A recent Pew Research poll found that religious faith had deepened for a quarter of Americans because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Some might indeed take solace in religion at a time of uncertainty, such as a pandemic, but the literary texts that I teach in my university course, "Pandemics in Literature," suggest that this is not always the case: Faith may deepen for some, while others may reject or abandon it altogether.

John Payne's translation of The Decameron was originally published in a private printing for The Villon Society, London in 1886. Comprising 100 novellas told by 10 men and women over a ten-day journey fleeing plague-infested Florence, the Decameron is an allegorical work famous for its bawdy portrayals of everyday life. (Musaicum Books)

In one of the most well known works of pandemic literature, Giovanni Boccaccio's "The Decameron" sales of which have reportedly risen during the coronavirus faith and religion are mocked and satirized.

"The Decameron" is a set of one hundred stories told by seven young women and three young men quarantined from the Black Death on the outskirts of medieval Florence. Interestingly, "The Decameron" is the earliest and most significant text that shows a rejection of Christianity at a time when most of Europe was still under the powerful influence of the Catholic Church and its teachings.

In Boccaccio's massive collection of novellas, monks and other dignitaries of the Church are ridiculed, disparaged and shown in their human fallibility. For example, in the fourth story on the first day, an abbot and a monk conspire to bring a willing young girl into a monastery an act that is celebrated by the narrators as brave and laudable, even though this went against every religious and moral doctrine of the time.

This and other stories show that personal faith or the church and priests are never able to help humans in their vulnerability. Instead, it is earthly love or passion that become the driving forces of human behavior.

Both the structure and the representatives of the Catholic Church as well as the possibility for individual, personal faith are rejected in Boccaccio's collection.

In German writer Thomas Mann's well-known novella of 1912, "Death in Venice," an outbreak of cholera affects the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach, a learned man.

On the face of it, Mann's novella does not seem to engage with religion or faith. Yet, Aschenbach's character is deeply rooted in the religious principles and values of a Protestant work ethic. For Mann, Aschenbach's service to art and literature is like religion because of his dedication he writes stoically every day, even when it's difficult.

When Aschenbach decides to travel to cholera-stricken Venice, he is seduced by the Polish boy Tadzio, who not only unleashes Aschenbach's sudden homoerotic desire but also leads him to feast on cholera-infested strawberries that eventually kill him.

Since Tadzio, the object of Aschenbach's forbidden love, is always an object of adoration and never a subject, it is easy to regard him as a personification of art. Aschenbach's admiration of Tadzio is almost religious: Tadzio is depicted as an "angel" when he is seen to follow "the Summoner," the angel of death, embodied by Tadzio: "It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner out there smiled at him and beckoned; () And, as so often before, he rose to follow."

In the face of cholera, religion, in "Death in Venice," gets replaced with art as a spiritual experience; earthly love becomes a substitute for personal faith.

The title of Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Katherine Anne Porter's short story "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" of 1936 is clearly a reference to the Bible.

The story borrows its title from Revelation 6:1-8, with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse as the Conqueror on a white horse, War on a red horse, Famine on a black horse and Death on a pale horse.

There are almost no literary works dealing with the 1918 influenza pandemic, except for Porter's short story. A narrator tells the story of Miranda, a newspaper woman, and Adam, a soldier, and the suffering that both endure because of their influenza illnesses. Adam eventually succumbs, but Miranda only learns of his death later.

Before Adam's death, Miranda and Adam recall prayers and songs from their childhood faith. They both say that now "[i]t doesn't sound right, somehow," meaning their childhood songs and prayers are no longer valuable, and their attempt to take comfort in the bluegrass song "Pale Horse Pale Rider" in the face of Adam's impending death fails, too.

There is little scholarship on Porter's interesting story, but English professor Jane Fisheraptly notes how Porter invokes new literary techniques and lessons learned from the Black Death in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider." While personal faith is in this story under consideration as a source of solace and relief, it is ultimately rejected.

Stephen Kings The Stand begins with a super-flu that wipes out most of the human population and ends with a battle between good and evil. (Doubleday)

Other literary works that engage with pandemics show a similar course, both in highbrow and more popular genres. Albert Camus' "The Plague" of 1947 was celebrated as an existentialist classic, where faith and religion have no place and individual effort is impossible.

In Stephen King's 1978 tome "The Stand," all characters surviving the apocalyptic and fictitious "super-influenza" appear apathetic, beyond religion. And Fermina Daza, the lover of the main protagonist in Gabriel Garca Mrquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera" grows to despise her religion.

We do not yet fully know how the coronavirus will affect societies in either deepening ties to faith or disillusionment from religious institutions. But it will be interesting to see what today's authors will write about how humanity survived the pandemic of 2020.

Agnes Mueller is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at University of South Carolina.The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The Conversation is wholly responsible for the content.

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What literature tells about people's struggle with faith in a pandemic - The Oakland Press

Human Behavior

A New Way to Calculate the Price of Carbon Pollution – State of the Planet

August 18, 2020 medical

by Noah Kaufman|August 17, 2020

October 8, 2018 was the day it became clear that carbon pricing had a problem.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new study on the risks of climate change that would spur a surge of action from policymakers and activists rallying around the goal of rapidly reducing emissions to net zero. Hours later, economist William Nordhaus was awarded a Nobel Prize for his path-breaking work on climate change, and in particular, developing an analytical approach that highlights carbon pricing as a powerful tool to reduce emissions while constraining the costs of decarbonization.

The irony, however, was that the approach that Nordhaus pioneered is not well suited for the pursuit of net zero goals. He recommends setting carbon prices using the social cost of carbon, which is an estimate of the damages caused by an additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions. And the scenario Nordhaus highlighted in his Nobel Lecture showed an optimal emissions pathway to over 4 degrees warming in the 2100s, causing many to wonder: is carbon pricing the wrong tool for the job?

In a new study in Nature Climate Change, we reconcile this tension with an approach for setting carbon prices that is consistent with goals of both climate experts (i.e. an equitable pathway to net zero) and economists (i.e. an efficient policy response). The Near Term to Net Zero (NT2NZ) approach entails selecting an emissions pathway to a net zero target that balances the risks of even-higher temperature changes with the additional costs of decarbonizing faster. The next step is to estimate the carbon prices needed, alongside a broad climate policy strategy, for consistency with the desired emissions pathway.

Estimating a social cost of carbon requires global projections of changes in climate impacts, technologies, and human behavior over centuries, as well as value-laden judgments to weigh impacts across different groups and times. In contrast, NT2NZ estimates focus on how carbon prices will reduce emissions in the near term (e.g. the next decade), when the projections of energy-economic models are most useful, and calls for periodically revising the analysis to capture the most up-to-date information.

U.S. CO2 emissions pathways to net zero and its associated NT2NZ CO2 prices. In figure at left, historical emissions (black) and pathways consistent with a straight-line path to net zero in the target year. Right, ranges of CO2 prices in 2025 and 2030 needed to reduce net emissions on each of the three pathways. Black dots reflect benchmark scenario NT2NZ prices. Black lines represent the ranges of CO2 prices in 2019 proposals to the U.S. Congress.

NT2NZ is a new way to think about answering one of climate economists oldest questionswhat is the right carbon price?but it only formalizes what policymakers figured out years ago. The United Kingdom, for instance, has already adopted a net zero target with near-term carbon budgets to act as stepping-stones. In fact, the Paris Agreement encourages such an approach, calling on nations to produce both long-term low greenhouse gas emissions strategies and near-term commitments that are updated every five years.

Our studys empirical results show that putting the United States on a pathway to net zero emissions in 2050 requires carbon prices around $50 per ton in 2025 and $100 in 2030. You may notice these carbon prices are modest compared to other prominent estimates, despite the transformational shift to a net zero emissions pathway. Thats because NT2NZ leaves open the possibility that innovation makes clean technologies much more competitive over time, and it assumes the carbon price is just one part of a multi-pronged policy strategy to overcome the many barriers to emissions reductions.

Our results are for one country, and from one model, and undertaken prior to the COVID-19 crisis, so they should be interpreted with considerable caution. However, the important role of a carbon price in a net zero pathway is robust as long as the carbon prices are designed for the job at hand.

Noah Kaufman is a research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy.

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A New Way to Calculate the Price of Carbon Pollution - State of the Planet

Human Behavior

Why You Should Do What Others Say Cant Be Done – Forbes

August 18, 2020 medical

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft launches on the mission to the ... [+] International Space Station.

How to overcome common obstacles to innovation

On August 2, SpaceXs Dragon spacecraft splashed down into the Gulf of Mexico, ending a historic two-month mission that demonstrated that a relatively small private company could successfully take people to space and back. As CNN reported, this mission has paved the way for the United States to once again become a world leader in human spaceflight.

Yet, SpaceXs success was anything but preordained. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, who wanted to make affordable spaceflight a reality. Despite these grand ambitions, most experts doubted the company would ever be successful. According to The Washington Post, one industry veteran dismissed SpaceX as a long shot by saying, you know their rockets are put together with rubber bands and sealing wax. Its not real. It wont fly.

Congress was also skeptical as some members wondered why NASA would bother awarding contracts to two companies to build capsules to fly astronauts to the International Space Station under NASAs Commercial Crew Program. Just let Boeing do it.

Even Elon Musk himself had doubts about SpaceX and initially gave the company a 10 percent chance at succeeding. Yet, this prognostication never stopped him from trying to create a better future. When he was recently asked about those that doubted the company, he said their probability assessment was correct. Fortunately, fate smiled upon us and brought us to this day.

The lesson from this: If you want to innovate, focus your energy on doing what others say cant be done because that is where the best opportunities lie.

Impossible is relative

Innovation can be described as the pursuit of the impossible, but who decides what is and isnt possible? The story of SpaceX underscores the idea that everything seems impossible until somebody proves otherwise.Impossible is a static perception of the current situation when, in reality, we live in a dynamic world - one continually being redefined by innovation.

The story also demonstrates that this limited view is often reinforced by so-called experts, who use their specialized knowledge to make judgments on what is and isnt possible. Come to find out, experts have a pretty bad track record on imagining the future. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan, said that the problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know.

SpaceX is just one of many examples where the experts were wrong. For instance, it was once believed that it would be impossible for humans ever to fly. In 1902, physicist and the Director of the US Naval Observatory, Simon Newcomb, said, flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible. Yet, only a year later, in December 1903, the Wright Brothers took off from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in what would become the first-ever successful heavier than air flight.

And again, in 1949, John Von Neumann, who was widely regarded as the foremost mathematician of his time and himself a computer scientist, was quoted as saying, it would appear that we have reached the limits of what is possible to achieve with computer technology. To his credit, he was aware that peoples understanding of what is possible is relative, and went on to say,although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in five years.

These examples reinforce the point that what seems impossible today is relative, and you cant allow it to limit your vision of the future; otherwise, you are likely to find yourself looking back at the missed opportunities for innovation along the way.

Nelson Mandela may have summed it up best when he said: It always seems impossible until its done.

When pursuing what has never been done before, you will likely encounter many perceived limitations that get in your way but you cant stop. So here are some strategies you can use to overcome these common obstacles.

Scientific or Logical Limitations

During my time at Cree, we were often told that what we were trying to do would never work. Early only, a prominent LED scientist said to me that the material system Cree was developing could never make a reliable LED. He noted that the physics simply wouldnt work. Fortunately, the scientists at Cree didnt listen to the experts. And they eventually proved them wrong by developing a blue LED that would not only disrupt the LED business but transform the lighting industry as well.

It is crucial to keep in mind that science is always evolving. And if you go into any problem with the belief that it cant be solved, then it will likely become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This idea is captured in the French proverb that says, to believe a thing impossible is to make it so.

So, next time someone tells you that you cant do something because its scientifically impossible, just remember thats only true if you choose to believe it is.

Human Behavioral Limitations

When working on a new product or disruptive idea, it is common to be told by more experienced industry veterans that nobody will want your new thing they will claim that people are happy with what they have today.

Human behavior is indeed hard to change because most people find comfort in the way things are todaypsychologists how shown that most of us are wired to resist change.However, great innovators dont stop there; they go beyond peoples initial resistance and find a way to reset what they are comfortable with.

Consider that if you went back ten years and tried to convince someone that people would take out their phone, push a button, and a stranger in a car would pick them up at their current location and drop them off without ever exchanging cash, you would likely be laughed out of the room. Most people would be adamant that this situation would be not only impossible, but also undesirable.

Yet, this is now what is happening all across the world where more than 14 million Uber trips happen each day. It has become our new normal.

So when someone tells you that nobody would ever want to do that recognize that it is your opportunity to show them and the customer that there is actually a better way.

Self-Imposed Limitations

How many times have you said to yourself, I could never do that!

In my experience, it is quite common for people to react to new challenges with thoughts about whats not possible.Whether this self-doubt comes purely from our personal concerns or is fueled by others, you have to overcome this limitation if you are going to innovate.

The key to doing this is to reframe how you think about yourself. Simply put, you have to believe in you. Glenn Reid, the founder of Marathon Machines and creator of iMovie and iPhoto, described his journey this way: Early on, I kind of realized, whatever my life is, Im going to decide it. And its up to me to do something.

If you want to innovate, dont allow self-doubt to get in your way.Instead, take responsibility for what you choose to believe and recognize that anything is possible if you set your mind to it and are willing to work hard enough to make it happen.

So the next time someone says something is impossible, recognize that the best ideas often come from what others say cant be done, and take it as a signal that its probably the next thing you should pursue.

Human Behavior

SIUE’s Sasso Named Vice Chair For Convention Programs Of ACPA’s Coalition On College Men And Masculinities – RiverBender.com

August 18, 2020 medical

EDWARDSVILLE Developing future campus leaders who will inspire next generation students through inclusivity and care, is a critically important task that educators like Southern Illinois University Edwardsvilles Pietro Sasso, PhD, do not take lightly.

Sasso excels in that mission as assistant professor and immediate past director of the Universitys College Student Personnel Administration (CSPA) program. His influential work and its reach are being further amplified as he serves as the Vice Chair for Convention Programs of the American College Personnel Associations (ACPA) Coalition on College Men and Masculinities (CMM).

Sasso assumed this national position in August, joining a leadership team comprising distinguished scholars and administrators from across the nation. In his new role, he will coordinate the CMMs sponsored programming review process while serving as a reviewer for sponsored program proposals. Additionally, he will assist in coordinating activities for the annual ACPA Convention and future ACPA events.

I am really looking forward to expanding my leadership with CMM to continue to facilitate research discussions that pushes the constructs of intersecting masculinities and the theoretical complexities of multiple masculinities, said Sasso. This will also inform my own teaching of our CSPA students as it challenges our conceptualization of college male identifying populations within the margins, and those who are edged to the boundaries of campus support systems.

The broad aim of the CMM is to promote mens development throughout college campuses. The coalitions vision is to focus on marginalized understandings of college masculinity, centering the experiences of men who experience systemic oppression. Our hope is that by centering these voices to be heard, new conceptions of what it means to be a man can emerge and influence educational research and practice. This aligns with Sassos current research focused on topics of masculinity in higher education.

In 2017, Sasso was named an Emerging Scholar in Residence by the CMM for his prior research related to men and masculinity within student affairs and higher education. During his two-year residency, Sasso worked with fellow emerging researchers and supported the work of the coalition as a resident expert by authoring critical thought pieces and delivering conference presentations.

Sasso has two forthcoming publications exploring masculinity on college campuses: an article for the Journal of Critical Scholarship in Higher Education & Student Affairs exploring white supremacy in college male student protests, and a text on multiracial masculinity, tentatively titled, Intersecting the Borders of Manhood: Multiracial Masculinities among American College Students. During his board service, he will continue to investigate such topics while developing programming to raise awareness of the ideas and issues surrounding men and masculinity in higher education.

To learn more about the CMM, visit myacpa.org/scmm.

The SIUE School of Education, Health and Human Behavior prepares students in a wide range of fields including public health, exercise science, nutrition, instructional technology, psychology, speech-language pathology and audiology, educational administration, and teaching. Faculty members engage in leading-edge research, which enhances teaching and enriches the educational experience. The School supports the community through on-campus clinics, outreach to children and families, and a focused commitment to enhancing individual lives across the region.

SIUEs Pietro Sasso, PhD, assistant professor and immediate past director of the CSPA program.

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SIUE's Sasso Named Vice Chair For Convention Programs Of ACPA's Coalition On College Men And Masculinities - RiverBender.com

Human Behavior

Only the nose knows: New international network explores how odors lead to actions – CU Boulder Today

August 18, 2020 medical

CU Boulder will lead a groundbreaking new international research network dubbed Odor2Action starting this fall. The work is aimed at understanding how animals use information from odors in their environment to guide behavior, with far-ranging implications for our understanding of the human brain.

The network was announced Monday as part of the Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience (NeuroNex) Program. Over the next five years, CU Boulder will be leading 16 scientists from 16 prestigious institutions around the world to better understand the brain and its evolution by reverse-engineering how it interprets odors. The project is funded by a $20.2 million award from the National Science Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the UK Research and Innovation Medical Research Council.

The network will examine all the steps involved in how an odor stimulus gets encoded by the brain and then activates the motor circuits to produce a behavioral response in an animal. The model species they will work with to do this, like fruit flies and mice, will make headway in understanding these same steps in humans.

Theres a lot of engineering involved in understanding what odors look like.In John Crimaldi's lab, he and his colleagues use lasers to track them. (Credit: Glenn Asakawa, CU Boulder)

The chemical sensing process (i.e. smell) evolved in the very earliest life forms on Earth, said John Crimaldi, lead principal investigator on the network and professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at CU. The idea here is that all brain evolution has taken place in the presence of chemical sensing. And so it's thought to be a primal portal from which to view brain function.

While Crimaldi and CU Boulder have previously received significant awards to research how animals find the source of an odor, this project is much broader and aims to understand the whole brain and the mechanism that goes into a behavioral response to smelling something.

Crimaldi said smell is the least understood sense and that humans have struggled to replicate odor-based searches with machines. Doing so, however, would allow robots to take over treacherous duties instead of humans or dogs, unlocking a new area of advancement for autonomous systems. These robots could one day rescue a person buried in an avalanche, locate valuable natural resources, or find chemical weapons and explosives on their own, for example.

Keith Molenaar, interim dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science, said the network was truly a special project and among the largest the college had ever been involved in. He said the work would result in transformational research around our understanding of the brain that could also lead to cures for diseases that connect to our sense of smellor even understanding why loss of smell is a symptom of some diseases like COVID-19 among many other areas and across many different fields.

The fact that an engineer, Professor John Crimaldi, is leading a group of neuroscientists, mathematicians and biologists, speaks to the truly interdisciplinary nature of the research, Molenaar said.

The network is composed of three interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs) that form a loop in animal sensing and behavior. The first is focused on theoretical mathematics and mapping to better understand how the characteristics of smells are encoded in the brain. The second builds on this and will determine how the encoded odors produce a behavioral response. The third group will investigate how this behavioral response alters the animals perception of the odor it is sensing.

As an engineer, Crimaldi said he never expected to end up working in neuroscience but it turns out theres a lot of engineering involved in understanding what odors look like. He currently studies fluid mechanics from a theoretical perspective; using lasers in a non-intrusive way to measure flowslike odorsthrough air and liquids. Hes looked at everything from why coral reproduction underwater is successful to how animals can tell where a smell is coming from.

Life forms have evolved to take advantage of specific opportunities and constraints that are imposed by their physical environment, Crimaldi said. I like to say we don't just use physics to understand biology or ecology, or the brain. We also use evolutionary processes that have evolved in animals to help us understand details of what's going on in the physical world.

Partners include Caltech, Penn State University, Duke University, Salk Institute, University of Utah, University of Pittsburgh, NYU School of Medicine, McGill University, Scripps Research, Arizona State University, Francis Crick Institute, University of Hertfordshire, Yale University and Weill Cornell.

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Only the nose knows: New international network explores how odors lead to actions - CU Boulder Today

Human Behavior

Jim Parsons (Hollywood): Theres something else going on in the air right now in Hollywood [WATCH] – Gold Derby

August 18, 2020 medical

I will say when I first read it, I think I was scared of it, reveals Jim Parsons about his role as real-life talent agent Henry Willson in the Netflix series Hollywood. The actors performance has earned him an Emmy nomination for Best Movie/Mini Supporting Actor, his ninth career bid. Parsons previously took home four Best Comedy Actor Emmys for his role as Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory. But as Parsons told us in an interview prior to the Emmy Nominations (watch above), playing Willson was a new and ultimately rewarding experience.

The role of Willson marked a dramatic departure for Parsons, both physically and emotionally. The actor spent hours in the makeup chair everyday, something that he says enhanced his ability to get into the characters mind. I just felt different after I came out of there, he says. Id never been through a hair and makeup process like that. It was a very helpful, freeing thing that I had never experienced before. Despite Willson being the complete antithesis of Sheldon Cooper, Parsons says that there was a certain connection between both roles. Really, when I first started playing Sheldon on Big Bang was probably the last time, certainly on camera, that I played a character that felt so colorful and complicated to me, at least, and full of possibilities, he exclaims. And again, once you get past the, Oh, thats horrible human behavior, for an actor its very fun to portray.

When it came Willsons bad behavior, which ranged from verbal abuse to sexual manipulation, Parsons went to great lengths to try to get at the source of Willsons unhappiness. I do think that theres just no doubt having to protect himself from his own sexuality being revealed, living in a world that vilified him at several different turns, he knew that whether it was happening to him personally or not, thats just the way of the world. I think that obviously can cause a self-hatred and help cause bad behavior in that way.

Parsons says that he felt a very real connection between the seriess period setting and the entertainment world of today, particular in discussions of racial and gender inequality within the industry. Theres something else going on in the air right now in Hollywood, in the world in general, he explains. And that felt good. That felt like something worth doing.

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Dont miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?

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Jim Parsons (Hollywood): Theres something else going on in the air right now in Hollywood [WATCH] - Gold Derby

Human Behavior

Kurokawa Ihoko: Exploring Men’s and Women’s Thinking to Foster Diversity – Nippon.com

August 18, 2020 medical

Claiming differences based on gender is a perilous business, but artificial intelligence researcher Kurokawa Ihoko boldly asserts that mens and womens brains function in distinct ways. She argues that understanding these differences is key to better communication between the sexes and the first step in promoting gender diversity.

Do men and women really have different brains? While neuroanatomy research strongly suggests this is not the case, there is no shortage of books penned by scientists and armchair experts alike pushing theories that many experts decry as nothing less than neurosexism.

Artificial intelligence expert Kurokawa Ihoko, herself the author of numerous works on the topic of behavior and the brain, refutes the idea that neural structure varies by sex, stating firmly that inside our skulls, everyones wired the same. Why is it, then, that men and women so often fail to see eye to eye? According to Kurokawa, the reason is that the sexes rely on different neural pathways, causing them to perceive their surroundings in fundamentally different wayssomething she calls the sensibility dilemma.

The term sensibility, or kansei in Japanese, describes the ways in which humans perceive and react to environmental stimuli, and Kurokawa argues that the triggering of certain neural circuits determines how a person will respond. Theres no question that the brains of men and women are structurally the same, she explains. Where the difference lies is in the areas that become active under certain conditions. These, she says, typically follow gender-based patterns. In this sense, you can say that men and women have different brains.

As calls for creating a more diverse society grow, such claims might be considered to be out of step with the times. However, Kurokawa insists that to foster better communication, it is vital to recognize that men and women convey their thoughts in different manners. One area Kurokawa has focused on is domestic relationships. As the pandemic forces people to stay at home more, Japan has seen an uptick in so-called corona divorces. Kurokawa maintains that couples can help reduce household tensions by being conscious of each others sensibility patterns, thereby keeping tempers from boiling over and making it easier to find common ground.

Kurokawas theory has it that there are two models of brain sensitivity. When people feel agitated or stressed, specific neural pathways activate, she explains. One major group allows us to concentrate on objects that are at a distance and another heightens our awareness of our immediate surroundings. In Kurokawas view, male brains developed to identify and deal with problems on the fly, a remnant of when our ancestors had to track game and defend against exterior threats, while female brains became fine-tuned for social awareness and knowledge-sharing, necessary skills for child rearing.

She categorizes these patterns of neural activity as the male goal-oriented, problem-solving model and the female process-oriented, empathetic model. While humanity is now largely sedentary, she argues that the relics of our past way of life live on in our communication styles. Kurokawa explains that when agitated or stressed, people subconsciously process and relate information according to one of the two models. Men tend to be linear in their approach and focus on finding solutions, whereas women are generally more intuitive and attuned to what others are thinking.

Kurokawa admits her models are not foolproof. Peoples environments influence their behavior, she says. Not everyone has the same stress triggers, either. Just because a person is born a male doesnt mean they always think like one. She notes that almost all people are able to consciously utilize both male and female sensibility models when calm and collected. However, this ability declines dramatically when a person is pressed to respond or deciding something on the spur of the moment.

She underscores that all too often couples find themselves at opposing ends of the sensibility spectrum, where they end up inadvertently pushing each others buttons. When tensions rise, people instinctively revert to their dominate sensibility model, she says, opening a divide between parties and causing communication to break down. The tendency for people to feel justified in their views and downplay others perspectives only worsens the situation.

The genesis of Kurokawas sensibility models was her research into artificial intelligence. I set out to develop an AI system that could effectively communicate with humans. she explains. To do this, I had to teach it to receive and relate information in the same fashion as people do. Approaching the topic from a different angle than neurobiology and psychology, she says as her research progressed, she began to recognize two styles of communication, one focused on problem solving and the other on shared emotions.

According to Kurokawa, emotional triggers drive the female dominated empathetic model. For example, when a woman complains to a female friend of an ailment, the goal is not just to relate her condition but to entice her conversation partner to acknowledge and share in her feelings. This back-and-forth is repeated over and over in the course of the conversation, unconsciously increasing each participants awareness of possible causes of the malady as well as potential remedies.

The process hits a wall, however, when faced with a partner whose empathetic neural circuits are not fully engaged, as is common with the problem-solving model dominant in males. For instance, a wife wanting to share her misadventures from earlier in the day might be met with a husband who listens halfheartedly or seems mainly interested in pointing out causes for the troubles. Communication quickly breaks down, sending stress levels through the roof. Such a scenario can be averted, though, if the husband, instead of focusing on the whys, shares in his wifes ordeal.

As with many theories of human behavior, Kurokawas sensibility models are general enough to strike a chord with large swaths of the population but are frustratingly vague on the finer details. Take, for instance, the claim that men and women evolved different patterns of neural activity as a reproductive strategy. While this seems plausible on the surface, it suggests that motherhood stands at the pinnacle of female brain development. Kurokawa adamantly says this is not the case. A womans hormonal balance necessarily shifts during pregnancy and childrearing, heightening her attentiveness to her offspring, she explains. But this in no way means that the brain of a woman without children is somehow less mature. She points to her own experience with raising a family. I know how easy it is for a mother to succumb to tunnel vision when raising kids, and I often sought out the advice of my childless friends to get a different perspective.

Although her theory seems to echo long-standing gender stereotypes, Kurokawa hopes fostering understanding of the different sensibility models will encourage greater diversity in society. A persons sex isnt an absolute determinant of which model is dominant, she asserts. There are men who come under the empathetic model just as there are women who are inclined toward problem solving. Its important to have a mixture of views and approaches, so rather than fixating solely on bridging the womens leadership gap in Japan, organizations in the public and private sectors need decision makers and regular employees who have neural diversity. People of all ages, genders, and mindsets need to be working together.

This is often easier said than done, however. Sensibility bias can hamper our abilities to see other peoples perspectives as equally valid. Returning to relationships, Kurokawa says that superficial traits like looks, talents, or bravado are typically thought to endear us to our partners, but that the subtle ways couples interact and build trust are what make or break relationships. Our brains crave connections. Reaching out to a partner for help or sharing hidden chinks in ones armor are necessary parts of building strong bonds.

As many countries struggle in their responses to the coronavirus pandemic, female leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have won accolades for their empathetic leadership styles. Kurokawa notes that fighting the newly emerged disease calls for a unified approach and that these female heads of state have done a commendable job of rallying their nations to the cause by acknowledging peoples unease.

She laments that Japanese leaders have not been as conscious of the concerns of the population during the health crisis and doubts that the government could duplicate the approach of Merkel and others merely by boosting the number of female legislators, given that women are expected to behave the same as their male counterparts. Female ministers have typically been guided in their approaches by the male-dominated norms of office, she says. She insists that women need to play to their strengths to truly impact how the country is run. I would love to see a woman in office making an active effort to connect with people on a human level. As an example, she points to Prime Minister Ardern, who as a mother of a small child does not hide the fact that her duties also include changing diapers.

Kurokawa jests that there is an upside to Japans linear-thinking response to the coronavirus. You could say that the government in taking a trial-and-error approach convinced people of the need to keep a close eye on what was happening around them, she chuckles. She points to Prime Minister Abe Shinzs decision to provide cloth masks, items that many people had no use for, to the entire nation rather than focusing more resources on supporting medical workers on the front lines.

As the pandemic rages on, Kurokawa notes that leaders are being called on to utilize both goal-oriented and empathetic sensibility models. There are situations when heartfelt communication is called for and others when getting things done is top priority. In times of uncertainty, she says that government leaders need to be able to tap into either model as circumstances demand, an admittedly tall order for some politicians. It is equally vital to increase awareness of the different sensibility models and bring people with different perspectives into the political realm. The coronavirus crisis touches everyone. To ensure the safety and health of the entire country, we need people with different ideas and viewpoints involved in creating new, innovative solutions.

(Originally published in Japanese. Interview and text by Itakura Kimie of Nippon.com. All photos by Hanai Tomoko.)

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Human Behavior

Characteristics that Give Viruses Pandemic Potential – The Scientist

August 18, 2020 medical

Even before COVID-19 swept across the globe this year, coronaviruses were on scientists radar as pathogens that could one day ignite a pandemic. Theyd threatened to beforein 200203, the SARS virus infected 8,000 people in more than two dozen countries and killed almost 800and they checked off several specific boxes that emerging infectious disease specialists worry about in a virus. But theyre not the only group of viruses that researchers are concerned about. Influenza and a handful of other viruses have long been viewed as pandemic threats.

One aspect that signals pandemic potential in a virus is having an RNA, rather than DNA, genome. Thats because the process of copying RNA typically doesnt include a proofreader like DNA replication does, and so RNA viruses have higher mutation rates than the DNA variety. This means they can change and become more adaptable to human infection and human transmission, says Steve Luby, an epidemiologist at Stanford University.

Researchers on the lookout for dangerous pathogens also pay close attention to viruses with track records of leaping from animals to people. Smallpox, measles, Ebola, and HIV all originated in animals, as Luby estimates that 80 percent of our most devastating infections did.

An RNA virus that causes respiratory tract infections can evolve into something we havent seen before and spread rapidly.

Ralph Baric, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Once a virus makes the zoonotic leap from animals to humans, it must then transmit from one person to the next if it is to cause an epidemic. In this respect, SARS-CoV-2 seems to outperform the original and deadlier SARS coronavirus, MERS coronavirus, and some bird flu strains. But these less-transmissible viruses could always acquire some new mutation that revs up their R0, the expected number of infections caused by one person, increasing their potential to spread rapidly through human populations, says Raina Plowright, an infectious disease researcher at Montana State University.

How a virus is transmitted is yet another consideration when evaluating its pandemic potential. The most concerning situation is when a virus can spread through respiratory droplets, allowing it to jump from person to person through close interactions, as is the case for the seasonal flu and also SARS-CoV-2. An RNA virus that causes respiratory tract infections can evolve into something we havent seen before and spread rapidly, says Ralph Baric, a virologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Measles, an RNA paramyxovirus spread through respiratory secretions, is perhaps the most contagious disease known in humans.

As the world continues to grapple with SARS-CoV-2, The Scientistasked virologists to rank viruses with the greatest potential to cause a future pandemic. Three answers routinely popped up: influenza, coronaviruses, and paramyxoviruses, a large family of viruses that includes mumps and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), as well as Nipah virus, which researchers say poses the biggest pandemic threat among them. There are lots of concerns to keep communicable disease epidemiologists up at night, says Luby.

Prior to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, most virologists rated influenza as the most likely agent to trigger a deadly pandemic. The 1918 flu pandemic caused an estimated 50 million to 100 million deaths over two years, and there have been three flu pandemics sincein 195758, in 1968, and most recently in 2009.

Influenza is an RNA virus and thus prone to mutation, which necessitates a new seasonal flu vaccine each year. Virologists classify influenza strains according to two surface proteins: the hemagglutinin (H) protein that binds to a receptor on target cells and the neuraminidase (N) protein that virus particles use to escape host cells. There are 18 hemagglutinin subtypes and 11 neuraminidase subtypes. Its likely that all permutations occur influenza viruses that affect in influenza viruses that affect birds but only a handful have cropped up in those that infect people. Over the last one hundred or so years, we have had pandemics and seasonal epidemics caused by only three of the eighteen H subtypes and two of the eleven N subtypes, says virologist Kanta Subbarao, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne.

From time to time, influenza viruses in ducks and shorebirds spill over to infect domestic poultry and sometimes pigs. The H protein is critical. Concern mounts whenever the H protein of a bird flu virus gains the ability to infect human cells. This allows the virus to jump to humans, introducing people to a new strain with avian proteins to which they have little or no immunity. So far, says Luby, the H7N9 and H5N1 viruses still primarily connect to the cellular receptors in birds, but sometimes they infect people and cause serious disease.

The concern is that some of the viruses with killer characteristics might change in a way that allows them to more easily spread from person to person. Indeed, influenza has a radical way to shapeshift. Its RNA genome is split into eight segments. When two different subtypes of virus, be they bird or mammalian strains, are in one cell, viral segments can be shuffled to create entirely new strains. Pigs are suspected to be ideal viral melting pots. Pigs carry similar receptors to humans, and they can be infected by avian and mammalian viruses, says Subbarao. The 1957 and 1968 flu pandemics were caused by reassortant viruses, with some gene segments from avian influenza viruses and other segments from circulating human flu viruses. It is long proposed that this [mixing] happened in an intermediate host, possibly pigs.

The WHO has a constellation of national labs to watch for emerging strains of flu, and now collaborates closely with the World Organisation for Animal Health. We want to pick up any novel influenza viruses in animals, Subbarao explains. Scientists recently became concerned, for example, when a swine influenza variant of H1N1, called G4, circulating in pigs was shown to be able to infect and replicate in human epithelial cells. The virus carries genes from the H1N1 subtype that caused the 2009 flu pandemic.

Pandemic pathogens are rare, however, and are by their nature difficult to predict. We do know there are some things we should worry about, Luby says, yet we tend to get caught off guard.

Both the SARS and MERS coronaviruses are deadlier than SARS-CoV-2. Fortunately, human-to-human transmission of SARS and MERS is relatively low. But there is a tremendous diversity of coronaviruses in bat species. They mostly infect the gut, but can replicate in lung tissue as well. After the SARS outbreak in 200203, scientists searched for coronaviruses in bats in Chinese caves and found a trove of them in common insectivorous species. Moreover, antibodies identified in the blood of people in southern China suggest that some human populations are routinely exposed to bat coronaviruses. This gives the viruses ample opportunity to adapt to people.

Harbingers of coronaviruses propensity to jump to new species are the lethal outbreaks that often occur on farms. Three devastating swine coronavirus strains have emerged in pigs in the last couple of decades. These viruses are on the move, says Baric. He worries that we have toggled on a switch to promote coronavirus emergence from animal reservoirs into other mammalian species, including ourselves. This is mostly linked to human behavior, such as consumption and farming of wild animals in certain countries. Markets where lots of animals are in cages together can mean more animal transmission and more humans getting infected, says Luby, who says he believes China should close all its wet markets.

Our immediate highest risk is coronaviruses.

Steve Luby, Stanford University

The current coronavirus pandemic along with the first SARS outbreak are not the first we have experienced. MERS coronavirus seems to have been in camels for decades, occasionally infecting people. It has now caused 2,400 cases, mostly in the Arabian Peninsula. Some virologists say that the coronaviruses that are now endemic in people, causing common cold symptoms, may have sparked deadly pandemics when they first made the jump from animals to humans. The OC43 coronavirus, for example, seems to have come from bats via cattle and there is evidence that it caused a pandemic in the 1890s, says Baric.

Now, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, some researchers rank coronaviruses as the biggest threat. Id put coronavirus ahead of flu, says Luby. It demonstrated higher case fatalitynot with SARS-CoV-2, but we have seen it with SARS and MERS, and it looks like the live markets in China are allowing coronaviruses associated with bats to spread to other mammals. Our immediate highest risk is coronaviruses.

In 1994, a mysterious disease broke out in horses in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia, called Hendra. Twenty-one horses fell severely ill from a pathogen that was soon named Hendra virus. Then, a vet attending to the sick horses died from the virus, whose origin was traced to fruit bats in the genus Pteropus(aka, flying foxes). Four years later, a related virus called Nipah virus was identified as the cause of an outbreak among pig farmers in Malaysia. Two million infected pigs were slaughtered, halting the outbreak. In 2001, researchers realized that outbreaks of Nipah virus in people happened each year in Bangladesh, primarily from people drinking the sap of date trees that was contaminated with bat urine. But there didnt appear to be human-to-human transmission.

In 2018, however, an outbreak in southern India suggested that human-to-human transmission of Nipah virus was possible through close contact. A 27-year-old villager, who may have contracted the virus from fruit contaminated by bat saliva or urine, was admitted to the hospital in Kerala state and infected nine other people, including fellow patients, visiting relatives, and medical staff. He was referred to another hospital, where more patients and medical workers were infected. Twenty-one of the 23 infected people died from severe respiratory sickness and/or brain inflammation. One reason it doesnt take off is because it makes people so sick so quickly that they tend to be hospitalized and isolated, says Plowright, who studies bats and Nipah virus outbreaks. But Nipah viruss fatality rate of between 50 percent and 100 percent is exactly what makes it such a concern.

Nipah and Hendra belong to a group of paramyxoviruses now called henipavirus, and there are many more strains harbored in flying foxes in Asia, Oceania, and Africa, says Plowright. Although henipaviruses have not yet caused widespread outbreaks in people, other paramyxoviruses, such as measles and mumps, have. Some of these viruses spread really well, says Rebecca Dutch, a molecular biologist at the University of Kentucky. If Nipah moved efficiently from one person to another, perhaps mutating so it transmits before making someone really sick, this would be devasting, says Luby, more like the Black Plague.

Viruses that did not top the list but still demand attention are filoviruses such as Ebola and Marburg virus, which cause hemorrhagic fever and can infect apes, monkeys, and bats, in addition to humans. The fact that Ebola requires blood or body fluids to be transmitted means that it is harder to transmit and so less likely to be a global threat, explains Luby. And as with Nipah virus infections, people get sick quickly and thus are isolated early. For a filovirus to cause a pandemic, it would need to be transmissible in respiratory form or spread readily in diarrhea, experts say, and its not yet clear how easily that might happen. The big question is, what is the diversity of the Ebola viruses in nature? says Baric.

Other viruses that scientists are keeping tabs on include those in the Bunyavirus and Arenavirus families, which primarily infect rodents, and mosquito-transmitted dengue, Zika virus, and West Nile virus. Vector-borne pathogens have the potential to infect two billion people, says Baric, but if you are in the northern latitudes it may be low risk for you. As the geographical range of mosquitoes spreads to higher latitudes with climate change, however, so too will the diversity of the pathogens they carry.

There is also disease X. The WHO uses this term to acknowledge that a serious epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease. But studying an undescribed pathogen is a tall order. Until SARS emerged in 2002, those who study coronaviruses had trouble getting anyone to fund their research, says Dutch. There certainly could be things out there we dont know about.

Experts warn that humans are creating conditions for more viral spillover events by disrupting natural habitats and by packing different wild animals together in wildlife markets. We are creating the perfect storm for new viruses to emerge, says Plowright, who recently coauthored a review on bat-borne virus diversity, spillover, and emergence. Despite this, the scientific community is largely unable to accurately forecast future outbreaks, she adds. No one predicted that a flu pandemic [2009] would come from pigs in Mexico, says Plowright. We have to keep an open mind as to what the next pathogen outbreak is going to be.

But researchers are hopeful that our experience with COVID-19 will turn the tide of pandemic preparedness. As Luby says, I anticipate there will be more attention to these threats.

Huge diversity in insectivorous bats and fruit-eating bats. Horseshoe bats (genus Rhinolophus) in Southeast Asia harbor SARS-like coronaviruses.

Water birds, poultry, and domestic pigs. Some outbreaks in dogs and horses.

Some family members abundant in fruit bats.

Four common cold coronaviruses may have origins in bats, possibly in last few centuries. SARS caused an outbreak during 200304. MERS continues to infect people, presumably jumping from camels.

Numerous pandemics throughout human history were likely due to flu. Confirmed flu pandemics include the devastating 1918 pandemic, as well as pandemics in 195758, 1969, and 2009.

Hendra virus infected horses and people first in 1994. Nipah virus first recorded in pigs and humans in 1998.

Varies hugely. COVID-19 possibly around 1 percent. SARS is thought to be closer to 15 percent. MERS has proved fatal in about 35 percent of patients.

In the case of the 1918 pandemic, the case fatality rate was around 2.5 percent globally.

Some of the deadliest known pathogens. Hendra virus rarely infects humans, but when it does, the fatality rate is around 50 percent. The case fatality rate for Nipah is even higher, ranging from 50 percent to 100 percent in some outbreaks.

Contact and airborne (droplets and aerosols)

Mostly urine and saliva from bats contaminating food of domestic animals and humans. Close contact between people for Nipah

Dogs, pigs, cats, cattle, camels, and others

Pigs, horses, ferrets, dogs, and poultry

Hendra virus infects horses and dogs. Nipah virus infects pigs (and lab animals such as hamsters and ferrets)

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Characteristics that Give Viruses Pandemic Potential - The Scientist

Physiology

Stomach SIDT1 mediates dietary microRNA absorption: ending of the 10-year debate – Science Codex

August 18, 2020 medical

In a new study published in Cell Research, Chen-Yu Zhang's group at Nanjing University School of Life Sciences, China, reports that SIDT1 in the mammalian stomach mediates host uptake of dietary and orally administered microRNAs (miRNAs), thus exerting biological functions in the host.

In previous studies, Chen-Yu Zhang's group has demonstrated that intact plant miRNA in foods can be absorbed through the mammalian digestive system and mediate cross-kingdom gene regulation. The discoveries also provide new insight into the oral administration of RNA therapeutic drugs. Although accumulated evidences showing the existence of intact dietary miRNAs within mammalian host, the absorption of dietary miRNAs in animal gastrointestinal tract has been frequently questioned, mainly due to the unknown mechanism of absorption.

In the current study, they show that SID-1 transmembrane family member 1 (SIDT1), mammalian homolog of SID-1 expressed on gastric pit cells in the stomach is required for the absorption of dietary miRNAs. SIDT1-deficient mice show reduced basal levels and impaired dynamic absorption of dietary miRNAs. Notably, they identified the stomach as the primary site for dietary miRNA absorption, which is dramatically attenuated in the stomachs of SIDT1-deficient mice. Mechanistic analyses revealed that the uptake of exogenous miRNAs by gastric pit cells is SIDT1 and low-pH dependent. Furthermore, oral administration of plant-derived miR2911 retards liver fibrosis, and the protective effect was abolished in SIDT1-deficient mice. This study not only reveals the major mechanism of dietary miRNA absorption, uncovers a novel physiological function of the mammalian stomach, but also shed light on orally delivered small-RNA therapeutics.

This work is important for the following reasons:

1.In this study, they demonstrated the molecular mechanism of mammalian dietary miRNA absorption, which is one of the most groundbreaking as well as most controversial discoveries in the field of extracellular RNA research in the last decade. Identification of the absorption mechanism provides strong evidence of the physiological existence and functionality of mammalian dietary miRNA absorption, thus ending the 10-year debate on this topic.2.This work also newly found that the stomach not only absorbs water and alcohol, as is broadly known in classic physiology, but also senses and takes up functional dietary miRNAs. This provides a unique new understanding of digestion physiology.3.A low-pH condition is required for efficient exogenous miRNA uptake via SIDT1. This finding reveals an evolutionary explanation for functional dietary miRNA absorption, in which the stability of dietary miRNAs is granted in stomach, where RNase activity is largely absent in this low-physiological-pH gastric environment.4.By oral administration, plant-derived miR2911 can be absorbed via SIDT1 and can subsequently alleviate liver fibrosis in mice, providing a new therapeutic strategy for small-RNA-based treatment. This natural mammalian absorption pathway of dietary miRNA will be easily harnessed for the oral delivery of therapeutic miRNAs, which could be a potential direction in for the development of RNA-based medicine.

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Physiology

The New Home of Sports Neuroscience: An Interview With Dr Jaime Tartar – Technology Networks

August 18, 2020 medical

Jaime Tartar, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Nova Southeastern University and president of the Society for NeuroSports, an academic society dedicated to the interdisciplinary collaboration between the fields of exercise science and neuroscience. Dr. Tartar completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, where she studied the neurobiology of sleep. She is widely published in many areas of neuroscience on topics ranging from basic cell physiology to neurological impairments. Her research interests are focused on the mechanisms and consequences of acute and chronic stress in humans and the impact of normal sleep and sleep deprivation on emotion processing and physiological functioning. We spoke to Dr. Tartar about the need for sports neuroscience, and how this young field is rapidly advancing.As an academic society, how does the Society for NeuroSports hope to impact the world of sports neuroscience?Jamie Tartar (JT): We aim to be able to provide an academic home to researchers working across fields. For example, those working in neuroscience, exercise science, psychology or physical therapy who are looking at brain-exercise relationships. We would also like to be able to provide those working in the applied fields a place where they can interact with academics in the field to share information and strengthen their practice.A lot of people are currently doing work in the field of sports neuroscience, but because it doesn't have an established academic organization, I don't think that researchers right now identify themselves as sport neuroscientists, even though that's what they're doing.

Initially, our goal was to hold academic conferences and we had the first one in November 2019. This conference was exactly what we hoped it would be there were researchers across disciplines sharing information and learning from each other. In fact, new and interesting collaborations also came from this conference! We would like to see this happen more at future conferences as the field and the society grows.A secondary goal for us was to create and establish the first journal in the field of sports neuroscience. We have recently done that with the launch of the Journal of the Society for NeuroSports. We are very pleased to offer this as an open access journal that does not have submission fees. We were able to do this by partnering closely with our university library that runs the journal through a special program that they have.Because sports neuroscience often involves working across disciplines, we also offer a certification in the field of sports neuroscience. This allows academics and practitioners to share their knowledge across disciplines. People like me, for example I am a neuroscientist who is working closely in the field of exercise science.If money was no object, what subsets of sports neuroscience research deserve to see the light of the day the most?JT: I think that's a difficult question to answer. Most researchers would certainly pick their area because we love what we do!There has been a lot of attention given recently to the impact of exercise and physical activity on brain health. This is a hot and growing area in science. I'm not sure how much the general public is aware of the recent findings on just how powerful exercise can be as a way of keeping your brain healthy. If anything, I think that information needs to be translated better to the public.

Jaime Tartar, Ph.D. Credit: NOVA

Most people exercise for the physical benefits, but maybe more people would exercise for the brain benefits. Another area where we could use a lot of work is in brain injury in sports. Right now, the neurodegenerative disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that can develop as a result of impact sports is not well understood. CTE cannot be diagnosed currently until after death. It would be very helpful to have better translation or research in this area. Better understanding of one neurodegenerative disease can help the understanding of all of them so understanding more about CTE can also help with our understanding of Alzheimer's disease.In your presentation last year at the 16th Annual Conference of the International Society of Sports Nutrition in Las Vegas, you spoke at length about the deleterious effects insufficient sleep has on sports performance. Is sleep monitoring a part of the solution?JT: Sleep monitoring can definitely help in sports performance. Athletes spend a lot of time training for performance and eating the right nutrition to perform better. Improving sleep is also critical to performance, but many athletes are not aware of just how much of an impact poor sleep has on sports performance. Many people, not just athletes, restrict their sleep in order to increase their daytime waking activities, but for athletes studies have demonstrated very clearly that when they sleep better they perform better. Athletes and non-athletes alike need to give themselves permission to get better sleep and think of sleep as a basic hygiene, just like eating well and exercising. It's difficult to gauge ones sleep properly so monitoring this can be very helpful towards this goal.In your presentation on How to manage the misbehaving brain, you pointed out that in hunter-gatherer times, a drop in temperature was a reliable predictor of sleep onset, perhaps even more so than light. Would you expect this still to be the case today?JT: Not only would I expect this to be true today, but a good number ofstudies have demonstrated this to be the case. In general, sleep in humans and non-human animals is associated with a decrease in core body temperature. It has been clearly demonstrated that a decrease in core body temperature before sleep onset relates to faster sleep onset and better-quality sleep.Youve studied the role of acute and chronic stress, a topic of great interest in sports performance circles. Historically, most research was centeredaround cortisol and alpha amylase activity, however the latest advances in genotyping have allowed researchers to look at how genetic difference in dopamine levels affect athletic performance.In one of your recent studies, you investigated how a functional single-nucleotide polymorphism in the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene relates to catecholamine levels and allele types considered the warrior and the worrier genotypes. How does COMT allele status affect the athletes performance under stressful conditions? What about its impact on emotional processing?JT: People who carry 2 G nucleotide alleles for the COMT gene have less of a breakdown of dopamine in the brain and especially in the prefrontal cortex. We previously demonstrated that women who carry at least one copy of the "A" allele (who therefore have less dopamine breakdown/ more circulating dopamine in the prefrontal cortex) have better psychological health at baseline.However, with the onset of stress, dopamine levels rise so for people who carry the GG alleles this rise puts their dopamine levels at the sweet spot for performance whereas people who have higher baseline dopamine levels (people who carry at least one A allele) this pushes their dopamine levels too high to the point where they're not performing well. People with two G alleles are sometimes known as warrior allele carriers because they seem to be able to perform better under stress. In agreement with this idea, we recently published a paper showing that professional MMA fighters are more likely to carry the GG allele than would be expected based on population data.

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