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Genetics

A Court Tried To Force Ancestry.com To Open Up Its DNA Database To Police. The Company Said No. – BuzzFeed News

Ancestry.com, the largest DNA testing company in the world, was served a search warrant to give police access to its database of some 16 million DNA profiles, but the company did not comply.

Ancestry received one request seeking access to Ancestrys DNA database through a search warrant, the company revealed in its 2019 transparency report released last week. Ancestry challenged the warrant on jurisdictional grounds and did not provide any customer data in response.

The warrant came from a court in Pennsylvania, the company told BuzzFeed News by email, adding: The warrant was improperly served on Ancestry and we did not provide any access or customer data in response. Ancestry has not received any follow up from law enforcement on this matter.

For months, legal experts who follow investigative genetic genealogy have expected search warrants to be issued to Ancestry and its main competitor, 23andMe, which has about 10 million DNA profiles in its database. Both companies have publicly vowed to defend their customers genetic privacy, and say they will fight efforts to open up their databases to searches by police.

Investigative genetic genealogy is a new method used to solve crimes. It involves searching for genetic profiles that partially match DNA from crime scenes and then building family trees from these relatives to find a suspect. Until now, only two databases used by genealogy enthusiasts to research their family histories GEDmatch, originally set up by hobbyists but now owned by the forensic genetics company Verogen, and the database run by FamilyTreeDNA have been open to search requests from police.

Finding criminal suspects through genetic genealogy is a numbers game: The more profiles you have to search, the more likely you are to find a reasonably close relative.

GEDmatch contains about 1.3 million profiles and Family Tree DNA has around 1.1 million. So if cops were to gain access to the much larger databases operated by Ancestry or 23andMe, it would make solving cases much easier.

After the April 2018 arrest in California of Joseph James DeAngelo, alleged to be the infamous Golden State Killer, there was a boom in investigative genealogy. But in May 2019, cops hit a partial roadblock when GEDmatch announced that its users would have to opt in to make their profiles visible to searches by the police. Only about 1 in 6 users have since done so.

At that time, Paul Holes, a retired investigator with the Contra Costa County district attorney's office, who led the team that solved the Golden State Killer case, said he expected warrants would be issued to search GEDmatchs database and to access the genetic data held by the larger companies.

Of course there are going to be legal battles, Holes told BuzzFeed News. It would not surprise me, years down the road, if this could be a US Supreme Court issue.

Holes' predictions have so far proved spot on. In October, the New York Times revealed that a homicide detective with the Orlando Police Department had obtained a warrant to search GEDmatch, which quickly complied. Ancestrys new transparency report reveals that the big companies are now under pressure to open up their databases too.

23andMe told BuzzFeed News that it had received no warrants to search its database as of the end of 2019. The company is expected to update its own transparency report in the next couple of weeks.

We carefully scrutinize all law enforcement requests, and have never provided any customer information to a law enforcement agency, nor do we share customer data with any public databases or with entities that may increase law enforcement access, 23andMe told BuzzFeed News by email.

MyHeritage, which is based in Israel and has more than 3.75 million DNA profiles in its database, said that it had also not received any warrants to search its database and would similarly fight any that were received. Our position is that MyHeritage does not cooperate with law enforcement, company spokesperson Rafi Mendelsohn told BuzzFeed News.

The coming legal tussles are likely to center on the meaning of probable cause, which historically has meant there is a particular reason to conduct a search to help solve a crime. Arguing that a database containing genetic information on millions of people is so large that it is highly likely to help solve most violent crimes stretches that definition, some legal experts argue.

If statistical probability standing alone is sufficient to define probable cause, then probable cause is going to be virtually meaningless in an era of big data, Natalie Ram, a legal scholar at the University of Maryland who studies genetic privacy, told BuzzFeed News.

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A Court Tried To Force Ancestry.com To Open Up Its DNA Database To Police. The Company Said No. - BuzzFeed News

Genetics

Adam Rutherford: taking on racism with the help of genetics – Times Higher Education (THE)

There were several reasons why geneticist Adam Rutherford, an honorary research fellow at UCL, felt the time was right to publish a book titled How to Argue with a Racist.

One was a political climate, in Britain and beyond, where nationalism appears to be on the rise. There were signs even in the way people now responded to hisown heritage.

A couple of years ago, he told Times Higher Education, my Wikipedia page was changed to describe me as a British Indo-Guyanese scientist. While that is effectively accurate, I have never described myself as such and have no Indian or Guyanese cultural input. I think of myself as from Ipswich.

Furthermore, a huge recent rise in genetics ancestry kits has had the effect of reinforcing some ideas about biological essentialism which we were trying to erase from genetics,added the science broadcaster, whose media appearances include his position as presenter of BBC Radio 4'sInside Science.

There were also factors relating to Dr Rutherfords own discipline and institution. When he arrived at UCL at the age of 18 as a student, he writes, he was enrolled in the Galton Laboratory, which was once called the Galton Eugenics Laboratory, and was taught by the Galton professor in the Galton Lecture Theatre.

My entire field of human genetics is based primarily on the work of Francis Galton, Dr Rutherford said, and thus on a science built by racists in order to demonstrate the racial superiority of white men. It was through setting up the National Eugenics Laboratory at UCL that Galton laid the foundations for what is now the genetics department that I am still a member of, he continued.

Although Dr Rutherford felt no ambiguity about saying that Galton was a scientific genius: much of genetics, statistics and behavioural psychology is built on the work which he did in the late-19thand early 20th century, he was also unequivocally racist. A UCL inquiry, looking into the connections with eugenics of Galton, mathematician Karl Pearson and Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, should announce its findings soon.

Genetics, in Dr Rutherfords view, has now fortunately put its past behind it and is indeed a crucial tool in the battle against racism. There is now a vanishingly small number of geneticists and evolutionary biologists who [dispute] that genetics has clearly demonstrated that race is not a biologically meaningful categorisation, he said. It was a beautiful irony that the science built by Galton on racist premises had also proved to be the science which demonstrates the fallacy of his ideas.

Yet, as someone who constantly engages with the public, Dr Rutherford was well aware of a massive disconnect between what we are saying within the walls of the academy and what people think. His book is designed to provide ammunition to challenge the views not only of hard-line white supremacists, but also your slightly racist uncle and even basically well-intentioned people who say black people are better at sport or Jews are better at intellectual pursuits.

In addressing some of the common assumptions about race, Dr Rutherford started with the broad point that literally everybody is descended from everybody else.

He continued: We are really bad at understanding how family trees actually work. After a few generations, they become enormously matted webs. There are no pure ancestries, no pure lineages.

Yet it remained true, Dr Rutherford admitted, that nobody has seen a white man in the final of the 100-metre sprint in the Olympics since 1980. So what could be said to people who point to such facts and claim that they reveal, as Dr Rutherford put it, a natural ability among those descended from the enslaved to be good at explosive-energy sports?

If that argument was right, he said, where are such people in sprint cycling or swimming, which has featured one African American in the history of the Olympics? Similar arguments could be used against those who attributed the striking presence of Jews among composers and performers of classical music to innate talent, while ignoring cultural factors and other genres such as hip hop and jazz.

Even whensuch notions were seemingly used in a positive sense, Dr Rutherford went on, we must keep in mind links to a long history of offensive stereotyping.

He pointed, for example, to a study looking at several thousand comments in the media about elite athletic success. These referred to innate physical abilities for a black athlete and hard work, intelligence and industriousness for a white elite athlete. Such stereotypes are just baked into our culture.

Adam Rutherfords How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race, and Realityis published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 6 February.

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Adam Rutherford: taking on racism with the help of genetics - Times Higher Education (THE)

Genetics

World Cancer Day: Going back to the basics The genetics of cancer – Firstpost

We have all heard of the term gene and DNA, but little do we know about the impact of changes in them known commonly as genetic mutations. Most cancers are associated with these changes in specific genes which are sub-units of the genetic material, DNA. In this era of modern medicine & treatment, certain genetic mutations have been identified to be responsible for several diseases including cancer and targeting such mutations play a major role in the overall management of the disease, to improve the quality of the life and cure.

In the past two decades, there has been an increasing number of cancer cases in India. According to the Globocan 2018 data, about 1.16 million new cancer cases in India were reported with close to 7.9 lakh deaths. In India, the cancer subtypes in descending order are breast cancer (14 percent), lip/oral cavity cancers (10.4 percent), cervical cancer (8.4 percent), lung cancer (5.9 percent) and stomach cancer (5 percent) followed by others.

Most cancers are associated with changes in specific genes which are sub-units of the genetic material DNA.

The question that arises that How genetic testing would help in understanding genetic mutation and its relation to cancer/s? The simple answer to this question is, whatever one asks for. Genetic testing provides varied answers, starting from predisposition, and events before onset of cancer to treatment planning and monitoring as well as detection of early relapse/recurrence.

How can the genetic information related to cancer, be decoded even before the cancer onset? Well, the presence of certain gene mutations increases the chances of developing cancers drastically. These cancers are known as hereditary cancers, and the process is known as hereditary risk assessment. Understanding genetic mutations can help one understand whether there are increased chances of developing cancer. For example, any woman is at a 12 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, in general population, but if there is a presence of harmful BRCA1 mutation, in a given individual due to inheritance, this risk can go as high as 70 percent.

Once cancer has developed, there are various ways in which these genetics tests can prove handy. Understanding genetic mutations can help the oncologist diagnose and differentially diagnose cancer subtypes in a more informed manner. Further certain genetic mutations help in understanding if the cancer progression will be aggressive or not. For example, in case of a leukaemia subtype: chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), the presence of IGHV gene mutation indicates that cancer wont progress aggressively. In medical terms it is known as good prognosis. On the other hand, there are some gene mutations that indicate poor prognosis of cancer as well.

Coming to the most known of application of genetic testing, we all have heard of what is called targeted treatment. Presence of certain gene mutations help the oncologists target the cancer as far as treatment is concerned. For example, in lung cancer, there are various classes of drugs that are based on gene mutations, such as EGFR inhibitors, which have a better effect on EGFR mutated lung cancers.

Certain genetic mutations help in understanding if the cancer progression will be aggressive or not.

Other applications of genetic testing include assessment of the treatment response for a given drug, also to detect the early recurrence in a periodic manner by a non-invasive procedure to check for cancer-specific mutations in the plasma of the blood sample, also known as liquid biopsy testing

Like all other subjects, cancer genetics is also something where India has certain unique features. There are multiple research papers that mention that in lung cancer, the prevalence of EGFR mutations is higher in south-Asian, particularly Indian population, as compared to the western populations. This provides an added advantage of treating these patients with targeted therapy for killing the specific cancer cells, thus avoiding the side effects associated with conventional chemotherapy. Hence understanding the mutation status of EGFR gene becomes imperative in case of lung cancers.

Similarly, there is a subclass of breast cancer called triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC), where there is an absence of receptors known to fuel breast cancer growth- Estrogen, Progesterone and Her-2/Neu gene. This is one of the most aggressive subtypes of breast cancer, where there are to targeted therapies available so far, and the standard of care remains conventional chemo-radiotherapy/surgery. Considering its aggressive behaviour the recurrence rates are very high in this subtype of cancers, and nearly 20 percent of these women are BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation carriers. As far as India is concerned, the triple-negative breast cancers incidence is higher in India (30 percent) as compared to the western population (12-17 percent), and have a poorer prognosis and survival (60 percent: 5 years age-adjusted survival) as compared to the Caucasian population (80 percent: 5 year age adjusted survival).

Talking about BRCA1 mutated breast cancers, one particular mutation, DelAG, is considered to be founder mutation in Ashkenazi Jewish community. Founder mutations is when a genetic alteration is observed with high frequency in a group that is or was geographically or culturally isolated, in which one or more of the ancestors was a carrier of the altered gene. In our experience, we have seen this founder mutation in Indian sub-population as well over and above Ashkenazi Jewish community.

In conclusion, genetic testing is aimed at providing clarity and insights about a persons cancer to the Oncologists that helps them make an informed decision. An increasing number of Oncologists have adopted genetic testing as an important tool for diagnosis and treatment planning of cancer and its management. Our constant effort is aimed to ensure, maximum number of cancer patients get benefitted by this technology in the society.

Dr Vidya Veldore is a principal scientist for Oncology at MedGenome Labs Ltd.

Updated Date: Feb 04, 2020 17:32:40 IST

Tags :Cancer,Cancer Day. World Cancer Day 2019,Cancer Patients,Diagnosis Of Cancer,DNA,Gene Mutations,Genes,Genetics Of Cancer,Genetics Tests,Oncologists,Oncology,Types Of Cancer,World Cancer Day

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World Cancer Day: Going back to the basics The genetics of cancer - Firstpost

Genetics

Gerald Fink awarded the Genetic Society of America’s Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal – MIT News

Gerald R. Fink,Whitehead Institute founding member and former director and professor of molecular genetics in the MIT Department of Biology, has been awarded the 2020 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, bestowed by the Genetics Society of America (GSA). The award recognizes a distinguished scientist who has a lifetime achievement in the field of genetics and a strong history as a mentor to fellow geneticists. TheGSA is an international community of more than 5,000 scientists who advance the field of genetics.

Fink, who is also the Herman and Margaret Sokol Professor at Whitehead Institute, is a former GSA president and the 1982 recipient of the GSA Medal. In honoring him with the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, GSA is recognizing Finks discovery of principles central to genome organization and regulation in eukaryotic cells.

This year, the Morgan Medal will also be awarded to David Botstein, chief scientific officer for Calico Labs and professor emeritus of molecular biology at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, in recognition of his multiple contributions to genetics, including the collaborative development of methods for defining genetic pathways, mapping genomes, and analyzing gene expression.

These awards to Gerry and David are richly deserved and I am so pleased they are being honored together, says Whitehead Institute DirectorDavid Page. Gerry Fink has fundamentally changed the way researchers approach biological problems, and his many discoveries have significantly shaped modern science. David Botstein has helped drive modern genetics, establishing the ground rules for human genetic mapping. Page has worked closely with both men: beginning his research career as an investigator in Botsteins lab, and collaborating with Fink for more than three decades at Whitehead Institute.

The medals will be formally presented to Fink and Botstein at the Allied Genetics Conference in April.

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Gerald Fink awarded the Genetic Society of America's Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal - MIT News

Genetics

Cancer is genetic, early detection can help cure it: Sonali Bendre – Yahoo India News

Nargis Dutt Foundation held awareness event on World Cancer Day in Mumbai. Sonali Bendre took part in the programme. Speaking at the event on cancer she encouraged people to go for early detection if their families have cancer background. "Huge part of cancer is genetics. The more data you have on cancer, the more the doctors can help you. What in India we lack is data. Anyone who has cancer in their family, go and get yourself tested. Most important cancer is curable if detected early. Genetic testing is important," said Sonali Bendre.

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Cancer is genetic, early detection can help cure it: Sonali Bendre - Yahoo India News

Physiology

Superhero science: Super speed and underwater breathing – Scope

Normally, Stanford hospitalistErrol Ozdalga, MD, is careful to make diagnoses for his patients based on their symptoms and test results. Not long ago, however, he had the opportunity to create medical explanations for superheroes using only his imagination and fascination with the human body.

In a series ofvideos, Ozdalga accounts for the fantastical powers of superheroes and supervillains using real-life explanations. For example, how does Aquaman breathe underwater? The secret is taking up oxygen through his skin like a frog. I caught up with Ozdalga to learn more.

Are you a big comics fan?

I've always loved comic-related things like Superman since I was a kid, but I should tell you I'm not a die-hard comics and superheroes person. I have a friend who is an editor for a company that published a book on the physiological properties that allow superheroes and supervillains to do what they do. I thought the idea for this book was really cool so when she asked, I was happy to volunteer.

I wasn't aware that anything like this had ever been explored and thought it would be fun to look at how these superpowers might be possible from a physiological standpoint.

So, this project was rooted in your interest in medicine?

That was the fun part for me. What got me interested in medicine was physiology. When I first started college, I thought I was going to be a therapist because I like talking with people and that feeling of helping people. But then I took a human biology class, and I was like, "Oh, wow, this is amazing."

All the different physiological processes that are going on inside our bodies right now, from a molecular to a cellular level, are just unbelievable. It's like when an astronomer looks at the stars and it's this amazing feeling of wonder. That's kind of how I look at the human body. I knew immediately that medical school was my trajectory.

How do you develop your explanations for these fictional superpowers using actual biology? For example,how did Superman get his super speed?

I was looking at it through that same lens I had when I first fell in love with the human body. I would take known things in the human body and then extrapolate from there -- so, what if someone didn't just have a little bit more of one thing, but they had a thousand times more to make it to turn it into a superpower?

For example, with Superman and his super speed, why are some people faster than others? I would take that and then extrapolate it to a much higher degree.

People have certain types of muscles, fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers, and people with a certain type of muscle fiber are better at short-term running. And so, Superman can run really fast because he has more of that type of muscle fiber, but he has, like, a hundred times more.

Or, take Aquaman and how he might breathe underwater. Air is composed of 21% oxygen but water is only around 1%. Aquaman, therefore, needs an efficient way to extract the low amount of available oxygen. Certain amphibians like frogs breathe through their skin. It's possible that Aquaman can "breathe" through a similar mechanism. To enhance this process, he might have numerous hair-like projections, which are also present on many amphibians, to increase the skin's surface area and absorb much more oxygen.

Do you have a favorite superhero?

I would say Superman. I'm going with the most popular one here, but from the days when I was a kid, I still remember watching the original Superman movies and the feeling you get watching those. He's my favorite go-to guy.

If you could pick one superpower what would it be?

Oh, to be able to fly, especially living in the Bay Area any not having to worry about traffic. That would be fantastic. I wouldn't have to pay for gas or a car -- it'd be great. And if something really bad happens, I can fly around the world really fast and then reverse time. It's a great superpower.

Top photo by Yogi Purnama; Photo by Steve Fisch

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Superhero science: Super speed and underwater breathing - Scope

Physiology

The Planet We Think Were Living on No Longer Exists: 3 Profound Ways the Art World Can Address the Climate Crisis – artnet News

While the art worlds habit of jetting from one art fair or biennial to the next becomes increasingly untenable as the climate crisis looms, a group of art industry leaders headed to the Swiss mountaintops last weekend to discuss how the field can reduce its complicity in environmental collapse.

The irony of traveling to a remote alpine village to discuss the climate at the fourth annual Verbier Art Summit was not lost on some of its speakers. Across two days of programming, Resource Hungry: Our Cultured Landscape showcased presentations by artists including Joan Jonas as well as organizations like Julies Bicycle, but it was finally on the last afternoon that Stefan Kaeg of art group Rimini Protokoll voiced what everyone had been thinking the whole time: Could the knowledge shared in Verbier have happened in a different form, without any of us being there?However noble the cause, one wonders if luxurious symposia like Verbier are even close to sustainable.

While the art world drags its heels on structural overhauls, this years organizerJessica Morgan, director of Dia Art Foundation nevertheless pulled together a fascinating crop of creatives to tackle formidable questions around the industrys ecological impact.

Here are three of the weekends biggest takeaways.

Artist Andrea Bowers said it plainly on Saturday afternoon: The earth is not out there, we are part of it.

Indeed, as we sat glassed-in on the third floor of the resplendent W Hotel, with the occasional paraglider-on-skis floating by, this could be easy to forget. Many speakers referenced the need to break down the divide between the museums, galleries, art fair halls, and the real, exterior world. Offering a Global Warming 101 reminder, French architect Philippe Rahm, who works in the fields of physiology and meteorology, stressed that 42 percent of CO2 emitted today is from the cooling, heating, and general operation of buildings.

So, how can a climate-controlled storage space, gallery, or museum reduce its energy consumption, or is that besides the point? Rahm said we need to look beyond updates to wall insulation and instead completely redesign space in line with what he calls climactic architecturea method that utilizes a buildings own convection, radiation, and conduction capabilities to optimize renewable resources. Architecture, said Rahm, is no longer [based on the idea of] form following function or function following form. Its function for the form that follows climate.

Djamila Ribeiro, Joan Jonas, El Ultimo Grito, and Jessica Morgan at Verbier Art Summer. Alpimages

Renowned professors of design practice Rosario Hurtado and Roberto Feocollectively known as El ltimo Gritotook the question raised by Rahm to a more speculative level: What would it mean if museums were free from fixed spaces altogether? While humans continuously create permanent structures, many of these places deteriorate or get demolished relatively soon after. Meanwhile, structures initially built with ephemeral intentions (take the Eiffel Tower, for example, which was supposed to be a temporary installation for the Worlds Fair) survive for centuries.

With this, Hurtado and Feos question seemed to push back against the status quo of the art worlds usual haunts, underscoring that the museums and galleries that we have become so familiar with need to be fundamentally reconsidered. While spacious, pristinely white, and climate-controlled venues may feel like theyre here to stay, art historian Dorothea von Hantelmann pointed to exhibition spaces of the 18th-century which were extremely crowded, with walls crammed with art from the floor to the ceiling. We need to strive against the white cube, said von Hantelmann. We need to bring things that weve been separating back together.

One of the most significant changes professors Hurtado and Feo said they witnessed in their students over the past decade was the shift away from individualistic thinking towards collaboration. Its a shift seen beyond the confines of art and architecture schools, of course, as todays youth bring forth new ideas and fight collectively for their future, most notably through the Fridays for Future movement.

Artists Joan Jonas and Andrea Bowers echoed this hope in young activists. Jonas explained that children have become subjects in her work about the future and the environment (theyre the ones who are going to inherit it, she added, simply). With similar motivations, Bowerss new video My Name Means Future, which is currently on view at New Yorks Andrew Kreps Gallery, spotlights Tokata Iron Eyes, a 16-year-old member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and her involvement with the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. But what was missing in both presentations was a consideration of the changing role youth plays in viewership; both artists were mute on whether they even considered the importance of young people seeing their work.

Andrea Bowers,My Name Means Future (2020). Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.

To place the crisis of climate change on the shoulders of one generation and await a solution is clearly not the answer; Catherine Bottrill from Julies Bicycle, a London-based charity that supports creative industries transformations towards sustainability, stressed the need to support young people who are going to bring about solutions, while operating at all ages and levels laterally, collaborating across organizational boundaries and typical hierarchies.

The calls to decolonize the art world might not immediately conjure a connection to climate change. However, Brazilian philosopher Djamila Ribeiro emphasized that, more than listening to the voices of indigenous cultures, we need to begin to act upon their novel ways of thinking and apply them to the ways we treat the natural world. In order to hear those voices that are so often drowned out, current power structures need to be dismantled, he argued.Other speakers, including Bottrill of Julies Bicycle, concurred: Hierarchies have to be disrupted. This was a major talking point, as architect and urban designer Adrian Lahoud pushed for a similar upheaval, adding that the planet we think were living on no longer exists.

One of the most effective ways to fight climate change will be to redefine our values. Lahoud shared a movingstory behind a paintingon view in the current edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, which he curated. A group of 40 Aboriginal artists painted an 8-by-10-meter canvas, collectively depicting the story of their cultural history; they then submitted the piece to the Australian government as proof of their rights over nearly 30,000 square miles of land. Amazingly, the Australian government accepted this painting as evidence of ownership and, in 2007, granted them the rights over the disputed territory.

Alternative modes of existence embody different ways of being in the world, outside of the xenophobic, extractive, capitalist modes of relating that currently dominate the world, that lead us to exhaustion, and soon to extinction, according to Lahoud. And, at least in some cases, art can be a welcome bridge to these new ways of thinking.

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The Planet We Think Were Living on No Longer Exists: 3 Profound Ways the Art World Can Address the Climate Crisis - artnet News

Physiology

Researcher leads a team of 94 undergrads to explore gut health – Mirage News

Getting a big team on the same page

While admitting she was initially fazed by the size of her class, which averages 100 students, Gamberi has found strength in numbers. She splits the large class into groups of four or five students and assigns one article to each.

Every student in the course learned how to perform an initial guided research of published literature, Gamberi says.

Next, the students learned to compose a written contribution as a group. After the course was over, three students volunteered to assemble and edit the article under Gamberis direct mentorship and supervision.

Tarin Sultana is one of the studys co-editors. This initiative moved forward as a pedagogical approach that demonstrated the value of teamwork, collaboration and painstaking review of original research works, she says.

This undertaking has marked a milestone in many next-generation scientific careers.

Susannah Selber, a fellow co-editor and the articles first author, adds that opportunities to write scientific papers at the undergraduate level are scarce.

This writing project was my second grand endeavour with Dr. Gamberi (Selber participated in Gamberis first co-published paper).

Many assignments involve writing, yet few require the tools and skills necessitated in published works. Dr. Gamberis approach adds great value to the other regular skills students obtain from their university education.

Dr. Gamberi brought a whole new meaning to the classroom experience, where a simple assignment may lead to a concrete contribution to the scientific community, says third co-editor W, adding they hope the project inspires others.

This next-generation approach allows students involved in a course to create something that can be remembered.

Gamberi also credits the Georges P. Vanier Library team as an invaluable resource in helping students to navigate the world of academic publishing and avoiding the perils of plagiarism.

Katharine Hall has been a tremendous resource, she says. Hall is the biology and health, kinesiology and applied physiology subject librarian. The two faculty members co-authored an article about the subject.

I am extremely grateful to her for all she has done to support my students and her collaboration in this educational initiative, Gamberi says.

Encouraged by two successful iterations of her model, Gamberi is ready to move ahead with a third, this one focusing on the role hormones play in regulating kidney function.

Now we know the model works. I dont plan to stop, she says.

I love working closely with students, to encourage their curiosity and to see how much it opens minds and doors to foster their love of learning and of science.

Read the cited paper, Metabolic networks of the human gut microbiota.

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Researcher leads a team of 94 undergrads to explore gut health - Mirage News

Physiology

Maternity LeaveNot Higher PayIs the WNBAs Real Win – The Atlantic

But even with these anecdotes, exactly how to safely and most effectively pair athletics and motherhood is still a bit of a scientific gray area. Stacy Sims, an exercise physiologist, sports nutritionist, and senior research fellow at the University of Waikato, in New Zealand, studies sex differences among athletes. She told me that only in the past five to seven years have scientists begun to seriously approach physiological questions related to the female athlete and pregnancy, reproductive systems, hormones, and the menstrual cycle. The enactment of the WNBAs maternity policy could do more than help support moms in the league, Sims said. It could also help researchers like herself have more incentive, and more cases, to study the physiology of pregnant and postpartum athletes. The WNBA saying, Hey, were putting this in? Im like, Its about effing time, Sims said. Now that the sports culture is changing to be more accepting of pregnant athletes, she said, the research that needs to be done comes down to the health and safety of the athletes.

According to Sims, some physiological effects of being pregnant could actually have a positive effect on athletic performance, such as increased blood volume, higher pain tolerance, and a better ability to access the parasympathetic nervous system (managing stress better). The new policy could also help reduce the risk of injuries that women who give birth are more likely to face, especially mothers in the postpartum period, when womens bodies tend to need more rest and recovery. This maternity leave is really going to help female athletes to have that ability to relax and not worry about losing [pay] and not have the pressure to perform [too soon], Sims said. But there are still many unknowns that she hopes to dive into. The research is still very archaic.

Georgie Bruinvels, a research scientist who co-created FitrWoman, an app that tracks menstrual cycles and physical activity, agreed, telling me that pregnancy isnt the only unknown. The discussion of female athletes and how theyre affected by everything from puberty to menopause has historically been avoided in research in the medical and sports-science worlds. This is due, at least in part, to the constant fluctuation of womens hormones throughout the menstrual cycle, which makes them more complex to perform research on, she said. Not long ago, for instance, women and girl athletes were often told it was normal to lose their periods while training hard, something now known as a sign of a probable nutrient deficiency.

Thats why Bruinvels, an elite runner herself, has started studying the effect of the menstrual cycle on female athletes; her research reportedly gave the U.S. Womens National Soccer team an edge in their 2019 World Cup championship run. Just tracking this kind of information, Bruinvels said, can empower women with the understanding of how to use it to their advantage.

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Maternity LeaveNot Higher PayIs the WNBAs Real Win - The Atlantic

Physiology

An Out of This World Conversation with Astronaut Jessica Meir – UC San Diego Health

UC San Diego alumna discusses her journey from STEM to Stars during live Q&A from International Space Station

NASA astronaut and UC San Diego alumna Jessica Meir called her alma mater from space to participate in a live stream Q&A sessionat the Scripps Seaside Forum. Photos by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications

Its not every day that you are given the chance to talk to an astronaut, let alone one thats currently residing at the International Space Station 250 miles above Earth. But the doors of possibility were kicked wide open on Jan. 27, when Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego welcomed more than 150 middle school students to campus for the opportunity to engage in a live Q&A session with NASA astronaut and UC San Diego alumna Jessica Meir.

The Scripps Seaside Forum was buzzing with anticipation as eighth grade students from Fulton K-8 and Memorial Preparatory for Scholars and Athletes, two schools supported by Birch Aquariums Price Philanthropies Ocean Science Education Fund, waited for the chance to ask Meir their burning questions. UC San Diego astrophysicist Brian Keating emceed the event, which was also attended by Meirs friends, mentors, and former Scripps colleagues. Thousands more tuned in remotely via live stream and through a special viewing at Birch Aquarium.

Scripps graduate students Anai Novoa, Kiefer Forsch, Tashiana Osborne, and Ivan Moreno participate in a pre-event science panel, sharing their path to science with local eighth graders.

The theme of the event was STEM to Stars, a nod to Meirs trailblazing path from ocean science to space. A trained marine biologist, Meir earned her Ph.D. in 2009 from Scripps Oceanography, where she studied the physiology of deep-diving animals in extreme environments. She credits this research with helping her stand out for NASAs astronaut program. Since launching to the International Space Station in September 2019 for a six-month mission, Meir has conducted three spacewalks, making history in October 2019 when she and astronaut Christina Koch conducted the worlds first all-female spacewalk.

Prior to the live stream, the visiting students heard from four current Scripps graduate students in a pre-event science panel. The studentsKiefer Forsch, Ivan Moreno, Anai Novoa, and Tashiana Osbornediscussed what they research at Scripps, what its like to be a graduate student, their path to science, and challenges theyve overcome. Graduate students from the Scripps group Women & Minorities in Science (WMIS) also participated in the event, showcasing hands-on research demos in the main lobby.

Kicking off the main event, Keating told the students some fun facts about Meirs adventures in space. When shes in space currently, shes traveling about 5 miles per second; she gets to witness sunrise and sunset 16 times a day, but I bet it never gets old for her, and shes traveling many thousands of miles an hour, he said, explaining that it only takes 90 minutes for Meir to travel the entire circumference of Earth.

Scripps Director Margaret Leinen also spoke to the students, describing some of the amazing places science can take you, whether here on Earth or up in space, and she congratulated Meir for utilizing her love of science to reach the stars.

Eighth grade students from two San Diego schools, Fulton K-8 and Memorial Preparatory for Scholars and Athletes, attend the live stream Q&A event with astronaut Jessica Meir.

I want to make sure you know how proud we are of everything that youve done with this extraordinary background in oceanography, and being able to realize this dream of yours to go to space, Leinen said.

Ashley and Alicia, two eighth graders from Memorial Preparatory, were among the lucky students who got to ask Meir a question.

Her being up in space shows us that mostly anything is possible. As long as you try your best, then you can succeed, said Ashley, who plans to one day be a software developer.

Alicia said she felt honored to talk to Meir and was inspired by her determination to pursue something that she really loves.

She inspired me to want to do my best, and even if I know I am doing my best, to try even harder, because theres always a good outcome, Alicia said. Even though she plans to pursue a career outside of STEM, she said she hopes to learn more about science because it never hurts to know more.

Below is an excerpt from Meirs Q&A session, condensed and edited for clarity. View the full livestream on Facebook and YouTube.

Q. Were you afraid of the takeoff? - Andres (Memorial Preparatory)

A. I wasnt afraid, actually, and I think one of the reasons why we dont really have that fear response, or at least I didnt, is because we receive so much incredible training at NASA. I have been training for my mission up here for six years, so we have been over and over all of the different things that well be experiencing.

In the last two years, I spent a lot of time in Russia training with the Russian space program since we launched to space on the Soyuz rocket. We spent a lot of time in simulators, preparing for every step and every phase of the mission. So, it was really interesting. I had been through that so many times in a simulator, which looked exactly like the real thing, that sometimes during the actual liftoff, I had to remind myself that this was finally real. You get so immersed in what youre doing and so focused with all the steps and actions you have to take as an operator, that sometimes you forget that its not just the same as all the practice youve been doing.

There were a few not so subtle reminders though, when the rocket started groaning and shifting a little bit, and then as the different stages of the rocket separated and we got higher and higher away from the earth, you could actually see those things falling off of the rocket outside of the window. Once I started seeing those signs I realized it was true, but it really wasnt any sort of fear; it was really just excitement and a little bit of disbelief and incredulity that my dream was actually finally coming true.

Q. What kind of classes did you take in school that helped you become an astronaut? - Ariana (Fulton K-8)

A. The common theme in everything we do up here is the STEM fieldscience, technology, engineering, and math. Now the nice thing is, there are a lot of different options within those fields. All of those fields could lead to a career like this one. To become an astronaut, you do have to have a degree in one of those areas, but the choices are really broad. For example, Im a life scientist, a biologist, and physiologist, and up here with me on my crew theres an electrical engineer, theres a military doctor, theres a military test pilot with a background in engineering, and then our two Russian cosmonauts up here as well with their engineering and military backgrounds. All of these different backgrounds are basic paths that you can use to get up here, so spending time in any of those STEM courses really helped us all get where we are today.

Q. What type of research do you do on the space station? Do you do any experiments outside the space station? - Naomi (Fulton K-8)

A. Its really amazing how many different types of experiments we conduct up here, and as a scientist, it is so exciting because as you can imagine, once you eliminate these gravity-driven effects that are always present no matter where you are on the earth, you might unveil a whole variety of responses and results that we never even thought possible. So we do experiments ranging from physiology and medicine, how the space flight environment affects our human bodies; we do experiments about combustioneven flames burn differently in space without gravity, without convection driving that motion. So in a chamber we study how different things burn in terms of flammability and safety responses, also in terms of fuel efficiency that might enhance fuel efficiency on earth and also for future spacecraft. We do biotechnology experiments; I did a DNA sequencing experiment called Genes in Space up here, and we do fluids experiments. We do any type of experiment and it is really an amazing playground as a scientist to be up here.

I was fortunate enough to go outside the space station three times now on spacewalks, and those are actually not for scientific experiments; those are for repair jobs. We have hardware both inside and outside the space station thats critical to making sure the systems work up here to accomplish our mission, and one of the things that needed to be upgraded were our batteries. So we conducted a series of spacewalks to upgrade those batteries to more efficient lithium ion batteries, just like youre using down on Earth. And that was one of the most amazing things that Ive done while Im up here is venturing out of the hatch in a spacesuit, and having really nothing between you and the earth below, except for the visor of your helmet. It really is an extraordinary experience.

Q. What advice do you have for young women who want to be astronauts? - Alma Renero (Instagram)

A. I think the most important thing to do is to make sure that you identify your passion and do what it is that you really care about. Once youve done that, you do need to work really hard to make those dreams come true, and it sounds a bit trite when I say it, but it really is true! I think this is proof that your dreams can come true. Ive been saying I wanted to be an astronaut since I was 5 years old, and because I had identified that as my passion, and also identified other aspects of science and exploration that led me down that road and pursued itwith a lot of hard work and dedication and perseveranceand then a lot of luck, all wrapped together to actually get me where I am today. The point is really, anybody can do it if thats what you set your mind to.

Q. Before you got accepted as an astronaut, did you ever consider any other careers? Jhiana (Fulton K-8)

A. Well I certainly did! I had a whole other career and that is thanks to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC San Diego and all of the mentors and colleagues that I had during my time as a graduate student there. My time at Scripps was invaluable; it really taught me how to think as a critical thinker, how to form and conduct something efficiently using the scientific method, and most importantlyrelevant to my job todayit taught me a lot about working with a team.

I was working as a comparative physiologist so I was studying animals, in particular animals that live in extreme environments, and trying to understand how those animals can do the incredible things they can. I was particularly intrigued by animals that live and work at extraordinary depths, so diving animals like emperor penguins, and elephant seals, and also high-altitude animals, birds that migrate over the tallest mountains on the planet. It was just fascinating to understand how these animals could live in these very oxygen-deprived zones.

I was working as a scientist at various universities and academia conducting research with animals in the wild and it was a very fulfilling career, but when the opportunity came to have this childhood dream job, I couldn't pass this up.

Stay informed about Meirs latest activities by following her on Twitter and Instagram.

More:
An Out of This World Conversation with Astronaut Jessica Meir - UC San Diego Health