CFL Insights: The anatomy of a comeback – CFL.ca

TORONTO When the Als took a 40-28 lead over the Bombers with 1:40 left in Week 6, some fans headed towards the gates at Winnipegs Investors Group Field. Of course, in many football stadiums across North American, a two-score deficit that late in the contest spells the end.

But theres a reason we often hear no lead is safe in the Canadian Football League and last week, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers took that saying to heart.

Thats one of the things we should learn from this, Head Coach Mike OShea said following one of the most dramatic comebacks in recent memory. One of the many.

The Alouettes appeared to have the game wrapped up when they rushed for six more points to take a 12-point lead. Thats the last time the Als offence would take the field however, as the Bombers quickly answered with a touchdown, recovered an onside kick and then scored with no time on the clock.

The CFL is fantastic in that way, OShea would add of the improbable comeback. Its hard to watch football when theyre walking off the field with lots of time left on the clock. This game is perfect because of that the ability to score two touchdowns in 1:40. Its a phenomenal game.

From a statistical standpoint, Winnipegs late comeback was one of themost stunning in CFL history because it combined three key elements: the Bombers trailed by 10 or more points; it happened entirely in the final 3:00 of the game; and finally, it was completed on the games final offensive play.

The closest parallel to last weeks comeback dates back to Oct. 17, 1999 when the Bombers also defeated Montreal after trailing by 10 and cutting the deficit to a single score with just 0:59 left. In that game, Winnipeg won 32-29 on Deland McCulloughs final-play one-yard touchdown run.

Finally, the victory was the fifth since 2005 that resulted from a touchdown on the games final play. Andrew Harris one-yard rumble puts him in elusive territory, joining Milt Stegall, Dahrran Diedrick, Nic Grigsby and Dava Stala as players to accomplish such a feat since then.

Here are the specific comebacks in CFL history over the 25 years since 1992 where clubs trailed by 10 or more points late and won:

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CFL Insights: The anatomy of a comeback - CFL.ca

How breakfast rewires your brain – The Boston Globe

The traditional American breakfast is a high-carb affair, with its heaping dishes of pancakes, waffles, toast, cereal. It may affect not just our waistlines, but also who we are.

In a recent study at the University of Lbeck in Germany, scientists asked participants about what they ate in the morning, then had them play the ultimatum game a common experiment that measures how much people tolerate unfairness. In essence, they were trying to test whether human behavior is subject to a well-known clich: Are we what we eat?

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We wanted to know whether our decision-making or thoughts might depend on what weve eaten, said So Young Park, a professor of social psychology and neuroscience at the University of Lbeck. We eat three times a day. And you can imagine that, if we change our behavior depending on our food, that would be quite striking information.

The ultimatum game puts study participants in an uncomfortable scenario. Players A and B are told that there is $10, but Player A must decide how the money is split between them. Scientists asked their study participants to act as Player B and watched how they reacted to lopsidedly unfair offers, such as being offered $1 out of $10. Study participants were told that, if they decided to reject an offer, neither person would take home any money at all.

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In theory, the respondent should accept any offer greater than zero, no matter how small, because its better than nothing, said Tobias Kalenscher, a professor of comparative psychology at the University of Dsseldorf. But respondents often would rather have nothing than live with an unfair deal.

The schools dining staff aims to become a national model for affordable, high-volume sourcing of locally grown food.

Though even a $2 offer could mean a nice doughnut for the next morning, scientists found that participants with high-carb breakfasts rejected unfair offers 40 percent more often than those with high-protein breakfasts.

We could see a very tremendous difference in these people, Park said. In a second experiment, breakfast was fed directly to study participants before they played the ultimatum game. Scientists found similar results, as well as differences in participants blood samples.

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High-carb people had lower tyrosine levels. And the lower the tyrosine levels, the higher the rejection rate, Kalenscher explained. Tyrosine is an amino acid that acts as a precursor for dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a significant role in our brains reward system. But this connection doesnt mean that we should clear out our cupboards and start anew with high-protein, low-carb diets.

You can say that people with high rejection rates are just sensitive to unfair treatment, Kalenscher said. Its absolutely not a bad thing.

The point is that food dictates your choices, Park said. Depending on what you have eaten, your choice is being dramatically modulated that is what were showing. You should really try to have a balanced diet.

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How breakfast rewires your brain - The Boston Globe

Our American Character is Under Siege – HuffPost

Many who seek to maintain America as a civilized and moral culture have been deeply troubled by increasing human behavior that doesnt reflect this character.

A recent event demands the response, Enough!

On July 9, Jamel Dunn, age 32, of Cocoa, Florida, drowned in a retention pond. His body was recovered July 14, two days after his fiance reported him missing. A week later, a family friend discovered on social media a video taken by five teenagers, recording the drowning, plus their reactions.

Not only did the teenagers ignore Dunns screams for help; they took great glee in his losing battle, laughing and jeering at his struggle, yelling things like, Nobody is going to help your a--!- to the point when his head finally goes under water, and they shriek, Oh he just died!

The teenagers went unpunished because authorities could find no laws they broke. But as civilized and moral human beings, we know something fundamental was very violated.

Our species of humans survived and thrived while others like Neanderthals did not, because we alone depended upon each other from the beginning. This universal truth is expressed in our Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

These teenagers were raised in American families and educated in American schools. Whatever we may think we taught them, we allowed them to reach adolescence as uncivilized and immoral individuals, which is much worse than being illiterate ones.

If they have no respect for human life, arent they prime candidates for violent crime?

I find them repulsive. But arent they children we failed? Why werent they taught human civility, morality and character?

American education is a crass enterprise, controlled by the interests of business and universities. It has little room or motivation for teaching and inspiring civility, morality and character.

Our schools strongly emphasize academic achievement and test scores. Some try to humanize themselves with social and emotional learning, even character programs. But kids know these are just add-ons that are not connected to the central college/jobs focus.

Families and parentsin the worst shape Ive seen in my 66-year teaching careerbuy into the schools academic focus out of fear their child will lose out in the college competition. Thus parents unwittingly abdicate their moral authority to the school.

Schools and parents are complicit in ignoring the moral development of children. Of course we have many parents, families and teachers who do a fine job in developing children with character, but that is not the norm today.

America was a powerful expression of humanity in civilization, founded on the belief that each individual has a unique potential that is to be valued. American educations first priority should be challenging and supporting every American child. In addition, the family must be an integral part of this process, since in character development, parents are the primary teachers and the home the primary classroom.

This rigorous process will produce self-confident, motivated and moral students with a larger purpose. Their scholarship and maturity will be welcomed by colleges and their drive and personal qualities by employers as well.

Im not describing utopia, just good teaching.

Horace Mann, the father of our public school system, said if he had a year to teach spelling, hed spend the first nine months on motivation. But today weve got a robotic educational system that essentially treats children like a herd of cattle, bombarding them with knowledge until they graduate. It insults their unique potential and Americas basic purpose.

There is a better way. I founded a school 51 years ago to test the educational focus on unique potential and character development; we helped the concept spread to public schools. Today we see thousands of graduates and their parents lead meaningful and fulfilling lives of honor.

The key to our success: Teaching children and their parents to discover their unique potential and character, and to value that learning process. This is what is missing from educationand our culture today.

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Our American Character is Under Siege - HuffPost

The Veterans’ Chaplain: Nature or Nature – Theadanews

A while back I wrote a column entitled, Is War Our Nature? (5.20.16). In it, I discussed a then-recent archeological discovery revealing that the earliest warfare among humans was believed to have taken place around ten thousand years ago. The rhetorical question that I asked in that column was: Are we humans predisposed to war and violence since our history, as a species, is replete with it? In other words, is war part of our nature?

That very question leads to the time-tested issue of whether we humans are born with a nature, or set of instincts. The issue is termed, nature versus nurture. When we are born, are we genetically preprogrammed to behave in certain ways, such as to be violent, or do we learn our behavior from other people, such as our parents? One of the prevailing theories on the nurture side of the issue is called the blank slate. According to blank slate reasoning, a developing human brain has no predetermined information, or instincts. The child is, thus, born with a blank slate that will be filled with information through the learning process. Of course, as our technology improves and we learn more about the prenatal development process, we are beginning to understand that some learning may take place prior to birth.

The most convincing evidence supporting the blank slate theory, at least with respect to violence, is that not everyone is violent. If humans were preprogrammed to be violent, we would all be violent. Since we are not all violent, some of us must learn violence and some of us do not. Problem solved.

If only questions involving human behavior were that simple. Getting back to that ten-thousand-year-old battle, evidence from the site suggested that one of the warring parties had traveled quite a distance in order to engage in that battle. This was no spur-of-the-moment anger reaction. My guess is, also, that it was not an isolated event. Because we have not found evidence of prior warfare does not mean that such evidence does not exist. It simply means that we have not found it.

What we know for certain is that people were conducting organized, group warfare at least ten thousand years ago. We do not know why they were fighting, nor do we know how or why they learned to fight. There is much that can be surmised but very little that can be established with any degree of certainty. There are lessons to be learned from those unfortunate nomadic hunter-gatherers who fought that day, however. What we, in the 21st century, CE, can learn from those people and those events ten thousand years ago will have to wait for next weeks column. In the meanwhile, be well, be kind, and may God bless you.

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The Veterans' Chaplain: Nature or Nature - Theadanews

Mindful Rage – Slate Magazine

Robert Wright

Hachette Book Group

On this weeks episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke with Robert Wright, the best-selling of author of books including The Moral Animal, Nonzero, and The Evolution of God. Those books covered subjects such as the evolutionary roots of human behavior, globalization and technologys positive influence on our relationships and lives, and how religious belief has become increasingly tolerant over time. His new book is called Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. It seeks to explain why Buddhism is so valuable, both to the world and to Wrights own life, and how its core insights reflect real truths about evolution and human psychology.

Below is an edited transcript of part of the show. You can find links to every episode here, and the entire interview with Wright is also below. Please subscribe to I Have to Ask wherever you get your podcasts.

Isaac Chotiner: I should say, in the interest of full disclosure, that my first paid job in journalism was at bloggingheads.tv, which you were the founder of.

Robert Wright: You realize youve just undermined the credibility of this entire conversation?

I didnt make enough money that Im in any sort of debt to you.

Thats true. Well, then, I may have the opposite problem in this conversation.

Can you just talk a little bit about what Buddhism is, and specifically, the variety of Buddhism that youre talking about in this book?

Well, first of all, theres religious Buddhism, which this book isnt about. This book is about what you might call the naturalistic or secular part of Buddhism. Its not about reincarnation, and its not about prayers, and so on. It is about the central claim of Buddhist philosophy, which is that the reason we suffer, and the reason we make other people suffer, is because we dont see the world clearly. Buddhist practice, including meditation, can be seen as a program for seeing the world more clearly.

You write in the book that you wondered if there was a way to put the actual truth about human nature and the human condition into a form that would not just identify and explain the illusions we labor under, but would help us liberate ourselves from them. One of the things that youre doing in the book is youre talking about these illusions, and youre explaining how science gives us some reason to understand why we have these illusions and that Buddhism and science, in this sense, coexist or teach us the same thing. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. I had written in the past about evolutionary psychology, and one thing that struck me is that actually, the human mind was not designed by natural selection to see the world clearly, per se. Thats not the bottom line. The bottom line is like: What psychological tendencies got the genes of our ancestors into subsequent generations? Often, [that] involved seeing the world clearly. You want to have a pretty clear visual picture of the world, generally, but not in all respects. If having a mind that is deceived or that has a distorted view of things will get genes into the next generation, then distortion will be built into the mind.

What would be an example of that?

Buddhism makes two really radical-seeming claims, when you drill down on what Buddhists mean by, We dont see the world clearly. One thing they mean is that we dont see ourselves clearly at all. In fact, Buddhism goes so far as to say, Were confused about the very existence of a self. There is a sense in which the self doesnt exist, which is pretty radical. Then, theres also a claim about how deluded we are about the world out there, that the people and the objects we see, we tend to have a distorted view of, we attribute to them a kind of essence that isnt there. Both of these claims may sound strong, but I think theres a lot more to be said for them than you might imagine. I think evolutionary psychology explains why we do suffer from these particular distortions.

One of those distortions concerns things such as our love of chocolate.

Chocolate, which I remain a fan of, as I was before I started meditating. Here, we get to another of the kind of central claims of Buddhism, very central, that in a way, is related to the other things Ive said about what Buddhism is. The idea that at the root of suffering was like, thirst, craving, for not just food, but for material attainments, for status, for sex, for everything that we crave. The illusion there is that lasting gratification will ensue, or even that it will endure for very long. It actually tends not to, right? We tend to pursue things as if they will be more deeply and enduringly gratifying than they are. The Buddha stressed their impermanence, that they would evaporate, and I think evolutionary psychology, again, explains why they evaporate.

Well, sure. Organisms have to be motivated, from natural selections point of view, to do things, to nourish themselves, to do whatever will get genes spread, like sex, but they cant be enduringly happy with these things, or they wouldnt sit around and get busy. Its a dog-eat-dog world out there. The fleetingness of pleasure is a product of natural selection. Were learning more about the brain chemistry of it, and I talk a little about that. Thats another example. The idea, in general, with mindfulness meditation, which is the kind I focus on in the book, is to, rather than be driven by your feelings, examine them and decide which feelings you think are offering good guidance and which arent.

If I really want to eat my second ice cream sundae of the day, you, in the book, you dont think that the way to do that is to repress it, necessarily, but to think about why I have that desire for it, and why, in fact, it may not make me that happy to have a second ice cream sundae. Is that correct?

Well, not just to think about it, and in fact, I came out of my study of evolutionary psychology very aware that knowing about the problem of human nature by itself doesnt solve the problem. Mindfulness meditation is a practice for getting better at seeing whats driving you and deciding consciously whether you want to be driven in exactly that way.

Righteous indignation is a powerful motivator. We just need to be mindful that our conception of whats righteous is warped.

Thats why, I think its interesting that Buddhism, a couple thousand years before Darwin, diagnosed the human predicament in ways that make a lot of sense in terms of evolutionary psychology and also came up with a prescription, a program that is not trivially easy to follow, by any means. Then again, its a difficult problem, but a program that I think works in a kind of pragmatic, therapeutic sense. Beyond that, it can take you into really, I think, interesting philosophical, and I would say, spiritual territory. Ive been on meditation retreats, a number of them, where you really just do nothing but meditation all day, no contact with the outside world. In that context, you can really go to some interesting places.

One of the things that you write about in your book, just to move off things like chocolate, is anger. You talk about why, in a certain way, we sometimes get pleasure from anger. In some incident of road rage or something, being angry really brings us some sort of joy. Again, its not long-lasting. I was wondering, in your own life, how do you feel like Buddhism has helped you with anger?

Im as prone to rage as the next person.

I worked for you, I know this.

I was actually ... I forget, was I a very well-behaved boss?

I contend that there are worse bosses. Some of them occupy very high positions, even as we speak.

Rage is an interesting example, because it, in a certain sense, made more sense in the environment of our evolution, a hunter-gatherer environment, than it makes now. The point of rage, from natural selections point of view, is to demonstrate that people cant mess with you. If you disrespect me, if you try to steal my mate, whatever, I will fight you. Even if I lose the fight, I have sent a signal to everyone in my social environment that I am willing to pay the price to make sure that people who exploit me suffer.

In a modern environment like road rageand there actually recently was an actual death by gunshot in a road rage caseit doesnt even make that much sense, because theres nobody whos ever going to see you again whos witnessing the rage. Theres no point at all in a demonstration of your resolve.

It's not going to help you on Tinder if you put on your profile that you just shot someone on the freeway, either.

No. There could be active downside, beyond the risk of getting shot. One thing an evolutionary perspective can do is highlight the absurdity of some of our feelings and so reinforce the idea that its worth learning how to examine them carefully and cultivating the ability to not be driven by them, should you choose not to.

How has that worked for you? You talk in the book about a former colleague who would make you angry sometimes to think about.

I do not mention that persons name.

I was just meditating once, this was during a retreat, and for some reason, he came to mind. You know, I dont have a lot of just bitter enemies. I would say there are two or three people in the category I would put this person in. I was meditating, and I dont know why I started thinking of him, but just suddenly I had a very charitable view. Suddenly, I was like, imagining him as a gangly, awkward adolescent, like, not fitting in on the playground, and developing the various tendencies that, in my view, are not entirely commendable, and in any event, have rubbed me the wrong way. It was just the first time Ive ever thought of this person in a charitable way. Thats some kind of testament to the kind of distance you can get on your more reflexive reactions to things.

How do you feel about anger and rage in terms of people who, say, are reading the newspaper now and seeing whats going on in the world? What do you think the appropriate response is?

Very interesting question. Im thinking about, and I may have done this by the time the podcast airs, who knows, trying to get the phrase mindful resistance off the ground. Maybe, I dont know, a podcast called Mindful Resistance that competes with yours or something, who knows. I, personally, think that the reaction to Trump is excessive, for tactical purposes, that I dont think we realize how often our outrage actually feeds his base and serves his goal of keeping support at least high enough that he cant get impeached, for example. I just think in a lot of ways, and Im as prone to this as the next person, clicking retweet on something that actually doesnt have much nutritional valueits a real challenge. Righteous indignation is a powerful motivator, and it can be harnessed for good. We just need to be mindful that our conception of whats righteous is kind of naturally warped. You need to very carefully examine, I think, your commitments, kind of, your value commitments or whatever, to make sure that youre not being led astray by the parts of human nature that tend to lead us astray, or that youre not just overreacting in a counterproductive way. It absolutely is a challenge.

To be honest, Ive known people who went so far down the meditative path that, although they had the same views that they had about social justice or whatever, the same views theyd ever had, still, they seemed a little more complacent than I thought was optimum. I think thats an actual danger. You want to think about it. I dont think Im anywhere near there. My problem, in general, with politics and ideology, is keeping my rage below the counterproductive level. I need meditation even to do that.

Do you think youve gotten a better sense of why people like Trump?

Three of my four siblings voted for Trump. On the other hand, Ive pretty much avoided talking to them about it, so I dont claim that Ive gotten a lot of insight there. I do think, there is the natural tendency to want to demonize the people on the other side of the fight. It is natural and easy to say, They are racist, they are stupid and so on, and I just think its more complicated than that. There are some true racists, but I think youre not serving your own cause when you succumb to the tendency to demonize people in that way, because I think if youre going to undermine Trumps support, youre going to need to understand what the source of that support is.

Thats a very pragmatically political way of looking at it, though, that if you want Trump to lose in 2020 that you have to reach some people who voted for him, and so on. What about from a larger sense of, just put aside the political consequences for a minute. Do you think that what we need is more sympathy for people who vote in different directions and so on?

One term I would use is cognitive empathy. Not necessarily feeling their pain or even caring about them, just understanding what the world looks like from their point of view. Again, I think meditation can really facilitate that. It can break down your natural tendency to want to dismiss or demonize them. Once you do that and understand what their situation in life is, and what their frustrations are, you may then feel deeply that, yeah, some of these problems they face should be addressed. Cognitive empathy may lead to sympathy, but I think the first step is just to see the situation clearly. Our brains naturally discourage that.

As Slates resident interrogator, Isaac Chotiner has tangled with Newt Gingrich and gotten personal with novelist Jonathan Franzen. Now hes bringing his pointed, incisive interview style to a weekly podcast in which he talks one-on-one with newsmakers, celebrities, and cultural icons.

You started this podcast by saying, Im not talking about religious Buddhism, per se. When you close the book, you talk about this very subject, and you ask, Is the type of Buddhism Im practicing in fact a religion? I was just wondering, how do you feel about it, sitting here today? Is the type of Buddhism youre practicing a form of religion?

It kind of feels like that to me. I certainly consider it spiritual in some reasonable definitions of that term. The thing I say in that chapter about religion is, William James said, Generically, religion certainly centrally involves the idea that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme interest lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to that order. Buddhism, set aside the religious part, but just philosophical Buddhism does posit the existence of a kind of order. A couple of kinds, but one kind is that there is a natural convergence between seeing the world more clearly, seeing the truth, becoming happier, and becoming a better person.

Thats three different things, right? Clarity of vision, happiness, and moral edification, becoming a better person. The assertion by Buddhist philosophy is that, conveniently, those are all the same thing. If you get on the path, including a meditative path, and seriously pursue it, you will be making progress on all three fronts. At least, they will tend to coincide. I think thats basically true. There are people of great meditative attainment who are bad people. Thats possible. But I think, by and large, this kind of amazing claim about the way the universe is set up, that you get kind of three for one, I think is true.

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Mindful Rage - Slate Magazine

Genetics expert discusses creating ground rules for human germline editing – Medical Xpress

A Stanford professor of genetics discusses the thinking behind a formal policy statement endorsing the idea that researchers continue editing genes in human germ cells.

A team of genetics experts has issued a policy statement recommending that research on editing human genes in eggs, sperm and early embryos continue, provided the work does not result in a human pregnancy.

Kelly Ormond, MS, professor of genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine, is one of three lead authors of the statement, which provides a framework for regulating the editing of human germ cells. Germ cells, a tiny subset of all the cells in the body, give rise to eggs and sperm. Edits to the genes of germ cells are passed on to offspring.

The statement, published today in the American Journal of Human Genetics, was jointly prepared by the American Society for Human Genetics and four other human genetics organizations, including the National Society of Genetic Counselors, and endorsed by another six, including societies in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Africa and Asia.

Germline gene editing raises a host of technical and ethical questions that, for now, remain largely unanswered. The ASHG policy statement proposes that federal funding for germline genome editing research not be prohibited; that germline editing not be done in any human embryo that would develop inside a woman; and that future clinical germline genome editing in humans not proceed without a compelling medical rationale, evidence supporting clinical use, ethical justification, and a process incorporating input from the public, patients and their families, and other stakeholders.

Ormond recently discussed the issues that prompted the statement's creation with writer Jennie Dusheck.

Q: Why did you think it was important to issue a statement now?

Ormond: Much of the interest arose a couple of years ago when a group of researchers in China did a proof of principle study demonstrating that they could edit the genes of human embryos.

The embryos weren't viable [meaning they could not lead to a baby], but I think that paper worried people. Gene editing in human germ cells is not technically easy, and it's not likely to be a top choice for correcting genetic mutations. Still, it worried us that somebody was starting to do it.

We've been able to alter genes for many years now, but the new techniques, such as CRISPR/Cas9, that have come out in the past five years have made it a lot easier, and things are moving fast. It's now quite realistic to do human germline gene editing, and some people have been calling for a moratorium on such work.

Our organization, the American Society of Human Genetics, decided that it would be important to investigate the ethical issues and put out a statement regarding germline genome editing, and what we thought should happen in the near term moving forward.

As we got into the process, we realized that this had global impact because much of the work was happening outside of the United States. And we realized that if someone, anywhere in the world, were moving forward on germline genome editing, that it was going to influence things more broadly. So we reached out to many other countries and organizations to see if we could get global buy-in to the ideas we were thinking about.

Q: Are there regulations now in place that prevent researchers from editing human embryos that could result in a pregnancy and birth?

Ormond: Regulations vary from country to country, so research that is illegal in one country could be legal in another. That's part of the challenge and why we thought it was so important to have multiple countries involved in this statement.

Also, since 1995 the United States has had regulations against federal funding for research that creates or destroys human embryos. We worry that restricting federal funding on things like germline editing will drive the research underground so there's less regulation and less transparency. We felt it was really important to say that we support federal funding for this kind of research.

Q: Is germline editing in humans useful and valuable?

Ormond: Germline editing doesn't have many immediate uses. A lot of people argue that if you're trying to prevent genetic disease (as opposed to treating it), there are many other ways to do that. We have options like prenatal testing or IVF and pre-implantation genetic testing and then selecting only those embryos that aren't affected. For the vast majority of situations, those are feasible options for parents concerned about a genetic disease.

The number of situations where you couldn't use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to avoid having an affected child are so few and far between. For example, if a parent was what we call a homozygote for a dominant condition such as BRCA1 or Huntington's disease, or if both members of the couple were affected with the same recessive condition, like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia, it wouldn't be possible to have a biologically related child that didn't carry that gene, not unless germline editing were used.

Q: What makes germline editing controversial?

Ormond: There are families out there who see germline editing as a solution to some genetic conditions. For example, during a National Academy of Sciences meeting in December of 2015, a parent stood up and said, "I have a child who has a genetic condition. Please let this move forward; this is something that could help."

But I also work in disability studies, as it relates to genetic testing, and there are many individuals who feel strongly that genetic testing or changing genes in any way makes a negative statement about them and their worth. So this topic really edges into concerns about eugenics and about what can happen once we have the ability to change our genes.

Germline gene editing impacts not just the individual whose genes are edited, but their future offspring and future generations. We need to listen to all of those voices and try to set a path that takes all of them into account.

That's a huge debate right now. A lot of people say, "Let's not mess around with the germline. Let's only edit genes after a person is born with a medical condition." Treating an existing medical condition is different from changing someone's genes from the start, in the germline, when you don't know what else you're going to influence.

Q: There was a paper recently about gene editing that caused mutations in excessive numbers of nontargeted genes, so called "off-target effects." Did that result surprise you or change anything about what you were thinking?

Ormond: I think part of the problem is that this research is moving very fast. One of our biggest challenges was that you can't do a good ethical assessment of the risks and benefits of a treatment or technology if you don't know what those risks are, and they remain unclear.

We keep learning about potential risks, including off-target mutations and other unintended consequences. Before anyone ever tries to do germline gene editing in humans, it is very important that we do animal studies where the animals are followed through multiple generations, so that we can see what happens in the long term. There's just a lot that we don't know.

There are so many unknowns that we don't even know what guidelines to set. For example, what's an appropriate new mutation level in some of these technologies? What is the risk we're willing to take as we move forward into human studies? And I think those guidelines need to be set as we move forward into clinical trials, both in somatic cells [cells of the body, such as skin cells, neurons, blood cells] and in germline cells.

It's really hard because, of course, we're talking about, for the most part, bad diseases that significantly impact quality of life. So if you're talking about a really serious disease, maybe you're willing to take more risk there, and these new mutations aren't likely to be as bad as the genetic condition you already have. But we don't know, right?

We haven't had any public dialogue about any of this, and that's what we need to have. We need to find a way to educate the public and scientists about all of these issues so people can have informed discussions and really come together as this moves forward, so that were not in that reactive place when it potentially becomes a real choice.

And that goes back to your first question, which is why did we feel like we needed to have a statement now? We wanted to get those conversations going.

Explore further: 11 organizations urge cautious but proactive approach to gene editing

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Genetics expert discusses creating ground rules for human germline editing - Medical Xpress

Invitae To Acquire Good Start Genetics And CombiMatrix – Seeking Alpha

Quick Take

Genetic information company Invitae (NVTA) has announced agreements to acquire two companies, privately-held Good Start Genetics and CombiMatrix (CBMX).

The target companies offer a range of prenatal and post-pregnancy genetic-based screening services for clinicians and their patients.

Invitae is acquiring these two firms as part of an ongoing strategy to create a genetic information cafeteria that provides a wide range of diagnostics options.

Target Companies

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Good Start was founded in 2008 to develop prenatal screening tests for persons wishing to have children.

Management is headed by CEO Jeffrey Luber, who has been with the company since 2014 and was previously CEO of EXACT Sciences (EXAS) during its turnaround and recapitalization. He was also co-founder and Vice President Corporate Development at SynapDx.

Below is a brief overview video about GoodStarts carrier screening:

(Source: Motivity Video)

Good Start has developed three types of tests:

Good Start had raised $32 million in investment from top tier investors such as OrbiMed, Safeguard Scientifics (SFE) and SV Health Investors.

CombiMatrix, which held its IPO in 2002, provides miscarriage analysis and advanced DNA testing for in-vitro fertility screening and determining genetic abnormalities involved in miscarriage & pediatric developmental disorders.

Prior to the acquisition announcement, CombiMatrix had a market capitalization of approximately $14.4 million.

Acquisition Terms and Rationale

For Good Start, Invitae intends to pay cash of $18.3 million, 1.65 million shares of Invitae stock ($15 million worth) and the assumption of Good Starts obligations, for a total transaction value of approximately $39.3 million.

For CombiMatrix, Invitae intends to pay up to $27 million in NVTA stock for CombiMatrix stock, RSUs and in-the-money options, plus up to $6 million in NVTA stock for Series F warrants, which were originally sold in 2016 as part of an $8 million financing. If holders of less than 90% of outstanding Series F warrants tender, then Invitae has the option to terminate the acquisition.

Notably, the deal announcement states that the cost to Invitae of those warrants may increase as follows,

To the extent the Series F warrants are not exchanged and are either exercised or assumed as part of the acquisition, the consideration payable by Invitae could increase by up to approximately $15.0 million in shares of Invitae, or approximately 1.58 million shares, subject to adjustment based upon a net cash calculation for CombiMatrix at the time of the acquisition.

Thus, Invitae is on the hook for up to an additional $15 million in stock consideration for CombiMatrix pertaining to what the Series F warrant holders choose to do.

So, to sum up both transactions, Invitae is spending $18.3 million in cash, issuing $48 million worth of stock and is potentially on the hook for an additional $15 million in stock, for a total combined deal value of $81.3 million.

Invitaes most recent 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2017, indicated cash and marketable securities of $96.7 million and total liabilities of $70.3 million, so it appears the company has ample resources to pay for these two acquisitions since they are mostly paid for with stock.

The rationale for Invitaes moves to acquire both companies is to expand its offerings to families both before pregnancy and after childbirth or miscarriage.

This in turn is part of Invitaes strategic approach of providing genetic information to individuals throughout their life span.

As Invitae CEO Sean George stated in the deal announcement,

This is a transformative moment for Invitae, for our industry, and importantly for patients. By acquiring Good Start and CombiMatrix, Invitae intends to create the industry's first comprehensive genetic information platform providing high-quality, affordable genetic information coupled with world-class clinical expertise to inform healthcare decisions throughout every stage of an individual's life. We believe the strength of our existing platform, strategic acquisitions like these and our network of partners will fuel continued growth and further establish Invitae as a leading genetic information service provider.

Invitae management hasnt been shy about acquiring companies as it sees fit. I previously wrote on the companies last acquisition in June in my article, Invitae Acquires CancerGene Connect for Patient Family History Collection.

Invitae appears to be assembling a veritable cafeteria of options for genetic information for consumers, healthcare providers and other market participants.

Investors like what they see so far, although Invitaes stock in the past year has largely moved within a range of $6.00 per share to $11.00 per share. The stock is up 7.75% on the current two acquisition deal announcement:

(Source: Seeking Alpha)

It is likely that both acquisitions will be a drag on EPS in the near term, but promise to increase Invitaes breadth of service offerings as management appears to intend it to become a one-stop shop for genetic information.

The big question is whether or not that is a viable model in the nascent market for genetic information. Acquiring companies on the cheap certainly helps, although Im not convinced that these acquisitions are necessarily cheap.

So, the jury is out, and management will need to prove the value of these transactions over the next 12 to 18 months.

I write about M&A deals, public company investments in technology startups, insider activity, and IPOs. Click the Follow button next to my name at the top or bottom of this article if you want to receive future articles automatically.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Editor's Note: This article covers one or more stocks trading at less than $1 per share and/or with less than a $100 million market cap. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.

Continued here:
Invitae To Acquire Good Start Genetics And CombiMatrix - Seeking Alpha

Neuroscience Research Seriously Flawed: A Conversation with Paul Silvia – HuffPost

The world is not fair to lefties. ---Paul J. Silvia

August 13 is International Left-Handers Day, a time to consider that in the world of cognitive neuroscience research roughly one billion lefties---10%-15% of the entire human population---do not exist. Sorry Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, you dont count. Indeed, I was shocked when University of North Carolina, Greensboro psychologist Paul Silvia informed me during the interview that follows that: Essentially all cognitive neuroscience research uses only right-handed people. Silvia says with lefties laterality in the brain is just so different that it throws off statistical group averaging. But doesnt that simply mean neuroscience research is seriously flawed?

Dutch researcher Roel M. Willems writing in Nature thinks so, because left-handedness falls within the normal range of human diversity---and so Willems has proposed the following:

Moreover, left handedness is not exclusive to Homo sapiens. Chimpanzees also exhibit left and right handedness, for example. And the beat goes on. . .

But I actually contacted Paul Silvia recently because he is one of three dozen academics currently funded by the Imagination Institute (bankrolled by the Templeton Foundation) to explore for an imagination quotient. Silvia and his collaborator Roger E. Beaty were awarded $175,000 to study how the brain generates creative ideas: Creative Connections: Measuring Imagination with Functional Network Connectivity. Results of their 2015-2017 investigation are about to be published.

In another 2015 Imagination Institute award, Silvia and Yale University co-investigator Zorana Pringle were recipients of $150,000 for a two-year study on self-regulation in creativity.

Silvia is the author of five books, among them, How to Write a Lot; and Public Speaking for Psychologists (with D.B. Feldman); and 150 academic papers. He serves on the editorial boards of nine professional journals: Imagination, Cognition, and Personality; Journal of Creative Behavior; International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving; Empirical Studies of the Arts; Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts; Self and Identity; Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; Social Psychology; Social Psychological and Personality Science.

As a watchmaker (evenings and weekends) as well, Paul Silvia is especially aware of time. And in his spare time away from the watch bench and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where he is currently Lucy Spinks Keker Excellence Professor of Psychology, he shares his horological expertise with the world in his online blog: Adjusting Vintage Watches.

Paul Silva has taught psychology at UNC, Greensboro for the last 15 years. Hes also been a professor of psychology at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and before that a visiting researcher at the University of Erlangen, Germany (1999-2000). His PhD and MA are from the University of Kansas in psychology and his BA (with Honors) in psychology from the University of Southern California.

Suzan Mazur: You published an article in Nature in 2015 on the brain and creative idea production in collaboration with your colleague Roger Beaty and with current Imagination Institute scientific director Scott Kaufman et al. in which you conclude that generating novel ideas requires both cognitive control and spontaneous imaginative processes---in other words the whole brain is needed for creativity. How has your recent Imagination Institute project on generating creative ideas advanced those 2015 findings? Whats new?

Paul Silvia: The 2015 paper was our first toes-in-the-water. The whole brain view is really a good way to think about it. Traditionally with creativity and brain work, investigations have addressed: Whats the creative part? Wheres creativity in the brain? Whats the part that lights up?

And traditionally, the view has been: The right side is the creative part. But theres really no part or piece or even single system. Creativity is a very complex thing. Our earlier study was really a pilot study. We had a small number of people and we were pretty limited in how we were looking at creativity. People werent especially selected because they were creative or eminent or accomplished. It was kind of a proof of concept. There was enough to suggest that we were on to something with the idea.

Suzan Mazur: But why were all of your participants in that first study right-handed?

Paul Silvia: The world is not fair to lefties, Suzan.

Suzan Mazur: Are you left-handed?

Paul Silvia: Im not left-handed but I have a lot of friends who are left-handed.

Suzan Mazur: I am left-handed and particularly curious about this aspect of your study.

Paul Silvia: The reason why our participants were right-handed was largely because of laterality in the brain of lefties. You sort of have to pick all right-handers or all left-handers for a brain-scanning study because youre basically averaging all the brains at the end of the study. For lefties, the laterality is just so different. Also, there are just more righties available.

Something not really appreciated with brain research is that we end up studying a very special group of people who are not taking any medications, are extremely healthy, are not claustrophobic and are fine for two hours in a small space thats freakishly loud. You cant have subjects who have migraines or seizures or depression. So you wind up with very healthy, very emotionally-controlled kind of people as subjects.

Suzan Mazur: How has your research funded by Imagination Institute advanced the 2015 findings? Whats new?

Paul Silvia: Theres a lot thats new. Its hard to create anything large scale without funding and the Imagination Institute has really been a god-send. In our most recent study we were able to work with a lot more subjects, close to 200 people. [Everyone in the Imagination Institute study was paid in cash.] And we specifically recruited people actively pursuing creative careers. So not just anyone off the street.

Primarily, we were able to research in an incredibly comprehensive way. Instead of just seeing creative ideas a person can come up with while theyre in a MRI scanner, the more recent study looked at creativity in everyday life as well.

For 8 to 10 hours, participants filled out personality scales and took intelligence tests, cognitive tests, surveys about creative achievement and hobbies. Then for a whole week we interrupted them 10 or 12 times a day on their smartphones and via a survey app that asked them what they were doing, thinking, and working on right then. We looked at whether they were daydreaming at that very moment. What were they thinking about? Were they thinking about the future? Were they thinking about a creative goal? Was their dream realistic? Was their daydream fulfilling, silly, interesting, idea provoking---

Suzan Mazur: Was this again an all right-handed group?

Paul Silvia: Yes, this was all right-handed. There were lots of exclusions. Illnesses---from epilepsy to stroke---disqualified candidates. Use of a wide range of medications that affect the brain, including some very common ones like antidepressants, also disqualified.

Suzan Mazur: But getting back to the left-handed issue, youre saying its easier to test right-handed people because left-handed people have more lateral brain activity. Its too much work to test lefties?

Suzan Mazur: Thats fascinating.

Paul Silvia: Its mostly because there are more right-handers around. If you could study only lefties, maybe it would work out [laughs]. Youd have to test righties separately from lefties. You cant combine the two.

The left-handers brain isnt a photographic negative of the right-handers brain. If you had half leftie and half rightie, maybe you could make it work but its just that there are so few lefties.

Suzan Mazur: One billion people more or less in the world are left-handed. So cognitive neuroscience research appears to be seriously flawed if it is basing its science only on a right-handed population.

Paul Silvia: The other problem is the ambidextrous people.

Suzan Mazur: Humans have two useful hands. Arent most people ambidextrous in some ways?

Paul Silvia: Yeah, its really not a left/right thing. Its much more like theres this line from 1 to 100 and everyone is on there somewhere. Its something that develops.

My office neighbor is studying how people develop handedness, which starts prenatally. Everyone learns to be handed, its not a biological default. There are just some complex developmental reasons. It starts prenatally and most people end up right-handed.

Suzan Mazur: What was the overall goal of your second study?

Paul Silvia: It was primarily to put how creative ideas arise to a big test. In looking at the creative brain, we needed to learn what our 200 participants were thinking about in everyday life, particularly how people were using imagination in everyday life, and we saw what their brains looked like during those moments via the scanner. Daydreaming, mental imagery, thoughts about everyday environment---that was a really big part of it.

The real test of whether something works is whether you can figure it out inside the lab where things are controlled and can then also say something about what people are like in their everyday lives. We had more people in the second study and there have been advances in neuroscience methods since our first study.

We were using a very fancy-pants method for the second study. We were essentially looking at networks of networks. Instead of looking at individual areas of the brain, we looked at clusters of areas that work together. There are a lot of these networks. Sometimes they compete with each other. Sometimes they cooperate with each other. Creativity seems to come from cooperation among networks that normally compete and inhibit and antagonize each other.

Suzan Mazur: When will you publish your findings of this second study?

Paul Silvia: Well be publishing a lot of different papers. Were now wrapping up the big main one. That should be ready to submit to a journal within a couple of weeks. This project went very well, very smoothly.

We suggested in the earlier paper that theres an old idea about creativity going back decades and decades that theres kind of a yin-yang quality to creative thinking. There are people who say creativity is expansive, its daydreaming, its uncontrolled, its letting your mind roam free. Its loose, a spontaneous way of thinking. But theres a whole other side to this argument that has to do with planning, thinking things through, focus, controlled problem solving.

Many humanist thinkers have suggested that a fusion of these opposites happens in the brain, that there is a network for spontaneous thought, but there is also a network for controlled thought. And when people are coming up with different ideas, these two otherwise unfriendly networks work together.

Suzan Mazur: There is a recent study from Queen Mary and Goldsmiths universities indicating that suppression of the thinking and reasoning centers of the brain--- the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex---through electrical stimulation results in more creative problem solving. However, the ability to solve problems where a higher working memory is needed is apparently worse with electrical stimulation to the same region. Any comment?

Paul Silvia: That would be an example where the unfriendly networks dont work together. We say, sort of to this approach. Yes, and mostly.

Whenever you have really two opposing schools of thought that have existed for centuries, its usually because they both do have some kernel of truth. Clearly an uncontrolled, spontaneous way of thinking is crucial to creativity.

Suzan Mazur: Emotion is coming from the oldest part of the brain.

Paul Silvia: Our brains are always mind wandering, daydreaming and very vivid, very emotional. But the other side is that theres planning, practice, deliberation, foresight and sustained focus. Not letting your mind wander away.

Suzan Mazur: Theres another relevant study, published in Nature earlier this year, by Shi et al.---who cite your 2015 paper. The authors look at grey matter volume across the brain and identify two types of creativity: (1) artistic and (2) scientific, which they associate with two regions of the brain. They say scientific creativity is closely associated with the executive attention network and semantic processing, but also note that the neural basis of scientific creativity is still pretty elusive. Artistic creativity they think is associated with the salience network (dynamic switching network), but say there are conflicting conclusions and that more studies are needed. Are you aware of this study and can you say more about it?

Paul Silvia: I think its a sign of where studies of the creative brain are really going. In the paper we are about to publish based on our large sample and more comprehensive assessment of creativity, it looks like theres a sort of mega-network. Theres the default network---spontaneous thought [deep prefrontal cortex & temporal lobe]; executive network of focused, controlled thought [outer prefrontal cortex & posterior parietal lobe]; and the salience network [dorsal anterior cingulate cortices & anterior insular], which is connecting things that are really important.

People who are most creative use a mega-network of all three working together. Notably the executive and default networks are usually antagonistic. But the calm focus that creative people experience, the expansive focus---there are not a lot of words for it---seems to resonate with a lot of people as a creative high.

Suzan Mazur: You are a watchmaker as well as social scientist. What is your fascination with watches?

Paul Silvia: Watchmaking helps me to cultivate a focus and awareness, its very contemplative. Watches are so intricate. Its fascinating to me that long ago people could make such micro-mechanical machines. It boggles the mind. You can take a watch 20 years old, clean it up, tune it up and it keeps time as good as a Rolex that costs $10,000.

I think time---humans always have a sense that we move through time, time means something to us. The clock is a powerful metaphor.

Suzan Mazur: As a scientist and watchmaker, do you see the brain using algorithms to gather and encode information?

Paul Silvia: Its funny to think of watchmaking and the brain because humans have always used whatever the most advanced technology was at the time as a metaphor for the brain. In ancient Greece, it was a catapult. Its comical now to think of the brain as a catapult as a metaphor. Then you get to telephone systems and switchboards. Certainly, watches and clocks since the 1700s with all these interlocking pieces. The brain as a computer, as software. The most modern metaphor, its almost not a metaphor, is the brain as an organic network, a distributed system---like human society.

Suzan Mazur: I understand the Imagination Institute is looking to find an imagination quotient. Is it findable? Or is it as biologist Stan Salthe says, bell on cat.

Paul Silvia: The Imagination Institute has taken an investment approach in funding three dozen young scholars with fairly far-out ideas. It has a high-risk, high-reward model that importantly raises the profile of imagination studies. From our research, it does appear that some people have much more vivid imagery than others and find it easier to come up with really cool ideas, although humans in general have a lot of mental imagery. Everyone is creative.

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Neuroscience Research Seriously Flawed: A Conversation with Paul Silvia - HuffPost

30m research neuroscience research boost at UCL – Lab News

The UCL Institute of Neurologyhas won a 29m infrastructure award to enable the creation of the worlds leading translational neuroscience facility.

The move will combine the UCL Neurology Institute with the operational headquarters of the UK Dementia Research Institute, also based at the university. This move will find better ways across the university of diagnosing and treating neurological disorders such as dementia, stroke and epilepsy.

Professor Michael Hanna, from the Institute of Neurology, said: This major award significantly advances progress towards our vision to create the worlds leading centre for translational neuroscience which will enable us to find treatments, train the next generation and work in close partnerships with industry, funders and patients.

Funding will provide new integrated spaces for laboratories, drug discovery and experimental neurology and its hoped that this drive closer collaboration with patients, funders and industry.

The grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has also been supplemented by a number of philanthropists such as a consortium of retailers. Including Iceland, ASDA, HSS Hire, Morrisons and Waitrose, they have all donated the levy on plastic carrier bags to the UCL Dementia Research Initiative. In addition, other partnerships have been formed with medical charities and industry partners who are contributing to this project.

The UK Research Partnership Fund (UKRPIF), which awarded the money to UCL, was launched in 2012 with 100m. Since then, government investment has risen to 900m with UKRPIF funded until 2021.

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30m research neuroscience research boost at UCL - Lab News

No Room For Neuroscience In New-Look Shire – Seeking Alpha

Not so long ago Shire (NASDAQ:SHPG) was under fire for over-reliance on its ADHD portofolio; now, as the company sharpens its focus on rare diseases, the neuroscience business could be jettisoned altogether. During its second-quarter results the group revealed plans for a "strategic review" of the division, which could be worth $9bn, according to EvaluatePharma's consensus-based NPV (see table below).

The company will give more concrete details of its plans by the end of the year, but said options for the unit could include an independent public listing. This seems a more likely outcome than a trade sale, with any potential buyers surely wary about a shrinking franchise grappling with patent expiries.

Nevertheless, in the near term Shire's neuroscience products will remain highly profitable, and Vyvanse is still forecast to be its top seller in 2022, although it is set to lose patent protection the year after.

10 years ago that concern about the company's reliance on ADHD was well founded - in 2006 sales of its stimulants business accounted for two thirds of group revenues, which amounted to $1.5bn in total.

By 2015, in the wake of moves into enzyme-replacement therapies and hereditary angiedema (HAE), the neuroscience division was bringing in just over a third of the company's $6bn in total revenues. And this year, with the huge Baxtalta acquisition bedded in, the unit will represent only a fifth of the company's projected $14.6bn of total sales.

Shire's Chief Executive, Flemming Ornskov, said several times during a media call that the neuroscience unit was strong, adding that the group's decision was part of a "natural evolution" in its shift towards rare diseases, which had seen it buy Baxalta last year.

"Both businesses are thriving, both have significant opportunities for growth in the future, but both are very distinct," he said.

Last year Bernstein analysts mooted Allergan (NYSE:AGN) as a potential buyer for the neuroscience unit.

In spite of its new focus, Shire has sought to wring as much life as possible out of its neuroscience franchise, which chiefly comprises the older ADHD therapy Adderall XR, the amphetamine prodrug Vyvanse and, most recently, Mydayis, which got FDA approval in June for patients aged 13 and older.

However, it is unclear how these newer products will fare as Adderall XR generics become more dominant in the market. Several versions are already on the market, and the drug's last patents are set to expire in 2019, which could lead to another wave of cheaper products and even more pressure on the next-generation therapies.

Splitting off its ADHD portfolio could make sense for Shire if the markets reward it with a premium for being a pure-play orphan company - and it could also use the proceeds to acquire more rare disease businesses to hone its focus further. However, it will escape no one that Glaxosmithkline (NYSE:GSK) recently said it was "considering its options" in rare diseases.

"I'm a believer in focus and building a business that's leader in its category," Mr. Ornskov said. A few years ago this was ADHD, but Shire has finally become big enough to sacrifice its first cash cow.

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No Room For Neuroscience In New-Look Shire - Seeking Alpha