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Cell Biology

On the Basis of Gender – The Viking Magazine

Left foot forward. Right foot forward. While that may well be the mantra playing in 18-year-old Caster Semenyas head as she flies furiously down the length of the track towards the finish line, the spectators watching her would be lucky to be able to distinguish between her feet as she runs. Her high speed reduces her muscular figure clad in a South-African-colored uniform to a blur of green and yellow as she finishes almost a full second before her closest opponent at the World Championships in the 800 meter race.

Semenya didnt just win her event she dominated it.

But later that fateful night in 2009, instead of being celebrated for the young phenom that she had trained arduously to become, Semenya came under fire for potentially having an unfair advantage as the public began to question her biological sex. The intrusive testing and inquisitions that followed affected Semenyas ability to compete, but she did her best to hold her head high and carry on as people picked apart her prowess. Semenyas case was just one of many that deals with the complicated role of gender in sports, a topic that becomes increasingly relevant as athletic science improves and athletes of all genders become faster and stronger than ever before.

When people think of sports, their mind often divides mens sports and womens sports into two separate entities, with the athletes within them as strictly binary. Sports have been categorized this way throughout history with the intention of ensuring that competition that ensues will be fair. But how do we define fair, and will this rigid separation continue to be the norm in the future?

In some sports, such as distance swimming, the average percent difference between men and womens times is a slim 5.5%, according to a 2010 study in The Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. In other sports, such as weightlifting, this difference is more significant at 36.8% according to the same source. Because each sport is unique in the physical challenge it presents to athletes, the same standards for legislation and rules regarding gender and fairness cannot be applied universally.

Recently, there has been an increase in discussion surrounding transgender athletes competing in the gender category that best matches their gender identity. While some push back against trans inclusion in situations such as the Idaho bill passed in March that enforces genital and hormonal testing of athletes, others fight for equality in sport. Harvard graduate Schuyler Bailar a trans swimmer who was accepted onto the mens team and found great success and joy in living life as his most authentic self is one of the athletes leading the fight for gender inclusivity in sports. The role that gender plays in sports is already complexthe way gender and sports will interact in the future is even more so.

Despite a social movement towards increased transgender inclusion and a general heightened understanding of what it means to be transgender, many major sports leagues, such as USA Powerlifting, have chosen to keep their original policies in place. In a statement of the organizations transgender participation policy, the USA Powerlifting league cited both the physical advantage of males and a ban on the androgens often used to transition from female to male as reasons for their stance.

While the term discrimination is used to catch the attention of the public, it is most often misused, the statement read. We are a sports organization with rules and policies. They apply to everyone to provide a level playing field.

While some question whether the USA Powerlifting policies are discriminatory against transgender athletes, the organization said it is fair in a sport largely based on physical strength and compared gender discrimination to policies surrounding age restrictions.

This bill attempts to solve a problem that does not exist while slamming the door shut for transgender student athletes to fully participate in their school communities.

Kathy Griesmeyer

At the high school level, some athletes have protested transgender participation in the gender category of their choice. Recently, at a high school in Connecticut, the families of female track runners filed a lawsuit against the participation of transgender athletes in womens sports, arguing that their female children competing against runners with male anatomy could hinder their personal chances of earning track titles and scholarships.

Those who share the same opinion as those parents have formed conservative groups and are supported by legislators throughout the states that are looking to ban participation of transgender athletes in both mens and womens sports. For example, the Idaho state Senate recently passed Republican-sponsored bill 24-11. If signed, this bill would prohibit both trans and intersex girls from competing in the girls heats of high school and college sports.

If a female athletes sex is questioned by a coach, parent, or administration of the other team, the future of that athletes participation depends on if their biological sex is confirmed by a signed physicians statement that shall indicate the students sex based solely on: The students internal and external reproductive anatomy; the students normal endogenously produced levels of testosterone; an analysis of the studentsgenetic makeup, according to the bill.

This bill fails to acknowledge that the inclusion and acceptance of transgender people and their identity is extremely important to their well being, both physically and mentally. By reducing someone to their biological sex characteristics, one is blatantly disregarding their internal identity.

Additionally, this bill only targets female athletes, requiring them to go the extra step if their sex status is questioned in order to play their sport, while their male counterparts do not have to endure this same burden. This suggests that, should a woman have success in an athletic event, her success may be attributed to genetic alterations rather than talent.

Kathy Griesmyer, a policy director with the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, is disappointed with this bill, citing that it is intentionally transphobic and that it makes things more difficult for athletes that already face many social hurdles simply for fulfilling their true sense of identity.

This bill attempts to solve a problem that does not exist while slamming the door shut for transgender student athletes to fully participate in their school communities, Griesmyer said in a statement in response to the bill. Idaho has not seen any issues with trans girls competing in the girls sports. This unconstitutional and mean-spirited bill prevents trans girls from finding community and self-esteem in sports, and will certainly result in litigation to defend the civil rights of Idahos transgender community.

In addition to being transphobic, this bill is an invasion of the athletes privacy and puts power in the hands of coaches or parents who may use it to place their competitors at a harsh disadvantage.

In a similar proposition, legislation announced in January could prevent transgender women in Arizona from participating in athletics teams based on their gender identity, requiring some females athletes to provide a doctors note stating their biological sex in order for them to compete in their sport.

However, this rule only applies to womens sport and not to male counterpart sports. The vast majority of the arguments surrounding barring transitioned athletes center solely on male-to-female athletes. Those critics cite the biological differences between men and women that, they claim, could lead to significant competitive advantages for male athletes. Most of these changes take place during puberty: a biological male undergoing puberty will see a host of changes due to their significantly elevated testosterone levels compared with biological females. According to a study comparing female to male testosterone, an adult male will have seven to eight times the natural testosterone coursing through a womans body on average.

This testosterone is accompanied by scores of physiological changes, among them larger muscles, denser bones and a higher proportion of lean body massits these traits that lead to the bigger, faster, stronger notion surrounding male athletes.

While transitioning to female often involves the use of testosterone suppressants and estrogen, most in favor of barring trans athletes argue that these measures dont reverse the increased bone density, superior musculature, and other characteristics of male puberty.

So despite the fact that female-to-male athletes who choose to undergo hormone therapy treatment will also have elevated testosterone levels, this isnt seen as a threat: the vast majority of benefits will be derived from a biological male puberty, not from an addition of testosterone to a body thats undergone female puberty.

But, of course, thats not always the case. A 2016 Washington Post article examining the trans advantage cites that after a year of hormone therapy, female trans distance runners completely lose their speed advantage over cisgender women. Similarly, individuals like Nancy Barto, an Arizona state representative, recognize that regardless of whether a male-to-female athlete will have a greater advantage in sports than a female-to-male athlete, legislature that targets women specifically cis or otherwise puts up barriers to prevent their participation. This type of legislature in sport is counterproductive, introducing yet another in a long line of historical roadblocks for female athletes.

When this is allowed, it discourages female participation in athletics and, worse, it can result in women and girls being denied crucial educational and financial opportunities, Barto said in an interview with NBC News.

The recent passage of such legislation such as the bill signed by Idahos governor on March 30 raises questions about what, exactly, constitutes someone as being transgender. Legislators such as Representative Barbara Ehardt, a sponsor of the bill passed in Idaho, have said that genital exams and genetic and hormone testing could easily determine an athletes sex. However, in reality, sex testing may not be that simple, as it is difficult to come up with metrics to objectively distinguish between different sexes.

Some of the sex testing methods that Ehardt cited may even produce contradictory results. At the 1966 European Track and Field Championships in Budapest, Polish sprinter Ewa Kobukowska passed a genital exam and qualified as female. The following year, Kobukowska failed a chromosomal test, and was barred from participating in the European Cup womens track and field competition in Kiev. An analysis later found that she had a set of XXY chromosomes.

A similar issue arises when it comes to hormone testing. The International Association of Athletics Federation, which sets testosterone limits for women in racing events ranging from the 400-meter to one-mile race, bans athletes who produce abnormally-high levels of testosterone from participating in womens sports.

In 2011, the IAAF set the limit for womens testosterone levels at 10 nanomoles per liter of blood, widely considered the lower end of the typical testosterone level among males. This limit barred Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter who naturally produces high levels of testosterone, from competition. Chand later won an appeal against her ban; the court agreed with Chand that there was no scientific evidence linking high testosterone levels to better athletic performance. The IAAF commissioned a study in 2017 and justified with data that was highly scrutinized lowered the limit to five nanomoles per liter seven years later, a change that was meant to ensure a level playing field for athletes, IAAF President Sebastian Coe said. Critics argued that the data was flawed, and urged the IAAF to retract the study, which was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

However, the IAAF stood firmly behind its study and said it would not retract the paper. Our evidence and data show that testosterone, either naturally produced or artificially inserted into the body, provides significant performance advantages in female athletes, Coe said. The press release goes on to state that most females have testosterone levels of between 0.12 to 1.79 nanomoles per liter, and that no females testosterone level would exceed the IAAFs new limit unless they had disorders of sex development or a tumor.

An example of a female athlete with higher than usual levels of testosterone is track champion Caster Semenya of South Africa. She began running seriously at age 12, and by the time she became an adult, she was competing in the Olympics. Due to her incredible success and ability, suspicion arose regarding Semenyas biological sex and levels of testosterone. She soon found herself the target of an extremely intrusive media investigation and was eventually barred from competing; after an investigation discovered that she was born with XY chromosomes, Semenyas genetic makeup was ruled an unfair advantage over her competition.

On August 19, 2009, Semenya won the 800-meter event in the World Championship by a landslide, but following this impressive feat came a seemingly never ending public investigation into her biological sex and sex characteristics.

Along with stripping Semenya of any type of celebration or praise for her accomplishments, the public reduced her feats to her gender. The scrutiny Semenya endured is disproportionate to her situation, as she is seconds off the world record and is relatively competitive with other female athletes, disproving the idea that she has an unfair advantage she is simply talented at what she does.

Typically, it is women who endure accusations of this nature. Michael Phelpss abnormally long wingspan is never labeled as an unfair advantage; it is simply a tool that makes him successful. Most professional basketball players are extremely tall compared to the general population, making them genetic oddities, and this is never labeled as an unfair advantage. Yao Ming, for instance, is a staggering 76 tall, a height thats inspired countless conspiracy theories about whether the star was bred in a lab rather than born to his 63 mother and 67 father. Tinfoil hats aside, Mings height enabled him to tower over even his fellow NBA competitors. Ming is nearly a full foot taller than the average NBA player, who stands at 67, and nearly two feet taller than the average American male, who stands at 59, which gives him a clear competitive advantage based on his genetics. And instead of protesting Usain Bolt, society hails him as the fastest man in the world, despite his body being described as built for speed due to his abnormal proportions. In a BBC News article, former Great Britain sprinter Craig Pickering said, Bolt is a genetic freak because being 65 tall means he shouldnt be able to do what he does at the speed he does given the length of his legs.

Along with stripping Semenya of any type of celebration or praise for her accomplishments, the public reduced her to her gender.

The main goal of most professional athletes is to be the best they can, so why was Semenya punished for her gift? The examples listed above are few compared to the gifted male athletes celebrated for the genetic gifts that enable them to compete leaps and bounds ahead of most athletes. And the countless examples seem to point to one central notion: men who are good at what they do are not held to the same unreasonable standards or stigma as their female counterparts.

Although Semenyas case has gained notoriety, she is not the first female athlete to face restrictions from her sport when her performances were deemed, essentially, too good to be true. Maria Jos Martnez-Patio, an internationally-recognized hurdler turned college professor, has a history that eerily parallels that of Semenya, so much so that Martnez-Patio calls herself the Semenya of the 1980s, according to a profile with the United Kingdoms Times. Martnez-Patio faced little scrutiny or public attention initially; at 22, she was given a certificate of femininity after passing a sex test the title is often awarded after enduring humiliating and intrusive tests such as gynecological exams, MRIs, and ultrasounds enabling her to advance to the quarter finals of the 100-meter hurdles at the world championships in Helsinki.

But in 1985, her troubles began.

At the World University Games, a new test karyotype analysis that examined her chromosomes directly found that she had an XY 46th chromosome, the chromosomal pattern typical of a biological male. Martnez-Patios story was more complex than her chromosomes she has androgen insensitivity syndrome which means her body doesnt respond to testosterone in a typical fashion, so any advantage she was perceived to have was likely naturally negated but the storm of public backlash that poured down on her was indifferent to that fact. After her test, Martnez-Patio was ruled ineligible to participate in femaleathletics, and even encouraged to fake an injury to leave quietly. She suddenly found herself barred from the sport shed played and loved all her life and newly privy to information regarding her sex that would leave anyones head spinning if not reconsidering what theyd thought was the truth about their gender their entire life. If the sudden onslaught that had struck Martnez-Patio wasnt already enough, the humiliation and shame of being pushed to lie, to leave gracefully not to make a scene was the final straw. Despite her initial compliance with the injury scheme, Martnez-Patio chose to fight back. In 1986, despite the public media skewering shed endured, she entered the Spanish national championships 60-meter hurdles event. She was told she had two options: withdraw from the event discreetly, or face public condemnation. She chose the latter. After competing and winning, she was stripped of her scholarship and athletic residency, and faced consequences in her private life that were far more hurtful than any Spanish press article.

In The Times article, Martnez-Patio describes how she suffered after the test. I lost my boyfriend because all the media said I was a man, Martnez-Patio said. On many occasions, I thought the best thing was to die because I could not stand so much suffering and injustice. I had to leave my residence in a high-performance center in Madrid within 24 hours. I was on the street. The most complicated thing is having to publicly demonstrate your status as a woman before the whole world. You feel as if everyone is talking about the amount of woman that you are. And this stigma accompanies you for the rest of your life.

Similarly to Martnez-Patios situation, when she was told to cease competing until her chromosomal test results were returned, the International Amateur Athletic Federation, or IAAF, requested Semenya to refrain from competing until there was a definitive conclusion from sex verification tests. As this all occurred, Semenya, her family and her team upheld the statement that she was biologically female and had identified as a woman since birth, regardless of her abnormal hormone levels.

However, this type of testing is not as accurate or conclusive as many hoped it would be. According to many studies and Dr. Gerald Conway, an endocrinologist who worked on the study of Semenyas hormones, while it is true that higher-than-usual levels of testosterone can give an individual an advantage in sport, this is not always the case.

There is an advantage to exposure to testosterone, which is why people use testosterone as an anabolic steroid, Conway said. There are natural conditions, where women normally have more testosterone in circulation, and they would have a biological advantage in many sports arenas.

But the quantitative level of testosterone in ones blood isnt the end all be all, as some women do not react to having high levels of the hormone because their bodies simply dont recognize it.

Katrina Karkazis, a cultural anthropologist and research fellow at Yale, co-authored the book Testosterone: An Unauthorised Biography with Rebecca Jordan-Young, a sociomedical scientist. In it, Karkazis and Jordan-Young critique and dismantle the previously believed effects testosterone has on the body.

In an interview with The Guardian, Karkazis discussed misconceptions about the actual impact testosterone can have on an athlete.

Testosterone is a very dynamic hormone, Karkazis said. Its actually responsive to social cues and situations. For example, if a coach gives you positive feedback, that can raise your testosterone level Where we run into trouble is trying to make comparisons across individuals based on testosterone levels. Sometimes its individuals with lower testosterone who do better. So its not as simple as saying more testosterone equals better performance.

Schuyler Bailar made history as the first openly transgender swimmer in the NCAA. As a member of the graduating class of 2019 from Harvard, the Virginia native took a gap year after high school during which he came out as transgender. After becoming a star swimmer in high school, Bailar had been recruited to swim for the womens team at Harvard, although after coming out he was unsure if he would be able to swim on the mens team once his education at Harvard began.

In an interview on the Ellen Show, Bailar said that while he has not been as competitive in mens heats in comparison to the dominance he showed when racing against women, he doesnt mind. Bailar admits that while he is no longer placing first, he is holding his own in races, defying people who support barring trans athletes from existing as themselves.

Im not winning anything, but I think Im not awful, Bailar said with a smile on his face. I keep up with my teammates and I keep up with the people around me, but Im not winning anything like I used to and thats definitely humbling.

While some people may argue that trans athletes fight to change which gender category they compete in for an advantage or other external reasons, Bailar is simply living life in a way that feels true to himself and because the sport is important to him. Along with being a swimmer, Bailar has become a public speaker, and aims to raise awareness about transgender youth in sports.

It [not winning] has helped me develop something I was working on before, which was learning to love swimming just for swimming, and I think that theres a lot of other kinds of glory in that, Bailar said.

I was just ecstatic and it was as much glory as I wouldve gotten in first place. Probably more, because I was myself.

Schuyler Bailar

Bailar has found that having the support of his team and improving on his own personal times can be just as exciting and rewarding as a medal.

In my last meet, I got sixteenth place, which obviously is not first place, Bailar said with a laugh. But the whole team was on the side of the deck and they jumped up and were screaming for me because I dropped a lot of time from my best, so I did really well relative to myself, and I was just ecstatic and it was as much glory as I wouldve gotten in first place. Probably more, because I was myself.

Elizabeth Edwards, an 18-year-old senior at the Urban School of San Francisco and a transgender woman, believes legislation which requires sex testing doesnt work and unfairly discriminates against transgender women like herself.

The requirement of gender reassignment surgery is ridiculous, especially considering the absurdly strict medical standards currently held in the US to qualify trans people to undergo them, Edwards said. Also, sex verification standards leads without fail to unfair standards of gender expression normativity that bear down on cis people, and result in cis people being disqualified on bases of uniquely high/low chemical levels that result from normal variance in such factors across the cisgender population.

A study conducted by researchers from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Brown University found that as many as 2% of the population have traits which deviate from the ideal male or female, including hormone levels and the structure of the internal genital duct systems and external genitalia. This seems to suggest that sex testing would not necessarily be as straightforward as critics suggest.

According to Edwards, at the professional level, the highest reasonable requirement should be proof that an athlete has undergone hormone reduction therapy for 18 months.

By that point, trans and cis people are chemically identical, and such quote-unquote biological dis/advantages such as bone density will have fallen to the wayside, Edwards said.

While research on this subject has hardly reached a consensus, a meta-analysis of eight research articles conducted by researchers from the Nottingham Centre for Gender Dysphoria and Loughborough University concluded that there is no evidence that hormones such as testosterone give transgender female athletes an advantage.

The analysis also reviewed 31 sport policies from various national and international competitions and found that rules restricting participation from transgender athletes discourage transgender athletes from participating in sports.

Within competitive sport, the athletic advantage transgender athletes are perceived to have appears to have been overinterpreted by many sport organisations around the world, which has had a negative effect on the experiences of this population, the analysis reads.

The researchers also write that sports organizations need to improve their policies to be more inclusive.

Given the established mental and physical health benefits of engaging in physical activity and sport, the barriers transgender people experience are a significant limitation to the promotion of healthy behaviours in transgender individuals, the analysis reads.

Kay Svenson, a Paly alum and recent graduate of Wellesley college, is a trans activist and believes that trans people, like all people, have the right to be treated in accordance with their gender identity, and this includes sports.

Sex-based discrimination is prohibited under Title IX, and that amendment is not up to the free interpretation of the (potentially transphobic) governing bodies of the state or local school district, Svenson said. We need to work harder to ensure that differences in birth anatomy do not shape our definition of athletic fairness.

Svenson believes that it is important that transgender people have the means and support to pursue their personal athletic careers, free of judgment.

Trans athletes have just as much of a right as cis athletes do to compete in the gender category that they identify with, Svenson said.

While there is no explicitly correct answer or proposed set of regulations surrounding the role of gender identity in sports today, if athletes and fans alike continue to ask hard questions respectfully and work towards giving everyone the opportunities to enjoy sports, compete as themselves, and make sure matches remains competitive, it will be a victory for everyone. Nonetheless, as gender identity and societal views surrounding the gender spectrum become more well understood and all-encompassing, the issues described will only become more complex. Its time to have conversations about this topic now so were ready for the more complex questions later.

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On the Basis of Gender - The Viking Magazine

Embryology

Biology Arrives In the Greek Words To Additional Info, Please Read This Article – NewsDay

The three wordsbiology,geologyastronomy is derived from this Greek term.

The very first thing we need to bear in mind when coping with scientific investigations may be that the meaning of the two phrases. Just what could be this significance of those words study? If people talk aboutgeology, what are they talking about? What they truly are speaking about is that the analysis of rocks or perhaps the study of fossils.

Whenever some one talks about fossils, that which they truly have been referring to is that the process of fossilization. Inorder for those rocks there has to be a certain number of oxidation, which can only come about at particular intervals of why not try here time.

For this procedure an amount of heat must be found on Earth earth. These will be the true meaning of geology. The studies of rocks and fossils are typical related to the origin of life.

The thing is archaeology. It simply meansto find the last. For archaeology to function, there has to be always a math.cas.lehigh.edu specific degree of wisdom and knowledge . The theory of development relies upon the notions of archaeology.

The true analysis of evolution needs to accomplish with its particular own shape in the modern occasions and the knowledge of living In spite of the fact that it is interesting to know the references to dinosaurs. In the event that you would really like to understand the origin of life, you have to understand that the plan of archaeology.

The third word is embryology. Its the study of the growth of living things on earth. The process is just one among the earliest & most recognized methods, although there are a number of distinctive procedures of studying embryology.

The baby was is explained by embryology. We are capable analytical thesis statement of knowing relating to embryology. We are all capable of thinking that it developed from some sort of fertilization or that an creature came to be.

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Biology Arrives In the Greek Words To Additional Info, Please Read This Article - NewsDay

Embryology

The pause on parenthood! How Coronavirus is messing up baby dreams – Mid-day

Last month, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates Britain's fertility industry, ordered private and the National Health Service (NHS) clinics to stop treating patients who are in the middle of an in-vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle. All new treatments had also been banned. Experts believed that this decision would prevent the birth of at least 20,000 babies if the policy were to stay in place for 12 months. But on May 1, the fertility regulator did a U-turn, lifting the suspension of fertility services, provided they were taking safety precautions for both doctors and patients.

The conundrum is more or less the same in Mumbai. Much before the Janata Curfew was imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 22, a few fertility clinics in Mumbai had already shuttered. Dr Firuza Parikh, director, Assisted Reproduction and Genetics at Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, says, "A week before the nationwide lockdown, Jaslok shut its fertility clinic for two reasons. We wanted to ensure the safety of our patients since we did not know what course the infection was going to take in Mumbai or Maharashtra. Second, we thought the government needs hospitals and healthcare workers to tend to COVID patients. We didn't want to sap resources including anaesthesia medicines, medical talent, etc., which could otherwise have been used to contain the spread of Coronavirus. We decided to pass on all the resources from our inventory to the ICU. The supply chain of PPEs had not started then, so this felt like the right thing to do."

Dr Firuza Parikh

Jaslok's fertility centre had around 40 patients who were in the middle of their IVF cycles at that point. Dr Parikh says we can no longer view the world from an individual standpoint. "It has to be about 'us'. I personally made calls to all our patients to explain the reason behind the decision. While a majority of them agreed with us, some women who had come down from the US and wanted to do multiple cycles of IVF at our centre, weren't pleased," she adds.

Dr Parikh explained the dangers. During the Zika virus outbreak, several newborns ended up being infected as their mothers were in the first trimester when they contracted the virus.

While there is no mandate from the Centre or the state government on the closure of fertility centres, it was a decision taken unanimously by most gynaecologists in the city. NOVA IVF fertility centres in Chembur and Andheri, too, shut down when the lockdown was imposed. Around 75 IVF cycles were underway at NOVA at that time. Dr Ritu Hinduja, consultant fertility specialist, NOVA, explains, "We didn't know if we were equipped to deal with patients during the pandemic. But before we closed, whatever injectable cycles were ongoing, we completed those, created embryos and cryopreserved them within a week."

Dr Ritu Hinduja

If embryos are cryopreserved, they can be transferred into the patient's womb at a suitable time. Once the eggs are frozen, the couples need not worry, Dr Hinduja adds. But what about those who had to leave the cycle in the stimulation phase? "They have to restart the IVF procedure when the world opens up. But we tried to finish ongoing cycles as we knew it would be mentally harrowing for patients. Some couples wait for years to have this procedure.

So while this is not a typical emergency service, it is indeed an emergency for some desperate couples."

Shweta and Sailesh Kumar may have to wait even longer. The Kumars have been undergoing IVF treatment under Dr Hinduja's supervision. "We have been married for four years. Last year, my wife was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease." In this condition, the immune system of the body mistakenly attacks healthy tissue. It can affect the skin, joints, kidneys, brain and other organs. "Our rheumatologist advised us to freeze her eggs as the treatment for SLE could have an effect on them." Just before the lockdown, Shweta's condition improved and her rheumatologist gave her a fitness certificate to go ahead with the pregnancy. "We decided to do the transfer of embryos but due to the lockdown, the procedure has been put on hold," Sailesh says.

The couple's case is unique. Since Shweta is a high risk patient, doctors advised her against venturing out for IVF treatment during the pandemic. They have staggered her transfer, because she has co-morbidity.

At both Jaslok and NOVA, doctors are ensuring that tele-consultations are available to patients to allay their fears. Dr Parikh says, "It's important for them to know when we will start OPDs again. About 50 per cent of our patients come from outside Mumbai, and about 10 per cent are from outside India. So, unless travel restrictions are lifted, we cannot help them."

Dr Prakash Trivedi

Dr Prakash Trivedi, well-known gynaecologist and president of the Indian Society For Assisted Reproduction (ISAR), facilitated a meeting of stakeholders last week to discuss the issue. "We recommended that couples who are not showing any COVID symptoms, have tested negative and are keen on IVF, could be treated. But necessary precautions need to be taken, both by doctors and patients. Since we don't know if the patient can contract the virus during IVF, we will only allow transfer of embryos. But this will be done after offering thorough counselling to the couples. We have also recommended that the embryos of patients undergoing IVF post-COVID be separated from the ones done before in different jars. This is to ensure safety of all patients," he shares.

According to him, there are close to 3,000 fertility centres across India, of which most have voluntarily decided to close temporarily. While Jaslok and NOVA are aiming to open up their OPDs for embryo transfers, they are yet to decide on whether to take on a new patient to start a fresh IVF cycle.

Ovulation Stimulation: During the stimulation phase of an IVF cycle, female patients are administered hormones for a period of 12 days.

Egg retrieval: Patient is put under mild sedation and the eggs are collected.

Sperm retrieval: Male partner is asked to produce a semen sample. The specimen is washed, and those that display maximum motility are selected.

FertiliSing the eggs: Retrieved eggs are fertilised with sperm. The eggs are regularly monitored to confirm the fertilization.

Embryo transfer into uterus: Embryologists monitor the embryos growth and viability to determine whether a transfer should be done.

After Transfer: Two weeks after retrieval, a pregnancy blood test is performed. If this test is positive, the patient is considered four weeks pregnant.

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The pause on parenthood! How Coronavirus is messing up baby dreams - Mid-day

Anatomy

Russias covid-19 outbreak is far worse than the Kremlin admits – The Economist

May 21st 2020

Editors note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

RUSSIA IS MORE successful in fighting covid-19 than the West, thanks to its superior health-care system and excellent leadership. Though faced with one of the highest rates of infection, its fatality rate is a seventh of that in most countries. That is, if you believe Russian statistics.

Few independent experts do. Russia has officially recorded just over 300,000 cases of covid-19 and 2,900 deaths, which makes its fatality rate less than 1%, compared with 4.5% in Germany and 14% in Britain. Yet the fatality rate among Russias front-line health professionals, who keep their own records, is about 16 times as high as in comparable countries, which suggests that the official figures are much too rosy.

Nonetheless, these were the figures that on May 11th led Vladimir Putin, Russias president, to order an end to a period of non-working days, a euphemism for a national lockdown that he never officially declared. Although he transferred responsibility for retaining restrictions to regional authorities, he signalled that Russia was through the worst. We must give thanks to our doctors and our president, who works day and night to save lives, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, declared.

The Russian government was upset when, on the same day, the Financial Times reported that the real death toll could be 70% higher; the New York Times quoted an expert as saying it could be nearly three times the official tally. These estimates were derived by calculating excess deaths. One member of the Duma demanded that the journalists accreditation be revoked. Kremlin mouthpieces denounced what they called an orchestrated attack on Russia by the West.

Meanwhile, some Russian doctors on social media say they were told to keep numbers low by including in the covid statistics only those who died directly of the disease, not those who had underlying conditions that might have contributed to their demise. Victims relatives are furious.

Adding weight to the suspicion are the improbable figures posted by some regions. For example, in Krasnodar, a region with 5.2m people, the number of reported infections has fluctuated only minutely, between 96 cases and 99 cases a day for the past two weeks. Statistically speaking, that is extremely unlikely.

Several other regions have produced odd statistics. They show the number of infections recorded in regional centres and those recorded in adjacent territories fluctuating in opposite directions, thus balancing each other out and producing a straight line of cases across the region.

The official numbers reveal less about covid-19 than they do about Russias political system, which, like its Soviet predecessor, is saturated with lies. Russian elections throw up similarly strange graphics. Many Russian athletes during the Sochi winter Olympics in 2014 took performance-enhancing drugs, and their cheating was covered up by secretly swapping urine samples with official connivance.

Konstantin Sonin of the University of Chicago says the problem is not that the Kremlin hides or distorts figures, but that it often does not have them in the first place. Most regional bigwigs are not accountable to voters but are entirely dependent on the Kremlin for status and money. They file rosy reports so as to appear to be meeting official targets. The aim is to please the president, not the people. The Kremlin does not even need to tell them what figures to report; they know to report what the Kremlin likes to hear, he says.

Over the past few weeks Russian state television has provided a perfect illustration of this system. In the West officials have at least tried to communicate with their electorates and the media. On Russian television people see their officials reporting to the self-isolated Mr Putin via a videoconference screen. The screen resembles a Russian Orthodox icon: Mr Putin is displayed in a large central box, surrounded by 12 apostles in smaller boxes.

Yet this manufactured image is starting to crack. Mr Putins ratings have dropped to historic lows in recent weeks. On May 17th the health minister in Dagestan, a Russian territory of 3m people in the North Caucasus, told a local blogger that the true number of infections on his patch was four times that reported, and that outbreaks of pneumonia had killed 657 people, not the officially recorded 27. Fully 40 medics had died of it. Mr Putin blamed citizens for trying to treat themselves at home.

Some big cities have been more open than the Kremlin. Moscow admitted that the real number of cases could be significantly higher than officially reported, and retained a lockdown.

The Kremlins handling of the crisis reminds some of the cover-up of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which prompted Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to launch glasnost, a campaign for more openness. The whole system is penetrated by the spirit of bootlicking, persecution of dissidents, clannishness, window-dressing. We will put an end to all this, Mr Gorbachev told his politburo at the time. Mr Putin, who began his presidency 20 years ago by covering up the sinking of the Kursk submarine, is determined not to repeat the glasnost experiment, which helped to bring the whole system crashing down.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "The anatomy of lies"

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Russias covid-19 outbreak is far worse than the Kremlin admits - The Economist

Anatomy

Grey’s anatomy hanged the audience on the point where they don’t have information about their loved show – News Lagoon

The head-shaving scene from Unorthodox. Everyone involved was very nervous because you just have this one take, said director Maria Schrader.By Anika Molnar/Netflix.

The beauty of the scene, to me, is the contradiction of feelings, said director Maria Schrader, calling from Berlin. Haas, in her translucent performance, is a prism of emotion: tears careening down her cheeks as she lets out proud, anguished smiles. The stakes were high. Hair off is hair off, Schrader said of the nail-biter take, which happened on a loaded first day of shooting. Haas began the morning filming the one glimpse of her own honey-colored hair, as she floats nude in the cleansing mikvah bath. A different kind of vulnerability followed, with the buzz cut staged inside Estys pink childhood bedrooma warm, sunlit moment witnessed by the households wide-eyed young girls. It was a deliberately bright counterpoint to a prevailing association with the Holocaust, when the heads of Jews were shaved, Schrader told me. In a similarly upbeat way, she sent Haas a flurry of images of Jean Seberg via WhatsApp. Its that same short pixie that Esty embraces when she ultimately sheds the wig in Berlin.

The experience of a cloistered Hasidic woman is arguably far from those binge-watching her story on the couch, a forkful of Alison Roman pasta in hand. Still, feeling trapped and isolated, balancing communal duty with personal will, it all seems to net out at the buzz cutif youre lucky enough to have the tools at hand.

I dont know if youve ever seen sheep shearing, but thats actually what it used to be before 1919, said Steven Yde, vice president of marketing at the grooming company Wahl. He was describing the old-fashioned monstrosities, with a hulking engine and long attachment, that barbers used during World War I to buzz soldiers heads. An enterprising Leo Wahl returned from duty in France and patented the first handheld clipper, which hit the market in the waning days of a global pandemic. His great-grandson, Brian Wahl, now oversees the business, with a handful of global manufacturing sites and a 1,300-employee factory in small-town Sterling, Illinois.

Were literally out of stock everywhere across the United States, Yde said, still incredulous as he recounts the sudden boom in demand. To get a Wahl clipper right now is like trying to find a nugget of gold. (In an origin-story twist, the closure of off-base barbershops and the need for social distancing has spurred several branches of the military, including the Navy and the Air Force, to temporarily ease grooming standards; a recent video showing a crowd of Marines lined up for regulation haircuts sparked concern that bubbled up to the Secretary of Defense.)

Yde last witnessed a spike in sales during the Great Recession, in the late 2000s. When times are tough, people cut hair at home, he said. (I asked about his own. Yde answered brightly that hes been doing his own fades since college, having learned from his hairdresser mother; he has been cutting his sons hair too, until one of them unveiled a buzzed head last month.) But this is unprecedented territory. Since the Illinois factory halted production on March 21, letters have poured in from major retailers, supporting Wahls designation as an essential business. Desperate emails from would-be customers pour in by the thousands. With the governors green light, Wahl has been readying its facility for a cautious, volunteer-based reopening this week. Along with supplying protective gear and restricting common areas, the company has incorporated practices learned from its Chinese site, which is nearly back to full capacity; one example is creating discrete zones of fewer than 50 people, to minimize possible spread.

Originally posted 2020-04-24 00:27:16.

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Grey's anatomy hanged the audience on the point where they don't have information about their loved show - News Lagoon

Anatomy

A new series of psychological thrillers is coming to Netflix titled ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL by David E. Kelley – Newsdio – NewsDio

David E. Kelley, the creator of shows Big Little Lies and Mr. Mercedes is partnering with Melissa James Gibson, who was showrunner in House of cards, to develop a psychological suspense series for Netflix titled Anatomy of a scandal.

They will write, produce and show the six-part miniseries, which is based on Sarah VaughanThe best-selling novel. It is described as a "insightful and suspenseful series about a sexual consent scandal between the British elite and the women caught in its wake."

S.J. Clarkson (Jessica Jones, The Defenders) will direct all episodes and also receive executive producer credit. The show will be filmed in the UK. Here is the description of the book's story:

You want to believe your husband. She wants to destroy him.

An astonishingly incisive and suspenseful novel about a scandal between Britain's elite elite and women caught in its wake.

Sophie's husband James is a loving father, a handsome man, a charismatic and successful public figure. And yet he is accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is convinced that she is innocent and desperate to protect her precious family from the lies that threaten to tear them apart.

Kate is the attorney hired to process the case an experienced professional who knows the law is about winning the argument. And yet Kate searches for the truth at all times. She is certain that James is guilty and is determined that he will pay for his crimes.

Who is right about James? Sophie or Kate? And are any of them informed by more than instinct and personal experience? Despite her privileged upbringing, Sophie is well aware that her beautiful life is not inviolable. She has known this since she and James were the first lovers, at Oxford, and witnessed the ease with which pleasure can turn into tragedy.

Most people would rather not try to understand what goes on between a man and a woman when they are alone: alone in bed, alone in a hug, alone in an elevator or alone in the moonlit courtyard of an Oxford university, where a girl once stood in front of a boy, her heart pounding with emotion and then fear. Sophie never understood why her tutoring partner Holly left Oxford so abruptly. What would she think if she knew the truth?

Does it sound like it's a series you'd be interested in watching?

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A new series of psychological thrillers is coming to Netflix titled ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL by David E. Kelley - Newsdio - NewsDio

Physiology

Pandemic isolation takes its toll both mentally and physically – ABC10.com KXTV

The psychological effects of isolation "seeps down through our nervous system and gets down into the rest of our body," explained Dr. Steve Cole.

SACRAMENTO, Calif People feeling irritable or out of sorts during the pandemic can often tell that something is wrong, but they are unable to put their finger on the problem. They use words like isolated or lonely to describe their experience but also tend to lash out and those they care about most.

Understandably, most cannot compare these experiences to any other time, because few alive have experienced anything similar.

Yet, there are people who have studied humans living in near total isolation. Dr. Larry Palinkas is one of them.

Dr. Palinkas, a professor of health and social policy at the University of Southern California, has been studying isolation confinement in extreme environments since the 1980s. His subjects have included both polar explorers and astronauts.

Dr. Palinkas said he sees many similarities between his subjects and people living under quarantine stay at home orders.

Certainly, were seeing many of the same kinds of reactions of people to the isolation confinement that has been imposed on them by virtue of the stay-at-home order, Dr. Palinkas said. Whats different about a period of isolation confinement in a polar environment is you know when the end point of that isolation is likely to be And as a result, their ability to mobilize their energy, their cognitive, emotional, material resources are likely to become exhausted over time.

He says different types of people fare better.

Those who are driven and rigid tend to have a hard time in isolation, whereas those who are more introverted tend to do well.

Creative people also tend to fare better during isolation because they can find ways to avoid boredom.

Dr. Palinkas said no matter how short or long someones isolation confinement, they all tend to go through a similar pattern.

No matter whether youre isolated for a week or for a year, you manage to do quite well during the first half of that period of isolation, explained Dr. Palinkas. When you get to the midpoint, you feel a sense of accomplishment but you also feel a sense of dread because youve got an equal amount of time to spend under those conditions.

He also said regardless of length of time, being deprived of familiarity causes predictable responses.

Even if you are isolated for as little as a week, the fact that there is limited environmental stimulation, the fact that you are not able to rely on the kinds of social cues that typically we use to regulate our body rhythmscan also regulate the level of energy that we may have and over time produce a sense of fatigue, said Dr. Palinkas.

He said thats what many people are going through right now.

Many people have been forced to be isolated, confined without knowing how long that period would last, said Dr. Palinkas. And as a result, their ability to mobilize their energy, their cognitive, emotional, material resources are likely to become exhausted over time.

Many people wonder why they snap at those around them during the pandemic. Dr. Palinkas said he might have an explanation.

Many times people will cope with the tension that they experience through the isolation confinement by displacing it on other people," he said.

He said it also gets funneled toward things like governments or politicians.

Many times they will find themselves the brunt of anger and criticism simply because they are a safe outlet for the expression of those feelings of anger and frustration, said Dr. Palinkas.

But the effects are not just mental.

Dr. Steve Cole studies is a genomics researcher who studies the physiological effects of loneliness at UCLA. He explained that the psychological effects of isolation don't just stay in your head.

It seeps down through our nervous system and gets down into the rest of our body," Dr. Cole said.

He said humans have been successful as a species because weve learned to work and live together, so the need to be connected is built into our physiology.

People tend to miss being checked up on people who care about us, he explained.

The major pathway by which we are safe and not stressed is by feeling connected to other members of humanity, said Dr. Cole. So when were lonely and we feel disconnected from them, basically all of our stress circuits flip back on and our physiology goes into this fight or flight mode.

He said this causes an inflammation response, which can be incredibly harmful if not checked. It's something that can develop overtime and won't instantly kill you, but Dr. Cole said "it does work like fertilizer for the development of heart attacks, degenerative diseases like Alzheimers, metastatic cancers, just about everything we worry about in epidemiology."

Psychoanalyst Dr. Bethany Marshall echoed Dr. Cole's statements.

But she said whats happening now isnt entirely new to humans, because masses of people already feel isolated and alone without the pandemic. The current state of isolation just exacerbates those feeling for many.

Fortunately, she said, there are many things people can do about it.

Act more extraverted and open than you really are, explained Dr. Marshall. Not so much that youre inauthentic but this is not a time to withdraw. Join an online community. This is so core to our mental health. Whether its a Zoom meeting for your neighborhood or your church service that streams online.

"Write a poem. Teach a class online. Post whatever youve learned. Facetime with your grandchildren and teach them about your life. Because living for others and with others, having gratitude and teaching, can override all kinds of negative emotions.

And, as Dr. Palinkas added, dealing with this isolation now can pay off in the long run.

Weve seen that it can actually produce long term benefits in terms of a sense of accomplishment, a greater sense of ones abilities and the ability to handle any kind of situation if they can handle this particular situation, said Dr. Palinkas.

Follow the conversation onFacebook with Mike Duffy.

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Pandemic isolation takes its toll both mentally and physically - ABC10.com KXTV

Physiology

The Limits of Science – Varsity Online

The conjunction of DNA and technology raises the question: what can't science do? Alexander Popov

Courtesy of innovations in science and technology, famines, plagues, wars, and infant mortality are now so low that most people living in economically developed countries expect to survive to old age, something which is unprecedented in the history of our species. Our modern society is able to avoid or survive diseases and wars far better than previous civilisations, but one of the final problems facing any civilisation is overextending the bounds of its resources - that is, running out of food.

Some farming practices, such as zero-till farming and applying fertiliser, are able to reduce nutrient losses, or spread them out over a larger area. However, in order to entirely eliminate nutrient losses from the food system, we would need to fertilise crops with our own faeces and dead bodies. Applying artificial fertilisers mined from rocks can help, but these will inevitably run out.

Physiological evolution has in some cases come close to the limits of what is physically possible.

Yet now, it seems as if even food production, the ultimate constraint on our survival, could be solved by technology. Bacterial cultures could produce food from thin air (or, rather, water), and be processed into substitutes for much of what we eat. We would still need to grow fruit and vegetables, but the amount of land required for this is tiny compared to what is required to produce animal products.

Is there any limit to what technology can solve? Thinking about the evolution of technology throughout history helps us address this question. Technology is a part of our cumulative culture, and there is a compelling argument that culture evolves by natural selection acting on memes, analogous to how organisms physiology evolves by natural selection acting on genes. In this sense, technological advances and scientific breakthroughs have little to do with individual people, but are to a large extent a product of the culture which these individuals experience. In support of this idea, there are many examples of convergent evolution. Agriculture arose at least 10 times independently. Calculus was formulated by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz around the same time. Big religions with just one or a few gods tend to evolve from animism and the worship of various spirits, wherever agricultural societies emerged from hunter gathering.

The various developments which eventually led to the iPhone may have been reliant on chance events. But if one of the inventors of Morse code, circuit boards, or miniature batteries had been run over by a bus before their big breakthrough, it seems highly likely that someone else would have made it in their stead, and the iPhone would still ultimately result. If Charles Darwin had never gone on the voyage of the Beagle, it is highly likely that someone else would have discovered evolution by natural selection. In fact, Alfred Russell Wallace did.

We are not in any way special compared to other creatures: we are all governed deterministically by evolutionary processes.

Physiological evolution has in some cases come close to the limits of what is physically possible. Some trees have reached their maximum possible size. Our eyes can detect single photons. Dogs noses can detect single molecules. Similarly, there surely must be limits to technology and scientific discoveries. There is surely a finite amount which can be known about the world, and, like distantly related groups of animals under similar environmental conditions converge on the same ecotypes, we will eventually arrive at a given set of explanations for how things work. Evolution, or the laws of physics, exist, and were just waiting to be discovered. To a certain extent, the way in which we think about things is influenced by our language and our culture, but the principles of formal logic and mathematics upon which science is ultimately based are the same regardless of the language which we use to express our internal thoughts and the cultural biases which impact hypotheses.

If evolution, culture and even ideas always converge to common ground, we might reasonably ask: do our individual choices matter, or is everything predetermined? Arguably, our actions are strongly influenced by our values and general worldview, which is shaped by the culture in which we live, which is to some extent a product of biogeography. The general direction of society is modelled by the struggle for survival between different memes which infect our minds and propagate themselves as we transmit ideas to others. In this sense, perhaps we are not in any way special compared to other creatures: we are all governed deterministically by evolutionary processes.

However, what sets us apart from other evolved species is our ability to predict and manipulate the world. For example, physicists could predict that if you dropped a hammer and a feather on the moon, they would hit the ground at the same time, and when people went to the moon, they showed that this was indeed true. Hypotheses in complicated systems like ecology can never be proved definitively, but we can use statistics to discriminate the better theories from worse.

So, whilst our beliefs and values are just human constructs, humans have the remarkable ability of predicting phenomena which occur regardless of the cultural frames through which we perceive them. To quote the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, The good thing about science is that its true, whether or not you believe in it. And, although recognising that our actions are to some extent predetermined can make life feel meaningless, I think its impossible to imagine a better existence than to be a conscious being in a world full of fascinating things.

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.

We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding, and during this unprecedented global crisis, we have a tough few weeks and months ahead.

In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content for the time being.

Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as 1, to help with our running cost at least until we hopefully return to print on 2nd October 2020.

Many thanks, all of us here at Varsity would like to wish you, your friends, families and all of your loved ones a safe and healthy few months ahead.

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The Limits of Science - Varsity Online

Physiology

PHS’ Kyle Moore headed to West Liberty | News, Sports, Jobs – Parkersburg News

Parkersburgs Kyle Moore prepares to deliver a pitch during a 2019 regular-season game. Moores days on the diamond are just beginning as he signed with West Liberty. Photo provided

PARKERSBURG Kyle Moore would rather be playing baseball.

The Parkersburg High School senior, who is set to attend West Liberty University and continue his career on the diamond for skipper Eric Burkle, has been through plenty the past two months.

With four years of football in the books and one spring left of baseball, Moore was looking ahead to college, but was ready for whatever his final prep season was about to thrust upon him.

Aside from finishing with a 4.25 GPA as a senior, the pitcher/outfielder said hes basically heading to WLU as a sophomore thanks to earning college credits at West Virginia University at Parkersburg.

Im going into athletic training as my major, said Moore, who was looking forward to playing summer ball with American Legion Post 15. After that go to PA school. What they have is this three and two.

Ill get my undergraduate in exercise physiology and then Ill get my masters in athletic training. Then go another two and a half years to PA school and become a physician assistant. Its all a matter of getting into the PA program.

Even though the Big Reds werent expected to challenge for a Class AAA state championship, Moore wishes he had his final spring with his teammates and coach Alan Burns.

We were pretty excited, he said. We had a really young team this year. It was going to be interesting to see how all the pieces were going to piece together. We were putting up good numbers in the weight room all winter and we were excited to see how that translated on the field.

We had about 10 practices when everything hit. The following week we were supposed to have three games, including a game against South.

We were excited and then all of this hit. I mean I hate losing your senior year. Couple of the guys Ive played with since 7 years old. You dont get that last final game to play with them.

Moore was the Big Reds top returning pitcher after working 22-plus frames as a junior. He recorded three decisions, which included a pair of victories, to go along with a 2.51 earned run average and one save.

Ive kind of accepted it, Moore expressed of the whole COVID-19 situation. It is very hard not being able to have that senior season. I was going to be one of our main pitchers and play a lot in left field.

Last year I pitched a lot of games out of the bullpen. I was mainly a relief pitcher. Going into my senior year, I was making the transition to a starting pitcher and I played a lot in the outfield last year.

Things are kind of looking up it appears for the Big Red, depending on how things unfold with the ongoing pandemic.

Its been pushed back to June 26, Moore said of his delayed graduation. Right now I think its supposed to be regular, but they havent told us much detail. I think they are waiting to get closer and see how open the state is.

I mean the main thing (with COVID-19) is just losing the senior baseball season, not getting to play your final season. Youve played with them the last four years and probably more and just not getting that experience.

It took just a single trip for Moore to realize where his home for the next few years was going to be.

I got into contact with graduate assistant coach Joel Jarrett, he explained. I went up on a couple visits and I really liked the campus and the coaching staff. I went on another visit and worked out with some of the guys and they were awesome up there.

I fell in love with the campus and the atmosphere of the school. There were a couple of schools who talked to coach Burns about me, but I just love West Liberty and the program, but I didnt go on any other visits anywhere.

If Moore can catch a break this spring, it will come from playing baseball this summer in some way, shape or form.

Hes thankful for the opportunities and experiences he had while a member of the red and white.

You look back at all the people who have played through the program at PHS of baseball, Moore added. You got Nick Swisher and those guys. Its fun to make your own memories with the same program he went through.

When asked whether he felt prepared for the rigors of being a Division II student-athlete, Moore didnt hesitate.

Youre always a little bit worried, he said. Division II, going to the next level, its going to be a different pace of play and people as good or better than you.

You have to work hard for it, but I think Ill do OK. I think Ill have to do a little more studying when I go to college, but I think Ill be OK.

Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com

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PHS' Kyle Moore headed to West Liberty | News, Sports, Jobs - Parkersburg News