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Human Behavior

The Hand Claps – lareviewofbooks

WHAT FOLLOWS IS a recorded conversation between two poets whose respective work and lives are fashioned around the question of how poetry gets written. The conversation is followed by a series of poems titled Rob Me Then in which each poet invites the other to steal language and ideas from each other, troubling the tradition of single authorship and the contradiction at the heart of possessing an idea.

RACHEL RABBIT WHITE: I was thinking about that too recently if you can somehow be anonymous during your lifetime I guess I have a line thats like, To evade fame must be the height of luxury. But I mean thats about money. I feel like, its almost like the people that can write anonymously, or can afford to be off social media, are people with wealth, you know?

RS: Last night, I had this nightmare that I was stuck at the top of this mountain. I could see everything but could not touch anyone, and yet everyone could touch and see me. I woke up and thought, I need to scrub my image and name from the internet. Or I need to proliferate more names to fracture my selfhood. Either overexposure or total erasure of names would work. Ive always been like how to become ungovernable? You have to become un-Googlable

RRW: In my meditations, names come to me that make no sense. Almost like angel names, that are no-names, and Im like I wish I had more things to name, I wish I had names.

RS: I have so many email addresses with different names and my friends are like, which fucking email do you use?

RRW: I love that about hustler life and hooker life. I remember when I was first building my hooker website and had an advertisement out, I was corresponding with this one guy back and forth and my name, my first and last name, literally changed 15 times during the conversation. And at first he wasnt saying anything, and then he was like, are you okay? Are you going through something? Like, this name has changed so many times. And Im like, look! Im just trying to figure it out right now.

RS: Exactly, like if your own name becomes incoherent you must be mentally losing it.

RRW: Last night, during my insomnia, I was going back and reading Baudrillard, so I am going to get on my Baudrillard pedestal for a second. He writes that what happens in modern culture is that our society becomes so reliant on models and maps that weve lost contact with the real world and everything that preceded the maps. From there, reality begins to merely imitate the map and the model, taking on the appearance of a real world and real language too.

RS: That reminds me of what Sylvia Wynter says, Dont mistake the map for the territory.

RRW: Yes, like language is the first brick that keeps us from accessing reality. You know how we were talking about being anonymous I am thinking about folk songs spreading through culture to the point that its not even clear what culture it originally came from. Theres this really girl-world version that happened to me where I grew up with those hand-clap songs. Did you ever have those hand-clap songs? You know like, Down, down baby, down by the roller coaster, sweet, sweet baby

RS: Never let me go.

RRW: Yeah! And there are regional versions too, depending on where you grew up. I remember once reading that those songs are on all continents and have spread in a way thats completely mysterious.

RS: Theres this simultaneous beauty in the lost origin, like when something goes viral and there is a desire to know where it came from, why and how it spread. It makes me think about the idea of plagiarism and the contradiction at the heart of possessing an idea, or thought, or song. Im drawn to Kathy Acker in terms of this.

RRW: Oh my god, yes!

RS: Her work is all about repetition, mimicry, plagiarism. But its meant to undermine those concepts and point out the origin-less nature of thoughts, concepts, words, phrases. There are these childhood songs, like the hand-clap songs, passed down forever, where the origin is completely lost. And yet when you learn some version of the origin story, you can understand how culture proliferates, how ideology brings you into your beliefs through these innocent seeming songs. I think about political slogans too, where its like, on the one hand, they grow and the origin becomes totally obscure, and on the other, there is something so important about studying political genealogies and understanding the context in which a certain political phrase is coined. When political slogans lose their origin story, they become more easily neutralized or co-opted by the state and start no longer serving the local or historically specific political purpose that they once had. So shout-out to historians unburying subjugated histories, but also shout-out to Acker for being like, Im just taking this as if it is mine and running with it.

RRW: So my sister and I, Irish twins, entered kindergarten, I was in first grade and I remember one day, I walked into the living room and my sister was showing my mom the hand-claps. And my mom was laughing because some of the songs were kind of dirty. And I just remember, I was so mad, and maybe ashamed, because now my mom, the authority figure, could see us.

RS: Because she wasnt a kid because your sister told the secret.

RRW: She told the secret! Yeah! And I remember feeling very sullen and silent over this betrayal, you know?

RS: Secrets are important. With an authority figure like a mother, or the state there has to be a refusal of transparency. You cant know my songs! You cant know our secret language!

RRW: Ive been thinking a lot about whats missing in my life I think it started when I was in Mississippi and I was isolated from my friends. When you leave New York, its hard to keep up with people, even if youre trying. But what I was missing was not the social updates or conversations, but like, that place you can get to when youre seeing someone close to you all the time and having conversations where language begins to break down, where grammar is breaking down. Everything becomes shorthand. That breakdown is where the poetic enters in. I think Elaine Kahn says this, about the poem needing a hole in it.

RS: Yes, like thats the way the poem works best: if it can point to the fundamental lack at the heart of language, at the heart of being a subject.

RRW: I got really into reading about chatbot technology recently. When they build the bots, they have all these metrics they use to determine how human is this conversation? The ways of measuring humanness are very funny, especially as a poet, one of them is no repetition.

But when I think about the chatbot I also think about sex robots. This fearmongering about the sex robot has been around forever. In Ovids Metamorphoses, sailors encounter a sculptor named Pygmalion who is carving ivory sex dolls so lifelike you cant tell them apart from real women. The question then was more about the human soul like if we can produce a truly lifelike machine does that mean a soul is no longer necessary criteria for being a human? Or is a soul no longer necessary to explain human behavior? And I find that way more interesting than our anxieties today, which are not spiritual, but more economical. If you Google it, youll find a million sex-robot-panic op-eds around the meaning of love and intimacy, but also about work, headlines like, Strippers are going to be replaced by mechanical strip clubs!

RS: This is reminding me of the Luddite textile worker rebellion. When we call someone a Luddite today, its like, this person is not up to date with modern technology, right? But actually, a Luddite is a term that comes from the textile worker uprising in England in the 1800s when their labor in cotton and wool mills was being replaced by machines. In the Luddite uprising, they destroyed the machines, smashed them, and threw them out the window. And theres this hilarious line in the Wikipedia about it: The workers destroyed the machines not because they were hostile toward the machines, but it was their way of expressing their hostility toward their boss.

RRW: Hostility toward work, yeah!

RS: I thought it was so cute that Wikipedia was consoling us that the workers actually felt solidarity with the machines.

RRW: Thats the thing! I feel solidarity with the machines. We are machines. The fear of, say, a sex robot, is totally reactionary. Because behind that fear, its like, your sex is being replaced by machines, your meaningful relationships when the very real threat has already happened when we sold our labor to the boss! We are already substitutable. Were already useless because all value is performance. Were already the robot, were already playing the automaton, you know?

RS: How human is this conversation? we ask the worker whose exploited labor is in essence already dehumanized.

RRW: I do think theres a point when, and I think the pandemic contributed to this, but also getting older, where you start to lose wonder with all interaction, its the same conversations every day, every bodega sells the same items, you start to feel a lack of awe with the things around you. Thats the reason Proust started to write, to find awe.

RS: Theres that amazing passage in Swanns Way where hes like, the danger of being a writer is that life will feel less lifelike, the narrative is the thing that gives you the feeling of being alive without the habits of everyday life.

RRW: Right! And you can only hope that youre going to get there. Remember what it felt like when you experienced those first freedoms as a teenager, and everything was full of inside jokes and alive and dangerous. It was all about connection. It was all about the other people you were meeting. And maybe finding the overlaps between you and that persons life was interesting that they werent a person you would have met before, but there were no gaps.

RS: I think the joy is in the incoherence. Its like groupchat energy.

RRW: And I feel like, you know, when you find yourself again in a place where security and money are your main worries, play disappears really quickly. I notice it in other people around me. Because everyones really scared right now, you know? And yet, you talk a lot about the increase in refusal to work and compulsion to work, like people are risking it again.

RS: Anti-work politics have been so important to me for so long. The tradition comes out of an autonomist, feminist, and anti-capitalist genealogy that basically argues that collective refusal of work is crucial for a transformative political moment. My interest in this is personal, I hate having a boss. I hate the way that labor is exploited. Theres this affective hatred toward the lie that work will ever lead you to the Good Life. And because that lie is propped up by the inequalities of racial capitalism, the refusal to work is not just about individuals refusing a particular job anti-work, to me, must be a collective stance against the capitalist system of production and refusal of the idea that work has some innate moral value. We are living in this time where anti-work politics are becoming mainstream, there is the Great Resignation where workers are leaving their jobs at the highest rates ever recorded month after month since last spring. It is more important than ever to not mistake this an individual refusal, and to understand the implicit critique of capitalism it carries with it. People are like, no fucking way, its not worth it. Work is not worth dying for.

The poem, like labor, has mechanical processes: meter and rhyme and feet that are measurable and propel a poem forward. So to approach poetic form from an anti-work perspective, Im like, I am going to smash this machine so we can play. I just get so much joy out of sabotage.

RRW: The poem has to write itself. The poem takes over you. I want to give life to that poetic voice so that it keeps coming to me. I want to decorate my life for that voice. And it cant be a conscious thought, it has to be in this meditative state where the poems are pushing me, pulling me, dressing me, giving me the clothes. The poems are making the decisions, theyre building the project, and Im going along with them. Im just the channel they play on.

Going back to the risk of anti-work politics, I think poetry and art need a sense of risk. You have to have a sense of risk to be like, okay, Im becoming this poem now. Do I agree with what Im becoming? It doesnt matter because you square it within you to subordinate yourself to the poetry.

RS: Its like that Amiri Baraka quote: My poetry, then, has always been aimed at destroying ugly shit.

RRW: Right! And theres terror in beauty too, the terror of going after beauty, going into the terror, not away from it. When Im engaged and the poem is making me or when Im trying to write prose or trying to write essays, I refuse to fake anything, I can wait, I let it come to me. You know?

RS: Its such a gift when that happens.

RRW: With these algorithm-based, Instagram-influenced ways everythings getting so sanitized and flattened, whether its the way we talk or social justice or relationships. Thats why the human conversation is a natural next poetry project for me. Thinking about phenomenology, where a human is a split-up object, theres the fantasy, theres the real, and in the real we have the other, the others otherness, and then that gap, you know, where we cant ever fully perceive that other, we cant see all the sides of the dice at the same time. When I wrote the Paradise Edition of my book, Porn Carnival, I was interested in the phenomenology of romance and how we talk about love and romance as optimizing your life in structural terms so that relationships support your work and finances. And I, being led by this poetic project of falling in love, letting that terror and passion lead me, I was more interested in engaging in someones otherness and individuality, where you dont overlap, in the gaps, where people are damaged or problematic. For me that seems much more like real romance, like a human conversation.

RS: Im working on a new project right now thematizing desire and the gap, or how we project onto a love object. Except my love object is the End of the World, not a lover. The World like capital-W World is a destructive regime that eclipses earth, life, difference. How can we end the World to save ourselves, to save the natural World?

Im thinking about the collective political desire for a revolutionary horizon as if you're experiencing a crush. Im trying to work with this idea of romantic love as perversion, taking an object that cant be possessed and trying to possess it. Im traversing my desire for the End of the World in these love letters where its total simp energy.

RRW: Oh my god. Are you finding that youre able to do it without much personification, or does some sense of human energy show up when youre writing that?

RS: Definitely. Its super personified. I love playing with that. What if the end of the world is onstage? On the stripper pole? Shes the end of the world, and Im giving her all my money, shes draining my bank account.

RRW: I once had this peyote trip in my early 20s where I was in this other dimension, with all these other dimensional beings, like mechanical elves, and in the middle was a pink stripper pole where this gorgeous slug was dancing. I was giving her all my money. Her image was so, like, enrapturing. She was sensual, this slug.

RS: Of course it was a slug.

RRW: A lime green slug. She showed me the end of the world. I reached into my bag for a pen to write down what she showed me and had a full-on, open-eye peyote hallucination, that above us was God, but instead of the usual God it was Hello Kitty. And I was laughing because everything is a joke.

[When my secret is discovered in the fracturing of a Death Synonym. Your housing search, the secret to my housing search. We keep each other for each other, always leaking, never kept. The angel creaks, splurges on claustrophobic fun, like all signs are a difficult code to be cracked. Tell me the map and nothing else. Let me hide in my own mistakes. Give away all your best lines. Jesus it would be. Jesus my name. I stretch like money in my basement utopia. Light leaves me private, where anything could happen.]

If there was one thing you cant take away fromher its American Insomniaand that Anything could happen.

She changed her names, stretched like money.Evaded fame to live the height of luxury.She terrified herself and thought with her feet

She answered those textsand she worked,she worked very hard at it.

I told JesusRRW

I told Jesus if theres one thing you cant take its lose the origin but keep the trace

I told Jesus, sell me the map and nothing else give away my best lines/ like all signs are a difficult code to be cracked.

I told Jesus, change my name.

remove that ground on which I love to walkRhapsodizing vulnerability, you paint me an image of LOVING respect:

as if the present could ever slamagainst its throat

She worked very hard at it/a to-do list fractured every possession fantasy: rob me then as if there was an opposite to longing your housing search the secret to my housing search

Jesus, it would be/ Jesus, my name

stretch like money/ light leaves me private, I told Jesus, Its basement smog on this hilltop,Its the wrong fucking email address. This much she worked for its where the trace becomes the origin/ let me make my own mistakes

I passed by open garages and took everything I could, in theory. I dont remember because it was mine / psychosis is clear & all else is amorphous & incalculable/ flaunting object impermanence on a plot in heaven, craigslist selling sunset, Grecian sex bots the original cartographers/ three decades of spreadsheets, / No testimony, all miracle/ we keep each other for each other /

I told Jesus free my names

cant really say what I been doinglook back and see the past daysmaybe I was certain of somethingI am jealous for once having had that

I talk to you to talk to myself, even the anonymous have a profile even animals feel shame, I said I dont need to tell you that love gets fungible, she gets compact enough to make it she & all those who work hard

who work very hard to change their names

God is so popularRS

the self is a series of conversationsWhat is a body if not air huggingwater? Like feet know lucite,I talk to you to talk to myself,floating 7 inches off thecarpet, here to interrupt allnarrative.

You draw me a map of how to get to yours,but I already know how to get lost without you.

anyone can lose themselves, you wrote.As if there was an opposite to longing.

present in multiples, I plagiarizemy own best man. The one that fearsthe browning astroturf, growingaround the edges of the property line.

badly wired solitude I need alonetime from my own company, overstayingmy welcome, never making up the couch.

fungible love, childs rhymes replace auto-fic and any housing stock that mimics home.

I was thinking of telling youthis could be our incalculable strike:to keep our names a secret

I keep hearing new names of new angelsRRW

Through interfaces, infrastructures, and genetic data, so as to hide it in the technology ofconfession, from myself

I present in multiples, I plagiarizeFirst of all, fuck is paradise my boys have been smuggling this out of utopia

Well if you're you, constantly, you're never you

between the abyss of what is intended and what is produced, we study the multiplicitiesin ripples, in gaps

You say youve got 8 days before you go back on straight fluid karma, HRTso if anyone wants to get you pregnant, now is the time to speak up

which path to take on the map of cause and effect

Cause and effectRS

Because money of course. Because God.Love gets fungible, I get compact enough to make it.Cramped as fuck in here. (In the me for money.)Holy circlejerk longs for a viable sub.

Its going to be a good year: look how the lupine syncs with the chatbots.They work very hard at it: avoidantly attached, spiting never swallowing.Soul pups splash in the cement, giving away their anthem.Crushed out automation takes the place of our lack.

Thats how we baptize this spontaneousduet. Fake mothers fall in our lap,California King size heartbreak.

I carry her footsteps above me deep in the Law,splurging on order she gave me, unwillingly, unknowingly.

This much she worked for:four decades of spreadsheets,down payment on a plot in heaven,craigslist selling sunset.

Like Grecian sex bots, the original cartographers.

Now Come on God. Come God.Come to me God. Mother amen, motheramen. Amen God.

I keep hearing new names of new angelsRRW

So we study destiny, one ripple, a few months here, before another, looking for openings to reverse or interchange

A second house. Oh no. And there's no identifiable feature. Right. There are four perfectly cubic blank walls. Theres no personality, it's xanax.

Full sign classism. First house. We prefer that.

The moon sign, shes the one who is like, I want to suck your dick. If you dont let me suck your dick Im killing myself.

So this is an advertisement we're seeing. This is like, yeah. It's like an

So what is the plot here?

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The Hand Claps - lareviewofbooks

Human Behavior

Review: A Dinner Party (for What, Exactly?) Is at the Heart of a Strange and Funny Epiphany – TheaterMania.com

What does the word "epiphany" mean to you? What about "Epiphany", with a capital E? Those are a couple of the questions that the guests of an unusual dinner party discuss in Brian Watkins's bizarre and altogether hilarious new play Epiphany, now running at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater under the fine-tuned direction of Tyne Rafaeli.

These aren't the only questions that get asked in this existential comedy about the modern world's obsessions with technology, human isolation and loneliness, the commodification of emotions, and the sense of loss that results from overabundance. Fortunately, Watkins knows how to spread these ideas out to keep things from getting tediously heady; and the magical presence of Marylouise Burke, who tirelessly flies about the stage like a flock of wild birds, elicits a laugh at every turn along with a terrific cast who pull the comic out of this American gothic.

You'll understand what I mean by gothic when you see John Lee Beatty's impressive House of Usher-like set the shadowy parlor of an old mansion with a long, steep staircase rising high into flies (eerie lighting by Isabella Byrd, accompanied by Daniel Kluger's ominous music and sounds, lends the scene the aura of a ghost story). This is the home of the elderly Morkan (Burke), eccentrically dressed in billowy sweatpants and silk blouse (costumes by Montana Levi Blanco). She's throwing a dinner party for a group of friends she hasn't seen in years (though most of the guests don't know each other). Snow gently falls outside as twentysomething Loren (Colby Minifie) greets them at the door.

Among them are klutzy drunk Freddy (C.J. Wilson), anxious pianist Kelly (Heather Burns), loud-talking lawyer Charlie (Francois Battiste), officious psychiatrist Sam (Omar Metwally), his wine-swilling partner, Taylor (David Ryan Smith), and dear old friend Ames (Jonathan Hadary). Amid a raucous, confused discussion about what the holiday of Epiphany (January 6) is all about and why Morkan has assembled a bunch of strangers together, the mysterious Aran (Carmen Zilles) arrives in place of the evening's guest of honor, Gabriel, a writer who has sunk into a depression and unfortunately will not make it. "He's lost his hope," Aran says, as the others stand silent.

Epiphany is full of odd mood shifts like that, which tug us back and forth between the "real" world and the uncanny in the way that the plays of Annie Baker do. Watkins leaves us swimming in a dark pool of timelessness in which the past and present often blend "We're in a time machine," says Charlie when he's told that the main course for dinner will be goose.

This is no accident: Those who are familiar with James Joyce's story "The Dead," which also deals with a dinner party that takes place on Epiphany (and which also features a goose), will recognize the names Morkan, Freddy, Gabriel, and others. But there's a gulf between the characters in Joyce's story, who would have known the traditional meaning of that holiday, and Watkins's characters, who do not. "How on earth does a holiday die?" asks Morkan. "We changed, ya know, the holiday didn't change, but we did."

So what about us has changed? One of the pleasures of this play is watching its characters fumble about for an answer to that question, which no one specifically asks but everyone feels, especially when Morkan demands that the guests lock their cellphones in a suitcase during dinner and talk to one another. While the conversation turns from Empiricism to the reduction of human behavior to algorithms, Burke, in a role that seems as though it was written just for her, gives an unflagging performance as Morkan and keeps things light with her impeccable comic timing (not to mention her remarkable endurance running up and down those stairs!).

Wilson, Smith, and Burns add to the hilarity with their off-hand quips and over-the-top antics. Battiste and Metwally subtly poke fun at the self-importance of their characters' professions, while Hadary takes center stage later in the play (two hours, no intermission) in a moving scene in which a song (beautifully sung by Zilles) reminds Ames of a childhood memory that shocks him back into the past an epiphany with a lowercase e.

Throughout this curious play, laughter mingles with mystery and unanswered questions: Why has Aran been standing alone over there by the piano all this time? Why do the lights keep dimming unexpectedly? Has something catastrophic happened in the outside world when all the cellphones start buzzing inside that suitcase? We never learn the answers, and it seems we're not meant to. That last question, however, has an eerily prophetic ring as we ponder the new significance of the date January 6. We have changed, as Morkan observes, and we've never been more in need of a holiday.

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Review: A Dinner Party (for What, Exactly?) Is at the Heart of a Strange and Funny Epiphany - TheaterMania.com

Human Behavior

FGCU developing as regional hub for the autism community – https://fgcu360.com/

When Annemarie Connor utters the phrase our college students with autism in conversation, it usually elicits a look that says, Wait what? College students with autism?

At the time she joined Florida Gulf Coast Universitys occupational therapy faculty in 2017, she says Adaptive Services had 42 or so students who identified as having autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and requested accommodations. This school year, the number is 101.

This growing campus population reflects a wider trend. Nationally, the prevalence of autism has skyrocketed from one child in 150 in 2000 to one in 44 last year, according to Centers for Disease Control & Prevention statistics.

A good portion of why that is, is that were getting better at diagnosing individuals, particularly those who have autism but have average to above-average IQ, Connor explains. Were understanding peoples needs better.

But society is not keeping up with the need for more resources for families grappling with the developmental disorder, which ranges widely in severity and can be diagnosed within the first two years of a childs life but often isnt until much later. Services lag far behind the mounting need in many communities, including Southwest Florida.

All these factors, along with research Connor already was conducting when she arrived here, fueled creation of FGCUs Community Autism Network a year ago. The multidisciplinary initiative aims to turn evidence-based research into educational and clinical models that can help fill the chasm in community resources especially for those aging out of school system programs and into adulthood, the workforce and independent living. With community partners, the network also brings together practitioners and families for health and wellness events such as therapeutic playgroups and life skills training.

FGCU has this potential to be a hub for autism, Connor says. We can be generating new programs, testing their validity, and in the next phase pushing them out in the community. Not only is FGCU prioritizing this, but our community is saying, Yes, we want this.

What started as a grassroots effort to involve faculty and students from strategic disciplines in her autism intervention research has gained endorsement from university leadership, institutional seed funding and the backing of community philanthropists.

Shawn Felton, interim dean for Marieb College of Health & Human Services as well as executive vice president for Academic Affairs, calls it the right thing to do and sees autism as another field of excellence that FGCU can develop as an institution.

They are building something that can make an indelible impact, Felton says of Community Autism Network. Their motivation and work really demonstrate the spirit of FGCU from day one: You roll up your sleeves and get the job done. They recognized a huge void in Southwest Florida and have been really trying to connect all the services.

Already, the networks efforts through teaching, scholarship and service have yielded results:

250-plus hours of group interventions, including training and educational opportunities for members of the autism community, service providers, family members, faculty and students

18 funded FGCU student researchers and five peer-reviewed articles

More than $1.4 million in grants and donations, including $1 million from the Golisano Foundation

Multiple news features about programs such as Putting Along the Spectrum, which provided young adults with autism the skills to help them gain comfort and confidence on a golf course.

Connors and the networks commitment to improving resources for the community inspired Theresa Lemieux to get on board as an advocate as well as a donor after participating in one of the networks programs. The retired schoolteacher has a 21-year-old son with autism and worries how he will live independently; her daughter also has youngsters diagnosed on the spectrum, so Lemieux sees a wide range of need.

I could see the passion Annemarie had was very much like the passion I have about how little there is in the area and how much the community needs to be aware that more providers and services need to come to this area, Lemieux says. No one is prepared. Its thrown everyone for a loop.

The Community Autism Network is relatively new at FGCU, but the university is not new to the field of autism syndrome disorder. This spring, FGCUs Promising Pathways autism conference celebrated its 15th anniversary, drawing a crowd to hear returning keynote speaker Temple Grandin, likely the most well-known and most influential individual in the autism community.

The annual gathering is held in April, which has been earmarked as a month to raise autism awareness since the 1970s. Despite five decades of educational efforts, the public still struggles to understand autism and the vast need for more resources and research. Autism is a developmental disability that can cause significant social and communication challenges as well as behavioral issues such as repetitive activities or resistance to changes in routine. The learning, thinking and problem-solving abilities of people on the spectrum can range from gifted to severely challenged, according to the CDCs description.

Connors research and the Community Autism Networks mission focus on higher-functioning adolescents and young adults, an underserved group within an underserved population. Less than a third of individuals with ASD have intellectual disabilities, and 69% have average or above-average IQs. Yet they can founder without the resources of school-system programs and clinical services as they transition to adulthood.

Were looking for ways to help individuals who have great potential to engage in independent living and careers but are struggling because of the social challenges of autism, she says. Only 39% of individuals with autism who go to college graduate, and its because of social aspects and mental health issues related to that.

Connor describes it as a cycle: Social anxiety prevents students with autism from engaging in the classroom and in campus life; the isolation spurs depression; depression lowers motivation to learn and often leads to dropping out. Mental and physical health have long been accepted as critical to overall student success even when autism is not a factor.

To help break that cycle, the Community Autism Network has developed initiatives like Assistive Soft Skills and Employment Training (ASSET). The 13-session program focuses on communication, critical thinking, networking and psychological wellness among other skills.

Our data consistently shows improvement in social confidence and functioning and confidence in applying those skills in work-based settings, says Connor of ASSETs results.

Success is partly due to a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together faculty and students in social work, occupational therapy, education, psychology, counseling and rehabilitation science. Thats a critical lesson for FGCUs practitioners-in-training, who already are using the ASSET manual to help service providers off-campus implement the program.

Autism is complex, people are complex, human behavior is complex and there is such variety with ASD diagnosis, Connor explains. More often than not, for the best services to occur you need to be interfacing with colleagues from other disciplines. That results in the best care, and thats what were modeling here.

Alice Norwood, a junior social work major with autism, completed ASSET and another Community Autism Network program that delves into getting and keeping a job. She describes her autism, diagnosed in 2020 when she was 18, as mostly a social impairment. Sometimes, she finds it difficult to set boundaries with others and to recognize them in others, she says.

I struggle to communicate effectively and appropriately sometimes, Norwood says. I struggle with fitting in, but I have actually found a lot of confidence. Ive told my closest friends that Im on the spectrum, and it doesnt faze them at all.

Norwood made such an impression on the network team that she was invited to join as an undergraduate researcher and help graduate students run the programs. Shes also helping them develop Club CAN, a drop-in autism-friendly space on campus where students can socialize, study or exercise.

This has been an amazing opportunity, and I am so grateful for it, says Norwood, who plans to pursue a masters in social work.

Alice is the best advocate on the team on any topic related to autism even among people who are highly educated on the topic, says Kevin Loch, whos working with the network as part of his masters in occupational therapy program. The network is helping him and others in the next generation of practitioners to develop skills and tools through hands-on experience that complements classroom knowledge and spans disciplines, he says.

Having close relatives on the autism spectrum is part of what inspired him to seek experience working with young adults transitioning into independent living.

I saw the whole development of their lives and the things they struggled with, Loch says. I came in knowing I wanted to gain experience with this population. Going out into the community and interacting with families and hearing their struggles fueled that fire. I wanted to go out and make a change. Ive already been doing that thanks to the Community Autism Network.

Tags: autism, Community Autism Network, fgcu, florida gulf coast university

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FGCU developing as regional hub for the autism community - https://fgcu360.com/

Genetics

"Founder events" that reduced genetic diversity found to be common throughout human history – News-Medical.Net

Human populations have waxed and waned over the millennia, with some cultures exploding and migrating to new areas or new continents, others dropping to such low numbers that their genetic diversity plummeted. In some small populations, inbreeding causes once rare genetic diseases to become common, despite their deleterious effects.

A new analysis of more than 4,000 ancient and contemporary human genomes shows how common such "founder events" were in our history. A founder event is when a small number of ancestral individuals gives rise to a large fraction of the population, often because war, famine or disease drastically reduced the population, but also because of geographic isolation -; on islands, for example -; or cultural practices, as among Ashkenazi Jews or the Amish.

More than half of the 460 groups represented by these individuals had experienced a population bottleneck somewhere in their past that decreased their genetic diversity and likely increased the incidence of recessive hereditary diseases.

The analysis by population geneticists at the University of California, Berkeley, is the first comprehensive look at founder events across a broad swath of human populations over the past 10,000 years or so of human history and pinpoints when these events occurred.

According to the authors, the findings will be useful not only to archeologists and historians tracking the movement and mixing of populations around the world, but also to scientists and doctors studying human genetic variation. The genetic diseases of inbred populations have helped scientists find many disease-causing mutations in the human genome and discover the causes of numerous genetic and inherited diseases.

Genomic data is really powerful because it not only tells us about where we come from, it tells us about our history at various different time scales, and you can look at how closely related different individuals are to each other. But also, it tells us about bits of DNA that are functionally important and can cause diseases. So, they become quite important to study from a biomedical perspective."

Priya Moorjani, senior author, assistant professor of molecular and cell biology, UC Berkeley

Many of the populations represented by individuals in the sample were or are much more inbred than ethnic Ashkenazi Jews, who some scientists have estimated once dwindled to a population of less than a couple of thousand individuals about 1,000 years ago. The Onge, a group in the Andaman Islands of the Indian Ocean, underwent a population bottleneck 10 times more extreme than that of Ashkenazi Jews, and today it numbers only about 100 individuals.

The researchers found that many Native American populations and groups from Oceania and South Asia also suffered severe population bottlenecks. Some coincide with known historical events -; for instance, the residents of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) underwent a founder event about 260 years ago, coincident with the migration of Europeans to the island.

Others correlate well with the known movement of peoples into an area and with changing cultural artifacts and practices. For example, Anatolian farmers and Eurasian steppe pastoralists moved into Europe between about 4,000 and 10,000 years ago, and the groups intermingled with existing European hunter-gatherers.

"The first surprise was that over half the groups we surveyed had evidence for founder events," Moorjani said. "So, it's not just Ashkenazi Jews or Finns that have a unique history, but many populations living today have had strong founder events -; in fact, stronger founder events than these two groups, like several contemporary South Asian groups, hunter-gatherers or populations living on islands. And many of these groups would be really important for prioritizing functional studies. We have learned so much about genetic variation from groups like Ashkenazi Jews and Finns that the potential for discovery is really high if we can expand these studies to other worldwide populations."

Moorjani, former UC Berkeley undergraduate Gillian Chu and first author Rmi Tournebize, now a postdoctoral fellow at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Cincia in Oeiras, Portugal, published their findings today (June 23) in the journal PLOS Genetics.

The analysis was made possible by a genomics analysis program called ASCEND (Allele Sharing Correlation for the Estimation of Non-equilibrium Demography), which was created by Tournebize and Moorjani specifically to analyze partial genome sequences -; in particular, ancient DNA. This DNA is generally sequenced from bones or teeth that are hundreds to thousands of years old and represent not only our Homo sapiens ancestors, but other human groups, like Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Such DNA is typically damaged so that only a portion of the individual's genome can be sequenced. But since human genomes contain about 3 billion base pairs of DNA, even a mere 100,000 base pairs can provide information about that person's heritage, Moorjani said. Many genome analysis programs today work only with nearly complete genome sequences, primarily from contemporaneous peoples.

"While ancient DNA is really powerful, one of the challenges is that it has much lower quality compared to data from living people, because once an individual dies, the DNA starts degrading, and it's very hard to recover very high quality data compared to present-day individuals," Moorjani said. "But the majority of the demographic inference methods are built thinking that you can get large numbers of samples from populations and high-quality data across the genome. Our methods were developed to leverage this low-coverage, highly degraded DNA to really understand our evolutionary history."

ASCEND measures the sharing of DNA between individuals within and across populations. When a population undergoes a founder event, its size dwindles to a few individuals. The offspring of these founder individuals, in turn, share long blocks in their genome that are inherited "identical by descent" from these few ancestors. As time passes, these blocks will become smaller due to crossover events that occur during meiosis, when chromosomes duplicate and mix before segregating to egg and sperm cells. The rate of crossovers is well characterized and provides a kind of molecular clock. The ASCEND program compares how large the shared blocks are within individuals in a population to infer when the individuals might have shared a common ancestor, i.e., when a founder event occurred in the population's history. A large-scale, pair-wise statistical comparison of genomic DNA allows an estimation of when and how intense the bottleneck was.

The genome data came from the Allen Ancient DNA Resource, a database created by David Reich and collaborators at Harvard University, with whom Moorjani earned her Ph.D. The public database currently includes available present-day and ancient genomes from more than 14,000 individuals and more than a million common mutations or variants -; single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs -; within those DNA sequences. At the time Moorjani started her study, the database held fewer ancient and modern genomes. She and Tournebize focused on the genomes of 2,310 present-day individuals from 184 groups, then expanded their study to look at an additional 1,947 individuals representing 164 worldwide ancient populations.

"Applying this method, we uncovered founder events that had not been identified previously, for instance, in populations from ancient Morocco or Siberia," Tournebize said. "As a French guy, I was really surprised to discover a founder event in Basque people, dated around the 1st century BCE and possibly related to Roman colonization of this region. We'll need more genetic data, especially from ancient samples, and collaboration with social scientists to understand the detailed historical events that might be associated with this bottleneck."

To test the ASCEND program in other species, Moorjani and Tournebize turned to dogs. The genome sequences of about 40 modern dog breeds are available, so the researchers ran them through the program to determine how long ago founder events occurred in breeds ranging from African village dogs -; the least inbred -; to breeds like boxers, dobermans and rottweilers, the most inbred. Consistent with the establishment of many dog breeds during Victorian times, they confirmed extreme founder events in most breeds within the last 25 generations, that is, 75 to 125 years.

"Dogs are so interesting that it was exciting to expand the analysis to another species, but it was really sad to see how strong the founder events are," she said. "Most dogs these days have so many more problems than village dogs. Their rates of cancers and congenital diseases are pretty high. And that's largely because of these very severe founder events in their history during breed formation."

In another recent paper, Moorjani and her colleagues described a different genomics analysis program that analyzes a single individual's genome, whether complete or partial, and estimates the amount of admixture of other populations over time. The researchers used this program, called DATES (Distribution of Ancestry Tracts of Evolutionary Signals), to analyze about 1,100 ancient genomes and reconstruct major gene flow events in Europe since about 10,000 BCE.

One surprising finding was that the genomes of Anatolian farmers, who lived in what is today Turkey, show admixture of genes from Iranian Neolithic farmers long before the advent of agriculture in Anatolia. This suggests that farming did not originate in Anatolia, as many archeologists have suggested.

"We had samples of Anatolian hunter-gatherers who don't have Iranian ancestry and samples of Anatolian early farmers who have Iranian ancestry, but we didn't know when this mixture occurred," she said. "In our case, we were able to actually figure out the key time point when this group formed, which predates agriculture in the region. And based on that, we are able to tell that farming must have spread through cultural diffusion, rather than having originated in Anatolia."

Another discovery was the timing for the formation of Bronze Age steppe pastoralists. These groups made a large impact, both genetically and demographically, in Eurasia during the Bronze Age and, according to some studies, are responsible for the spread of Indo-European languages. Archeological studies suggest these groups inhabited regions of the steppe in present day Russia and Ukraine from 3,300 to 2,600 BCE. Using the genetic dating method, the researchers found these groups were genetically formed between 4,400 and 4,000 BCE, predating previous findings by over a half a millennium.

"Our study emphasizes the power of dating population mixtures and formation, rather than just using temporal sampling and tracking the presence or absence of a particular ancestry in ancient samples, which is highly dependent on sampling choice and density," said UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Manjusha Chintalapati, first author of the paper.

Moorjani plans to use ASCEND and DATES to take a closer look at many ancient populations, in particular those in India, that have strong founder events that suggest the possibility of many unrecognized recessive diseases that could help to reduce disease burden in the group and shed light on the basic functions of human genes.

"In our analysis, we find that 64% of South Asian populations have very strong founder events, so we are trying to do targeted sample collection in these groups to characterize some of the deleterious variants due to the founder events," she said.

DATES, for example, suggests that each isolated population in South Asia has admixtures of local indigenous hunter-gatherers, Near Eastern farmers and Steppe pastoralists or herders, but in different proportions that remained the same for many hundreds of generations. Strikingly, most European populations also derive ancestry from similar three groups, though the groups have continued to freely mix with each other after the initial mixture.

"It's really exciting to do this work at Berkeley, where Allan Wilson's lab came up with the idea of a molecular clock, and to continue on his path to use genomic data for learning about the timing of different evolutionary events," Moorjani said, referring to the late biochemist and pioneer of molecular evolution, who died in 1991.

The two studies were funded by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a Sloan Research Fellowship and the National Institutes of Health (R35GM142978).

Source:

Journal reference:

Tournebize, R.,et al.(2022) Reconstructing the history of founder events using genome-wide patterns of allele sharing across individuals.PLOS Genetics. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1010243.

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"Founder events" that reduced genetic diversity found to be common throughout human history - News-Medical.Net

Genetics

Obesity and genetics: Expert shares insights – Hindustan Times

Obesity is a health condition which involves accumulation of a large amount of fat. Unlike what we think, Obesity is not just a cosmetic condition. It, in fact, involves and increases the risk of a lot of other disorders such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and even certain types of cancers. Obesity is caused by a range of factors it usually involves eating a lot of calories and not burning enough of them which causes the fat to accumulate. Genetics is also one of the causes of obesity. Speaking to HT Lifestyle, Yash Vardhan Swami, Nutritionist, Health and Fitness Expert said, To gain weight we need to eat more calories than we burn (over time) and to lose weight, we need to eat lesser calories. To control this equation, we can eat more or fewer calories, or we can burn more or fewer calories. We can also do a bit of both.

Yash Vardhan Swami further added that this formula applies to everyone irrespective of the genetic makeup that they are a part of. Can our genes make it harder to lose weight? Certain gene variants can make it easier for us to gain weight by making it easier for us to eat more calories than what we burn over time which would lead to weight gain by increasing drive to eat (hunger and cravings) or reducing drive to move/burn calories (in simple terms, making us lazier).

ALSO READ: Health tips for adolescents: 5 problems due to obesity, ways to lose weight

The nutritionist further referred to the presence of the FTO Gene also known as the obesity gene, FTO gene is Fat Mass and Obesity Associated Gene which raises the risk of obesity. Referring to the part played by the FTO gene, the expert added, If you have one copy of gene (one parent), there would be a difference of 1.5kgs only (on an average). If you have two copies of the gene (both parents), there would be a difference of 3kgs only (on an average). So, if we are up to 3kgs up, we can blame our genetics. If it's more, genetics are not to be blamed. The expert recommended regular exercise which can reduce and slash the effect of the FTO gene and can prevent obesity.

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Obesity and genetics: Expert shares insights - Hindustan Times

Genetics

Myriad Genetics Partners with Epic Systems to Make Test Results Available in EMR – GenomeWeb

NEW YORK Myriad Genetics on Thursday said that through a partnership with Epic Systems doctors will be able to order its genetic tests and view patients' results directly within the electronic medical records platform hosted by the software company.

The integration, slated to go live later this year, "creates a seamless, end-to-end workflow solution for healthcare providers to order Myriad tests and review results directly within their everyday Epic platform without additional steps or manual ordering processes," Myriad said in a statement announcing the partnership.

Epic's EMR platform is used by 600,000 physicians to manage the records of 250 million patients. Healthcare providers have long expressed frustration with how difficult it is to access genomic test results within EMRs. Because the reports tend to exist as PDFs and not as discrete fields within the EMR, healthcare institutions cannot easily analyze patients' outcomes based on their genetic test results or build decision support to help doctors identify when patients need testing. However, a few years ago, Epic introduced a genomics module with the goal of allowing healthcare providers to integrate genetic test results directly into the EMR.

At the same time, Epic has been inking partnerships with genetic testing labs like Myriad. For example, last year Epic announced a similar arrangement to make results from Foundation Medicine's comprehensive genomic profiling tests accessible through its EMR platform.

Salt Lake City-based Myriad, meanwhile, is in the midst of a strategic shift to focus its testing business on key indications such as cancer, pharmacogenomics, and prenatal testing, and make it easier for doctors to order tests and receive results through online interfaces. Earlier this year the company launched an integrated offering with Intermountain Healthcare, called Precise Oncology Solutions, through which doctors can order germline cancer risk assessments, companion tests, and somatic tumor profiling with a single order and receive tests via a unified online portal.

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Myriad Genetics Partners with Epic Systems to Make Test Results Available in EMR - GenomeWeb

Genetics

Headaches and genetics: If migraines are hereditary, what are possible solutions? – Genetic Literacy Project

The GLP Needs Your Help

The biotechnology revolution in biomedicine, farming, and gene drives to eradicate pests has yielded enormous benefits, but future success is not assured. It is easier than ever for advocacy groups to spread disinformation on pressing science issues or for corporations to capture innovation for its own benefit. To inform the public about whats really going on, we present the facts and challenge those who don't. We cant do this without your help. Please support us a donation of as little as $10 a month helps support our vital myth-challenging efforts.

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Headaches and genetics: If migraines are hereditary, what are possible solutions? - Genetic Literacy Project

Genetics

Where science meets fiction: the dark history of eugenics – The Guardian

Its a quirk of history that the foundations of modern biology and as a consequence, some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century should rely so heavily on peas. Cast your mind back to school biology, and Gregor Mendel, whose 200th birthday we mark next month. Though Mendel is invariably described as a friar, his formidable legacy is not in Augustinian theology, but in the mainstream science of genetics.

In the middle of the 19th century, Mendel (whose real name was Johann Gregor was his Augustinian appellation) bred more than 28,000 pea plants, crossing tall with short, wrinkly seeds with smooth, and purple flowers with white. What he found in that forest of pea plants was that these traits segregated in the offspring, and did not blend, but re-emerged in predictable ratios. What Mendel had discovered were the rules of inheritance. Characteristics were inherited in discrete units what we now call genes and the way these units flowed through pedigrees followed neat mathematical patterns.

These rules are taught in every secondary school as a core part of how we understand fundamental biology genes, DNA and evolution. We also teach this history, for it is a good story. Mendels work, published in 1866, was being done at the same time as Darwin was carving out his greatest idea. But this genius Moravian friar was ignored until both men were dead, only to be rediscovered at the beginning of the new century, which resolved Darwinian evolution with Mendelian genetics, midwifing the modern era of biology.

But theres a lesser-known story that shaped the course of the 20th century in a different way. The origins of genetics are inextricably wedded to eugenics. Since Plato suggested the pairing of high-quality parents, and Plutarch described Spartan infanticide, the principles of population control have been in place, probably in all cultures. But in the time of Victorian industrialisation, with an ever-expanding working class, and in the wake of Darwinian evolution, Darwins half-cousin, Francis Galton, added a scientific and statistical sheen to the deliberate sculpting of society, and he named it eugenics. It was a political ideology that co-opted the very new and immature science of evolution, and came to be one of the defining and most deadly ideas of the 20th century.

The UK came within a whisker of having involuntary sterilisation of undesirables as legislation, something that Churchill robustly campaigned for in his years in the Asquith government, but which the MP Josiah Wedgwood successfully resisted. In the US though, eugenics policies were enacted from 1907 and over most of the next century in 31 states, an estimated 80,000 people were sterilised by the state in the name of purification.

American eugenics was faithfully married to Mendels laws though Mendel himself had nothing to do with these policies. Led by Charles Davenport a biologist and Galton devotee the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, set out in 1910 to promote a racist, ableist ideology, and to harvest the pedigrees of Americans. With this data, Davenport figured, they could establish the inheritance of traits both desirable and defective, and thus purify the American people. Thus they could fight the imagined threat of great replacement theory facing white America: undesirable people, with their unruly fecundity, will spread inferior genes, and the ruling classes will be erased.

Pedigrees were a major part of the US eugenics movement, and Davenport had feverishly latched on to Mendelian inheritance to explain all manner of human foibles: alcoholism, criminality, feeblemindedness (and, weirdly, a tendency to seafaring). Heredity, he wrote in 1910, stands as the one great hope of the human race; its saviour from imbecility, poverty, disease, immorality, and like all of the enthusiastic eugenicists, he attributed the inheritance of these complex traits to genes nature over nurture. It is from Davenport that we have the first genetic studies of Huntingtons disease, which strictly obeys a Mendelian inheritance, and of eye colour, which, despite what we still teach in schools, does not.

One particular tale from this era stands out. The psychologist Henry Goddard had been studying a girl with the pseudonym Deborah Kallikak in his New Jersey clinic since she was eight. He described her as a high-grade feeble-minded person, the moron, the delinquent, the kind of girl or woman that fills our reformatories. In order to trace the origin of her troubles, Goddard produced a detailed pedigree of the Kallikaks. He identified as the founder of this bloodline Martin Kallikak, who stopped off en route home from the war of independence to his genteel Quaker wife to impregnate a feeble-minded but attractive barmaid, with whom he had no further contact.

In Goddards influential 1912 book, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, he traced a perfect pattern of Mendelian inheritance for traits good and bad. The legitimate family was eminently successful, whereas his bastard progeny produced a clan of criminals and disabled defectives, eventually concluding with Deborah. With this, Goddard concluded that the feeble-mindedness of the Kallikaks was encoded in a gene, a single unit of defective inheritance passed down from generation to generation, just like in Mendels peas.

A contemporary geneticist will frown at this, for multiple reasons. The first is the terminology feeble-minded, which was a vague, pseudopsychiatric bucket diagnosis that we presume included a wide range of todays clinical conditions. We might also reject his Mendelian conclusion on the grounds that complex psychiatric disorders rarely have a single genetic root, and are always profoundly influenced by the environment. The presence of a particular gene will not determine the outcome of a trait, though it may well contribute to the probability of it.

This is a modern understanding of the extreme complexity of the human genome, probably the richest dataset in the known universe. But a meticulous contemporary analysis is not even required in the case of the Kallikaks, because the barmaid never existed.

Martin Kallikaks legitimate family was indeed packed with celebrated achievers men of medicine, the law and the clergy. But Goddard had invented the illegitimate branch, by misidentifying an unrelated man called John Wolverton as Kallikaks bastard son, and dreaming up his barmaid mother. There were people with disabilities among Wolvertons descendants, but the photos in Goddards book show some of the children with facial characteristics that are associated with foetal alcohol syndrome, a condition that is entirely determined not by genetic inheritance, but by exposure to high levels of alcohol in utero. Despite the family tree being completely false, this case study remained in psychology textbooks until the 1950s as a model of human inheritance, and a justification for enforced sterilisation. The Kallikaks had become the founding myth of American eugenics.

The German eugenics movement had also begun at the beginning of the 20th century, and grown steadily through the years of the Weimar Republic. By the time of the rise of the Third Reich, principles such as Lebensunwertes Leben life unworthy of life were a core part of the national eugenics ideology for purifying the Nordic stock of German people. One of the first pieces of legislation to be passed after Hitler seized power in 1933 was the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, which required sterilisation of people with schizophrenia, deafness, blindness, epilepsy, Huntingtons disease, and other conditions that were deemed clearly genetic. As with the Americans tenacious but fallacious grip on heredity, most of these conditions are not straightforwardly Mendelian, and in one case where it is Huntingtons the disease takes effect after reproductive age. Sterilisation had no effect on its inheritance.

The development of the Nazis eugenics programmes was supported intellectually and financially by the American eugenicists, erroneously obsessed as they were with finding single Mendelian genes for complex traits, and plotting them on pedigrees. In 1935, a short propaganda film called Das Erbe (The Inheritance) was released in Germany. In it, a young scientist observes a couple of stag beetles rutting. Confused, she consults her professor, who sits her down to explain the Darwinian struggles for life and shows her a film of a cat hunting a bird, cocks sparring. Suddenly she gets it, and exclaims, to roars of laughter: Animals pursue their own racial policies!

The muddled propaganda is clear: nature purges the weak, and so must we.

The film then shows a pedigree of a hunting dog, just the type that you might get from the Kennel Club today. And then, up comes an animation of the family tree of the Kallikaks, on one side Erbgesunde Frau and on the other, Erbkranke Frau genetically healthy and hereditarily defective women. On the diseased side, the positions of all of the miscreants and deviants pulse to show the flow of undesirable people through the generations, as the voiceover explains. Das Erbe was a film to promote public acceptance of the Nazi eugenics laws, and what follows the entirely fictional Kallikak family tree is its asserted legacy: shock images of seriously disabled people in sanatoriums, followed by healthy marching Nazis, and a message from Hitler: He who is physically and mentally not healthy and worthy, may not perpetuate his suffering in the body of his child. Approximately 400,000 people were sterilised under this policy. A scientific lie had become a pillar of genocide in just 20 years.

Science has and will always be politicised. People turn to the authority of science to justify their ideologies. Today, we see the same pattern, but with new genetics. After the supermarket shootings in Buffalo in May, there was heated discussion in genetics communities, as the murderer had cited specific academic work in his deranged manifesto, legitimate papers on the genetics of intelligence and the genetic basis of Jewish ancestry, coupled with the persistent pseudoscience of the great replacement.

Science strives to be apolitical, to rise above the grubby worlds of politics and the psychological biases that we are encumbered with. But all new scientific discoveries exist within the culture into which they are born, and are always susceptible to abuse. This does not mean we should shrug and accept that our scientific endeavours are imperfect and can be bastardised with nefarious purpose, nor does it mean we should censor academic research.

But we should know our own history. We teach a version of genetics that is easily simplified to the point of being wrong. The laws in biology have a somewhat tricksy tendency to be beset by qualifications, complexities and caveats. Biology is inherently messy, and evolution preserves what works, not what is simple. In the simplicity of Mendels peas is a science which is easily co-opted, and marshalled into a racist, fascist ideology, as it was in the US, in Nazi Germany and in dozens of other countries. To know our history is to inoculate ourselves against it being repeated.

This article was amended on 20 June 2022. The mass shooting in Buffalo, US, in May 2022 was at a supermarket, not a school as an earlier version said.

Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics by Adam Rutherford is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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Where science meets fiction: the dark history of eugenics - The Guardian

Genetics

Genetics Really Said Copy And Paste: People Are Amazed At How Similar This Woman Looks To Her Dad In These 5 Recreation Photos – Bored Panda

Fathers Day is celebrated on different days in various places around the world, but most of them honor their dads on the third Sunday in June. Somehow it is always so difficult to come up with an idea of what could be the best present to show our love to our dads as they rarely need anything, and actually, nothing seems good enough to express our gratitude.

But what it takes is just a little bit of creativity. This woman on TikTok decided that she could recreate some of her dads photos from his youth and make a cute video for him, showing how similar they actually look.

More info: TikTok

Image credits: lakynthrifts

TikToker lakynbowman, also known as Lakyn Bowman, is a 26-year-old woman from West Tennessee who has a business of transforming her thrift finds into home decor to promote sustainability.

She is also quite busy creating content on social media, especially on TikTok, where she shares her thrift finds for her home, her business and also shows what outfits can be composed of second-hand clothing.

Image credits: lakynthrifts

Image credits: lakynthrifts

Bored Panda has already talked about one of her videos that went viral with 8.8 million views a few months ago. In that video, Lakyn decided to recreate her grandmothers photos from when she was young as a gift for her birthday.

She wanted to surprise her grandma and did her hair and makeup exactly like in the pictures. The granddaughter also found some clothes that looked very similar and posed in the same way as her grandma did. If you would like to read more, you can follow this link.

Image credits: lakynbowman

This time we are looking at her latest photo recreation video that she dedicated to her dad in honor of Fathers Day. She again found similar-looking clothes and manipulated her hair to look like she had a short bob like her dad when he was a kid. She nailed the poses and the comparison shots are proof that these two people are definitely family.

Lakyn herself confessed in the text overlay in the video that she was a bit freaked out looking at her dads old photos and seeing how much the two of them look alike, and its fascinating to observe with the naked eye how genes work.

Image credits: lakynbowman

Image credits: lakynbowman

While seeing photos side by side is very satisfying, the best part about this gift was the dads reaction. Lakyn posted a video of her dad watching the montage for the first time and it made the dad quite emotional as he couldnt stop smiling.

The man recognized his jersey and his coat, praising his daughter for doing such a good job. Actually, he was so impressed that he wanted to see the video a couple of more times.

You can hear Lakyn asking her dad which of the recreations he liked the most and his answer was I like all of them! But he was especially happy about the one in which she was wearing a red jacket because it was the actual jacket he wore in that photo.

The dad also revealed a little bit of more context to the photo in which he was wearing a blue shirt. Apparently, he was a cheerleader for a while because he wasnt allowed to play more than 2 basketball games on a weekend, so he asked if he could participate in the game as a cheerleader.

Image credits: lakynbowman

Image credits: lakynbowman

The dad said that he remembered all of the photos and you could see the nostalgia in his eyes reminiscing about the times he did sports. He also said that he really misses his dark hair, as now it has silver strands in it.

He noticed that Lakyn even has his eyebags and they both agreed that Lakyn is definitely her fathers kid. Lakyn confessed that she was really excited to do this because couldnt grasp how her face could be so similar to her dads.

Image credits: lakynbowman

Image credits: lakynbowman

Before surprising her dad with the video, Lakyn did one for her mom on Mothers Day as well. Lakyn isnt so sure that she has any physical similarities with her mom, but she has heard from some people that they do. With the power of makeup, clothes, poses and filters, it would be hard to think that the two women are strangers.

Moms reaction was as wholesome as the dads. She loved the result and told Lakyn that the swing picture in the park was actually taken by her, even though she didnt remember that because she was so little.

Image credits: lakynbowman

Its quite impressive how children can grow up looking so similar to their parents and even though its easily explained by science, its mesmerizing nonetheless.

Have you ever looked at your parents pictures from their youth and were surprised to discover you now look like them? Do you see the similarities between Lakyn and her dad in these pictures? Let us know in the comments!

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Genetics Really Said Copy And Paste: People Are Amazed At How Similar This Woman Looks To Her Dad In These 5 Recreation Photos - Bored Panda

Genetics

Dubrovnik Hosts International Conference on Anthropological Genetics and Forensics – Total Croatia News

June the 24th, 2022 - Dubrovnik hosts the 12th International Conference on Anthropological Genetics and Forensics, which saw 550 scientists, doctors and other experts from across Europe and the rest of the world descend on the Pearl of the Adriatic.

As Morski writes, the 12th International Conference on Anthropological Genetics and Forensics brought together the above-mentioned number of individuals from various prestigious European and international universities and institutions to discuss forensics and personalised medicine in Dubrovnik on Thursday.

The conference was organised by the International Society for Applied Biological Sciences ISABS, the American Mayo Clinic and the Sv Katarina (St. Catherine) Special Hospital. ISABS President Dragan Primorac pointed out that the congress will primarily answer what the medicine of the future will look like.

''First of all, I'm referring to the development of pharmacogenomics, gene cell therapy in the treatment of a number of degenerative diseases, as well as cancer. The future of medicine is to break out of the clichs of the medical tradition. The new concept is personalised medicine, and that means that the right therapy goes to the right patient at the right time, which we can find out more about by analysing glycomics, genomics, proteomics and epigenomics. Those who don't accept that will not be competitive on the global market,'' said Primorac.

Dubrovnik hosts many famous names, and this time three Nobel laureates also took part in the congress: Sir Richard Roberts, Thomas Sdhof and Aaron Ciechanover, and Primorac has announced that they will work with about 200 students from the USA, Europe and Croatia.

Minister of Science and Education Radovan Fuchs pointed out that, in addition to the level of scientific thought and new achievements, the congress opened up opportunities for students to network and gain some new experiences.

''It's very important for young people. I'd especially like to emphasise forensics, but personalised medicine is also becoming more and more popular across the world, and that is certainly the future,'' said Fuchs.

Minister of the Interior Davor Bozinovic noted that the Ivan Vucetic Police Academy and the Centre for Forensic Investigations, Research and Expertise are scientific institutions within the Ministry of the Interior (MUP).

''Perhaps it's less known that these organiaational units of the Ministry of the Interior have scientific licenses, and in terms of forensics, the Ivan Vucetic Centre has an important role to play. The chief is a member of the American Academy of Forensics. We're at the very top of the global scale and we're certainly a leader in this part of Europe,'' said Bozinovic.

In cooperation with the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the conference discussed new forms of cancer treatment, pharmacogenomics, translational and personalised medicine, gene and molecular therapy and diagnostics, regenerative medicine and the use of stem cells in treatment, as well as other achievements of modern scientific research.

For more on conferences and congresses Dubrovnik hosts, make sure to check out our dedicated lifestyle section.

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Dubrovnik Hosts International Conference on Anthropological Genetics and Forensics - Total Croatia News