stories from other sites on the web. These links leave Siliconera.

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Goods Genetics Are Key To Surviving Niche's Harsh Worlds - Siliconera

Genetics

This Very Rare Emoji Snake Is a Genetics Marvel – Inverse

It wasnt until a few weeks after the albino ball python hatched that Justin Kobylka noticed it was distinctly marked with three smiley faces. He saw one a yellow blob that looks like a smiling emoji and thought it was cool. Then, when reviewing a photograph of the snake, he noticed they comprised a trio a pattern that he, a professional snake breeder, had never heard of. He was in the presence of a rare masterwork of genetic engineering.

I knew theoretically that you could get smiley faces one smiley face is not that uncommon, said Kobylka, who hatched his first batch of snakes in an incubator underneath his dorm room bed in college, in an interview with Inverse. I would likely be able to breed more in the future that have just one, but I dont know if I could get three ever again no matter how long I try. Its really a lucky thing.

This snakes existence is a mixture of luck and years worth of careful science. While the snakes unique pattern is what makes it viral worthy, what is less obvious is how difficult it is for a highly patterned albino that is, white-skinned ball python to even exist.

There are two recessive mutations, fairly common in the natural world, manifested this snake: albinism and pybalism, the characteristic of having high-color, high-contrast patterns like the smiley face. The first albino ball python that ever hatched was bred from double heterozygous parent snakes that both contained mutant alleles at both genes encoding these two traits. Because the odds are one in 16 that a snake carrying both mutations could hatch and each female only has six eggs a year, it could take two to three years for this breeding to even occur, Kobylka says.

Breeding gets easier once the first albino pyball is born: Using it in a second pairing with another double heterozygous parent, the odds drop to one in four. Still, theres no guarantee that the albino pyballs characteristic splotch pattern will form the shape of a smiley, let alone three times in a row; it occurs in only one in ten snakes. This is where Kobylkas luck factors in.

The special smilies are fun, but were just happy to be able to make an albino ball python, says Kobylka. Two years ago, making an albino ball python was a holy grail.

When these special snakes hatched, they were worth a pretty penny for collectors; they are valued between $30,000 to $40,000. Today, Kobylka can use an albino python in the actual pairing as a double homozygous animal as the parent, which drops the odds to another albino ball python hatching to one in four. While this easier breeding system has increased the quantity available, and has dropped the price to about $4,500 each.

Is it possible for you to get an emoji snake exactly like this? Probably not science isnt on your side and Kobylka is keeping this one.

Photos via Giphy

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This Very Rare Emoji Snake Is a Genetics Marvel - Inverse

Embryology

Rhine speaks on genetics – The Hillsdale Daily News

By The Hillsdale Daily News

JACKSON Students and community members are invited to learn the latest advances in genetics research when the noted speaker and educator Sam Rhine presents a Genetics Update Conference from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. March 14 in the Harold Sheffer Music Hall, Potter Center.

Over the years, Rhine has spoken to tens of thousands of students and teachers about genetics research. High school and college students who attend Rhines conference are often enrolled in biology or Advanced Placement biology classes, are college bound, in college or in pre-professional tracks like medicine, life sciences or social studies. Every presentation begins with a review of the basics, so less experienced students need not worry about being lost. Students have a unique chance to hear one of the top educators in the country present the most recent genetics information. This years conference will cover Human Embryology Basis of Stem Cell Biology, CRISPR-Cas9 Applications of Genome Editing, and more. In addition to the biologic and medical applications, the conference will also review the ethical issues raised by this work.

Sam Rhine has crossed the country for 30-plus years presenting the latest genetic information to students and teachers. Sam has devoted himself to genetics education. He is a gifted speaker with the desire to take biology out of the textbook and see how it works in the real world.

Admission to the Sam Rhine Genetic Update Conference is $20 per person for students, teachers and community guests. Jackson College faculty and students, including dual-enrolled high school students, are free with student ID or class schedule. Please pre-register online at http://www.samrhine.com.

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Rhine speaks on genetics - The Hillsdale Daily News