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Human Behavior

How Do I Know I’m Not the Only Conscious Being in the Universe? – Scientific American

It is a central dilemma of human lifemore urgent, arguably, than the inevitability of suffering and death. I have been brooding and ranting to my students about it for years. It surely troubles us more than ever during this plague-ridden era. Philosophers call it the problem of other minds. I prefer to call it the solipsism problem.

Solipsism, technically, is an extreme form of skepticism, at once utterly nuts and irrefutable. It holds that you are the only conscious being in existence. The cosmos sprang into existence when you became sentient, and it will vanish when you die. As crazy as this proposition seems, it rests on a brute fact: each of us is sealed in an impermeable prison cell of subjective awareness. Even our most intimate exchanges might as well be carried out via Zoom.

You experience your own mind every waking second, but you can only infer the existence of other minds through indirect means. Other people seem to possess conscious perceptions, emotions, memories, intentions, just as you do, but you cant be sure they do. You can guess how the world looks to me, based on my behavior and utterances, including these words you are reading, but you have no first-hand access to my inner life. For all you know, I might be a mindless bot.

Natural selection instilled in us the capacity for a so-called theory of minda talent for intuiting others emotions and intentions. But we have a countertendency to deceive each other, and to fear we are being deceived. The ultimate deception would be pretending youre conscious when youre not.

The solipsism problem thwarts efforts to explain consciousness. Scientists and philosophers have proposed countless contradictory hypotheses about what consciousness is and how it arises. Panpsychists contend that all creatures and even inanimate mattereven a single proton!possess consciousness. Hard-core materialists insist, conversely (and perversely), that not even humans are all that conscious.

The solipsism problem prevents us from verifying or falsifying these and other claims. I cant be certain that you are conscious, let alone a jellyfish, sexbot or doorknob. As long as we lack what neuroscientist Christof Koch calls a consciousness metera device that can measure consciousness in the same way that a thermometer measures temperaturetheories of consciousness will remain in the realm of pure speculation.

But the solipsism problem is far more than a technical philosophical matter. It is a paranoid but understandable response to the feelings of solitude that lurk within us all. Even if you reject solipsism as an intellectual position, you sense it, emotionally, whenever you feel estranged from others, whenever you confront the awful truth that you can never know, really know another person, and no one can really know you.

Religion is one response to the solipsism problem. Our ancestors dreamed up a supernatural entity who bears witness to our innermost fears and desires. No matter how lonesome we feel, how alienated from our fellow humans, God is always there watching over us. He sees our souls, our most secret selves, and He loves us anyway. Wouldnt it be nice to think so.

The arts, too, can be seen as attempts to overcome the solipsism problem. The artist, musician, poet, novelist says, This is how my life feels or This is how life might feel for another person. She helps us imagine what its like to be a Black woman trying to save her children from slavery, or a Jewish ad salesman wandering through Dublin, wondering whether his wife is cheating on him. But to imagine is not to know.

Some of my favorite works of art dwell on the solipsism problem. InIm thinking of ending thingsand earlier films, as well as his new novelAntkind, Charlie Kaufman depicts other people as projections of a disturbed protagonist. Kaufman no doubt hopes to help us, and himself, overcome the solipsism problem by venting his anxiety about it, but I find his dramatizations almost too evocative.

Love, ideally, give us the illusion of transcending the solipsism problem. You feel you really know someone, from the inside out, and she knows you. In moments of ecstatic sexual communion or mundane togethernesswhile youre eating pizza and watching The Alienist, sayyou fuse with your beloved. The barrier between you seems to vanish.

Inevitably, however, your lover disappoints, deceives, betrays you. Or, less dramatically, some subtle bio-cognitive shift occurs. You look at her as she nibbles her pizza and think, Who, what, is this odd creature? The solipsism problem has reemerged, more painful and suffocating than ever.

It gets worse. In addition to the problem of other minds, there is the problem of our own. As evolutionary psychologist Robert Trivers points out, we deceive ourselves at least as effectively as we deceive others. A corollary of this dark truth is that we know ourselves even less than we know others.

If a lion could talk, Wittgenstein said, we couldnt understand it. The same is true, I suspect, of our own deepest selves. If you could eavesdrop on your subconscious, youd hear nothing but grunts, growls and moansor perhaps the high-pitched squeaks of raw machine-code data coursing through a channel.

For the mentally ill, solipsism can become terrifyingly vivid. Victims of Capgras syndrome think that identical imposters have replaced their loved ones.If you have Cotards delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome, you become convinced that you are dead.A much more common disorder is derealization, which makes everything--you, others, reality as whole--feel strange, phony, simulated

Derealization plagued me throughout my youth. One episode was self-induced. Hanging out with friends in high school, I thought it would be fun to hyperventilate, hold my breath and let someone squeeze my chest until I passed out. When I woke up, I didnt recognize my buddies. They were demons, jeering at me. For weeks after that horrifying sensation faded, everything still felt unreal, as if I were in a dreadful movie.

What if those afflicted with these alleged delusions actually see reality clearly? According to the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, the self does not really exist. When you try to pin down your own essence, to grasp it, it slips through your fingers.

We have devised methods for cultivating self-knowledge and quelling our anxieties, such as meditation and psychotherapy. But these practices strike me as forms of self-brainwashing. When we meditate or see a therapist, we are not solving the solipsism problem. We are merely training ourselves to ignore it, to suppress the horror and despair that it triggers.

We have also invented mythical places in which the solipsism problem vanishes. We transcend our solitude and merge with others into a unified whole. We call these places heaven, nirvana, the Singularity. But solipsism is a cave from which we cannot escapeexcept, perhaps, by pretending it doesnt exist. Or, paradoxically, by confronting it, the way Charlie Kaufman does. Knowing we are in the cave may be as close as we can get to escaping it.

Conceivably, technology could deliver us from the solipsism problem. Christof Koch proposes that we all get brain implants with wi-fi, so we can meld minds through a kind of high-tech telepathy. Philosopher Colin McGinn suggests a technique that involves brain-splicing, transferring bits of your brain into mine, and vice versa.

But do we really want to escape the prison of our subjective selves? The archnemesis of Star Trek: The Next Generation is the Borg, a legion of tech-enhanced humanoids who have fused into one big meta-entity. Borg members have lost their separation from each other and hence their individuality. When they meet ordinary humans, they mutter in a scary monotone, You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

As hard as solitude can be for me to bear, I dont want to be assimilated. If solipsism haunts me, so does oneness, a unification so complete that it extinguishes my puny mortal self. Perhaps the best way to cope with the solipsism problem in this weird, lonely time is to imagine a world in which it has vanished.

Further Reading:

Jellyfish, Sexbots and the Solipsism Problem

Do Fish Suffer?

Can Integrated Information Theory Explain Consciousness?

Dont Make Me One with Everything

Do We Need Brain Implants to Keep Up with Robots?

Rational Mysticism

See also my free, online book Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity & Who We Really Are and my upcoming book Pay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science, which describes what its like to be a neurotic science writer.

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How Do I Know I'm Not the Only Conscious Being in the Universe? - Scientific American

Human Behavior

Sharp attention explains why the early bird gets the worm – UB News Center

BUFFALO, N.Y. Many of the characteristics related to auditory attention in birds match those of humans, according to a study from the University at Buffalo.

The findings published in the journal PLOS ONE provide novel insights into evolutionary survival mechanisms, and are the first to behaviorally measure the cognitive process responsible for a non-human animals ability to segregate and respond to meaningful targets heard in simultaneous sound streams.

Though previous research had explored auditory attention in animals, the experiments were clouded by anthropomorphism, which essentially put the cart before the horse, according to Micheal Dent, a professor of psychology in UBs College of Arts and Sciences, and lead author of the paper co-written with then-UB graduate student Huaizhen Cai, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.

People have been doing physiological experiments to find neural correlates to attention capture, but I always thought they did it backwards since at the time there was no evidence that animals have the same attention characteristics and limits that humans possess, says Dent. When you look for physiological correlates to something, you need to know first that the behavior exists.

We didnt know it existed then, but now we do.

Auditory attention is the ability to focus on specific sounds. Attention capture is the involuntary response to sound targets in the environment. For humans, auditory attention can mean having a conversation in a noisy room, but still recognizing and responding (attention capture) to hearing a name being called from a distance.

But what amounts largely to social utility for humans becomes a matter of survival for birds.

For animals trying to hone in on something in the environment, its critical that they respond to something like a big crash in a bush, which could signal the presence of a predator, but not a little one, which can likely be ignored, explains Dent. No one had ever measured this before in the auditory domain. They had measured it in the visual system, but never with sound.

As it turns out, auditory attention in birds is nearly as keen as it is in humans.

But testing auditory attention in animals is challenging given the difficulty of building a paradigm where animals have to ignore specific elements. For humans, the research method is straightforward: tell participants to pay attention to changes in one sound stream, but ignore changes in a different stream.

So to conduct their experiments, Dent and Cai trained seven adult budgerigars to peck a key that started a stream of tones, AAAA, for example. When one tones pitch in the sequence changed (AABA) the birds would peck another key.

The researchers then slowly introduced a background stream of tones the birds were supposed to ignore (CCCC), which they did, just as humans would ignore surrounding chatter and noise happening during a phone conversation.

What the birds had trouble ignoring was a frequency change to the background tones (CDCC), similar to the loud crash in the bush, a task also challenging to humans, according to Dent, an expert in the perception of complex auditory stimuli in birds and mammals.

Other factors that affected the birds attention were the saliency of the changes in the distractor. Bigger frequency changes in the background disrupted attention to the targets more so than smaller frequency changes. Also, the longer the birds listened to the background they were supposed to be ignoring, the easier it was for them to notice changes in the target streams.

Just like humans trying to pay attention to something, the longer they hone in on those sounds, the easier it is to ignore the background, says Dent.

Dent says shes currently involved in research to test her hypothesis with more ecologically relevant sounds.

We have results that demonstrate how the birds respond to pure tones, but are they equally proficient with bird calls? Dent asks. Thats what were testing next.

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Sharp attention explains why the early bird gets the worm - UB News Center

Embryology

How the IVF procedure appeared in the USSR – Russia Beyond

The first children in the USSR born by IVF (in vitro fertilization) were described as diamond babies. It was also believed that they were born weak and ill. Here is our story about how the procedure came into being in the Soviet Union and what happened with the first diamond baby.

The history of IVF in the USSR began in 1955 at the Crimean Medical Institute, 25 years before the birth of American Louise Brown, the first child in the world conceived outside a womans body.

The Department of Histology and Embryology at the institute was then headed by scientist Boris Khvatov. He had actually already come up with the idea of artificial human fertilization back in 1939. From 1940, Khvatovs theory was being studied by his pupils and researchers at the institute. In 1954, one of his most talented pupils, postgraduate student Grigory Petrov, started conducting experiments on the artificial fertilization of animals. On November 10, 1955, Petrov performed the first artificial fertilization procedure using human eggs with the consent of a childless couple who were desperate to have a child.

Professor Boris Khvatov

The pregnancy succeeded and lasted 13 weeks, but ended in a miscarriage. A local scientist reported it to the Crimean regional committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and Khvatov was summoned to the committee for an interview.

Khvatov returned to the institute very morose. He gathered his team and said: I have nothing to lose, but you have everything ahead of you - I dont want to see your lives ruined. Perhaps we should stop the work? Everyone was silent. At the time, the department had been receiving sacks of letters, including from abroad, from childless couples asking for help, recalls Boris Trotsenko, one of Khvatovs pupils and now professor at the department of histology at the Crimea State Medical University.

Associate Professor G. N. Petrov takes credit from students

The CPSU regional committee prohibited the institute from conducting experiments on Soviet women. Khvatov continued working at the institute and, to the end of his life, attended conferences in Moscow and St. Petersburg, defending IVF as a method of helping childless couples. He passed away in 1975.

As for Petrov, he published nine research papers on IVF and then left the institute to look for a new job and an apartment. After unsuccessful attempts, he returned to the institute and taught anatomy. He also set up an anatomy museum on the premises of the medical institute. At the age of 60 he was forced to retire. Gardening was his passion until the end of his life. Grigory Petrov died in poverty in 1997.

April 1, 1989 A newborn in a medical incubator.

In 1969, Robert Edwards, a British scientist specializing in physiology and medicine, announced that he had developed an assisted reproductive technology. In 2010, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his research. When Boris Trotsenko learnt about it, he went to the Abdal Cemetery in Simferopol and put four roses on the graves of Khvatov and Petrov - two yellow ones for Khvatov and two red roses for Petrov.

Four roses instead of the Nobel Prize, he remarked.

After the ban on further experiments by Khvatov, a group on early embryogenesis (the development and formation of the human embryo - ed.) was set up in 1965. It included medical researchers studying infertility.

After 21 years of experiments, the USSRs first successful artificial fertilization was performed by obstetrician-gynecologist Elena Kalinina and embryologist Valentin Lukin.

On February 7, 1986, the Soviet Unions first child conceived by IVF was born - Elena Dontsova (she later changed her first name to Alyona).

USSR. Moscow. February 1, 1989 In the laboratory of clinical embryology.

Only four clinics were then working to develop a method of in vitro fertilization: Two in Moscow, and one in Leningrad and Khabarovsk, respectively. We got a result first, although in the same year, the first children conceived by IVF were also born in other Soviet clinics, recalls fertility specialist, Doctor of Medical Sciences Elena Kalinina. She later received government prizes along with the other doctors who had taken part in the first IVF procedure.

All-Union research center for maternal and child health. USSR. Moscow. September 1, 1986 Professor B. Leonov, doctor E. Finogenova with twins near the mother's bed

She says that the first procedures required expensive equipment and highly skilled doctors. Because of this, children born by IVF were described as diamond babies. It was also considered that the children themselves could be born weak and ill and that the IVF method would never be accessible to ordinary patients. The IVF procedure costs around 200,000 rubles in Russia today (approx. $2,600). Under national projects to boost birth rates, free procedures are also available - in 2019, 80,000 procedures were carried out without charge.

Russian clinics are no worse and frequently even better than many foreign clinics, Kalinina believes.

Elena Dontsova, the USSR's first IVF child, passed her childhood in Ukraine and went to university in Sevastopol, Crimea. There, she met her husband and, in 2007, gave birth to a son naturally. Elena Dontsovas pregnancy was managed by the same Elena Kalinina who had helped bring her into the world.

Elena Dontsova, the first child in the USSR conceived with IVF

In 2009, Elena and her husband moved to Moscow, where she heads an agency that produces outdoor and indoor advertising. Elena and her first husband divorced, but she remarried and dreams of having more children.

I dream of having twins. My future husband had twins in his family, both on his mothers and his fathers side. I very much hope that we'll have twins, too, Dontsova said in a RIA Novosti interview.

Elena Dontsova, the first child in the USSR conceived with IVF

Dontsova sometimes takes part in TV programs about IVF. In one of them she narrates, a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church spoke up against IVF on the grounds that it contradicted Gods will.

I objected and replied: You say that everything happens by Gods will, but given that mankind has made this [IVF - ed.] possible, it means that it was also Gods will. He was unable to give me an answer, Dontsova says.

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How the IVF procedure appeared in the USSR - Russia Beyond

Embryology

Tauranga man walks to Wellington with pink casket – The Bay’s News First – SunLive

Tauranga man Peter van Zweeden is setting out on foot for Wellington today, with a little pink casket strapped to his back.

He wants to raise awareness of a health bill passed prior to lockdown in March.

Peter is calling for the Abortion Legislation Act to be altered to reflect the fact that all New Zealanders, born or yet to be, should treated with respect and valued.

The Abortion Legislation Bill passed its third reading in Parliament in March, meaning the procedure was removed from the Crimes Act.

It passed 68 votes to 51 - a much narrower margin than at the second reading.

At the time, Justice Minister Andrew Little says for more than 40 years, abortion had been the only medical procedure considered a crime in New Zealand. Read more here.

Peter, who owns a local health-care clinic, left from the Mount Surf Club at 8am flanked by several supporters also walking the first leg.

While the idea of walking 525km carrying a tiny coffin is admittedly strange, the 58-year-old is just a regular guy: he employs four people, coaches his youngest sons football team, and, along with his wife, provides respite foster-care at their Welcome Bay home.

A chiropractor with a science degree in genetics and embryology, he says most people were understandably focused on preparing for lockdown when the bill came before Parliament - and believes it passed largely unnoticed.

People are shocked when they realise theres no legal requirement to make sure a foetus does not feel pain during a termination and that if a baby is inadvertently born alive after an attempted abortion procedure, it can be left to die.

MPs voted down amendments to the bill which would have fixed both those issues.

Peter emphasises he is not advocating that women should be criminalised for abortion.

Women who choose to terminate a pregnancy generally do so after a lot of thought and with much angst.

Often they see it as their only valid choice. As a society, we need to offer them much more support, both before and after abortion, along with information on all their options.

I am calling for the law to be altered to reflect the fact that all New Zealanders, born or yet to be, should treated with respect and valued and for politicians seeking election to listen to what people think about the legislation as it stands currently. We can do so much better.

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Tauranga man walks to Wellington with pink casket - The Bay's News First - SunLive

Cell Biology

Propofol Affects Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Cell Biology By Regulating the miR-21/PTEN/AKT Pathway In Vitro and In Vivo – DocWire News

Anesth Analg. 2020 Oct;131(4):1270-1280. doi: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000004778.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Propofol is a common sedative-hypnotic drug traditionally used for inducing and maintaining general anesthesia. Recent studies have drawn attention to the nonanesthetic effects of propofol, but the potential mechanism by which propofol suppresses non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) progression has not been fully elucidated.

METHODS: For the in vitro experiments, we used propofol (0, 2, 5, and 10 g/mL) to treat A549 cells for 1, 4, and 12 hours and Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) to detect proliferation. Apoptosis was measured with flow cytometry. We also transfected A549 cells with an microribonucleic acid-21 (miR-21) mimic or negative control ribonucleic acid (RNA) duplex and phosphatase and tensin homolog, deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN) small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) or negative control. PTEN, phosphorylated protein kinase B (pAKT), and protein kinase B (AKT) expression were detected using Western blotting, whereas miR-21 expression was examined by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). In vivo, nude mice were given injections of A549 cells to grow xenograft tumors; 8 days later, the mice were intraperitoneally injected with propofol (35 mg/kg) or soybean oil. Tumors were then collected from mice and analyzed by immunohistochemistry and Western blotting.

RESULTS: Propofol inhibited growth (1 hour, P = .001; 4 hours, P .0001; 12 hours, P = .0004) and miR-21 expression (P .0001) and induced apoptosis (1 hour, P = .0022; 4 hours, P = .0005; 12 hours, P .0001) in A549 cells in a time and concentration-dependent manner. MiR-21 mimic and PTEN siRNA transfection antagonized the suppressive effects of propofol on A549 cells by decreasing PTEN protein expression (mean differences [MD] [95% confidence interval {CI}], -0.51 [-0.86 to 0.16], P = .0058; MD [95% CI], 0.81 [0.07-1.55], P = .0349, respectively), resulting in an increase in pAKT levels (MD [95% CI] = -0.82 [-1.46 to -0.18], P = .0133) following propofol exposure. In vivo, propofol treatment reduced NSCLC tumor growth (MD [95% CI] = -109.47 [-167.03 to -51.91], P .0001) and promoted apoptosis (MD [95% CI] = 38.53 [11.69-65.36], P = .0093).

CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicated that propofol inhibited A549 cell growth, accelerated apoptosis via the miR-21/PTEN/AKT pathway in vitro, suppressed NSCLC tumor cell growth, and promoted apoptosis in vivo. Our findings provide new implications for propofol in cancer therapy and indicate that propofol is extremely advantageous in surgical treatment.

PMID:32925348 | DOI:10.1213/ANE.0000000000004778

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Propofol Affects Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Cell Biology By Regulating the miR-21/PTEN/AKT Pathway In Vitro and In Vivo - DocWire News

Cell Biology

The art of science: Olympus launches second global image of the year award – News-Medical.net

Sep 16 2020

Following the success of the first Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award, Olympus has launched its second annual Global Image of the Year Award to recognize the best in life science imaging. Those interested in participating can enter through Jan. 10, 2021 by uploading up to three images, with a description of the equipment used, at Olympus-LifeScience.com/IOTY. Winners will be selected by a jury panel and announced in March 2021.

Prizes include an Olympus SZX7 stereo microscope with a DP27 digital camera for the global winner and an Olympus CX23 upright microscope for the regional winners in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

The jury consists of global representatives from both science and the arts, including Wendy Salmon, a light microscopy specialist at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT; Geoff Williams, the manager of the Leduc BioImaging Facility at Brown University; Harini Sreenivasappa, the microscopy facility manager of the Cell Imaging Center at Drexel University; Safa Shehab, a professor at United Arab Emirates University; Sin Culley, a postdoctoral research associate at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at UCL; Stefan Terjung, the operational manager of the Advanced Light Microscopy Facility at EMBL Heidelberg; Xiang Yu, a professor in the School of Life Sciences at Peking University and investigator of the Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research; Graham Wright, the chief technology officer at A*STARs Research Support Centre; and Ikuko Koyama-Honda, the project lecturer of the Graduate School and Faculty of Medicine, the University of Tokyo.

All entries will be evaluated based on artistic and visual aspects, scientific impact and microscope proficiency.

Olympus IOTY Award began in 2017 as the Image of the Year European Life Science Light Microscopy Award with the aim to celebrate both the artistic and scientific value of microscopy images. Today, the competition stays true to this mission by encouraging people across the world to look at scientific images in a new way, appreciate their beauty and share images with others.

More information about the Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award, including jury members biographies, last years winning images and the full terms and conditions, can be found at Olympus-LifeScience.com/IOTY.

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The art of science: Olympus launches second global image of the year award - News-Medical.net

Cell Biology

Beyond the bench: how inclusion and exclusion make us the scientists we are – DocWire News

This article was originally published here

Mol Biol Cell. 2020 Sep 15;31(20):2164-2167. doi: 10.1091/mbc.E20-06-0374.

ABSTRACT

Recent events encompassing social injustices, healthcare disparities, and police brutality against Black citizens highlight the continued need to strive toward unbiased and inclusive practices in all realms of the world. Our voices as cell biologists are powerful tools that can be used to combat inequities in the scientific landscape. In this inaugural Voices essay, we discuss how exclusion and inclusion events have contributed to our scientific journeys and how scientists can work to create an inclusive environment for our trainees and colleagues. As underrepresented minority scientists in the early and late stages of our scientific training, we frame the trainee experience to provide insight from unique perspectives. This essay also provides actionable items that the cell biology community can implement to promote inclusivity. We anticipate that initiating an open dialogue focused on diversity and inclusion will promote growth in the field of cell biology and enable scientists to assess and assume their role in creating welcoming environments. We believe that scientists at all stages in their careers can make meaningful and habitual contributions to supporting inclusivity in cell biology, thereby creating a future where diversity, equity, and inclusion are expected, not requested.

PMID:32924843 | DOI:10.1091/mbc.E20-06-0374

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Beyond the bench: how inclusion and exclusion make us the scientists we are - DocWire News

Cell Biology

A cell culture master class: What your cells wish they could tell you – Science Magazine

Cell culturethe controlled growing of cells outside their natural environmentmay be commonplace in molecular biology laboratories, but one thing that strikes fear in both novices and experts using these techniques is contamination. Whether it occurs via chemicals (impurities in media, sera, and water) or biological components (bacteria, viruses, and mycoplasma), contamination can bring research to a halt, wasting both time and money and possibly raising doubts about the validity of a laboratorys findings. Studies have shown that up to 30% of animal cell cultures are contaminated by either microorganisms or other cells.While no researcher is immune to this common problem, an introduction to and/or refresher on good aseptic techniques can help reduce the occurrence of contamination and possibly its severity. This webinar will be a master class for all those who perform primary and immortalized cell culture. It will discuss best practices and common pitfalls, with a special section dedicated to the dangers of contamination and ways to avoid it. An additional section will be devoted to protein expression in suspension. This webinar should be equally beneficial to both novices and experts in cell culture.

During the webinar, the speakers will:

This webinar will last for approximately 60 minutes.

Johns Hopkins School of MedicineBaltimore, MD

Stowers Medical InstituteKansas City, MO

Dr. Zhao, originally from Henan Province, China, graduated from Zhengzhou University with an M.D. degree. She earned her Ph.D. in veterinary pathobiology from the University of Missouri-Columbia, then completed a 2-year certification in science management at the University of Kansas. In 2012 she joined the Stowers Institute of Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, as a research coordinator. In 2019, she was promoted to head of Tissue Culture at Stowers and in 2020 was named head of Tissue Culture and Media Prep. With 15 years of experience in cell culture, including 3D organoid culture, primary cell culture, virus work, and gene editing, Dr. Zhao collaborates with Stowers researchers to develop new products and technologies in the cell-culture field.

Science/AAASWashington, DC

Dr. Oberst did her undergraduate training at the University of Maryland, College Park, and her Ph.D. in Tumor Biology at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. She combined her interests in science and writing by pursuing an M.A. in Journalism from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Oberst joined Science/AAAS in 2016 as the Assistant Editor for Custom Publishing. Before then she worked at Nature magazine, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Endocrine Society, and the National Institutes of Mental Health.

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A cell culture master class: What your cells wish they could tell you - Science Magazine

Cell Biology

S2 Genomics Announces Asia-Pacific Distribution Partnerships for the Singulator 100 System With SCRUM, PharmiGene, LnCBio, Thunderbio Science, and…

S2 Genomics, Inc., today announced that it has entered into distribution agreements with SCRUM, PharmiGene, LnCBio, Thunderbio Science, and TrendBio for the promotion, sales, and support of S2s Singulator 100 System and associated products for single-cell genomics and cell biology applications in the Asia-Pacific region.

The distribution agreements cover Japan (SCRUM), South Korea (LnCBio and Thunderbio Science), Taiwan (PharmiGene), and Australia and New Zealand (TrendBio).

The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing significant growth in single-cell genomic and cell biology analyses, and that is driving a need for improved sample preparation solutions, said Dr. Stevan Jovanovich, S2 Genomics Chief Executive Officer. We are excited to welcome SCRUM, PharmiGene, LnCBio, Thunderbio Science, and TrendBio as key partners for S2 Genomics. Each of these distributors has significant expertise in life sciences, and especially in genomics. Expanding our commercialization efforts into the Asia-Pacific region represents a significant milestone for S2 Genomics.

S2 Genomics Singulator 100 system enables consistent isolation of single cells or nuclei from solid tissue samples, essential to producing high-quality single-cell data from difficult tissue types. The Singulator 100 system uses single-use disposable cartridges and proprietary reagents to automate tissue dissociation in a convenient workflow. In addition, the system allows users to create their own dissociation protocols, use their own reagents, and dissociate tissue at low temperature to minimize changes to cell transcriptomes.

Takemitsu Furuta, President and CEO of SCRUM noted, Its exciting for SCRUM to be working with S2 and expand our product portfolio in cell biology, especially single cell genomics. This is also an important area of current life science studies in Japan. I strongly believe the value of this platform will facilitate our customers research studies and greatly improve their experimental efficiency.

S2 Genomics distributor information can be found at http://www.S2Genomics.com/distributors.

About S2 Genomics, Inc.

S2 Genomics, founded in 2016, is a leading developer of laboratory automation solutions for processing solid tissues for single-cell applications. S2 Genomics technology platforms integrate advanced fluidics, optics, and biochemistry to produce automated sample preparation solutions for single-cell sequencing and cell biology markets, enabling discovery and innovation in life science research, healthcare, and agriculture. For more information, visit https://S2Genomics.com.

For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

S2 Genomics, the S2 Genomics logo, and Singulator are trademarks of S2 Genomics, Inc.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200909005030/en/

Dr. John Bashkin, VP Business Development, S2 Genomics, Inquiries@s2genomics.com

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S2 Genomics Announces Asia-Pacific Distribution Partnerships for the Singulator 100 System With SCRUM, PharmiGene, LnCBio, Thunderbio Science, and...

Cell Biology

10x Genomics First to Market With Product to Simultaneously Capture Epigenome and TranscriptomeChromium Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene Expression…

PLEASANTON, Calif., Sept. 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --10x Genomics (Nasdaq: TXG) today announced it has begun shipping its Chromium Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene Expression solution to customers, marking the first commercial release of a product capable of simultaneously profiling the epigenome and transcriptome from the same single cell. This multi-omic approach provides customers with the ability to link a cells epigenetic program to its transcriptional output, enabling a better understanding of cell functionality and bypassing the need to infer relationships through computer simulations.

This is one of our most ambitious undertakings at the company, said Ben Hindson, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of 10x Genomics. By introducing the first solution that captures ATAC and gene expression simultaneously, researchers can gain even more clarity by combining two already powerful methods to profile biological systems at single cell resolution simultaneously for the first time.

The new solution builds on an array of new products launched by the company this year for both its Chromium platform for single cell analysis as well as its Visium platform for spatial genomics. Early customers already working with Chromium Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene Expression include Stanford University School of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai and Spains Centro Nacional de Anlisis Genmico.

My lab is interested in understanding why some immune cell types fail to fight the cancer, said Dr. Ansuman Satpathy, Assistant Professor of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine. We plan to use 10x Genomics' new assay to understand the epigenetic and transcriptional regulation of immune cell dysfunction directly in patient samples, and to use this information to precisely engineer more effective immunotherapies in the future.

Until now, we have relied on computational prediction to match a cell's epigenome to a single-cell gene expression profile, said Dr. Holger Heyn, leader of the single cell genomics team at Spains Centro Nacional de Anlisis Genmico that is working on delineating the dynamics underlying B-cell differentiation and activation. 10x Genomics new multiome assay will allow us to directly measure what before could only be predicted, and offers a new gold standard that will confirm how accurate these predictions had been.

"With this new technology, we can better understand the mechanisms affected by the non-coding risk genetic variation across a wide range of neuropsychiatric diseases, including Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, along with different severity of neuropathology and clinical symptomatology," added Dr. Panagiotis Roussos, Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomics Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

By using Chromium Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene Expression, researchers can:

Chromium Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene Expression is shipping to customers. To learn more, visit https://www.10xgenomics.com/products/single-cell-multiome-atac-plus-gene-expression.

About 10x Genomics10x Genomics is a life science technology company building products to interrogate, understand and master biology to advance human health. The companys integrated solutions include instruments, consumables and software for analyzing biological systems at a resolution and scale that matches the complexity of biology. 10x Genomics products have been adopted by researchers around the world including 97 of the top 100 global research institutions and 19 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies, and have been cited in over 1,500 research papers on discoveries ranging from oncology to immunology and neuroscience. The companys patent portfolio comprises more than 775 issued patents and patent applications.

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10x Genomics First to Market With Product to Simultaneously Capture Epigenome and TranscriptomeChromium Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene Expression...