All posts by medical

Combination therapy is more effective at preventing recurrence of bipolar disorder – News-Medical.Net

October 16, 2020 medical

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Oct 15 2020

A review of 39 randomized clinical trials by scientists from UCLA and their colleagues from other institutions has found that combining the use medication with psychoeducational therapy is more effective at preventing a recurrence of illness in people with bipolar disorder than medication alone.

For the paper, published in JAMA Psychiatry, researchers analyzed studies that included adult and adolescent patients currently receiving medication for bipolar disorder who were randomly assigned to either an active family, individual or group therapy, or "usual care," meaning medication with routine monitoring and support from a psychiatrist.

David Miklowitz, PhD, the study's lead author, and a distinguished professor of psychiatry at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, said the studies reviewed followed patients for at least a year, measured rates of recurrence of bipolar disorder, depression and mania symptoms, and included study attrition or dropout rates.

The findings were:

Of the findings, Miklowitz said they point to the importance of having a support system.

Not everyone may agree with me, but I think the family environment is very important in terms of whether somebody stays well. There's nothing like having a person who knows how to recognize when you're getting ill and can say,

'you're starting to look depressed or you're starting to get ramped up.' That person can remind their loved one to take their medications or stay on a regular sleep-wake cycle or contact the psychiatrist for a medication evaluation."

David Miklowitz, PhD, Study' Led Author and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA

Miklowitz said the same is true for a patient who may not have close relatives but does have support through group therapy.

"If you're in group therapy, other members of that group may be able to help you recognize that you're experiencing symptoms," he said. "People tend to pair off. It's a little bit like the AA model of having a sponsor."

Source:

Journal reference:

Miklowitz, D. J., et al. (2020) Adjunctive Psychotherapy for Bipolar Disorder: A Systematic Review and Component Network Meta-analysis. JAMA Psychiatry. doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.2993.

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Combination therapy is more effective at preventing recurrence of bipolar disorder - News-Medical.Net

Human Behavior

Scientists Find Neurochemicals Dopamine and Serotonin Have Unexpectedly Profound Roles in the Human Brain – SciTechDaily

October 16, 2020 medical

Dopamine, serotonin involved in sub-second perception, cognition.

In first-of-their-kind observations in the human brain, an international team of researchers has revealed two well-known neurochemicals dopamine and serotonin are at work at sub-second speeds to shape how people perceive the world and take action based on their perception.

The discovery shows researchers can continually and simultaneously measure the activity of both dopamine and serotonin whose receptor and uptake sites are therapeutic targets for disorders ranging from depression to Parkinsons disease in the human brain.

Furthermore, the neurochemicals appear to integrate peoples perceptions of the world with their actions, indicating dopamine and serotonin have far more expansive roles in the human nervous system than previously known.

Virginia Tech researchers with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Center for Human Neuroscience Research construct carbon fiber microelectrodes for real-time detection of dopamine and serotonin activity in human patients. Credit: Virginia Tech

Known as neuromodulators, dopamine and serotonin have traditionally been linked to reward processing how good or how bad people perceive an outcome to be after taking an action.

The study published in the journal Neuron on October 12, 2020, opens the door to a deeper understanding of an expanded role for these systems and their roles in human health.

An enormous number of people throughout the world are taking pharmaceutical compounds to perturb the dopamine and serotonin transmitter systems to change their behavior and mental health, said P. Read Montague, senior author of the study and a professor and director of the Center for Human Neuroscience Research and the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion. For the first time, moment-to-moment activity in these systems has been measured and determined to be involved in perception and cognitive capacities. These neurotransmitters are simultaneously acting and integrating activity across vastly different time and space scales than anyone expected.

Better understanding of the underlying actions of dopamine and serotonin during perception and decision-making could deliver important insight into psychiatric and neurological disorders, the researchers said.

The relative size of a microelectrode used to make recordings of dopamine and serotonin activity during deep brain stimulation procedures. Credit: Virginia Tech

Every choice that someone executes involves taking in information, interpreting that information, and making decisions about what they perceived, said Kenneth Kishida, a corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor of physiology and pharmacology, and neurosurgery, at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Theres a whole host of psychiatric conditions and neurological disorders where that process is altered in the patients, and dopamine and serotonin are prime suspects.

Lack of chemically specific methods to study neuromodulation in humans at fast time scales has impeded understanding of these systems, according to Montague, who is an honorary professor at the Wellcome Center for Human Neuroimaging at University College London and a professor of physics at the Virginia Tech College of Science.

But now, in first-ever measurements, scientists used an electrochemical method called fast scan cyclic voltammetry, which employs a small carbon fiber microelectrode that has low voltages ramped across it for real-time detection of dopamine and serotonin activity.

In the study, researchers recorded fluctuations in dopamine and serotonin using specially designed electrodes in five patients undergoing deep brain stimulation electrode implantation surgery to treat essential tremor or Parkinsons disease. Patients were awake during surgery, playing a computer game designed to quantify aspects of thought and behavior while the measurements were taken.

Read Montague, a computational neuroscientist at the Center for Human Neuroscience Research at Virginia Techs Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, said dopamine and serotonin are at work at sub-second speeds to shape how people perceive the world and take action based on their perception. Credit: Virginia Tech

On each round of the game, patients briefly viewed a cloud of dots and were asked to judge the direction they were moving. The method, designed by corresponding author Dan Bang, a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow, and Steve Fleming, a Sir Henry Dale/Royal Society Fellow, both at the Wellcome Center for Human Neuroimaging at University College London, helped indicate that dopamine and serotonin were involved in simple perceptual decisions, outside of the traditional context of rewards and losses.

These neuromodulators play a much broader role in supporting human behavior and thought, and in particular they are involved in how we process the outside world, Bang said. For example, if you move through a room and the lights are off, you move differently because youre uncertain about where objects are. Our work suggests these neuromodulators serotonin in particular are playing a role in signaling how uncertain we are about the outside environment.

Montague and Kishida, along with Terry Lohrenz, a research assistant professor, and Jason White, a senior research associate, now both at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, started working on a new statistical approach to identify dopamine and serotonin signals while still at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Ken rose to the challenge of doing fast neurochemistry in human beings during active cognition, Montague said. A lot of other good groups of scientists were not able to do it. Aside from the computation of enormous amounts of data, there are complicated issues to solve, including great, fundamental algorithmic tasks.

Until recently, only slow methodologies such as PET scanning could measure the impact of neurotransmitters, but they were nowhere near the frequency or volume of the second-to-second measurements of fast scan cyclic voltammetry.

The measurements in the new study were taken at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, and involved neurosurgical teams led by Adrian W. Laxton and Stephen B. Tatter.

The enthusiasm the neurosurgeons have for this research is derived from the same reasons that drove them to be doctors first and foremost, they want to do the best for their patients, and they have a real passion for understanding how the brain works to improve patient outcomes, said Kishida, who oversaw the data collection in the operating room during the surgeries. Both are collaborative scientists along with Charles Branch, the chair of the neurosurgery department at Wake Forest, who has been an amazing advocate for this work.

Likewise, Montague said, You cant do it without the surgeons being real, shoulder-to-shoulder partners, and certainly not without the people who let you make recordings from their brains while they are having electrodes implanted to alleviate the symptoms of a neurological disorder.

Montague had read a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that prompted him to approach colleagues Bang and Fleming at University College London to tailor a task for patients to perform during surgery that would reveal sub-second dopamine and serotonin signaling in real-time inference about the external world separate from their often-reported roles in reward-related processes.

I said I have this new method to measure dopamine and serotonin, but I need you to help with the task, Montague said. They ended up in the study. The research really took a lot of hard work and an integrated a constellation of people to obtain these results.

Reference: Sub-second Dopamine and Serotonin Signaling in Human Striatum during Perceptual Decision-Making by Dan Bang, Kenneth T. Kishida, Terry Lohrenz, Jason P. White, Adrian W. Laxton, Stephen B. Tatter, Stephen M. Fleming and P. Read Montague, 12 October 2020, Neuron.DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.09.015

The research was funded by grants to various researchers from the Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health including the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

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Scientists Find Neurochemicals Dopamine and Serotonin Have Unexpectedly Profound Roles in the Human Brain - SciTechDaily

Human Behavior

How environmentally friendly are you if you only recycle? | TheHill – The Hill

October 16, 2020 medical

American households have recycled for generations and as landfills began getting, well, full in the 1970s, the country turned to recycling as a solution.

Today, more than a third of Americans recycle, and many of them believe it's for the good of the environment. And it can be, the Environmental Protection Agency is clear on that, but it comes with its own issues and new research shows itseffect might not be as big as many Americans think.

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Inspire, a clean energy company, surveyed close to 2,000 people between the ages of 21 and 65 with a household income of at least $40,000 and a median household income of $86,969. Of these respondents, many of whom were college-educated white people with children, 92 percent believe climate change is real and 78 percent believe human behavior has at least something to do with it. Nearly three-fourths of them recycle and a majority think it's the most impactful action they can take.

But Inspire calculated that if you recycle, saving more than 600 pounds of coal from being burned annually, you are making just a little more of an impact on the environment than going one day without meat, which saves about 500 pounds of coal burned in food production. Meanwhile, biking to work, driving a hybrid or electric vehicle and powering your home with renewable energy can have up to 10 times the impact.

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

Of course, committing to clean or renewable energy isnt cheap. Wind, solar and other sources of renewable energy require more capital from energy companies than gas and oil power plants, and that cost can get handed down to customers. But solar and wind power can also be cheaper than coal and gas power, according to a 2019 report, especially once you make an initial investment in the infrastructure.

A little more than three-fourths, or 77 percent, of consumers surveyed said they were willing to make changes to their lifestyle to reduce their personal impact, even though more than half of them didn't have much faith in the world getting its act together to reverse climate change. Still, 49 percent said they wanted to know more about how to reduce their impact.

In 1960, less than 7 percent of Americans recycled. But faced with a decision, a not insignificant number of Americans chose to recycle over letting landfills spill over into their neighborhoods. As climate change continues to take its toll, Americans are once again being asked to make a decision.

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How environmentally friendly are you if you only recycle? | TheHill - The Hill

Human Behavior

An open letter to the young people of the United States – Resilience

October 16, 2020 medical

New scientific understanding shows we can drastically reduce the time it takes for our environment to stabilize if we elect a leader who will get us back on track with IPCC carbon emission guidelines

Hi my name is Sierra, I am 23 years old and this is beyond an opinion piece; for me, this is a piece of my heart and a plea to everyone, young, old, black, white, brown, purple, democrat or republican to vote to save our collective future.

Starting now and until November 3rd we must vote-in someone with the best interest of this planet and its people in mind.

In Environmental Studies at UCSB, a lot of us would joke (but more like inwardly cry) we have ESD (Environmental Studies Depression) because almost every day we went to class after class learning about how modern human behavior mixed with greed has and is causing irreversible devastation on planetary health.

I graduated from UCSB simultaneously feeling fired up to make change and completely burnt out and hopeless.

As the Trump administration continued to endanger the wild/natural world I loved and continued to ignore and beat down historically oppressed communities(ex: low income/underserved and indigenous communities) I found myself asking, where is my passion-my energy to fight?

As I struggled to find jobs (LOL and myself) and the global pandemic took off, my energy fizzled and reignited at the same time. I found myself, and still find myself, riding a roller coaster of depression and elation, feeling immense love and within seconds intense hatred and anger, feeling like I know my place in the world and then like Im floating in an endless dark paralyzing abyss.

People often say thats just how this stage in life feels and thats just how it goes in your early twenties but WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL THIS IS NOT JUST HOW IT GOES!

We live in truly unprecedented times (I would say un-president-ed times because we clearly lack a presidential leader) and it is really hard to be a young person right now because the future often looks really shitty with all the news spewing doom and devastation.

But it is not all doom and gloom.

Last Sunday on 60 minutes professor, Michael Mann, from Penn State University, dropped a good news BOMB on our world in relation to climate change. Mann revealed new scientific understanding that our planet still has a chance to avoid climate breakdown and recover faster than previously predicted if, and only if, we stick to IPCC guidelines to reduce our emissions by 5 percent every year and halve emissions by 2030. If we elect a leader who will get us back on track to hit these marks global warming lag time (The time between halting CO2 emissions and halting temperature rise) could be more like three to five years instead of the previously thought to be 50.

We can turn things around but we gotta V-O-T-E.

I speak to you the recently graduated the what-the-hell-do-I-do-now-ers.

Let me say I feel you.

But as crazy as the outside and inner world is right now and as much as it feels debilitating, there is something you can do right now and that thing is vote.

We must vote president Voldemort *excuse me* President Donald Trump out of his little White(supremacist)House to give our planet, our people, our plants, and our animals, micro and macro, a chance at life. Another 4 years with Trump as our president (who refuses to fight emissions and instead rolls back climate regulations) would kill our chances of preventing a catastrophic rise in global temperature.

All the issues we face today are interrelated, from racism to global CO2 concentrations. If we start to tackle one part of the beast we will start to weaken the whole beast! Yes, we have a fucked-up system that is all tangled up and our problems are complexly interrelated but this also means solving one issue helps resolve others simultaneously. Injustices happening to marginalized communities and the earth are interconnected and one in the same @Intersectional environmentalism!

We still have time to reverse the previously thought to be irreversible damage and hit IPCC guidelines for emission reductions and reduce the warming time to more like three to five years. instead of 50. But we have to

VOTE

We have to give the USA the chance to do its part in protecting our planet and our people.

If you dont know who to vote for, vote for your future, and not for Donald Trump.

Yes, Biden may not be the best, you may not like him in the slightest, but voting for Donald Trump ensures 4 more years of climate inaction and solidifies the devastating fate of our environment and front-line communities (communities at the front line of climate changes negative effects).

Im writing this because I love you and I love the fricken world so much and I know there are so many of us out there and if we choose to not label ourselves by our political affiliation, color, who we choose to love, what diet we eat, or god we pray to, and we have to focus on our common ground, literally, our common ground (our earth below our feetour air that which we breatheand water that we drink )and come together and vote for it and vote for us, then we will have a chance to turn things around and bring into reality an America and world we are proud of.

I hope my writing challenges you to think differently and empowers your own self-exploration and love journey. I truly believe a more fulfilling and environmentally/socially just way of living exist if we come together on our common ground and see each other for what we really are one of the same.Sierra Emrick

Link:
An open letter to the young people of the United States - Resilience

Human Behavior

Local View: Is there a lesson behind the ‘Gorilla Theory’? – Duluth News Tribune

October 16, 2020 medical

So, Plug, have you ever heard of the Gorilla Theory?

Plug, in his usual startled look when I turn a conversation, replied, Ugh, no.

Well, its like this. Its a thought experiment conceived by some psychologists on human behavior. These scientists put six gorillas in a large cage, and in the middle of the cage was a platform with stairs leading up to it. Hanging above the platform was a bunch of bananas. Now the scientists also installed a water-jet system so that if any gorilla attempted to go up the stairs to get the bananas, they would be forcefully hosed off the stairs. At the same time, water jets would hose down all the other gorillas, too. So, as you can imagine, at the start of the experiment all the gorillas attempted to climb the stairs and they all got hosed down. Now, gorillas are trainable, so they slowly realized that attempts to get to the bananas resulted in all of them getting hosed down. To prevent this, the gorillas started beating up any gorilla that attempted to climb the stairs.

After the six gorillas stopped attempting to climb the stairs, the scientists took one of the six gorillas out of the cage and introduced a new gorilla. The new gorilla, of course, promptly saw the bananas and headed for the stairs. As he started to climb, he was promptly beaten and pulled from the stairs by the other gorillas. Eventually, the new gorilla realized that if he attempted to climb the stairs he got beat up.

So, the experiment proceeded with the scientists slowly taking out all of the original six gorillas, one at a time, and replacing them with new gorillas which attempted to climb the stairs to get to the bananas and were quickly beaten up by the other gorillas.

Eventually all of the original six gorillas were removed and only replacements existed in the cage. Scientists then removed the hose system because newly introduced gorillas were quickly beaten up by the others if they attempted to climb the stairs to get to the bananas. Funny thing was, none of the gorillas knew why they had to beat up any gorilla attempting to get to the bananas. It was just what they had always done.

Plug stared at me with some wide-eyed confusion and replied, You sure took a hard-right rudder with that one. Whats your point?

I guess Im not really sure. But curious, how long do you intend to wear that face mask?

Dave Crockett of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, owns engineering firms in Arizona and Michigan; is politically active; and is currently on sabbatical, working at Cirrus Aircraft in Duluth.

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Local View: Is there a lesson behind the 'Gorilla Theory'? - Duluth News Tribune

Human Behavior

Brainstorm: Breaking down the science behind the bean – Daily Northwestern

October 16, 2020 medical

Podcast (brain-storm): Play in new window | Download

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How much caffeine is too much caffeine? Brainstorm spoke to the experts to find out (and drank copious amounts of coffee while doing so).

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Hi everyone! Long time, no listen. Sorry its been a while, Ive just been grinding away at all of my schoolwork

EMMA EDMUND: Now is that a coffee pun I hear?

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Why yes, Emma, that was.

EMMA EDMUND: Well, I guess I shouldve heard that coming, considering you and I have a quintessential caffeine addiction. What cup are we on so far today? Two? Three?

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Ive honestly lost track.

EMMA EDMUND: I guess it also depends on if were just counting coffee, or if youre including tea, energy drinks or even chocolate. You know, the four food groups.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Health is wealth. Speaking of health, welcome back to another episode of Brainstorm, a podcast about all things health, science and tech. And if you havent caught on yet, this is the caffeine episode. Im Neya Thanikachalam

EMMA EDMUND: And Im Emma Edmund. Cue the coffee shop music. There we go. I smelled beans roasting, and I needed to know what was going on.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Speaking of roasting beans we spoke with Isaac Bloom, one of the co-founders of Backlot Coffee and a roaster himself. He showed me around Backlots roastery, which is in Evanston.

Let me set the scene for you: Theres a large gas roaster and burlap sacks filled with green coffee beans, which turn deep brown when roasted. When Isaac gets a new batch of coffee beans from a vendor, he tests out the flavor profile of the beans by smelling them, roasting a small amount of the beans and making coffee from them. He uses cupping, a taste technique, to test the quality of the beans and judge their flavor.

ISAAC BLOOM: From the sample roasting and the cupping, I can get a general idea of how its going to perform on the big gas roaster.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Even when Isaac decides on the roasting style, there are other factors, like the humidity in the air and the temperature of the roastery that can affect the flavor of the coffee beans.

ISAAC BLOOM: In Chicago, in Evanston, as you know, we have some very drastic seasonal changes, so a hot, humid summer day is going to affect the roast in ways that a cold, dry winter day wont. Over the past couple of years, Ive had to learn how to adjust my roasting style to kind of fit the temperature and the humidity level.

EMMA EDMUND: Oh, sorry, Neya and I are just prepping our coffee beans. But thats not to say there arent plenty of grab-and-go options in Evanston. Backlot is one of the 78,943 coffee shops on and around Northwesterns campus. No, not actually, but there are a lot. In downtown Evanston, theres Colectivo, Newport, Backlot, Patisserie Coralie, Philz, Peets and Sherbucks, the Starbucks on Sherman Avenue. Then theres Norbucks, which is the Starbucks on campus, BrewBike, Coffee Lab for our north campus friends by God, we all know they need caffeine and some fun and flirty coffee shops in the form of Brothers K, Reprise and Dollop. And dont get me started on the Chicago coffee shops

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: All right, all right, I think they get the picture. Evanston loves its caffeine. And, specifically, Evanston loves the idea of getting coffee.

ISAAC BLOOM: Its about giving time to something, making it special, making it a ritual, making it a part of your day, a part of your routine. So the experience of coffee lends so much to the final product that you take out into your day with you in a cup.

EMMA EDMUND: So what is it about that perfect cup of coffee, or tea, or whatever poison you pick, that makes it so addictive? NEYA groans. Sorry, sorry! Its almost Halloween, I had to. But is it the coffee shop vibes, with the cool indie music? Or the way you can study with your friends and cry over finals together? Or is it the coffee itself, brimming with caffeine?

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Id say it all depends on how much caffeine is in my drink I like something strong, like an espresso or cold brew. Caffeine is great at keeping us up. Unfortunately, one of the effects of constantly drinking caffeinated beverages is developing a caffeine dependency. To speak more on this, Im going to turn it over to Dr. Marilyn Cornelis, who has spent much of her career looking into the ways that caffeine affects our brains. Maybe she can break it down a little for us.

MARILYN CORNELIS: I would say that there is definitely a caffeine dependence trait that people do have. But interestingly, if people are very interested in cutting back on their caffeine, its very possible to do that by just slowly tapering off the amount of caffeine and eventually those withdrawal symptoms do go away.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: As a frequent coffee consumer, that did make me worry a little bit about how much I depend on caffeine. So, how much caffeine can we have in a day?

MARILYN CORNELIS: I wouldnt be too worried about 400 milligrams of caffeine a day. So thats about four to five cups of coffee a day.

EMMA EDMUND: OK, good to know how much coffee I can drink before keeling over. But why do I drink it? Or, for that matter, why do college students in general consume caffeine? Harris Lieberman, a research psychologist at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, might have an answer. He studies the relationship between nutrition and brain function, and he also does a lot of work looking at how stress affects human behavior and psychology.

And as Neya said, the effects of caffeine can enhance mental and physical performance, making it of interest to the military, and, as it turns out, many soldiers are similar in age to us college kiddos. So Lieberman and his team researched caffeine use among college students as a marker of the civilian population compared to soldiers.

HARRIS LIEBERMAN: At some universities, they would administer it if the students volunteered, in-person, during a class, or after class had either ended or began.

EMMA EDMUND: Lieberman surveyed over 1,200 students at five colleges: Louisiana State, Kent State, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, California State University Fullerton, and Tufts. They represented the variety of four-year schools students across the country attend. The survey included questions on types of caffeinated products, including beverages, gum and medications.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: And the results? Did people consume caffeine?

EMMA EDMUND: Yes oh yes. Ninety-two percent of respondents claimed to consume caffeine, with more females than males which, you know, guilty as charged. And people cited all kinds of reasons why, from feeling more awake to improving mood to even just liking the taste.

HARRIS LIEBERMAN: I think what we were a little surprised about was that almost all college students who use caffeine said they used it in some way to enhance their mental, and to a lesser extent, physical performance. We kind of have studied that, for many years, but we werent sure that we were going to find that typical individuals out there explicitly said thats why they use caffeine. If you talk to folks theyll often say I do it because, you know, its just my usual habit in the morning.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Well, glad to see science confirms my caffeine habits.

EMMA EDMUND: The real question is, should we stop this podcast to make some coffee?

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Ooh, yes.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: Sounds like our espressos are almost ready.

Lets sign off real quick. From The Daily Northwestern, Im Neya Thanikachalam.

EMMA EDMUND: And Im Emma Edmund. Thanks for listening to another episode of Brainstorm.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM: This episode was reported and produced by me, Neya Thanikachalam

EMMA EDMUND: And me, Emma Edmund. The audio editor is Alex Chun, the digital managing editors are Molly Lubbers and Jacob Ohara, and the editor-in-chief of The Daily Northwestern is Marissa Martinez. The co-host of this podcast is me, and if you want Caffeine Part Two: Electric Boogaloo, let us know and well make it happen. Maybe. Its midterm season.

NEYA THANIKACHALAM (from far away): Emma!

EMMA EDMUND: Sorry, sorry! Have a brew-tiful day!

Email: [emailprotected]

Twitter: @emmaeedmund

Twitter: @neyachalam

ASWSU hosts virtual event on environmental awareness The Daily Evergreen – The Daily Evergreen

October 16, 2020 medical

Proposed solutions from climate change policy include innovating technology, changing human behavior

SCREENSHOT OF EVENT

There are several different routes that cancombat climate change, said Kara Whitman, instructor for WSUs School of the Environment.

The ASWSU Environmental Sustainability Alliance and TEDxWSU Countdown held an event featuring WSU faculty to discuss how climate change is impacting people locally and worldwide.

There are areas of the Arctic where a boat can be sailed through, said Von Walden, professor for WSUs Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The melting of Greenland, which is in the Arctic, is a significant contributor to climate change.

The Arctic region was the first place where changes were seen, he said.

In the western U.S., there are more wildfires and they are larger, he said. The fires from California generated so much smoke it was seen in Europe, Walden said.

If the [smoke] index gets over 500 [parts per million], it is beyond the EPA scale for human health, he said.

There are several different routes that cancombat climate change, said Kara Whitman, instructor for WSUs School of the Environment.

The climate change policy focuses on mitigation and adaptation, she said. The proposed solutions are innovating technology, putting a price on carbon, changing human behavior and creating a new economic system.

The goal is to make energy more efficient, she said. Sixty-three percent of the energy for residential, industrial and transportation use was wasted in 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

There is a lot of concern over how we are going to meet the demand, she said. Are we going to add energy sources or address the inefficiencies in the use of energy?

Climate change affects all of us, said Deepti Singh, WSU Vancouver assistant professor in the School of the Environment.

Louisiana had one of the strongest hurricanes it has had in over 100 years, she said. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and moisture fuels these storms.

Each of these events will likely impact communities around the world, she said. Our first responders are experiencing anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

There are people and animals who will be displaced for years because of the fires, Singh said.

Wildfires and hurricanes are worse because of a one degree Celsius increase, she said. Changing to energy-efficient devices and conserving energy in homes helps.

Humans are not understanding climate change because they are static thinkers and their thoughts are fragmented, said Chuck Pezeshki, professor for WSUs School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and owner of the blog Empathy Guru.

We live in a trauma-soaked environment and we need to start connecting with other people, he said.

By having discussions with other people, the brain becomes more complex, he said. This is what is needed to come up with new ideas to solve climate change.

Human Behavior

UW biochemist Scott Coyle awarded 2020 Packard Fellowship – University of Wisconsin-Madison

October 16, 2020 medical

Scott M. Coyle, a University of WisconsinMadison assistant professor of biochemistry, has been named a 2020 Packard Foundation Fellow in Science and Engineering.

Coyle, whose research focuses on understanding and engineering microscale molecular and cellular machines, is one of 20 early career scientists from across the United States to be awarded this years Packard Fellowship. The fellowship provides $875,000 in flexible funding over five years.

Scott Coyles research could have could have far-reaching applications, from expanding the scope and utility of cell-based therapies deployed inside the human body to fight human disease to developing smart micro-technologies that could scavenge damaged environmental sites to be used for bioremediation. Photo by Robin Davies

Coyles project will develop models for how the structure and behavior of single cells which he likens to microscopic robots that move through, interact with, and respond to their environment are encoded and programmed by their smaller components: themotors, filaments, signaling molecules, and so on that that are used to build and control the physical machinery of the cell. His goal is to reveal strategies for building and organizing molecules into complex machines that scientists can one day use to engineer new cell behaviors.

What Coyle learns could have far-reaching applications, from expanding the scope and utility of cell-based therapies deployed inside the human body to fight human disease to developing smart micro-technologies that could scavenge damaged environmental sites to be used for bioremediation. The work could even lead to potential computing systems powered by biochemistry instead of electricity.

To do this we explore a broad range of cellular systems, says Coyle, from human cells that crawl around your body to single celled protozoans that can jump, forage, and hunt for prey like tiny animals. Despite how different these cells appear, they are all built from a similar toolbox of molecular components, but ones which are deployed in different ways not so unlike how you can make a whole bunch of different electronic devices out of resistors, capacitors and transistors.

Coyle was drawn to apply for the fellowship in part because of its support of collaborative and creative approaches to research. The Packard Fellowships flexible funding allows scientists the freedom to pursue research in innovative ways. In Coyles case, this flexibility provides the resources for his lab to obtain and work with materials and biological systems, such as protozoan cells, which may otherwise be difficult to secure with traditional funding streams.

Dr. Coyle is an extraordinary young scientist with a rich array of academic and industry research experiences, says Brian Fox, associate vice chancellor for research policy and integrityand biochemistry department chair. He is uniquely poised to integrate his training and break new ground with an exciting research program that will redefine how we understand the systems biology of cell behavior.

For Coyle, the fellowship is about a big-picture research vision. Collaboration and innovation will drive Coyles project, as he works with researchers across disciplines at UWMadison, including computer science for technologies in machine vision and deep learning as applied to cell biology and limnology to study Madisons lakes, a source of myriad understudied protozoan cells.

We are entering an era in which the extraordinary biology of living systems will provide us a foundation upon which to build an exciting new class of molecular technologies, says Coyle. Getting to interact with physicists, ecologists and engineers will provide invaluable new perspectives and help me approach my own research questions from a fresh and inspired point of view.

Coyle is UWMadisons 16th Packard Fellowship winner, chosen from among 100 nominees from 50 universities across the country by an advisory panelof distinguished scientists and engineers.

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UW biochemist Scott Coyle awarded 2020 Packard Fellowship - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Human Behavior

Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the Krylenko Test | Lawrence W. Reed – Foundation for Economic Education

October 16, 2020 medical

By any standard, Judge Amy Coney Barrett appears to be a superbly qualified, first-rate nominee to the US Supreme Court. That would normally be a widely shared and bi-partisan perspective of someone with her experience and reputation, but these are hardly normal times. They are hyper-politicized, ultra-partisan, politically correct, and hysterically ideological times.

For example: Until this nomination, court-packing meant stuffing a bench with additional justices. To a significant number of public figures who ought to know better (and probably do), court-packing now is when a President exercises his constitutional duty to nominate a single person to fill a vacancy. George Orwell would call this startling transformation of court-packing Newspeak.

As in Orwells 1984, the purpose of todays Newspeak is to serve the interests of power and power-seekers, no matter what, the truth be damned. Politics is everything to this crowd. It is apparently what makes their lives worth living, which is a profoundly sad commentary on their balance and priorities. To cast aside such values as fairness and honesty for the sake of political power is about as anti-social as human behavior gets.

As I watched the first day of hearings on Judge Barretts nomination, I was reminded of a largely forgotten Soviet legal theoretician from decades ago. His name was Nikolai Krylenko. Judge Barrett is being given the Krylenko treatment by Democrat senators like Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, meaning this: The only thing that matters is whether she will vote their party line in future cases.

Under the communist dictatorship of Lenin and then Stalin, Krylenko (1885-1938) rose through the Soviet Unions legal system to become Peoples Commissar for Justice and a Prosecutor General. He was a leading practitioner of the theory of socialist legality, which held that an accused persons innocence or guilt depended on that persons politics (real or imagined). It sounds nuts and indeed, it was. It was the stuff of Orwells nightmare, and one of the reasons the Soviet Union thankfully perished of its own poison.

In The Gulag Archipelago, the famous Soviet dissident and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recounted an episode involving Krylenko. Shortly after Lenins Bolsheviks assumed power in 1917, an admiral named Shchastny was sentenced by one of the regimes judges to be shot within 24 hours. When some in the courtroom expressed shock, it was Krylenko who responded thusly: What are you worrying about? Executions have been abolished. But Shchastny is not being executed; he is being shot.

To Krylenko, the only morality was what served the Party and the State, which of course in the Soviet Union were one and the same. If your politics were not correct, you would be corrected, one way or the other. In Richard Pipes authoritative book, The Russian Revolution, Krylenko is quoted as exclaiming, We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.

At the Senate hearings for the Barrett nomination, it was apparent the first day that the Judge was being Krylenkoed. Hostile senators pronounced their verdicts before she had uttered a word, and those verdicts had nothing to do with Barretts stellar qualifications or keen legal mind. Legal analyst and George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley commented,

What they were suggesting is that they will be voting against her because of what they expected her vote would be in a pending case, and that is a conditional confirmationHere, the senators seem to be saying, Im not even going to listen; Im going to vote against you because I dont think youre going to vote the right way.

Judge Barrett clearly articulated her judicial philosophy, borne out by the way she has ruled at the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit: She believes the role of a judge or justice is to follow the Constitution and the law as written, not make stuff up in the service of a political agenda. How ironic that this is a point of fiery contention. Senators who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and the law hate the guts of a judge who does just that!

Perhaps Amy Coney Barrett should tell those hostile senators, If the Constitution stands in the way of your ideology, Ill gladly scrap it on your behalf. All power to the State! She would pick up a few votes in the process.

What happened to Nikolai Krylenko? Its called what goes around, comes around. The very system of politicized, arbitrary judgments he wielded against his fellow citizens came back to bite him. He lost favor with the politicians (namely, Stalin) and fell victim to the Great Purge of 1938. Accused of anti-Party activity, he was tortured until he confessed to crimes he never committed and summarily executed.

The rule of law did not exist in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Krylenko. In its place, what prevailed was the rule of menpower-mad men of no conscience. Civilized people will not pity the likes of Krylenko, but they will always regret the innocent that his legal theory victimized. Shame on us if we allow his brand of evil to ever take root among us.

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Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the Krylenko Test | Lawrence W. Reed - Foundation for Economic Education

Human Behavior

Dolly Alm achieves her dreams, works with NASA – The Post

October 16, 2020 medical

Dolly Alm wont stop until she achieves her dreams.

Throughout her whole life, Alm has dreamed of working for NASA and helping facilitate future human life in space. She wants to help by working with the well-being, motivation and team dynamics of NASA staff. Now, her dream is within reach.

Alm had her first son when she was in high school. He was about 3 years old when she started her first year of college to become a nurse. Her grandmother helped her attend classes and raise a child. But after she passed away, Alm was left to be a full-time caregiver while also taking classes and working full-time.

You know that saying, Once you take a break, youre most likely not going to go back? Alm said. I do fall into that scenario because life happened.

Now 39, Alm is a junior working toward a degree in organizational behavior, a major she designed through specialized studies. She studies psychology within an organization, or human behavior in the workplace, and wants to enter into grad school for industrial and organizational psychology.

However, her dream remains the same: to work for NASA. It wasnt until she took the strategic leadership onboarding class with Kim Jordan that she started to turn those dreams into a reality.

In the course, Jordan created a project where students experience strategy by creating one for themselves and their professional development. In the project, students were asked to look at an industry and identify what their dream job would be and where they are now in terms of getting there.

Jordans job is to figure out how to close the gap between where her students are today and where they need to be to fulfill their dreams.

Dolly has a big dream, Jordan said. She was willing to engage with that dream. She is a slightly non-traditional student slightly older, so I think she comes back to school with a real passion for How can I make this happen?

After speaking with Alm about her specific desired work for NASA, Jordan encouraged her to shake out the Bobcat tree and see if she could find some connections in the industry. What they found in their search for closing the gap was the LSPACE program.

The NASA LSPACE program is a free, online, interactive program open to undergraduate STEM students interested in pursuing a career with NASA. There are two academies: Mission Concept Academy and the NASA Proposal Writing and Evaluation Experience Academy.

Alm is participating in the 12-week Proposal Writing and Evaluation Experience Academy. Students get partnered in a team and work together to write a proposal for technology that NASA currently needs. At the end of the program, the winning proposal and team receive $10,000 to proceed with the concept.

Though receiving admittance into this program doesnt guarantee an internship, Alm says its an important tool to have on her resume when NASA reviews her internship application in the future.

What I hope to get out of this is a skill set because Ive never participated in proposal writing, which will be necessary for me to receive grants in the future for research that Im doing and working with NASA, Alm said. And its just interesting, the amount of creativity and thoughts and how the team works together to visualize these ideas and work together to make that happen. Its actually a phenomenal experience.

James Richards, Alms oldest son, is proud to watch his mom achieve her dreams, and is happy that she didnt give up.

Honestly, my moms always proven to me that she can do whatever she puts her mind to, Richards said. So its still amazing that she goes out there and does all she does, but shes always proven to me that if she wants to do it, she can do it.

Jordan is not only proud to watch one of her students succeed, but also knows Alms story is symbolic for many other people.

For every student on this campus, theres a part of Dolly in them, Jordan said. Some students could use a little more help in bringing out that part of themselves that really does dream big and wants to have somebody help them and have a process to connect their big dream to making it happen. I hope that people read her story and see it also as an opportunity for themselves.

As for Alm, shes just excited to be taking tangible steps to achieve her ambition.

Being 39 and trying to do this now, Im so focused on me, Alm said. Because I think its time. I put everybody before me and now Its just my time, and its coming together so nicely, and its just really exciting.

@rileyr44

rr855317@ohio.edu

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Dolly Alm achieves her dreams, works with NASA - The Post