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Human Behavior

Psychologists say there are 2 types of narcissists: Which one are you? – Inverse

Narcissists, like sharks, get a bad press. Both are generally seen as menacing, negative forces to be feared and avoided.

But as any biologist will tell you, sharks play a vital role in the marine ecosystem. And it may be that narcissists also have a necessary part to play in human society.

This, of course, goes against the widely accepted perception of personality traits that it is good to be agreeable and outgoing and bad to be narcissistic.

After all, narcissistic people engage in risky behavior, hold an unrealistic superior view of themselves, are overconfident, show little empathy for others, and have little shame or guilt. But if narcissism is so socially toxic, why does it persist and why is it said to be on the rise in modern societies?

The answer is that human nature is complex. And while narcissism is often associated with dark traits like psychopathy and sadism, it also has aspects which are widely considered to be positive, such as extroversion and confidence.

In saying this, I do not mean to defend or excuse the worst examples of narcissistic behavior. Instead, I want to highlight the potentially beneficial elements which could then enable society to harness the positive potential of dark personalities while also curtailing their potential for harm.

There are two main types of narcissism: grandiose and vulnerable. Vulnerable narcissists are likely to be more defensive and view the behavior of others as hostile, whereas grandiose narcissists usually have an over inflated sense of importance and a preoccupation with status and power.

The results from our studies (on the personality trait of sub-clinical narcissism, not narcissistic personality disorder) show that grandiose narcissism correlates with highly positive components of mental toughness. These include confidence and a focus on achieving goals, which help protect against symptoms of depression and stress.

The association between narcissism and mental toughness may help to explain the variation in symptoms of depression in society. If a person is more mentally tough, they are likely to embrace challenges head on, rather than viewing them as a hurdle.

So while not all dimensions of narcissism are good, certain aspects can lead to positive outcomes. And a little bit of narcissism can be a useful tool when faced with stressful situations, providing that extra bit of mental toughness we need to get through.

Its a bit like having the ability to run when walking is not enough. The idea is that people need to be flexible. They need to walk when thats all that is required, but run when thats whats necessary. Likewise, the ability to call on a little bit of narcissism when faced with a challenge, socially or professionally, is a useful skill.

Recent research from our lab suggests that narcissism may act as a bridge connecting the dark (anti-social) and light (pro-social) sides of the human personality. Put simply, individuals can cross that bridge to use their dark traits when facing a challenge, and pro-social characteristics when in a safe environment.

Our work suggests that instead of perceiving human personality as a dichotomy (narcissistic versus agreeable), we should treat it as a constantly changing spectrum.

It is not about promoting grandiosity over healthy self-esteem and modesty. Instead it is about promoting diversity of people and ideas by advocating that dark traits, such as narcissism, should not be seen as either good or bad. They are products of evolution, and expressions of human nature that may be beneficial or harmful depending on the context.

This may help to reduce the marginalization of individuals that score high on dark traits, and work out how best to cultivate some manifestations of these traits, while discouraging others, for the collective good.

It is too simplistic to say that personality traits like narcissism, which help individual empowerment, are socially toxic. People are trying to adapt, survive, and succeed in a social, political, and economic environment that promotes the self-made man or woman, and if they exhibit antagonistic traits such as narcissism, they receive negative attention. Yet grandiose narcissism may be the key to protecting individuals from such needless pressure.

Nor do I think there are individuals who live without narcissism. In common with other psychological traits, it exists on a spectrum, with some individuals scoring higher than others.

Elsewhere in the natural world, a human fear and distrust of sharks has led to a widespread attitude of us versus them. After the movie Jaws was released, according to one conservationist there was a collective testosterone rush which led to thousands of anglers targeting and killing sharks off the American coast.

Shark numbers have dropped dramatically (by up to 92%) in the past half century. So just as we are starting to understand the importance of sharks for the marine ecosystem, we have run out of sharks to study.

We should not let narcissists be similarly marginalized just because we dont understand them. Instead of demonizing parts of our personality, we need to celebrate all of its aspects and work out how best to use them, for our own benefit and the benefit of society.

This article was originally published on The Conversation by Kostas Papageorgiou. Read the original article here.

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Psychologists say there are 2 types of narcissists: Which one are you? - Inverse

Genetics

This Mom Is Buying Mutant Mice From China To Find A Cure For Her Sons Rare Genetic Disease – BuzzFeed News

When Amber Freed first told doctors her baby boy wasnt able to move his hands, they said that wasnt possible.

Freed had given birth to twins in March 2017. While her baby girl, Riley, squirmed and babbled and crawled through the first year of her life, her fraternal twin, Maxwell, was different. He didnt crawl or babble like Riley did. I would fill out their baby books each month, and Riley had met all of these milestones. Maxwell didnt reach one, she said. Most alarmingly, however, Freed noticed that he never moved his hands.

She knew the news was going to be bad when they sent her to the sad room at the hospital, a featureless conference space filled with grim-faced doctors, to hear the diagnosis.

You take your baby to the doctor and you say, He cant move his hands. And they look at you and they say, Of course he can, said Freed.

Then they look for themselves, and you can see from the look on their faces that they have never seen anything like this.

On June 14, 2018, at the Children's Hospital Colorado in Denver, Maxwell was diagnosed with a genetic disease called SLC6A1. The diagnosis explained why the infant hadnt moved his hands or learned how to speak for the first year of his life, while Riley was thriving. But it didnt explain much else: All the doctors who diagnosed Maxwell knew about the genetic disease came from a single five-page study published in 2014, the year of its discovery. It was too rare to even have a name, she was told, so the doctors just called it by the name of the affected gene: SLC6A1.

Now her 2-year-old son is at the center of a multimillion-dollar race against time, one thats come to include genetics researchers whom Freed personally recruited, paid for by $1 million that Freed and her husband, Mark, have raised themselves. At the center of their research will be specially crafted mutant mice that Freed paid scientists in China to genetically alter to have the same disease as Maxwell. The four mice are scheduled to arrive stateside next week, but Freed said shes prepared to smuggle them into the US disguised as pets if there are any problems.

In total, Amber and Mark will need to raise as much as $7 million to test a genetic treatment for their child. And unless they can find and fund a cure, SLC6A1 will condemn Maxwell to severe epileptic seizures, most likely starting before he turns 3. The seizures may trigger developmental disabilities for a lifetime, often accompanied by aggressive behavior, hand flapping, and difficulty speaking.

And the Freeds will have to do it largely alone there are only an estimated 100 other people diagnosed with SLC6A1 in the world. This is the rarest of the rare diseases, pediatric geneticist Austin Larson of the Children's Hospital Colorado told BuzzFeed News.

SLC6A1 is just one of thousands of untreatable rare diseases, and the perilous path it has set up for Freed, half science quarterback and half research fundraiser, is one that few parents can follow. My dream is to create a playbook of how I did this for those that come after me, said Freed. I never want there to be another family that has suffered like this.

You can think of SLC6A1 as a vacuum cleaner in the brain, genetic counselor Katherine Helbig of the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, told BuzzFeed News. Helbig will speak at the first conference on the gene at the American Epilepsy Society meeting in Baltimore on Dec. 5, an effort organized by Freed.

The protein made by the gene acts as a stop sign to message-carrying chemicals in the brain, halting them by vacuuming them up once they reach their destination brain cell, Helbig explained.

When one of the two copies of the SLC6A1 gene in every brain cell is damaged, like in Maxwells case, too little of its protein is available to perform its vacuuming duties, leading to miscommunication between cells, developmental disorders, autism-like symptoms, and, often, severe epileptic seizures.

Maxwell is about the age when epileptic seizures typically start in kids with the genetic disease, said Helbig, adding, There probably are many more children out there who have it, but they just havent had the right test to find it. At least 100 similar genetic defects cause similar kinds of epilepsy, afflicting about 1 in 2,000 kids, she said.

I was the one who presented this diagnosis to Amber, said Larson of the Children's Hospital Colorado. There was no medicine or diet or any other treatment for SLC6A1. It wasnt an easy conversation. Most of the time when we present a diagnosis for a genetic condition, there is not a specific treatment available.

At that moment, it was just vividly clear that the only option was for me to create our own miracle, said Freed. Nobody else was going to help.

Half the battle with a rare genetic disease is getting researchers interested, said Helbig.

At that moment, it was just vividly clear that the only option was for me to create our own miracle. Nobody else was going to help.

So that is what Freed set out to do. She quit her job as a financial analyst and started making phone calls to scientists, calling 300 labs in the first three months. For those who didnt respond, she sent them snacks via Uber Eats.

Her search, and a rapid-fire education on genetic diseases, led her to conclude the best hope for helping Maxwell was an experimental technique called gene therapy.

All the roads zeroed in on one scientist: Steven Gray of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. In 2018, a team headed by Gray reported the first human experiments of gene transfer by spinal injection, conducted in 5 to 10 children with mutations in a gene called GAN that causes swelling in brain cells.

The GAN gene transfer in that experiment, first tested in mice, attached a corrected version of the damaged gene to a harmless virus. Viruses reproduce by infecting cells and hijacking their DNA machinery to reproduce their own genes, making more viruses. The gene therapy virus in turn leaves behind a corrected gene in the DNA of cells they infect. Injected into the spinal cord, Grays virus can travel straight to the brain, leaving behind the corrected gene after the virus has run its course.

I gave him my 30-second equity analyst pitch. I told him why Maxwell was a good patient, that we would raise $4 million to $7 million, and quarterback every step of the research, she said. And it worked. He agreed to make it a priority if we could raise the money.

The SLC6A1 researchers with the Freeds at a science meeting. From left: Terry Jo Bichell, Frances Shaffo, Amber Freed, Katty Kang, and Mark Freed.

Less than a month after meeting Gray, Freed contacted a lab at Tongji University in Shanghai that was also researching SLC6A1. The lab agreed to develop a mouse with Maxwells specific mutation for less than $50,000, using a gene modification technology called CRISPR that has revolutionized genetic engineering in the lab. CRISPR mice are much more expensive in the US, and this lab had experience with the gene, said Freed.

By July of this year, an experiment with a gene therapy virus that corrects SLC6A1 was tested on normal lab mice, which showed no sign of a toxic response, an encouraging sign. And by September, a line of CRISPR mice with Maxwells exact genetic mutation had been created at Tongji University.

It is the literal mouse version of him, said Freed. Testing a therapy in this mouse is as close as science can get to testing in my son directly.

To pay for all this, Maxwells family started fundraising last November and organized the first medical symposium on SLC6A1 in New Orleans that same month. They opened a GoFundMe account, which has raised $600,000, and held 35 fundraisers, which raised an additional $400,000 by October. In one charity competition, Larson from the Colorado Childrens Hospital, who diagnosed Maxwell, personally helped her raise $75,000.

It is the literal mouse version of him. Testing a therapy in this mouse is as close as science can get to testing in my son directly.

That money is helping to pay for the next step getting the CRISPR mice to Grays lab to test the SLC6A1-correcting virus on them. But its not as simple as putting the mice in a box and shipping them by mail. The mice will be transferred through a lab at Vanderbilt University headed by Katty Kang, an expert on the neurotransmitter disrupted by Maxwells mutation.

Amber is helping us to advance science, and everyone is making this a priority because of the young lives at stake not just Maxwell, but other children this could help, Kang told BuzzFeed News.

Once the four mice arrive, they will spend several weeks in quarantine, be tested to make sure they have Maxwells specific point mutation in the SLC6A1 gene, and breed with normal lab mice to produce generations of mixed-inheritance mice to serve as controls in future experiments. The mutant mice will be closely monitored before they head to UT Southwestern to make sure that they demonstrate the same problems and genetics as human patients with SLC6A1 and can therefore be used in any future clinical trials of gene therapy.

Right now at UT Southwestern, results from a safety test of the gene therapy virus conducted by Grays lab on young, normal lab mice is awaiting publication. If that works out, once the Chinese mice are sent over, they will also receive the gene-correcting virus. His team will see if their symptoms improve and to what extent their brain cells accept the corrected gene.

Maxwell's brain cells seen through a microscope (left), and a sample of his cells in a petri dish.

And then, Freed just needs another $5.5 million. Half a million dollars will go to test the virus in a second SLC6A1 animal model, likely a rat, as another safety step. Two million dollars will go toward creating more of the gene-correcting virus for a human safety study if that proves to be safe. And finally, if all that works out, $3 million will be needed to conduct the experiment on Maxwell and other children next year, following the path of the GAN clinical trial led by Gray.

Its a really horrible realization that the only thing standing in the way of a cure for your 2-year-old is money, said Freed.

Freed acknowledges that she has only been able to pursue a cure for Maxwell because her family has the resources to do so which she would never have had growing up in small towns in Texas, Montana, and Colorado in a poor family affected by alcoholism. I grew up visiting my parents in rehab and knew what to say to put a family member on a 72-hour psychiatric hold by age 12, she said. She dug herself out to build a career in finance, and hoped her kids would never have to experience the struggles she did growing up.

Even so, the fight hasnt been easy on them or on Maxwells sister, Riley.

Freed worries her daughter is growing up in doctors' waiting rooms, waiting on treatments for her brother to end. Maxwells disease has progressed, causing him to constantly clench his fingers, and sometimes pull his sisters hair. His 3-year-old sister will gently remind him, Soft hands, Maxie.

Families like the Freeds are at the forefront of efforts to turn diagnoses of rare genetic ailments, which often used to be the stopping point for medicine, into treatments. A similar case saw the family of a 3-year-old girl, Mila Makovec, raise $3 million for gene therapy to cure her Batten disease, a deadly genetic brain disease that affects 2 to 4 of every 100,000 children born in the US.

In a New England Journal of Medicine editorial on that case published in October, FDA officials questioned how high the agency should set the safety bar for such treatments, meant for severe diseases affecting so few people. In these cases, parents are often collaborators in developing treatments, and might not want to stop efforts that come with high risks. Even in rapidly progressing, fatal illnesses, precipitating severe complications or death is not acceptable, so what is the minimum assurance of safety that is needed? wrote senior FDA officials Janet Woodcock and Peter Marks.

This is way beyond what anyone expects of families.

Finally, Woodcock and Marks wrote, finding sustainable funding for such interventions may prove challenging, because the cost of production can be quite substantial, particularly for gene therapies.

In our era of financial inequality, the specter of wealthy parents buying custom genetic treatments for their childrens ailments while other parents desperately resort to GoFundMe accounts, or else do nothing looms as a possibility.

This is way beyond what anyone expects of families, said Larson. The pathway has been opened up by the brave new world of improved genetic diagnoses, and the coming of age of rapid genetic engineering tools like CRISPR.

But only 20 years ago, an experimental gene therapy that relied on a harmless virus killed an 18-year-old volunteer, Jesse Gelsinger, in a research misconduct case that brought gene therapy to a standstill. Now more than 2,500 gene therapy clinical trials have been conducted, and more than 370 are underway. The human genome was not sequenced until 2000; today, mapping an entire human gene map costs around $700. In this new era, customized treatments for rare genetic diseases like Maxwells are suddenly possible.

What I hope is that we are paving the way for other parents to help their children, said Freed.

Families of children with rare genetic diseases are also working together to make treatments like the one Freed is spearheading possible, said Larson.

They support each other and work together, he said. The best example might be the families of children with cystic fibrosis, who through the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the discovery of the gene responsible for the disease in 1989 have pushed for the discovery of new drug treatments. In October, the FDA approved a breakthrough pharmaceutical that could treat 90% of cases.

It is easier working with FDA on this kind of approach rather than starting from scratch, Gray told BuzzFeed News by email. After all, he said, its easier to follow a path that youve already walked down.

Similarly, Freed hopes the SLC6A1 Connect advocacy group she started can lead to similar treatments for other children with genetic epilepsies caused by the gene.

I dont think any parent should be expected to single-handedly cure his or her childs rare disease, said Helbig. Amber is a very tenacious and persistent person, and she will fight tooth and nail for her kids. But a lot of people dont have the resources and they shouldnt have to.

Helbig says that cautious optimism is appropriate on the chances of research yielding a genetic therapy for children like Maxwell. For SLC6A1, its really too early to say whether this is going to work.

But if it works, it might lead many more parents to get genetic tests for children that will reveal undiagnosed problems, she said. Many doctors discourage extensive genetic tests, thinking they wont find anything helpful. In the absence of known treatments, insurers are also reluctant to pay for such tests, discouraging all but the most fortunate and resourceful parents. Even for them, there are no guarantees.

The other tough reality is the possibility this treatment wont be completed in time to help Maxwell, said Freed. I love him with every ounce of my being, and I want him to know that I did everything humanly possible to change his outcome.

Originally posted here:
This Mom Is Buying Mutant Mice From China To Find A Cure For Her Sons Rare Genetic Disease - BuzzFeed News

Cell Biology

Hershey native tapped for new administrative position at Texas A&M – North Platte Telegraph

DALLAS Dr. Kathy Svoboda, Regents Professor in biomedical sciences at Texas A&M College of Dentistry, has been named assistant dean of the oral biology graduate program after serving as the director since 2009. Svoboda is a Hershey native.

Looking at Kathys background and expertise, I could think of no one better to serve in this capacity, said Dr. Lawrence Wolinsky, College of Dentistry dean. She is an asset to this institution and I am confident she will continue to move the oral biology graduate program in the right direction.

Svoboda was trained as a developmental biologist and anatomist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. She continued her training in a postdoctoral position in the Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology at Harvard Medical School.

Svoboda had an active research laboratory and taught gross anatomy, histology and human development at Harvard and Boston University School of Medicine before joining the College of Dentistry faculty in 1998.

She was promoted to professor, with tenure, in 2001 and named a Regents Professor in 2009. She has been a member of the Oral Biology Graduate Committee since 2003.

Svobodas research focuses on signal transduction pathways controlling developmental processes and cell biology of adult tissues. She currently serves as a guest editor for Anatomical Record, and on the editorial boards of Developmental Dynamics and FASEB BioAdvances. She has served on the executive board of the American Association of Anatomists, including the offices of program co-chair, vice president and president.

Svoboda also was named an AAA Fellow in 2009 and received the AJ Ladman Exemplary Service Medal in 2014. She served the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and received its Gold Fellow Award in 2014.

In 2017, Svoboda received the Institutional Service Award from the College of Dentistry for her leadership of the graduate program and other committees.

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Hershey native tapped for new administrative position at Texas A&M - North Platte Telegraph

Cell Biology

AI helps cells pull themselves together – Cosmos

By Paul Biegler

US scientists have overcome a major stumbling block in the creation of mini-organs, programming cells to take on the desired shape rather than relying on 3D printing or external scaffolds.

This inside out approach, described in a paper in the journal Cell Systems, could signal a paradigm shift in how mini-hearts, kidneys and brains are grown on the lab bench a technique used to study disease that may one day lead to personalised organ transplants.

The team, led by bioengineer Todd McDevitt at Gladstone Institutes in the US, was driven by an enduring issue with state-of-the-art ways of producing mini-organs such as 3D printing. The cells just wont stay put.

Making a mini-organ or organoid starts when scientists take a persons skin cell and, using the right mix of agents, turn it into an induced pluripotent stem cell. This IPS cell is the blank cheque of biology, capable of becoming almost any cell type.

Grow it into a mini-kidney, say, and you can reproduce kidney diseases and test treatments in a dish sitting on your lab bench. But how faithful that model is depends on the physical organisation of the cells; to mimic a real deal kidney, 3D printing is often used.

But cells, much like unruly teenagers, have a mind of their own and will often wander away from their printed position.

McDevitts team wanted to own those cellular minds and so took control of two genes that together make up something of a joystick that directs how the cells organise.

CDH1 and ROCK1 figure heavily in the complex moves that lead to the final configuration of a group of cells. The pair influences stickiness and repulsion between cells, the surface tension that makes them spherical and their overall speed of migration.

The researchers used the editing tool CRISPR to knock out the two genes at various stages in the evolution of a clump of cells. Their aim was to make a bulls eye pattern, a shape thats common in human development, including in early embryo formation.

To detect that aspirational pattern, they engineered another tweak making the cells fluoresce when CDH1 and ROCK1 were neutralised.

But there was a problem.

Factor in all the potential time points where the genes could be knocked out, the proportion of cells to be targeted, and a host of other variables, and the researchers calculated theyd need to do nearly 9000 trial-and-error experiments.

So they called on AI. They trained a machine learning model to compute the precise pattern of gene knockouts needed to realise their dream shape.

Machine learning can predict what movie you might like based on your viewing history, but it can also generate new insights into biological systems by mimicking them, says co-author Demarcus Briers, from the Boston University Bioinformatics Program.

Our machine-learning model allows us to predict new ways that stem cells can organise themselves, and produces instructions for how to recreate these predictions in the lab.

That model hit a bulls eye, quite literally, allowing the team to produce the concentric pattern of cells they were aiming at.

"We've shown how we can leverage the intrinsic ability of stem cells to organise," says McDevitt. "This gives us a new way of engineering tissues, rather than a printing approach where you try to physically force cells into a specific configuration."

Ultimately, that concrete target shape will give way to a target in the abstract, one with potential to shift the life course.

"We're now on the path to truly engineering multicellular organization, which is the precursor to engineering organs," McDevitt says. "When we can create human organs in the lab, we can use them to study aspects of biology and disease that we wouldn't otherwise be able to."

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AI helps cells pull themselves together - Cosmos

Cell Biology

Boundless Bio Announces Publication in Nature Elucidating the Role of Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) Structure in Cancer Biology – Business Wire

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Boundless Bio, a company interrogating and targeting extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in aggressive cancers, today announced that research describing new mechanisms by which ecDNA drive cancer growth, resistance, and recurrence has been published in the journal Nature. The manuscript, Circular ecDNA promote accessible chromatin and high oncogene expression, was co-authored by Boundless Bios scientific founders Paul Mischel, M.D., Distinguished Professor at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) School of Medicine and a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research; Vineet Bafna, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, UC San Diego; Howard Chang, M.D., Ph.D., Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Genomics and Genetics, Stanford University; and Roel Verhaak, Ph.D., Professor and Associate Director of Computational Biology, The Jackson Laboratory. Boundless Bio scientists Kristen Turner, Ph.D. and Nam Nguyen, Ph.D. were co-lead authors on the manuscript as well.

The paper describes, for the first time, how ecDNA encode information not only in their sequence but also in their shape, enabling a new understanding of how ecDNA drive aggressive tumor growth. ecDNA differ profoundly in their shape from human chromosomal DNA in ways that have not been well-understood, and until now, the impact of the physical shape of ecDNA on cancer biology has remained a mystery. Mischel and his collaborators conducted an in-depth analysis of the structure of ecDNA in cancer, revealing a circular structure that is organized around protein cores in a different way than normal chromosomal DNA. They showed that ecDNA are wound around protein cores in a fashion that permits a far greater level of accessibility to the transcriptional machinery than occurs on chromosomes. As a result of this unique architecture, along with the very high number of ecDNA particles inside a tumor cell, oncogenes that are amplified on ecDNA are amongst the most highly transcribed genes in a tumor.

The researchers also showed that the circular architecture of ecDNA permits new regulatory interactions that might be important in controlling gene expression in cancer. These findings enabled the team to construct topologically informed circular maps of ecDNA that may potentially prove to be of value in guiding treatment for patients. These new findings build on and expand the impact of previous work from the team, which showed that ecDNA amplification is common in cancer and that it can drive aggressive growth and treatment resistance in part through the way that DNA is passed from mother cells to daughter cells (Turner et al., Nature, 2017; Verhaak et al., Nature Reviews Cancer, 2019; de Carvalho et al., Nature Genetics, 2018; Nathanson et al., Science, 2014).

The findings published in Nature represent a major leap forward in our understanding of both the structure of ecDNA and of the significant role that ecDNA play in promoting cancer growth and resistance, said Zachary Hornby, President and Chief Executive Officer of Boundless Bio. This new research arms us with essential knowledge that will enable our team at Boundless Bio to develop the first medicines capable of targeting the underlying biology that causes overexpressed oncogenes to develop and perpetuate in tumors that historically have been difficult-to-treat.

This new study sheds light on how the three-dimensional architecture of ecDNA plays a critical role in driving aggressive cancer growth and provides an important bridge between cancer genomics and epigenetics, said Dr. Mischel. These are exciting findings that we believe will propel Boundless Bios efforts to develop transformative new cancer medicines that eliminate cancer cells ability to employ ecDNA to drive cancer.

About ecDNA

Extrachromosomal DNA, or ecDNA, are large circles of DNA containing genes that are outside the cells chromosomes and can make many copies of themselves. ecDNA can be rapidly replicated within the cell, causing high numbers of oncogene copies, a trait that can be passed to daughter cells in asymmetric ways during cell division. Cells have the ability to upregulate or downregulate ecDNA and resulting oncogenes to ensure survival under selective pressures, including chemotherapy or radiation, making ecDNA one of cancer cells primary mechanisms of recurrence and treatment evasion. ecDNA are rarely seen in healthy cells but are found in many solid tumor cancers. They are a key driver of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat cancers, specifically those characterized by high copy number amplification of oncogenes.

About Boundless Bio

Boundless Bio is a biotechnology company focused on interrogating a novel area of cancer biology, extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA), to deliver transformative therapies to patients with previously intractable cancers. For more information, visit http://www.boundlessbio.com.

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Boundless Bio Announces Publication in Nature Elucidating the Role of Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) Structure in Cancer Biology - Business Wire

Cell Biology

St. Jude researchers among the most highly cited in 2019 – Newswise

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Newswise Eighteen scientists from St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital were recently named Highly Cited Researchers for 2019 by the Web of Science Group.

The annual list identifies scientists and social scientists who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication. The ranking demonstrates significant research influence among their peers. The 2019 St. Jude Highly Cited Researchers are:

Kelly Caudle, PharmD, PhD, Pharmaceutical Sciences

James R. Downing, MD, St. Jude president and CEO

John Easton, PhD, Computational Biology

David Ellison, MD, PhD, Pathology chair

Amar Gajjar, MD, Pediatric Medicine chair

Douglas Green, PhD, Immunology chair

Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti, PhD, Immunology vice-chair

Richard Kriwacki, PhD, Structural Biology

Jing Ma, PhD, Clinical Application Core

Charles Mullighan, MBBS (Hons), MD, Pathology

Ching-Hon Pui, MD, Oncology chair

Mary Relling, PharmD, Pharmaceutical Sciences chair

Leslie Robison, PhD, Epidemiology and Cancer Control chair

Michael Rusch, Computational Biology

Paul Taylor, MD, PhD, Cell and Molecular Biology chair

ShengdarTsai, PhD, Hematology

Gang Wu, PhD, Center for Applied Bioinformatics

Jinghui Zhang, PhD, Computational Biology chair

The methodology that determines the whos who of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts from the Institute for Scientific Information at the Web of Science Group.

The data are taken from 21 broad research fields within Essential Science Indicators, a component of InCites. The fields are defined by sets of journals and, in the case of multidisciplinary journals such as Nature and Science, by a paper-by-paper assignment to a field based on an analysis of the cited references in the papers. This percentile-based selection method removes the citation advantage of older papers relative to recently published ones since papers are weighed against others in the same annual cohort.

The full 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found here, and the methodology can be found here.

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St. Jude researchers among the most highly cited in 2019 - Newswise

Cell Biology

Novocure Announces 43 Presentations on Tumor Treating Fields at 24th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology – Business Wire

ST. HELIER, Jersey--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Novocure (NASDAQ: NVCR) today announced 43 presentations on Tumor Treating Fields, including three oral presentations, will be featured at the 24th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO) on Nov. 20 through Nov. 24 in Phoenix. Presentations on Tumor Treating Fields cover a broad and growing range of topics. External authors prepared 34 of the 43 presentations.

The oral presentations on Tumor Treating Fields include an EF-14 post hoc subgroup analysis on tumor growth rates, and the pilot study results of Tumor Treating Fields combined with radiotherapy and temozolomide for the treatment of newly diagnosed glioblastoma.

Highlights among poster presentations include the combinations of Tumor Treating Fields with other therapies such as radiation and immunotherapies, simulations, health economics and outcomes research, patient advocacy, and research on the mechanism of action.

Year after year, it is amazing to see the continued focus on Tumor Treating Fields at the SNO Annual Meeting, said Novocure CEO Asaf Danziger. From our first presentation at SNO in 2008 to today, more than 250 abstracts on Tumor Treating Fields have been included at one of the most important conferences in neuro-oncology worldwide. I am proud of our team for their relentless focus on innovative research and for their consistent drive in raising awareness of our therapy among the scientific community. We look forward to another productive year at SNO.

Oral Presentations

(Abstract #: ACTR-46) Tumor Treating Fields combined with radiotherapy and temozolomide for the treatment of newly diagnosed glioblastoma: Final results from a pilot study. R. Grossman. 2:45 to 2:50 p.m. MST Nov. 22.

(Abstract #: RTHP-28) TTFields treatment affects tumor growth rates: A post-hoc analysis of the pivotal phase 3 EF-14 trial. Z. Bomzon. 4:05 to 4:10 p.m. MST Nov. 22.

(Abstract #: QOLP-24) Patients/parents experiences of receiving Optune delivered tumor treatment fields: A Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium Study: PBTC-048. J. Lai. 7:50 to 7:54 p.m. MST Nov. 22.

Poster Presentations

(Abstract #: RDNA-10) TTFields treatment planning for targeting multiple lesions spread throughout the brain. Z. Bomzon. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Radiation Biology and DNA Repair/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: NIMG-20) Evaluation of head segmentation quality for treatment planning of tumor treating fields in brain tumors. Z. Bomzon. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Neuro-Imaging/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: HOUT-24) Challenges and successes in the global reimbursement of a breakthrough medical technology for treatment of glioblastoma multiforme. C. Proescholdt. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Health Outcome Measures/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: EXTH-02) The blood brain barrier (BBB) permeability is altered by Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) in vivo. E. Schulz. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Experimental Therapeutics/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: IMMU-06) TTFields induces immunogenic cell death and STING pathway activation through cytoplasmic double-stranded DNA in glioblastoma cells. D. Chen. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Immunology/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: DRES-06) Prostaglandin E Receptor 3 mediates resistance to Tumor Treating Fields in glioblastoma cells. D. Chen. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Drug Resistance/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: EXTH-34) In vitro tumor treating fields (TTFields) applied prior to radiation enhances the response to radiation in patient-derived glioblastoma cell lines. S. Mittal. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Experimental Therapeutics/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: CSIG-20) Effect of tumor-treating felds (TTFields) on EGFR phosphorylation in GBM cell lines. M. Reinert. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Cell Signaling and Signaling Pathways/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: CBMT-14) The dielectric properties of brain tumor tissue. M. Proescholdt. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Cell Biology and Metabolism/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: CSIG-26) Is intrinsic apoptosis the signaling pathway activated by tumor-treating fields for glioblastoma. K. Carlson. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Cell Signaling and Signaling Pathways/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: ATIM-08) Trial in Progress: CA209-9Y8 phase 2 trial of tumor treating fields (TTFs), nivolumab plus/minus ipilimumab for bevacizumab-nave, recurrent glioblastoma. Y. Odia. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Adult Clinical Trials Immunologic/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: ACTR-60) A phase 2, historically controlled study testing the efficacy of TTFields with adjuvant temozolomide in high-risk WHO grade II and III astrocytomas (FORWARD). A. Allen. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Adult Clinical Trials - Non-Immunologic/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: TMIC-54) Comparison of cellular features at autopsy in glioblastoma patients with standard treatment of care and tumor treatment fields. A. Lowman. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Tumor Microenvironment/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: ACTR-26) Safety and efficacy of bevacizumab plus Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) in patients with recurrent glioblastoma (GBM): data from a phase II clinical trial. J. Fallah. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Adult Clinical Trials Non-immunologic/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: RBTT-02) Radiosurgery followed by Tumor Treating Fields for brain metastases (1-10) from NSCLC in the phase 3 METIS trial. V. Gondi. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Randomized Brain Tumor Trials in Development/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: INNV-16) Complete response of thalamic IDH wildtype glioblastoma after proton therapy followed by chemotherapy together with Tumor Treating Fields. M. Stein. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Innovations in Patient Care/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: INNV-20) A systematic review of tumor treating fields therapy for primary for recurrent and glioblastoma. P. Shah. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Innovations in Patient Care/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: STEM-16) Dual Inhibition of Protein Arginine Methyltransferase 5 and Protein Phosphatase 2a Enhances the Anti-tumor Efficacy in Primary Glioblastoma Neurospheres. H. Sur. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. MST Nov. 22. (Stem Cells/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: CBMT-13) 3DEP system to test the electrical properties of different cell lines as predictive markers of optimal tumor treating fields (TTFields) frequency and sensitivity. M. Giladi. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Cell Biology and Metabolism/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: EXTH-37) A novel transducer array layout for delivering Tumor Treating Fields to the spine. Z. Bomzon. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Experimental Therapeutics/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: NIMG-41) Rapid and accurate creation of patient-specific computational models for GBM patients receiving Optune therapy with conventional imaging (T1w/PD). Z. Bomzon. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Neuro-Imaging/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: HOUT-17) Utilities of rare cancers like malignant pleural mesothelioma and glioblastoma multiforme - do they compare? C. Proescholdt. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Health Outcome Measures/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: INNV-17) Innovative educational approaches to enhance patient and caregiver understanding of Optune for glioblastoma. M. Shackelford. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Innovations in Patient Care/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: EXTH-05) Therapeutic implications of TTFields induced DNA damage and replication stress in novel combinations for cancer treatment. N. Karanam. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Experimental Therapeutics/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: EXTH-31) Combination of tumor treating fields (TTFields) and paclitaxel produces additive reductions in proliferation and clonogenicity in patient-derived metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. S. Michelhaugh. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23 (Experimental Therapeutics/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: EXTH-53) Tumor Treating Fields leads to changes in membrane permeability and increased penetration by anti-glioma drugs. E. Chang. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Experimental Therapeutics/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: RDNA-01) Tubulin and microtubules as molecular targets for TTField therapy. J. Tuszynski. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Radiation Biology and DNA Repair/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: SURG-01) OptimalTTF-1: Final results of a phase 1 study: First glioblastoma recurrence examining targeted skull remodeling surgery to enhance Tumor Treating Fields strength. A. Korshoej. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Surgical Therapy/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: ATIM-39) Phase 2 open-labeled study of adjuvant temozolomide plus Tumor Treating Fields plus Pembrolizumab in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma (2-THE-TOP). D. Tran. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Adult Clinical Trials Immunologic/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: ACTR-49) Initial experience with scalp preservation and radiation plus concurrent alternating electric tumor-treating fields (SPARE) for glioblastoma patients. A. Song. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Adult Clinical Trials - Non-Immunologic/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: RTHP-25) TTFields dose distribution alters tumor growth patterns: An imaging-based analysis of the randomized phase 3 EF-14 trial. M. Ballo. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Radiation Therapy/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: ACTR-19) Report on the combination of Axitinib and Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) in three patients with recurrent glioblastoma. E. Schulz. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Adult Clinical Trials - Non-Immunologic/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: PATH-47) TTF may apply selective pressure to glioblastoma clones with aneuploidy: a case report. M. Ruff. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Molecular Pathology and Classification Adult and Pediatric/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: RARE-39) Combination of Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) with lomustine (CCNU) and temozolomide (TMZ) in newly diagnosed glioblastoma (GBM) patients - a bi-centric analysis. L. Lazaridis. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Rare Tumors/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: ACTR-31) The use of TTFields for newly diagnosed GBM patients in Germany in routine clinical care (TIGER: TTFields in Germany in routine clinical care). O. Bahr. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Adult Clinical Trials Non-Immunologic/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: INNV-09) Clinical efficacy of tumor treating fields for newly diagnosed glioblastoma. Y. Liu. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Innovations in Patient Care/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: EXTH-61) Celecoxib Improves Outcome of Patients Treated with Tumor Treating Fields. K. Swanson. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Experimental Therapeutics/Basic Science)

(Abstract #: INNV-23) Glioblastoma and Facebook: An Analysis Of Perceived Etiologies and Treatments. N. Reddy. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Innovations in Patient Care/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: INNV-12) Outcomes in a Real-world Practice For Patients With Primary Glioblastoma: Impact of a Specialized Neuro-oncology Cancer Care Program. N. Banerji. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Innovations in Patient Care/Clinical Research)

(Abstract #: RBTT-11): NRG Oncology NRG-BN006: A Phase II/III Randomized, Open-label Study of Toca 511 and Toca FC With Standard of Care Compared to Standard of Care in Patients With Newly Diagnosed Glioblastoma. M. Ahluwalia. 5 to 7 p.m. MST Nov. 23. (Randomized Brain Tumor Trials Development/Clinical Research)

About Novocure

Novocure is a global oncology company working to extend survival in some of the most aggressive forms of cancer through the development and commercialization of its innovative therapy, Tumor Treating Fields. Tumor Treating Fields is a cancer therapy that uses electric fields tuned to specific frequencies to disrupt solid tumor cancer cell division. Novocures commercialized products are approved for the treatment of adult patients with glioblastoma and malignant pleural mesothelioma. Novocure has ongoing or completed clinical trials investigating Tumor Treating Fields in brain metastases, non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer and liver cancer.

Headquartered in Jersey, Novocure has U.S. operations in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Malvern, Pennsylvania and New York City. Additionally, the company has offices in Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Israel. For additional information about the company, please visit http://www.novocure.com or follow us at http://www.twitter.com/novocure.

Approved Indications

Optune is intended as a treatment for adult patients (22 years of age or older) with histologically-confirmed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

Optune with temozolomide is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with newly diagnosed, supratentorial glioblastoma following maximal debulking surgery, and completion of radiation therapy together with concomitant standard of care chemotherapy.

For the treatment of recurrent GBM, Optune is indicated following histologically- or radiologically-confirmed recurrence in the supratentorial region of the brain after receiving chemotherapy. The device is intended to be used as a monotherapy, and is intended as an alternative to standard medical therapy for GBM after surgical and radiation options have been exhausted.

The NovoTTF-100L System is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic, malignant mesothelioma (MPM) to be used concurrently with pemetrexed and platinum-based chemotherapy.

Important Safety Information

Contraindications

Do not use Optune in patients with GBM with an implanted medical device, a skull defect (such as, missing bone with no replacement), or bullet fragments. Use of Optune together with skull defects or bullet fragments has not been tested and may possibly lead to tissue damage or render Optune ineffective. Do not use the NovoTTF-100L System in patients with MPM with implantable electronic medical devices such as pacemakers or implantable automatic defibrillators, etc.

Use of Optune for GBM or the NovoTTF-100L System for MPM together with implanted electronic devices has not been tested and may lead to malfunctioning of the implanted device.

Do not use Optune for GBM or the NovoTTF-100L System for MPM in patients known to be sensitive to conductive hydrogels. Skin contact with the gel used with Optune and the NovoTTF-100L System may commonly cause increased redness and itching, and may rarely lead to severe allergic reactions such as shock and respiratory failure.

Warnings and Precautions

Optune and the NovoTTF-100L System can only be prescribed by a healthcare provider that has completed the required certification training provided by Novocure.

The most common (10%) adverse events involving Optune in combination with chemotherapy in patients with GBM were thrombocytopenia, nausea, constipation, vomiting, fatigue, convulsions, and depression.

The most common (10%) adverse events related to Optune treatment alone in patients with GBM were medical device site reaction and headache. Other less common adverse reactions were malaise, muscle twitching, and falls related to carrying the device.

The most common (10%) adverse events involving the NovoTTF-100L System in combination with chemotherapy in patients with MPM were anemia, constipation, nausea, asthenia, chest pain, fatigue, device skin reaction, pruritus, and cough.

Other potential adverse effects associated with the use of the NovoTTF-100L System include: treatment related skin toxicity, allergic reaction to the plaster or to the gel, electrode overheating leading to pain and/or local skin burns, infections at sites of electrode contact with the skin, local warmth and tingling sensation beneath the electrodes, muscle twitching, medical site reaction and skin breakdown/skin ulcer.

If the patient has an underlying serious skin condition on the treated area, evaluate whether this may prevent or temporarily interfere with Optune and the NovoTTF-100L System treatment.

Do not prescribe Optune or the NovoTTF-100L System for patients that are pregnant, you think might be pregnant or are trying to get pregnant, as the safety and effectiveness of Optune and the NovoTTF-100L System in these populations have not been established.

Forward-Looking Statements

In addition to historical facts or statements of current condition, this press release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements provide Novocures current expectations or forecasts of future events. These may include statements regarding anticipated scientific progress on its research programs, clinical trial progress, development of potential products, interpretation of clinical results, prospects for regulatory approval, manufacturing development and capabilities, market prospects for its products, coverage, collections from third-party payers and other statements regarding matters that are not historical facts. You may identify some of these forward-looking statements by the use of words in the statements such as anticipate, estimate, expect, project, intend, plan, believe or other words and terms of similar meaning. Novocures performance and financial results could differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements due to general financial, economic, regulatory and political conditions as well as more specific risks and uncertainties facing Novocure such as those set forth in its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on July 25, 2019, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Given these risks and uncertainties, any or all of these forward-looking statements may prove to be incorrect. Therefore, you should not rely on any such factors or forward-looking statements. Furthermore, Novocure does not intend to update publicly any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. Any forward-looking statements herein speak only as of the date hereof. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 permits this discussion.

Read more from the original source:
Novocure Announces 43 Presentations on Tumor Treating Fields at 24th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology - Business Wire

Human Behavior

From Survivor to D.C., women are showing up strong on TV, but does patriarchal America care? – Salon

Taking the broadest cultural and political view, the past two weeks or so have provided a solid, sobering representation of where women stand in America right now.

All of us are passing through a time of triumph and trial, obviously. Proof of this is playing out across TV in examples ranging from moving to enraging to outright depressing.

But in this context Im mostly speaking about watching women in three different settings playing out within the same general time frame: the public hearings portion of Congress impeachment inquiry, Wednesdays Democratic debates in Atlanta, and a disheartening parable dispatched from the Mamanuca Islands of Fiji.

That third mention refers to CBS' Survivor: Island of the Idols, unscripted entertainment edited to fit whatever narrative producers deem to be most provocative. The 39th season is embroiled in a controversy involving several women being subjected to unwanted touching by castaway Dan Spilo, a Hollywood talent manager .

Dan is still part of the game whereas Kellee Kim, the contestant who raised her voice about Spilos groping both directly to him and to other women, ended up being voted off the island. Kim's confessionals about the experience are raw and charged; at one point she visibly tears up, and a producer, speaking off camera, lets her know that if she's says the word they'll step in.

With $1 million on the line, however, taking such action would not have been without penalty. Then again, her trust that the tribe's other women would stand with her was misplaced. Several of them used her candor with them against her to blindside her, saying "me too" to her face and then putting her on the chopping block at Tribal Council.

"Survivor executive producer and host Jeff Probst likes to remind people that the game plays out as a microcosm of society. Its also a program run by producers who have an obligation to ensure the people in their charge feel safe. The first half of the Nov. 13 back-to-back episodes actually includes an onscreen message that Spilo received an official warning from producers.

Given everything Probst and Survivor producers knew about Spilos behavior before Kim and the man who defended her, Jamal Shipman, were voted off, the general consensus from passionate fans is that Spilo should have been ousted from the game instead of Kim, the woman whose boundaries he violated. (Shipman, it must be said, made an unrelated strategic mistake that doomed him. His eloquent, empathetic defense of Kim still stands.)

But this is Survivor; this is television. As Shipman told Entertainment Weekly in his exit interview, the understanding is that once you set foot on the island, the game is in play and barring a medical emergency of which the show has had its share there is no pause or reset button aside from the ones producers toss in as part of the game.

The consequences for a player asking for production to get involved are monumental, Shipman said. . . . Therefore, I think it is a judgment call that only the producers can make. They are monitoring the camp 24/7. They need to be the ones to decide when to prioritize the safety of the players. They should recognize that we are in a situation where we cannot advocate for ourselves without the fear of compromising our endgame.

I am not a regular Survivor viewer. In fact, it only occurred to me to watch the Nov. 13 and 20 episodes when it came up in a number of conversations. My friend and colleague Andy Dehnarts rapier-pointed critique of the situation, by the way, is a must-read for anyone seeking a concise breakdown of the ethical quandaries this development presents.

And he concisely spells out one of the main reasons for the general outcry among viewers sensitive to a womans right to have her personal and physical boundaries respected:

At Tribal Council, Probst was more concerned about making a Survivor Cultural Touchstone Moment than just being honest and open about what he already knew. For Probst to get irritated with Dan while simultaneously pretending like he had no idea what was going on was quite the choice.

The Nov. 13 Survivor is fascinating to watch now, in the wake of five days worth of impeachment inquiry testimony and Wednesdays debate, because of what events of the day prove about the Survivor theory of human behavior and society.

The common denominators in all three events the reality show, the hearings and to some degree, the debate stem from our feelings concerning right or wrong, and consequence, with women playing key roles at each juncture.

Even more starkly, it shows why movements like #MeToo and the struggle for gender inequality are not blown out of proportion or the latest social justice fever to hit the entertainment industry. And they also remind us that our problems are far from solved.

The fifth Democratic primary face-off,held at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, was moderated by four women, MSNBCs Rachel Maddow and Andrea Mitchell, NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker, and Ashley Parker, White House reporter for The Washington Post, which co-hosted the event along with MSNBC.

Among the topics candidates fielded on Wednesday were substantive exchanges about abortion rights, family leave, and gender inequity lines of questioning underrepresented or completely omitted in previous debates.

Out of the 10 contenders on the stage, three out of the four women shone brightest. Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the popular winner in post-debate assessments, but Sen. Kamala Harris also received her share of upvotes.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar performed better than she ever has, while also distinguishing herself by making a reasonable and fai22r stand for gender equality. Referring to a comment Klobuchar previously made about the double standard of Mayor Pete Buttigieg being taken seriously as a candidate given his youth and experience relative to her own, Mitchell asked her to clarify what she meant.

Pete is qualified to be up on this stage, and I am honored to be standing next to him. But what I said is true: Women are held to a higher standard, she told Mitchell Otherwise we could play a game called name your favorite woman president, which we cant do because it has all been men.

On the other hand, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard attempted to reprise her attack on Harris and was smacked down badly, and Vice President Joe Bidens second greatest gaffe of the night involved erasing Harris career achievements in attempting to burnish his own by claiming that his strong support among black voters is because they know me, they know who I am. Three former chairs of the black caucus, the only African-American woman that's ever been elected to the United States Senate

No, thats not true, Harris said, stepping in along with Cory Booker. The other one is here.

At the end of the night, the general if unscientific consensus is that Maddow, Mitchell, Welker, and Parker kept the debate running smoothly, allowing candidates to fully deliver their answers while keeping them within their allotted time limits. Maddow, in the post-show, cited the flawless set-up at Tyler Perry Studios, which she says ensured that everyone heard one another and reduced the frequency of outburst and cross-talk

She also opined that the perceived toughness of her fellow moderators may have had influenced the better behavior this time around, jokingly referring to her NBC co-workers Welker and Mitchell as people you dont want to cross "in a dark alley, with no one around you."

The candidates, in turn, refrained from squabbling over one another. For the most part.

The presumption that women would simply run things better is lovely, and I support it. Its also facile. To wit: on "Survivor," two of the other women on the island with Kim played their discomfort with Spilo as a strategy, which paints a repulsive picture in several respects.

At the debate, Welker tried some gamesmanship of her own when she set up Harris to take a shot at Buttigieg for his bungled attempts to inflate his support among African Americans. But the moderator didnt go into specifics of what those missteps are basically putting the weight on Harris to do the work for her and viewers at home and somehow not look like a heel.

Harris strategically pivoted away from the trap, likely aware of the potential optics of a black woman going on the offensive against nice Mayor Pete.

And while debate moved quickly and covered a lot of ground, it sill fell short on depth and substance. LGBTQ issues were barely discussed; the topic of violence and discrimination against transgender Americans did not come up at all.

And yet, taking into account that it came at the end of 10 hours of live political coverage, women got the job done and did it well.

Women, too, put their careers on the line in service of the impeachment inquiry. A week before Wednesdays debates, Former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, and I imagine her testimony might have hit anyone smarting from the events of that Nov. 13 Survivor episode differently than other viewers.

Yovanovitch is a story of a career diplomat who did her job well and was fully versed in the players behind corruption in the Ukraine, and as a reward for doing her job, was pushed out of her position and smeared by her former boss as she testified. (She was sidelined and silenced, in other words. You know, like one of those jurors made to silently witness Tribal Council from the sidelines.)

The unblinking cameras showed America a composed, capable witness who remained even-keeled throughout her testimony, as did Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence who listened in on Trumps July 25 phone call to Ukraine PresidentVolodymyr Zelensky and testified on Day Three, or Tuesday of this week, that she found it unusual.

But two other women who appeared as witnesses this week packed more perceptual punch, in part due to how they were scheduled. From most accounts the inquirys climax arrived on Wednesday of this week when EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland sauntered into the Capitol in the way of all entitled rich men who pay their way into positions theyre not qualified to perform.

Sondland, who bought his diplomatic position by writing a $1 million check to Trumps presidential inaugural committee, joked and smiled his way through many hours of questions by Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee after kicking off the proceedings with this bombshell:

I know that members of this committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a `quid pro quo? As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.

Certainly it was a tremendous performance designed for the cameras. His resting grin, in particular, spoke volumes: it was that of a man who knew he could say or do anything without suffering any significant penalty or alteration to his lifestyle because of it. But his role was mainly that of ending a flimsy argument; the rest was artful dodging and schtick.

The more thankless duty fell to the woman who followed Sondland on the schedule, deputy assistant secretary of Defense Laura Cooper, who dispelled the notion that Ukraine didnt know that funds for military assistance were being held up. She confirmed that, indeed, government workers asked about it on the same day as Trumps famous phone call.

In contrast to Sondland, Cooper was not afforded the luxury of engaging in performative hamminess, because she is a career servant; as far as we know she doesnt have a cushion of millions to fall back on if shes fired. The viewer saw a serious woman who chose her words very carefully and let GOP attacks roll off on her when they came her way.

Besides, it was not she who reminded viewers of the inequalities that exist within government, or this situation, or workplaces in general. That fell to Thursdays fact witness, Dr. Fiona Hill, the former top National Security Council official for Europe and Russia.

Questioned about her reaction to Sondland cutting her and her department out of the loop (which includes John Bolton) in terms of their dealings with Ukraine, she admitted having a couple of testy encounters with him.

One of those was in June 18 when I actually said to him, Who put you in charge of Ukraine? Ill admit I was a bit rude, but thats when he told me the president, which shut me up, she said. What she said next speaks to something women face in every setting.

I was actually, to be honest, angry with him, she said. And you know, I hate to say it, but often when women show anger its not fully appreciated. Its often pushed onto emotional issues, perhaps, or deflected onto other people.

She continued, And what I was angry about was that he wasnt coordinating with us. I now actually realize, having listened to his deposition, that he was absolutely right. That he wasnt coordinating with us because we werent doing the same thing that he was doing."

With this, she calmly delivered the coup de grace by characterizing Sondlands actions as being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged. So he was correct . . . And I did say to him, Ambassador Sondland, Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up. And here we are.

Recency bias, that phenomenon of easily recalling the latest events in a timeline with most accuracy, can be a wonderful thing . . . when and if it works in your favor, that is. The problem always is that the latest chapter in a saga doesnt tell the whole tale, which is why researchers and other types of chroniclers caution us about its influence.

Hill, though, gave a hell of a finale, coming across as unshakable even in the face of attempts to besmirch her reputation, even chastising members of the GOP without calling them out by name or party for perpetuating the debunked conspiracy that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 elections, not Russia.

Yet I am left to wonder, at the end of it all, what will happen to this steely survivor and others like her.

If the Senate embarks upon the trial portion of the impeachment, the focus will not be on weighing the evidence but tearing apart the people who submitted it to the public. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republicans got quite a preview of what to expect from Hill, Cooper, Williams, and Yovanovitch.

On the other hand, the hearing also served as a coming-out party for Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who tag teamed with Ohio GOP Congressman Jim Jordan in attacking witnesses.

Politics is a messy, bloody business, even more so when our diplomatic efforts become overtly politicized. Typically, though, what alarms people who consume current events mainly through TV news are acts that have already happened, actions that have been discussed in the halls of Congress or occur in places far away.

The real-time collision of political theater and unscripted reality showbiz adds a new kind of anxiety to what were seeing, in that the manufactured product has the misfortune of auguring the truth of how things are. Four women did a better job of moderating the latest presidential debate than any of the predecessors, yet the debate was the least watched so far, with only 6.6 million viewers tuning in.

Hill's testimony was strong, and her unflappable comportment read brilliantly on live TV. A few hours later, Sean Hannity got an early start on the campaign to discredit Hill on Thursday's installment of his Fox News primetime program.

And some Survivor viewers are upset because they expected an artificial society formed and endured for 39 days, overseen by multiple witnesses behind many cameras, would mete out justice in ways the real world rarely does. The producers saw everything, and we saw enough. Even so, the alleged perpetrator is still on the road to a $1 million payday.

Its super upsetting because its like you cant do anything about it, Kim says on the show. There are always consequences for standing up. This happens in real life, in work settings, in school. You cant say anything because its going to affect your upward trajectory. Its going to affect how people look at you.

Her anger, I think, has not been fully appreciated it. But I do hope what happened to her serves as a warning, perhaps, to prepare for whatever obfuscating storm is coming after these weeks of hard transparency, transmitted via live television.

See original here:
From Survivor to D.C., women are showing up strong on TV, but does patriarchal America care? - Salon

Human Behavior

Why Fox News Slimed a Purple Heart Recipient – The New York Times

In anticipation of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindmans recent public testimony in the Houses impeachment inquiry, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham and a guest concocted an insulting fantasy on her show: the idea that Colonel Vindman might be a Ukrainian spy.

It may have shocked a lot of Americans that Fox News televangelists and establishment conservatives like John Yoo are spinning the narrative of the courageous Colonel Vindman a man who put his countrys interests ahead of his own into one that suggests, as an immigrant, he wasnt loyal to the United States. But as a former Fox News opinion talk-show guest host and contributor for 14 years, it didnt shock me.

I can explain the art and purpose behind throwing a Purple Heart veteran under the Fox News bus. First, we must talk about narratives. In my time at Fox News, narratives were weapons of mass emotional manipulation, what the Nobel laureate Robert J. Shiller defines in Narrative Economics as contagious stories as he put it in a paper of the same name, a simple story or easily expressed explanation of events that many people want to bring up in conversation or on news or social media because it can be used to stimulate the concerns or emotions of others, and/or because it appears to advance self-interest. One recent report said that we find information or misinformation 22 times more memorable in narrative form.

Theres little in this world that has the emotional manipulative power of a good tribalized us versus them narrative. Its a contagion, and thanks to social media, or participatory propaganda, highly viral.

The Fox News counternarrative model is as simple as it is cunning. The segment producers job is to get the answers to two questions: What is the most emotionally engaging story we have right now (in 2019, thats the most recent damaging attack House impeachment hearings on President Trump). The next question is, how do we construct a counternarrative that includes as many existing other believable meta-narratives as possible?

The hunt for the killer narrative starts with the Morning Memo to the producers. It shares the interpretation from the vice president of news of the highest-trending articles on Foxnews.com and Drudge. In the old days, the memo from the C.E.O. Roger Ailes dictated the narratives of the day. The next move is to get a few Fox News contributor regulars elected officials and paid pundits not just to deliver the new counternarrative but also to wrap it inside an existing or new meta-narrative.

What do the ratings tell the producers are the most engaging meta-narratives for the over 80 million Fox News viewers on all digital platforms?

Conspiracy theories.

Why do people love conspiracy stories? Its human behavior. Being in on a good conspiracy theory makes you feel like you know something the other guy in this case, any liberal does not. The emotional payoff from being on the inside of a conspiracy is a self-esteem jolt that makes you feel smarter than your tribal foe and keeps your eyeballs glued to screens television, laptops, tablets, cellphones where the network makes money from advertising.

The Vindman coverage followed the Fox News conspiracy segment playbook perfectly. In the days after Fox News produced it, the spy tale was distributed by other dealers of conspiracy theory. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida tweeted that Donald Trump is innocent. The deep state is guilty. The congressmans message was amplified by an account tied to the online conspiracy movement QAnon to 160,000 of its followers as well as posted on a QAnon Facebook page.

If some of those who consumed the story go back to the original source, Fox, its more business for the network.

Every successful Fox News segment producer has the conspiracy script down cold. These segments work best when the proof of a conspiracy against a tribal leader in this case the Republican president makes the viewer feel under attack as well. It elevates the fight-or-flight juices. And it helps when a proposed conservative thought leader mixes in the meta-narrative to the effect that we are victimized again by the condescending Beltway elites.

Weaponized and tribalized political video narratives in the hands of Fox News producers can become something like drug-abuse epidemics keeping addicts of that conspiracy theory high and coming back for more.

Believing in conspiracy theories is a psychological construct for people to take back some semblance of control in their lives. It inflates their sense of importance. It makes them feel they have access to special knowledge that the rest of the world is too blind, too dumb or too corrupt to understand.

And that is why they wrote Colonel Vindman into the wrong side of a spy novel.

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Why Fox News Slimed a Purple Heart Recipient - The New York Times

Human Behavior

A New Simultaneous Reality: On Shane Jones’s Vincent and Alice and Alice – lareviewofbooks

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

THE PINNACLE OF human civilization is junk food. More than any pyramid or tomb, it represents the apex of how humanity has mastered itself and its innate desires. It combines three of the rarest elements in nature salt, fat, and sugar in an affordable, easy to consume package. It preys on our primal instincts to seek out these elements and covet them at any cost, behaviors burned into the core of our minds from a time when our ancestors had to fight to attain even tiny amounts of them. Add to that corporations whose sole purpose is to exploit that instinct, which pump untold amounts of money into research, refinement, and marketing, and we are nearly powerless in the face of it. Even compared to the realms of politics, science, and academia, there may be no entities on earth who understand human behavior better.

Now consider the idea of a corporation that has tapped into emotional desires just as deeply if you could exist as a dual consciousness, one that experienced the happy successes of life while the other existed in gray mediocrity, would you take it? If they promised to reshape your waking reality in order to increase your unconscious productivity, could you still enjoy it with the terrible knowledge that you are living a lie? In the newest novel from Shane Jones, Vincent and Alice and Alice from Tyrant Books, the titular Vincent is confronted with this very question. Rather than being offered a red pill or a blue pill, Vincent has a different choice: the unremarkable pain of real life, or the emotional equivalent of a cheeseburger and fries exploding in his brain every second of the day.

On the day I start reading the novel, my manager informs me that Im participating in an all-day seminar for Process Improvement and Collaborative Governance on Friday. Its mandatory. If I had the choice to minimize the time spent on it, I would, but I get a feeling I dont have a choice in the matter. I usually try to ignore coincidences and apophenia in my life, but I cant help but notice the parallels between the book and this inane task.

Shane Jones is a well-known name due to the success and controversy of his debut novel, Light Boxes, released in 2010 by Penguin Books. It follows the surrealist tale of a small towns war against February, who exists both as a season and a person, and which has cursed them with an endless winter. It is a cathartic story that blends a frontier landscape with sensual elements, tragedy highlighted by sharpness of mint, depression softened by the sweet lull of flowers. In Crystal Eaters (Two Dollar Radio, 2014), Jones creates a village being physically encroached on by a city, following the story of Remy and her family as they deal with the literally impending doom. The characters live their lives imprisoned by the properties of different colored crystals, some hewn from the earth in a desperate attempt to improve the crystal count inside them. What happens here are the choices of the individual: either to scratch, dig, and claw at an unyielding, inorganic surface, desperate to connect despite the damage to the physical body, or to remain frozen inside of a quartz-tinted life. Both action and inaction result in catastrophic consequences, and Jones paints this world for us in a mythological, yet utterly real, fashion.

While Light Boxes and Crystal Eaters could be set in the past, present, or distant future, Vincent and Alice and Alice takes place in a time that could be solidly defined as the present and near-future, much closer in relation to our own reality than his previous works. The timeline starts in 2017 and stretches to 2037, and Vincents world is a landscape dominated by Walmart rather than woodland. He has an office job with the State, a job that seems to involve the same trappings as our own, in which co-worker birthdays and reams of copier paper make up the minutiae of the day. There is Elderly, an old man who lives in a car on his street, who for all intents and purposes seems to be Vincents best friend. Between Vincents mediocrity and Elderlys eccentric nature, they seem to balance each other out, neither conflicting nor agreeing on anything in particular. In a bland existence, Elderly could be considered Vincents tether to reality, a reminder that chaos exists as a part of life. But of course, these are just ancillary details to the person that consumes Vincents mind, despite being physically absent: Alice.

When we meet Vincent, he is dominated (in every sense of the word) by thoughts of his ex-wife, Alice. No matter where he goes or whom he interacts with, he is followed by permutations of Alice, which drift back and forth from the melancholy to the obsessive. Apparently, this is a pattern of behavior that has always been a part of him:

Alice said I was incapable of living in reality. She said I spent too much time in my head, which is impossible because my reality was Alice, planning our days together. We spent weekends in bed eating sushi, reading the first ten pages of novels, binging shows, sleeping to no clock, no rules, no guidelines, no sense of time. If my imagination did wander, it always included her.

Jones writes Vincent as a man diving head first into just about anything, even adopting an old dog on a whim, to get away from the pain of Alices physical absence in his life. While outwardly composed, Vincent is flailing, searching for meaning in a life where its focal point has got up and left.

One of the people to reach out and steady Vincents hand comes from within his workplace, when he is scheduled to meet with an enigmatic figure named Dorian Blood. While the average person would already be sensing the ominous overtones, Vincent attends the meeting anyway. There, Dorian a square-jawed yet erratic executive type gives him the option of participating in PER, a new kind of mental strategy designed to increase worker productivity. Vincent is promised with the reward of the gate, which, when entered, will turn him into a split consciousness, physically toiling while mentally rejoicing. He will still be working at his dead-end job, but will experience a new simultaneous reality in which anything is possible. Even in the context of this review, you can probably guess that Vincent agrees to do this. With language clouded in the kind of obfuscation reserved for New Age seminars and corporate retreats, Vincent is given the instructions to reach the gate, as well as rules for engagement with it. I recognize this language from my own workplace, where I am pelted with acronyms and esoteric phrases as solutions to problems: Post Deltas, HRO, KANO, EBP, DMAIC. I am told to focus on innovation, to adhere to the white belt method, to identify problem statements and vision statements. I still dont understand how this fits into my job.

As Vincent works with the Patrick Batemanesque Dorian, he is told to learn and adhere to the rules of the gate at all costs:

1. Do not confront the gate about its plausibility.

2. Do not question the humans inside the gate.

3. Do not control the gate.

4. Let the gate guide you.

5. Do not attempt to escape from the gate.

6. Documenting the gate by video or photo is prohibited.

When Vincent asks, How will I know whats real and what isnt? Dorian replies, We get that one a lot. But at this stage in your life, does it matter? In our own lives, we have to make so many decisions and sacrifices, which the PER system is satirizing. Do we go out after work, or stare at a different screen at home? As we get older, the future begins to loom over us as a cold reality instead of a bright tomorrow. The days become obstacles to get through instead of opportunities, our precious lives poured into the forge of capitalism to create a solid plan a future we can have, hold, depend on in other words, an impossible thing. Every day we are confronted with news of climate change and the unrest that has resulted because of it. The picture only becomes grimmer with each passing day, as resources dwindle and small collapses nick away at the foundations of the world. Its enough to make fantasy seem like an attractive alternative, even compared to connecting with others. Vincent says of Alice, From her point of view the reason our marriage ended wasnt because I couldnt fulfill her sexually, but I stopped connecting. She said I wasnt there with her mentally because I was either commuting to work, at work, coming home from work, or dead-eyed from having sat for eight hours at work. How many of us, whether supporting the ever-increasing cost of rent, family, education, or costs of living, could not say we are the same?

Vincent follows the rules of PER, and engages with his work on a level he never has before. Ironically, all details of his work fall to the wayside there are no more pithy comments from co-workers, the state of his zone in the cubicle, or what he does in off-hours. Everything that creates the landscape of his day, and thus the story as we read it, falls away into a void. As his productivity increases, he starts to notice changes. He sleeps for 25 hours at a time. The days turn into one-sentence chapters, sitting at his desk and not saying a word. Dorian and his cronies monitor him, impressed by his progress, promising that he is rapidly approaching the gate.

Elderly and his car, which previously functioned as Vincents anchor to reality, have vanished.

In my own world, the instructor at the mandatory seminar tells us that in order to adhere to the Lean Six Sigma process (created by Toyota in the wake of their airbag failures) all projects must be formatted on an A3 sized sheet of paper. This is the size used on auto factory floors, and it is big enough to see while on the line. It is written in pencil so changes can be made easily and quickly. I ask how we are supposed to create these sheets when the companys printers only fit a maximum paper size of A4. They promise to get back to my question, and they never do.

After a day of work only marked by a co-worker conversation of what to get for lunch, Vincent returns to his apartment to find someone inside it. It is Alice, acting as if their separation has never happened. Vincent tests the reality several ways, but comes to the same conclusion: it is Alice, and she is real, and she is here. The gate has worked. But all this ignores an important fact: the book begins not with Vincents dialogue, but with an excerpt from Alice, in 2037. Is this Alice solely a creation of Vincents mind? If thats true, then when Vincent finds out that Dorian is an undercover cop and Elderly owns four houses with his own wife is that real? Or does it not matter, like Dorian says? The apex philosophical question of the novel remains, in A Scanner Darklytype psych-noir twist: what happens when Alice meets Alice?

In Vincent and Alice and Alice, Jones has created a sharp modern allegory, fueled with the issues so prevalent in society. The desperate coping mechanisms we turn to in the face of grief. The near-satirical level of process improvement in our workplaces, to the point where any real changes are moot in the face of bureaucracy. Our obsessive natures, tempered by the sterile drudgery of white-collar work, and the humor we find in trying to adapt to it. Most importantly, the novel addresses the nature of love how we love others and treat them in a society that values disposal over sentimentality, what we give and what we ask of those we love, and how this will change in a growing world that is constantly breaking apart and reforming itself into something new.

Is this really what our future will look like? A world dominated by productivity, distraction, and consumerism over the pitfalls of human connection? I think what Jones is saying is that it doesnt have to be. As the world changes, we will change with it, and the only way to create a sustainable future is to find greater empathy with each other. Vincents marriage failed because he lost sight of the actual Alice, he slipped into a pattern of complacency that is warm and familiar. Relationships cant thrive in stagnation. In a time when nothing is certain and entities try to guide us the way they want to, we need to remember that our human connection is what grounds us. The answers are not there yet, but the only way we can figure them out is together.

At the end of the meeting at my workplace, we are given a coupon to a fast food place for a discount when you buy a cheeseburger and fries. I leave mine on the desk.

Matt E. Lewis is the editor of Ayahuasca Publishing.

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A New Simultaneous Reality: On Shane Jones's Vincent and Alice and Alice - lareviewofbooks